Proceedings of the 10 th Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends, June 2016 Well Met: Common Sense and Humor in the Friendship of G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers Barbara M. Prescott, M.A., M.Ed. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth. ― G.K. Chesterton , Orthodoxy As we consider the myriad facets and profound influence upon twentieth century thought: religious, philosophical, fantastical, of C.S. Lewis and the writers we know as the Inklings, we may also consider the importance of those friendly associations outside of the canonical group which were equally important to this influential society of writers, particularly to C.S. Lewis. I like to refer to those friendly associates and influences as the ‘Linklings’, and there were many Linklings in the lives of Lewis and his friends. Two of those links with whom C.S. Lewis was acquainted and who were influential to the development of Lewis’s own philosophy of religious thought and profound writing were G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers. These two writers were Linklings to C.S. Lewis as well as to one another, and they extended those links to us, their readers, through a shared sense of reality, of humanity emanating from the Divine, and a shared gift of humor that allow us, the human, glimpses of insight into, as we are intrinsically part of, the Spirit of God. In our humanity which emanates from the Divine, we have a common sense of one another. As human beings we can understand shared experience and empathize with one another’s experience as we can understand the subtle humor that links our common experience. In this paper, I will briefly explore those links of sense and humor shared by Chesterton and Sayers as their own friendship developed through time, realized by similar insights, shared spirit of faith, sense of the absurd, and common sense of experience as they revolved around one another in early twentieth century Oxford and England. As Gilbert Keith Chesterton noted, “The secret of life lies in laughter and humility” 1 , but continued by reminding and grounding us with the observation that, “The first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense.” 2 . Chesterton very well understood the use of humor and common sense in reaching out to people, in reaching his readers and audience. Dorothy Sayers possessed, as well, this intrinsic understanding of the power of humor in communication. In point of fact, both Chesterton and Sayers clearly understood the processes with which to draw a reader to their message and further to keep the reader interested in reading more. One reason we resonate to the writings of Chesterton and Sayers is that they make us laugh. Chesterton’s sympathetically self-deprecating, ironic, humor invariably strikes a chord of truth within his reader. We like to read him; we find ourselves in his humor without being made vulnerable. By making himself vulnerable, Chesterton saves us the embarrassment yet provides us with a protected mirror of our own foibles and weaknesses. That is, I believe, the beauty of G.K. Chesterton’s writings. We like him, we like his words, and we want to read more. We feel