he book as a man fully
possessed of its whole standpoint. Once he made one of his common
confusions and forgot he was addressing the Wiseman Dining Society on
the Oxford Movement. In the train from Beaconsfield he said how nice
it was that he had not got to speak. Frances Chesterton told him not
to be silly, he knew he was speaking on the Oxford Movement. He was
visibly disconcerted at the start, for many grave seniors had
assembled to hear him; but all went well in the discussion as soon as
he was attacked for something he had said about Newman's views. You
cannot catch me out about Newman, he said, with joy of battle, and he
produced then and there a most detailed account of just where in
Newman's writings the points in question were developed. Yet he was
curiously content to read what happened to come his way and to rely
upon his friends for references and facts, remembering what they
might tell him, but not ordering the books which would have greatly
strengthened him in the sort of newspaper arguments in which he was
so often employed. He had a large collection of books at Topmeadow,
but they gave the impression that they had assembled themselves.
Masses of them were adventure stories, many were presentation copies
from writers. You felt that they had got into the house knowing that
it was a hospitable one, if not built for books, and that they would
probably be allowed to stay. But he had a study which would barely
home him, and the library room he did eventually build was only
finished as he died.

I think nothing is more superficial or belittling to him than the
idea that while he might have liked the real country he could not
like Beaconsfield, as it developed into a dormitory town while he
lived there. His sympathies were far too wide. He liked to tell how
he had had to complain of the noise made by an adjoining Cinema
Company. His secretary had said Mr. Chesterton finds he cannot write;
and the Cinema people replied we are well aware of that.

He liked to think of Mr. Garvin near by, "not that I see him very
much," he said, "but I like to think that that great factory is
steaming away night and day." He had great satisfaction when a friend
and I, driving away in the evening, knocked down a white wooden post
outside the house in starting the car. He held that he had witnessed
just how many a grand old lo