s notes was an artificial reticence of speech, which
waited till it could plant the perfect epigram. Its typical products
were far too conceited to lay down the law. Now when people heard that
Bernard Shaw was witty, as he most certainly was, when they heard his
_mots_ repeated like those of Whistler or Wilde, when they heard things
like "the Seven deadly Virtues" or "Who _was_ Hall Caine?" they expected
another of these silent sarcastic dandies who went about with one
epigram, patient and poisonous, like a bee with his one sting. And when
they saw and heard the new humorist they found no fixed sneer, no frock
coat, no green carnation, no silent Savoy Restaurant good manners, no
fear of looking a fool, no particular notion of looking a gentleman.
They found a talkative Irishman with a kind voice and a brown coat; open
gestures and an evident desire to make people really agree with him. He
had his own kind of affectations no doubt, and his own kind of tricks of
debate; but he broke, and, thank God, forever the spell of the little
man with the single eye glass who had frozen both faith and fun at so
many tea-tables. Shaw's humane voice and hearty manner were so obviously
more the things of a great man than the hard, gem-like brilliancy of
Wilde or the careful ill-temper of Whistler. He brought in a breezier
sort of insolence; the single eye-glass fled before the single eye.

Added to the effect of the amiable dogmatic voice and lean, loose
swaggering figure, is that of the face with which so many caricaturists
have fantastically delighted themselves, the Mephistophelean face with
the fierce tufted eyebrows and forked red beard. Yet those caricaturists
in their natural delight in coming upon so striking a face, have
somewhat misrepresented it, making it merely Satanic; whereas its actual
expression has quite as much benevolence as mockery. By this time his
costume has become a part of his personality; one has come to think of
the reddish brown Jaeger suit as if it were a sort of reddish brown fur,
and were, like the hair and eyebrows, a part of the animal; yet there
are those who claim to remember a Bernard Shaw of yet more awful aspect
before Jaeger came to his assistance; a Bernard Shaw in a dilapidated
frock-coat and some sort of straw hat. I can hardly believe it; the man
is so much of a piece, and must always have dressed appropriately. In
any case his brown woollen clothes, at once artistic and hygienic,
completed the