he theorists about
moving house, if they do not know that decisions made by one party
alone are rare indeed and stick out like spikes in the life of a
normal and happy couple. Of the vast majority of decisions it is hard
to say who makes them. They make themselves: after endless talk: on
the tops of omnibuses going to Hanwell or elsewhere: out walking:
breakfasting--especially breakfasting in bed. They make
themselves--above all in the matter of a move--in fine weather:
during a holiday: on a hot London Sunday: when a flat is stuffy: when
the telephone rings all day: when a book is on the stocks.

Other writers have left London that they might create at leisure and
choose their own times for social intercourse. Why does no one say
their wives dragged them away? Simply, I think, that being less kind
and considerate than Gilbert, they do not mind telling their friends
that they are not always wanted. This Gilbert could not do. If people
said how they would miss him, how they hated his going, he would
murmur vague and friendly sounds, from which they deduced all they
wanted to deduce. Was it more weakness or strength, that tenderness
of heart that could never faintly suggest to his friends that they
would miss him more than he would miss them? "I never wanted but one
thing in my life," he had written to Annie Firmin. And that "one
thing" he was taking with him.

Anyhow, the move accomplished, he enjoyed defending it in every
detail, and did so especially in his _Daily News_ articles. The rush
to the country was not uncommon in the literary world of the moment,
and his journalist friends had urged the point that Beaconsfield was
not true country, was suburban, was being built over. His friends,
G.K. replied, were suffering from a weak-minded swing from one
extreme to the other. Men who had praised London as the only place to
live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a
station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to
depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so
distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival
ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely
inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous
heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation
which the other friend had thoughtlessly overlooked."

Gilbert, on the contrary, noted soon after his arrival that
Beaconsfield was beginning to be built over a