He saw marriage as a settling down to the serious business of life; a settling down that was symbolized in the large stuccoed house in St John's Wood Park, with its long mahogany dining-table, its family portraits, its oak-panelled smoking-room, its leather-bound books running in long, dusty rows from floor to ceiling; its drawing-room whose heavily brocaded windows looked out on a trim garden, its thick carpets, its kitchened basement, its high, wide bedrooms, its airy nursery.