Edward Macdonald writes of his experiences of Chesterton when he was working with him on the paper.
He loved all the jokes about his size. He was the first to see the point and to roar with laughter when Douglas Woodruff introduced him to a meeting as "Mr. Chesterton who has just been looking round in America. . . ."
He came into the office once on Press Day and saw the disordered pile of papers and proofs on my desk. The place was certainly in an awful mess. I wanted to show him a particular letter and shoved my hand into the middle of one pile and was lucky enough to put my hand right on the right document. G.K.C. complimented me on a filing system that demanded a keen memory and then remarked enviously "I wish they'd let me have a desk like that at home."
When Thomas Derrick drew his famous cartoon of G.K.C. milking a cow
he hesitated to give it to me for fear that G.K.C. would be offended.
I wanted to print it in a special number and telephoned to
Beaconsfield.
"Mr. Chesterton, I have here a cartoon of Derrick and would like to put it in the special number. But as you are the subject of the cartoon Derrick is afraid you may not like it."
"I would rather it were not printed," he replied. "I never liked the idea of my name being used in the title of the paper and don't want well-intentioned but embarrassing personalities. Of course, if it were highly satirical, insulting and otherwise unflattering I'd gladly have it on the front-page."
I assured him that it was anything but flattering and on the front-page it went. It was used as the frontispiece of G.K.'s Miscellany.
Many of the obituary writers said that he hated the cinema. In fact he told me once that he had long wished to write a new translation of Cyrano and would like to try his hand at a film scenario of the play. His fingers had itched in the first place to retranslate the duel scene in order to restore the strength of the ballade in English. When he saw the film version of a Father Brown story I asked him what he thought of it. He had liked the film as a film and the acting. He added as an afterthought, "It gave me an idea for a new Father Brown story."
A short-hand note was taken of the famous debate with Bernard Shaw. It was decided to devote four pages of G.K.'s Weekly to a report which I tried to compile by avoiding the third person and concentrating on significant quotations. But whereas Shaw put his points in a few words from which elaboration could be cut, G.K.C.'s argument was so closely knit that it was difficult to leave out passages without spoiling the effect. He walked into the room as my pencil went through a fairly long extract from Shaw's speech.
"And whose words are you so gaily murdering?" he asked.