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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18707-8.txt b/18707-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..06f66f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/18707-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25982 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, by Maisie Ward + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Gilbert Keith Chesterton + + +Author: Maisie Ward + + + +Release Date: June 28, 2006 [eBook #18707] +[Most recently updated October 20, 2006] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON*** + + +E-text prepared by David McClamrock + + + +Transcriber's note + + This electronic edition is intended to contain the complete, + unaltered text of the first published edition of _Gilbert + Keith Chesterton_ by Maisie Ward (New York: Sheed & Ward, + 1943), with the following exceptions: + + The index, and a few other references to page numbers that do + not exist in this edition, have been omitted. + + Italics are represented by underscores at the beginning and + end, _like this_. + + Footnotes* have been placed directly below the paragraph + referring to them and enclosed in brackets. + + [* Like this.] + + Any other deviations from the text of the first edition may be + regarded as defects and attributed to the transcriber. + + + + + +GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON + +by + +MAISIE WARD + + + + + + + +CONTENTS + +Introduction: Chiefly Concerning Sources + + +CHAPTER + + I Background for Gilbert Keith Chesterton + II Childhood + III School Days + IV Art Schools and University College + V The Notebook + VI Towards a Career + VII Incipit Vita Nova + VIII To Frances + IX A Long Engagement + X Who is G.K.C.? + XI Married Life in London + XII Clearing the Ground for Orthodoxy + XIII Orthodoxy + XIV Bernard Shaw + XV From Battersea to Beaconsfield + XVI A Circle of Friends + XVII The Disillusioned Liberal + XVIII The Eye Witness + XIX Marconi + XX The Eve of the War (1911-1915) + XXI The War Years + XXII After the Armistice + XXIII Rome via Jerusalem + XXIV Completion + XXV The Reluctant Editor (1925-1930) + XXVI The Distributist League and Distributism + XXVII Silver Wedding +XXVIII Columbus + XXIX The Soft Answer + XXX Our Lady's Tumbler + XXXI The Living Voice + XXXII Last Days + +Appendices: + +Appendix A--An Earlier Chesterton +Appendix B--Prize Poem Written at St. Paul's +Appendix C--_The Chestertons_ + +Bibliography + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +Chiefly Concerning Sources + + +THE MATERIAL FOR this book falls roughly into two parts: spoken and +written. Gilbert Chesterton was not an old man when he died and many +of his friends and contemporaries have told me incidents and recalled +sayings right back to his early boyhood. This part of the material +has been unusually rich and copious so that I could get a clearer +picture of the boy and the young man than is usually granted to the +biographer. + +The book has been in the making for six years and in three countries. +Several times I hid it aside for some months so as to be able to get +a fresh view of it. I talked to all sorts of people, heard all sorts +of ideas, saw my subject from every side; I went to Paris to see one +old friend, to Indiana to see others, met for the first time in +lengthy talk Maurice Baring, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw; went to +Kingsland to see Mr. Belloc; gathered Gilbert's boyhood friends of +the Junior Debating Club in London and visited "Father Brown" among +his Yorkshire moors. + +Armed with a notebook, I tried to miss none who had known Gilbert +well, especially in his youth: E. C. Bentley, Lucian Oldershaw, +Lawrence Solomon, Edward Fordham. I had ten long letters from Annie +Firmin, my most valuable witness as to Gilbert's childhood. For +information on the next period of his life, I talked to Monsignor +O'Connor, to Hilaire Belloc, Maurice Baring, Charles Somers Cocks, F. +Y. Eccles and others, besides being now able to draw on my own +memories. Frances I had talked with on and off about their early +married years ever since I had first known them, but she was, alas, +too ill and consequently too emotionally unstrung during the last +months for me to ask her all the questions springing in my mind. +"Tell Maisie," she said to Dorothy Collins, "not to talk to me about +Gilbert. It makes me cry." + +For the time at Beaconsfield, out of a host of friends the most +valuable were Dr. Pocock and Dr. Bakewell. Among priests, Monsignors +O'Connor and Ronald Knox, Fathers Vincent McNabb, O.P. and Ignatius +Rice, O.S.B. were especially intimate. + +Dorothy Collins's evidence covers a period of ten years. That of H. +G. Wells and Bernard Shaw is reinforced by most valuable letters +which they have kindly allowed me to publish. + +Then too Gilbert was so much of a public character and so popular +with his fellow journalists that stories of all kinds abound: +concerning him there is a kind of evidence, and very valuable it is, +that may be called a Boswell Collective. It is fitting that it should +be so. We cannot picture G.K. like the great lexicographer +accompanied constantly by one ardent and observant witness, pencil in +hand, ready to take notes over the teacups. (And by the way, in spite +of an acquaintance who regretted in this connection that G.K. was not +latterly more often seen in taverns, it was over the teacups, even +more than over the wine glasses, that Boswell made his notes. I have +seen Boswell's signature after wine--on the minutes of a meeting of +The Club--and he was in no condition then for the taking of notes. +Even the signature is almost illegible.) But it is fitting that +Gilbert, who loved all sorts of men so much, should be kept alive for +the future by all sorts of men. From the focussing of many views from +many angles this picture has been composed, but they are all views of +one man, and the picture will show, I think, a singular unity. When +Whistler, as Gilbert himself once said, painted a portrait he made +and destroyed many sketches--how many it did not matter, for all, +even of his failures, were fruitful--but it would have mattered +frightfully if each time he looked up he found a new subject sitting +placidly for his portrait. Gilbert was fond of asking in the _New +Witness_ of people who expressed admiration for Lloyd George: "Which +George do you mean?" for, chameleon-like, the politician has worn +many colours and the portrait painted in 1906 would have had to be +torn up in 1916. But gather the Chesterton portraits: read the files +when he first grew into fame: talk to Mr. Titterton who worked with +him on the _Daily News_ in 1906 and on _G.K.'s Weekly_ in 1936, +collect witnesses from his boyhood to his old age, from Dublin to +Vancouver: individuals who knew him, groups who are endeavoring to +work out his ideas: all will agree on the ideas and on the man as +making one pattern throughout, one developing but integrated mind and +personality. + +Gathering the material for a biography bears some resemblance to +interrogating witnesses in a Court of Law. There are good witnesses +and bad: reliable and unreliable memories. I remember an old lady, a +friend of my mother's, who remarked with candour after my mother had +confided to her something of importance: "My dear, I must go and +write that down immediately before my imagination gets mixed with my +memory." One witness must be checked against another: there will be +discrepancies in detail but the main facts will in the end emerge. + +Just now and again, however, a biographer, like a judge, meets a +totally unreliable witness. + +One event in this biography has caused me more trouble than anything +else: the Marconi scandal and the trial of Cecil Chesterton for +criminal libel which grew out of it. As luck would have it, it was on +this that I had to interrogate my most unreliable witness. I had seen +no clear and unbiased account so I had to read the many pages of Blue +Book and Law Reports besides contemporary comment in various papers. +I have no legal training, but one point stuck out like a spike. Cecil +Chesterton had brought accusations against Godfrey Isaacs not only +concerning his own past career as a company promoter, but also +concerning his dealings with the government over the Marconi +contract, in connection with which he had also fiercely attacked +Rufus Isaacs, Herbert Samuel and other ministers of the Crown. But in +the witness box he accepted the word of the very ministers he had +been attacking, and declared that he no longer accused them of +corruption: which seemed to me a complete abandonment of his main +position. + +Having drafted my chapter on Marconi, I asked Mrs. Cecil Chesterton +to read it, but more particularly to explain this point. She gave me +a long and detailed account of how Cecil had been intensely reluctant +to take this course, but violent pressure had been exerted on him by +his father and by Gilbert who were both in a state of panic over the +trial. Unlikely as this seemed, especially in Gilbert's case, the +account was so circumstantial, and from so near a connection, that I +felt almost obliged to accept it. What was my amazement a few months +later at receiving a letter in which she stated that after "a great +deal of close research work, re-reading of papers, etc." (in +connection with her own book _The Chestertons_) and after a talk with +Cecil's solicitors, she had become convinced that Cecil had acted as +he had because "the closest sleuthing had been unable to discover any +trace" of investments by Rufus Isaacs in English Marconis. "For this +reason Cecil took the course he did--not through family pressure. +That pressure, _I still feel_,* was exerted, though possibly not +until the trial was over." + +[* Italics mine.] + +It was, then, the lady's feelings and not facts that had been offered +to me as evidence, and it was the merest luck that my book had not +appeared before Cecil's solicitors had spoken. + +The account given in Lord Birkenhead's _Famous Trials_ is the Speech +for the Prosecution. Mrs. Cecil Chesterton's chapter is an +impressionist sketch of the court scene by a friend of the defendant. +What was wanted was an impartial account, but I tried in vain to +write it. The chronology of events, the connection between the +Government Commission and the Libel Case, the connection between the +English and American Marconi companies--it was all too complex for +the lay mind, so I turned the chapter over to my husband who has had +a legal training and asked him to write it for me. + +_The Chestertons_ is concerned with Gilbert and Frances as well as +with Cecil; and the confusion between memory and imagination--to say +nothing of reliance on feelings unsupported by facts--pervades the +book. It can only be called a Legend, so long growing in Mrs. Cecil's +mind that I am convinced that when she came to write her book she +firmly believed in it herself. The starting-point was so ardent a +dislike for Frances that every incident poured fuel on the flame and +was seen only by its light. When I saw her, the Legend was beginning +to shape. She told me various stories showing her dislike: facts +offered by me were either denied or twisted to fit into the pattern. +I do not propose to discuss here the details of a thoroughly +unreliable book. Most of them I think answer themselves in the course +of this biography. With one or two points I deal in Appendix C. But I +will set down here one further incident that serves to show just how +little help this particular witness could ever be. + +For, like Cecil's solicitors, I spoilt one telling detail for her. +She told me with great enthusiasm that Cecil had said that Gilbert +was really in love not with Frances but with her sister Gertrude, and +that Gertrude's red hair accounted for the number of red-headed +heroines in his stories. I told her, however, on the word of their +brother-in-law, that Gertrude's hair was not red. Mr. Oldershaw in +fact seemed a good deal amused: he said that Gilbert never looked at +either of the other sisters, who were "not his sort," and had eyes +only for Frances. Mrs. Cecil however would not relinquish this dream +of red hair and another love. In her book she wishes "red-gold" hair +on to Annie Firmin, because in the _Autobiography_ Gilbert had +described her golden plaits. But unluckily for this new theory +Annie's hair was yellow,* which is quite a different colour. And +Annie, who is still alive, is also amused at the idea that Gilbert +had any thought of romance in her connection. + +[* See G.K.'s letter to her daughter, p. 633 [Chapter XXXI].] + +When Frances Chesterton gave me the letters and other documents, she +said: "I don't want the book to appear in a hurry: not for at least +five years. There will be lots of little books written about Gilbert; +let them all come out first. I want your book to be the final and +definitive Biography." + +The first part of this injunction I have certainly obeyed, for it +will be just seven years after his death that this book appears. For +the second half, I can say only that I have done the best that in me +lies to obey it also. And I am very grateful to those who have +preceded me with books depicting one aspect or another of my subject. +I have tried to make use of them all as part of my material, and some +are "little" merely in the number of their pages. I am especially +grateful to Hilaire Belloc, Emile Cammaerts, Cyril Clemens and +"Father Brown" (who have allowed me to quote with great freedom). I +want to thank Mr. Seward Collins, Mr. Cyril Clemens and the +University of Notre Dame for the loan of books; Mrs. Bambridge for +the use of a letter from Kipling and a poem from _The Years Between_. + +Even greater has been the kindness of those friends of my own and of +Gilbert Chesterton's who have read this book in manuscript and made +very valuable criticisms and suggestions: May Chesterton, Dorothy +Collins, Edward Connor, Ross Hoffman, Mrs. Robert Kidd, Arnold Lunn, +Mgr. Knox, Father Murtagh, Father Vincent McNabb, Lucian Oldershaw, +Beatrice Warde, Douglas Woodruff, Monsignor O'Connor. + +Most of the criticisms were visibly right, while even those with +which I could not concur showed me the weak spot in my work that had +occasioned them. They have helped me to improve the book--I think I +may say enormously. + +One suggestion I have not followed--that one name should be used +throughout: either Chesterton or Gilbert or G.K., but not all three. +I had begun with the idea of using "Chesterton" when speaking of him +as a public character and also when speaking of the days before I did +in fact call him "Gilbert." But this often left him and Cecil mixed +up: then too, though I seldom used "G.K." myself, other friends +writing to me of him often used it. I began to go through the +manuscript unifying--and then I noticed that in a single paragraph of +his _Bernard Shaw_ Gilbert uses "GBS," "Shaw," "Bernard Shaw," and +"Mr. Shaw." Here was a precedent indeed, and it seemed to me that it +was really the natural thing to do. After all we do talk of people +now by one name, now by another: it is a matter of slight importance +if of any, and I decided to let it go. + +As to size, I am afraid the present book is a large one--although not +as large as Boswell's _Johnson_ or _Gone with the Wind_. But in this +matter I am unrepentant, for I have faith in Chesterton's own public. +The book is large because there is no other way of getting Chesterton +on to the canvas. It is a joke he would himself have enjoyed, but it +is also a serious statement. For a complete portrait of Chesterton, +even the most rigorous selection of material cannot be compressed +into a smaller space. I have first written at length and then cut and +cut. + +At first I had intended to omit all matter already given in the +_Autobiography_. Then I realised that would never do. For some things +which are vital to a complete Biography of Chesterton are not only +told in the _Autobiography_ better than I could tell them, but are +recorded there and nowhere else. And this book is not merely a +supplement to the _Autobiography_. It is the Life of Chesterton. + +The same problem arises with regard to the published books and I have +tried to solve it on the same line. There has rung in my mind Mr. +Belloc's saying: "A man is his mind." To tell the story of a man of +letters while avoiding quotation from or reference to his published +works is simply not to tell it. At Christopher Dawson's suggestion I +have re-read all the books _in the order in which they were written_, +thus trying to get the development of Gilbert's mind perfectly clear +to myself and to trace the influences that affected him at various +dates. For this reason I have analysed certain of the books and not +others--those which showed this mental development most clearly at +various stages, or those (too many alas) which are out of print and +hard to obtain. But whenever possible in illustrating his mental +history I have used unpublished material, so that even the most +ardent Chestertonian will find much that is new to him. + +For the period of Gilbert's youth there are many exercise books, +mostly only half filled, containing sketches and caricatures, lists +of titles for short stories and chapters, unfinished short stories. +Several completed fairy stories and some of the best drawings were +published in _The Coloured Lands_. Others are hints later used in his +own novels: there is a fragment of _The Ball and the Cross_, a first +suggestion for _The Man Who Was Thursday_, a rather more developed +adumbration of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_. This I think is later +than most of the notebooks; but, after the change in handwriting, +apparently deliberately and carefully made by Gilbert around the date +at which he left St. Paul's for the Slade School, it is almost +impossible to establish a date at all exactly for any one of these +notebooks. Notes made later when he had formed the habit of dictation +became difficult to read, not through bad handwriting, but because +words are abbreviated and letters omitted. + +Some of the exercise books appear to have been begun, thrown aside +and used again later. There is among them one only of real +biographical importance, a book deliberately used for the development +of a philosophy of life, dated in two places, to which I devote a +chapter and which I refer to as _the_ Notebook. This book is as +important in studying Chesterton as the Pensées would be for a +student of Pascal. He is here already a master of phrase in a sense +which makes a comparison with Pascal especially apt. For he often +packs so much meaning into a brilliant sentence or two that I have +felt it worth while, in dealing especially with some of the less +remembered books, to pull out a few of these sentences for quotation +apart from their context. + +Other important material was to be found in _G.K.'s Weekly_, in +articles in other periodicals, and in unpublished letters. With some +of the correspondences I have made considerable use of both sides, +and if anyone pedantically objects that that is unusual in a +biography I will adapt a phrase of Bernard Shaw's which you will find +in this book, and say, "Hang it all, be reasonable! If you had the +choice between reading me and reading Wells and Shaw, wouldn't you +choose Wells and Shaw." + + + + +GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON + + + + +CHAPTER I + +Background for Gilbert Keith Chesterton + +IT IS USUAL to open a biography with some account of the subject's +ancestry. Chesterton, in his _Browning_, after some excellent foolery +about pedigree-hunting, makes the suggestion that middle-class +ancestry is far more varied and interesting than the ancestry of the +aristocrat: + + The truth is that aristocrats exhibit less of the romance of + pedigree than any other people in the world. For since it is their + principle to marry only within their own class and mode of life, + there is no opportunity in their case for any of the more interesting + studies in heredity; they exhibit almost the unbroken uniformity of + the lower animals. It is in the middle classes that we find the + poetry of genealogy; it is the suburban grocer standing at his shop + door whom some wild dash of Eastern or Celtic blood may drive + suddenly to a whole holiday or a crime. + +This may provide fun for a guessing game but is not very useful to a +biographer. The Chesterton family, like many another, had had the ups +and downs in social position that accompany the ups and downs of +fortune. Upon all this Edward Chesterton, Gilbert's father, as head +of the family possessed many interesting documents. After his death, +Gilbert's mother left his papers undisturbed. But when she died +Gilbert threw away, without examination, most of the contents of his +father's study, including all family records. Thus I cannot offer any +sort of family tree. But it is possible to show the kind of family +and the social atmosphere into which Gilbert Chesterton was born. + +Some of the relatives say that the family hailed from the village of +Chesterton--now merged into Cambridge, of which they were Lords of +the Manor, but Gilbert refused to take this seriously. In an +introduction to a book called _Life in Old Cambridge_, he wrote: + +I have never been to Cambridge except as an admiring visitor; I have +never been to Chesterton at all, either from a sense of unworthiness +or from a faint superstitious feeling that I might be fulfilling a +prophecy in the countryside. Anyone with a sense of the savour of the +old English country rhymes and tales will share my vague alarm that +the steeple might crack or the market cross fall down, for a smaller +thing than the coincidence of a man named Chesterton going to +Chesterton. + +At the time of the Regency, the head of the family was a friend of +the Prince's and (perhaps as a result of such company) dissipated his +fortunes in riotous living and incurred various terms of imprisonment +for debt. From his debtors' prisons he wrote letters, and sixty years +later Mr. Edward Chesterton used to read them to his family: as also +those of another interesting relative, Captain George Laval +Chesterton, prison reformer and friend of Mrs. Fry and of Charles +Dickens. A relative recalls the sentence: "I cried, Dickens cried, we +all cried," which makes one rather long for the rest of the letter. + +George Laval Chesterton left two books, one a kind of autobiography, +the other a work on prison reform. It was a moment of enthusiasm for +reform, of optimism and of energy. Dickens was stirring the minds of +Englishmen to discover the evils in their land and rush to their +overthrow. Darwin was writing his _Origin of Species_, which in some +curious way increased the hopeful energy of his countrymen: they +seemed to feel it much more satisfying to have been once animal and +have become human than to be fallen gods who could again be made +divine. Anyhow, there were giants in those days and it was hope that +made them so. + +When by an odd confusion the _Tribune_ described G. K. Chesterton as +having been born about the date that Captain Chesterton published his +books, he replied in a ballade which at once saluted and attacked: + + I am not fond of anthropoids as such, + I never went to Mr. Darwin's school, + Old Tyndall's ether, that he liked so much + Leaves me, I fear, comparatively cool. + I cannot say my heart with hope is full + Because a donkey, by continual kicks, + Turns slowly into something like a mule-- + I was not born in 1856. + + Age of my fathers: truer at the touch + Than mine: Great age of Dickens, youth and yule: + Had your strong virtues stood without a crutch, + I might have deemed man had no need of rule, + But I was born when petty poets pule, + When madmen used your liberty to mix + Lucre and lust, bestial and beautiful, + I was not born in 1856.* + +[* Quoted in _G. K. Chesterton: A criticism_. Aliston Rivers (1908) +pp. 243-244.] + +Both _Autobiography_ and _Prison Life_ are worth reading.* They +breathe the "Great Gusto" seen by Gilbert in that era. He does not +quote them in his _Autobiography_, but, just mentioning Captain +Chesterton, dwells chiefly on his grandfather, who, while George +Laval Chesterton was fighting battles and reforming prisons, had +succeeded to the headship of a house agents' business in Kensington. +(For, the family fortunes having been dissipated, Gilbert's +great-grandfather had become first a coal merchant and then a house +agent.) A few of the letters between this ancestor and his son remain +and they are interesting, confirming Gilbert's description in the +_Autobiography_ of his grandfather's feeling that he himself was +something of a landmark in Kensington and that the family business +was honourable and important. + +[* See Appendix A.] + +The Chestertons, whatever the ups and downs of their past history, +were by now established in that English middle-class respectability +in which their son was to discover--or into which he was to bring--a +glow and thrill of adventurous romance. Edward Chesterton, Gilbert's +father, belonged to a serious family and a serious generation, which +took its work as a duty and its profession as a vocation. I wonder +what young house-agent today, just entering the family business, +would receive a letter from his father adjuring him to "become an +active steady and honourable man of business," speaking of "abilities +which only want to be judiciously brought out, of course assisted +with your earnest co-operation." + +Gilbert's mother was Marie Grosjean, one of a family of twenty-three +children. The family had long been English, but came originally from +French Switzerland. Marie's mother was from an Aberdeen family of +Keiths, which gave Gilbert his second name and a dash of Scottish +blood which "appealed strongly to my affections and made a sort of +Scottish romance in my childhood." Marie's father, whom Gilbert never +saw, had been "one of the old Wesleyan lay-preachers and was thus +involved in public controversy, a characteristic which has descended +to his grandchild. He was also one of the leaders of the early +Teetotal movement, a characteristic which has not."* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 11-12.] + +When Edward became engaged to Marie Grosjean he complained that his +"dearest girl" would not believe that he had any work to do, but he +was in fact much occupied and increasingly responsible for the family +business. + +There is a flavour of a world very remote from ours in the packet of +letters between the two and from their various parents, aunts and +sisters to one another during their engagement. Edward illuminates +poems "for a certaln dear good little child," sketches the "look out +from home" for her mother, hopes they did not appear uncivil in +wandering into the garden together at an aunt's house and leaving the +rest of the company for too long. He praises a friend of hers as +"intellectual and unaffected, two excellent things in woman," +describes a clerk sent to France with business papers who "lost them +all, the careless dog, except the _Illustrated London News_." + +A letter to Marie from her sister Harriette is amusing. She describes +her efforts at entertaining in the absence of her mother. The company +were "great swells" so that her brother "took all the covers of the +chairs himself and had the wine iced and we dined in full dress--it +was very awful--considering myself as hostess." Poor girl, it was a +series of misfortunes. "The dinner was three-quarters of an hour +late, the fish done to rags." She had hired three dozen wine-glasses +to be sure of enough, but they were "brought in in twos and threes at +a time and then a hiatus as if they were being washed which they were +not." + +In the letters from parents and older relatives religious observances +are taken for granted and there is an obvious sincerity in the many +allusions to God's will and God's guidance of human life. No one +reading them could doubt that the description of a dying relative as +"ready for the summons" and to "going home" is a sincere one. Other +letters, notably Harriette's, do not lack a spice of malice in +speaking of those whose religion was unreal and affected--a +phenomenon that only appears in an age when real religion abounds. + +Doubtless her generation was beginning to see Christianity with less +than the simplicity of their parents. They were hearing of Darwin and +Spencer, and the optimism which accompanied the idea of evolution was +turning religion into a vague glow which would, they felt, survive +the somewhat childish dogmas in which our rude ancestors had tried to +formulate it. But with an increased vagueness went also, with the +more liberal--and the Chestertons were essentially liberal both +politically and theologically--an increased tolerance. In several of +his letters, Edward Chesterton mentions the Catholic Church, and +certainly with no dislike. He went on one occasion to hear Manning +preach and much admired the sermon, although he notes too that he +found in it "no distinctively Roman Catholic doctrine." He belonged, +however, to an age that on the whole found the rest of life more +exciting and interesting than religion, an age that had kept the +Christian virtues and still believed that these virtues could stand +alone, without the support of the Christian creed. + +The temptation to describe dresses has always to be sternly resisted +when dealing with any part of the Victorian era, so merely pausing to +note that it seems to have been a triumph on the part of Mrs. +Grosjean to have cut a _short_ skirt out of 8½ yards of material, I +reluctantly lay aside the letters at the time when Edward Chesterton +and Marie were married and had set about living happily ever after. + +These two had no fear of life: they belonged to a generation which +cheerfully created a home and brought fresh life into being. In doing +it, they did a thousand other things, so that the home they made was +full of vital energies for the children who were to grow up in it. +Gilbert recollects his father as a man of a dozen hobbies, his study +as a place where these hobbies formed strata of exciting products, +awakening youthful covetousness in the matter of a new paint-box, +satisfying youthful imagination by the production of a toy-theatre. +His character, serene and humorous as his son describes him, is +reflected in his letters. Edward Chesterton did not use up his mental +powers in the family business. Taught by his father to be a good man +of business, he was in his private life a man of a thousand other +energies and ideas. "On the whole," says his son, "I am glad he was +never an artist. It might have stood in his way in becoming an +amateur. It might have spoilt his career; his private career. He +could never have made a vulgar success of all the thousand things be +did so successfully." + +Here, Gilbert sees a marked distinction between that generation of +business men and the present in the use of leisure; he sees hobbies +as superior to sport. "The old-fashioned Englishman, like my father, +sold houses for his living but filled his own house with his life. A +hobby is not merely a holiday. . . . It is not merely exercising the +body instead of the mind, an excellent but now largely a recognised +thing. It is exercising the rest of the mind; now an almost neglected +thing." Edward Chesterton practised "water-colour painting and +modelling and photography and stained glass and fretwork and magic +lanterns and mediaeval illumination." And, moreover, "knew all his +English literature backwards." + +It has become of late the fashion for any one who writes of his own +life to see himself against a dark background, to see his development +frustrated by some shadow of heredity or some horror of environment. +But Gilbert saw his life rather as the ancients saw it when _pietas_ +was a duty because we had received so much from those who brought us +into being. This Englishman was grateful to his country, to his +parents, to his home for all that they had given him. + + I regret that I have no gloomy and savage father to offer to the + public gaze as the true cause of all my tragic heritage; no pale-faced + and partially poisoned mother whose suicidal instincts have cursed + me with the temptations of the artistic temperament. I regret that + there was nothing in the range of our family much more racy than a + remote and mildly impecunious uncle; and that I cannot do my duty + as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I + am. I am not clear about what that is; but I am pretty sure that + most of it is my own fault. And I am compelled to confess that I + look back to that landscape of my first days with a pleasure that + should doubtless be reserved for the Utopias of the Futurist.* + +[* G. K. Chesterton. _Autobiography_, pp. 22-3.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +Childhood + + +GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON was born on May 29, 1874 at a house in +Sheffield Terrace, Campden Hill, just below the great tower of the +Waterworks which so much impressed his childish imagination. Lower +down the hill was the Anglican Church of St. George, and here he was +baptised. When he was about five, the family moved to Warwick +Gardens. As old-fashioned London houses go, 11 Warwick Gardens is +small. On the ground floor, a back and front room were for the +Chestertons drawing-room and dining-room with a folding door between, +the only other sitting-room being a small study built out over the +garden. A long, narrow, green strip, which must have been a good deal +longer before a row of garages was built at the back, was Gilbert's +playground. His bedroom was a long room at the top of a not very high +house. For what is in most London houses the drawing-room floor is in +this house filled by two bedrooms and there is only one floor above it. + +Cecil was five years younger than Gilbert, who welcomed his birth +with the remark, "Now I shall always have an audience," a prophecy +remembered by all parties because it proved so singularly false. As +soon as Cecil could speak, he began to argue and the brothers' +intercourse thenceforward consisted of unending discussion. They +always argued, they never quarrelled. + +There was also a little sister Beatrice who died when Gilbert was +very young, so young that he remembered a fall she had from a +rocking-horse more clearly than he remembered her death, and in his +memory linked with the fall the sense of loss and sorrow that came +with the death. + +It would be impossible to tell the story of his childhood one half +so well as he has told it himself. It is the best part of his +_Autobiography_. Indeed, it is one of the best childhoods in +literature. For Gilbert Chesterton most perfectly remembered the +exact truth, not only about what happened to a child, but about how +a child thought and felt. What is more, he sees childhood not as an +isolated fragment or an excursion into fairyland, but as his "real +life; the real beginnings of what should have been a more real life; +a lost experience in the land of the living." + + I was subconsciously certain then, as I am consciously certain now, + that there was the white and solid road and the worthy beginning of + the life of man; and that it is man who afterwards darkens it with + dreams or goes astray from it in self-deception. It is only the grown + man who lives a life of make-believe and pretending; and it is he who + has his head in a cloud.* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 49.] + +Here are the beginnings of the man's philosophy in the life and +experience of the child. He was living in a world of reality, and +that reality was beautiful, in the clear light of "an eternal +morning," which "had a sort of wonder in it, as if the world were as +new as myself." A child in this world, like God in the moment of +creation, looks upon it and sees that it is very good. It was not +that he was never unhappy as a child, and he had his share of bodily +pain. "I had a fair amount of toothache and especially earache." But +the child has his own philosophy and makes his own proportion, and +unhappiness and pain "are of a different texture or held on a +different tenure." + + What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a + wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a + miraculous world. What gives me this shock is almost anything I + really recall; not the things I should think most worth recalling. + This is where it differs from the other great thrill of the past, all + that is connected with first love and the romantic passion; for that, + though equally poignant, comes always to a point; and is narrow like + a rapier piercing the heart, whereas the other was more like a + hundred windows opened on all sides of the head.* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 31-32.] + +These windows opening on all sides so much more swiftly for the +genius than for the rest of us, led to a result often to be noted in +the childhood of exceptional men: a combination of backwardness and +precocity. Gilbert Chesterton was in some ways a very backward child. +He did not talk much before three. He learnt to read only at eight. + +He loved fairy tales; as a child he read them or had them read aloud +to him: as a big boy he wrote and illustrated a good many, some of +which are printed in _The Coloured Lands_. I have found several +fragments in praise of Hans Andersen written apparently in his +schooldays. In the chapter of _Orthodoxy_ called "The Ethics of +Elfland" he shows how the truth about goodness and happiness came to +him out of the old fairy tales and made the first basis for his +philosophy. And George Macdonald's story _The Princess and the +Goblin_ made, he says, "a difference to my whole existence, which +helped me to see things in a certain way from the start." It is the +story of a house where goblins were in the cellar and a kind of fairy +godmother in a hidden room upstairs. This story had made "all the +ordinary staircases and doors and windows into magical things." It +was the awakening of the sense of wonder and joy in the ordinary +things always to be his. Still more important was the realization +represented by the goblins below stairs, that "When the evil things +besieging us do appear, they do not appear outside but inside." In +life as in this story there is + + . . . a house that is our home, that is rightly loved as our home, + but of which we hardly know the best or the worst, and must always + wait for the one and watch against the other. . . . Since I first + read that story some five alternative philosophies of the universe + have come to our colleges out of Germany, blowing through the world + like the east wind. But for me that castle is still standing in the + mountains, its light is not put out.* + +[* Introduction to _George Macdonald and His Wife_.] + +All this to Gilbert made the story the "most real, the most +realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life" of +any story he ever read--then or later! Another recurrent image in +books by the same author is that of a great white horse. And Gilbert +says, "To this day I can never see a big white horse in the street +without a sudden sense of indescribable things."* + +[* Ibid.] + +Of his playmates, "one of my first memories," he writes in the +_Autobiography_, "is playing in the garden under the care of a girl +with ropes of golden hair; to whom my mother afterwards called out +from the house, 'You are an angel'; which I was disposed to accept +without metaphor. She is now living in Vancouver as Mrs. Robert Kidd." + +Mrs. Kidd, then Annie Firmin, was the daughter of a girlhood friend +of Mrs. Chesterton's. She called her "Aunt Marie." She and her +sister, Gilbert says in the _Autobiography_, "had more to do with +enlivening my early years than most." She has a vivid memory of +Sheffield Terrace where all three Chesterton children were born and +where the little sister, Beatrice, whom they called Birdie, died. +Gilbert, in those days, was called Diddie, his father then and later +was "Mr. Ed" to the family and intimate friends. Soon after Birdie's +death they moved to Warwick Gardens. Mrs. Kidd writes: + + . . . the little boys were never allowed to see a funeral. If one + passed down Warwick Gardens, they were hustled from the nursery + window at once. Possibly this was because Gilbert had such a fear of + sickness or accident. If Cecil gave the slightest sign of choking at + dinner, Gilbert would throw down his spoon or fork and rush from the + room. I have seen him do it so many times. Cecil was fond of animals. + Gilbert wasn't. Cecil had a cat that he named Faustine, because he + wanted her to be abandoned and wicked--but Faustine turned out to be + a gentleman! + +Gilbert's story-telling and verse-making began very early, but not, I +think, in great abundance; his drawing even earlier, and of this +there is a great deal. There is nothing very striking in the written +fragments that remain, but his drawings even at the age of five are +full of vigour. The faces and figures are always rudimentary human +beings, sometimes a good deal more, and they are taken through +lengthy adventures drawn on the backs of bits of wall paper, of +insurance forms, in little books sewn together, or sometimes on long +strips glued end to end by his father. These drawings can often be +dated exactly, for Edward Chesterton, who later kept collections of +press-cuttings and photographs of his son, had already begun to +collect his drawings, writing the date on the back of each. With the +earlier ones he may, one sometimes suspects, have helped a little, +but it soon becomes easy to distinguish between the two styles. + +Edward Chesterton was the most perfect father that could have been +imagined to help in the opening of windows on every side. "My father +might have reminded people of Mr. Pickwick, except that he was always +bearded and never bald; he wore 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," was there. When asked her preference + she would say, diffidently, "I think I'll take a little mutton!" + "Don't be a fool, Alice, you know you like chicken,"--and chicken + she got. + +Visitors to the house in later years dwell on Mrs. Chesterton's +immense spirit of hospitality, the gargantuan meals, the eager desire +that guests should eat enormously, and the wittiness of her +conversation. Schoolboy contemporaries of Gilbert say that although +immensely kind, she alarmed them by a rather forbidding +appearance--"her clothes thrown on anyhow, and blackened and +protruding teeth which gave her a witchlike appearance. . . . The +house too was dusty and untidy." She called them always by their +surnames, both when they were little boys and after they grew up, +"Oldershaw, Bentley, Solomon." + +"Not only," says Miss May Chesterton, "did Aunt Marie address +Gilbert's friends by their surnames, but frequently added darling to +them. I have heard her address Bentley when a young man thus; +'Bentley darling, come and sit over here,' to which invitation he +turned a completely deaf ear as he was perfectly content to remain +where he was!" + +"Indiscriminately, she also addressed her maids waiting at table with +the same endearment." + +A letter written when Gilbert was only six would seem to show that +Mrs. Chesterton had not yet become so reckless about her appearance, +and was still open to the appeal of millinery. ("She always was," +says Annie.) The letter is from John Barker of High Street, +Kensington, and is headed in handwriting, "Drapery and Millinery +Establishment, Kensington High Street, September 21, 1880." + + MADAM, + + We are in receipt of instructions from Mr. Edward Chesterton to + wait upon you for the purpose of offering for your selection a Bonnet + of the latest Parisian taste, of which we have a large assortment + ready for your choice; or can, if preferred, make you one to order. + + Our assistant will wait upon you at any time you may appoint, + unless you would prefer to pay a visit to our Millinery department + yourself. + + Mr. Chesterton informs us that as soon as you have made your + selection he will hand us a cheque for the amount. + + We are given to understand that Mr. Chesterton proposes this + transaction as a remembrance of the anniversary of what, he instructs + us to say, he regards as a happy and auspicious event. We have + accordingly entered it in our books in that aspect. + + In conveying, as we are desired to do, Mr. Chesterton's best wishes + for your health and happiness for many future anniversaries, may we + very respectfully join to them our own, and add that during many + years to come we trust to be permitted to supply you with goods of + the best description for cash, on the principle of the lowest prices + consistent with excellence of quality and workmanship. + + We have the honour to be Madam Your most obedient Servants + + JOHN BARKER & Co. + +The order entered in their books "under that aspect," the readiness +to provide millinery "for cash," convinces you (as G.K. himself says +of another story) that Dick Swiveller really did say, "When he who +adores thee has left but the name--in case of letters and parcels." +Dickens _must_ have dictated the letter to John Barker. After all, he +was only dead ten years. + +"Aunt Marie used to say," adds Annie Firmin, "that Mr. Ed married her +for her beautiful hair, it was auburn, and very long and wavy. He +used to sit behind her in Church. She liked pretty clothes, but +lacked the vanity to buy them for herself. I have a little blue +hanging watch that he bought her one day--she always appreciated +little attentions." + +The playmates of Gilbert's childhood are not described in the +_Autobiography_ except for Annie's "long ropes of golden hair." But +in one of the innumerable fragments written in his early twenties, he +describes a family of girls who had played with him when they were +very young together. It is headed, "Chapter I. A Contrast and a +Climax," and several other odd bits of verse and narrative introduce +the Vivian family as early and constant playmates. + + One of the best ways of feeling a genuine friendly enthusiasm for + persons of the other sex, without gliding into anything with a + shorter name, is to know a whole family of them. The most + intellectual idolatry at one shrine is apt to lose its purely + intellectual character, but a genial polytheism is always bracing and + platonic. Besides, the Vivians lived in the same street or rather + "gardens" as ourselves, and were amusing as bringing one within sight + of what an old friend of mine, named Bentley, called with more than + his usual gloom and severity of expression, "the remote outpost of + Kensington Society." + + For these reasons, and a great many much better ones, I was very + much elated to have the family, or at least the three eldest girls + who represent it to the neighbourhood, standing once more on the + well-rubbed lawn of our old garden, where some of my earliest + recollections were of subjecting them to treatment such as I + considered appropriate to my own well-established character of + robber, tying them to trees to the prejudice of their white frocks, + and otherwise misbehaving myself in the funny old days, before I went + to school and became a son of gentlemen only. I have never been able, + in fact I have never tried, to tell which of the three I really liked + best. And if the severer usefulness and domesticity of the eldest + girl, with her quiet art-colours, and broad, brave forehead as pale + as the white roses that clouded the garden, if these maturer + qualities in Nina demanded my respect more than the levity of the + others, I fear they did not prevent me feeling an almost equal tide + of affection towards the sleepy acumen and ingrained sense of humour + of Ida, the second girl and book-reader for the family: or Violet, a + veritably delightful child, with a temper as formless and erratic as + her tempest of red hair. + + "What old memories this garden calls up," said Nina, who like many + essentially simple and direct people, had a strong dash of sentiment + and a strong penchant for being her own emotional pint-stoup on the + traditional subjects and occasions. "I remember so well coming here + in a new pink frock when I was a little girl. It wasn't so new when + I went away." + + "I certainly must have been a brute," I replied. "But I have + endeavoured to make a lifetime atone for my early conduct." And + I fell to thinking how even Nina, miracle of diligence and + self-effacement, remembered a new pink frock across the abyss of + the years. . . . Walking with my old friends round the garden, I + found in every earth-plot and tree-root the arenas of an active + and adventurous life in early boyhood. . . .* + +[* Unpublished fragment.] + +Edward Chesterton was a Liberal politically and what has been called +a Liberal Christian religiously. When the family went to +church--which happened very seldom--it was to listen to the sermons +of Stopford Brooke. Some twenty years later, Cecil was to remark with +amusement that he had as a small boy heard every part of the teaching +now (1908) being set out by R. J. Campbell under the title, "The New +Religion." The Chesterton Liberalism entered into the view of history +given to their children, and it produced from Gilbert the only poem +of his childhood worth quoting. I cannot date it, but the very +immature handwriting and curious spelling mark it as early. + +Probably most children have read, or at any rate up to my own +generation, had read, Aytoun's _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, and +played at being Cavaliers as a result. But Gilbert could not play at +being a Cavalier. He had learned from his father to be a Roundhead, +as had every good Liberal of that day. What was to be done about it? +He took the _Lays_ and rewrote them in an excellent imitation of +Aytoun, but on the opposite side. In view of his own later +developments such a line as "Drive the trembling Papists backwards" +has an ironic humour. But one wonders what Aytoun himself would have +made of a small boy who took his rhythm and sometimes his very words, +turned his hero into a traitor ("false Montrose") and his traitor +Argyll into a hero! I have left the spelling untouched. + + Sing of the Great Lord Archibald + Sing of his glorious name + Sing of his covenenting faith + And his evelasting fame. + + One day he summoned all his men + To meet on Cruerchin's brow + Three thousand covenenting chiefs + Who no master would allow + + Three thousand Knights + With clamores drawn + And targets tough and strong + Knights who for the right + Would ever fight + And never bear the wrong. + + And he creid (his hand uplifted) + "Soldiers of Scotland hear my vow + Ere the morning shall have risen + I will lay the trators low + Or as ye march from the battle + Marching back in battle file + Ye shall there among the corpses + Find the body of Argyll. + + Soldiers Soldiers onward onward + Onward soldiers follow me + Come, remember ye the crimes + Of the fiend of fell Dundee + Onward let us draw our clamores + Let us draw them on our foes + Now then I am threatened with + The fate of false Montrose. + + Drive the trembling Papists backwards + Drive away the Tory's hord + Let them tell thier hous of villians + They have felt the Campbell's sword." + + And the next morn he arose + And he girded on his sword + They asked him many questions + But he answered not a word. + And he summoned all his men + And he led them to the field + And We creid unto our master + That we'd die and never yield. + That same morn we drove right backwards + All the servants of the Pope + And Our Lord Archibald we saved + From a halter and a rope + Far and fast fled all the trators + Far and fast fled all the Graemes + Fled that cursed tribe who lately + Stained there honour and thier names. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +School Days + + +CURIOUSLY ENOUGH Gilbert does not in the _Autobiography_ speak of any +school except St. Paul's. He went however first to Colet Court, +usually called at that time Bewsher's, from the name of the +Headmaster. Though it is not technically the preparatory school for +St. Paul's, large numbers of Paulines do pass through it. It stands +opposite St. Paul's in the Hammersmith Road and must have been felt +by Gilbert as one thing with his main school experience, for he +nowhere differentiates between the two. + +St. Paul's School is an old city foundation which has had among its +scholars Milton and Marlborough, Pepys and Sir Philip Francis and a +host of other distinguished men. The editor of a correspondence +column wrote a good many years later in answer to an enquirer: "Yes, +Milton and G. K. Chesterton were both educated at St. Paul's school. +We fancy however that Milton had left before Chesterton entered the +school." In an early life of Sir Thomas More we learn of the keen +rivalry existing in his day between his own school of St. Anthony and +St. Paul's, of scholastic "disputations" between the two, put an end +to by Dean Colet because they led to brawling among the boys, when +the Paulines would call those of St. Anthony "pigs" and the pigs +would call the Paulines "pigeons"--from the pigeons of St. Paul's +Cathedral. Now, however, St. Anthony's is no more, and St. Paul's +School has long moved to the suburbs and lies about seven minutes' +walk along the Hammersmith Road from Warwick Gardens. Gilbert +Chesterton was twelve when he entered St. Paul's (in January 1887) +and he was placed in the second Form. + +His early days at school were very solitary, his chief occupation +being to draw all over his books. He drew caricatures of his masters, +he drew scenes from Shakespeare, he drew prominent politicians. He +did not at first make many friends. In the _Autobiography_ he makes a +sharp distinction between being a child and being a boy, but it is a +distinction that could only be drawn by a man. And most men, I fancy, +would find it a little difficult to say at what moment the +transformation occurred. G.K. seems to put it at the beginning of +school life, but the fact that St. Paul's was a day-school meant that +the transition from home to school, usual in English public-school +education,* was never in his case completely made. No doubt he is +right in speaking in the _Autobiography_ of "the sort of prickly +protection like hair" that "grows over what was once the child," of +the fact that schoolboys in his time "could be blasted with the +horrible revelation of having a sister, or even a Christian name." +Nevertheless, he went home every evening to a father and mother and +small brother; he went to his friends' houses and knew their sisters; +school and home life met Daily instead of being sharply divided into +terms and holidays. + +[* The terminology for English schools came into being largely before +the State concerned itself with education. A Private School is one +run by an individual or a group for private profit. A Public School +is not run for private profit; any profits there may be are put back +into the school. Mostly they are run by a Board of Governors and very +many of them hold the succession to the old monastic schools of +England (e.g., Charterhouse, Westminster, St. Paul's). They are +usually, though not necessarily, boarding schools, and the fees are +usually high. Elementary schools called Board Schools were paid for +out of local rates and run by elected School Boards. They were later +replaced by schools run by the County Councils.] + +This fact was of immense significance in Gilbert's development. Years +later he noted as the chief defect of Oxford that it consisted almost +entirely of people educated at boarding-schools. For good, for evil, +or for both, a boy at a day-school is educated chiefly at home. + + In the atmosphere of St. Paul's is found little echo of the dogma + of the Head Master of Christ's Hospital. "Boy! The school is your + father! Boy! The school is your mother." Nor, as far as we know has + any Pauline been known to desire the substitution of the august + abstraction for the guardianship of his own people. Friendships + formed in this school have a continual reference to home life, nor + can a boy possibly have a friend long without making the acquaintance + and feeling the influence of his parents and his surroundings. . . . + The boys' own amusements and institutions, the school sports, the + school clubs, the school magazine, are patronised by the masters, but + they are originated and managed by the boys. The play-hours of the + boys are left to their several pleasures, whether physical or + intellectual, nor have any foolish observations about the battle of + Waterloo being won on the cricket-field, or such rather unmeaning + oracles, yet succeeded in converting the boys' amusements into a + compulsory gymnastic lesson. The boys are, within reasonable limits, + free.* + +[* MS. _History of J.D.C_. written about 1894.] + +Gilbert calls the chapter on his school days, "How to be a Dunce," +and although in mature life he was "on the side of his masters" and +grateful to them "that my persistent efforts not to learn Latin were +frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping +the contamination of the language of Aristotle and Demosthenes," he +still contrasts childhood as a time when one "wants to know nearly +everything" with "the period of what is commonly called education; +that is, the period during which I was being instructed by somebody +I did not know about something I did not want to know." + +The boy who sat next to him in class, Lawrence Solomon (later Senior +Tutor of University College, London), remembered him as sleepy and +indifferent in manner but able to master anything when he cared to +take the trouble--as he very seldom did. He was in a class with boys +almost all his juniors. Lucian Oldershaw, who later became his +brother-in-law, says of Gilbert's own description of his school life +that it was as near a pose as Gilbert ever managed to get. He wanted +desperately to be the ordinary schoolboy, but he never managed to +fulfil this ambition. Tall, untidy, incredibly clumsy and +absent-minded, he was marked out from his fellows both physically and +intellectually. When in the later part of his school life some sort +of physical exercises were made compulsory, the boys used to form +parties to watch his strange efforts on the trapeze or parallel bars. +In these early days, he was (he says of himself) "somewhat solitary," +but not unhappy, and perfectly good-humoured about the tricks which +were inevitably played on a boy who always appeared to be half asleep. + +"He sat at the back of the room," says Mr. Fordham, "and never +distinguished himself. We thought him the most curious thing that +ever was." His schoolfellows noted how he would stride along, +"apparently muttering poetry, breaking into inane laughter." The kind +of thing he was muttering we learn from a sentence in the +_Autobiography:_ "I was one day wandering about the streets in that +part of North Kensington, telling myself stories of feudal sallies +and sieges, in the manner of Walter Scott, and vaguely trying to +apply them to the wilderness of bricks and mortar around me." + +"I can see him now," wrote Mr. Fordham, "very tall and lanky, +striding untidily along Kensington High Street, smiling and sometimes +scowling as he talked to himself, apparently oblivious of everything +he passed; but in reality a far closer observer than most, and one +who not only observed but remembered what he had seen." It was only +of himself that he was really oblivious. + +Mr. Oldershaw remembers that on one occasion on a very cold day they +filled his pockets with snow in the playground. When class +reassembled, the snow began to melt and pools to appear on the floor. +A small boy raised his hand: "Please Sir, I think the laboratory sink +must be leaking again. The water is coming through and falling all +over Chesterton." + +The laboratory sink was an old offender and the master must have been +short-sighted. "Chesterton," he said, "go up to Mr. ---- and ask him +with my compliments to see that the trouble with the sink is put +right immediately." Gilbert, with water still streaming from both +pockets, obediently went upstairs, gave the message and returned +without discovering what had happened. + +The boys who played these jokes on him had at the same time an +extraordinary respect, both for his intellectual acquirements and for +his moral character. One boy, who rather prided himself in private +life on being a man about town, stopped him one day in the passage +and said solemnly, "Chesterton, I am an abandoned profligate." G.K. +replied, "I'm sorry to hear it." "We watched our talk," one of them +said to me, "when he was with us." His home and upbringing were felt +by some of his schoolfellows to have definitely a Puritan tinge about +them, although on the other hand the more Conservative elements +regarded them as politically dangerous. Mr. Oldershaw relates that +his own father, who was a Conservative in politics and had also +joined the Catholic Church, seriously warned him against the +Agnosticism and Republicanism of the Chesterton household. But even +at this age his schoolfellows recognised that he had begun the great +quest of his life. "We felt," said Oldershaw, "that he was looking +for God." + +I suppose it was in part the keenness of the inner vision that +produced the effect of external sleepiness and made it possible to +pack Gilbert's pockets with snow; but it was also the fact that he +was observing very keenly the kind of thing that other people do not +bother to observe. I remember my mother telling me, when I first came +out, that she had almost ceased trying to draw people's characters +and imaginatively construct their home lives, because for the first +time in her life she was trying to notice how they were dressed. She +was not noticeably successful. Gilbert Chesterton never even tried to +see what everyone else saw. All the time he was seeing qualities in +his friends, ideas in literature and possibilities in life. And all +this world of imagination had, on his own theory, to be carefully +concealed from his masters. In the _Autobiography_ he describes +himself walking to school fervently reciting verses which he +afterwards repeated in class with a determined lack of expression and +woodenness of voice; but when he assumes that this is how all boys +behave, he surely attributes his own literary enthusiasms far too +widely. One would rather gather that he supposed the whole of St. +Paul's School to be in the conspiracy to conceal their love of +literature from their masters! Such of his own schoolboy papers as +can be found show an imagination rare enough at any age, and an +enthusiasm not commonly to be found among schoolboys. A very early +one, to judge by the handwriting, is on the advantages for an +historical character of having long hair, illustrated by the history +of Mary Queen of Scots and Charles the First. In the contrast he +draws between Mary and Elizabeth, appear qualities of historical +imagination that might well belong to a mature and experienced writer. + + . . . As in the cause of the fleeting heartless Helen, the Trojan + War is stirred up, and great Ajax perishes, and the gentle Patroclus + is slain, and mighty Hector falls, and godlike Achilles is laid low, + and the dun plains of Hades are thickened with the shades of Kings, + so round this lovely giddy French princess, fall one by one the + haughty Dauphin, the princely Darnley, the accomplished Rizzio, the + terrible Bothwell, and when she dies, she dies as a martyr before the + weeping eyes of thousands, and is given a popular pity and regret + denied to her rival, with all her faults of violence and vanity, a + greater and a purer woman. + + It must indeed have been a terrible scene, the execution of that + unhappy Queen, and it is a scene that has been described by too + many and too able writers for me to venture on a picture of it. But + the continually lamented death of Mary of Scotland seems to me + happy compared with the end of her greater and sterner rival. As I + think on the two, the vision of the black scaffold, the grim headsman, + the serene captive, and the weeping populace fades from me and is + replaced by a sadder vision: the vision of the dimly-lighted + state-bedroom of Whitehall. Elizabeth, haggard and wild-eyed has + flung herself prone upon the floor and refuses to take meat or drink, + but lies there, surrounded by ceremonious courtiers, but seeing with + that terrible insight that was her curse, that she was alone, that + their homage was a mockery, that they were waiting eagerly for her + death to crown their intrigues with her successor, that there was not + in the whole world a single being who cared for her: seeing all this, + and bearing it with the iron fortitude of her race, but underneath + that invincible silence the deep woman's nature crying out with a + bitter cry that she is loved no longer: thus gnawed by the fangs of a + dead vanity, haunted by the pale ghost of Essex, and helpless and + bitter of heart, the greatest of Englishwomen passed silently away. + Of a truth, there are prisons more gloomy than Fotheringay and deaths + more cruel than the axe. Is there no pity due to those who undergo + these? + +It is surprising to read the series of form reports written on a boy +who at fifteen or sixteen could do work of this quality. Here are the +half-yearly reports made by his Form Masters from his first year in +the school at the age of thirteen to the time he left at the age of +eighteen. + +_December 1887_. Too much for me: means well by me, I believe, but +has an inconceivable knack of forgetting at the shortest notice, is +consequently always in trouble, though some of his work is well done, +when he does remember to do it. He ought to be in a studio not at +school. Never troublesome, but for his lack of memory and absence of +mind. + +_July 1888_. Wildly inaccurate about everything; never thinks for two +consecutive moments to judge by his work: plenty of ability, perhaps +in other directions than classics. + +_December 1888_. Fair. Improving in neatness. Has a very fair stock +of general knowledge. + +_July 1889_. A great blunderer with much intelligence. + +_December 1889_. Means well. Would do better to give his time to +"Modern" subjects. + +_July 1890_. Can get up any work, but originates nothing. + +_December 1890_. Takes an interest in his English work, but otherwise +has not done well. + +_July 1891_. He has a decided literary aptitude, but does not trouble +himself enough about school work. + +_December 1891. Report missing_. + +_July 1892_. Not on the same plane with the rest: composition quite +futile, but will translate well and appreciate what he reads. Not a +quick brain, but possessed by a slowly moving tortuous imagination. +Conduct always admirable. + +What is much clearer from the mass of notebooks and odd sheets of +paper belonging to these years than from the _Autobiography_ is the +degree to which the two processes of resisting and absorbing +knowledge were going on simultaneously. At school he was, he says, +asleep but dreaming in his sleep; at home he was still learning +literature from his father, going to museums and picture galleries +for enjoyment, listening to political talk and engaging in arguments, +writing historical plays and acting them, and above all drawing. + +To most of his early writing it is nearly impossible to affix a +date--with the exception of a "dramatic journal," kept by fits and +starts during the Christmas holidays when he was sixteen. G.K. +solemnly tells the reader of this diary to take warning by it, to +beware of prolixity, and it does in fact contain many more words to +many fewer ideas than any of his later writings. But it is useful in +giving the atmosphere of those years. Great part is in dialogue, the +author appearing throughout as Your Humble Servant, his young brother +Cecil as the Innocent Child. + +The first scene is the rehearsal of a dramatic version of Scott's +_Woodstock_. This has been written by Your Humble Servant who is at +the same time engaged on a historic romance. At intervals in the +languid rehearsing, endless discussions take place: between Oldershaw +and G.K. on Thackeray, between Oldershaw, his father and G.K. on +Royal Supremacy in the Church of England. The boys, walking between +their two houses, "discuss Roman Catholicism, Supremacy, Papal v. +Protestant Persecutions. Your Humble Servant arrives at 11 Warwick +Gardens to meet Mr. Mawer Cowtan, Master Sidney Wells and Master +William Wells. Conversation about Frederick the Great, Voltaire and +Macaulay. Cheerful and enlivening discourse on Germs, Dr. Koch, +Consumption and Tuberculosis." + +"Conservative" Oldershaw regards his friend as a "red hot raging +Republican" and it is interesting to note already faint +foreshadowings of Gilbert's future political views. His parents had +made him a Liberal but it seemed to him later, as he notes in the +_Autobiography_, that their generation was insufficiently alive to the +condition and sufferings of the poor. Open-eyed in so many matters, +they were not looking in that particular direction. And so it was +only very gradually that he himself began to look. + +Your Humble Servant read Oldershaw Elizabeth Browning's "Cry of the +Children," which the former could scarcely trust himself to read, but +which the latter candidly avowed that he did not like. Part and +parcel of Oldershaw's optimism is a desire not to believe in pictures +of real misery, and a desire to find out compensating pleasures. I +think there was a good deal in what he said, but at the same time I +think that there is real misery, physical and mental, in the low and +criminal classes, and I don't believe in crying peace where there is +no peace. + +Of his brother, Gilbert notes, "Innocent Child's fault is not a +servile reverence for his elder brother, whom he regards, I believe, +as a mild lunatic." And Oldershaw recalls his own detestation of +Cecil, who would insist on monopolising the conversation when +Gilbert's friends wanted to talk to him. "An ugly little boy creeping +about," Mr. Fordham calls him. "Cecil had no vanity," writes Mrs. +Kidd, "and thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was not beautiful; +when he was about 14 he said at dinner one day: 'I think I shall +marry X (a very plain cousin); between us we might produce the +missing link.' Aunt Marie was shocked!" + +Many of the games arise from the skill in drawing of both Gilbert and +his father. A long history of two of the Masters drawn by Gilbert +shows them in the Salvation Army, as Christy Minstrels, as editors of +a new revolutionary paper, "La Guillotine," as besieged in their +office by a mob headed by Lord Salisbury, the Archbishop of +Canterbury and other Conservative leaders. Getting tired at last of +the adventures of these two mild scholars, Gilbert starts a series of +Shakespeare plays drawn in modern dress. + + Shylock as an aged Hebrew vendor of dilapidated vesture, with a + tiara of hats, Antonio as an opulent and respectable city-merchant, + Bassanio as a fashionable swell and Gratiano as his loud and + disreputable "pal" with large checks and a billy-cock hat. Portia was + attired as a barrister in wig and gown and Nerissa as a clerk with a + green bag and a pen behind his ear. This being much appreciated, Your + Humble Servant questions what portion of the Bard of Avon he shall + next burlesque. + +The little group seems certainly at this date to be living in a land +in which 'tis always afternoon. In one house or another tea-time +goes on until signs of dinner make their appearance. The boys only +move from one hospitable dining-room to another, or adjourn to their +own bedrooms where Gilbert piles book on book and reduces even neat +shelves to the same chaos that reigns in his own room. + +The Christmas holidays to which the "dramatic journal" belongs came a +few months after the founding of the Junior Debating Club, which +became so central in Gilbert's life and which he treated with a +gravity, solemnity even, such as he never showed later for any cause, +a gravity untouched by humour. It was a group of about a dozen boys, +started with the idea that it should be a Shakespeare Club, but +immediately changed into a general discussion club. They met every +week at the home of one or other and after a hearty tea some member +read a paper which was then debated. + +At the age of twenty, when he had left school two years, G.K. wrote a +solemn history of this institution in which the question of whether +it was right or wrong to insist on penny fines for rowdy behaviour is +canvassed with passionate feeling! One boy who was expelled asked to +be readmitted, saying, "I feel so lonely without it." Gilbert's +enthusiasm over this incident could be no greater had he been a +bishop welcoming the return of an apostate to the Christian fold. I +suppose it was partly because of his early solitary life at school, +partly because of the general trend of his thought, partly that at +this later date he was under the influence of Walt Whitman and cast +back upon his earlier years a sort of glow or haze of Whitman +idealism. Anyhow, the Junior Debating Club became to him a symbol of +the ideal friendship. They were Knights of the Round Table. They were +Jongleurs de Dieu. They were the Human Club through whom and in whom +he had made the grand discovery of Man. They were his youth +personified. The note is still struck in the letters of his +engagement period, and it was only forty years later, writing his +_Autobiography_, that he was able to picture with a certain humorous +detachment this group of boys who met to eat buns and criticise the +universe. + +A year after their first meeting, the energy of Lucian Oldershaw +produced a magazine called _The Debater_. At first it was turned out +at home on a duplicator--the efficiency of the production being such +that the author of any given paper was able occasionally to recognise +a few words of his own contribution. Later it was printed and gives a +good record of the meetings and discussions. It shows the energy and +ardour of the debaters and also their serious view of themselves and +their efforts. At first they are described as Mr. C, Mr. F, etc. +Later the full name is given. Besides the weekly debates, they +started a Library, a Chess Club, a Naturalists' Society and a +Sketching Club, regular meetings of which are chronicled. + +"The Chairman [G.K.C.] said a few words," runs a record, after some +months of existence, "stating his pride at the success of the Club, +and his belief in the good effect such a literary institution might +have as a protest against the lower and unworthy phases of school +life. His view having been vehemently corroborated, the meeting broke +up." + +In one fairly typical month papers were read on "Three Comedies of +Shakespeare," "Pope," and "Herodotus," and when no paper was produced +there was a discussion on Capital Punishment. In another, the +subjects were "The Brontës," "Macaulay as an Essayist," "Frank +Buckland" (the naturalist) and "Tennyson." A pretty wide range of +reading was called for from schoolboys in addition to their ordinary +work, even though on one occasion the Secretary sternly notes that +the reading of the paper occupied only three and one-half minutes. +But they were not daunted by difficulties or afraid of bold attempts. + +Mr. Digby d'Avigdor on one occasion "delivered a paper entitled 'The +Nineteenth Century: A Retrospect.' He gave a slight resumé of the +principal events, with appropriate tribute to the deceased great of +this century." + +Mr. Bertram, reading a paper on Milton, "dealt critically with his +various poems, noting the effective style of 'L'Allegro,' giving the +story of the writing of 'Comus' and cursorily analysing 'Paradise +Lost,' and 'Paradise Regained.'" + +"After discussing the adaptability of _Hamlet_ to the stage, Mr. +Maurice Solomon"--who may have been quite fifteen--"passed on to +review the chief points in the character of the Prince of Denmark, +concluding with a slight review of the other characters which he did +not think Shakespeare had given much attention to." + +In a discussion on the new humorists, we find the Secretary "taking +grievous umbrage at certain unwarrantable attacks which he considered +Mr. Andrew Lang had lately made on these choice spirits." This +discussion arose from a paper by the Chairman on the new school of +poetry "in which, in spite of its good points, he condemned the +absence of the sentiment of the moral, which he held to be the really +stirring and popular element in literature." + +Evidently some of his friends tended towards a youthful cynicism for +in a paper on Barrie's _Window in Thrums_ Gilbert apologises to "such +of you as are much bitten with the George Moore state of mind." + +The book which describes the rusty emotions and toilsome lives of the +Thrums weavers will always remain a book that has given me something, +and the fact that mine is merely the popular view and that what I +feel in it can be equally felt by the majority of fellow-creatures, +this fact, such is my hardened and abandoned state, only makes me +like the book more. I have long found myself in that hopeless +minority that is engaged in protecting the majority of mankind from +the attacks of all men. . . . + +In this sentiment we recognise the G.K. that is to be, but not when +we find him seconding Mr. Bentley in the motion that "a scientific +education is much more useful than a classic." + +"Mr. M," reading a paper on Herodotus, "gave a minute account of the +life of the historian, dwelling much upon the doubt and controversy +surrounding his birth and several incidents of his history"; while +"Mr. F. read a paper on Newspapers, tracing their growth from the +Acta Diurna of the later Roman Empire to the hordes of papers of the +present day." + +Perhaps best of all these efforts was that of Mr. L.D., who "after +describing the governments of England, France, Russia, Germany and +the United States, proceeded to give his opinion on their various +merits, first saying that he personally was a republican." + +Of the boys that appear in _The Debater_, Robert Vernède was killed +in the Great War; Laurence Solomon at his death in 1940 was Senior +Tutor of University College, London; his brother Maurice who became +one of the Directors of the General Electric Company is now an +invalid. I read a year or so ago an interesting _Times_ obituary of +Mr. Bertram, who was Director of Civil Aviation in the Air Ministry; +Mr. Salter became a Principal in the Treasury, having practised as a +solicitor up to the War; Mr. Fordham, a barrister, was one of the +Legal Advisers to the Ministry of Labour and has now retired. + +The two outstanding "debaters" in G.K.'s life were Lucian Oldershaw +who became his brother-in-law and will often reappear in these pages, +and Edmund Clerihew Bentley, his friend of friends. Closely united as +was the whole group, Lucian Oldershaw once told me that they were +frantically jealous of one another: "We would have done anything to +get the first place with Gilbert." + +"But you know," I said "who had it." + +"Yes," he replied, "our jealousy of Bentley was overwhelming." + +Mr. Bentley became a journalist and was for long on the editorial +staff of the _Daily Telegraph_, but he is best known for his +detective stories--especially _Trent's Last Case_--and as the +inventor of a special form of rhyme, known from his second name as +the Clerihew. He wrote the first of these while still at school, and +the best were later published in a volume called _Biography for +Beginners_, which G.K. illustrated. Everyone has his favourite. My +own is: + + Sir Christopher Wren + Said "I am going to dine with some men, + If anybody calls + Say I'm designing St. Paul's." + +Or possibly: + + The people of Spain think Cervantes + Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes, + An opinion resented most bitterly + By the people of Italy. + +Bentley was essentially a holiday as well as term-time companion and +when they were not together a large correspondence between the two +boys gives some idea of how and where Gilbert spent his summer +holidays. They are very much schoolboy letters and not worth quoting +at full length, but it is interesting to compare both style and +content with the later letters. All the letters begin "Dear Bentley." +The first use of his Christian name only occurs after both had left +school. + + Austria House + Pier Street + Ventnor, Isle of Wight + (undated, probably 1890) + + Although you dropt some hints about Paris when you were last + in our humble abode, I presume that this letter, if addressed to your + usual habitation, will reach you at some period. Ventnor, where, as + you will perceive we are, is, I will not say built upon hills, but + emptied into the cracks and clefts of rocks so that the geography of + the town is curious and involved. . . . + + My brother is intent upon "The Three Midshipmen" or "The Three + Admirals" or the three coal-scuttles or some other distinguished trio + by that interminable ass Kingston. I looked at it today and wondered + how I ever could have enjoyed his eternal slave schooners and African + stations. I would not give a page of "Mansfield Park" or a verse of + "In Memoriam" for all the endless fighting of blacks and boarding of + pirates through which the three hypocritical vagabonds ever went. I + am getting old. How old it will shortly be necessary for me to state + precisely, for, as you doubtless know there is going to be a + Census. . . . + + I have been trying to knock into shape a story, such as we spoke + about the other day, about the first introduction of Tea, and I should + be glad of your assistance and suggestions. I think I shall lay the + scene in Holland where the merits of tea were first largely agitated, + and fill the scene with the traditional Dutch figures such as I sketch. + I find in Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature" which I consulted + before coming away that a French writer wrote an elaborate treatise + to prove that tea merchants were always immoral members of society. + It would be rather curious to apply the theory to the present + day. . . . + + 11, Warwick Gardens, + Kensington. + (undated.) + + I direct this letter to your ancient patrimonial estate unknowing + whether it will reach you or where it will reach you if it does; + whether you are shooting polar bears on the ice-fields of Spitzbergen + or cooking missionaries among the cannibals of the South Pacific. + But wherever you are I find some considerable relief in turning from + the lofty correspondence of the secretary (with no disparagement + of my much-esteemed friend, Oldershaw) to another friend + (ifelow-mecallimso as Mr. Verdant Greene said) who can discourse on + some other subjects besides the Society, and who will not devote the + whole of his correspondence to the questions of that excellent and + valuable body. The Society is a very good thing in its way (being + the President I naturally think so) but like other good things, you + may have too much of it, and I have had. . . . + + As I said before, I don't know where you are disporting yourself, + beyond some hurried remark about Paris which you dropped in our + hurried interview in one of the "brilliant flashes of silence" between + those imbecile screams and yells and stamping, which even the + natural enthusiasm at the prospect of being "broken up" cannot + excuse. + + 6, The Quadrant, + North Berwick, Haddington, + Scotland. + (? 1891.) + + You will probably guess that as far as personal taste and instincts + are concerned, I share all your antipathy to the noisy Plebian + excursionist. A visit to Ramsgate during the season and the vision of + the crowded, howling sands has left in me feelings which all my + Radicalism cannot allay. At the same time I think that the lower + orders are seen unfavorably when enjoying themselves. In labour and + trouble they are more dignified and less noisy. Your suggestion as to + a series of soliloquies is very flattering and has taken hold of me + to the extent of writing a similar ballad on Simon de Montfort. The + order in which they come is rather incongruous, particularly if I + include the list I have in mind for the future thus--Danton, William + III, Simon de Montfort, Rousseau, David and Russell. . . . I rejoice + to say that this is a sequestered spot into which Hi tiddly hi ti, + etc. and all the ills in its train have not penetrated. + +In these last two letters there are sentences of a kind not to be +found anywhere else in Chesterton. The disparagement of Lucian +Oldershaw's excessive enthusiasm for the Junior Debating Club, the +solemn reprobation of the "imbecile screams and yells and stamping" +of the last day at school before the summer holidays, the antipathy +expressed for the rowdy enjoyments of the lower orders--these things +are not in the least like either the Chesterton that was to be or the +Chesterton that then was. But they are very much like Bentley. He was +two years younger than Chesterton, but far older than his years and +seemed indeed to the other boys (and perhaps to himself) like an +elderly gentleman smiling a remote amused smile at the enthusiasms of +the young. I get the strongest feeling that at this stage Chesterton +not only admired him--as he was to do all his life--but wanted to be +like him, to say the kind of thing he thought Bentley would say. This +phase did not last, as we shall see; it had gone by the time +Chesterton was at the Slade School. + + 6, The Quadrant, + North Berwick + Haddington, Scotland. + (undated, probably 1891.) + + DEAR BENTLEY, + + We have been here three days and my brother loudly murmurs that we + have not yet seen any of "the sights." For my part I abominate + sights, and all people who want to look at them. A great deal more + instruction, to say nothing of pleasure is to be got out of the + nearest haystack or hedgerow taken quietly, than in trotting over two + or three counties to see "the view" or "the site" or the + extraordinary cliff or the unusual tower or the unreasonable hill or + any other monstrosity deforming the face of Nature. Anybody can make + sights but nobody has yet succeeded in making scenery. (Excuse the + unaccountable pencil drawing in the middle which was drawn + unconsciously on the back of the unfinished letter.) . . . + + 9, South Terrace, + Littlehampton, Sussex. + (undated.) + + . . . I agree with you in your admiration for Paradise Lost, but + consider it on the whole too light and childish a book for persons of + our age. It is all very well, as small children to read pretty + stories about Satan and Belial, when we have only just mastered our + "Oedipus" and our Herbert Spencer, but when we grow older we get to + like Captain Marryat and Mr. Kingston and when we are men we know + that Cinderella is much better than any of those babyish books. As + regards one question which you asked, I may remark that the children + of Israel [presumably the Solomons] have not gone unto Horeb, neither + unto Sittim, but unto the land that is called Shropshire they went, + and abode therein. And they came unto a city, even unto the city that + is called Shrewsbury, and there they builded themselves an home, + where they might abide. And their home was in the land that was + called Castle Street and their home was the 25th tabernacle in that + land. And they abode with certain of their own kin until their season + be over and gone. And lo! they spake unto me by letter, saying, + "Heard ye aught of him that is called Bentley? Is he in the house of + his fathers or has he come unto a strange land?" Here endeth the 2nd + Lesson. + + Hotel de Lille & d'Albion, + 223, Rue St. Honoré, + Paris. + (undated, probably 1892.) + + . . . They showed us over the treasures of the Cathedral, among + which, as was explained by the guide, who spoke a little English, was + a cross given by Louis XIV to _"Meess"_ Lavallière. I thought that + concession to the British system of titles was indeed touching. I + also thought, when reflecting what the present was, and where it was + and then to whom it was given, that this showed pretty well what the + religion of the Bourbon regime was and why it has become impossible + since the Revolution. + + Grand Hotel du Chemin de Fer, + Arromanches (Calvados) + (undated) + + . . . Art is universal. This remark is not so irrelevant and Horace + Greeley-like as it may appear. I have just had a demonstration of its + truth on the coach coming down here. Two very nice little French boys + of cropped hair and restless movements were just in front of us and + my pater having discovered that the book they had with them was a + prize at a Paris school, some slight conversation arose. Not thinking + my French altogether equal to a prolonged interview, I took out a + scrap of paper and began, with a fine carelessness to draw a picture + of Napoleon I, hat, chin, attitude, all complete. This, of course, + was gazed at rapturously by these two young inheritors of France's + glory and it ended in my drawing them unlimited goblins to keep for + the remainder of the interview. + +In May 1891, the Chairman of the J.D.C. attained the maturity of +seventeen. + + The Secretary then rose and in a speech in which he extolled the + merits of the Chairman as a chairman, and mentioned the benefit which + the Junior Debating Club received on the day of which this was the + anniversary, viz., the natal day of Mr. Chesterton, proposed that a + vote wishing him many happy returns of the day and a long continuance + in the Chair of the Club should be passed. This was carried with + acclamations. The Chairman replied after restoring Order. . . . + +Naturally this question of order among a crowd of boys loomed large. +At the beginning a number of rules were passed giving great powers to +the Chairman, "which that gentleman," he says of himself, "lenient by +temperament and republican by principles, certainly would never have +put in force. . . . It was seldom enough," he continues: + + that a boy of fifteen* found himself in the position of the + Chairman, an attitude of command and responsibility over a body of + his friends and equals, and it was not to be expected that they would + easily take to the state of things. Nor was the Chairman himself, + like the Secretary, protected and armed by any personal aptitude for + practical proceedings. But solely by the certain degree of respect + entertained for his character and acquirements. This respect, sincere + and even excessive as it frequently was, contrasted somewhat + humorously with the common inattention to questions of order, nor + could anything be more noisy than the loyalty of Fordham and Langdon + Davies, with the exception of their interruptions. It may then fairly + be said that the troubles and discussions of the first months of the + Club's existence centred practically round the question of order, the + first of the great difficulties of this most difficult enterprise. + How boys who could scarcely be got to behave quietly under the + strictest schoolmasters could ever be brought to obey the rebuke of + their equal and schoolfellow: how a heterogeneous pack of average + schoolboys could organise themselves into a self-governing republic, + these were problems of real and stupendous difficulty. The fines of a + penny and of twopence, which were instituted at the first meeting, + were found hopelessly incompetent to cope with the bursts of + oblivious hilarity. Fordham in particular, whose constant breaches of + order threatened to exhaust even the extensive treasury of that + spoilt and opulent young gentleman, soon left calculation far behind, + nor can the story be better or more brightly told than by himself. + "Mr. F.," he wrote, "at one time, after considerable calculation + found that he was in debt to the extent of some 10 or 11 shillings; + but as he felt that by refusing to pay the sum he would be striking a + blow for the liberty of the subject, he manfully held out against + what he considered an unjust punishment for such diminutive + frivolities as he had indulged in." . . . At times incidents of a + disturbing and playful nature have roused the wrath of the Chairman + and Secretary to a pitch awful to behold. At one time Mr. H. (a + member who soon resigned) spent a considerable part of a meeting + under the table, till he found himself used as a public footstool and + a doormat combined. At another as Mr. Bentley was departing from the + scene of chaos a penny bun of the sticky order caressingly stung his + honoured cheek, sped upon its errand of mercy by the unerring aim of + Mr. F.** + +[* He was, in fact, sixteen when the J.D.C. began.] + +[** MS. _History of the J.D.C_.] + +Mr. Fordham well remembers how G.K. one day took him +aside at the Oldershaws' house and told him that he really must +be less exuberant. This historic occasion was always alluded +to later as "the day on which the Chairman spoke seriously to +Mr. F." + +After various resignations order was restored, and a little later two +of the chief recalcitrants asked to be received back into the Club. +"I feel so lonely without it," one of them had remarked; and G.K. +comments, "This has always appeared to the present writer one of the +most important speeches in the history of the Club. . . . The Junior +Debating Club had come through its moments of difficulty and was a +fact and an establishment." + +Nor was the circulation of _The Debater_ long confined to members of +the Club and their own circle of friends and relatives. Some of the +boys had no doubt a regular allowance, but probably a small one. +Gilbert himself says in his diary that he had no income "except +errant sixpences." And printers' bills had to be paid. Moreover in +the first number the editor Lucian Oldershaw confessed frankly that +one reason for the paper's existence was "that the Society may not +degenerate into the position of a mutual admiration Society by +totally lacking the admiration of outsiders." The staff were able +immediately to note, "Any apprehensions we may have felt on the +morning of the publication of _The Debater_ were speedily dispelled, +when by nightfall we had disposed of all our copies." Of a later +issue the energetic editor sold sixty-five copies in the course of +the summer holidays. Masters, too, began to read it and at last a +copy was hid on the table of the High Master, Mr. Walker. Cecil +Chesterton describes the High Master as a gigantic man with a booming +voice. Some Paulines believed he had given Gilbert the first +inspiration for the personality of "Sunday" in _The Man Who Was +Thursday_. Another contemporary says that he was reputed to take no +interest in anything except examination successes, and that the boys +were amazed at the effect on him of reading _The Debater_. Reading in +the light of his future, one sees qualities in Gilbert's work not to +be found in that of the other contributors, but it is worth noting +that the J.D.C. members were in fact a quite unusually able group. +Almost every one of them took brilliant scholarships to Oxford or +Cambridge; the High Master had never boasted of so many scholarships +from one set of boys. And in reading _The Debater_ (an enjoyment I +wish others could share) one has to bear in mind the relative ages of +the contributors. It is, I think, striking that all these boys should +have recognised Gilbert's quality and accepted his leadership, for +they were all a year or so younger than he was and yet were in the +same form. They knew that this was only because G.K. would not bother +to do his school work; still, I think that at that age they showed +insight by knowing it. + +Gilbert's work is to be found in every number of _The +Debater_--usually verse as well as prose. Both Fordham and Oldershaw +remember most vividly the effect of reading a fanciful essay on +Dragons in the first number. "The Dragon," it began, "is the most +cosmopolitan of impossibilities." And the boys, rolling the words on +their tongues, murmured to one another, "This is literature." + +Except for a very occasional flash the one element not yet visible in +these _Debater_ essays is humour. This is curious, because some of +his most brilliant fooling belongs to the same period. In a +collection made after his death, _The Coloured Lands_ is an +illustrated jeu d'esprit of 1891, _Half Hours in Hades:_ "an +elementary handbook of demonology" which is as amusing a thing as he +ever wrote. The drawings he made for it show specimens of the +evolution of various types of devil into various types of humans: the +devils themselves are carefully classified--the common or garden +serpent (Tentator Hortensis), the red devil (Diabolus Mephistopheles) +the blue devil (Caeruleus Lugubrius) etc. Mr. J. Milton's "specimen" +is discussed and various methods of pursuing observations in +supernatural history which "possesses an interest which will remain +after health, youth and even life have departed." + +There is nothing of this kind in _The Debater_. Besides the +historical soliloquies mentioned in the letter to Bentley, there are +poems in which he is beginning to feel after his religious +philosophy. One of these in a very early number shows considerable +power for a boy not yet seventeen. + + ADVENIAT REGNUM TUUM + + Not that the widespread wings of wrong brood o'er a moaning earth, + Not from the clinging curse of gold, the random lot of birth; + Not from the misery of the weak, the madness of the strong, + Goes upward from our lips the cry, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" + Not only from the huts of toil, the dens of sin and shame, + From lordly halls and peaceful homes the cry goes up the same; + Deep in the heart of every man, where'er his life be spent, + There is a noble weariness, a holy discontent. + Where'er to mortal eyes has come, in silence dark and lone, + Some glimmer of the far-off light the world has never known, + Some ghostly echoes from a dream of earth's triumphal song, + Then as the vision fades we cry, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" + Long ages, from the dawn of time, men's toiling march has wound + Towards the world they ever sought, the world they never found; + Still far before their toiling path the glimmering promise lay, + Still hovered round the struggling race, a dream by night and day. + Mid darkening care and clinging sin they sought their unknown home, + Yet ne'er the perfect glory came--Lord, will it ever come? + The weeding of earth's garden broad from all its growths of wrong, + When all man's soul shall be a prayer, and all his life a song. + Aye, though through many a starless night we guard the flaming oil, + Though we have watched a weary watch, and toiled a weary toil, + Though in the midnight wilderness, we wander still forlorn, + Yet bear we in our hearts the proof that God shall send the dawn. + Deep in the tablets of our hearts he writes that yearning still, + The longing that His hand hath wrought shall not his hand fulfil? + Though death shall close upon us all before that hour we see, + The goal of ages yet is there--the good time yet to be: + Therefore, tonight, from varied lips, in every house and home, + Goes up to God the common prayer, "Father, Thy Kingdom come."* + +[* _The Debater_, Vol. I. March-April, 1891.] + +Gilbert's prose work in _The Debater_ must have been little less +surprising to any master who had merely watched him slumbering at a +desk. His historical romance "The White Cockade" is immature and +unimportant. But essays on Spenser, Milton, Pope, Gray, Cowper, +Burns, Wordsworth, "Humour in Fiction," "Boys' Literature," Sir +Walter Scott, Browning, the English Dramatists, showed a range and a +quality of literary criticism alike surprising. Perhaps most +surprising, however, is the fact that all this does not seem to have +made clear to either masters or parents the true nature of Gilbert's +vocation. He suffered at this date from having too many talents. For +he still went on drawing and his drawings seemed to many the most +remarkable thing about him, and were certainly the thing he most +enjoyed doing. + +Even now his school work had not brought him into the highest +form--called not the Sixth, as in most schools, but the Eighth: the +highest form he ever reached was 6B. But in the Summer term of 1892 +he entered a competition for a prize poem, and won it. The subject +chosen was St. Francis Xavier. I give the poem in Appendix A. It is +not as notable as some other of his work at that time: what is +interesting is that in it this schoolboy expresses with some power a +view he was later to explode yet more powerfully. He might have +claimed for himself what he said of earlier writers--it is not true +that they did not see our modern difficulties: they saw through them. +Never before had this contest been won by any but an Eighth Form boy, +and almost immediately afterwards Gilbert was amazed to find a short +notice posted on the board: "G. K. Chesterton to rank with the +Eighth.--F. W. Walker, High Master." + +The High Master at any rate had travelled far from the atmosphere of +the form reports when Mrs. Chesterton visited him in 1894 to ask his +advice about her son's future. For he said, "Six foot of genius. +Cherish him, Mrs. Chesterton, cherish him." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Art Schools and University College + +WHEN ALL GILBERT'S friends were at Oxford or Cambridge, he used to +say how glad he was that his own choice had been a different one. He +never sighed for Oxford. He never regretted his rather curious +experiences at an Art School--two Art Schools really, although he +only talks of one in the _Autobiography_, for he was for a short time +at a School of Art in St. John's Wood (Calderon's, Lawrence Solomon +thought), whence he passed to the Slade School. He was there from +1892 to 1895 and during part of that time he attended lectures on +English Literature at University College. + +The chapter on the experiences of the next two years is called in the +_Autobiography_, "How to be a Lunatic," and there is no doubt that +these years were crucial and at times crucifying in Gilbert's life. +During a happily prolonged youth (he was now eighteen and a half) he +had developed very slowly, but normally. Surrounded by pleasant +friendships and home influences he had never really become aware of +evil. Now it broke upon him suddenly--probably to a degree +exaggerated by his strong imagination and distorted by the fact that +he was undergoing physical changes usually belonging to an earlier +age. + +Towards the end of his school life Gilbert's voice had not yet +broken. His mother took him to a doctor to be overhauled and was told +that his brain was the largest and most sensitive the doctor had ever +seen. "A genius or an idiot" was his verdict on the probabilities. +Above all things she was told to avoid for him any sort of shock. +Physically, mentally, spiritually he was on a very large scale and +probably for that reason of a slow rate of development. The most +highly differentiated organisms are the slowest to mature, and +without question Gilbert did mature very late. He was now passing +through the stage described by Keats: "The imagination of a boy is +healthy and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is +a space of life between"--a period unhealthy or at least ill-focussed. + +Intellectually Gilbert suffered at this time from an extreme +scepticism. As he expressed it he "felt as if everything might be a +dream" as if he had "projected the universe from within." The +agnostic doubts the existence of God. Gilbert at moments doubted the +existence of the agnostic. + +Morally his temptations seem to have been in some strange psychic +region rather than merely physical. The whole period is best +summarised in a passage from the _Autobiography_, for looking back +after forty years Gilbert still saw it as deeply and darkly +significant: as both a mental and moral extreme of danger. + + There is something truly menacing in the thought of how quickly I + could imagine the maddest, when I had never committed the mildest + crime . . . there was a time when I had reached that condition of + moral anarchy within, in which a man says, in the words of Wilde, + that "Atys with the blood-stained knife were better than the thing I + am." I have never indeed felt the faintest temptation to the + particular madness of Wilde, but I could at this time imagine the + worst and wildest disproportions and distortions of more normal + passion; the point is that the whole mood was overpowered and + oppressed with a sort of congestion of imagination. As Bunyan, in his + morbid period, described himself as prompted to utter blasphemies, I + had an overpowering impulse to record or draw horrible ideas and + images; lunging deeper and deeper as in a blind spiritual suicide.* + +[* Pp. 88-9.] + +Two of his intimate friends, finding at this time a notebook full of +these horrible drawings, asked one another, "Is Chesterton going mad?" + +He dabbled too in spiritualism until he realised that he had reached +the verge of forbidden and dangerous ground: + + I would not altogether rule out the suggestion of some that we were + playing with fire; or even with hell-fire. In the words that were + written for us there was nothing ostensibly degrading, but any amount + that was deceiving. I saw quite enough of the thing to be able to + testify with complete certainty, that something happens which is not + in the ordinary sense natural, or produced by the normal and + conscious human will. Whether it is produced by some subconscious but + still human force, or by some powers, good, bad, or indifferent, + which are external to humanity, I would not myself attempt to decide. + The only thing I will say with complete confidence, about that mystic + and invisible power, is that it tells lies. The lies may be larks or + they may be lures to the imperilled soul or they may be a thousand + other things; but whatever they are, they are not truths about the + other world; or for that matter about this world.* + +[*_Autobiography_, p. 77.] + +He told Father O'Connor some years later* that "he had used the +planchette freely at one time, but had to give it up on account of +headaches ensuing . . . 'after the headaches came a horrid feeling as +if one were trying to get over a bad spree, with what I can best +describe as a bad smell in the mind.'" + +[*_Father Brown on Chesterton,_ p. 74.] + +Idling at his work he fell in with other idlers and has left a vivid +description in a _Daily News_ article called, "The Diabolist," of one +of his fellow students. + + . . . It was strange, perhaps, that I liked his dirty, drunken + society; it was stranger still, perhaps, that he liked my society. + For hours of the day he would talk with me about Milton or Gothic + architecture; for hours of the night he would go where I have no wish + to follow him, even in speculation. He was a man with a long, + ironical face, and close red hair; he was by class a gentleman, and + could walk like one, but preferred, for some reason, to walk like a + groom carrying two pails. He looked like a sort of super-jockey; as + if some archangel had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the + half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first + and last time. + + . . . He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me + despair of his soul. A common, harmless atheist would have denied + that religion produced humility or humility a simple joy; but he + admitted both. He only said, "But shall I not find in evil a life of + its own? Granted that for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks + will go out; will not the expanding pleasure of ruin . . ." + + "Do you see that fire?" I asked. "If we had a real fighting + democracy, some one would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper + that you are." + + "Perhaps," he said, in his tired, fair way. "Only what you call + evil I call good." + + He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the + steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my + hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his + voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled; but + then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, + "Nobody can possibly know." And then I heard those two or three words + which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the + Diabolist say, "I tell you I have done everything else. If I do that + I shan't know the difference between right and wrong." I rushed out + without daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not know + whether it was hell or the furious love of God. + + I have since heard that he died; it may be said, I think, that he + committed suicide; though he did it with tools of pleasure, not with + tools of pain. God help him, I know the road he went; but I have + never known or even dared to think what was that place at which he + stopped and refrained.* + +[* Quoted in _G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism_. Alston Rivers Ltd. 1908, +pp. 20-22.] + +Revulsion from the atmosphere of evil took Gilbert to no new thing +but to a strengthening of old ties and a mystic renewal of them. The +J.D.C. was idealised into a mystical city of friends: + + A LIST + + I know a friend, very strong and good. He is the best friend in the + world, + + I know another friend, subtle and sensitive. He is certainly the best + friend on earth. + + I know another friend: very quiet and shrewd, there is no friend so + good as he. + + I know another friend, who is enigmatical and reluctant, he is the + best of all. + + I know yet another: who is polished and eager, he is far better + than the rest. + + I know another, who is young and very quick, he is the most beloved + of all friends, + + I know a lot more and they are all like that. + + Amen. + + THE COSMIC FACTORIES + + What are little boys made of? + + Bentley is made of hard wood with a knot in it, a complete set of + Browning and a strong spring; + + Oldershaw of a box of Lucifer matches and a stylographic pen; + + Lawrence of a barrister's wig: files of Punch and salt, + + Maurice of watch-wheels, three riders and a clean collar. + + Vernède is made of moonlight and tobacco, + + Bertram is mostly a handsome black walking-stick. + + Waldo is a nice cabbage, with a vanishing odour of cigarettes, + + Salter is made of sand and fire and an university extension ticket. + + But the strongest element in all can not be expressed; I think it + is a sort of star.* + +[* From _The Notebook_.] + +There are fragments of a Morality Play entitled "The Junior Debating +Club," of a modern novel in which everyone of the Debaters makes his +appearance, of a mediaeval story called "The Legend of Sir Edmund of +the Brotherhood of the Jongleurs de Dieu." Notes, fragments, letters, +all show an intense individual interest that covered the life of each +of his friends. If one of them is worried, he worries too; if one +rejoices, he rejoices exceedingly. They write to him about their +ideas and views, their relations with one another, their reactions in +the world of Oxford life, their love affairs. "I am in need of some +literary tonic or blood-letting," says Vernède, "which you alone can +supply." + +"I only hope," writes Bertram, "you may be as much use in the world +in future as you have been in the past to your friends." + +"Most of the absent Club," writes Salter separated from the others, +"lie together in my pocket at this moment." And Gilbert writes in +_The Notebook:_ + + AN IDYLL + + Tea is made; the red fogs shut round the house but the gas burns. + I wish I had at this moment round the table + A company of fine people. + Two of them are at Oxford and one in Scotland and two at other + places. + But I wish they would all walk in now, for the tea is made. + +Gilbert was devoted to them all. But as we have seen, Bentley's was +the supreme friendship of his youth. It was a friendship in foolery +as we are told by the dedication of _Greybeards at Play:_ + + He was through boyhood's storm and shower + My best my nearest friend, + We wore one hat, smoked one cigar + One standing at each end. + +It was a deeply serious friendship as we are told in the dedication +of _The Man Who Was Thursday_. With Bentley alone he shared the + + Doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, + And day had broken on the streets ere it broke upon the brain. + +Most young men write or at least begin novels of which they are +themselves the heroes. Gilbert wrote and illustrated a fairy story +about a boyish romance of Lucian Oldershaw's while two unfinished +novels have Bentley for hero. He is, too, in the mediaeval story, Sir +Edmund of the Brotherhood of the Jongleurs de Dieu. Gilbert sings, +like all young poets, of first love--but it is Bentley's not his own: +he was as much excited about a girl Bentley had fallen in love with +as if he had fallen in love with her himself. And where a London +street has a special significance one discovers it is because of a +memory of Bentley's. To Bentley then, with whom all was shared, +Gilbert wrote, when through friendship and the goodness of things he +had come out again into the daylight. The second thought that had +saved him had largely grown out of the first. The J.D.C. meant +friendship. Friendship meant the highest of all good things and all +good things called for gratitude. As he gave thanks he drew near to +God. + + Dunedin Lodge + Forth Street + North Berwick. + (undated, but probably Long Vac., 1894.) + + Your letter was most welcome: in which, however, it does not differ + widely from most of your letters. I read somewhere in some fatuous + Complete Letter-writer or something, that it is correct to imitate + the order of subjects, etc. observed by your correspondent. In + obedience to this rule of breeding I will hurriedly remark that my + holiday has been nice enough in itself; we walk about; lie on the + sand; go and swim in the sea when it generally rains; and the + combination gets in our mouths and we say the name of the Professor + in the "Water Babies." Inwardly speaking, I have had a funny time. A + meaningless fit of depression, taking the form of certain absurd + psychological worries came upon me, and instead of dismissing it and + talking to people, I had it out and went very far into the abysses, + indeed. The result was that I found that things when examined, + necessarily _spelt_ such a mystically satisfactory state of things, + that without getting back to earth, I saw lots that made me certain + it is all right. The vision is fading into common day now, and I am + glad. The frame of mind was the reverse of gloomy, but it would not + do for long. It is embarrassing, talking with God face to face, as a + man speaketh to his friend. + +And in another letter: + + A cosmos one day being rebuked by a pessimist replied, "How can you + who revile me consent to speak by my machinery? Permit me to reduce + you to nothingness and then we will discuss the matter." Moral. You + should not look a gift universe in the mouth. + +Another powerful influence in the direction of mental health was the +discovery of Walt Whitman's poetry. "I shall never forget," Lucian +Oldershaw writes, "reading to him from the Canterbury Walt Whitman in +my bedroom at West Kensington. The séance lasted from two to three +hours, and we were intoxicated with the excitement of the discovery." + +For some time now we shall find Gilbert dismissing belief in any +positive existence of evil and treating the universe on the Whitman +principle of jubilant and universal acceptance. He writes, too, in +the Whitman style. By far the most important of his notebooks is one +which, by amazing good fortune, can be dated, beginning in 1894 and +continuing for several years. In its attitude to man it is +Whitmanesque to a high degree, yet it is also most characteristically +Chestertonian. Whitman is content with a shouting, roaring optimism +about life and humanity. Chesterton had to find for it a +philosophical basis. Heartily as he disliked the literary pessimism +of the hour, he was not content simply to exchange one mood for +another. For whether he was conscious of it at the time or not, he +did later see Walt Whitman's outlook as a mood and not a philosophy. +It was a mood, however, that Chesterton himself never really lost, +solely because he did discover the philosophy needed to sustain it. +And thereby, even in this early Notebook, he goes far beyond Whitman. +Even so early he knew that a philosophy of man could not be a +philosophy of man only. He already _feels_ a presence in the universe: + + It is evening + And into the room enters again a large indiscernable presence. + Is it a man or a woman? + Is it one long dead or yet to come? + That sits with me in the evening. + +This again might have been only a mood--had he not found the +philosophy to sustain it too. It is remarkable how much of this +philosophy he had arrived at in The Notebook, before he had come to +know Catholics. Indeed the Notebook seems to me so important that it +needs a chapter to itself with abundant quotation. + +Meanwhile, what was Gilbert doing about his work at University +College? Professor Fred Brown told Lawrence Solomon that when he was +at the Slade School he always seemed to be writing and while +listening to lectures he was always drawing. It is probably true +that, as Cecil Chesterton says, he shrank from the technical toils of +the artist as he never did later from those of authorship; and none +of the professors regarded him as a serious art student. They pointed +later to his illustrations of _Biography for Beginners_ as proof that +he never learnt to draw. Yet how many of the men who did learn +seriously could have drawn those sketches, full of crazy energy and +vitality? I know nothing about drawing, but anyone may know how +brilliant are the illustrations to _Greybeards at Play_ or _Biography +for Beginners_, and later to Mr. Belloc's novels. And anyone can see +the power of line with which he drew in his notebooks unfinished +suggestions of humanity or divinity. Anyone, too, can recognise a +portrait of a man, and faces full of character continue to adorn +G.K.'s exercise books. Of living models he affected chiefly +Gladstone, Balfour, and Joe Chamberlin. In hours of thought he made +drawings of Our Lord with a crown of thorns or nailed to a +cross--these suddenly appear in any of his books between fantastic +drawings or lecture notes. As the mind wandered and lingered the +fingers followed it, and as Gilbert listened to lectures, he would +even draw on the top of his own notes. He had always had facility and +that facility increased, so that in later years he often completed in +a couple of hours the illustrations to a novel of Belloc's. Nor were +these drawings merely illustrations of an already completed text, for +Mr. Belloc has told me that the characters were often half suggested +to him by his friend's drawings. + +On one, at any rate, of his vacations, Gilbert went to Italy, and two +letters to Bentley show much of the way his thoughts were going: + + Hotel New York + Florence. + (undated, probably 1894.) + + DEAR BENTLEY, + + I turn to write my second letter to you and my first to Grey + [Maurice Solomon], just after having a very interesting conversation + with an elderly American like Colonel Newcome, though much better + informed, with whom I compared notes on Botticelli, Ruskin, Carlyle, + Emerson and the world in general. I asked him what he thought of + Whitman. He answered frankly that in America they were "hardly up to + him." "We have one town, Boston," he said precisely, "that has got up + to Browning." He then added that there was one thing everyone in + America remembered: Whitman himself. The old gentleman quite kindled + on this topic, "Whitman was a real Man. A man who was so pure and + strong that we could not imagine him doing an unmanly thing anywhere." + It was odd words to hear at a table d'hôte, from your next door + neighbour: it made me quite excited over my salad. + + You see that this humanitarianism in which we are entangled asserts + itself where, by all guidebook laws, it should not. When I take up my + pen to write to you, I am thinking more of a white-moustached old + Yankee at an hotel than about the things I have seen within the same + 24 hours: the frescoes of Santa Croce, the illuminations of St. + Marco; the white marbles of the tower of Giotto; the very Madonnas of + Raphael, the very David of Michael Angelo. Throughout this tour, in + pursuance of our theory of travelling, we have avoided the guide: he + is the death-knell of individual liberty. Once only we broke through + our rule and that was in favour of an extremely intelligent, nay + impulsive young Italian in Santa Maria Novella, a church where we saw + some of the most interesting pieces of mediaeval painting I have ever + seen, interesting not so much from an artistic as from a moral and + historical point of view. Particularly noticeable was the great + fresco expressive of the grandest mediaeval conception of the + Communion of Saints, a figure of Christ surmounting a crowd of all + ages and stations, among whom were not only Dante, Petrarca, Giotto, + etc., etc., but Plato, Cicero, and best of all, Arius. I said to the + guide, in a tone of expostulation, "Heretico!" (a word of impromptu + manufacture). Whereupon he nodded, smiled and was positively radiant + with the latitudinarianism of the old Italian painter. It was + interesting for it was a fresh proof that even the early Church + united had a period of thought and tolerance before the dark ages + closed around it. There is one thing that I must tell you more of + when we meet, the tower of Giotto. It was built in a square of + Florence, near the Cathedral, by a self-made young painter and + architect who had kept sheep as a boy on the Tuscan hills. It is + still called "The Shepherd's Tower." What I want to tell you about is + the series of bas-reliefs, which Giotto traced on it, representing + the creation and progress of man, his discovery of navigation, + astronomy, law, music and so on. It is religious in the grandest + sense, but there is not a shred of doctrine (even the Fall is + omitted) about this history in stone. If Walt Whitman had been an + architect, he would have built such a tower, with such a story on it. + As I want to go out and have a good look at it before we start for + Venice tomorrow, I must cut this short. I hope you are enjoying + yourself as much as I am, and thinking about me half as much as I am + about you. + + Your very sincere friend, + GILBERT K. CHESTERTON. + +No one would have enjoyed more than Gilbert rereading this letter in +after years and noting the suggestion that the fifteenth century +belonged to the early church and preceded the Dark Ages. And I think, +too, that even in Giotto's Tower, he might later have discovered some +roots of doctrine. + + Grand Hotel De Milan + (undated) + + DEAR BENTLEY, + + I write you a third letter before coming back, while Venice and + Verona are fresh in my mind. Of the former I can really only + discourse viva voce. Imagine a city, whose very slums are full of + palaces, whose every other house wall has a battered fresco, or a + gothic bas-relief; imagine a sky fretted with every kind of pinnacle + from the great dome of the Salute to the gothic spires of the Ducal + Palace and the downright arabesque orientalism of the minarets of St. + Mark's; and then imagine the whole flooded with a sea that seems only + intended to reflect sunsets, and you still have no idea of the place + I stopped in for more than 48 hours. Thence we went to Verona, where + Romeo and Juliet languished and Dante wrote most of "Hell." The + principal products (1) tombs: particularly those of the Scala, a very + good old family with an excellent taste in fratricide. Their three + tombs (one to each man I mean: one man, one grave) are really + glorious examples of three stages of Gothic: of which more when we + meet. (2) Balconies: with young ladies hanging over them; really + quite a preponderating feature. Whether this was done in obedience to + local associations and in expectation of a Romeo, I can't say. I can + only remark that if such was the object, the supply of Juliets seemed + very much in excess of the demand. (3) Roman remains: on which, + however, I did not pronounce a soliloquy beginning, "Wonderful + people . . ." which is the correct thing to do. Just as I get to this + I receive your letter and resolve to begin another sheet of paper. I + did read Rosebery's speech and was more than interested; I was + stirred. The old order (of parliamentary forms, peerages, Whiggism + and right honourable friends) has changed, yielding place to the new + (of industrialism, county council sanitation, education and the + Kingdom of Heaven at hand) and, whatever the Archbishop of + Canterbury may say, God fulfils himself in many ways, even by local + government. . . . + + Several things in your letter require notice. First the accusation + levelled against me of being prejudiced against Professor Huxley, I + repel with indignation and scorn. You are not prejudiced against + cheese because you like oranges; and though the Professor is not + Isaiah or St. Francis or Whitman or Richard le Gallienne (to name + some of those whom I happen to affect) I should be the last person in + the world to say a word against an earnest, able, kind-hearted and + most refreshingly rational man: by far the best man of his type I + know. As to what you say on education generally, I am entirely with + you, but it will take a good interview to say how much. As for the + little Solomons, I am prepared to [be] fond of all of them, as I am + of all children, even the grubby little mendicants that run these + Italian streets. I am glad you and Grey have pottered. Potter again. + I have had such a nice letter from Lawrence. It makes me think it is + all going "to be the fair beginning of a time." + +Had the months of art study only developed in Gilbert Chesterton his +power of drawing, they might still have been worthwhile. But they +gave him, too, a time to dream and to think which working for a +University degree would never have allowed. His views and his mind +were developing fast, and he was also developing a power to which we +owe some of his best work--depth of vision. + +Most art criticism is the work of those who never could have been +artists--which is possibly why it tends to be so critical. Gilbert, +who could perhaps have been an artist, preferred to appreciate what +the artist was trying to say and to put into words what he read on +the canvas. Hence both in his _Watts_ and his _Blake_ we get what +some of us ask of an art critic--the enlargement of our own powers of +vision. This is what made Ruskin so great an art critic, a fact once +realised, today forgotten. He may have made a thousand mistakes, he +had a multitude of foolish prejudices, but he opened the eyes of a +whole generation to see and understand great art. + +G.K. was to begin his published writings with poetry and art +criticism--in other words with vision. And this vision he partly owed +to the Slade School. Here is a letter (undated) to Bentley containing +a hint of what eight years later became a book on Watts: + + On Saturday I saw two exhibitions of pictures. The first was the + Royal Academy, where I went with Salter. There was one picture there, + though the walls were decorated with frames very prettily. As to the + one picture, if you look at an Academy catalogue you will see + "Jonah": by G. F. Watts, and you will imagine a big silly picture of + a whale. But if you go to Burlington House you will see something + terrible. A spare, wild figure, clad in a strange sort of green with + his head flung so far back that his upper part is a miracle of + foreshortening, his hands thrust out, his face ghastly with ecstasy, + his dry lips yelling aloud, a figure of everlasting protest and + defiance. And as a background (perfect in harmony of colour) you have + the tracery of the Assyrian bas-reliefs, such as survive in wrecks in + the British Museum, a row of those processions of numberless captives + bowing before smiling Kings: a cruel sort of art. And the passionate + energy of that lonely screaming figure in front, makes you think of a + great many things besides Assyrians: among others of some words of + Renan: I quote from memory: "But the trace of Israel will be eternal. + She it was who alone among the tyrannies of antiquity, raised her + voice for the helpless, the oppressed, the forgotten." + + But this only expresses a fraction of it. The only thing to do is + to come and look at this excited gentleman with bronze skin and hair + that approaches green, his eyes simply white with madness. And Jonah + said, "Yea, I do well to be angry: even unto death." + +He had learnt to look at colour, to look at line, to describe +pictures. But far more important than this, he could now create in +the imagination gardens and sunsets and sheer colour, so as to give +to his novels and stories pictorial value, to his fantasies glow, and +to his poetry vision of the realities of things. In his very first +volume of Essays, _The Defendant_, were to be passages that could be +written only by one who had learnt to draw. For instance, in "A +Defence of Skeletons": + + The actual sight of the little wood, with its grey and silver sea + of life is entirely a winter vision. So dim and delicate is the heart + of the winter woods, a kind of glittering gloaming, that a figure + stepping towards us in the chequered twilight seems as if he were + breaking through unfathomable depths of spiders' webs. + +In the year 1895, in which G.K. left art for publishing, he came of +age "with a loud report." He writes to Bentley: + + Being twenty-one years old is really rather good fun. It is one of + those occasions when you remember the existence of all sorts of + miscellaneous people. A cousin of mine, Alice Chesterton, daughter of + my Uncle Arthur, writes me a delightfully cordial letter from Berlin, + where she is a governess; and better still, my mother has received a + most amusing letter from an old nurse of mine, an exceptionally nice + and intelligent nurse, who writes on hearing that it is my + twenty-first birthday. Billy (an epithet is suppressed) gave me a + little notebook and a little photograph frame. The first thing I did + with the notebook was to make a note of his birthday. The first thing + I shall do with the frame will be to get Grey to give me a photograph + of him to put into it. Yes, it is not bad, being twenty-one, in a + world so full of kind people. . . . + + I have just been out and got soaking and dripping wet; one of my + favourite dissipations. I never enjoy weather so much as when it is + driving, drenching, rattling, washing rain. As Mr. Meredith says in + the book you gave me, "Rain, O the glad refresher of the grain, and + welcome waterspouts of blessed rain." (It is in a poem called "Earth + and a Wedded Woman," which is fat.) Seldom have I enjoyed a walk so + much. My sister water was all there and most affectionate. Everything + I passed was lovely, a little boy pickabacking another little boy + home, two little girls taking shelter with a gigantic umbrella, the + gutters boiling like rivers and the hedges glittering with rain. And + when I came to our corner the shower was over, and there was a great + watery sunset right over No. 80, what Mr. Ruskin calls an "opening + into Eternity." Eternity is pink and gold. This may seem a very + strange rant, but it is one of my "specimen days." I suppose you + would really prefer me to write as I feel, and I am so constituted + that these Daily incidents get me that way. Yes, I like rain. It + means something, I am not sure what; something freshening, cleaning, + washing out, taking in hand, not caring-a-damn-what-you-think, + doing-its-duty, robust, noisy, moral, wet. It is the Baptism of the + Church of the Future. + + Yesterday afternoon (Sunday) Lawrence and Maurice came here. We were + merely infants at play, had skipping races round the garden and + otherwise raced. ("Runner, run thy race," said Confucius, "and in the + running find strength and reward.") After that we tried talking about + Magnus, and came to some hopeful conclusions. Magnus is all right. As + for Lawrence and Grey, if there is anything righter than all right, + they are that. . . . + + There is an expression in Meredith's book which struck me immensely: + "the largeness of the evening earth." The sensation that the Cosmos + has all its windows open is very characteristic of evening, just as + it is at this moment. I feel very good. Everything out of the window + looks very, very flat and yellow: I do not know how else to describe + it. + + It is like the benediction at the end of the service. