“Chesterton’s voice was a fairly high tenor,” recalls Mr. Daniel Kern who was present, “not at all surprising. I have observed that many Englishmen despite bulk and great size, possess the same type voice. For example, H. G. Wells’ ... so high and snuffled that it was execrable coming over the radio. The loud-speaker system made it easy to hear both men. Both speakers were making use of a word which sounded like ‘eppitet’ or ‘epithet,’ which in the context could have had no meaning. The people about us were confused. As we became used to their voices, it developed that the word was ‘appetite.’ You can estimate the frequency of the occurrence of this word in an ethical discussion when it is coupled with the modifiers ‘innate’ and ‘acquired’.”
G. K. C.’s pink face, framed by a white mane of hair, isolated by a rumpled dinner jacket, shining beautifully at the audience, caused Kern’s companion, a singular personality, to remark wistfully, “Chesterton’s just a saint, just a saint.”
The warm, human, simple childlike nature, and the beaming benevolence of Chesterton’s smile was so utterly charming that Mr. W. D. Hennessy also present, was immediately reminded of two quite disparate characters his “favorite uncle, now deceased and Santa Claus. As I thought more about it, I realized that my first instinctive impression in its childlike simplicity, was founded upon a correct perception. My uncle was loved by every man, woman, child, and dog in his town and he was the most natural democrat I ever knew. I am just as certain that Chesterton was a beloved figure to his neighbors and that he was a true democrat in the best sense of that much abused term.
“Mr. Hamilton several times referred to Chesterton as a cherub and a teacher. G. K. C. expressed difficulty in reconciling the picture of a cherub and a teacher, but I think Cosmo Hamilton’s appellations were apt, for was not Chesterton an angelic teacher? And when a casual remark about the New York subway was made by Hamilton, I was delighted at the way G. K. C. pounced upon it as a perfect allegory, comparing the modern world looking for its way with the stranger lost in the labyrinths of the subway.”
Mr. Joseph J. Reilly attended a debate at Mecca Temple in New York City, between Chesterton and Clarence Darrow, which dealt with the story of creation as presented in Genesis. It was a Sunday afternoon and the Temple was packed. At the conclusion of the debate everybody was asked to express his opinion as to the victor and slips of paper were passed around for that purpose. The award went directly to Chesterton. Darrow in comparison, seemed heavy, uninspired, slow of mind, while G. K. C. was joyous, sparkling and witty ... quite the Chesterton one had come to expect from his books. The affair was like a race between a lumbering sailing vessel and a modern steamer.
Mrs. Frances Taylor Patterson also heard the Chesterton-Darrow debate, but went to the meeting with some misgivings because she was a trifle afraid that Chesterton’s “gifts might seem somewhat literary in comparison with the trained scientific mind and rapier tongue of the famous trial lawyer. Instead, the trained scientific mind, the clear thinking, the lightning quickness in getting a point and hurling back an answer, turned out to belong to Chesterton. I have never heard Mr. Darrow alone, but taken relatively, when that relativity is to Chesterton, he appears positively muddle-headed.”
Although the terms of the debate were determined at the outset, Darrow either could not or would not stick to the definitions, but kept going off at illogical tangents and becoming choleric over points that were not in dispute. He seemed to have an idea that all religion was a matter of accepting Jonah’s whale as a sort of luxury-liner. As Chesterton summed it up, he felt as if Darrow had been arguing all afternoon with his fundamentalist aunt, and the latter kept sparring with a dummy of his own mental making. When something went wrong with the microphone, Darrow sat back until it could be fixed. Whereupon G. K. C. jumped up and carried on in his natural voice, “Science you see is not infallible!” Whatever brilliance Darrow had in his own right, it was completely eclipsed. For all the luster that he shed, he might have been a remote star at high noon drowned by the bright incandescent arc light of the sun. Chesterton had the audience with him from the start, and when it was over, everyone just sat there, not wishing to leave. They were loath to let the light die!
Clarence Darrow wrote the author shortly before his death,
“I was favorably impressed by, warmly attached to, G. K. Chesterton. I enjoyed my debates with him, and found him a man of culture and fine sensibilities. If he and I had lived where we could have become better acquainted, eventually we would have ceased to debate, I firmly believe.”
Bishop George Craig Stewart of Chicago, presided at Orchestra Hall when Chesterton debated in that city with Dr. Horace J. Bridges of the Ethical Cultural Society on the subject, “Is Psychology a Curse?” In his closing remarks Chesterton devastatingly sideswiped his opponent and wound up the occasion in a storm of laughter and applause,