On this day in 1898 George Bernard Shaw married Charlotte Payne-Townsend. Both were in their early forties and both professed a distaste for matrimony; how they came to tie a knot that would last for forty-five years -- albeit celibate ones, apparently -- is a story that has intrigued all Shaw's biographers, as it seems to have intrigued Shaw himself.
During the courting months of 1896-7, Shaw was a struggling writer-reviewer and a committed Fabian, a man getting known not only for his wit and his soapbox socialism, but for his "coquetting" with ladies attracted to either. Payne-Townsend was a recent heiress, and one clearly enjoying her independence ... FULL STORY »
