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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 April of 1934, Chesterton agreed to supply an Introduction to Hesketh Pearson's biography of Sydney Smith. Chesterton, however, submitted an essay on Smith that mentioned neither Pearson nor Pearson's book. When Pearson protested, Chesterton sheepishly admitted that he had become so enthralled with Sydney Smith that he became "rather like a chairman who gave a lecture but forgot to introduce the guest speaker." Chesterton quickly corrected the defect, and the biography was published that January. [Ian Hunter, Nothing To Repent, London: Hamilton, 1987]

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