only
three years before Gilbert's death must be given. The third letter is
undated and I am not sure if it belongs here or refers to another of
Gilbert's reviews of a book of Wells.

47 Chiltern Court, N.W.I. Dec. 10, 1933

DEAR OLD G.K.C.

An _Illustrated London News_ Xmas cutting comes like the season's
greetings. If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your
Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if
I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you.

My warmest good wishes to you and Mrs. G.K.C.

H.G.

MY DEAR H.G.,

I do hope my secretary let you know that at the moment when I got
your most welcome note I was temporarily laid out in bed and able to
appreciate it, but not to acknowledge it. As to the fine point of
theology you raise--I am content to answer (with the subtle and
exquisite irony of the Yanks) I should worry. If I turn out to be
right, you will triumph, not by being a friend of mine, but by being
a friend of Man, by having done a thousand things for men like me in
every way from imagination to criticism. The thought of the vast
variety of that work, and how it ranges from towering visions to tiny
pricks of humour, overwhelmed me suddenly in retrospect: and I felt
we had none of us ever said enough. Also your words, apart from their
generosity, please me as the first words I have heard for a long time
of the old Agnosticism of my boyhood when my brother Cecil and my
friend Bentley almost worshipped old Huxley like a god. I think I
have nothing to complain of except the fact that the other side often
forget that we began as free-thinkers as much as they did: and there
was no earthly power but thinking to drive us on the way we went.
Thanking you again a thousand times for your letter . . . and
everything else.

Yours always

G. K. CHESTERTON.

MY DEAR CHESTERTON:

You write wonderful praise and it leaves me all aquiver. My warmest
thanks for it. But indeed that wonderful fairness of mind is very
largely a kind of funk in me--I know the creature from the
inside--funk and something worse, a kind of deep, complex cunning.
Well anyhow you take the superficial merit with infinite charity--and
it has inflated me and just for a time I am an air balloon over the
heads of my fellow creatures.

Yours ever

H. G. WELLS.

Gilbert loved to praise his fe