d if they are
journalists, it will be necessary to administer an oath of secrecy. I
don't object to the oath; and nothing would please Gilbert more than
to make them drink blood from a skull: the difficulty is, they
wouldn't keep it. In short, they must be the right sort of people, of
whom the more the merrier.

Forgive this long rigmarole: it is only to put you in possession of
what _may_ happen if you approve, and your invitations and domestic
circumstances are propitious.

Yours sincerely,
G. BERNARD SHAW.

Chesterton at last did write _Magic_--but that belongs to another
chapter.

Like the demand for a play, the theme of finance recurs with great
frequency in Shaw's letters, and after _Magic_ appeared he wrote to
Frances telling her that "in Sweden, where the marriage laws are
comparatively enlightened, I believe you could obtain a divorce on
the ground that your husband threw away an important part of the
provision for your old age for twenty pieces of silver. . . . In
future, the moment he has finished a play and the question of
disposing of it arises, lock him up and bring the agreement to me.
Explanations would be thrown away on him."

CHAPTER XV

From Battersea to Beaconsfield
(1909-1911)

IN 1909, WITH _Orthodoxy_ well behind him, and _George Bernard Shaw_
just published, Gilbert and his wife left London for the small
country town that was to be their home for the rest of their lives.
It was an odd coincidence that they should leave Overstrand Mansions,
Battersea, and come to Overroads, Beaconsfield, for they did not name
their new home but found it ready christened.

It will be remembered that in one of the letters during the
engagement Gilbert had suggested a country home. The reason for the
choice of Beaconsfield he gives in the _Autobiography:_

After we were married, my wife and I lived for about a year in
Kensington, the place of my childhood; but I think we both knew that
it was not to be the real place for our abode. I remember that we
strolled out one day, for a sort of second honeymoon, and went upon a
journey into the void, a voyage deliberately objectless. I saw a
passing omnibus labelled "Hanwell" and, feeling this to be an
appropriate omen,* we boarded it and left it somewhere at a stray
station, which I entered and asked the man in the ticket-office where
the next train went to. He uttered the pedantic reply, "Where d