 Chapter 10 Part 2 of Gilbert Keith Chesterton of his belief in God in man, in goodness, as against the pessimist outlook of his day, Gilbert, as we have seen, felt profound certitude. That his outlook was one that held him back from many fields of opportunity, he was already partly conscious. A fragment of a letter to Francis expresses this feeling. I find I cannot possibly come to-night, as my Canadian uncle keeps his last night in England, in a sort of family party. And I abide in my father's house, said our lady of the snows. I have just had a note from Rex, asking me with characteristic precision if I can produce a play in the style of Materlink by six-fifty this afternoon, or words to that effect. The idea is full of humor. He remarks as a matter of fact that there is just a remote chance of his getting the stage society to act my play of the wild night. This opens to me a vista of quite new ambition. While only at the stage society, I see a visionary program. The wild night, Mr. Charles Haughtry, Captain Redfeather, Mr. Penley, Olive, Miss Katie Seymour, Priest, Sir Henry Irving, Lord Orm, Mr. Arthur Roberts. I am working and must get on with my work. I do not feel any despondency about it, because I know it is good and worth doing. It is extraordinary how much more moral one is than one imagines. At school I never minded getting into a row if it were really not my fault. Similarly I have never cared a rap for rejections or criticisms, since I had got a point of view to express which I was certain held water. Some people think it holds water, on the brain. But I don't mind. Bless them. I am afraid, darling, that this doctrine of patience is hard on you. But really, it's a grand thing to think oneself right. It's what this whole age is starving for, something to suffer for and go mad and miserable over. That is the only luxury of the mind. I wish I were a convinced probore, and could stare down a howling mob. But I am right about the cosmos, and Schopenhauer and company are wrong. Two interesting points in this letter are the remark about wishing to be a convinced probore, which he certainly became, and the suggestion of a possible performance of the wild night. Perhaps the letter was written before he had finally taken his stand. It has no dating postmark. Or perhaps it merely means that his convictions on the cosmos are more absolute than on the war. As to the wild night, it was never acted, and its publication was made possible only by the generosity of Gilbert's father. For a volume of comic verse, Graybeards at Play, which appeared earlier in the same year, 1900, he could find a publisher, but serious poetry has never been easy to launch. The letter that follows has more immediate bearing on their own future. 11. Warwick Gardens. Good Friday, 1900. As you have tabulated your questions with such alarming precision, I must really endeavour to answer them categorically. 1. How am I? I am in excellent health, I have an opaque cold in my head, cough tempestuously, and am very deaf, but these things I count as mere specs showing up the general blaze of celebrity. I am getting steadily better, and I don't mind how slowly. As for my spirits, a cold never affects them, for I have plenty to do and think about indoors. One or two little literary schemes, trifles doubtless, claim my attention. 2. Am I going away at Easter? The sarcastic might think at a characteristic answer, but I can only reply that I had banished the matter from my mind, a vague problem of the remote future, until you asked it. But since this is Easter, and we are not gone away, I suppose we are not going away. 3. I will meet you at Houston on Tuesday evening, though hell itself should gape and bid me stop at home. 4. I am not sure whether a review on Crivelli's art is out this week. I am going to look. 5. Alas, I have not been to nut. There are good excuses, but they are not the real ones. I will write to him now. Yes. Now. 6. Does my hair want cutting? My hair seems pretty happy. You are the only person who seems to have any fixed theory on this. For all I know it may be at that fugitive perfection which has moved you to enthusiasm. Three minutes after this perfection, I understand, a horrible degeneration sets in. The hair becomes too long, the figure disreputable and profligate, and the individual is unrecognized by all his friends. It is he that wants cutting, then, not his hair. 7. As to shirtlinks, studs, and laces, I glitter from head to foot with them. 8. I have had a few skirmishes with Nollies, but not the general engagement. When this comes off you shall have news from our correspondent. Nollies was Francis' brother. 9. I have got a really important job in reviewing the life of Ruskin for the speaker. As I have precisely seventy-three theories about Ruskin, it will be brilliant and condensed. I am also reviewing the life of the Kendall's, a book on the Renaissance, and one on Coraggio for the Bookman. 10. How far is it to Babylon? Babylon, I am firmly convinced, is just round the corner. If one could only be certain which corner? This conviction is the salt of my life. 11. Really and truly I see no reason why we should not be married in April, if not before. I have been making some money calculations with the kind assistance of Rex, and as far as I can see we could live in the country on quite a small amount of regular literary work. P.S. Forgot the last question. 12. Oddly enough I was writing a poem. We'll send it to you. Gilbert's engagement had given him the impetus to earn more, but he was always entirely unpractical. His salary at Fisher Unwinds had been negligible, and he was not making much yet by the journalism which was now his only source of income. P.S. The repeated promise to write to not is very characteristic, for not was the manager of the solitary publisher who was at the moment prepared to put a book of Gilbert on the market at his own risk. Although they did not manage to get married this year, by the end of it he was becoming well known. The articles in the speaker especially were attracting attention, and Greybeards at play had a considerable success. P.S. This, the first of Gilbert's books to be published, is a curiosity. It is made up of three incredibly witty satirical poems, the Oneness of the Philosopher with Nature, the dangers of attending altruism on the high seas, and the disastrous spread of aestheticism in all classes. The illustrations drawn by himself are as witty as the verses. By the beginning of 1901 his work was being sought for by other liberal periodicals, and he was writing regularly for the daily news. The following letter to Francis bears the postmark February 8, 1901. Somewhere in the Arabian Nights, or some such place, there is a story of a man who was emperor of the Indies for one day. I am rather in the position of that person, for I am editor of the speaker for one day. Hammond is unwell, and Hearst has gone to dine with John Morley, so the latter asked me to see the paper through for this number. Hence this note paper, and the great hurry and berevity, which I fear must characterize this letter. There are a few minor amusing things, however, that I have a moment to mention. 1. The daily news have sent me a huge mass of books to review, which block up the front hall. A study of Swinburne, a book on Kipling, the last Richard Legalien, all very interesting. See if I don't do some whacking articles all about the stars and the moon and the creation of Adam and that sort of thing. I really think I could work a revolution in daily paper, writing by the introduction of poetical prose. 2. Among other books that I have to review came, all unsolicited, a book by your old friend Schofield. It's about the formation of character, or some of those low and beastly amusements. I think of introducing parts of my comic opera of the PNEU into the articles. 