“But Trotsky is at once both more commercial and cunning; he is the typical Russian or German Jew.”
The Chestertons own a pert little Scotch terrier named Quoodle. “I named him Quoodle,” explained Chesterton, “after the hero of one of my early, but alas forgotten, novels, in the hope that unwary visitors like you would ask about the origin of the name and I would have a good excuse to talk about my novel! But when only the family is present we shorten the name to Quo: a handy name and one that can be yelled to the top of the lungs.”
Among the other delectable viands that Mrs. Chesterton’s bounty provided were some cakes made out of the white of eggs, that caused me to say,
“These cakes put me in mind of some period of English Literature.”
“They remind me, rather,” responded Chesterton with a hearty laugh, “of icebergs and I wish that I was sitting on a large one just now. (It was an extremely hot August afternoon.) But if we must compare them to some period of English literature they remind me of the rococo period, the age of Horace Walpole, in particular of some of the decorations of his home ‘Strawberry Hill’.”
Tea over, Chesterton suggested going to see his garden. After putting on an enormous sombrero, and taking in his hand something like a small axe, but which proved to be a walking stick which his Polish friend, Roman Dyboski, had given him, he led the way through a French window out into a tidy little garden. We sat on camp chairs in a pleasant spot. Chesterton’s one seemed somewhat frail, shaking a little, and to make matters worse, the cat Stanley Baldwin came along and fell sound asleep right under his master’s chair! If anything had happened to the chair, Baldwin would have awakened in cat heaven!
The conversation turned on the rather whimsical subject of chairs.
“H. G. Wells in one of his books,” remarked Chesterton, “has written several pages on the subject of chairs. Some non-materialists might very well contend there is no such a thing as a chair. They would argue that since there are all kinds and varieties of chairs, when you use the word ‘chair’ you cannot have any particular one in mind: therefore the word is only abstract and hence has no equivalent in actuality!”
When I wondered if anything had ever been written on the subject of shoes, Chesterton answered that his friend Hilaire Belloc had done an exceedingly entertaining essay on the subject, “Belloc makes the point that the kind of shoes a man wears and how he keeps them, is a better indication of his character, than any other piece of apparel.”
Chesterton told of a literary club which had lately given a fancy dressed ball for its members, and that he went as Doctor Samuel Johnson. When I asked who Mrs. Chesterton went as, he replied with a merry twinkle in his eye,