The ceremony was brisk. Shaw, true to form, attempted to interrupt the proceedings twice—once to question the phrasing of "lawful impediment" and again to suggest that the room’s ventilation was a crime against public health.
When it came time for the rings, Shaw fumbled. "A gold hoop," he muttered. "The smallest handcuff ever forged by man." Getting Married by George Bernard Shaw
"You look remarkably like a prisoner waiting for the gaoler, George," Charlotte remarked, her eyes twinkling behind her spectacles. The ceremony was brisk
The morning of his wedding, George Bernard Shaw did not look like a man about to enter the "monstrous engine" of matrimony. Instead, he looked like a man who had misplaced a very important pamphlet on Fabianism. "A gold hoop," he muttered
Shaw regained his posture, his eyes sparking with their usual mischievous fire. "I feel," he declared, "that I have just committed a very popular mistake. However, as mistakes go, I find the company to be of a much higher caliber than I deserve. Now, shall we go home? I have a preface to write, and I suspect marriage will provide me with at least five thousand words on why it is a disaster for everyone else."
As they stepped back out onto the street, the London fog swirling around them, Charlotte took his arm.
He stood in the hallway of the West Strand Registry Office, tugging at his rough, woollen jacket. Beside him stood Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a woman of formidable intellect and even more formidable patience. She was dressed sensibly; George was dressed, as usual, like a hedge that had decided to take up socialist lecturing.