3. Another rather funny thing is the way in which my name is being spread about. Belich declares that everyone says to him, Who discovered Chesterton? and that he always replies, The Genius Oldershaw. This may be a trifle gallic, but Hammond has shown me more than one letter from Cambridge Dawns and such people, demanding the identity of GKC in a quite violent tone. They excuse themselves by offensive phrases in which the word brilliant occurs, but I shouldn't wonder if there was a thick stick somewhere at the back of it. Belich, by the way, has revealed another side of his extraordinary mind. He seems to have taken our marriage much to heart, for he talks to me no longer about French Jacobins and medieval saints, but entirely about the cheapest flats and furniture, on which, as on the others, he is a mind of information, assuring me paternally that it's the carpet that does you. I should think this fatherly tone would amuse you. Now I must leave off, for the pages have come up to be seen through the press. Greybeards at play its author never took very seriously. It was not included in his collected poems, and he does not even mention it in his autobiography. He attached a great deal more importance to the Wild Knight and other poems. It was a volume of some fifty poems, many of which had already appeared in The Outlook and The Speaker. It was published in 1900 and produced a crop of enthusiastic reviews, and more and more people began to ask one another, who is G. K. Chesterton? One reviewer wrote, If it were not for the haunting fear of losing a humorist, we should welcome the author of The Wild Knight to a high place among the poets. Another spoke of the curious intensity of the volume. Among those who were less pleased was John Davidson, on whom the book had been fathered by one reviewer, and who denied responsibility for such frantic rubbish, and also a reverent reviewer who complained, it is scattered all over with the name of God. To Francis Gilbert wrote, I have been taken to see Mrs. Maynall, poet and essayist, who is enthusiastic about The Wild Knight and is lending it to all her friends. Last night I went to Mrs. Cox's book-party. My costume was a great success, everyone wrestled with it, only one person guessed it, and the rest admitted that it was quite fair and simple. It consisted of wearing on the lapel of my dress-coat the following letters, U U N S I J. Perhaps you would like to work this out all by yourself. But no, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. The book I represented was The Letters of Junius. Mrs. Maynall never came to know Gilbert well, and her daughter says in the biography that her mother realized his critical approval, admiration would be a better word, of her own work only by reading his essays. But he once wrote an introduction for a book of hers, and her admiration of him would break out frequently in amusing exclamations. I hope the papers are nice to my Chesterton, he is mine much more really than Bellocks. If I had been a man and large I should have been Chesterton. Brimley Johnson, who was to have been Gilbert's brother-in-law, sent The Wild Knight to Rudyard Kipling. His reply is amusing and also touching, for Mr. Johnson was clearly pouring out in interest in Gilbert's career and in forwarding his marriage with Francis, the affections that might merely have been frozen by Gertrude's death. The Elms Roddington November 28th Dear Mr. Johnson, many thanks for The Wild Knight. Of course I knew some of the poems before, notably The Donkey, which stuck in my mind at the time I read it. I agree with you that there is any amount of promise in the work, and I think marriage will teach him a good deal too. It will be curious to see how he'll develop in a few years. We all begin with arranging and elaborating all the heavens and hells and stars and tragedies we can lay our poetic hands on. Later we see folk, just common people under the heavens. In the meantime I wish him all the happiness that there can be, and for yourself, such comfort as men say, time brings after loss. It's apt to be a weary while coming, but one goes the right way to get it if one interests oneself in the happiness of other folk. Even though the sight of happiness is like a knife turning in a wound, yours sincerely, Rudyard Kipling. P.S. merely as a matter of loathsome detail, Chesterton has a bad attack of Orioles. They are spotted all over the book. I think everyone is bound in each book to employ unconsciously some pet word, but that was Rosetti's. Likewise I notice one waste and many wands, and things that catch and cling. He is too good not to be jolted out of that. What do you say to a severe course of Walt Whitman, or will marriage make him see people? Gilbert had already taken both prescriptions. Walt Whitman, and folk, just common people under the heavens. Many years later James Agate wrote in Thursdays and Fridays. Unlike some other serious thinkers, Chesterton understood his fellow men. The woes of a jockey were as familiar to him as the worries of a judge. Perhaps some slight echoes of Swinburne did remain in this collection. Many earlier poems exist in the Swinburne manner, not of thought but of expression. Gilbert left an absolute command that these should never be published. All Englishmen were stricken by the death of Queen Victoria. Mr. Summers Cox, who had come to know Gilbert through his intimacy with Bellock, remembers that he wept when he heard of it. The tears may also be heard in a letter to Francis. Today the Queen was buried. I did not see the procession, first because I had an appointment with Hammond, of which Moronon, and secondly because I think I felt the matter too genuinely. I like a crowd when I am triumphant or excited, for a crowd is the only thing that can cheer, as much as a cock is the only thing that can crow. Can anything be more absurd than the idea of a man cheering alone in his back bedroom? But I think that reverence is better expressed by one man than a million. There is something unnatural and impossible, even grotesque, in the idea of a vast crowd of human beings all assuming an air of delicacy. All the same, my dear, this is a great and serious hour, and it is felt so completely by all England that I cannot deny the enduring wish I have, quite apart from certain more private sentiments, that the noblest Englishwoman I have ever known was here with me to renew, as I do, private vows of a very real character, to do my best for this country of mine, which I love with a love passing the love of jingos. It is sometimes easy to give one's country blood, and easier to give her money. Sometimes the hardest thing of all is to give her truth. I am writing an article on the good friend who is dead. I hope particularly that you will like it. The one I really like so far is Bellocks and the speaker. I had, as I said, many things to say, but owing to the hour and a certain fatigue and idiocy in myself, I have only space for the most important. Hammond sent for me today and asked me seriously if I would help him in writing a book on Fox, sharing work, fame, and profits. I told him that I had no special talent for research. He replied that he had no talent for literary form. I then said that I would be delighted to give him such assistance, as I honestly thought valuable enough for him to split his profits for, that I thought I could give him such assistance in the matter of picturesqueness and plan of idea, more especially as Fox was a great hero of mine, and the philosophy of his life involves the whole philosophy of the revolution and of the love of mankind. We arranged that we would make a preliminary examination of the Fox record, and then decide. Three more letters, two to Francis, one to his mother, complete the outline of this eventful period. He was now determined to get married quickly. For the first time, and entirely without ranker, he realized the inevitable competition in the world of journalism. The struggle for success meant men fighting one another. Other journalists were fighting him, but truly enough, though with a rare dispassionateness, he realized that this meant a need for daily bread and others similar to his own. 11. Warwick Gardens, W. Postmarked February 19, 1901. I hope that in your own beautiful kindness you will be indulgent just at this time if I only write rough letters or postcards. I am for the first time in my life thoroughly worried, and I find it a rather exciting and not entirely unpleasant sensation. But everything depends just now, not only on my sticking hard to work and doing a