usband a good deal of "corroborative detail designed to
give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."
Of these details some are true, some false, all arranged to support
the main untruth of Frances and Gilbert's relation to one another.
The thesis of the book is that Gilbert was an unhappy and frustrated
man (a) because Frances shrank from consummating their marriage, and
(b) because she dragged him away from his London life and friends to
bury him in a middle class suburb.

I confess that I am Victorian enough heartily to dislike writing this
appendix. Yet it is necessary, for many who read _The Chestertons_
have supposed that a story told by so near a connection must be true.

The ground was laid for the introduction of the Legend by the tale of
the Red Haired Phantom, if I may describe it in the terms of a ghost
story. That ghost was easy to lay (see Introduction). Next comes the
odd account of Gilbert and Frances' honeymoon and of the years that
followed. It is of course possible that the first night of their
marriage was not happy--especially in the Victorian days of reticence
which left wife and even possibly husband unprepared for life
together: (though this did not normally prevent a happy marriage and
a pack of children afterwards). But I find it impossible to imagine
Cecil Chesterton, like the bridesmaid on the honeymoon, receiving and
passing on such a story as that of Gilbert "quivering with
self-reproach" so that after the first night he "dared not even
contemplate a repetition. . . . Gilbert, young and vital, was
condemned to a pseudo-monastic life, in which he lived with a woman
but never enjoyed one." (p. 282)

There is a psychological reason for thinking this story especially
improbable and a physical reason for dismissing it as actually
impossible.

A white horse had from his childhood been for Gilbert the supreme
sign of romance, and he had chosen to spend the first night of his
honeymoon at the White Horse Inn. From his honeymoon he wrote home
that he had "a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife. What
more can any man want?" Ten years later he wrote _The Ballad of the
White Horse_ and dedicated it to Frances, saying,

"O go you onward, where you are
Shall honour and laughter be.
Past purpled forest and pearled foam,
God's winged pavilion free to roam,
Your face, that is a wandering home,
A flying home for me."

And over thirty years later he wrote again of be