to the right place at the right time and in clothes
not too wildly wrong. When he lectured in Lancashire they stayed at
Crosby with Francis Blundell (my brother-in-law), and my sister
remembers Frances as incessantly looking through her bag for letters
and sending telegrams to confirm engagements that had come unstuck or
to refuse others that were in debate. The celebrated and now almost
legendary telegram from Gilbert to Frances told as from a hundred
different cities was really sent: "Am in Market Harborough. Where
ought I to be?"

Desperate, she wired, "Home," because, as she told me later, it was
easier to get him home and start him off again. That day's engagement
was lost past recall.

Charles Rowley of the Ancoats Brotherhood received a wire, reply
paid, from Snow Hill Station, Birmingham: "Am I coming to you tonight
or what?" Reply: "Not this Tuesday but next Wednesday."

So home he came again to Overroads.

The Chestertons made a host of friends in Beaconsfield but the
children always held pride of place. The doctor's little boy, running
along the top of the wall, looked down at Gilbert and remarked to his
delight, "I think you're an ogre." But when the nurse was heard
threatening punishment if he did not get down "that minute," the
child was told by the ogre, "This wall is meant for little boys to
run along." One child, asked after a party if Mr. Chesterton had been
very clever, said, "You should see him catch buns in his mouf."

What was unusual both with Gilbert and Frances was the fact that they
never allowed their disappointment in the matter of children to make
them sour or jealous of others who had the joy that they had not. All
through their lives they played with other people's children: they
chose on a train a compartment full of children: they planned
amusements, they gave presents to the children of their friends. Over
my son's bed hangs a silver crucifix chosen with loving care by
Frances after Gilbert had stood godfather to him. And he was one of
very many.

Gilbert was however a complete realist as to the ways and manners of
the species he so loved.

Playing with children [he wrote at this time] is a glorious thing:
but the journalist in question has never understood why it was
considered a soothing or idyllic one. It reminds him, not of watering
little budding flowers, but of wrestling for hours with gigantic
angels and devils. Moral problems of the most monstrous complex