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Background: When I was the editor of Gilbert Magazine, I was responsible for the "Tremendous Trifles" column. It was occasionally hard to find a sufficient amount of interesting GKC material to fill the page, so John Peterson sent me a file full of Chesterton ancedotes. They were idiosyncratic, historical, and Chestertonian. He recently gave me permission to use them here. I hope y'all find them as interesting as I have over the years. Most of them have never been published.

Chesterton Short(s)

In the spring of 1908, the unpublished D.H. Lawrence sent Chesterton one of his essays, asking for an appraisal. After a number of weeks, and much to Lawrence's displeasure, Mrs. Chesterton returned the manuscript, with apologies, saying that her husband's workload prevented him from evaluating the work as Lawrence had requested. [John Worthen, D.H. Lawrence, Cambridge, 1991, p. 190] In 1909 Ford Maddox Ford attended a Dutch-Treat dinner for writers and publishers presided over by the poet Herbert Trench. At his table of five, Ford was joined by H.G. Wells, Hilaire Belloc, Maurice Baring and G.K. Chesterton. When Belloc began to insult a novelist at the next table, an embarrassed Wells changed the subject by loudly asking Ford to tell everyone about a new writer he had just discovered. Thus did Belloc help launch the career of D.H. Lawrence after Chesterton had taken a pass. [Edward Nehls, D. H. Lawrence, Madison, 1957, v. I, p. 202]

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