ed
to blot out the liner and the river. Mrs. Chesterton was busy with
the baggage.

"My wife understands these things," he said with a sweep of his
stick. "I don't." . . .

In order to get the two figures into the same picture one of the
newspaper photographers requested Mr. Chesterton to sit in a big
armchair while his wife stood beside him. When they were settled in
the required pose he exclaimed: "I say I don't like this; people will
think that I am a German."

Another newspaper remarks: "He was accompanied by his wife, who
looked very small beside him. She attended to the baggage
examination, opening trunks and bags while her husband delivered a
short essay on the equality of men and women in England since the
war." This reporter was perhaps not without irony: but if it actually
happened like that, G.K. must have seen the joke too for he has a
similar situation in the first scene of his play "The Judgement of
Dr. Johnson." The same reporter adds that Chesterton speaks in
essays, so that his interviewers "received a brief essay instead of a
direct reply to a leading question."

We next come upon them in their New York hotel:

I found, with Mrs. Chesterton at the Biltmore, this big, gentle,
leonine man of letters six feet of him and 200 odd lbs. There is a
delightful story of how an American, driving with him through London,
remarked "Everyone seems to know you, Mr. Chesterton."

"Yes," mournfully responded the gargantuan author, "and if they
don't they ask."

He really doesn't look anything like as fat as his caricatures make
him, however, and he has a head big enough to go with his massive
tallness. His eyes are brilliant English blue behind the big rimmed
eyeglasses: his wavy hair, steel grey; his heavy mustache, bright
yellow. Physically he is the crackling electric spark of the
heaven-home-and-mother party, the only man who can give the cleverest
radical debaters a Roland for their Oliver.

In subsequent interviews G.K.'s height grew to six foot three and his
weight to 300 lbs. (which was surely closer to the mark); his
mannerisms were greatly remarked.

Mr. Chesterton speaks clearly, in a rather high-pitched voice. He
accompanies his remarks with many nervous little gestures. His hands,
at times, stray into his pockets. He leans over the reading desk as
if he would like to get down into the audience and make it a sort of