Charlotte Payne-Townshend

Webb described her as: "[a] large graceful woman with masses of chocolate brown hair ... She dresses well, in flowing white evening robes she approaches beauty.

Beatrice and Sidney Webb persuaded Charlotte to donate £1,000 to the London School of Economics library and the endowment of a woman's scholarship.

Beatrice later commented: By temperament she is an anarchist, feeling any regulation or rule intolerable, a tendency which has been exaggerated by her irresponsible wealth... She is a socialist and a radical, not because she understands the collectivist standpoint, but because she is by nature a rebel.

She is fond of men and impatient of most women, bitterly resents her enforced celibacy but thinks she could not tolerate the matter-of-fact side of marriage.

[7]According to Michael Holroyd, Webb developed a plan "to marry Charlotte off to" Graham Wallas, who worked at the London School of Economics.

She, being also Irish, does not succumb to my arts as the unsuspecting and literal Englishwoman does; but we get on together all the better, repairing bicycles, talking philosophy and religion... or, when we are in a mischievous or sentimental humour, philandering shamelessly and outrageously."

Beatrice wrote: "They were constant companions, pedaling round the country all day, sitting up late at night talking."

Shaw told Ellen Terry:Kissing in the evening among the trees was very pleasant, but she knows the value of her unencumbered independence, having suffered a good deal from family bonds and conventionality before the death of her mother and the marriage of her sister left her free...

The idea of tying herself up again by a marriage before she knows anything – before she has exploited her freedom and money power to the utmost.When they returned to London, Charlotte sent an affectionate letter to Shaw.

He told Ellen Terry that the proposal was like an "earthquake" and he "with shuddering horror and wildly asked the fare to Australia".

The "romance" of the marriage of "A" and "Z" reveals consummation, not as mere sensual gratification of the senses, but as a mystic rite of sublimation, in the discovery of life's aesthetic magic and wonder.