lowing as
freely as the beer. It meant a pleasant afternoon and it meant good
copy. They visited him in the country, they observed him in town. One
interviewer returned with a photo which showed Chesterton "in a
somewhat neglige condition," the result as he admitted of reading W.
W. Jacobs "rolling about on the floor waving his legs in the air."

He was seen working a swan boat at the White City: "he collapsed it
and the placid lake became a raging sea." He was seen thinking and
even reading under the strangest weather conditions: one man saw him
under a gas lamp in the street in pouring rain with an open book in
his hand. Reading in Fleet Street one day Gilbert discovered suddenly
that the Lord Mayor's Show was passing. He began to reflect on the
Show so deeply that he forgot to look at it.

Overroads I remember as a little triangular house, much too small for
the sort of fun the Chestertons enjoyed. Frances bought a field
opposite to it and there built a studio. The night the studio was
opened Father O'Connor remembers a large party at which charades were
acted. He himself as Canon Cross-Keys gave away the word so that
"Belfry" was loudly shouted by the opposition group. The rival
company acting Torture got away with it successfully, especially,
complains our Yorkshire priest "as 'ure' was pronounced 'yaw' in the
best southern manner."

On that night, returning to the house, Father O'Connor offered his
arm to Gilbert who "refused it with a finality foreign to our
friendship." Father O'Connor went on ahead and Gilbert following in
the dark stumbled over a flowerpot and broke his arm. Perhaps because
his size made him self-consciously aware of awkwardness Gilbert hated
being helped. Father Ignatius Rice, another close friend, says the
only time he ever saw Gilbert annoyed was when he offered him an arm
going upstairs.

Gilbert and Frances would both visit Father O'Connor in his Yorkshire
Parish of Heckmondwike. One year they took rooms at Ilkley and he
remembers Gilbert adorning with huge frescoes the walls of the attic
and Frances sitting in the window singing, "O swallow, swallow flying
south" while Gilbert "did a blazon of some fantastic coat of arms."

The closeness of the intimacy is seen in a letter quoted by Father
O'Connor* in which Gilbert explained why Frances and he were unable
to come to Heckmondwike for a promised visit.

[* _Father Brown on Chesterton_, p. 123.]

(July 3rd, 1909)

I would