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +The Notebook + + +I AM WRITING THIS chapter at a table facing Notre Dame de Paris in +front of a café filled with arguing French workmen--in the presence +of God and of Man; and I feel as if I understood the one hatred of +G.K.'s life: his loathing of pessimism. "Is a man proud of losing his +hearing, eyesight or sense of smell? What shall we say of him who +prides himself on beginning as an intellectual cripple and ending as +an intellectual corpse?"* + +[* From _The Notebook_.] + + SOME PROPHECIES + + Woe unto them that keep a God like a silk hat, that believe not in + God, but in a God. + + Woe unto them that are pompous for they will sooner or later be + ridiculous. + + Woe unto them that are tired of everything, for everything will + certainly be tired of them. + + Woe unto them that cast out everything, for out of everything they + will be cast out. + + Woe unto them that cast out anything, for out of that thing they + will be cast out. + + Woe unto the flippant, for they shall receive flippancy. + + Woe unto them that are scornful for they shall receive scorn. + + Woe unto him that considereth his hair foolishly, for his hair will + be made the type of him. + + Woe unto him that is smart, for men will hold him smart always, + even when he is serious.* + +[* Ibid.] + +A pessimist is a man who has never lived, never suffered: "Show me a +person who has plenty of worries and troubles and I will show you a +person who, whatever he is, is not a pessimist." + +This idea G.K. developed later in the _Dickens_, dealing with the +alleged over-optimism of Dickens--Dickens who if he had learnt to +whitewash the universe had learnt it in a blacking factory, Dickens +who had learnt through hardship and suffering to accept and love the +universe. But that he wrote later. The quotations given here come +from the Notebook begun in 1894 and used at intervals for the next +four or five years, in which Gilbert wrote down his philosophy step +by step as he came to discover it. The handwriting is the work of art +that he must have learnt and practised, so different is it from his +boyhood's scrawl. Each idea is set down as it comes into his mind. +There is no sequence. In this book and in _The Coloured Lands_ may be +seen the creation of the Chesterton view of life--and it all took +place in his early twenties. From the seed-thoughts here, _Orthodoxy_ +and the rest were to grow--here they are only seeds but seeds +containing unmistakably the flower of the future: + + They should not hear from me a word + Of selfishness or scorn + If only I could find the door + If only I were born. + +He makes the Unborn Babe say this in his first volume of poems. And +in the Notebook we see how the babe coming into the world must keep +this promise by accepting life with its puzzles, its beauty, its +fleetingness: "Are we all dust? What a beautiful thing dust is +though." "This round earth may be a soap-bubble, but it must be +admitted that there are some pretty colours on it." "What is the good +of life, it is fleeting; what is the good of a cup of coffee, it is +fleeting. Ha Ha Ha." + +The birthday present of birth, as he was later to call it in +_Orthodoxy_, involved not bare existence only but a wealth of other +gifts. "A grievance," he heads this thought: + + Give me a little time, + I shall not be able to appreciate them all; + If you open so many doors + And give me so many presents, O Lord God. + +He is almost overwhelmed with all that he has and with all that is, +but accepts it ardently in its completeness. + + If the arms of a man could be a fiery circle embracing the round + world, I think I should be that man. + +Yet in the face of all this splendour the pessimist dares to find +flaws: + + The mountains praise thee, O Lord! + But what if a mountain said, + "I praise thee; + But put a pine-tree halfway up on the left + It would be much more effective, believe me." + It is time that the religion of prayer gave + place to the religion of praise. + +If the mountains must praise God, if the religion of praise expresses +the truth of things, how much more does it express the truth of +humanity--or rather of men, for he saw humanity not as an abstraction +but as the sum of human and intensely individual beings: + + Once I found a friend + "Dear me," I said "he was made for me." + But now I find more and more friends + Who seem to have been made for me + And more and yet more made for me, + Is it possible we were all made for each other + all over the world? + +And on another page comes perhaps the most significant phrase in the +book: "I wonder whether there will ever come a time when I shall be +tired of any one person." Hence a fantastic thought of a way of +making the discovery of more people to know and to like: + + THE HUMAN CIRCULATING LIBRARY NOTES + + Get out a gentleman for a fortnight, then change him for a lady, or + your ticket. No person to be kept out after a fortnight, except with + the payment of a penny a day. Any person morally or physically + damaging a man will be held responsible. The library omnibus calls + once a week leaving two or three each visit. Man of the season--old + standard man. + +Or better still: + + My great ambition is to give a party at which everybody should meet + everybody else and like them very much. + + AN INVITATION + + Mr. Gilbert Chesterton + requests the pleasure + Of humanity's company + to tea on Dec. 25th 1896. + Humanity Esq., The Earth, Cosmos E. + +G.K. liked everybody very much, and everything very much. He liked +even the things most of us dislike. He liked to get wet. He liked to +be tired. After that one short period of struggle he liked to call +himself "always perfectly happy." And therefore he wanted to say, +"Thank you." + + You say grace before meals + All right. + But I say grace before the play and the opera, + And grace before the concert and pantomime, + And grace before I open a book, + And grace before sketching, painting, + Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing; + And grace before I dip the pen in the ink. + +Each day seemed a special gift; something that might not have been: + + EVENING + + Here dies another day + During which I have had eyes, ears, hands + And the great world round me; + And with tomorrow begins another. + Why am I allowed two? + + THE PRAYER OF A MAN WALKING + + I thank thee, O Lord, for the stones in the street + I thank thee for the hay-carts yonder and for the + houses built and half-built + That fly past me as I stride. + But most of all for the great wind in my nostrils + As if thine own nostrils were close. + + THE PRAYER OF A MAN RESTING + + The twilight closes round me + My head is bowed before the Universe + I thank thee, O Lord, for a child I knew seven years ago + And whom I have never seen since. + + Praised be God for all sides of life, for friends, lovers, art, + literature, knowledge, humour, politics, and for the little red cloud + away there in the west-- + +For, if he was to be grateful, to whom did he owe gratitude? Here is +the chief question he asked and answered at this time. At school he +was looking for God, but at the age of 16 he was, he tells us in +_Orthodoxy_, an Agnostic in the sense of one who is not sure one way +or the other. Largely it was this need for gratitude for what seemed +personal gifts that brought him to belief in a personal God. Life was +personal, it was not a mere drift; it had will in it, it was more +like a story. + + A story is the highest mark + For the world is a story and every part of it + And there is nothing that can touch the world or any part of it + That is not a story. + +And again, with the heading, "A Social Situation." + + We must certainly be in a novel; + What I like about this novelist is that he takes + such trouble about his minor characters. + +The story shapes from man's birth and it is as he meets the other +characters that he finds he is in the right story. + + A MAN BORN ON THE EARTH + + Perhaps there has been some mistake + How does he know he has come to the right place? + But when he finds friends + He knows he has come to the right place. + + You say it is a love affair + Hush: it is a new Garden of Eden + And a new progeny will people a new earth + God is always making these experiments. + +Life is a story: who tells it? Life is a problem: who sets it? + + The world is a problem, not a Theorem + And the word of the last Day will be Q.E.F. + +God sets the problem, God tells the story, but can those know Him who +are characters in His story, who are working out His problem? + + Have you ever known what it is to walk along a road in such a frame + of mind that you thought you might meet God at any turn of the path? + +For this a man must be ready, against this he must never shut the +door. + + There is one kind of infidelity blacker than all infidelities, + Worse than any blow of secularist, pessimist, atheist, + It is that of those persons + Who regard God as an old institution. + + VOICES + + The axe falls on the wood in thuds, "God, God." + The cry of the rook, "God," answers it + The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice of the brook, say the + same name; + All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby, + Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap + Repeat in a thousand languages-- + God. + +Next in his thought comes a point where he hesitates as to the +meeting place between God and Man. How and where can these two +incommensurates find a meeting place? What is Incarnation? The +greatness and the littleness of Man obsessed Chesterton as it did +Pascal; it is the eternal riddle: + + TWO STRANDS + + Man is a spark flying upwards. God is everlasting. + + Who are we, to whom this cup of human life has been given, to ask + for more? Let us love mercy and walk humbly. What is man, that thou + regardest him? + + Man is a star unquenchable. God is in him incarnate. + + His life is planned upon a scale colossal, of which he sees + glimpses. Let him dare all things, claim all things: he is the son + of Man, who shall come in the clouds of glory. + + [I] saw these two strands mingling to make the religion of man. + +"A scale colossal, of which he sees glimpses." This, I think, is the +first hint of the path that led Gilbert to full faith in Our Lord. In +places in these notes he regards Him certainly only as Man--but even +then as _The_ Man, the _Only_ Man in whom the colossal scale, the +immense possibilities, of human nature could be dreamed of as +fulfilled. Two notes on Marcus Aurelius are significant of the way +his mind was moving. + + MARCUS AURELIUS + + A large-minded, delicate-witted, strong man, + following the better thing like a thread between his hands. + + Him we cannot fancy choosing the lower even by mistake; we cannot + think of him as wanting for a moment in any virtue, sincerity, mercy, + purity, self-respect, good manners. + + Only one thing is wanting in him. He does not + command me to perform the impossible. + + THE CARPENTER + + The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. + Yes: he was soliloquising, not making something. + Do not the words of Jesus ring + Like nails knocked into a board + In his father's workshop? + +On two consecutive pages are notes showing how his mind is wrestling +with the question, the answer to which would complete his philosophy: + + XMAS DAY + + Good news: but if you ask me what it is, I know not; + It is a track of feet in the snow, + It is a lantern showing a path, + It is a door set open. + + THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST + + I live in an age of varied powers and knowledge, + Of steam, science, democracy, journalism, art: + But when my love rises like a sea, + I have to go back to an obscure tribe and a slain man + To formulate a blessing. + + JULIAN + + "Vicisti Galilæe," he said, and sank conquered + After wrestling with the most gigantic of powers, + A dead man. + + THE CRUCIFIED + + On a naked slope of a poor province + A Roman soldier stood staring at a gibbet, + Then he said, "Surely this was a righteous man," + And a new chapter of history opened, + Having that for its motto. + + PARABLES + + There was a man who dwelt in the east centuries ago, + And now I cannot look at a sheep or a sparrow, + A lily or a cornfield, a raven or a sunset, + A vineyard or a mountain, without thinking of him; + If this be not to be divine, what is it? + +Cecil Chesterton tells us Gilbert read the Gospels partly because he +was not forced to read them: I suppose this really means that he read +them with a mature mind which had not been dulled to their reception +by a childhood task of routine lessons. But I do not think at this +date it had occurred to him to question the assumption of the period: +that official Christianity, its priesthood especially, had travestied +the original intention of Christ. This idea is in the _Wild Knight_ +volume (published in 1900) and more briefly in a suggestion in the +Notebook for a proposed drama: + + Gabriel is hammering up a little theatre and the child looks at his + hands, and finds them torn with nails. + + _Clergyman_. The Church should stand by the powers that be. + + _Gabriel_. Yes? . . . That is a handsome crucifix you have there at + your chain. + +That the clergy, that the Christian people, should have settled down +to an acceptance of a faulty established order, should not be alert +to all that Our Lord's life signified, was one of the problems. It +was, too, a matter of that cosmic loyalty which he analyses more +fully in _Orthodoxy_. Here he simply writes: + + It is not a question of Theology, It is a question of whether, + placed as a sentinel of an unknown watch, you will whistle or not. + +Sentinels do go to sleep and he was coming to feel that this want of +vigilance ran through the whole of humanity. In "White Wynd," a +sketch written at this time,* he adumbrates an idea to which he was +to return again in _Manalive_ especially, and in _Orthodoxy_--that we +can by custom so lose our sense of reality that the only way to enjoy +and be grateful for our possessions is to lose them for a while. The +shortest way home is to go round the world. In this story of "White +Wynd" he applies the parable only to each man's life and the world he +lives in. But in _Orthodoxy_ he applies it to the human race who have +lost revealed truth by getting so accustomed to it that they no +longer look at it. And already in the Notebook he is calling the +attention of a careless multitude to "that great Empire upon which +the sun never sets. I allude to the Universe." + +[* It is published in _The Coloured Lands_.] + +Most of the quotations about Our Lord come in the later part of the +book: in the earlier pages he dreams that "to this age it is given to +write the great new song, and to compile the new Bible, and to found +the new Church, and preach the new Religion." And in one rather +obscure passage he seems to hint at the thought that Christ might +come again to shape this new religion. + +Going round the world, Gilbert was finding his way home; the explorer +was rediscovering his native country. He himself has given us all the +metaphors for what was happening now in his mind. Without a single +Catholic friend he had discovered this wealth of Catholic truth and +he was still travelling. "All this I felt," he later summed it up in +_Orthodoxy_, "and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And +all this time I had not even thought of Catholic theology." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Towards a Career + + +A CURIOUS LITTLE incident comes towards the end of +Gilbert's time at the Slade School. In a letter he wrote to +E. C. Bentley we see him, on the eve of his 21st birthday, being +invited to write for the _Academy_: + + Mr. Cotton is a little bristly, bohemian man, as fidgetty as a + kitten, who runs round the table while he talks to you. When he + agrees with you he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head. When he + means anything rather seriously he ends up with a loud nervous laugh. + He talks incessantly and is mad on the history of Oxford. I sent him + my review of Ruskin and he read it before me (Note. Hell) and + delivered himself with astonishing rapidity to the following effect: + "This is very good: you've got something to say: Oh, yes: this is + worth saying: I agree with you about Ruskin and about the Century: + this is good: you've no idea: if you saw some stuff: some reviews I + get: the fellows are practised but of all the damned fools: you've no + idea: they know the trade in a way: but such infernal asses: as send + things up: but this is very good: that sentence does run _nicely:_ + but I like your point: make it a little longer and then send it in: + I've got another book for you to review: you know Robert Bridges? Oh + very good, very good: here it is: about two columns you know: by the + way: keep the Ruskin for yourself: you deserve that anyhow." + + Here I got a word in: one of protest and thanks. But Mr. Cotton + insisted on my accepting the Ruskin. So I am really to serve Laban. + Laban proves on analysis to be of the consistency of brick. It is + such men as this that have made our Cosmos what it is. At one point + he said, literally dancing with glee: "Oh, the other day I stuck some + pins into Andrew Lang." I said, "Dear me, that must be a very good + game." It was something about an edition of Scott, but I was told + that Andrew "took" the painful operation "very well." We sat up + horribly late together talking about Browning, Afghans, Notes, the + Yellow Book, the French Revolution, William Morris, Norsemen and Mr. + Richard le Gallienne. "I don't despair for anyone," he said suddenly. + "Hang it all, that's what you mean by humanity." This appears to be a + rather good editor of the _Academy_. And my joy in having begun my + life is very great. "I am tired," I said to Mr. Brodribb, "of writing + only what I like." "Oh well," he said heartily, "you'll have no + reason to make that complaint in journalism." + +But here is a mystery. Nowhere in the _Academy_ columns for 1895 +or 1896 are to be seen the initials G.K.C., yet at that date all +the reviews are signed. Mr. Eccles, who was writing for it at +the time, told me that he had no recollection of G.K. among the +contributors--and later he came to know him well when both were +together on the _Speaker_. In any case, the idea of reviewing for no +reward except the book reviewed would scarcely appeal to a more +practical man than Gilbert as a hopeful beginning. Perhaps the +mystery is solved by the fact that soon after the date of this letter +Mr. Cotton got an appointment in India. To Mr. Eccles it appeared +somewhat ironical that the unpaid contributors to the _Academy_ were +circularised with a suggestion of contributions of money towards a +parting present for their late editor. + +The actual beginning of G.K.'s journalism was in _The Bookman_; and +in the _Autobiography_ he insists that it was a matter of mere luck: +"these opportunities were merely things that happened to me." While +still at the Slade School, he was, as we have seen, attending English +lectures at University College. There he met a fellow-student, Ernest +Hodder Williams, of the family which controlled the publishing house +of Hodder & Stoughton. He gave Chesterton some books on art to review +for _The Bookman_, a monthly paper published by the firm. "I need not +say," G.K. comments, "that having entirely failed to learn how to +draw or paint, I tossed off easily enough some criticisms of the +weaker points of Rubens or the misdirected talents of Tintoretto. I +had discovered the easiest of all professions, which I have pursued +ever since." But neither in the art criticism he wrote for _The +Bookman_ nor in the poems he was to publish in _The Outlook_ and _The +Speaker_ was there a living. He left the Slade School and went to +work for a publisher. + +Mr. Redway, in whose office Gilbert now found himself, was a +publisher largely of spiritualist literature. Gilbert has described +in his _Autobiography_ his rather curious experience of ghostly +authorship, but he relates nothing of his office experience, which is +described in another undated letter to Mr. Bentley: + + I am writing this letter just when I like most to write one, late + at night, after a beastly lot of midnight oil over a contribution for + a _Slade Magazine_, intended as a public venture. I am sending them a + recast of that "Picture of Tuesday." + + Like you, I am beastly busy, but there is something exciting about + it. If I must be busy (as I certainly must, being an approximately + honest man) I had much rather be busy in a varied, mixed up way, with + half a hundred things to attend to, than with one blank day of + monotonous "study" before me. To give you some idea of what I mean. I + have been engaged in 3 different tiring occupations and enjoyed them + all. (1) Redway says, "We've got too many MSS; read through them, + will you, and send back those that are too bad at once." I go slap + through a room full of MSS, criticising deuced conscientiously, with + the result that I post back some years of MSS to addresses, which I + should imagine, must be private asylums. But one feels worried, + somehow. . . . + + (2) Redway says, "I'm going to give you entire charge of the press + department, sending copies to Reviews, etc." Consequence is, one has + to keep an elaborate book and make it tally with other elaborate + books, and one has to remember all the magazines that exist and what + sort of books they'd crack up. I used to think I hated + responsibility: I am positively getting to enjoy it. (3) There is + that confounded "Picture of Tuesday" which I have been scribbling at + the whole evening, and have at last got it presentable. This sounds + like mere amusement, but, now that I have tried other kinds of hurry + and bustle, I solemnly pledge myself to the opinion that there is no + work so tiring as writing, that is, not for fun, but for publication. + Other work has a repetition, a machinery, a reflex action about it + somewhere, but to be on the stretch inventing fillings, making them + out of nothing, making them as good as you can for a matter of four + hours leaves me more inclined to lie down and read Dickens than I + ever feel after nine hours ramp at Redway's. The worst of it is that + you always think the thing so bad too when you're in that state. I + can't imagine anything more idiotic than what I've just finished. + Well, enough of work and all its works. By all means come on Monday + evening, but don't be frightened if by any chance I'm not in till + about 6.30, as Monday is a busy day. Of course you'll stop to + dinner . . . what an idiotically long time 8 weeks is. . . . + +This letter does not seem to bear out the suggestion in Cecil's book* +of Gilbert's probable uselessness to the publishers for whom he +worked. After all, literacy is more needful to most publishers than +automatic practicality, because it is so very much rarer. Probably +G.K. would have been absolutely invaluable had he been a little less +kind-hearted. His dislike of sending back a manuscript and making an +author unhappy would have been a bar to his utility as a reader. But +there are lots of other things to do besides rejecting manuscripts, +and two later letters show how capable Gilbert was felt to be in +doing most of them. + +[* _G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism_, see p. 23.] + +The exact date at which he left Redway's for the publishing firm of +Fisher Unwin (of 11 Paternoster Buildings) I cannot discover, but it +was fairly early and he was several years with Fisher Unwin, only +gradually beginning to move over into journalism. + +"He did nothing for himself," says Lucian Oldershaw, "till we +[Bentley and Oldershaw] came down from Oxford and pushed him." + +The following letters belong to 1898, being written to Frances when +they were already engaged, but I put them here as they give some +notion of the work he did for his employer. + + . . . The book I have to deal with for Unwin is an exhaustive and I + am told interesting work on "Rome and the Empire" a kind of + realistic, modern account of the life of the ancient world. I have + got to fix it up, choose illustrations, introductions, notes, etc., + and all because I am the only person who knows a little Latin and + precious little Roman history and no more archaeology than a blind + cat. It is entertaining, and just like our firm's casual way. The + work ought to be done by an authority on Roman antiquities. If I + hadn't been there they would have given it to the office boy. + + However, I shall get through it all right: the more I see of the + publishing world, the more I come to the conclusion that I know next + to nothing, but that the vast mass of literary people know less. This + is sometimes called having "a public-school education."* + +[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 11, 1898).] + +* * * + + I have a lot of work to do, as Unwin has given the production of an + important book entirely into my hands, as a kind of invisible editor. + It is complimentary, but very worrying, and will mean a lot of time + at the British Museum.* + +[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 29, 1898).] + + 11 Paternoster Bldgs. + (Postmark, December 1898) + + . . . For fear that you should really suppose that my observations + about being busy are the subterfuges of a habitual liar, I may give + you briefly some idea of the irons at present in the fire. As far as + I can make out there are at least seven things that I have undertaken + to do and everyone of them I ought to do before any of the others. + + 1st. There is the book about Ancient Rome which I have to do for + T.F.U.--arrange and get illustrations etc. This all comes of showing + off. It is a story with a moral (Greedy Gilbert: or Little Boys + Should be Seen and not Heard). A short time ago I had to read a + treatise by Dean Stubbs on "The Ideal Woman of the Poets" in which + the Dean remarked that "all the women admired by Horace were + wantons." This struck me as a downright slander, slight as is my + classical knowledge, and in my report I asked loftily what Dean + Stubbs made of those noble lines on the wife who hid her husband + from his foes. + + _Splendide mendax et in omne virgo + Nobilis aevum_ + + One of the purest and stateliest tributes ever made to a woman. + (The lines might be roughly rendered "A magnificent liar and a noble + lady for all eternity"; but no translation can convey the + organ-voice of the verse, in which the two strong and lonely words + "noble" and "eternity" stand solitary for the last line.) In + consequence of my taking up the cudgels against a live Dean for the + manly moral sense of the dear old Epicurean, the office became + impressed with a vague idea that I know something about Latin + literature--whereas, as a matter of fact I have forgotten even the + line before the one I quoted. However, in the most confidential and + pathetic manner I was entrusted with doing with "Rome et l'Empire" + work which ought to be done by a scholar. . . . + + 2nd. Then there is Captain Webster. You ask (in gruff, rumbling + tones) "Who is Captain Webster?" I will tell you. + + Captain Webster is a small man with a carefully waxed moustache and + a very Bond Street get up, living at the Grosvenor Hotel. Talking to + him you would say: he is an ass, but an agreeable ass, a humble, + transparent honourable ass. He is an innocent and idiotic butterfly. + The interesting finishing touch is that he has been to New Guinea for + four years or so, and had some of the most hideous and extravagant + adventures that could befall a modern man. His yacht was surrounded + by shoals of canoes full of myriads of cannibals of a race who file + their teeth to look like the teeth of dogs, and hang weights in their + ears till the ears hang like dogs' ears, on the shoulder. He held his + yacht at the point of the revolver and got away, leaving some of his + men dead on the shore. All night long he heard the horrible noise of + the banqueting gongs and saw the huge fires that told his friends + were being eaten. Now he lives in the Grosvenor Hotel. Captain + Webster finds the pen, not only mightier than the sword, but also + much more difficult. He has written his adventures and we are to + publish them and I am translating the honest captain into English + grammar, a thing which appals him much more than Papuan savages. This + means going through it carefully of course and rewriting many parts + of it, where relatives and dependent sentences have been lost past + recovery. I went to see him, and his childlike dependence on me was + quite pathetic. His general attitude was, "You see I'm such a damned + fool." And so he is. But when I compare him with the Balzacian + hauteur and the preposterous posing of many of our Fleet Street + decadent geniuses, I feel a movement of the blood which declares that + perhaps there are worse things than War. (Between ourselves, I have a + sneaking sympathy with fighting: I fought horribly at school. It is + well you should know my illogicalities.) + + 3rd. There is the selection of illustrations for the History of + China we are producing. I know no more of China than the Man in the + Moon (less, for he has seen it, at any rate), except what I got from + reading the book, but of course I shall make the most of what I do + know and airily talk of La-o-tsee and Wu-sank-Wei, criticise + Chung-tang and Fu-Tche, compare Tchieu Lung with his great successor, + whose name I have forgotten, and the Napoleonic vigour of Li with the + weak opportunism of Woo. Before I have done I hope people will be + looking behind for my pig-tail. The name I shall adopt will be + Tches-Ter-Ton. + + 4th. A MS to read translated from the Norwegian: a History of the + Kiss, Ceremonial, Amicable, Amatory, etc.--in the worst French + sentimental style. God alone knows how angry I am with the author of + that book. I am not sure that I shall not send up the brief report. + "A snivelling hound." + + 5th. The book for Nutt [_Greybeards at Play_], which has reached + its worst stage, that of polishing up for the eye of Nutt, instead of + merely rejoicing in the eye of God. Do you know this is the only one + of the lot about which I am at all worried. I do not feel as if + things like the Fish poem are really worth publishing. I know they + are better than many books that are published, but Heaven knows that + is not saying much. In support of some of my work I would fight to + the last. But with regard to this occasional verse I feel a humbug. + To publish a book of my nonsense verses seems to me exactly like + summoning the whole of the people of Kensington to see me smoke + cigarettes. + + Macgregor told me that I should do much better in the business of + literature if I found the work more difficult. My facility, he said, + led me to undervalue my work. I wonder whether this is true, and + those silly rhymes are any good after all. + + 6th. The collection of more serious poems of which I spoke to you. + You shall have a hand in the selection of these when you get back. + + 7th. The Novel--which though I have put it aside for the present, + yet has become too much a part of me not to be constantly having + chapters written--or rather growing out of the others. + + And all these things, with the exception of the last one, are + supposed to be really urgent, and to be done immediately. . . . Now I + hope I have sickened you forever of wanting to know the details of my + dull affairs. But I hope it may give you some notion of how hard it + really is to get time for writing just now. For you see they are none + of them even mechanical things: they all require some thinking about. + + I am afraid . . . that if you really want to know what I do, you + must forgive me for seeming egoistic. That is the tragedy of the + literary person: his very existence is an assertion of his own mental + vanity: he must pretend to be conceited even if he isn't. . . . + +Beginning to publish, beginning to write, and still developing +mentally at a frantic rate--this is a summary of the years 1895-8. + +As the Notebook shows, Gilbert was reflecting deeply at this time on +the relations both between God and man and between man and his fellow +man. The realisation that their relations had gone very far wrong was +necessarily followed--for Gilbert's _mind_ was an immensely practical +one--by the question of what the proposed remedies were worth. He has +told us that he became a Socialist at this time only because it was +intolerable not to be a Socialist. The Socialists seemed the only +people who were looking at conditions as they were and finding them +unendurable. Christian Socialism seemed at first sight, for anyone +who admired Christ, to be the obvious form of Socialism, and, in a +fragment of this period, G.K. traces the resemblance of modern +collectivism to early Christianity. + + The points in which Christian and Socialistic collectivism are at + one are simple and fundamental. As, however, we must proceed + carefully in this matter, we may state these points of resemblance + under three heads. + + (1) Both rise from the deeps of an emotion, the emotion of compassion + for misfortune, as such. This is really a very important point. + Collectivism is not an intellectual fad, even if erroneous, but a + passionate protest and aspiration: it arises as a secret of the + heart, a dream of the injured feeling, long before it shapes itself + as a definite propaganda at all. The intellectual philosophies ally + themselves with success and preach competition, but the human heart + allies itself with misfortune and suggests communism. + + (2) Both trace the evil state of society to "covetousness," the + competitive desire to accumulate riches. Thus, both in one case and + the other, the mere possession of wealth is in itself an offence + against moral order, the absence of it in itself a recommendation and + training for the higher life. + + (3) Both propose to remedy the evil of competition by a system of + "bearing each other's burdens" in the literal sense, that is to say, + of levelling, silencing and reducing one's own chances, for the + chance of your weaker brethren. The desirability, they say, of a + great or clever man acquiring fame is small compared with the + desirability of a weak and broken man acquiring bread. The strong man + is a man, and should modify or adapt himself to the hopes of his + mates. He that would be first among you, let him be the servant of + all. + + These are the three fountains of collectivist passion. I have not + considered it necessary to enter into elaborate proof of the presence + of these three in the Gospels. That the main trend of Jesus' + character was compassion for human ills, that he denounced not merely + covetousness but riches again and again, and with an almost impatient + emphasis, and that he insisted on his followers throwing up personal + aims and sharing funds and fortune entirely, these are plain matters + of evidence presented again and again, and, in fact, of common + admission. + +Yet that uncanny thing in Gilbert which always forced him to see +facts, mutinied again at this point and produced another fragment in +which he has moved closer to Christianity and thereby further away +from modern Socialism. The world he lived in contained a certain +number of Christians who were, he found, highly doubtful about the +Christian impulse of Socialism. And most of his Socialist friends had +about them a tone of bitterness and an atmosphere of hopelessness +utterly unlike the tone and the atmosphere of Christianity. Just as +atheists were the first people to turn Gilbert from Atheism towards +dogmatic Christianity, so the Socialists were now turning him from +Socialism. + +The next fragment is rather long, but it was never published and I +think it so important, as showing how his mind was moving, that it +cannot well be shortened. It is a document of capital importance for +the biography of Chesterton. + + Now, for my own part, I cannot in the least agree with those who + see no difference between Christian and modern Socialism, nor do I + for a moment join in some Christian Socialists' denunciations of + those worthy middle-class people who cannot see the connection. For I + cannot help thinking that in a way these latter people are right. No + reasonable man can read the Sermon on the Mount and think that its + tone is not very different from that of most collectivist speculation + of the present day, and the Philistines feel this, though they cannot + distinctly express it. There is a difference between Christ's + Socialist program and that of our own time, a difference deep, + genuine and all important, and it is this which I wish to point out. + + Let us take two types side by side, or rather the same type in the + two different atmospheres. Let us take the "rich young man" of the + Gospels and place beside him the rich young man of the present day, + on the threshold of Socialism. If we were to follow the difficulties, + theories, doubts, resolves, and conclusions of each of these + characters, we should find two very distinct threads of + self-examination running through the two lives. And the essence of + the difference was this: the modern Socialist is saying, "What will + society do?" while his prototype, as we read, said, "What shall I + do?" Properly considered, this latter sentence contains the whole + essence of the older Communism. The modern Socialist regards his + theory of regeneration as a duty which society owes to him, the early + Christian regarded it as a duty which he owed to society; the modern + Socialist is busy framing schemes for its fulfilment, the early + Christian was busy considering whether he would himself fulfil it + there and then; the ideal of modern Socialism is an elaborate Utopia + to which he hopes the world may be tending, the ideal of the early + Christian was an actual nucleus "living the new life" to whom he + might join himself if he liked. Hence the constant note running + through the whole gospel, of the importance, difficulty and + excitement of the "call," the individual and practical request made + by Christ to every rich man, "sell all thou hast and give to the + poor." + + To us Socialism comes speculatively as a noble and optimistic + theory of what may [be] the crown of progress, to Peter and James and + John it came practically as a crisis of their own Daily life, a + stirring question of conduct and renunciation. + + We do not therefore in the least agree with those who hold that + modern Socialism is an exact counterpart or fulfilment of the + socialism of Christianity. We find the difference important and + profound, despite the common ground of anti-selfish collectivism. The + modern Socialist regards Communism as a distant panacea for society, + the early Christian regarded it as an immediate and difficult + regeneration of himself: the modern Socialist reviles, or at any rate + reproaches, society for not adopting it, the early Christian + concentrated his thoughts on the problem of his own fitness and + unfitness to adopt it: to the modern Socialist it is a theory, to the + early Christian it was a call; modern Socialism says, "Elaborate a + broad, noble and workable system and submit it to the progressive + intellect of society." Early Christianity said, "Sell all thou hast + and give to the poor." + + This distinction between the social and personal way of regarding + the change has two sides, a spiritual and a practical which we + propose to notice. The spiritual side of it, though of less direct + and revolutionary importance than the practical, has still a very + profound philosophic significance. To us it appears something + extraordinary that this Christian side of Socialism, the side of the + difficulty of the personal sacrifice, and the patience, cheerfulness, + and good temper necessary for the protracted personal surrender is so + constantly overlooked. The literary world is flooded with old men + seeing visions and young men dreaming dreams, with various stages of + anti-competitive enthusiasm, with economic apocalypses, elaborate + Utopias and mushroom destinies of mankind. And, as far as we have + seen, in all this whirlwind of theoretic excitement there is not a + word spoken of the intense practical difficulty of the summons to the + individual, the heavy, unrewarding cross borne by him who gives up + the world. + + For it will not surely be denied that not only will Socialism be + impossible without some effort on the part of individuals, but that + Socialism if once established would be rapidly dissolved, or worse + still, diseased, if the individual members of the community did not + make a constant effort to do that which in the present state of human + nature must mean an effort, to live the higher life. Mere state + systems could not bring about and still less sustain a reign of + unselfishness, without a cheerful decision on the part of the members + to forget selfishness even in little things, and for that most + difficult and at the same time most important personal decision + Christ made provision and the modern theorists make no provision at + all. Some modern Socialists do indeed see that something more is + necessary for the golden age than fixed incomes and universal stores + tickets, and that the fountain heads of all real improvement are to + be found in human temper and character. Mr. William Morris, for + instance, in his "News from Nowhere" gives a beautiful picture of a + land ruled by Love, and rightly grounds the give-and-take camaraderie + of his ideal state upon an assumed improvement in human nature. But + he does not tell us how such an improvement is to be effected, and + Christ did. Of Christ's actual method in this matter I shall speak + afterwards when dealing with the practical aspect, my object just now + is to compare the spiritual and emotional effects of the call of + Christ, as compared to those of the vision of Mr. William Morris. + When we compare the spiritual attitudes of two thinkers, one of whom + is considering whether social history has been sufficiently a course + of improvement to warrant him in believing that it will culminate in + universal altruism, while the other is considering whether he loves + other people enough to walk down tomorrow to the market-place and + distribute everything but his staff and his scrip, it will not be + denied that the latter is likely to undergo certain deep and acute + emotional experiences, which will be quite unknown to the former. And + these emotional experiences are what we understand as the spiritual + aspect of the distinction. For three characteristics at least the + Galilean programme makes more provision; humility, activity, + cheerfulness, the real triad of Christian virtues. + + Humility is a grand, a stirring thing, the exalting paradox of + Christianity, and the sad want of it in our own time is, we believe, + what really makes us think life dull, like a cynic, instead of + marvellous, like a child. With this, however, we have at present + nothing to do. What we have to do with is the unfortunate fact that + among no persons is it more wanting than among Socialists, Christian + and other. The isolated or scattered protest for a complete change in + social order, the continual harping on one string, the necessarily + jaundiced contemplation of a system already condemned, and above all, + the haunting pessimistic whisper of a possible hopelessness of + overcoming the giant forces of success, all these impart undeniably + to the modern Socialist a tone excessively imperious and bitter. Nor + can we reasonably blame the average money-getting public for their + impatience with the monotonous virulence of men who are constantly + reviling them for not living communistically, and who after all, are + not doing it themselves. Willingly do we allow that these latter + enthusiasts think it impossible in the present state of society to + practise their ideal, but this fact, while vindicating their + indisputable sincerity, throws an unfortunate vagueness and + inconclusiveness over their denunciations of other people in the same + position. Let us compare with this arrogant and angry tone among the + modern Utopians who can only dream "the life," the tone of the early + Christian who was busy living it. As far as we know, the early + Christians never regarded it as astonishing that the world as they + found it was competitive and unregenerate; they seem to have felt + that it could not in its pre-Christian ignorance have been anything + else, and their whole interest was bent on their own standard of + conduct and exhortation which was necessary to convert it. They felt + that it was by no merit of theirs that they had been enabled to enter + into the life before the Romans, but simply as a result of the fact + that Christ had appeared in Galilee and not in Rome. Lastly, they + never seem to have entertained a doubt that the message would itself + convert the world with a rapidity and ease which left no room for + severe condemnation of the heathen societies. + + With regard to the second merit, that of activity, there can be + little doubt as to where it lies between the planner of the Utopia + and the convert of the brotherhood. The modern Socialist is a + visionary, but in this he is on the same ground as half the great men + of the world, and to some extent of the early Christian himself, who + rushed towards a personal ideal very difficult to sustain. The + visionary who yearns toward an ideal which is practically impossible + is not useless or mischievous, but often the opposite; but the person + who is often useless, and always mischievous, is the visionary who + dreams with the knowledge or the half-knowledge that his ideal is + impossible. The early Christian might be wrong in believing that by + entering the brotherhood men could in a few years become perfect even + as their Father in Heaven was perfect, but he believed it and acted + flatly and fearlessly on the belief: this is the type of the higher + visionary. But all the insidious dangers of the vision; the idleness, + the procrastination, the mere mental aestheticism, come in when the + vision is indulged, as half our Socialistic conceptions are, as a + mere humour or fairy-tale, with a consciousness, half-confessed, that + it is beyond practical politics, and that we need not be troubled + with its immediate fulfilment. The visionary who believes in his own + most frantic vision is always noble and useful. It is the visionary + who does not believe in his vision who is the dreamer, the idler, the + Utopian. This then is the second moral virtue of the older school, an + immense direct sincerity of action, a cleansing away, by the sweats + of hard work, of all those subtle and perilous instincts of mere + ethical castle-building which have been woven like the spells of an + enchantress, round so many of the strong men of our own time. + + The third merit, which I have called cheerfulness, is really the + most important of all. We may perhaps put the comparison in this way. + It might strike many persons as strange that in a time on the whole + so optimistic in its intellectual beliefs as this is, in an age when + only a small minority disbelieve in social progress, and a large + majority believe in an ultimate social perfection, there should be + such a tired and blasé feeling among numbers of young men. This, we + think, is due, not to the want of an ultimate ideal, but to that of + any immediate way of making for it: not of something to hope but of + something to do. A human being is not satisfied and never will be + satisfied with being told that it is all right: what he wants is not + a prediction of what other people will be hundreds of years hence, to + make him cheerful, but a new and stirring test and task for himself, + which will assuredly make him cheerful. A knight is not contented + with the statement that his commander has hid his plans so as to + insure victory: what the knight wants is a sword. This demand for a + task is not mere bravado, it is an eternal and natural part of the + higher optimism, as deep-rooted as the foreshadowing of perfection. + +I do not know whether Gilbert would yet have actually called himself +a Christian. He was certainly tending towards the more Christian +elements in his surroundings. It seems pretty clear from all he wrote +and said later that he did not hold that transformation to have been +fully effected until after his meeting with Frances, to whom he wrote +many years later: + + Therefore I bring these rhymes to you + Who brought the Cross to me. + +These papers are undated and are arranged in no sequence. It is +possible this last one was written after their first meeting. Certain +it is that in it he had begun feeling after a more Christian +arrangement of society than Socialism offered--and particularly after +an arrangement better suited to the nature of man. This thought of +man's nature as primary was to remain the basis of his social +thinking to the end of his life. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Incipit Vita Nova + + +IN THE NOTEBOOK may be seen Gilbert's occasional thoughts +about his own future love story. + + SUDDENLY IN THE MIDST + + Suddenly in the midst of friends, + Of brothers known to me more and more, + And their secrets, histories, tastes, hero-worships, + Schemes, love-affairs, known to me + Suddenly I felt lonely. + Felt like a child in a field with no more games to play + Because I have not a lady + to whom to send my thought at that hour + that she might crown my peace. + + MADONNA MIA + + About her whom I have not yet met + I wonder what she is doing + Now, at this sunset hour, + Working perhaps, or playing, worrying or laughing, + Is she making tea, or singing a song, or writing, + or praying, or reading + Is she thoughtful, as I am thoughtful + Is she looking now out of the window + As I am looking out of the window? + +But a few pages later comes the entry: + + F.B. + + You are a very stupid person. + I don't believe you have the least idea how nice you are. + +F.B. was Frances, daughter of a diamond merchant some time dead. The +family was of French descent, the name de Blogue having been somewhat +unfortunately anglicised into Blogg. They had fallen from +considerable wealth into a degree of poverty that made it necessary +for the three daughters to earn a living. Frances was never strong +and Gilbert has told how utterly exhausted she was at the end of each +day's toil--"she worked very hard as secretary of an educational +society in London."* The family lived in Bedford Park, a suburb of +London that went in for artistic housing and a kind of garden-city +atmosphere long before this was at all general. Judging by their +photographs the three girls must all have been remarkably pretty, and +young men frequented the house in great numbers, among them Brimley +Johnson who was engaged to Gertrude, and Lucian Oldershaw who later +married Ethel. Some time in 1896, Oldershaw took Gilbert to call and +Gilbert, literally at first sight, fell in love with Frances. + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 153.] + + TO MY LADY + + God made you very carefully + He set a star apart for it + He stained it green and gold with fields + And aureoled it with sunshine + He peopled it with kings, peoples, republics + And so made you, very carefully. + All nature is God's book, filled with his rough sketches for you.* + +[* _The Notebook_.] + +When almost forty years later Gilbert was writing his +_Autobiography_, Frances asked him to keep her out of it. The liking +they both had for keeping private life private made him call it "this +very Victorian narrative." Nevertheless he tells us something of the +early days of their acquaintance. Gilbert had mentioned the moon: + + She told me in the most normal and unpretentious tone that she + hated the moon. I talked to the same lady several times afterwards; + and found that this was a perfectly honest statement of the fact. Her + attitude on this and other things might be called a prejudice; but it + could not possibly be called a fad, still less an affectation. She + really had an obstinate objection to all those natural forces that + seemed to be sterile or aimless; she disliked loud winds that seemed + to be going nowhere; she did not care much for the sea, a spectacle + of which I was very fond; and by the same instinct she was up against + the moon, which she said looked like an imbecile. On the other hand, + she had a sort of hungry appetite for all the fruitful things like + fields and gardens and anything connected with production; about + which she was quite practical. She practised gardening; in that + curious cockney culture she would have been quite ready to practise + farming; and on the same perverse principle, she actually practised a + religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both to me and to + the whole fussy culture in which she lived. Any number of people + proclaimed religions, chiefly oriental religions, analysed or argued + about them; but that anybody could regard religion as a practical + thing like gardening was something quite new to me and, to her + neighbours, new and incomprehensible. She had been, by an accident, + brought up in the school of an Anglo-Catholic convent; and to all + that agnostic or mystic world, practising a religion was much more + puzzling than professing it. She was a queer card. She wore a green + velvet dress barred with grey fur, which I should have called + artistic, but that she hated all the talk about art; and she had an + attractive face, which I should have called elvish, but that she + hated all the talk about elves. But what was arresting and almost + blood-curdling about her, in that social atmosphere, was not so much + that she hated it, as that she was entirely unaffected by it. She + never knew what was meant by being "under the influence" of Yeats or + Shaw or Tolstoy or anybody else. She was intelligent, with a great + love of literature, and especially of Stevenson. But if Stevenson had + walked into the room and explained his personal doubts about personal + immortality, she would have regretted that he should be wrong upon + the point; but would otherwise have been utterly unaffected. She was + not at all like Robespierre, except in a taste for neatness in dress; + and yet it is only in Mr. Belloc's book on Robespierre that I have + ever found any words that describe the unique quality that cut her + off from the current culture and saved her from it. "God had given + him in his mind a stone tabernacle in which certain great truths were + preserved imperishable."* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 151-3.] + +A letter to a friend, Mildred Wain, who was now engaged to Waldo +d'Avigdor, makes the future tolerably easy to foresee. + + . . . My brother wishes me to thank you with ferocious gratitude + for the music, which he is enjoying tremendously. It reminds me + rather of what Miss Frances Blogg--but that is another story. + + In your last letter you enquired whether I saw anything of the + Bloggs now. If you went and put that question to them there would be + a scene. Mrs. Blogg would probably fall among the fire-irons, Knollys + would foam in convulsions on the carpet, Ethel would scream and take + refuge on the mantelpiece and Gertrude faint and break off her + engagement. Frances would--but no intelligent person can affect an + interest in what she does. + +Lawrence Solomon told me that Mrs. Edward Chesterton did not approve +of the rather arty-crafty atmosphere of Bedford Park--that earliest +of Garden Cities, so conventionally unconventional--where Frances +lived. She did not like her son's friendship with the Bloggs and she +had chosen for him a girl who she felt would make him an ideal wife: +"Very open air," Mr. Solomon said. "Not booky, but good at games and +practical." He was not sure whether Gilbert realised this, but +personally I believe that Gilbert realised everything. + +"Of course you know," Annie Firmin wrote to me, "that Aunt Marie +never liked Frances? Or Bentley?" Annie was the girl chosen by +Gilbert's mother. She was very much a member of the family. + +"Did Gilbert ever speak to you," she wrote to me recently, "of the +old Saturday night parties at Barnes, at the home of the +grandparents--every Saturday night the family, or as many of it as +could, used to go down to Barnes to supper, and the 'boys' and Tom +Gilbert, Alice Chesterton's husband, used to sing round the supper +table. Many a one I went to when I was staying at Warwick Gardens. We +used to go on a red Hammersmith bus, before the days of motor cars." + +On a longer trip they stayed at Berck in Belgium, and Cecil had a +strange idea, apparently regarded by him as humorous, which measures +the family absence of a Christian sense at this date. "Cecil urged me +to sit at the foot of the big Crucifix in the village street and let +him photograph me as Mary Magdalen! I _didn't_, and I don't know how +he thought he'd get away with the modern clothing." + +Whatever Gilbert's mother may have planned for them, neither she nor +Gilbert had any romantic feeling for each other. Indeed Cecil was +definitely her favourite and she believed him the favourite of both +parents also. "He had more heart," she says, "than the more brilliant +Gilbert." Anyhow, his heart was shown more openly to her. + +"Cecil was not much given to versifying," she wrote in another +letter, "he sent me the enclosed when my son was born. I value it so +much." Headed "To Annie" the poem is a long one. It begins with the +"ancient comradeship, loyal and unbroken" in which they had "first +seen life together." + + Shining nights, tumultuous days, + Joy swift caught in sudden ways, + All the laughter, love and praise, + All the joys of living + + These we shared together dear, + Plot and jest and story, + This is hid, shut off, unknown, + Seeing that to you alone + Is the wondrous Kingdom shown + And the power and Glory! + +Annie's thoughts, then, and Cecil's were not greatly on the elder +brother, who was pursuing his own romance with a heart that seems to +have been fairly adequate in its energies. + +Most mothers have watched their sons through one or more experiences +of calf love: Gilbert indicates in the _Autobiography_--and I knew +it, too, from some jokes he and Frances used to make--that he had had +one or two fancies before the coming of Reality. He must then +convince his mother that Reality had come: he must overcome a +prejudice avowed by neither: he must call on the deeps of a mother's +feelings so effectively that it would never now be avowed, that it +might indeed be swept away. + +And so, sitting at a table in a seaside lodging, as his mother sat in +the same room or moved about making cocoa for the family, Gilbert +tried to express what even for him was the inexpressible. + + 1 Rosebery Villas + Granville Road + Felixstowe. + + MY DEAREST MOTHER, + + You may possibly think this a somewhat eccentric proceeding. You + are sitting opposite and talking--about Mrs. Berline. But I take this + method of addressing you because it occurs to me that you might + possibly wish to turn the matter over in your mind before writing or + speaking to me about it. + + I am going to tell you the whole of a situation in which I believe + I have acted rightly, though I am not absolutely certain, and to ask + for your advice on it. It was a somewhat complicated one, and I + repeat that I do not think I could rightly have acted otherwise, but + if I were the greatest fool in the three kingdoms and had made + nothing but a mess of it, there is one person I should always turn to + and trust. Mothers know more of their son's idiocies than other + people can, and this has been peculiarly true in your case. I have + always rejoiced at this, and not been ashamed of it: this has always + been true and always will be. These things are easier written than + said, but you know it is true, don't you? + + I am inexpressibly anxious that you should give me credit for + having done my best, and for having constantly had in mind the way in + which you would be affected by the letter I am now writing. I do hope + you will be pleased. + + Almost eight years ago, you made a remark--this may show you that + if we "jeer" at your remarks, we remember them. The remark applied to + the hypothetical young lady with whom I should fall in love and took + the form of saying "If she is good, I shan't mind who she is." I + don't know how many times I have said that over to myself in the last + two or three days in which I have decided on this letter. + + Do not be frightened; or suppose that anything sensational or final + has occurred. I am not married, my dear mother, neither am I engaged. + You are called to the council of chiefs very early in its + deliberations. If you don't mind I will tell you, briefly, the whole + story. + + You are, I think, the shrewdest person for seeing things whom I + ever knew: consequently I imagine that you do not think that I go + down to Bedford Park every Sunday for the sake of the scenery. I + should not wonder if you know nearly as much about the matter as I + can tell in a letter. Suffice it to say however briefly (for neither + of us care much for gushing: this letter is not on Mrs. Ratcliffe + lines) that the first half of my time of acquaintance with the Bloggs + was spent in enjoying a very intimate, but quite breezy and Platonic + friendship with Frances Blogg, reading, talking and enjoying life + together, having great sympathies on all subjects; and the second + half in making the thrilling, but painfully responsible discovery + that Platonism, on my side, had not the field by any means to itself. + That is how we stand now. No one knows, except her family and + yourself. + + My dearest mother, I am sure you are at least not unsympathetic. + Indeed we love each other more than we shall either of us ever be + able to say. I have refrained from sentiment in this letter--for I + don't think you like it much. But love is a very different thing from + sentiment and you will never laugh at that. I will not say that you + are sure to like Frances, for all young men say that to their + mothers, quite naturally, and their mothers never believe them, also, + quite naturally. Besides, I am so confident, I should like you to + find her out for yourself. She is, in reality, very much the sort of + woman you like, what is called, I believe, "a Woman's Woman," very + humorous, inconsequent and sympathetic and defiled with no offensive + exuberance of good health. + + I have nothing more to say, except that you and she have occupied + my mind for the last week to the exclusion of everything else, which + must account for my abstraction, and that in her letter she sent the + following message: "Please tell your mother soon. Tell her I am not + so silly as to expect her to think me good enough, but really I will + try to be." + + An aspiration which, considered from my point of view, naturally + provokes a smile. + + Here you give me a cup of cocoa. Thank you. + + Believe me, my dearest mother, + + Always your very affectionate son + + GILBERT. + +What exactly Gilbert meant by saying they were "not engaged" it is +hard to surmise, in view of Frances's message to her future +mother-in-law. Of his sensations when proposing Gilbert gives some +idea in the _Autobiography:_ + + It was fortunate, however, that our next most important meeting was + not under the sign of the moon but of the sun. She has often + affirmed, during our later acquaintance, that if the sun had not been + shining to her complete satisfaction on that day, the issue might + have been quite different. It happened in St. James's Park; where + they keep the ducks and the little bridge, which has been mentioned + in no less authoritative a work than Mr. Belloc's Essay on Bridges, + since I find myself quoting that author once more. I think he deals + in some detail, in his best topographical manner, with various + historic sites on the Continent; but later relapses into a larger + manner, somewhat thus: "The time has now come to talk at large about + Bridges. The longest bridge in the world is the Forth Bridge, and the + shortest bridge in the world is a plank over a ditch in the village + of Loudwater. The bridge that frightens you most is the Brooklyn + Bridge, and the bridge that frightens you least is the bridge in St. + James's Park." I admit that I crossed that bridge in undeserved + safety; and perhaps I was affected by my early romantic vision of the + bridge leading to the princess's tower. But I can assure my friend + the author that the bridge in St. James's Park can frighten you a + good deal.* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 154-5.] + +Now, with Frances promised to him, Gilbert could enjoy everything +properly, could execute, verbally at least, a wild fantasia. Among +the first of his friends to be written to was Mildred Wain, because, +as he says in a later letter, he felt towards her deep gratitude "for +forming a topic of conversation on my first visit to a family with +which I have since formed a dark and shameful connection." + + DEAR MILDRED, + + On rising this morning, I carefully washed my boots in hot water + and blacked my face. Then assuming my coat with graceful ease and + with the tails in front, I descended to breakfast, where I gaily + poured the coffee on the sardines and put my hat on the fire to boil. + These activities will give you some idea of my frame of mind. My + family, observing me leave the house by way of the chimney, and take + the fender with me under one arm, thought I must have something on my + mind. So I had. + + My friend, I am engaged. I am only telling it at present to my real + friends: but there is no doubt about it. The next question that + arises is--whom am I engaged to? I have investigated this problem + with some care, and, as far as I can make out, the best authorities + point to Frances Blogg. There can I think be no reasonable doubt that + she is the lady. It is as well to have these minor matters clear in + one's mind. + + I am very much too happy to write much; but I thought you might + remember my existence sufficiently to be interested in the incident. + + Waldo has been of so much help to me in this and in everything, and + I am so much interested in you for his sake and your own, that I am + encouraged to hope our friendship may subsist. If ever I have done + anything rude or silly, it was quite inadvertent. I have always + wished to please you. + +To Annie Firmin he wrote: + + I can only think of the day, one of the earliest I can recall of my + life, when you came in and helped me to build a house with bricks. I + am building another one now, and it would not have been complete + without your going over it. + +To others he wrote such sentences as he could put together in the +whirlwind of his happiness. For himself he stammered in a verse that +grew with the years into his great love poetry. + + God made thee mightily, my love, + He stretched his hands out of his rest + And lit the star of east and west + Brooding o'er darkness like a dove. + God made thee mightily, my love. + + God made thee patiently, my sweet, + Out of all stars he chose a star + He made it red with sunset bar + And green with greeting for thy feet. + God made thee mightily, my sweet. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +To Frances + + +THIS CHAPTER CAN be written only by Gilbert himself. It might seem +that he had no words left for an emotion heightened beyond the love +of his friends and the joyous acceptance of existence. But in these +letters he shows the truth of his own theory, that to love each thing +separately strengthens the power of loving, to have tried to love +everyone is, as he tells Frances, no bad preparation for loving her. +The emotion of falling in love had both intensified his appreciation +of all things and cast for him a vivid light on past, present and +future, so that in the last of these letters he sketches his life +down to the moment when a new life begins. + +". . . I am looking over the sea and endeavouring to reckon up the +estate I have to offer you. As far as I can make out my equipment for +starting on a journey to fairyland consists of the following items. + +"1st. A Straw Hat. The oldest part of this admirable relic shows +traces of pure Norman work. The vandalism of Cromwell's soldiers has +left us little of the original hat-band. + +"2nd. A Walking Stick, very knobby and heavy: admirably fitted to +break the head of any denizen of Suffolk who denies that you are the +noblest of ladies, but of no other manifest use. + +"3rd. A copy of Walt Whitman's poems, once nearly given to Salter, +but quite forgotten. It has his name in it still with an affectionate +inscription from his sincere friend Gilbert Chesterton. I wonder if +he will ever have it. + +"4th. A number of letters from a young lady, containing everything +good and generous and loyal and holy and wise that isn't in Walt +Whitman's poems. + +"5th. An unwieldy sort of a pocket knife, the blades mostly having an +edge of a more varied and picturesque outline than is provided by the +prosaic cutter. The chief element however is a thing 'to take stones +out of a horse's hoof.' What a beautiful sensation of security it +gives one to reflect that if one should ever have money enough to buy +a horse and should happen to buy one and the horse should happen to +have a stone in his hoof--that one is ready; one stands prepared, +with a defiant smile! + +"6th. Passing from the last miracle of practical foresight, we come +to a box of matches. Every now and then I strike one of these, +because fire is beautiful and burns your fingers. Some people think +this waste of matches: the same people who object to the building of +Cathedrals. + +"7th. About three pounds in gold and silver, the remains of one of +Mr. Unwin's bursts of affection: those explosions of spontaneous love +for myself, which, such is the perfect order and harmony of his mind, +occur at startlingly exact intervals of time. + +"8th. A book of Children's Rhymes, in manuscript, called the 'Weather +Book' about ¾ finished, and destined for Mr. Nutt.* I have been +working at it fairly steadily, which I think jolly creditable under +the circumstances. One can't put anything interesting in it. They'll +understand those things when they grow up. + +[* _Greybeards at Play_.] + +"9th. A tennis racket--nay, start not. It is a part of the new +régime, and the only new and neat-looking thing in the Museum. We'll +soon mellow it--like the straw hat. My brother and I are teaching +each other lawn tennis. + +"10th. A soul, hitherto idle and omnivorous but now happy enough to +be ashamed of itself. + +"11th. A body, equally idle and quite equally omnivorous, absorbing +tea, coffee, claret, sea-water and oxygen to its own perfect +satisfaction. It is happiest swimming, I think, the sea being about a +convenient size. + +"12th. A Heart--mislaid somewhere. And that is about all the property +of which an inventory can be made at present. After all, my tastes +are stoically simple. A straw hat, a stick, a box of matches and some +of his own poetry. What more does man require? . . ." + +". . . The City of Felixstowe, as seen by the local prophet from the +neighbouring mountain-peak, does not strike the eye as having +anything uncanny about it. At least I imagine that it requires rather +careful scrutiny before the eerie curl of a chimney pot, or the elfin +wink of a lonely lamp-post brings home to the startled soul that it +is really the City of a Fearful Folk. That the inhabitants are not +human in the ordinary sense is quite clear, yet it has only just +begun to dawn on me after staying a week in the Town of Unreason with +its monstrous landscape and grave, unmeaning customs. Do I seem to be +raving? Let me give my experiences. + +"I am bound to admit that I do not think I am good at shopping. I +generally succeed in getting rid of money, but other observances, +such as bringing away the goods that I've paid for, and knowing what +I've bought, I often pass over as secondary. But to shop in a town of +ordinary tradesmen is one thing: to shop in a town of raving lunatics +is another. I set out one morning, happy and hopeful with the +intention of buying (a) a tennis racket (b) some tennis balls (c) +some tennis shoes (d) a ticket for a tennis ground. I went to the +shop pointed out by some villager (probably mad) and went in and said +I believed they kept tennis rackets. The young man smiled and +assented. I suggested that he might show me some. The young man +looked positively alarmed. 'Oh,' he said, 'We haven't got any--not +got any here.' I asked 'Where?' 'Oh, they're out you know. All +round,' he explained wildly, with a graphic gesture in the direction +of the sea and the sky. 'All out round. We've left them all round at +places.' To this day I don't know what he meant, but I merely asked +when they would quit these weird retreats. He said in an hour: in an +hour I called again. Were they in now? 'Well not in--not in, just +yet,' he said with a sort of feverish confidentialness, as if he +wasn't quite well. 'Are they still--all out at places?' I asked with +restrained humour. 'Oh no!' he said with a burst of reassuring pride. +'They are only out there--out behind, you know.' I hope my face +expressed my beaming comprehension of the spot alluded to. +Eventually, at a third visit, the rackets were produced. None of +them, I was told by my brother, were of any first-class maker, so +that was outside the question. The choice was between some good, neat +first-hand instruments which suited me, and some seedy-looking +second-hand objects with plain deal handles, which would have done at +a pinch. I thought that perhaps it would be better to get a +good-class racket in London and content myself for the present with +economising on one of these second-hand monuments of depression. So I +asked the price. '10/6' was the price of the second-hand article. I +thought this large for the tool, and wondered if the first-hand +rackets were much dearer. What price the first-hand? '7/6' said the +Creature, cheery as a bird. I did not faint. I am strong. + +"I rejected the article which was dearer because it had been hallowed +by human possession, and accepted the cheap, new crude racket. Except +the newness there was no difference between them whatever. I then +asked the smiling Maniac for balls. He brought me a selection of +large red globes nearly as big as Dutch cheeses. I said, 'Are these +tennis-balls?' He said, 'Oh did you want tennis-balls?' I said +Yes--they often came in handy at tennis. The goblin was however quite +impervious to satire, and I left him endeavouring to draw my +attention to his wares in general, particularly to some zinc baths +which he seemed to think should form part of the equipment of a +tennis-player. + +"Never before or since have I met a being of that order and degree of +creepiness. He was a nightmare of unmeaning idiocy. But some mention +ought to be made of the old man at the entrance to the tennis ground +who opened his mouth in parables on the subject of the fee for +playing there. He seemed to have been wound up to make only one +remark, 'It's sixpence.' Under these circumstances the attempt to +discover whether the sixpence covered a day's tennis or a week or +fifty years was rather baffling. At last I put down the sixpence. +This seemed to galvanise him into life. He looked at the clock, which +was indicating five past eleven and said, 'It's sixpence an hour--so +you'll be all right till two.' I fled screaming. + +"Since then I have examined the town more carefully and feel the +presence of something nameless. There is a claw-curl in the sea-bent +trees, an eye-gleam in the dark flints in the wall that is not of +this world. + +"When we set up a house, darling (honeysuckle porch, yew clipt hedge, +bees, poetry and eight shillings a week), I think you will have to do +the shopping. Particularly at Felixstowe. There was a great and +glorious man who said, 'Give us the luxuries of life and we will +dispense with the necessities.' That I think would be a splendid +motto to write (in letters of brown gold) over the porch of our +hypothetical home. There will be a sofa for you, for example, but no +chairs, for I prefer the floor. There will be a select store of +chocolate-creams (to make you do the Carp with) and the rest will be +bread and water. We will each retain a suit of evening dress for +great occasions, and at other times clothe ourselves in the skins of +wild beasts (how pretty you would look) which would fit your taste in +furs and be economical. + +"I have sometimes thought it would be very fine to take an ordinary +house, a very poor, commonplace house in West Kensington, say, and +make it symbolic. Not artistic--Heaven--O Heaven forbid. My blood +boils when I think of the affronts put by knock-kneed pictorial +epicures on the strong, honest, ugly, patient shapes of necessary +things: the brave old bones of life. There are aesthetic pottering +prigs who can look on a saucepan without one tear of joy or sadness: +mongrel decadents that can see no dignity in the honourable scars of +a kettle. So they concentrate all their house decoration on coloured +windows that nobody looks out of, and vases of lilies that everybody +wishes out of the way. No: my idea (which is much cheaper) is to make +a house really allegoric: really explain its own essential meaning. +Mystical or ancient sayings should be inscribed on every object, the +more prosaic the object the better; and the more coarsely and rudely +the inscription was traced the better. 'Hast thou sent the Rain upon +the Earth?' should be inscribed on the Umbrella-stand: perhaps on the +Umbrella. 'Even the Hairs of your Head are all numbered' would give a +tremendous significance to one's hairbrushes: the words about 'living +water' would reveal the music and sanctity of the sink: while 'our +God is a consuming Fire' might be written over the kitchen-grate, to +assist the mystic musings of the cook--Shall we ever try that +experiment, dearest. Perhaps not, for no words would be golden enough +for the tools you had to touch: you would be beauty enough for one +house. . . ." + +". . . By all means let us have bad things in our dwelling and make +them good things. I shall offer no objection to your having an +occasional dragon to dinner, or a penitent Griffin to sleep in the +spare bed. The image of you taking a Sunday school of little Devils +is pleasing. They will look up, first in savage wonder, then in vague +respect; they will see the most glorious and noble lady that ever +lived since their prince tempted Eve, with a halo of hair and great +heavenly eyes that seem to make the good at the heart of things +almost too terribly simple and naked for the sons of flesh: and as +they gaze, their tails will drop off, and their wings will sprout: +and they will become Angels in six lessons. . . . + +"I cannot profess to offer any elaborate explanation of your mother's +disquiet but I admit it does not wholly surprise me. You see I happen +to know one factor in the case, and one only, of which you are wholly +ignorant. I know you . . . I know one thing which has made me feel +strange before your mother--I know the value of what I take away. I +feel (in a weird moment) like the Angel of Death. + +"You say you want to talk to me about death: my views about death are +bright, brisk and entertaining. When Azrael takes a soul it may be to +other and brighter worlds: like those whither you and I go together. +The transformation called Death may be something as beautiful and +dazzling as the transformation called Love. It may make the dead man +'happy,' just as your mother knows that you are happy. But none the +less it is a transformation, and sad sometimes for those left behind. +A mother whose child is dying can hardly believe that in the +inscrutable Unknown there is anyone who can look to it as well as +she. And if a mother cannot trust her child easily to God Almighty, +shall I be so mean as to be angry because she cannot trust it easily +to me? I tell you I have stood before your mother and felt like a +thief. I know you are not going to part: neither physically, +mentally, morally nor spiritually. But she sees a new element in your +life, wholly from outside--is it not natural, given her temperament, +that you should find her perturbed? Oh, dearest, dearest Frances, let +us always be very gentle to older people. Indeed, darling, it is not +they who are the tyrants, but we. They may interrupt our building in +the scaffolding stages: we turn their house upside down when it is +their final home and rest. Your mother would certainly have worried +if you had been engaged to the Archangel Michael (who, indeed, is +bearing his disappointment very well): how much more when you are +engaged to an aimless, tactless, reckless, unbrushed, strange-hatted, +opinionated scarecrow who has suddenly walked into the vacant place. +I could have prophesied her unrest: wait and she will calm down all +right, dear. God comfort her: I dare not. . . ." + +". . . Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born of comfortable but honest +parents on the top of Campden Hill, Kensington. He was christened at +St. George's Church which stands just under that more imposing +building, the Waterworks Tower. This place was chosen, apparently, in +order that the whole available water supply might be used in the +intrepid attempt to make him a member of Christ, a child of God and +an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven. + +"Of the early years of this remarkable man few traces remain. One of +his earliest recorded observations was the simple exclamation, full +of heart-felt delight, 'Look at Baby. Funny Baby.' Here we see the +first hint of that ineffable conversational modesty, that shy social +self-effacement, which has ever hidden his light under a bushel. His +mother also recounts with apparent amusement an incident connected +with his imperious demand for his father's top-hat. 'Give me that +hat, please.' 'No, dear, you mustn't have that.' 'Give me that hat.' +'No, dear--' 'If you don't give it me, I'll say 'At.' An exquisite +selection in the matter of hats has indeed always been one of the +great man's hobbies. + +"When he had drawn pictures on all the blinds and tablecloths and +towels and walls and windowpanes it was felt that he required a +larger sphere. Consequently he was sent to Mr. Bewsher who gave him +desks and copy-books and Latin grammars and atlases to draw pictures +on. He was far too innately conscientious not to use these materials +to draw on. To other uses, asserted by some to belong to these +objects, he paid little heed. The only really curious thing about his +school life was that he had a weird and quite involuntary habit of +getting French prizes. They were the only ones he ever got and he +never tried to get them. But though the thing was quite mysterious to +him, and though he made every effort to avoid it, it went on, being +evidently a part of some occult natural law. + +"For the first half of his time at school he was very solitary and +futile. He never regretted the time, for it gave him two things, +complete mental self-sufficiency and a comprehension of the +psychology of outcasts. + +"But one day, as he was roaming about a great naked building land +which he haunted in play hours, rather like an outlaw in the woods, +he met a curious agile youth with hair brushed up off his head. +Seeing each other, they promptly hit each other simultaneously and +had a fight. Next day they met again and fought again. These Homeric +conflicts went on for many days, till one morning in the crisis of +some insane grapple, the subject of this biography quoted, like a +war-chant, something out of Macaulay's _Lays_. The other started and +relaxed his hold. They gazed at each other. Then the foe quoted the +following line. In this land of savages they knew each other. For the +next two hours they talked books. They have talked books ever since. +The boy was Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The incident just narrated is +the true and real account of the first and deepest of our hero's male +connections. But another was to ensue, probably equally profound and +far more pregnant with awful and dazzling consequences. Bentley +always had a habit of trying to do things well: twelve years of the +other's friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a +peculiar desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of +an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black +Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half +thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea +yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian +Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. 'That night,' as +Shakespeare says, 'there was a star.' + +"These three persons soon became known through the length and breadth +of St. Paul's School as the founders of a singular brotherhood. It +was called the J.D.C. No one, we believe, could ever have had better +friends than did the hero of this narrative. We wish that we could +bring before the reader the personality of all the Knights of that +eccentric round table. Most of them are known already to the reader. +Even the subject himself is possibly known to the reader. Bertram, +who seemed somehow to have been painted by Vandyck, a sombre and +stately young man, a blend of Cavalier and Puritan, with the physique +of a military father and the views of an ethical mother and a soul of +his own which for sheer simplicity is something staggering. Vernède +with an Oriental and inscrutable placidity varied every now and then +with dazzling agility and Meredithian humour. Waldo d'Avigdor who +masks with complete fashionable triviality a Hebraic immutability of +passion tried in a more ironical and bitter service than his Father +Jacob. Lawrence and Maurice Solomon, who show another side of the +same people, the love of home, the love of children, the meek and +malicious humour, the tranquil service of a law. Salter who shows how +beautiful and ridiculous a combination can be made of the most +elaborate mental cultivation and artistic sensibility and omniscience +with a receptiveness and a humility extraordinary in any man. These +were his friends. May he be forgiven for speaking of them at length +and with pride? Some day we hope the reader may know them all. He +knew these people; he knew their friends. He heard Mildred Wain say +'Blogg' and he thought it was a funny name. Had he been told that he +would ever pronounce it with the accents of tears and passion he +would have said, in his pride, that the name was not suitable for +that purpose. But there are _oukh eph' emin_ [Greek characters in +original]. . . . + +"He went for a time to an Art School. There he met a great many +curious people. Many of the men were horrible blackguards: he was not +exactly that: so they naturally found each other interesting. He went +through some rather appalling discoveries about human life and the +final discovery was that there is no Devil--no, not even such a thing +as a bad man. + +"One pleasant Saturday afternoon Lucian said to him, 'I am going to +take you to see the Bloggs.' 'The what?' said the unhappy man. 'The +Bloggs,' said the other, darkly. Naturally assuming that it was the +name of a public-house he reluctantly followed his friend. He came to +a small front-garden; if it was a public-house it was not a +businesslike one. They raised the latch--they rang the bell (if the +bell was not in the close time just then). No flower in the pots +winked. No brick grinned. No sign in Heaven or earth warned him. The +birds sang on in the trees. He went in. + +"The first time he spent an evening at the Bloggs there was no one +there. That is to say there was a worn but fiery little lady in a +grey dress who didn't approve of 'catastrophic solutions of social +problems.' That, he understood, was Mrs. Blogg. There was a long, +blonde, smiling young person who seemed to think him quite off his +head and who was addressed as Ethel. There were two people whose +meaning and status he couldn't imagine, one of whom had a big nose +and the other hadn't. . . . Lastly, there was a Juno-like creature in +a tremendous hat who eyed him all the time half wildly, like a shying +horse, because he said he was quite happy. . . . + +"But the second time he went there he was plumped down on a sofa +beside a being of whom he had a vague impression that brown hair grew +at intervals all down her like a caterpillar. Once in the course of +conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as +plainly as if he had read it in a book: 'If I had anything to do with +this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she +would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me: +if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she +would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget +me. I may never see her again. Goodbye.' It was all said in a flash: +but it was all said. . . . + +"Two years, as they say in the playbills, is supposed to elapse. And +here is the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the +sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering +record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he +has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often +been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he is called upon to be. +Let him now declare it and hereafter for ever hold his peace. + +"But there are four lamps of thanksgiving always before him. The +first is for his creation out of the same earth with such a woman as +you. The second is that he has not, with all his faults, 'gone after +strange women.' You cannot think how a man's self-restraint is +rewarded in this. The third is that he has tried to love everything +alive: a dim preparation for loving you. And the fourth is--but no +words can express that. Here ends my previous existence. Take it: it +led me to you." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A Long Engagement + + +GILBERT SYMPATHIZED WITH his future mother-in-law's anxiety at +Frances's engagement to "a self-opinionated scarecrow," but I doubt +if it at all quickly occurred to him that the basis of that anxiety +was the fact that he was earning only twenty-five shillings a week! +Frances herself, Lucian Oldershaw, and the rest of his friends +believed he was a genius with a great future and this belief they +tried to communicate to Frances's family. But even if they succeeded, +faith in the future did not pay dividends in a present income on +which to set up house. A widow, considering her daughter's future, +might well feel a little anxiety. But one can see wheels within +wheels of family conclaves and matters to perplex the simple which +drew another letter from Gilbert to Frances: + + . . . It is a mystic and refreshing thought that I shall never + understand Bloggs. + + That is the truth of it . . . that this remarkable family + atmosphere . . . this temperament with its changing moods and its + everlasting will, its divine trust in one's soul and its tremulous + speculations as to one's "future," its sensitiveness like a tempered + sword, vibrating but never broken: its patience that can wait for + Eternity and its impatience that cannot wait for tea: its power of + bearing huge calamities, and its queer little moods that even those + calamities can never overshadow or wipe out: its brusqueness that + always pleases and its over-tactfulness that sometimes wounds: its + terrific intensity of feeling, that sometimes paralyses the outsider + with conversational responsibility: its untranslatable humour of + courage and poverty and its unfathomed epics of past tragedy and + triumph--all this glorious confusion of family traits, which, in no + exaggerative sense, make the Gentiles come to your light and the folk + of the nations to the brightness of your house--is a thing so utterly + outside my own temperament that I was formed by nature to admire and + not understand it. God made me very simply--as he made a tree or a + pig or an oyster: to perform certain functions. The best thing he + gave me was a perfect and unshakable trust in those I love. . . . + +Gilbert's sympathy with his future mother-in-law may have been put +to some slight strain by an incident related by Lucian Oldershaw. +Mrs. Blogg begged him to talk to Gilbert about his personal +appearance--clothes and such matters--and to entreat him to make an +effort to improve it. One can imagine how much he must have disliked +the commission! Anyhow, he decided it would be better to do it away +from home and he suggested to Gilbert a trip to the seaside. Arrived +there he broached the subject. Gilbert, he says, was not the least +angry, but answered quite seriously that Frances loved him as he was +and that it would be absurd for him to try to alter. It was only out +of a later and deeper experience of women that he was able to write +"A man's friends like him but they leave him as he is. A man's wife +loves him and is always trying to change him." + +A good many things happened in the course of this long engagement. +Frances and Gilbert were both young and long engagements were normal +at that period, when the idea of a wife continuing to earn after +marriage was unheard of. There were obvious disadvantages in the long +delay before marriage but also certain advantages. The two got to +know each other with a close intimacy: they were comrades as well as +lovers and carried both these relationships into married life. For +the biographer the advantage has been immense, since every separation +between the pair meant a batch of letters. The discerning will have +noted that there are in these letters considerable excisions: parts +Frances would not show even to the biographer. . But they are the +richest quarry from which to dig for the most important period of any +man's life; the period richest in mental development and the shaping +of character. It is, too, the only period of his adult life when +Gilbert wrote letters at all, unless they were absolutely unavoidable. + +Even in a small family two members will tend to draw together more +closely than the rest, and this was so with Frances and her sister +Gertrude. They adored one another and Frances offered her to Gilbert +as a sister, with especially confident pride. He had never had a +sister since babyhood and he enjoyed it. The happiness of the +engagement was terribly broken into by the sudden death of Gertrude +in a street accident. Frances was absolutely shattered. The next +group of letters belongs to the months after Gertrude's death, when +Gilbert was still trying to be a publisher, but, urged on by Frances, +beginning also to be a writer. During part of this time she had gone +abroad for rest and recovery after the shock. Gilbert pictures her +reading his letters "under the shadow of an alien cathedral." + +None of these letters are dated but most of them have kept their +postmarks. + + 11, Paternoster Buildings + (postmarked July 8, 1899) + + . . . I am black but comely at this moment: because the cyclostyle + has blacked me. Fear not. I shall wash myself. But I think it my duty + to render an accurate account of my physical appearance every time I + write: and shall be glad of any advice and assistance. . . . I have + been reading Lewis Carroll's remains, mostly Logic, and have much + pleasure in enlivening you with the following hilarious query: "Can a + Hypothetical, whose protasis is false, be legitimate? Are two + Hypotheticals of the forms, _If A, then B_, and _If A then not B_ + compatible?" I should think a Hypothetical could be, if it tried + hard. . . . + + To return to the Cyclostyle. I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so + inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce + pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of + water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the + steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the + same with people. When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we + touch the deepest philosophy. + + I will not ask you to forgive this rambling levity. I, for one have + sworn, I do not hesitate to say it, by the sword of God that has + struck us, and before the beautiful face of the dead, that the first + joke that occurred to me I would make, the first nonsense poem I + thought of I would write, that I would begin again at once with a + heavy heart at times, as to other duties, to the duty of being + perfectly silly, perfectly extravagant, perfectly trivial, and as far + as possible, amusing. I have sworn that Gertrude should not feel, + wherever she is, that the comedy has gone out of our theatre. This, I + am well aware, will be misunderstood. But I have long grasped that + whatever we do we are misunderstood--small blame to other people; for, + we know ourselves, our best motives are things we could neither + explain nor defend. And I would rather hurt those who can shout than + her who is silent. + + You might tell me what you feel about this: but I am myself + absolutely convinced that gaiety that is the bubble of love, does not + annoy me: the old round of stories, laughter, family ceremonies, + seems to me far less really inappropriate than a single moment of + forced silence or unmanly shame. . . . + +I have always imagined Frances did not know of her mother's efforts +to tidy Gilbert, but very early in their engagement she began her own +abortive attempts to make him brush his hair, tie his tie straight +and avoid made-up ones, attend to the buttons on his coat, and all +the rest. It would seem that for a time at any rate he made some +efforts, but evidently simply regarded the whole thing as one huge +joke. + + 11 Warwick Gardens + (Postmarked July 9th, 1899) + + . . . I am clean. I am wearing a frockcoat, which from a + superficial survey seems to have no end of buttons. It must be + admitted that I am wearing a bow-tie: but on careful research I find + that these were constantly worn by Vikings. A distinct allusion to + them is made in that fine fragment, the Tryggvhessa Saga, where the + poet says, in the short alliterative lines of Early Norse poetry: + + Frockcoat Folding then + Hakon Hardrada + Bow-tie Buckled + Waited for war + +(Brit. Mus. Mss. CCCLXIX lines 99981-99985) + + I resume. My appearance, as I have suggested, is singularly + exemplary. My boots are placed, after the fastidious London fashion, + on the feet: the laces are done up, the watch is going, the hair is + brushed, the sleeve-links are inserted, for of such is the Kingdom of + Heaven. As for my straw hat, I put it on eighteen times + consecutively, taking a run and a jump to each try, till at last I + hit the right angle. I have not taken it off for three days and + nights lest I should disturb that exquisite pose. Ladies, princes, + queens, ecclesiastical processions go by in vain: I do not remove it. + That angle of the hat is something to mount guard over. As Swinburne + says--"Not twice on earth do the gods do this." + + It is at present what is, I believe, called a lovely summer's + night. To say that it is hot would be as feeble a platitude as the + same remark would be in the small talk of Satan and Beelzebub. + + If there were such a thing as _blue_-hot iron, it would describe + the sky tonight. I cannot help dreaming of some wild fairy-tale in + which the whole round cosmos should be a boiling pot, with the flames + of Purgatory under it, and that soon I shall have the satisfaction of + seeing such a thing as boiled mountains, boiled cities, and a boiled + moon and stars. A tremendous picture. Yet I am perfectly happy as + usual. After all, why should we object to be boiled? Potatoes, for + example, are better boiled than raw--why should we fear to be boiled + into new shapes in the cauldron? These things are an allegory. + + . . . I am so glad to hear you say . . . that, in your own words "it + is good for us to be here"--where you are at present. The same remark, + if I remember right, was made on the mountain of the Transfiguration. + It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that + remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought + to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the + long Vision we call life--other things superficially, but this always + in our depths. "It is good for us to be here--it is good for us to be + here," repeating itself eternally. And if, after many joys and + festivals and frivolities, it should be our fate to have to look on + while one of us is, in a most awful sense of the words, "transfigured + before our eyes": shining with the whiteness of death--at least, I + think, we cannot easily fancy ourselves wishing not to be at our + post. Not I, certainly. It was good for me to be there. + +* * * * + + 11 Warwick Gardens + (postmarked July 11, 1899.) + + . . . The novel, after which you so kindly enquire, is proceeding + headlong. It received another indirect stimulus today, when Mr. + Garnett insisted on taking me out to lunch, gave me a gorgeous repast + at a restaurant, succeeded in plucking the secret of my private + employment from my bosom, and made me promise to send him some + chapters of it. I certainly cannot complain of not being + sympathetically treated by the literary men I know. I wonder where + the jealous, spiteful, depreciating man of letters we read of in + books has got to. It's about time he turned up, I think. Excuse me + for talking about these trivialities. . . . + + I have made a discovery: or I should say seen a vision. I saw it + between two cups of black coffee in a Gallic restaurant in Soho: but + I could not express it if I tried. + + But this was one thing that it said--that all good things are one + thing. There is no conflict between the gravestone of Gertrude and a + comic-opera tune played by Mildred Wain. But there is everlasting + conflict between the gravestone of Gertrude and the obscene pomposity + of the hired mute: and there is everlasting conflict between the + comic-opera tune and any mean or vulgar words to which it may be set. + These, which man hath joined together, God shall most surely sunder. + That is what I am feeling . . . now every hour of the day. All good + things are one thing. Sunsets, schools of philosophy, babies, + constellations, cathedrals, operas, mountains, horses, poems--all + these are merely disguises. One thing is always walking among us in + fancy-dress, in the grey cloak of a church or the green cloak of a + meadow. He is always behind, His form makes the folds fall so + superbly. And that is what the savage old Hebrews, alone among the + nations, guessed, and why their rude tribal god has been erected on + the ruins of all polytheistic civilisations. For the Greeks and + Norsemen and Romans saw the superficial wars of nature and made the + sun one god, the sea another, the wind a third. They were not + thrilled, as some rude Israelite was, one night in the wastes, alone, + by the sudden blazing idea of all being the same God: an idea worthy + of a detective story. + + 11, Paternoster Buildings + (postmarked July 14, 1899.) + + . . . costume slightly improved. The truth is that a mystical and + fantastic development has taken place. My clothes have rebelled + against me. Weary of scorn and neglect, they have all suddenly come + to life and they dress me by force every morning. My frockcoat leaps + upon me like a lion and hangs on, dragging me down. As I struggle my + boots trip me up--and the laces climb up my feet (never missing a + hole) like snakes or creepers. At the same moment the celebrated grey + tie springs at my throat like a wild cat. + + I am told that the general effects produced by this remarkable + psychical development are superb. Really the clothes must know + best. Still it is awkward when a mackintosh pursues one down the + street. . . . + + . . . There is nothing in God's earth that really expresses the + bottom of the nature of a man in love except Burns' songs. To the man + not in love they must seem inexplicably simple. When he says, "My + love is like the melody that's sweetly played in tune," it seems + almost a crude way of referring to music. But a man in love with a + woman feels a nerve move suddenly that Dante groped for and + Shakespeare hardly touched. What made me think of Burns, however, was + that one of his simple and sudden things, hitting the right nail so + that it rings, occurs in the song of "O a' the airts the wind can + blaw," where he merely says that there is nothing beautiful anywhere + but it makes him think of the woman. That is not really a mere + aesthetic fancy, a chain of sentimental association--it is an actual + instinctive elemental movement of the mind, performed automatically + and instantly. . . . + + Felixstowe (undated) + + . . . I have as you see, arrived here. I have done other daring + things, such as having my hair shampooed, as you commanded, and also + cut. The effect of this is so singularly horrible that I have found + further existence in London impossible. Public opinion is too strong + for me. . . . There are many other reasons I could give for being + pleased to come: such as that I have some time for writing the novel; + that I can make up stories I don't intend to write . . . that there + are phosphorescent colours on the sea and a box of cigarettes on the + mantelpiece. + + Some fragments of what I felt [about Gertrude's death] have + struggled out in the form of some verses which I am writing out for + you. But for real strength (I don't like the word "comfort") for real + peace, no human words are much good except perhaps some of the + unfathomable, unintelligible, unconquerable epigrams of the Bible. I + remember when Bentley had a burning boyish admiration for Professor + Huxley, and when that scientist died some foolish friend asked him + quite flippantly in a letter what he felt about it. Bentley replied + with the chapter and verse reference to one of the Psalms, alone on a + postcard. The text was, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the + death of one of his saints." The friend, I remember, thought it "a + curious remark about Huxley." It strikes me as a miraculous remark + about anybody. It is one of those magic sayings where every word hits + a chain of association, God knows how. + + "Precious"--we could not say that Gertrude's death is happy or + providential or sweet or even perhaps good. But it is something. + "Beautiful" is a good word--but "precious" is the only right word. + + It is this passionate sense of the _value_ of things: of the + richness of the cosmic treasure: the world where every star is a + diamond, every leaf an emerald, every drop of blood a ruby, it is + this sense of preciousness that is really awakened by the death of + His saints. Somehow we feel that even their death is a thing of + incalculable value and mysterious sweetness: it is awful, tragic, + desolating, desperately hard to bear--but still "precious." . . . + Forgive the verbosity of one whose trade it is to express the + inexpressible. + +The verses he speaks of in this letter, Frances treasured greatly. +She showed them to me, in a book which opens with a very touching +prayer in her own writing. In a later chapter I quote the lines in +which Gilbert writes of his own tone-deafness, and of how he saw what +music meant as he watched his wife's face. Something of the same +effect is produced on me by these verses. Gilbert was not of course +tone-deaf to this tragedy, yet it was chiefly in its effect on +Frances that it affected him. + + The sudden sorrow smote my love + That often falls twixt kiss and kiss + And looking forth awhile she said + Can no man tell me where she is. + +And again + + Stricken they sat: and through them moved + My own dear lady, pale and sweet. + + This soul whose clearness makes afraid + Our souls: this wholly guiltless one-- + No cobweb doubts--no passion smoke + Have veiled this mirror from Thy sun. + +In letters to Frances he could enter so deeply into her grief as to +make it his own. But when he wrote verse and spoke as it were to +himself or to God, the reflected emotion was not enough. These verses +could never rank with his real poetry. + +It was not possible in fact for a man so happily in love to dwell +lastingly on any sorrow. And I cannot avoid the feeling that, quite +apart from any theory, cheerfulness was constantly "breaking in." For +Gilbert was a very happy man. Across the top of one of his letters is +written: "You can always tell the real love from the slight by the +fact that the latter weakens at the moment of success; the former is +quadrupled." + +The next of his letters is a mingling of the comic and the fantastic, +very special to G.K.C. + + 11, Paternoster Buildings + (postmarked Sept. 29, 1899.) + + . . . I fear, as you say, that my letters do not contain many + practical details about myself: the letters are not very long to + begin with, as I think it better to write something every day + than a long letter when I have leisure: and when I have a little + time to think in, I always think of the Kosmos first and the Ego + afterwards. I admit, however, that you are not engaged to the + Kosmos: dear me! what a time the Kosmos would have! All its + Comets would have their hair brushed every morning. The Whirlwind + would be adjured not to walk about when it was talking. The + Oceans would be warmed with hot-water pipes. Not even the lowest + forms of life would escape the crusade of tidiness: you would + walk round and round the jellyfish, looking for a place to put in + shirt-links. + + Under these circumstances, then, I cannot but regard it as + fortunate that you are only engaged to your obedient Microcosm: a + biped inheriting some of the traits of his mother, the Kosmos, its + untidiness, its largeness, its irritating imperfection and its + profound and hearty intention to go on existing as long as it + possibly can. + + I can understand what you mean about wanting details about me, for + I want just the same about you. You need only tell me "I went down + the street to a pillar-box," I shall know that you did it in a + manner, blindingly, staggeringly, crazily beautiful. It is quite + true, as you say, that I am a person wearing _certain_ clothes with a + _certain_ kind of hair. I cannot get rid of the impression that there + is something scorchingly sarcastic about the underlining in this + passage. . . . + + . . . as to what I do every day: it depends on which way you want + it narrated: what we all say it is, or what it really is. + + What we all say happens every day is this: I wake up: dress myself, + eat bacon and bread and coffee for breakfast: walk up to High St. + Station, take a fourpenny ticket for Blackfriars, read the Chronicle + in the train, arrive at 11, Paternoster Buildings: read a MS called + "The Lepers" (light comedy reading) and another called "The + Preparation of Ryerson Embury"--you know the style--till 2 o'clock. + Go out to lunch, have--(but here perhaps it would be safer to become + vague), come back, work till six, take my hat and walking-stick and + come home: have dinner at home, write the Novel till 11, then write + to you and go to bed. That is what, we in our dreamy, deluded way, + really imagine is the thing that happens. What really happens (but + hist! are we observed?) is as follows. + + Out of the starless night of the Uncreated, that was before the + stars, a soul begins to grope back to light. It gropes its way + through strange, half-lighted chambers of Dreams, where in a brown + and gold twilight, it sees many things that are dimly significant, + true stories twisted into new and amazing shapes, human beings whom + it knew long ago, sitting at the windows by dark sunsets, or talking + in dim meadows. But the awful invading Light grows stronger in the + dreams, till the soul in one last struggle, plunges into a body, as + into a house and wakes up within it. Then he rises and finds himself + in a wonderful vast world of white light and clear, frankly coloured + shapes, an inheritor of a million stars. On enquiry he is informed + that his name is Gilbert Keith Chesterton. This amuses him. + + He goes through a number of extraordinary and fantastic rituals; + which the pompous elfland he has entered demands. The first is that + he shall get inside a house of clothing, a tower of wool and flax; + that he shall put on this foolish armour solemnly, one piece after + another and each in its right place. The things called sleevelinks he + attends to minutely. His hair he beats angrily with a bristly tool. + For this is the Law. Downstairs a more monstrous ceremony attends him. + + He has to put things inside himself. He does so, being naturally + polite. Nor can it be denied that a weird satisfaction follows. He + takes a sword in his hand (for what may not befall him in so strange + a country!) and goes forth: he finds a hole in the wall, a little + cave wherein sits One who can give him the charm that rules the horse + of water and fire. He finds an opening and descends into the bowels + of the earth. Down, among the roots of the Eternal hills, he finds a + sunless temple wherein he prays. And in the centre of it he finds a + lighted temple in which he enters. Then there are noises as of an + earthquake and smoke and fire in the darkness: and when he opens the + door again he is in another temple, out of which he climbs into + another world, leagues and leagues away. And when he asks the meaning + of the vision, they talk gibberish and say, "It is a train." + + So the day goes, full of eerie publishers and elfin clerks, till he + returns and again puts things inside him, and then sits down and + makes men in his own head and writes down all that they said and did. + And last of all comes the real life itself. For half-an-hour he + writes words upon a scrap of paper, words that are not picked and + chosen like those that he has used to parry the strange talk of the + folk all day, but words in which the soul's blood pours out, like the + body's blood from a wound. He writes secretly this mad diary, all his + passion and longing, all his queer religion, his dark and dreadful + gratitude to God, his idle allegories, the tales that tell themselves + in his head; the joy that comes on him sometimes (he cannot help it!) + at the sacred intoxication of existence: the million faults of + idleness and recklessness and the one virtue of the unconquered + adoration of goodness, that dark virtue that every man has, and hides + deeper than all his vices--he writes all this down as he is writing + it now. And he knows that if he sticks it down and puts a stamp on it + and drops it into the mouth of a little red goblin at the corner of + the street--he knows that all this wild soliloquy will be poured into + the soul of one wise and beautiful lady sitting far away beyond seas + and rivers and cities, under the shadow of an alien Cathedral. . . . + This is not all so irrelevant as you may think. It was this line of + feeling that taught me, an utter Rationalist as far as dogma goes, + the lesson of the entire Spirituality of things--an opinion that + nothing has ever shattered since. I can't express myself on the + point, nobody can. But it is _only_ the spirituality of things that + we are sure of. That the eyes in your face are eyes I do not know: + they may have other names and uses. I know that they are _good_ or + beautiful, or rather spiritual. I do not know on what principle the + Universe is run, I know or feel that it is _good_ or spiritual. I do + not know what Gertrude's death was--I know that it was beautiful, for + I saw it. We do not feel that it is so beautiful now--why? Because we + do not see it now. What we see now is her absence: but her Death is + not her absence, but her Presence somewhere else. That is what we + _knew_ was beautiful, as long as we could see it. Do not be + frightened, dearest, by the slow inevitable laws of human nature, we + shall climb back into the mountain of vision: we shall be able to use + the word, with the accent of Whitman. "Disembodied, triumphant, dead." + +In the _Notebook_ he was writing: + + There is a heart within a distant town + Who loves me more than treasure or renown + Think you it strange and wear it as a crown. + + Is not the marvel here; that since the kiss + And dizzy glories of that blinding bliss + One grief has ever touched me after this. + +We see Gilbert in the next two letters more concerned about a grand +dinner of the J.D.C. than about his future fame and fortune. In the +second he mentions almost casually that he is leaving Fisher Unwin. +From now on he was to live by his pen. + + 11 Warwick Gardens, W. + Tuesday Night. 3rd Oct. 1899. + + . . . Nothing very astonishing has happened yet, though many + astonishing things will happen soon. The Final perfection of Humanity + I expect shortly. The _Speaker_ for this week--the first of the _New + Speaker_, is coming out soon, and may contain something of mine though + I cannot be quite sure. A rush of the Boers on Natal, strategically + quite possibly successful, is anticipated by politicians. The rising + of the sun tomorrow morning is predicted by astronomers. My father + again is engaged in the crucial correspondence with Fisher Unwin, at + least it has begun by T.F.U. stating his proposed terms--a rise of + 5/--from October, another rise possible but undefined in January, 10 + per cent royalty for the Paris book and expenses for a fortnight in + Paris. These, as I got my father to heartily agree, are vitiated to + the bone as terms by the absence of any assurance that I shall not + have to write "Paris," for which I am really paid nothing, _outside_ + the hours of work for which I am paid 25/--. In short, the net result + would be that instead of gaining more liberty to rise in the literary + world, I should be selling the small liberty of rising that I have + now for five more shillings. This my father is declining and asking + for a better settlement. The diplomacy is worrying, yet I enjoy it: I + feel like Mr. Chamberlain on the eve of war. I would stop with T.F.U. + for £100 a year--but not for less. Which means, I think, that I shall + not stop at all. + + But all these revolutions, literary, financial and political fade + into insignificance compared with the one really tremendous event of + this week. It will take place on Saturday next. The sun will stand + still upon Leicester Square and the Moon on the Valley of Wardour St. + For then will assemble the Grand Commemorative Meeting of the Junior + Debating Club. The Secretary, Mr. L.R.F. Oldershaw, will select a + restaurant, make arrangements and issue the proclamations, or, to use + the venerable old Club phrase "the writs." When this gorgeous + function is over, you must expect a colossal letter. Everyone of the + old Brotherhood, scattered over many cities and callings, has hailed + the invitation, and is coming, with the exception of Bentley, who + will send a sensational telegram from Paris. The fun is expected to + be fast and furious, the undercurrent of emotion (twelve years old) + is not likely to be much disguised. As I say, I will write you a + sumptuous description of it; it is somewhat your due, for the thing + is, and always will be, one of the main strands of my life. . . . + + None can say what will occur. It is one of those occasions when + Englishmen are not much like the pictures of them in Continental + satires . . . there is more in this old affair of ours than possibly + meets the eye. It is a thing that has left its roots deep in the + hearts of twelve strangely different men. . . . And now that seven of + us have found the New Life that can only be found in Woman, it would + be mean indeed not to turn back and thank the old. . . . + + 11, Warwick Gardens, W. + + . . . This is the colossal letter. I trust you will excuse me if + the paper is conceived on a similar scale of Babylonian immensity. I + cannot make out exactly whether I did or did not post a letter I + wrote to you on Saturday. If I did not, I apologise for missing the + day. If I did, you will know by this time one or two facts that may + interest you, the chief of which is that I am certainly leaving + Fisher Unwin, with much mutual courtesy and goodwill. + + This fact may interest you, I repeat: at this moment I am not sure + whether it interests me. For my head, to say nothing of another + organ, is filled with the thundering cheers and songs of the dinner + on Saturday night. It was, I may say without hesitation, a breathless + success. Cholmeley, who must be experienced being both a + schoolmaster, a diner out and a clever man, told me he had never in + his life heard eleven better speeches. I quite agree with him, merely + adding his own. Everyone was amusing and what is much better, + singularly characteristic. Will you forgive me, dearest, if I reel + off to the only soul that can be trusted to enjoy my enjoyment, a + kind of report of the meeting? It will revivify my own memories. And + one thing at least that I said in my speech I thoroughly believed + in--"if there is any prayer I should be inclined to make it is that I + should forget nothing in my life." + + The proceedings opened with dinner. The illustrated menus were wildly + appreciated: every person got all the rest to sign on the menu and + then took it away as a memento. Then the telegrams from Kruger, + Chamberlain, Dreyfus and George Meredith were read. Then I proposed + the toast of the Queen. I merely said that nothing could ever be + alleged against the Queen, except the fact that she is not a member + of the J.D.C. and that I thought it spoke well for the chivalry of + Englishmen that with this fact she had never been publicly taunted. I + said I knew that the virtues of Queen Victoria had become somewhat + platitudinous, but I thought it was a fortunate country in which the + virtues of its powerful ones are platitudes. The toast was then + drunk. . . . + + After a pause and a little conversation, I called upon Lawrence + Solomon to propose the toast of "The School." He was very amusing + indeed. Most of his speech would not be very comprehensible to an + outsider for it largely consisted of an ingenious dove-tailing of the + sentences in the Latin and Greek Arnold. I shall never forget the + lucid and precise enunciation with which he delivered the idiotic + sentences in those works, more especially where he said, "such a + course would be more agreeable to Mr. Cholmeley and I would rather + gratify such a man as he than see the King of the Persians." + + Cholmeley, amid roars of welcome, rose to respond. I think I must + have told you in a former letter that Cholmeley is a former + classmaster of ours, a former house-master of Bentley's, and one of + the nicest men at St. Paul's. We invited him as the only visitor. He + said a great deal that was very amusing, mostly a commentary on + Solomon's remarks about the Latin Arnold. One remark he made was that + he possessed one particular Latin Arnold, formerly the property of + the President, which he had withdrawn from him "with every expression + of contumely"--because it was drawn all over with devils. He made + some very sound remarks about the Club as an answer to the common + charge against St. Paul's School that it was aridly scholastic, + without spontaneous growth in culture or sentiment. + + Then Fordham proposed "The Ladies." He was killing. Fordham is a + personality whom I think you do not know. He is one of the most + profoundly humourous men I ever knew, but his humour is more thickly + coated on him, so to speak, than Bentley or Oldershaw, i.e., it is + much more difficult to make him serious. He is one of the most + fascinating "typical Englishmen" I ever knew: strong, generous, + flippant on principle, rowdy by physical inspiration, successful, + popular, married--a man to discharge all the normal functions of life + well. But his most entertaining gift which he displayed truly + sumptuously on this occasion is a wonderful gift of burlesque and + stereotyped rhetoric. With melodramatic gestures he drew attention to + the torrents of the President's blood pouring "from the wound of the + tiny god." Amid sympathetic demonstration he protested against the + pathos of the toast, "the conquered on the field of battle toasting + the conquerors." As the only married member of the Club he ventured + to give us some advice on (A) Food, (B) Education, (C) Intercourse. + He sat down in a pure whirlwind of folly, without saying a word about + the feelings that were in all hearts, including his own, just then. + But I was delighted to find that marriage had not taken away an inch + of his incurable silliness. + + Nothing could be a greater contrast than the few graceful and + dignified but very restrained words in which Bertram responded to + the toast. He is not a man who cares to make fun of women, however + genially. + + Then came Langdon-Davies, whom I called upon to propose "The Club." + His was perhaps the most interesting case of all. When I knew + Langdon-Davies in the Junior Debating Club, he was one of the most + frivolous young men I ever knew. . . . But knowing that he was a good + speaker in a light style, and had been President of the Cambridge + Union, I put him down to propose the Club, thinking that we should + have enough serious speaking and would be well to err on the side of + entertainment. + + Langdon-Davies got up and proceeded to deliver a speech that + made me jump. It was, I thought, the best speech of the evening: + but I am sure it was the most serious, the most sympathetic and a + long way the most frankly emotional. + + He said that the Club was not now a club in the strict sense. It + was two things preeminently and everlastingly--a memory and an + influence. He spoke with a singular sort of subdued vividness of the + influence the Club had had on him in boyhood. He then turned to the + history of the Club. And here, my dearest lady, I am pained to have + to report that he launched suddenly and dramatically into a most + extraordinary, and apparently quite sincere eulogium upon myself and + the influence I had on my schoolfellows. I will not repeat his + words--I did not believe them, but they took me by surprise and shook + me somewhat. Mr. B. N. Langdon-Davies, I may remark, and yourself, + are the only persons who have ever employed the word "genius" in + connection with me. I trust it will not occur again. + + I replied. My speech was a medley, but it appeared very successful. + I discussed largely the absence of any successor to the J.D.C. I + described how I watched the boys leaving school today--a solitary + figure, clad in the latest fashion, moodily pacing the Hammersmith + Road--and asked myself "where among these is the girlish gush of a + Bentley--the passionate volubility of a Vernède, the half-ethereal + shyness of a Fordham?!!" I admitted that we had had misfortunes, one + of us had a serious illness, another had had a very good story in the + Strand Magazine: but I thought that a debating club of 12 members + that had given three presidents to the University Unions, had not + done badly. The rest was sentimental. Then began a most extraordinary + game of battledore and shuttlecock. Vernède proposed the Secretary, + Mr. Oldershaw. Mr. Oldershaw, instead of replying properly, proposed + Mr. Bentley and the absent members. Waldo responded for these or + rather instead of responding proposed Mr. Maurice Solomon. Mr. + Maurice Solomon instead of responding proposed Mr. Salter. The latter + was the only one who had not spoken and on rising he explained his + reasons for refusing. He had not been in the same room with Mr. + Cholmeley, he said, since he had sat five years ago in the Lower + Fourth and Mr. Cholmeley had told him that he talked too much. He had + no desire on his first reappearance to create in Mr. Cholmeley's mind + the idea that he had been at it ever since. + + After this we passed on to singing and nearly brought down the roof + of Pinoli's restaurant. Cholmeley, the awful being of whose classic + taste in Greek iambics I once stood in awe, sang with great feeling a + fragment of lyric literature of which the following was, as far as I + remember, the refrain: + + "Singing Chooral-i-chooral-i-tiddity + Also--Chooral-i-chooral-i-tay + And chanting Chooral-i-chooral-i-dititty + Not forgetting--chooral-i-chooral-i-day--" + + Vernède sang a Sussex pothouse chorus in an indolent and refined + way which was exquisitely incongruous: Waldo and Langdon-Davies also + sang. I recited an Ode which I had written for the occasion and + Lucian recited one of Bentley's poems that came out in an Oxford + magazine. Then we sang the Anthem* of the J.D.C., of which the words + are, "I am a Member--I'm a Member--Member of the J.D.C. I belong to + it forever--don't you wish that you were me." + +[* It was sung to the tune of "Clementine."] + + Then we paid the bill. Then we borrowed each other's arms and legs + in an inextricable tangle and sang "Auld Lang Syne." Then we broke up. + + There now. Five mortal pages of writing and nothing about you in + it. How relieved you must be, wearied out with allusions to your hair + and your soul and your clothes and your eyes. And yet it has been + every word of it about you really. I like to make my past vivid to + you, especially this past, not only because it was on the whole, a + fine, healthy, foolish, manly, enthusiastic, idiotic past, with the + very soul of youth in it. Not only because I am a victim of the + prejudice, common I trust to all mankind, that no one ever had such + friends as I had. . . . + +Readers of the _Autobiography_ will remember that many many years +later, at the celebration of Hilaire Belloc's sixtieth birthday, the +guests threw the ball to one another in just this same fashion. +Chesterton had by then so far forgotten this earlier occasion that he +spoke of the Belloc birthday party as the only dinner in his life at +which every diner made a speech. + +Two more extracts from his letters must be given, showing the efforts +made by Frances to look after Gilbert, and his reactions. One of his +friends remarked that Gilbert's life was unique in that, never having +left home for a boarding school or University, he passed from the +care of his mother to the care of his wife. I think too that the +degree of his physical helplessness affected all who came near him +with the feeling that while he might lead them where he would +intellectually, it was their task to look after a body that would +otherwise be wholly neglected. + + The old religionists used to talk about a man being "a fool for + Christ's sake"--certainly I have been a blithering fool for your + sake. I went to see the doctor, as you requested. He asked me what he + could do for me. I told him I hadn't the least idea, but people + thought my cold had been going on long enough. He said, "I've no + doubt it has." He then, to afford some relief to the idiotic futility + of the situation, wrote me a prescription, which I read on my way up + to business, weeping over the pathetic parts and laughing heartily at + the funny ones. I have since had some of it. It tastes pretty aimless. + + I cannot remember for certain whether I mentioned in my letter that + I had had an invitation including yourself, from my Aunt Kate for + this Friday. As you do not refer to it, I expect I didn't--so I wrote + to her giving both our thanks and explaining the state of affairs. + "All is over," I said, "between that lady and myself. Do not name her + to me, lest the hideous word 'Woman' should blind me to the seraphic + word 'Aunt.' My life is a howling waste--but what matter? Ha! Ha! + Ha!" I cannot remember my exact words, of course. . . . + + . . . I am a revolting object. My hair is a matted chaos spread all + over the floor, my beard is like a hard broom. My necktie is on the + wrong way up: my bootlaces trail half-way down Fleet St. Why not? + When one's attempts at reformation are "not much believed in" what + other course is open but a contemptuous relapse into liberty? + + Your last letter makes me much happier. I put great faith in the + healing power of the great winds and the sun. "Nature," as Walt + Whitman says, "and her primal sanities." Mrs. S . . . , also, is a + primal sanity. It is not, I believe, considered complimentary, in a + common way, to approach an attractive lady and say pleasantly, "You + are thousands of years old." Or, "You seem to me as old as the + mountains." Therefore I do not say it. But I always feel that anyone + beautiful and strong is really old--for the really old things are not + decrepit: decrepit things are dying early. The Roman Empire was + decrepit. A sunrise cloud is old. + + So I think there are some people, who even in their youth, seem to + have existed always: they bear the mark of the elemental things: the + things that recur; they are as old as springtime, as old as + daybreak--as old as Youth. