“Undoubtedly it does in certain London districts. When I stayed at the Royal York in Toronto on my way down to Notre Dame I noticed something oligarchical about the Ontario system inasmuch as there was a dance on and those who could afford a room left the ballroom on occasion and went upstairs for a nip displaying visible evidences thereof as one met them in the hall. Moreover in Ontario a permit was necessary whereas in Catholic Quebec this Protestant condition did not prevail.
“I live near Oxford, and I often visit friends there. In Cambridge too I know and admire many men, such as the poet A. E. Housman, and the historians George M. Trevelyan and Holland Rose, the great Napoleonic authority. Speaking of the latter place you know the old yarn about the Italian doctor on his way to Cambridge to debate some don there. On stopping to inquire directions of some pedestrians he was answered in Greek verse by Cambridge students disguised as workmen, whereupon he ordered the coachman to turn around and go back because said he, if the laborers are so learned, what must the dons be?...”
When O’Grady said he had heard that the difference between the two schools was that an Oxford man went around as though he owned the place, while a Cambridge man acted as though he didn’t give a damn who did, Chesterton retorted,
“And both about equally obnoxious!”
When the discussion turned to some well known Englishmen, Chesterton said,
“If my description of Lord Beaverbrook was based on his journalistic methods I would have to call him a guttersnipe. I feel that Bertrand Russell is a disgrace to English literature, not only on account of his writings, but also because of his way of life.”
“Masefield’s a fine fellow and a good writer,” said Chesterton in reply to another question, “but Ramsay MacDonald had to choose Masefield as Poet Laureate, there being no other poet so sympathetic to Labor. However, Yeats was by far our best poet. Yet hardly ever has the best poet been made laureate. There is too much politics in the appointment, just as is the case with the appointment of the Anglican bishops. One need only consider Barnes of Birmingham. The idea of calling York’s archbishop ‘by divine permission’ and Canterbury’s ‘by divine consent,’ has always seemed to me rather far-fetched.”
When reference was made to Rebecca West’s resigning from the “Bookman” because the editorial policy favored the New Humanists, Chesterton remarked,
“How extremely foolish that is—as though that affected your contributions!”
Asked about Lord Beaverbrook who had but recently died, Chesterton reflected,