ich Mrs. Chesterton was staying, suggesting
that I should come round and remonstrate with Mr. Chesterton. On my
arrival I found him sitting on the stairs, where he had been for two
hours, greatly incommoding passers up and down and deaf to all
requests to move on. It appeared that he had written a sonnet to his
wife on her recovery from the operation and was bringing it to give
her. He was not however satisfied with the last line, but was
determined to perfect it before entering her room to take tea with
her.

By the time they left London she must, I think, have given up the
hope she had so long cherished. Still if there could not be children
there might be perhaps something of a home. In the conditions of
their life, there was danger that any house of bricks and mortar
should be rather a headquarters than a home, and it was lucky that he
was able to feel she took home with her wherever they went--

Your face that is a wandering home
A flying home for me.

The years before them were to be filled with the vast activities that
not only took Gilbert to London and all over England incessantly, but
were to take him increasingly over Europe and America. Beaconsfield
gave a degree of quiet that made it possible, when they were able to
be at home, not to be swamped by engagements and to lead a life of
their own. Gilbert could go to London when he liked, but he need not
always be on tap, so to say, for all the world. Frances could have a
garden and indulge her hungry appetite for all that was fruitful.
G.K., later, under the title "The Homelessness of Jones"* showed his
love for a house rather than a flat, and they gave even to their
first little house "Overroads" the stamp of a real home.

[* A chapter in _What's Wrong with the World_.]

For a man and his wife to leave London for the country might seem to
be their own affair. Not so, however, with the Chestertons. After a
lapse of over thirty years I find the matter still a subject of
furious controversy and indeed passion. Frances, says one school of
opinion, committed a crime against the public good by removing
Gilbert from Fleet Street. No, says the other school, she had to move
him or he would have died of working too hard and drinking too much.
The suggestion, which I believe to be a fact, that Gilbert himself
wanted to move, is seldom entertained.

There is in all this the legitimate feeling of distress among any
group at losing its c