“As a boy of ten,” records Thomas O. Mabbott, “I read regularly copies of the ‘London Illustrated News’ to which G. K. C. was a regular contributor. I am one of those people who, while not exactly a prodigy, developed very early and think very much more as I did when sixteen than most people seem to do. I often boast how little most writers influence my own thought but Chesterton is one of the few who did! I read much of his work as a very young man, and believe he is one of the very few authors who impressed me profoundly. I saw ‘Magic’ when it was given in New York during the war—a mark of devotion, surely, since I rarely went to a serious play. Incidentally I thought it very effective as an acted play.”
Clement Wood first read “Heretics” and then “Orthodoxy,” and immediately obtained the impression that the author was “one of the world’s most alert and persuasively brilliant minds. He made the persons treated of real and significant to me for the first time. Thereafter I read most of his work. His novels are absolutely unique, I wouldn’t be without one, and of all, the ‘Napoleon of Notting Hill’ is the most precious—the glorious effort to revive medievalism today (which I am 100% against intellectually) won me forever. His Father Brown stories, in spite of the ever-present propaganda for Catholicism—which again I am against, but I believe that if religion persists, it will either be Roman Catholic or the Quaker non-Christian (Religious Society of Friends) non-evangelical faith—I regard as by all odds the greatest detective stories ever written. Poe and Doyle are forerunners, and then G. K. C. whose every word is a work of art. I have memorized the plots of nearly all and the wording of many of his memorable openings. His ‘Peacock Trees,’ ‘Club of Queen Trades,’ rank as highly.
“The play ‘Magic’ is immortal and weighs more to me than all Shaw!”
“You may certainly enroll me as one of his admirers,” affirms Donald Ogden Stewart. “Although I do not recall the name of the first book of his which I read, I do remember, however, that it was while I was in my senior year at Yale, and that it had such an influence on me that I immediately proceeded to read every one of his books that I could lay my hands on.”
Henry Hazlitt first encountered Chesterton’s writings in 1916 and “was quickly carried away by his stylistic brilliance. My admiration, I must confess, was not sustained at its original level, but it most certainly never deserted me. I never met him personally, but I heard him debate with Clarence Darrow, and was impressed by his immense superiority over his antagonist, and by his charm as a man.”
William Thomas Walsh first heard about G. K. C. when he was a student at Yale in 1909: “I think it was Professor Chauncey B. Tinker who recommended him in class that year, and I seem to remember that William Lyon Phelps was also a Chesterton enthusiast at that early period. The book that helped and influenced me most was ‘The Everlasting Man.’ I liked it so well that I bought three copies, intending to lend them to as many people as possible, for I thought the whole world should drink at that fountain of wisdom. I soon discovered, however, that some people loved the book and others hated it just as fervently. This was to be expected, perhaps, about anything so profoundly Christian in its perceptions. In fact, I began to entertain an almost superstitious notion that the book had a practical value apart from literary considerations, in what St. Ignatius, following St. John, called the Discernment of Spirits. The various agnostics and pagans to whom I lent the book usually kept it a long while, and finally returned it saying apologetically that they had never found time to read it, though I knew that every one of them had read several other books in the interim. Finally the three volumes disappeared completely from my life. It was partly my fault, for I have a bad habit of lending books, and forgetting to whom: and as the number of people who have to be reminded to return books is apparently very large, I have lost the best part of my library in consequence: for it is usually the book that one is enthusiastic about that one lends. But I can’t help thinking the Devil must have had a particular grudge against so true and so powerful a book, and has continued to hide all three of my volumes on the most obscure shelves of as many sons of Belial. Still, as good comes out of evil in the long run, it may be that the sons of these benighted individuals may inadvertently come upon them on rainy days, and in their innocence read and be enlightened.
“In my biography of Philip the Second, I have had to differ with Chesterton’s interpretations of that most misunderstood gentleman. But when G. K. wrote his glorious ‘Lepanto,’ he was still partly deceived by the tradition that had so long dominated English letters, so far as Spain was concerned. It is the only mistake of importance I have ever noted in the work of that phenomenal man.”
Hamlin Garland met him at the Savage Club in London, and several times in America: “As a matter of fact, I introduced him when he made his first address in New York City. I enjoyed his mystery stories much better than some of his more pretentious work. From my point of view he worked the paradoxes altogether too hard. He was a very singular and interesting character.”
Waldo Frank remembers that when he was “in college and out of it, the essays of G. K. C. stimulated me, indeed. His critique of modern society, his destruction of its complacencies, his suggestive references to other values now absent, meant a good deal to me.”
Myles Connolly feels that Chesterton “will not, try as I will, come under the head of remembrance. He seems vividly contemporary, vitally alive. It’s a worn-out form of tribute, I know, but there’s none greater and I will say it: he lives. The stuff of immortality was so strong in him that beside his memory as the world calls it, it is we who are dead.