“On my advice the Macmillans had asked him to do Browning in the ‘English Men of Letters,’ when he was still not quite arrived. Old Mr. Craik, the Senior Partner, sent for me and I found him in white fury, with Chesterton’s proofs corrected in pencil; or rather not corrected; there were still thirteen errors uncorrected on one page; mostly in quotations from Browning. A selection from a Scotch ballad had been quoted from memory and three of the four lines were wrong. I wrote to Chesterton saying that the firm thought the book was going to “disgrace” them. His reply was like the trumpeting of a crushed elephant. But the book was a huge success as it deserved to be.”
J. Lewis May writes about another early book,
“A book that created something of a sensation in its day was the penetrating study of George Bernard Shaw by Chesterton. The mention of Chesterton reminds me that it was Lane who published his ‘Orthodoxy’ and his ‘Napoleon of Notting Hill,’ as well as ‘Heretics.’ Those, I think, were in the days before the royalty system came in, and I fancy Lane bought them outright. It was in regard to the first that I heard that Chesterton brought it in chapter by chapter as he wrote it, and it was written on any miscellaneous scraps of paper that came to his hand. He did not disdain, I have been told, even the paper that sugar is wrapped in, for the purpose of recording his valuable thoughts. Anatole France was accustomed to use the inside of envelopes or the backs of bills for the same object.”
William Platt gave Chesterton encouragement at the start,
“We are all aware that one of G. K. C.’s first successes was by a series of articles signed ‘The Defendant’ each one being headed ‘In Defense of....’
“I wrote immediately to the clever young ‘Defendant’ telling him of the certainty of his future as a writer. He immediately came ’round to see me. Tall, young, handsome, vivacious. At once we fraternized.
“After that our trends in life became rather diverse. We met occasionally, chiefly at public gatherings in London. At rare intervals we exchanged letters. But G. K. C. never forgot my early prediction of his inevitable rise to fame, or the many things we had in common, in his sense of knight-errantry and mine. In any hall the moment he caught sight of me he would greet me with his radiant smile, or, if free, he would at once come over to me.”
A newspaperman once asked Chesterton what he considered his first most important book,
“‘Napoleon of Notting Hill’ and I almost missed writing it. If I hadn’t written it, I would have stopped writing. I was what you Americans call ‘broke’—only ten shillings in my pocket. Leaving my worried wife, I went down Fleet Street, got a shave, and then ordered for myself, at the Cheshire Cheese, an enormous luncheon of my favorite dishes and a bottle of wine. It took my all, but I could then go to my publishers fortified. I told them I wanted to write a book and outlined the story of ‘Napoleon of Notting Hill.’ But I must have twenty pounds, I said, before I begin.
“‘We will send it to you on Monday.’