llying-point of
domestic virtue, the origin of domestic tyranny. It is the place where
public opinion cannot see you and where, therefore, you may behave
badly. Most wife beaters live in houses; in flats they would be afraid
of the opinion of the hall porter. And yet the home is not without its
charm and its nobility, for its bricks and mortar enshrine a spirit that
is worshiped and for which much may be sacrificed. Cigars have been
given up so that the home might have a new coat of paint; amusements,
holidays, food sometimes--all these have been sacrificed so that, well
railed off from the outside world by a front garden, if possible by a
back garden, too--or, still more delightful, far from the next house--a
little social cosmos might be maintained. So far has this gone in the
north of England that many people who could well afford servants will
not have them because, as they say, they cannot bear strangers in the
house. And very desirable houses in the suburbs of London, with old,
walled gardens, have been given up because it was unbearable to take tea
under the eyes of passengers on the top of the motor busses.

The home spirit, however, is not content merely with coats of paint and
doilies; it demands mental as well as material worship. It demands
importance; it insists that it is home, sweet home, and that there is no
place like it (which is one comfort); that it is the last thought of the
drowning sailor; that the trapper, lost in the deepest forests of
Canada, sees rising in the smoke of his lonely camp fire a delicious
vision of Aunt Maria's magenta curtains. It lays down that it is wrong
to leave it, quite apart from the question of burglars; it has invented
scores of phrases to justify otherwise unpleasant husbands who had
"given a good home" to their wives; phrases to censure revolting
daughters "who had good homes, and what more could they want?" It has
frowned upon everything that was outside itself, for it could not see
anything that was not itself. It has hated theaters, concerts, dances,
lectures, every form of amusement; and, as it has to bear them, likes to
refer to them archly as debauches, or going on the razzle-dazzle, or the
ran-dan, according to period. It has powerfully allied itself with the
pulpit and, in impious circles, with fancy work and crochet; it has
enlisted a considerable portion of the Royal Academy to depict it in
various scenes for which the recipe is: One tired man with a sunny smi