GKC Wednesday

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 September of 1909, Vivian Carter reviewed Chesterton's new book George Bernard Shaw and concluded that "Shaw and Chesterton are one and the same person." The tall, thin, and abstemious Shaw, she revealed, kept a secret cellar in which he could quickly remove his false whiskers and Jaeger tweeds, and as quickly don padding, cloak, and pince-nez, in order to emerge as the self-indulgent GKC enjoying the cafes of Fleet Street. Thomas Leitch suggests that Carter's amusing fancy gave Chesterton the inspiration for "The Duel of Dr. Hirsch," a Father Brown story published in 1914. [The Critical Judgments, p. 210-11; The Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 70, p. 74]