thought there was none he
loved better than Maurice Baring. They often wrote ballades
together--a French form which they, with Phillimore and others, had
re-popularised in English. A telegram from Gilbert refusing a
celebration runs like a refrain:

Prince, Yorkshire holds me now
By Yorkshire hams I'm fed
I can't assist your row
I send ballades instead.

These "Ballades Urbane" were a feature in the _New Witness_--but many
of those the three friends composed were strictly not for publication
but recited to friends behind closed doors. Gilbert's memory was
useful: he knew all his own and the others: Once Belloc forgot the
Envoi to one of his own ballades and Gilbert finished it for him.
Even to Maurice Baring, G.K. wrote less often than he intended and
one apologetic ballade carries the refrain:

I write no letters to the men I love.

I have always fancied that Maurice Baring gave Gilbert the idea for
his story _The Man Who Knew Too Much_. First in the diplomatic
service, then doing splendidly as an airman in the war, a member of
the great banking family, related to most of the aristocracy and
intimate with most of the rest, he is like the hero of the book in a
sort of detachment, a slight irony about a world that he has not
cared to conquer. Impossible for a mere acquaintance to say whether
he views that world with all the disillusionment of Chesterton's
hero--but anyhow such a suggestion from life is never more than a
hint for creative art. Another side is seen in the _Autobiography_--
in the stories of Maurice Baring plunging into the sea in evening
dress on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, and of the smashing
by Gilbert of a wine-glass that became in retrospect a priceless
goblet (which had "stood by Charlemagne's great chair and served St.
Peter at High Mass") and now inspired the refrain:

I like the sound of breaking glass.

A good deal of glass was broken by the stones of this group of men
whose own house was made of tolerably strong materials.

There is quite a bundle of Mr. Baring's letters to Gilbert, and, in
spite of the apologetic ballade, a fair number of answers. Two of
these last are written early in 1919, the second of which opens the
question of the Jerusalem visit:

May 23, 1919

MY DEAR MAURICE,

I am the Prince of unremembered towers destroyed before the birth
of Babylon; I am also the (writer) of unremem