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 a letter to Amy Ronald, dated November 16, 1969, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, "What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in–especially for those who have also the burden of age, whose friends and all they especially care for are afflicted in the same way. Chesterton once said that it is our duty to keep the Flag of This World flying: but it takes a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then." [Letters of Tolkien, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, p. 402]
