G K Chesterton

Manalive G K Chesterton

We all remember the fairy tales of science in our infancy, which played with thesupposition that large animals could jump in the proportion of small ones. If an elephantwere as strong as a grasshopper, he could (I suppose) spring clean out of the ZoologicalGardens and alight trumpeting upon Primrose Hill. If a whale could leap from the sea like atrout, perhaps men might look up and see one soaring above Yarmouth like the wingedisland of Laputa. Such natural energy, though sublime, might certainly be inconvenient, andmuch of this inconvenience attended the gaiety and good intentions of the man in green. Hewas too large for everything, because he was lively as well as large. By a fortunate physicalprovision, most very substantial creatures are also reposeful; and middle-class boardinghouses in the lesser parts of London are not built for a man as big as a bull and excitable asa kitten. When Inglewood followed the stranger into the boarding-house, he found him talkingearnestly (and in his own opinion privately) to the helpless Mrs. Duke. That fat, faint ladycould only goggle up like a dying fish at the enormous new gentleman, who politely offeredhimself as a lodger, with vast gestures of the wide white hat in one hand, and the yellowGladstone bag in the other. Fortunately, Mrs. Duke's more efficient niece and partner wasthere to complete the contract; for, indeed, all the people of the house had somehowcollected in the room. This fact, in truth, was typical of the whole episode. The visitorcreated an atmosphere of comic crisis; and from the time he came into the house to thetime he left it, he somehow got the company to gather and even follow (though in derision)as children gather and follow a Punch and Judy. An hour ago, and for four years previously, these people had avoided each other, even when they had really liked each other. They hadslid in and out of dismal and deserted rooms in search of particular newspapers or privateneedlework. Even now they all came casually, as with varying interests; but they all came. There was the embarrassed Inglewood, still a sort of red shadow; there was theunembarrassed Warner, a pallid but solid substance. There was Michael Moon offering likea riddle the contrast of the horsy crudeness of his clothes and the sombre sagacity of hisvisage. He was now joined by his yet more comic crony, Moses Gould