t--"one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and industry
of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady. His heart
was in the right place but he was quite content to leave it there.
His head was his hobby." This might be Chesterton himself--in fact,
it is Chesterton himself--and the climax belongs to a later world
than that of 1911. For pointing to the Ball bereft of the Cross, the
Highlander calls out: "It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by
itself; you know it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life.
Turnbull, this garden is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfillment.
This garden is the world gone mad."

About the time this book appeared Gilbert was asked by an Anglican
Society to lecture at Coventry. He said "What shall I lecture on?"
They answered "Anything from an elephant to an umbrella." "Very
well," he said, "I will lecture on an umbrella." He treated the
umbrella as a symbol of increasing artificiality. We wear hair to
protect the head, a hat to protect the hair, an umbrella to protect
the hat. Gilbert said once he was willing to start anywhere and
develop from anything the whole of his philosophy. In the Notebook
he had written:

BOOTLACES

Once I looked down at my bootlaces
Who gave me my bootlaces?
The bootmaker? Bah!
Who gave the bootmaker himself?
What did I ever do that I should be given bootlaces?

After the lecture on the umbrella two priests saw him at the railway
bookstall and asked him if the rumour was true that he was thinking
of joining the Church. He answered, "It's a matter that is giving me
a great deal of agony of mind, and I'd be very grateful if you would
pray for me."

The following year he broached the subject to Father O'Connor when
they were alone in a railway carriage. He said he had made up his
mind, but he wanted to wait for Frances "as she had led him into the
Anglican Church out of Unitarianism." Frances told Father O'Connor
when he came to Overroads later, at the beginning of Gilbert's
illness, that she "could not make head or tail" of some of her
husband's remarks, especially one about being buried at Kendal Green.
When Father O'Connor told her what had been on Gilbert's mind she was
half amused at the hints he had been dropping: she recognised his
reluctance to move without her, but I think she probably realised too
that even to himself his conviction seemed in those years at times
more absolute, at times less. We shall see in