“Back to ‘nos moutons’—we’ve seen Gilbert Chesterton start a broadcast-speech to a club on whose Board I am—for which he was allowed forty minutes: He rose from the speakers’ table—put his watch in front of him—began one of the most stirring prose poems to which we all ever listened—made his introduction—points in phrases as colorful as a rainbow—approached his conclusion—made his logical deductions and finished on the fortieth minute. It was such a tour de force as was rarely done in the earliest days of radio.”
“When I was introduced to Chesterton,” writes Adolphe de Castro, “I was a bit abashed. He was so formidable and such a mighty eater. But his conversation and his wit were delightful. I have my doubts if any one ever had the temerity to ask Mr. Chesterton why he had embraced Catholicism. I asked him. Americans in those days were forgiven much, and a friend of the late Ambrose Bierce was a particularly privileged character. Chesterton twirled the end of his scraggly moustache for some time, then he said: ‘Because of its primitivity.’
“‘Then you ought to have become a Jew,’ I said. ‘Judaism has greater primitivity.’
“To which he rejoined: ‘It has too much primitivity and is not sufficiently elastic for adaptability.’
“‘You hold with Heine that Judaism is not a religion but a misfortune?’ I asked.
“‘Heine was a great poet,’ returned Chesterton. ‘And do you recall what John Locke said, ‘A merchant lies for gain; a poet lies for pleasure.’ Do you happen to write poetry?’
“I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers, extracted one and gave it to him. He read it. ‘I like this,’ he said.
“It was a quasi sonnet entitled ‘The Jewish Poet.’”
“At one time I doubted the existence of G. K. C.,” declares Holbrook Jackson. “I listened to the stories of him as one listens to the yarns of men who have been in the ends of the earth. And even now, after I have looked upon him with my own eyes, I have to nudge myself to realize his probability. He has the reality of one of those dragons or fairies in which he has such invincible faith. I first beheld him on a Yorkshire moor far from his natural element, which is in London. He was in the locality on a holiday, and I had gone over to verify his existence just as one might go to the Arctic regions to verify the existence of the North Pole or the Northwest Passage.
“He was staying at the house of a Bradford merchant adjoining the moor, and I was to meet him there. It was April and raining. I trudged through the damp furze and heather up to the house only to find that the object of my pilgrimage had disappeared without leaving a trace behind him. No alarm was felt, as that was one of his habits. Sometimes he would go down to the railway station, and taking a ticket to any place that had a name which appealed to him, vanish into the unknown, making his way home on foot or wheel as fancy or circumstances directed. On this occasion, however, nothing so serious had happened. Therefore I adjourned with the lady of the house and Mrs. Chesterton to an upper hall, where a noble latticed window commanded a wide vista of the moor. I peered into the wild, half hoping that I should first behold the great form of Gilbert Chesterton looming over the bare brow of the wold, silhouetted against the grey sky like the symbol of a large new faith.