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 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 1924, the Queen's Doll House was unveiled at the British Empire Exhibit, complete with crown jewels, wine cellar, a working gramophone, pianos, and a two-thousand book library. A number of authors, including Chesterton, Maugham, Housman, and others, contributed handwritten volumes, each the size of a postage stamp. [Ted Morgan, Maugham, New York, 1980, p. 274]
British novelist Daphne du Maurier was nervous about her impending 1928 screen test. She had been suggested for the title role in the movie version of The Constant Nymph and decided that the best way to prepare for the ordeal was to play some tennis and then relax with Chesterton's The Return of Don Quixote. [Daphne du Maurier, Myself When Young, New York, 1977, p. 114]
In 1910, British authors John Mansfield, Walter de la Mare, John Galsworthy, Ford Maddox Ford, and Ezra Pound regularly attend a monthly dinner meeting to discuss new books. The gathering, formally named the Square Club, had been founded by G. K. Chesterton. [Letters of Ford Maddox Ford, Princeton University Press, 1965]
In April of 1925, Chesterton completed the illustrations for Hilaire Belloc's novel, Mr. Petre. Said Belloc, "He did eight in an hour and a half. But if I hadn't forced him, he'd never have done them at all." [Letters from Hilaire Belloc, London: Hollis & Carter, 1958, pp. 164-65]
