In subsequent interviews G.K.'s height grew to six foot three and his weight to 300 lbs. (which was surely closer to the mark); his mannerisms were greatly remarked.
Mr. Chesterton speaks clearly, in a rather high-pitched voice. He accompanies his remarks with many nervous little gestures. His hands, at times, stray into his pockets. He leans over the reading desk as if he would like to get down into the audience and make it a sort of heart-to-heart talk.
Mr. Chesterton's right hand spent a restless and rather disturbing evening. It would start from the reading desk at which he stood and fall to the points of that vast waistcoat which inspired the description of him as "a fellow of infinite vest." It would wander aimlessly a moment about his—stomach is a word that is taboo among the polite English—equator, and then shift swiftly to the rear until the thumb found the hip pocket. There the hand would rest a moment, to return again to the reading desk and to describe once more the quarter circle. Once in a while it would twist a ring upon the left hand, once in a while it would be clasped behind the broad back, but only for a moment. To the hip pocket and back again was its sentry-go, and it was a faithful soldier.
Several interviewers remark on the unexpected calibre of his voice. He himself spoke of it as "the mouse that came forth from the mountain."
One would never suspect him of being our leading American best-seller. His accent, mannerisms, and dress are pro-Piccadilly and he likes his Oolong with a lump of sugar. He thinks with his cigar, a black London cheeroot.
He, Gilbert K. Chesterton, was sipping a cup of tea, expertly brewed by Mrs. Chesterton when a reporter yesterday entered his room at the Blackstone [in Chicago]. Before he submitted to interrogation he lighted the cigar.
"My muse," he explained. "A Parnassian pleasure. Tobacco smoke is the Ichor of mental life. Some men write with a pencil, others with a typewriter, I write with my cigar." . . .
Throughout the interview he was profoundly concerned not with the subjects under discussion, but with the black cheeroot. Seven times it went out. Seven times he relighted it. The eighth time he tossed it away.
When asked which of his works he considered the greatest, he said: "I don't consider any of my works in the least great." . . .
"Slang," he said, "is too sacred and precious to be used promiscuously. Its use should be led up to reverently for it expresses what the King's English could not."