Turns about Town

by Robert Cortes Holliday

I thought I ought to look around and try to find somebody. I wandered into what I suppose are the "wings" of the theatre. Anyway, I had an excellent view, from one side, of the stage and of a portion of one gallery. The only person quite near me was a fireman, who paid no attention whatever to me, but continued to gaze out steadily at Mr. Chesterton, with an expression of countenance which (as well as I could decipher it) registered fascinated incomprehension. I attempted to lean against what I supposed was a wall, but to my great fright the whole structure nearly tumbled over as I barely touched it. Perceiving a chair the other side of the fireman, I passed before him, sat down, and gave myself over to contemplation of the spectacle.

My first impression, I think, was that Mr. Chesterton was speaking in so conversational a key that I should have expected to hear cries of "Louder!" coming from all over the house. But from the lighted expressions of the faces far away in the corner of the gallery visible to me he was apparently being followed perfectly. I did not then know that at his first public appearance in New York he had referred to his lecturing voice as the original mouse that came from the mountain. Nor had I then seen Francis Hackett's comment upon it that: "It wasn't, of course, a bellow. Neither was it a squeak." Mr. Hackett adds that it is "the ordinary good lecture-hall voice." I do not feel that this quite describes my own impression of it the other afternoon. Rather, perhaps, I should put the matter in this way. My recollection of the conversation I had with him in 1914 at Beaconsfield is that there was a much more ruddy quality to his voice then than the other day, and more, much more, in the turn of his talk a racy note of the burly world.

Perhaps he feels that before a "representative" American audience one should be altogether what used to be called "genteel." At any rate, I certainly heard the other day the voice of a modest, very friendly, cultivated, nimble-minded gentleman, speaking with the nicety of precision more frequently observed among English people than among Americans. There was in it even a trace of a tone as though it were most at home within university walls. Though, indeed, I am glad to say, Mr. Chesterton did not abstain from erudite, amused, and amusing allusions to the society most at home in "pubs." And I cannot but suspect that perhaps he would have been found a shade more amusing even than he was if ... but, no matter.

One gentleman who has written a piece about his impressions of Mr. Chesterton's lectures here felt that his audience didn't have quite as much of a good time as the members of it expected to have. I heard only a brief, concluding portion of one lecture. The portion of the audience which came most closely before my observation were those seated at the well filled press table, which stood directly between the speaker and me. These naïve beings gave every evidence of getting, to speak temperately, their money's worth.

Though Mr. Chesterton turned the pages of notes as he spoke, he could not be said to have read his lecture. On the other hand, it was clear that he did not appreciably depart from a carefully prepared disquisition.

The tumbled mane which tops him off seemed more massive even than before. It did not, though, appear quite so tumbled. I think there had been an effort (since 1914) to brush it quite nicely. Certainly it is ever so much greyer. I think in my earlier article I said something like this: "Mr. Chesterton has so remarkably red a face that his smallish moustache seems lightish in color against it." While Mr. Chesterton's face today could not be described as pale, it looks more like a face and less like a glowing full moon. The moustache is darker against it; less bristling than before, more straggly.

A couple of our recent commentators upon Mr. Chesterton have taken a fling at the matter of his not being as huge as, it seems to them, he has been made out to be. I remember that when I saw him before I was even startled to find him more monstrous than even he had appeared in his pictures. He appears to take part a good deal in pageants in England; and recent photographs of him as Falstaff, or Tony Weller, or Mr. Pickwick, or somebody like that, have not altogether squared up with my recollection of him. True, he has not quite the bulk he had before; but it is a captious critic, I should say, who would not consider him sufficiently elephantine for all ordinary purposes.

He was saying (much to the delight of the house) when I became one of the audience, that he would "not regard this as the time or the occasion for him to comment upon the lid on liquor." A bit later in the course of his answer to the question he had propounded, "Shall We Abolish the Inevitable," he got an especially good hand when he remarked: "People nowadays do not like statements having authority—but they will accept any statement without authority." He concluded his denunciation of the idea of fatalism with the declaration: "Whatever man is, he is not in one sense a part of nature." "He has committed crimes, Crimes," he repeated—with gusto in the use of the word,—"and performed heroisms which no animal ever tried to do. Let us hold ourselves free from the boundary of the material order of things, for so shall we have a chance in the future to do things far too historic for prophecy."

I darted back toward Room Three, ran into Mr. Widdecombe, we wheeled, and saw the mountain approaching. Whereas before, this off-stage place had been deserted, now the scene was populous—with the figures of agitated young women. Mr. Widdecombe, however, with much valiance secured Mr. Chesterton. "Yes, yes," he said, and (remarkable remark!), "I had the pleasure of meeting you in England." He glanced about rather nervously at the dancing figures seeking to obtain him, and led the way for me into the dressing room. Mr. Widdecombe pulled the door to from without.

I am far from being as large as Mr. Chesterton, but the two of us closeted in that compartment was an absurdity. Mr. Chesterton eclipsed a chair, and beamed upon me with an expression of Cheeryble-like brightness. Upon his arrival in New York he had declared to the press that he would not write a book of his impressions of the United States. I asked him if, after being here a week or so, he had changed his mind as to this determination. "Not definitely," he said, "not definitely. But, of course, one could never tell what one might do." He might write a book about us, then? Yes, he might. Did he think it at all likely that he would take up residence over here? A very joyous smile: "One's own country is best," he said. Rumors had several times been afloat that he had entered the Roman Catholic Church. Would he say whether there was any likelihood of his doing this? He was an Anglican Catholic, he replied. Not a Roman Catholic—yet. That was not to say that he might not be—if the English Church should become more Protestant. What was his next book to be? Had he any project in mind of going to Turkey, or Mexico, or some such place? No; the only books he was working on at present were a new volume of short stories and a book (smiling again widely) on eugenics. He knew Mr. Lucas, of course? "Yes, fine fellow." Did he know Frank Swinnerton? No. What was.... But the door was popped open. Several persons were waiting for him, among them Mrs. Chesterton. I helped him into the cape-coat. Stood behind the door so that when it was opened he could get out. "You know Mr. Holliday," he said to Mrs. Chesterton. "Thank you, so much," he said to me. And was whisked away.