with a very
disconsolate expression and asking where Frances was. I said, "I
don't know but I can easily find her. Do you want her?" He answered,
"I don't want her now but I may want her at any minute." Many men
depend upon their wives but very few men admit it so frankly. And if
he was unpractical to a point almost inconceivable, Frances herself
could be called practical only in comparison with him. The confused
mass of papers through which she had to hunt to find some important
document lingers in the memory.

Another element that made action lag behind conviction with
Chesterton was his perpetual state of overwork. Physically inactive,
his mind was never barren but issued in an immense output: several
books every year besides editing and articles: there were even two
years in which no fewer than six books were published. To focus his
attention on the deepest matters, it was vital to escape from the net
of work and worry.

Returning from Jerusalem, Gilbert wrote from Alexandria to Maurice
Baring:

MY DEAR MAURICE,

To quote a poet we agree in thinking ridiculously underrated by
recent fashions, my boat is on the shore and my bark is on the sea;
but before I go, Tom Moore (if I may so by a flight of fancy describe
you), I feel impelled to send you this hurried line to thank you, so
far as this atrocious hotel pen will allow me, for the wonderful time
I have had in Palestine, which is so largely owing to you. There is
also something even more important I want very much to discuss with
you; because of certain things that have been touched on between us
in former times. I will only say here that my train of thought, which
really was one of thought and not fugitive emotion, came to an
explosion in the Church of the Ecce Homo in Jerusalem; a church which
the guidebooks call new and the newspapers call Latin. I fear it may
be at least a month before we meet; for the journey takes a fortnight
and may be prolonged by a friend ill in Paris; and I must work the
moment I return to keep a contract. But if we could meet by about
then I could thank you better for many things.

Yours illegibly,

G. K. CHESTERTON.

The contract that had to be kept was in all probability the writing
of _The New Jerusalem_. It is a glorious book. Until I read them more
carefully I had always accepted G.K.'s own view that books of travel
were a weak spot in his multifarious output. He sai