one man, and the picture will show, I think, a singular unity. When
Whistler, as Gilbert himself once said, painted a portrait he made
and destroyed many sketches--how many it did not matter, for all,
even of his failures, were fruitful--but it would have mattered
frightfully if each time he looked up he found a new subject sitting
placidly for his portrait. Gilbert was fond of asking in the _New
Witness_ of people who expressed admiration for Lloyd George: "Which
George do you mean?" for, chameleon-like, the politician has worn
many colours and the portrait painted in 1906 would have had to be
torn up in 1916. But gather the Chesterton portraits: read the files
when he first grew into fame: talk to Mr. Titterton who worked with
him on the _Daily News_ in 1906 and on _G.K.'s Weekly_ in 1936,
collect witnesses from his boyhood to his old age, from Dublin to
Vancouver: individuals who knew him, groups who are endeavoring to
work out his ideas: all will agree on the ideas and on the man as
making one pattern throughout, one developing but integrated mind and
personality.

Gathering the material for a biography bears some resemblance to
interrogating witnesses in a Court of Law. There are good witnesses
and bad: reliable and unreliable memories. I remember an old lady, a
friend of my mother's, who remarked with candour after my mother had
confided to her something of importance: "My dear, I must go and
write that down immediately before my imagination gets mixed with my
memory." One witness must be checked against another: there will be
discrepancies in detail but the main facts will in the end emerge.

Just now and again, however, a biographer, like a judge, meets a
totally unreliable witness.