too ill and consequently too emotionally unstrung during the last
months for me to ask her all the questions springing in my mind.
"Tell Maisie," she said to Dorothy Collins, "not to talk to me about
Gilbert. It makes me cry."

For the time at Beaconsfield, out of a host of friends the most
valuable were Dr. Pocock and Dr. Bakewell. Among priests, Monsignors
O'Connor and Ronald Knox, Fathers Vincent McNabb, O.P. and Ignatius
Rice, O.S.B. were especially intimate.

Dorothy Collins's evidence covers a period of ten years. That of H.
G. Wells and Bernard Shaw is reinforced by most valuable letters
which they have kindly allowed me to publish.

Then too Gilbert was so much of a public character and so popular
with his fellow journalists that stories of all kinds abound:
concerning him there is a kind of evidence, and very valuable it is,
that may be called a Boswell Collective. It is fitting that it should
be so. We cannot picture G.K. like the great lexicographer
accompanied constantly by one ardent and observant witness, pencil in
hand, ready to take notes over the teacups. (And by the way, in spite
of an acquaintance who regretted in this connection that G.K. was not
latterly more often seen in taverns, it was over the teacups, even
more than over the wine glasses, that Boswell made his notes. I have
seen Boswell's signature after wine--on the minutes of a meeting of
The Club--and he was in no condition then for the taking of notes.
Even the signature is almost illegible.) But it is fitting that
Gilbert, who loved all sorts of men so much, should be kept alive for
the future by all sorts of men. From the focussing of many views from
many angles this picture has been composed, but they are all views of