lot of my very best, but on my thinking about it, keeping wide awake to the turn of the market, being ready to do things not in half a week but in half an hour, getting the feelings and tendencies of other men and generally living in work. I am going to see laymen tomorrow, and many things may come of it. I cannot express to you what it is to feel the grip of the great wheel of real life on you for the first time. For the first time I know what is meant by the word enemies, men who deliberately dislike you and oppose your career. And the funny thing is that I don't dislike them at all. Poor divils. Very likely they want to be married in June too. I am a socialist, but I love this fierce old world, and am beginning to find a beauty in making money, in moderation, as in making statues. Always through my head one tune and words of Kipling set to it. They passed one resolution. Your subcommittee believe you can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse of Eve. Until we are built like angels with hammer and chisel and pen, we'll work for ourselves and a woman forever and ever. Amen. 11. Warwick Gardens W. Postmark, March 4, 1901 I have delayed this letter in a scandalous manner because I hoped I might have the arrangements with the daily news to tell you. As that is again put off, I must tell you later. The following, however, are grounds on which I believe everything will turn out right this year. It is arithmetic. The speaker has hitherto paid me seventy pounds a year, that is six pounds a month. It has now raised it to ten pounds a month, which makes one hundred twenty pounds a year. Moreover, they encourage me to write as much as I like in the paper so that assuming that I do something extra, poem, note, leader, twice a month, or every other number, which I can easily do, that brings us to nearly a hundred and fifty pounds a year. So much for the speaker. Now for the daily news. Both Certainties and Probabilities Hammond, to whom you will favour me by being eternally grateful, pushed me so strongly with laymen for the post of manager of the literary page that it is most probable that I shall get it. If I do, Hammond thinks they couldn't give me less than two hundred pounds a year, so that if this turns out right, we have three hundred fifty pounds, say, without any aid from bookmen, books, magazine articles, or stories. Let us, however, put this chance entirely on one side, and suppose that they can give me nothing but regular work on the daily news. I have just started a set of popular fighting articles on literature in the daily news called The Wars of Literature. They will appear at least twice a week, often three times. For each of these I am paid about a guinea and a half. This makes about three pounds a week, which is a hundred forty four pounds a year. Thus, with only the present Certainties of Speaker and Daily News, we have two hundred sixty four pounds a year, or very likely, with extra speaker items, two hundred eighty eight pounds, close on three hundred pounds. This again may be reinforced by all sorts of miscellaneous work, which I shall get now my name is getting known, magazine articles, helping editors or publishers, reading manuscripts, and so on. In all these calculations I have kept deliberately under the figures, not over them, so that I don't think I have failed altogether to bring my promise within reasonable distance of fact already. Belick suggested that I should write for the pilot, and as he is on it, he will probably get me some work. Hammond has become leader-writer on the Echo, and will probably get me some reviewing on that. And between ourselves, to turn with intense relief from all this egotism, Hammond and I have a little scheme on hand for getting Oldershaw a kind of editorial place on the Echo, where they want a brisk but cultivated man of the world. I think we can bring it off. It is a good place for an ambitious young man. It would give me more happiness than I can say, while I am building my own house of peace, to do something for the man who did so much in giving me my reason for it. For well thou knowest, O God most wise, how good on earth was his gift to me. Shall this be a little thing in thine eyes that is greater in mine than the whole great sea? I am afraid that this is a very dull letter. But you know what I am. I can be practical, but only deliberately, by fixing my mind on a thing. In this letter I sum up my last month's thinking about money resources. I haven't given a thought yet to the application and distribution of them in rent, furniture, etc. When I have done thinking about that you will get another dull letter. I can keep ten poems and twenty theories in my head at once, but I can only think of one practical thing at a time. The only conclusion of this letter is that on any calculation whatever we ought to have three hundred pounds a year and be on the road to four in a little while. With this before you I dare say you, who are more practical than I, could speculate and suggest a little as to the form of living and expenditure. Gilbert's mother perhaps needed more convincing. The letter to her has no postmark, but the three hundred pounds a year has grown to almost five hundred pounds and a careful economy is promised. Mrs. Barnes, The Orchards, Burley Hance My dearest mother, thank you very much for your two letters. If you get back to Kensington before me, I shall return on Thursday night. I find I work here very well. Would you mind sending on any letters? You might send on the check, though that is not necessary. There is a subject we have touched on once or twice that I want to talk to you about, for I am very much worried in my mind as to whether you will disapprove of a decision I have been coming to with a very earnest belief that I am seeking to do the right thing. I have just had information that my screw from the speaker will be yet further increased from a hundred twenty pounds a year to a hundred fifty pounds, or, if I do the full amount I can, a hundred ninety pounds a year. I have also had a request from the Daily News to do two columns a week regularly, which is rather over a hundred pounds a year, besides other book reviews. My other sources of income, which should bring the amount up to nearly one hundred fifty pounds more at any rate, I will speak of in a moment. There is something, as I say, that is distressing me a great deal. I believe I said about a year ago that I hoped to get married in a year if I had money enough. I fancy you took it rather as a joke. I was not so certain about it myself then. I have, however, been coming very seriously to the conclusion that if I pull off one more affair, a favourable arrangement with Reynolds Newspaper, whose editor wants to see me at the end of this week, I shall, unless you disapprove, make a dash for it this year. When I mentioned the matter a short time ago you said, if I remember right, that you did not think I ought to marry under four hundred pounds or five hundred pounds a year. I was moved to go into the matter thoroughly then and there, but as it happened I knew I had one or two bargains just coming of which would bring me nearer to the standard you named, so I thought I would let it stand over till I could actually quote them. Believe me, my dearest mother, I am not considering this affair wildly or ignorantly. I have been doing nothing but sums in my head for the last months. This is how matters stand. The speaker editor says they will take as much as I like to write. If I write my maximum I get a hundred ninety-two pounds a year from them. From the Daily News, even if I do not get the post on the staff which was half promised to me, I shall get at least a hundred pounds a year, with a good deal over for reviews outside the wars of literature. That makes nearly three hundred pounds. With the Manchester Sunday Chronicle I have just made a bargain by which I shall get seventy-two pounds a year. This makes three hundred seventy pounds a year altogether. The matter now I think largely depends on Reynolds paper. If I do, as is contemplated, weekly articles and thumbnail sketches, they cannot give me less than a hundred pounds a year. This would bring the whole to four hundred seventy