The reader will recall that in his “Autobiography” Chesterton states that it was in Fleet Street that he first met Sir Philip Gibbs “who carried a curious air of being the right man in the wrong place.”
However, in a letter to the author, Sir Philip disagrees with this,
“As regards G. K. C., he was a good friend of mine and has placed me on record in his ‘Autobiography’ as ‘the right man in the wrong place’—though as a matter of fact I claim to have been the right man in the right place—which was Fleet Street, where he and I met many times as writers for the Press. His books belong to my mental library and he will live in English literature as one of our great essayists, and above all as a good poet.”
Sir Oliver Lodge recalls:
“G. K. C. at one time lived at the set of flats in Artillery Mansions where I had one of them, and I used to meet him outside sometimes waiting for a cab in the street and had a few words with him. I also met him at the Synthetic Society dinners, and once I impounded a piece of blotting-paper on which he had made a lot of characteristic scribbles (clever sketches of faces) absentmindedly during a discussion at one of these dinners.”
Robert Blatchford, the well known editor of “The Clarion” and author of “Merrie England,” who was born away back in 1851, tells of a long controversy he had with Chesterton in the press some thirty years ago about determinism: “Some years later he wrote in some paper, I forgot which, and paid me the finest compliment I ever received. He said,
“‘Very few intellectual minds have left such a mark on our time: have cut so deep or remained so clean. His case for Socialism, so far as it goes, is so clear and simple that any one would understand it when it was put properly: his genius was that he could put it properly. His triumphs were triumphs of strong style, active pathos, and picturesque metaphor: his very lucidity was a generous sympathy with simple minds. For the rest he had triumphed with being honest and by not being afraid.’
“Now in paying me that compliment he complimented himself, for only a very warm-hearted and generous man could have treated an opponent with such gallantry and kindness. But you cannot publish that tribute without giving the impression that I am fishing for a cheap advertisement.
“Then as to his books. I liked what he wrote about Dickens and some of his poetry, and I recognize his brilliance: but a good deal of his work I found rather tiresome, and you cannot publish such an opinion.
“We met several times and got on quite pleasantly together.”