“What do you object to?” asked Shaw; “the velvet jacket?”
The attendant nodded assent.
“Very well,” exclaimed Shaw, no whit abashed, “I will remove it.” And the next instant he was striding up the aisle in his shirt sleeves.
“Here, that won't do!” shouted the attendant in great alarm, hurrying after Shaw and stopping him with great difficulty.
“Won't do?” cried Shaw, with fine assumption of indignation. “Do you think I am going to take off any more?”
And with that he promptly redonned his velvet jacket and turning on his heel, left the house. Shaw finally won the battle and enjoyed his triumph in face of the objection of managers and the indignation of the fashionable and wealthy theatre-goers.
Shaw's snuff-coloured suit and flannel shirt made him a marked figure in London during the 'nineties. He wore it so long that it finally came to look, as one of his acquaintances said, as if it were made of brown wrapping paper. So much a part of his individuality had it become that, when he finally discarded it, some friends of Shaw's, seeing it depending from a nail, exclaimed—so well had it retained its shape—“Good heavens! he's done it at last!”
Of peculiar, almost unique, interest is the record of Shaw's physical proportions and qualities, taken in the Anthropometric Laboratory arranged by Francis Galton, F.R.S., at the International Health Exhibition on August 16th, 1884. This was just twenty days before Shaw joined the Fabian Society. According to this chart, numbered 3,655, Shaw's anthropometric properties were as follows:
Colour of eyes, blue-grey.
Eyesight.