I came to know G. K. Chesterton at that time, and every time I saw him admired more profoundly his great range of knowledge, his immense wit and fancy, his genial, jolly, and passionately sincere idealism. From my ground-floor flat, every morning at ten I used to observe a certain ritual in his life. There appeared an old hansom cab, with an old horse and an old driver. This would be kept waiting for half an hour. Then G. K. C. would descend, a spacious and splendid figure in a big cloak and a slouch hat, like a brigand about to set forth on a great adventure, and though he was bound no further than Fleet Street, it was adventure enough, leading to great flights of fancy and derring do. After him came Mrs. Chesterton, a little figure almost hidden by her husband’s greatness. When Chesterton got into the cab, the old horse used to stagger in its shafts, and the old cab used to rock like a boat in a rough sea.
At luncheon time I often used to see G. K. C. in an Italian restaurant in Fleet Street where, with a bottle of port wine at his elbow, and a scribbling pad at his side, he used to write one of his articles for The Daily News, chuckling mightily over some happy paradox, which had just taken shape in his brain, and totally unconscious of any public observation of his private mirth.
As literary editor of The Tribune, I tried to buy Chesterton away from The Daily News, at double the price they paid him, but he was proof against this temptation. “The Daily News has been very good to me,” he said, “and though I loathe their point of view on many subjects, I’m not going to desert them now.” He agreed, however, to contribute to The Tribune from time to time, and as I had arranged the matter, he had a kindly feeling toward me which led to an embarrassing but splendid moment in my life. At a preliminary banquet given by the proprietor of that unfortunate paper to a crowd of distinguished people who utterly neglected to buy it, G. K. Chesterton sat, as one of the chief guests, at the high table. I had been obscurely placed at the back of the room, and this distressed the noble and generous soul of my good friend. When he was asked to speak, he made some general and excellent observations, and then uttered such a panegyric of me that I was dissolved in blushes, especially when he raised his glass and asked the company to drink to me. Some of them, including the proprietor, were not altogether pleased with this demonstration in my favor, but, needless to say, I cherish it.
Among my happy recollections of G. K. C. is one day at luncheon hour when he was “guyed” by a group of factory girls in Fleet Street, and took their playfulness with jovial humor, careless of his dignity; and an evening at the Guildhall when King Albert of Belgium was the guest, and I encountered Chesterton afterward wandering in the courtyard like the restless ghost of a roistering cavalier, afraid to demand his hat from the flunkeys, because he had not the necessary shilling with which to tip them.
Chesterton is one of the great figures of literary England, and will live in the history of our own time as one of the wittiest and wisest men, worthy of a place in the portrait gallery of the immortals. His great figure, his overflowing humor, his splendid simplicity of faith in the ancient code of liberty and truth, put him head and shoulders above the standardized type of little “intellectuals” with whom the world is crowded.
I have the pleasantest recollections of “Intellectual Mansions,” Battersea Park, but, after living there for four years or so, I moved over the bridge to the little house I have already mentioned, in Holland Street, Kensington, a few yards away from the old world Paradise, Kensington Gardens. It was a little house in a little street, which I still think the most charming in London, with fine old Georgian mansions mixed up with little old shops, so that an admiral lived next to a chimney sweep, and that great artist, Walter Crane, was two doors or so removed from an oil and colorman, who sold everything from treacle to paraffin. We had everything in Holland Street that adds to the charm of life—a public house at the corner, a German band which played all the wrong notes once a week, just as it ought to do, and a Punch and Judy show.
A near neighbor and close friend of mine at that time was E. W. Hornung, the author of Raffles and many better books not so famous. He was the brother-in-law of Conan Doyle, whose enormous success with Sherlock Holmes probably set his mind working on the character of that gentlemanly thief, Raffles, with whom, personally, I had no sympathy at all.
Hornung and I used to “jaw” about books and writing, and, as an obscure journalist and unsuccessful author, I used to stand in awe of his fine house, his powerful motor car, his son at Eton. He was a heavily built man, with a lazy manner and a certain intolerance of view which made him despise Socialists, radicals, or any critics of the British Empire and the old traditions, but I came to know the underlying sweetness and sentiment of his character, and his passion of patriotism. He used to drive me sometimes to places like Richmond Park and Windsor Forest, and there we used to walk about under the trees, discussing the eternal subject of books. Deep peace was about us in those old woods. Neither he nor I imagined in our wildest flights of fancy that one day he would be living in a hole in the ground under the ruins of Arras, and that life and death would knock all thought of books out of our minds.
His boy was his greatest pride, a fine lad, fresh from Eton, and steeped in the old traditions which Hornung thought gave the only grace to the code of an English gentleman. (He had no patience with any other school of thought.) The boy stood one day on the curbstone in High Street Kensington, on a day after war had been declared and the streets were placarded with posters, “Your King and Country Need You.” He raised his hat to my wife, and said, “Do you think I ought to join up?” He joined up, like all boys of his age, and, like most of them in the list of second lieutenants, at that time, was killed very soon. His letters from the front were full of faith and pride. He loved his men, the splendor of being an officer, the thought of the great adventure ahead for England’s sake. He did not live into the times of disillusion and the dull routine of mud and misery....