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Who is G.K.C.? + + +THE BOER WAR--and the whole country enthusiastically behind it. The +Liberal Party as a whole went with the Conservatives. The leading +Fabians--Bernard Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, Hubert Bland, Cecil +Chesterton and the "semi-detached Fabian" H. G. Wells--were likewise +for the war. Only a tiny minority remained in opposition, most of +whom were pacifists or cranks of one kind or another. To the sane +minority of this minority Gilbert found himself belonging. It is +something of a tribute to the national feeling at such a moment of +tension that (as an American has noted) "Chesterton was the one +British writer, utterly unknown before, who built up a great +reputation, and it was gained, not through nationalistic support, but +through determined and persistent opposition to British policy."* + +[* _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, p. 20.] + +In his _Daily News_ column a correspondent later asked him to define +his position. Chesterton replied, "The unreasonable patriot is one +who sees the faults of his fatherland with an eye which is clearer +and more merciless than any eye of hatred, the eye of an irrational +and irrevocable love." His attitude sprang, he claimed, not from +defect but from excess of patriotism. + +It is hard to imagine anything that would clarify better the ideas of +a strong mind than finding itself in opposition. This opposition +began at home, in argument with Cecil. Later the two brothers would +agree about most main issues, but now Cecil was a Tory democrat, +Gilbert a pro-Boer, and what was known as a little Englander. The tie +between the two brothers was very close. As the "Innocent Child" +developed into the combative companion, there is no doubt that he +proportionately affected Gilbert. All their friends talk of the +endless amicable arguments through which both grew. Conrad Noel +remembers parties at Warwick Gardens during the Boer War at which the +two brothers "would walk up and down like the two pistons of an +engine" to the disorganisation of the company and the dismay of their +parents. It was at this time that Frances, engaged to a deeply +devoted Gilbert, found even that devotion insufficient to pry him and +Cecil apart when an argument had got well under way. + +"I must go home, Gilbert. I shall miss my train." + +Usually he would have sprung to accompany her, but now she must miss +many trains before the brothers could be separated. + +Frances told me that when they were at the seaside the landlady would +sometimes clear away breakfast, leaving the brothers arguing, come to +set lunch and later set dinner while still they argued. They had come +to the seaside but they never saw the sea. + +Once Frances was staying with them at a house they had taken by the +sea. Her room was next to Cecil's and she could not sleep for the +noise of the discussion that went on hour after hour. About one in +the morning she rapped on the wall and said, "O Cecil, do send +Gilbert to bed." A brief silence followed, and then the remark, in a +rather abashed voice, "There's no one here." Cecil had been arguing +with himself. Gilbert too argued with himself for the stand he was +taking was a hard one. Mr. Belloc has told me that he felt Gilbert +suffered at any word against England, that his patriotism was +passionate. And now he had himself to say that he believed his +country to be in the wrong. To admit it to himself, to state it to +others. + +This autumn of 1899 G.K. began to write for the _Speaker_. The weekly +of this title had long been in a languishing condition when it was +taken over by a group of young Liberals of very marked views. Hammond +became editor and Philip Comyns Carr sub-editor. Sir John Simon was +among the group for a short while, but he soon told one of them that +he feared close association with the _Speaker_ might injure his +career. F. Y. Eccles was in charge of the review department. He is +able to date the start of what was known as the "new" _Speaker_ with +great exactitude, for when the first number was going to press the +ultimatum had been sent to Kruger and the editors hesitated as to +whether they should take the risk of announcing that it was war in +South Africa. They decided against, but before their second number +appeared war had been declared. + +My difficulty in getting a picture of the first meeting of Belloc and +Chesterton illustrates the problem of human testimony and the limits +of that problem. For I imagine a scripture critic, old style, would +end by concluding that the men never met at all. + +F. Y. Eccles, E. C. Bentley and Lucian Oldershaw all claim to have +made the momentous introduction, Mr. Eccles adding that it took place +at the office of the _Speaker_, while Gilbert himself has described +the meeting twice: once in the street, once in a restaurant. Belloc +remembers the introduction as made in the year 1900 by Lucian +Oldershaw, who was living at the time with Hammond. Mr. Oldershaw +usually has the accuracy of the hero-worshipper and upon this matter +he adds several amusing details. For some time he had been trying to +get the group on the _Speaker_ to read Chesterton and had in vain +taken several articles to the office. Mr. Eccles declared the +handwriting was that of a Jew and he prejudiced Belloc, says +Oldershaw, against reading "anything written by my Jew friend." + +But when at last they did meet, Belloc "opened the conversation by +saying in his most pontifical manner, 'Chesterton, you wr-r-ite very +well.'" Chesterton was then 26, Belloc four years older. It was at +the Mont Blanc, a restaurant in Gerrard St., Soho, and the meeting +was celebrated with a bottle of Moulin au Vent. + +The first description given by Gilbert himself is at once earlier and +more vivid than the better known one in the _Autobiography_. + + When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us + that he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more + uproarious and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked + into the night, and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. + When I have said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not + merely _bons mots_, I have said all that can be said in the most + serious aspect about the man who has made the greatest fight for good + things of all the men of my time. + + We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho + restaurant; his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist + and French Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes, + which are like a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin. . . . + + The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt + for three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about + the South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most + of us were writing on the _Speaker_. . . . + + . . . What he brought into our dream was this Roman appetite for + reality and for reason in action, and when he came into the door + there entered with him the smell of danger.* + +[* Introduction to: _Hilaire Belloc: The Man and His Work_ by C. C. +Mandell and E. Shanks, 1916.] + +"It was from that dingy little Soho café," Chesterton writes in the +_Autobiography_, "that there emerged the quadruped, the twiformed +monster Mr. Shaw has nicknamed the Chesterbelloc." + +Listening to Belloc is intoxicating. I have heard many brilliant +talkers, but none to whom that word can so justly be applied. He goes +to your head, he takes you off your feet, he leaves you breathless, +he can convince you of anything. My mother and brother both counted +it as one of the great experiences of their lives to have dined with +Belloc in a small Paris Restaurant (Aux Vendanges de Bourgogne) and +then to have walked with him the streets of that glorious city while +he discoursed of its past. Imagination staggers before the picture of +a Belloc in his full youth and vigour in a group fitted to strike +from him his brightest fire at a moment big with issues for the +world's future. + +In Chesterton's _Autobiography_ a chapter is devoted to the "Portrait +of A Friend," while Belloc in turn has said something of Chesterton +in obituary notices and also in a brief study of his position in +English literature. None of these documents give much notion of the +intellectual flame struck out by one mind against the other. It has +often been asked how much Belloc influenced Chesterton. + +The best test of an influence in a writer's life is to compare what +he wrote before with what he wrote after he was first subjected to +it. It is easy to apply this test to Belloc's influence on G.K.C. +because of the mass we still have of his boyhood writings. In pure +literature, in philosophy and theology he remains untouched by the +faintest change. Pages from the Notebook could be woven into +_Orthodoxy_, essays from _The Debater_ introduced into _The Victorian +Age in Literature_, and it would look simply like buds and flowers on +the same bush. Belloc has characterized himself as ignorant of +English literature and says he learnt from Chesterton most of what he +knows of it, while there is no doubt Chesterton was by far the +greater philosopher. + +With politics, sociology, and history (and the relation of religion +to all three) it is different. Belloc himself told me he thought the +chief thing he had done for Chesterton when they first met was to +open his eyes to reality--Chesterton had been unusually young for his +twenty-six years and unusually simple in regard to the political +scene. He was in fact the young man he himself was later to describe +as knowing all about politics and nothing about politicians. The four +years between the two men seemed greater than it was, partly because +of Belloc's more varied experience of life--French military training, +life at Oxford, wide travel and an early marriage. + +Belloc, then, could teach Chesterton a certain realism about +politics--which meant a certain cynicism about politicians. Far more +valuable, however, was what Belloc had to give him in sociology. We +have seen that G.K. was already dissatisfied with Socialism before he +met Belloc; it may be that by his consideration of the nature of man +he would later have reached the positions so individually set out in +_What's Wrong with the World_--but this can only remain a theoretical +question. For Belloc did actually at this date answer the +sociological question that Chesterton at this date was putting: +answered it brilliantly and answered it truly. Every test that G.K. +could later apply--of profound human reality, of truth divinely +revealed--convinced him that the answer was true. + +He had, he has told us, been a Socialist because it was so horrible +not to be one, but he now learned of the historical Christian +alternative--equally opposed to Socialism and to Capitalism-- +well-distributed property. This had worked in the past, was still +working in many European countries, could be made to work again in +England. The present trend appeared to Belloc to be towards the +Servile State, and in the book with this title and a second book _The +Restoration of Property_ he later developed his sociology. After this +first meeting, two powerful and very different minds would +reciprocally influence one another. An admirer of both told me that +he thought Chesterton got the idea of small property from Belloc but +gave Belloc a fuller realization of the position of the family. One +difference between them is that Belloc writes sociology as a textbook +while Chesterton writes it as a human document. All the wealth of +imagination that Belloc pours into _The Path to Rome_ or _The Four +Men_ he sternly excludes from the Servile State. The poet, traveller, +essayist is one man, the sociologist another. + +The third field of influence was history. Here Belloc did Chesterton +two great services--he restored the proportion of English history, +and he put England back into its context. Since the Reformation, +English history had been written with all the stress on the +Protestant period. Lingard had written earlier but had not been +popularized and certainly would not be used at St. Paul's School. And +even Lingard had laid little stress on the social effects of the +Reformation. Mr. Hammond's contemporary work on English social +history fitted into Belloc's more vivid if less documented +vision--none of this could be disregarded by later writers. + +Belloc, too, restored that earlier England to the Christendom to +which it belonged. The England of Macaulay or of Green had, like Mr. +Mantalini's dowager, either no outline or a "demned outline" for it +was cut out of a larger map. And Chesterton was always seeking an +outline of history. + +To get England back into the context of Christendom is a great thing: +just how great must depend upon how rightly Christendom is conceived. +One cannot always escape the feeling that Belloc conceives it too +narrowly. His famous phrase "The Faith is Europe and Europe is the +Faith" omits too much--the East out of which Christianity came; the +new worlds into which Europe has flowed. Belloc of course knows these +things and has often said them. It is rather a question of emphasis, +of how things loom in the mind when judgments have to be made. In +that sense he does tend to narrow the Faith to Europe: in exactly the +same sense he does tend to narrow Europe to France. Born in France of +a French father, educated in England, Belloc chose his mother's +nationality, chose to be English; but his Creator had chosen +differently, and there is not much a man can do in competition with +his Creator. I do not for a moment suggest that Belloc, having chosen +to be English, is conscious of anything but loyalty to the country of +his adoption. The thing lies far below the mind's conscious +movements. Belloc thinks of himself as an Englishman with a patriotic +duty to criticise his country, but his feelings are not really those +of an Englishman. Once at least he recognised this when he wrote the +verse: + +England to me that never have malingered, +Nor spoken falsely, nor your flattery used, +_Nor even in my rightful garden lingered_--: * +What have you not refused? + +[* Italics mine.] + +And just as France was Belloc's rightful garden so England was +Chesterton's. When first they talked of the Church he told Belloc +that he wanted the example of "someone entirely English who should +none the less have come in." When criticising his country his voice +has the note of pain that only love can give. Belloc saw him as +intensely national "English of the English . . . a mirror of +England . . . he writes with an English accent." + +It is of some interest that after meeting Belloc Gilbert added notes +to two early poems, each note reflecting a judgment of Belloc's--on +the Dreyfus case which Belloc saw as all French Catholics saw it: on +Anglo-American relations which Belloc saw as most Latin Europeans +would see it. + +(1) The first was the poem entitled "To a Certain Nation"--addressed +to France in commentary on the Dreyfus case of 1899 which must be +briefly explained for those who are too young to remember the +excitement it caused. Captain Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French +army, had been found guilty of treachery and sent to Devil's Island. +All France was divided into two camps on the question of his guilt or +innocence. In general, Catholics and what we should call the Right +were all for his guilt; atheists, anti-clericals and believers in the +Republic were for his innocence. Passions were roused to fury on both +sides. English opinion was almost entirely for his innocence. I was a +small girl at the time and I remember that my brother and I amused +ourselves by crying _Vive Dreyfus_, on all possible and impossible +occasions, for the annoyance of our pious French governess. I +remember also that our parents were startled by the vehemence of the +French Catholic paper _La Croix_ from which our governess imbibed her +views. Ultimately the case was reopened, and Dreyfus, after years of +horror on Devil's Island, found not guilty and restored to his rank +in the army. But there are, I know, Catholic Frenchmen alive today +who refuse to believe in his innocence and hold that the whole thing +was a Jewish-Masonic plot that hampered the French espionage service +and nearly lost us the war of 1914. + +In the first edition of _The Wild Knight_, written before the meeting +with Belloc, Gilbert, like any other English Liberal, had assumed +Dreyfus' innocence and in the poem "To a Certain Nation" had +reproached the France of the Revolution, the France he had loved, as +unworthy of herself. + + . . . and we + Who knew thee once, we have a right to weep. + +The Note in the second edition shows him as now undecided +about Dreyfus' guilt and concludes: "There may have been a fog +of injustice in the French courts; I know that there was a fog +of injustice in the English newspapers." + +(2) In "An Alliance" Chesterton had gloried in "the blood of Hengist" +and hymned an Anglo-American alliance with the enthusiasm of a young +Republican who took for granted the links of language and of origin +that might draw together two great countries into something +significant: + + In change, eclipse, and peril + Under the whole world's scorn, + By blood and death and darkness + The Saxon peace is sworn; + That all our fruit be gathered + And all our race take hands, + And the sea be a Saxon river + That runs through Saxon lands. + +But in the Note to the second edition, he says: + + In the matter of the "Anglo-American Alliance" I have come to see + that our hopes of brotherhood with America are the same in kind as + our hopes of brotherhood with any other of the great independent + nations of Christendom. And a very small study of history was + sufficient to show me that the American Nation, which is a hundred + years old, is at least fifty years older than the Anglo-Saxon race.* + +[* Collected Poems, p. 318.] + +The poem was of course only a boyish expression of a boyish dream; +like all dreams, like all boyhood dreams especially, it omitted too +much; yet it contained a thought that might well have borne rich +fruit in Gilbert's Catholic life. + +My mother told me once that when after three years' study of Queen +Elizabeth's character she came to a different conclusion from Belloc, +she found it almost impossible to resist his power and hold on to her +own view. It must be realised that Chesterton actually preferred the +attitude of a disciple. A mutual friend has told me that Chesterton +listened to Belloc all the time and said very little himself. In +matters historical where he felt his own ignorance, Gilbert's +tendency was simply to make an act of faith in Belloc. + +On nothing were the two men more healthily in accord than on the Boer +War. In an interesting study of Belloc, prefixed to a French +translation of _Contemporary England_, F. Y. Eccles explains how he +and most of the _Speaker_ group differed from the pacifist pro-Boers, +who hated the South African war because they hated all wars. The +young Liberals on the _Speaker_ were not pacifists. They hated the +war because they thought it would harm England--harm her morally--to +be fighting for an unjust cause, and even materially to be shedding +the blood of her sons and pouring out her wealth at the bidding of a +handful of alien financiers. Thus far Gilbert was among one group +with whom he was in fullest sympathy. But I think he went further. +Mr. Eccles told me that most of the _Speaker_ group had no sympathy +with the Boers. Gilbert had. He thought of them as human beings who +might well have been farmers of Sussex or of Kent, something of an +older civilization, resisting money power and imperialism and +perishing thereby. + +Few, indeed, of the Liberal Party held Chesterton's ideal--an England +territorially small, spiritually great. The _Speaker_ was struggling +against odds: it was the voice of a tiny group. To Gilbert it seemed +that this mattered nothing so long as that little group held to their +great ideas, so long as the paper represented not merely a group or a +party but the Liberal Idea. In an unfinished letter to Hammond is to +be found this idea as he saw it and his dawning disappointment even +with the paper that most nearly stood for it: + + I am just about to commit a serious impertinence. I believe however + that you will excuse it because it is about the paper and I know + there is not another paper dead or alive for which I would take the + trouble or run the risk of offence. + + I am hearing on all sides the _Speaker_ complained of by the very + people who should be and would be (if they could) its enthusiastic + supporters and I cannot altogether deny the truth of their + objections, though I am glad to notice both in them and in myself the + fact that those objections are tacitly based on the assumption of the + _Speaker_ having an aim and standard higher than other papers. If the + _Speaker_ were a mere party rag like "Judy" or "The Times," it would be + only remarkable for moderation, but to us who have built hopes on it + as the pioneer of a younger and larger political spirit it is + difficult to be silent when we find it, as it seems to us, poisoned + with that spirit of ferocious triviality which is the spirit of + Birmingham eloquence, and with that evil instinct which has + disintegrated the Irish party, the instinct for hating the man who + differs from you slightly, more than the man who differs from you + altogether. + + Of two successive numbers during the stress of the fight (a fight + in which we had first to unite our army and then to use it) a + considerable portion was devoted, first to sneering at "The Daily + News" and then to sneering at "The Westminster Gazette." . . . + + There is a sentence in the Book of Proverbs which expresses the + whole of my politics. "For the liberal man deviseth liberal things + and by his liberality he shall stand." Now what I object to is + sneering at "The Westminster" as a supporter of Chamberlain when + everyone knows that it hardly lets a day pass without an ugly + caricature of him. What I object to in this is that it is talking + Brummagem--it is not "devising liberal things" but spiteful, + superficial, illiberal things. It is claptrap and temporary + deception of the "Patriotism before Politics" order. . . . + + To all this you will say there is an obvious answer. The _Speaker_ + is a party paper and does not profess to be otherwise. But here I am + sure we are mistaking our mission. What the _Speaker_ is (I hope and + believe) destined to do, is to renovate Liberalism, and though + Liberalism (like every other party) is often conducted by claptrap, + it has never been renovated by claptrap, but by great command of + temper and the persistent exposition of persuasive and unanswerable + truths. It is while we are in the desert that we have the vision: we + being a minority, must be all philosophers: we must think for both + parties in the State. It is no good our devoting ourselves to the + flowers of mob oratory with no mob to address them to. We must, like + the Free Traders, for instance, have discoveries, definite truths and + endless patience in explaining them. We must be more than a political + party or we shall cease to be one. Time and again in history victory + has come to a little party with big ideas: but can anyone conceive + anything with the mark of death more on its brow than a little party + with little ideas?* + +[* Undated, handwritten letter in a notebook.] + +Such Liberalism was not perhaps of this world. It certainly was not +of the Liberal Party! + +Gilbert argued much with himself during these years. He had come out +of his time of trial with firm faith in God and in man. But his +philosophy was still in the making, and he made it largely out of the +material supplied by ordinary London suburban society and by the +rather less usual society of cranks and enthusiasts so plentiful at +the end of the nineteenth century. He has written in the +_Autobiography_ of the artistic and dilettante groups where everyone +discussed religion and no one practised it, of the Christian +Socialists and other societies into which he and Cecil found their +way, and of some of the friendships they formed. Among these one of +the closest was with Conrad Noel who wrote in answer to my request +for his recollections: + + We met G.K.C. for the first time at the Stapleys' in Bloomsbury + Square, at a series of meetings of the Christo-Theosophic Society. He + was like a very big fish out of water; he was comparatively thin, + however, in those days, nearly forty years ago. We had been much + intrigued by the weekly contribution of an unknown writer to "The + Speaker" and "The Nation"--brilliant work, and my wife and I, + independently, came to the conclusion when we heard this young man + speak that it must be he. The style was unmistakable. + + I thought of writing to him to congratulate him on his speech, but + before I could do so, I got a letter from him, saying that he was + coming to hear me in the same series in a week or so; it was thus we + first became acquainted, and the acquaintance ripened into a warm + friendship with us both. He and his brother Cecil were in and out of + our flat in Paddington Green, where I was assistant curate. He was + genial, bubbling over with jokes, at which he roared with laughter. + +The question was becoming insistent: when would there be enough money +for Frances and Gilbert to get married? + +In one letter Frances asks him what he thinks of Omar Khayyam. He +replies at great length, and concludes: + + You see the result of asking me for an opinion. I have written it + very hurriedly: if I had paused I might make an essay of it. + (Commercial Pig!) Never mind, sweetheart, that Essay might be a + sauce-pan some day--or at any rate a cheap toast-rack. + +Of his belief in God, in man, in goodness, as against the pessimist +outlook of the day, Gilbert, as we have seen, felt profound +certitude. That his outlook was one that held him back from many +fields of opportunity he was already partly conscious. A fragment of +a letter to Frances expresses this feeling. + + . . . I find I cannot possibly come tonight as my Canadian uncle + keeps his last night in England in a sort of family party. And I + abide by my father's house--said our Lady of the Snows. + + I have just had a note from Rex, asking me, with characteristic + precision, if I can produce a play in the style of Maeterlinck by + 6.50 this afternoon, or words to that effect. The idea is full of + humour. He remarks, as a matter of fact that there is just a remote + chance of his getting the Stage Society to act my play of The Wild + Knight. This opens to me a vista of quite new ambition. Why only at + the Stage Society?--I see a visionary programme. + + The Wild Knight . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Charles Hawtree + Captain Redfeather . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Penley + Olive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Katie Seymour + Priest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sir Henry Irving + Lord Orm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Arthur Roberts + + I am working and must get on with my work. I do not feel any + despondency about it because I know it is good and worth doing. It is + extraordinary how much more moral one is than one imagines. At school + I never minded getting into a row if it were _really_ not my fault. + Similarly, I have never cared a rap for rejections or criticisms, + since I had got a point of view to express which I was certain held + water. Some people think it holds water--on the brain. But I don't + mind. Bless them. + + I am afraid, darling, that this doctrine of patience is hard on + you. But really it's a grand thing to think oneself right. It's what + this whole age is starving for. Something to suffer for and go mad + and miserable over--that is the only luxury of the mind. I wish I + were a convinced Pro-Boer and could stare down a howling mob. But I + _am_ right about the Cosmos, and Schopenhauer and Co. are wrong. . . . + +Two interesting points in this letter are the remark about wishing to +be a convinced Pro-Boer--which he certainly became--and the +suggestion of a possible performance of _The Wild Knight_. Perhaps +the letter was written before he had finally taken his stand (it has +no dating postmark), or perhaps it merely means that his convictions +on the cosmos are more absolute than on the war. As to _The Wild +Knight:_ it was never acted and its publication was made possible +only by the generosity of Gilbert's father. For a volume of comic +verse, _Greybeards at Play_, which appeared earlier in the same year +(1900), he could find a publisher, but serious poetry has never been +easy to launch. + +The letter that follows has a more immediate bearing on their +own future: + + 11, Warwick Gardens, + Good Friday. 1900. + + . . . As you have tabulated your questions with such alarming + precision I must really endeavour to answer them categorically. + + (1) How am I? I am in excellent health. I have an opaque cold in my + head, cough tempestuously and am very deaf. But these things I count + as mere specks showing up the general blaze of salubrity. I am + getting steadily better and I don't mind how slowly. As for my + spirits a cold never affects them: for I have plenty to do and think + about indoors. One or two little literary schemes--trifles + doubtless--claim my attention. + + (2) Am I going away at Easter? The sarcastic might think it a + characteristic answer, but I can only reply that I had banished the + matter from my mind, a vague problem of the remote future until you + asked it: but since this is Easter and we are not gone away I suppose + we are not going away. + + (3) I will meet you at Euston on Tuesday evening though hell itself + should gape and bid me stop at home. + + (4) I am not sure whether a review on Crivelli's art is out this + week: I am going to look. + + (5) Alas! I have not been to Nutt. There are good excuses, but they + are not the real ones. I will write to him now. Yes: Now. + + (6) Does my hair want cutting? My hair seems pretty happy. You are + the only person who seems to have any fixed theory on this. For all I + know it may be at that fugitive perfection which has moved you to + enthusiasm. Three minutes after this perfection, I understand, a + horrible degeneration sets in: the hair becomes too long, the figure + disreputable and profligate: and the individual is unrecognised by + all his friends. It is he that wants cutting then, not his hair. + + (7) As to shirt-links, studs and laces, I glitter from head to foot + with them. + + (8) I have had a few skirmishes with Knollys but not the general + engagement. When this comes off, you shall have news from our + correspondent. (Knollys was Frances's brother.) + + (9) I have got a really important job in reviewing--the Life of + Ruskin for the _Speaker_. As I have precisely 73 theories about Ruskin + it will be brilliant and condensed. I am also reviewing the Life of + the Kendals, a book on the Renascence and one on Correggio for "The + Bookman." + + (10) How far is it to Babylon? Babylon I am firmly convinced is just + round the corner: if one could be only certain which corner. This + conviction is the salt of my life. + + (11) Really and truly I see no reason why we should not be married + in April if not before. I have been making some money calculations + with the kind assistance of Rex, and as far as I can see we could + live in the country on quite a small amount of regular literary + work. . . + + P.S. Forgot the last question. + + (12) Oddly enough, I was writing a poem. Will send it to you. + +Gilbert's engagement had given him the impetus to earn more but he +was always entirely unpractical. His salary at Fisher Unwin's had +been negligible and he was not making much yet by the journalism +which was now his only source of income. The repeated promise to +"write to Nutt" is very characteristic. For Nutt was the manager of +the solitary publisher who was at the moment prepared to put a book +of Gilbert's on the market at his own risk! + +Although they did not manage to get married this year, by the end of +it he was becoming well known. The articles, in the _Speaker_ +especially, were attracting attention and _Greybeards at Play_ had a +considerable success. This, the first of Gilbert's books to be +published, is a curiosity. It is made up of three incredibly witty +satirical poems--"The Oneness of the Philosopher with Nature," "The +Dangers Attending Altruism on the High Seas" and "The Disastrous +Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes." The illustrations drawn by +himself are as witty as the verses. By the beginning of 1901 his work +was being sought for by other Liberal periodicals and he was writing +regularly for the _Daily News_. The following letter to Frances bears +the postmark Feb. 8, 1901. + + Somewhere in the Arabian Nights or some such place there is a story + of a man who was Emperor of the Indies for one day. I am rather in + the position of that person: for I am Editor of the _Speaker_ for one + day. Hammond is unwell and Hirst has gone to dine with John Morley, + so the latter asked me to see the paper through for this number. + Hence this notepaper and the great hurry and brevity which I fear + must characterise this letter. + + There are a few minor amusing things, however, that I have a moment + to mention. + + (1) The "Daily News" have sent me a huge mass of books to review, + which block up the front hall. A study of Swinburne--a book on + Kipling--the last Richard le Gallienne--all very interesting. See if + I don't do some whacking articles, all about the stars and the moon + and the creation of Adam and that sort of thing. I really think I + could work a revolution in Daily paper--writing by the introduction + of poetical prose. + + (2) Among other books that I have to review came, all unsolicited, + a book by your old friend Schofield. Ha! Ha! Ha! It's about the + Formation of Character, or some of those low and beastly amusements. + I think of introducing parts of my Comic Opera of the P.N.E.U. into + the articles. + + (3) Another rather funny thing is the way in which my name is being + spread about. Belloc declares that everyone says to him "Who + discovered Chesterton?" and that he always replies "The genius + Oldershaw." This may be a trifle Gallic, but Hammond has shown me + more than one letter from Cambridge dons and such people demanding + the identity of G.K.C. in a quite violent tone. They excuse + themselves by offensive phrases in which the word "brilliant" occurs, + but I shouldn't wonder if there was a thick stick somewhere at the + back of it. + + Belloc, by the way, has revealed another side of his extraordinary + mind. He seems to have taken our marriage much to heart, for he talks + to me, no longer about French Jacobins and Mediaeval Saints, but + entirely about the cheapest flats and furniture, on which, as on the + others, he is a mine of information, assuring me paternally that + "it's the carpet that does you." I should think this fatherly tone + would amuse you. + + Now I must leave off: for the pages have come up to be seen through + the press. . . . + +_Greybeards at Play_ its author never took very seriously. It was not +included in his Collected Poems and he does not even mention it in +his _Autobiography_. He attached a great deal more importance to _The +Wild Knight and Other Poems_. It was a volume of some fifty poems, +many of which had already appeared in _The Outlook_ and _The +Speaker_. It was published late in 1900 and produced a crop of +enthusiastic reviews and more and more people began to ask one +another, "Who is G. K. Chesterton?" + +One reviewer wrote: "If it were not for the haunting fear of losing a +humourist we should welcome the author of _The Wild Knight_ to a high +place among the poets." Another spoke of the "curious intensity" of +the volume. Among those who were less pleased was John Davidson, on +whom the book had been fathered by one reviewer, and who denied +responsibility for such "frantic rubbish," and also a "reverent" +reviewer who complained, "It is scattered all over with the name of +God." + +To Frances, Gilbert wrote: + + I have been taken to see Mrs. Meynell, poet and essayist, who is + enthusiastic about the Wild Knight and is lending it to all her + friends. + + Last night I went to Mrs. Cox's Book Party. My costume was a great + success, everyone wrestled with it, only one person guessed it, and + the rest admitted that it was quite fair and simple. It consisted of + wearing on the lapel of my dress coat the following letters. + U.U.N.S.I.J. Perhaps you would like to work this out all by + yourself--But no, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. The book I + represented was "The Letters of Junius." + +Mrs. Meynell never came to know Gilbert well and her daughter says in +the biography that her mother realised his "critical approval" +(admiration would be a better word) of her own work only by reading +his essays. But he once wrote an introduction for a book of hers and +her admiration of him would break out frequently in amusing +exclamations: "I hope the papers are nice to my Chesterton. He is +mine much more, really, than Belloc's."* "If I had been a man, and +large, I should have been Chesterton."** + +[* _Alice Meynell_, p. 259.] + +[** _Ibid._, p. 260.] + +Brimley Johnson, who was to have been Gilbert's brother-in-law, sent +_The Wild Knight_ to Rudyard Kipling. His reply is amusing and also +touching, for Mr. Johnson was clearly pouring out, in interest in +Gilbert's career and in forwarding his marriage with Frances, the +affections that might merely have been frozen by Gertrude's death. + + The Elms, Rottingdean, + Nov. 28th. + + DEAR MR. JOHNSON, + + Many thanks for _The Wild Knight_. Of course I knew some of the + poems before, notably _The Donkey_ which stuck in my mind at the + time I read it. + + I agree with you that there is any amount of promise in the + work--and I think marriage will teach him a good deal too. It will be + curious to see how he'll develop in a few years. We all begin with + arrainging [sic] and elaborating all the Heavens and Hells and stars + and tragedies we can lay our poetic hands on--Later we see folk--just + common people under the heavens-- + + Meantime I wish him all the happiness that there can be and for + yourself such comfort as men say time brings after loss. It's apt to + be a weary while coming but one goes the right way to get it if one + interests oneself in the happiness of other folk. Even though the + sight of this happiness is like a knife turning in a wound. + + Yours sincerely, + + RUDYARD KIPLING. + + P.S. Merely as a matter of loathsome detail, Chesterton has a bad + attack of "aureoles." They are spotted all over the book. I think + every one is bound in each book to employ unconsciously some pet word + but that was Rossetti's. + + Likewise I notice "wan waste" and many "wans" and things that + "catch and cling." He is too good not to be jolted 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. + + Hammond sent for me today and asked me seriously if I would help + him in writing a book on Fox, sharing work, fame and profits. I told + him that I had no special talent for research: he replied that he had + no talent for literary form. I then said that I would be delighted to + give him such assistance as I honestly thought valuable enough for + him to split his profits for, that I thought I could give him such + assistance in the matter of picturesqueness and plan of idea, more + especially as Fox was a great hero of mine and the philosophy of his + life involves the whole philosophy of the Revolution and of the love + of mankind. We arranged that we would make a preliminary examination + of the Fox record and then decide. . . .* + +[* This book was never written nor even, I think, begun.] + +Three more letters, two to Frances, one to his mother, complete the +outline of this eventful period. He was now determined to get married +quickly. For the first time and entirely without rancour, he realised +the inevitable competition in the world of journalism. The struggle +for success meant men fighting one another. Other journalists were +fighting him; but truly enough, though with a rare dispassionateness, +he realised that this meant a need for Daily bread in others similar +to his own. + + 11, Warwick Gardens, W. + (postmark: Feb. 19, 1901) + + . . . I hope that in your own beautiful kindness you will be + indulgent just at this time if I only write rough letters or + postcards. I am for the first time in my life, thoroughly _worried_, + and I find it a rather exciting and not entirely unpleasant + sensation. But everything depends just now, not only on my sticking + hard to work and doing a lot of my very best, but on my thinking + about it, keeping wide awake to the turn of the market, being ready + to do things not in half a week, but in half an hour; getting the + feelings and tendencies of other men and generally living in work. I + am going to see Lehmann tomorrow and many things may come of it. I + cannot express to you what it is to feel the grip of the great wheel + of real life on you for the first time. For the first time I know + what is meant by the word "enemies"--men who deliberately dislike you + and oppose your career--and the funny thing is that I don't dislike + them at all myself. Poor devils--very likely they want to be married + in June too. + + I am a Socialist, but I love this fierce old world and am beginning + to find a beauty in making money (in moderation) as in making + statues. Always through my head one tune and words of Kipling set to + it. + + "They passed one resolution, your sub-committee believe + You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse + of Eve. + And till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen + We'll work for ourselves and a woman, for ever and ever--Amen." + + 11, Warwick Gardens, W. + (postmark: March 4, 1901) + + . . . I have delayed this letter in a scandalous manner because I + hoped I might have the arrangements with the _Daily News_ to tell + you; as that is again put off, I must tell you later. The following, + however, are grounds on which I believe everything will turn out + right this year. It is arithmetic. "The Speaker" has hitherto paid me + £70 a year, that is £6 a month. It has now raised it to £10 a month, + which makes £120 a year. Moreover they encourage me to write as much + as I like in the paper, so that assuming that I do something extra + (poem, note, leader) twice a month or every other number, which I can + easily do, that brings us to nearly £150 a year. So much for "The + Speaker." Now for the "Daily News," both certainties and + probabilities. Hammond (to whom you will favour me by being eternally + grateful) pushed me so strongly with Lehmann for the post of manager + of the literary page that it is most probable that I shall get + it. . . . If I do, Hammond thinks they couldn't give me less than + £200 a year. So that if this turns out right, we have £350, say, + without any aid from "Bookman," books, magazine articles or stories. + + Let us however, put this chance entirely on one side and suppose + that they can give me nothing but regular work on the "Daily News." I + have just started a set of popular fighting articles on literature in + the "Daily News" called "The Wars of Literature." They will appear at + least twice a week, often three times. For each of these I am paid + about a guinea and a half. This makes about £3 a week which is £144 a + year. Thus with only the present certainties of "Speaker" and "Daily + News" we have £264 a year, or very likely (with extra "Speaker" + items) £288, close on £300. This again may be reinforced by all sorts + of miscellaneous work which I shall get now my name is getting known, + magazine articles, helping editors or publishers, reading Mss. and so + on. In all these calculations I have kept deliberately under the + figures, not over them: so that I don't think I have failed + altogether to bring my promise within reasonable distance of fact + already. Belloc suggested that I should write for the "Pilot" and as + he is on it, he will probably get me some work. Hammond has become + leader-writer on the "Echo" and will probably get me some reviewing + on that. And between ourselves, to turn with intense relief, from all + this egotism, Hammond and I have a little scheme on hand for getting + Oldershaw a kind of editorial place on the "Echo" where they want a + brisk but cultivated man of the world. I think we can bring it off: + it is a good place for an ambitious young man. It would give me more + happiness than I can say, while I am building my own house of peace, + to do something for the man who did so much in giving me my reason + for it. + + For well Thou knowest, O God most wise + How good on earth was his gift to me + Shall this be a little thing in thine eyes + That is greater in mine than the whole great sea? + + I am afraid . . . that this is a very dull letter. But you know + what I am. I can be practical, but only deliberately, by fixing my + mind on a thing. In this letter, I sum up my last month's thinking + about money resources. I haven't given a thought yet to the + application and distribution of them in rent, furniture, etc. When I + have done thinking about that you will get another dull letter. I can + keep ten poems and twenty theories in my head at once. But I can only + think of one practical thing at a time. The only conclusion of this + letter is that on any calculation whatever, we ought to have £300 a + year, and be on the road to four in a little while. With this before + you I daresay you (who are more practical than I) could speculate and + suggest a little as to the form of living and expenditure. . . . + +Gilbert's mother perhaps needed more convincing. The letter to her +has no postmark but the £300 a year has grown to almost £500 and a +careful economy is promised. + + Mrs. Barnes + The Orchards + Burley. Hants. + + MY DEAREST MOTHER, + + Thank you very much for your two letters. If you get back to + Kensington before me (I shall return on Thursday night: I find I work + here very well) would you mind sending on any letters. You might send + on the cheque: though that is not necessary. + + There is a subject we have touched on once or twice that I want to + talk to you about, for I am very much worried in my mind as to + whether you will disapprove of a decision I have been coming to with + a very earnest belief that I am seeking to do the right thing. I have + just had information that my screw from "The Speaker" will be yet + further increased from £120 a year to £150, or, if I do the full + amount I can, £190 a year. I have also had a request from the "Daily + News" to do two columns a week regularly, which [is] rather over £100 + a year, besides other book reviews. My other sources of income which + should bring the amount up to nearly £150 more, at any rate, I will + speak of in a moment. + + There is something, as I say, that is distressing me a great deal. + I believe I said about a year ago that I hoped to get married in a + year, if I had money enough. I fancy you took it rather as a joke: I + was not so certain about it myself then. I have however been coming + very seriously to the conclusion that if I pull off one more + affair--a favourable arrangement with Reynolds' Newspaper, whose + editor wants to see me at the end of this week, I shall, unless you + disapprove, make a dash for it this year. When I mentioned the matter + a short time ago, you said (if I remember right) that you did not + think I ought to marry under £400 or £500 a year. I was moved to go + into the matter thoroughly then and there, but as it happened I knew + I had one or two bargains just coming of which would bring me nearer + to the standard you named, so I thought I would let it stand over + till I could actually quote them. Believe me, my dearest mother, I am + not considering this affair wildly or ignorantly: I have been doing + nothing but sums in my head for the last months. This is how matters + stand. The _Speaker_ editor says they will take as much as I like to + write. If I write my maximum I get £192 a year from them. From the + _Daily News_, even if I do not get the post on the staff which was half + promised me, I shall get at least £100 a year with a good deal over + for reviews outside "The Wars of Literature." That makes nearly £300. + With the Manchester Sunday Chronicle I have just made a bargain by + which I shall get £72 a year. This makes £370 a year altogether. The + matter now, I think, largely depends on Reynolds' Newspaper. If I do, + as is contemplated, weekly articles and thumbnail sketches, they + cannot give me less than £ 100 a year. This would bring the whole to + £470 a year, or within £30 of your standard. Of course I know quite + well that this is not like talking of an income from a business or a + certain investment. But we should live a long way within this income, + if we took a very cheap flat, even a workman's flat if necessary, had + a woman in to do the laborious Daily work and for the rest waited on + ourselves, as many people I know do in cheap flats. Moreover, + journalism has its ups as well as downs, and I, I can fairly say, am + on the upward wave. Without vanity and in a purely businesslike + spirit I may say that my work is talked about a great deal. It is at + least a remarkable fact that every one of the papers I write for (as + detailed above) came to me and asked me to do work for them: from the + _Daily News_ down to the Manchester Sunday Chronicle. I have, as I say, + what seems to me a sufficient income for a start. That I shall have + as good and better I am as certain as that I sit here. I know the + clockwork of these papers and among one set of them I might almost + say that I am becoming the fashion. + + Do not, please, think that I am entertaining this idea without + realising that I shall have to start in a very serious and economical + spirit. I have worked it out and I am sure we could live well within + the above calculations and leave a good margin. + + I make all these prosaic statements because I want you to + understand that I know the risks I think of running. But it is not + any practical question that is distressing me: on that I think I see + my way. But I am terribly worried for fear you should be angry or + sorry about all this. I am only kept in hope by the remembrance that + I had the same fear when I told you of my engagement and that you + dispelled it with a directness and generosity that I shall not + forget. I think, my dear Mother, that we have always understood each + other really. We are neither of us very demonstrative: we come of + some queer stock that can always say least when it means most. But I + do think you can trust me when I say that I think a thing really + right, and equally honestly admit that I can hardly explain why. To + explain why I know it is right would be to communicate the + incommunicable, and speak of delicate and sacred things in bald + words. The most I can say is that I know Frances like the back of my + hand and can tell without a word from her that she has never + recovered from a wound* and that there is only one kind of peace that + will heal it. + +[* Gertrude's death.] + + I have tried to explain myself in this letter: I can do it better + in a letter, somehow, but I do not think I have done it very + successfully. However, with you it does not matter and it never will + matter, how my thoughts come tumbling out. You at least have always + understood what I meant. + + Always your loving son, + + GILBERT. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Married Life in London + + +_The suburbs are commonly referred to as prosaic. That is a matter of +taste. Personally I find them intoxicating_. + +Introduction to _Literary London_. + +THE WEDDING DAY drew near and the presents were pouring in. + +"I feel like the young man in the Gospel," said Gilbert to Annie +Firmin, "sorrowful, because I have great possessions." + +Conrad Noel married Gilbert and Frances at Kensington Parish Church +on June 28, 1901. As Gilbert knelt down the price ticket on the sole +of one of his new shoes became plainly visible. Annie caught Mrs. +Chesterton's eye and they began to laugh helplessly. Annie thinks, +too, that for once in their lives Gilbert and Cecil did not argue at +the Reception. + +Lucian Oldershaw drove ahead to the station with the heavy luggage, +put it on the train and waited feverishly. That train went off (with +the luggage), then another, and at last the happy couple appeared. +Gilbert had felt it necessary to stop on the way "in order to drink a +glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in +another." The milk he drank because in childhood his mother used to +give him a glass in that shop. The revolver was for the defense of +his bride against possible dangers. They followed the luggage by a +slow train. + +This love of weapons, his revolver, his favourite sword-stick, +remained with him all his life. It suggested the adventures that he +always bestowed on the heroes of his stories and would himself have +loved to experience. He noted in _Twelve Types_ Scott's love of armour +and of weapons for their own sakes--the texture, the power, the +beauty of a sword-hilt or a jewelled dagger. As a child would play +with these things Gilbert played with them, but they stood also in +his mind for freedom, adventure, personal responsibility, and much +else that the modern world had lost. + +The honeymoon was spent on the Norfolk Broads. On the way they +stopped at Ipswich "and it was like meeting a friend in a fairy-tale +to find myself under the sign of the White Horse on the first day of +my honeymoon." Annie Firmin was staying in Warwick Gardens for the +wedding and afterwards. Gilbert's first letter, from the Norfolk +Broads, began "I have a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a +knife: what more can any man want on a honeymoon." + +Asked on his return what wallpapers he would prefer in the house they +had chosen, he asked for brown paper so that he could draw pictures +everywhere. He had by no means abandoned this old habit, and Annie +remembers an illness during which he asked for a long enough pencil +to draw on the ceiling. Their quaint little house in Edwardes Square, +Kensington, lent to them by Mr. Boore, an old friend of Frances, was +close to Warwick Gardens. "I remember the house well," wrote E. C. +Bentley later, "with its garden of old trees and its general air of +Georgian peace. I remember too the splendid flaming frescoes, done in +vivid crayons, of knights and heroes and divinities with which G.K.C. +embellished the outside wall at the back, beneath a sheltering +portico. I have often wondered whether the landlord charged for them +as dilapidations at the end of the tenancy." + +They were only in Edwardes Square for a few months and then moved to +Overstrand Mansions, Battersea, where the rest of their London life +was spent. It was here I came to know them a few years later. As soon +as they could afford it they threw drawing-room and dining-room +together to make one big room. At one end hung an Engagement board +with what Father O'Connor has described as a _"loud_ inscription"-- +LEST WE FORGET. Beside the engagements was pinned a poem by Hilaire +Belloc: + + Frances and Gilbert have a little flat + At eighty pounds a year and cheap at that + Where Frances who is Gilbert's only wife + Leads an unhappy and complaining life: + while Gilbert who is Frances' only man + Puts up with it as gamely as he can. + +The Bellocs chose life in the country much earlier than the +Chestertons, and an undated letter to Battersea threatens due +reprisals in an exclusion from their country home, if the Chestertons +are not prepared to receive him in town at a late hour. + + Kings Land, Shipley, Horsham + + It will annoy you a good deal to hear that I am in town tomorrow + Wednesday evening and that I shall appear at your Apartment at 10.45 + or 10.30 at earliest. P.M.! You are only just returned. You are + hardly settled down. It is an intolerable nuisance. You heartily wish + I had not mentioned it. + + Well, you see that [arrow pointing to "Telegrams, Coolham, + Sussex"], if you wire there before _One_ you can put me off, but if + you do I shall melt your keys, both the exterior one which forms the + body or form of the matter and the interior one which is the mystical + content thereof. + + Also if you put me off I shall not have you down here ever to see + the _Oak Room_, the _Tapestry Room_, the _Green Room_ etc. + + Yrs, + H.B. + +Early in his Battersea life Gilbert received a note from Max +Beerbohm, the great humourist, introducing himself and suggesting a +luncheon together. + + I am quite different from my writings (and so, I daresay, are you + from yours)--so that we should not necessarily fail to hit it off. + + I, in the flesh, am modest, full of commonsense, very genial, and + rather dull. + + What you are remains to be seen--or not to be seen--by me, according + to your decision. + +Gilbert's decision was for the meeting and an instant liking grew +into a warm friendship. As in J.D.C. days Gilbert had written verse +about his friends, so now did he try to sum up an impression, perhaps +after some special talk: + + And Max's queer crystalline sense + Lit, like a sea beneath a sea, + Shines through a shameless impudence + As shameless a humility. + Or Belloc somewhat rudely roared + But all above him when he spoke + The immortal battle trumpets broke + And Europe was a single sword.* + +[* Unpublished fragment.] + +Somewhere about this time must have occurred the incident +mentioned by George Bernard Shaw in a note which appeared +in the _Mark Twain Quarterly_ (Spring, 1937): + +I cannot remember when I first met Chesterton. I was so much struck +by a review of Scott's _Ivanhoe_ which he wrote for the _Daily News_ +in the course of his earliest notable job as feuilletonist to that +paper that I wrote to him asking who he was and where he came from, +as he was evidently a new star in literature. He was either too shy +or too lazy to answer. The next thing I remember is his lunching with +us on quite intimate terms, accompanied by Belloc. + +The actual first meeting, forgotten by Shaw, is remembered by +Gilbert's brother-in-law, Lucian Oldershaw. He and Gilbert had gone +together to Paris where they visited Rodin, then making a bust of +Bernard Shaw. Mr. Oldershaw introduced Gilbert to G.B.S., who, +Rodin's secretary told them, had been endeavouring to explain at some +length the nature of the Salvation Army, leading up (one imagines) to +an account of Major Barbara. At the end of the explanation, Rodin's +secretary remarked--to a rather apologetic Shaw--"The Master says you +have not much French but you impose yourself." + +"Shaw talked Gilbert down," Mr. Oldershaw complained. That the famous +man should talk more than the beginner is hardly surprising, but all +through Gilbert's life the complaint recurs on the lips of his +admirers, just as a similar complaint is made by Lockhart about Sir +Walter Scott. Chesterton, like Scott, abounded in cordial admiration +of other men and women and had a simple enjoyment in meeting them. +And Chesterton was one of the few great conversationalists--perhaps +the only one--who would really rather listen than talk. + +In 1901 appeared his first book of collected essays, _The Defendant_. +The essays in it had already appeared in _The Speaker_. Like all his +later work it had the mixed reception of enthusiasts who saw what he +meant, and puzzled reviewers who took refuge in that blessed word +"paradox." "Paradox ought to be used," said one of these, "like +onions to season the salad. Mr. Chesterton's salad is all onions. +Paradox has been defined as 'truth standing on her head to attract +attention.' Mr. Chesterton makes truth cut her throat to attract +attention." + +Without denying that his love of a joke led him into indefensible +puns and suchlike fooleries (though Mgr. Ronald Knox tells me he is +prepared to defend all of G.K.'s puns), I think nearly all his +paradoxes were either the startling expression of an entirely +neglected truth, or the startling re-emphasis of the neglected side +of a truth. Once, he said: "It is a paradox, but it is God, and not +I, who should have the credit of it." He proved his case a few years +later in the chapter of _Orthodoxy_ called "The Paradoxes of +Christianity." What it amounted to was roughly this: paradox must be +of the nature of things because of God's infinity and the limitations +of the world and of man's mind. To us limited beings God can express +His idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent +contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is +suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner we startle +the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do +it we shall miss a great deal of truth. + +Chesterton also saw many proverbs and old sayings as containing a +truth which the people who constantly repeated them had forgotten. +The world was asleep and must be awakened. The world had gone +placidly mad and must be violently restored to sanity. That the +methods he used annoyed some is undeniable, but he did force people +to think, even if they raged at him as the unaccustomed muscles came +into play. + +"I believe," he said in a speech at this date, "in getting into +hot water. I think it keeps you clean." And he believed intensely +in keeping out of a narrow stream of merely literary life. To +those who exalted the poet above the journalist he gave this +answer: + + The poet writing his name upon a score of little pages in the + silence of his study, may or may not have an intellectual right to + despise the journalist: but I greatly doubt whether he would not + morally be the better if he saw the great lights burning on through + darkness into dawn, and heard the roar of the printing wheels + weaving the destinies of another day. Here at least is a school of + labour and of some rough humility, the largest work ever published + anonymously since the great Christian cathedrals.* + +[* "A Word for the Mere Journalist." _Darlington North Star:_ +February 3, 1902.] + +He plunged then into the life of Fleet Street and held it his +proudest boast to be a journalist. But he had his own way of being a +journalist: + + On the whole, I think I owe my success (as the millionaires say) to + having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best + advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best + sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the + exact opposite. For what they all told me was that the secret of + success in journalism was to study the particular journal and write + what was suitable to it. And, partly by accident and ignorance and + partly through the real rabid certainties of youth, I cannot remember + that I ever wrote any article that was at all suitable to any + paper. . . . I wrote on a Nonconformist organ like the old _Daily + News_ and told them all about French cafés and Catholic cathedrals; + and they loved it, because they had never heard of them before. I + wrote on a robust Labour organ like the old _Clarion_ and defended + mediaeval theology and all the things their readers had never heard + of; and their readers did not mind me a bit.* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 185-6.] + +Mr. Titterton, who worked also on the _Daily News_ and came at this +time to know G.K. in the Pharos Club, says that at first he was +rather shy of the other men on the staff but after a dinner at which +he was asked to speak he came to know and like them and to be at home +in Fleet Street. He liked to work amid human contact and would write +his articles in a public-house or in the club or even in the street, +resting the paper against a wall. + +Frank Swinnerton records* a description given him by Charles +Masterman of + + how Chesterton used to sit writing his articles in a Fleet St. + café, sampling and mixing a terrible conjunction of drinks, while + many waiters hovered about him, partly in awe, and partly in case he + should leave the restaurant without paying for what he had had. One + day . . . the headwaiter approached Masterman. "Your friend," he + whispered, admiringly, "he very clever man. He sit and laugh. And + then he write. And then he laugh at what he write." + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 94.] + +He loved Fleet Street and did a good deal of drinking there. But not +only there. When (in the _Autobiography_) he writes of wine and song +it is not Fleet Street and its taverns that come back to his mind but +"the moonstruck banquets given by Mr. Maurice Baring," the garden in +Westminster where he fenced with real swords against one more +intoxicated than himself, songs shouted in Auberon Herbert's rooms +near Buckingham Palace. + +After marriage Frances seems to have given up the struggle, so +ardently pursued during their engagement, to make him tidy. By a +stroke of genius she decided instead to make him picturesque. The +conventional frock-coat worn so unconventionally, the silk hat +crowning a mat of hair, disappeared, and a wide-brimmed slouch hat +and flowing cloak more appropriately garbed him. This was especially +good as he got fatter. He was a tall man, six foot two. As a boy he +had been thin, but now he was rapidly putting on weight. Neither he +nor Cecil played games (the tennis did not last!) but they used to go +for long walks, sometimes going off together for a couple of days at +a time. Gilbert still liked to do this with Frances, but the +sedentary Daily life and the consumption of a good deal of beer did +not help towards a graceful figure. By 1903 G.K. was called a fat +humourist and he was fast getting ready to be Dr. Johnson in various +pageants. By 1906--he was then thirty-two--he had become famous +enough to be one of the celebrities painted or photographed for +exhibitions; and Bernard Shaw described a photo of him by Coburn: + + Chesterton is "our Quinbus Flestrin," the young Man Mountain, a + large abounding gigantically cherubic person who is not only large in + body and mind beyond all decency, but seems to be growing larger as + you look at him--"swellin' wisibly," as Tony Weller puts it. Mr. + Coburn has represented him as flowing off the plate in the very act + of being photographed and blurring his own outlines in the process. + Also he has caught the Chestertonian resemblance to Balzac and + unconsciously handled his subject as Rodin handled Balzac. You may + call the placing of the head on the plate wrong, the focussing wrong, + the exposure wrong if you like, but Chesterton is right and a right + impression of Chesterton is what Mr. Coburn was driving at. + +The change in his appearance G.K. celebrated in a stanza of his +"Ballade of the Grotesque": + + I was light as a penny to spend, + I was thin as an arrow to cleave, + I could stand on a fishing-rod's end + With composure, though on the _qui vive_; + But from Time, all a-flying to thieve, + The suns and the moons of the year, + A different shape I receive; + The shape is decidedly queer. + +"London," said a recently arrived American, "is the most marvellously +fulfilling experience. I went to see Fleet Street this morning, and +met G. K. Chesterton face to face. Wrapped in a cloak and standing in +the doorway of a pie-shop, he was composing a poem reciting it aloud +as he wrote. The most striking thing about the incident was that no +one took the slightest notice." + +I doubt if any writer, except Dickens, has so quickly become an +institution as Chesterton. Nor, of course, would his picturesqueness +in Fleet Street or his swift success as a journalist have +accomplished this but for the vast output of books on every +conceivable subject. + +But before I come to the books written during those years at +Battersea, a word must be said of another element besides his +journalistic contacts that was linking G.K. with a wider world than +the solely literary. We have seen that even when his religion was at +its lowest point, in the difficult Art School days, he never lost it +entirely--"I hung on to religion by one thin thread of thanks." In +the years of the Notebook, he advanced very far in his pondering on +and acceptance of the great religious truths. But this did not as yet +mean attachment to a Church. Then he met Frances. "She actually +practised a religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both +to me and to the whole fussy culture in which she lived." Now that +they were married, Frances, as a convinced Anglo-Catholic, was +bringing more clergy and other Anglican friends into Gilbert's +circle. Moreover, he was lecturing all over England, and this brought +him into contact with all sorts of strange religious beliefs. "Amid +all this scattered thinking . . . I began to piece together fragments +of the old religious scheme; mainly by the various gaps that denoted +its disappearance. And the more I saw of real human nature, the more +I came to suspect that it was really rather bad for all these people +that it had disappeared."* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 177.] + +In 1903-04 he had a tremendous battle (the detail of which will be +treated in the next chapter) in the _Clarion_ with Robert Blatchford. +In it he adumbrated many of the ideas that were later developed in +_Orthodoxy_. Of the arguments used by Blatchford and his atheist +friends, G.K. wrote that the effect on his own mind was: "Almost thou +persuadest me to be a Christian." In a diary kept by Frances +spasmodically during the years 1904-05, she notes that Gilbert has +been asked to preach as the first of a series of lay preachers in a +city church. She writes: + +_March 16th_. One of the proudest days of my life. Gilbert preached +at St. Paul's, Covent Garden for the C.S.U. [Christian Social Union] +_Vox populi vox Dei_. A crammed church--he was very eloquent and +restrained. Sermons will be published afterwards. + +Published they were: under the title, _Preachers from the Pew_. + +_March 30th_. The second sermon: "The Citizen, the Gentleman and the +Savage." Even better than last week. "Where there is no vision the +people perisheth." + +When it is remembered that the _Browning_, the _Watts_, _Twelve +Types_ and the _Napoleon of Notting Hill_ had all been published and +received with acclaim, it is touching that Frances should speak thus +of the "proudest day" of her life. That Gilbert should himself have +vision and show it to others remained her strongest aspiration. Not +thus felt all his admirers. The Blatchford controversy on matters +religious became more than many of them could bear. + +A plaintive correspondent (says the _Daily News_), who seems to have +had enough of the eternal verities and the eternal other things, +sends us the following "lines written on reading Mr. G. K. +Chesterton's forty-seventh reply to a secularist opponent": + + What ails our wondrous "G.K.C." + Who late, on youth's glad wings, + Flew fairylike, and gossip'd free + Of translunary things, + + That thus, in dull didactic mood, + He quits the realms of dream, + And like some pulpit-preacher rude, + Drones on one dreary theme? + + Stern Blatchford, _thou_ hast dashed the glee + Of our Omniscient Babe; + Thy name alone now murmurs he, + Or that of dark McCabe. + + All vain his cloudy fancies swell, + His paradox all vain, + Obsessed by that malignant spell + Of Blatchford on the brain. + + H.S.S.* + +[* _Daily News_, 12 January, 1904.] + +Mr. Noel has a livelier memory of Gilbert's religious and social +activities. On one occasion he went to the Battersea flat for a +meeting at which he was to speak and Gilbert take the chair, to +establish a local branch of the Christian Social Union. The two men +got into talk over their wine in the dining-room (then still a +separate room) and Frances came in much agitated. "Gilbert you must +dress. The people will be arriving any moment. + +"Yes, yes, I'll go." + +The argument was resumed and went on with animation. Frances came +back. "Gilbert, the drawing-room is half full and people are still +arriving." At last in despair she brought Gilbert's dress-clothes +into the dining-room and made him change there, still arguing. Next +he had to be urged into the drawing-room. Established at a small +table he began to draw comic bishops, quite oblivious of the fact +that he was to take the chair at the now assembled meeting. Finally +Frances managed to attract his attention, he leaped up overthrowing +the small table and scattering the comic bishops. + +"Surely this story," said a friend to whom I told it, "proves what +some people said about Chesterton's affectation. He must have been +posing." + +I do not think so, and those who knew Gilbert best believed him +incapable of posing. But he was perfectly capable of wilfulness and +of sulking like a schoolboy. It amused him to argue with Mr. Noel, it +did not amuse him at all to take the chair at a meeting. So, as he +was not allowed to go on arguing, he drew comic bishops. + +There was, too, more than a touch of this wilfulness in the second +shock he administered to respectable Battersea later in the evening. +An earnest young lady asked the company for counsel as to the best +way of arranging her solitary maid's evening out. "I'm so afraid," +ended the appeal, "of her going to the Red Lion." + +"Best place she could go," said Gilbert. And occasionally he would +add example to precept, for society and Fleet Street were not the +only places for human intercourse. "At present," commented a +journalist, "he is cultivating the local politics of Battersea; in +secluded ale houses he drinks with the frequenters and learns their +opinions on municipal milk and on Mr. John Burns." + +"Good friends and very gay companions," Gilbert calls the Christian +Social Union group of whom, beside Conrad Noel, were Charles +Masterman, Bishop Gore, Percy Dearmer, and above all Canon Scott +Holland. Known as "Scotty" and adored by many generations of young +men, he was "a man with a natural surge of laughter within him, so +that his broad mouth seemed always to be shut down on it in a grimace +of restraint."* Like Gilbert, he suffered from the effect of urging +his most serious views with apparent flippancy and fantastic +illustrations. In the course of a speech to a respectable Nottingham +audience he remarked, "I dare say several of you here have never been +in prison." + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 169.] + +"A ghastly stare," says Gilbert, describing this speech, "was fixed +on all the faces of the audience; and I have ever since seen it in my +own dreams; for it has constituted a considerable part of my own +problem." + +Gilbert's verses, summarizing the meeting as it must have sounded to +a worthy Nottingham tradesman, are quoted in the _Autobiography_ and +completed in _Father Brown on Chesterton_. I have put them together +here for they show how merrily these men were working to change the +world. + + The Christian Social Union here + Was very much annoyed; + It seems there is some duty + Which we never should avoid, + And so they sang a lot of hymns + To help the Unemployed. + + Upon a platform at the end + The speakers were displayed + And Bishop Hoskins stood in front + And hit a bell and said + That Mr. Carter was to pray, + And Mr. Carter prayed. + + Then Bishop Gore of Birmingham + He stood upon one leg + And said he would be happier + If beggars didn't beg, + And that if they pinched his palace + It would take him down a peg. + + He said that Unemployment + Was a horror and a blight, + He said that charities produced + Servility and spite, + And stood upon the other leg + And said it wasn't right. + + And then a man named Chesterton + Got up and played with water, + He seemed to say that principles + Were nice and led to slaughter + And how we always compromised + And how we didn't orter. + + Then Canon Holland fired ahead + Like fifty cannons firing, + We tried to find out what he meant + With infinite enquiring, + But the way he made the windows jump + We couldn't help admiring. + + I understood him to remark + (It seemed a little odd.) + That half a dozen of his friends + had never been in quod. + He said he was a Socialist himself, + And so was God. + + He said the human soul should be + Ashamed of every sham, + He said a man should constantly + Ejaculate "I am" + When he had done, I went outside + And got into a tram. + +Partly perhaps to console himself for the loss of his son's Daily +company, chiefly, I imagine, out of sheer pride and joy in his +success, Edward Chesterton started after the publication of _The Wild +Knight_ pasting all Gilbert's press-cuttings into volumes. Later I +learnt that it had long been Gilbert's weekly penance to read these +cuttings on Sunday afternoon at his father's house. Traces of his +passage are visible wherever a space admits of a caricature, and +occasionally, where it does not, the caricature is superimposed on +the text. + +His growing fame may be seen by the growing size of these volumes and +the increased space given to each of his books. _Twelve Types_ in +1902 had a good press for a young man's work and was taken seriously +in some important papers, but its success was as nothing compared +with that of the _Browning_ a year later. The bulk of _Twelve Types_, +as of _The Defendant_, had appeared in periodicals, but never in his +life did Gilbert prepare a volume of his essays for the press without +improving, changing and unifying. It was never merely a collection, +always a book. + +Still, the _Browning_ was another matter. It was a compliment for a +comparatively new author to be given the commission for the English +Men of Letters Series. Stephen Gwynn describes the experience of the +publishers: + +On my advice the Macmillans had asked him to do Browning in the +"English Men of Letters," when he was still not quite arrived. Old +Mr. Craik, the Senior Partner, sent for me and I found him in white +fury, with Chesterton's proofs corrected in pencil; or rather not +corrected; there were still thirteen errors uncorrected on one page; +mostly in quotations from Browning. A selection from a Scotch ballad +had been quoted from memory and three of the four lines were wrong, I +wrote to Chesterton saying that the firm thought the book was going +to "disgrace" them. His reply was like the trumpeting of a crushed +elephant. But the book was a huge success.* + +[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, p. 14.] + +In fact, it created a sensation and established G.K. in the front +rank. Not all the reviewers liked it, and one angry writer in the +_Athenaeum_ pointed out that, not content with innumerable +inaccuracies about Browning's descent and the events of his life, +G.K. had even invented a line in "Mr. Sludge the Medium." But every +important paper had not only a review but a long review, and the vast +majority were enthusiastic. Chesterton claimed Browning as a poet not +for experts but for every man. His treatment of the Browning love +affair, of the poet's obscurity, of "The Ring and the Book," all +receive this same praise of an originality which casts a true and +revealing light for his readers. As with all his literary criticism, +the most famous critics admitted that he had opened fresh windows on +the subject for themselves. + +This attack on his inaccuracy and admiration for his insight +constantly recurs with Chesterton's literary work. Readers noted that +in the _Ballad of the White Horse_ he made Alfred's left wing face +Guthrum's left wing. He was amused when it was pointed out, but never +bothered to alter it. His memory was prodigious. All his friends +testify to his knowing by heart pages of his favourite authors (and +these were not few). Ten years after his time with Fisher Unwin, +Frances told Father O'Connor that he remembered all the plots and +most of the characters of the "thousands" of novels he had read for +the firm. But he trusted his memory too much and never verified. +Indeed, when it was a question merely of verbal quotation he said it +was pedantic to bother, and when latterly Dorothy Collins looked up +his references he barely tolerated it. + +Again while he constantly declared that he was no scholar, he said +things illuminating even to scholars. Thus, much later, when +Chesterton's _St. Thomas Aquinas_ appeared, the Master-General of the +Dominican Order, Père Gillet, O.P., lectured on and from it to large +meetings of Dominicans. Mr. Eccles told me that talking of Virgil, +G.K. said things immensely illuminating for experts on Latin poetry. +In a very different field, Mr. Oldershaw noted after their trip to +Paris that though he could set Gilbert right on many a detail yet his +generalisations were marvellous. He had, said Mr. Eccles, an +intuitive mind. He had, too, read more than was realised, partly +because his carelessness and contempt for scholarship misled. Where +the pedant would have referred and quoted and cross-referred, he went +dashing on, throwing out ideas from his abundance and caring little +if among his wealth were a few faults of fact or interpretation. +"Abundance" was a word much used of his work just now, and in the +field of literary criticism he was placed high, and had an +enthusiastic following. We may assume that the _Browning_ had +something to do with Sir Oliver Lodge's asking him in the next year +(1904) to become a candidate for the Chair of Literature at +Birmingham University. But he had no desire to be a professor. + +Frances, in her diary, notes some of their widening contacts and +engagements. The mixture of shrewdness and simplicity in her comments +will be familiar to those who knew her intimately. Meeting her for +the first time I think the main impression was that of the "single +eye." She abounded in Gilbert's sense, as my mother commented after +an early meeting, and ministered to his genius. Yet she never lost an +individual, markedly feminine point of view, which helped him +greatly, as anyone can see who will read all he wrote on marriage. He +shows an insight almost uncanny in the section called, "The Mistake +About Women" in _What's Wrong with the World_. "Some people," he said +in a speech of 1905, "when married gain each other. Some only lose +themselves." The Chestertons gained each other. And by the sort of +paradox he loved, Frances did so by throwing the stream of her own +life unreservedly into the greater river of her husband's. She writes +in her Diary, for 1904: + + Gilbert and I meet all sorts of queer, well-known, attractive, + unattractive people and I expect this book will be mostly about + them. . . . + + Feb. 17th. We went together to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Colvin's "At + home." It was rather jolly but too many clever people there to be + really nice. The clever people were Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Henry + James, Mr. Laurence Binyon, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, and a great many + more. Mr. and Mrs. Colvin looked so happy. + + Feb. 23rd. Gilbert went as Mr. Lane's guest to a dinner of the "Odd + Volumes" at the Imperial Restaurant. The other guest was Baden + Powell. He and Gilbert made speeches. . . . + + March 8th. Gilbert was to speak on "Education" at a C.S.U. meeting + at Sion College, but a debate on the Chinese Labour in South Africa + was introduced instead and went excitingly. There is to be a big + meeting of the C.S.U. to protest. Though I suppose it's all no good + now. When the meeting was over we adjourned to a tea-shop and had + immense fun. Gilbert, Percy Dearmer and Conrad Noel walked together + down Fleet Street, and never was there a funnier sight. Gilbert's + costume consisted of a frock coat, huge felt hat and walking stick + brandished in the face of the passers-by, to their exceeding great + danger. Conrad was dressed in an old lounge suit of sober grey with a + clerical hat jauntily stuck on the back of his head (which led + someone to remark, "Are you here in the capacity of a private + gentleman, poor curate, or low-class actor?"). Mr. Dearmer was clad + in wonderful clerical garments of which he alone possesses the + pattern, which made him look like a Chaucer Canterbury Pilgrim or a + figure out of a Noah's ark. They swaggered down the roadway talking + energetically. At tea we talked of many things, the future of the + "Commonwealth" chiefly . . . + + March 22nd. Meeting of Christian Theosophical Society at which + Gilbert lectured on "How Theosophy appears to a Christian." He was + very good. Herbert Burrows vigorously attacked him in debate + afterwards . . . _Napoleon of Notting Hill_ was published. + + April 27th. The Bellocs and the Noels came here to dinner. Hilaire + in great form recited his own poetry with great enthusiasm the whole + evening . . . + + May 9th. the Literary Fund Dinner. About the greatest treat I ever + had in my life. J. M. Barrie presided. He was so splendid and so + complimentary. Mrs. J. M. Barrie is very pretty, but the most + beautiful woman there was Mrs. Anthony Hope--copper coloured hair, + masses, with a wreath of gardenias--green eyes--and a long neck, very + beautiful figure. The speakers were Barrie, Lord Tennyson, Comyns + Carr, A. E. W. Mason, Mrs. Craigie (who acquitted herself + wonderfully) and Mrs. Flora Annie Steel. After the formal dinner was + a reception at which everyone was very friendly. It is wonderful the + way in which they all accept Gilbert, and one well-known man told me + he was the biggest man present. Anyhow there was the feeling of + brotherhood and fellowship in the wielding of "the lovely and + loathely pen" (J. M. Barrie's speech). + + May 12th. Went to see Max Beerbohm's caricature of Gilbert at the + Carfax Gallery. "G.K.C.--humanist--kissing the World." It's more like + Thackeray, very funny though. + + June 9th. A political "at home" at Mrs. Sidney Webb's--saw Winston + Churchill and Lloyd George. Politics and nothing but politics is dull + work though, and an intriguer's life must be a pretty poor affair. + Mrs. Sidney Webb looked very handsome and moved among her guests as + one to the manner born. I like Mrs. Leonard Courtenay who is always + kind to me. Charlie Masterman and I had a long talk on the iniquities + of the "Daily News" and goodness knows they are serious enough. + + June 22nd. An "at home" at Mrs. ----'s proved rather a dull affair + save for a nice little conversation with Watts Dunton. His walrusy + appearance which makes the bottom of his face look fierce, is + counteracted by the kindness of his little eyes. He told us the inner + story of Whistler's "Peacock Room" which scarcely redounds to + Whistler's credit. The Duchess of Sutherland was there and many + notabilities. Between ourselves Mr. ---- is a good-hearted snob. His + wife nice, intelligent, but affected (I suppose unconsciously). I + don't really like the "precious people." They worry me. + + June 30th. Graham Robertson's "at home" was exceedingly select. I + felt rather too uncultivated to talk much. Mr. Lane tucked his arm + into mine and requested to know the news which means, "tell me all + your husband is doing, or going to do, how much is he getting, who + will publish for him, has he sold his American rights, etc." Cobden's + three daughters looked out of place, so solid and sincere are they. + It was all too grand. No man ought to have so much wealth. + + July 5th. Gilbert went today to see Swinburne--I think he found it + rather hard to reconcile the idea with the man, but he was + interested, though I could not gather much about the visit. He was + amused at the compliments which Watts Dunton and Swinburne pay to + each other unceasingly. + + December 8th. George Alexander has an idea that he wants Gilbert to + write a play for him, and sent for him to come and see him. He was + apparently taken with the notion of a play on the Crusades, and + although there is at present no love incident in Gilbert's mind, + Alexander introduced and acted the supposed love scene with great + spirit. It may come off some day perhaps. + + December 31st. H. Belloc's been very ill but is better, thank God. + + 1905 + + Feb. 1st. Gilbert, a guest at the "Eighty Club" dinner. Rhoda and I + went to after dinner speeches. G. W. E. Russell (Chair). Augustine + Birrell guest and Sir Henry Fowler. It amused me hugely. Russell so + imprudent and reckless, Birrell so prudent and incapable of giving + himself away, Sir Henry Fowler so commonplace and trite. He looked so + wicked. I thought of Mr. Haldane's story of Fowler's fur coat and his + single remark on examining it: "skunk." + + Feb. 11th. Rather an interesting lunch at Mrs. J. R. Green's. Jack + Yeats and Mrs. Thursby were there. The atmosphere is too political + and I imagine Mrs. Green to be a bit of a wire-puller, though I + believe a nice woman. + + Feb. 24th. Mr. Halliwell Sutcliffe came over. He is amusing and + nice. Very puzzled at Gilbert's conduct, which on this particular + occasion was peculiarly eccentric. + + March 9th. I had an amusing lunch at the Hotel Cecil with Miss + Bisland (representative of McClure). Evidently thinks a lot of + Gilbert and wants his work for McClure. O ye gods and little fishes! + The diplomatic service ought to be all conducted by women. I offered + her Margaret's poems in exchange for a short interview with Meredith + which she wishes Gilbert to undertake. + + March 14th. Gilbert dined at the Buxtons, met Asquith. + + March 19th. Lienie is in town and we have been with her to call on + the Duchess of Sutherland. When I had got used to the splendour it + was jolly enough. Her Grace is a pretty, sweet woman who was very + nervous, but got better under the fire of Gilbert's chaff. She made + him write in her album which he did, a most ridiculous poem of which + he should be ashamed. It must be truly awful to live in the sort of + way the Duchess does and endeavour to keep sane. + + May 20th. Words fail me when I try to recall the sensation aroused + by a J.D.C. dinner. It seems so odd to think of these men as boys, to + realize what their school life was and what a powerful element the + J.D.C. was in the lives of all. And there were husbands and wives, + and the tie so strong, and the long, long thoughts of schoolboys and + schoolgirls fell on us, as if the battle were still to come instead + of raging round us. + + May 24th. We went together to see George Meredith. I suppose many + people have seen him in his little Surrey Cottage; Flint Cottage, + Boxhill. He has a wonderful face and a frail old body. He talks + without stopping except to drink ginger-beer. He told us many + stories, mostly about society scandals of some time back. I remember + he asked Gilbert, "Do you like babies?" and when Gilbert said, "Yes," + he said "So do I, especially in the comet stage." + + June 5th. Granville Barker came to see Gilbert, touching the + possibility of a play. + + June 29th. A garden party at the Bishop's House, Kennington. The + Bishop told me that A. J. Balfour was very impressed with "Heretics." + Guild of St. Matthew Service and rowdy supper. Gilbert made an + excellent speech. + + July 5th. Gilbert dined at the Asquiths; met Rosebery. I think he + hated it. + + July 16th. Gilbert went to see Mrs. Grenfell at Taplow. He met + Balfour, Austen Chamberlain and George Wyndham. Had an amusing time, + no doubt. Says Balfour is most interesting to talk to but appears + bored. George Wyndham is delightful. + +One felt always with both Frances and Gilbert that this society life +stayed on the surface--amusing, distracting, sometimes welcome, +sometimes boring--but never infringing the deeper reality of their +relationships with old friends, with their own families, with each +other. Frances wrote endless business and other letters for them +both: in just a handful, mainly to Father O'Connor, does she show her +deeper life of thought and feeling. Gilbert had little time now for +writing anything but books and articles. Never a very good +correspondent he had become an exceedingly bad one. Annie Firmin's +engagement to Robert Kidd produced one of the few letters that exist. +It is handwritten and undated. + + A Restaurant somewhere. + + MY DEAR ANNIE, + + I have thought of you, I am quite certain, more often than I have + of any human being for a long time past--except my wife who recalls + herself continually to me by virtues, splendours, agreeable memories, + screams, pokers, brickbats and other things. And yet, though whenever + my mind was for an instant emptied of theology and journalism and + patriotism and such rot, it has been immediately filled with you, I + have never written you a line. + + I am not going to explain this and for a good reason. It is a part + of the Mystery of the Male, and you will soon, even if you do not + already, get the hang of it, by the society of an individual who + while being unmistakably a much better man than I am, is nevertheless + male. I can only say that when men want a thing they act quite + differently to women. We put off everything we want to do, in the + ordinary way. If the Archangel Michael wrote me a complimentary + letter tomorrow (as perhaps he may) I should put it in my pocket, + saying, "How admirable a reply shall I write to that in a week or a + month or so." I put off writing to you because I wanted to write + something that had in it all that you have been, to me, to all of us. + And now instead I am scrawling this nonsense in a tavern after lunch. + + My very dear old friend, I am of a sex that very seldom takes real + trouble, that forgets the little necessities of time, that is by + nature lazy. I never wanted really but one thing in my life and that + I got. Any person inspecting 60 Overstrand Mansions may see that + somewhat excitable thing--free of charge. In another person, whom + with maddening jealousy I suspect of being some inches taller than I + am, I believe I notice the same tendency towards monomania. He also, + being as I have so keenly pointed out, male, he also--I think has + only wanted one thing seriously in his life. He also has got it: + another male weakness which I recognize with sympathy. + + All my reviewers call me frivolous. Do you think all this kind of + thing frivolous? Damn it all (excuse me) what can one be but + frivolous about serious things? Without frivolity they are simply too + tremendous. That you, who, with your hair down your back, played at + bricks with me in a house of which I have no memory except you and + the bricks, that you should be taken by someone of my miserable + sex--as you ought to be--what is one to say? I am not going to wish + you happiness, because I am quite placidly certain that your + happiness is inevitable. I know it because my wife is happy with me + and the wild, weird, extravagant, singular origin of this is a + certain enduring fact in my psychology which you will find paralleled + elsewhere. + + God bless you, my dear girl. + + Yours ever, + GILBERT CHESTERTON. + +Married in 1903, Annie and her husband took another flat in +Overstrand Mansions. + +"Gilbert never cared what he wore," she writes. "I remember one night +when my husband and I were living in the same block of flats he came +in to ask me to go and sit with Frances who wasn't very well, while +he went down to the House to dine with Hugh Law--Gilbert was very +correctly dressed except for the fact that he had on one boot and one +slipper! I pointed it out to him, and he said: 'Do you think it +matters?' I told him I was sure Frances would not like him to go out +like that--the only argument to affect him! When he was staying with +me here in Vancouver, Dorothy Collins had to give him the once-over +before he went lecturing--they had left Frances in Palos Verdes as +she wasn't well." + +In 1904, were published a monograph on Watts, _The Napoleon of +Notting Hill_, and an important chapter in a composite book, _England +a Nation_. + +The _Watts_ is among the results of Gilbert's art studies. Its +reviewers admired it somewhat in the degree of their admiration +for the painter. But for a young man at that date to have seen the +principles of art he lays down meant rare vision. The portrait-painter, +he says, is trying to express the reality of the man himself but +"he is not above taking hints from the book of life with its +quaint old woodcuts." G.K. makes us see all the painter could have +thought or imagined as he sets us before "Mammon" or "Jonah" or +"Hope" and bids us read their legend and note the texture and lines +of the painting. His distinction between the Irish mysticism of Yeats +and the English mysticism of Watts is especially valuable, and the +book, perhaps even more than the _Browning_ or the _Dickens_, +manifests Gilbert's insight into the mind of the last generation. The +depths and limitations of the Victorian outlook may be read in _G. F. +Watts_. + +The story of the writing of _The Napoleon_ was told me in part by +Frances, while part appeared in an interview* given by Gilbert, in +which he called it his first important book: + +[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, pp. 16-17.] + + I was "broke"--only ten shillings in my pocket. Leaving my worried + wife, I went down Fleet Street, got a shave, and then ordered for + myself, at the Cheshire Cheese, an enormous luncheon of my favourite + dishes and a bottle of wine. It took my all, but I could then go to + my publishers fortified. I told them I wanted to write a book and + outlined the story of "Napoleon of Notting Hill." But I must have + twenty pounds, I said, before I begin. + + "We will send it to you on Monday." + + "If you want the book," I replied, "you will have to give it to me + today as I am disappearing to write it." They gave it. + +Frances meanwhile sat at home thinking, as she told me, hard thoughts +of his disappearance with their only remaining coin. And then +dramatically he appeared with twenty golden sovereigns and poured +them into her lap. Referring to this incident later, Gilbert said, +"What a fool a man is, when he comes to the last ditch, not to spend +the last farthing to satisfy the inner man before he goes out to +fight a battle with wits." But it was his way to let the money +shortage become acute and then deal with it abruptly. Frank +Swinnerton relates that when, as a small boy, he was working for J. +M. Dent, Gilbert appeared after office hours with a Dickens preface +but refused to leave it because Swinnerton, the only soul left in the +place, could not give him the agreed remuneration. + +The _Napoleon_ is the story of a war between the London suburbs, and +grew largely from his meditations on the Boer War. Besides being the +best of his fantastic stories, it contains the most picturesque +account of Chesterton's social philosophy that he ever gave. But it +certainly puzzled some of the critics. One American reviewer feels +that he might have understood the book if he "had an intimate +knowledge of the history of the various boroughs of London and of +their present-day characteristics." Others treat the story as a mere +joke, and many feel that it is a bad descent after the _Browning_. +"Too infernally clever for anything," says one. + +Auberon Quin, King of England, chosen by lot (as are all kings and +all other officials by the date of this story, which is a romance of +the future), is one of the two heroes of this book. He is simply a +sense of humour incarnate. His little elfish face and figure was +recognised by old Paulines as suggested by a form master of their +youth; but by the entire reviewing world as Max Beerbohm. The +illustrations by Graham Robertson were held to be unmistakably Max. +Frances notes in her diary: + + A delightful dinner party at the Lanes. . . . The talk was mostly + about _Napoleon_. Max took me in to dinner and was really nice. He is + a good fellow. His costume was extraordinary. Why should an evening + waistcoat have four large white pearl buttons and why should he look + that peculiar shape? He seems only pleased at the way he has been + identified with King Auberon. "All right, my dear chap," he said to + G., who was trying to apologize. "Mr. Lane and I settled it all at a + lunch." I think he was a little put out at finding no red carpet put + down for his royal feet and we had quite a discussion as to whether + he ought to precede me into the dining room. Graham Robertson was on + my left. He was jolly too, kept on producing wonderful rings and + stones out of his pockets. He said he wished he could go about + covered in the pieces of a chandelier. The other guests were lady + Seton, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Mr. W. W. Howells and his daughter (too + Burne-Jonesy to be really attractive), Mr. Taylor (police + magistrate), and Mrs. Eichholz (Mrs. Lane's mother) who is more + beautiful than anything except a wee baby. In fact, she looks exactly + like one, so dainty and small. She can never at any time have been as + pretty as she is now. + + Gilbert and Max and I drove to his house (Max's), where he basely + enticed us in. He gave me fearful preserved fruits which ruined my + dress--but he made himself very entertaining. Home 1.30. + +Caring for nothing in the world but a joke, King Auberon decrees that +the dull and respectable London boroughs shall be given city guards +in resplendent armour, each borough to have its own coat of arms, its +city walls, tocsin, and the like. The idea is taken seriously by the +second hero, Adam Wayne of Notting Hill, an enthusiast utterly +lacking any sense of humour, who goes to war with the other boroughs +of London to protect a small street which they have designed to pull +down in the interests of commercial development. Pimlico, Kensington +and the rest attack Notting Hill. Men bleed and die in the contest +and by the magic of the sword the old ideas of local patriotism and +beauty in civic life return to England. The conventional politician, +Barker, who begins the story in a frock-coat and irreproachable silk +hat, ends it clad in purple and gold. + +When Notting Hill, become imperial minded, goes down to destruction +in a sea of blood, Auberon Quin confesses to Wayne that this whole +story, so full of human tragedy and hopes and fears, had been merely +the outcome of a joke. To him all life was a joke, to Wayne an epic; +and this antagonism between the humorist and the fanatic has created +the whole wild story. Wayne has the last word: + + "I know of something that will alter that antagonism, something + that is outside us, something that you and I have all our lives + perhaps taken too little account of. The equal and eternal human + being will alter that antagonism, for the human being sees no real + antagonism between laughter and respect, the human being, the common + man, whom mere geniuses like you and me can only worship like a god. + When dark and dreary days come, you and I are necessary, the pure + fanatic, the pure satirist. We have between us remedied a great + wrong. We have lifted the modern cities into that poetry which every + one who knows mankind knows to be immeasurably more common than the + commonplace. But in healthy people there is no war between us. We are + but the two lobes of the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love are + everywhere. The cathedrals, built in the ages that loved God, are + full of blasphemous grotesques. The mother laughs continually at the + child, the lover laughs continually at the lover, the wife at the + husband, the friend at the friend. Auberon Quin, we have been too + long separated; let us go out together. You have a halberd and I a + sword, let us start our wanderings over the world. For we are its two + essentials. Come, it is already day." + + In the blank white light Auberon hesitated a moment. Then he made + the formal salute with his halberd, and they went away together into + the unknown world. + +This is very important to the understanding of Chesterton. With him, +profound gravity and exuberant fooling were always intermingled and +some of his deepest thoughts are conveyed by a pun. He always claimed +to be intensely serious while hating to be solemn and it was a +mixture apt to be misunderstood. If gravity and humour are the two +lobes of the average man's brain, the average man does not bring them +into play simultaneously to anything like the extent that Chesterton +did. + +Auberon Quin and Adam Wayne are the most living individuals in any of +his novels--just because they are the two lobes of his brain +individualised. All his stories abound in adventure, are admirable in +their vivid descriptions of London or the countryside of France or +England seen in fantastic visions. They are living in the portrayal +of ideas by the road of argument. But the characters are chiefly +energies through whose lips Gilbert argues with Gilbert until some +conclusion shall be reached. + +In 1905 came _The Club of Queer Trades_--least good of the +fantasia--and even admirers have begun to wonder if too many fields +are being tried; in 1906, _Dickens_ and _Heretics_. + +It will remain a moot point whether the _Browning_ or the _Dickens_ +is Chesterton's best work of literary criticism. The _Dickens_ is the +more popular, largely because Dickens is the more popular author. +Most Dickens idolators read anything about their idol if only for the +pleasure of the quotations. And no Dickens idolator could fail to +realise that here was one even more rapt in worship than himself. +After the publication of _Charles Dickens_, Chesterton undertook a +series of prefaces to the novels. In one of them he took the trouble +to answer one only of the criticisms the book had produced: the +comment that he was reading into the work of Dickens something that +Dickens did not mean. + + Criticism does not exist to say about authors the things that they + knew themselves. It exists to say the things about them which they + did not know themselves. If a critic says that the _Iliad_ has a + pagan rather than a Christian pity, or that it is full of pictures + made by one epithet, of course he does not mean that Homer could have + said that. If Homer could have said that the critic would leave Homer + to say it. The function of criticism, if it has a legitimate function + at all, can only be one function--that of dealing with the + subconscious part of the author's mind which only the critic can + express, and not with the conscious part of the author's mind, which + the author himself can express. Either criticism is no good at all (a + very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an + author the very things that would have made him jump out of his + boots.* + +[* Introduction to "Old Curiosity Shop." Reprinted in _Criticisms and +Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens_, 1933 ed. pp. 51-2.] + +He attended not at all to the crop of comments on his inaccuracies. +One reviewer pointed out that Chesterton had said that every postcard +Dickens wrote was a work of art; but Dickens died on June 9th, 1870 +and the first British postcard was issued on October 1st, 1870. "A +wonderful instance of Dickens's never-varying propensity to keep +ahead of his age." After all, what did such things matter? Bernard +Shaw, however, felt that they did. He wrote a letter from which I +think Gilbert got an important hint, utilized later in his +introduction to _David Copperfield:_ + + 6th September, 1906. + + DEAR G.K.C. + + As I am a supersaturated Dickensite, I pounced on your book and + read it, as Wegg read Gibbon and other authors, right slap through. + + In view of a second edition, let me hastily note for you one or two + matters. First and chiefly, a fantastic and colossal howler in the + best manner of Mrs. Nickleby and Flora Finching. + + There is an association in your mind (well founded) between the + quarrel over Dickens's determination to explain his matrimonial + difficulty to the public, and the firm of Bradbury and Evans. There + is also an association (equally well founded) between B. & E. and + Punch. They were the publishers of Punch. But to gravely tell the XX + century that Dickens wanted to publish his explanation in Punch is + gas and gaiters carried to an incredible pitch of absurdity. The + facts are: B. & E. were the publishers of Household Words. They + objected to Dickens explaining in H.W. He insisted. They said that in + that case they must take H.W. out of his hands. Dickens, like a lion + threatened with ostracism by a louse in his tail, published his + explanation, which stands to this day, and informed his readers that + they were to ask in future, not for Household Words, but for All the + Year Round. Household Words, left Dickensless, gasped for a few weeks + and died. All the Year Round, in exactly the same format, flourished + and entered largely into the diet of my youth. + + * * * * * + + There is a curious contrast between Dickens's sentimental + indiscretions concerning his marriage and his sorrows and quarrels, + and his impenetrable reserve about himself as displayed in his + published correspondence. He writes to his family about waiters, + about hotels, about screeching tumblers of hot brandy and water, and + about the seasick man in the next berth, but never one really + intimate word, never a real confession of his soul. David Copperfield + is a failure as an autobiography because when he comes to deal with + the grown-up David, you find that he has not the slightest intention + of telling you the truth--or indeed anything--about himself. Even the + child David is more remarkable for the reserves than for the + revelations: he falls back on fiction at every turn. Clennam and Pip + are the real autobiographies. + + I find that Dickens is at his greatest after the social awakening + which produced _Hard Times_. Little Dorrit is an enormous work. The + change is partly the disillusion produced by the unveiling of + capitalist civilization, but partly also Dickens's discovery of the + gulf between himself as a man of genius and the public. That he did + not realize this early is shown by the fact that he found out his + wife _before he married her_ as much too small for the job, and yet + plumbed the difference so inadequately that he married her thinking + he could go through with it. When the situation became intolerable, + he must have faced the fact that there was something more than + "incompatibilities" between him and the average man and woman. Little + Dorrit is written, like all the later books, frankly and somewhat + sadly, _de haut en bas_. In them Dickens recognizes that quite + everyday men are as grotesque as Bunsby. Sparkler, one of the most + extravagant of all his gargoyles, is an untouched photograph almost. + Wegg and Riderhood are sinister and terrifying because they are + simply real, which Squeers and Sikes are not. And please remark that + whilst Squeers and Sikes have their speeches written with anxious + verisimilitude (comparatively) Wegg says, "Man shrouds and grapple, + Mr. Venus, or she dies," and Riderhood describes Lightwood's sherry + (when retracting his confession) as, "I will not say a hocussed wine, + but a wine as was far from 'elthy for the mind." Dickens doesn't care + what he makes Wegg or Riderhood or Sparkler or Mr. F's aunt say, + because he knows them and has got them, and knows what matters and + what doesn't. Fledgeby, Lammle, Jerry Cruncher, Trabbs's boy, Wopsle, + etc. etc. are human beings as seen by a master. Swiveller and + Mantalini are human beings as seen by Trabbs's boy. Sometimes + Trabbs's boy has the happier touch. When I am told that young John + Chivery (whose epitaphs you ignore whilst quoting Mrs. Sapsea's) + would have gone barefoot through the prison against rules for little + Dorrit had it been paved with red hot ploughshares, I am not so + affected by his chivalry as by Swiveller's exclamation when he gets + the legacy--"For she (the Marchioness) shall walk in silk attire and + siller hae to spare." Edwin Drood is no good, in spite of the stone + throwing boy, Buzzard and Honeythunder. Dickens was a dead man before + he began it. Collins corrupted him with plots. And oh! the + Philistinism; the utter detachment from the great human heritage of + art and philosophy! Why not a sermon on that? + + G.B.S. + +Note in the Introduction to _David Copperfield_ what G.K. says as to +the break between the two halves of the book. He calls it an instance +of weariness in Dickens--a solitary instance. Is not Shaw's +explanation at once fascinating and probable? + +Kate Perugini, the daughter of Dickens, wrote two letters of immense +enthusiasm about the book saying it was the best thing written about +her father since Forster's biography. But she shatters the theory put +forth by Chesterton that Dickens thrown into intimacy with a large +family of girls fell in love with them all and happened unluckily to +marry the wrong sister. At the time of the marriage her mother, the +eldest of the sisters, was only eighteen, Mary between fourteen and +fifteen "very young and childish in appearance," Georgina eight and +Helen three! Nothing could better illustrate the clash between +enthusiasm and despair that fills a Chestertonian while reading any +of his literary biographies. For so much is built on this theory +which the slightest investigation would have shown to be baseless. + +_Heretics_ aroused animosity in many minds. Dealing with Browning or +Dickens a man may encounter literary prejudices or enthusiasms, but +there is not the intensity of feeling that he finds when he gets into +the field with his own contemporaries. Reviewers who had been +extending a friendly welcome to a beginner found that beginner +attacking landmarks in the world of letters, venturing to detest +Ibsen and to ask William Archer whether he hung up his stocking on +Ibsen's birthday, accusing Kipling of lack of patriotism. It is, said +one angrily, "unbecoming to spend most of his time criticising his +contemporaries." "His sense of mental perspective is an extremely +deficient one." "The manufacture of paradoxes is really one of the +simplest processes conceivable." "Mr. Chesterton's sententious +wisdom." + +In fact it was like the scene in _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ when +most people present were purple with anger but an intellectual few +were purple with laughter. And even now most of the reviewers seemed +not to understand where G.K. stood or what was his philosophy. +"Bernard Shaw," says one, "whom _as a disciple_* he naturally +exalts." This, after a series of books in which G.K. had exposed, +with perfect lucidity and a wealth of examples, a view of life +differing from Shaw's in almost every particular. One reviewer +clearly discerned the influence of Shaw in _The Napoleon of Notting +Hill_, "but without a trace of Shaw's wonderful humour and +perspicacity." + +[* Italics mine.] + +Belloc's approval was hearty. He wrote: + + I am delighted with what I have read in the _Daily Mail_. Hit them + again. Hurt them. Continue to binge and accept my blessing. Give them + hell. It is the only book of yours I have read right through. Which + shows that I don't read anything. Which is true enough. This letter + is written in the style of Herbert Paul. Continue to bang them about. + + You did wrong not to come to the South coast. Margate is a fraud. + What looks like sea in front of it is really a bank with hardly any + water over it. I stuck on it once in the year 1904 so I know all + about it. Moreover the harbour at Margate is not a real harbour. + Ramsgate round the corner has a real harbour on the true sea. In both + towns are citizens not averse to bribes. Do not fail to go out in a + boat on the last of the ebb as far as the Long Nose. There you will + see the astonishing phenomenon of the tide racing down the North + Foreland three hours before it has turned in the estuary of the + Thames, which you at Margate foolishly believe to be the sea. Item no + one in Margate can cook. + +Gilbert was not really concerned in this book to bang his +contemporaries about so much as to study their mistakes and so +discover what was wrong with modern thought. Shaw, George Moore, +Ibsen, Wells, The Mildness of the Yellow Press, Omar and the Sacred +Vine, Rudyard Kipling, Smart novelists and the Smart Set, Joseph +McCabe and a Divine Frivolity--the collection was a heterogeneous +one. And in the introduction the author tells us he is not concerned +with any of these men as a brilliant artist or a vivid personality, +but "as a Heretic--that is to say a man whose view of things has the +hardihood to differ from mine . . . as a man whose philosophy is +quite solid, quite coherent and quite wrong. I revert to the +doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general +hope of getting something done." + +In _England a Nation_ and even more in the study of Kipling in this +book there is one touch of inconsistency which we shall meet with +again in his later work. He hated Imperialism yet he glorified +Napoleon; himself ardently patriotic he accused Kipling of lack of +patriotism on the ground that a man could not at once love England +and love the Empire. For there was a curious note in the +anti-Imperialism of the Chesterbelloc that has not always been +recognised. The ordinary anti-Imperialist holds that England has no +right to govern an Empire and that her leadership is bad for the +other dominions. But the Chesterbelloc view was that the Dominions +were inferior and unworthy of a European England. The phrase "suburbs +of England" (quoted in a later chapter) was typical. But Kipling was +thrilled by those suburbs and Chesterton, who had as a boy admired +Kipling, attacks him in _Heretics_ for lack of patriotism. _Puck of +Pook's Hill_ was not yet written, but like Kipling's poem on Sussex +it expressed a patriotism much akin to Gilbert's own. Remember the +man who returned from the South African veldt to be the Squire's +gardener--"Me that have done what I've done, Me that have seen what +I've seen"--that man, with eyes opened to a sense of his own tragedy, +was speaking for Chesterton's people of England who "have not spoken +yet." Yes, they have spoken through the mouth of English genius: as +Langland's Piers Plowman, as Dickens's Sam Weller, but not least as +Kipling's Tommy Atkins. It was a pity Chesterton was deaf to this +last voice. With a better understanding of Kipling he might in turn +have made Kipling understand what was needed to make England "Merrie +England" once again, have given him the philosophy that should make +his genius fruitful. + +For the huge distinction between Chesterton and most of his +contemporaries lay not in the wish to get something done but in the +conviction that the right philosophy alone could produce fruitful +action. A parable in the Introduction shows the point at which his +thinking had arrived. + +Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, +let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull +down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is +approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of +the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value +of Light. If Light be in itself good." At this point he is somewhat +excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, +the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about +congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as +things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled +the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some +because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, +because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a +lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash +municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And +there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, +gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there +comes back the conviction that the monk was Right after all, that all +depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have +discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.* + +[* _Heretics_, pp. 22-3.] + +Every year during this time at Battersea, the press books reveal an +increasing flood of engagements. Gilbert lectures for the New Reform +Club on "political watchwords," for the Midland Institute on "Modern +Journalism," for the Men's Meeting of the South London Central +Mission on "Brass Bands," for the London Association of Correctors of +the Press at the Trocadero, for the C.S.U. at Church Kirk, +Accrington, at the Men's Service in the Colchester Moot Hall. He +debates at the St. German's Literary Society, maintaining "that the +most justifiable wars are the religious wars"; opens the Anti-Puritan +League at the Shaftesbury Club, speaks for the Richmond and Kew +branch of the P.N.E.U. on "The Romantic Element in Morality," for the +Ilkley P.S.A., on "Christianity and Materialism," and so on without +end. All these are on a few pages of his father's collection, +interspersed with clippings recording articles in reviews +innumerable, introductions to books, interviews and controversies. + +There was almost no element of choice in these engagements. G.K. was +intensely good-natured and hated saying No. He was the lion of the +moment and they all wanted him to roar for them. In spite of the +large heading, "Lest we forget," that met his eye daily in the +drawing-room, he did forget a great deal--in fact, friends say he +forgot any engagement made when Frances was not present to write it +down directly it was made. She had to do memory and all the practical +side of life for him. There might have been one slight chance of +making Gilbert responsible in these matters--that chance was given to +his parents and by them thrown away. How far it is even possible to +groom and train a genius is doubtful: anyhow no attempt was made. +Waited on hand and foot by his mother, never made to wash or brush +himself as a child, personally conducted to the tailor as he grew +older, given by his parents no money for which to feel responsible, +not made to keep hours--how could Frances take a man of twenty-seven, +and make him over again? + +But there is, of course, a most genuine difficulty in all this, which +Gilbert once touched on when he denied the accusation of absence of +mind. It was, he claimed, presence of mind--on his thoughts--that +made him unaware of much else. And indeed no man can be using his +mind furiously in every direction at once. Anyone who has done even a +little creative work, anyone even who has lived with people who do +creative work, knows the sense of bewilderment with which the mind +comes out of the world of remoter but greater reality and tries to +adjust with that daily world in which meals are to be ordered, +letters answered, and engagements kept. What must this pain of +adjustment not have been to a mind almost continuously creative? For +I have never known anyone work such long hours with a mind at such +tension as Gilbert's. + +There was no particular reason why he should have written his article +for the _Daily News_ as the reporter writes his--at top speed at a +late hour--but he usually did. The writing of it was left till the +last minute and, if at home, he would need Frances to get it off for +him before the deadline was reached. But he often wrote by preference +in Fleet Street--at the Cheshire Cheese or some little pub where +journalists gathered--and then he would hire a cab to take the +article a hundred yards or so to the _Daily News_ office. + +The cab in those days was the hansom with its two huge wheels over +which one perilously ascended, while the driver sat above, only to be +communicated with by opening a sort of trap door in the roof. Gilbert +once said that the imaginative Englishman in Paris would spend his +days in a café, the imaginative Frenchman in London would spend his +driving in a hansom. In the _Napoleon_, the thought of the cab moves +him to write: + + Poet whose cunning carved this amorous cell + Where twain may dwell. + +E. V. Lucas, his daughter tells us, used to say that if one were +invited to drive with Gilbert in a hansom cab it would have to be two +cabs: but this is not strictly true. For in those days I drove with +Gilbert and Frances too in a hansom--he and I side by side, she on +his knee. We must have given to the populace the impression he says +any hansom would give on first view to an ancient Roman or a simple +barbarian--that the driver riding on high and flourishing his whip +was a conqueror carrying off his helpless victims. + +Like the "buffers" at the Veneering election, he spent much of his +time "taking cabs and getting about"--or not even getting about in +them, but leaving them standing at the door for hours on end. Calling +on one publisher he placed in his hands a letter that gave excellent +reasons why he could not keep the engagement! The memory so admirable +in literary quotations was not merely unreliable for engagements but +even for such matters as street numbers and addresses. Edward +Macdonald, who worked with him later, on _G.K.'s Weekly_, relates how +some months after the paper had changed its address he failed one day +to turn up at a board meeting. + +Finally he appeared with an explanation. On calling a taxi at +Marylebone he realized that he could not give the address, so he told +the driver to take him to Fleet Street. There as his memory still +refused to help, he stopped the taxi outside a tea-shop, left it +there while he was inside, and ordering a cup of tea began to turn +out all his pockets in the hope of finding a letter or a proof +bearing the address. Then as no clue could be found, he told the +driver to take him to a bookstall that stocked the paper. At the +first and second he drew blanks but at the third bought a copy of his +own paper and thus discovered the address. + +I am not sure at what date he began to hate writing anything by hand. +My mother treasured two handwritten letters. I have none after a +friendship of close on thirty years. But I remember on his first +visit to my parents' home in Surrey his calling Frances that he might +dictate an article to her. His writing was pictorial and rather +elaborate. "He drew his signature rather than writing it," says +Edward Macdonald, who remembers him saying as he signed a cheque: +"'With many a curve my banks I fret.' I wonder if Tennyson fretted +his." At one of our earliest meetings I asked him to write in my +Autograph Book. It was at least five years before the _Ballad of the +White Horse_ appeared, but the lines may be found almost unchanged in +the ballad: + + VERSES MADE UP IN A DREAM + (which you won't believe) + + People, if you have any prayers + Say prayers for me. + And bury me underneath a stone + In the stones of Battersea. + Bury me underneath a stone, + With the sword that was my own; + To wait till the holy horn is blown + And all poor men are free. + +The dream went on, he said, for pages and pages. And I think Frances +was anxious, for the mind must find rest in sleep. + +The little flat at Battersea was a vortex of requests and +engagements, broken promises and promises fulfilled, author's ink and +printer's ink, speeches in prospect and speeches in memory, meetings +and social occasions. A sincere admirer wrote during this period of +his fears of too great a strain on his hero--and from 1904 to 1908 +the only change was an increase of pressure: + + I see that Chesterton has just issued a volume on the art of G. F. + Watts. His novel was published yesterday. Soon his monograph on + Kingsley should be ready. I believe he has a book on some modern + aspects of religious belief in the press. He is part-editor of the + illustrated Booklets on great authors issued by the Bookman. He is + contributing prefaces and introductions to odd volumes in several + series of reprints. He is a constant contributor to the _Daily News_ + and the _Speaker_; he is conducting a public controversy with + Blatchford of the _Clarion_ on atheism and free-thinking; he is + constantly lecturing and debating and dining out; it is almost + impossible to open a paper that does not contain either an article or + review or poem or drawing of his, and his name is better known now to + compositors than Bernard Shaw. + + Now, both physically and mentally Chesterton is a Hercules, and + from what I hear of his methods of work he is capable of a great + output without much physical strain; nevertheless, it is clear, I + think to anyone that at his present rate of production he must either + wear or tear. No man born can keep so many irons in the fire and not + himself come between the hammer and the anvil. It is a pitiable thing + to have a good man spend himself so recklessly; and I repeat once + more that if he and his friends have not the will or power to + restrain him, then there should be a conspiracy of editors and + publishers in his favour. Not often is a man like Chesterton born. He + should have his full chance. And that can only come by study and + meditation, and by slow, steady accumulation of knowledge and wisdom.