d out of that. What
do you say to a severe course of Walt Whitman--or will marriage make
him see people?

Gilbert had already taken both prescriptions--Walt Whitman and "folk,
just common people under the heavens." (Many years later James Agate
wrote in _Thursdays and Fridays_: "Unlike some other serious thinkers,
Chesterton understood his fellow men; the woes of a jockey were as
familiar to him as the worries of a judge.") Perhaps some slight
echoes of Swinburne did remain in this collection. Many earlier poems
exist in the Swinburne manner, not of thought but of expression:
Gilbert left an absolute command that these should never be published.

All Englishmen were stricken by the death of Queen Victoria. Mr.
Somers Cocks, who had come to know Gilbert through his intimacy with
Belloc, remembers that he wept when he heard of it. The tears may
almost be heard in a letter to Frances.

Today the Queen was buried. I did not see the procession, first
because I had an appointment with Hammond (of which more anon) and
secondly because I think I felt the matter too genuinely. I like a
crowd when I am triumphant or excited: for a crowd is the only thing
that can cheer, as much as a cock is the only thing that can crow.
Can anything be more absurd than the idea of a man cheering alone in
his back bedroom? But I think that reverence is better expressed by
one man than a million. There is something unnatural and impossible,
even grotesque, in the idea of a vast crowd of human beings all
assuming an air of delicacy. All the same, my dear, this is a great
and serious hour and it is felt so completely by all England that I
cannot deny the enduring wish I have, quite apart from certain more
private sentiments, that the noblest Englishwoman I have ever known
was here with me to renew, as I do, private vows of a very real
character to do my best for this country of mine which I love with a
love passing the love of Jingoes. It is sometimes easy to give one's
country blood and easier to give her money. Sometimes the hardest
thing of all is to give her truth.

I am writing an article on the good friend who is dead: I hope
particularly that you will like it. The one I really like so far is
Belloc's in the "Speaker." I had, as I said, many things to say, but
owing to the hour and a certain fatigue and idiocy in myself, I have
only space for the most important.