ed Russell Wallace, whom they invited to talk on
Evolution, came and talked instead on the nationalisation of land. He
sat, huddled in a chair, very old and very bright, with eyes that
sparkled behind his glasses ... and suddenly, in the middle of his
discourse on land, he informed them that he had positive proof of the
existence of angels. "My God, he'll want to make civil servants of 'em!"
Gilbert whispered to Henry.... Sir Horace Plunkett dined with them one
night, eating so little that he scarcely seemed to eat at all, and he
preached the whole gospel of co-operation. It was through him that they
got hold of an agricultural genius called T. Wibberley, an
English-Irishman, who reorganised the entire farming system on a basis
of continuous cropping inside an hour and ten minutes. Wibberley knew
Henry's father, and for the first time in his life Henry learned that
Mr. Quinn's agricultural experiments were of value.... Then came H. G.
Wells, smiling and very deprecating and almost inarticulate, to tell
them of the enormous importance of the novelist. They got him into a
corner of the room, when he had finished reading his paper, and
persuaded him to make caricatures of them ... and while he was making
the caricatures, he talked to them far more brilliantly than he had read
to them. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc came to lecture and stayed
to drink. Chesterton's lecture would have been funny, they agreed, if
they had been able to hear it, but he laughed so heartily at his jokes,
as he, so to speak, saw them approaching, that he forgot to make them.
His method of speech was a mixture of giggle and whisper.
"Chuckle-and-squeak!" Gilbert called it. Belloc whispered dark things
about Influential Families and Hebrews and seemed to think that a man
who changed his name only did so with the very worst intentions. He and
Chesterton said harsh things about the Party System, and they babbled
beatifically about the Catholic Church.... "Two big men like that
gabbling like a couple of priest-smitten flappers!" said Gilbert in
disgust as he listened to them. "Them and their Cathlik Church!" he
added, imitating Belloc's way of pronouncing the word "Catholic."
Mouldy, grovelling, fat Papists! he called them, and vowed that he would
resign from the Improved Tories if any more of that sort were asked to
address them. That was because some one had suggested that Cecil
Chesterton should also be invited to dine with them. "He's simply
Be