* + +[* Shan F. Bullock in the _Chicago Evening Post_, 9th April, 1906.] + +In a volume made up of Introductions written at this time to +individual novels of Dickens, we find a passage that might well be +Gilbert's summary of his own life: + + The calls upon him at this time were insistent and overwhelming; + this necessarily happens at a certain stage of a successful writer's + career. He was just successful enough to invite others and not + successful enough to reject them . . . there was almost too much work + for his imagination, and yet not quite enough work for his + housekeeping. . . . And it is a curious tribute to the quite curious + greatness of Dickens that in this period of youthful strain we do not + feel the strain but feel only the youth. His own amazing wish to + write equalled or outstripped even his readers' amazing wish to read. + Working too hard did not cure him of his abstract love of work. + Unreasonable publishers asked him to write ten novels at once; but he + wanted to write twenty novels at once. + +Thus too with Gilbert. The first eight years of his married life saw +in swift succession the publication of ten books comprising literary +and art criticism and biography, poetry, fiction (or rather fantasy), +light essays and religious philosophy. All these were so full at once +of the profound seriousness of youth, and of the bubbling wine of its +high spirits, as to recall another thing Gilbert said: that Dickens +was "accused of superficiality by those who cannot grasp that there +is foam upon deep seas." That was the matter in dispute about +himself, and very furiously disputed it was during these years. Was +G.K. serious or merely posing, was he a great man or a mountebank, +was he clear or obscure, was he a genius or a charlatan? "Audacious +reconciliation," he pleaded--or rather asserted, for his tone could +seldom be called a plea, "is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme +seriousness." + + A man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels, + or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is + taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it + passes. But a man who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus + must have some serious view of the universe. The man who should write + a dialogue between two early Christians might be a mere writer of + dialogues. But a man who should write a dialogue between an early + Christian and the Missing Link would have to be a philosopher. The + more widely different the types talked of, the more serious and + universal must be the philosophy which talks of them. The mark of the + light and thoughtless writer is the harmony of his subject matter; + the mark of the thoughtful writer is its apparent diversity. The most + flippant lyric poet might write a pretty poem about lambs; but it + requires something bolder and graver than a poet, it requires an + ecstatic prophet, to talk about the lion lylng down with the lamb.* + +* G. K. Chesterton. _Criticisms and Appreciations of the World of +Charles Dickens_. Dent. 1933 pp. 68-9. + +A man starting to write a thesis on Chesterton's sociology once +complained bitterly that almost none of his books were indexed, so +he had to submit to the disgusting necessity of reading them all +through, for some striking view on sociology might well be embedded +in a volume of art criticism or be the very centre of a fantastic +romance. Chesterton's was a philosophy universal and unified and it +was at this time growing fast and finding exceedingly varied +techniques of expression. But the whole of it was in a sense in each +of them--in each book, almost in each poem. As he himself says of the +universe of Charles Dickens, "there was something in it--there is in +all great creative writers--like the account in Genesis of the light +being created before the sun, moon and stars, the idea before the +machinery that made it manifest. Pickwick is in Dickens's career the +mere mass of light before the creation of sun or moon. It is the +splendid, shapeless substance of which all his stars are ultimately +made." And again, "He said what he had to say and yet not all he had +to say. Wild pictures, possible stories, tantalising and attractive +trains of thought, perspectives of adventure, crowded so continually +upon his mind that at the end there was a vast mass of them left +over, ideas that he literally had not the opportunity to develop, +tales that he literally had not the time to tell." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Clearing the Ground for Orthodoxy + + +G. K. CHESTERTON: A CRITICISM (published anonymously in 1908) was a +challenge thrown to the world of letters, for it demanded the +recognition of Chesterton as a force to be reckoned with in the +modern world. As its title implied, the book was by no means a +tribute of sheer admiration and agreement. Gilbert was rebuked for +that love of a pun or an effective phrase that sometimes led him into +indefensible positions. It was hotly asked of him that he should +abandon his unjust attitude toward Ibsen. He was accused of calling +himself a Liberal and being in fact a Tory. But even in differing +from him the book showed him as of real importance, not least in the +sketch given of his life and of the influences that had contributed +to the formation of his mind. It did too another thing: it clarified +his philosophical position for the world at large. For some time now +many had been demanding such a clarification. When G.K. attacked the +Utopia of Wells and of Shaw, both Wells and Shaw had been urgent in +their demands that he should play fair by setting forth his own +Utopia. When he attacked the fundamental philosophy of G. S. Street, +Mr. Street retorted that it would be time for him to worry about his +philosophy when G.K.'s had been unfolded. (G.K.'s retort to this was +_Orthodoxy_!) + +_G. K. Chesterton: a Criticism_--far the best book that has ever been +written about Chesterton--showed at last a mind that had really +grasped his philosophy and could even have outlined his Utopia. +Perhaps this was the less surprising as it ultimately turned out to +have been written by his brother Cecil. + +I do not know at what stage Cecil revealed his authorship, but I +remember that at first Frances told me only that they suspected Cecil +because it was from the angle of his opinions that the book +criticised many of Gilbert's. However, I was at that date only an +acquaintance and the truth may still have been a family secret. At +any rate Cecil it was, and it is small wonder if after all those +years of arguing he understood something of the man with whom he had +been measuring forces. But he did better than that--for he explained +him to others without ever having resort to these arguments, which +after all were more or less private property. He explained G.K.'s +general philosophy from the _Napoleon_, his ideas of cosmic good from +_The Wild Knight_ and _The Man Who Was Thursday_, which had just been +published that same year, 1908. + +In this last fantastic story the group of anarchists (distinguished +by being called after the days of the week) turn out, through a +series of incredible adventures to be, all save one, detectives in +disguise. The gigantic figure of Sunday before whom they all tremble +turns from the chief of the anarchists, chief of the destructive +forces, into--what? The sub-title, "A Nightmare," is needed, for +Sunday would seem to be some wild vision, seen in dreams, not merely +of forces of good, of sanity, of creation, but even of God Himself. + +When, almost twenty years later, _The Man Who Was Thursday_ was +adapted for the stage,* Chesterton said in an interview: + +[* By Ralph Neale and Mrs. Cecil Chesterton.] + + In an ordinary detective tale the investigator discovers that some + amiable-looking fellow who subscribes to all the charities, and is + fond of animals, has murdered his grandmother, or is a trigamist. I + thought it would be fun to make the tearing away of menacing masks + reveal benevolence. + + Associated with that merely fantastic notion was the one that there + is actually a lot of good to be discovered in unlikely places, and + that we who are fighting each other may be all fighting on the right + side. I think it is quite true that it is just as well we do not, + while the fight is on, know all about each other; the soul must be + solitary; or there would be no place for courage. + + A rather amusing thing was said by Father Knox on this point. He + said that he should have regarded the book as entirely pantheist and + as preaching that there was good in everything if it had not been for + the introduction of the one real anarchist and pessimist. But he was + prepared to wager that if the book survives for a hundred years--which + it won't--they will say that the real anarchist was put in afterwards + by the priests. + + But, though I was more foggy about ethical and theological matters + than I am now, I was quite clear on that issue; that there was a + final adversary, and that you might find a man resolutely turned away + from goodness. + + People have asked me whom I mean by Sunday. Well, I think, on the + whole, and allowing for the fact that he is a person in a tale--I + think you can take him to stand for Nature as distinguished from God. + Huge, boisterous, full of vitality, dancing with a hundred legs, + bright with the glare of the sun, and at first sight, somewhat + regardless of us and our desires. + + There is a phrase used at the end, spoken by Sunday: "Can ye drink + from the cup that I drink of?" which seems to mean that Sunday is + God. That is the only serious note in the book, the face of Sunday + changes, you tear off the mask of Nature and you find God. + +Monsignor Knox* has called _The Man Who Was Thursday_ "an +extraordinary book, written as if the publisher had commissioned him +to write something rather like the Pilgrim's Progress in the style of +the Pickwick Papers"--which explains perhaps why some reviewers +called it irreverent. The very wildness of it conveys a sense of +thoughts seething and straining in an effort to express the +inexpressible. Later in his more definitely philosophical books G.K. +could say calmly much that here he splashes "on a ten leagued canvas +with brushes of comet's hair"--with all the violent directness of a +vision. + +[* In the panegyric preached at Westminster Cathedral, June 27, 1936.] + +Of that vision his brother began the interpretation in his +challenging book. Reactions were interesting, for even those who +wanted most ardently to say that Cecil's book should not have been +written found that it was necessary to say it loudly and to say it at +great length. Their very violence showed their sense of Chesterton as +a peril even when they abused anyone who felt him to be a portent. It +was not the kind of contempt that is really bestowed on the +contemptible. + +The _Academy_ expended more than two columns saying; + + We propose to deal with the quack and leave his sycophants and + lickspittles to themselves . . . + + One skips him in his numerous corners of third and fourth rate + journals [e.g. _The Illustrated London News_, _The Bookman_, _Daily + News_!] and one avoids his books because they are always and + inevitably a bore. + +Lancelot Bathurst had also dared to write of G.K. in his Daily life +as a journalist, so the article goes on: + + Let us kneel with the Hon. Lancelot at his greasy burgundy-stained + shrine, what time the jingling hansom waits us with its rolling + occupant and his sword-stick and his revolver and his pockets stacked + with penny dreadfuls. . . . + + The fact is we have in Mr. Chesterton the true product of the + deboshed hapenny press. . . . If the hapenny papers ceased to notice + him forthwith it seems to us more than probable that he would cease + at once to be of the highest importance in literary circles and the + Bishops and Members of Parliament who have honoured him with their + kind notice would be compelled to drop him. . . . + +Most of the reviews were very different from this one, which is +certainly great fun (although some few other reviewers suggested +that Gilbert himself wrote the _Criticism_). I have wondered whether +the _Academy_ notices of his own books, all much like this, were +written by a personal enemy or merely by one of the "jolly people" as +he often called them who were maddened by his views. + +For some years now Gilbert had been gathering in his mind the +material for _Orthodoxy_. Some of the ideas we have seen faintly +traced in the Notebook and _The Coloured Lands_, but they all grew to +maturity in the atmosphere of constant controversy. In a controversy +with the Rev. R. J. Campbell we see, for instance, his convictions +about the reality of sin shaping under our eyes. Discussing Modernism +in the _Nation_, he analyses the difference between the true +development of an idea and the mere changing from one idea to +another. Modernism claiming to be a development was actually an +abandonment of the Christian idea. + +For the Catholic, this is among the most interesting of his +controversies. In the course of it he refers to "the earlier works of +Newman and the literature of the Oxford Movement" to support his view +of the Anglican position. I have already said that Chesterton read +far more than was usually supposed, because he read so quickly and +with so little parade of learning, and it has been too lightly +assumed that the statement in _Orthodoxy_ that he avoided works of +Christian Apologetic meant that he had not read any of the great +Christian writers of the past. True, he was not then or at any time +reading books of Apologetic. He must, however, have been reading +something more life-giving, as we learn from a single hint. Asked to +draw up a Scheme of Reading for 1908 in _G.K.'s Weekly_, he suggests +Butler's _Analogy_, Coleridge's _Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit_, +Newman's _Apologia_, St. Augustine's _Confessions_ and the _Summa_ of +St. Thomas Aquinas. + +It was absurd, he said in this article, to suppose that the ancients +did not see our modern problems. The truth was that the great +ancients not only saw them, but saw through them. Butler had sketched +the "real line along which Christianity must ultimately be defended." +These great writers all remained modern, while the "New Theology" +takes one back to the time of crinolines. "I almost expect to see Mr. +R. J. Campbell in peg-top trousers, with very long side-whiskers." + +In this controversy, although not yet a Catholic, he showed the gulf +between the Modernist theory of development and the Newman doctrine, +with a clarity greater than any Catholic writer of the time. + + A man who is always going back and picking to pieces his own first + principles may be having an amusing time but he is not developing as + Newman understood development. Newman meant that if you wanted a tree + to grow you must plant it finally in some definite spot. It may be (I + do not know and I do not care) that Catholic Christianity is just now + passing through one of its numberless periods of undue repression and + silence. But I do know this, that when the great Powers break forth + again, the new epics and the new arts, they will break out on the + ancient and living tree. They cannot break out upon the little shrubs + that you are always pulling up by the roots to see if they are + growing. + +Against R. J. Campbell he showed in a lecture on "Christianity and +Social Reform" how belief in sin as well as in goodness was more +favourable to social reform than was the rather woolly optimism that +refused to recognize evil. "The nigger-driver will be delighted to +hear that God is immanent in him. . . . The sweater that . . . he has +not in any way become divided from the supreme perfection of the +universe." If the New Theology would not lead to social reform, the +social Utopia to which the philosophy of Wells and of Shaw was +pointing seemed to Chesterton not a heaven on earth to be desired, +but a kind of final hell to be avoided, since it banished all freedom +and human responsibility. Arguing with them was again highly +fruitful, and two subjects he chose for speeches are suggestive--"The +Terror of Tendencies" and "Shall We Abolish the Inevitable?" + +In the _New Age_ Shaw wrote about Belloc and Chesterton and so did +Wells, while Chesterton wrote about Wells and Shaw, till the +Philistines grew angry, called it self-advertisement and log-rolling +and urged that a Bill for the abolition of Shaw and Chesterton should +be introduced into Parliament. But G.K. had no need for advertisement +of himself or his ideas just then: he had a platform, he had an eager +audience. Every week he wrote in the _Illustrated London News_, +beginning in 1905 to do "Our Notebook" (this continued till his death +in 1936). He was still writing every Saturday in the _Daily News_. +Publishers were disputing for each of his books. Yet he rushed into +every religious controversy that was going on, because thereby he +could clarify and develop his ideas. + +The most important of all these was the controversy with Blatchford, +Editor of the _Clarion_, who had written a rationalist Credo, +entitled _God and My Neighbour_. In 1903-4, he had the generosity and +the wisdom to throw open the _Clarion_ to the freest possible +discussion of his views. The Christian attack was made by a group of +which Chesterton was the outstanding figure, and was afterwards +gathered into a paper volume called _The Doubts of Democracy_. + +One essay in this volume, written in 1903, is of primary importance +in any study of the sources of _Orthodoxy_, for it gives a brilliant +outline of one of the main contentions of the book and shows even +better than _Orthodoxy_ itself what he meant by saying that he had +first learnt Christianity from its opponents. It is clear that by now +he believed in the Divinity of Christ. The pamphlet itself has fallen +into oblivion and Chesterton's share of it was only three short +essays. I think it well to quote a good deal from the first of these, +because in it he has put in concentrated form and with different +illustrations what he developed five years later. There is nothing +more packed with thought in the whole of his writings than these +essays. + + The first of all the difficulties that I have in controverting Mr. + Blatchford is simply this, that I shall be very largely going over + his own ground. My favourite text-book of theology is _God and My + Neighbour_, but I cannot repeat it in detail. If I gave each of my + reasons for being a Christian, a vast number of them would be Mr. + Blatchford's reasons for not being one. + + For instance, Mr. Blatchford and his school point out that there + are many myths parallel to the Christian story; that there were Pagan + Christs, and Red Indian Incarnations, and Patagonian Crucifixions, + for all I know or care. But does not Mr. Blatchford see the other + side of the fact? If the Christian God really made the human race, + would not the human race tend to rumours and perversions of the + Christian God? If the centre of our life is a certain fact, would not + people far from the centre have a muddled version of that fact? If we + are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is it odd that + Patagonians should dream of a Son of God? + + The Blatchfordian position really amounts to this--that because a + certain thing has impressed millions of different people as likely or + necessary, therefore it cannot be true. And then this bashful being, + veiling his own talents, convicts the wretched G.K.C. of paradox . . . + + The story of a Christ is very common in legend and literature. So + is the story of two lovers parted by Fate. So is the story of two + friends killing each other for a woman. But will it seriously be + maintained that, because these two stories are common as legends, + therefore no two friends were ever separated by love or no two lovers + by circumstances? It is tolerably plain, surely, that these two + stories are common because the situation is an intensely probable and + human one, because our nature is so built as to make them almost + inevitable . . . + + Thus, in this first instance, when learned sceptics come to me and + say, "Are you aware that the Kaffirs have a sort of Incarnation?" I + should reply: "Speaking as an unlearned person, I don't know. But + speaking as a Christian, I should be very much astonished if they + hadn't." + + Take a second instance. The Secularist says that Christianity has + been a gloomy and ascetic thing, and points to the procession of + austere or ferocious saints who have given up home and happiness and + macerated health and sex. But it never seems to occur to him that the + very oddity and completeness of these men's surrender make it look + very much as if there were really something actual and solid in the + thing for which they sold themselves. They gave up all pleasures for + one pleasure of spiritual ecstasy. They may have been mad; but it + looks as if there really were such a pleasure. They gave up all human + experiences for the sake of one superhuman experience. They may have + been wicked, but it looks as if there were such an experience. + + It is perfectly tenable that this experience is as dangerous and + selfish a thing as drink. A man who goes ragged and homeless in order + to see visions may be as repellant and immoral as a man who goes + ragged and homeless in order to drink brandy. That is a quite + reasonable position. But what is manifestly not a reasonable + position, what would be, in fact, not far from being an insane + position, would be to say that the raggedness of the man, and the + stupefied degradation of the man, proved that there was no such thing + as brandy. That is precisely what the Secularist tries to say. He + tries to prove that there is no such thing as supernatural experience + by pointing at the people who have given up everything for it. He + tries to prove that there is no such thing by proving that there are + people who live on nothing else. + + Again I may submissively ask: "Whose is the Paradox?" . . . + + Take a third instance. The Secularist says that Christianity + produced tumult and cruelty. He seems to suppose that this proves it + to be bad. But it might prove it to be very good. For men commit + crimes not only for bad things, far more often for good things. For + no bad things can be desired quite so passionately and persistently + as good things can be desired, and only very exceptional men desire + very bad and unnatural things. + + Most crime is committed because, owing to some peculiar + complication, very beautiful or necessary things are in some + danger . . . + + . . . And when something is set before mankind that is not only + enormously valuable, but also quite new, the sudden vision, the + chance of winning it, the chance of losing it, drive them mad. It has + the same effect in the moral world that the finding of gold has in + the economic world. It upsets values, and creates a kind of cruel + rush. + + We need not go far for instances quite apart from the instances of + religion. When the modern doctrines of brotherhood and liberality + were preached in France in the eighteenth century the time was ripe + for them, the educated classes everywhere had been growing towards + them, the world to a very considerable extent welcomed them. And yet + all that preparation and openness were unable to prevent the burst of + anger and agony which greets anything good. And if the slow and + polite preaching of rational fraternity in a rational age ended in + the massacres of September, what an _a fortiori_ is here! What would + be likely to be the effect of the sudden dropping into a dreadfully + evil century of a dreadfully perfect truth? What would happen if a + world baser than the world of Sade were confronted with a gospel + purer than the gospel of Rousseau? + + The mere flinging of the polished pebble of Republican idealism + into the artificial lake of eighteenth century Europe produced a + splash that seemed to splash the heavens, and a storm that drowned + ten thousand men. What would happen if a star from heaven really fell + into the slimy and bloody pool of a hopeless and decaying humanity? + Men swept a city with the guillotine, a continent with a sabre, + because Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were too precious to be + lost. How if Christianity was yet more maddening because it was yet + more precious? + + But why should we labour the point when One who knew human nature + as it can really be learnt, from fishermen and women and natural + people, saw from his quiet village the track of this truth across + history, and, in saying that He came to bring not peace but a sword, + set up eternally His colossal realism against the eternal + sentimentality of the Secularist? + + Thus, then, in the third instance, when the learned sceptic says: + "Christianity produced wars and persecutions," we shall reply: + "Naturally." + + And, lastly, let me take an example which leads me on directly to + the general matter I wish to discuss for the remaining space of the + articles at my command. The Secularist constantly points out that the + Hebrew and Christian religions began as local things; that their god + was a tribal god; that they gave him material form, and attached him + to particular places. + + This is an excellent example of one of the things that if I were + conducting a detailed campaign I should use as an argument for the + validity of Biblical experience. For if there really are some other + and higher beings than ourselves, and if they in some strange way, at + some emotional crisis, really revealed themselves to rude poets or + dreamers in very simple times, that these rude people should regard + the revelation as local, and connect it with the particular hill or + river where it happened, seems to me exactly what any reasonable + human being would expect. It has a far more credible look than if + they had talked cosmic philosophy from the beginning. If they had, I + should have suspected "priestcraft" and forgeries and third-century + Gnosticism. + + If there be such a being as God, and He can speak to a child, and + if God spoke to a child in the garden, the child would, of course, + say that God lived in the garden. I should not think it any less + likely to be true for that. If the child said: "God is everywhere; an + impalpable essence pervading and supporting all constituents of the + Cosmos alike"--if, I say, the infant addressed me in the above terms, + I should think he was much more likely to have been with the + governess than with God. + + So if Moses had said God was an Infinite Energy, I should be + certain he had seen nothing extraordinary. As he said He was a + Burning Bush, I think it very likely that he did see something + extraordinary. For whatever be the Divine Secret, and whether or no + it has (as all people have believed) sometimes broken bounds and + surged into our world, at least it lies on the side furthest away + from pedants and their definitions, and nearest to the silver souls + of quiet people, to the beauty of bushes, and the love of one's + native place. + + Thus, then, in our last instance (out of hundreds that might be + taken), we conclude in the same way. When the learned sceptic says: + "The visions of the Old Testament were local, and rustic, and + grotesque," we shall answer: "Of course. They were genuine." + + Thus, as I said at the beginning, I find myself, to start with, + face to face with the difficulty that to mention the reasons that I + have for believing in Christianity is, in very many cases, simply to + repeat those arguments which Mr. Blatchford, in some strange way, + seems to regard as arguments against it. His book is really rich and + powerful. He has undoubtedly set up these four great guns of which I + have spoken. I have nothing to say against the size and ammunition of + the guns. I only say that by some strange accident of arrangement he + has set up those four pieces of artillery pointing at himself. If I + were not so humane, I should say: "Gentlemen of the Secularist Guard, + fire first." + +He goes on in the next essay to talk of the positive arguments for +Christianity, of "this religious philosophy which was, and will be +again, the study of the highest intellects and the foundation of the +strongest nations, but which our little civilisation has for a while +forgotten." Very briefly he then deals with Determinism and Freewill, +the need for the Supernatural and the question of the Fall. Dealing +with the Fall he uses one of his most brilliant illustrations. We +speak, he says, of a manly man, but not of a whaley whale. "If you +wanted to dissuade a man from drinking his tenth whisky, you would +slap him on the back and say, 'Be a man.' No one who wished to +dissuade a crocodile from eating his tenth explorer would slap it on +the back and say, 'be a crocodile.' For we have no notion of a +perfect crocodile; no allegory of a whale expelled from his Whaley +Eden." + +Continuing the swift sketch of some elements of Christian theology, +Chesterton next deals with Miracles. While the development in +_Orthodoxy_ makes this section look very slight, there are passages +that make one realize the mental wealth of a man who could afford to +leave them behind and rush on. Blatchford had said that no English +judge would accept the evidence for the resurrection and G.K. answers +that possibly Christians have not all got "such an extravagant +reverence for English judges as is felt by Mr. Blatchford himself. +The experiences of the Founder of Christianity have perhaps left us +in a vague doubt of the infallibility of Courts of Law." + +In reference to the many rationalists whose refusal to accept any +miracle is based on the fact that "Experience is against it," he +says: "There was a great Irish Rationalist of this school who when he +was told that a witness had seen him commit a murder said that he +could bring a hundred witnesses who had not seen him commit it." + +The final essay on "The Eternal Heroism of the Slums" has two main +points. It begins with an acknowledgment of the crimes of Christians, +only pointing out that while Mr. Blatchford outlaws the Church for +this reason, he is prepared to invoke the State whose crimes are far +worse. But the most vigorous part of the essay is a furious attack on +determinism. Blatchford apparently held that bad surroundings +inevitably produced bad men. Chesterton had seen the heroism of the +poor in the most evil surroundings and was furious at "this +association of vice with poverty, the vilest and the oldest and the +dirtiest of all the stories that insolence has ever flung against the +poor." Men can and do lead heroic lives in the worst of circumstances +because there is in humanity a power of responsibility, there is +freewill. Blatchford, in the name of humanity, is attacking the +greatest of human attributes. + + More numerous than can be counted, in all the wars and persecutions + of the world, men have looked out of their little grated windows and + said, "at least my thoughts are free." "No, No," says the face of Mr. + Blatchford, suddenly appearing at the window, "your thoughts are the + inevitable result of heredity and environment. Your thoughts are as + material as your dungeons. Your thoughts are as mechanical as the + guillotine." So pants this strange comforter, from cell to cell. + + I suppose Mr. Blatchford would say that in his Utopia nobody would + be in prison. What do I care whether I am in prison or no, if I have + to drag chains everywhere. A man in his Utopia may have, for all I + know, free food, free meadows, his own estate, his own palace. What + does it matter? he may not have his own soul. + +An architect once discoursed to me on the need of humility in face of +the material; the stone and marble of his building. Thus Chesterton +was humble before the reality he was seeking to interpret. Pride, he +once defined as "the falsification of fact by the introduction of +self." To learn, a man must "subtract himself from the study of any +solid and objective thing." This humility he had in a high degree and +also that rarer humility which saw his friends and his opponents +alike as his intellectual equals. "Almost anybody," Monsignor Knox +once said, "was an ordinary person compared with him." But this was +an idea that certainly never occurred to him. + +The philosophy shaping into _Orthodoxy_ was stimulated by newspaper +controversy, and also by the talk in which Gilbert always delighted. +As I have noted he loved to listen and he was a little slow in +getting off the mark with his own contribution. Many years later an +American interviewer described him, when he did get going, as +answering questions in brief essays. Frank Swinnerton has admirably +described the manner of speech so well remembered by his friends: + + His speech is prefaced and accompanied by a curious sort of + humming, such as one may hear when glee singers give each other the + note before starting to sing. He pronounces the word "I" (without + egotism) as if it were "Ayee," and drawls, not in the highly + gentlemanly manner which Americans believe to be the English accent, + and which many English call the Oxford accent, but in a manner + peculiar to himself, either attractive or the reverse according to + one's taste (to me attractive).* + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 94.] + +Even more attractive to most of us was his fashion of making us feel +that we had contributed something very worthwhile. He would take +something one had said and develop it till it shone and glowed, not +from its own worth but from what he had made of it. Almost anything +could thus become a starting point for a train of his best thought. +And the style disliked by some in his writings was so completely the +man himself that it was the same in conversation as in his books. He +would approach a topic from every side throwing light on those +contradictory elements that made a paradox. He himself had what he +attributes to St. Thomas--"that instantaneous presence of mind which +alone really deserves the name of wit." Asked once the traditional +question what single book he would choose if cast on a desert island, +he replied Thomas's _Guide to Practical Shipbuilding_. + +In talk, as in his books, G.K. loved to play upon words, and +sometimes of course this was merely a matter of words and the puns +were bad ones. Once, for instance, after translating the French +phrase for playing truant as "he goes to the bushy school--or the +school among the bushes," he adds "not lightly to be confounded with +the Art School at Bushey." This is indefensible, but rare. +Christopher Morley has noted how "his play upon words often led to a +genuine play upon thoughts. . . . One of Chesterton's best +pleasantries was his remark on the so-called Emancipation of Women. +'Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry _We will +not be dictated to:_ and proceeded to become stenographers.'" He +complained in a review of a novel "Every modern man is an atlas +carrying the world; and we are introduced to a new cosmos with every +new character. . . . Each man has to be introduced accompanied by his +cosmos, like a jealous wife or on the principle of 'love me love my +dogma.'" + +Each of Chesterton's readers can think of a hundred instances of this +inspired fooling: many have been given in this book and many will yet +be given. But the thing went far deeper than fooling: it has been +compared by Mr. Belloc to the gospel parables as a method of teaching +and of illumination. "He made men see what they had not seen before. +He made them _know_. He was an architect of certitude, whenever he +practiced the art in which he excelled." + +Belloc's analysis of this special element in Chesterton's style, +alike written and spoken, is of first rate importance to an +understanding of the man whose mind at this date was still rapidly +developing while his method of expression had become what it remained +to the end of his life. + + His unique, his capital, genius for illustration by parallel, by + example, is his peculiar mark. The word "peculiar" is here the + operative word. . . . No one whatsoever that I can recall in the + whole course of English letters had his amazing--I would almost say + superhuman--capacity for parallelism. + + Now parallelism is a gift or method of vast effect in the + conveyance of truth. + + Parallelism consists in the illustration of some unperceived truth + by its exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known + and perceived . . . + + Whenever Chesterton begins a sentence with, "It is as though" (in + exploding a false bit of reasoning), you may expect a stroke of + parallelism as vivid as a lightning flash. + + . . . Always, in whatever manner he launched the parallelism, he + produced the shock of illumination. He _taught_. + + Parallelism was so native to his mind; it was so naturally a fruit + of his mental character that he had difficulty in understanding why + others did not use it with the same lavish facility as himself. + + I can speak here with experience, for in these conversations with + him or listening to his conversation with others I was always + astonished at an ability in illustration which I not only have never + seen equalled, but cannot remember to have seen attempted. He never + sought such things; they poured out from him as easily as though they + were not the hard forged products of intense vision, but spontaneous + remarks.* + +[* _On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters_, pp. 36-41.] + +To return to the Blatchford controversy: a final point of interest is +a psychological one. G.K. admits his difficulty in using in his +arguments the reverent solemnity of the Agnostic. He realizes that he +is thought flippant because he is amusing on a subject where he is +more certain than "of the existence of the moon. . . . Christianity +is itself so jolly a thing that it fills the possessor of it with a +certain silly exuberance, which sad and high-minded Rationalists +might reasonably mistake for mere buffoonery." But if this is his own +psychology he faces too the special difficulty of theirs--the main +and towering barrier that he wished but hardly hoped to surmount. He +was the first person, I think, to see that Free Thought was no longer +a young movement, but old and even fossilized. It had formed minds +which were now too set to be altered. It had its own dogmas and its +own most rigid orthodoxy. "You are armed to the teeth," he told the +readers of the _Clarion_, "and buttoned up to the chin with the great +agnostic Orthodoxy, perhaps the most placid and perfect of all the +orthodoxies of men. . . . I approach you with the reverence and the +courage due to a bench of bishops." + +The _Clarion_ controversy was, as we have seen, in 1903 and +1904, when Chesterton was approaching thirty. Others of those +I have mentioned came later. But I don't think any or even all +of them fully explain the depth and richness of _Orthodoxy_. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Orthodoxy + + +_Philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. . . . A cosmic +philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is +constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private +religion than he can possess a private sun and moon_. + +_Introduction to the Book of Job_. + +BECAUSE _Orthodoxy_ is supremely Chesterton's own history of his mind +more must be said of it than of his other published works. For "This +book is the life of a man. And a man is his mind." The Notebook shows +him thinking and feeling in his youth exactly on the lines that he +recalls--but they were only lines--in fact an outline. The richness +of life was needed, the richness of thought, to turn the outline into +the masterpiece. No man, not even Chesterton, could have written +_Orthodoxy_ at the age of twenty. It was sufficiently remarkable that +he should have written it at thirty-five: but only a man who had been +thinking along those lines at twenty and much earlier could have +written it at all. For the book is as he says "a sort of slovenly +autobiography." It is not so much an argument for Orthodoxy as the +story of how one man discovered Orthodoxy as the only answer to the +riddle of the universe. + +In an interview, given shortly after its publication, Gilbert told of +a temptation that had once been his and which he had overcome almost +before he realized he had been tempted. That temptation was to become +a prophet like all the men in _Heretics_, by emphasizing one aspect of +truth and ignoring the others. To do this would, he knew, bring him a +great crowd of disciples. He had a vision--which constantly grew +wider and deeper--of the many-sided unity of Truth, but he saw that +all the prophets of the age, from Walt Whitman and Schopenhauer to +Wells and Shaw, had become so by taking one side of truth and making +it all of truth. It is so much easier to see and magnify a part than +laboriously to strive to embrace the whole: + + . . . a sage feels too small for life, + And a fool too large for it. + +Not that he condemned as fools the able men of his generation. For +Wells he had a great esteem, for Shaw a greater. Whitman he had in +his youth almost idolized. But increasingly he recognized even +Whitman as representing an idea that was too narrow because it was +only an aspect. There was not room in Whitman's philosophy for some +of the facts he had already discovered and he felt he had not yet +completed his journey. He must not, for the sake of being a prophet +and of having a following, sacrifice--I will not say a truth already +found, but a truth that might still be lurking somewhere. He could +not be the architect of his own intellectual universe any more than +he had been the creator of sun, moon and earth. "God and humanity +made it," he said of the philosophy he discovered, "and it made me." + +He had begun in boyhood, as we have seen, by realizing that the world +as depicted in fairy tales was saner and more sensible than the world +as seen by the intellectuals of his own day. These men had lost the +sense of life's value. They spoke of the world as a vast place +governed by iron laws of necessity. Chesterton felt in it the +presence of will, while the mere thought of vastness was to him about +as cheerful a conception as that of a jail that should with its cold +empty passages cover half the county. "These expanders of the +universe had nothing to show us except more and more infinite +corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that was +divine." + + These people professed that the universe was one coherent thing; + but they were not fond of the universe. But I was frightfully fond of + the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did + so; and it never seemed to mind. Actually and in truth I did feel + that these dim dogmas of vitality were better expressed by calling + the world small than by calling it large. For about infinity there + was a sort of carelessness which was the reverse of the fierce and + pious care which I felt touching the pricelessness and the peril of + life. They showed only a dreary waste; but I felt a sort of sacred + thrift. For economy is far more romantic than extravagance. To them + stars were an unending income of halfpence; but I felt about the + golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one + sovereign and one shilling. + + These subconscious convictions are best hit off by the colour and + tone of certain tales. Thus I have said that stories of magic alone + can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of + eccentric privilege. I may express this other feeling of cosmic + cosiness by allusion to another book always read in boyhood, + "Robinson Crusoe," which I read about this time, and which owes its + eternal vivacity to the fact that it celebrates the poetry of limits, + nay, even the wild romance of prudence. Crusoe is a man on a small + rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing + in the book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The + greatest of poems is an inventory. . . + + I really felt (the fancy may seem foolish) as if all the order and + number of things were the romantic remnant of Crusoe's ship. That + there are two sexes and one sun, was like the fact that there were + two guns and one axe. It was poignantly urgent that none should be + lost; but somehow, it was rather fun that none could be added. The + trees and the planets seemed like things saved from the wreck: and + when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked + in the confusion. I felt economical about the stars as if they were + sapphires (they are called so in Milton's Eden): I hoarded the hills. + For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to + talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is + literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: + for there cannot be another one.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter IV, pp. 112-5.] + +A fragment of an essay on Hans Anderson that cannot be later than the +age of seventeen shows Gilbert trying to shape part of what he calls +here, "The Ethics of Elfland," but a large part was, as he says, +"subconscious." In this chapter he sums up the results of musings +about the universe begun so long ago--small wonder that he had seemed +to sleep over his lessons while he was seeing these visions and +dreaming these dreams which after every effort to tell them he still +knows remains half untold: + + . . . the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my + ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. + These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt + before I could think; that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I + will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that + this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a + supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural + explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to + satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I + have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel + as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to + mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of + art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this + purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as + dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of + humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by + not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to + whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my + mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a + remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man + had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods; he had saved them from + a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel + it. And all the time I had not even thought of Christian theology.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 155-6.] + +This theology came with the answers to all the tremendous questions +asked by life. Here the convert has one great advantage over the +Catholic brought up in the Faith. Most of us hear the answers before +we have asked the questions: hence intellectually we lack what G.K. +calls "the soils for the seeds of doctrine." It is nearly impossible +to understand an answer to a question you have not formulated. And +without the sense of urgency that an insistent question brings, many +people do not even try. All the years of his boyhood and early +manhood Chesterton was facing the fundamental questions and hammering +out his answers. At first he had no thought of Christianity as even a +possible answer. Growing up in a world called Christian, he fancied +it a philosophy that had been tried and found wanting. It was only as +he realized that the answers he was finding for himself always fitted +into, were always confirmed by, the Christian view of things that he +began to turn towards it. He sees a good deal of humour in the way he +strained his voice in a painfully juvenile attempt to utter his new +truths, only to find that they were not his and were not new, but +were part of an eternal philosophy. + +In the chapter called "The Flag of the World" he tells of the moment +when he discovered the confirmation and reinforcing of his own +speculations by the Christian theology. The point at which this came +concerned his feelings about the men of his youth who labelled +themselves Optimist and Pessimist. Both, he felt, were wrong. It must +be possible at once to love and to hate the world, to love it more +than enough to get on with it, to hate it enough to get it on. And +the Church solved this difficulty by her doctrine of creation and of +Original Sin. "God had written not so much a poem, but rather a play; +a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left +to human actors and stage-managers who had since made a great mess of +it." + +As to that mess the Christian could be as pessimist as he liked, as +to the original design he must be optimist, for it was his work to +restore it. "St. George could still fight the dragon . . . if he were +as big as the world he could yet be killed in the name of the world." + + And then followed an experience impossible to describe. It was as + if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and + unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent + connection--the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this + hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of + loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world + without being worldly. I found this projecting feature of Christian + theology, like a sort of hard spike, the dogmatic insistence that God + was personal, and had made a world separate from Himself. The spike + of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world--it had evidently + been meant to go there--and then the strange thing began to happen. + When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one + after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie + exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery + falling into its place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one + part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as + clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered + by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one + who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. + And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and + turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back + to the first fields of my childhood. All those blind fancies of + boyhood which in the fourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace on + the darkness, became suddenly transparent and sane. I was right when + I felt that I would almost rather say that grass was the wrong colour + than say that it must by necessity have been that colour: it might + verily have been any other. My sense that happiness hung on the crazy + thread of a condition did mean something when all was said: it meant + the whole doctrine of the Fall. Even those dim and shapeless monsters + of notions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend, + stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides of the + creed. The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and + cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work + of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars + might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my haunting instinct + that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be + guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that had been the + wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to + Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a + golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter V, pp. 142-4.] + +In a chapter called "The Paradoxes of Christianity," the richness of +his mind is most manifest; and in that chapter can best be seen what +Mr. Belloc meant when he told me Chesterton's style reminded him of +St. Augustine's. Talking over with an old schoolfellow of his the +list of books he had, as we have seen, drawn up for _T.P.'s Weekly_, +I discovered deep doubt as to whether Gilbert would really have read +these books, as most of us understand reading, combined with a +conviction that he would have got out of them at a glance more than +most of us by prolonged study. I have certainly never known anyone +his equal at what the schoolboy calls "degutting" a book. He did not +seem to study an author, yet he certainly knew him. + +But it remained that his own mind, reflecting and experiencing, made +of his own life his greatest storehouse, so that in all this book +there was, as my father pointed out in the _Dublin Review_ at the +time, an intensely original new light cast on the eternal philosophy +about which so much had already been written. The discovery specially +needed, perhaps, for his own age was that Christianity represented a +new balance that constituted a liberation. The ancient Greek or +Roman had aimed at equilibrium by enforcing moderation and getting +rid of extremes. Christianity "made moderation out of the still crash +of two impetuous emotions." It "got over the difficulty of combining +furious opposites by keeping them both, and keeping them both +furious." "The more I considered Christianity, the more I felt +that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of +that order was to give room for good things to run wild." Thus +inside Christianity the pacifist could become a monk, and the +warrior a Crusader, St. Francis could praise good more loudly +than Walt Whitman, and St. Jerome denounce evil more darkly than +Schopenhauer--but both emotions must be kept in their place. I +remember how George Wyndham laughed as he recited to us the paragraph +where this idea reached its climax. + + And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and + justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was + fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the + lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is + constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when + the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that + is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is + simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the + lamb. The real problem is--can the lion lie down with the lamb and + still retain his royal ferocity? _That_ is the problem the Church + attempted; _that_ is the miracle she achieved.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter VI, pp. 178-9.] + +All this applied not only to the release of the emotions, the +development of all the elements that go to make up humanity, but even +more to the truths of Revelation. A heresy always means lopping off a +part of the truth and, therefore, ultimately a loss of liberty. +Orthodoxy, in keeping the whole truth, safeguarded freedom and +prevented any one of the great and devouring ideas she was teaching +from swallowing any other truth. This was the justification of +councils, of definitions, even of persecutions and wars of religion: +that they had stood for the defence of reason as well as of faith. +They had stood to prevent the suicide of thought which must result if +the exciting but difficult balance were lost that had replaced the +classical moderation. + + The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some + things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the + irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and + some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep + the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, + of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong + enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember + that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a + lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of + a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of + prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to + turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. . . . A sentence + phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the + best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the + dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter + eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order + that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be + careful, if only that the world might be careless. + + This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into + a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, + and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as + orthodoxy. It was sanity; and to be sane is more dramatic than to be + mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, + seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude + having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The + Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet + it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one + idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so as + exactly to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge + bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make + Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid + an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox + Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the + orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to + have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been + easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the + bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is + easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; + the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a + modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of + those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after + fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of + Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple + to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one + at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from + Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and + tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; + and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the + ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth + reeling but erect.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter VI, pp. 182-5.] + +No quotation can adequately convey the wealth of thought in the book. +Yet amazingly, the _Times_ reviewer rebuked G.K. for substituting +emotion for intellect, partly on the strength of a sentence in the +chapter called "The Maniac." "The madman is the man who has lost +everything except his reason." The reviews, when one reads them as a +whole, exactly confirm what Wilfrid Ward said in the _Dublin Review:_ +that whereas he had regarded _Orthodoxy_ as a triumphant vindication +of his own view that G.K. was a really profound thinker, he found to +his amazement that those who had thought him superficial, hailed it +as a proof of theirs. + +Obviously with a man so much concerned with ultimates the place +accorded him in letters will depend upon whether one agrees or +disagrees with his conclusions. In a country that is not Catholic +this consideration must affect the standing of any Catholic thinker. +Thus Newman was considered by Carlyle to have "the brain of a +moderate sized rabbit," yet by others his is counted the greatest +mind of the century. Similarly Arnold Bennett could credit Chesterton +with only a second-class intellectual apparatus--because he was a +dogmatist. To this Chesterton replied (in _Fancies versus Facts_): +"In truth there are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas +and know it and those who accept dogmas and don't know it. My only +advantage over the gifted novelist lies in my belonging to the former +class." If one grasps the Catholic view of dogma the answer is +satisfying; if not the objector is left with his original +objection--as against Chesterton, as against Newman. And Chesterton +had the extra disadvantage of being a journalist famous for his jokes +now moving in Newman's unquestioned field of philosophy and theology. +It was in part the difficulty of convincing a man against his will. +These critics, as Wilfrid Ward pointed out, read superficially and +looked only at the fooling, the fantastic puns and comparisons, +ignoring the underlying deep seriousness and lines of thought that +made him, as it then seemed boldly, rank Chesterton with such writers +as Butler, Coleridge and Newman. Taking as his text the saying, +"Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth," +Wilfrid Ward called his article, "Mr. Chesterton among the Prophets." + +He showed especially the curious confusion made in such comments as +the one I have quoted from the _Times_, and made clearer what +Chesterton was really saying by a comparison with the "illative +sense" of Cardinal Newman. It is the usual difficulty of trying to +express a partly new idea. Newman had coined an expression, but it +did not express all he meant, still less all that Chesterton meant. +Yet it was difficult to use the word "reason" in this particular +discussion, without giving to it two different meanings. For in two +chapters, "The Maniac" and "The Suicide of Thought," Chesterton was +concerned to show that Authority was needed for the defence of reason +(in the larger sense) against its own power of self-destruction. Yet +the maniac commits this suicide by an excessive use of reason (in the +narrower sense). "He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by +charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more +logical for losing certain sane affections. . . . He is in the clean +and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful +point." + +To Chesterton it seemed that most of the modern religions and +philosophies were like the argument by which a madman suffering from +persecution mania proves that he is in a world of enemies: it is +complete, it is unanswerable, yet it is false. The madman's mind +"moves in a perfect but narrow circle. . . . The insane explanation +is quite as complete as the sane one, only it is not so large. . . . +There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing +as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern + religions." Philosophies such as Materialism, Idealism, Monism, all +have in their explanations of the universe this quality of the +madman's argument of "covering everything and leaving everything +out." The Materialist, like the Madman is "unconscious of the alien +energies and the large indifference of the earth; he is not thinking +of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers +or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large and +the cosmos is so very small." + + +People sometimes say, "life is larger than logic," when they want to +dismiss logic, but that was not Chesterton's way. He wanted logic, he +needed logic, as part of the abundance of the mind's life, as part of +a much larger whole. What was the word--we are looking for it +still--for a use of the mind that included all these things; logic +and imagination, mysticism and ecstasy and poetry and joy; a use of +the mind that could embrace the universe and reach upwards to God +without losing its balance. The mind must work in time, yet it can +reach out into Eternity: it is conditioned by space but it can +glimpse infinity. The modern world had imprisoned the mind. Far more +than the body it needed great open spaces. And Chesterton, breaking +violently out of prison, looked around and saw how the Church had +given health to the mind by giving it space to move in and great +ideas to move among. Chesterton, the poet, saw too that man is a poet +and must therefore, "get his head into the heavens." He needs +mysticism and among Her great ideas, the Church gives him mysteries. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Bernard Shaw + +_This chapter was read by G.B.S. His remarks are printed in +footnotes. [A facsimile of the] one page altered substantially by him +is [omitted in this plain-text electronic edition]_. + +WHEN ANYONE IN the early years of the century made a list of the +English writers most in the public eye, such a list always included +the names of Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton. But a good many +people in writing down these names did so with unconcealed irritation +and I think it is important at this stage to see why. + +These men were constantly arguing with each other; but the literary +public felt all the same that they represented something in common, +and the literary public was by no means sure that it liked that +something. It could not quite resist Bernard Shaw's plays; it loved +Chesterton whenever it could rebuke him affectionately for paradox +and levity. What that public succumbed to in these men was their art: +it was by no means so certain that it liked their meaning. And so the +literary public elected to say that Shaw and Chesterton were having a +cheap success by standing on their heads and declaring that black was +white. The audience watched a Shaw v. Chesterton debate as a sham +fight or a display of fireworks, as indeed it always partly was; for +each of them would have died rather than really hurt the other. But +Shaw and Chesterton were operating on their minds all the time. They +were allowed to sit in the stalls and applaud. But they were +themselves being challenged; and that spoilt their comfort. + +Chesterton in his _Autobiography_ complains of the falsity of most of +the pictures of England during the Victorian era. The languishing, +fainting females, who were in fact far stronger-minded than their +grand-daughters today, the tyrannical pious fathers, the dull +conventional lives: it all rings false to anyone who grew up in an +average Victorian middle-class home and was happy enough there. There +was, however, one thing fundamentally wrong in such homes; and it was +on this fundamental sin that he agreed with Shaw in waging a +relentless war. + +The middle classes of England were thoroughly and smugly satisfied +with social conditions that were intolerable for the great mass of +their fellow countrymen. They had erected between the classes +artificial barriers and now did not even look over the top of them. I +remember how when my mother started a settlement in South London the +head worker told us she often saw women groping in the dirt under the +fish barrows for the heads and tails of fishes to boil for their +children. The settlement began to give the children dinners of +dumplings or rice pudding and treacle, and many well-to-do friends +would give my mother a pound or so to help this work. But the +suggestion that government should intervene was Socialism: the idea +that here was a symptom of a widespread evil, was scouted utterly. +People might have learnt much from their own servants of how the rest +of humanity were living, but while, said Chesterton, they laughed at +the idea of the mediaeval baron whose vassals ate below the salt, +their own vassals ate and lived below the floor. At no time in the +Christian past had there been such a deep and wide cleavage in +humanity. + +The first thing that G.K.C. and G.B.S., Wells too, and Belloc, were +all agreed upon was that the upper and middle classes of England must +be reminded, if need were by a series of earthquakes, that they were +living in an unreal world. They had forgotten the human race to which +they belonged. They, a tiny section, spoke of the mass of mankind as +"the poor" or "the lower orders" almost as they might speak of the +beasts of the forest, as beings of a different race. Chesterton had a +profound and noble respect for the poor: Shaw declared that they were +"useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished." But for both men, +the handful of quarrelsome cliques called the literary world was far +too small, because it was so tiny a section of the human race. + +Shaw and Chesterton had, in fact, discovered the social problem. +Today, whether people intend to do anything about it or not, it is +impossible to avoid knowing something about it. But at that date the +idea was general that all was as well as could be expected in an +imperfect world. The trades unionists were telling a different story, +but they could not hope to reach intellectually the classes they were +attacking. Here were men who could not be ignored, and I cannot but +think that it was sometimes the mere utterance of unwelcome truth in +brilliant speech that aroused the cry of "paradox." + + I hear many people [wrote Chesterton], complain that Bernard Shaw + deliberately mystifies them. I cannot imagine what they mean; it + seems to me that he deliberately insults them. His language, + especially on moral questions, is generally as straight and solid as + that of a bargee and far less ornate and symbolic than that of a + hansom-cabman. The prosperous English Philistine complains that Mr. + Shaw is making a fool of him. Whereas Mr. Shaw is not in the least + making a fool of him; Mr. Shaw is, with laborious lucidity, calling + him a fool. G.B.S. calls a landlord a thief; and the landlord, + instead of denying or resenting it, says, "Ah, that fellow hides his + meaning so cleverly that one can never make out what he means, it is + all so fine-spun and fantastical." G.B.S. calls a statesman a liar to + his face, and the statesman cries in a kind of ecstasy, "Ah, what + quaint, intricate and half-tangled trains of thought! Ah, what + elusive and many-coloured mysteries of half-meaning!" I think it is + always quite plain what Mr. Shaw means, even when he is joking, and + it generally means that the people he is talking to ought to howl + aloud for their sins. But the average representative of them + undoubtedly treats the Shavian meaning as tricky and complex, when it + is really direct and offensive. He always accuses Shaw of pulling his + leg, at the exact moment when Shaw is pulling his nose.* + +[* _George Bernard Shaw_, pp. 82-3.] + +Chesterton was, however, in agreement with the ordinary citizen and +in disagreement with Shaw as to much of Shaw's essential teaching. +And here we touch a matter so involved that even today it is hard to +disentangle it completely. I suppose it will always be possible for +two observers to look at human beings acting, to hear them talking, +and to arrive at two entirely different interpretations of what they +mean. This is certainly the case with any very recent period, and +perhaps especially with our own recent history. We have within living +memory ended a period and begun an exceedingly different period, and +we tend to judge the former by the light--or the darkness--of the +latter. The Victorian age, even in its extreme old age, was still +tacitly assuming and legally enforcing as axioms the Christian moral +system, especially in regard to marriage and all sex questions, and +the sacred nature of property. To read many disquisitions on that +period today one would suppose that no one living really believed in +these things: that humbug explained the first and greed the second. + +This is surely a false perspective. The age was an enormously +conventional one: these fundamental ideas had become fossilized and +meaningless for an increasing number of younger people. But when +Bernard Shaw called himself an atheist out of a kind of insane +generosity towards Bradlaugh (see his letter to G.K. later in this +chapter) or described all property as theft, it was a real moral +indignation that was roused in many minds. Real, but exceedingly +confused. It testified to the need of the ordinary man to live by a +creed that he need not question. Shaw and Chesterton were +philosophers, and philosophers love asking questions as well as +answering them. But the average man wants to live by his creed, not +question it, and the elder Victorians had still some kind of creed. + +There were many who believed in God. There were others who believed +that the Christian moral system must remain, because it had commended +itself to man's nature as the highest and best and was the true fruit +of evolutionary progress. There were certainly some who were angry +because they thought chaos must follow any tampering with the +existing social order. But if you take the mass of those who tried to +laugh Bernard Shaw aside and grew angry when they could not do so, +you find at the root of the anger an intense dislike of having any +part of a system questioned which was to them unquestionable, which +they had erected into a creed. They thought Shaw's ideas dangerous +and wanted to keep them from the young. They did not want anyone to +ask how a civilisation had laid its principles open to this brilliant +and effective siege. They hated Shaw's questions before they began to +hate his answers. And that is probably why so many linked Chesterton +with Shaw--he gave different answers, but he was asking many of the +same questions. He questioned everything as Shaw did--only he pushed +his questions further: they were deeper and more searching. Shaw +would not accept the old Scriptural orthodoxy; G.K. refused to accept +the new Agnostic orthodoxy; neither man would accept the orthodoxy of +the scientists; both were prepared to attack what Butler had called +"the science ridden, art ridden, culture ridden, afternoon-tea ridden +cliffs of old England." + +They attacked first by the mere process of asking questions; and the +world thus questioned grew uneasy and seemed to care curiously little +for the fact that the two questioners were answering their own +questions in an opposite fashion. Where Shaw said: "Give up +pretending you believe in God, for you don't," Chesterton said: +"Rediscover the reasons for believing or else our race is lost." +Where Shaw said: "Abolish private property which has produced this +ghastly poverty," Chesterton said: "Abolish ghastly poverty by +restoring property." + +And the audience said: "these two men in strange paradoxes seem to us +to be saying the same thing, if indeed they are saying anything at +all." Chesterton wrote later of a young man whose aunt "had +disinherited him for Socialism because of a lecture he had delivered +against that economic theory"; and I well remember how often after my +own energetic attempts to explain why a Distributist was not a +Socialist, I was met with a weary, "Well, it's just the same." It was +just the same question; it was an entirely different answer, but the +audience, annoyed by the question, never seemed to listen to the +answer. One man was saying: "Sweep away the old beliefs of humanity +and start fresh"; the other was saying: "Rediscover your reasons for +these profound beliefs, make them once more effective, for they are +of the very nature of man." + +Shaw and Chesterton were themselves deeply concerned about the +answers. Both sincere, both dealing with realities, they were +prepared to accept each other's sincerity and to fight the matter +out, if need were, endlessly. Being writers they conducted their +discussions in writing: being journalists they did so mainly in the +newspapers, to the delight or fury of other journalists. A jealous +few were enraged at what they called publicity hunting, but most +realised that it was not a private fight. Anyone might join in and a +good many did. + +Belloc was in the fight as early as Chesterton, and of course, on the +same side. G.B.S. who had invented "The Chesterbelloc" declared that +Chesterton felt obliged to embrace the dogmas of Catholicism lest +Belloc's soul should be damned. H. G. Wells agreed in the main with +Shaw: both were Fabians and both were ready with a Fabian Utopia for +humanity, which Belloc and Chesterton felt would be little better +than a prison. Cecil Chesterton, coming in at an angle of his own, +wrote some effective articles. He was a Fabian--actually an official +Fabian--but his outlook already embraced many of the Chesterbelloc +human and genial ideals, although he still ridiculed their Utopia of +the peasant state, small ownership and all that came later to be +called Distributism. Like the _Clarion_, the _New Age_ (itself a +Socialist paper) saw the wisdom of giving a platform to both sides, +and in this paper appeared the best articles that the controversy +produced. + +Meanwhile the private friendship between G.B.S. and G.K.C. was +growing apace. Very early on, Shaw had begun to urge G.K. to write a +play. G.K. was, perhaps, beginning to feel that newspaper controversy +did not give him space to say all he wanted about Shaw (or perhaps it +was merely that Messrs. Lane had persuaded him to promise them a book +on Shaw for a series they were producing!). Anyhow, in a letter of +1908, Shaw again urges the play and gives interesting information for +the book. + + Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. + 1st March 1908. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + What about that play? It is no use trying to answer me in The New + Age: the real answer to my article is the play. I have tried fair + means: The New Age article was the inauguration of an assault below + the belt. I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as + a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers + your laziness a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to + serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to + you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if + necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by + intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to + the British drama. You are played out as an essayist: your ardor is + soddened, your intellectual substance crumbled, by the attempt to + keep up the work of your twenties in your thirties. Another five + years of this; and you will be the apologist of every infamy that + wears a Liberal or Catholic mask. You, too, will speak of the + portraits of Vecelli and the Assumption of Allegri, and declare that + Democracy refuses to lackey-label these honest citizens as Titian and + Correggio. Even that colossal fragment of your ruined honesty that + still stupendously dismisses Beethoven as "some rubbish about a + piano" will give way to remarks about "a graceful second subject in + the relative minor." Nothing can save you now except a rebirth as a + dramatist. I have done my turn; and I now call on you to take yours + and do a man's work. + + It is my solemn belief that it was my Quintessence of Ibsenism that + rescued you and all your ungrateful generation from Materialism and + Rationalism.* You were all tired young atheists turning to Kipling + and Ruskinian Anglicanism whilst I, with the angel's wings beating in + my ears from Beethoven's 9th symphony (oh blasphemous Walker in + deafness), gave you in 1880 and 1881 two novels in which you had your + Rationalist-secularist hero immediately followed by my Beethovenian + hero. True, nobody read them; but was that my fault? They are read + now, it seems, mostly in pirated reprints, in spite of their + appalling puerility and classical perfection of style (you are right + as to my being a born pedant, like all great artists); and are at + least useful as documentary evidence that I was no more a materialist + when I wrote _Love Among the Artists_ at 24 than when I wrote + _Candida_ at 39. + +[* Cecil avowed this as far as he was concerned. G.B.S.] + + My appearances on the platform of the Hall of Science were three + in number. Once for a few minutes in a discussion, in opposition to + Bradlaugh, who was defending property against Socialism. Bradlaugh + died after that, though I do not claim to have killed him. The + Socialist League challenged him to debate with me at St. James's + Hall; but we could not or would not agree as to the proposition to be + debated, he insisting on my being bound by all the publications of + the Democratic Federation (to which I did not belong) and I refusing + to be bound by anything on earth or in heaven except the proposition + that Socialism would benefit the English people. And so the debate + never came off. + + Now in those days they were throwing Bradlaugh out of the House of + Commons with bodily violence; and all one could do was to call + oneself an atheist all over the place, which I accordingly did. At + the first public meeting of the Shelley Society at University + College, addressed by Stopford Brooke, I made my then famous (among + 100 people) declaration "I am a Socialist, an Atheist and a + Vegetarian" (ergo, a true Shelleyan) whereupon two ladies who had + been palpitating with enthusiasm for Shelley under the impression + that he was a devout Anglican, resigned on the spot. + + My second Hall of Science appearance was after the last of the + Bradlaugh-Hyndman debates at St. James's Hall, where the two + champions never touched the ostensible subject of their + difference--the Eight Hours Day--at all, but simply talked Socialism + or Anti-Socialism with a hearty dislike and contempt for one another. + G. V. Foote was then in his prime as the successor of Bradlaugh; and + as neither the Secularists nor the Socialists were satisfied with the + result of the debate, it was renewed for two nights at the Hall of + Science between me and Foote. A verbatim report was published for + sixpence and is now a treasure of collectors. Having the last word on + the second night, I had to make a handsome wind-up; and the + Secularists were much pleased by my declaring that I was altogether + on Foote's side in his struggle with the established religion of the + country. + + When Bradlaugh died, the Secularists wanted a new leader, because + B.'s enormous and magnetic personality left a void that nobody was + big enough to fill--it was really like the death of Napoleon in that + world. There was J. M. Robertson, Foote, and Charles Watts. But + Bradlaugh liked Foote as little as most autocrats like their + successors; and when he, before his death surrendered the gavel (the + hammer for thumping the table to secure order at a meeting) which was + the presidential sceptre of the National Secular Society, he did so + with an ill will which he did not attempt to conceal; and so though + Foote was the nearest size to Bradlaugh's shoes then available, he + succeeded him at the disadvantage of inheriting the distrust of the + old chief. J. M. Robertson you know: he was not a mob orator. Watts + was not sufficient: he had neither Foote's weight (being old) nor + Robertson's scholarship. + + So whilst the survivors of Bradlaugh were trying to keep up the + Hall of Science and to establish a memorial library, etc. there, they + cast round for new blood. What more natural than that they should + think of me as a man not afraid to call himself an atheist and able + to hold his own on the platform? Accordingly, they invited me to + address them; and one memorable night I held forth on Progress in + Freethought. I was received with affectionate hope; and when the + chairman announced that I was giving my share of the gate to the + memorial library (I have never taken money for lecturing) the + enthusiasm was quite touching. The anti-climax was super-Shavian. I + proceeded to smash materialism, rationalism, and all the philosophy + of Tyndall, Helmholtz, Darwin and the rest of the 1860 people into + smithereens. I ridiculed and exposed every inference of science, and + justified every dogma of religion, especially showing that the + Trinity and the Immaculate Conception were the merest common sense. + That finished me up as a possible leader of the N.S.S. Robertson came + on the platform, white with honest Scotch Rationalist rage, and + denounced me with a fury of conviction that startled his own + followers. Never did I grace that platform again. I repeated the + address once to a branch of the N.S.S. on the south side of the + Thames--Kensington, I think--and was interrupted by yells of rage + from the veterans of the society. The Leicester Secularists, a pious + folk, rich and independent of the N.S.S., were kinder to me; but they + were no more real atheists than the congregation of St. Paul's is + made wholly of real Christians. + + Foote is still bewildered about me, imagining that I am a pervert. + But anybody who reads my stuff from the beginning (a Shelleyan + beginning, as far as it could be labelled at all) will find implicit, + and sometimes explicit, the views which, in their more matured form, + will appear in that remarkable forthcoming masterpiece, "Shavianism: + a Religion." + + By the way, I have omitted one more appearance at the Hall of + Science. At a four nights' debate on Socialism between Foote and Mrs. + Besant, I took the chair on one of the nights. + + I take advantage of a snowy Sunday afternoon to scribble all this + down for you because you are in the same difficulty that beset me + formerly: namely, the absolute blank in the history of the immediate + past that confronts every man when he first takes to public life. + Written history stops several decades back; and the bridge of + personal recollection on which older men stand does not exist for the + recruit. Nothing is more natural than that you should reconstruct me + as the last of the Rationalists (his real name is Blatchford); and + nothing could be more erroneous. It would be much nearer the truth to + call me, in that world, the first of the mystics. + + If you can imagine the result of trying to write your spiritual + history in complete ignorance of painting, you will get a notion of + trying to write mine in ignorance of music. Bradlaugh was a + tremendous platform heavyweight; but he had never in his life, as far + as I could make out, seen anything, heard anything or read anything + in the artistic sense. He was almost beyond belief incapable of + intercourse in private conversation. He could tell you his adventures + provided you didn't interrupt him (which you were mostly afraid to + do, as the man was a mesmeric terror); but as to exchanging ideas, or + expressing the universal part of his soul, you might as well have + been reading the letters of Charles Dickens to his family--those + tragic monuments of dumbness of soul and noisiness of pen. Lord help + you if you ever lose your gift of speech, G.K.C.! Don't forget that + the race is only struggling out of its dumbness, and that it is only + in moments of inspiration that we get out a sentence. All the rest is + padding. + + Yours ever + G. BERNARD SHAW. + +In the book on Shaw which appeared in August 1909, G.K. did as he had +done with his other literary studies: gave (inaccurately) only as +much biography as seemed absolutely necessary, and mainly discussed +ideas. He saw Shaw as an Irishman, yet lacking the roots of +nationality since he belonged to a mainly alien governing class. He +saw him as a Puritan yet without the religious basis of Puritanism. +And thirdly, he saw him as so swift a progressive as to be ahead of +his own thought and ready to slay it in the name of progress. + +All these elements in Shaw made for strength but also created +limitations, "Shaw is like the Venus of Milo; all that there is of +him is admirable." Where he fails is in being unable to see and +embrace the full complexity of life. "His only paradox is to pull out +one thread or cord of truth longer and longer into waste and +fantastic places. He does not allow for that deeper sort of paradox +by which two opposite cords of truth become entangled in an +inextricable knot. Still less can he be made to realise that it is +often this knot which ties safely together the whole bundle of human +life . . . here lies the limitation of that lucid and compelling +mind; he cannot quite understand life, because he will not accept its +contradictions." Humanity is built of these contradictions, therefore +Shaw pities humanity more than he loves it. "It was his glory that he +pitied animals like men; it was his defect that he pitied men almost +too much like animals. Foulon said of the democracy, 'Let them eat +grass.' Shaw said, 'Let them eat greens.' He had more benevolence but +almost as much disdain." + +As a vegetarian and a water drinker Shaw himself lacked, in +Chesterton's eyes, something of complete humanity. And in discussing +social problems he was more economist than man. "Shaw (one might +almost say) dislikes murder, not so much because it wastes the life +of the corpse as because it wastes the time of the murderer." This +lack of the full human touch is felt, even in the plays, because Shaw +cannot be irrational where humanity always is irrational. In +_Candida_ "It is completely and disastrously false to the whole +nature of falling in love to make the young Eugene complain of the +cruelty which makes Candida defile her fair hands with domestic +duties. No boy in love with a beautiful woman would ever feel +disgusted when she peeled potatoes or trimmed lamps. He would like +her to be domestic. He would simply feel that the potatoes had become +poetical and the lamps gained an extra light. This may be irrational; +but we are not talking of rationality, but of the psychology of first +love.* It may be very unfair to women that the toil and triviality of +potato-peeling should be seen through a glamour of romance; but the +glamour is quite as certain a fact as the potatoes. It may be a bad +thing in sociology that men should deify domesticity in girls as +something dainty and magical; but all men do. Personally I do not +think it a bad thing at all; but that is another argument."** + +[* No two love affairs are the same. This sentence assumed that they +are all the same. To Eugene, the poet living in a world of +imagination and abhorring reality, Candida was what Dulcinea was to +Don Quixote. G.B.S.] + +[** _George Bernard Shaw_, pp. 120-1.] + +Yet Shaw's limitations are those of a great man and a genius. In an +age of narrow specialism he has "stood up for the fact that +philosophy is not the concern of those who pass through Divinity and +Greats, but of those who pass through birth and death." In an age +that has almost chosen death, "Shaw follows the banner of life; but +austerely, not joyously." Nowhere, in dealing with Shaw's philosophy, +does Chesterton note his debt to Butler. Shaw has himself mentioned +it, and no reader of Butler could miss it, especially in this matter +of the Life Force. It is the special paradox of our age, Chesterton +notes, that the life force should thus need assertion and can thus be +followed without joy. + + To every man and woman, bird, beast, and flower, life is a + love-call to be eagerly followed. To Bernard Shaw it is merely a + military bugle to be obeyed. In short, he fails to feel that the + command of Nature (if one must use the anthropomorphic fable of + Nature instead of the philosophic term God) can be enjoyed as well as + obeyed. He paints life at its darkest and then tells the babe unborn + to take the leap in the dark. That is heroic; and to my instinct at + least Schopenhauer looks like a pigmy beside his pupil. But it is the + heroism of a morbid and almost asphyxiated age. It is awful to think + that this world which so many poets have praised has even for a time + been depicted as a man-trap into which we may just have the manhood + to jump. Think of all those ages through which men have talked of + having the courage to die. And then remember that we have actually + fallen to talking of having the courage to live.* + +[* _George Bernard Shaw_. Week-End Library, p. 190.] + +Here comes the great parting of the two men's thought. G.K. believed +in God and in joy. But he saw that Shaw had much of value for this +strange diseased world. His primary value was not merely (as some +said) that he woke it up. The literary world might not be awake to +the social evil, but it was painfully awake to the ills, real or +imaginary, inherent in human life. + + We do not need waking up; rather we suffer from insomnia, with all + its results of fear and exaggeration and frightful waking dreams. The + modern mind is not a donkey which wants kicking to make it go on. The + modern mind is more like a motor-car on a lonely road which two + amateur motorists have been just clever enough to take to pieces but + are not quite clever enough to put together again.* + +[Ibid., pp. 245-6.] + +Shaw had not merely asked questions of the age: that would have been +worse than useless. What he had done was at moments to rise above his +own thoughts and give, through his characters, inspired answers: G.K. +instances _Candida_, with its revelation of the meaning of marriage +when the woman stays with the strong man because he is so weak and +needs her. And Shaw had brought back philosophy into drama--that is, +he had recreated the atmosphere, lost since Shakespeare,* in which +men were thinking, and might, therefore, find the answers that the +age needed. And here again we come back to the world which these men +were shaking and to the respective philosophies with which they +looked at it. It was a world of conventions and these conventions had +become empty of meaning. Throw them away, said Shaw and Wells; no, +said Chesterton; keep them and look for their meaning; Revolution +does not mean destruction: it means restoration. + +[* Hard on Goethe and Ibsen, to say nothing of Mozart's Magic Flute +and Beethoven's 9th symphony. G.B.S.] + +The same sort of discussion buzzed around this book as around the +controversies of which it might be called a prolongation. Shaw +himself reviewed it in an article in the _Nation_, in which he called +it, "the best work of literary art I have yet provoked. . . . +Everything about me which Mr. Chesterton had to divine he has divined +miraculously. But everything that he could have ascertained easily by +reading my own plain directions on the bottle, as it were, remains +for him a muddled and painful problem." From an interchange of +private letters it would seem that the move to Beaconsfield took +place later in this year than I had supposed. Bernard Shaw's letter +is probably not written many days after an undated one to him from +G.K.: + + 48, Overstrand Mansions, + Battersea Park. S.W. + + DEAR BERNARD SHAW, + + I trust our recent tournaments have not rendered it contrary to the + laws of romantic chivalry (which you reverence so much) for me to + introduce to you my friend Mr. Pepler, who is a very nice man indeed + though a social idealist, and who has, I believe, something of a + practical sort to ask of you. Please excuse abruptness in this letter + of introduction; we are moving into the country and every piece of + furniture I begin to write at is taken away and put into a van. + + Always yours sincerely, + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + 10, Adelphi Terrace, W.C. + 30th October 1909. + + CHESTERTON. + SHAW SPEAKS. + ATTENTION! + + I saw your man and consoled him spiritually; but that is not the + subject of this letter. I still think that you could write a useful + sort of play if you were started. When I was in Kerry last month I + had occasionally a few moments to spare; and it seemed to me quite + unendurable that you should be wasting your time writing books about + me. I liked the book very much, especially as it was so completely + free from my own influence, being evidently founded on a very hazy + recollection of a five-year-old perusal of Man and Superman; but a + lot of it was fearful nonsense. There was one good thing about the + scientific superstition which you came a little too late for. It + taught a man to respect facts. You have no conscience in this + respect; and your punishment is that you substitute such dull + inferences as my "narrow puritan home" for delightful and fantastic + realities which you might very easily have ascertained if you had + taken greater advantage of what is really the only thing to be said + in favour of Battersea; namely, that it is within easy reach of + Adelphi Terrace. However, I have no doubt that when Wilkins Micawber + junior grew up and became eminent in Australia, references were made + to his narrow puritan home; so I do not complain. If you had told the + truth, nobody would have believed it. + + Now to business. When one breathes Irish air, one becomes a + practical man. In England I used to say what a pity it was you did + not write a play. In Ireland I sat down and began writing a scenario + for you. But before I could finish it I had come back to London; and + now it is all up with the scenario: in England I can do nothing but + talk. I therefore now send you the thing as far as I scribbled it; + and I leave you to invent what escapades you please for the hero, and + to devise some sensational means of getting him back to heaven again, + unless you prefer to end with the millennium in full swing.* + +[* The scenario dealt with the return of St. Augustine to the England +he remembered converting.] + + But experience has made me very doubtful of the efficacy of help as + the means of getting work out of the right sort of man. When I was + young I struck out one invaluable rule for myself, which was, + Whenever you meet an important man, contradict him. If possible, + insult him. But such a rule is one of the privileges of youth. I no + longer live by rules. Yet there is one way in which you may possibly + be insultable. It can be plausibly held that you are a venal ruffian, + pouring forth great quantities of immediately saleable stuff, but + altogether declining to lay up for yourself treasures in heaven. It + may be that you cannot afford to do otherwise. Therefore I am quite + ready to make a deal with you. + + A full length play should contain about 18,000 words (mine + frequently contain two or three times that number). I do not know + what your price per thousand is. I used to be considered grossly + extortionate by Massingham and others for insisting on £3. 18,000 + words at £3 per thousand is £54. I need make no extra allowance for + the republication in book form, because even if the play aborted as + far as the theatre is concerned, you could make a book of it all the + same. Let us assume that your work is worth twice as much as mine; + this would make £108. I have had two shockingly bad years of it + pecuniarily speaking, and am therefore in that phase of extravagance + which straitened means have always produced in me. Knock off 8% as a + sort of agent's commission to me for starting you on the job and + finding you a theme. This leaves £100. I will pay you £100 down on + your contracting to supply me within three months with a mechanically + possible, i.e., stageable drama dealing with the experiences of St. + Augustine after re-visiting England. The literary copyright to be + yours, except that you are not to prevent me making as many copies as + I may require for stage use. The stage right to be mine; but you are + to have the right to buy it back from me for £250 whenever you like.* + The play, if performed, to be announced as your work and not as a + collaboration. All rights which I may have in the scenario to go with + the stage right and literary copyright as prescribed as far as you + may make use of it. What do you say? There is a lot of spending in + £100. + +[* I could not very well offer him £100 as a present. G.B.S.] + + One condition more. If it should prove impossible to achieve a + performance otherwise than through the Stage Society (which does not + pay anything), a resort to that body is not to be deemed a breach of + the spirit of our agreement. + + Do you think it would be possible to make Belloc write a comedy? If + he could only be induced to believe in some sort of God instead of in + that wretched little conspiracy against religion which the pious + Romans have locked up in the Vatican, one could get some drive into + him. As it is, he is wasting prodigious gifts in the service of King + Leopold and the Pope and other ghastly scarecrows. If he must have a + Pope, there is quite a possible one at Adelphi Terrace. + + For the next few days I shall be at my country quarters, Ayot St. + Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. I have a motor car which could carry me on + sufficient provocation as far as Beaconsfield; but I do not know how + much time you spend there and how much in Fleet Street. Are you only + a week-ender; or has your wise wife taken you properly in hand and + committed you to a pastoral life. + + Yours ever, + G. BERNARD SHAW. + + P.S. Remember that the play is to be practical (in the common + managerial sense) only in respect of its being mechanically + possible as a stage representation. It is to be neither a + likely-to-be-successful play nor a literary lark: it is to be + written for the good of all souls. + +Among the reviewers of the book, our old friend, the _Academy_, +surprised me by hating Shaw so much more than Chesterton that the +latter came off quite lightly. There was a good deal of the usual +misunderstanding and lists were made of self-contradictions on the +author's part. Still in the main the press was sympathetic and even +enthusiastic. But when Shaw reviewed Chesterton on Shaw, more than +one paper waxed sarcastic on the point of royalties and remuneration +gained by these means. The funniest of the more critical comments on +the way these men wrote of one another was a suggestion made in the +_Bystander_ that Shaw and Chesterton were really the same person: + + . . . Shaw, it is said, tired of socialism, weary of wearing + Jaegers, and broken down by teetotalism and vegetarianism, sought, + some years ago, an escape from them. His adoption, however, of these + attitudes had a decided commercial value, which he did not think it + advisable to prejudice by wholesale surrender. Therefore he, in order + to taste the forbidden joys of individualistic philosophy, meat, food + and strong drink, created "Chesterton." This mammoth myth, he + decided, should enjoy all the forms of fame which Shaw had to deny + himself. Outwardly, he should be Shaw's antithesis. He should be + beardless, large in girth, smiling of countenance, and he should be + licensed to sell paradoxes only in essay and novel form, all stage + and platform rights being reserved by Shaw. To enable the imposition + to be safely carried out, Shaw hit on the idea of residence close to + the tunnel which connects Adelphi with the Strand. Emerging from his + house plain, Jaeger-clad, bearded and saturnine Shaw, he entered the + tunnel, in a cleft in which was a cellar. Here he donned the + Chesterton properties, the immense padding of chest, and so on, the + Chesterton sombrero hat and cloak and pince-nez, and there he left + the Shaw beard and the Shaw clothes, the Shaw expression of + countenance, and all the Shaw theories. He emerged into the Strand + "G.K.C.," in whose identity he visited all the cafés, ate all the + meats, rode in all the cabs, and smiled on all the sinners. The day's + work done, the Chesterton manuscripts delivered, the proofs read, the + bargains driven, the giant figure returned to the tunnel, and once + again was back in Adelphi, the Shaw he was when he left it--back to + the Jaegers, the beard, the Socialism, the statistics, and the + sardonic letters to the _Times_.* + +[* From _The Bystander_. 1 September, 1909.] + +Bernard Shaw is a man of unusual generosity, but I think from his +letters he must also be quite a good man of business. G.K. was so +greatly the opposite that G.B.S. urged him again and again to do the +most ordinary things to protect the literary rights of himself and +others. Thus, in the only undated letter in the whole packet, he begs +Gilbert to back up the Authors' Society: + + MY DEAR G.K.C., + + I am one of the unhappy slaves who, on the two big committees of + your Trade Union (the Society of Authors) drudge at the heartbreaking + work of defending our miserable profession against being devoured, + body and soul, by the publishers--themselves a pitiful gang of + literature-struck impostors who are crumpled up by the booksellers, + who, though small folk, are at least in contact with reality in the + shape of the book buyer. It is a ghastly and infuriating business, + because the authors _will_ go to lunch with their publishers and sell + them anything for £20 over the cigarettes, but it has to be done; and + I, with half a dozen others, have to do it. + + Now I missed the last committee meeting (electioneering: I am here + doing two colossal meetings of miners every night for Keir Hardie); + but the harassed secretary writes that it was decided to take + proceedings in the case of a book of yours which you (oh Esau, Esau!) + sold to John--(John is a--well--no matter: when you take your turn on + the committee you will find him out) and that though the German + lawyer has had £7 and is going ahead (£7 worth of law in Germany + takes you to the House of Lords) everything is hung up because you + will not answer Thring's* letters. Thring, in desperation, appeals to + me, concluding with characteristic simplicity that we must be friends + because you have written a book about me. As the conclusion is + accidentally and improbably true, I now urge you to give him whatever + satisfaction he requires. I have no notion what it is, or what the + case is about; but at least answer his letters, however infuriating + they may be. Remember: you pay Thring only £500, for which you get + integrity, incorruptibility, implacability, and a disposition greatly + to find quarrel in a straw on your behalf (even with yourself) and + don't complain if you don't get £20,000 worth of tact into the + bargain. And your obligations to us wretched committee men are simply + incalculable. We get nothing but abuse and denigration: authors weep + with indignation when we put our foot on some blood-sucking, + widow-cheating, orphan starving scoundrel and ruthlessly force him to + keep to his mite of obligation under an agreement which would have + revolted Shylock: unless the best men, the Good Professionals, help + us, we are lost. We get nothing and spend our time like water for you. + +[* Herbert Thring was the barrister employed by the Society of +Authors.] + + All we ask you to do is to answer Thring and let us get along with + your work. + + Look here: will you write to Thring. + + _Please_ write to Thring. + + I say: have you written to Thring yet? + + G.B.S. + +I doubt whether he had. Those chance sums he poured from time to time +into Frances' lap were usually not what they should have been, an +advance on a royalty. _Orthodoxy_ he sold outright for £100. No man +ever worked so hard to earn so little. + +When later Gilbert employed Messrs. A. P. Watt as his literary agents +a letter to them (undated, of course, and written on the old +notepaper of his first Battersea flat) shows a mingling of gratitude +to his agents with entire absence of resentment towards his +publishers, which might be called essence of Chesterton: + + The prices you have got me for books, compared with what I used + weakly to demand, seem to me to come out of fairyland. It seems to me + that there is a genuine business problem which creates a permanent + need for a literary agent. It consists in this--that our work, even + when it has become entirely a duty and a worry, still remains in some + vague way a pleasure. And how can we put a fair price on what is at + once a worry and a pleasure? Suppose someone comes to me and says, "I + offer you sixpence for your _History of the Gnostic Heresy_." Why, + after all, should I charge more than sixpence for a work it was so + exuberant to write? You, on the other hand, seeing it from the + outside, would say that it was worth--so and so. And you would get it. + +Shaw continued his attempts to stimulate the reluctant playwright. +Two years after drafting the scenario, he writes: + + 10 Adelphi Terrace, W.C. + 5th April 1912. + + DEAR MRS. CHESTERTON, + + I have promised to drive somebody to Beaconsfield on Sunday + morning; and I shall be in that district more or less for the rest of + the day. If you are spending Easter at Overroads, and have no + visitors who couldn't stand us, we should like to call on you at any + time that would be convenient. + + The convenience of time depends on a design of my own which I wish + to impart to you first. I want to read a play to Gilbert. It began by + way of being a music-hall sketch; so it is not 3½ hours long as + usual: I can get through it in an hour and a half. I want to insult + and taunt and stimulate Gilbert with it. It is the sort of thing he + could write and ought to write: a religious harlequinade.* In fact, + he could do it better if a sufficient number of pins were stuck into + him. My proposal is that I read the play to him on Sunday (or at the + next convenient date), and that you fall into transports of + admiration of it; declare that you can never love a man who cannot + write things like that; and definitely announce that if Gilbert has + not finished a worthy successor to it before the end of the third + week next ensuing, you will go out like the lady in A Doll's House, + and live your own life--whatever that dark threat may mean. + +[* Androcles and The Lion evidently. G.B.S.] + + If you are at home, I count on your ready complicity; but the + difficulty is that you may have visitors; and if they are pious + Gilbert will be under a tacit obligation not to blaspheme, or let me + blaspheme, whilst they are beneath his roof (my play is about + Christian Martyrs, and perfectly awful in parts); and if they are + journalists, it will be necessary to administer an oath of secrecy. I + don't object to the oath; and nothing would please Gilbert more than + to make them drink blood from a skull: the difficulty is, they + wouldn't keep it. In short, they must be the right sort of people, of + whom the more the merrier. + + Forgive this long rigmarole: it is only to put you in possession of + what _may_ happen if you approve, and your invitations and domestic + circumstances are propitious. + + Yours sincerely, + G. BERNARD SHAW. + +Chesterton at last did write _Magic_--but that belongs to another +chapter. + +Like the demand for a play, the theme of finance recurs with great +frequency in Shaw's letters, and after _Magic_ appeared he wrote to +Frances telling her that "in Sweden, where the marriage laws are +comparatively enlightened, I believe you could obtain a divorce on +the ground that your husband threw away an important part of the +provision for your old age for twenty pieces of silver. . . . In +future, the moment he has finished a play and the question of +disposing of it arises, lock him up and bring the agreement to me. +Explanations would be thrown away on him." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +From Battersea to Beaconsfield +(1909-1911) + + +IN 1909, WITH _Orthodoxy_ well behind him, and _George Bernard Shaw_ +just published, Gilbert and his wife left London for the small +country town that was to be their home for the rest of their lives. +It was an odd coincidence that they should leave Overstrand Mansions, +Battersea, and come to Overroads, Beaconsfield, for they did not name +their new home but found it ready christened. + +It will be remembered that in one of the letters during the +engagement Gilbert had suggested a country home. The reason for the +choice of Beaconsfield he gives in the _Autobiography:_ + + After we were married, my wife and I lived for about a year in + Kensington, the place of my childhood; but I think we both knew that + it was not to be the real place for our abode. I remember that we + strolled out one day, for a sort of second honeymoon, and went upon a + journey into the void, a voyage deliberately objectless. I saw a + passing omnibus labelled "Hanwell" and, feeling this to be an + appropriate omen,* we boarded it and left it somewhere at a stray + station, which I entered and asked the man in the ticket-office where + the next train went to. He uttered the pedantic reply, "Where do you + want to go to?" And I uttered the profound and philosophical + rejoinder, "Wherever the next train goes to." It seemed that it went + to Slough; which may seem to be singular taste, even in a train. + However, we went to Slough, and from there set out walking with even + less notion of where we were going. And in that fashion we passed + through the large and quiet cross-roads of a sort of village, and + stayed at an inn called The White Hart. We asked the name of the + place and were told that it was called Beaconsfield (I mean of course + that it was called Beconsfield and not Beaconsfield), and we said to + each other, "This is the sort of place where some day we will make + our home."** + +[* At Hanwell is London's most famous lunatic asylum.] + +[** _Autobiography_, p. 219.] + +They both wanted a home. They both deeply desired a family. The wish +is normal to both man and woman, normal in a happy marriage, and +theirs was unusually happy; it was almost abnormally keen in both +Frances and Gilbert. Few men have so greatly loved children. As a +schoolboy his letters are full of it--making friends with Scottish +children on the sands, with French children by the medium of +pictures. Later he was writing "In Defence of Baby Worship" and +welcoming with enthusiasm the arrival of his friends' children into +the world. + +In the Notebook he had written: + + Sunlight in a child's hair. + It is like the kiss of Christ upon all children. + I blessed the child: and hoped the blessing would go with him + And never leave him; + And turn first into a toy, and then into a game + And then into a friend, + And as he grew up, into friends + And then into a woman. + + GRASS AND CHILDREN + + Grass and children + There seems no end to them. + But if there were but one blade of grass + Men would see that it is fairer than lilies, + And if we saw the first child + We should worship it as the God come on earth. + + ROUNDS + + I find that most round things are nice, + Particularly Eternity and a baby. + +Frances cared no less deeply both for Eternity and for babies and for +many years went on hoping for the family that would complete their +lives. At last it was decided to have an operation to enable her to +have children. Her doctor writes: + + I well remember an incident which occurred during her convalescence + from that operation. I received a telephone call from the matron of + the Nursing Home in which Mrs. Chesterton was staying, suggesting + that I should come round and remonstrate with Mr. Chesterton. On my + arrival I found him sitting on the stairs, where he had been for two + hours, greatly incommoding passers up and down and deaf to all + requests to move on. It appeared that he had written a sonnet to his + wife on her recovery from the operation and was bringing it to give + her. He was not however satisfied with the last line, but was + determined to perfect it before entering her room to take tea with + her. + +By the time they left London she must, I think, have given up the +hope she had so long cherished. Still if there could not be children +there might be perhaps something of a home. In the conditions of +their life, there was danger that any house of bricks and mortar +should be rather a headquarters than a home, and it was lucky that he +was able to feel she took home with her wherever they went-- + + Your face that is a wandering home + A flying home for me. + +The years before them were to be filled with the vast activities that +not only took Gilbert to London and all over England incessantly, but +were to take him increasingly over Europe and America. Beaconsfield +gave a degree of quiet that made it possible, when they were able to +be at home, not to be swamped by engagements and to lead a life of +their own. Gilbert could go to London when he liked, but he need not +always be on tap, so to say, for all the world. Frances could have a +garden and indulge her hungry appetite for all that was fruitful. +G.K., later, under the title "The Homelessness of Jones"* showed his +love for a house rather than a flat, and they gave even to their +first little house "Overroads" the stamp of a real home. + +[* A chapter in _What's Wrong with the World_.] + +For a man and his wife to leave London for the country might seem to +be their own affair. Not so, however, with the Chestertons. After a +lapse of over thirty years I find the matter still a subject of +furious controversy and indeed passion. Frances, says one school of +opinion, committed a crime against the public good by removing +Gilbert from Fleet Street. No, says the other school, she had to move +him or he would have died of working too hard and drinking too much. +The suggestion, which I believe to be a fact, that Gilbert himself +wanted to move, is seldom entertained. + +There is in all this the legitimate feeling of distress among any +group at losing its chief figure, its pride and joy. "I lost +Gilbert," Lucian Oldershaw once said, "first when I introduced him to +Belloc, next when he married Frances, and finally when he joined the +Catholic Church. . . . I rejoiced, though perhaps with a maternal +sadness, at all these fulfillments." + +Cecil wanted his brother always on hand. Belloc was already in the +country--a far more remote country--but even he, coming up to London, +mourned to my mother, "she has taken my Chesterton from me." Talking +it over however after the lapse of years, he agreed that in all +probability the move was a wise one. What may be called the smaller +fry of Fleet Street are less reasonable. One cannot avoid the feeling +that in all this masculine life so sure of its manhood, there +lingered something of the "schwärmerei" of the Junior Debating Club +furiously desiring each to be first with Gilbert. And in his love of +Fleet Street he so identified himself with them all that they felt he +was one of them and did not recognise the horizons wider than theirs +that were opening before him. + +My husband and I are experts in changing residences and we listened +with the amusement of experts to the talk of theorists. For it was so +constantly assumed that on one side of a choice is disaster, on the +other perfection. Actually perfection does not belong to this earthly +state: if you go to Rome, as Gilbert himself once said, you sacrifice +a rich suggestive life at Wimbledon. Newman writing of a far greater +and more irrevocable choice called his story _Loss and Gain_--but he +had no doubt that the gain outweighed the loss. There were in +Gilbert's adult life three other big decisions--decisions of the +scale that altered its course. The first was his marriage. The second +was his reception into the Church. The third was his continued +dedication to the paper that his brother and Belloc had founded. In +deciding to marry Frances he was acting against his mother's wishes, +to which he was extremely sensitive. His decision to become a +Catholic had to be made alone: he had the sympathy of his wife but +not her companionship. In the decision to edit the paper he had not +even fully her sympathy: she always felt his creative work to be so +much more important and to be imperilled by the overwork the paper +brought. Gilbert was a man slow in action but it would be exceedingly +difficult to find instances of his doing anything that he did not +want to do. The theorists about marriage are like the theorists about +moving house, if they do not know that decisions made by one party +alone are rare indeed and stick out like spikes in the life of a +normal and happy couple. Of the vast majority of decisions it is hard +to say who makes them. They make themselves: after endless talk: on +the tops of omnibuses going to Hanwell or elsewhere: out walking: +breakfasting--especially breakfasting in bed. They make +themselves--above all in the matter of a move--in fine weather: +during a holiday: on a hot London Sunday: when a flat is stuffy: when +the telephone rings all day: when a book is on the stocks. + +Other writers have left London that they might create at leisure and +choose their own times for social intercourse. Why does no one say +their wives dragged them away? Simply, I think, that being less kind +and considerate than Gilbert, they do not mind telling their friends +that they are not always wanted. This Gilbert could not do. If people +said how they would miss him, how they hated his going, he would +murmur vague and friendly sounds, from which they deduced all they +wanted to deduce. Was it more weakness or strength, that tenderness +of heart that could never faintly suggest to his friends that they +would miss him more than he would miss them? "I never wanted but one +thing in my life," he had written to Annie Firmin. And that "one +thing" he was taking with him. + +Anyhow, the move accomplished, he enjoyed defending it in every +detail, and did so especially in his _Daily News_ articles. The rush +to the country was not uncommon in the literary world of the moment, +and his journalist friends had urged the point that Beaconsfield was +not true country, was suburban, was being built over. His friends, +G.K. replied, were suffering from a weak-minded swing from one +extreme to the other. Men who had praised London as the only place to +live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a +station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to +depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so +distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival +ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely +inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous +heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation +which the other friend had thoughtlessly overlooked." + +Gilbert, on the contrary, noted soon after his arrival that +Beaconsfield was beginning to be built over and he noted it with +satisfaction. "Within a stone's throw of my house they are building +another house. I am glad they are building it and I am glad it is +within a stone's throw." He did not want a desert, he did not want a +large landed estate, he wanted what he had got--a house and a garden. +He adventurously explored that garden, finding a kitchen-garden that +had "somehow got attached" to the premises, and wondering why he +liked it; speaking to the gardener, "an enterprise of no little +valour," and asking him the name "of a strange dark red rose, at once +theatrical and sulky," which turned out to be called Victor Hugo; +"watching (with regret) a lot of little black pigs being turned out +of my garden." + +Watching the neighbouring house grow up from its foundation he noted +in an article called, "The Wings of Stone," what was the reality of a +staircase. We pad them with carpets and rail them with banisters, yet +every "staircase is truly only an awful and naked ladder running up +into the infinite to a deadly height." (A correspondent pointed out +in a letter to the _Daily News_ that here he had touched a reality +keenly felt by primitive peoples. When Cetewayo, King of Zululand, +visited London, he would go upstairs only on hands and knees and that +with manifest terror.) The paddings of civilisation may be useful, +yet Gilbert held more valuable a realisation of the realities of +things. Vision is not fancy, but the sight of truth. + +In the Notebook he had written + + There are three things that make me think; + things beyond all poetry: + A yellow space or rift in evening sky: + A chimney or pinnacle high in the air; + And a path over a hill. + +Chesterton had always the power of conveying in words a painter's +vision of some unforgettable scene with the poet's words for what the +artist not only sees but imagines. Such flashes became more frequent +as he looked through the doorway of his little house. Go through _The +Ball and the Cross_ with this in mind and you will see what I mean. +"The crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of +some sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken." "There +is nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it were through the +archway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior chamber, and +the sun a secret lamp of the place." Best of all to illustrate this +special quality is a longer passage from the _Poet and the Lunatics_. + + For the most part he was contented to see the green semicircles of + lawn repeat themselves like a pattern of green moons; for he was not + one to whom repetition was merely monotony. Only in looking over a + particular gate at a particular lawn, he became pleasantly conscious, + or half conscious, of a new note of colour in the greenness; a much + bluer green, which seemed to change to vivid blue, as the object at + which he was gazing moved sharply, turning a small head on a long + neck. It was a peacock. But he had thought of a thousand things + before he thought of the obvious thing. The burning blue of the + plumage on the neck had reminded him of blue fire, and blue fire had + reminded him of some dark fantasy about blue devils, before he had + fully realised even that it was a peacock he was staring at. And the + tail, that trailing tapestry of eyes, had led his wandering wits away + to those dark but divine monsters of the Apocalypse whose eyes were + multiplied like their wings, before he had remembered that a peacock, + even in a more practical sense, was an odd thing to see in so + ordinary a setting. + +Yet always to Chesterton the beauty of nature was enhanced by the +work of men, and if in London men had swarmed too closely, it was not +to get away from them but to appreciate them more individually that +he chose the country. Yes, his literary friends would say: in the +real country that is true; the farmer, the labourer, even the village +barber and the village tradesmen are worth knowing, but not suburban +neighbours. Against such discrimination the whole democracy of +Chesterton stood in revolt. All men were valuable, all men were +interesting, the doctor as much as the barber, the clergyman as much +as the farmer. All men were children of God and citizens of the +world. If he had a choice in the matter it was discrimination against +the literary world itself with all the fads that tended to smother +its essential humanity. Nothing would have induced him to +discriminate against the suburban. In the last year of his life he +wrote in the _Autobiography:_ "I have lived in Beaconsfield from the +time when it was almost a village, to the time when, as the enemy +profanely says, it is a suburb." + +For the author of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ this would hardly be +a conclusive argument against any place. We should, he once said, +"regard the important suburbs as ancient cities embedded in a sort of +boiling lava spouted up by that volcano, the speculative builder." +That "lava" itself he found interesting, but beneath or beside it a +little town like Beaconsfield had its share in the great sweep of +English history. Something of the "seven sunken Englands" could be +found in the Old Town which custom marked off pretty sharply from the +"New Town." Burke had lived in Beaconsfield and was buried there; and +Gilbert once suggested to Mr. Garvin that they should appear at a +local festival, respectively as Fox ("a part for which I have no +claim except in circumference") and Burke ("I admire Burke in many +things while disagreeing with him in nearly everything. But Mr. +Garvin strikes me as being rather like Burke"). + +At the barber's he was often seen sitting at the end of a line +patiently awaiting his turn, for he could never shave himself and it +was only years later that Dorothy Collins conceived and put into +execution the bold project of bringing the barber to the house. +Probably an article would be shaping while he waited and the barber's +conversation might put the finishing touches to it. There were in +fact two barbers, one of the old town, one of the new. "I once +planned," he says, "a massive and exhaustive sociological work, in +several volumes, which was to be called 'The Two Barbers of +Beaconsfield' and based entirely upon the talk of the two excellent +citizens to whom I went to get shaved. For those two shops do indeed +belong to two different civilisations." + +Despite his love for London, Gilbert had always felt that life in a +country town held one point of special superiority--in it you +discovered the Community. In London you chose your friends--which +meant that you narrowed your life to people of one kind. He had noted +in the family itself a valuable widening: + + The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into + a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we + have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us + and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a + surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt + from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being + born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world + which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without + us, into a world that we have not made.