pounds a year or within thirty pounds of your standard. Of course I know quite well that this is not like talking of an income from a business or a certain investment. But we should live a long way within this income if we took a very cheap flat, even a workman's flat if necessary, had a woman in to do the laborious daily work, and for the rest waited on ourselves, as many people I know do in cheap flats. Moreover, journalism has its ups as well as downs, and I, I can fairly say, am on the upward wave. Without vanity, and in a purely business-like spirit, I may say that my work is talked about a great deal. It is at least a remarkable fact that every one of the papers I write for, as detailed above, came to me and asked me to do the work for them. From the daily news down to the Manchester Sunday Chronicle. I have, as I say, what seems to me a sufficient income for a start, that I shall have as good and better I am as certain as that I sit here. I know the clockwork of these papers, and among one set of them I might almost say that I am becoming the fashion. Do not please think that I am entertaining this idea without realising that I shall have to start in a very serious and economical spirit. I have worked it out, and I am sure we could live well within the above calculations, and leave a good margin. I make all these prosaic statements because I want you to understand that I know the risks I think of running. But it is not any practical question that is distressing me. On that I think I see my way. But I am terribly worried for fear you should be angry or sorry about all this. I am only kept in hope by the remembrance that I had the same fear when I told you of my engagement, and that you dispelled it with the directness and generosity that I shall not forget. I think, my dear mother, that we have always understood each other really. We are neither of us very demonstrative. We come of some queer stock that can always say least when it means most. But I do think you can trust me when I say that I think a thing really right, and equally honestly admit that I can hardly explain why. To explain why I know it is right would be to communicate the incomunicable and speak of delicate and sacred things in bald words. The most I can say is that I know Francis like the back of my hand and can tell without a word from her that she has never recovered from a wound and that there is only one kind of peace that will heal it. I have tried to explain myself in this letter. I can do it better in a letter somehow, but I do not think I have done it very successfully. However, with you it does not matter, and it never will matter how my thoughts come tumbling out. You at least have always understood what I meant. Always your loving son, Gilbert. End of Chapter 10 Part 2 Recording by Candace Tuttle Chapter 11 Part 1 of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dick Bourgeois Doyle Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward Chapter 11 Part 1 Married Life in London The suburbs are commonly referred to as prosaic. That is a matter of taste. Personally, I find them intoxicating. Introduction to Literary London The wedding day drew near and the presents were pouring in. I feel like the young man in the Gospel, said Gilbert to Annie Furman, sorrowful because I have great possessions. Conrad Noel married Gilbert and Francis at Kensington Parish Church on June 28, 1901. As Gilbert knelt down, the price ticket on the sole of one of his new shoes became plainly visible. Annie caught Mrs. Chesterton's eye and they began to laugh helplessly. Annie thinks too that for once in their lives, Gilbert and Cecil did not argue at the reception. Lucien Olershaw drove ahead to the station with the heavy luggage, put it on the train, and waited feverishly. That train went off with the luggage. Then another. And at last, the happy couple appeared. Gilbert had felt it necessary to stop on the way in order to drink a glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in another. The milk he drank because in childhood his mother used to give him a glass in that shop. The revolver was for the defense of his bride against possible dangers. They followed the luggage by a slow train. This love of weapons, his revolver, his favorite swordstick, remained with him all his life. It suggested the adventures that he always bestowed on the heroes of his stories and would himself have loved to experience. He noted in 12 types, Scott's love of armor and of weapons for their own sakes, the texture, the power, the beauty of a sword hilt, or a jewel dagger. As a child would play with these things, Gilbert played with them. But they also stood in his mind for freedom, adventure, personal responsibility, and much else that the modern world had lost. The honeymoon was spent on the Northwick Brods, on the way they stopped at Ipswich, and it was like meeting a friend in a fairy tale to find himself under the sign of the white horse on the first day of my honeymoon. Annie Ferman was staying in Warwick Gardens for the wedding and afterwards. Gilbert's first letter from the Northwick Brods began, I have a wife, a piece of string, a pencil, and a knife. What more can any man want on a honeymoon? Asked on his return what wallpapers he would prefer in the house they had chosen, he asked for brown paper so he could draw pictures everywhere. He had by no means abandoned this old habit, and Annie remembers an illness during which he asked for a long enough pencil to draw on the ceiling. Their quaint little house in Edward Square, Kensington, lent to them by Mr. Boer, an old friend of Francis, was close to Warwick Gardens. I remember the house well, wrote E. C. Bentley later, with its garden of old trees and its general era of Georgian peace. I remember too the splendid flaming frescoes done in vivid crayons of knights and heroes and divinities with which G. K. C. embellished the outside wall of the back beneath a sheltering portico. I have often wondered whether the landlord charged for them as dilapidations at the end of the tenancy. They were only in Edward Square for a few months and then moved to overstrand mansions, Battersea, where the rest of their London life was spent. It was here I came to know them a few years later. As soon as they could afford it, they threw drawing room and dining room together to make one big room. At one end hung an engagement board with what Father O'Connor has described as a loud inscription, lest we forget. Beside the engagements was pinned to poem by Euler Balak. Francis and Gilbert have a little flat at 80 pounds a year and cheap at that, where Francis, who is Gilbert's only wife, leads an unhappy and complaining life, while Gilbert, who is Francis' only man, puts up with it as gamely as he can. The Balak's chose life in the country much earlier than the Chesterton's, and an undated letter to Battersea threatens due reprisals in an exclusion from their country home if the Chesterton's are not prepared to receive them in town at a late hour. Kingsland, Shipley, Horsham. It will annoy you a good deal to hear that I am in town tomorrow, Wednesday evening, and I shall appear at your apartment at 10.45 or 10.30 at the earliest p.m. You are only just returned. You are hardly settled down. It is an intolerable nuisance. You hardly wish I had not mentioned it. Well, you see that arrow pointing to telegrams, Coulomb Sussex? If you wire there before one, you can put me off. But if you do, I shall melt your keys, both the exterior one, which forms the body, or form of the matter, and the interior one, which is the mystical content thereof. Also, if you put me off, I shall not have you down here ever to see the Oak Room, the Tapestry Room, the Green Room, etc. Yours, H.B. Early in his Battersea life, Gilbert received a note from Max Bierbaum, the great humorist, introducing himself and suggesting a luncheon together. I am quite different from my writings. And so, I daresay, are you from yours, so that we should not necessarily fail to hit it off. I in the flesh am modest, full of common sense, very genial, and rather dull. What you are remains to be seen, or not to be seen, by me according to your decision. Gilbert's decision was for