Walking-Stick Papers

by Robert Cortes Holliday

Then an ambitious idea popped into my head. I determined to write the same request to all the people in England I had ever reviewed. Reviewing, mostly anonymous, had been my business for several years, with other literary chores on the side. I communicated to Mr. Chesterton the fact that I had come over to look about, told him my belief that he was one of the noblest and most interesting monuments in England, and asked him if he supposed that he could be "viewed" by me, at some street corner, say, at a time appointed, as he rumbled past in his triumphal car.

Writing to famous people that you don't know is somewhat like the drink habit. It is easy to begin; it is pleasurably stimulating; it soon fastens itself upon you to the extent that it is exceedingly difficult to stop indulgence and it leads you straight to excess. I wound up, I think, with Hugh Walpole. I had liked that "Fortitude" thing very much.

My Englishised Boston friend—he's the worst Englishman I saw over there—simply threw up his hands. He groaned and fell into a chair.

"Holy cat!" he cried, or English words to that effect, "you can't come over here and do that way. It's not done," he declared. "You can't meet Englishmen in that fashion. These people will think you are a wild, bounding red Indian. They'll all go out of town until you leave the country."

Well, I saw it was awfully bad. I have disgraced the U.S.A. That's what comes of having crude notions about meeting people. I felt pretty cheap. I felt sorry for my friend too, because he had to stay there where he lived and try to hold his head up while I could slink off back home. My friend pointed out to me that Mr. Chesterton and the other gentlemen had only my word for it that I had any connection with literature, and that as far as they were aware I might be the worst kind of crook, and at the very best was in all likelihood a very great bore.

Annie, the maid at my lodgings, handed me a bunch of mail. Mr. Belloc was particularly eager to see me, he said. He gave me an intimate two page account of his movements for the past couple of weeks or so. He had just been out to sea in his boat, the Nona, and had only got back after a good deal of difficulty outside; this he hoped would account for the delay of a day or so in his reply.

During the Whitsun days he had to travel about England to see his children at their various schools, and after that he had to go to settle again about his boat, where she lay in a Welsh port. Then he must speak at Eton. He would be "available," however, at the beginning of the next week, when he hoped I would "take a meal" with him. Perhaps he could be of some use in acquainting me with England; it would be such a pleasure to meet me, and so on. Very nice attitude for a man so slightly acquainted with one.

Mr. Chesterton wished to thank me for my letter and to say that he would be pleased if I cared to come down to spend an afternoon with him at Beaconsfield. Mr. Walpole apologised very greatly for seeming so curtly inhospitable, but he was only in London for a short time and had difficulty in squeezing his engagements in. This week, too, was infernally complicated by Ascot. But couldn't I come round on Monday to lunch with him at his club?

Mr. Chesterton is a grand man. Smokes excellent cigars. But first, as you come up the hill, from the railway station toward the old part of the village and to the little house Overroads, you enter, as like as not, as I did, a gate set in a pleasant hedge, and you knock at a side door, to the mirth later of Mrs. Chesterton.

This agreeable entrance is that for tradesmen. The way you should have gone in is round somewhere on another road. A maid admits you to a small parlour and in a moment Mrs. Chesterton comes in to inquire if you have an appointment with her husband. She always speaks of Mr. Chesterton as "my husband." It develops that the letter you sent fixing the appointment got balled up in some way. It further develops that a good many things connected with Mr. Chesterton's life and house get balled up. Mrs. Chesterton's line seems to be to keep things about a chaotic husband as straight as possible.