He also constructed toy theaters for which he composed extravagant dramas that were produced for the pleasure of his and the neighborhood's children. In his autobiography, Chesterton admitted that his love of "romantic things" had been instilled by his "Pickwickian" father.
Chesterton's mother, Marie Louise Grosjean Chesterton, was, like her son, genial and untidy. His younger brother Cecil, who later became a well-known polemical journalist, was quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and devoted to debating with his brother. Summarizing his relationship with Cecil, Chesterton once wrote: "We really devoted all our boyhood to one long argument, unfortunately interrupted by meal times, by school times ... and many such irritating frivolities." Even at mealtime "We shouted at each other across the table, on the subject of Parnell or Puritanism or Charles the First's head." As Chesterton's biographer Dudley Barker notes, "the incessant youthful arguments trained the adult Chesterton to be as sharp, vigorous and swift a public debater as any man alive; a debater who could stand on a platform against Bernard Shaw and give as good as he received."
At the age of thirteen Chesterton began as a day boy at St. Paul's Preparatory School in London.
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