hen I first knew Chesterton he was living in a flat in Battersea, a
charming place overlooking a green park in front and a mass of black
roofs behind. Here Chesterton lived in the days when he was becoming
famous, when the inhabitants of that part of London began to realize
that they had a great man in their midst, and grew accustomed to seeing
a romantic figure in a cloak and slouch hat hail a hansom and drive off
to Fleet Street.

Later, Chesterton moved to Beaconsfield, a delightful country town,
built in the shape of a cross, on the road from London to Oxford. He has
here a queer kind of house that is mostly doors and passages, and looks
like a very elaborate dolls'-house; it is rather like one of the Four
Beasts, who had eyes all round, except that instead of having eyes all
round it has doors all round; and I have never yet discovered which is
really the front door, for the very good reason that either of the sides
may be the front.

In a very charming essay, Max Beerhobm, one of the best essayists of the
day, gives warning to very eminent men that if they wish to please their
admirers a great deal depends on how they receive those who would pay
them homage. He tells us of how Coventry Patmore paid a visit to Leigh
Hunt and was so overcome by the poet's greeting--'This is a beautiful
world, Mr. Patmore'--that he remembered nothing else of that interview.
I remember one day it so happened that I had to pay a visit to Anthony
Hope. I knocked tremblingly at his door in Gower Street and followed the
trim housemaid into the dining-room. Here I found an oldish man with his
back to me. Turning round at my entrance he said, without any asking who
I was, 'Have a cigarette?' And this is all that I remembered of this
visit.

The best way, according to Max Beerbohm, is for the visitor to be
already seated, and for the very eminent man to enter, for 'Let the hero
remember that his coming will seem supernatural to the young man.'

I cannot remember the first time I saw Chesterton, whether he was seated
or whether I was; whether his entrance was like a god or whether he was
sitting on the floor drawing pirates of foreign climes or whether he was
wandering up and down the passage. Chesterton is so remarkable-looking
that any one seeing him cannot fail to be impressed by his splendid
head, his shapely forehead, his eyes that seem to look back over the
forgotten centuries or forward to those yet to come.

If there is one thing