He maintains, with the aid of eager little books
by Socialists, that man is really happier in a hive than in a house.
The practical difficulty of keeping total strangers out of your
bedroom he describes as Brotherhood; and the necessity for
climbing twenty-three flights of cold stone stairs, I dare say he
calls Effort. The net result of their philanthropic adventure is this:
that one has come to defending indefensible slums and still more
indefensible slum-landlords, while the other has come to treating
as divine the sheds and pipes which he only meant as desperate.
Gudge is now a corrupt and apoplectic old Tory in the Carlton Club;
if you mention poverty to him he roars at you in a thick,
hoarse voice something that is conjectured to be "Do 'em good!"
Nor is Hudge more happy; for he is a lean vegetarian with a gray,
pointed beard and an unnaturally easy smile, who goes about telling
everybody that at last we shall all sleep in one universal bedroom;
and he lives in a Garden City, like one forgotten of God.
Such is the lamentable history of Hudge and Gudge; which I merely
introduce as a type of an endless and exasperating misunderstanding
which is always occurring in modern England.
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