“It is clear that I have won the debate, and we are all prepared to acknowledge that psychology is a curse. Let us, however, be magnanimous. Let us allow at least one person in this unhappy world to practice this cursed psychology, and I should like to nominate Dr. Bridges.”
During Dr. Bridges’ share of the debate Chesterton was drawing funny pictures on the back of a torn envelope which he produced out of his capacious inner pocket. At the close of the debate, Bishop Stewart begged the torn envelope with the funny pictures, which the artist initialed “From G. K. C. to G. C. S.” It now hangs framed with one of G. K.’s photographs in the episcopal drawingroom.
At luncheon Bishop Stewart remarked, “Mr. Chesterton, securus judicat orbis terrarum. You have become a Roman Catholic, and I do not doubt that you have gained the whole world, but may I suggest that one may gain the whole world and lose one’s soul, and I think you have lost the soul of Chestertonianism, for after all, when you were an Anglican you were both a Protestant and a Catholic, and that was a delightfully Chestertonian position. Now you have become a Romanist, you have ceased to be a Chestertonian.”
Chesterton’s only response to this Anglican leg pulling was a beaming and chuckling acknowledgment of the charge.
At the luncheon Chesterton talked just as he wrote, on any subject that came up, in a free, flowing, brilliant manner, and everything he said might have been taken down and published as a part of his weekly letter to the “Illustrated London News.”
In introducing Chesterton for the debate, Bishop Stewart had quoted Oliver Hereford’s delightful verse,
“When plain folks such as you and I
See the sun sinking in the sky,
We think it is the setting sun:
But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton