“When I saw him he was fifty-five years of age but looked at least ten years more, probably on account of his enormous bulk about which he was fond of joking; indeed I believe he was proud of resembling Dr. Johnson in this respect.
“I heard him lecture on Henry VIII here at the Convent of the Holy Child when he said that Henry had no intention of Protestantizing the Church in England but thought he could have a Catholic Church with himself at the head of it, and that he was astonished to discover how rapidly it disintegrated into many sects. I remember his saying on this occasion: ‘Many people are prejudiced against Henry VIII because he was a Large Fat Man,’ and then going off into a chuckle of laughter, swelling himself out to an enormous size as he spoke. His wife told me he always rather spoilt his own jokes by laughing at them before he uttered them.”
Ralph Adams Cram met him first in London a good many years ago: “Father Wagget asked my wife and myself once when we were staying in London, whom we would like best to meet—‘anyone from the King downward.’ We chose Chesterton who was a very particular friend of Father Wagget. At that time we put on a dinner at the Buckingham Palace Hotel (in those days the haunt of all the County families) and in defiance of fate, had this dinner in the public dining room. We had as guests Father Wagget, G. K. C. and Mrs. Chesterton. The entrance into the dining room of the short processional created something of a sensation amongst the aforesaid County families there assembled. Father Wagget, thin, crop-headed monk in cassock and rope; G. K. C., vast and practically globular; little Mrs. Chesterton, very South Kensington in moss green velvet; my wife, and myself.
“The dinner was a riot. I have the clearest recollection of G. K. C. seated ponderously at the table, drinking champagne by magnums, continually feeding his face with food which, as he was constantly employed in the most dazzling and epigrammatic conversation, was apt to fall from his fork and rebound from his corporosity, until the fragments disappeared under the table.
“He and Father Wagget egged each other on to the most preposterous amusements. Each would write a triolet for the other to illustrate. They were both as clever with the pencil as with the pen, and they covered the backs of menus with most astonishing literary and artistic productions. I particularly remember G. K. C. suddenly looking out of the dining room window towards Buckingham Palace and announcing that he was now prepared ‘to write a disloyal triolet.’ This was during the reign of King Edward VII, and the result was convincing. I have somewhere the whole collection of these literary productions with their illustrations, but where they are, I do not know.”
“Ten or fifteen years ago,” recollects Stephen Gwynn, whom we have already quoted, “Barrie had taken a big house for August, and there was a large party, including several schoolboys and the Chestertons. It was decided to play the game of clues, and in the evening a dozen or more of us were each given bits of paper containing some mystification in verse. At the end all the clues led us to a most amusing charcoal portrait of Lord Beaverbrook. Everybody went to bed, and I was settling down to a quiet chat with G. K. C. over whiskey and soda when three schoolboys filed past. ‘Thank you very much,’ they said to him, ‘for giving us an amusing evening.’
“Next morning I said to the spokesman’s mother, ‘Your youngster said his piece very well.’ But she knew nothing about it. It had been the schoolboy’s own idea. Admittedly the Chestertons were the best guests in that gathering of a long and very mixed list.
“I remember how Lord David Cecil when still a boy, sitting up there one night and expounding to us two elders the point of view of the younger generation. Not only the easiest man in the world to talk with, but also a very good listener.”
Lucille Borden, the novelist, found G. K.’s personality was even more impressive than the things he put to paper: “I remember once on meeting him I asked him what he thought of a certain small English boy (who calls us Aunt-Uncle though we are no relation) who used to plot out London in sections, selecting the men of prominence in those sections, then call on them. This between the ages of nine and thirteen. He was very small and fragile, and by reason of this, all flunkies and secretaries let him pass. So he not only gained access to the great man but used to go and sit with him, looking for all the world like Tiny Tim.
“‘Indeed I remember that boy—he was an extraordinary chap. He will go far but he needs a guiding hand.’ ... This after the boy had grown. The thing that was so remarkable was, that Terence had only his inquisitive personality to recommend him. He has gone far but without the guiding hand, and drifted into the set pseudo-literati, sponsored by the Sitwells. However, at the age of eighteen or nineteen he married—a very clever young woman over whom the London newspapers fought and whom the “Daily Mail” finally acquired—as one of their top-notch women. This gives Terry leisure to write terrible but correct poetry—and to carry on a most extraordinary and original literary career.