the meeting, and an instant liking grew into a warm friendship. As in J.D.'s Sea Days, Gilbert had written verse about his friends. So now, did he try to sum up an impression, perhaps after some special talk? And Max's queer, crystalline sense, lit, like a sea beneath a sea, shines through a shameless impudence, a shameless humility, or bellocks somewhat rudely roared, but all above them, when he spoke, the immortal battle trumpet spoke, and Europe was a single sword, unpublished fragment. Somewhere about this time must have occurred the incident mentioned by George Bernard Shaw in a note, which appeared in the Mark Twain Quarterly, Spring, 1937. I cannot remember when I first met Chesterton. I was so much struck by a review of Scott's Ivanhoe, which he wrote for the Daily News in the course of his earliest notable job as a foyer tonist for the paper that I wrote to him, asking who he was, and where he came from as he was evidently a new star in literature. He was either too shy or too lazy to answer. The next thing I remember is his lunching with us on quite intimate terms, accompanied by bellock. The actual first meeting, forgotten by Shaw, is remembered by Gilbert's brother-in-law, Lucien Oldershaw. He and Gilbert had gone together to Paris where they visited Rodin, then making a bust of Bernard Shaw. Mr. Oldershaw introduced Gilbert to GBS, who Rodin's secretary told them had been endeavoring to explain at some length the nature of the Salvation Army, leading up one imagines to an account of Major Barbara. At the end of the explanation Rodin's secretary remarked to a rather apologetic Shaw, the master says, you have not much French, but you impose yourself. Shaw talked Gilbert down. Mr. Oldershaw complained that the famous man should talk more than the beginner is hardly surprising, but all through Gilbert's life the complaint recurs on the lips of his admirers, just as a similar complaint is made by Lockhart about Sir Walter Scott. Chesterton, like Scott, abounded in cordial admiration of other men and women, and had a simple enjoyment in meeting them. Chesterton was one of the few great conversationalists, perhaps the only one, who would really rather listen than talk. In 1901 appeared his first book of collected essays, The Defendant. The essays in it had already appeared in the speaker. Like all his later work, it had the mixed reception of enthusiasts who saw what he meant and puzzled reviewers who took refuge in that blessed word Paradox. Paradox ought to be used, said one of these, like onions to season the salad. Mr. Chesterton's salad is all onions. Paradox has been defined as truth standing on her head to attract attention. Mr. Chesterton makes truth cut her throat to attract attention. Without denying that his love of a joke led him into indefensible puns and such like fulleries, though Monsignor Ronald Knox tells me he is prepared to defend all of GK's puns. I think nearly all his paradoxes were either the startling expression of an entirely neglected truth or the startling re-emphasis of the neglected side of a truth. Once he said, it is a paradox, but it is God and not I who should have the credit of it. He proved his case a few years later in the chapter of orthodoxy called The Paradoxes of Christianity. What it amounted to was roughly this, paradox must be the nature of things because of God's infinity and the limitations of the world and of man's mind. To us limited beings, God can express his idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner, we startle the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do it, we shall miss a great deal of truth. Chesterton also saw many proverbs and old sayings as containing a truth which the people who constantly repeated them had forgotten. The world was asleep and must be awakened. The world had gone placidly mad and must be violently restored to sanity. That the methods he used annoyed some is undeniable, but he did force people to think, even if they raged at him as the unaccustomed muscles came into play. I believe he said in a speech at this date in Getting into Hot Water, I think it keeps you clean, and he believed intensely in keeping out of a narrow stream of merely literary life. To those who exalted the poet above the journalist, he gave this answer. The poet writing his name upon a score of little pages in the silence of his study may or may not have an intellectual right to despise the journalist, but I greatly doubt whether he would not morally be better if he saw the great lights burning on through darkness into dawn and heard the roar of the printing wheels weaving the destinies of another day. Here at least is a school of labor and of some rough humility, the largest work ever published anonymously since the great Christian cathedrals. A word for the mere journalist, Darlington North Star, February 3rd, 1902. He plunged then into the life of Fleet Street and held it his proudest boast to be a journalist, but he had his own way of being a journalist. On the whole, I think I owe my success, as the millionaires say, to having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best advice given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best sort of success in journalism, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. For what they all told me was that the secret of success in journalism was to study the particular journal and write what was suitable to it. And partly by accident and ignorance and partly through the real rabid certainties of youth, I cannot remember that I ever wrote any article that was at all suitable to any paper. I wrote on a non-conformist organ, like the old daily news, and told them all about French cafes and Catholic cathedrals. And they loved it, because they had never heard of them before. I wrote on a robust labor organ, like the old clarion, and defended medieval theology and all the things their readers had never heard of, and their readers did not mind me a bit. Autobiography, pages 185-186. Mr. Titterden, who worked also on the daily news and came at this time to know G.K. at the Farrow's Club, says that at first he was rather shy of the other men on the staff, but after a dinner at which he was asked to speak he came to know and liked them and to be at home in Fleet Street. He liked to work amid human contact and would write his articles in a public house or in the club or even in the street resting the paper against a wall. Frank Swinerton records a description given him by Charles Masterman of how Chesterton used to sit writing his articles in a Fleet Street cafe, sampling and mixing a terrible conjunction of drinks while many waiters hovered about him, partly in awe and partly in case he should leave the restaurant without paying for what he had had. One day the head waiter approached Masterman, her friend he whispered admiringly. He very clever man, he sit and laugh and then he write and then he laugh at what he write. Georgian scene page 94. He loved Fleet Street, handed a good deal of drinking there, but not only there. When in the autobiography he writes of wine and song is not Fleet Street and its taverns that come back to his mind, but the moon-struck banquets given by Mr. Morris Bering, the garden in Westminster where he fenced with real swords against one more intoxicated than himself. Song shouted in Oberon Erbert's rooms near Buckingham Palace. After marriage Francis seems to have given up the struggle so ardently pursued during their engagement to make him tidy. By stroke of genius she decided instead to make him picturesque. The conventional frock coat worn so unconventionally, the silk hat crowning a mat of hair disappeared and a wide brim slow chat and flowing cloak more appropriately garbed him. This was especially good as he got fatter. He was a tall man, six foot two. As a boy he had been thin, but now he was rapidly putting on weight. Neither he nor Cecil played games. The tennis did not last, but they used to go for long walks, sometimes going off together for a couple of days at a time. Gilbert still liked to do this with Francis, but the sedentary daily life and the consumption of a good deal of beer did not help towards a graceful figure. By 1903 GK was called a