* + +[* _Heretics_, pp. 191-2.] + +Here in Beaconsfield the Chestertons grew into the community: the +clergyman, the doctor, the inn-keeper, the barber, the gardener. And +like the relatives who spring upon you at birth these worthy citizens +seemed to Gilbert potentials of vast excitement and varied interest. +Discussing an event of much later date--a meeting to decide whether a +crucifix might be erected as a local war memorial--he thus describes +the immense forces he found in that small place: + + Those who debated the matter were a little group of the inhabitants + of a little country town; the rector and the doctor and the bank + manager and the respectable tradesmen of the place, with a few + hangers-on like myself, of the more disreputable professions of + journalism or the arts. But the powers that were present there in the + spirit came out of all the ages and all the battlefields of history; + Mahomet was there and the Iconoclasts, who came riding out of the + East to ruin the statues of Italy, and Calvin and Rousseau and the + Russian anarchs and all the older England that is buried under + Puritanism; and Henry the Third ordering the little images for + Westminster and Henry the Fifth, after Agincourt, on his knees before + the shrines of Paris. If one could really write that little story of + that little place, it would be the greatest of historical monographs.* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 244.] + +A keen observer often added to the Beaconsfield community in those +days was Father (now Monsignor) John O'Connor, close friend of both +Gilbert and Frances and inspirer of "Father Brown" of detective fame. +They had first become friends in 1904 when they met at the house of a +friend in Keighley, Yorkshire, and walked back over the moors +together to visit Francis Steinthal at Ilkley. This Jew, of Frankfort +descent, was a great friend of the Chestertons and on their many +visits to him the friendship with Father O'Connor ripened. With both +Frances and Gilbert it was among the closest of their lives. Their +letters to him show it: the long talks, and companionable walks over +the moors, have an atmosphere of intimacy that is all the more +convincing because so little stressed in his book. Father O'Connor +has a pardonable pride in the idea that their talks suggested ideas +to Gilbert, he takes pleasure in his character of "Father Brown," but +he reveals the atmosphere of unique confidence and intimacy by the +very absence of all parade of it. + +Both he and Gilbert have told the story of how the idea of the +detective priest first dawned. On their second meeting Father +O'Connor had startled, indeed almost shattered Gilbert, with certain +rather lurid knowledge of human depravity which he had acquired in +the course of his priestly experience. At the house to which they +were going, two Cambridge undergraduates spoke disparagingly of the +"cloistered" habits of the Catholic clergy, saying that to them it +seemed that to know and meet evil was a far better thing than the +innocence of such ignorance. To Gilbert, still under the shock of a +knowledge compared with which "these two Cambridge gentlemen knew +about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator," +the exquisite irony of this remark suggested a thought. Why not a +whole comedy of cross purposes based on the notion of a priest with a +knowledge of evil deeper than that of the criminal he is converting? +He carried out this idea in the story of "The Blue Cross," the first +Father Brown detective story. Father O'Connor's account adds the +details that he had himself once boasted of buying five sapphires for +five shillings, and that he always carried a large umbrella and many +brown paper parcels. At the Steinthal dining table, an artist friend +of the family made a sketch of Father O'Connor which later appeared +on the wrapper of _The Innocence of Father Brown_. + +Beyond one or two touches of this sort the idea had been a suggestion +for a character, not a portrait, and in the _Autobiography_ and in +the _Dickens_ Gilbert has a good deal to say of interest to the +novelist about how such suggestions come and are used. He never +believed that Dickens drew a portrait, as it were, in the round. +Nature just gives hints to the creative artist. And it used to amuse +"Father Brown" to find that such touches of observation as noting +where an ash-tray had got hidden behind a book seemed to Gilbert +quasi miraculous. Left to himself he merely dropped ashes on the +floor from his cigar. "He did not smoke a pipe and cigarettes were +prone to set him on fire in one place or another." + +A frequent visitor, Father O'Connor noted his fashion of work and +reading, and the abstracted way he often moved and spoke. "Call it +mooning, but he never mooned. He was always working out something in +his mind, and when he drifted from his study to the garden and was +seen making deadly passes with his sword-stick at the dahlias, we +knew that he had got to a dead end in his composition and was getting +his thoughts into order." + +He played often, too, with a huge knife which he had for twenty-four +years. He took it abroad with him, took it to bed: Frances had to +retrieve it often from under his pillow in some hotel. Once at a +lecture in Dublin he drew it absent-mindedly to sharpen a pencil: as +it was seven and a half inches long shut, and fourteen open, the +amusement of the audience may be imagined. In origin it was, Father +O'Connor relates, a Texan or Mexican general utility implement. It +was with this knife that he won my daughter's heart many years later +when she, aged three, had not seen him for some time and had grown +shy of him. A little scared of his enormousness she stood far off. He +did not look in her direction but began to open and shut the vast +blade. Next she was on his knee. A little later we heard her remark, +"Uncle Gilbert, you make jokes just like my Daddy." And from him +came, "I do my best." + +The prototype of Father Brown tells of the easy job in detection when +Gilbert had been reading a book: + + He had just been reading a shilling pamphlet by Dr. Horton on the + Roman Menace or some such fearful wild fowl. I knew he had read it, + because no one else could when he had done. Most of his books, as and + when read, had gone through every indignity a book may suffer and + live. He turned it inside out, dog-eared it, pencilled it, sat on it, + took it to bed and rolled on it, and got up again and spilled tea on + it--if he were sufficiently interested. So Dr. Horton's pamphlet had + a refuted look when I saw it. + +Father O'Connor was not the only friend who was added to the +Beaconsfield group with some frequency. It was easy enough to run +down from London or over from Welwyn (home of G.B.S.) or from Oxford +or Cambridge. It was most conveniently central. Gilbert's brethren of +the pen were especially apt to appear at all seasons and always found +friendly welcome. For he continued to call himself neither poet nor +philosopher but journalist. Father O'Connor had tried to persuade +him, as he neatly puts it, to "begin to print on handmade paper with +gilt edges." But Frances begged him to drop the idea: "You will not +change Gilbert, you will only fidget him. He is bent on being a jolly +journalist, to paint the town red, and he does not need style to do +that. All he wants is buckets and buckets of red paint." + +Journalists coming down from London describe the "jolly" welcome, +beer poured, the sword-stick flourished, conversation flowing as +freely as the beer. It meant a pleasant afternoon and it meant good +copy. They visited him in the country, they observed him in town. One +interviewer returned with a photo which showed Chesterton "in a +somewhat négligé condition," the result as he admitted of reading W. +W. Jacobs "rolling about on the floor waving his legs in the air." + +He was seen working a swan boat at the White City: "he collapsed it +and the placid lake became a raging sea." He was seen thinking and +even reading under the strangest weather conditions: one man saw him +under a gas lamp in the street in pouring rain with an open book in +his hand. Reading in Fleet Street one day Gilbert discovered suddenly +that the Lord Mayor's Show was passing. He began to reflect on the +Show so deeply that he forgot to look at it. + +Overroads I remember as a little triangular house, much too small for +the sort of fun the Chestertons enjoyed. Frances bought a field +opposite to it and there built a studio. The night the studio was +opened Father O'Connor remembers a large party at which charades were +acted. He himself as Canon Cross-Keys gave away the word so that +"Belfry" was loudly shouted by the opposition group. The rival +company acting Torture got away with it successfully, especially, +complains our Yorkshire priest "as 'ure' was pronounced 'yaw' in the +best southern manner." + +On that night, returning to the house, Father O'Connor offered his +arm to Gilbert who "refused it with a finality foreign to our +friendship." Father O'Connor went on ahead and Gilbert following in +the dark stumbled over a flowerpot and broke his arm. Perhaps because +his size made him self-consciously aware of awkwardness Gilbert hated +being helped. Father Ignatius Rice, another close friend, says the +only time he ever saw Gilbert annoyed was when he offered him an arm +going upstairs. + +Gilbert and Frances would both visit Father O'Connor in his Yorkshire +Parish of Heckmondwike. One year they took rooms at Ilkley and he +remembers Gilbert adorning with huge frescoes the walls of the attic +and Frances sitting in the window singing, "O swallow, swallow flying +south" while Gilbert "did a blazon of some fantastic coat of arms." + +The closeness of the intimacy is seen in a letter quoted by Father +O'Connor* in which Gilbert explained why Frances and he were unable +to come to Heckmondwike for a promised visit. + +[* _Father Brown on Chesterton_, p. 123.] + + (July 3rd, 1909) + + I would not write this to anyone else, but you combine so unusually + in your own single personality the characters of (1) priest, (2) + human being, (3) man of the world, (4) man of the other world, (5) + man of science, (6) old friend, (7) new friend, not to mention + Irishman and picture dealer, that I don't mind suggesting the truth + to you. Frances has just come out of what looked bad enough to be an + illness, and is just going to plunge into one of her recurrent + problems of pain and depression. The two may be just a bit too much + for her and I want to be with her every night for a few days--there's + an Irish Bull for you! + + One of the mysteries of Marriage (which must be a Sacrament and an + extraordinary one too) is that a man evidently useless like me can + yet become at certain instants indispensable. And the further oddity + (which I invite you to explain on mystical grounds) is that he never + feels so small as when he knows that he is necessary. + +But sometimes she would send him off whether she was well or ill, and +on Father O'Connor would rest the heavy responsibility of getting him +on to his next destination or safe back home. He tells of one such +experience. + + He was most dutiful and obedient to orders, but they had to be + written ones and backed by the spoken word. He brought his + dress-suit, oh! with what loving care, to Bradford on Sunday for + Sheffield for Monday, but a careful host found it under the bed in + Bradford just as his train left for Sheffield. Sent at once it was to + Beaconsfield, where it landed at 5 P.M. on Thursday, just allowing + him ten minutes to change and entrain for London. + + Scene at Beaconsfield: + + "What on earth have you done with your dress-suit, Gilbert?" + + "I must have left it behind, darling, but I brought back the ties, + didn't I?"* + +[* Ibid., p. 43.] + +Another time he came back without his pyjamas. They had been lost +early in the journey. "Why didn't you buy some more?" his wife asked. +"I didn't know pyjamas were things you could buy," he said, +surprised. Probably if one were Gilbert one couldn't! Father O'Connor +arriving at Overroads without baggage found that Gilbert's pyjamas +went around him exactly twice. + +Lecturing engagements had of course not come to an end with the move +although they had (mercifully) somewhat lessened. What increased with +the distance from London was the problem--never fully solved--of +getting Gilbert to the right place at the right time and in clothes +not too wildly wrong. When he lectured in Lancashire they stayed at +Crosby with Francis Blundell (my brother-in-law), and my sister +remembers Frances as incessantly looking through her bag for letters +and sending telegrams to confirm engagements that had come unstuck or +to refuse others that were in debate. The celebrated and now almost +legendary telegram from Gilbert to Frances told as from a hundred +different cities was really sent: "Am in Market Harborough. Where +ought I to be?" + +Desperate, she wired, "Home," because, as she told me later, it was +easier to get him home and start him off again. That day's engagement +was lost past recall. + +Charles Rowley of the Ancoats Brotherhood received a wire, reply +paid, from Snow Hill Station, Birmingham: "Am I coming to you tonight +or what?" Reply: "Not this Tuesday but next Wednesday." + +So home he came again to Overroads. + +The Chestertons made a host of friends in Beaconsfield but the +children always held pride of place. The doctor's little boy, running +along the top of the wall, looked down at Gilbert and remarked to his +delight, "I think you're an ogre." But when the nurse was heard +threatening punishment if he did not get down "that minute," the +child was told by the ogre, "This wall is meant for little boys to +run along." One child, asked after a party if Mr. Chesterton had been +very clever, said, "You should see him catch buns in his mouf." + +What was unusual both with Gilbert and Frances was the fact that they +never allowed their disappointment in the matter of children to make +them sour or jealous of others who had the joy that they had not. All +through their lives they played with other people's children: they +chose on a train a compartment full of children: they planned +amusements, they gave presents to the children of their friends. Over +my son's bed hangs a silver crucifix chosen with loving care by +Frances after Gilbert had stood godfather to him. And he was one of +very many. + +Gilbert was however a complete realist as to the ways and manners of +the species he so loved. + + Playing with children [he wrote at this time] is a glorious thing: + but the journalist in question has never understood why it was + considered a soothing or idyllic one. It reminds him, not of watering + little budding flowers, but of wrestling for hours with gigantic + angels and devils. Moral problems of the most monstrous complexity + besiege him incessantly. He has to decide before the awful eyes of + innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother's + bricks, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his + turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling + on the sister's picture-book, and whether such conduct does not + justify the sister in blowing out the brother's unlawfully lit match. + + Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest + morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his + Saturday article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. + He wildly calls to somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to + somewhere for a messenger; he barricades himself in another room and + tears his hair, wondering what on earth he shall write about. A + drumming of fists on the door outside and a cheerful bellowing + encourage and clarify his thoughts. . . . He sits down desperately; + the messenger rings at the bell; the children drum on the door; the + servants run up from time to time to say the messenger is getting + bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the world a present of + fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making Shakespeare a present + of a portion of Gray's _Elegy_; putting "fantastic roots wreathed + high" instead of "antique roots peep out."* Then the journalist sends + off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of whether a + brother should commandeer a sister's necklace because the sister + pinched him at Littlehampton. + +[* Chesterton had actually made this slip, and the present quotation +is from the article he wrote in apology.] + +In the Notebook he had written: + + NORTH BERWICK + + On the sands I romped with children + Do you blame me that I did not improve myself + By bottling anemones? + But I say that these children will be men and women + And I say that the anemones will not be men and women + (Not just yet, at least, let us say). + And I say that the greatest men of the world might romp with + children + And that I should like to see Shakespeare romping with children + And Browning and Darwin romping with children + And Mr. Gladstone romping with children + And Professor Huxley romping with children + And all the Bishops romping with children; + And I say that if a man had climbed to the stars + And found the secrets of the angels, + The best thing and the most useful thing he could do + Would be to come back and romp with children. + + M. V. + + An almost elvish little girl with loose brown hair, doing + needlework. I have spoken to her once or twice. + I think I must get another book of the same size as this + to make notes about her. + +From the Christmas party at Overroads all adults were excluded--no +nurses, no parents. The children would hang on Gilbert's neck in an +ecstasy of affection and he and Frances schemed out endless games for +them. Gilbert had started a toy theatre before he left London, +cutting out and painting figures and scenery, and devising plots for +plays. Two of the favourites were "St. George and the Dragon" and +"The Seven Champions of Christendom." + +The atmosphere of Overroads is perhaps best conveyed through +Gilbert's theories concerning his toy theatre and the other +theatricals such as Charades sometimes played there. When it came to +the toy theatre set up to amuse the children, he frankly felt that he +was himself child No. 1 and got the most amusement out of it. He felt +too that the whole thing was good enough to be worth analysing in its +rules and its effects. And so he drew up a paper of rules and +suggestions for its use. + + I will not say positively that a toy-theatre is the best of + theatres; though I have had more fun out of it than out of any other. + But I will say positively that the toy-theatre is the best of all + toys. It sometimes fails; but generally because people are mistaken + in the matter of what it is meant to do, and what it can or cannot be + expected to do; as if people should use a toy balloon as a football + or a skipping rope as a hammock. . . . + + Now the first rule may seem rather contradictory; but it is quite + true and really quite simple. In a small theatre, because it is a + small theatre, you cannot deal with small things. Because it is a + small theatre it must only deal with large things. You can introduce + a dragon; but you cannot really introduce an earwig; it is too small + for a small theatre. And this is true not only of small creatures, + but of small actions, small gestures and small details of any + kind. . . . All your effects must be made to depend on things like + scenery and background. The sky and the clouds and the castles and + the mountains and so on must be the exciting things; along with other + things that move all of a piece, such as regiments and processions; + great and glorious things can be done with processions. . . . In a + real comedy the whole excitement may consist in the nervous curate + dropping his tea-cup; though I do not recommend this incident for the + drama of the drawing-room. But if he were nervous, let us say, about + a thunderstorm, the toy-theatre could hardly represent the + nervousness but it might manage the thunder-storm. It might be quite + sensational and yet entirely simple; for it would largely consist of + darkening the stage and making horrible noises behind the + scenes. . . . + + The second and smaller rule, that really follows from this, is that + everything dramatic should depend not on a character's action, but + simply on his appearance. Shakespeare said of actors that they have + their exits and their entrances; but these actors ought really to + have nothing else except exits and entrances. The trick is to so + arrange the tale that the mere appearance of a person tells the + important truth about him. Thus, supposing the drama to be about St. + George let us say, the mere abrupt appearance of the dragon's head + (if of a proper ferocity) will be enough to explain that he intends + to eat people; and it will not be necessary for the dragon to explain + at length, with animated gestures and playful conversation, that his + nature is carnivorous and that he has not merely dropped in to tea. + +There is some further discussion on colour effects ("I like very gay +and glaring colours, and I like to give them a good chance to +glare"). The paper concludes on a more serious note: + + It is an old story, and for some a sad one, that in a sense these + childish toys are more to us than they can ever be to children. We + never know how much of our after imaginations began with such a + peep-show into paradise. I sometimes think that houses are + interesting because they are so like doll houses and I am sure the + best thing that can be said for many large theatres is that they may + remind us of little theatres. . . . + + I do not look back, I look forward to this kind of puppet play; I + look forward to the day when I shall have time to play with it. Some + day when I am too lazy to write anything, or even to read anything, I + shall retire into this box of marvels; and I shall be found still + striving hopefully to get inside a toy-theatre. + +Adults as well as children enjoyed this toy and it was often +described by interviewers. Like the sword-stick, the great cloak and +flapping hat, it was felt by some to be Gilbert's way of attracting +attention. But it was just one of Gilbert's ways of amusing himself. +A small nephew of Frances was living with them at the time and it was +funny to watch him fencing with his huge uncle who was obviously +enjoying himself rather the more of the two. On my first visit to +Overroads, I noticed how as we talked my host's pencil never ceased. +One evening I collected and kept an imposing red Indian and a +caricature of Chesterton himself in a wheelbarrow being carried off +to the bonfire. I came in too for one of the grown-up parties in +which guessing games were a feature. Lines from the poets were +illustrated and we had to guess them. At another party, Dr. Pocock +told me, G.K. did the Inns of Beaconsfield, of which the most +successful drawing was that of a sadly dilapidated dragon being +turned away from the inn door: "Dragon discovers with disgust that he +cannot put up at the George." + +Sometimes these drawings were the prize of whoever guessed the line +of verse they illustrated, sometimes they were sold for a local +charity. The Babies' Convalescent Home was a favourite object and one +admirable picture (reproduced in _The Coloured Lands_) shows the +"Despair of King Herod at discovering children convalescing from the +Massacre." The two closest friendships of early Beaconsfield life +were with the rector, Mr. Comerline and his wife, who are now dead, +and Dr. and Mrs. Pocock. Dr. Pocock was the Chestertons' doctor as +well as their friend, and he tells me that his great difficulty in +treating Gilbert lay in his detachment from his own physical +circumstances. If there was anything wrong with him he usually didn't +notice it. "He was the most uncomplaining person. You had to hunt him +all over" to find out if anything was wrong. + +This detachment from circumstances still extended to his appearance +and Frances one day begged Dr. Pocock to take him to a good tailor. +It was a huge success: he had never looked so well as he did now--for +a few weeks. And then the tailor said to Dr. Pocock, "Mr. Chesterton +has broken my heart. It took twice the material and twice the time to +make for him, but I _was_ proud of it." His tailor like his doctor +was apt to become a friend. Mrs. Pocock recalls how he would go to a +dinner of the tradesmen of Beaconsfield and come back intensely +interested and wanting to tell her all about it. + +"You always went away," Dr. Pocock said, "chuckling over something," +and he summed up the years of their friendship, saying, "You never +saw him without getting delight from his presence." + +Sometimes he would grow abstracted in the train of his own thought, +and Father Ignatius Rice remembers an occasion when he was one of a +group discussing really bad lines of poetry. Gilbert broke into +something Frances was saying with the words, "That irritating person +Milton"--then, realising he had interrupted her, he broke off and +apologised profusely. When she had finished he went on "That +irritating person Milton--I can't find a single bad line in him." + +Frances one day came in rather suddenly when Dr. Pocock was there, +and Gilbert exclaimed, "Oh you've broken it." She looked round +thinking she must have knocked something over. "No," he said, "it was +an idea." "It will come back," said Frances. "No," he said, "it got +broken." More usually he was indifferent to interruptions: sometimes +he welcomed them as grist for his mind's mill. Daily life went on +around him and often in his articles one can find traces of Frances's +daily activities as well as his own. + +Attending him for his broken arm, Dr. Pocock told him at a certain +stage to write something--anything--to see if he could use a pen +again. After an instant's thought, Gilbert headed his paper with the +name of a prominent Jew and wrote: + + I am fond of Jews + Jews are fond of money + Never mind of whose + I am fond of Jews + Oh, but when they lose + Damn it all, it's funny. + +The name at the head (which wild horses would not drag from me) is +the key to this impromptu. It was really true that Gilbert was fond +of very many Jews. In his original group of J.D.C. friends, four Jews +had been included and with three of these his friendship continued +through life. Lawrence Solomon and his wife were among the +Beaconsfield neighbours and he saw them often. There was another kind +of Jew he very heartily disliked but he was at great pains to draw +this distinction himself. + +Speaking at the Jewish West End Literary Society in 1911 he put the +question of what the real Jewish problem was. The Jews, he said, were +a race, born civilised. You never met a Jewish clod or yokel. They +represented one of the highest of civilised types. But while all +other races had local attachments, the Jews were universal and +scattered. They could not be expected to have patriotism for the +countries in which they made their homes: their patriotism could be +only for their race. In principle, he believed in the solution of +Zionism. And then the reporter in large letters made a headline: "Mr. +Chesterton said that speaking generally, as with most other +communities, 'THE POOR JEWS WERE NICE AND THE RICH WERE NASTY.'" + +Many years later in Palestine he was to be driven around the country, +as he has described in _The New Jerusalem_, by one of these less +wealthy Jews who had sacrificed his career in England to his national +idealism. And later yet, after G.K.'s death, Rabbi Wise, a leader of +American Jewry, paid him tribute (in a letter to Cyril Clements dated +September 8, 1937): + + Indeed I was a warm admirer of Gilbert Chesterton. Apart from his + delightful art and his genius in many directions, he was, as you + know, a great religionist. He as Catholic, I as Jew, could not have + seen eye to eye with each other, and he might have added + "particularly seeing that you are cross-eyed"; but I deeply respected + him. When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with + all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. + Blessing to his memory! + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +A Circle of Friends + + +IN THE LAST chapter, this chapter and to a considerable extent those +that follow, down to the break made by Gilbert's illness and the war +of 1914, it is unavoidable that the same years should be retraced to +cover a variety of aspects. For their home was for both Gilbert and +Frances the centre of a widening circle. Although I visited +Overroads, it seems to me, looking back, I saw them just then much +more frequently in London and elsewhere. Several times they stayed at +Lotus, our Surrey home. The first time it was a weekend of blazing +summer weather. Lady Blennerhassett was there--formerly Countess +Leyden and a favourite disciple of Döllinger. I remember she +delighted Gilbert by her comment on Modernism. "I must," she said, +"have the same religion as my washerwoman, and Father Tyrrell's is +not the religion for my washerwoman." We sat on the terrace in the +sunshine and Lady Blennerhassett asked suddenly whether the soles of +our boots were, like hers, without hole or blemish. We all looked +very odd as we stuck our feet out and tried to see the soles. +Gilbert, offered a wicker chair, preferred the grass because, he +said, there was grave danger he might unduly "modify" the chair. + +After a meeting of the Westminster Dining Society (the predecessor of +the Wiseman), he wrote my mother an unnecessary apology: + + DEAR MRS. WILFRID WARD-- + + I have wanted for some days past to write to you, but could not + make up my mind whether I was making my position worse or better. But + I do want to apologise to you for the way in which I threw out your + delightful Catholic Dining Society affair the other day. I behaved + badly, dined badly, debated badly and left badly; yet the explanation + is really simple. I was horribly worried, and I do not worry well; + when I am worried I am like a baby. My wife was that night just ill + enough to make a man nervous, a stupid man, and I had sworn to her + that I would fulfill some affairs that night on which she was keen. + As she is better now and only wants rest, I feel normal and realise + what a rotter I must have looked that night. As Belloc wrote in a + beautiful epitaph-- + + "He frequently would flush with fear when other people paled, + He Tried to Do his Duty . . . but how damnably he failed." + + This is the epitaph of yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +My father and mother were hardly less excited than I at the discovery +of the greatest man of the age, for so we all felt him to be. Gilbert +later described my father as "strongly co-operative" with another's +mind, and this was perhaps his own chief characteristic in +conversation. The two men did not agree on politics, but on religion +their agreement was deep and constantly grew deeper as they +co-operated in exploring it. Our headquarters were in Surrey but when +we came up to London every spring my parents wanted to bring the +Chestertons into touch with all their friends. They tended to think +of their luncheon table as Chesterton "supported" by those most +worthy of the honour. One of the first was of course George Wyndham, +already a friend and admirer of Gilbert's. At this luncheon they +discussed the modern press, 18th Century lampoons, the ingredients of +a good English style, the lawfulness of Revolution, the causes of +Napoleon, Scripture criticism, Joan of Arc, public executions, how to +bring about reforms. It was absurd, G.K. said, to think that gaining +half a reform led to the other half. Supposing it was agreed that +every man ought to have a cow, but you say, "We can't manage that +just yet: give him half a cow." He doesn't care for it and he leaves +it about, and he never asks for the other half. + +Talking of the Eastern and Western races Gilbert said it was curious +that while the Easterns were so logical and clear in their religion, +they were so unpractical in every-day life; the religion of the +Westerns is mystical and full of paradoxes. Yet they are far more +practical. "The Eastern says fate governs everything and he sits and +looks pretty; we believe in Free-will and Predestination and we +invent Babbage's Calculating Machine." + +As the group grew into one another's thought the talk intensified and +we got from considering East and West to considering our own +countrymen. What makes a man essentially English? Dickens had it. +Johnson had it. "You couldn't," said G.K., "imagine a Scotch Johnson, +or an Irish Johnson, or a French or German Johnson." + +George Wyndham told us, as we got on to the topic of patriotism, that +he had a fear he hardly liked to utter. As we urged him he said he +feared a big war might come and we might be defeated. Gilbert agreed +that he too had felt that fear. "But," he said, "if you were to say +that in the House or I to write it in a paper we should be denounced +as unpatriotic." + +Small wonder the talk had time to range, for these scrappy notes are +all that remain of a meeting beginning about one o'clock and lasting +until five. At that hour two little old sisters, the Miss Blounts, +known in our family as "the little B's," happened to call on my +mother. I shall never forget their faces as they looked at the huge +man in the armchair, and the other guests all absorbed and animated, +and realised that they were interrupting a luncheon party. A swift +glance at the little old ladies, another at the clock, and the party +broke up, to remain my most cherished memory for months: until my +next visit to their home, when Gilbert and I arrived at the use of +each other's Christian names, an agreement that he insisted on +calling The Pact of Beaconsfield. + +How deep he saw when in his "Defence of Hermits" he analysed a chief +joy of human intercourse: + + . . . The best things that happen to us are those we get out of + what has already happened. If men were honest with themselves, they + would agree that actual social engagements, even with those they + love, often seem strangely brief, breathless, thwarted or + inconclusive. Mere society is a way of turning friends into + acquaintances. The real profit is not in meeting our friends, but in + having met them. Now when people merely plunge from crush to crush, + and from crowd to crowd, they never discover the positive joy of + life. They are like men always hungry, because their food never + digests; also, like those men, they are cross.* + +[* _The Well and the Shallows_, pp. 104-5.] + +There was time in the country for the food of social intercourse to +digest. I notice too that in the list of Gilbert's friends +quiet-voiced men stood high: Max Beerbohm, Jack Phillimore, Monsignor +O'Connor, Monsignor Knox, his own father, Maurice Baring: all these +represent a certain spaciousness and leisureliness which was what he +asked of friendship. Even if they were in a hurry, they never seemed +so. + +Jack Phillimore both he and we saw on and off at this time but had +often to enjoy in anticipation or in retrospect. Professor, at one +time of Greek at another of Latin, at Glasgow University, he was the +kind of man Gilbert specially appreciated: he wrote of Phillimore +after his death something curiously like what he wrote of his own +father--"he was a supreme example of unadvertised greatness, and the +thing which is larger inside than outside." At Oxford Phillimore had +been known as "one of Belloc's lambs." He was very much one of the +group who were to run the _Eye-Witness_ and _New Witness_ but though +he always adored Belloc, no one who knew him in the fulness of his +powers could think of him as anyone's lamb. He was a quiet, humorous, +deeply intelligent man: a scholar of European repute, whose knowledge +of Mediaeval Latin verse equalled his Classical scholarship. + +Gilbert's keen observation of his friends is never shown better than +in what he wrote of Phillimore: + + Like a needle pricking a drum, his quietude seemed to kill all the + noise of our loud plutocracy and publicity. In all this he was + supremely the scholar, with not a little of the satirist. + + And yet there was never any man alive who was so unlike a don. His + religion purged him of intellectual pride, and certainly of that + intellectual vanity which so often makes a sort of seething fuss + underneath the acid sociability of academic centres. He had none of + the tired omniscience which comes of intellectual breeding in and in. + He seemed to be not so much a professor as a practiser of learning. + He practised it quietly but heartily and humorously, exactly as if it + had been any other business. If he had been a sailor, like his father + the Admiral, he would have minded his own business with exactly the + same smile and imperceptible gesture. Indeed, he looked much more + like a sailor than a professor; his dark square face and clear eyes + and compact figure were of a type often seen among sailors; and in + whatever academic enclave he stood, he always seemed to have walked + in from outside, bringing with him some of the winds of the world and + some light from the ends of the earth.* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Nov. 27, 1926.] + +To return to my own notes. It is horribly characteristic that I wrote +them in an undated notebook, but I think that luncheon which lasted +so long must have been in 1911. The same year my father persuaded +both the Synthetic Society to elect Chesterton and Chesterton to +attend the Synthetic. Of his first meeting my father wrote to George +Wyndham: + + Had you been at the Synthetic last night you would have witnessed a + memorable scene. + + Place: Westminster Palace Hotel. Time: 9.40. + + A. J. B. [Arthur Balfour, leader of the Conservative Party] is + speaking persuasively and in carefully modulated tones to an + attentive audience. Suddenly a crash as though the door were blown + open. A. J. B. brought to a halt. The whole company look round and in + rushes a figure exactly like the pictures of Mr. Wind when he blows + open the door and forces an entrance in the German child's story "Mr. + Wind and Madame Rain"--a figure enormous and distended, a kind of + walking mountain but with large rounded corners. It was G. K. C. who, + enveloped in a huge Inverness cape of light colour, thus made his + debut at the Synthetic. He rushed (not walked) to a chair, and was + dragged chair and all by Waggett and me as near as might be to the + table, where with a fresh crash he deposited his stick, and then his + hat. And there he sat, eager and attentive, forgetting all about his + stick and hat and coat, filling up the whole space at the bottom of + the table, drawing caricatures of the company on a sheet of foolscap, + a memorable figure, very welcome to me, but arousing the fury of the + conventional and the "dreary and well-informed" well represented by + Bailey Saunders who has been at me here half the morning trying to + convince me that he will ruin the society and ought never to have + been elected. + +Some of the reactions of this new recruit have been touched on in his +_Autobiography:_ + + There I met old Haldane, yawning with all his Hegelian abysses, who + appeared to me as I must have appeared to a neighbour in a local + debating club when he dismissed metaphysical depths and pointed at me + saying: "There is that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to take his + sport therein." . . . + + There also I met Balfour, obviously preferring any philosophers + with any philosophies to his loyal followers of the Tory Party. + Perhaps religion is not the opium of the people, but philosophy is + the opium of the politicians. + +My father belonged to another group besides the Synthetic Society for +which it seemed to him that Gilbert was even more ideally fitted. +_The_ Club was founded by Dr. Johnson, the home of the best talk in +the land, where Garrick and Goldsmith were at times shouted down by +the great Lexicographer--a sign, said Chesterton, of his modesty and +his essential democracy: Johnson was too democratic to reign as king +of his company: he preferred to contend with them as an equal. The +old formula still in use had informed my father "you have had the +honour to be elected," but Wilfrid Ward felt that the election of the +modern Dr. Johnson would be an honour to The Club. To his intense +disgust he found that only George Wyndham could be relied upon for +whole-hearted support. What may be called the "social" element in the +Club had become too strong to welcome a man who boasted in all +directions of belonging to the Middle Classes and whose friends +merely urged the claim that he was one of the few today who could +talk as well as Johnson. + +Gilbert met many politicians in other ways but only with one of them +did he feel a really close harmony. Of George Wyndham's opinions he +said in the _Autobiography_ that they were "of the same general +colour as my own," and he went on to stress the word "colour" as +significant of the whole man. To depict him in political cartoons as +"St. George" had not in it the sort of absurdity of the pictures of +the more frigid and philosophic Balfour as "Prince Arthur." George +really did suggest the ages of chivalry. "He had huge sympathy with +gypsies and tramps." There was about him "an inward generosity that +gave a gusto or relish to all he did." + +The Chestertons' appreciation of George Wyndham was deepened for them +both by an affection, indeed almost a reverence, for "the deep +mysticism of his wife; a woman not to be forgotten by anyone who ever +knew her, and still less to be merely praised by anyone who +adequately appreciated her." For a period at any rate Gilbert and +Frances were much in contact with the extreme Anglo-Catholic group in +the Church of England. In the best of that group--and many of them +are very very good--there is a sense of taking part in a crusade to +restore Catholicism to the whole country. Canon Scott Holland led a +campaign for social justice and many of the same group mixed this +with devotion to Our Lady, belief in the Real Presence, and a +profound love of the Catholic past of England. George Wyndham's wife, +Lady Grosvenor, was one of this group and also her friend Father +Philip Waggett of the Cowley Fathers. Father Waggett, a member of the +Synthetic Society and intimate with my parents, became also intimate +with the Chestertons. + +Ralph Adams Cram described his own meeting with Chesterton, arranged +by Father Waggett. + + Father Waggett asked my wife and myself once when we were staying + in London, whom we would like best to meet--"anyone from the King + downward." We chose Chesterton who was a very particular friend of + Father Waggett. At that time we put on a dinner at the Buckingham + Palace Hotel (in those days the haunt of all the County families) and + in defiance of fate, had this dinner in the public dining room. We + had as guests Father Waggett, G. K. C. and Mrs. Chesterton. The + entrance into the dining room of the short processional created + something of a sensation amongst the aforesaid County families there + assembled. Father Waggett, thin, cropheaded monk in cassock and rope; + G. K. C., vast and practically globular; little Mrs. Chesterton, very + South Kensington in moss green velvet; my wife and myself. + + The dinner was a riot. I have the clearest recollection of G. K. C. + seated ponderously at the table, drinking champagne by magnums, + continually feeding his face with food which, as he was constantly + employed in the most dazzling and epigrammatic conversation, was apt + to fall from his fork and rebound from his corporosity, until the + fragments disappeared under the table. + + He and Father Waggett egged each other on to the most preposterous + amusements. Each would write a triolet for the other to illustrate. + They were both as clever with the pencil as with the pen, and they + covered the backs of menus with most astonishing literary and + artistic productions. I particularly remember G. K. C. suddenly + looking out of the dining room window towards Buckingham Palace and + announcing that he was now prepared "to write a disloyal triolet!" + This was during the reign of King Edward VII, and the result was + convincing. I have somewhere the whole collection of these literary + productions with their illustrations, but where they are I do not + know.* + +[* _Chesterton_ by Cyril Clemens, pp. 36-37.] + +On a second visit of the Chestertons to Lotus, George Wyndham was +there. He had told us of his habit of "shouting the Ballad of the +White Horse to submissive listeners" and we had hoped for the same +treat. But Gilbert got the book and kicked it under his chair defying +us to recover it. We had at that time a vast German cook--of a girth +almost equal to his own and possessed of unbounded curiosity in the +matter of our guests. Gilbert declared that as he sat peacefully in +the drawing room she approached him holding out a paper which he +supposed to be a laundry list, and then started back exclaiming that +she had thought him to be Mrs. Ward. + +It was on this visit that he remarked to a lady who happened to be +the granddaughter of a Duke: "You and I who belong to the jolly old +upper Middle Classes." Had he been told about her ancestry he would, +I imagine, have felt that he had paid her an implied compliment by +not being aware of it. For into the world of the aristocracy he and +Frances had been received in London, and he viewed it with the same +calm humour and potential friendliness as he had for all the rest of +mankind. When Frances in her Diary pitied the Duchess of Sutherland +and felt that a single day of such a life as the Duchess lived would +drive her crazy, she was expressing Gilbert's taste as well as her +own for a certain simplicity of life. Social position neither excited +nor irritated him. He liked or disliked an aristocrat exactly as he +liked or disliked a postman. Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton really +were, as Conrad Noel said, personally unconcerned about class. They +had, however, a principle against the position of the English +aristocracy which will be better understood in the light of their +general social and historical outlook. What might be called the +social side of it was often expressed by G.K. when lecturing on +Dickens. Thus, speaking at Manchester for the Dickens centenary, he +was reported as saying: + + The objection to aristocracy was quite simple. It was not that + aristocrats were all blackguards. It was that in an aristocratic + state, people sat in a huge darkened theatre and only the stage was + lighted. They saw five or six people walking about and they said, + "That man looks very heroic striding about with a sword." Plenty of + people outside in the street looked more heroic striding about with + an umbrella; but they did not see these things, all the lights being + turned out. That was the really philosophic objection to an + aristocratic society. It was not that the lord was a fool. He was + about as clever as one's own brother or cousin. It was because one's + attention was confined to a few people that one judged them as one + judged actors on the stage, forgetting everybody else. + +Chesterton thought everybody should be remembered whether suburban, +proletarian, aristocrat or pauper. Shortly after the removal to +Beaconsfield he was summoned to give evidence before a Parliamentary +Commission on the question of censorship of the theatre. Keep it, he +said, to the surprise of many of his friends, but change the manner +of its exercise. Let it be no longer censorship by an expert but by a +jury--by twelve ordinary men. These will be the best judges of what +really makes for morality and sound sense. He had come to give +evidence, he said, not as a writer but as the representative of the +gallery, and he was concerned only with "the good and happiness of +the English people." + +One bewildered Commissioner was understood to murmur that their terms +of reference were not quite so wide as that. + +The chapter in the _Autobiography_ called "Friendships and Foolery" +ends suddenly with a reference to the war but, like the whole book, +it leaps wildly about. One point in it is interesting and links up +with the introduction to Titterton's _Drinking Songs_ that Gilbert +later wrote. To shout a chorus is natural to mankind and G.K. claims +that he had done it long before he heard of Community Singing. He +sang when out driving, or walking over the moors with Father +O'Connor; he sang in Fleet Street with Titterton and his journalist +friends; he sang the _Red Flag_ on Trade Union platforms and _England +Awake_ in Revolutionary groups. There was, he claims, a legend that +in Auberon Herbert's rooms not far from Buckingham Palace "we sang +Drake's Drum with such passionate patriotism that King Edward the +Seventh sent in a request for the noise to stop." + +Yet it was all but impossible to teach Gilbert a tune, and Bernard +Shaw felt this (as we have seen) a real drawback to his friend's +understanding of his own life and career. Music was to Shaw what line +and color were to Chesterton; but to Chesterton singing was just +making a noise to show he felt happy. Once he wrote a poem called +"Music"--but only as one more flower in the wreath he was always +weaving for Frances--who was, says Monsignor Knox, the heroine of all +his novels.* + +[* _The Listener_, June 19, 1941.] + + Sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, + He that made me sealed my ears, + And the pomp of gorgeous noises, + Waves of triumph, waves of tears, + + Thundered empty round and past me, + Shattered, lost for evermore, + Ancient gold of pride and passion, + Wrecked like treasure on a shore. + + But I saw her cheek and forehead + Change, as at a spoken word, + And I saw her head uplifted + Like a lily to the Lord. + + Nought is lost, but all transmuted, + Ears are sealed, yet eyes have seen; + Saw her smiles (0 soul be worthy!), + Saw her tears (0 heart be clean!)* + +[* _Collected Poems_, p. 129.] + +Against the background of all these activities the books went on +pouring out as fast from Overroads as they had from Overstrand. A +town full of friends forty minutes' journey from London was not +exactly the desert into which admirers had advised Gilbert to flee, +but he would never have been happy in a desert: he needed human +company. He also needed to produce. "Artistic paternity," he once +said, "is as wholesome as physical paternity." And certainly he never +ceased to bring forth the children of his mind. Within two years of +the move seven books were published: + +The Ball and the Cross, February 1910, +What's Wrong with the World, June 1910, +Alarms and Discursions, November 1910, +Blake, November 1910, +Criticisms and Appreciations of Dickens, January 1911, +Innocence of Father Brown, August 1911, +Ballad of the White Horse, August 1911. + +Of these books, _Alarms and Discursions_ and the Dickens criticisms +are collections and arrangements of already published essays. +Meanwhile other essays were being written to become in turn other +books at a later date. + +The _Blake_ is a brilliant short study of art and mysticism. After +reading it you feel you understand Blake in quite a new way. And then +you wonder--is this illumination light on Blake or simply light on +Chesterton? It must never be forgotten that the writer was himself a +"spoilt" artist--which means a man with almost enough art in him to +have been in the ranks of men consecrated for life to art's service. + +"Father Brown" had first made his appearance in magazines and these +detective stories became the most purely popular of Gilbert's books. +It was a new genre: detection in which the mind of a man means more +than his footprints or cigar ash, even to the detective. The one +reproduced in most anthologies--"The Invisible Man"--depends for its +solution on the fact that certain people are _morally_ invisible. To +the question "Has anyone been here" the answer "No" does not include +the milkman or the postman: thus the postman is the morally invisible +man who has committed the crime. A thread of this sort runs through +all the stories, but they are, like all his romances, full too of +escape and peril and wild adventure. + +Life on several occasions imitated Gilbert's fancies. Thus the Azeff +revelations followed his fantastic idea in _The Man Who Was Thursday_ +of the anarchists who turn out to be detectives in disguise. The +technique of Father Brown himself was imitated by a man in Detroit +who recovered a stolen car by putting himself imaginatively in the +thief's place and driving an exactly similar car around likely +corners till he came suddenly upon his own, left in a lonely road. He +wrote to tell Gilbert of this adventure. + +From Chicago came an even odder example. "It is extremely difficult," +wrote the _Tribune_, "to determine the proper relationship of the +Chiesa-Prudente-Di Cossato duels to Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton's book, +_The Ball and the Cross"_ . . . + + The flight in search of a duelling ground; the pursuit by the + police; the friendly intervention of the anarchist wineshop-keeper, + Volpi; the offer of his backyard for fighting purposes; the + unfriendly intervention of the police; the friendly intervention of + the reporters; the renewed and insistently unfriendly intervention of + the police commissioner; the disgust of the duellists; the extreme + disgust of the anarchist; the renewed flight of the fighters, + seconds, physicians, reporters, and the anarchist over the back + fences--all these and other incidents are essentially Chestertonian. + + The Di Cossato affair was carried off with fully as much spirit and + dash; with fully as many automobiles, seconds, physicians, reporters + and police, all scampering over the country roads until the artistic + deputy and the aged veteran of the war of 1859, outdistancing their + pursuers, could find opportunity in comparative peace to cut the + glorious gashes of satisfied honour in each other's faces.* + +[* _Chicago Tribune_, 12 March 1910.] + +Two months after this an interviewer from the _Daily News_ visited +Beaconsfield and splashed headlines in the paper to the effect that +the spirit of Chesterton was inspiring a fight between the +leaseholders in Edwardes Square and a firm which had bought up their +garden to erect a super-garage. Barricades were erected by day and +destroyed in the night: a wild-eyed beadle held the fort with a +garden roller, and said G.K. "the creatures of my Napoleon [of +Notting Hill] have entered into the bodies of the staid burghers of +Kensington." + +In none of these cases was there any likelihood, as the _Chicago +Tribune_ noted, of the actors in life having read the books they were +spiritedly staging. "Ideas have a life of their own," the _Daily +News_ interviewer tentatively ventured, but he may have been puzzled +as G.K. "agreed heartily" in the words, "I am no dirty nominalist." + +Chesterton kept the reviewers busy as well as the interviewers and in +all his stories they noted one curiosity: "If time and space--or any +circumstances--interfere with the cutting of his Gordian knots, he +commands time and space to make themselves scarce, and circumstances +to be no more heard of." + +About time and space this is true in a unique degree. For him time +seems to have had no existence, or perhaps rather to have been like a +telescope elongating and shortening at will. As a young man, it may +be remembered, he gave in the course of one letter two quite +irreconcilable statements of the length of time since events in his +school days. He had indeed the same difficulty about time as about +money--he mentions in the _Autobiography_ that after his watch was +stolen during a pro-Boer demonstration he never bothered to possess +another. In his stories this oddity became more marked. In _The Ball +and the Cross_ he relates adventures performed in leaping on and off +an omnibus in such fashion that the bus must have covered several +miles of ground: and then we are suddenly told it had gone the few +score yards from the bottom of Ludgate Hill to the top. Still +stranger are the records in _The Man Who Was Thursday_ and _Manalive_ +of the happenings of a single day, while in _The Return of Don +Quixote_ a new organisation of society is described as though many +years old and then suddenly announced as having been on foot some +weeks. + +But to return for one moment to the more serious aspects of the work +of these years. While _What's Wrong with the World_ (discussed in +some detail in the next chapter) is the first sketch of his social +views--a kind of blueprint for a sane and human sort of world--the +other books with all their foolery hold a serious purpose. They +should be read as illustrations of the philosophy of _Orthodoxy_-- +both the book he had written and the thing of which he had said "God +and humanity made it and it made me." + +"This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before +the reader," he says of his essays (in the "Introduction on +Gargoyles" in _Alarms and Discursions_), "does not consist of +separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various +islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite +cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing +else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. But +I am very sure of the style of the architecture and of the +consecration of the church." + +The story of _The Ball and the Cross_, already indicated to the +reader by the American-Italian duel which seemed like a parody of it, +has the double interest of its bearing on the world of Chesterton's +day and its glimpses at a stranger world to come. A young Highlander, +coming to London, sees in an atheist bookshop an insult to Our Lady. +He smashes the window and challenges the owner to a duel. Turnbull, +the atheist, is more than ready to fight; but the world, caring +nothing for religious opinions, regards anyone ready to fight for +them as a madman and is mainly concerned with keeping the peace. +Pursued by all the resources of modern civilisation, the two men +spend the rest of the book starting to fight, being interrupted and +arrested by the police, escaping, arguing and fighting again. They +end up in an asylum with a garden where again they talk endlessly and +where the power of Lucifer the prince of this world has enclosed +everyone who has been concerned in their wild flight, so that no +memory of it may live on the earth. + +The two sides of Chesterton's brain are engaged in the duel of minds +in this book, and some of his best writing is in it, both in the +description of the wild rush across sea and land and in the +discussions between the two men. G.K.'s affection for the sincere +atheist is noteworthy and his hatred is reserved for the shuffler and +the compromiser. It was grand to have such a man as Turnbull to +convert--"one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and industry +of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady. His heart +was in the right place but he was quite content to leave it there. +His head was his hobby." This might be Chesterton himself--in fact, +it is Chesterton himself--and the climax belongs to a later world +than that of 1911. For pointing to the Ball bereft of the Cross, the +Highlander calls out: "It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by +itself; you know it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. +Turnbull, this garden is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfillment. +This garden is the world gone mad." + +About the time this book appeared Gilbert was asked by an Anglican +Society to lecture at Coventry. He said "What shall I lecture on?" +They answered "Anything from an elephant to an umbrella." "Very +well," he said, "I will lecture on an umbrella." He treated the +umbrella as a symbol of increasing artificiality. We wear hair to +protect the head, a hat to protect the hair, an umbrella to protect +the hat. Gilbert said once he was willing to start anywhere and +develop from anything the whole of his philosophy. In the Notebook +he had written: + + BOOTLACES + + Once I looked down at my bootlaces + Who gave me my bootlaces? + The bootmaker? Bah! + Who gave the bootmaker himself? + What did I ever do that I should be given bootlaces? + +After the lecture on the umbrella two priests saw him at the railway +bookstall and asked him if the rumour was true that he was thinking +of joining the Church. He answered, "It's a matter that is giving me +a great deal of agony of mind, and I'd be very grateful if you would +pray for me." + +The following year he broached the subject to Father O'Connor when +they were alone in a railway carriage. He said he had made up his +mind, but he wanted to wait for Frances "as she had led him into the +Anglican Church out of Unitarianism." Frances told Father O'Connor +when he came to Overroads later, at the beginning of Gilbert's +illness, that she "could not make head or tail" of some of her +husband's remarks, especially one about being buried at Kendal Green. +When Father O'Connor told her what had been on Gilbert's mind she was +half amused at the hints he had been dropping: she recognised his +reluctance to move without her, but I think she probably realised too +that even to himself his conviction seemed in those years at times +more absolute, at times less. We shall see in a later chapter his own +analysis of his very slow progress. Meanwhile in his books he was at +once deepening and widening his vision of the faith. + +Fragments of verse used in _The Ballad of the White Horse_ had come +to Gilbert in his sleep; a great white horse had been the romance of +his childhood; the beginning of his honeymoon under the sign of the +White Horse at Ipswich had been "a trip to fairyland." But it is hard +to say when the motif of the White Horse, the verses ringing in his +head, and the ideas that make the poem, came together into what many +think the greatest work of his life. + +In _Father Brown on Chesterton_ we are told of the long time the poem +took in the making. They talked of it on the Yorkshire moors in 1906 +and Father O'Connor noted how Frances "cherished it. . . . I could +see she was more in love with it than with anything else he had in +hand." Father O'Connor also gives some interesting illustrations of +the way talk ministers to a work of genius. He had begun one day "by +saying lightly that none of us could become great men without leaning +on the little ones: could not well begin our day but for those who +started theirs first for our sake, lighting the fire and cooking the +breakfast." This was said just before the dressing bell rang and +between the bell and dinner Gilbert had written about nine verses +beginning with King Alfred's meditation: + + And well may God with the serving folk + Cast in His dreadful lot + Is not He too a servant + And is not He forgot? + +In 1907, Gilbert published in the _Albany Review_ a "Fragment from a +Ballad Epic of Alfred" which evoked the comment "Mr. Chesterton +certainly has in each eye a special Röntgen ray attachment." + +He wrote _The White Horse_ guided by his favourite theory that to +realise history we should not delve into the details of research but +try only to see the big things--for it is those that we generally +overlook. + + People talk about features of interest; but the features never make + up a face. . . . They will toil wearily off to the tiniest inscription + or darkest picture that is mentioned in a guide book as having some + reference to Alfred the Great or William the Conqueror; but they care + nothing for the sky that Alfred saw or the hills on which William + hunted. + +In the King Alfred country especially can be found "the far-flung +Titanic figure of the Giant Albion whom Blake saw in visions, +spreading to our encircling seas."* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Apr. 16, 1927.] + +Gilbert wrote a sketch for the _Daily News_ about this time, telling +how an old woman in a donkey cart whom they had left far behind on +the road went driving triumphantly past when the car they were in +broke down. For this expedition, as so often later, he made full use +of the modern invention he derided. In an open touring car hired for +the occasion, Gilbert in Inverness cape and shapeless hat, Frances +beside him snugly wrapped up, they + + Saw the smoke-hued hamlets quaint + With Westland King and Westland Saint, + And watched the western glory faint + Along the road to Frome. + +The note struck in the dedication and recurring throughout the poem +is that of the Christian idea which had made England great and which +he had learnt from Frances: + + Wherefore I bring these rhymes to you + Who brought the cross to me, + Since on you flaming without flaw + I saw the sign that Guthrum saw + When he let break his ships of awe + And laid peace on the sea. + +In the poem Christian men, whether they be Saxon or Roman or Briton +or Celt, are banded together to fight the heathen Danes in defence of +the sacred things of faith, in defence of the human things of daily +life, in defence even of the old traditions of pagan England + + . . . because it is only Christian men + guard even heathen things. + +Gilbert constantly disclaimed the idea that he took trouble over +anything: "taking trouble has never been a weakness of mine": but in +what might be termed a large and loose way he really did take immense +trouble over what interested him. King Alfred is not an almost +mythical figure like King Arthur and an outline of his story with +legendary fringes can be traced in the Wessex country and confirmed +by literature. Gilbert wanted this general story: he did not want +antiquarian exactness of detail. + +Into the mouths of Guthrum and of King Alfred, he put the expression +of the pagan and the Christian outlook. Nor did he hesitate to let +King Alfred prophesy at large concerning the days of G. K. +Chesterton. The poem is a ballad in the sense of the old ballads that +were stirring stories: it is also an expression of the threefold love +of Gilbert's life: his wife, his country and his Faith. And as in all +great poetry, there is a quality of eternity in this poem that has +made it serve as an expression of the eternal Spirit of man. + +During the first world war many soldiers had it with them in the +trenches: "I want to tell you," the widow of a sailor wrote, "that a +copy of the Ballad of the White Horse went down into the Humber with +the R.38. My husband loved it as his own soul--never went anywhere +without it." + +Almost thirty years have passed and today the poem still speaks. +Greeting Jacques Maritain on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, +Dorothy Thompson quoted King Alfred's assertion of Christian freedom +against "the pagan nazi conquerors of his day." After Crete the +_Times_ had the shortest first leader in its history. Under the +heading _Sursum Corda_ was a brief statement of the disaster, +followed by the words of Our Lady to King Alfred: + + I tell you naught for your comfort, + Yea, naught for your desire, + Save that the sky grows darker yet + And the sea rises higher. + Night shall be thrice night over you, + And heaven an iron cope. + Do you have joy without a cause, + Yea, faith without a hope? + +The unbreakable strength of that apparently faint and tenuous thread +of faith appeared in the sequel. Many had the ballad in hand in those +dark days; many others wrote to the _Times_ asking the source of the +quotation. Months later when Winston Churchill spoke of "the end of +the beginning," the _Times_ returned to _The White Horse_ and gave +the opening of Alfred's speech at Ethandune: + + "The high tide!" King Alfred cried. + "The high tide and the turn!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +The Disillusioned Liberal + + +_The English were not wrong in loving liberty. They were only wrong +in losing it_. + +_G.K.'s Weekly_, June 1, 1933. + +ONE MAIN DIFFICULTY in writing biography lies in the various strands +that run through every human life. It is as I have already said +impossible to keep a perfect chronological order with anyone whose +occupations and interests were so multifarious. In the present +chapter and the two that follow we shall consider the movement of +Chesterton's mind upon politics and sociology. This will involve +going back to the general election of 1906 and forward to the Marconi +Trial of 1913. For those who are interested in his poetry or his +humour or his philosophy or his theology but not at all in his +sociological and political outlook, I fear that these three chapters +may loom a little uninvitingly. If they are tempted to skip them +altogether, I shall not blame them; yet they will miss a great deal +that is vital to the understanding of his whole mind and the course +his life was to take. These are not the most entertaining chapters in +the book, but if we are really to know Chesterton the events they +cover must be considered most carefully. + +As a boy Gilbert Chesterton spoke of politics as absorbing "for every +ardent intellect"; and during these years he was himself deeply +concerned with the politics of England. The ideal Liberalism sketched +in his letter to Hammond during the Boer War [Chapter X] had appeared +to him, if not perfectly realised, at least capable of realisation, +in the existing Liberal Party. The Tory Party was in power and all +its acts, to say nothing of its general ineptitude, appeared to +Liberals as positive arguments for their own party. At this date so +convinced a Tory as Lord Hugh Cecil could describe his own party as +"to mix metaphors, an eviscerated ruin."* Several letters and +postcards from Mr. Belloc announcing his own election as Liberal +member for South Salford show the high hope with which young +Liberalism was viewing the world in 1906: + +[* In a letter to Wilfrid Ward.] + + (undated) + + I have, as you will have seen, pulled it off by 852. It is huge + fun. I am now out against all Vermin: Notably South African Jews. The + Devil is let loose: let all men beware. H. B. + + (Written across top of letter) + + Tomorrow Monday Meet the Manchester train arriving Euston 6.10 and + oblige your little friend HB _St. Hilary's Day_. + + Don't fail to meet that train. Stamps are cheap! HB + + I beg you. I implore you. _Meet that 6.10 train_. + + HB + + Stamps are a drug in the market. + 852 + Meet that train! + Stamps are _given away_ now in _Salford_. + +From 1902, when the general election left the Conservatives still in +power, until 1906 the Liberal party had been, as Chesterton described +it, "in the desert." And the younger members of the party were deeply +concerned with hammering out a positive philosophy which might +inspire a true programme for their own party. A group of them wrote a +book called _England A Nation_ with the sub-title _Papers of A +Patriot's Club_. The Patriot's Club had no real existence, but I +imagine that Lucian Oldershaw who edited the book believed that its +publication might create the club. Belloc was not one of the +contributors, but Hugh Law wrote ably on Ireland, J. L. Hammond on +South Africa, and Conrad Noel, Henry Nevinson and C. F. G. Masterman +on other aspects of the political scene. + +The whole book is on a fairly high level but Chesterton's essay was +the only one much noticed by reviewers. It was the introductory +chapter, far longer than any of the others, and gave the key to the +whole book. Entitled "The idea of Patriotism" it was, like _The +Napoleon of Notting Hill_, which it does much to illumine, a plea for +patriotism that was really for England and not for the British +Empire. Such a patriotism recognizes the limitations proper to +nationality and admits, nay admires, other patriotisms for other +nations. Thus, in Chesterton's eyes a true English patriot should +also be an ardent home ruler for Ireland since Ireland too was a +nation. + +He stressed the danger that the nationhood of England should be +absorbed and lost in the Imperial idea. The claim that in an empire +the various races could learn much from one another he considered a +bit of special pleading on the part of Imperialists. England had +learned much from France and Germany but, although Ireland had much +to teach, we had not learned from Ireland. The real patriotism of the +Englishman had been dimmed both by the emphasis on the Imperial idea +and by the absence of roots in his own land. The governing classes +had destroyed those roots and had almost forgotten the existence of +the people. From the dregs and off-scourings of the population a vast +empire had been created, but the people of England were not allowed +to colonize England. + +The Education Bill of 1902, brought in by the Conservatives and +giving financial support to Church schools, saw Gilbert in general +agreement with the Liberal attacks. He did not yet appreciate the +Catholic idea that education must be of one piece and he did not +think it fair that the country should support specifically Catholic +schools. Parents could give at home the religious instruction they +wanted their children to have. But with that fairness of mind which +made it so hard for him to be a party man he saw why the Liberal +"compromise" of simple Bible teaching for all in the State schools +could not be expected to satisfy Catholics. He wrote to the _Daily +News:_ + + The Bible compromise is certainly in favour of the Protestant view + of the Bible. The thing, properly stated, is as plain as the nose on + your face. Protestant Christianity believes that there is a Divine + record in a book; that everyone ought to have free access to that + book; that everyone who gets hold of it can save his soul by it, + whether he finds it in a library or picks it off a dustcart. Catholic + Christianity believes that there is a Divine army or league upon + earth called the Church; that all men should be induced to join it; + that any man who joins it can save his soul by it without ever + opening any of the old books of the Church at all. The Bible is only + one of the institutions of Catholicism, like its rites or its + priesthood; it thinks the Bible only efficient when taken as part of + the Church. . . . This being so, a child could see that if you have + the Bible taught alone, anyhow, by anybody, you do definitely decide + in favour of the first view of the Bible and against the second. + +Discussing a few years later whether it was possible or satisfactory +to teach the Bible simply as Literature he put his finger on the +Catholic objection. "I should not mind," he said, "children being +told about Mohammed because I am not a Mohammedan. If I were a +Mohammedan I should very much want to know what they were told about +him." + +While as for the unfortunate teacher: in case a child should ask if +the things in the Bible happened, "Either the teacher must answer him +insincerely and that is immorality, or he must answer him sincerely, +and that is sectarian education, or he must refuse to answer him at +all, and that is first of all bad manners and a sort of timid +tyranny . . ." + +Chesterton's Liberalism received a further shock from the fact that +Liberals, in attacking the Bill, were attacking also the Catholic +faith and raising the cry of No Popery. In a correspondence with Dr. +Clifford he reminded him of how they had stood together against +popular fanaticism during the Boer War. + + There are two cries always capable of raising the English in their + madness--one that the Union Jack is being pulled down, and one that + the Pope is being set up. And upon the man who raises one of them + responsibility will lie heavy till the last day. For when they are + raised, the best are mixed with the worst, every rational compromise + is dashed to pieces, every opponent is given credit for the worst + that the worst of his allies has by his worst enemy been said to + have said. That horror of darkness swept across us when the war + began. . . . + + Beyond all question this is true--that if we choose to fight on the + "No Popery" cry, we may win. But I can imagine something of which I + should be prouder than of any victory--the memory that we had shown + our difference from Mr. Chamberlain simply and finally in this--that + to our hand had lain (as it once laid to his) an old, an effectual, + an infallible, and a filthy weapon, and that we let it lie.* + +[* Letter to the _Daily News_, October 1902.] + +Yet it was fairly easy to be a Liberal in opposition. At the +elections of 1902 (which the Liberals lost) and 1906 (which they won) +Chesterton canvassed for the Liberal party. Charles Masterman used to +tell a story of canvassing a street in his company. Both started at +the same end on opposite sides of the road. Masterman completed his +side and came back on the other to find Chesterton still earnestly +arguing at the first house. For he was passionately serious in his +belief that the Liberal Party stood for a real renewal, even +revolution, in the life of England. "At the present moment of +victory," says the report of a speech by Gilbert following the great +swing of the Liberal party into power in 1906, he called for "that +magnanimity towards the defeated that characterized all great +conquerors. It was important that all should develop--even the Tory." +It needed the experience of seeing the Liberal party in power to +shake his faith. + +In the new House of Commons the Conservatives were in a minority: +against them were the two old parties--the Liberals and the Irish +members who were in general allied to them, and a small group forming +a new party known as Labour. The Labour Members who got into +Parliament in 1906 and 1909 were regarded by Conservatives as being a +kind of left-wing extension of the Liberal Party. Such a Liberal as +Chesterton saw them there with delight, and, although he would still +have called himself a Liberal, he at first hoped in the Labour men as +something more truly expressive of the people's wishes. + +In an introduction to _From Workhouse to Westminster_, a life of Will +Crooks, Gilbert expressed a good deal of his own political +philosophy. As a democrat he believed in the ideal of direct +government by the people. But obviously this was only possible in a +world that was also his ideal--a world consisting of small and even +of very small states. The democrat's usual alternative, +representative government, was, Gilbert said, symbolic in character. +Just as religious symbolism "may for a time represent a real emotion +and then for a time cease to represent anything, so representative +government may for a time represent the people, and for a time cease +to represent anything." + +Further, the very idea of representation itself involved two +perfectly distinct notions: a man throws a shadow or he throws a +stone. "In the first sense, it is supposed that the representative is +like the thing he represents. In the second case, it is only supposed +that the representative is useful to the thing he represents." +Workmen, like Conservatives, sent men to Parliament not to show what +they themselves were like, but to attack the other party in their +name. "The Labour Members as a class are not representatives but +missiles. . . . Working men are not at all like Mr. Keir Hardie. If +it comes to likeness, working men are more like the Duke of +Devonshire. But they throw Mr. Keir Hardie at the Duke of Devonshire, +knowing that he is so curiously shaped as to hurt anything at which +he is thrown."* In the same way Mr. Balfour was entirely unlike the +Tory squires who used him as a weapon. To this rule, that men do not +choose to be represented by their like, Chesterton took Will Crooks +as the one exception: + +[* Introduction to _From Workhouse to Westminster_, p. XV.] + + You have not yet seen the English people in politics. It has not + yet entered politics. Liberals do not represent it; Tories do not + represent it; Labour Members, on the whole, represent it rather less + than Tories or Liberals. When it enters politics it will bring with + it a trail of all the things that politicians detest; prejudices (as + against hospitals), superstitions (as about funerals), a thirst for + respectability passing that of the middle classes, a faith in the + family which will knock to pieces half the Socialism of Europe. If + ever that people enters politics it will sweep away most of our + revolutionists as mere pedants. It will be able to point only to one + figure, powerful, pathetic, humorous and very humble, who bore in any + way upon his face the sign and star of its authority.* + +[* Ibid., p. XX.] + +It was sad enough after this to see Will Crooks fathering one of +those very Bills for the interference with family life which +Chesterton most hated. But, indeed, the years that followed the 1906 +election are a story of a steadily growing disillusionment with the +realities of representative government in England. + +Chesterton wrote regularly for the _Daily News_ and was regarded as +one of their most valuable contributors. But when, following an +attack in the House of Commons on the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman +over the sale of peerages, he sent in an article on the subject, the +Editor A. G. Gardiner wrote (July 12, 1907): + + I have left your article out tonight not because I do not entirely + agree with its point of view but because just at this moment it would + look like backing Lea's unmannerly attack on C. B. I am keeping the + article in type for a later occasion when the general question is not + complicated with a particularly offensive incident. + +It was a test case, and it seemed to Chesterton not a question of +good manners, but of something far more fundamental. The assertion +had been made in the House of Commons that peerages were being sold, +and that the price of such sales was the chief support of the secret +party funds. But the _Daily News_ was a Liberal paper and this was an +attack on the Liberal party. Chesterton replied (July 11, 1907): + + I am sure you know by this time that I never resent the exclusion + of my articles as such. I should always trust your literary judgment, + if it were a matter of literature only: and I daresay you have often + saved me from an indiscretion and your readers from a bore. + Unfortunately this matter of the party funds is not one of that sort. + My conscience does not often bother you, but just now the animal is + awake and roaring. Your paper has always championed the rights of + conscience, so mine naturally goes to you. If you disagreed with me, + it would be another matter. But since you agree with me (as I was + sure you would) it becomes simply a question of which is the more + important, politeness or political morality. I agree that Lea did go + to the point of being unmannerly. So did Plimsoll, so did Bradlaugh: + so did the Irish members. But surely it would be a very terrible + thing if anyone could say "The _Daily News_ suppressed all demand for + the Plimsoll line," or "The _Daily News_ did not join in asking for + Bradlaugh's political rights." I am sure that this is not your idea. + You think that this matter can be better raised later on. I am + convinced of its urgency. I am so passionately convinced of its + urgency that if you will not help me to raise it now, I must try some + other channel. They are going on Monday to raise a "breach of + privilege" (which is simply an aristocratic censorship of the Press) + in order to crush this question through the man who raised it: and to + crush it forever. I have said that I think Lea's questions violent + and needless. But they are not attacking his questions. They are + attacking his letter, which contains nothing that I do not think, + probably nothing that you do not think. Lea is to be humiliated and + broken because he said that titles are bought; as they are: because + he said that poor members are reminded of their dependence on the + party funds; as they are: because he said that all this was hypocrisy + of public life; as it is. . . . + + One thing is quite certain. Unless some Liberal journalists speak + on Monday or Tuesday, the secret funds and the secret powers are + safe. These Parliamentary votes mark eras: they are meant to. And + that vote will not mark a defence of C. B. The letter had nothing to + do with C. B. It will mark the final decision that any repetition of + what Lea said in his letter is an insult to the House. That is, any + protest against bought titles will be an insult to the House. Any + protest against secret funds will be an insult to the House. + + I would willingly burn my article if I were only sure you would + publish one yourself tomorrow on the same lines. But if not, here is + at least one thing you can do. An article, even signed, may perhaps + commit the paper too much. But your paper cannot be committed by + publishing a letter from me stating my opinions. It might publish a + letter from Joe Chamberlain, stating his opinions. I therefore send + you a short letter, pointing out the evil, and disassociating it as + far as possible from the indiscretions of Lea. I am sure you will + publish this, for it is the mere statement of a private opinion and + as I am not an M. P. I can say what I like about Parliament. You will + not mind my confessing to you my conviction and determination in this + matter. I do not think we could quarrel, even if we had to separate. + +The letter was published, and was quoted in the House of Commons by +Lord Robert Cecil amid general applause. But it was twenty years +before a Bill was passed that forbade this particular unpleasantness. + +While political corruption stirred Chesterton deeply, I think his +outlook was even more affected by the progressive Socialism of +Liberal legislation. He had honestly believed that the Liberal Party +stood, on the whole, for liberty. He found that it stood increasingly +for daily and hourly interference with the lives of the people. He +found too that the Liberal papers, which he held should have been +foremost in criticism of these measures, were as determined to uphold +measures brought in by a Liberal Government as they had been to +attack anything that the Tories brought forward. + +It has been well said by Mr. Belloc that Chesterton could never write +as a party man. But to the ordinary party newspaper such an attitude +was utterly incomprehensible. I think that we can also see at this +point how alien his fundamental outlook was from that even of the +best members of his own Party. A great admirer said to me the other +day that it had taken her a long time to appreciate Chesterton's +sociology. "You see, I was brought up to think that it was quite +right for the poor to have their teeth brushed by officials." This is +undoubtedly the normal Socialistic outlook and the outlook most +abhorrent to Chesterton. "The philanthropist," he once said, "is not +a brother; he is a supercilious aunt." + +The five years of Liberal Government had been disillusioning to many +others besides Belloc and the Chesterton brothers. Probably many men +in newspaper offices and elsewhere continued vaguely to support the +party to which their own paper belonged. But there were others who +were in those days going through a struggle between principles and +Party which became increasingly acute. Gilbert has described his own +feelings in a review of Galsworthy's play _Loyalties_, written +several years later during the first World War. + + . . . The author of _Loyalty_ suffers one simple and amazing + delusion. He imagines that in those pre-war politics Liberalism was + on the side of Labour. On this point at least I can correct him from + the most concrete experience. In the newspaper office where his hero + lingered, wondering how much longer he could stand its Pacifism, I + was lingering and wondering how much longer I could stand its + complete and fundamental Capitalism, its invariable alliance with the + employer, its invariable hostility to the striker. No such scene as + that in which the Liberal editor paced the room raving about his + hopes of a revolution ever occurred in the Liberal newspaper office + that I knew; the least hint of a revolution would have caused quite + as much horror there as in the offices of the _Morning Post_. On + nothing was the Pacifist more pacifist than upon that point. No + workman so genuine as the workman who figures in _Loyalty_ ever + figured among such Liberals. The fact is that such Liberalism was in + no way whatever on the side of Labour; on the contrary, it was on the + side of the Labour Party. . . . + +Both Chesterton and Belloc had begun to point out that a Free Press +had almost disappeared from England. The revenue of most of the +newspapers depended not on subscriptions but on advertisement. +Therefore nothing could be said in them which was displeasing to +their wealthy advertisers. Nor was this the worst of it. Very rich +men were often owners of half a dozen papers or more and dictated +their policy. An outstanding example was Alfred Harmsworth--Lord +Northcliffe--whose newspapers ranged from the _Times_ through the +_Daily Mail_ to _Answers_. Thus to every section of the English +people, Harmsworth was able to convey day by day such news as he +thought best together with his own outlook and philosophy of life +such as it was. Still worse, the _Times_ had not lost in the eyes of +Europe, to say nothing of America, that reputation it had held so +long of being _the_ official expression of English opinion. It was +still the _Jupiter_ of Trollope's day, the maker of ministries or +their undoing. In the days of a Free Press a paper held such a +position in virtue of the talents of its staff. Editors were then +powerful individuals and would brook little interference. But today +the editor was commonly only the mouthpiece of the owner. + +It is surprising that Gilbert and the official Liberal Press so long +tolerated one another. The _Daily News_ and other papers owned by Mr. +Cadbury (of Cadbury's Cocoa) were often referred to as "the Cocoa +Press" and it happened that it was not in the end political +disagreement alone that brought the Chesterton-Cadbury alliance to an +end. In one of Gilbert's poems in praise of wine are the lines: + + Cocoa is a cad and coward, + Cocoa is a vulgar beast. + +In the _Autobiography_ he tells us that after he had published the +poem he felt he could write no longer for the _Daily News_. He went +from the _Daily News_ to the _Daily Herald_, to the Editor of which +he wrote that the _News_ "had come to stand for almost everything I +disagree with; and I thought I had better resign before the next +great measure of social reform made it illegal to go on strike." G.K. +was a considerable asset to any paper and had recently been referred +to by Shaw (in a debate with Belloc) as "a flourishing property of +Mr. Cadbury's." + +Politically the break was bound to come, for even when _Dickens_ was +published Gilbert Chesterton had reached the stage of saying "as much +as ever I did, more than ever I did, I believe in Liberalism. But +there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals." At +this time too he infuriated an orthodox Liberal journalist by saying +of the party leaders "some of them are very nice old gentlemen, some +of them are very nasty old gentlemen, and some of them are old +without being gentlemen at all." An orthodox church journalist in a +periodical charmingly entitled _Church Bells_ got angrier yet. "A +certain Mr. G. K. Chesterton," he wrote, had, when speaking for the +C.S.U. in St. Paul's Chapter House, remarked "the best of his +Majesty's Ministers are agnostics, and the worst devil worshippers." +_Church Bells_ cries out: "We only mention this vulgar falsehood +because we regret that an association, with which the names of many +of our respected ecclesiastics are connected, should have allowed the +bad taste and want of all gentlemanly feeling displayed by the words +quoted, to have passed unchallenged." "Vulgar falsehood" is surely +charming. + +But perhaps even deeper than his disillusionment with any Party was +his growing sense of the unreality of the political scene. He has +described it in the _Autobiography:_ + + I was finding it difficult to believe in politics; because the + reality seemed almost unreal, as compared with the reputation or the + report. I could give twenty instances to indicate what I mean, but + they would be no more than indications, because the doubt itself was + doubtful. I remember going to a great Liberal club, and walking about + in a large crowded room, somewhere at the end of which a bald + gentleman with a beard was reading something from a manuscript in a + low voice. It was hardly unreasonable that we did not listen to him, + because we could not in any case have heard; but I think a very large + number of us did not even see him . . . it is possible, though not + certain, that one or other of us asked carelessly what was supposed + to be happening in the other corner of the large hall. . . . Next + morning I saw across the front of my Liberal paper in gigantic + headlines the phrase: "Lord Spencer Unfurls the Banner." Under this + were other remarks, also in large letters, about how he had blown the + trumpet for Free Trade and how the blast would ring through England + and rally all the Free-Traders. It did appear, on careful + examination, that the inaudible remarks which the old gentleman had + read from the manuscript were concerned with economic arguments for + Free Trade; and very excellent arguments too, for all I know. But the + contrast between what that orator was to the people who heard him, + and what he was to the thousands of newspaper-readers who did not + hear him, was so huge a hiatus and disproportion that I do not think + I ever quite got over it. I knew henceforward what was meant, or what + might be meant, by a Scene in the House, or a Challenge from the + Platform, or any of those sensational events which take place in the + newspapers and nowhere else.* + +[* Pp. 201-2.] + +As in _Orthodoxy_ Chesterton had formulated his religious beliefs, so +in _What's Wrong with the World_ he laid the foundations of his +sociology. It will be remembered that, giving evidence before the +Commission on the Censorship, Chesterton declared himself to be +concerned only with the good and happiness of the English people. +Where he differed from nearly every other social reformer was that he +believed that they should themselves decide what was for their own +good and happiness. + +"The body of ideas," says Monsignor Knox of Gilbert's sociology, +"which he labelled, rather carelessly, 'distributism' is a body of +ideas which still lasts, and I think will last, but it is not exactly +a doctrine, or a philosophy; it is simply Chesterton's reaction to +life."* + +[* _The Listener_, June 19, 1941.] + +It may be said that a man's philosophy is in the main a formulation +of his reaction to life. Anyhow life seems to be the operative +word--for it is the word that best conveys the richness of this first +book of Chesterton's sociology. All the wealth of life's joys, life's +experiences, is poured into his view of man and man's destiny. +Already developing manhood to its fullest potential he found in this +book a new form of expression. To quote Monsignor Knox again, "I call +that man intellectually great who is an artist in thought . . . I +call that man intellectually great who can work equally well in any +medium." The poet-philosopher worked surprisingly well in the medium +of sociology. + +He had intended to call the book, "What's Wrong?" and it begins on +this note of interrogation. The chapter called "The Medical Mistake" +is a brilliant attack on the idea that we must begin social reform by +diagnosing the disease. "It is the whole definition and dignity of +man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we +find the disease." The thing that is most terribly wrong with our +modern civilisation is that it has lost not only health but the clear +picture of health. The doctor called in to diagnose a bodily illness +does not say: we have had too much scarlet fever, let us try a little +measles for a change. But the sociological doctor does offer to the +dispossessed proletarian a cure which, says Chesterton, is only +another kind of disease. We cannot work towards a social ideal until +we are certain what that ideal should be. We must, therefore, begin +with principles and we are to find those principles in the nature of +man, largely through a study of his history. Man has had +historically--and man needs for his fulfilment--the family, the home +and the possession of property. The notion of property has, for the +modern age, been defiled by the corruptions of Capitalism; but modern +Capitalism is really a negation of property because it is a denial of +its limitations. He summarises this idea with one of his most +brilliant illustrations: "It is the negation of property that the +Duke of Sutherland should have all the farms in one estate; just as +it would be the negation of marriage if he had all our wives in one +harem." + +But property in its real meaning is almost the condition for the +survival of the family. It is its protection, it is the opportunity +of its development. God has the joy of unlimited creation--He can +make something out of nothing; but He has given to Man the joy of +limited creation--Man can make something out of anything. "Fruitful +strife with limitations," self-expression "with limits that are +strict and even small,"--all this belongs to the artist, but also to +the average man. "Property is merely the art of the democracy." + +The family, protected by the possession of some degree of property, +will grow by its own laws. What are these laws? Clearly there are two +sets of problems, one concerned with life within the family, the +other with the relation of the family to the state. These two sets of +problems provide the subject-matter of the book. On both Chesterton +felt that there had been insufficient thinking. Thus he says of the +first: "There is no brain-work in the thing at all; no root query of +what sex is, of whether it alters this or that." And of the second: +"It is quite unfair to say that Socialists believe in the State but +do not believe in the Family. But it is true to say that Socialists +are especially engaged in strengthening and renewing the State; and +they are not especially engaged in strengthening and renewing the +Family. They are not doing anything to define the functions of +father, mother and child, as such--they have no firm instinctive +sense of one thing being in its nature private and another public." + +It is precisely this kind of root-thinking that the book does. In the +free family there will be a division of the two sides of life, +between the man and the woman. The man must be, to a certain extent, +a specialist; he must do one thing well enough to earn the daily +bread. The woman is the universalist; she must do a hundred things +for the safeguarding and development of the home. The modern fad of +talking of the narrowness of domesticity especially provoked +Chesterton. "I cannot," he said + + with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When + domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty + arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means + dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man + might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at + Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because + it is trifling, colourless and of small import to the soul, then as I + say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen + Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours + and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, + boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain + area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can + understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how + it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other + people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell + one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the + same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a + woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not + because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her + task; I will never pity her for its smallness.* + +[* _What's Wrong With the World_, chapter 3, "The Emancipation of +Domesticity."] + +While he was writing these pages and after their appearance in print, +G.K. was constantly asked to debate the question of Women's Suffrage. +He was an anti-suffragist, partly because he was a democrat. The +suffrage agitation in England was conducted by a handful of women, +mainly of the upper classes; and it gave Cecil Chesterton immense +pleasure to head articles on the movement with the words, "Votes for +Ladies." G.K. too felt that the suffrage agitation was really doing +harm by dragging a red herring across the path of necessary social +reform. If the vast majority of women did not want votes it was +undemocratic to force votes upon them. Also, if rich men had +oppressed poor men all through the course of history, it was +exceedingly probable that rich women would also oppress poor women. +Both in _What's Wrong With the World_ and in debating on the subject, +Chesterton brushed aside as absurd and irrelevant the suggestion that +women were inferior to men and what was called the physical force +argument. But he did maintain that if the vote meant anything at all +(which it probably did not in the England he was living in), it meant +that side of life which belongs to masculinity and which the normal +woman dislikes and rather despises. + + All we men had grown used to our wives and mothers, and + grandmothers, and great aunts all pouring a chorus of contempt upon + our hobbies of sport, drink and party politics. And now comes Miss + Pankhurst with tears in her eyes, owning that all the women were + wrong and all the men were right. . . . We told our wives that + Parliament had sat late on most essential business; but it never + crossed our minds that our wives would believe it. We said that + everyone must have a vote in the country; similarly our wives said + that no one must have a pipe in the drawing-room. In both cases the + idea was the same. "It does not matter much, but if you let those + things slide there is chaos." We said that Lord Huggins or Mr. + Buggins was absolutely necessary to the country. We knew quite well + that nothing is necessary to the country except that the men should + be men and the women women. We knew this; we thought the women knew + it even more clearly; and we thought the women would say it. + Suddenly, without warning, the women have begun to say all the + nonsense that we ourselves hardly believed when we said it. . . .* + +[* From chapter VII, _The Modern Surrender_.] + +All the agitated reformers who were running about and offering their +various nostrums were prepared to confess that something had gone +very wrong with modern civilisation. But they suggested that what was +wrong with the present generation of adults could be set right for +the coming generation by means of education. In the last part of the +book, "Education or the Mistake about the Child," he put the +unanswerable question: How are we to give what we have not got? "To +hear people talk one would think [education] was some sort of magic +chemistry, by which, out of a laborious hotch-potch of hygienic +meals, baths, breathing-exercises, fresh-air and freehand drawing, we +can produce something splendid by accident; we can create what we +cannot conceive." The social reformers who were talking about +education seem not to have seen very clearly what they meant by the +word. They argued about whether it meant putting ideas into the child +or drawing ideas out of the child. In any case, as Chesterton pointed +out, you must choose which kind of ideas you are going to put in or +even which kind you are going to draw out. "There is indeed in each +living creature a collection of forces and functions; but education +means producing these in particular shapes and training them for +particular purposes, or it means nothing at all." + +But to decide what they were trying to produce was altogether too +much for the men who were directing education in our Board Schools. +The Public Schools of England were often the target of Chesterton's +attacks; but they had, he declared, one immense superiority over the +Board Schools. The men who directed them knew exactly what they +wanted and were on the whole successful in producing it. Those +responsible for the Board Schools seemed to have no idea excepting +that of feebly imitating the Public Schools. One disadvantage of this +was that, at its worst and at its best, the Public School idea could +only be applicable to a small governing class. The other disadvantage +was that whereas in the Public Schools the masters were working with +the parents and trying to give the boys the same general shape as +their homes would give them, the Board Schools were doing nothing of +the kind. The schoolmaster of the poor never worked with the parents; +often he ignored them; sometimes he positively worked against them. +Such education was, Chesterton held, the very reverse of that which +would prevail in a true democracy. "We have had enough education for +the people; we want education by the people." + +Chesterton felt keenly that while the faddists were perfectly +prepared to take the children out of the hands of any parents who +happened to be poor, they had not really the courage of their own +convictions. They would expatiate upon methods; they could not define +their aims; they would take refuge in such meaningless terms as +progress or efficiency or success. They were not prepared to say what +they wanted to succeed in producing, towards what goal they were +progressing or what was the test of efficiency. And part of this +inability arose from their curious fear of the past. Most movements +of reform have looked to the past for great part of their +inspiration. To reform means to shape anew, and he pointed out that +every revolution involves the idea of a return. On this point, G.K. +attacked two popular sayings. One was "You can't put the clock back"; +but, he said, you can and you do constantly. The clock is a piece of +mechanism which can be adjusted by the human finger. "There is +another proverb: 'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; +which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, +please God, I will make it again." + +It is easy to understand that this sort of philosophy should be out +of tune with the Socialist who looked with contempt on the wisdom of +his forefathers. It is less easy to understand why it was +unacceptable also to most of the Tories. One reviewer asked whether +Mr. Chesterton was the hoariest of Conservatives or the wildest of +Radicals. And with none of his books are the reviews so bewildered as +they are with this one. "The universe is ill-regulated," said the +_Liverpool Daily Post_, "according to the fancy of Mr. Chesterton; +but we are inclined to think that if the deity were to talk over +matters with him, he would soon come to see that a Chestertonian +cosmos would be no improvement on things as they are." On the other +hand, the _Toronto Globe_ remarks, "His boisterous optimism will not +admit that there is anything to sorrow over in this best of all +possible worlds." The _Observer_ suggested that Chesterton would find +no disciples because "his converts would never know from one week to +another what they had been converted to"; while the _Yorkshire Post_ +felt that the chief disadvantage of the book was that "a shrewd +reader can pretty accurately anticipate Mr. Chesterton's point of +view on any subject whatsoever." + +It seems almost incredible that so definite a line of thought, so +abundantly illustrated, should not have been clear to all his +readers. Some reviewers, one supposes, had not read the book; but +surely the _Daily Telegraph_ was deliberately refusing to face a +challenge when it wrote: "His whole book is an absurdity, but to be +absurd for three hundred pages on end is itself a work of genius." +That particular reviewer was shirking a serious issue. He was the +official Tory. But those whom I might call the unofficial Tories, +such men for instance as my own father, received much of this book +with delight and yet declined to take Chesterton's sociology +seriously. And I think it is worth trying to see why this was the +case. + +In a letter to the _Clarion_, G.K. outlines his own position: "If you +want praise or blame for Socialists I have enormous quantities of +both. Roughly speaking (1) I praise them to infinity because they +want to smash modern society. (2) I blame them to infinity because of +what they want to put in its place. As the smashing must, I suppose, +come first, my practical sympathies are mainly with them."* + +[* Letter to the _Clarion_, February 8, 1910.] + +Such a confession of faith seemed shocking to the honest +old-fashioned Tory. And because it shocked him, he made the mistake +of calling it irresponsible. Chesterton frequently urged revolution +as the only possible means of changing an intolerable state of +things. But the word "revolution" suggested streets running with +blood. And, on the other hand, they had not the very faintest +conception of how intolerable the state of things was against which +Chesterton proposed to revolt. I think it must be said too that he +was a little hazy as to the exact nature of the revolution he +proposed. He certainly hoped to avoid the guillotine! And even when +urging the restoration of the common lands to the people of England, +he appended a note in which he talked of a land purchase scheme +similar to that which George Wyndham had introduced in Ireland. But +besides this tinge of vagueness in what he proposed, there was +another weakness in his presentment of his sociology which I think +was his chief weakness as a writer. + +It would be hard to find anyone who got so much out of words, +proverbs, popular sayings. He wrung every ounce of meaning out of +them; he stood them on their heads; he turned them inside out. And +everything he said he illustrated with an extraordinary wealth of +fancy; but when you come to illustration by way of concrete facts +there is a curious change. In his sociology, he did the same thing +that his best critics blamed in his literary biographies. He would +take some one fact and appear to build upon it an enormous +superstructure and then, very often, it would turn out that the fact +itself was inaccurately set down; and the average reader, discovering +the inaccuracy, felt that the entire superstructure was on a rotten +foundation and had fallen with it to the ground. Yet the ordinary +reader was wrong. The "fact" had not been the foundation of his +thought, but only the thing that had started him thinking. If the +"fact" had not been there at all, his thinking would have been +neither more nor less valid. But most readers could not see the +distinction. + +It is a little difficult to make the point clear; but anyone who has +read the _Browning_ and the _Dickens_ and then read the reviews of +them will recognise what I mean. It was universally acknowledged that +Chesterton might commit a hundred inaccuracies and yet get at the +heart of his subject in a way that the most painstaking biographer +and critic could not emulate. The more deeply one reads Dickens or +Browning, the more even one studies their lives, the more one is +confirmed as to the profound truth of the Chesterton estimate and the +genius of his insight. A superficial glance sees only the errors; a +deeper gaze discovers the truth. It is exactly the same with his +sociology. But here we are in a field where there is far more +prejudice. When Chesterton talked of State interference and used +again and again the same illustration--that of children whose hair +was forcibly cut short in a Board School--two questions were asked by +Socialists: Was this a solitary incident? Was it accurately reported? +When a pained doctor wrote to the papers saying the incident had been +merely one of a request to parents who had gladly complied for fear +their children should catch things from other and dirtier children, +it appeared as though G.K. had built far too much on this one point. +It was not the case. He was not building on the incident, he was +illustrating by the incident. But it must be admitted that he was +incredibly careless in investigating such incidents; and quite +indifferent as to his own accuracy. And this was foolish, for he +could have found in Police Court records, in the pages of _John Bull_ +and later of the _Eye Witness_ itself, abundance of well verified +illustrations of his thesis. + +In the same way, when he talked of the robbery of the people of +England by the great landlords, he did not take the slightest trouble +to prove his case to the many who knew nothing of the matter. It must +be remembered that the sociological side of English history was only +just beginning to be explored to any serious extent. In the _Village +Labourer_, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond point out to what an extent they had +had to depend on the Home Office papers and contemporary documents +for the mass of facts which this book and the _Town Labourer_ brought +for the first time to the knowledge of the general public. Chesterton +had worked with Hammond on the _Speaker_ for some years. Just as with +his book about Shaw so too with the background of his sociology he +could have gone round the corner and got the required information. He +knew the thing in general terms; he would not be bothered to make +that knowledge convincing to his readers. If to his genius for +expounding ideas had been added an awareness of the necessity of +marshalling and presenting facts, he must surely have convinced all +men of goodwill. + +For in this matter the facts were there to marshal. It was less than +a hundred years since the last struggle of the English yeomen against +a wholesale robbery and confiscation that catastrophically altered +the whole shape of our country. And it seems to have left no trace in +the memory of the English poor. In _Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen +describes Catherine Morland finding the traces of an imaginary crime. +But Chesterton comments that the crime she failed to discover was the +very real one that the owner of Northanger Abbey was not an Abbot. +The ordinary Englishman, however, thinks little of a crime that +consisted in robbing "a lot of lazy monks." That they had possessed +so much of the land of England merely seemed to make the act a more +desirable one: yet it was a confiscation, not so much of monks' land +as of the people's land administered by the monasteries. + +What is even less realised is how much of the structure of the +mediaeval village remained after the Reformation and how widespread +was small ownership nearly to the end of the eighteenth century, when +Enclosures began estimated by the Hammonds at five million acres. +This land ceased in effect to be the common property of the poor and +became the private property of the rich. This business of the +Enclosures must be treated at some little length because it had the +same key position in Chesterton's sociological thinking as the +Marconi Case (shortly to be discussed) had in his political. + +In every village of England had been small freeholders, copyholders +and cottagers, all of whom had varying degrees of possession in the +common lands which were administered by a manorial court of the +village. These common lands were not mere stretches of heath and +gorse but consisted partly of arable cultivated in strips with strict +rules of rotation, partly of grazing land and partly of wood and +heath. Most people in the village had a right to a strip of arable, +to cut firing of brushwood and turf, and rushes for thatch, and to +pasture one or more cows, their pigs and their geese. A village +cowherd looked after all the animals and brought them back at night. +Cobbett in his _Cottage Economy_ (to a new edition of which +Chesterton wrote a preface) reckoned that a cottager with a +quarter-acre of garden could well keep a cow on his own cabbages plus +commonland grazing, could fatten his own pig and have to buy very +little food for his family except grain and hops for home-baking and +brewing. He puts a cottager's earnings, working part-time for a +farmer, at about 10 sh. a week. This figure would vary, but the +possession of property in stock and common rights would tide over bad +times. A man with fire and food could be quasi-independent; and +indeed some of the larger farmers, witnessing before Enclosure +Enquiry Committees, complained of this very spirit of independence as +producing idleness and "sauciness." + +The case for the Enclosures was that improved agricultural methods +could not be used in the open fields: more food was grown for +increasing town populations: much waste land ploughed: livestock +immeasurably improved. Only later was the cost counted when cheap +imported food for these same towns had slain English agriculture. The +"compensation" in small plots or sums of money could not for the +smaller commoners replace what they had lost--even when they +succeeded in getting it. Claims had to be made in writing--and few +cottagers could write. How difficult too to reduce to its money value +a claim for cutting turf or pasturing pigs and geese. A commissioner, +who had administered twenty Enclosure Acts, lamented to Arthur Young +that he had been the means of ruining two thousand poor people. But +the gulf was so great between rich and poor that all that the commons +had meant to the poor was not glimpsed by the rich. Arthur Young had +thought the benefits of common "perfectly contemptible," but by 1801 +he was deeply repentant and trying in vain to arrest the movement he +had helped to start. + +Before enclosure, the English cottager had had milk, butter and +cheese in plenty, home-grown pork and bacon, home-brewed beer and +home-baked bread, his own vegetables (although Cobbett scorned green +rubbish for human food and advised it to be fed to cattle only), his +own eggs and poultry. After enclosure, he could get no milk, for the +farmers would not sell it; no meat, for his wages could not buy it; +and he no longer had a pig to provide the fat bacon commended by +Cobbett. Working long hours he lived on bread, potatoes and tea, and +insufficient even of these. Lord Winchelsea, one of the very few +landowners who resisted the trend of the time, mentioned in the House +of Lords the discovery of four labourers, starved to death under a +hedge, and said this was a typical occurrence. + +At the beginning of the Enclosure period the Industrial Revolution +was barely in its infancy. A large part of the spinning, weaving and +other manufactures was carried on in the cottages of men who had +gardens they could dig in and cows and pigs of their own. The +invention of power machines, the discovery of coal wherewith those +machines could be worked, led to the concentration of factories in +the huge cities. But it was the drift from the villages of +dispossessed men, together with the cheap child labour provided by +Poor Law Guardians, that made possible the starvation wages and the +tyranny of the factory system. And here the tyrants were largely of a +different class. There were some landowners who also had factories, +and more who possessed coal-mines, but many of the manufacturers had +themselves come from the class of the dispossessed. + +Successful manufacturers made money--a great deal of money. Many of +the men's appeals gave the figures at which the goods were sold in +contrast with their rate of wages, and the contrast is startling. So, +as the towns grew, the masters left the smoke they were creating and +bought country places and became country gentlemen, preserved their +own game and judged their own tenants. And thus disappeared yet +another section of the ancient country folk. For the large landowners +would seldom sell and the land bought by the new men was mostly the +land of small farmers and yeomen. This was the age of new country +houses with a hundred rooms and vast offices that housed an army of +servants. "Labour was cheap," the descendants of those who built just +then will tell you, as they gaze disconsolate at their unwieldy +heritage. Old and new families alike built or rebuilt, added and +improved. + +Cobbett rode rurally and angrily through the ruins of a better +England (described a century earlier by another horseman, Daniel +Defoe). Goldsmith mourned an early example in his "Deserted Village," +but they are the only voices in an abundant literature. Jane Austen +is, indeed, the perfect example of what Chesterton always +realised--the ignorance that was almost innocence with which the +wealthy had done their work of destruction. He did not account them +as evil as they would seem by a mere summary of events. And what he +saw at the root of those events was in his eyes still present: +England was still possessed and still governed by a minority. The +Conservatives were "a minority that was rich," the liberals "a +minority that was mad." And those two minorities tended to join +together and rob and oppress the ordinary man, in the name of some +theory of progress and perfection. + +Thus the Protestant Reformation had closed the monasteries, which +were the poor man's inns, in the name of a purer religion; the +economists had taken away his land and driven him into the factories +with a promise of future wealth and prosperity. These had been the +experts of their day. Now the new experts were telling him with equal +eagerness that hygienic flats and communal kitchens would bring about +for him the new Jerusalem. But never did the expert think of asking +Jones, the ordinary man, what he himself wanted. Jones just wanted +the "divinely ordinary things"--a house of his own and a family life. +And that was still denied him as is related in the chapter called +"The Homelessness of Jones." + +In a debate in the Oxford Union, G.K. maintained that the House of +Lords was a menace to the State, because it failed precisely in what +was supposed to be its main function, that of conservation. It had +not saved, it had destroyed the Church lands and the common lands; it +was ready to pass any Bill that affected only the lower classes. "We +are all Socialists now," Sir William Harcourt had lately said, and +Chesterton saw that Socialism would mean merely further restriction +of liberty and continued coercion of the poor by the experts and the +rich. So, looking at the past, Chesterton desired a restoration which +he often called a Revolution. There were two forms of government that +might succeed--a real Monarchy, in which one ordinary man governed +many ordinary men--or a real democracy, in which many ordinary men +governed themselves. Aristocracy may have begun well in England when +it was an army protecting England: when the Duke was a Dux. Now it +was merely plutocracy and it had become "an army without an enemy +billeted on the people." + +All this and more formed the background of Chesterton's mind. But +what he wrote was a comment on the scene, not a picture of it. He +wrote of the terrible irony whereby "the Commons were enclosing the +commons." He spoke of the English revolution of the eighteenth +century, "a revolution of the rich against the poor." He mourned with +Goldsmith the destruction of England's peasantry. He cried aloud like +Cobbett, for he too had discovered the murder of England his mother. +But his cry was unintelligible and his hopes of a resurrection +unmeaning to those who knew not what had been done to death. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +The Eye Witness + + +THE PUBLICATION OF _What's Wrong With the World_ brings us to 1910. +Gilbert had, as we have seen, originally intended to call the book +_What's Wrong?_ laying some emphasis on the note of interrogation. It +amused him to perplex the casual visitor by going off to his study +with the muttered remark: "I must get on with What's Wrong." The +change of name and the omission of the note of interrogation (both +changes the act of his publishers) represented a certain loss, for +indeed Gilbert was still asking himself what was wrong when he was +writing this book, although he was very certain what was right--his +ideals were really a clear picture of health. His doubts about the +achievement of those ideals in the present world and with his present +political allegiance were, as he suggests in the _Autobiography_, +vague but becoming more definite. + +Did this mean that he ever looked hopefully towards the other big +division of the English political scene--the Tory or Conservative +party to which his brother had once declared he belonged without +knowing it? That would be a simpler story than what really happened +in his mind--and I confess that I am myself sufficiently vague and +doubtful about part of what the Chesterbelloc believed they were +discovering, to find it a little difficult to describe it clearly. +Cecil Chesterton and Belloc set down their views in a book called +_The Party System_. Gilbert made his clear in letters to the Liberal +Press. + +The English party system had often enough been attacked for its +obvious defects and indeed the _New Witness's_ even livelier +contemporary _John Bull_ was shouting for its abolition. But Belloc +and Cecil Chesterton had their own line. Their general thesis was +that not only did the people of England not govern, Parliament did +not govern either. The Cabinet governed and it was chosen by the real +rulers of the party. For each party was run by an oligarchy, and run +roughly on the same lines. Lists were given of families whose +brothers-in-law and cousins (though not yet their sisters and their +aunts) found place in the Ministry of one or other political party. +Moreover, the governing families on both sides were in many cases +connected by birth or marriage and all belonged to the same social +set. But money too was useful: men could buy their way in. Each party +had a fund, and those who could contribute largely had of necessity +an influence on party policy. The existent Liberal Government had +brought to a totally new peak the art of swelling its fund by the +sale of titles: which in many instances meant the sale of hereditary +governing powers, since those higher titles which carry with them a +seat in the House of Lords were sold like the others, at a higher +rate naturally. For the rank and file member, a political career no +longer meant the chance for talents and courage to win recognition in +an open field. A man who believed that his first duty was to +represent his constituents stood no chance of advancement. Certainly +a private member could not introduce a bill as his own and get it +debated on its merits. + +None of this was new, though the book did it rather exceptionally +well. What was new was the theory that the two party oligarchies were +secretly one, that the fights between the parties were little more +than sham fights. The ordinary party member was unaware of this +secret conspiracy between the leaders and would obey the call of the +party Whip and accept a sort of military discipline with the genuine +belief that the defeat of his party would mean disaster to his +country. + +Belloc had discovered for himself the impotence of the private +member. He had, as we have seen, been elected to Parliament by South +Salford in 1906 as a Liberal. In Parliament he proposed a measure for +the publication of the names of subscribers to the Party Funds. +Naturally enough the proposal got nowhere. Also naturally enough the +Party Funds were not forthcoming to support him at the next election. +He fought and won the seat as an Independent. At the second election +of 1910 he declined to stand, having lucidly explained to the House +of Commons in a final speech that a seat there was of no value under +the existing system. + +Thus Belloc's own experience, and a thousand other things, went to +prove the stranglehold the rulers of the party had on the party. But +did it prove, or did the book establish, the theory of a +behind-scenes conspiracy between the small groups who controlled each +of the great historical parties, which was the theme not only of _The +Party System_ but also of Belloc's brilliant political novels-- +notably _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_ and _Pongo and the Bull?