AUTOBIOGRAPHY-Chesterton

the better for meeting him, in however Bacchanalian an environment; courage
and frankness and the love of freedom stood out of him like staring signals,
though he was entirely modest and natural; and the battered party name of
Liberal meant something so long as he was alive. His courage was of the
queerest quality; casual and as it were, in a quiet way, crazy. He had a wooden
leg or foot, having lost the use of one limb in the South African War; and I
have known him climb out of the window at the top of a dizzy tower of flats
and crawl somehow like a fly to the next window, without railing or balcony
or any apparent foothold; and having re-entered by the next window climb out
again by the next, so weaving a sort of winding pattern round the top of the
building. This story is strictly true; but there were a great many legends in that
circle, the growth of which it was amusing to watch. I once smashed an
ordinary tumbler at Herbert’s table, and an ever-blossoming tradition sprang
up that it had been a vessel of inconceivable artistic and monetary value, its
price perpetually mounting into millions and its form and colour taking on the
glories of the Arabian Nights. From this incident (and from the joyful manner
in which Baring trampled like an elephant among the fragments of the crystal)
arose a catchword used by many of us in many subsequent controversies, in
defence of romantic and revolutionary things; the expression: “I like the noise
of breaking glass.” I made it the refrain of a ballade which began:
Prince, when I took your goblet tall
And smashed it with inebriate care,
I knew not how from Rome and Gaul
You gained it; I was unaware
It stood by Charlemagne’s great chair
And served St. Peter at High Mass.
. . . I’m sorry if the thing was rare;
I like the noise of breaking glass.
It is only just to our happy company to say that we did not confine
ourselves to saying or singing our own lyrics; though Belloc was generally
ready to oblige; and the loud and roaring but none the less pathetic song with
the chorus:
And the Gates of Heaven are opening wide
To let poor Hilary in
was first heard, I think, at one of these quiet evenings for mutual
edification and culture. But we must have sung a vast number of the finest
songs in the English language, by poets ancient and modern; and a legend