Gilbert's story-telling and verse-making began very early, but not, I
think, in great abundance; his drawing even earlier, and of this
there is a great deal. There is nothing very striking in the written
fragments that remain, but his drawings even at the age of five are
full of vigour. The faces and figures are always rudimentary human
beings, sometimes a good deal more, and they are taken through
lengthy adventures drawn on the backs of bits of wall paper, of
insurance forms, in little books sewn together, or sometimes on long
strips glued end to end by his father. These drawings can often be
dated exactly, for Edward Chesterton, who later kept collections of
press-cuttings and photographs of his son, had already begun to
collect his drawings, writing the date on the back of each. With the
earlier ones he may, one sometimes suspects, have helped a little,
but it soon becomes easy to distinguish between the two styles.

Edward Chesterton was the most perfect father that could have been
imagined to help in the opening of windows on every side. "My father
might have reminded people of Mr. Pickwick, except that he was always
bearded and never bald; he wore spectacles and had all the
Pickwickian evenness of temper and pleasure in the humours of
travel." He had, as his son further notes in the _Autobiography_, a
power of invention which "created for children the permanent
anticipation of what is profoundly called a 'surprise.'" The child
of today chooses his Christmas present in advance and decides between
Peter Pan and the Pantomime (when he does not get both). The
Chesterton children saw their first glimpses of fantasy through the
framework of a toy-theatre of which their father was carpenter,
scene-painter and scene-shifter, author and creator of actors and
actresses a few inches high. Gilbert's earliest recollection is of