fat humorist and he was fast getting ready to be Dr. Johnson in various pageants. By 1906 he was then 32. He had become famous enough to be one of the celebrities painted or photographed for exhibitions and Bernard Shaw described a photo of him by Coburn. Chesterton is our quimbus flestern, the young man mountain, a large, abounding, gigantically cherubic person who is not only large and body and mind, be all on all decency, but seems to be growing larger as you look at him, swelling, wistfully, as Tony Weller puts it. Mr. Coburn has represented him as flowing off the plate in the very act of being photographed and blurring his own outlines in the process. Also, he has cut the Chestertonian resemblance to Balzac and unconsciously handled his subject as Rodin handled Balzac. You may call the placing of the head on the plate wrong, the focusing wrong, the exposure wrong if you like, but Chesterton is right and a right impression of Chesterton is what Mr. Coburn was driving at. The change in his appearance G.K. celebrated in a stanza of his Ballad of the Grotesque. I was light as a penny to spend. I was thin as an arrow to cleave. I could stand on a fishing rod's end with composure, though on the key weave. But from time all the flying to thief, the suns and the moons of the year, a different shape I receive. The shape is decidedly queer. London said a recently arrived American is the most marvellously fulfilling experience. I went to see Fleet Street this morning and met G.K. Chesterton face to face, wrapped in a cloak and standing in the doorway of a pie shop. He was composing a poem reciting it aloud as he wrote. The most striking thing about the incident was that no one took the slightest notice. I doubt if any writer, except Dickens, has so quickly become an institution as Chesterton, nor of course would his picturesqueness in Fleet Street or his swift success as a journalist have accomplished this but for the vast output of books on every conceivable subject. But before I come to the books written during those years at Battersea, a word must be said of another element besides his journalistic contacts that was linking G.K. with a wider world than the solely literary. We have seen that even when his religion was at its lowest point in the difficult art school days, he never lost it entirely. I hung on to religion by one thin thread of thanks. In the years of the notebook he advanced very far in his pondering on and his acceptance of the great religious truths. But this did not as yet mean attachment to the church. Then he met Francis. She actually practiced a religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both to me and to the whole fussy culture in which she lived. Now that they were married, Francis, as a convinced Anglo-Catholic, was bringing more clergy and other Anglican friends into Gilbert's circle. Moreover, he was lecturing all over England and this brought him into contact with all sorts of strange religious beliefs. Amid all this scattered thinking, I began to piece together fragments of the old religious scheme, mainly by the various gaps that denoted its disappearance. And the more I saw of real human nature, the more I came to suspect that it was really rather bad for all these people that it had disappeared. Autobiography page 177. In 1903-1904 he had a tremendous battle, the detail of which will be treated in the next chapter in the Clarion with Robert Blanchford. In it, he adumbrated many of the ideas that were later developed in orthodoxy. Of the arguments used by Blanchford and his atheist friends, G.K. wrote that the effect on his own mind was almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. In a diary kept by Francis spasmodically during the years 1904 and 1905, she notes that Gilbert has been asked to preach as the first of a series of lay preachers in a city church. She writes, March 16. One of the proudest days of my life, Gilbert preached at St. Paul's Covent Garden for the CSU, the Christian Social Union, Vox Populi, Vox Day. A crammed church, he was very eloquent and restrained, sermons will be published afterwards. Published they were, under the title, Preachers from the Pew. March 30. The second sermon, The Citizen, the Gentleman, and the Savage. Even better than last week, where there is no vision, the people perisheth. It is remembered that the Browning, the Watts, 12 types, and the Napoleon of Notting Hill had all been published and received with a claim it is touching that Francis should speak thus of the proudest day of her life. That Gilbert should himself have vision and show it to others remained her strongest aspiration. Not thus felt all his admirers. The Blashford controversy on matters religious became more than many of them could bear. A plaintiff correspondent says the Daily News, who seems to have had enough of the eternal verities and the eternal other things, sends us the following lines written on reading Mr. J. Key Chesterton's 47th reply to a secularist opponent. What ails our wondrous GKC? Who late on youth's glad wings, flew fairy-like and gossip-free of trans-lunary things? And thus, in dull, didactic mood, he quits the realms of dream, and like some pulpit preacher rude, drones on one dreary theme. Stern Blachford thou hast dashed the glee of our omniscient babe, thy name alone now murmurs he, or that of dark McCabe. All vain his cloudy fancy swell, his paradox all vain, obsessed by that malignant spell of Blachford on the brain. H.S.S. Daily News, 12 January 1904. Mr. Noel has a livelier memory of Gilbert's religious and social activities. On one occasion, he went to the Batter C. Flatt for a meeting, at which he was to speak, and Gilbert, take the chair, to establish a local branch of the Christian social union. The two men got in to talk over their wine in the dining room, then still a separate room, and Francis came in much agitated. Gilbert, you must dress, the people will be arriving any moment. Yes, yes, I'll go. The argument was resumed and went on with animation. Francis came back. Gilbert, the drawing room is half full and people are still arriving. At last, in despair, she brought Gilbert's dress clothes into the dining room, and made him change there, still arguing. Next, he had to be urged into the drawing room. Established at a small table, he began to draw comic bishops, quite oblivious to the fact that he was to take the chair of the now assembled meeting. Finally, Francis managed to attract his attention. He leaped up, overthrowing the small table, and scattering the comic bishops. Surely this story, said a friend whom I told it, proves what some people said about Chesterton's affectation. He must have been posing. I do not think so, and those who knew Gilbert best believed him incapable of posing. He was perfectly capable of wealthfulness and of sulking like a schoolboy. It amused him to argue with Mr. Noel. It did not amuse him at all to take the chair at the meeting. So, as he was not allowed to go on arguing, he drew comic bishops. There was, too, more than a touch of his wealthfulness in the second shock he administered to respectable Battersea later in the evening. An earnest young lady asked the company for counsel as to the best way of arranging their solitary maids evening out. I am so afraid, ended the appeal of her going to the Red Lion. Best place she could go, said Gilbert, and occasionally he would add example to precept. For Society and Fleet Street were not the only places for human intercourse. At present, commented a journalist, he is cultivating the local politics of Battersea. In secluded alehouses, he drinks with the frequenters and learns their opinions on municipal milk and on Mr. John Burns. Good friends and very gay companions, Gilbert calls the Christian Social Union group, of whom, beside Conrad Noel, were Charles Masterman, Bishop Gore, Percy Dürmer, and above all, Cannon Scott Holland. Known as Scotty and adored by many generations of young men, he was a man with a natural surge of laughter within him, so that his broad mouth seemed always to be shut down on it in a grimace of restraint. Like Gilbert, he suffered from the effect of urging his most serious views with apparent flippancy and fantastic