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.