T. Grein).
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a towering physical giant who weighed over 300 pounds. At the suggestion of his wife, Frances, whom he married in 1901, he typically wore a theatrical cloak and clamped a black slouch hat over his leonine mane of blond hair. He also flourished a swordstick, his own touch. Befitting his reputation as a literary personality, anecdotes about Chesterton's eccentricity and wit were frequently repeated. There was the famous telegram to his wife: "Am in Manchester. Where should I be"" Her rejoinder: "Home." Asked on Fleet Street which single book he would want if stranded on a desert island he replied without breaking stride, "Robertson's Guide to Practical Shipbuilding." Always though the repartee sparkled best between Shaw and Chesterton. To a rather gaunt Shaw: "I see there's been a famine in the land." Reply to a less than gaunt Chesterton: "Yes, and now I see what caused it."
In 1905 Shaw became the first to insist that playwriting should be Chesterton's major occupation in literature. Shaw had noted that the paradox, compression, and epigram which were cardinal points of his own style were also cardinal points of Chesterton's. Like Shaw, Chesterton employed humor not for its own sake but to make serious points.
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