illustrations. In the course of a speech to a respectable Nottingham audience, he remarked, I dare say several of you here have never been in prison. Autobiography, page 169. A ghastly stare, says Gilbert, describing the speech, was fixed on all the faces of the audience, and I have ever since seen it in my own dreams, for it has constituted a considerable part of my own problem. Gilbert's verses, summarizing the meeting, as it must have sounded to a worthy Nottingham tradesman, are quoted in the autobiography and completed in Father Brown on Chesterton. I have put them together here, for they show how merrily these men were working to change the world. The Christian Social Union here was very much annoyed. It seems there is some duty which we never should avoid, and so they sang a lot of hymns to help the unemployed. Upon a platform at the end, the speakers were displayed, and Bishop Hoskins stood in front and hit a bell and said that Mr. Carter was to pray, Mr. Carter prayed, then Bishop Gore of Birmingham, he stood upon one leg, and said he would be happier if beggars didn't beg, and that if they pinched his palace, it would take him down a peg. He said that unemployment was a horror and a blight. He said that charities produced servility and spite, and stood upon the other leg and said it wasn't right. And then the man named Chesterton got up and played with water. He seemed to say that principles were nice and led to slaughter, and how we always compromised, and how we didn't alter. Then Cannon Holland fired ahead, like 50 cannons firing. We tried to find out what he meant with infinite inquiring, but the way he made the windows jump, we couldn't help admiring. I understood him to remark, it seemed a little odd, that half a dozen of his friends had never been in quad. He said he was a socialist himself, and so was God. He said the human soul should be ashamed of every sham. He said a man should constantly ejaculate I am. When he had done, I went outside and got into a tram. Partly perhaps to console himself for the loss of his son's daily company, chiefly I imagine, out of sheer pride and joy in his success. Edward Chesterton started after the publication of The Wild Knight, pasting all Gilbert's press cuttings into volumes. Later I learned that long been Gilbert's weekly penance to read these cuttings on Sunday afternoon at his father's house. Traces of his passage are visible wherever a space admits of a caricature and occasionally where it does not. The caricature is superimposed on the text. His growing fame may be seen by the growing size of these volumes and the increased space given to each of his books. Twelve types in 1902 had a good press for a young man's work and was taken seriously in some important papers, but its success was as nothing compared with that of the Browning a year later. The bulk of twelve types, as of the defendant, had appeared in periodicals, but never in his life did Gilbert prepare a volume of his essays for the press without improving, changing and unifying. It was never merely a collection, always a book. Still, the Browning was another matter. It was a compliment for a comparatively new author to be given the commission for the English Men of Letter series. Stephen Gwynne describes the experience of the publishers. On my advice, the McMillans had asked him to do Browning in the English Men of Letters, when he was still not quite arrived. Old Mr. Craig, the senior partner, sent for me and I found him in white fury, with Chesterton's proofs corrected in pencil, or rather not corrected. There were still thirteen errors uncorrected on one page, mostly in quotations from Browning. A selection from a Scotch ballot had been quoted from memory and three of the four lines were wrong. I wrote to Chesterton saying that the firm thought the book was going to disgrace them. His reply was like the trumpeting of a crushed elephant, but the book was a huge success. Quoted in Chesterton by Cyril Clemens, page 14. In fact, he created a sensation and established GK in the front rank. Not all the reviewers liked it. And one angry writer in the Anthonyam pointed out that not content with innumerable inaccuracies about Browning's dissent and the events of his life, GK had even invented a line in Mr. Sludge, The Medium. But every important paper had not only a review, but a long review, and the vast majority were enthusiastic. Chesterton claimed Browning as a poet not for experts, but for every man. His treatment of Browning's love affair, of the poet's obscurity, and of the ring and the book all received the same praise of an originality which casts a true and revealing light for his readers. As with all his literary criticism, the most famous critics admitted that he had opened fresh windows on the subject for themselves. This attack on his inaccuracy and admiration for his insight constantly recurs with Chesterton's literary work. Readers noted that in the ballad of The White Horse, he made Alfred's left wing face, Guthram's left wing. He was amused when it was pointed out, but never bothered to alter it. His memory was prodigious. All his friends testified to his knowing by heart pages of his favorite authors, and these were not few. Ten years after his time with Fisher Unwin, Francis told Father O'Connor that he remembered all the plots and most of the characters of the thousands of novels he had read for the firm, but he trusted his memory too much and never verified. Indeed, when it was a question merely a verbal quotation, he said it was pendantic to bother, and when laterally Dorothy Collins looked up his references, he barely tolerated it. Again, while he constantly declared that he was no scholar, he said things illuminating even two scholars. Thus, much later, when Chesterton's Saint Thomas Aquinas appeared, the Master General of the Dominican Order, Per Gile, lectured on and from it to large meetings of Dominicans. Mr. Eccles told me that talking of Virgil, GK said things immensely illuminating for experts on Latin poetry. In a very different field, Mr. Oldershaw noted after their trip to Paris that though he could set Gilbert right on many a detail, yet his generalizations were marvelous. He had, said Mr. Eccles, an intuitive mind. He had too read more than was realized, partly because his carelessness and contempt for scholarship misled. Where the pedant would have referred and quoted and cross referred, he wanted dashing on, throwing out ideas from his abundance and carrying little if among his wealth were a few faults of fact or interpretation. Abundance was a word much used of his work just now, and in the field of literary criticism, he was placed high and had an enthusiastic following. We may assume that the Browning had something to do with Sir Oliver Lodge's asking him in the next year, 1904, to become a candidate for the Chair of Literature at Birmingham University, but he had no desire to be a professor. Francis Inner Diary notes some of their widening contacts and engagements. The mixture of shrewdness and simplicity in her comments will be familiar to those who knew her intimately. Meeting her for the first time, I think the main impression was that of the single eye. She abounded in Gilbert's sense, as my mother commented after an early meeting and ministered to his genius, yet she never lost an individual, markedly feminine point of view, which helped him greatly, as anyone can see who will read all he wrote on marriage. He shows an insight almost uncanny in the section called the mistake about women and what's wrong with the world. Some people he said in a speech in 1905, when married gain each other. Some only lose themselves. The Chesterton's gained each other, and by the sort of paradox he loved, Francis did so by throwing the stream of her own life unreservedly into the greater river of her husbands. She writes in her diary in 1904. Gilbert and I met all sorts of queer, well known, attractive, unattractive people, and I expect this book will be mostly about them. February 17th, we went together to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Colvin's home. It was rather jolly, but too many clever people there to be really nice. The clever people were Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Henry James, Mr. Lawrence Binion, Mr. Morris Hewlett, and a great many more. Mr. Mrs. Colvin looked so happy. February 3rd, Gilbert went as Mr. Lane's guest to a dinner of the odd volumes at the Imperial Restaurant. The other guest was Baden Powell. He and Gilbert made speeches. March 8th, Gilbert was to speak on education at the CSU meeting at Scion College, but a debate on the Chinese labor in South Africa was introduced instead and went excitingly. There is to be a big meeting of the CSU to protest, though I suppose it's all no good now. When the meeting was over, we adjourned to a tea shop and had immense fun. Gilbert, Percy Dürmer, and Conrad Noelle walked together down Fleet Street and never was there a funnier sight. Gilbert's costume consisted of a frock coat, huge felt hat, and walking stick brandished in the face of the passersby to their exceeding great danger. Conrad was dressed in an old lounge suit of sober gray with a clerical hat jauntily stuck on the back of his head, which led someone to remark, are you here in the capacity of a private gentleman, poor curate, or low class actor? Mr. Dürmer was clad in wonderful clerical garments of which he alone possesses the pattern, which made him look like a Chaucer Canterbury pilgrim, or a figure out of Noah's Ark. They swaggered down the road way talking energetically. At tea, we talked of many things. The future of the Commonwealth, chiefly. March 22nd, meeting of Christian Theosophical Society, in which Gilbert lectured on how Theosophy appears to a Christian. He was very good. Herbert Burrows vigorously attacked him in debate afterwards. Napoleon of Notting Hill was published. April 27th, Belex and the Knowles came here to dinner. Hilaire, in great form, recited his own poetry with great enthusiasm the whole evening. May 9th, the literary fund dinner. About the greatest treat I ever had in my life, J. M. Berry presided. He was so splendid and so complimentary. Mrs. J. M. Berry is very pretty, but the most beautiful woman there was Mrs. Anthony Hope. Copper-colored hair, masses with a wreath of gardenias, green eyes, and a long neck. Very beautiful figure. The speakers were Berry, Lord Tennyson, Cummins Carrer, A. E. W. Mason, Mrs. Craigie, who acquitted herself wonderfully, and Mrs. Flora Annie Steele. After the formal dinner, it was a reception which everyone was very friendly. It is wonderful the way in which they all accept Gilbert, and one well-known man told me he was the brightest man present. Anyhow, there was a feeling of brotherhood and fellowship in the wielding of the lovely and loathely pen. J. M. Berry's speech. May 12th, went to see Max Bierbaum's caricature of Gilbert at the Carfax Gallery. G. K. C., humanist kissing the world. It's more like Thackery, very funny though. June 9th, a political at home at Mrs. Sidney Webbs. Saw Winston Churchill, and Lloyd George. Politics and nothing but politics is dull work though, and in Trigger's life must be a pretty poor affair. Mrs. Sidney Webbs looked very handsome and moved among her guests as one to the man her born. I like Mrs. Leonard Courtney, who is always kind to me. Charlie Masterman and I had a long talk on the iniquities of the daily news, and goodness knows they are serious enough. June 22nd, an at home at Mrs. Blanks proved rather a dull affair, save for a nice little conversation with Watts Dunton. His walrus-y appearance, which makes the bottom of his face look fierce, is counteracted by the kindness of his little eyes. He told us the inner story of Whistler's peacock room, which scarcely redounds to Whistler's credit. The Duchess of Sutherland was there, and many notabilities. Between ourselves, Mr. Blank is a good-hearted snob. His wife, nice, intelligent, but affected. I suppose unconsciously. I don't really like the precious people, they worry me. June 30th, Graham Robertson's at home was exceedingly select. I felt rather too uncultivated to talk much. Mr. Lane tucked his arm into mine and requested to know the news, which means, tell me all your husband is doing or going to do, how much is he getting, who will publish for him, has he sold his American rights, etc. Cobbden's three daughters looked out of place, so solid and sincere are they. It was all too grand. No man ought to have so much wealth. July 5th, Gilbert went today to see Swinburne. I think he found it rather hard to reconcile the idea with the man, but he was interested, though I could not gather much about the visit. He was amused at the compliments which Watts Dunton and Swinburne paid to each other unceasingly. December 8th, George Alexander has an idea that he wants Gilbert to write a play for him and sent for him to come and see him. He was apparently taken with the notion of a play on the Crusades, and although there is at present no love incident in Gilbert's mind, Alexander introduced and acted the supposed love scene with great spirit. It may come off someday, perhaps. December 31st, H. Balak's been very ill, but is better, thank God. 1905, February 1st, Gilbert, a guest at the 80 Club Dinner, Rhoda and I went to after dinner speeches. G. W. E. Russell, chair, Augustine Burl, guest, and Sir Henry Fowler. It amused me hugely, Russell so imprudent and reckless, Burl so prudent and incapable of giving himself away, answer Henry Fowler so commonplace and trite. He looks so wicked, I thought of Mr. Haldane's story of Fowler's fur coat in a single remark on examining it, skunk. February 11th, rather an interesting lunch at Mrs. J. R. Greens, Jack Yeats and Mrs. Thursby were there. The atmosphere is too political and I imagine Mrs. Green to be a bit of a wire puller, though I believe a nice woman. February 24th, Mr. Hallowell Sutcliffe came over. He is amusing and nice. Very puzzled at Gilbert's conduct, which on this particular occasion was peculiarly eccentric. March 9th, I had an amusing lunch at the Hotel Cecil with Miss Bisland, representative of McClure. Evidently thinks a lot of Gilbert and wants his work for McClure. Oh ye gods and little fishes, the diplomatic service ought to be all conducted by women. I offered her Margaret's poems in exchange for a short interview with Meredith, which she wishes Gilbert to undertake. March 14th, Gilbert dined at the Buxton's, met Asquith. March 19th, Leni is in town, and we have been with her to call on the Duchess of Sutherland. When he got used to the splendor, it was jolly enough. Her grace is a pretty sweet woman, who was very nervous, but got better under the fire of Gilbert's chaff. She made him right in her album, which he did, a most ridiculous poem of which he should be ashamed. It must be truly awful to live in the sort of way the Duchess does and endeavor to keep saying. May 25th, words fail me when I try to recall the sensation aroused by a JDC dinner. It seems so odd to think that these men as boys, to realize what their school life was, and what a powerful element the JDC was in the lives of all. And there were husbands and wives, and the tie is so strong, and long, long thoughts of schoolboys and schoolgirls fell on us, as if the battle were still to come instead of raging round us. May 24th, we went together to see George Meredith. I suppose many people have seen him in his little surrey cottage, Flint Cottage Box Hill. He has a wonderful face and a frail old body. He talks without stopping except to drink ginger beer. He told us many stories, mostly about society's scandals of some time back. I remember he asked Gilbert, do you like babies? And when Gilbert said yes, he said, so do I, especially in the Comet stage. June 5th, Granville Barker came to see Gilbert touching the possibility of a play. June 29th, a garden party at the Bishop's house, Kennington, the Bishop told me that A.J. Balfour was very impressed with heretics. Guild of St. Matthew's service and rowdy supper. Gilbert made an excellent speech. July 5th, Gilbert dined at the Asquiths, met Roseberry. I think he hated it. July 16th, Gilbert went to see Mrs. Grenfell at Taplow. He met Balfour, Austin Chamberlain, and George Wyndham. Had an amusing time, no doubt, says Balfour is most interesting to talk to, but appears bored. George Wyndham is delightful.