_ + +Of the stranglehold there was no doubt and Gilbert soon found it too +much for his own allegiance to the Liberal Party or any other. At the +election of 1910, he addressed a Liberal meeting at Beaconsfield and +dealt vigorously with constant Tory questions and interjections from +the back of the hall. He obviously enjoyed the fight and a little +later he spoke for the "League of Young Liberals" and was +photographed standing at the back of their van. But although he went +to London to vote for John Burns in Battersea and would probably have +continued to vote Liberal or Labour, he showed at a Women's Suffrage +meeting in 1911 a growing scepticism about the value of the vote. He +was reported as saying, "If I voted for John Burns now, I should not +be voting for anything at all (laughter)." + +It must have been irritating that this interpolation "laughter" was +liable to occur when Chesterton was most serious; he did not change +quickly but in the alteration of his outlook towards his party, his +growing doubt whether it stood for any real values, he was very +serious. In the years that followed the coming into power of +Liberalism there were a multitude of Acts described as of little +importance and passed into law after little or no discussion. At the +same time, private members complained that they could get no +attention for really urgent matters of social reform. The _Nation_, +as a party paper, defended the state of things and talked of official +business and of want of time. Their attitude was vigorously attacked +by Gilbert, whose first letter (Jan. 17, 1911) ended with this +paragraph: + + Who ever dreamed of getting "perfect freedom and fulness of + discussion" except in heaven? The case urged against Cabinets is + that we have no freedom and no discussion, except that laid down + despotically by a few men on front benches. Your assurance that + Parliament is very busy is utterly vain. It is busy on things the + dictators direct. That small men and small questions get squeezed out + among big ones, that is a normal disaster. With us, on the contrary, + it is the big questions that get squeezed out. The Party was not + allowed really to attack the South African War, for fear it should + alienate Mr. Asquith. It was not allowed to object to Mr. Herbert + Gladstone (or is it Lord Gladstone? This blaze of democracy blinds + one) when he sought to abolish the Habeas Corpus Act, and leave the + poorer sort of pickpockets permanently at the caprice of their + jailers. Parliament is busy on the aristocratic fads; and mankind + must mark time with a million stamping feet, while Mr. Herbert Samuel + searches a gutter-boy for cigarettes. That is what you call the + congestion of Parliament. + +The Editor of the _Nation_ was so rash as to append to this letter +the words, "We must be stupid for we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton +means." This was too good an opening to be lost. G.K. returned to the +charge and I feel that this correspondence is so important in various +ways that the next two letters should be given in full. + + Sir, + + In a note to my last week's letter you remark, "We must be stupid; + but we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton means." As an old friend I + can assure you that you are by no means stupid; some other + explanation of this unnatural darkness must be found; and I find it + in the effect of that official party phraseology which I attack, and + which I am by no means alone in attacking. If I had talked about + "true Imperialism," or "our loyalty to our gallant leader," you might + have thought you knew what I meant; because I meant nothing. But I do + mean something; and I do want you to understand what I mean. I will, + therefore, state it with total dullness, in separate paragraphs; and + I will number them. + + (1) I say a democracy means a State where the citizens first desire + something and then get it. That is surely simple. + + (2) I say that where this is deflected by the disadvantage of + representation, it means that the citizens desire a thing and tell + the representatives to get it. I trust I make myself clear. + + (3) The representatives, in order to get it at all, must have some + control over detail; but the design must come from popular desire. + Have we got that down? + + (4) You, I understand, hold that English M. P.s today do thus obey + the public in design, varying only in detail. That is a quite clear + contention. + + (5) I say they don't. Tell me if I am getting too abstruse. + + (6) I say our representatives accept designs and desires almost + entirely from the Cabinet class above them; and practically not at + all from the constituents below them. I say the people does not wield + a Parliament which wields a Cabinet. I say the Cabinet bullies a + timid Parliament which bullies a bewildered people. Is that plain? + + (7) If you ask why the people endure and play this game, I say they + play it as they would play the official games of any despotism or + aristocracy. The average Englishman puts his cross on a ballot-paper + as he takes off his hat to the King--and would take it off if there + were no ballot-papers. There is no democracy in the business. Is that + definite? + + (8) If you ask why we have thus lost democracy, I say from two + causes; (a) The omnipotence of an unelected body, the Cabinet; (b) + the party system, which turns all politics into a game like the Boat + Race. Is that all right? + + (9) If you want examples I could give you scores. I say the people + did not cry out that all children whose parents lunch on cheese and + beer in an inn should be left out in the rain. I say the people did + not demand that a man's sentence should be settled by his jailers + instead of by his judges. I say these things came from a rich group, + not only without any evidence, but really without any pretence, that + they were popular. I say the people hardly heard of them at the + polls. But here I do not need to give examples, but merely to say + what I mean. Surely I have said it now. + + Yours, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + January 26th, 1911. + + _Editor's Note_. + + Mr. Chesterton is precise enough now, but he is precisely wrong. + There are grains of truth in his premises, a bushel of exaggeration + in his conclusions. We have not "lost democracy"; the two instances + which he alleges, both of which we dislike, are too small to prove so + large a case. + +To this G. K. replied: + + Sir, + + I want to thank you for printing my letters, and especially for + your last important comment, in which you say that the Crimes and + Children's Acts were bad, but are "too small" to support a charge of + undemocracy. And I want to ask you one last question, which is the + question. + + Why do you think of these things as small? They are really + enormous. One alters the daily habits of millions of people; the + other destroys the public law of thousands of years. What can be more + fundamental than food, drink, and children? What can be more + catastrophic than putting us back in the primal anarchy, in which a + man was flung into a dungeon and left there "till he listened to + reason?" There has been no such overturn in European ethics since + Constantine proclaimed the cross. + + Why do you think of these things as small? I will tell you. + Unconsciously, no doubt, but simply and solely because the Front + Benches did not announce them as big. They were not "first-class + measures"; they were not "full-dress debates." The governing class + got them through in the quick, quiet, secondary way in which they + pass things that the people positively detests; not in the pompous, + lengthy, oratorical way in which they present measures that the + people merely bets on, as it might on a new horse. A "first-class + measure" means, for instance, tinkering for months at some tottery + compromise about a Religious Education that doesn't exist. The reason + is simple. "Sound Church Teaching" and "Dogmatic Christianity" both + happen to be hobbies in the class from which Cabinets come. But going + to public-houses and going to prison are both habits with which that + class is, unfortunately, quite unfamiliar. It is ready, therefore, at + a stroke of the pen, to bring all folly into the taverns and all + injustice into the jails. + + Yours, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + February 2nd, 1911. + +It was not only in the _Nation_ that such letters as these appeared. +"We can't write in every paper at once," runs a letter in the _New +Age_. "We do our best." ("We" meant Gilbert, Cecil and Hilaire +Belloc.) And G.K. goes on to answer four questions which have been +put by a correspondent signing himself, "Political Journalist." + + First, in whose eyes but ours has the Party System lost credit? I + say in nearly everybody's. If this were a free country, I could + mention offhand a score of men within a stone's throw; an innkeeper, + a doctor, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a civil servant. As it is, I may + put it this way. In a large debating society I proposed to attack the + Party System, and for a long time I could not get an opposer. At + last, I got one. He defended the Party System on the ground that + people must be bamboozled more or less. + + Second, he asks if the Party System does not govern the country to + the content of most citizens. I answer that Englishmen are happy + under the Party System solely and exactly as Romans were happy under + Nero. That is, not because government was good, but because Life is + good, even without good government. Nero's slaves enjoyed Italy, not + Nero. Modern Englishmen enjoy England but certainly not the British + Constitution. The legislation is detested, wherever it is even felt. + The other day a Cambridge don complained that, when out bicycling + with his boys, he had to leave them in the rain while he drank a + glass of cider. Count the whole series of human souls between a + costermonger and a Cambridge don, and you will see a nation in mutiny. + + Third, "What substitute, etc., etc." Here again, the answer is + simple and indeed traditional. I suggest we should do what was always + suggested in the riddles and revolutions of the recent centuries. In + the seventeenth century phrase, I suggest that we should "call a free + Parliament!" + + Fourth, "Is Democracy compatible with Parliamentary Government?" + God forbid. Is God compatible with Church Government? Why should He + be? It is the other things that have to be compatible with God. A + church can only be a humble effort to utter God. A Parliament can + only be a humble effort to express Man. But for all that, there is a + deal of commonsense left in the world, and people do know when + priests or politicians are honestly trying to express a mystery--and + when they are only taking advantage of an ambiguity. + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +Encouraged by the excitement that had attended the publication of +_The Party System_ its authors decided to attempt a newspaper of +their own. This paper is still in existence but it has in the course +of its history appeared under four different titles. To avoid later +confusion I had better set these down at the outset. + +The Eye Witness, June 1911-October 1912 +The New Witness, November 1912-May 1923 +G. K.'s Weekly, 1925-1936 +The Weekly Review, 1936 till today + +During the first year of its existence the _Eye Witness_ was edited +by Belloc. Cecil Chesterton took over the editorship after a short +interregnum during which he was assistant editor. Charles Granville +had financed it. When he went bankrupt the title was altered to _The +New Witness_. When Cecil joined the Army in 1916, G.K. became Editor. +In 1923 the paper died, but two years later rose again under the +title, _G.K.'s Weekly_. After Gilbert's own death Belloc took it back. +Today, as _The Weekly Review_, it is edited by Reginald Jebb, Belloc's +son-in-law. With all these changes of name, the continuity of the +paper is unmistakable. Its main aim may be roughly defined under two +headings. 1. To fight for the liberty of Englishmen against +increasing enslavement to a Plutocracy. 2. To expose and combat +corruption in public life. + +The fight for Liberty appears in the letters quoted above in the form +of an attack on certain bills: Belloc unified and defined it with +real genius in the articles which became two of his most important +books: _The Servile State_ and _The Restoration of Property_. If +these two books be set beside Chesterton's _What's Wrong With the +World_ and _The Outline of Sanity_ the Chesterbelloc sociology stands +complete. + +In his _Cobbett_, G.K. was later to emphasise the genius with which +Cobbett saw the England of today a hundred years before it was there +to be seen. Belloc in the same way saw both what was coming and the +way in which it was coming. Especially far-sighted was his attitude +to Lloyd George's Compulsory Health Insurance Act. It was the first +act of the kind in England and the scheme in outline was: every week +every employed person must have a stamp stuck on a card by his +employer, of which he paid slightly less and the employer slightly +more than half the cost. The money thus saved gave the insured person +free medical treatment and a certain weekly sum during the period of +illness. Agricultural labourers were omitted from the act and a +ferment raged on the question of domestic servants, who were +eventually included in its operation. It was practically acknowledged +that this was done to make the Act more workable financially. For +domestic servants were an especially healthy class and, moreover, in +most upper and middle-class households they were already attended by +the family doctor without cost to themselves. + +The company in which the _Eye Witness_ found itself in opposing this +Act was indeed a case of "strange bedfellows." For the opposition was +led by the Conservatives (on the ground that the Act was Socialism). +Many a mistress and many a maid did I hear in those days in good +Conservative homes declaring they would rather go to prison than +"lick Lloyd George's stamps." Most Liberals, on the other hand, +regarded the Act as an example of enlightened legislation for the +benefit of the poor. The _Eye Witness_ saw in it the arrival of the +Servile State. Their main objections cut deep. As with compulsory +education, but in much more far-reaching fashion, this Act took away +the liberty and the personal responsibilities of the poor--and in +doing so put them into a category--forever ticketed and labelled, +separated from the other part of the nation. As people for whom +everything had to be done, they were increasingly at the mercy of +their employers, of Government Inspectors, of philanthropic +societies, increasingly slaves. + +What was meant by the Servile State? It was, said Belloc, an +"arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the +families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labour +for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the +whole community with the mark of such labour." It was, quite simply, +the return of slavery as the condition of the poor: and the +Chesterbelloc did not think, then or ever, that any increase of +comfort or security was a sufficient good to be bought at the price +of liberty. + +In a section of the paper called "Lex versus the Poor" the editor +made a point of collecting instances of oppression. A series of +articles attacked the Mentally Deficient Bill whereby poor parents +could have their children taken from them--those children who most +needed them and whom they often loved and clung to above the others, +and a Jewish contributor to the paper, Dr. Eder, pointed out in +admirable letters how divided was the medical profession itself on +what constituted mental deficiency and whether family life was not +far more likely to develop the mind than segregation with other +deficients in an Institution. + +To the official harriers of the poor were added further inspectors +sent by such societies as the National Society for the Prevention of +Cruelty to Children. Cruelty to children, as Gilbert often pointed +out, is a horrible thing, but very seldom proved of parents against +their own children. The word was stretched to cover anything that +these inspectors called neglect. Lately we have read of a case, and +many like it were reported in the _New Witness_, where failure to +wash children adequately was called cruelty. And what was the remedy? +To take away the father, the breadwinner, to prison. For insufficient +food and clothes to substitute destitution, for insufficient care to +remove the only one the children had to care for them at all: always +to break up the family. + +Worst of all was the question of school attendance: While a child of +three was dying of starvation, the mother was at the Police Court +where she was fined for not sending an older child to school. As she +could not pay the fine her husband was sent to prison for a week. A +child died of consumption. The parents said at the inquest they had +not dared to keep her at home when she got sick, for fear of the +school inspector. + +As he had in _What's Wrong With the World_ been fired by the thought +of the landless poor of England, so now these stories stirred Gilbert +deeply. He saw the philanthropists like the Pharisees, unheeding the +wisdom learned by the Wise Men at Bethlehem: saw them with their busy +pencils peering at the Mother's omissions while the vast crimes of +the State went unchallenged. He wrote a poem called "The Neglected +Child" and "dedicated in a glow of Christian Charity to a +philanthropic Society." + + The Teachers in the temple + They did not lift their eyes + For the blazing star on Bethlehem + Or the Wise Men grown wise. + + They heeded jot and tittle, + They heeded not a jot + The rending voice in Ramah + And the children that were not. + + Or how the panic of the poor + Choked all the fields with flight, + Or how the red sword of the rich + Ran ravening through the night. + + They made their notes; while naked + And monstrous and obscene + A tyrant bathed in all the blood + Of men that might have been. + + But they did chide Our Lady + And tax her for this thing, + That she had lost Him for a time + And sought Him sorrowing. + +To most of the _Eye Witness_ group the fight for freedom was so bound +up with the fight against corruption that all was but one fight. I +think that when they looked back they were too much inclined to see +the shadow of Lloyd George behind them as well as around them: that +in fact the Liberal Party of those years had brought with it a new +descent in political decency--a descent which would have startled +both Gladstone and the more cynical Disraeli. Of this more when we +come to Marconi. Meanwhile there was certainly a whole lot to fight +about and the group responsible for the _Witness_, not content with +the pen, formed a Society entitled "The League for Clean Government," +with Mr. John Scurr as Secretary. This League specialised in +promoting the candidature of independent Members of Parliament for +such vacancies as occurred between general elections, and in +attacking Party "place men." Doubtless other elements were present at +some of these by-elections but the League boasted its success on +several occasions, notably in the three defeats sustained by C. F. G. +Masterman. + +Charles Masterman had been with Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton a member +of the group of young Christian Socialists that drew its inspiration +in great part from Canon Scott Holland. He had gone further than most +of them in his practical sympathy and understanding for the +destitute. With a friend he had taken a workman's flat in the slums +and he had written a somewhat florid but very moving book recording +conditions experienced as well as observed. He was one of the Young +Liberals who entered Parliament full of ardour to fight the battles +of the poor. The sequel as they saw it may best be told by Belloc and +Cecil Chesterton themselves. In _The Party System_ they wrote: + + . . . Mr. Masterman entered Parliament as a Liberal of independent + views. During his first two years in the House he distinguished + himself as a critic of the Liberal Ministry. He criticised their + Education Bill. He criticised with especial force the policy of Mr. + John Burns at the Local Government Board. His conduct attracted the + notice of the leaders of the party. He was offered office, accepted + it, and since then has been silent, except for an occasional + rhetorical exercise in defence of the Government. One fact will be + sufficient to emphasise the change. On March 13th, 1908, Mr. + Masterman voted for the Right to Work Bill of the Labour Party. In + May of the same year he accepted a place with a salary of £1200 a + year--it has since risen to £1500. On April 20th, 1909, he voted, at + the bidding of the Party Whips, against the same Bill which he had + voted for in the previous year. Yet this remarkable example of the + "peril of change"* does not apparently create any indignation or even + astonishment in the political world which Mr. Masterman adorns. On + the contrary, he seems to be generally regarded as a politician of + exceptionally high ideals. No better instance need be recorded of the + peculiar atmosphere it is the business of these pages to describe. + +[* The title of one of Masterman's books was _In Peril of Change_.] + +At the succeeding General Election, Masterman was not re-elected. And +he failed again in a couple of by-elections. In all these elections, +the League for Clean Government campaigned fiercely against him. +There was certainly in the feeling of Belloc and Cecil Chesterton +towards Masterman a great deal of the bitterness that moved Browning +to write, "Just for a handful of silver he left us," and I do not +think there is anything in the history of the paper that created so +strong a feeling against it in certain minds. There seemed something +peculiarly ungenerous in the continued attacks after a series of +defeats, in the insistence with which Masterman's name was dragged +in, always accompanied by sneers. Replying to a remonstrance to this +effect, Cecil Chesterton, then Editor of the _New Witness_, stated +that in his considered opinion it was a duty to make a successful +career impossible to any man convicted of selling his principles for +success. + +I dwell on this matter of Masterman for two reasons. The first is +that it was one of the rare occasions on which Gilbert Chesterton +disagreed with his brother and Belloc. Gilbert was a very faithful +friend: it would be hard to find a broken friendship in his life. He +had moreover much of the power that aroused his enthusiasm in +Browning of going into the depths of a character and discovering the +virtue concealed there. And as with Browning his explanation took +account of elements that really existed but could find no place in a +more narrowly adverse view. + +"Many of my own best friends," he wrote of Masterman, "entirely +misunderstood and underrated him. It is true that as he rose higher +in politics, the veil of the politician began to descend a little on +him also; but he became a politician from the noblest bitterness on +behalf of the poor; and what was blamed in him was the fault of much +more ignoble men. . . . But he was also an organiser and liked +governing; only his pessimism made him think that government had +always been bad, and was now no worse than usual. Therefore, to men +on fire for reform, he came to seem an obstacle and an official +apologist." After G.K. became Editor of the _New Witness_ the attacks +on Masterman ceased, but he did not differ from the two earlier +Editors in his views on the ethics of political action or the +principles of social reform. + +The second reason for which the Masterman matter must be dwelt on is +because it affords the best illustration of one curious fact in +connection with the _Eye_ and _New Witness_ campaign. When the _Life +of Masterman_ recently appeared I seized it eagerly that I might read +an authoritative defence of his position. I searched the Index under +_Eye Witness, New Witness, Cecil Chesterton_ and _League for Clean +Government_. No one of them was mentioned. At last I discovered under +_Belloc_ and _Scurr_ a faint allusion to their activities at a +by-election in which Belloc was coupled with the Protestant Alliance +leader Kensit as part of a contemptible opposition, and the unnamed +League for Clean Government described as "those working with Mr. +Scurr"! Clearly where it is possible to use against something +powerful the weapon of ignoring it as though it were something +obscure, that weapon is itself a powerful one. Against the _New +Witness_ it was used perpetually. + +A paper which included among its contributors Hilaire Belloc, G. K. +Chesterton, J. S. Phillimore, E. C. Bentley, Wells, Shaw, Katharine +Tynan, Desmond McCarthy, F. Y. Eccles, G. S. Street--to name only +those who come first to mind--obviously stood high. Cecil +Chesterton's own editorials, Hugh O'Donnell's picturesque series +_Twenty Years After_, the high level of the reviewing and (oddly +enough, considering the paper's outlook) the financial articles of +Raymond Radclyffe, were all outstanding. The sales (at sixpence) were +never enormous but the readers were on a high cultural level. The +correspondence pages are always interesting. + +The _Eye Witness_ group, besides courage, had high spirits and they +had wit. "Capulet's" rhymes; the series of ballades written by +Baring, Bentley, Phillimore, Belloc and G.K.C.; "Mrs. Markham's +History" written by Belloc; there was little of this quality in the +other weeklies. Side by side with the serious attacks was a line of +satire and of sheer fooling. The silver deal in India was being +attacked in the editorials, while Mrs. Markham explained to Tommy how +good, kind Lord Swaythling, really a Samuel, had lent money to his +brother Mr. Montague (another Samuel) for the benefit of the poor +people of India. The next week Tommy and Rachel grew enthusiastic +about the kindness of Lord Swaythling in _borrowing_ money that +the Indian Government could not use. Mrs. Markham too made Rachel +take a pencil and write out a list of Samuels including the +Postmaster-General, now so busy over the Marconi Case. The next +lesson was about titles. Then came one about policemen, and finally +about company promoters and investments. How a promoter guesses there +is oil somewhere, how money is lent to dig for it ("But, Mamma! How +can money dig?"), how the Company promoter may find no oil, how if +they think he has cheated them the rich men who lent their money can +have him tried by twelve good men and true--(_Tommy:_ "How do they +know the men are good and true, Mamma?" _Mrs. M.:_ "They do this by +taking them in alphabetical order out of a list."). + +Perhaps the combination of irony thinly veiling intensity of purpose, +with humour sometimes degenerating into wild fooling, damned them in +the eyes of many. But there was a more serious obstacle to the real +effectiveness they might otherwise have had. When it was unavoidable +to name the _New Witness_ its opponents referred to it as though to a +"rag." Why was this possible? Principally I think because of the +violence of its language. Most Parliamentary matters to which it made +reference were spoken of as instances of "foul" corruption or "dirty" +business. Transactions by Ministers were said to "stink," while the +Ministers themselves were described as carrying off or distributing +"swag" and "boodle." In Vol. II of the _Eye Witness_, for instance, we +find the "game of boodle," "dirty trick," "Keep your eye on the +Railway Bill: you are going to be fleeced," and "stunt" and "ramp" +_passim_. Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs are always called +"George" and "Isaacs." The General of the Salvation Army is +invariably "Old Booth," while in the headlines the word "Scandal" +constantly recurs. Even admirers were at times like Fox's followers +who + + Groaned "What a passion he was in tonight! + Men in a passion must be in the wrong + And heavens how dangerous when they're built so strong." + Thus the great Whig amid immense applause + Scared off his clients and bawled down his cause, + Undid reform by lauding Revolution + Till cobblers cried "God save the Constitution." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Marconi + + +IN HIS _Autobiography_ Gilbert Chesterton has set down his belief +that the Marconi Scandal will be seen by historians as a landmark in +English history. To him personally the revelations produced by it +were a great shock and gave the death-blow to all that still lingered +of his belief in the Liberal Party. For the rest of his life it may +almost be called an obsession with him. In his eyes it was so great a +landmark that as others spoke of events as pre- or post-war, he +divided the political history of England into pre- and post-Marconi. +It meant as much for his political outlook as the Enclosures for his +social. It is necessary to know what happened in the Marconi Case if +we are to understand a most important element in Chesterton's mental +history. + +The difficulty is to know what did happen. The main lines of a very +complicated bit of history have never, so far as I know, been +disentangled by anyone whose only interest was to disentangle them: +and the partisans have naturally tangled them more. I wrote a draft +chapter after reading the two thousand page report of the +Parliamentary Committee, the six hundred page report of Cecil +Chesterton's Trial, and masses of contemporary journalism. Then, in +the circumstances I have related in the Introduction, I called in my +husband's aid. The rest of this chapter is mainly his. + +I. WHAT THE MINISTERS DID + +The Imperial Conference of 1911 had approved the plan of a chain +of state-owned wireless stations to be erected throughout the +British Empire. The Post Office--Mr. Herbert Samuel being the +Postmaster-General--was instructed to put the matter in hand. After +consideration of competing systems, the Marconi was chosen. The +Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of London--of which Mr. Godfrey Isaacs +was Managing Director--was asked to tender for the work. Its tender +was accepted on March 7, 1912. The main terms of the tender were as +follows: + +The Company was to erect stations in various parts of the Empire at a +cost to the Government of £60,000 per station; these were then to be +operated by the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions +and Colonies concerned; and the Marconi Company was to receive 10% of +the gross receipts. The Agreement was for 28 years, though the +Postmaster-General might terminate it at the end of eighteen years. +But there was one further clause (Clause 10) allowing for termination +_at any time_ if the Government should find it advantageous to use a +different system. + +The acceptance of this tender was only the first stage. A contract +had to be drawn up, and nothing would be finalised till this contract +had been accepted by Parliament. In fact the contract was not +completed till July 19. On that day it was placed on the table of the +House of Commons. + +For the understanding of the Marconi Case, the vital period is the +four months of 1912 between March 7, when the tender was accepted, +and July 19 when the contract was tabled. Let us concentrate upon +that four-month period. The Postmaster-General issued no statement +whatever on the matter but on March 8 the Company sent out a circular +to its shareholders telling them the good news--but making the news +look even better than it was by omitting all reference to Clause 10, +which entitled the Government to substitute some rival system at any +time it pleased. The Postmaster-General issued no correction because, +as he said later, he had not been aware of the omission. + +Immediately after, Godfrey Isaacs left for America to consider the +affairs of the American Marconi Company, capitalised at $1,600,000, +of which he was a Director. More than half its shares were owned by +the English Company. On behalf of the English Company he bought up +the rights of the American Company's principal rival, and then sold +these rights (at a profit not stated but apparently very +considerable) to the American Company for $1,400,000. To handle all +this and allow for vast developments hoped for from this purchase and +from a very favourable agreement Godfrey Isaacs had negotiated with +Western Union, the American Company was to be re-organized as a +$10,000,000 Company--two million shares at $5 each. The American +Company--whose own repute in America was too low for any hope of +raising money on that scale from the American public--seems to have +agreed to the Godfrey Isaacs plan only on condition that the English +Company should guarantee the subscription; and Godfrey Isaacs made +himself personally responsible for placing 500,000 shares. (It should +be remembered that the pound was then worth just under five dollars: +a $5 share was worth £1.1.3, or £1 1/16 in English money.) + +Godfrey Isaacs returned to England. On April 9 he lunched with his +brothers Harry and Rufus--Rufus being Attorney-General in the British +Government. He told them of the arrangements he had made--arrangements +which were not yet made known to the public--and of the new stock +about to be issued, and offered them 100,000 shares, out of the +500,000 for which he had made himself responsible, at the face value +of £1.1.3. Rufus refused--one reason for his refusal being that the +shares were not a good "buy," as the prospects of the Company did not +warrant so large a new issue of capital. Harry took 50,000. + +We now come to the transactions which the public was later to lump +together rather crudely as "Ministers Gambling in Marconis." + +A. On April 17--roughly a week after the luncheon--Rufus Isaacs +bought 10,000 of Harry's shares at £2. He made the point later that +buying from Godfrey would have been improper as Godfrey was director +of a company with which the Government was negotiating, but that it +was all right to buy from Harry who had bought from Godfrey. (Harry +having paid only £1.1.3 was willing to let Rufus have them for the +same price. But Rufus thought it only fair to pay the higher price. +This is all the more remarkable because only a week earlier he had +thought these same shares bad value at roughly half the price he was +now prepared to pay.) Of his 10,000 shares, Rufus immediately sold +1000 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, and 1000 +to the Master of Elibank, who was chief Whip of the Liberal Party +then in office. It is to be noted that no money passed at this time +in any of those transactions: Rufus did not pay Harry, Lloyd George +and Elibank did not pay Rufus. + +Nor did the shares pass. Indeed the shares did not as yet exist, as +it was not till the next day, April 18, that the American Marconi +Company authorised the issue of the new capital. On the day after +that, April 19, the shares were put on the market at £3.5.0. That +same day they rose to £4. In the course of the day Rufus Isaacs sold +700 shares at an average price of £3.6.6, which on the face of it +looks like clearing £3000 more than he had paid for all his shares +and still having 3000 shares left. But he explained later that there +had been pooling arrangements between himself and his brother, and +himself and his two friends: so that the upshot of his day's +transactions was that he had sold 2856 of his own shares, and 357 +each for Lloyd George and Elibank.* The triumvirate therefore still +had 6430 shares of which 1286 belonged to Lloyd George and Elibank. + +[* Rufus' explanation boils down to this: he and Harry had arranged +that whatever either sold in the course of the day should be totalled +and divided in the proportion of their holdings. Rufus sold 7000 +shares, Harry 10,850: a total of 17,850. Rufus had taken 1/5 of +Harry's 50,000 shares, so one-fifth of the shares sold were allotted +as his--i.e. 3570. Lloyd George and Elibank had each taken 1/10 of +Rufus', therefore each was considered to have sold 357.] + +On April 20 these two sold a further 1000 of their 1286 shares at +£3.5/32. + +B. On May 22 Lloyd George and Elibank bought 3000 more shares at +£2.5/32. As they were not due to deliver the shares previously sold +by them at £3.6.6 and £3.5/32 till June 20, this new purchase had +something of the look of a "bear" transaction. + +C. In April and May the Master of Elibank bought 3000 shares for the +account of the Liberal Party, of whose funds he had charge. + +These three transactions are all that the three politicians ever +admitted, and nothing more was ever proved against them. As we have +seen there was no documentary evidence of the principal transaction +(the one I have called A), except that Rufus sold 7000 shares on +April 19. In his acquiring of the shares, no broker was employed. +Rufus did not pay Harry for the shares until January 6, 1913, some +nine months later, when the enquiry was already on. There was no +evidence other than his own word that 10,000 was the number he had +agreed to take or £2 the price that he had agreed to pay, or that he +had bought from Harry and not from Godfrey, or that of the 7000 +shares he had certainly sold at a huge profit on April 19 half were +sold for Harry. There was, indeed, no evidence that the shares were +not a gift. + +Even on what they admitted, they had obviously acted improperly. The +contract with the English Marconi Company was not yet completed, +Parliament had not been informed of its terms, Parliament therefore +had yet to decide whether it would accept or reject it. Three members +of Parliament had committed two grave improprieties: + +(1) They had purchased shares--directly or at one remove--from the +Managing Director of a Company seeking a contract from Parliament, in +circumstances that were practically equivalent to receiving a gift of +money from him. They received shares which the general public could +not have bought till two days later and then only at over 50% more +than the politicians paid.* (On this count, the fact that the shares +were American Marconis made no difference: the point is that they +were valuable shares sold to ministers at a special low price. This +need not have been bribery, but it is a fact that one way of bribing +a man is to buy something from him at more than it is worth, or sell +something to him at less than it is worth.) + +[* H. T. Campbell of Bullett, Campbell & Grenfell, the English +Marconi Company's official brokers, gave evidence before the +Parliamentary Committee that it would have been impossible for the +general public to buy the shares before April 19. And as we have +seen, they opened on that day at £3.5.0.] + +(2) They--and through the Chief Whip's action the whole Liberal +Party, though it did not know it--were financially interested in the +acceptance by Parliament of the contract. For though they had not +bought shares in the English Company (with which the contract was +being made) but with the American Company (which had no direct +interest in the contract), none the less it would have lowered the +value of the American shares if the British Parliament had rejected +the Marconi System and chosen some other in preference. I may say at +once that I feel no certainty that the transaction was a sinister +effort to bribe ministers. But had it been, exactly the right +ministers were chosen. They were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who +has charge of the nation's purse; the Attorney-General, who advises +upon the legality of actions proposed; the Chief Whip, who takes the +Party forces into the voting lobby. It was this same Chief Whip, the +Master of Elibank, that had carried the sale of honours to a new +height in his devotion to the increase of his Party's funds. + +II. THE PARLIAMENTARY ENQUIRY + +On July 19, 1912, the contract was put on the table of the House of +Commons. In the ordinary course it would have come up for a vote some +time before the end of the Parliamentary Session. But criticism of +the contract was growing on the ground that it was too favourable to +the Marconi Company. And rumours were flying that members of the +Government had been gambling in Marconi shares (which, as we have +seen, they had, though not in English Marconis). + +Even before the tabling of the contract, members of Parliament, +notably Major Archer-Shee, a Conservative, had been harrying Mr. +Herbert Samuel, the Postmaster-General. On July 20, and in weekly +articles following, it was attacked as a thoroughly bad contract by a +writer in the _Outlook_, Mr. W. R. Lawson. On August 1, a Labour +Member asked a question in the House about the rising price of +Marconis. The feeling that enquiry was needed was so strong that on +August 6, the last day but one of the session, the Prime Minister +(who knew something of his colleagues' purchase of Marconis but never +mentioned it) promised the House that the Marconi Agreement would not +be rushed through without full discussion. In spite of this Herbert +Samuel* and Elibank both tried hard to get the contract approved that +day or the next. When it was quite clear that Parliament would not +allow this, Herbert Samuel insisted on making a general statement on +the contract. He too knew of the Ministers' dealings in American +Marconis, but did not mention them. There was no debate or division. +The question of ratification or rejection was postponed till the +House should meet again in October. + +[* The argument he put to Major Archer-Shee, M.P. was that the +stations were urgently needed for Imperial defence.] + +On August 8, Cecil Chesterton's paper the _New Witness_ launched its +first attack on the whole deal (though without reference to +Ministerial gambling in Marconis) under the headline "The Marconi +Scandal": + + Isaacs' brother is Chairman of the Marconi Company. It has + therefore been secretly arranged between Isaacs and Samuel that the + British people shall give the Marconi Company a very large sum of + money through the agency of the said Samuel, and for the benefit of + the said Isaacs. Incidentally, the monopoly that is about to be + granted to Isaacs No. 2, through the ardent charity of Isaacs No. 1 + and his colleague the Postmaster-General, is a monopoly involving + antiquated methods, the refusal of competing tenders far cheaper and + far more efficient, and the saddling of this country with corruptly + purchased goods, which happen to be inferior goods. + +The article went on to say that these "swindles" were apt to occur in +any country, but that England alone lacked the will to punish them: +"it is the lack of even a minimum standard of honour urging even +honest men to protest against such villainy that has brought us where +we are." + +In September L. J. Maxse's _National Review_ had a criticism of the +contract by Major Archer-Shee, M.P., with editorial comment as well. +In the same month the _Morning Post_ and the _Spectator_ pressed for +further enquiry. The October number of the _National Review_ +contained a searching criticism of the whole business and called +special attention to the Stock Exchange gamble in American Marconis. + +A few days later--on October 11--the re-assembled House of Commons +held the promised debate. In the light of what we know, it is +fascinating to read how nobody told a lie exactly and the truth was +concealed all the same. Here is Sir Rufus Isaacs. He begins by +formulating the rumours against Mr. Herbert Samuel and Mr. Lloyd +George and himself. But he is careful to formulate them in such a way +that he can truthfully deny them. The rumours, he says, were that the +Ministers had dealt in the shares of a Company with which the +Government was negotiating a contract: "Never from the beginning . . . +have I had one single transaction with the shares of that Company." + +Literally true, as you see. The contract was with the English +Company, the shares he had bought were in the American Company. He +made no allusion to that purchase. + +Mr. Herbert Samuel--who is not accused of having purchased shares +himself but who knew of what his colleagues had done--treads the same +careful line: "I say that these stories that members of the Cabinet, +knowing the contract was in contemplation, and feeling that possibly +the price of shares might rise, themselves, directly or indirectly +bought any of those shares, or took any interest in this Company +through any other party whatever, have not one syllable of truth in +them. Neither I myself nor any of my colleagues have at any time held +one shilling's worth of shares in this Company, directly or +indirectly, or have derived one penny profit from the fluctuations in +their prices." However, he promised a Parliamentary Committee to +enquire into the whole affair. + +Isaacs had denied any transactions with "that Company," Samuel with +"this Company." Neither had ventured to say "the English +Company"--for that would instantly have raised the question of the +American Company. It is an odd truth that has to be phrased so +delicately. Lloyd George, the first of the ministers to speak, +managed better. He flew into a rage with an interjector: "The hon. +member said something about the Government, and he has talked about +'rumours.' I want to know what these rumours are. If the hon. +gentleman has any charge to make against the Government as a whole, +or against individual members of it, I think it ought to be stated +openly. The reason why the Government wanted _a frank discussion +before going to Committee_* was because we wanted to bring here these +rumours, these sinister rumours, that have been passing from one foul +lip to another behind the backs of the House." He sat down, still in +a white heat, without having denied anything. + +[* Italics mine.] + +The Master of Elibank did not deny anything either. He was not there. +He was, indeed, no longer in the House of Commons. He had inherited +the title of Lord Murray of Elibank. He had left England in August +and did not return till the enquiry was over: nor did he send any +communication of any sort. + +As we have seen, no literal lie was told. But Parliament and the +country assumed that the Ministers had denied any gambling in +Marconis of any sort. And the Ministers must have known that this was +what their denials had been taken to mean.* + +[* Rufus Isaacs' son mentions a theory held by some (though he thinks +there are strong arguments against it) that Rufus' silence was due to +instructions from the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, who was not +anxious to have the connection of Lloyd George with the matter +disclosed, "fearing that his personal unpopularity would lead to such +an exacerbation of the attacks that the prestige of the whole +Government might be seriously impaired." (_Rufus Isaacs, First +Marquess of Reading_, pp. 248-9.)] + +On October 29 the names were announced of the members appointed to +the promised Committee of Enquiry. As usual they represented the +various parties in proportion to their numbers in the House. The +Liberals were in office, supported by Irish Nationalists and Labour +Members: 9 members of the Committee (including the Chairman) were +from these parties; 6 were Conservatives. One might have expected +that the careful evasions in the House would have meant only a brief +respite for the Ministers who had been so economical of the truth. +They would appear before the Committee and then the whole thing would +emerge. But though the Committee was appointed at the end of October +and met three times most weeks thereafter, five months went by and no +Minister was called. The plain fact is that Mr. Samuel's department, +the Post Office, slanted the enquiry in a different direction right +at the start by putting in evidence a confidential Blue Book and +suggesting that Sir Alexander King, secretary to the Post Office, be +heard first. + +On the question of the goodness or badness of the contract itself, +the Committee uncovered much that was interesting. It emerged that +the Poulsen System had offered to erect stations at a cost of about +£36,000 less per station than the Marconi, and that the Admiralty +itself had estimated a cost, if they were undertaking the work, about +the same as the Poulsen offer. But, by a confusion as to whether +their figure did or did not include freight charges, the Admiralty +estimate had been put down at £10,000 higher than it was! Nor was +this the only confusion. When Sir Alexander King spoke of +"concessions" made to the Government by the Marconi Company, he +admitted under cross-questioning that there was no written record of +these concessions. He spoke of various vitally important +conversations and was not able to produce a Minute. Letters referred +to were found to have been lost from the Post Office files. + +Further, it appeared that while most rigid tests were to be required +of the other systems, the Marconi people had been constantly taken +almost on their own word alone. "Mr. Isaacs and Mr. Marconi both told +us," said Sir Alexander King at one point, when asked whether he had +had technical advice on a point of working. + +"You will excuse me," said Mr. Harold Smith, "if for the moment I +ignore the opinion of Mr. Marconi and Mr. Isaacs. I ask you who was +the expert who gave you this information." + +Then too as to the terms. The Government had proposed 3% on the gross +takings. Godfrey Isaacs had held out for 10%, and got it. Moreover, +the royalty was to be paid as long as a single Marconi patent was in +use at the stations. Considering that by the Patents Act the +Government had the legal right to take over _any_ invention while +paying reasonable compensation, the provision which gave so high a +royalty to the Marconi Company was severely criticised. Again the +right was given to the Marconi Company to advise on any fresh +invention that should be offered to the Post Office--which meant that +any invention made by their rivals was entirely at their mercy. + +Naturally enough the question was pressed home whether the Post +Office had really sought the advice of its own technical experts. It +transpired that a technical sub-committee had been called once, and +had recommended a further investigation of the Poulsen System. The +report of this sub-committee had been shelved, and the members never +summoned for a second meeting. + +Early in January 1913, the Parliamentary Committee (against the +advice of Herbert Samuel) asked for a special sub-committee of +experts to go into the merits of the various wireless systems and +report within three months at latest. It is not surprising that the +_New Witness_ commented on this as "a surrender of the most decided +type, for it proposes to do what Samuel himself clearly ought to have +done before he entered into the contract." + +The report of this technical sub-committee showed that there had been +a good deal of exaggeration in the first attack by the _New Witness_ +on the worth of the Marconi System. If one single system was to be +used, it was the only one capable of carrying out the Government's +requirements. But the sub-committee held that as wireless was in a +state of rapid development, it would be better not to be tied to any +one system. And they added that while the nature of the contract +itself was not within their terms of reference, they must not be held +to approve it. + +From its examination of the contract, the Committee passed on to +examine journalists and others as to the rumours against Ministers. +And still the Ministers were not called. + +On February 12, 1913, L. J. Maxse, Editor of _The National Review_, +was being examined by the Committee. Suddenly he put his finger on +the precise spot. Having expressed surprise at the non-appearance of +Ministers, he went on: "One might have conceived that they would have +appeared at its first sitting clamoring to state in the most +categorical and emphatic manner that neither directly nor indirectly, +in their own names or in other people's names, have they had any +transactions whatsoever, either in London, Dublin, New York, +Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, or any other financial centre, in any +shares in any Marconi Company throughout the negotiations with the +Government. . . ." + +"Any shares in any Marconi Company": the direct question was at last +put. + +On February 14, just two days later, something very curious happened. +_Le Matin_, a Paris Daily paper, published a story to the effect that +Mr. Maxse had charged that Samuel, Rufus Isaacs and Godfrey Isaacs +had bought shares in the English Marconi Company at 50 francs (about +£2 in those days) before the negotiations with the Government were +started and had resold them at 200 francs (about £8) when the public +learnt that the contract was going through. It was an extraordinary +piece of clumsiness for any paper to have printed such a story: +certainly Mr. Maxse had made no such charge. It was an extraordinary +stroke of luck, if the Ministers wanted to tell their story in Court, +that they should have this kind of clumsy libel to deny. And it is at +least a coincidence that Rufus Isaacs happened, as his son tells us, +to be in Paris when _Le Matin_ printed the story. Samuel and Rufus +Isaacs announced that they would prosecute and that Sir Edward Carson +and F. E. Smith were their counsel. This decision to prosecute a not +very important French newspaper, while taking no such step against +papers in their own country, caused Gilbert Chesterton to write a +"song of Cosmopolitan Courage":* + +[* _New Witness_, Vol. I, p. 655.] + + I am so swift to seize affronts, + My spirit is so high, + Whoever has insulted me + Some foreigner must die. + + I brought a libel action, + For the Times had called me "thief," + Against a paper in Bordeaux, + A paper called _Le Juif_. + + _The Nation_ called me "cannibal" + I could not let it pass-- + I got a retractation + From a journal in Alsace. + + And when _The Morning Post_ raked up + Some murders I'd devised, + A Polish organ of finance + At once apologised. + + I know the charges varied much; + At times, I am afraid + _The Frankfurt Frank_ withdrew a charge + The _Outlook_ had not made. + + And what the true injustice + Of the _Standard's_ words had been, + Was not correctly altered + In the _Young Turk's Magazine_. + + I know it sounds confusing-- + But as Mr. Lammle said, + The anger of a gentleman + Is boiling in my head. + +The hearing of the case against _Le Matin_ came on March 19. As that +paper had withdrawn and apologised only three days after printing the +story, there was no actual necessity for statements by Rufus Isaacs +and Samuel. But they had decided to answer Maxse's question, to admit +the dealings in American Marconis which they had not mentioned to the +House of Commons: or rather to get their lawyer to tell the story and +then answer his questions on the matter in a Court case where there +could be no cross-examination because the Defendants were not +contesting the case. Sir Edward Carson mentioned the American +purchase at the end of a long speech and almost as an afterthought-- +"really the matter is so removed from the charges made in the libel +that I only go into it at all . . . because of the position of the +Attorney-General and because he wishes in the fullest way to state +this deal, so that it may not be said that he keeps anything +whatsoever back." As _The Times_ remarked (9 June, 1913): "The fact +was stated casually, as though it had been a matter at once trifling +and irrelevant. Only persons of the most scrupulous honour, who +desired that nothing whatsoever should remain hid would, it was +suggested, have thought necessary to mention it at all." + +The statement was not really as full as Carson's phrasing would seem +to suggest. The court was told that Rufus Isaacs had bought 10,000 +shares--but not from whom he had bought them: that he had paid market +price, but not what the price was, nor that the shares were not on +the market: that he had sold 1000 shares each to Lloyd George and +Elibank, and had sold some on their behalf, but not that these two +had had further buyings and sellings on their own. It was stated for +Sir Rufus and reiterated by him that he had lost money on the +deal--the reason being that while he had gained on the shares sold, +the shares he still held had slumped. (It is difficult to see why +Rufus Isaacs and later Lloyd George made such a point of the loss on +their Marconi transactions. They can hardly have bought the shares in +order to lose money on them, and their initial sellings showed a very +large profit. Indeed Rufus Isaacs' loss depended on his having paid +his brother £2 for the shares, and again upon the 7000 shares he sold +on the opening day being only partly on his own behalf, and there is +only his own word for these two statements. If Rufus lost, he lost to +his brother, who had been willing to sell at cost price, with whom he +had a pooling arrangement, and who made an enormous profit. If Rufus +lost, the loss remained in the family.) + +A week after the hearing of the _Matin_ case, Rufus Isaacs appeared +for the first time before the Parliamentary Committee, almost five +months after its formation. His problem was not so much to explain +his dealings in American Marconis, as to account for his silence in +the House of Commons. His one desire that day in Parliament, it +seems, had been to answer the "foul lies" being uttered against him, +which he was "quite unable to find any foundation for, quite unable +to trace the source of, quite unable to understand how they were +started": obviously his dealings in American Marconis could have no +possible bearing on these rumours, so he did not mention them: "I +confined my speech entirely . . . to dealing with the four specific +charges _which I formulated."_* + +[* Italics mine.] + +The Chairman, Sir Albert Spicer, suggested that one way to scotch the +rumours would have been to mention his investment in American +Marconis, "because both being Marconis you could easily understand +one might get confused with the other." This question always drove +Rufus Isaacs into a rage and indeed he met all difficult questions +with rages which to this day, across the gulf of thirty years, seem +simulated, and not convincingly. + +Why had he not earlier asked the Committee to hear the story of the +American shares? "I took the view . . . that I had no right to claim +any preferential position . . . and it seemed to me that it might +almost savour of presumption if I had asked the Committee to take my +evidence or any Minister's evidence, out of the ordinary turn in +which the Committee desired it." All the same he had once written a +letter to the Committee asking to be heard but "on consideration did +not send it." + +During his examination the element of strain between the two parties +on the Committee, which had been evident throughout the enquiry, was +very much intensified--Lord Robert Cecil and the Conservatives +courteously but tenaciously trying to get at the truth, the +Ministerialists determined to shield their man. There is a most +unpleasing contrast between the earlier bullying of the journalists +(who after all were not on trial) and the deference the majority now +showed to Ministers (who were). + +Rufus Isaacs twisted and turned incredibly. But he did admit to Lord +Robert Cecil that he had obtained the shares before they were +available to the general public and at a price lower than that at +which they were afterwards introduced to them. He tried later to +modify this admission by saying that he had been told of dealings by +others before April 17, but he could give no details: and the +evidence of the Marconi Company's broker (quoted above) is decisive. + +Two points of special interest emerged from his evidence. The first +was that he had not told the whole story in the _Matin_ case. He now +mentioned that Lloyd George and Elibank had sold a further 1000 of +the shares he held for them on the second day, July 20; and went on +to tell of the purchase of 3000 shares by the same pair, the +so-called "bear" transaction of May 22. The second was more +unpleasing still. He admitted that he had told the story of the +American Marconis privately to two friends _on the Committee_-- +Messrs. Falconer and Booth--who had kept the matter to themselves and +had--or at least appeared to have--continually steered the Committee +away from this dangerous ground. Rufus Isaacs' son actually says that +his father "had informed Mr. Falconer and Mr. Handel Booth privately +of these transactions, in order that they might be forearmed when the +journalists came to give evidence."* + +[* _Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading_, p. 256.] + +On March 28 Lloyd George appeared before the Committee. Mrs. Charles +Masterman gives an account of Rufus Isaacs grooming Lloyd George for +the event: + + There was a really very comic, though somewhat alarming, scene + between Rufus and George on the following Sunday. George had to give + evidence on the Monday--the following day--and Rufus discovered that + George was still in a perfect fog as to what his transaction really + had been, and began talking about "buying a bear." I have never seen + Rufus so nearly lose his temper, and George got extremely sulky, + while Rufus patiently reminded him what he had paid, what he still + owed, when he had paid it, who to, and what for. It was on that + occasion also that Charlie and Rufus tried to impress upon him with + all the force in their power to avoid technical terms and to stick as + closely as possible to the plainest and most ordinary language. _As + is well known, George made a great success of his evidence_.* + (Italics mine.) + +[* _C. F. G. Masterman_, p. 255.] + +I cannot imagine why she thought so. Hugh O'Donnell's description in +the _New Witness_ of Isaacs and Lloyd George as they appeared before +the Committee accords perfectly with the impression produced by a +reading of the evidence: + + . . . While the simile of a panther at bay, anxious to escape, but + ready with tooth and claw, might be applied to Sir Rufus Isaacs, + something more like "a rat in a corner" might be suggested by the + restless, snapping, furious little figure which succeeded. Let us + compromise by saying that Mr. Lloyd George was singularly like a + spitting, angry cat, which had got, perhaps, out of serious danger + from her pursuers, but which caterwauled and spat and swore with + vigour and venomousness quite surprising in that diminutive bulk. + "Dastardly," "dishonourable," "disgraceful," "disreputable," + "skulking," "cowardly!" + +Asked why he had not mentioned his Marconi purchases in the House of +Commons, Lloyd George gave two answers: (1) "There was no time on a +Friday afternoon" (2) "I could not get up and take time when two +Ministers had already spoken." Why had he not asked to be heard +sooner by the Committee? He understood that Sir Rufus had expressed +the willingness of all the accused Ministers to be heard. Like Sir +Rufus, Lloyd George mentioned that he had lost money on his Marconi +transactions. + +The obstruction within the Committee continued to the end. The +question had arisen whether Godfrey had had the right to sell the +shares at his own price or for his own profit. He had sold a +considerable number of shares to relations and friends at £1.1.3, +whereas shares were sold to the general public at £3.5.0. Others of +his shares he sold on the Stock Exchange at varying prices, all high. +But were the shares his? Or did they belong to the English Company? +If they were his he was entitled to sacrifice vast profits on some by +selling at cost to his relations, and to take solid profits on others +by selling at what he could get in the open market. But if he was +simply selling as an agent of the Company, he had no right to make so +fantastic a present of one lot of shares and was bound to hand over +to the Company profits made on the others. + +He told the Committee that the 500,000 shares had been sold to him +outright but that he had passed on £46,000 of profits to the Company. +He said that a record of this sale of 500,000 shares to him would be +found in the minutes of the English Company. The books of the Company +were inspected and it was found that no such minute existed. Lord +Robert Cecil naturally wished to recall Godfrey Isaacs to explain the +discrepancy between his statements and the records. The usual 8 to 6 +majority decided that there was no need to recall Godfrey. It looked +rather as if the shares Godfrey had sold to Harry and Harry to Rufus +at such favourable prices belonged to--and should have been sold for +the profit of--the Company. + +On May 7 the Committee concluded its hearings and its members were +marshalling their ideas for the Report. But there was one fact for +them and the public still to learn. Early in June they were re-called +to hear about it. A London stockbroker had absconded: a trustee was +appointed to handle his affairs and it was discovered that the +fleeing stockbroker had acted for the still absent Elibank, had +indeed bought American Marconis for him--a total of 3000: and as it +later appeared, these had been bought for the funds of the Liberal +Party. The comment of _The Times_ (June 9, 1913) on "the totally +unnecessary difficulty which has been placed in the way of getting at +the truth" seems moderate enough. + +III. THE TRIAL OF CECIL CHESTERTON + +Meanwhile the _New Witness_ had not been neglecting its +self-appointed task of striking at every point that looked +vulnerable. On January 9, 1913, an article appeared attacking the +city record of Mr. Godfrey Isaacs and listing the bankrupt +companies--there were some twenty of them--of which he had been +promoter or director. Some more ardent spirit in the _New Witness_ +office sent sandwichmen to parade up and down in front of Godfrey +Isaacs' own office bearing a placard announcing his "Ghastly +failures." Cecil Chesterton said later that he had not ordered this +to be done, but he refused to disclaim responsibility. The placard +was the last straw. Godfrey's solicitors wrote to Cecil saying that +Godfrey would prosecute unless Cecil promised to make no further +statement reflecting on his honour till both had given evidence +before the Parliamentary Committee. Cecil replied: "I am pleased to +hear that your client, Mr. Godfrey Isaacs, proposes to bring an +action against me." And in the _New Witness_ (February 27, 1913) he +wrote: "We are up against a very big thing. . . . You cannot have the +honour (and the fun) of attacking wealthy and powerfully entrenched +interests without the cost. We have counted the cost; we counted it +long ago. We think it good enough--much more than good enough." + +The case came on at the Old Bailey on May 27. It is worth recalling +the exact position at this time. The Parliamentary Committee had +concluded its hearings three weeks earlier and was now preparing its +report. (Cecil Chesterton had not given evidence before it, for +though he had frequently demanded to be summoned, when at last the +summons came he excused himself on the plea of ill-health and the +further plea that he wished to reserve his evidence for his own +trial.) the _Matin_ case had been heard a couple of months earlier. +Everything that was ever to be known about ministerial dealings in +Marconis was by now known, except for Elibank's separate purchase on +behalf of the Party Funds, which was made public just at the end of +the trial. + +Sir Edward Carson and F. E. Smith were again teamed, as in the +_Matin_ case. The charge was criminal libel. Cecil insisted on facing +the charge alone. His various contributors had joined in the attack +but Cecil would not give the names of the authors of unsigned +articles and took full responsibility as Editor. Carson's opening +speech for the Prosecution divided the six alleged libels under two +main heads: One set, said Carson, charged Godfrey Isaacs with being a +corrupt man who induced his corrupt brother to use his influence with +the corrupt Samuel to get a corrupt contract entered into. The +opening attack under this head has already been quoted. Later +attacks did not diminish in violence: "the swindle or rather +theft--impudent and barefaced as it is": "when Samuel was caught with +his hand in the till (or Isaacs if you prefer to put it that way)." + +The second set charged that Godfrey Isaacs had had transactions with +various companies which, had the Attorney-General not been his +brother, would have got him prosecuted. There is the same violence +here: "This is not the first time in the Marconi affair that we find +these two gentlemen [Godfrey and Rufus] swindling": and again: "the +files at Somerset House of the Isaacs companies cry out for vengeance +on the man who created them, who manipulated them, who filled them +with his own creatures, who worked them solely for his own ends, and +who sought to get rid of some of them when they had served his +purpose by casting the expense of burial on to the public purse." + +There is no need to describe the case in detail. On the charges +concerned with the contract and ministerial corruption, the same +witnesses (with the notable exception of Lloyd George) gave much the +same evidence as before the Parliamentary Committee. Very little that +was new emerged. The contract looked worse than ever after Cecil +Chesterton's Counsel, Ernest Wild, had examined witnesses, but Mr. +Justice Phillimore insisted that it had nothing to do with the case +"whether the contract was badly drawn or improvident." + +But indeed all this discussion of the contract was given an air of +unreality by the extraordinary line the Chesterton Defence took. It +distinguished between the two sets of charges, offering to justify +the second (concerning Godfrey Isaacs' business record) but claiming +that the first set brought accusation of corruption not against +Godfrey but against Rufus and Herbert Samuel--who were not the +prosecutors. It was an impossible position to say that Ministers were +fraudulently giving a fraudulent contract to Godfrey Isaacs but that +this did not mean that he was in the fraud. Cecil showed up unhappily +under cross-examination on this matter, but from the point of view of +his whole campaign worse was to follow: for Cecil withdrew the +charges of corruption he had levelled at the Ministers! + +Here are extracts from the relevant sections of the cross-examination +by Sir Edward Carson: + + Carson: And do you now accuse him [Godfrey Isaacs] of any + abominable business--I mean in relation to obtaining the contract? + + Cecil Chesterton: Yes, certainly; I now accuse Mr. Isaacs of very + abominable conduct between March 7 and July 19. + + Carson: Do you accuse the Postmaster General of dishonesty or + corruption? + + C. Chesterton: What I accused the Postmaster General of was of + having given a contract which was a byword for laxity and thereby + laying himself open reasonably to the suspicion that he was + conferring a favour on Mr. Godfrey Isaacs because he was the + Attorney-General's brother. + + Carson: I must repeat my question, do you accuse the + Postmaster-General of anything dishonest or dishonourable? + + C. Chesterton: After the Postmaster-General's denials on oath I + must leave the question; I will not accuse him of perjury. + + Carson: And therefore you do not accuse him of anything dishonest + or dishonourable? + + AFTER SOME FURTHER QUESTIONING + + Judge: That is evasion. Do you or do you not accuse him? + + C. Chesterton: I have said "No." + + LATER + + C. Chesterton: My idea at that time was that Sir Rufus Isaacs had + influenced Mr. Samuel to benefit Godfrey Isaacs. + + Carson: You have not that opinion now? + + C. Chesterton: Sir Rufus has denied it on oath and I accepted his + denial. + +Cecil still insisted that though the Ministers had not been +corrupted, what had come to light about Godfrey's offer of American +Marconi shares to his brother showed that Godfrey had tried to +corrupt them. Godfrey could not have enjoyed the case very much. +There was much emphasis on his concealment of Clause 10 (allowing the +Government to terminate at any time): and Sir Alexander King, +secretary to the Post Office, admitted that Godfrey Isaacs had asked +that it be kept quiet: but this was not among the accusations Cecil +had levelled at him. In his summing up, Mr. Justice Phillimore +indicated the possibility that the shares Godfrey had so gaily sold +belonged not to himself but to the English Marconi Company--merely +adding that this question was not relevant to the present case. +Further the record of his company failures _was_ rather ghastly. + +Here is a section of his cross-examination as to the companies he had +been connected with before the Marconi Company--remember that there +were twenty of them! + + Wild: I am trying to discover a success. + + Judge: It is not an imputation against a man that he has been a + failure. + + Wild: Here are cases after cases of failure. + + Isaacs: That is my misfortune. + + Judge: You might as well cross-examine any speculative widow. + + Wild: A speculative widow would not be concerned in the management. + + * * * + + Wild: Can you point to one success except Marconi in the whole of + your career? + + Isaacs: In companies? + + Wild: Yes. + + Isaacs: A complete success, no; I should not call any one of them a + complete success, but I may say that each of them was an endeavour to + develop something new. + +But Carson had made the point in his opening speech that though +Godfrey Isaacs had been connected with so many failures, he had not +been accused by the shareholders of anything dishonourable: in his +closing speech he pointed out that "not one single City man had been +brought forward to say that he had been deceived to the extent of one +sixpence by the representations of Mr. Isaacs." And indeed the +evidence called by the Defence in this present case, however +suspicious it may have made some of his actions appear, did not +establish beyond doubt any actual illegality. + +The trial ended on June 9. The Judge summed up heavily against Cecil +Chesterton. The jury was out only forty minutes. The verdict was +"Guilty." Cecil Chesterton, says the _Times_, "smiled and waved his +hand to friends and relations who sat beside the dock." The Judge +preached him a solemn little homily and then imposed a fine of £100 +and costs. The Chestertons and all who stood with them held that so +mild a fine instead of a prison sentence for one who had been found +guilty of criminal libel on so large a scale was in itself a moral +victory. "It is a great relief to us," ran the first Editorial in the +_New Witness_ after the conclusion of the trial, "to have our hands +free. We have long desired to re-state our whole case about the +Marconi disgrace, in view of the facts that are now before us and the +English people. . . . When we began our attack . . . we were striking +at something very powerful and very dangerous . . . we were striking +at it in the dark. The politicians saw to that. Our defence is that +if we had not ventured to strike in the dark, we and the people of +England should be in the dark still." + +There can be no question of Cecil Chesterton's courage. But he may +have exaggerated a little in saying that if the _New Witness_ had not +struck in the dark the nation would still be in the dark: Parliament +had already refused to approve the contract without proper discussion +and the _Outlook_ was attacking vigorously, _before_ the first _New +Witness_ attack. And there are grave drawbacks to the making of +charges in the dark which later have to be withdrawn. Cecil's +withdrawal of his charges against the Ministers and his failure to +substantiate his charges against Godfrey's company record may have +done more to hinder than help the cause of clean government. But his +courage remains: and, if one has to choose, one prefers the +immoderate man who said more than he knew to the careful men who said +so much less. Gilbert giving evidence at the trial had said that he +envied his brother the dignity of his present position. And with the +Isaacs brothers in mind, one sees the point. + +IV. AFTER THOUGHTS + +Four days after the verdict against Cecil Chesterton, the +Parliamentary Committee produced its report. There had been a draft +report somewhat critical of the Marconi-buying Ministers by the +Chairman, Sir Albert Spicer; and another considerably more critical +by Lord Robert Cecil. Lord Robert's report said that Rufus Isaacs had +committed "grave impropriety in making an advantageous purchase of +shares . . . upon advice and information not yet fully available to +the public. . . . By doing so he placed himself, however unwittingly, +in a position in which his private interests or sense of obligation +might easily have been in conflict with his public duty. . . ." Of +his silence in the House, Lord Robert said: "We regard that reticence +as a grave error of judgment and as wanting in frankness and in +respect for the House of Commons." + +Upon this Rufus Isaacs' son comments: "The vehemence of this language +was not calculated to commend the draft to the majority of the +Committee." Vehemence seems hardly the word; but at any rate the +Committee did not adopt either Lord Robert's report or Sir Albert +Spicer's. + +By the usual party vote of 8 to 6, it adopted a report prepared by +Mr. Falconer (one of the two whom Rufus Isaacs had approached +privately) which simply took the line that the Ministers had acted in +good faith and refrained from criticising them. + +Parliament debated the matter a few days later on a Conservative +motion: "That this House regrets the transactions of certain of its +Ministers in the shares of the Marconi Company of America, and the +want of frankness displayed by Ministers in their communications on +the subject to the House." Rufus Isaacs' son speaks of the certain +ruin of his father's career if "by some unpredictable misadventure" +the motion had been carried. It would indeed have had to be an +"unpredictable misadventure" for the voting was on the strictest +party lines: which means that the House did not express its real +opinion at all: the motion was defeated by 346 to 268. Lloyd George +and Rufus Isaacs expressed regret for any indiscretion there might +have been in their actions: Rufus explained that he would not have +bought the shares--"if I had thought that men could be so suspicious +of any action of mine." In the debate the Leader of the Opposition, +Arthur Balfour, somewhat disdainfully refused to make political +capital out of the business. Lloyd George and Isaacs were loudly +cheered by their own Party--though whether they were cheered for +having bought American Marconis or for having concealed the purchase +from the House there is now no means of discovering. At any rate +their careers were not damaged: the one went on to become Lord Chief +Justice of England and later Viceroy of India: the other became Prime +Minister during the war of 1914-1918. + +One question arising from the episode is whether it meant what Cecil +Chesterton and Belloc thought it meant in the world of party +politics, or something entirely different. They seem throughout to +have assumed that their thesis of collusion between the Party Leaders +was proved by this scandal: it seems to me quite as easy to make the +case that it was _disproved_. + +A Conservative first raises the matter by inconvenient questions in +the House. A group of young Conservatives pay the costs of Cecil +Chesterton's defence. When a Parliamentary Committee is appointed to +enquire into the alleged corruption, the story of every session +becomes one of a Conservative minority trying hard to ferret out the +truth and a ministerial majority determined to prevent their +succeeding. Finally the leading Conservative Commissioner, Lord +Robert Cecil, issues a restrained but most damning report which is, +as a matter of course, rejected by the Liberal majority. + +A Conservative M.P. told me he thought the great mistake made was +that it had all been made "too much of a party question." Unless you +already disbelieved quite violently in the existence of the two +parties this would certainly be the effect upon you of reading the +report of the Commission Sessions, and all that can be set against it +is the fact that Mr. Balfour did, in the House of Commons, utter a +conventional form of words which, as has been said, really amounted +to a refusal to make political capital out of the affair. + +I do not say, for I do not pretend to know, if this is the correct +interpretation: it is certainly the obvious one. + +Douglas Jerrold in a brilliant article on Belloc,* treats his theory +of the Party System as a false one, and maintains that he mistook for +collusion that degree of co-operation that alone could enable a +country to be governed at all under a party system. A certain +continuity must be preserved if, in the old phrase, "The King's +Government is to be carried on"--but such continuity did not spell a +corrupt collusion. If at this distance of time such a view can be +held by a man of Mr. Jerrold's ability it could certainly be held at +the time by the majority--and it may be that the continual assumption +of an unproved fact got in the way in the fight against more obvious +evil. + +[* "Hilaire Belloc and the Counter Revolution" in _For Hilaire +Belloc_.] + +For bound up with this question is another: _The Eye Witness_ seemed +so near success and yet never quite succeeded. Might it have done so +had it been founded with a single eye to creative opportunity--to the +attack on the Servile State and the building of some small beginning +of an alternative? _G.K.'s Weekly_ was a slight improvement from that +point of view--for it did create the Distributist League; but both +papers, I think, had from their inception a divided purpose that made +failure almost inevitable. + +The fight against corruption which had been placed equal with the +fight for property and liberty at the start of the _Eye Witness_ is a +noble aim. But, like the other, it is a life work. To do it a man +must have time to spend verifying rumours or exploding them, +following up clues, patiently waiting on events. I began to read the +files with an assumption of the accuracy of the claims of the _Eye_ +and _New Witness_ as to its own achievement in all this, but when the +dates and facts in the Marconi case had been tabulated for me +chronologically I began to wonder. Again and again the editor stated +that _The New Witness_ had been first to unearth the Marconi matter. +But it hadn't. As we have seen, questions in the House and attacks in +other papers had _preceded_ their first mention of the subject. + +So too the statement that the Marconi affair had proved how little +Englishmen cared about corruption seemed almost absurd when one read +not only the Conservative but also the Liberal comment of the time. +"Political corruption is the Achilles heel of Liberalism," said an +outstanding Liberal Editor; while Hugh O'Donnell in the _New Witness_ +paraphrased the wail of the "Cadbury" papers: + + 'Tis the voice of the Cocoa + I hear it exclaim + O Geordie, dear Geordie + Don't do it again. + +Just how scandalous _was_ the Marconi scandal? At this distance of +time it is difficult to arrive at any clear view. There are two main +problems--the contract and the purchase of American Marconis. + +The contract seems very definitely to have been unduly favourable to +the Company; clauses were so badly drawn that they had to be +supplemented by letters which had no legal effect; documents were +lost, other tenders misinterpreted, other systems perhaps not fully +examined, the report of a sub-committee shelved, Godfrey Isaacs +allowed to issue a misleading report without correction from the Post +Office. It all may spell corruption: but it need not. No one familiar +with the workings of a Government department is likely to be +surprised at any amount of muddle and incompetence. Matters are +forgotten and then in the effort to make up for lost time important +steps are simply omitted. Officials are pig-headed and unreasonable. +And as to lost documents-- + +What of the ministers' dealings in shares? Godfrey may have been +using Rufus to purchase ministerial favour. If so, he could hardly +have done so on the comparatively small scale of the dealings known +to us. The few thousand involved could not have meant an enormous +amount to Rufus. He had, it is true, begun his career on the Stock +Exchange, found himself insolvent and been "hammered." But he had +gone on to make large sums at the Bar--up to thirty thousand pounds a +year; and his salary as Attorney-General was twenty thousand a year. + +There may, of course, have been far heavier purchases than we know +about: the piece-by-piece emergence of what we do know gives us no +confidence that all the pieces ever emerged. We have only the word of +the two brothers for most of the story and one comes to feel that +their word has no great meaning. But, allowing for all that, it is +possible that Godfrey may have wanted Rufus to have the American +shares out of family affection; of the shares Godfrey personally +disposed of, a very large number went to relations and close +friends--mother, sisters, his wife's relations--who certainly could +not help to get his contract through Parliament. If this, the most +charitable interpretation, is also the true one, Rufus and his +political friends acted with considerable impropriety in snatching at +this opportunity of quick and easy money. The rest of the story is of +their efforts to prevent this impropriety being discovered. Had they +mentioned it openly in Parliament on October 11, the matter might +have ended there. But they lacked the nerve: the occasion passed: and +nothing remained, especially for Rufus, but evasion, shiftiness, +half-truth passing as whole truth, the farce of indignant virtue--a +performance which left him not a shred of dignity and ought to have +made it unthinkable that he should ever again be given public office. +The perfect word on the whole episode was uttered, not by either +Gilbert or Cecil Chesterton or by any of their friends, but by +Rudyard Kipling. The case had meant a great deal to him. On June 15, +a Conservative neighbour of Kipling wrote to Gilbert: + + I cannot let the days pass without writing to congratulate you and + your brother on the result of the Isaacs Trial. . . . I do feel, as + many thousands of English people must feel, that the _New Witness_ is + fighting on the side of English Nationalism and that is our common + battle. My neighbour, Rudyard Kipling, has followed every phase of + the fight with interest of such a kind that it almost precluded his + thinking of anything else at all and when he gets hold of the _New + Witness_ (my copy) I never can get it back again. You see, however + much we have all disagreed--do disagree--we are all in the same boat + about a lot of things of the first rank. . . . We can't afford to + differ just now if we do agree--it's all too serious. + +When Isaacs was appointed Viceroy of India, Kipling wrote the poem: + + GEHAZI + + Whence comest thou, Gehazi + So reverend to behold + In scarlet and in ermine + And chain of England's gold? + From following after Naaman + To tell him all is well; + Whereby my zeal has made me + A judge in Israel. + + Well done, well done, Gehazi, + Stretch forth thy ready hand, + Thou barely 'scaped from Judgment, + Take oath to judge the land. + Unswayed by gift of money + Or privy bribe more base, + Or knowledge which is profit + In any market place. + + Search out and probe, Gehazi, + As thou of all canst try + The truthful, well-weighed answer + That tells the blacker lie: + The loud, uneasy virtue, + The anger feigned at will, + To overbear a witness + And make the court keep still. + + Take order now, Gehazi, + That no man talk aside + In secret with the judges + The while his case is tried, + Lest he should show them reason, + To keep the matter hid, + And subtly lead the questions + Away from what he did. + + Thou mirror of uprightness, + What ails thee at thy vows, + What means the risen whiteness + Of skin between thy brows? + The boils that shine and burrow, + The sores that slough and bleed-- + The leprosy of Naaman + On thee and all thy seed? + + Stand up, stand up, Gehazi, + Draw close thy robe and go + Gehazi, judge in Israel. + A leper white as snow! + +As the _Times_ leading article of June 19, 1913, put it: "A man is +not blamed for being splashed with mud. He is commiserated. But if he +has stepped into a puddle which he might easily have avoided, we say +that it is his own fault. If he protests that he did not know it was +a puddle, we say that he ought to know better; but if he says that it +was after all quite a clean puddle, then we judge him deficient in +the sense of cleanliness. And the British public like their public +men to have a very nice sense of cleanliness." + +That, fundamentally, was what troubled Gilbert Chesterton then and +for the rest of his life. He was not himself an investigator of +political scandals--in that field he trusted his brother and Belloc, +and on this particular matter Cecil had certainly said more than he +knew and possibly more than was true. But it did not take an expert +to know that some of the men involved in the Marconi Case had no very +nice sense of cleanliness: and these men were going to be dominant in +the councils of England, and to represent England in the face of the +world, for a long time to come. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +The Eve of the War (1911-1915) + + +DURING THE EARLIER YEARS of the _New Witness_ Gilbert had nothing to +do with the editing, and his contributions to it were only part of +the continuing volume of his weekly journalism. It would be almost +impossible to trace all the articles in papers and magazines that +were never republished: the volumes of essays appearing year by year +probably contained the best among them. He was still in 1911 writing +for the _Daily News_ and every week until his death he continued to +do "Our Notebook" for the _Illustrated London News_. I have found an +unpublished ballade he wrote on the subject: + + BALLADE OF A PERIODICAL + + In icy circles by the Behring Strait, + In moony jungles where the tigers roar, + In tropic isles where civil servants wait, + And wonder what the deuce they're waiting for, + In lonely lighthouses beyond the Nore, + In English country houses crammed with Jews, + Men still will study, spell, perpend and pore + And read the Illustrated London News. + + Our fathers read it at the earlier date + And twirled the funny whiskers that they wore + Ere little Levy got his first estate + Or Madame Patti got her first encore. + While yet the cannon of the Christian tore + The lords of Delhi in their golden shoes + Men asked for all the news from Singapore + And read the Illustrated London News. + + But I, whose copy is extremely late + And ought to have been sent an hour before + I still sit here and trifle with my fate + And idly write another ballad more. + I know it is too late; and all is o'er, + And all my writings they will now refuse + I shall be sacked next Monday. So be sure + And read the Illustrated London News. + + ENVOY + + Prince, if in church the sermon seems a bore + Put up your feet upon the other pews, + Light a Fabrica de Tabagos Flor + And read the Illustrated London News. + +Debating and lecturing went on, and an amusing letter from Bernard +Shaw shows the preparations for a Three Star Show--Shaw against +Chesterton with Belloc in the chair--in 1911. An exactly similar +debate years later was published in a slender volume entitled _Do We +Agree?_ On both occasions the crowd was enormous and many had to be +turned away. All three men were immensely popular figures and all +three were at their best debating in a hall of moderate size where +swift repartee could be followed by the whole audience. + +Gilbert always shone on these occasions. The challenge of a debate +brought forth all his powers of wit and humour. His opponent +furnished material on which he could work. And how he enjoyed +himself! Frank Swinnerton once heard him laugh so much that he gave +himself hiccups for the rest of the evening. I heard him against Miss +Cicely Hamilton and against Mr. Selfridge and felt the only drawback +to be that the fight was so very unequal. The Selfridge debate in +particular was sheer cruelty, so utterly unaware was the business man +that he was being intellectually massacred by a man who regarded all +that Selfridge's stores stood for as the ruin of England. +Occasionally Mr. Selfridge looked bewildered when the audience rocked +with laughter at some phrase that clearly conveyed no meaning to him +at all. But so complete was his failure to understand what it was all +about that when the meeting was over he asked if Chesterton would not +write his name with a diamond on a window of his store already graced +with many great names. For once Chesterton was at a loss for words. +"Oh, how jolly!" he murmured feebly. + +Very different was it when he debated with Bernard Shaw with Belloc +as third performer. + + Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. + 27th Oct. 1911. + + Don't be dismayed: this doesn't need a reply. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + With reference to this silly debate of ours, what you have to bear + in mind is this. + + I am prepared to accept any conditions. If they seem unfair to me + from the front of the house, all the better for me; therefore do not + give me that advantage unless you wish to, or are--as you probably + are--as indifferent to the rules as I am. + + The old Hyndman-Bradlaugh & Shaw-Foote debates (S-F. was a + two-nighter) were arranged thus. Each debater made 3 speeches: 1 of + 30 minutes, 1 of 15 and 1 of 10. Strict time was kept (the audiences + were intensely jealous of the least departure from the rules); and + the chairman simply explained the conditions and called Time without + touching the subject of debate. + + The advantages of this were, (a) that the opponent or the opener + could introduce fresh matter up to the end of his second speech, and + was tied up in that respect for the last 10 minutes only, and (b) + that the debate was one against one, and not one against two (and + with less time allowed for him at that), as it must have been had the + chairman dealt with the subject. + + The disadvantages for us are that we both want Belloc to let + himself go (I simply thirst for the blood of his Servile State--I'll + Servile him); and nobody wants to tie you down to matter previously + introduced when you make your final reply. We shall all three talk + all over the shop--possibly never reaching the Socialism + department--and Belloc will not trouble himself about the rules of + public meeting and debate, even if there were any reason to suppose + that he is acquainted with them. (Do you recollect how Parnell and + Biggar floored the House in the palmy days of obstruction by meanly + getting up the subject of public order, which no one else suspected + the existence of?) + + I therefore conclude that we had better make it to some extent a + clowns' cricket match, and go ahead as in the debates with Sanders & + Macdonald & Cicely Hamilton, which were all wrong technically. In a + really hostile debate it is better to be as strict as possible; but + as this is going to be a performance in which three Macs who are on + the friendliest terms in private will belabor each other recklessly + on wooden scalps and pillowed waistcoats and trouser seats, we need + not be particular. + + Still, you had better know exactly what you are doing: hence this + wildly hurried scrawl. + + Did you see my letter in Tuesday's _Times?_ Magnificent! + + My love to Mrs. Chesterton, and my most distinguished consideration + to Winkle.* To hell with the Pope! + +[* The Chestertons' dog who preceded Quoodle of the poem.] + + Ever + + G.B.S. + + P.S. I told Sanders to explain to you that you would be entitled to + half the gate (or a third if Belloc shares) and that you were likely + to overlook this if you were not warned. I take it that you have + settled this somehow. + +At the second of these debates Belloc opened the proceedings by +announcing to the audience "You are about to listen, I am about to +sneer." His only contribution to the debate was to recite a poem: + + Our civilisation + Is built upon coal + Let us chant in rotation + Our civilisation + That lump of damnation + Without any soul + Our civilisation + Is built upon coal. + +Bernard Shaw was on the friendliest terms with the others and admired +their genius but thought it ill directed. Belloc, he had told +Chesterton, was "wasting prodigious gifts" in the service of the Pope. + +"I have not met G.K.C.: Shaw always calls him a man of colossal +genius" writes Lawrence of Arabia to a friend. + +As a lecturer Chesterton's success was less certain than as a +debater. Many of his greatest admirers say they have heard him give +very poor lectures. He was often nervous and worried beforehand. "As +a lecture," wrote the _Yorkshire Weekly Post_ after a performance +in this year (1911), "it was a fiasco, but as an exhibition of +Chesterton it was pleasing." Although his writing appeared almost +effortless he did in fact take far more pains about it than he did in +preparing for a lecture. He seemed quite incapable of remembering the +time or place of appointment, or of getting there on time, if at all. +Stories are told of his non-appearance on various platforms. My +husband remembers a meeting in a London theatre at which Chesterton +had been billed as one of the speakers. The meeting, arranged by the +Knights of the Blessed Sacrament, was well under way before he +arrived, panting but unperturbed. His apology ran something like +this: "As knights you will understand my not being here at the +beginning, for the whole point of knighthood was that the knight +should arrive late but not too late. Had St. George not been late +there would have been no story. Had he been too late, there would +have been no princess." + +Even more annoying was his habit of beginning his lecture by saying +he had not prepared it. Such a remark is not likely to please any +audience, least of all an audience that has paid for admission and +knows that the lecturer is receiving a large fee. But money, whether +he was receiving it or giving it away, meant nothing to him. He had +not a strong voice, and I have seen him, when a microphone was +provided, holding a paper of notes between himself and it. An ardent +admirer of his writing told me he made far too many jokes about his +size. Yet how pleasing they sometimes were: when his Chairman for +instance, after a long wait, said he had feared a traffic accident: +"Had I met a tram-car," Chesterton replied, "it would have been a +great, and if I may say so, an equal encounter." + +He thought badly of his own lecturing and began once by saying: "I +might call myself a lecturer; but then again I fear some of you may +have attended my lectures." + +Actually, in spite of the jokes, his thoughts were centred entirely +on his subject, not on himself. An anonymous Society Diarist quoted +by Cosmo Hamilton writes of an occasion when: "he was given, rather +foolishly, a little gold period chair and as he made his points it +slowly collapsed under him. He rose just in time and sinking into +another chair that someone put behind him began at the word he had +last spoken. No acting could have secured such an effect of complete +indifference. It was evident that he had barely noticed the incident." + +Ellis Roberts completes the picture. He knew Gilbert already as a +brilliant talker and came to hear him from a platform: + +"I remember the manner of his lecture. It seemed to be written on a +hundred pieces of variously shaped paper, written in ink and pencil +(of all colours) and in chalk. All the pages were in a splendid and +startling disorder and I remember being at first a little +disappointed. Then the papers were abandoned and G.K.C. talked."* + +[* _Reading for Pleasure_, p. 96.] + +At this time Bernard Shaw scored a victory over his friend. For +beside lecturing, journalism and the publication of three +considerable and two minor books, Chesterton between 1911 and the War +wrote the play that Shaw had been so insistently demanding. The books +were: _Manalive_ 1911, _A Miscellany of Men_ (Essays) 1912, _The +Victorian Age in Literature_ February 1913, _The Wisdom of Father +Brown_ 1914, _The Flying Inn_ 1914. The play was _Magic_ produced at +the Little Theatre in October 1913. One who admired it was George +Moore. He wrote to Forster Bovill (November 24, 1913): + + I followed the comedy of _Magic_ from the first line to the last with + interest and appreciation, and I am not exaggerating when I say that + I think of all modern plays I like it the best. Mr. Chesterton wished + to express an idea and his construction and his dialogue are the best + that he could have chosen for the expression of that idea: therefore, + I look upon the play as practically perfect. The Prologue seems + unnecessary, likewise the magician's love for the young lady. That + she should love the magician is well enough, but it materialises him + a little too much if he returns that love. I would have preferred her + to love him more and he to love her less. But this spot, if it be a + spot, is a very small one on a spotless surface of excellence. + + I hope I can rely upon you to tell Mr. Chesterton how much I + appreciated his Play as I should like him to know my artistic + sympathies. + +"Artistic sympathies" is not ungenerous considering how Chesterton +had written of George Moore in _Heretics_. + +It is rather comic that all the reviews hailing from Germany where +the play was very soon produced compare Chesterton with Shaw and many +of them say that he is the better playwright. "He means more to it," +a Munich paper was translated as saying, "than the good old Shaw." +Chesterton's superiority can hardly be entertained in the matter of +technique. Actually what the critic meant was that he preferred the +ideas of Chesterton to the ideas of Shaw. Both men were chiefly +concerned with ideas. But while Shaw excelled chiefly in presenting +them through brilliant dialogue, G.K.'s deeper thoughts were conveyed +in another fashion. The Duke might almost, it is true, have been a +Shaw character, but the fun the audience got out of him was the least +thing they received. Chesterton once said that he suspected Shaw of +being the only man who had never written any poetry. Many of us +suspect that Chesterton never wrote anything else. This play is a +poem and the greatest character in it is atmosphere. Chesterton +believed in the love of God and man, he believed in the devil: love +conquers diabolical evil and the atmosphere of this struggle is felt +even in the written page and was felt more vividly in the theatre. +After a passage of many years those who saw it remember the moment +when the red lamp turned blue as a felt experience. + +But as to popularity, in England at least, it would be absurd to +compare G.K. with G.B.S. The play's run was a brief one and it was +years before he attempted another. + +Chesterton was fighting corruption, fighting the Servile State. Above +all things he was fighting sterility, fighting it in the name of +life--life with its richness, its variety, its sins and its virtues, +with its positively outrageous sanity. "Thank you for being alive," +wrote an admirer to him. + +_Manalive_ is above all things a hymn to life. It is the acid test of +a Chestertonian. Reviewers became wildly enthusiastic or bitterly +scornful. Borrowing from his own phrase about Pickwick I am inclined +to say that men not in love with life will not appreciate _Manalive_-- +nor, I should imagine, heaven. The ideas that make up the book had +been long in his head. The story of White Wynd written while he was +at the Slade School tells one half of the story, an unpublished +fragment of the same period entitled "The Burden of Balham" the +other half. The Great Wind that blows Innocent Smith to Beacon House +is the wind of life and it blows through the whole story. Before an +improvised Court of Law Smith is tried on three charges: +housebreaking--but it was his own house that he broke into to renew +the vividness of ownership; bigamy--but it was his own wife with whom +he repeatedly eloped to renew the ecstasy of first love; murder with +a large and terrifying revolver--but he dealt life not death from its +barrel. For he used it only to threaten those who said they were +tired of life or that life was not worth living, and he forced them +through fear of death to hymn the praises of life. + +The explanation given by Smith to Dr. Eames, the Master of +Brakespeare College, of his ideas and his purpose gives the note of +fooling and profundity filling the whole book. + + "I want both my gifts to come virgin and violent, the death and the + life after death. I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the + Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him--only to bring him to + life. I begin to see a new meaning in being the skeleton at the + feast." + + "You can scarcely be called a skeleton," said Dr. Eames smiling. + + "That comes of being so much at the feast," answered the massive + youth. "No skeleton can keep his figure if he is always dining out. + But that is not quite what I meant: what I mean is that I caught a + kind of glimpse of the meaning of death and all that--the skull and + the crossbones, the _Memento Mori_. It isn't only meant to remind us + of a future life, but to remind us of a present life too. With our + weak spirits we should grow old in Eternity if we were not kept young + by death. Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for us, as + nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers." + +_Manalive_ appeared in 1911. Next year came what is perhaps his +best-known single piece of writing, the _Battle of Lepanto_. In the +spring of 1912 he had taken part in a debate at Leeds, affirming that +all wars were religious wars. Father O'Connor supported him with a +magnificent description of the battle of Lepanto. Obviously it seized +Gilbert's mind powerfully, for while he was still staying with Father +O'Connor, he had begun to jot down lines and by October of that year +the poem was published. One might fill a book with the tributes it +has received from that day to this. Perhaps none pleased him more +than a note from John Buchan (June 21, 1915): "The other day in the +trenches we shouted your Lepanto." + +_The Victorian Age in Literature_ made many of his admirers again +express the wish that he would stay in the field of pure literature. +His characterisations of some of the Victorian writers were sheer +delight. + + Ruskin had a strong right hand that wrote of the great mediaeval + Minsters in tall harmonies and traceries as splendid as their own; + and also, so to speak, a weak and feverish left hand that was always + fidgeting and trying to take the pen away--and write an evangelical + tract about the immorality of foreigners . . . it is not quite unfair + to say of him that he seemed to want all parts of the Cathedral + except the altar. + + Tennyson was a provincial Virgil . . . he tried to have the + universal balance of all the ideas at which the great Roman had + aimed: but he hadn't got hold of all the ideas to balance. Hence his + work was not a balance of truths, like the universe. It was a balance + of whims; like the British Constitution . . . he could not think up + to the height of his own towering style. + + . . . while Emily Bronte was as unsociable as a storm at midnight + and while Charlotte Bronte was at best like that warmer and more + domestic thing a house on fire--they do connect themselves with the + calm of George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments + of the feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would + have felt rather ill if they had seen the things they foreran. + +The best and most profound part of the book was however the working +out of certain generalisations--the effect on the literature of the +period of the Victorian compromise between religion and rationalism +("Macaulay, it is said, never talked about his religion: but Huxley +was always talking about the religion he hadn't got"): the break-up +of the compromise when Victorian Protestantism and Victorian +rationalism simultaneously destroyed one another; the uniqueness of +the nonsense-writing of the later Victorian period. + +In one illuminating passage Chesterton defends what seems at first +sight merely his own habit of getting dates and events in their wrong +order. + + The mind moves by instincts, associations, premonitions and not by + fixed dates, or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur + simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. + Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: + notions will be first defined long after they are dead . . . thus + Wordsworth shrank back into Toryism, as it were, from a Shelleyan + extreme of pantheism as yet disembodied. Thus Newman took down the + iron sword of dogma to parry a blow not yet delivered, that was + coming from the club of Darwin. For this reason no one can understand + tradition or even history who has not some tenderness for anachronism. + +This was not merely special pleading: it contains a profound truth. +Wilfrid Ward proved it of Newman in the biography that G.K. had +probably just been reading. Chesterton noted it himself in his book +on Cobbett who, as he said, saw what was not yet there. It is almost +the definition of genius. Already at this date Chesterton and Belloc +were fighting much that to the rest of us only became fully apparent +long afterwards. + +"I think you would make a very good God," wrote E. V. Lucas to +Chesterton. There is indeed something divine in an almost ceaseless +outpouring of creative energy. But only God can create tirelessly and +Chesterton was at this time beginning to be tired. You can see it in +_The Flying Inn_. The book is still full of vitality and the lyrics +in it, later published separately under the title _Wine, Water and +Song_, are as good in that kind as any that he ever wrote. But +with all its vigour the book is a less joyful one than _Manalive_ +and it is a much more angry one. _Manalive_ was a paean of joy to +life. _The Flying Inn_ is fighting for something necessary to its +fulness--freedom. + +It must have been just while he was writing it that there were +threatenings of a case against him by Lever Brothers on account of a +lecture given at the City Temple on "The Snob as Socialist." In +answering a question he spoke of Port Sunlight as "corresponding to a +Slave Compound." Others besides Lever Brothers were shocked and some +clarification was certainly called for. Belloc and Chesterton meant +by Slavery not that the poor were being bullied or ill treated but +that they had lost their liberty. Gilbert went so far as to point out +how much there was to be said in defence of a Slave state. Under +Slavery the poor were usually fed, clothed and housed adequately. +Slaves had often been much more comfortable in the past than were +free men in the world of today. A model employer might by his +regulations greatly increase the comfort of his workers and yet +enslave them. + +A letter from Bernard Shaw advising him to get up certain details +asks the question of whether the workman at Port Sunlight would +forfeit his benefits and savings should he leave. "If this is so," +wrote Shaw, "then, though Lever may treat him as well as Pickwick +would no doubt have treated old Weller, if he had consented to take +charge of his savings, Lever is master of his employee's fate, and +captain of his employee's soul, which is slavery." He went on to +offer financial help in fighting the case. The "Christian Commonweal" +had reported Chesterton's speech and was also threatened with the +law. To the editor G. K. wrote: + + Only a hasty line to elongate the telephone. I am sorry about this + business for one reason only; and that is that you should be even + indirectly mixed up in it. Lever can sue me till he bursts: I'm not + afraid of him. But it does seem a shame when I've often attacked you + (always in good faith and what was meant for good humour), and when + you've heaped coals of fire by printing my most provocative words, + that your chivalry should get you even bothered about it. I am truly + sorry and ask pardon--of you, but not of old Sun and Soapsuds, I can + tell you. + + Another very hasty line about the way I shall, if necessary, + answer; about which I feel pretty confident. I should say it is + absurd to have libel actions about Controversies, instead of about + quarrels. It would mean every Capitalist being prosecuted for saying + that Socialism is robbery and every Socialist for saying property is + theft. By great luck, the example lies at the threshold of the + passage quoted. The worst I said of Port Sunlight was that it was a + slave-compound. Why, that was the very phrase about which half the + governing class argued with the other half a few years ago! Are all + who called the Chinese slaves to be sued by all who didn't? Am I + prosecuted for a terminology . . . enough, you know the rest. Go on + with the passage and you will see the luck continues. Abrupt, brief, + and perhaps abbreviated as my platform answer was, it really does + contain all the safeguards against imputing cruelty or human crime to + poor Lever. It defines slavery as the imposition of the master's + private morality; as in the matter of the pubs. It expressly suggests + it does not imply cruelty: for it goes out of its way to say that + such slaves may be better off under such slavery. So they were, + physically, both in Athens and Carolina. It then says that a merely + mystical thing, which I think is Christianity, makes me think this + slavery damnable, even if it is comfortable. I would defend all this, + as a lawful sociological comment, in any Court in civilisation. + + I tell you my line of defence, to use discreetly and at your + discretion. If the other side are bent on fighting, I should reserve + the defence. If they seem open to reason, I should point out that it + is on our side. + +His old schoolfellow Salter was also his solicitor and a letter to +Wells shows in part the advice Salter gave. + + DEAR WELLS, + + I am asked to make a suggestion to you that looks like, and indeed + is, infernal impudence: but which a further examination will rob of + most of its terrors. Let not these terrors be redoubled when I say + that the request comes from my solicitor. It is a great lark; I am + writing for him when he ought to be writing for me. + + In the forthcoming case of Lever v. Chesterton & Another, the + Defendant Chesterton will conduct his own case; as his heart is not, + like that of the lady in the song, Another's. He wants to fight it + purely as a point of the liberty of letters and public speech; and to + show that the phrase "slavery" (wherein I am brought in question) is + current in the educated controversy about the tendency of Capitalism + today. The solicitor, rather to my surprise, approves this general + sociological line of defence; and says that I may be allowed one or + two witnesses of weight and sociological standing--not (of course) to + say my words are defensible, still less that my view is right--but + simply to say that the Servile State, and Servile terms in connection + with it, are known to them as parts of a current and quite + unmalicious controversy. He has suggested your name: and when I have + written this I have done my duty to him. You could not, by the laws + of evidence, be asked to mix yourself up with my remarks on Lever: + you could only be asked, if at all, whether there was or was not a + disinterested school of sociology holding that Capitalism is close to + Slavery--quite apart from anybody. Do you care to come and see the + fun? + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +The suggested line was so successful that Wells's testimony was not +called for. The case was withdrawn. No apology was even asked from +Gilbert, whose solicitor tells me that Messrs. Lever "behaved very +reasonably when once it was made clear to them that Gilbert was not +a scurrilous person making a vulgar and slanderous attack upon their +business." + +With H. G. Wells as with Shaw, Gilbert's relations were exceedingly +cordial, but with a cordiality occasionally threatened by explosions +from Wells. Gilbert's soft answer however invariably turned away +wrath and all was well again. "No one," Wells said to me, "ever had +enmity for him except some literary men who did not know him." They +met first, Wells thinks, at the Hubert Blands, and then Gilbert +stayed with Wells at Easton. There they played at the non-existent +game of Gype and invented elaborate rules for it. Cecil came too and +they played the War game Wells had invented. "Cecil," says Wells, +comparing him with Gilbert, "seemed condensed: not quite big enough +for a real Chesterton." + +They built too a toy theatre at Easton and among other things +dramatized the minority report of the Poor Law Commission. The play +began by the Commissioners taking to pieces Bumble the Beadle, +putting him into a huge cauldron and stewing him. Then out from the +cauldron leaped a renewed rejuvenated Bumble several sizes larger +than when he went in. + +In the early days of their acquaintance Wells remembers meeting the +whole Chesterton family in the street of a French town and inviting +them to lunch. His own youngest son, a small boy, had left the room +for a moment when Wells exclaimed: "Where's Frank? Good God, Gilbert, +you're sitting on him." + +The anxious way in which Gilbert got up and turned apologetically +towards his own chair was unforgettable. An absent-minded man who in +a gesture of politeness once gave his seat to three ladies in a bus +might well be alarmed over the fate of a small boy found under him. + +In his memoirs Wells relates another pleasing story of a +Chestertonian encounter: + + I once saw [Henry] James quarrelling with his brother William + James, the psychologist. He had lost his calm; he was terribly + unnerved. He appealed to me, to me of all people, to adjudicate on + what was and what was not permissible in England. William was arguing + about it in an indisputably American accent, with an indecently naked + reasonableness. I had come to Rye with a car to fetch William James + and his daughter to my home at Sandgate. William had none of Henry's + passionate regard for the polish upon the surface of life and he was + immensely excited by the fact that in the little Rye inn, which had + its garden just over the high brick wall of the garden of Lamb House, + G. K. Chesterton was staying. William James had corresponded with our + vast contemporary and he sorely wanted to see him. So with a + scandalous directness he had put the gardener's ladder against that + ripe red wall and clambered up and peeped over! + + Henry had caught him at it. It was the sort of thing that isn't + done. It was most emphatically the sort of thing that isn't + done. . . . Henry instructed the gardener to put away that ladder and + William was looking thoroughly naughty about it. + + To Henry's manifest relief, I carried William off and in the road + just outside the town we ran against the Chestertons who had been for + a drive in Romney Marsh; Chesterton was heated and I think rather + swollen by the sunshine; he seemed to overhang his one-horse fly; he + descended slowly but firmly; he was moist and steamy but cordial; we + chatted in the road and William got his coveted impression. + +The two must have suited each other a good deal better than +Chesterton and the more conventional brother. Of Henry's reactions +there was a comment from the other side of the Atlantic. + +The _Louisville Post_ reported that Henry James, being asked on a +visit to his native country, "What do you think of Chesterton in +England?" replied "In England we do not think of Chesterton." The +_Post_ commented rather neatly "This 'we' of our compatriot must be +considered as either mythical or editorial--unless indeed it refers +to that small and exquisite circle which immediately surrounds and +envelopes him." In his _Autobiography_ Gilbert is appreciative but +amusing, describing Henry James's reactions to the arrival of Belloc +from a walking tour unbrushed, unwashed and unshaven. After reading +_Dickens_, William wrote from Cambridge, Mass.: + + O, Chesterton, but you're a darling! I've just read your + Dickens--it's as good as Rabelais. Thanks! + +Wells, asked to debate with Gilbert, wrote to Frances: + + Spade House, Sandgate. (undated) + + DEAR MRS. CHESTERTON + + God forbid that I should seem a pig [here a small pig is drawn] and + indeed I am not and of all the joys in life nothing would delight me + more than a controversy with G.K.C., whom indeed I adore. [Here is + drawn a tiny Wells adoring a vast Chesterton.] + + But--I have been recklessly promising all and everyone who asks me to + lecture or debate; "If ever I do so again it will be for you," and if + once I break the vow I took last year-- + + Also we are really quite in agreement. It's a mere difference in + fundamental theory which doesn't really matter a rap--except for + after dinner purposes. + + Yours ever, + + H. G. Wells. + +Frances thought Wells was good for Gilbert, he tells me, because he +took him out walking, but when the two men were alone Gilbert would +say supplicatingly "We won't go for a walk today, will we?" "He +thought it terrifying," said Wells, "the way my wife tidied up." +Frances, too, tidied up, but cautiously. "She prevented G.K.," says +Wells, "from becoming too physically gross. He ought not to have been +allowed to use the word 'jolly' more than forty times a day." + +He could not, Wells thought, have gone on living in a London which +was that of ordinary social life, whether Mayfair or Bloomsbury. +"Either the country or Dr. Johnson's London." And of the relation +seen by Chesterton between liberty and conviviality he said, "Every +time he lifted a glass of wine he lifted it against Cadbury." + +In spite of growing restrictions as to sales and hours the Inn still +remained for Chesterton a symbol of freedom in a world increasingly +enslaved. It was pointed out to him how great a peril lay in drink, +how homes were broken up and families destroyed through drunkenness. +After the war began, a letter from one of his readers stressed a real +danger: + + Now I do beg you, Mr. Chesterton, much as you love writing in + praise of drink, to give it a rest during the war. . . . You may have + the degradation of any number of silly boys to your account without + knowing it. . . . + + I have written with a freedom--you will say perhaps rudeness--which + a casual meeting with you, and a great admiration for your work by no + means justifies, but which other things perhaps do. I beg you to + forgive me. + +It seems to me that this charge he never quite answered. To claim +liberty is one thing, to hymn the glories of wine is quite another. +And when he was attacked for the latter he always defended the +former, saying that he did not deny the peril but that all freedom +meant peril--peril must be preferred to slavery. There were things in +which a man must be free to choose even if his choice be evil. This +was a part of Chesterton's whole philosophy about drink--a subject on +which he wrote constantly. It is interesting to note the stages of +its development in his mind. + +The Chesterton family had not a Puritan tradition in the sense of +being teetotal. But Lucian Oldershaw tells me that in their boyhood +he always felt G.K. himself to be a bit of a Puritan and I have come +upon a boyish poem that seems to confirm this in the matter of wine. + + THE TEA POT + + Raised high on tripod, flashing bright, the Holy Silver Urn + Within whose inmost cavern dark, the secret waters burn + Before the temple's gateway the subject tea-cups bow + And pass it steaming with thy gift, thy brown autumnal glow. + Within thy silver fortress, the tea-leaf treasure piled + O'er which the fiery fountain pours its waters undefiled + Till the witch-water steals away the essence they enfold + And dashes from the yawning spout a torrent-arch of gold. + Then fill an honest cup my lads and quaff the draught amain + And lay the earthen goblet down, and fill it yet again + Nor heed the curses on the cup that rise from Folly's school + The sneering of the drunkard and the warning of the fool. + + * * * + + Leave to the Stuart's cavalier the revel's blood-red wine + To hiccup out a tyrant's health and swear his Right Divine + Mine, Cromwell's* cup to stir within, the spirit cool and sure + To face another Star Chamber, a second Marston Moor. + Leave to the genius-scorner, the sot's soul-slaying urns + That stained the fame of Addison, and wrecked the life of Burns + For Etty's hand his private Pot, that for no waiter waits** + For Cowper's lips his "Cup that cheers but not inebriates." + + Goal of Infantine Hope, Unknown, mystic Felicity + Sangrael of childish quest much sought, aethereal "Real Tea" + Thy faintest tint of yellow on the milk and water pale + Like Midas' stain on Pactolus, gives joy that cannot fail. + +[* Cromwell's teapot was among the first used in England.] + +[** Etty, the artist made his own tea in all hotels in a private pot.] + +Childhood's "May I have _real_ tea" had grown into the tea-table of +the Junior Debating Club, and Lucian Oldershaw remembers Gilbert as a +young man still lunching at tea shops. I found recently two versions +of a fragment of a story called "The Human Club," written when he was +at the Slade School. The second version opens: + + A meal was spread on the table, for the members of the Human Club + were, as their name implies, human, however glorified and + transformed: the meal, however, consisted principally of tea and + coffee, for the Humans were total abstainers, not with the virulent + assertion of a negative formula, but as an enlightened ratification + of a profound social effort (hear, hear), not as the meaningless + idolatry (cheers) of an isolated nostrum (renewed cheers), but as a + chivalrous sacrifice for the triumph of a civic morality (prolonged + cheers and uproar). + + The aims of the Human Club were many but among the more practical + and immediate was the entire perfection of everything. + + "Perfection is impossible," said the host, Eric Peterson, bowing + his colossal proportions over the coffee-pot. He was in the habit of + showing these abrupt rifts of his train of thought, like gigantic + fragments of a frieze. But he said then quite simply, with no change + in his bleak blue eyes, "perfection is impossible, thank God. The + impossible is the eternal." + +We are a long way from tea the "Oriental," cocoa the "vulgar +beast," and wine the true festivity of man that we find in _Wine, +Water and Song_. Chesterton had meanwhile discovered the +wine-drinking peasants of France and Italy: he had discovered what +were left of the old-fashioned inns of England where cider or beer +are drunk by the sort of Englishmen he had come to love best--the +poor. In his revolt against that dreary and pretentious element that +he most hated in the middle classes he had come to feel that the life +of the poor, as they themselves had shaped it when they were free +men, was the ideal. And that ideal included moderate drinking, +drinking to express joy in life and to increase it. + +Already in _Heretics_ (1904) he had in the essay called "Omar and the +Sacred Vine" attacked the evil of pessimistic drinking. A man should +never drink because he is miserable, he will be wise to avoid drink +as a medicine for, health being a normal thing, he will tend in +search of it to drink too much. But no man expects pleasure all the +time, so if he drinks for pleasure the danger of excess is less. + + The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other + rules--a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you + are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you + will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when + you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing + peasants of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is + rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because + you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient + health of the world.