emblem, I should choose the beech-tree." Beaconsfield was, by one
theory, named from the beech forests that surrounded it, and while
the oaks suggested adventure and the British lion, the beeches
suggest rather the pigs that feed upon their mast and villages that
grow up in the hollows and slow curves of the hills.

"The return to the real England with real Englishmen would be a
return to the beech-woods, which still make this town like a home. At
least they did until recently. I shall probably be told tomorrow that
several beech forests have been removed to enable a motorist,
temporarily deaf and blind, to go from Birmingham to Brighton."

It is at Top Meadow, whither they moved in 1922, that I always see
Frances and Gilbert in a memory picture. They were to live there for
the rest of their lives, and life there was the quiet background for
all the vast mental activity and the journeying over England and
Ireland and Europe and America that marked the years that remained.

The house began simply as a huge room or studio built in the field
opposite Overroads. At one end was a stage which became the dining
room: at the other end a minute study for Gilbert. The roof was high
with great beams: at the study end was a musicians' gallery. A wide
open fireplace held two rushbottomed seats on one of which Frances
sat in winter. They were the only warm corners, but Gilbert did not
feel the cold and certainly could not have fitted into the inglenook.
Opposite the fire was a long low window looking into the prettiest
garden, where St. Francis stood guardian and preached perpetually to
the birds. A pool held water lilies; and the flowers that surrounded
the pool and the house were also cut and brought indoors in great
quantities. Frances loved to have them in glowing masses against the
background of books.

New shelves had to be added every year as the books accumulated. Big
as the room was, the wall space was not enough and one large bookcase
was built out from the wall near the fireplace into the middle of the
room, as in a public library. It looked well there and it screened
one from the bitterest blasts. For the place seemed full of air from
the four winds of heaven. The rest of the house was built on to this
room and looked tiny beside it. Kitchen and servants' quarters, two
fair-sized and one very small bedroom, a minute sitting room for
Frances where she kept her collection of tiny things--toys and
ornaments mostly less