Journalists coming down from London describe the "jolly" welcome, beer poured, the sword-stick flourished, conversation flowing as freely as the beer. It meant a pleasant afternoon and it meant good copy. They visited him in the country, they observed him in town. One interviewer returned with a photo which showed Chesterton "in a somewhat négligé condition," the result as he admitted of reading W. W. Jacobs "rolling about on the floor waving his legs in the air."
He was seen working a swan boat at the White City: "he collapsed it and the placid lake became a raging sea." He was seen thinking and even reading under the strangest weather conditions: one man saw him under a gas lamp in the street in pouring rain with an open book in his hand. Reading in Fleet Street one day Gilbert discovered suddenly that the Lord Mayor's Show was passing. He began to reflect on the Show so deeply that he forgot to look at it.
Overroads I remember as a little triangular house, much too small for the sort of fun the Chestertons enjoyed. Frances bought a field opposite to it and there built a studio. The night the studio was opened Father O'Connor remembers a large party at which charades were acted. He himself as Canon Cross-Keys gave away the word so that "Belfry" was loudly shouted by the opposition group. The rival company acting Torture got away with it successfully, especially, complains our Yorkshire priest "as 'ure' was pronounced 'yaw' in the best southern manner."
On that night, returning to the house, Father O'Connor offered his arm to Gilbert who "refused it with a finality foreign to our friendship." Father O'Connor went on ahead and Gilbert following in the dark stumbled over a flowerpot and broke his arm. Perhaps because his size made him self-consciously aware of awkwardness Gilbert hated being helped. Father Ignatius Rice, another close friend, says the only time he ever saw Gilbert annoyed was when he offered him an arm going upstairs.
Gilbert and Frances would both visit Father O'Connor in his Yorkshire Parish of Heckmondwike. One year they took rooms at Ilkley and he remembers Gilbert adorning with huge frescoes the walls of the attic and Frances sitting in the window singing, "O swallow, swallow flying south" while Gilbert "did a blazon of some fantastic coat of arms."