* + +[* _Heretics_. John Lane, chapter VII, p. 103.] + +But the human will must be brought into action and the gifts of God +must be taken with the thanksgiving that is restraint. "We must thank +God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them." The +topic seemed to fascinate him; he returned to it again and again. In +one essay he described himself opening all the windows in a private +bar to get rid of the air of secrecy that he hated. Wine should be +taken, not secretly but + + Frankly and in fellowship As men in inns do dine. + +Cocktails he abominated--and in fact strong spirits were almost as +evil as wine and beer were good. In an essay "The Cowardice of +Cocktails"* he is especially scathing in his comment on those who +urge "that they give a man an appetite for his meals." + +[* From _Sidelights on New London & Newer York,_ p. 45.] + + This is unworthy of a generation that is always claiming to be + candid and courageous. In the second aspect, it is utterly unworthy + of a generation that claims to keep itself fit by tennis and golf and + all sorts of athletics. What are these athletes worth if, after all + their athletics, they cannot scratch up such a thing as a natural + appetite? Most of my own work is, I will not venture to say, + literary, but at least sedentary. I never do anything except walk + about and throw clubs and javelins in the garden. But I never require + anything to give me an appetite for a meal. I never yet needed a tot + of rum to help me to go over the top and face the mortal perils of + luncheon. + + Quite rationally considered, there has been a decline and + degradation in these things. First came the old drinking days which + are always described as much more healthy. In those days men worked + or played, hunted or herded or ploughed or fished, or even, in their + rude way, wrote or spoke, if only expressing the simple minds of + Socrates or Shakespeare, and _then_ got reasonably drunk in the + evening when their work was done. We find the first step of the + degradation, when men do not drink when their work is done, but drink + in order to do their work. Workmen used to wait in queues outside the + factories of forty years ago, to drink nips of neat whisky to enable + them to face life in the progressive and scientific factory. But at + least it may be admitted that life in the factory was something that + it took some courage to face. These men felt they had to take an + anaesthetic before they could face pain. What are we to say of those + who have to take an anaesthetic before they can face pleasure? What + of those, who when faced with the terrors of mayonnaise eggs or + sardines, can only utter a faint cry for brandy? What of those who + have to be drugged, maddened, inspired and intoxicated to the point + of partaking of meals, like the Assassins to the point of committing + murders? If, as they say, the use of the drug means the increase of + the dose, where will it stop, and at what precise point of frenzy and + delusion will a healthy grown-up man be ready to rush headlong upon a + cutlet or make a dash for death or glory at a ham-sandwich? This is + obviously the most abject stage of all; worse than that of the man + who drinks for the sake of work, and much worse than that of the man + who drinks for the sake of play. + +Wine, Chesterton maintained, should not be drunk as an aid to +creative production, yet one may find that increased power of +creation sometimes follows in its wake. And here of course was a +danger to a man who worked as hard as Chesterton. He sometimes spoke +of himself as "idle," but I think it would be hard to match either +his output or his hours of creative work. I remember one visit that I +paid to Beaconsfield when he was writing one of his major books. He +was in his study by 10 in the morning, emerged for lunch at 1 and went +back from about 2:30 to 4:30. After tea he worked again until a 7:30 +dinner. His wife and I went to bed about 10:30 leaving him preparing +his material for the next day. Towards 1 A.M. a ponderous tread as he +passed my door on his way to bed woke me to a general impression of +an earthquake. + +In a passage in _Magic_ G.K. makes his hero say, "I happen to have +what is called a strong head and I have never been really drunk." It +was true of himself, but in these years just before the Great War, +before his own severe illness, intimate friends have told me that +they had seen him unlike himself, that they felt he had come to +depend, "almost absent-mindedly" one said, on the stimulus of wine +for the sheer physical power to pour forth so much. + +Besides overwork G.K. was in these years mentally oppressed by the +strain of the Marconi Case, and then almost overwhelmed by the horror +of the World War. A man very tender of heart, sensitive and intensely +imaginative, he could not react as calmly as Cecil himself did to +what both believed the probability of the latter's imprisonment. And +when that strain was removed there remained the stain on national +honour, the opening gulf into which he saw his country falling. To +him the Marconi Case was a heavier burden than the war. For, as he +saw it, in the Marconi Case the nation was wrong in enduring +corruption and in the war the nation was magnificently right in +resisting tyranny. + +So Chesterton felt, yet the outbreak of the war with all its human +suffering to mind and body weighed heavily upon him too. He wrote +_The Barbarism of Berlin_ of which I will say something in the next +chapter--for it belongs to those writings of the war period the +series of which is so consistent that in his _Autobiography_ he was +able to claim that he had no sympathy "with the rather weak-minded +reaction that is going on round us. At the first outbreak of the War +I attended the conference of all the English men of letters, called +together to compose a reply to the manifesto of the German +professors. I at least among all those writers can say, 'What I have +written I have written.'" + +Then his illness came upon him. Dr. Pocock, coming for a first visit, +found the bed partly broken under the weight of the patient who was +lying in a grotesquely awkward position, his hips higher than his +head. + +"You must be horribly uncomfortable," he said. + +"Why, now you mention it," said G.K., like a man receiving a new +idea, "I suppose I am." + +The doctor ordered a water-bed, and almost the last words he heard +before the patient sank into coma were, "I wonder if this bally ship +will ever get to shore." + +The illness lasted several months. We can follow its progress (and +his) in extracts from letters* written to Father O'Connor by Frances: + + Nov. 25th, 1914. You must pray for him. He is seriously ill and I + have two nurses. It is mostly heart-trouble, but there are + complications. He is quite his normal self, as to head and brain, and + he even dictates and reads a great deal. + + Dec. 29th, 1914. Gilbert had a bad relapse on Christmas Eve, and + now is being desperately ill. He is not often conscious, and is so + weak--I feel he might ask for you--if so I shall wire. Dr. is still + hopeful, but I feel in despair. + + Jan. 3rd, 1915. If you came he would not know you, and this + condition may last some time. The brain is dormant, and must be kept + so. If he is sufficiently conscious at any moment to understand, I + will ask him to let you come--or will send on my own responsibility. + Pray for his soul and mine. + + Jan. 7th, 1915. Gilbert seemed decidedly clearer yesterday, and + though not quite so well today the doctor says he has reason to hope + the mental trouble is working off. His heart is stronger, and he is + able to take plenty of nourishment. Under the circumstances therefore + I am hoping and praying he may soon be sufficiently himself to tell + us what he wants done. I am dreadfully unhappy at not knowing how he + would wish me to act. His parents would never forgive me if I acted + only on my own authority. I do pray to God He will restore him to + himself that we may know. I feel in His mercy He will, even if death + is the end of it--or the beginning shall I say? + + Jan. 12th, 1915. He is really better I believe and by the mercy of + God I dare hope he is to be restored to us. Physically he is + stronger, and the brain is beginning to work normally, and soon I + trust we shall be able to ask him his wishes with regard to the + Church. I am so thankful to think that we can get at his desire. + +In January 1915 Frances wrote to my mother: "Gilbert remains much the +same in a semi-conscious condition--sleeping a great deal. I feel +absolutely hopeless; it seems impossible it can go on like this. The +impossibility of reaching him is too terrible an experience and I +don't know how to go through with it. I pray for strength and you +must pray for me." + +"Dearest Josephine," she wrote in a later undated letter, "Gilbert is +today a little better, after being practically at a standstill for +the past week. He asked for me today, which is a great advance, and +hugged me. I feel like Elijah (wasn't it?) and shall go in the +strength of that hug forty days. The recovery will be very slow, the +doctors tell me, and we have to prevent his using his brain at all." + +In this letter she begged to see my mother, and I remember when they +met she told her that one day she had tried to test whether Gilbert +was conscious by asking him, "Who is looking after you?" "He answered +very gravely, 'God' and I felt so small," she said. Presently Frances +told my mother that Gilbert had talked to her about coming into the +Catholic Church. It was just at this time that she wrote to tell +Father O'Connor that Gilbert said to her "Did you think I was going +to die?" and followed this with the question, "Does Father O'Connor +know?" After her conversation with my mother Frances wrote to her: + + March 21 + + I think I would rather you did not tell anyone just yet of what I + told you regarding my husband and the Catholic Church. Not that I + doubt for a moment that he meant it and knew what he was saying and + was relieved at saying it, but I don't want the world at large to be + able to say that he came to this decision, when he was weak and + unlike himself. He will ratify it no doubt when his complete manhood + is restored. I know it was not weakness that made him say it, but you + will understand my scruples. I know in God's good time he will make + his confession of faith--and if death comes near him again I shall + know how to act. + + Thanks for all your sympathy. I _did_ enjoy seeing you. + +On Easter Eve Frances wrote two letters, one to Father O'Connor, one +to my mother. To Father O'Connor she said: + + All goes well here, though still very very slowly--G's mind is + gradually clearing, but it is still difficult to him to distinguish + between the real and the unreal. I am quite sure he will soon be able + to think and act for himself, but I dare not hurry matters at all. I + have told him I am writing to you often and he said, "That is + right--I'll see him soon. I want to talk to him." He wanders at + times, but the clear intervals are longer. He repeated the Creed last + night, this time in English. + +To my mother: + + I feel the enormous significance of the resurrection of the body + when I think of my dear husband, just consciously laying hold of life + again. Indeed, I will pray that your dear ones may be kept in safety. + God bless you for all your sympathy. I am so glad that Gilbert's + decision (for I am sure it was a decision) has made you so happy. I + dare not hurry anything, the least little excitement upsets him--last + night he said the Creed and asked me to read parts of Myers' "St. + Paul." He still wanders a good deal when tired but is certainly a + little stronger. Love and Easter blessings to you all. + +We ourselves were passing then through the shadow of death. Almost as +Gilbert rose again to this life my father passed into life eternal. +One of the very few letters I possess in Gilbert's own handwriting +was also one of the first he wrote on recovery. It was to my mother: + + I fear I have delayed writing to you, and partly with a vague + feeling that I might so find some way of saying what I feel on your + behalf and others'; and of course it has not come. Somewhat of what + the world and a wider circle of friends have lost I shall try to say + in the _Dublin Review_, by the kindness of Monsignor Barnes, who has + invited me to contribute to it; but of all I feel, and Frances feels, + and of the happy times we have had in your house, I despair of saying + anything at all. + + I can only hope you and yours will be able to read between the + lines of what I write either here or there; and understand that the + simultaneous losses of a good friend and a fine intellect have a way + of stunning rather than helping the expression of either. I would say + I am glad he lived to see what I feel to be a rebirth of England, if + his mere presence in an older generation did not prove to me that + England never died. + +This sense of the rebirth of England gave to Gilbert's restored life +a special quality of triumph that abode down to the end of the war. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +The War Years + + +GILBERT WAS TAKING up life again and with it the old friendships and +the old debates, in the new atmosphere created by the war. + +To Bernard Shaw he wrote: + + June 12th, 1915 + + MY DEAR BERNARD SHAW, + + I ought to have written to you a long time ago, to thank you for + your kind letter which I received when I had recovered and still more + for many other kindnesses that seem to have come from you during the + time before the recovery. I am not a vegetarian; and I am only in a + very comparative sense a skeleton. Indeed I am afraid you must + reconcile yourself to the dismal prospect of my being more or less + like what I was before; and any resumption of my ordinary habits must + necessarily include the habit of disagreeing with you. What and where + and when is "Uncommon Sense about the War?" How can I get hold of it? + I do not merely ask as one hungry for hostilities, but also as one + unusually hungry for good literature. "Il me faut des géants," as + Cyrano says; so I naturally wish to hear the last about you. You + probably know that I do not agree with you about the War; I do not + think it is going on of its own momentum; I think it is going on in + accordance with that logical paradox whereby the thing that is most + difficult to do is also the thing that must be done. If it were an + easy war to end it would have been a wicked war to begin. If a cat + has nine lives one must kill it nine times, saving your humanitarian + feelings, and always supposing it is a witch's cat and really draws + its powers from Hell. I have always thought that there was in Prussia + an evil will; I would not have made it a ground for going to war, but + I was quite sure of it long before there was any war at all. But I + suppose we shall some day have an opportunity of arguing about all + that. Meanwhile my thanks and good wishes are as sincere as my + opinions; and I do not think those are insincere. + + Yours always sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +Bernard Shaw replied: + + 22nd June 1915 + + MY DEAR CHESTERTON + + I am delighted to learn under your own hand that you have recovered + all your health and powers with an unimpaired figure. You have also + the gratification of knowing that you have carried out a theory of + mine that every man of genius has a critical illness at 40, Nature's + object being to make him go to bed for several months. Sometimes + Nature overdoes it: Schiller and Mozart died. Goethe survived, though + he very nearly followed Schiller into the shades. I did the thing + myself quite handsomely by spending eighteen months on crutches, + having two surgical operations, and breaking my arm. I distinctly + noticed that instead of my recuperation beginning when my breakdown + ended, it began before that. The ascending curve cut through the tail + of the descending one; and I was consummating my collapse and rising + for my next flight simultaneously. + + It is perfectly useless for you to try to differ with me about the + war. NOBODY can differ with me about the war: you might as well + differ from the Almighty about the orbit of the sun. I have got the + war right; and to that complexion, you too must come at last, your + nature not being a fundamentally erroneous one. + + At the same time, it is a great pity you were not born in Ireland. + You would have had the advantage of hearing the burning patriotism of + your native land expressing itself by saying exactly the same things + about England that English patriotism now says about Prussia, and of + recognizing that though they were entirely true, they were also a + very great nuisance, as they prevented people from building the + future by conscientious thought. Also, Cecil would have seen what the + Catholic Church is really like when the apostolic succession falls to + the farmer's son who is cleverer with school books than with + agricultural implements. In fact you would have learned a devil of a + lot of things for lack of which you often drive me to exclaim + "Gilbert, Gilbert, why persecutest thou me." + + As to the evil will, of course there is an evil will in Prussia. + Prussia isn't Paradise. I have been fighting that evil will, in + myself and others, all my life. It is the will of the brave Barabbas, + and of the militant Nationalists who admired him and crucified the + pro-Gentile. But the Prussians must save their own souls. They also + have their Shaws and Chestertons and a divine spark in them for these + to work on. . . . What we have to do is to make ridiculous the cry of + "Vengeance is mine, saith Podsnap," and, whenever anyone tells an + Englishman a lie, to explain to the poor devil that it is a lie, and + that he must stop cheering it as a splendid speech. For an Englishman + never compares speeches either with facts or with previous speeches: + to him a speech is art for art's sake, the disciples of our favoured + politicians being really, if they only knew it, disciples of + Whistler. Also, and equally important, we have to bear in mind that + the English genius does not, like the German, lie in disciplined + idealism. The Englishman is an Anarchist and a grumbler: he has no + such word as Fatherland, and the idea which he supposes corresponds + to it is nothing but the swing of a roaring chorus to a patriotic + song. Also he is a muddler and a slacker, because tense and + continuous work means thought; and he is lazy and fat in the head. + But as long as he is himself, and grumbles, it does not matter. Given + a furious Opposition screaming for the disgrace of tyrannical and + corrupt ministers, and a press on the very verge of inviting Napoleon + to enter London in triumph and deliver a groaning land from the + intolerable burden of its native rulers' incapacity and rapacity and + obsolescence, and the departments will work as well as the enemy's + departments (perhaps better), and the government will have to keep + its wits at full pressure. But once let England try what she is + trying now: that is, to combine the devoted silence and obedience of + the German system with the slack and muddle of Coodle and Doodle, and + we are lost. Unless you keep up as hot a fire from your ink-bottle on + the Government as the soldier keeps up from the trenches you are + betraying that soldier. Of course they will call you a pro-German. + What of that? They call ME a pro-German. We also must stand fire. As + Peer Gynt said of hell, if the torture is only moral, it cannot be so + very bad. + + I grieve to say that some fool has stolen my title, and issued a + two page pamphlet called Uncommon Sense about the War. So I shall + have to call mine More Common Sense About the War. It is not yet in + type: I haven't yet quite settled its destination. Any chance of + seeing you both if we drive over from Ayot to Beaconsfield some + Sunday or other afternoon. + + Yours ever, + + G.B.S. + +Wells too was rejoicing over his recovery-- + + DEAR OLD G.K.C., + + I'm so delighted to get a letter from you again. As soon as I can I + will come to Beaconsfield and see you. I'm absurdly busy in bringing + together the Rulers of the country and the scientific people of whom + they are totally ignorant. Lloyd George has never heard of + Ramsey--and so on, and the hash and muddle and quackery on our + technical side is appalling. It all means boys' lives in Flanders and + horrible waste and suffering. Well, anyhow if we've got only obscure + and cramped and underpaid scientific men we have a bench of fine fat + bishops and no end of tremendous lawyers. One of the best ideas for + the Ypres position came from Robert Mond but the execution was too + difficult for our officers to attempt. So we've got a row of wounded + and mangled men that would reach from Beaconsfield to Great + Marlow--just to show we don't take stock in these damned scientific + people. + + Yours ever, + + H.G. + +No one however mad could have called Gilbert a pro-German: it was +perhaps the only accusation the _New Witness_ escaped. But while he +largely agreed with Shaw's analysis of the Englishman as a natural +Anarchist and grumbler, while he believed in the voluntary principle +and disliked conscription, his general outlook was as different from +Shaw's as were the pamphlets they both wrote. + +In a book addressed to a German professor G.K. frankly confessed the +real _Crimes of England_, for which she was now making reparation. + +To any Englishman living in the native atmosphere the suggestion that +England had been preparing an aggression against Germany seemed more +than faintly ludicrous. We were not engaged in plotting in Europe--on +the contrary we were far too careless of Europe. And the funds of the +Liberal Party (which was in power) actually depended chiefly on +Quaker Millionaires who were noted pacifists and at whose bidding +national honour was jeopardised by our delay in declaring our support +of France. We were not prepared for war and probably only the shock +of the invasion of Belgium made certain our stand with France. + + . . . It may seem an idle contradiction to say that our strength in + this war came from not being prepared. But there is a truth that + cannot be otherwise expressed. The strongest thing in sane anger is + surprise. If we had time to think we might have thought better--that + is worse. Everything that could be instinctive managed to be strong; + the instant fury of contempt with which the better spirit in our + rulers flung back the Prussian bribe; the instant solidarity of all + parties; above all, the brilliant instinct by which the Irish leader + cast into the scale of a free Europe the ancient sword of Ireland.* + +[* _The Uses of Diversity_.] + +Our crimes were in the past, not the present. The first had been when +we gave aid to Prussia against Austria, Austria which was "not a +nation" but "a kind of Empire, a Holy Roman Empire that never came," +which "still retained something of the old Catholic comfort for the +soul." We had helped to put Prussia instead of Austria at the head of +the Germanies--Prussia which in the person of Frederick the Great +"hated everything German and everything good." Francophile as +Chesterton was, he yet had a certain tenderness for those old +Germanies which "preserved the good things that go with small +interests and strict boundaries, music, etiquette, a dreamy +philosophy and so on." + +Our next crimes had been in calling Prussia to our aid against +Napoleon and in failing to assist Denmark against her. And by far our +worst had been the using of Prussian mercenaries with their ghastly +tradition of cruelty in Ireland in the '98. + +There is in this little book one drawback from the historian's point +of view: its view of the past is so oddly selective. Doubtless it is +lawful to examine your own nation's conscience as you do your +own--and not your neighbour's. Yet history should be rather an +examination of facts than an examination of conscience. And +historically Richelieu's policies had had quite something to say in +the creation of Prussia; the conscript armies of the French +Revolution had first made Europe into an armed camp. It was an undue +simplification to insist exclusively on The Crimes of England. + +But even while he did so Chesterton rejoiced that now at long last +England was on the right side, on the side of Europe and of sanity. +The _New Witness_ group had always seen the issue as their countrymen +were now suddenly beginning to see it. They had no sympathy with the +"liberal" thinking, made in Germany, that had in the name of biblical +and historical criticism been undermining the bases of Christianity. +Their love of logic and of clarity had made German philosophy +intolerable to them--it was wind, and it was fog. Finally their love +of France had always made them conceive of Europe as centering in +that country. For them there was one profound satisfaction even amid +the horrors of war: that the issues were so clear. + +But were they as clear to the whole world? If not they must be made +so. + +There were two main problems to be overcome in this matter, one of +which was less pronounced at the time than it became later--the +economic interpretation of history. Started by Karl Marx the idea that +all history can be interpreted solely by economic causes has come +since to have an extraordinary popularity even among those whose own +philosophy and sociology are most widely removed from Marx. It is a +view which Chesterton would always have dismissed with the contempt +it deserves. Both he and Belloc saw as the determining factor in +history, because it is the determining factor in human life, the free +will of man. This does not mean that they would deny that the +economic factor has often been powerful in conquering man's liberty, +or a motive in its exercise. But Chesterton regarded the present age +as a diseased one precisely because the money motive held so +disproportionate a place in it. He looked back to the past and saw +the world of today as almost unique in that respect. He looked +forward to the future and hoped for a release from it. + +And as he looked back into the past he saw something in the history +of mankind far stronger than the economic motive--whether that mean +the strife for wealth or the mere struggle for subsistence. He saw +the all-pervading power of religion, which in bygone ages had +presided over man's activities and turned the exercise of that most +noble faculty free-will to the building of a civilization today +undreamed of. + +But in 1914 it was easier to get away from the economic +interpretation of history than it was to overcome another difficulty +in the minds of those who had not the Chesterton vision of Europe, +and to whom it seemed that in a war between nations it was extremely +likely that all parties were more or less equally to blame. +"History," said Chesterton, "tends to be a façade of faded +picturesqueness for most of those who have not specially studied it: +a more or less monochrome background for the drama of their own day." +But the nature of that background and the vision of today's drama +will vary with the varying angle of historic vision. + +There were two possible meanings for the statement that all nations +were to blame for the world war. All nations had gone away from God. +Motives of personal and national greed had ousted the old ideal of +Christendom. It might roughly be said that no nation was seriously +trying to seek the Kingdom of God and His Justice. International +Finance had become a shadow resting on all the earth, and it could +not have got this power if Governments had been governing solely for +the good of their peoples. "Bow down your heads before God," is the +invocation constantly used in the Missal during the penitential +season of Lent and the government of every nation needed this call to +repentance. + +With this interpretation Chesterton would have agreed. All nations +were to blame for the predisposing causes that made a world-war +possible. But when we come to the question of actual responsibility +for making this particular war, the statement means something very +different and something with which Chesterton was prepared to join +issue. Against him those who disliked France or England, and saw the +history of those two countries as a history of Imperialism, were +saying: if Germany had not attacked France, France would have +attacked Germany; or: England would have been equally treacherous if +it had paid her--look at the Treaty of Limerick. + +Chesterton kept imploring people simply to look at the facts. Germany +had in fact broken her word to France and attacked her. France had +not attacked Germany. Germany had invaded Belgium. England had not +invaded Holland "to seize a naval and commercial advantage; and +whether they say that we wished to do it in our greed or feared to do +it in our cowardice, the fact remains that we did not do it. Unless +this common-sense principle be kept in view, I cannot conceive how +any quarrel can possibly be judged. A contract may be made between +two persons solely for material advantage on each side: but the moral +advantage is still generally supposed to lie with the person who +keeps the contract."* + +[* _The Barbarism of Berlin_, 15-16.] + +The promise and the vow were fundamental to Chesterton's view of +human life. Discussing divorce he claims as essential to manhood the +right to bind oneself and to be taken at one's word. The marriage vow +was almost the only vow that remained out of the whole mediaeval +conception of chivalry and he could not endure to see it set at +nought. But even in the modern world there still remained some notion +of the sacredness of a solemn promise. + +"It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through +time, is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, +but from brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the +Old Testament, when it summed up the dark, irresponsible enormity of +Leviathan in the words, 'Will he make a pact with thee?' . . . The +vow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark to the +dog; his voice whereby he is known."* There were two chief marks +whereby it seemed to Chesterton that the Prussian invasion of Belgium +was fundamentally an attack on civilization. Contempt for a promise +was the first. He called it the war on the word. + +[* Ibid., 32-33.] + +The other mark of barbarism he called the refusal of reciprocity. +"The Prussians," he wrote, "had been told by their literary men that +everything depends upon Mood: and by their politicians that all +arrangements dissolve before 'necessity.'"* This was not merely a +contempt for the word but also an assumption that German necessity +was like no other necessity because the German "cannot get outside +the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is free to break the +law; and also to appeal to the law." Thus the Kaiser at once violated +the Hague Convention openly himself and wrote to the President of the +United States to complain that the Allies were violating it. "For +this principle of a quite unproved racial supremacy is the last and +worst of the refusals of reciprocity."** + +[* Ibid., 37.] + +[* Ibid., p. 60.] + +If these two ideas were allowed to prevail they must destroy +civilization and so to Chesterton the war was a crusade and, to his +profound joy, was understood as such by the people of England. The +democratic spirit of our country "is rather unusually sluggish and +far below the surface. And the most genuine and purely popular +movement that we have had since the Chartists has been the enlistment +for this war." Chesterton loved the heroic humour of the trenches: +the cry of "Early Doors" from the boys rushing on death; the term +Blighty for England and congratulations on a severe wound as a "good +Blighty one"; the song under showers of bullets, "When It's Raining +Keep Your Umbrella Up." The English, he once said, had no religion +left except their sense of humour but I think he meant that they hung +out humour somewhat defiantly as a smoke-screen for other things. + +Anyhow he doubted neither that the war was worth winning nor that it +could be won by our soldiers and sailors. And with the soldiers and +sailors stood the munition workers and the Trades Unions which had +sacrificed their cherished rights for the war period. If the only +danger to England was on the Home Front it was not, in his eyes, to +be found in the mass of the nation. Nor was he at first too +apprehensive of the actions of the Government. Asquith and Sir Edward +Grey might have been slow in declaring war but both were patriotic +Englishmen and with them stood with equal patriotism the mass of the +governing classes. If as has later been said the war had really been +brought about by English political and financial interests, it is +strange that Lord Desborough, head of the London house of J. P. +Morgan and a leading financier of England, should have lost his two +elder sons and the Prime Minister his eldest. + +But the _New Witness_ did see two dangers at home which might +jeopardise the success of our armies in the field and bring about a +premature and dishonourable peace. These were international finance, +and the Press magnates. + +Nothing so reminds me of how we were all feeling about the Daily +papers just then as finding this letter to E. C. Bentley (dated July +20, 1915): + + I was delighted to hear from you though very sorry to hear you have + been bad. I mean physically bad; morally and intellectually you have + evidently been very good. Seriously, I think you have done something + to save this country; for the _Telegraph_ continues to be almost the + only paper that the crisis has sobered and not tipsified. I take it + in myself and know many others who do so. Part of the fun about + 'Armsworth is that quite a lot of old ladies of both sexes go about + distinguishing elaborately between the _Daily Mail_ and the _Times_.* + It is a stagnant state of mind created in people who have never been + forced by revolution or other public peril to distinguish between the + things they are used to and the thoughts for which the things are + supposed to stand. If you printed the whole of Ally Sloper's Half + Holiday and called it the Athenaeum, they would read it with unmoved + faces. So long as St. Paul's Cathedral stood in the usual place they + would not mind if there was a Crescent on top of it instead of a + Cross. By the way, I see the Germans have actually done what I + described as a wild fancy in the Flying Inn; combined the Cross and + the Crescent in one ornamental symbol. . . . + +[* Both these papers were then owned by the same man--Alfred +Harmsworth, who had become Lord Northcliffe.] + +I am inclined to think that the attack upon Harmsworth which the _New +Witness_ developed attributed too much to purposed malice and did not +allow enough for the journalistic craving for news and for "scoops." +Probably some of the posters and articles to which they objected were +not the work of Lord Northcliffe but of some young journalist anxious +to sell his paper. Nevertheless the _New Witness_ attack was not only +largely justified but was also remarkably courageous. The staff of +the _New Witness_ were themselves journalists and men of letters. In +both capacities as powerful a newspaper owner as Lord Northcliffe +could damage them severely--and did. Never henceforward would any of +them be able to write in one of his numerous papers, never would one +of their books receive a favourable review. For Belloc did not +hesitate to call Lord Northcliffe a traitor for the way in which he +had attacked Kitchener, while Cecil amused himself by reviewing and +pointing out the illiteracy of that strange peer's own writing. Later +too when the Harmsworth papers were in full cry for the fall of +Asquith and the substitution of Lloyd George, the _New Witness_ took +a strong stand. They pointed out too the way in which censorship was +exercised against the smaller newspapers while the Northcliffe press +seemed immune. Here was the fundamental danger. Whatever the motive, +some of the attacks and articles printed were undoubtedly calculated, +in military language, to cause alarm and despondency. It was +appalling that in time of war this should be permitted; and, as they +saw it, permitted because the Harmsworth millions had been used to +secure a hold on certain politicians. To the _New Witness_ "George" +was simply Harmsworth's man. + +Meanwhile at Easter, 1916, came the awful tragedy of the Irish +rising. Chesterton had fallen into the sleep of his long illness soon +after the splendid gesture in which Redmond had offered the sword of +Ireland to the allied cause. And there seems little doubt that in +making this offer Redmond had with him, for the last time, the people +of Ireland. Recruiting began well but that awful fate of stupidity +that seems to overtake every Englishman dealing with Ireland even now +was overwhelming the two countries. Sir Francis Vane, an Irish +officer in the British Army, described in a series of articles in the +_New Witness_ the blunders made in the recruiting campaign: such +things as prominent Protestant Unionists being brought to the fore, +national sentiment discouraged, waving of Union Jacks, appeals to +patriotism not for Ireland but for England. + +Vane himself found his attempt at recruiting on national lines +unpopular with authority and in the midst of his successful effort +was recalled to England. Still, though recruiting slackened, the +cause of the Allies remained in Ireland the popular cause and the +Easter Rising was the work only of a handful of men. Its immediate +cause was the fact that although the Home Rule Bill had been passed +and was on the Statute Book its operation was again deferred. All +Irishmen saw this as a breach of faith yet the majority were not at +that time behind the rising. The severity of its repression turned +it almost overnight into a national cause and erected yet another +barrier against friendship between England and Ireland. + +For this friendship Chesterton longed ardently and worked +passionately, nor did he believe the barriers insurmountable. He even +held that there was between the people of the two countries a natural +amity. "There is something common to all the Britons, which even +Acts of Union have not torn asunder. The nearest name for it is +insecurity, something fitting in men walking on cliffs and the verge +of things. Adventure, a lonely taste in liberty, a humour without +wit, perplex their critics and perplex themselves. Their souls are +fretted like their coasts."* The Irish and the English had suffered +oppression at the same hands--those of the rulers of England. If +Prussian soldiers had been used against Irish peasants, so too had +they been used against English Chartists. A typical Englishman, +William Cobbett, had suffered fine and long imprisonment because of +his protest against the flogging of an English soldier by a German +mercenary. + +[* _A Short History of England_, p. 7.] + +"Telling the truth about Ireland," wrote Chesterton, "is not very +pleasant to a patriotic Englishman; but it is very patriotic."* For +the lack of the essential patriotism of admitting past sin the rulers +of England were perpetuating an evil that many of them sincerely +desired to end. For this was a case where the right road could only +be found by retracing the steps of a long road of wrong. + +[* _The Crimes of England_, p. 57.] + +Before the end of the war G.K. visited Ireland and in the book that +he wrote after this visit may be found his best analysis of all this +matter. Ireland, he believed, was making a mistake in not throwing +herself into the cause of the defeat of Germany, not because she owed +anything to England but because of what Prussia was and of what +Europe meant. Ireland had been the friend of France and the enemy of +Prussia long before England had been either; she would do well to +hold to her ancient allegiance. + +It was true that Ireland had been betrayed by the Liberal promise of +Home Rule--but the men who betrayed her were the Marconi men! Redmond +had made the great mistake of his career when from motives of +patriotism for Ireland he had helped the party hacks of the +Government Committee to whitewash these men, who had gone on to +betray Ireland as they were then betraying England. England too +needed Home Rule. England too needed deliverance from her "degenerate +and unworthy governing class." + +There are a few pages in _Irish Impressions_--now out of print-which +find their place here in illustration of what he meant by his +championship of nationality: + + A brilliant writer . . . once propounded to me his highly personal + and even perverse type of internationalism by saying, as a sort of + unanswerable challenge, "Wouldn't you rather be ruled by Goethe than + by Walter Long?" I replied that words could not express the wild love + and loyalty I should feel for Mr. Walter Long, if the only + alternative were Goethe. I could not have put my own national case in + a clearer or more compact form. I might occasionally feel inclined to + kill Mr. Long; but under the approaching shadow of Goethe, I should + feel more inclined to kill myself. That is the deathly element in + denationalisation; that it poisons life itself, the most real of all + realities. . . . + +Some people felt it an affectation that the Irish should put up their +street signs in Gaelic but G.K. defended it. "It is well to remember +that these things, which we also walk past every day, are exactly the +sort of things that always have, in the nameless fashion, the +national note." + + It is this sensation of stemming a stream, of ten thousand things + all pouring one way, labels, titles, monuments, metaphors, modes of + address, assumptions in controversy, that make an Englishman in + Ireland know that he is in a strange land. Nor is he merely + bewildered, as among a medley of strange things. On the contrary, if + he has any sense, he soon finds them united and simplified to a + single impression, as if he were talking to a strange person. He + cannot define it, because nobody can define a person, and nobody can + define a nation. He can only see it, smell it, hear it, handle it, + bump into it, fall over it, kill it, be killed for it, or be damned + for doing it wrong. He must be content with these mere hints of its + existence; but he cannot define it, because it is like a person, and + no book of logic will undertake to define Aunt Jane or Uncle William. + We can only say, with more or less mournful conviction, that if Aunt + Jane is not a person, there is no such thing as a person. And I say + with equal conviction that if Ireland is not a nation, there is no + such thing as a nation. . . . + +* * * * + +In September 1916 Cecil Chesterton bade farewell to the _New +Witness_. He was in the army as a private in the East in the East +Surreys, and G.K. took over the editorship. + + I like Chesterton's paper, the _New Witness_ [wrote an American + journalist in the _New York Tribune_ (no, _not_ yet Herald-Tribune)], + since G.K.C. has taken it over. . . . Gilbert Chesterton seems to me + the best thing England has produced since Dickens. . . . I like the + things he believes in, and I hate sociological experts and + prohibitionists and Uhlan officers, which are the things he hates. I + feel in him that a very honest man is speaking. . . . I like his + impudence to Northcliffe. . . . As a journalist Chesterton gets only + about a quarter of himself into action. But even a quarter of + Chesterton is good measure. . . . He works very hard at his + journalism. That is why he doesn't do it as well as his careless + things, which give him fun. But for all that there is no other + editorial page in England or the United States written with the snap, + wit and honest humanity of his paragraphs. I hope he won't blunt + himself by overwork. It would be an international loss if that sane, + jolly mind is bent to routine. England has need of him. + +The overwork and the high quality of it were alike undeniable, but +after the long repose of his illness G.K. seemed like a giant +refreshed and ready to run his course. Each week's _New Witness_ had +an Editorial, besides the paragraphs of which the _New York Tribune_ +speaks (not all of these however written by himself), and a signed +article under the suggestive general heading "At the Sign of the +World's End." The difference between articles and a real book, and +the degree of work needed to turn the one into the other, may be seen +if the essays on Marriage in the paper be compared with _The +Superstition of Divorce_ for which they furnished material, and those +on Ireland with _Irish Impressions_. There were besides very many +articles in other papers English and American and he was also writing +his _History of England_. + +If all Englishmen had kept the same unwavering gaze at reality as +Chesterton much of what he called "the rather feeble-minded reaction" +that followed the war might have been avoided and with it the advent +of Hitler. Particularly he opposed the tendency to call "Kaiserism" +what is now called "Hitlerism" and should always be called +Prussianism. While agreeing that care should be taken not to write of +German atrocities that could not be substantiated he insisted that +there was no ground for forgetting or ignoring the findings of the +American enquiry in Belgium which had established more than enough. +These horrors, the bombing of civilians, shelling of open towns and +sinking of passenger ships culminating with the Lusitania, were in +the main what brought America into the war. Here, as with England, +Chesterton did not admit as primary what has since been so +exclusively stressed--the economic motive. Here as with England he +took the volunteer army as one great proof of the will of a Nation. +And those of us who remember can testify that in America as in +England the will of the people was ahead of the decision of the +politicians. + +On one point Chesterton's articles have a special interest: the +question of reprisals. When the Germans broke yet another of the +promises of the Hague Convention and initiated the use of poison gas +there was much discussion as to the ethics of reprisals and G.K. used +against reprisals two arguments one of which was a rare example of a +fallacy in his arguments. If a wasp stings you, he said, you do not +sting back. No, we might reply, but you squash it--you have as a man +an advantage over a wasp and so do not need to use its own weapons to +defeat it. + +His other argument is far more powerful--is indeed overwhelming. If +you use, even as reprisals, unlawful weapons, it is harder to prove +you did not initiate them. And I remember well another feeling at the +time expressed by G.K. which was I believe that of the majority of +English people--if we use these things, if we accept the Prussian +gospel of "frightfulness" then spiritually we have lost the war. +Spiritually Prussia has conquered: as she has engulfed the old +Germanies and, first imposing her rule, then gained acceptance of her +ideas, so it may be with us. Ideas are everything and the barbarians +destroy more with ideas even than by material weapons, horrible as +these may be. + +Inclined at first to hope for the fruits of democracy from the +Russian revolution Chesterton was soon being reproached by H. G. +Wells for "dirty" suspiciousness about the Bolshevik leaders and +their motives. But the collapse of Russia and the defeat of Rumania +alike only strengthened the necessity of the fight to a finish with +Prussia that became as the months passed the absorbing aim of the +_New Witness_. In the treaties respectively of Brest-Litovsk and +Bukarest Germany imposed upon these two countries incredibly harsh +terms. + +Thus wrote the _New Witness_ after the Treaty of Bukarest: + + We should like to ask the Pacifists and Semi-Pacifists, who are + fond of official documents, if they have read the White Paper dealing + with the plain facts about the peace with Roumania. If they have a + single word to say on the subject, we should be much interested to + hear what it is. It makes absolutely plain two facts, both of which + have a sort of frightful humour after all the humanitarian talk about + no annexations and no indemnities. The first is that the conquerors + have annexed in a direct and personal sense beyond what is commonly + meant by annexation; the second is that they have indemnified + themselves by an immediate coercion and extortion, which is generally + veiled by the forms of a recognised indemnity. In annexing some nine + thousand square miles, they have been particular to attach whole + forests to the hunting-grounds of Hungarian nobles and the timber + of Hungarian wood merchants; not merely annexing as a conqueror + annexes, but rather stealing as an individual steals. Further, the + fun growing fast and furious, they have taken country containing a + hundred and thirty thousand Roumanians, merely because it is + uninhabited land. For the second point, we often speak figuratively + of tyrants enslaving a country; but Teutons do literally enslave. All + the males of the occupied land, which happens to be two-thirds of + Roumania, are driven to work on pain of death or prison. All this is + clear and satisfactory enough; but the White Paper keeps the best to + the last. It is this sentence we would commend to our peaceful + friends: "The German delegates informed the Roumanian delegates, who + were appalled at being required to accept such conditions, that they + would appreciate their moderation when they knew those which would be + imposed on the Western Powers after the victory of the Central + Empires." + +The reminder was needed. Far less than most people was Chesterton +subject to that weakness of the human spirit that brings weariness in +sustained effort and premature relaxation. Prussia had not, he said, +shown any evidence of repentance--merely of regret for lack of +success. The Kaiser said he had not wanted this war. No, said +Chesterton, he wanted a very different war. Chesterton might and did +say later that he himself had wanted a very different peace--the +destruction of Prussia, the reconstruction of the old German +states--but at present he wanted only to fight on until this became +possible. + +I do not think he ever hated anybody--but he did hate Prussianism as +the "wickedness that hindered loving," and he had no liking for "the +patronizing pacifism of the gentleman [it was Romain Rolland] who +took a holiday in the Alps and said he was above the struggle; as if +there were any Alp from which the soul can look down on Calvary. +There is, indeed, one mountain among them that might be very +appropriate to so detached an observer--the mountain named after +Pilate, the man who washed his hands."* + +[* _Uses of Diversity_, p. 40 (Fountain Library)] + +His keen imagination could visualize the sufferings caused by war. +Vicariously he knew something of the life of the trenches, for Cecil +like many another C. Man* had managed to get to France. A delightful +article on Comradeship shows, what letters from soldiers confirm, how +perfectly at home was Private Chesterton among his fellows and how +much loved by them. + +[* English soldiers are classed A, B, or C, according to their degree +of physical fitness, and Cecil was in Class C.] + +I can understand a pagan, but not a Christian, who simply dismisses +the suffering of our soldiers as useless. He is like Dr. Hyde +scorning Father Damien or like those who cried at the foot of the +Cross: He saved others, Himself He cannot save. They saved others +these men, their suffering was that of the human race whose head is +Christ. With Him they bore, even if they knew it not, that mysterious +burden of humanity that makes some men question God's existence but +draws others into conscious membership of His mystical body. Many +were so drawn in those days and there seemed a new lifting up of the +Cross. The _New Witness_ does, I think, lack one note a little. They +were too busy hating Prussianism to give thought to the Christian +command to love Prussians, whose sufferings too were those of +humanity. + +Into the opposite error there was no risk that they would fall. Never +for them would heroism be belittled in the name of the very horrors +it was encountering. In one article Belloc touched on this strange +perversion and reminded his readers that the power to ravage and +destroy was not really a new result of modern machinery. Attila and +his Huns had inflicted even greater devastation and had left a desert +behind them. Barbarism in its nature was destructive and we were +encountering barbarism. In so doing we were acting the part of +Christian men. + +But the old fights still had to be waged on the home front: against +the money power and against what the _New Witness_ called Prussianism +at home. Unceasingly they battled for fair treatment for soldiers' +wives and children, for freedom from unmeaning and unnecessary +regulations, against the profiteering by big firms and the consequent +crushing of small. About two thousand small butchers' shops for +instance had to close at the very beginning of the war owing to a +cornering of supplies by the large firms. Against this and all the +ramifications of the meat "scandal" the _New Witness_ struggled, +publishing, they claimed, facts unpublished elsewhere and inspiring +questions in the House of Commons. Belloc's irony, Chesterton's wit, +point these articles and make them worth reading as literature; and +there is some of the old fooling. A further series on the Servile +State is attacked by Shaw who thinks that Belloc, since he is not a +Socialist, must be a follower of Herbert Spencer! G.K. accounts for +this by saying that Shaw had not read Belloc. "How do you know," +retorts Shaw, "it is not Herbert Spencer I have not read? Suppose you +had your choice of not reading a book by Belloc and not reading one +by Spencer which would you choose? Hang it all, be reasonable." + +The economic front was never abandoned and the paper continued to +attack all forms of Socialism including the recreation of Bumble by +Mrs. Sidney Webb, with all the regimentation of the poor "for their +own good" that Bumble represented. The inner secrets of the Fabian +Office are unfolded by Shaw in a letter to Gilbert (dated Aug. 6, +1917). + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + If you want to expose a scandalous orgy in the _New Witness_, you + may depend on the following as being a correct account by an eye + witness. + + You know that there is a body called The Fabian Research + Department, of which I have the hollow honour to be Perpetual Grand, + the real moving spirit being Mrs. Sidney Webb. A large number of + innocent young men and women are attracted to this body by promises + of employment by the said Mrs. S.W. in works of unlimited and + inspiring uplift, such as are unceasingly denounced, along with + Marconi and other matters, in your well-written organ. + + Well, Mrs. Sidney Webb summoned all these young things to an + uplifting At Home at the Fabian office lately. They came in crowds + and sat at her feet whilst she prophesied unto them, with occasional + comic relief from the unfortunate Perpetual Grand. At the decent hour + of ten o'clock, she bade them good night and withdrew to her own + residence and to bed. For some accidental reason or other I lingered + until, as I thought, all the young things had gone home. I should + explain that I was in the two pair back. At last I started to go home + myself. As I descended the stairs I was stunned by the most infernal + din I have ever heard, even at the front, coming from the Fabian + Hall, which would otherwise be the back yard. On rushing to this + temple I found the young enthusiasts sprawling over tables, over + radiators, over everything except chairs, in a state of scandalous + abandonment, roaring at the tops of their voices and in a quite + unintelligible manner a string of presumably obscene songs, + accompanied on the piano with frantic gestures and astonishing + musical skill by a man whom I had always regarded as a respectable + Fabian Researcher, but who now turned out to be a Demon Pianist + out-Heroding (my secretary put in two rs, and explains that she was + thinking of Harrods) Svengali. A horribly sacrilegious character was + given to the proceedings by the fact that the tune they were singing + when I entered was Luther's hymn _Eine Feste Burg ist Unser Gott_. As + they went on (for I regret to say that my presence exercised no + restraint whatever) they sang their extraordinary and + incomprehensible litany to every tune, however august its + associations, which happened to fit it. These, if you please, are the + solemn and sour neophytes whose puritanical influence has kept you in + dread for so many years. + + But I have not told you the worst. Before I fled from the building + I did at last discover what words it was they were singing. When it + first flashed on me, I really could not believe it. But at the end of + the next verse no doubt or error was possible. The young maenad + nearest me was concluding every strophe by shrieking that she didn't + care where the water went if it didn't get into the wine.* Now you + know. + +[* The refrain of a poem in _The Flying Inn_.] + + I have since ascertained that a breviary of this Black Mass can be + obtained at the Fabian Office, with notes of the numbers of the hymns + Ancient and Modern, and all the airs sacred and profane, to which + your poems have been set. + + This letter needs no answer--indeed, admits of none. I leave you to + your reflections. + + Ever + + G.B.S. + +"The Shaw Worm Turns on Wells" was a headline in the _New Witness_ +over a vigorous and light-hearted attack. The others were apt to +score off Wells in these exchanges because he lost light-heartedness +and became irritable. Even with Gilbert he sometimes broke out, +although in a calmer moment he told Shaw that to get angry with +Chesterton was an impossibility. With Cecil Chesterton it was only +too easy to get angry at any rate as he appeared in the _New Witness_. +But I think when he heard Cecil was in France Wells must have +regretted one of the letters he wrote to Gilbert, just before the +change of editorship. + +It was curious, the contrast between the genial personality so loved +by his friends and the waspishness so often shown by Cecil and his +staff in the columns of the paper. "His extraordinary personality," +writes E. S. P. Haynes, "wonderfully penetrated the eccentricity of +his appearance. His features were slightly fantastic and his voice +was as loudly discordant as his laughter; but the real charm and +generosity of his character were so transparent that one never seemed +to be conscious of the physical medium." + +Yet with all my sympathy for many of the _New Witness_ ideas my +nerves jangle when I read the volumes of Cecil's editorship, and I +think jangled nerves explain if they do not excuse this outburst by +Wells: + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + Haven't I on the whole behaved decently to you? Haven't I always + shown a reasonable civility to you and your brother and Belloc? + Haven't I betrayed at times a certain affection for you? Very well, + then you will understand that I don't start out to pick a needless + quarrel with the _New Witness_ crowd. But this business of the + Hueffer book in the _New Witness_ makes me sick. Some disgusting + little greaser named ---- has been allowed to insult old F.M.H. in a + series of letters that make me ashamed of my species. Hueffer has + many faults no doubt but firstly he's poor, secondly he's notoriously + unhappy and in a most miserable position, thirdly he's a better + writer than any of your little crowd and fourthly, instead of + pleading his age and his fat and taking refuge from service in a + greasy obesity as your Brother has done, he is serving his country. + His book is a great book and ---- just lies about it--I guess he's a + dirty minded priest or some such unclean thing--when he says it is + the story of a stallion and so forth. The whole outbreak is so + envious, so base, so cat-in-the-gutter-spitting-at-the-passer-by, + that I will never let the _New Witness_ into the house again. + + Regretfully yours, + + H. G. WELLS. + +Gilbert replied: + + 11 Warwick Gardens, Kensington W. + + MY DEAR WELLS, + + As you will see by the above address I have been away from home; + and must apologise for delay; I am returning almost at once, however. + Most certainly you have always been a good friend to me, and I have + always tried to express my pride in the fact. I know enough of your + good qualities in other ways to put down everything in your last + letter to an emotion of loyalty to another friend. Any quarrel + between us will not come from me; and I confess I am puzzled as to + why it should come from you, merely because somebody else who is not + I dislikes a book by somebody else who is not you, and says so in an + article for which neither of us is even remotely responsible. I very + often disagree with the criticisms of ----; I do not know anything + about the book or the circumstances of Hueffer. I cannot help being + entertained by your vision of ----, who is not a priest, but a poor + journalist, and I believe a Free-Thinker. But whoever he may be (and + I hardly think the problem worth a row between you and me) he has a + right to justice: and you must surely see that even if it were my + paper, I could not either tell a man to find a book good when he + found it bad, or sack him for a point of taste which has nothing in + the world to do with the principles of the paper. For the rest, + Haynes represents the _New Witness_ much more than a reviewer does, + being both on the board and the staff; and he has put your view in + the paper--I cannot help thinking with a more convincing logic. Don't + you sometimes find it convenient, even in my case, that your friends + are less touchy than you are? + + By all means drop any paper you dislike, though if you do it for + every book review you think unfair, I fear your admirable range of + modern knowledge will be narrowed. Of the paper in question I will + merely say this. My brother and in some degree the few who have + worked with him have undertaken a task of public criticism for the + sake of which they stand in permanent danger of imprisonment and + personal ruin. We are incessantly reminded of this danger; and no one + has ever dared to suggest that we have any motive but the best. If + you should ever think it right to undertake such a venture, you will + find that the number of those who will commit their journalistic + fortunes to it is singularly small: and includes some who have more + courage and honesty than acquaintance with the hierarchy of art. It + is even likely that you will come to think the latter less important. + + Yours, sans rancune, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. On re-reading your letter in order to be as fair as I am + trying to be, I observe you specially mention ----'s letters. You + will see, of course, that this does not make any difference; to stop + letters would be to stop Haynes' letter and others on your side; and + these could not be printed without permitting a rejoinder. I post + this from Beaconsfield, where anything further will find me. + +It ended as all quarrels did that anyone started with Gilbert: + + DEAR G.K.C. + + Also I can't quarrel with you. But the Hueffer business aroused my + long dormant moral indignation and I let fly at the most sensitive + part of the _New Witness_ constellation, the only part about whose + soul I care. I hate these attacks on rather miserable exceptional + people like Hueffer and Masterman. I know these aren't perfect men + but their defects make quite sufficient hells for them without these + public peltings. I suppose I ought to have written to C.C. instead of + to you. One of these days I will go and have a heart to heart talk to + him. Only I always get so amiable when I meet a man. He, C.C., needs + it--I mean the talking to. + + Yours ever + + H.G. + +Through the war's progress Wells appeared to Chesterton to be +expressing with a powerful and individual genius not his own +considered views but the reactions of public opinion. As Mr. Britling +he saw the war through, and even called it "a war to end war." As Mr. +Clissold he asked of what use it had all been. Chesterton speaks of +him as a "rather unstable genius," and the genius and instability +alike can be seen in his meteor appearances in the _New Witness_ and +in his books. Several of these he sent to Gilbert, who wrote (Sept. +12, 1917): + + I have been trying for a long time, though perpetually baulked + with business and journalism, to write and thank you for sending me, + in so generous a manner, your ever interesting and delightful books; + especially as divisions touching the things we care most about, drive + me, every time I review them, to deal more in controversy and less in + compliment than I intend. The truth and the trouble, is that both of + us are only too conscious that there is a Great War going on all the + time on the purely mental plane; and I cannot help thinking your view + is often a heresy; and I know only too well that when you lead it, it + is likely to be a large heresy. I fear that being didactic means + being disproportionate; and that the temptation to attack something I + think I can correct leads to missing (in my writing, not in my + reading) a thousand fine things that I could never imitate. It is + lucky for me that you are not very often a book-reviewer, when I + bring out my own shapeless and amateurish books. + +In the _Autobiography_ G.K. calls Wells a sportive but spiritual +child of Huxley. He delighted in his wit and swiftness of mind, but +he summarized in the same book the quality which runs through all his +work. + + I have always thought that he re-acted too swiftly to everything; + possibly as a part of the swiftness of his natural genius. I have + never ceased to admire and sympathise; but I think he has always been + too much in a state of reaction. To use the name which would probably + annoy him most, I think he is a permanent reactionary. Whenever I met + him, he seemed to be coming from somewhere, rather than going + anywhere. . . . And he was so often nearly right, that his movements + irritated me like the sight of somebody's hat being perpetually + washed up by the sea and never touching the shore. But I think he + thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the + mind. Whereas I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the + mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. + +No change of mood in the public meant any change in the _New Witness_ +group. In a powerful article in reply to an old friend who asked for +peace because the war was destroying freedom, Belloc told him that +freedom had gone long since for the mass of Englishmen. "How many," +wrote G.K., "pacifists or semi-pacifists . . . resisted the detailed +destruction of all liberty for the populace _before the war?_ It is a +bitter choice between freedom and patriotism, but how many fought for +freedom before it gave them the chance of fighting against +Patriotism?"* + +[* _New Witness_, May 31, 1917.] + +Again and again they touched the spot on the question of trading with +the enemy. In this as in all their attacks they made one point of +enormous importance. Do not, they said, look for traitors and spies +among waiters and small traders--look up, not down. You will find +them in high places if you will dare to look. They dared. + +And here came in once more what was commonly regarded as a strange +crank peculiar to the Chesterbelloc--their outlook towards Jews. +Usually those who referred to it spoke of a religious prejudice. +Again and again the _New Witness_, not always patiently but with +unvarying clarity, explained. They had no religious prejudice against +Jews, they had not even a racial prejudice against Jews (though this +I think was true only of some of the staff). Their only prejudice was +against the pretence that a Jew was an Englishman. + +It was undeniable that there were (for example) Rothschilds in Paris, +London and Berlin, all related and conducting an international family +banking business. There were d'Erlangers in London and Paris +(pronounced in the French style) whose cousins were Erlangers +(pronounced in the German style) in Berlin. How, the _New Witness_ +asked, could members of such families feel the same about the war as +an Englishman? They could not, to put it at its lowest, have the same +primary loyalty to England or to Germany either. Their primary +loyalty must be, indeed it ought to be, to their own race and kindred. + +Yet this was surely an excessive simplification. We have only to +remember that lately a son of the d'Erlanger house died gallantly as +an English airman: we have only to remember the thousands of Jews who +fought in our ranks in this war and the last. Very many Jews _are_ +patriotic for England and for America: many were patriotic for +Germany. This, no doubt, makes the problem more acute, but any +discussion is nonsense that omits this certain fact. There are Jews +patriotic first for the country they live in, the country that gave +them home and citizenship, of which often their wives and mothers are +descended; there are others who feel that Jewry is their _patria_. + +This was the fact the _New Witness_ could never forget. A Jew might +not be specially pro-German in feeling, yet his actions might help +Germany by being pro-Jewish. International Jewish trading _was_ +trading with the enemy and was to a very large extent continuing in +spite of assurances to the contrary. Moreover international finance +was getting nervous over the continuance of the war as a menace to +its own future: it wanted peace, a peace that should still leave it +in possession in this country--and in Germany. Gilbert Chesterton was +passionately determined to cast it out. + +He was a Zionist. He wished for the Jewish people the peaceful +possession of a country of their own, but he demanded urgently that +they should no longer be allowed to govern his country. Marconi still +obsessed him, and the surrender of English politics to the money +power seemed to him to represent as great a danger for the future as +Prussianism. For a moment the two dangers were the one danger, and +against them was set the people of England. + +It was at this moment that Chesterton published his epic of the +English people which he called a History. Frank Swinnerton has told* +how this book came to be written. Chatto & Windus (for whom +Swinnerton worked) had asked G.K. to write a history of England: he +refused "on the ground that he was no historian." Later he signed a +contract with the same publishers for a book of essays, then +discovered that he was already under contract to give this book to +another firm. He asked Chatto & Windus to cancel their contract and +offered to write something else for them. Swinnerton's account +continues: + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 93.] + + The publishers, concealing jubilation, sternly recalled their + original proposal for a short history of England. Shrieks and groans + were distinctly heard all the way from Beaconsfield, but the promise + was kept. The _Short History of England_ was what Chesterton must + have called a wild and awful success. It probably has been the most + generally read of all his books. But while the credit for it is his, + he must not be blamed for impudence in essaying history, when the + inspiration arose in another's head (not mine) and when in fact no + man ever went to the writing of a literary work with less confidence. + +You can find no dates in this History and a minimum of facts, but you +can find vision. The history professors at London University said to +Lawrence Solomon that it was full of inaccuracies, yet "He's got +something we hadn't got." G.K. might well have borrowed from Newman +and called it an Essay in Aid of a History of England. He showed +"something of the great moral change which turned the Roman Empire +into Christendom, by which each great thing, to which it afterwards +gave birth, was baptised into a promise or at least into a hope of +permanence. It may be that each of its ideas was, as it were, mixed +with immortality." + +The English people had been free and happy as a part of this great +thing, cultivating their own land, establishing by their Guilds a +social scheme based upon "pity and a craving for equality," building +cathedrals and worshipping God, with the "Holy Land much nearer to a +plain man's house than Westminster, and immeasurably nearer than +Runnymede." All life was made lovely by "this prodigious presence of +a religious transfiguration in common life" and only began to darken +with the successful "Rebellion of the Rich" under Henry VIII. + +Probably too big a proportion is given by Chesterton to the great +crime that overshadowed for him the rest of English history. Yet he +does justice in brilliant phrasing to the Eighteenth Century Whigs: +still more to Chatham and Burke and to Dr. Johnson whom he so loved +and to whom he was often compared. But supremely he loved Nelson "who +dies with his stars on his bosom and his heart upon his sleeve." For +Nelson was the type and chief exemplar of the ordinary Englishman. + + . . . the very hour of his death, the very name of his ship, are + touched with that epic completeness which critics call the long arm + of coincidence and prophets the hand of God. His very faults and + failures were heroic, not in a loose but in a classic sense; in that + he fell only like the legendary heroes, weakened by a woman, not + foiled by any foe among men. And he remains the incarnation of a + spirit in the English that is purely poetic; so poetic that it + fancies itself a thousand things, and sometimes even fancies itself + prosaic. At a recent date, in an age of reason, in a country already + calling itself dull and business-like, with top-hats and factory + chimneys already beginning to rise like towers of funereal + efficiency, this country clergyman's son moved to the last in a + luminous cloud, and acted a fairy tale. He shall remain as a lesson + to those who do not understand England, and a mystery to those who + think they do. In outward action he led his ships to victory and died + upon a foreign sea; but symbolically he established something + indescribable and intimate, something that sounds like a native + proverb; he was the man who burnt his ships, and who for ever set the + Thames on fire. + +The _Ballad of the White Horse_ had been a poem about English legends +and origins. The _History_ too was called a poem by the reviewers. +And it was. It was a poem about Falstaff and Sam Weller and even the +Artful Dodger who in so many British colonies had turned into +Robinson Crusoe. His rulers had tried to educate him, they had tried +to Germanize him and to teach him "to embrace a Saxon because he was +the other half of an Anglo-Saxon." All English culture had been based +for a century and more on ardent admiration for German _Kultur_. And +then-- + + . . . the day came, and the ignorant fellow found he had other + things to learn. And he was quicker than his educated countrymen, + for he had nothing to unlearn. + + He in whose honour all had been said and sung, stirred, and + stepped across the border of Belgium. Then were spread out before + men's eyes all the beauties of his culture and all the benefits of his + organization; then we beheld under a lifting daybreak what light + we had followed and after what image we had laboured to refashion + ourselves. Nor in any story of mankind has the irony of God chosen + the foolish things so catastrophically to confound the wise. For the + common crowd of poor and ignorant Englishmen, because they only + knew that they were Englishmen, burst through the filthy cobwebs + of four hundred years and stood where their fathers stood when they + knew that they were Christian men. The English poor, broken in + every revolt, bullied by every fashion, long despoiled of property, + and now being despoiled of liberty, entered history with a noise of + trumpets, and turned themselves in two years into one of the iron + armies of the world. And when the critic of politics and literature, + feeling that this war is after all heroic, looks around him to find the + hero, he can point to nothing but a mob. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +After the Armistice + +THE MONTHS THAT followed the signing of the Armistice were the +darkest in Gilbert Chesterton's life. Nothing but the immense natural +high spirits of the _New Witness_ group could have carried them +through the many years in which they cried their unheeded warnings to +England. But now as the war drew to an end a new note of optimism had +become audible. The Prussian menace was almost conquered. Our +soldiers would return and would bring with them the courage and +confidence of victors. They might overthrow the governing plutocracy +and build again an England of freedom and sanity. But one soldier did +not return--the one to whom this group looked for comradeship and +inspiration. On December 6, 1918, Cecil Chesterton died in hospital +in France. + +"His courage was heroic, native, positive and equal," wrote Belloc, +"always at the highest potentiality of courage. . . ." + +Gilbert wrote: + + He lived long enough to march to the victory which was for him a + supreme vision of liberty and the light. The work which he put first + he did before he died. The work which he put second, but very near to + the other, he left for us to do. There are many of us who will + abandon many other things, and recognize no greater duty than to do + it. + +This second work was the fight at home against corruption and for +freedom for the English people. It is impossible to remember Gilbert +Chesterton vividly and to write the word bitterness. It was rather +with a profound and burning indignation that he thought of his fellow +Englishmen who had fought and died--and then looked up and saw +"Marconi George" and "Marconi Isaacs," still rulers of the fate of +his country. Thus meditating he wrote an "Elegy in a Country +Churchyard." + + The men that worked for England + They have their graves at home: + And bees and birds of England + About the cross can roam. + + But they that fought for England, + Following a falling star, + Alas, alas for England + They have their graves afar. + + And they that rule in England, + In stately conclave met, + Alas, alas for England + They have no graves as yet.* + +[* _Collected Poems_, p. 65.] + +Strange irony of Cecil Chesterton's last weeks: his old enemy Godfrey +Isaacs brought an action for perjury against Sir Charles Hobhouse. +Both men's Counsel agreed and the judge stressed that perjury lay on +one side or the other. The case was given against Isaacs. He appealed +and his appeal was dismissed. Perjury had lain on one side or the +other! + +Meanwhile news came that Rufus Isaacs, now Lord Reading, had gone +with Lloyd George to Paris to attend the Peace Conference. All that +this might mean: the peril to Poland: the danger of a Prussia kept at +the head of the Germanies for the sake of international finance: an +abasement of England before those countries that had not forgotten +Marconi: all this was vivid to Gilbert Chesterton. In the same number +of the _New Witness_ in which he mourned his brother (Dec. 13, 1918), +he wrote under "The Sign of the World's End" an Open Letter to Lord +Reading: + + My Lord--I address to you a public letter as it is upon a public + question: it is unlikely that I should ever trouble you with any + private letter on any private question; and least of all on the + private question that now fills my mind. It would be impossible + altogether to ignore the irony that has in the last few days brought + to an end the great Marconi duel in which you and I in some sense + played the part of seconds; that personal part of the matter ended + when Cecil Chesterton found death in the trenches to which he had + freely gone; and Godfrey Isaacs found dismissal in those very Courts + to which he once successfully appealed. But believe me I do not write + on any personal matter; nor do I write, strangely enough perhaps, + with any personal acrimony. On the contrary, there is something in + these tragedies that almost unnaturally clarifies and enlarges the + mind; and I think I write partly because I may never feel so + magnanimous again. It would be irrational to ask you for sympathy; + but I am sincerely moved to offer it. You are far more unhappy; for + your brother is still alive. + + If I turn my mind to you and your type of politics it is not wholly + and solely through that trick of abstraction by which in moments of + sorrow a man finds himself staring at a blot on the tablecloth or an + insect on the ground. I do, of course, realise, with that sort of + dull clarity, that you are in practise a blot on the English + landscape, and that the political men who made you are the creeping + things of the earth. But I am, in all sincerity, less in a mood to + mock at the sham virtues they parade than to try to imagine the more + real virtues which they successfully conceal. In your own case there + is the less difficulty, at least in one matter. I am very willing to + believe that it was the mutual dependence of the members of your + family that has necessitated the sacrifice of the dignity and + independence of my country; and that if it be decreed that the + English nation is to lose its public honour, it will be partly + because certain men of the tribe of Isaacs kept their own strange + private loyalty. I am willing to count this to you for a virtue as + your own code may interpret virtue; but the fact would alone be + enough to make me protest against any man professing your code and + administering our law. And it is upon this point of your public + position, and not upon any private feelings, that I address you today. + + Not only is there no question of disliking any race, but there is + not here even a question of disliking any individual. It does not + raise the question of hating you; rather it would raise, in some + strange fashion, the question of loving you. Has it ever occurred to + you how much a good citizen would have to love you in order to + tolerate you? Have you ever considered how warm, indeed how wild, + must be our affection for the particular stray stock-broker who has + somehow turned into a Lord Chief Justice, to be strong enough to make + us accept him as Lord Chief Justice? It is not a question of how much + we dislike you, but of how much we like you; of whether we like you + more than England, more than Europe, more than Poland the pillar of + Europe, more than honour, more than freedom, more than facts. It is + not, in short, a question of how much we dislike you, but of how far + we can be expected to adore you, to die for you, to decay and + degenerate for you; for your sake to be despised, for your sake to be + despicable. Have you ever considered, in a moment of meditation, how + curiously valuable you would really have to be, that Englishmen + should in comparison be careless of all the things you have + corrupted, and indifferent to all the things that you may yet + destroy? Are we to lose the War which we have already won? That and + nothing else is involved in losing the full satisfaction of the + national claim of Poland. Is there any man who doubts that the Jewish + International is unsympathetic with that full national demand? And is + there any man who doubts that you will be sympathetic with the Jewish + International? No man who knows anything of the interior facts of + modern Europe has the faintest doubt on either point. No man doubts + when he knows, whether or no he cares. Do you seriously imagine that + those who know, that those who care, are so idolatrously infatuated + with Rufus Daniel Isaacs as to tolerate such risk, let alone such + ruin? Are we to set up as the standing representative of England a + man who is a standing joke against England? That and nothing else is + involved in setting up the chief Marconi Minister as our chief + Foreign Minister. It is precisely in those foreign countries with + which such a minister would have to deal, that his name would be, and + has been, a sort of pantomime proverb like Panama or the South Sea + Bubble. Foreigners were not threatened with fine and imprisonment for + calling a spade a spade and a speculation a speculation; foreigners + were not punished with a perfectly lawless law of libel for saying + about public men what those very men had afterwards to admit in + public. Foreigners were lookers-on who were really allowed to see + most of the game, when our public saw nothing of the game; and they + made not a little game of it. Are they henceforth to make game of + everything that is said and done in the name of England in the + affairs of Europe? Have you the serious impudence to call us + Anti-Semites because we are not so extravagantly fond of one + particular Jew as to endure this for him alone? No, my lord; the + beauties of your character shall not so blind us to all elements of + reason and self-preservation; we can still control our affections; + if we are fond of you, we are not quite so fond of you as that. If we + are anything but Anti-Semite, we are not Pro-Semite in that peculiar + and personal fashion; if we are lovers, we will not kill ourselves + for love. After weighing and valuing all your virtues, the qualities + of our own country take their due and proportional part in our + esteem. Because of you she shall not die. + + We cannot tell in what fashion you yourself feel your strange + position, and how much you know it is a false position. I have + sometimes thought I saw in the faces of such men as you that you felt + the whole experience as unreal, a mere masquerade; as I myself might + feel it if, by some fantastic luck in the old fantastic civilisation + of China, I were raised from the Yellow Button to the Coral Button, + or from the Coral Button to the Peacock's Feather. Precisely because + these things would be grotesque, I might hardly feel them as + incongruous. Precisely because they meant nothing to me I might be + satisfied with them, I might enjoy them without any shame at my own + impudence as an alien, adventurer. Precisely because I could not feel + them as dignified, I should not know what I had degraded. My fancy may + be quite wrong; it is but one of many attempts I have made to imagine + and allow for an alien psychology in this matter; and if you, and + Jews far worthier than you, are wise they will not dismiss as + Anti-Semitism what may well prove the last serious attempt to + sympathise with Semitism. I allow for your position more than most + men allow for it; more, most assuredly, than most men will allow for + it in the darker days that yet may come. It is utterly false to + suggest that either I or a better man than I, whose work I now + inherit, desired this disaster for you and yours, I wish you no such + ghastly retribution. Daniel son of Isaac. Go in peace; but go. + + Yours, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +In those last sentences the spirit of prophecy was upon Chesterton +after a truly dark and deep fashion. Yet even he did not guess that +the retribution he feared would fall, not upon that "tribe of Isaacs" +thus established in English government, but upon the unfortunate +Jewish people as a whole, from the German nation that Isaacs had gone +to Paris to protect. For there was no doubt in Chesterton's mind that +it was his work at the Peace Conference to strive for the survival of +Prussia, no matter how Europe and the rest of the Germanies suffered. +The _New Witness_ hated the Treaty of Versailles in its eventual form +as much as Hitler hates it, but for a very different reason. + +All human judgments are limited and no doubt there was a mixture of +truth and error in Chesterton's view of the years that followed. But +in the universal reaction from the war-spirit to Pacifism the truths +he was urging received scant attention, his really amazing prophecies +fell on deaf ears. "He will almost certainly," Monsignor Knox has +said,* "be remembered as a prophet, in an age of false prophets." And +it is not insignificant that today it has become the fashion to say, +as he said twenty-five years ago and steadily reiterated, that the +peace of 1918 was only an armistice. + +[* In the panegyric preached in Westminster Cathedral, June 27, 1936.] + +Just before leaving England for the Front, Cecil had married Miss Ada +Jones, who had long worked with him on the paper, and who continued +to write both for it and later for _G.K.'s Weekly_, doing especially +the dramatic criticism under the pen-name of J. K. Prothero. Later on +she was to become famous for her exploit in spending a fortnight +investigating in the guise of a tramp the London of down-and-out +women. She wrote _In Darkest London_ and founded the Cecil Houses to +improve the very bad conditions she had discovered and in memory of +her husband. At this date Mrs. Cecil Chesterton visited Poland and +wrote a series of articles describing the Polish struggle for life +and freedom. Several Poles also contributed articles to the paper. +There was not I imagine on the staff one single writer with the kind +of ignorance that enabled Lloyd George to confess in Paris that he +did not know where Teschen was. + +Here was the first tragedy of Versailles. The representatives of both +America and England were ignorant of the reality of Europe: Wilson +was (as Chesterton often said) a much better man than Lloyd George, +but he knew as little of the world which he had come to reconstruct. +He was, too, a political doctrinaire preferring "what was not there" +in the shape of a League of Nations to the real nations of Poland or +Italy. And with the American as with the Welshman international +finance stood beside the politicians and whispered in their ears. An +interesting article appeared in the _New Witness_ by an American who +said that no leading journal in his own country would print it any +more than any English one. He described the opposition of masses of +ordinary Americans to the League of Nations and how a Chicago banker, +who however had no international interests, had heartily agreed with +this opposition. But the same banker had written to him next day +eating his own words. In the interim he had met the other bankers. +This American correspondent held with the _New Witness_ that the +League of Nations was mainly a device of international finance so +framed as to enlist also the support of pacifist idealists who really +believed it would make for peace. + +Only one thing, said the _New Witness_, would make for a stable +peace: remove Prussia from her position at the head of Germany: make +her regaining of it impossible. Make a strong Poland, and a strong +Italy, as well as a strong France. Later on they said they had +disapproved of the weakening of Austria, but though I do not doubt +that this is true in principle I cannot find much mention of Austria +in the paper: Poland, Italy and Ireland fill their columns--and the +freeing of England. + +They claimed that theirs was in the main the policy of +Clemenceau--but both Chesterton and Belloc admitted that Clemenceau, +even if he desired a strong Poland as a barrier between Germany and +Russia, shared with his colleagues an equal responsibility in the +destruction of Austria which proved so fatal. He was too much a +freemason to desire many Catholic states. The interests of France +were not those of Italy, which certainly went to the wall and was +turned thereby from friend and ally into enemy. And the _New Witness_ +summed up the fate of Ireland in the suggestion that Lloyd George had +said to Wilson: "If you won't look at Ireland, I won't look at +Mexico." Both Lloyd George and Wilson were too anti-Catholic to do +other than dislike (in Lloyd George's case _hate_ is the word) +Catholic Poland. It is certain that Lloyd George in particular worked +savagely against the Poland that should have been. A commission +appointed by the Peace Conference reported in favour of Poland owning +the port of Danzig and territory approximating to her age-long +historic boundaries and in particular including East Prussia in which +there was still a majority of Poles: Lloyd George sent back the +report for revision: they made it again on the same lines. + +It was a strange anomaly that this man should have sat at the Council +Table representing a great country. In the past men had sat there who +not only knew much of Europe themselves but who had as their advisers +the Foreign office with all its experience and tradition. Belloc +pointed out in an article on Versailles that the English tradition +had been to hold a balance between conflicting extremes and thus to +bring about a peace that at least ensured stability for a long +period. But here was a man too ignorant to realize the dangers of his +own ignorance and therefore seek help from experience. This peace +would be, Belloc foretold, the parent of many wars. The Czechs got +much of what they wanted just as d'Annunzio got Fiume for Italy--by +seizing it. Poland waited for Versallles and enlisted her allies, yet +while the Peace Conference was actually in session Germans were +persecuting Poles in East Prussia so that many thousands of them fled +into Poland proper and thus diminished the Polish population of East +Prussia before any plebiscite could be taken there. + +Lloyd George and Churchill sent a British expeditionary force to +Archangel to assist the "White" Russians but when the Bolsheviks +invaded Poland she was not supported. Nor did the Allies send her the +raw material they had promised, to rebuild her commercial life. Again +and again our papers reported pogroms in Poland. Yet close +investigation by writers for the _New Witness_ failed to discover any +pogroms in the cities in which they were reported as occurring. + +Powerful are the words in which, in April 1919, Chesterton foretells +the future that will result if power and her historic port are +refused to Poland. + + . . . We know that a flood threatens the West from the meeting of + two streams, the revenge of Germany and the anarchy of Russia; and we + know that the West has only one possible dyke against such a flood, + which is not the mere existence, but the might and majesty of Poland. + We know that without some such Christian and chivalric shield on that + side, we shall have half Europe and perhaps half Asia on our backs. + + We know exactly what the Germans think about our nationalities in + the West, and exactly what the Bolshevists think about any + nationalities anywhere. We know that if the Poles have a port and a + powerful line of communication with the West, they will be eager to + help the West. We know that if they have no port they will have no + reason to help the West and no power to help anybody. We know that if + they lose their port it will not be by any act of English public + opinion or any public opinion, but by the most secret of all secret + diplomacy; that it will not even be given up by the English to the + Germans, but by German Jews to other German Jews. We know that such + international adventurers would still find themselves floating on the + top of any tide that drowned the nations, and that they do not care + what nations they drown. We know that out of the whole world the + Polish port is the one place that should have been held, and the one + place that is being surrendered. + + In short, we know what everybody knows and scarcely anybody says. + + There is one word to be added for those detached persons who see no + particular objection to England ceasing to be English, who do not + care about the national names of the West, which have been the + greatest words in the poetry of the world. So far as we know there is + only one ideal they do care about, and they will not get it. Whatever + else this betrayal means it does not mean peace. The Poles have + raised revolution after revolution, when three colossal Empires + prevented them from being a nation at all. It is not in the realm of + sanity to suppose that, if we make them half a nation, they will not + some day attempt to be a whole nation. But we shall come back to the + place where we started, after another cycle of terror and torment and + abominable butchery--and to a place where we might, in peace and + perfect safety, stand firm today. + +"Not by any act of English public opinion" would Poland be weakened, +not by any act of English opinion Prussia strengthened or Ireland +oppressed. It was the horror of the situation that no act of English +public opinion seemed possible, for the organs of action were +stultified. When they _could_ act by fighting and by dying Englishmen +had done it grandly. Not all that they had done had, Chesterton +believed, been lost. Because of them the Cross once more had replaced +the crescent over the Holy City of Jerusalem, because of them Alsace +and Lorraine were French once more and Poland lived again. But their +sufferings and their death had not availed yet to save England. + + And what is theirs, though banners blow on Warsaw risen again, Or + ancient laughter walks in gold through the vineyards of Lorraine, + Their dead are marked on English stones, their loves on English + trees, How little is the prize they win, how mean a coin for these-- + How small a shrivelled laurel-leaf lies crumpled here and curled; + They died to save their country and they only saved the world.* + +[* _Collected Poems_, pp. 79-80, "The English Graves."] + +In the _New Witness_ he wrote (July 25, 1919): + + On Peace Day I set up outside my house two torches, and twined them + with laurel; because I thought at least there was nothing pacifist + about laurel. But that night, after the bonfire and the fireworks had + faded, a wind grew and blew with gathering violence, blowing away the + rain. And in the morning I found one of the laurelled posts torn off + and lying at random on the rainy ground; while the other still stood + erect, green and glittering in the sun. I thought that the pagans + would certainly have called it an omen; and it was one that strangely + fitted my own sense of some great work half fulfilled and half + frustrated. And I thought vaguely of that man in Virgil, who prayed + that he might slay his foe and return to his country; and the gods + heard half the prayer, and the other half was scattered to the winds. + For I knew we were right to rejoice; since the tyrant was indeed + slain and his tyranny fallen for ever; but I know not when we shall + find our way back to our own land. + +English soldiers in Ireland felt, as we all remember, a strong +sympathy with the Irish people: most of them, said the _New Witness_, +became Sinn Feiners. This was an exaggeration, but certainly their +opposition to acting as terrorists led to the employment in their +stead of the jail-birds known as Black and Tans. + +And in England itself the feeling was stirring that grew stronger as +the years passed. The soldiers, who were the nation, had won the +victory, the politicians had thrown it away. A rushed election before +most of the men were demobilized had brought back the same old +politicians by turning, so G.K. put it, "collusion" into "coalition." +A Coalition Government had been in wartime "comprehensible and +defensible; precisely because it is not concerned with construction +or reconstruction but only with the warding off of destruction." A +peace-time coalition could do nothing but show up the absurdity of +the old party labels. For if these meant anything they meant that +their wearers wanted an entirely different kind of construction, at +which therefore they could not collaborate. How could a real Tory +co-operate in construction with a genuine Radical? It was the +culmination of unreality. + +The idea that it succeeded (for the moment) because the country +really believed that Lloyd George had won the war seemed to +Chesterton the crowning absurdity. It succeeded because the party +machines combined to finance their candidates and offered them to a +rather dazed country whose men were still in great numbers under +arms. "There is naturally no dissentient when hardly anybody seems to +be sentient. Indifference is called unanimity." + +How then could this indifference be thrown off: How could the +returning manhood of the nation be given a true democracy: was there +still hope? If there was, never had the _New Witness_ been more +needed than now. It had told the truth about political corruption, +today it had to fight it: "We are not divided now into those who know +and those who do not know. We are divided now into those who care and +those who do not care." Thus wrote Chesterton in an article about his +own continued editorship of the paper. + + Politics would never have been my province, either in the highest + or the lowest sense. . . . I have hitherto known myself to be merely + a stop-gap; but my action, or rather inaction, as a stop-gap, has + come terribly to an end. That gap will never be filled now, till God + restores all the noble ruin that we name the world; and the wisest + know best that the gap will yawn as hopelessly in the history of + England as in the story of our private lives. I must now either + accept this duty entirely or abandon it entirely. I will not abandon + it; for every instinct and nerve of intelligence I have tells me that + this is a time when it must not be abandoned. I must accept a + comparison that must be a contrast, and a crushing contrast; but + though I can never be so good as my brother, I will see if I can be + better than myself. + +The same attacks on financiers and others constantly reiterated might +well have put Gilbert in the dock where his brother had stood. But I +think the upshot of the case against Cecil had not been entirely +encouraging to the winners. Then too, G.K.'s immense popularity made +such an attack a still more doubtful move. Cecil had been less +well-known than Gilbert: but far better known than a Mr. Fraser and a +Mr. Beamish, a pair of cranks against whom Sir Alfred Mond brought a +libel action in 1919 for having--in a placard shown in a window in a +back street--called him a traitor and accused him of having traded +with the enemy. + +In this case Sir Alfred Mond (of the Mond Nickel Company) giving +evidence: "said that he always disregarded charges made by +irresponsible persons. Charges had been made against him in the _New +Witness_ which was edited by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. All the world +regarded Mr. Chesterton as 'irresponsible,' but he was certainly +amusing, and he (the witness) had read most of his books. He had once +procured with some difficulty a copy of the _New Witness."_ HIS +LORDSHIP--Did Mr. Chesterton charge the witness with being a traitor? +Mr. SMITH (Counsel for the defence)--Yes, in the _New Witness."_ + +"Irresponsible" was not quite the _mot juste_. The unfortunate Fraser +and Beamish were not of the metal to win that or any case in that or +any court. There was a kind of solemn buffoonery in choosing these +two as responsible opponents in preference to the irresponsible G.K. +Chesterton. At any rate damages of £5000 were given against +them--which gives some measure of the risk G.K. took in making +exactly the same attacks. + +Gilbert had not so much natural buoyancy as Cecil: he got far less +fun out of making these attacks. Still less had he the recklessness +that made Cecil indifferent even to the charge of inaccuracy. That +charge was in fact the only one that Gilbert feared. Writing to a +contributor whose article he had held back in order to verify an +accusation made in it, Gilbert remarked that he had no fear of a +lawsuit when he was certain of his facts: he did not fear fine or +imprisonment:--he had one fear only, "I am afraid of being answered." + +There was another thing he feared: hurting or distressing his +friends. This was especially a danger for one, so many of whose +friends were also his opponents in politics or religion: and who was +now editing a paper of so controversial a character. With H. G. Wells +he had a real bond of affection, and an interesting correspondence +with and about him illustrates all Gilbert's qualities; consideration +for his subordinates: for his friendships; concern for the integrity +of his paper: sense of responsibility to Cecil's memory. + +During an editorial absence the assistant editor, Mr. Titterton, had +accepted a series of articles called "Big Little H. G. Wells" from +Edwin Pugh, which seemed to be turning into an attack on Wells +instead of an appreciation. Chesterton wrote to Mr. Titterton and +simultaneously to Wells himself-- + + DEAR WELLS, + + The sudden demands of other duties, which I really could not see + how to avoid, has prevented my attending to the _New Witness_ lately: + and I have only just heard, on the telephone, that you have written a + letter to the paper touching an unfortunate difference between you + and Edwin Pugh. I don't yet know the contents of your letter but of + course I have told my _locum tenens_ that it is to be printed + whatever it is, this week or next. I am really exceedingly distressed + to have been out of the business at the time; but if you knew the + circumstances I think you would see the difficulty; and my editorial + absence has not been a holiday. As it is, I agreed to the general + idea of a study of your work by Pugh; and I confess it never even + crossed my mind that anybody would write such a thing except as a + tribute to your genius and the intellectual interest of the subject; + nor can I believe it now. It may strike you as so ironical as to be + incredible; but it is really one of those ironies that are also + facts, that I rather welcomed the idea of a criticism in the paper + (which so often differs from you) from a modernist and collectivist + standpoint more like your own. I should imagine Pugh would agree with + you more than I do, and not less. I will not prejudge the quarrel + till I understand more of it; but I now write at once to tell you + that I would not dream of tolerating anything meant to be a mere + personal attack on you, even if I resigned my post on the point; and + I had already written to the office to say so. But I do not believe + for a moment that Pugh means any such thing; I regarded him as a + strong Wellsian and even more of an admirer than myself; though he + might be so modern as to use a familiar and mixed method of + portraiture, which is too modern for my tastes, but which many use + besides he. For the moment I suggest a possible misunderstanding, + which he may well correct by a further explanation. I had said + something myself in my weekly article, demurring to a possible + undervaluing of you, long before I heard of your own letter. Even + when I am in closer touch with things, of course, many things appear + in the paper with which I wholly disagree; but the notion of a mere + campaign against you would always have seemed to me as abominable and + absurd as it does now; I do not believe any one can entertain it; and + certainly I do not. I am perfectly willing to do you anything that + can fairly be shown to be justice, whether it were explanation or + apology or anything else. This is all I can say without your letter + and Pugh's side of the case; but I feel I should say this at once. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. I have arranged for your letter to appear in next week's + number; but I may have more light on Pugh's attitude by then. + +To Titterton he wrote: + + . . . I do hope this work will not turn into anything that looks + like a mere attack on Wells, especially in the rather realistic and + personal modern manner, which I am perhaps too Victorian myself to + care very much about. I do not merely feel this because I have + managed to keep Wells as a friend on the whole. I feel it much more + (and I know you are a man to understand such sentiments) because I + have a sort of sense of honour about him as an enemy, or at least a + potential enemy. We are so certain to collide in controversial + warfare, that I have a horror of his thinking I would attack him with + anything but fair controversial weapons. My feeling is so entirely + consistent with a faith in Pugh's motives, as well as an admiration + of his talents, that I honestly believe I could explain this to him + without offence. . . . + + I am honestly in a very difficult position on the _New Witness_, + because it is physically impossible for me really to edit it, and + also do enough outside work to be able to edit it unpaid, as well as + having a little over to give it from time to time. What we should + have done without the loyalty and capacity of you and a few others I + can't imagine. I cannot oversee everything that goes into the + paper; . . . I cannot resign, without dropping as you truly said, the + work of a great man who is gone; and who, I feel, would wish me to + continue it. It is like what Stevenson said about marriage and its + duties: "There is no refuge for you; not even suicide." But I should + have to consider even resignation, if I felt that the acceptance of + Pugh's generosity really gave him the right to print something that I + really felt bound to disapprove. It may be that I am needlessly + alarmed over a slip or two of the pen, in vivid descriptions of a + very odd character, and that Pugh really admires his Big Little H. G. + as much as I thought he did at the beginning of the business. . . . + If the general impression on the reader's mind is of the Big Wells + and not the Little Wells, I think the doubt I mean would really be + met. + +Somehow the letter to Titterton got into the hands of a Mr. Hennessy +who, after Gilbert's death, sent it to Wells. + +Wells wrote, "Thank you very much for that letter of G.K.C.'s. It is +exactly like him. From first to last he and I were very close friends +and never for a moment did I consider him responsible for Pugh's +pathetic and silly little outbreak. I never knew anyone so steadily +true to form as G.K.C." + +Besides the cleansing of public life two other things were seen as +vital by the _New Witness_, the restoration of well-distributed +property and the restoration of liberty. Under the heading +"Reconstruction of Property" Belloc set out a series of proposals, +highly practical and very far from what is usually called +revolutionary: that savings for instance made on a small scale should +be helped by a very high rate of interest; that the purchase by small +men of small parcels of land or businesses or houses should be freed +from legal charges while these should be made heavier for those who +purchased on a large scale thus encouraging small property and +checking huge accumulation. He pointed out how vast sums could be +found for such subsidies out of the money spent today on an education +which the poor detested for their children and which most of the +wealthy admitted to be an abject failure. Most of those, he noted, +who oppose Distributism do so on the ground that the proposals are +unpractical or revolutionary, which generally means that they have +not examined the proposals. His own were certainly practical and +would by many be called reactionary. But he admitted one +doubt--besides the overwhelming difficulty of turning the current of +modern Socialism--the doubt whether Englishmen from long disuse had +not lost the appetite for property. + +Chesterton's own line of approach to the double problem was also +twofold. In a volume of Essays published near the end of the war and +called _The Utopia of Usurers_ he remarked: "That anarchic future +which the more timid Tories professed to fear has already fallen upon +us. We are ruled by ignorant people." + +The old aristocracy of England, in his view, had made many mistakes +but certain things they had understood very well. The modern +governing class "cannot face a fact, or follow an argument, or feel +a tradition; but least of all can they, upon any persuasion read +through a plain impartial book, English or foreign, that is not +specially written to soothe their panic or to please their pride." +There had been reality in the claim of the old aristocracy to +understand matters not known to the people. They had read history; +they were familiar with other languages and other lands. They had a +great tradition of foreign diplomacy. Even the study of philosophy +and theology, today confined to a handful of experts, was not alien +to them. On all this had rested what right they had to govern. But +today "They rule them by the smiling terror of an ancient secret. +They smile and smile but they have forgotten the secret." + +On the other hand the ordinary workman had the advantage over his +probably millionaire master by the necessity of knowing something. He +must be able to use his tools, he must know "enough arithmetic to +know when prices have risen." The hard business of living taught him +something. Give him a chance of more through property and liberty and +see what he will build on that foundation. The war had already shown +not only the courage of our men but their contrivance: their trench +newspapers, songs and jests: their initiative as sailors and as +airmen: at home the same thing was happening. Allotments had sprung +up everywhere and solved the problem of potato shortage. Men were +doing for themselves a rough kind of building. The inclination to get +away from the machine and do things oneself was on the increase. + +Armistice and the men's return were heralded by outdoor tea-parties +with ropes stretched across the streets for safety. The outburst of +pageants was spontaneous and national. "It is time," said Chesterton, +"for an army of amateurs; for England is perishing of the +professionals." Vitality seemed to be flowing back into national +life, but Bureaucracy does not love vitality. Agitated Town Councils +met and stopped the tea-parties; fought against street markets +through which allotment holders could sell their produce cheaply; put +heavy rates on land reclaimed and buildings erected by hard work. +Town families living in single rooms had secured plots on building +estates and run up shacks for themselves and their families. They +were forbidden to live in these dwellings--only intended as +temporary, but far more healthy than living eight people to a room in +a slum. The _New Witness_ suspected that the real objection in the +eyes of Councillors was a lowering of the value of neighbouring plots +for wealthier purchasers. + +Worst of all, the allotments were taken: fields sold for speculative +building, land dug in public parks taken away in the name of +"amenities." The little spark that could have been fanned into a +flame was crushed out. + +An episode of a few years later best illustrates the spirit +Chesterton was fighting. In 1926 a threat arose to the traffic +monopoly from soldiers who put their war gratuities into the purchase +of omnibuses which they drove themselves. The London General Omnibus +Company decided to crush them and with the aid of a Government +Commission succeeded. Chesterton's paper followed the struggle with +passionate interest. Just as he believed that the small shop actually +served the public better than the large, so too he believed that +these owner-drivers would serve it better than the Combine. But if it +could have been proved that the Combine was more efficient Gilbert +would still have championed the Independents. It was better for the +Community that men should take responsibility and initiative for +themselves even if the work could be done more efficiently by wage +slaves. To his dismay he found that the Trade Unions did not dream of +applying this test and that they were aligned against the Pirates--as +the independent owners were usually called. + +He had always been an ardent supporter of the Trade Unions. To him it +had seemed they were trying to do the work of the ancient Guilds +under far more difficult conditions. But after the war for the first +time a little note of doubt creeps into his voice when he is speaking +of them. They were still vocal for the rights of labour, but they had +begun to lay stress exclusively on the less important of those rights. + +Writing of the loss of the allotments he suggested in one article +that the Trades Unions might well use some part of their funds in +purchasing land to be held in perpetuity by their members. But I doubt +if he much expected that they would do so. Many Trade Unionists were +working for the Bus Company and were more concerned about their +conditions of work than about the handful of drivers who were their +own masters. But the Unions had begun to stress almost solely the +question of hours and of wages; to fight for good conditions but no +longer for control or ownership: to demand security but to agree to +abandon many of their rights in return. + +It was a chill fear and for long he resisted it, but in these +terrible years it had begun to shake him. Were the people of England +losing the appetite for freedom and for property? Were the Trades +Unions, from lack of leadership and confusion of thought, beginning +to accept the Servile State? + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +Rome via Jerusalem + + +SHORTLY AFTER THE war Gilbert and Frances set out on their travels, +going in 1919 to Palestine, home through Italy early in 1920, and +starting out again the following year for a lecture tour in the +United States. + +To his friendship with Maurice Baring Gilbert owed their being able +to make the first of these journeys as well as much else. The picture +entitled "Conversation Piece" of Chesterton, Belloc and Baring is +well known. Was it Chesterton himself who christened it "Baring, +Overbearing and Past Bearing?" Many elements united the three in a +close friendship: love of literature, love of Europe, a common view +of the philosophy of history and of life. Frances Chesterton often +said that of all her husband's friends she thought there was none he +loved better than Maurice Baring. They often wrote ballades +together--a French form which they, with Phillimore and others, had +re-popularised in English. A telegram from Gilbert refusing a +celebration runs like a refrain: + + Prince, Yorkshire holds me now + By Yorkshire hams I'm fed + I can't assist your row + I send ballades instead. + +These "Ballades Urbane" were a feature in the _New Witness_--but many +of those the three friends composed were strictly not for publication +but recited to friends behind closed doors. Gilbert's memory was +useful: he knew all his own and the others: Once Belloc forgot the +Envoi to one of his own ballades and Gilbert finished it for him. +Even to Maurice Baring, G.K. wrote less often than he intended and +one apologetic ballade carries the refrain: + + I write no letters to the men I love. + + I have always fancied that Maurice Baring gave Gilbert the idea for + his story _The Man Who Knew Too Much_. First in the diplomatic + service, then doing splendidly as an airman in the war, a member of + the great banking family, related to most of the aristocracy and + intimate with most of the rest, he is like the hero of the book in a + sort of detachment, a slight irony about a world that he has not + cared to conquer. Impossible for a mere acquaintance to say whether + he views that world with all the disillusionment of Chesterton's + hero--but anyhow such a suggestion from life is never more than a + hint for creative art. Another side is seen in the _Autobiography_-- + in the stories of Maurice Baring plunging into the sea in evening + dress on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, and of the smashing + by Gilbert of a wine-glass that became in retrospect a priceless + goblet (which had "stood by Charlemagne's great chair and served St. + Peter at High Mass") and now inspired the refrain: + + I like the sound of breaking glass. + +A good deal of glass was broken by the stones of this group of men +whose own house was made of tolerably strong materials. + +There is quite a bundle of Mr. Baring's letters to Gilbert, and, in +spite of the apologetic ballade, a fair number of answers. Two of +these last are written early in 1919, the second of which opens the +question of the Jerusalem visit: + + May 23, 1919 + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + I am the Prince of unremembered towers destroyed before the birth + of Babylon; I am also the (writer) of unremembered letters, and to a + much greater extent the designer and imaginer of unwritten letters: + and I cannot remember whether I ever acknowledged properly your + communications about Claudel, especially your interesting remarks + about the comparative coolness of Henri de Regnier about him. It + struck me because I think it is part of something I have noticed + myself; a curious and almost premature conservatism in the older + generation of revolutionaries, particularly when they were pagan + revolutionaries. Not that I suppose de Regnier is particularly old or + in the stock sense a revolutionist; but I think you will know the + break between the generations to which I refer. I remember having + exactly the same experience the only time I ever talked to Swinburne. + I had regarded (and resisted) him in my boyhood as a sort of + Antichrist in purple, like Nero holding his lyre, and I found him + more like a very well-read Victorian old maid, almost entirely a + _laudator temporis acti_ disposed to say that none of the young men + would ever come up to Tennyson--which may be quite true for all I + know. I fancy it has something to do with the very fact that their + revolt was pagan, and being temporal was also temporary. When that + particular fashion in caps of liberty has gone out, they have nothing + to fall back on but the feeling which Swinburne himself puts into the + mouth of the pagan on the day when Constantine issued the + proclamation. + + "But to me their new device is barren, the days are bare + Things long gone over suffice, and men forgotten that were." + + I only tell you all this because you might find it amusing to keep + an eye on the _New Statesman_ as well as the _New Witness_, where + there is a small repetition of the same thing. Bernard Shaw has + written an article which is supposed to be about his view of me and + Socialism; but which may be said more truly to be about his blindness + to Hilary and his Servile State. It is quite startling to me to find + how wholly he misses Hilary's point; and how wildly he falls back on + a sort of elderly impatience with our juvenile paradox and + fantasticality. I shall answer him as abusively as my great personal + liking for him will allow and I think Hilary is going to do the same; + so if you ever see such papers, you might enjoy the fun. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR MAURICE, + + Thank you ever so much for your interesting letter. I think you are + right every time about Gosse and Claudel; or rather about Claudel and + Gosse. For though I think Gosse a very valuable old Victorian in his + way, I do not think he is on the same scale as the things that have + lately been happening in the world; and Claudel is one of them. He + has happened like a great gun going off; and I think I saw a line of + his on the subject of such a discharge of artillery in the war. It + ran, "And that which goes forth is France; terrible as the Holy + Ghost." I doubt if Gosse has ever seen that France even in a flash + and a bang; I don't see how he could. Remember the religion in which + he grew up, by his own very graphic account of it; a man is not + entirely emancipated from such very positive Puritanism by anything + so negative as Agnosticism. Nothing but a religion can cast out a + religion. Being so sensitive on behalf of Renan is simply not + understanding the great historical passions about a heresiarch. It + means that famous intellectuals must not hate each other; because + they all belong to the Saville Club. Please do not think I mean + merely that Gosse is a snob; I think he is a jolly old gentleman and + a good critic of French poetry; but not of _Gesta Dei per Francos_. + Your points against him are quite logical; I suppose the controversy + will not be conducted in public, or I should feel inclined to join in + it. Anyhow, I wish it could be continued between us as a conversation + in private, for I have long wanted to talk to you about serious + things. + + Meanwhile, as not wholly unconnected with the serious things, could + you possibly do me a great favour? It is very far from being the + first great favour you have done me; and I should fear that anyone + less magnanimous would fancy I only wrote to you about such things. + But the situation is this. An excellent offer has been made to me to + write a book about Jerusalem, not political but romantic and + religious, so to speak; I conceive it as mostly about pilgrimages and + crusades, in poetical prose, and working up to Allenby's great + entrance. The offer includes money to go to Jerusalem but cannot + include all the political or military permissions necessary to go + there. I have another motive for wanting to go there, which is much + stronger than the desire to write the book though I do think I could + do it in the right way and, what matters more, on the right side. + Frances is to come with me, and all the doctors in creation tell her + she can only get rid of her neuritis if she goes to some such place + and misses part of an English winter. I would do anything to bring it + off, for that reason alone. You are a man who knows everybody; do you + know anybody on Allenby's staff; or know anybody who knows anybody on + Allenby's staff; or know anybody who would know anybody who would + know anything about it? I am told that it cannot be done as yet in + the ordinary way by Cook's; and that the oracle must be worked in + some such fashion. If you should be so kind as to refer to any + worried soldier or official, I should like it understood that I am + not nosing about touching any diplomatic or military matter; France + in Syria, or any copy for the _New Witness_. I only want to write + semi-historical rhetoric on the spot. If you could possibly help in + this matter, I really think you would be helping things you yourself + care about; and one person, not myself, who deserves it. I will not + say it would be killing two birds with one stone, which might seem a + tragic metaphor; but bringing one bird at least to life; and allowing + the other bird, who is a goose, to go on a wild goose-chase. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +It was much needed change and refreshment for both Gilbert and +Frances. Her Diary shows a vivid enjoyment of all the scenes and +happenings: going into the Church of the Nativity with a door "so low +you can hardly get in--this done to prevent the cattle from straying +in"; seeing camels on the roof of a convent; standing godmother to an +Armenian carpenter's baby: + + The officiator in a cape of white silk embroidered in gold and a + wonderful crown supposed to represent the temple. The godfather (a + young man) was in a red velvet gown. After a good many prayers and + much chanting the babe, beautifully dressed, was taken to the font + (which was in the side of the wall) and there were more prayers and + chanting. Then cushions were laid on the floor and the child + undressed, all of us assisting. At this point I was asked to stand + Godmother and gladly consented. The baby, by this time quite naked, + was handed to the priest who immersed him completely under the water + three times--giving him the name of Pedros (Peter). Before being + re-clothed he was anointed with oil--the forebead, eyes, nose, mouth, + ears, heart, hands and feet all being signed with the Cross. The + child was by this time crying lustily and it was some business to get + him dressed, especially as he was swaddled in bands very completely. + When ready he was handed to me and he lay stiff in my arms whilst I + held two large lighted candles. I followed the priest from the font + to the little altar, where a chain and a little gold cross were bound + round his head (signifying that he was now a Christian). Then the + priest touched his lips with the sacramental wafer, and touched his + nose with myrrh. After the Blessing, we left the church in a + procession, the godfather carrying the baby. At the threshold of the + house the priest took it and delivered it to the mother who sat + waiting for it, also holding the two candles. Again the priests + muttered a few prayers and blessed mother, child and godparents. The + father is an Armenian carpenter by trade--very nice people. Mother + very pretty. The parents insisted that we should stay for + refreshments and we were handed a very nice liquor in lovely little + glasses and a very beautiful sort of pastry. Afterwards cups of weak + tea and cakes. + +The various rites and ceremonies in Jerusalem interested Frances +deeply but the Diary shows no awareness of the differences that +separated the various kinds of Christians. The Diary ends with the +return through Rome where she and I met, to the surprise of both of +us, in the street, while a friend travelling with them met my mother. +"Both meetings were miraculous," Frances comments. Since the letters +to my mother during Gilbert's illness in 1915 we had heard no more +about his spiritual pilgrimage. There was much eager talk at this +meeting but no opportunity occurred and certainly none was sought for +any confidences. As we waved goodbye after their departing train my +mother said thoughtfully: "Frances did rather play off Jerusalem +against Rome, didn't she?" + +In fact, as we learned later, this visit to Jerusalem had been a +determining factor in Gilbert's conversion. Many people both in and +outside the Church had been wondering what had so long delayed him. +The mental progress from the vague Liberalism of the _Wild Knight_ to +the splendid edifice of _Orthodoxy_ had been a swift one. For the +book was written in 1908 and already several years earlier in +_Heretics_ and in his newspaper contests with Blatchford, Gilbert +Chesterton had shown his firm belief in the Godhead of Our Lord, in +Sacraments, in Priesthood and in the Authority of the Church. But it +was not yet the Catholic and Roman Church. There is a revealing +passage in the _Autobiography:_ "And then I happened to meet Lord +Hugh Cecil. I met him at the house of Wilfrid Ward, that great +clearing house of philosophies and theologies. . . . I listened to +Lord Hugh's very lucid statements of his position. . . . The +strongest impression I received was that he was a Protestant. I was +myself still a thousand miles from being a Catholic; but I think it +was the perfect and solid Protestantism of Lord Hugh that fully +revealed to me that I was no longer a Protestant." + +The time that thousand miles took is a real problem--the years before +the illness during which he talked of joining the Church, the seven +further years before he joined it. Cecil Chesterton had been received +before the war--just at the beginning of the Marconi Case, in +fact--and the entire outlook of both brothers had seemed to make this +inevitable, not only theologically but sociologically and +historically. Alike in their outlook on Europe today or on the great +ages of the past, it was a Catholic civilisation based on Catholic +theology that seemed to them the only true one for a full and rich +human development. + +I think in this matter a special quality and its defect could be seen +in Gilbert. For most people intensity of thought is much more +difficult than action. With him it was the opposite. He used his mind +unceasingly, his body as little as possible. I remember one day going +to see them when he had a sprained ankle and learning from Frances +how happy it made him because nobody could bother him to take +exercise. The whole of practical life he left to her. But joining the +Church was not only something to be thought about, it was something +really practical that had to be done, and here Frances could not help +him. + +"He will need Frances," said Father O'Connor to my mother, "to take +him to church, to find his place in his prayer-book, to examine his +conscience for him when he goes to Confession. He will never take all +those hurdles unaided." Frances never lifted a finger to prevent +Gilbert from joining the Catholic Church. But obviously before she +was convinced herself she could not help him. The absence of help was +in this case a very positive hindrance. + +I remember one day on a picnic Gilbert coming up to me with a very +disconsolate expression and asking where Frances was. I said, "I +don't know but I can easily find her. Do you want her?" He answered, +"I don't want her now but I may want her at any minute." Many men +depend upon their wives but very few men admit it so frankly. And if +he was unpractical to a point almost inconceivable, Frances herself +could be called practical only in comparison with him. The confused +mass of papers through which she had to hunt to find some important +document lingers in the memory. + +Another element that made action lag behind conviction with +Chesterton was his perpetual state of overwork. Physically inactive, +his mind was never barren but issued in an immense output: several +books every year besides editing and articles: there were even two +years in which no fewer than six books were published. To focus his +attention on the deepest matters, it was vital to escape from the net +of work and worry. + +Returning from Jerusalem, Gilbert wrote from Alexandria to Maurice +Baring: + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + To quote a poet we agree in thinking ridiculously underrated by + recent fashions, my boat is on the shore and my bark is on the sea; + but before I go, Tom Moore (if I may so by a flight of fancy describe + you), I feel impelled to send you this hurried line to thank you, so + far as this atrocious hotel pen will allow me, for the wonderful time + I have had in Palestine, which is so largely owing to you. There is + also something even more important I want very much to discuss with + you; because of certain things that have been touched on between us + in former times. I will only say here that my train of thought, which + really was one of thought and not fugitive emotion, came to an + explosion in the Church of the Ecce Homo in Jerusalem; a church which + the guidebooks call new and the newspapers call Latin. I fear it may + be at least a month before we meet; for the journey takes a fortnight + and may be prolonged by a friend ill in Paris; and I must work the + moment I return to keep a contract. But if we could meet by about + then I could thank you better for many things. + + Yours illegibly, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +The contract that had to be kept was in all probability the writing +of _The New Jerusalem_. It is a glorious book. Until I read them more +carefully I had always accepted G.K.'s own view that books of travel +were a weak spot in his multifarious output. He said of himself that +he always tended to see such enormous significance in every detail +that he might just as well describe railway signals near Beaconsfield +as the light of sunset over the Golden Horn. But _The New Jerusalem_ +is no mere book of description. It is the book of a man seeing a +vision. To understand how this vision broke upon him we have first to +try to understand something jealously hidden by Gilbert +Chesterton--his own suffering. Even as a boy--in the days of the +toothache and still more torturing earache--he had written + + Though pain be stark and bitter + And days in darkness creep + Not to that depth I sink me + That asks the world to weep. + +So much did he acclaim himself enrolled under the banner of joy that +I think most people miss the companion picture to the favourite one +of the Happy Warrior. No warrior can fight untiringly through a long +lifetime without wounds, without temptations to abandon the struggle +and seek a less glorious peace. If in what are commonly called +practical matters Chesterton was weak, he was in this almost +superhumanly strong. His fame did not rest upon success in the field +of sociology and politics. He could have increased it by neglecting +the good of England for which he fought, and living in literature, +poetry and fantasy. Here all acclaimed him great, whereas most +tolerated or despised as a hobby or a weakness the work he was +pouring into the fight for England. In this time after the Armistice +it was by a naked effort of the will that he held his ground. The +loss of Cecil with his light-hearted courage, his energy and +buoyancy, was immeasurable. And I know--for we talked of it +together--that Frances had not the complete sympathy with Gilbert +over the paper that she had over his other work. It seemed to her too +great a drain on his time and energy: it made the writing of his +important books more difficult. She would not, she told me, try to +stop it as she knew how much he cared, but she would have rejoiced if +he had chosen to let it go. + +And the fight that he had almost enjoyed in Cecil's company had +become a harder one, not merely because he was alone but because the +nature of the foe had changed. He was fighting now not individual +abuses but the mood of pessimism that had overtaken our civilisation. +In an article entitled _Is It Too Late?