ore spectacles and had all the
Pickwickian evenness of temper and pleasure in the humours of
travel." He had, as his son further notes in the _Autobiography_, a
power of invention which "created for children the permanent
anticipation of what is profoundly called a 'surprise.'" The child
of today chooses his Christmas present in advance and decides between
Peter Pan and the Pantomime (when he does not get both). The
Chesterton children saw their first glimpses of fantasy through the
framework of a toy-theatre of which their father was carpenter,
scene-painter and scene-shifter, author and creator of actors and
actresses a few inches high. Gilbert's earliest recollection is of
one of these figures in a golden crown carrying a golden key, and his
father was all through his childhood a man with a golden key who
admitted him into a world of wonders.

I think Gilbert's father meant more to him than his mother, fond as
he was of her. Most of their friends seem to feel that Cecil was her
favorite son. "Neither was ever demonstrative," Annie Firmin says,
"I never saw either of them kiss his mother." But in some ways the
mother spoilt both boys. They had not the training that a strict
mother or an efficient nurse usually accomplishes with the most
refractory. Gilbert was never refractory, merely absent-minded; but
it is doubtful whether he was sent upstairs to wash his hands or
brush his hair, except in preparation for a visit or ceremonial
occasion ("not even then!" interpolates Annie). And it is perfectly
certain that he ought to have been so sent several times a day. No
one minded if he was late for meals; his father, too, was frequently
late and Frances during her engagement often saw his mother put the
dishes down in the fireplace to keep hot, and wait patiently--in
spite of Gilbert's description of her as "more swift, relentless and
generally radical in her instincts" than his father. Annie Firmin's
earlier memories fit this description better. Much as she loved her
"aunt," she writes:

Aunt Marie was a bit of a tyrant in her own family! I have been
many times at dinner, when there might be a joint, say, and a
chicken--and she would say positively to Mr. Ed, "Which will you
have, Edward?" Edward: "I think I'd like a bit of chicken!" Aunt M.
fiercely: "No, you won't, you'll have mutton!" That happened so
often. Sometimes Alice Grosjean, the youngest of Aunt M.'s family,
familiarly known as "Sloper,"