Remembering the Big Guy

Alexander Woollcott first met Chesterton in May of 1914, when they lunched together in Soho. Woolcott recalled what GKC had said on the difference between power and authority: "If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever." The luncheon broke off at four o'clock at which point Chesterton was loaded into a cab, "probably," according to Woollcott's blurred recollection, "with the use of a derrick and shoehorn." [Foreward, Charles Dickens, by G.K. Chesterton, New York: Reader's, 1942, pp. xii-xii.]