H.G. Wells and G.K. Chesterton, despite their immense disagreements on many matters, nevertheless maintained a very close friendship with each other, and here are some quotes by Wells himself (found in Maisie Ward's 1943 biography of GKC) relating to that which I wished to share. :-)
"From first to last [Chesterton] and I were very close friends...I never knew anyone so true to form as G.K.C." [written after Chesterton's death]
"No one ever had enmity for [Chesterton] except some literary men who did not know him." [said to Maisie Ward]
"...nothing would delight me more than a controversy with G.K.C., whom indeed I adore" [to Frances Chesterton]
In a letter to Chesterton himself:
"If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you."
Finally, H.G. Wells's own account of an incident narrated on this blog before.
"I once saw [Henry] James quarrelling with his brother William James, the psychologist. He had lost his calm; he was terribly unnerved. He appealed to me, to me of all people, to adjudicate on what was and what was not permissible in England. William was arguing about it in an indisputably American accent, with an indecently naked reasonableness. I had come to Rye with a car to fetch William James and his daughter to my home at Sandgate. William had none of Henry's passionate regard for the polish upon the surface of life and he was immensely excited by the fact that in the little Rye inn, which had its garden just over the high brick wall of the garden of Lamb House, G.K. Chesterton was staying. William James had corresponded with our vast contemporary and he sorely wanted to see him. So with a scandalous directness he had put the gardener's ladder against that ripe red wall and clambered up and peeped over!
Henry had caught him at it. It was the sort of thing that isn't done. It was most emphatically the sort of thing that isn't done...Henry instructed the gardener to put away that ladder and William was looking thoroughly naughty about it.
To Henry's manifest relief, I carried William off and in the road just outside the town we ran against the Chestertons who had been for a drive in Romney Marsh; Chesterton was heated and I think rather swollen by the sunshine; he seemed to overhang his one-horse fly; he descended slowly but firmly; he was moist and steamy but cordial; we chatted in the road and William got his coveted impression."
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