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23 4 keith chesterton My Most unforgettable character I was discontent throughout my early twenties—in the eyes of society I was a struggling young actor. But like Antipholus in Comedy of Errors, I had my honor to stand for. Like Arragon of Merchant of Venice, I wanted people to choose me for my worth, “to cozen [my] fortune” with their “stamp of merit.” I needed an opportunity, a mentor. Then came the break I had hoped for. I met a prominent woman whose friendship I valued enormously. She helped me find direction and introduced me to London’s most creative and successful society. With her help, I would imagine a future. Mrs. Cecil “Keith” Chesterton—widow of the journalist Cecil Chesterton (G.K.C.’s brother)—had come into my life late in 1923. During a financially depleted looking-for-further-work period at home in London, I attended a Stage Society performance of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the St. Martin’s Theatre. I had been given a ticket—I hadn’t the money to pay for one, anyway. But the evening had completely bewildered me. In the vestibule after the show I was introduced to a very smart, very dazzling, very bright-eyed lady, Mrs. Cecil Chesterton. She asked me how I had enjoyed the performance, and I frankly admitted that I hadn’t understood any part of it. The lady’s male companion frowned, and—feeling I had got off on the wrong foot—I apologetically added that perhaps I would be able to better understand and appreciate Mr. Chekhov when I was older. The companion, whom I presently realized with deep awe was Hubert Griffiths (“H.G.”), one of the two dramatic critics of the London Sunday Observer, coldly remarked HitcHcock’s Partner in susPense 24 that he was quite sure that I would never be able to understand and appreciate Mr. Chekhov. Curiously enough, H.G.—whose opinion of my intelligence was so justifiably low—gave a remarkably good Observer review of my first play, The Return, some three years later. For that matter, so did Mrs. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly—though she gave a first-class write-up to my every play, good, bad, or indifferent, which suggests that she was more honest as a friend than she was as a critic. As things worked out, H.G. did me a great service by making me feel rather less than six inches tall. Keith Chesterton, whose middle name should have been compassion, reacted to my obvious discomfiture. In what I conclude was an attempt to alleviate my unhappiness, she then and there invited me to her next Saturday-night party—and that was the beginning of one of my most treasured friendships. It was also, although I didn’t realize it at the time, the beginning of a step up the ladder. At Keith’s I met playwrights and novelists and journalists and editors, and I began to realize that there was a world outside the Theatre Royal, Widnes, Lancashire, and the Grand Theatre, Hetton-leHole , Durham. Soon I started to write. And out of the supreme kindness of her heart, Mrs. Cecil Chesterton gave me infinitely more than the encouragement that a budding writer needs. She gave me a belief in myself, and what greater gift can there be than that? Through the late 1920s I used to go up to her flat and read her my plays, act by act as I wrote them. Her advice was always constructive. Later on, when I became caught up in the film industry, I used to read her my screenplays. Here Keith was on less solid ground—the talking picture was a fledgling form of entertainment—but she was never wrong in her fundamental criticism. Her friends, and they were legion, knew her as Keith. She was a Londoner bred and born. Her flat was on Fleet Street, opposite that big hanging clock at the Law Courts and directly overlooking the original site of the old Temple Bar. To use a cliché, the printer’s ink of Fleet Street was in her veins, and at that time she was probably the most successful and most highly paid woman journalist in London. Her frequent two-page feature spread in the Sunday Express was always exciting and rewarding reading , and sometimes truly sensational. Keith was slim and chic and completely charming, and her laughter was spontaneous and tremendously catching. Her personality was...

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