There is a remarkable note of unanimity in these personal recollections and judgments. There are differences of view about the value of G. K. C.’s work; about the relative importance of this or that of its many aspects; about his matter or style in lecturing; about the quality of his wit, and many points more. But as to the nature of the man as he was there is hardly any difference at all. He won the hearts of those who met him because of his manifest goodness of heart and happiness of temper; these things were as apparent to all who came near him as was his physical being.

I do not imagine that Mr. Clemens asked me to write this introduction with the idea of my setting forth any opinions about the place of G. K. C. in our literature. I could offer none of any critical value, because for me the man and his work have always been one, and I have been for most of my life intensely prejudiced in favour of the man. Mr. Clemens knew of me, I suppose, as a boyhood friend of G. K. C.—as I appear in his Autobiography—and perhaps as having dedicated a book of mine to him in terms which told some fraction of what my feeling towards him was. I may, then, say now that I first met him at that time of life when personal influence counts for most, and one’s nature is in the making for good or evil. His friendship was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I have always thanked God for it.

Essential goodness, perfect sincerity, chivalrous generosity, boundless good-temper, a total absence of self-esteem—these are lovable traits; and with them, even in boyhood, were united brilliant intellectual powers and an enormous gift of humor. The effect of it all on an impressionable youth of fifteen or so can perhaps be guessed. For years we were as near to each other as it is possible for friends to be, I think; but there was no one who knew him even slightly that did not feel something of the spiritual attraction that he exercised—always in utter unconsciousness of it.

G. K. C. was too conspicuously unlike the ordinary boy to be popular, in the sense of being on the best of terms with all and sundry. He was without any desire to excel or take the lead in any direction. He was unconscious of the very existence of games. He was steeped in literature and art; and he could, at need, be perfectly happy with his own thoughts and the fruits of his imagination. He was, on the other hand, not unpopular; it was impossible for even an ill-natured boy, I should think, to dislike him; but his circle of friends was small in those early days. I have written something about this time of our lives to Mr. Clemens who has quoted it at the outset of this book. What I have been saying in this place is an attempt to express what Gilbert Chesterton meant to me.

That circle of friends which was so small was to become as wide as any man’s of our time, as the recognition of his genius increased, and the magic of his personality gained greater scope. No death can ever have been mourned with a deeper sincerity of personal affection by so many, in his own country and in others.

CHAPTER ONE
BOYHOOD DAYS

One of Chesterton’s earliest and staunchest friends, Mr. E. C. Bentley, recalls,

“Chesterton was in his schooldays the centre of a small group of boys. They formed a club under his chairmanship ... the Junior Debating Club, so called to distinguish it from the School Union Society, which was the preserve of the senior boys. He never did, as he states in his memoirs, any work at school in the academic sense, and so never rose to the position of a star boy. The star boys did not understand him and classed him as a freak who was unlikely to do the school any credit. He was so exceptionally untidy and absent-minded, even at the age when the ordinary boy becomes careful of his appearance, that he did not fit into the picture at all; and it needed the insight of Walker, the High Master of his day, to divine that there was the stuff of genius in him, and to ordain (as G. K. tells in his own modest way) that on the strength of a remarkable prize poem ... the only ‘regular’ thing he ever did at school ... he should ‘rank with the eighth form,’ the highest, to which he would never have attained on his school performance. Very few of the boys of whom he saw most did anything in the field of letters in after life.” The poet Edward Thomas was not at St. Paul’s with G. K. C. as many think. Mr. Robert Eckert, the biographer of Thomas, states that the latter was a schoolmate of Cecil, G. K. C.’s younger brother.

Mr. Bentley continues: “About G. K. C.:—His spare time at school—which, as he makes clear in his Autobiography, was mostly spent.... I should say entirely ... in talking, reading, writing, and drawing pictures. He had a wonderful decorative handwriting, and was already a masterly draughtsman. Apart from walking, of which he never tired as a boy, he took no part in any sport. His sight was always very bad without his glasses. He was nevertheless strong and healthy as a boy, rather slim than otherwise; it was not until the twenties that he began to put on flesh. It was not ordinary fatness; I believe some gland trouble must have been at the root of it.

“Speaking generally, Chesterton would talk about everything when at school that had to do with the realm of ideas. He never took much interest in things that are called practical. Politics in a broad sense he would talk about, but for the details of legislation he cared nothing. He always was, of course, what we know as a Liberal; in the large sense he remained a Liberal all his days.