“I became famous, if you can call it that,” the great author chuckled, “at a time when there were no famous men in England.”
He went on to explain that there had been no very great writers or journalists in England during the Boer War. His bitter opposition to the war ran so counter to the English press of the period that he became famous for his disloyalty, and for refusing to run with the crowd.
Chesterton impressed the late Reverend Frederic Seidenberg, S. J., who was also present in Orchestra Hall, as a man one could never forget, “not only his huge size, but his striking personality and ever present smile are things that one would carry through life. We had a full house, but his voice was so thin that I immediately had the speaker’s desk placed at the edge of the footlights. When he began again to speak several in the balcony called out, ‘Louder!’ After a moment’s hesitation, Chesterton looked up and said, ‘Good brother, don’t worry, you’re not missing a thing.’ The audience roared.”
Dr. Horace J. Bridges has kindly given his impressions,
“I had two public debates with Chesterton, one in Chicago and one in Milwaukee. He struck me as a curious mixture of great personal charm, wide reading, exquisite critical faculty (manifested particularly in his interpretations of Browning and of Dickens), delightful humor, and a certain intellectual recklessness that made him indifferent to truth and reality. I cannot but feel that fundamentally—perhaps I should say subconsciously—he was a thorough-going skeptic and acted upon the principle that, since we cannot really be positive about anything, we had better believe what it pleases us to believe. I think he never did justice to the real arguments for a case he opposed; and he had a slap-dash way of assuming that the weaknesses in an opponent’s case proved not only the falsity of that case, but—which is obviously a very different matter—the truth of his own case.
“One may think my criticism of him unfair. I certainly do not mean it to be so, nor do I fail to recognize that men much more earnest in their truth-seeking than he was have sincerely believed the things he said he believed. My comment is on his mental processes, in distinction from the question of his particular beliefs.”
Chesterton spoke in St. Louis at the Odeon Theatre. On the stage his entire appearance was distinctive: shaggy, tousled dark-light hair topped a massive head and full, ruddy face; eyes which seemed always half-closed were protected by thick-lensed glasses; heavy shoulders and ponderous girth bulked above long, slender legs. Over evening dress he wore a black cape; when he doffed it and stood ready to speak, his stiff, white shirt-front became awry and crept several degrees out of proper position.
“A gentle giant Chesterton seemed,” recalls Mr. James O’Neill, “as he commenced to address his audience. His high-pitched voice sounded somewhat of a plaintive and apologetic note.”
Lamenting the pseudo-sophistication of the day and the loss of appreciation for the simple pleasures of yore, Chesterton complained that the modern man and woman were seeking to escape ennui by finding new thrills, which tendency was expressed in our entertainments and even in our foods. Whereas we had once been satisfied with the taste of one palatable comestible at a time, we now demanded a combination of several in such an assembly as the modern three-deck sandwich. He regretfully observed that whereas our esthetic sense had once been pleased by such a dainty little figurine as the china shepherdess, we were now regaled by only such heroic figures as the billboard likeness of the lady who keeps her schoolgirl complexion by using a certain kind of soap and proclaims her secret to all who read. He was saddened by these thoughts and yearned for a return of the more simple but much more wholesome aesthetic attitudes currents in the days of his early manhood.
Mrs. Katharine Darst says that when there was a call for questions, they were slow coming, and dull when finally blurted out. Then there was a long, embarrassing pause. And finally, “Well, we’ve heard from the educated. Now, have the ignorant anything to ask?” ... this from the Chairman. Chesterton had such a vicious way of tearing poseurs apart with his sharp shafts that the reluctance of the audience to place itself at his mercy was natural. But here was too good a chance to miss. A number who had hesitated to make inquiries were on their feet at once. If they asked as the ignorant, they felt that they were armed against Chesterton’s barbs!