For many months he kept the office in being and paid salaries to a skeleton staff, consisting of Mr. Gander, the deaf old manager, Miss Dunham (now Mrs. Phillips) and an office boy. Mr. Titterton would stroll in and play cricket with the office boy with a paper ball and a walking-stick. Endless discussions were held as to how to re-start the paper and whether under the old name or a new one. Bernard Shaw had his own view. He wrote:
11 Feb.: 1923
MY DEAR CHESTERTON
Not presume to dictate (I have all Jingle's delicacy); but if everybody else is advising you, why should not I?
T.P.'s Weekly always had a weakly sound. But it established itself sufficiently to make that form of title the trade mark of a certain sort of paper. Hence Jack O'London's Weekly. It also set the trade sheep running that way.
You have the precedents of Defoe and Cobbett for using your own
name; but D.D.'s Weekly is unthinkable, and W.C.'s Weekly indecent.
Your initials are not euphonious: they recall that brainy song of my
boyhood, U-pi-dee.
Jee Kay see, kay see, kay see,
Jee Kay see, Jee Kay see.
Jee Kay see, Kay see, Kay see,
Jee Kay see Kay see.
Chesterton is a noble name; but Chesterton is Weakly spoils it.
Call it simply
CHESTERTON'S
That is how it will be asked for at the bookstalls. You may be obliged to call later ventures Chesterton's Daily or Chesterton's Annual, but this one needs no impertinently superfluous definition: Chesterton's Perennial is amusing enough to be excusable; but a joke repeated every week is no joke. A picture cover like that of Punch might stand even that test if it were good enough; but where are you to find your Doyle?