t the modern world had lost.

The honeymoon was spent on the Norfolk Broads. On the way they
stopped at Ipswich "and it was like meeting a friend in a fairy-tale
to find myself under the sign of the White Horse on the first day of
my honeymoon." Annie Firmin was staying in Warwick Gardens for the
wedding and afterwards. Gilbert's first letter, from the Norfolk
Broads, began "I have a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a
knife: what more can any man want on a honeymoon."

Asked on his return what wallpapers he would prefer in the house they
had chosen, he asked for brown paper so that he could draw pictures
everywhere. He had by no means abandoned this old habit, and Annie
remembers an illness during which he asked for a long enough pencil
to draw on the ceiling. Their quaint little house in Edwardes Square,
Kensington, lent to them by Mr. Boore, an old friend of Frances, was
close to Warwick Gardens. "I remember the house well," wrote E. C.
Bentley later, "with its garden of old trees and its general air of
Georgian peace. I remember too the splendid flaming frescoes, done in
vivid crayons, of knights and heroes and divinities with which G.K.C.
embellished the outside wall at the back, beneath a sheltering
portico. I have often wondered whether the landlord charged for them
as dilapidations at the end of the tenancy."

They were only in Edwardes Square for a few months and then moved to
Overstrand Mansions, Battersea, where the rest of their London life
was spent. It was here I came to know them a few years later. As soon
as they could afford it they threw drawing-room and dining-room
together to make one big room. At one end hung an Engagement board
with what Father O'Connor has described as a _"loud_ inscription"--
LEST WE FORGET. Beside the engagements was pinned a poem by Hilaire
Belloc:

Frances and Gilbert have a little flat
At eighty pounds a year and cheap at that
Where Frances who is Gilbert's only wife
Leads an unhappy and complaining life:
while Gilbert who is Frances' only man
Puts up with it as gamely as he can.

The Bellocs chose life in the country much earlier than the
Chestertons, and an undated letter to Battersea threatens due
reprisals in an exclusion from their country home, if the Chestertons
are not prepared to receive him in town at a late hour.

Kings Land, Shipley, Horsham

It will annoy you a good deal to hear that I am in town tomorrow
Wednesday evenin