ver read a word he wrote," the barber answered. "But I always
listened to him on the wireless. He seemed to be sitting beside me in
the room."

"That man," Edward Macdonald comments, "emphasised what I still
think: that G.K.C. in another year or so would have become the
dominating voice from Broadcasting House."

In 1934 Gilbert had jaundice and on his recovery he started with
Frances and Dorothy on one of those trips that were his greatest
pleasure. They went to Rome--it was Holy Year--and thence to Sicily,
intending to go on to Palestine. At Syracuse, however, Gilbert became
really ill with inflammation of the nerves of the neck and shoulders.
They stayed five weeks in Syracuse, gave up the trip to Palestine and
returned home by Malta. Gilbert and Frances were to have dined at
Admiralty House but he was too unwell to dine out and only came up
one afternoon. Lady Fisher remembers going to see them at the Osborne
Hotel. Gilbert was sitting on a rickety basket chair, obviously in
pain and talking a good deal in order to hide it. She sympathised
with him for the cold weather, his obvious physical misery, and the
discomfort of his chair.

"You must never sympathise with me," Gilbert answered, "for I can
always turn every chair into a story."

The next year they motored in France and Italy and Gilbert records in
the _Autobiography_ an experience in a French cafe when he felt a
rare thrill--not in talking on the radio but in listening--on a day
that "was dateless, even for my dateless life; for I had forgotten
time and had no notion of anything anywhere, when in a small French
town I strolled into a cafe noisy with French talk. Wireless songs
wailed unnoted; which is not surprising, for French talk is much
better than wireless. And then, unaccountably, I heard a voice
speaking in English; and a voice I had heard before. For I heard the
words, '. . . wherever you are, my dear people, whether in this
country or beyond the sea,' and I remembered Monarchy and an ancient
cry; for it was the King; and that is how I kept the Jubilee."

After he got home I remember how delightedly Gilbert quoted the
captions on two banners hung in the heart of the London slums. One
read, "Down with Capitalism--God Save the King." The other read,
"Lousy but loyal." He knew that it was true and it served to increase
the passionate quality of his pity. Patient he could be for himself,
but the lot of the poor aroused in him a terrible anger--and i