_ he defined this pessimism as +"a paralysis of the mind; an impotence intrinsically unworthy of a +free man." He stated powerfully the case of those who held that our +civilisation was dying and that it was too late to make any further +efforts: + + The future belongs to those who can find a real answer to that real + case. . . . The omens and the auguries are against us. There is no + answer but one; that omens and auguries are heathen things; and that + we are not heathens. . . . We are not lost unless we lose + ourselves. . . . Great Alfred, in the darkness of the Ninth Century, + when the Danes were beating at the door, wrote down on his copy of + Boethius his denial of the doctrine of fate. We, who have been + brought up to see all the signs of the times pointing to improvement, + may live to see all the signs in heaven and earth pointing the other + way. If we go on it must be in another name than that of the Goddess + of Fortune. + +It was that other Name, in which he had so long believed, that he +realised with the freshness of novelty on this journey to Jerusalem. +He made in the Holy City and in the fields of Palestine a new +discovery of Christ and of the Christian Thing. As he looked over the +Dead Sea and almost physically realised what evil meant, he heard the +voice of the divine Deliverer saying to the demons: "Go forth and +trouble him not any more." In the cave at Bethlehem he realised the +"little local infancy" whereby the creator of the world had chosen to +redeem the world. All through the book there are glimpses of what he +tells more fully in _The Everlasting Man_. Between the two books all +that he had seen and thought in Palestine lay in his mind, and grew +there, and fructified for our understanding. But he had seen it all +in that first vision. + +Jerusalem first impressed Chesterton as a mediaeval city and from its +turrets he could readily picture Godfrey de Bouillon, Richard the +Lion-Hearted and Saint Louis of France. Through the Crusades he views +what was meant by Christendom and sets over against it at once the +greatness and the barrenness of Islam: + + The Moslem had one thought, and that a most vital one; the + greatness of God which levels all men. But the Moslem had not one + thought to rub against another, because he really had not another. It + is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, + or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The + Creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex; + they can breed thoughts. + +Today we of Christendom have fallen below ourselves but yet we have +something left of the power to create whether it be a theology or a +civilisation. Talking to an old Arab in the desert, Chesterton heard +him say that in all these years of Turkish rule the Turks had never +given to the people a cup of cold water. And as the old man spoke he +heard the clank of pipes and he knew that it was the English soldiers +who were bringing water through the desert to Jerusalem. + +A chapter on Zionism discusses with sympathy to both parties the +difficulties of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. In Palestine he +found his Jewish friend and co-worker on the _New Witness_, Dr. Eder, +who had gone there ardent in the cause of Zionism; and Chesterton +himself remained convinced that some system akin to Zionism was the +only possible solution of this enormous problem--possibly a system of +Jewish cantons in various countries. But he was equally convinced +that the English government was destroying the chances of success for +Zionism by sending Jews as governors in England's name to that or any +other Eastern country. + +Even in this book there is struck at times a note of the doom he +feared was overhanging us. He heard "Islam crying from the turret and +Israel wailing from the wall," and yet he seemed too to hear a voice +from all the peoples of Jerusalem "bidding us weep not for them, who +have faith and clarity and a purpose, but weep for ourselves and for +our children." In his fighting articles he had asserted the supremacy +of the human will over fate: in this book he sees how that will must +be renewed, purified and made once more mighty by the same power that +built the ancient civilisation of Christendom. + +Jerusalem gave to Chesterton the fuller realisation of two great +facts. First he saw that the supernatural was needed not only to +conquer the powers of evil but even to restore the good things that +should be natural to man. As he put it in the later book, "Nature may +not have the name of Isis; Isis may not be really looking for Osiris. +But it is true that Nature is really looking for something. Nature is +always looking for the supernatural." Yet man, even strengthened by +the supernatural, cannot suffice for the fight, without a leader who +is more than man. In the land of Christ's childhood, His teaching and +His suffering, there came to Gilbert Chesterton "a vision more vivid +than a man walking unveiled upon the mountains, seen of men and +seeing; a visible God." + +All visions must fade into the light of common day, and the return +home meant the resumption of hard labour. + +"For the moment," wrote Gilbert to Maurice Baring, "as Balzac said, I +am labouring like a miner in a landslide. Normally I would let it +slide. But if I did in this case I should break two or three really +important contracts, which I find I have returned from Jerusalem just +in time to save." + +(A few years later when Sheed and Ward started, Gilbert wanted to +write a number of books for us to publish. His secretary found that +he had then thirty books contracted for with a variety of publishers!) + +He had got home in April 1920: and a lecture tour was planned for the +United States at the beginning of the following year. The eight +months between saw the completion and publication of _The Uses of +Diversity_ (collected essays), _The New Jerusalem_ and _The +Superstition of Divorce_. And still went on the _New Witness_, the +_Illustrated London News_, articles, introductions, lectures, +conferences. Two letters to Maurice Baring clearly belong to these +months: + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + I am so awfully distressed to hear you are unwell again; I do not + know whether I ought even to bother you with my sentiments; beyond my + sympathy; but if it is not too late, or too early, I will call on you + early next week; probably Monday, but I will let you know for certain + before then. I would have called on you long ago, let alone written, + but for this load of belated work which really seems to bury me day + after day. I never realised before that business can really block out + much bigger things. As you may possibly guess, I want to consider my + position about the biggest thing of all, whether I am to be inside it + or outside it. I used to think one could be an Anglo-Catholic and + really inside it; but if that was (to use an excellent phrase of your + own) only a Porch, I do not think I want a Porch, and certainly not a + Porch standing some way from the building. A Porch looks so silly, + standing all by itself in a field. Since then, unfortunately, there + have sprung up round it real ties and complications and difficulties; + difficulties that seemed almost duties. But I will not bother you + with all that now; and I particularly do not want you to bother + yourself, especially to answer this unless you want to. I know I have + your sympathy; and please God, I shall get things straight. Sometimes + one suspects the real obstacles have been the weaknesses one knows to + be wrong, and not the doubts that might be relatively right, or at + least rational. I suppose all this is a common story; and I hope so; + for wanting to be uncommon is really not one of my weaknesses. They + are worse, probably, but they are not that. There are other and in + the ordinary sense more cheerful things I would like to talk of; + things I think we could both do for causes we certainly agree about. + Meanwhile, thank you for everything; and be sure I think of you very + much. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + This is the shortest, hastiest and worst written letter in the + world. It only tells you three things: (1) that I thank you a + thousand times for the book; (2) that I have to leave for America for + a month or two, earlier than I expected; But I am glad, for I shall + see something of Frances, without walls of work between us; and (3) + that I have pretty well made up my mind about the thing we talked + about. Fortunately, the thing we talked about can be found all over + the world. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +I will not write here of the American scene but will talk of it in a +later chapter along with the second tour Gilbert made in the States. +It seems best to complete now the story of his journey of the mind. A +reserved man tells more of himself indirectly than directly. Readers +of the _Autobiography_ complain that it is concerned with everything +in the world except G. K. Chesterton. You can certainly search its +pages in vain for any account of the process of his conversion: for +that you must look elsewhere: in the poems to Our lady, in _The +Catholic Church and Conversion_, in _The Well and the Shallows_, and +in the letters here to be quoted. + +In _The Catholic Church and Conversion_ he sketches the three phases +through which most converts pass, all of which he had himself +experienced. He sums them up as "patronizing the Church, discovering +the Church, and running away from the Church." In the first phase a +man is taking trouble ("and taking trouble has certainly never been a +particular weakness of mine") to find out the fallacy in most +anti-Catholic ideas. In the second stage he is gradually discovering +the great ideas enshrined in the Church and hitherto hidden from him. +"It is these numberless glimpses of great ideas, that have been +hidden from the convert by the prejudices of his provincial culture, +that constitute the adventurous and varied second stage of the +conversion. It is, broadly speaking, the stage in which the man is +unconsciously trying to be converted. And the third stage is perhaps +the truest and most terrible. It is that in which the man is trying +not to be converted. He has come too near to the truth, and has +forgotten that truth is a magnet, with the powers of attraction and +repulsion."* + +[* _The Catholic Church and Conversion_, p. 61.] + + To a certain extent it is a fear which attaches to all sharp and + irrevocable decisions; it is suggested in all the old jokes about the + shakiness of the bridegroom at the wedding or the recruit who takes + the shilling and gets drunk partly to celebrate, but partly also to + forget it. But it is the fear of a fuller sacrament and a mightier + army. . . . * + +[* Ibid., p. 65.] + + The man has exactly the same sense of having committed or + compromised himself; or having been in a sense entrapped, even if he + is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is not so + much glad as simply terrified. It may be that this real psychological + experience has been misunderstood by stupider people and is + responsible for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a mere + trap. But that legend misses the whole point of the psychology. It is + not the Pope who has set the trap or the priests who have baited it. + The whole point of the position is that the trap is simply the truth. + The whole point is that the man himself has made his way towards the + trap of truth, and not the trap that has run after the man. All steps + except the last step he has taken eagerly on his own account, out of + interest in the truth; and even the last step, or the last stage, + only alarms him because it is so very true. If I may refer once more + to a personal experience, I may say that I for one was never less + troubled by doubts than in the last phase, when I was troubled by + fears. Before that final delay I had been detached and ready to + regard all sorts of doctrines with an open mind. Since that delay has + ended in decision, I have had all sorts of changes in mere mood; and + I think I sympathise with doubts and difficulties more than I did + before. But I had no doubts or difficulties just before. I had only + fears; fears of something that had the finality and simplicity of + suicide. But the more I thrust the thing into the back of my mind, + the more certain I grew of what Thing it was. And by a paradox that + does not frighten me now in the least, it may be that I shall never + again have such absolute assurance that the thing is true as I had + when I made my last effort to deny it.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 62-3.] + +The whole of Catholic theology can be justified, says Gilbert, if you +are allowed to start with those two ideas that the Church is +popularly supposed to oppose: Reason and Liberty. "To become a +Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. It +is so in exactly the same sense in which to recover from palsy is not +to leave off moving but to learn how to move." The convert has learnt +long before his conversion that the Church will not force him to +abandon his will. "But he is not unreasonably dismayed at the extent +to which he may have to use his will." This was the crux for Gilbert. +"There is in the last second of time or hairbreadth of space, before +the iron leaps to the magnet, an abyss full of all the unfathomable +forces of the universe. The space between doing and not doing such a +thing is so tiny and so vast." + +Father Maturin said after his conversion that for at least ten years +before it the question had never been out of his mind for ten waking +minutes. It was about ten years since Gilbert had first talked to +Father O'Connor of his intention to join the Church, but in his case +thought on the subject could not have been so continuous. Still he +had time for patronising, discovery, and running away, all in +leisurely fashion. External efforts to help him had been worse than +useless: as he indicates in _The Catholic Church and Conversion_, +they had always put him back. + +"Gilbert could not be hustled," says Maurice Baring of his whole +habit of mind and body. + +"You could fluster Gilbert but not hustle him," says Father O'Connor. + +They were both too wise to try. + +In two letters Gilbert said that the two people who helped him most +at this time were Maurice Baring and Father Ronald Knox, who had both +gone through the same experience themselves. + +Besides the positive mental processes of recognition, repulsion and +attraction exercised by the Church, Gilbert was affected to some +extent both by affection for the Church of England and disappointment +with it. The profound joy of his early conversion to Christianity was +linked with Anglicanism and so too were many friendships and the +continued attachment to it of Frances. But what he said to Maurice +Baring about a Porch is representative. Like Father Maturin he felt +he owed so much to his Anglican friends: he hated to stress overmuch +the revulsion from Anglicanism in the process of conversion. But it +did at this date contribute to the converging arguments. + +He wrote to Maurice Baring: + + So many thanks for the sermons, which I will certainly return as + you suggest. I had the other day a trying experience, and I think a + hard case of casuistry; I am not sure that I was right; but also not + by any means sure I was wrong. Long ago, before my present crisis, I + had promised somebody to take part in what I took to be a small + debate on labour. Too late, by my own carelessness, I found to my + horror it had swelled into a huge Anglo-Catholic Congress at the + Albert Hall. I tried to get out of it, but I was held to my promise. + Then I reflected that I could only write (as I was already writing) + to my Anglo-Catholic friends on the basis that I was one of them now + in doubt about continuing such; and that their conference in some + sense served the same purpose as their letters. What affected me + most, however, was that by my own fault I had put them into a hole. + Otherwise, I would not just now speak from or for their platform, + just as I could not (as yet at any rate) speak from or for yours. So + I spoke very briefly, saying something of what I think about social + ethics. Whether or not my decision was right, my experience was + curious and suggestive, though tragic; for I felt it like a farewell. + There was no doubt about the enthusiasm of those thousands of + Anglo-Catholics. But there was also no doubt, unless I am much + mistaken, that many of them besides myself would be Roman Catholics + rather than accept things they are quite likely to be asked to + accept--for instance, by the Lambeth Conference. For though my own + distress, as in most cases I suppose, has much deeper grounds than + clerical decisions, yet if I cannot stay where I am, it will be a + sort of useful symbol that the English Church has done something + decisively Protestant or Pagan. I mean that to those to whom I cannot + give my spiritual biography, I can say that the insecurity I felt in + Anglicanism was typified in the Lambeth Conference. I am at least + sure that much turns on that Conference, if not for me, for large + numbers of those people at the Albert Hall. A young Anglo-Catholic + curate has just told me that the crowd there cheered all references + to the Pope, and laughed at every mention of the Archbishop of + Canterbury. It's a queer state of things. I am concerned most, + however, about somebody I value more than the Archbishop of + Canterbury; Frances, to whom I owe much of my own faith, and to whom + therefore (as far as I can see my way) I also owe every decent chance + for the controversial defence of her faith. If her side can convince + me, they have a right to do so; if not, I shall go hot and strong to + convince her. I put it clumsily, but there is a point in my mind. + Logically, therefore, I must await answers from Waggett and Gore as + well as Knox and McNabb; and talk the whole thing over with her, and + then act as I believe. + + This is a dusty political sort of letter, with nothing in it but + what I think and nothing of what I feel. For that side of it, I can + only express myself by asking for your prayers. + +The accident of his having to speak at this Congress, where he was +received with enormous enthusiasm, probably led to a fuller analysis +of this element in his thought. I put here a letter he wrote to +Maurice Baring soon after his conversion, because it sums up the +Anglican question as he finally saw it: + + Feb. 14th, 1923 + + Please forgive me for the delay; but I have been caught in a + cataract of letters and work in connection with the new paper we are + trying to start; and am now dictating this under conditions that make + it impossible for it to resemble anything so personal and intimate as + the great unwritten epistle to which you refer. But I will note down + here very hurriedly and in a more impersonal way, some of the matters + that have affected me in relation to the great problem. + + To begin with, I am shy of giving one of my deepest reasons because + it is hard to put it without offence, and I am sure it is the wrong + method to offend the wavering Anglo-Catholic. But I believe one of my + strongest motives was mixed up with the idea of honour. I feel there + is something mean about not making complete confession and + restitution after a historic error and slander. It is not the same + thing to withdraw the charges against Rome one by one, or restore the + traditions to Canterbury one by one. Suppose a young prig refuses to + live with his father or his friend or his wife, because wine is drunk + in the house or there are Greek statues in the hall. Suppose he goes + off on his own and develops broader ideas. On the day he drinks his + first glass of wine, I think it is essential to his honour that he + should go back to his father or his friend and say, "You are right + and I was wrong, and we will drink wine together." It is not + consonant with his honour that he should set up a house of his own + with wine and statues and every parallel particular, and still treat + the other as if he were in the wrong. That is mean because it is + making the best of both; it is combining the advantages of being + right with the advantages of having been wrong. Any analogy is + imperfect; but I think you see what I mean. + + The larger version of this is that England has really got into so + wrong a state, with its plutocracy and neglected populace and + materialistic and Servile morality, that it must take a sharp turn + that will be a sensational turn. No _evolution_ into Catholicism will + have that moral effect. Christianity is the religion of repentance; + it stands against modern fatalism and pessimistic futurism mainly in + saying that a man can go back. If we do decidedly go back it will + show that religion is alive. For the rest, I do not say much about + the details of continuity and succession, because the truth is they + did not much affect me. What I see is that we cannot complain of + England suffering from being Protestant and at the same time claim + that she has always been Catholic. That there has always been a High + Church Party is true; that there has always been an Anglo-Catholic + Party may be true, but I am not so sure of it. But there is one + matter arising from that which I do think important. Even the High + Church Party, even the Anglo-Catholic Party only confronts a + particular heresy called Protestantism upon particular points. It + defends ritual rightly or even sacramentalism rightly, because these + are the things the Puritans attacked. If it is not the heresy of an + age, at least it is only the anti-heresy of an age. But since I have + been a Catholic, I have become conscious of being in a much vaster + arsenal, full of arms against countless other potential enemies. The + Church, as the Church and not merely as ordinary opinion, has + something to say to philosophies which the merely High Church has + never had occasion to think about. If the next movement is the very + reverse of Protestantism, the Church will have something to say about + it; or rather has already something to say about it. You might unite + all High Churchmen on the High Church quarrel, but what authority is + to unite them when the devil declares his next war on the world? + + Another quality that impresses me is the power of being decisive + first and being proved right afterwards. This is exactly the quality + a supernatural power would have; and I know nothing else in modern + religion that has it. For instance, there was a time when I should + have thought psychical enquiry the most reasonable thing in the + world, and rather favourable to religion. I was afterwards convinced, + by experience and not merely faith, that spiritualism is a practical + poison. Don't people see that _when_ that is found in experience, a + prodigious prestige accrues to the authority which, long before the + experiment, did not pretend to enquire but simply said, "Drop it." + We feel that the authority did not discover; it knew. There are a + hundred other things of which that story is true, in my own + experience. But the High Churchman has a perfect right to be a + spiritualistic enquirer; only he has not a right to claim that his + authority knew beforehand the truth about spiritualistic enquiry. + + Of course there are a hundred things more to say; indeed the + greatest argument for Catholicism is exactly what makes it so hard to + argue for it. It is the scale and multiplicity of the forms of truth + and help that it has to offer. And perhaps, after all, the only thing + that you and I can really say with profit is exactly what you + yourself suggested; that we are men who have talked to a good many + men about a good many things, and seen something of the world and the + philosophies of the world and that we have not the shadow of a doubt + about what was the wisest act of our lives. + +This letter, as we have seen, was written afterwards. Meanwhile the +story of the last slow but by no means uncertain steps is best told +in a series of undated letters to Father Ronald Knox: + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + It is hard not to have a silly feeling that demons, in the form of + circumstances, get in the way of what concerns one most, and I have + been distracted with details for which I have to be responsible, in + connection with the _New Witness_, which is in a crisis about which + shareholders etc. have to be consulted. I can't let my brother's + paper, that stands for all he believed in, go without doing all I + can; and I am trying to get it started again, with Belloc to run it + if possible. But the matter of our meeting has got into every chink + of my thoughts, even the pauses of talk on practical things. I could + not explain myself at that meeting; and I want to try again now. + + I could not explain what I mean about my wife without saying much + more. I see in principle it is not on the same level as the true + Church; for nothing can be on the same level as God. But it is on + quite a different level from social sentiments about friends and + family. I have been a rottenly irresponsible person till I began to + wear the iron ring of Catholic responsibilities. But I really have + felt a responsibility about her, more serious than affection, let + alone passion. First, because she gave me my first respect for + sacramental Christianity; second, because she is one of the good + who mysteriously suffer. . . . . + + I have, however, a more practical reason for returning to this + point. So far as my own feelings go, I think I might rightly make + application to be instructed as soon as possible; but I should not + like to take so serious a step without reopening the matter with her, + which I could do by the end of a week. I have had no opportunity + before, because she has only just recovered from an illness, and is + going away for a few days. But at about the end of next week, say, + everything ought to be ready. Meanwhile I will write to you again, as + I ought to have done before, but this tangle of business ties me up + terribly just now. Perhaps you could tell me how I could arrange + matters with some priest or religious in London, whose convenience it + would suit if I came up once or twice a week, or whatever is + required; or give me the address of someone to write to, if that is + the correct way. There are priests at High Wycombe which is nearer; + but I imagine they are very busy parochial clergy. + + I had meant to write to you about the convictions involved in a + more abstract way, but I fear I have filled my letter with one + personal point. But, as I say, I will write to you again about the + other matters; and as they are more intellectual and less emotional, + I hope I may be a little more coherent. + + Yours very sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. This has been delayed even longer than I thought, for business + bothers of my own and the paper's, plus finishing a book and all my + journalism, are bewildering me terribly. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + Please excuse this journalistic paper, but the letter-block seems + undiscoverable at this time of night. I ought to have written before; + but we have been in some family trouble; my father is very ill, and + as he is an old man, my feelings are with him and my mother in a way + more serious than anything except the matter of our correspondence. + Essentially, of course, it does not so much turn the current of my + thoughts as deepen it; to see a man so many million times better than + I am, in every way, and one to whom I owe everything, under such a + shadow makes me feel, on top of all my particular feelings, the + shadow that lies on us all. I can't tell you what I feel of course; + but I hope I may ask for your prayers for my people and for me. My + father is the very best man I ever knew of that generation that never + understood the new need of a spiritual authority; and lives almost + perfectly by the sort of religion men had when rationalism was + rational. I think he was always subconsciously prepared for the next + generation having less theology than he has; and is rather puzzled at + its having more. But I think he understood my brother's conversion + better than my mother did; she is more difficult, and of course I + cannot bother her just now. However, my trouble has a practical side, + for which I originally mentioned it. As this may bring me to London + more than I thought, it seems possible I might go there after all, + instead of Wycombe, if I knew to whom to go. Also I find I stupidly + destroyed your letter with the names of the priests at Wycombe to + whom you referred me. Would it bother you very much to send me the + names again, and any alternative London ones that occur to you; and I + will let you know my course of action then. Please forgive the + disorder of my writing--and feeling. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + I was just settling down three days ago to write a full reply to + your last very kind letter, which I should have answered long before, + when I received the wire that called me instantly to town. My father + died on Monday; and since then I have been doing the little I can for + my mother; but even that little involves a great deal of + business--the least valuable sort of help. I will not attempt to tell + you now all that this involves in connection with my deeper feelings + and intentions; for I only send you this interim scribble as an + excuse for delaying the letter I had already begun; and which nothing + less than this catastrophe would have prevented me finishing. I hope + to finish it in a few days. I am not sure whether I shall then be + back in Beaconsfield; but if so it will be at a new address: + + Top Meadow + Beaconsfield. + + Yours in haste, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + I feel horribly guilty in not having written before, and I do most + earnestly hope you have not allowed my delay to interfere with any of + your own arrangements. I have had a serious and very moving talk with + my wife; and she is only too delighted at the idea of your visit in + itself; in fact she really wants to know you very much. + Unfortunately, it does not seem very workable at the time to which I + suppose you referred. I imagine it more or less corresponds to next + week; and we have only one spare bedroom yet, which is occupied by a + nurse who is giving my wife a treatment that seems to be doing her + good and which I don't want to stop if I can help it. I am sure you + will believe that my regret about this difficulty is really not the + conventional apology; though heaven knows all sorts of apologies are + due to you. Touching the other idea of Lady Lovat's most generous + invitation I am not so sure, as that again depends at the moment on + the treatment; but of course I shall let Lady Lovat know very soon in + any case; and make other arrangements, as you suggested. In our + conversation my wife was all that I hope you will some day know her + to be; she is incapable of wanting me to do anything but what I think + right; and admits the same possibility for herself: but it is much + more of a wrench for her, for she has been able to practise her + religion in complete good faith; which my own doubts have prevented + me from doing. + + I will write again very soon. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. I am ashamed to say this has been finished fully forty-eight + hours after I meant it to go, owing to executor business. Nobody so + unbusinesslike as I am ought to be busy. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + This is only a wild and hasty line to show I have not forgotten, + and to ask you if it would be too late if I let you know in a day or + two, touching your generous suggestion about your vacation. I shall + know for certain, I think, at latest by the end of the week; but just + at the moment it depends on things still uncertain, about a nurse who + is staying here giving my wife a treatment of radiant heat--one would + hardly think needed in this weather; but it seems to be doing her + good, I am thankful to say. If this is pushing your great patience + too far, please do not hesitate to make other arrangements if you + wish to; and I shall no doubt be able to do the same. But I should + love to accept your suggestion if possible. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + Just as I am emerging from the hurricane of business I mentioned to + you, I find myself under a promise a year old to go and lecture for a + week in Holland; and I write this almost stepping on to the boat. I + don't in the least want to go; but I suppose the great question is + there as elsewhere. Indeed, I hear it is something of a reconquered + territory; some say a third of this heroic Calvinist state is now + Catholic. I have no time to write properly; but the truth is that + even before so small a journey I have a queer and perhaps + superstitious feeling that I should like to repeat to you my + intention of following the example of the worthy Calvinists, please + God; so that you could even cite it if there were ever need in a good + cause. I will write to you again and more fully about the business of + instruction when I return, which should be in about ten days. + + Yours always sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + I ought to have written long ago to tell you what I have done about + the most practical of business matters. I have again been torn in + pieces by the wars of the _New Witness_; but I have managed to have + another talk with my wife, after which I have written to our old + friend Father O'Connor and asked him to come here, as he probably + can, from what I hear. I doubt whether I can possibly put in words + why I feel sure this is the right thing, not so much for my sake as + for hers. We talk about misunderstandings; but I think it is possible + to understand too well for comfort; certainly too well for my powers + of psychological description. Frances is just at the point where Rome + acts both as the positive and the negative magnet; a touch would turn + her either way; almost (against her will) to hatred, but with the + right touch to a faith far beyond my reach. I know Father O'Connor's + would be the touch that does not startle, because she knows him and + is fond of him; and the only thing she asked of me was to send for + him. If he cannot come, of course I shall take other action and let + you know. I doubt if most people could make head or tail of this + hasty scrawl: but I think you will understand. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +Father Knox wrote on July 17, 1922, "I'm awfully glad to hear that +you've sent for Father O'Connor and that you think he's likely to be +available. I must say that, in the story, Father Brown's powers of +neglecting his parish always seemed to me even more admirable than +Dr. Watson's powers of neglecting his practice; so I hope this trait +was drawn from the life." + +Father O'Connor has described the two days before the reception: "On +Thursday morning, on one of our trips to the village, I told Mrs. +Chesterton: 'There is only one thing troubling Gilbert about the +great step--the effect it is going to have on you.' 'Oh! I shall be +infinitely relieved. You cannot imagine how it fidgets Gilbert to +have anything on his mind. The last three months have been +exceptionally trying. I should be only too glad to come with him, if +God in His mercy would show the way clear, but up to now He has not +made it clear enough to me to justify such a step.' So I was able to +reassure Gilbert that afternoon. We discussed at large such special +points as he wished, and then I told him to read through the Penny +Catechism to make sure there were no snags to a prosperous passage. +It was a sight for men and angels all the Friday to see him wandering +in and out of the house with his fingers in the leaves of the little +book, resting it on his forearm whilst he pondered with his head on +one side." + +The ceremony took place in a kind of shed with corrugated iron roof +and wooden walls--a part of the Railway Hotel, for at this time +Beaconsfield had no Catholic Church. Father Ignatius Rice, O.S.B., +another old and dear friend, came over from the Abbey at Douai, to +join Father O'Connor at breakfast at the Inn and they afterwards +walked up together to Top Meadow. What follows is from notes made by +my husband of a conversation with Father Rice. They found Gilbert in +an armchair reading the catechism "pulling faces and making noises as +he used to do when reading." + + He got up and stuffed the catechism in his pocket. At lunch he + drank water and poured wine for everyone else. About three they set + out for the Church. Suddenly Father O'Connor asked G.K. if he had + brought the Ritual. G.K. plunged his hand in his pocket, pulled out a + threepenny shocker with complete absence of embarrassment, and went + on searching till at last he found the prayer book. + + While G.K. was making his confession to Father O'Connor, Frances + and Father Rice went out of the chapel and sat on the yokels' bench + in the bar of the inn. She was weeping. + + After the baptism the two priests came out and left Gilbert and + Frances inside. Father Rice went back for something he had forgotten + and he saw them coming down the aisle. She was still weeping, and + Gilbert had his arm round her comforting her. . . . + + He wrote the sonnet on his conversion that day. He was in brilliant + form for the rest of the day, quoting poetry and jesting in the + highest spirits. . . . + + He joined the Church "to restore his innocence." Sin was almost the + greatest reality to him. He became a Catholic because of the Church's + practical power of dealing with sin. + +Immediately, he wrote to his mother and to Maurice Baring, who had +anxiously feared he had perhaps offended Gilbert, so long was it +since he had heard from him. + + MY DEAREST MOTHER, + + I write this (with the worst pen in South Bucks) to tell you + something before I write about it to anyone else; something about + which we shall probably be in the position of the two bosom friends + at Oxford, who "never differed except in opinion." You have always + been so wise in not judging people by their opinions, but rather the + opinions by the people. It is in one sense a long story by this time; + but I have come to the same conclusion that Cecil did about needs of + the modern world in religion and right dealing, and I am now a + Catholic in the same sense as he, having long claimed the name in its + Anglo-Catholic sense. I am not going to make a foolish fuss of + reassuring you about things I am sure you never doubted; these things + do not hurt any relations between people as fond of each other as we + are; any more than they ever made any difference to the love between + Cecil and ourselves. But there are two things I should like to tell + you, in case you do not realise them through some other impression. I + have thought about you, and all that I owe to you and my father, not + only in the way of affection, but of the ideals of honour and freedom + and charity and all other good things you always taught me: and I am + not conscious of the smallest break or difference in those ideals; + but only of a new and necessary way of fighting for them. I think, as + Cecil did, that the fight for the family and the free citizen and + everything decent must now be waged by [the] one fighting form of + Christianity. The other is that I have thought this out for myself + and not in a hurry of feeling. It is months since I saw my Catholic + friends and years since I talked to them about it. I believe it is + the truth. I must end now, you know with how much love; for the post + is going. + + Always your loving son, + + GILBERT. + + DEAR MAURICE, + + My abominable delay deserves every penalty conceivable, hanging, + burning and boiling in oil; but really not so inconceivable an idea + as that I should be offended with you at any time (let alone after + all you have done in this matter) however thoroughly you might be + justified in being offended with me. Really and truly my delay, + indefensible as it is, was due to a desire and hope of writing you a + letter quite different from all those I have had to write to other + people; a very long and intimate letter, trying to tell you all about + this wonderful business, in which you have helped me so much more + than anyone else. The only other person I meant to write to in the + same style is Father Knox; and his has been delayed in the same + topsy-turvy way. I am drowning in whirlpools of work and worry over + the _New Witness_ which nearly went bankrupt for good this week. But + worry does not worry so much as it did before . . . Unless it is + adding insult to injury, I shall send the long letter after all. This + I send off instantly on receipt of yours. Please forgive me; you see + I humiliate myself by using your stamped envelope. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +This sense that the Church was needed to fight for the world was +very strong in Gilbert when he hailed it to his mother as the "one +fighting form of Christianity." In the _New Witness_ he answered near +this time a newspaper suggestion that the Church ought to "move with +the times." + + The Cities of the Plain might have remarked that the heavens above + them did not altogether fit in with their own high civilisation and + social habits. They would be right. Oddly enough, however, when + symmetry was eventually restored, it was not the heavens that had + been obliged to adapt themselves. . . . + + The Church cannot move with the times; simply because the times are + not moving. The Church can only stick in the mud with the times, and + rot and stink with the times. In the economic and social world, as + such, there is no activity except that sort of automatic activity + that is called decay; the withering of the high Powers of freedom and + their decomposition into the aboriginal soil of slavery. In that way + the world stands much at the same stage as it did at the beginning of + the Dark Ages. And the Church has the same task as it had at the + beginning of the Dark Ages; to save all the light and liberty that + can be saved, to resist the downward drag of the world, and to wait + for better days. So much a real Church would certainly do; but a real + Church might be able to do more. It might make its Dark Ages + something more than a seed-time; it might make them the very reverse + of dark. It might present its more human ideal in such abrupt and + attractive a contrast to the inhuman trend of the time, as to inspire + men suddenly for one of the moral revolutions of history; so that men + now living shall not taste of death until they have seen justice + return. + + We do not want, as the newspapers say, a Church that will move with + the world. We want a Church that will move the world. We want one + that will move it away from many of the things towards which it is + now moving; for instance, the Servile State. It is by that test that + history will really judge, of any Church, whether it is the real + Church or no. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +Completion + + +THERE IS ONE part of this story that has not been told with the rest: +Our Lady's share in Gilbert's conversion. The Chesterton family had +been quite without the strange Protestant prejudice that in the minds +of many Englishmen sets the Mother of God against God the Son. Our +lady was respected though of course not invoked. In a boyhood poem +Gilbert took the blasphemous lines of Swinburne's "Hymn to +Proserpine" and wrote a kind of parody in reverse turning the poem +into a hymn to Mary. He would, too, recite Swinburne's own lines +"deliberately directing them away from Swinburne's intention and +supposing them addressed to the new Christian Queen of life, rather +than to the fallen Pagan queen of death." + + But I turn to her still; having seen she shall surely abide + in the end + Goddess and maiden and queen be near me now and befriend. + +Nor was it only admiration for art that made him write--also in early +youth: + + THE NATIVITY OF BOTTICELLI + + Do you blame me that I sit hours before this picture? + But if I walked all over the world in this time + I should hardly see anything worth seeing that is not + in this picture. + +Father O'Connor sees in _The Catholic Church and Conversion_ a hint +that Mr. Belloc had been of those who tried to hustle Gilbert in his +younger days. But on this profound reality of Mary's help they could +meet many years before Gilbert had finished the slow rumination of +mind and the painful effort of will that had held him so long. Here +is an early letter Belloc wrote to his friend: + + Reform Club, Manchester. + 11 Dec. 1907. + + MY DEAR GILBERT, + + I am a man afraid of impulse in boats, horses and all action though + driven to it. I have never written a letter such as I am writing now, + though I have desired to write some six or seven since I became a + grown man. In the matter we discussed at Oxford I have a word to say + which is easier to say on paper than by word of mouth, or rather, + more valuable. All intellectual process is doubtful, all + inconclusive, save pure deduction, which is a game if one's first + certitudes are hypothetical and immensely valuable if one's first + certitude is fixed, yet remains wholly dependent on that. + + Now if we differed in all main points I would not write thus, but + there are one or two on which we agree. One is "Vere passus, + immolatus in cruce pro homine." Another is in a looking up to our + Dear Lady, the blessed Mother of God. + + I recommend to you this, that you suggest to her a comprehension for + yourself, of what indeed is the permanent home of the soul. If it is + here you will see it, if it is there you will see it. She never fails + us. She has never failed me in any demand. + + I have never written thus--as I say--and I beg you to see nothing + in it but what I say. There is no connection the reason can + seize--but so it is. If you say "I want this" as in your case to know + one way or the other--she will give it you: as she will give health + or necessary money or success in a pure love. She is our Blessed + Mother. + + I have not used my judgment in this letter. I am inclined to + destroy it, but I shall send it. Don't answer it. + + Yours ever + + H. BELLOC. + + At top of letter: "My point is If it is right She knows. If it is + not right She knows." + +Gilbert believed it, and he knew that as he came to the Church he was +coming to Our Lady. + + Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our lady did + not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the + thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, + and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the + world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the + condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or + was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or + was a challenge to myself--I never doubted that this figure was the + figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being + still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The + instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I + tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her! When I + finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest + of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy + little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the + thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.* + +[* _The Well and the Shallows_, pp. 176-7.] + +In his _Chaucer_, G.K. quoted with considerable amusement a learned +critic who said it was "possible" that the poet had "passed through a +period of intense devotion, more especially towards the Virgin Mary." +"It is," he comments. "It does occur from time to time. I do not +quite understand why Chaucer must have 'passed through' this fit of +devotion; as if he had Mariolatry like the measles. Even an amateur +who has encountered this malady may be allowed to testify that it +does not usually visit its victim for a brief 'period'; it is +generally chronic and (in some sad cases I have known) quite +incurable."* + +[* _Chaucer_, p. 121.] + +_The Queen of Seven Swords_ is the great expression of Gilbert's +"chronic" love of Our Lady: + + And men looked up at the woman made for the morning + When the stars were young, + For whom more rude than a beggar's rhyme in the gutter + These songs were sung. + +"The Return of Eve" exemplified a favourite thought of his: when the +journalist keeps repeating that the life of religion does not lie in +dusty dogmas we should stop him with a great shout, for he is wrong +at the very start. It is from the seed of dogma and from that seed +alone that all the Powers of art and poetry and devotion spring. In +the days of his boyhood, when he thought of Our lady with a vague +and confused respect as _"The_ Madonna" he could not have written +"The Return of Eve." That flower came from the seed of the doctrine of +the Immaculate Conception. + +Our lady is the Mother of God and our Mother: this doctrine blossomed +as he wrote: + + I found One hidden in every home + A voice that sings about the house. + A nurse that scares the nightmares off + A mother nearer than a spouse + + Whose picture once I saw; and there + Wild as of old and weird and sweet + In sevenfold splendour blazed the moon + Not on her brow; beneath her feet. + +This poem, "The White Witch" has in it a mingling of the old +classical stories of his boyhood and the new light of Christian +reality. In _The Everlasting Man_ he saw the myths as hunger and the +Faith as bread. Men's hearts today were withered because they had +forgotten to eat their bread. The hunger of the pagans was a +healthier thing than the jaded sterility of the modern world. Our +Lady was ready to give that world the Bread of Life once more. And as +he meditated on the mystery of the Virgin Birth he saw God making +purity creative. She alone who overcame all heresies could overcome +the hideous heresy of birth prevention. + + That Christ from this creative purity + Came forth your sterile appetites to scorn. + So: in her house Life without Lust was born, + So in your house Lust without Life shall die. + +"Gaude, Virgo Maria, cunctas haereses sola interemisti." Was this +phrase from Our Lady's office ringing in Gilbert's mind as he sang of +the Seven Champions of Christendom disarmed and worsted in the fight, +going back to Our Lady to find that she had hidden their swords where +the gospels tell us she hid and pondered all things--in her heart? +From her wounded heart, Mary takes the seven swords to rearm the +saints who have to reconquer the earth. + +Certainly he must often have thought of the Litany. So many verses +are based on it. Our Lord as a baby climbs the Ivory Tower of His +Mother's body and kisses the Mystic Rose of her lips: + + A woman was His walking home + Foederis Arca Ora pro nobis. + +And he thinks of the sun, moon and stars as trinkets for her to play +with: + + With the great heart a woman has + And the love of little things. + +For she is a woman: Regina Angelorum, Queen of Powers and Archangels, +she yet belongs to the human race. + + Our lady went into a strange country, + Our lady, for she was ours + And had run on the little hills behind the houses + And pulled small flowers; + But she rose up and went into a strange country + With strange thrones and powers. + +From a welter of comment and correspondence that followed his +conversion--challenging, scorning, rejoicing, welcoming, I select two +letters from the two closest of Gilbert's Catholic friends--Hilaire +Belloc and Maurice Baring. + + i.VIII.22. + + MY DEAR GILBERT, + + I write to you, from these strange surroundings, the first line + upon the news you gave me. I must write to you again when I have + collected myself: for my reactions are abominably slow. I have, + however, something to say immediately: and that is why I write this + very evening, just after seeing Eleanor off at the Station. The thing + I have to say is this (I could not have said it before your step: I + can say so now. Before it would have been like a selected pleading.) + The Catholic Church is the exponent of Reality. It is true. Its + doctrines in matters large and small are statements of what is. This + it is which the ultimate act of the intelligence accepts. This it is + which the will deliberately confirms. And that is why Faith though an + act of the Will is Moral. If the Ordnance Map tells us that it is 11 + miles to [a place] then, my mood of lassitude as I walk through the + rain at night making it feel like 30, I use the Will and say "No." My + intelligence has been convinced and I compel myself to use it against + my mood. It is 11 and though I feel in the depths of my being to have + gone 30 miles and more, I _know_ it is not yet 11 I have gone. + + I am by all my nature of mind sceptical. . . . And as to the doubt + of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood: not a conclusion. My + conclusion--and that of all men who have ever once seen it--is the + Faith; Corporate, organised, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a + theory. It. + + To you, who have the blessing of profound religious emotion, this + statement may seem too desiccate. It is indeed not enthusiastic. It + lacks meat. + + It is my misfortune. In youth I had it: even till lately. Grief has + drawn the juices from it. I am alone and unfed, the more do I affirm + the Sanctity, the Unity, the Infallibility of the Catholic Church. By + my very isolation do I the more affirm it, as a man in a desert knows + that water is right for man: or as a wounded dog not able to walk, + yet knows the way home. + + The Catholic Church is the natural home of the human spirit. The + odd perspective picture of life which looks like a meaningless puzzle + at first, seen from that one standpoint takes a complete order and + meaning, like the skull in the picture of the Ambassadors. + + So much for my jejune contribution: not without value; because I + know you regard my intelligence--a perilous tool God gave me for his + own purposes; one bringing nothing to me. + + But beyond this there will come in time, if I save my soul, the + flesh of these bones--which bones alone I can describe and teach. I + know--without feeling (an odd thing in such a connection) the reality + of Beatitude: which is the goal of Catholic Living. + + In hac urbe lux solennis + Ver aeternum pax perennis + Et aeterna gaudia. + + Yours, + + H. B. + +Maurice Baring wrote: + + August 25: 1922. + + MY DEAR GILBERT, + + When I wrote to you the other day I was still cramped by the + possibility of the news not being true although I _knew_ it was true. + I felt it was true at once. Curiously enough I felt it had happened + before I saw the news in the newspaper at all. I felt that your ship + had arrived at its port. But the more I felt this, the more unwilling + I was to say anything before I heard the news from a source other + than the newspapers. I gave way to an excess, a foolish excess + perhaps of scruple. But you will, I think, understand this. In + writing to you the other day I expressed not a tenth part of what I + felt and feel and that baldly and inadequately. Nothing for years has + given me so much joy. I have hardly ever entered a church without + putting up a candle to Our Lady or to St. Joseph or St. Anthony for + you. And both this year and last year in Lent I made a Novena for + you. I know of many other people, better people far than I, who did + the same. Many Masses were said for you and prayers all over England + and Scotland in centres of Holiness. I will show you some day a + letter from some Nuns on the subject. A great friend of mine one of + the greatest saints I have known, Sister Mary Annunciation of the + Convent Orphanage, Upper Norwood, used always to pray for you. She, + alas, died last year. + + Did I ever quote you a sentence of Bernard Holland on the subject + of Kenelm Henry Digby when the latter was received? + + "Father Scott . . . who, at last, guided him through the narrow + door where one must bend one's head, into the internal space and + freedom of the eternal and universal Catholic Church." _Space_ and + _freedom:_ that was what I experienced on being received; that is + what I have been most conscious of ever since. It is the exact + opposite of what the ordinary Protestant conceives to be the case. To + him and not only to him but to the ordinary English agnostic the + convert to Catholicism is abandoning his will and his independence, + sometimes they think even his nationality; at the best they think he + is sheltering himself in a walled garden; at the worst they think he + has closed on himself an iron door: and shackled himself with foolish + chains and sold his birthright for a crown of tinsel. + + And yet their own experience, the testimony of their eyes if they + would only use them, ought to suggest to them that they might perhaps + be mistaken. + + It would be difficult for anyone to make out a case for the + UnEnglishness of Manning or indeed of any prominent English Catholic + whether a born Catholic or a convert. + + It would be difficult for them to prove that Belloc was a writer + wanting in independence. It would be difficult for them to convince + any one that Father Vaughan and Lord Fitzalan were wearing foolscaps. + + And anybody who has thought about history or looked on at politics + must have reflected that freedom resides where there is order and not + where there is license: or no-order. + + It is true in politics; it is true in art. It is the basis of our + whole social life in England. Russia has just given us the most + startling of object lessons. The English with their passion for + Committees, their Club-rules and their well organised traffic are + daily realising the fact, however little they may recognise the + theory. Only the law can give us freedom, said Goethe talking of art. + "Und das Gesetz kann nur die Freiheit geben." + + Well all I have to say, Gilbert, is what I think I have already + said to you, and what I have said not long ago in a printed book. + That I was received into the Church on the Eve of Candlemass 1909, + and it is perhaps the only act in my life, which I am quite certain I + have never regretted. Every day I live, the Church seems to me more + and more wonderful; the Sacraments more and more solemn and + sustaining; the voice of the Church, her liturgy, her rules, her + discipline, her ritual, her decisions in matters of Faith and Morals + more and more excellent and profoundly wise and true and right, and + her children stamped with something that those outside Her are + without. There I have found Truth and reality and everything outside + Her is to me compared with Her as dust and shadow. Once more God + bless you and Frances. Please give her my love. In my prayers for you + I have always added her name. + + Yours, + + MAURICE. + +It was a bit of great good fortune, although at the time he did not +feel it so, that the death of the _New Witness_ in 1922 for lack of +funds, left Gilbert some months for uninterrupted creative thought +before _G.K.'s Weekly_ took its place. Lawrence Solomon, friend of +his boyhood and at this time a near neighbour, has told me not only +how happy his conversion had made Gilbert but also how it had seemed +to bring him increased strength of character. Worry, he had told +Maurice Baring, did not worry so much as of old because of a +fundamental peace. In this atmosphere were written two of his most +important books: _St. Francis of Assisi_ published 1923, _The +Everlasting Man_ published 1925. + +In a poem he has expressed his sense of conversion as a new light +that had transfigured life: indeed of a new life given to him: + + After one moment when I bowed my head + And the whole world turned over and came upright, + And I came out where the old road shone white, + I walked the ways and heard what all men said. + + * * * * * + + They rattle reason out through many a sieve + That stores the sand and lets the gold go free: + And all these things are less than dust to me + Because my name is Lazarus and I live.* + +[* _Collected Poems_, p. 387, "The Convert."] + +Both books shine with that light on the white road of man's +endeavour, thrill with that life. Gilbert felt now the clue to +history in his fingers and he used it increasingly. _The Everlasting +Man_ is the _Orthodoxy_ of his later life and one difficulty in +dealing with it adequately was expressed in a letter from William +Lyon Phelps thanking the author for "a magnificent work of genius and +never more needed than now. I took out my pencil to mark the most +important passages, but I quickly put my pencil in my pocket for I +found I had to mark every sentence." Reading the book for perhaps the +seventh time I can only say (I hope without irreverence) what G.K. +himself says happens to those who can read the words of the Gospels +"simply enough." They "will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon +them. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words +about such words as these." + +"Rocks rolled upon them." Did he not feel crushed, overwhelmed at +times by his own thought on these immensities, or can the philosopher +carry his thoughts as lightly as Gilbert so often seemed to carry +his? I think not always. He must have needed superhuman strength to +conceive and give birth to this mighty book. The thoughts sketched in +_The New Jerusalem_ had grown to their full fruition in an atmosphere +of meditation. It would be much easier to give an outline of _The +Everlasting Man_ than of _Orthodoxy_, much harder to give an idea of +it. For _Orthodoxy_ consists of a hundred brilliant arguments while +_The Everlasting Man_ really is a vision of history supported by a +historical outline. Comparing his own effort with that of H. G. +Wells, Chesterton says, "I do not believe that the best way to +produce an outline of history is to rub out the lines." He is like +Wells however in not being a specialist but claiming "the right of +the amateur to do his best with the facts the specialists +provide"--only their specialists are different specialists and their +facts therefore largely different facts. + +Chesterton, unlike most converts, wrote concerning his own conversion +the least interesting of his later books: but in _The Everlasting Man_ +he is not at all concerned with his own spiritual wayfaring, he +merely wants to make everyone else look at what he has come to see at +the end of the way. The book is an attempt to get outside Man and +thus see him as the strange being he really is: to get outside +Christianity and see for the first time its uniqueness among the +religions of the world. Why are not all men aware of the uniqueness +of Man among the animals and the uniqueness of the Church among +religions? Because they do not really look at either. Familiarity has +dulled the edge of awareness. Men must be made to see them as though +for the first time; and it is the towering achievement of this book +that reading it we do so see them. "I desire to help the reader to +see Christendom from the outside in the sense of seeing it as a whole +against the background of other historic things; just as I desire him +to see humanity as a whole against the background of natural things. +And I say that in both cases when seen thus, they stand out from +their background like supernatural things." This being his desire, he +divides the book into two parts--"the first being the main adventure +of the human race in so far as it remained heathen; and the second a +summary of the real difference that was made by it becoming +Christian." + +Notable as the first part is, it is only a preparation for the +second, which shows the Church not as one religion among many but as +the only religion, for it is the only Thing that binds into one both +Philosophy (or Thought) and Mythology (or Poetry), giving us a Logos +Who is also the Hero of the strangest story in the world. He asks the +man who talks of reading the Gospels really to read them as he might +read his daily paper and to feel the terrific shock of the words of +Christ to the Pharisees or the behaviour of Christ to the +money-changers: to look at the uniqueness of the Church that has died +so often but like Her Founder risen again from the dead. + +Two untrue things, he felt, were constantly reiterated about the +gospel--one that the Church had overlaid and made difficult a plain +and simple story: the other that the hero of this story was merely +human and taught a morality suitable to his own age, inapplicable in +our more complicated society. To anyone who really read the gospels +the instant impression would be rather that they were full of dark +riddles which only historic Christianity has clarified. The Eunuchs +of the heavenly Kingdom would be an idea dark and terrible but for +the historic beauty of Catholic virginity. The ideal of man and woman +"in one flesh" inseparable and sanctified by a sacrament became clear +in the lives of the great married saints of Christendom. The apparent +idealisation of idleness above service in the story of Mary and +Martha was lit up by the sight of Catherine and Clare and Teresa +shining above the little home at Bethany. The meek inheriting the +earth became the basis of a new Social Order when the mystical monks +reclaimed the lands that the practical kings had lost. + +Thus if the gospel was a riddle the Church was the answer to the +riddle because both were created by One Who Knew: Who saw the ages in +which His own creation was to find completion: Whose morality was not +one of another age but of another world. + +Chesterton gathered history in his mind and saw together before the +Christmas Crib the shepherds who had found their shepherd, the +philosopher kings who "would stand for the same human ideal if their +names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were +those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their +thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had +their reward. But even in order to understand that reward, we must +understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was +the completion of the incomplete."* + +[* _The Everlasting Man_, p. 211.] + +G.K. too had needed the completion of incomplete human thought: he +too had followed the star from a far country. It had been a fancy of +his boyhood, caught from a fairytale, that evil lurked somewhere in a +hidden room of the human house and the human heart. He saw in the +history of the ancients a consciousness of the Fall, in the sadness +of their songs a sense of "the Presence of the Absence of God." But +at Bethlehem he saw the transformation that had come upon the whole +race of man with that little local infancy concealing the mighty +power of God who had put Himself under the feet of the world. + + It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart + of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from + within. It is as if he found something at the back of his own heart + that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would + call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose + strength is in that winged levity with which they brush us and pass. + It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness, that is there made + eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in + some strange fashion become a strengthening and a repose; it is the + broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended + unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the + mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only + the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more + human than humanity. + +[* Ibid., p. 223.] + +It seems to me profoundly significant that Gilbert studied first in +the little Poor Man of Assisi what Christ could do in one man before +he came on to the study of what He had done in mankind as a whole, of +Who He was who had done it. For the man thus chosen embodied the +ideals that Gilbert had seen dimly in his boyhood--ideals that most +of us accept a little reluctantly from the Church, but which had +actually attracted him towards the Church. St. Francis "had found the +secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure". . . +"he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom +everybody disliked him for liking." "By nature he was the sort of man +who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride, that vanity which +is very near to humility. He never despised his fellow creatures and +therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures, +including the admiration of his fellow creatures." "He was above all +things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of +giving which is called thanksgiving. If another great man wrote a +grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of +acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very +depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss." + +Here, in St. Francis, Gilbert saw the apotheosis of his old boyish +thought--that thanksgiving is a duty and a joy, that we should love +not "humanity" but each human. Things shadowed in the Notebook are in +_St. Francis_, for + + the transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of + revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and + illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates + all things. It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say + at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards + that all flowers reminded him of his lady. A saint and a poet + standing by the same flower might seem to say the same thing; but + indeed though they would both be telling the truth, they would be + telling different truths. For one the joy of life is a cause of + faith, for the other rather a result of faith.* + +[* _St. Francis of Assisi_, p. 111.] + +_The Everlasting Man_ and the _St. Francis_ seem to me the highest +expression of Gilbert's mysticism. I have hesitated to use the word +for it is not one to be used lightly but I can find no other. Like +most Catholics I have been wont to believe that to be a mystic a man +must first be an ascetic and Gilbert was not an ascetic in the +ordinary sense. But is there not for the thinker an asceticism of the +mind, very searching, very purifying? In his youth he had told +Bentley that creative writing was the hardest of hard labour. That +sense of the pressure of thought that made Newman call creative +writing "getting rid of pain by pain"; the profound depression that +often follows; the exhaustion that seems like a bottomless pit. St. +Theresa said the hardest penance was easier than mental prayer: was +not much of Gilbert's thought a contemplation? + +Faith, thanksgiving, love, surely these far above bodily asceticism +can so clear a man's eyesight that he may fittingly be called a +mystic since he sees God everywhere. "The less a man thinks of +himself, the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of +God." Only a poet who was more than a poet could see so clearly of +what like St. Francis was. + + When we say that a poet praises the whole creation, we commonly + mean only that he praises the whole cosmos. But this sort of poet + does really praise creation, in the sense of the act of creation. He + praises the passage or transition from nonentity to entity; there + falls here also the shadow of that archetypal image of the bridge, + which has given to the priest his archaic and mysterious name. The + mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but God + does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings in which there + was really nothing else. He not only appreciates everything but the + nothing of which everything was made. In a fashion he endures and + answers even the earthquake irony of the Book of Job; in some sense + he is there when the foundations of the world are laid, with the + mornings stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy.* + +[* _St. Francis of Assisi_, pp. 112-13.] + +But there was in all those years another element besides the giving +of thanks and the joy of creation: an abiding grief for the sorrows +of the sons of men and especially those of his own land. In this mood +the _Cobbett_ was written. + +Nine years separate the publication of _William Cobbett_ from that of +the _History of England_. Written at the time when Englishmen were +fighting so magnificently, that book had radiated G.K.'s own mood of +hope, but to read _Rural Rides_, to meditate on Cobbett's England, +and then turn to the England of the hour was not cheerful. For +Cobbett "did not draw precise diagrams of things as they were. He +only had frantic and fantastic nightmares of things as they are."* +And these nightmares haunted Cobbett's biographer. + +[* _Cobbett_, p. 22.] + + What he saw was not an Eden that cannot exist, but rather an + Inferno that can exist, and even that does exist. What he saw was the + perishing of the whole English power of self-support, the growth of + cities that drain and dry up the countryside, the growth of dense + dependent populations incapable of finding their own food, the + toppling triumph of machines over men, the sprawling omnipotence of + financiers over patriots, the herding of humanity in nomadic masses + whose very homes are homeless, the terrible necessity of peace and + the terrible probability of war, all the loading up of our little + island like a sinking ship; the wealth that may mean famine and the + culture that may mean despair; the bread of Midas and the sword of + Damocles. In a word, he saw what we see, but he saw it when it was + not there. And some cannot see it--even when it is there.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 14, 15.] + +Two men had written of the Reformation as the ultimate origin of +these evils at a time when it was still the fashion to treat it as +the dawn of all good. Lingard, himself a Catholic, had written +cautiously, with careful documentation and moderate tone. Cobbett, a +Protestant, had written hastily and furiously, but both men had drawn +in essentials the same picture. Chesterton suspected that Cobbett was +treated with contempt, Lingard with respect, largely because of the +difference in the tone of the two men. Lingard spoke restrainedly but +Cobbett's voice was raised in a loud cry: + + He was simply a man who had discovered a crime: ancient like many + crimes; concealed like all crimes. He was as one who had found in a + dark wood the bones of his mother, and suddenly knew she had been + murdered. He knew now that England had been secretly slain. Some, he + would say, might think it a matter of mild regret to be expressed in + murmurs. But when he found a corpse he gave a shout; and if fools + laughed at anyone shouting, he would shout the more, till the world + should be shaken with that terrible cry in the night. + + It is that ringing and arresting cry of "Murder!" wrung from him as + he stumbled over those bones of the dead England, that distinguishes + him from all his contemporaries.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 176-77.] + +Yet, for the Christian, hope remains: no murder can be the end. +"Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God +who knew the way out of the grave." This quotation is from the +chapter called "Five Deaths of the Faith" in _The Everlasting Man_. +Several times in the book Chesterton puts aside tempting lines of +thought with the remark that he intends to develop them later--in one +of the unwritten books that he always felt were so much better than +those he actually wrote. Would any human life have been long enough +to develop them all? Anyhow, even the whole of this life was not +available. + +As I turn to the story of the weekly paper rising again from its +ashes I ask myself the question I have often asked: was it worth +while? I cannot answer the question. Something of his manhood seemed +to Gilbert bound up with this struggle, and it may be he would have +been a lesser man had he abandoned it. And yet at moments imagining +the poetry, the philosophy that might have been ours--another _White +Horse_, another _Everlasting Man_--I am tempted to wish that these +years had not thus been sacrificed to the paper which enshrined his +brother's memory. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +The Reluctant Editor (1925-1930) + + +_I tell you naught for your comfort +Yea naught for your desire +Save that the sky grows darker yet +And the sea rises higher. + +Ballad of the White Horse_ + +COULD GILBERT HAVE divided his life between literary work, his home +at Top Meadow, and those other elements called in the _Autobiography_ +"Friendship and Foolery," that life might well have been as he +himself called it "indefensibly fortunate and happy." But he could +not. Part of his philosophy of joy was that thanks must be given--for +sunsets, for dandelions, for beech trees, for home and friends. And +this thanks could only be the taking of his part in the fight. He +would never, he once said, have turned of his own accord to politics: +it is arguable that it would have been better if he never had. But +his brother had plunged into the fray with that very political paper +the _New Witness_ and his brother's death had left it in Gilbert's +hands. He felt the task to be a sacred legacy, and when the paper +died for lack of funds his one thought was how to start it again. + +For many months he kept the office in being and paid salaries to a +skeleton staff, consisting of Mr. Gander, the deaf old manager, Miss +Dunham (now Mrs. Phillips) and an office boy. Mr. Titterton would +stroll in and play cricket with the office boy with a paper ball and +a walking-stick. Endless discussions were held as to how to re-start +the paper and whether under the old name or a new one. Bernard Shaw +had his own view. He wrote: + + 11 Feb.: 1923 + + MY DEAR CHESTERTON + + Not presume to dictate (I have all Jingle's delicacy); but if + everybody else is advising you, why should not I? + + _T.P.'s Weekly_ always had a weakly sound. But it established + itself sufficiently to make that form of title the trade mark of a + certain sort of paper. Hence _Jack O'London's Weekly_. It also set + the trade sheep running that way. + + You have the precedents of Defoe and Cobbett for using your own + name; but _D.D.'s Weekly_ is unthinkable, and W.C.'s Weekly indecent. + Your initials are not euphonious: they recall that brainy song of my + boyhood, U-pi-dee. + + Jee Kay see, kay see, kay see, + Jee Kay see, Jee Kay see. + Jee Kay see, Kay see, Kay see, + Jee Kay see Kay see. + + Chesterton is a noble name; but Chesterton is Weakly spoils it. + Call it simply + + CHESTERTON'S + + That is how it will be asked for at the bookstalls. You may be + obliged to call later ventures _Chesterton's Daily_ or _Chesterton's + Annual_, but this one needs no impertinently superfluous definition: + _Chesterton's Perennial_ is amusing enough to be excusable; but a + joke repeated every week is no joke. A picture cover like that of + Punch might stand even that test if it were good enough; but where + are you to find your Doyle? + + Week is a detestable snivelling word: nothing can redeem it, not + even the sermon on the Mount. Seven Days is better, But reminds one + of the police court as well as of the creation. Every Seven Days + would sound well. But _Chesterton's_ leaves no room for anything + else. I am more than usually sure that I am right. + + Frances quite agrees with me. How would you like it if she were to + publish a magazine and call it Fanny's First Paper? + + Ever + + G.B.S. + +If Gilbert answered this letter his answer has disappeared. He seems +to have asked permission to publish it--probably with a view to +collecting further opinions. + + 10 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.2. + February 16th 1923. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + Of course you may publish any letter of mine that you care to, at + your discretion. + + . . . But not only will the publication of a letter from me not add + one to your circulation (nothing but a permanent feature will do + that), but it may lead you to disregard the advice I give to all the + people who start Labour papers (about two a week or so), which always + is, "Don't open with an article to say that your paper supplies a + want; don't blight your columns with 'messages'; don't bewilder your + readers with the family jokes of your clique; else there will be no + second number." Ponder this: it is sound. + + Your main difficulty is that the class whose champion you have made + yourself reads either Lloyd's or nothing. To the rural proprietor, + no longer a peasant, art, including _belles lettres_, is immorality, + and people who idealize peasants, unpractical fools. Also the Roman + Catholic Church, embarrassed by recruits of your type and born + scoffers like Belloc, who cling to the Church because its desecration + would take all the salt out of blasphemy, will quietly put you on the + unofficial index. The Irish will not support an English journal + because it occasionally waves a Green flag far better than they can + wave it themselves. And the number of Jews who will buy you just to + see what you say about them is not large enough to keep you going. + Thus there is absolutely no public for your policy; and though there + is a select one for yourself one and indivisible, it is largely + composed of people to whom your oddly assorted antipathies and + pseudo-racial feuds are uncongenial. Besides, on these fancies of + yours you have by this time said all you have to say so many thousand + times over, that your most faithful admirers finally (and always + suddenly) discover they are fed up with the _New Witness_ and cannot + go on with it. This last danger becomes greater as you become older, + because when we are young we can tell ourselves a new story every + night between our prayers and our sleep; but later on we find + ourselves repeating the same story with intensifications and + improvements night after night until we are tired of it; and in the + end (which you have not yet reached) a story revived from the old + repertory has to last for months, and is more and more shaky as a + protection against thinking of business, or lying there a prey to + unwelcome reminiscences. And what happens to the story of the + imaginative child happens also to the sermon or the feuilleton of the + adult. It is inevitably happening to you. + + That is the case against the success of CHESTERTON'S. + + Your only chance finally is either to broaden your basis, or to + have no basis at all, like Dickens in "Household Words" and "All The + Year Round," and say, "Give me something with imagination in it, and + I can do without politics or theoretic sociology of any kind." This + is perhaps the only true catholicism in literature; but it will + hardly serve your turn; because all the articles and stories that + Dickens got are now mopped up by the popular press, which in his day + stuck to politics and news and nothing else. So I am afraid you will + have to stand for a policy, or at least a recognisable attitude, + unless you are prepared to write a detective story every week and + make Belloc write a satirical story as well. + + You could broaden your basis if you had money enough to try the + experiment of giving ten poor but honest men in Beaconsfield and ten + more in London capital enough to start for themselves as independent + farmers and shopkeepers. The result would be to ruin 18 out of the + twenty, and possibly to ruin the lot. You would then learn from your + feelings what you would never learn from me, that what men need is + not property but honorable service. Confronted either with 20 men + ruined by your act, or 18 ruined and one Fascination Fledgby owning + half a street in London, and the other half a parish in Bucks, you + would--well, perhaps join the Fabian Society. + + The pseudo race feuds you should drop, simply because you cannot + compete with the _Morning Post_, which gives the real thing in its + succulent savagery whilst you can give only a "wouldn't hurt a fly" + affectation of it. In religion too you are up against the fact that + an editor, like an emperor, must not belong to a sect. Wells is on + the right tack: my tack. See my prefaces to Androcles and Methuselah. + We want the real Catholic Church above the manufactured one. The + manufactured one is useful as the Salvation Army is useful, or the + formulas of the Church of Christ Scientist; but they do not strike on + the knowledge box of the modern intellectual; and it is on the modern + intellectual that you are depending. I am an Irishman, and know how + far the official Catholic Church can go. Your ideal Church does not + exist and never can exist within the official organization, in which + Father Dempsey will always be efficient and Father Keegan futile if + not actually silenced; and I know that an officially Catholic + Chesterton is an impossibility. + + However, you must find out all this for yourself as I found it out + for myself. Mere controversy is waste of time; and faith is a curious + thing. I believe that you would not have become a professed official + Catholic if you did not believe that you believe in + transubstantiation; but I find it quite impossible to believe that + you believe in transubstantiation any more than, say, Dr. Saleeby + does. You will have to go to Confession next Easter; and I find the + spectacle--the box, your portly kneeling figure, the poor devil + inside wishing you had become a Fireworshipper instead of coming + there to shake his soul with a sense of his ridiculousness and + yours--all incredible, monstrous, comic, though of course I can put a + perfect literary complexion on it in a brace of shakes. + + Now, however, I am becoming personal (how else can I be sincere?). + Besides I am going on too long and the lunch bell is ringing. So + forgive me, and don't bother to answer unless you cannot help it. + + Ever, + + G. BERNARD SHAW. + +Meanwhile, Shaw as usual responded cordially to Gilbert's wish to +make him an early attraction in the paper--but also as usual urged +him towards the theatre: + + 10th Dec. 1924. + + By all means send me a screed about Joan [of Arc] for the cockpit. + But I protest I have no views about her. I am only the first man + modest enough to know his place _auprès d'elle_ as a simple reporter + and old stage hand. + + You should write plays instead of editing papers. Why not do George + Fox, who was released from the prisons in which Protestant England + was doing its best to murder him, by the Catholic Charles II? George + and Joan were as like as two peas in pluck and obstinacy. + + G.B.S. + +The specimen advance number was published before the end of 1924. In +the leading article G.K. gave his reasons for agreeing finally to use +his own name--although in the form attacked by Shaw. He had first +viewed the proposal with a "horror which has since softened into +loathing." He had looked for a title that should indicate the paper's +policy. But while that policy was in fact a support of human +normality: well-distributed property, freedom and the family--yet the +surrounding atmosphere was so abnormal that "any title defining our +doctrine makes it look doctrinaire." A name like _The Distributive +Review_ would suggest that a Distributist was like a Socialist, a +crank or a pedant with a new theory of human nature. "It is so old +that it has become new. At the same time I want a title that does +suggest that the paper is controversial and that this is the general +trend of its controversy. I want something that will be recognised as +a flag, however fantastic and ridiculous, that will be in some sense +a challenge, even if the challenge be received only with genial +derision. I do not want a colourless name; and the nearest I can get +to something like a symbol is merely to fly my own colours." + +Although the paper was never exclusively Catholic, that flag was for +G.K. as it had been for Cecil of a very definite pattern and very +clear colours: religiously the paper stood for Catholic Christianity, +socially for the theory of small ownership, personal responsibility +and property. It was in strong opposition especially to Socialism and +even more to Communism. Bernard Shaw, Gilbert once said, wanted to +distribute money among the poor--"we want to distribute power." + +During the last part of Cecil's editorship his wife had been +Assistant Editor of the _New Witness_ and she had so continued when +Gilbert first became Editor. But she was neither a Catholic nor a +Distributist. Religion seems not to have interested her, and her +political outlook was entirely different from Gilbert's. In _The +Chestertons_ she dismissed Distributism as "quite without first +principles" and "a pious hope and no more."* Obviously it was +impossible for Gilbert to start his new paper with an Assistant +Editor in entire disagreement with his views. I have sometimes +wondered whether his intense dislike of having to tell Mrs. Cecil +this was not almost as strong a factor in the delay as the money +problem. + +[* I have learnt, as this book goes to press, that Mrs. Cecil became +a Catholic in 1941.] + +There was no break in their relations: she went on writing for the +paper, doing chiefly the dramatic criticism. But it is clear from her +own account of the incident that she wholly misconstrued Gilbert's +attitude and did not realise how far she herself had drifted from +Cecil's views as well as from Gilbert's. + +Shaw wrote again: + + Reid's Palace Hotel + Funchal, Madeira. + 16th January, 1925. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + The sample number has followed me out here. What a collector's + treasure! + + Considering that I had Cecil's own assurance that my Quintessence + of Ibsenism rescued him from Rationalism, and that it was written in + 1889 (I abandoned Rationalism consciously and explicitly in 1881) I + consider John Prothero's introduction of me to your readers as a + recently converted Materialist Rationalist to be a most unnatural + act; and it would serve her right if I never spoke to her again. + + Rationalism is the bane of the Church. A Roman priest always wants + to argue with you. A Church of England parson flies in terror from an + argument, a fundamentally sensible course. George Fox simply knocked + arguers out with his "I have experimental knowledge of God." St. + Thomas Aquinas was like me: he knew the worthlessness of + ratiocination because he could do it so well, and yet despaired of + the Inspirationists in practical life because they did it so badly. + + J.K.P. doesn't know her way about in this controversy; and I cannot + take up her challenge. + + What makes me uneasy about the prospectus is that you drag in + anti-prohibition. You might as well have declared for Brighter London + at once, or said that the paper would be printed at the office of the + _Morning Advertiser_. You run the risk of the money coming from The + Trade. However, _non olet_. Only, remember the fate of all the + editors--Gardiner, Donald, Massingham, etc., etc.--who have written + without regard to their proprietors. The strength of your position is + that they can hardly carry on with your name in the title without + you. But they can kill the paper by stopping supplies if it does not + pay; and the chances are that it will not. I have never had a + farthing of interest on my shares in the New Statesman, and don't + expect I ever shall. Therefore keep your list of shareholders as + various and as uncommercial as you can: get Catholic money rather + than beer money. + + As I am the real patentee of the Distributive State, and the D.S. + is Socialism; and as, furthermore, the Church must remain at least + neutral on Prohibition, as in the United States, where a Catholic + priest has just set a praiseworthy example of neutrality by bringing + about a record cop of bootleggers, and as the success of Prohibition + is so overwhelming that it is bound to become a commonplace of + civilization, you must regard it as at least possible that you will + some day make the paper Socialist and Dry (with a capital). Therefore + do not undertake to oppose anything: stand for what you propose to + advocate, whether as to property or drink or anything else, but don't + state your solutions as antitheses. + + By the way, don't propose equal distribution of land. It is like + equal distribution of metal, rough on those who get the lead and + rather too jolly for those who get the gold. Your equal distribution + must come to equal distribution of the national income in terms of + money. + + The £500 a year is absurd. Do you realize that it is £250 at + pre-war rates, and subject to heavy taxation: net £375--pre-war + 182-10-0? You have sold yourself into slavery for ten years for + £3-10-2 a week. Are you quite mad? Make it at least £1500, plus + payment for copy. + + Ever + + G.B.S. + +Of course it was not merely a question of inadequate payment for his +work: as time went on, a large part of the financial burden of the +paper had to be carried by him. Lord Howard de Walden helped +generously and so did Mr. Chivers. Other donations came in but mostly +very small ones. No proper accounts were kept: no watch on how the +money went. And from time to time Gilbert would pay off a printing +bill of £500 or so and go ahead hoping for better times. The money +aspect did not worry him, I think, at first. There was always more to +be made by a little extra effort: though a time was to come when +every extra effort wearied him cruelly. But there was one thing he +could not bear--quarrels on the Board or on the staff and above all +the suggestion that he should adjudicate. + +"He was a bad judge of men," one of his staff told me. "He never +shirked an intellectual issue, but in a practical crisis he was +inclined to slide out." + +"He could never," said another, "stand up to accusations from one man +against another." + +The first start was made with the existing staff of three. Miss +Dunham was sub-editor and was usually left to see the paper through +the press. G.K. would come up once or twice a week and dictate his +own articles. + +"You never knew when he was coming," she says, "but you always knew +when he was there by the smell of his cigar." He was practically a +chain smoker and he always used the same brand. He left drawings on +the blotter and everything else. He had no idea of time and when he +said, "I think I'll go out now," he might stay out an hour or so, or +he might not return at all. Lighting a cigar or cigarette he would +make a sign in the air with the match. He never omitted this ritual, +and Miss Dunham thinks it became like tapping the railings was to Dr. +Johnson. + +"He used to come in and swing about on his little feet," she said. +And it is true that his feet like his voice seemed too small to +belong to the rest of him. Her great difficulty was that she could +not get him to read and select among the contributions: too often +this was left to her and she felt painfully inadequate to the task. + +For the first year all the Notes of the Week were written by G.K. +Then he got Mr. Titterton as Assistant Editor: and after that, said +the Assistant Editor with simplicity, "You couldn't always tell good +Titterton from bad Chesterton." Everyone who worked at the office +adored G.K.: especially the "little" people, typists, secretaries, +office boys. + +"He was so kind," Miss Dunham said. "He never got angry. He never +minded being interrupted. If his papers blew away he never got +impatient. His patience hurt one." She had never seen him angry. + +That the paper was ever got out seems wonderful as the staff recall +those days. Yet I think that all the stories about Gilbert's +inefficiency as Editor have contributed towards an impression that I +shared myself until quite lately--that _G.K.'s Weekly_ was +immeasurably inferior to the _New Witness_. Going more carefully +through the files I have begun to question that impression. + +The paper was produced under certain obvious disadvantages. Even +spending some days a week in London and telephoning freely it is not +easy to edit a paper from the country. Gilbert thought of himself as +a bad editor, and was not in fact a very good one. The contributions +he accepted were uneven in quality: both Leaders and Notes of the +Week when not written by him tended to be weak imitations of either +himself or Belloc--tinged at times with an air of omniscience +tolerable in Belloc but quite intolerable in his imitators. Just +occasionally the equally unedited Notes and Leader were in +contradiction of each other. Yet the paper remains an exceedingly +interesting one. Analysing my earlier and late impressions I +concluded that my earlier feeling of boredom sprang from the +inevitable effect of the _New Witness_ coming first and therefore +having been read first. It is a disadvantage of consistency that, as +Bernard Shaw remarked, you have said the same thing, you have told +the same story, so often as the years go by. + +Taking a rest of a year and returning fresh to _G.K.'s Weekly_ I was +surprised at finding how much I enjoyed reading it and also at +finding that it had been of more practical use than I remembered to +the cause it served. The trend of the whole world is to make the +State powerful and the family powerless. It was something that in +these years _G.K.'s Weekly_ should have helped to smash two bills of +this nature-the Mental Deficiency and the Canal Children's Bills. +Both these aimed at taking children from their parents, the first in +the cause of health, the second of education. Against both Gilbert +wrote brilliantly and successfully. + +_G.K.'s Weekly_ has much more G.K. in it and quite as much Belloc as +in the earlier years of the _New Witness_. Eric Gill, too, long a +friend of the Chestertons, became the chief contributor on art. In +1925 he spent a night at Top Meadow to discuss the policy of the +paper, especially with reference to industrialism and art. A little +later the Gills moved from Wales much nearer to Beaconsfield and the +two men met fairly often. Gill's letters are interesting. They are +mostly before the visit to Beaconsfield and probably led to it. He +begins by attacking Gilbert for "(1) supporting Orpenism as against +Byzantinism and (2) thinking that the art of painting _began_ with +Giotto, whereas Giotto was really much more the end." + +In June 1925, G.K. was asking him to write about Epstein. Gill agreed +to do so but insisted that Chesterton and Belloc must not disagree +with him but "accept my doctrine as the doctrine of _G.K.'s Weekly_ +in matters of art--just as I accept yours in other matters." "I don't +intend to write for you as an outsider (have I not put almost my last +quid into your blooming Company?--7% or not). . . . God forbid that +you should have an art critic who'll go round the picture shows for +you and write bilge about this painter and that--this 'art movement' +and that." + +In the first state of effervescence the labour he delighted in quite +deadened the pain of the Editor's chair. Gilbert was prepared if +necessary to write the whole paper and to treat it as a variant on +the Toy Theatre or the Sword Stick: + + It was said that the Chicago pork machine used every part of a pig + except the squeal. It might be said that the Fleet Street press + machine uses only the squeal. . . . + + In short, nobody reading the newspapers could form the faintest + notion of how intelligent we newspaper people are. The whole machine + is made to chop up each mind into meaningless fragments and waste the + vast mass even of those. Such a thing as one complete human being + appearing in the press is almost unknown; and when an attempt is made + at it, it necessarily has a certain air of eccentric egotism. That is + a risk which I am obliged to run everywhere in this paper and + especially on this page. As I have said, the whole business of + actually putting a paper together is a new game for me to play, to + amuse my second childhood; and it combines some of the characters of + a jigsaw and a crossword puzzle. But at least I am called upon to do + a great many different sorts of things; and am not tied down to that + trivial specialism of the proletarian press.* + +[* March 28, 1925.] + +And again + + This paper exists to insist on the rights of man; on possessions + that are of much more political importance than the principle of one + man one vote. I am in favour of one man one house, one man one field; + nay I have even advanced the paradox of one man one wife. But I am + almost tempted to add the more ideal fancy of one man one + magazine . . . to say that every citizen ought to have a weekly paper + of this sort to splash about in . . . this kind of scrap book to keep + him quiet.* + +[* April 4, 1925.] + +G.K. goes on to talk of an old idea of his: that a young journalist +should write one article for the _Church Times_ and another for the +_Pink 'Un_ and then put them into the wrong envelopes. + + It is that sort of contrast and that sort of combination that I am + going to aim at in this paper . . . I cannot see why convictions + should look dull or why jokes should be insincere. I should like a + man to pick up this paper for amusement and find himself involved in + an argument. I should like him to pursue it purely for the sake of + argument and find himself pulled up short by a joke . . . I never can + see why a thing should not be both popular and serious; that is, in + the sense of being both popular and sincere. + +For the paper had a most serious purpose. He acknowledged its defects +of bad printing (which the printers indignantly denied), bad +proof-reading, bad editing, and claimed "to raise against the banner +of advertisement the noble banner of apology." Because a creative +revolution was what he wanted, words and forms were hard to find. It +was easy to dress up stale ideas in a new dress but the terminology +for something outside the old hack party programmes had to be fresh +minted. + +He proposed various changes after a few months' running and +introduced them thus: + +We should be only too glad if for this week only our readers would +have the tact to retire and leave us alone. We are in a Hegelian +condition, a condition not so much of Being as of Becoming. And no +generous person should spy on an unfortunate fellow creature who is +going through the horrible and degrading experience of being a +Hegelian. It is even more embarrassing than being caught in the very +act of evolution, which every clear headed person would desire to +avoid.* + +[* December 12, 1925.] + +In this number he began _The Return of Don Quixote_ and also a sort +of scrapbook. He invited contributions dealing with every sort of +approach to Distributism and promised "more than one series of +constructive proposals and definite schemes of legislation. We do not +promise that all these schemes will exactly agree with each other or +that we shall agree with all of them. Some will be more conservative, +some more drastic than our own view." This article ends on an +ambitious note. Very varying schemes will be admitted, but the idea +of the paper will thereby be strengthened not destroyed-- + + For what we desire is not a paltry party programme but a + Renaissance. + +It was not the first time he had demanded a revolution but, as the +depression hit our country and Big Business seemed less and less +capable of coping with it, the demand became more understandable and +the fight against Monopoly more urgent. + + A thinking man should always attack the strongest thing in + his own time. For the strongest thing of the time is always + too strong. . . . The great outstanding fact and feature of + our time is Monopoly.* + +[* April 25, 1925.] + +I have already referred to a debate on Monopoly between Chesterton +and Mr. Gordon Selfridge, in which Selfridge, with the familiar +unreality of the millionaire, maintained that there was no such +thing. Anyone was free to open a store in rivalry of Selfridge's or +to start a paper that should eclipse the _Daily Mail!_ The only real +monopoly, he added gracefully, was that of a genius like Chesterton +whose work the ordinary man could not emulate. The graceful +compliment Chesterton answered by offering to share his last epigram +with Mr. Selfridge: but as to the main contention, what could he say? +It was at once too easy and absolutely impossible to answer such a +speech--or more truly such a speaker: only in a Country of the Blind +could he have won a hearing. But Chesterton persevered. Even in 1924 +the shadow of large scale unemployment had begun. And at this +singularly inappropriate time came the Empire Exhibition at Wembley. +In the failure of its appeal Chesterton saw hope: for he believed +that from a frank facing of truth his country might yet conquer the +coming perils. + + That was the real weakness of Wembley; that it so completely + mistook the English temperament as to appeal to a stale mood. It + appealed to a stale mood of success; when we need to appeal to a + new and more noble mood of failure, or at least of peril. The + English . . . no longer care to be told of an Empire on which the sun + never sets. Tell them the sun is setting, and they will fight though + the battle go against them to the going down of the sun: if they do + not stay it, like Joshua. . . . + + We seriously propose that England should take her stand among the + unhappy nations; it is too dismal a fate to go on being one of the + happy ones. We must be as proud as Spain and Poland and Serbia; + nations made more dear to their lovers by their disasters. Our + disasters have begun; but they do not seem to have endeared us to + anybody in particular. Our sorrow has come; but we gain no extra + loyalty by it. The time has come to claim our crown of thorns; or at + least not to cover it any longer with such exceedingly faded flowers.* + +[* March 21, 1925.] + +Always Chesterton was haunted by the present war. He had seen the +Prussian peril conquered: he saw it rising again. Even before the +advent of Hitler he knew that the tribe which had stolen from Austria +and Denmark, had invaded France and crushed Poland was without +repentance, and he feared that again the stupidity (or the greed) +behind English and American policy was giving it another opportunity-- +"Those sturdy Teutons," he wrote ironically, "from whom we were +descended up to the outbreak of the Great War, and from whom we are +now showing signs of being descended again." + +The misfortune was that Englishmen had ceased to try to get free from +"a secret government; conducted by we know not whom, and achieving we +know not what. The real national life of our country is unconscious +of its own national policy. The right hand of the Englishman, that +holds the plough or the sword, knows not what his left hand doth with +the pen and the cheque-book. Man is man; and Mond is master of his +fate." For our government he apologised to France. He saw it as one +and the same fight--against a heathenish money power and heathen +Prussia. And the beating of the dark wings of enemy aeroplanes +sounded in his dreams. As early as 1925 he wrote a Christmas play of +St. George and the Dragon in which the Turkish Knight embodied his +vision of Prussia and St. George spoke prophetically for England. + + SAINT GEORGE: I know that this is sure + Whatever man can do, man can endure, + Though you shall loose all laws of fight, and fashion + A torture chamber from a tilting yard, + Though iron hard as doom grow hot as passion, + Man shall be hotter, man shall be more hard, + And when an army in your hell fire faints, + You shall find martyrs who were never saints. + + _(They wound each other and the doctor comes to the help of the + Turkish knight.)_ + + PRINCESS: Why should we patch this pirate up again? + Why should you always win and win in vain? + Bid him not cut the leg but cut the loss. + + SAINT GEORGE: I will not fire upon my own red cross. + + PRINCESS: If you lay there, would he let you escape? + + SAINT GEORGE: I am his conqueror and not his ape. + + DOCTOR: Be not so sure of conquering. He shall rise + On lighter feet, on feet that vault the skies. + Science shall make a mighty foot and new, + Light as the feather feet of Perseus flew, + Long as the seven leagued boots in tales gone by, + This shall bestride the sea and ride the sky. + Thus shall he fly, and beat above your nation + The clashing pinions of Apocalypse, + Ye shall be deep sea fish in pale prostration + Under the sky foam of his flying ships. + + When terror above your cities, dropping doom, + Shall shut all England in a lampless tomb, + Your widows and your orphans now forlorn + Shall be no safer than the dead they mourn. + When all their lights grow dark, their lives grow gray, + What will those widows and those orphans say? + + SAINT GEORGE: Saint George for Merrie England. + +He saw the aeroplanes in vision and he saw courage and patriotism. I +think he must rejoice today that betrayal of the allied cause has not +been at the hands of an Englishman. He had said many hard things +about the English aristocracy and gentry: but these two virtues he +had always granted were theirs. And in his vision he saw hope: + + England may soon be poor enough to be praised with an undivided + heart. We are not sure that the ruins of Wembley may not be the + restoration of Westminster. It is when a nation has recovered from + the illusion of owning everything that it discovers that it does + stand for something; and for that something it will fight with a + lucid and just tenacity which no mere megalomania can comprehend. We + are not so perverse as to wish to see England ruined that she may be + respected. But we do think she will be happy in having the sort of + respect that could remain even if she were ruined. Patriotic as the + English have always been, the patriotism of their educated class has + seldom had this peculiar sort of extra energy that is given by a + conscience completely at rest. If that were added, they might well + make such a stand as would astound the world. All their other + virtues, their humour and sporting spirit and freedom from the + morbidities and cruelties of fatigue, might enter into their full + heritage when joined to the integrity and intellectual dignity that + belong to self defence and self respect. We are far from sure that + the world has not yet to see our nation in its finest phase. + + What may be in the womb of night we know not, nor what are those dim + outlines that show on the horizon. + +"In truth" he wrote, "no man knows how near we are to death or to +dawn. I am not sure whether I am making this speech from a +scaffolding or a scaffold." + +It is easy for the young to undertake hard things: they never know +how hard they are. And they are certain of success. The "lessons of +experience" signify to the young that other men have failed: their +own experience shall teach others the meaning of success. But to +begin again at fifty, with the special spring of youth gone and with +the sad lessons of one's own experience in the mind: this calls +indeed for a rare courage. Gilbert knew all the cost in time, energy, +money and reputation that he would have to pay--that he did pay. And +he stood increasingly alone. Cecil's had been the irreparable loss, +but others of the old circle were dropping out and their places were +not filled. + +Jack Phillimore's death in 1926 was a heavy blow. To his memory +Gilbert dedicated _The Queen of Seven Swords_, published the year of +his death. + + You go before me on all roads + On bridges broad enough to spread + Between the learned and the dunce + Between the living and the dead. + +The gulf between the Socialist group and the Distributist had become +far more obvious than of yore: Shaw and Wells would still write for +G.K. but only because he was their friend. If F. Y. Eccles, if +Desmond McCarthy today contributed, it would too be chiefly from +affection for Gilbert. One article by Mr. McCarthy described the old +days when the original _Eye Witness_ was in being and he, Cecil and +Belloc sat around the table editing it and sticking triolets thrown +off in hot haste into those nasty little spaces left by articles that +did not quite fit, or supplying three or four articles and a Ballade +Urbane while the printers waited. + + We have to print a triolet + When space is clamouring for matter + We try to put it off and yet + We have to print a triolet + It is with infinite regret + That we admit the silly patter + We have to print a triolet + When space is clamouring for matter. + +Such joyous scrambles are proper to youth, and now none of them were +young. + +All authors worthy of the name have found their platform and made +permanent engagements by middle life: professional men are absorbed +by work and life: they simply had not time to give as of yore to +build up this new-old venture. The names of Shaw and Wells continue +to appear among the contributors, often enough in religious debate. +Reading the files and visiting the two men to talk of Gilbert, I made +one discovery that is curious from whichever side you look at it. Two +able and indeed brilliant men betrayed not only an amazing degree of +ignorance concerning the tenets of Catholicism but also a bland +conviction that they knew them well. Wells in conversation based his +claim on the fact that he had long been intimately acquainted with an +ex-nun. Shaw I fancy felt he must know all about something that had +surrounded him in infancy--for, as the reader must have noticed, he +is much preoccupied by the thought of his Irish descent and education. + +But what seems to me even stranger about the situation is the absence +on the Catholic side of any effort to explain to these men the +doctrines they misconstrued. When Wells, for instance, gave a crude +and inaccurate statement of the doctrine of the Fall, Belloc laughed +at him, Chesterton and Father McNabb both wrote long and picturesque +articles, illuminating to a believer but, as instruction to an +unbeliever, quite useless. A correspondence that seemed likely to +drag on forever ended abruptly with Wells asking about the Fall, +"Tell me, did it really happen?" to which Chesterton briefly replied, +"Yes." + +I imagine he thought he and the other writers had said this several +times already, but in fact they had not. Perhaps they did not realise +where the beginning must be made in instructing otherwise instructed +men on the subject of Catholicism. It is all very interesting and +curious. But it largely explains why Bernard Shaw found it hard to +believe that Gilbert believed in Transubstantiation. Has any Catholic +ever explained the philosophic meaning of Transubstantiation to the +Great old Irish Man of English Letters? Even Gilbert was perhaps too +much inclined simply to play the fool in high-spirited fashion with +those who attacked the Faith in his paper or other papers. But then +how well he played it! + +Here are some imaginary interviews on + + . . . the recently discovered traces of an actual historical Flood: + a discovery which has shaken the Christian world to its foundations + by its apparent agreement with the Book of Genesis. . . . + + The Dean of St. Paul's remarked: "I do not see that there is any + cause for alarm. Protestantism is still founded on an impregnable + rock: on that deep and strong foundation of disbelief in the Bible + which supports the spiritual and intellectual life of all true + Christians today. Even if dark doubts should arise, and it should + seem for the moment as if certain passages in the Scripture story + were true, we must not lose heart; the cloud will pass: and we have + still the priceless possession of the Open Bible, with all its + inexhaustible supply of errors and inconsistencies: a continual + source of interest to scholars and a permanent bulwark against + Rome. . . ." + + Mr. H. G. Wells exclaimed: "I am interested in the Flood of the + future: not in any of these little local floods that may have taken + place in the past. I want a broader, larger, more complete and + coordinated sort of Flood: a Flood that will really cover the whole + ground. I want to get people to understand that in the future we + shall not divide water, in this petty way, into potty little ponds + and lakes and rivers: it will be one big satisfying thing, the same + everywhere. _Après moi le Déluge_. Belloc in his boorish boozy way + may question my knowledge of French; but I fancy that quotation will + settle him."* + +[* March 30, 1929.] + +On the favourite topic of modern advertisement, having read an essay +which said that good salesmanship made "everything in the garden +beautiful," Gilbert again thought of Genesis: + + There was only one actor in that ancient drama who seems to have + had any real talent for salesmanship. He seems to have undertaken to + deliver the goods with exactly the right preliminaries of promises + and praise. He knew all about advertisement: we may say he knew all + about publicity, though not at the moment addressing a very large + public. He not only took up the slogan of Eat More Fruit, but he + distinctly declared that any customers purchasing his particular + brand of fruit would instantly become as gods. And as this is exactly + what is promised to the purchasers of every patent medicine, popular + tonic, saline draught or medicinal wine at the present day, there can + be no question that he was in advance of his age. It is extraordinary + that humanity, which began with the apple and ended with the patent + medicine, has not even yet become exactly like gods. It is still more + extraordinary (and probably the result of a malicious interpolation + by priests at a later date) that the record ends with some + extraordinary remarks to the effect that one thus pursuing the bright + career of Salesmanship is condemned to crawl on his stomach and eat a + great deal of dirt.* + +[* March 23, 1929.] + +The relation between Belloc and the paper, as between Belloc and +Gilbert himself, was a unique one. Not indeed its "onlie begetter," +he was equally with Cecil begetter of the original paper and its +first editor. He was Gilbert's chief guide to the historical and +political scene of Europe. Both men shared, had fought all their +lives for, their ideas of Freedom, the Family, Restoration of +Property and all that is involved in Catholic Christianity. And +Belloc said repeatedly that he had no platform for the continuous +expression of these ideas. Such books as his _Cruise of the Nona_ +found still as wide a public as had _The Path to Rome_ a quarter +century earlier, and in those books his philosophy may be read. But +he had, too, urgent commentaries on Foreign Affairs and Current +Politics--and for these _G.K.'s Weekly_ became his platform as +completely as the _New Witness_ had been in the past. To Gilbert this +appeared one chief value of his paper: in an article from which I +quote in the next chapter he gives it as one of the two reasons for +which he toiled to keep _G.K.'s Weekly_ in existence. + +Week by week Belloc on Current or Foreign Affairs wrote of what was +happening and what would presently come of it. And who can say +reading those articles today that it would not have changed the +defeats of this war into victory at a far earlier date had our +statesmen read and heeded--the analysis for instance of the peril of +the aeroplane, of the threat to the Empire from Japan, the importance +of keeping Italy's friendship in the Mediterranean, the growing +strength of Germany and the awful risk we took in allowing her to +rearm, in failing to arm against her? + +Whether he was right or, as many held, wildly wrong about what +underlay our failures of judgment, his views must be briefly traced +because of their effect on Gilbert and others. In the financial world +he saw England in the first years after the war dominated by the +International Banking Power, which made us as it were a local branch +of Wall Street. In his view it was the bankers both of America and +England who first insisted that Germany could not pay her reparations +and later made England repudiate her own war debts to America (though +she had, he showed, already paid in interest and principal more than +half of what had been lent). The banks did this because they had lent +commercially both to Germany and England sums whose safety meant more +to them than moneys merely owing to the nations--which would not +benefit the banks! England thus became subservient to the United +States and had to follow American financial policies. It was these +policies that led to the abandonment of the unwritten alliance with +France and especially to allowing Germany to rearm (helped by loans +from these same banks), to reoccupy the Rhineland and remilitarise +the Ruhr. + +Next, in Belloc's view, came a worse stage yet in which the banks had +given place to Big Business which was increasingly controlling +Parliament. The plutocracy that had bit by bit eaten into our +aristocracy and gained ascendancy in the Govemment was not, like our +ancient aristocracy, trained for the business and was utterly +uninformed especially in foreign affairs. The one remaining hope, the +permanent officials, especially of the Foreign Office, were less and +less listened to; latterly he held too that even the Foreign Office +had lost its old sure touch. Hence a constant vacillation in our +policies which weakened England's position and made certain some +terrible disaster. + +This fear is ever present in Belloc's articles and ever brooded on by +the Editor. He rallied his forces to urge, week after week, the +possible alternative to disaster--the recovery by the people of +England of power and freedom, the restoration of England to its place +in a restored Europe, freed from the German menace. Despite the +natural high spirits a certain gloom and more than a touch of +fierceness mark the work of these years. Summing up "the twenties" +of the century, Chesterton saw them as singularly bankrupt spiritually +and intellectually, and he foresaw from their sowing a miserable +harvest. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +The Distributist League and Distributism + + +_To say we must have Socialism or Capitalism is like saying we must +choose between all men going into monasteries and a few men having +harems. If I denied such a sexual alternative I should not need to +call myself a monogamist; I should be content to call myself a man_. + +Advance number of _G.K.'s Weekly_, Nov. 1924 + +FROM _G.K.'s Weekly_ grew THE DISTRIBUTIST LEAGUE. Its start in 1926 +was marked by intense enthusiasm, and its progress was recorded week +by week in the paper. The inaugural meeting took place in Essex Hall, +Essex Street, Strand, on September 17, 1926. G.K. summed up their aim +in the words: "Their simple idea was to restore possession." He added +that Francis Bacon had long ago said: "Property is like muck, it is +good only if it be spread." The following week the first committee +meeting took place. Chesterton was elected President; Captain Went, +Secretary, and Maurice Reckitt, Treasurer. It was planned to form a +branch in Birmingham. Alternative names were discussed: The Cobbett +Club, the Luddite League, the League of Small Property: + + The Cow and Acres, however suitable as the name of a public house at + which we could assemble, is too limited as an economic statement. . . . + + The League of the Little People (President, Mr. G. K. Chesterton) + may seem at first too suggestive of the fairies; but it has been + strongly supported among us: + + And again: Suppose we call our movement, "The Lost Property + League" . . . the idea of the restoration of lost property is far + more essential to our whole conception than even the idea of liberty, + as now commonly understood. The Liberty and Property Defense League + implies that property is there to be defended. "The Lost Property + League" describes the exact state of the case.* + +[* From an article called, "Name This Child" and another later +article.] + +In October another meeting of the central branch was held in Essex +Hall to debate "Have We Lost Liberty?" The Croydon and Birmingham +branches were arranging meetings, G.K. conferred with the members of +the Manchester branch, and Glasgow announced that it was only +awaiting the christening to form a branch. Bath held its first public +meeting, with the Mayor in the chair, and the meeting had to overflow +into a very large hall. + +It was decided to reduce the price of the paper to twopence-- +Twopenny Trash* was the title of the leading article--in order to +give the League an opportunity of extending the paper's radius of +action as an organ of the League's principles. . . . _"Every reader +who has been buying one copy at sixpence, must take three copies at +twopence_ until his two surplus copies have secured two new +readers. . . . The League would have to make itself responsible for +the success of this experiment and save the paper which gave it +birth, or die of inanition, for it is certainly not yet strong +enough to leave its mother."** + +[* This was the name given to Cobbett's _Weekly Register_ by his +enemies.] + +[** _G.K.'s Weekly_, November 6, 1926.] + +It is clear that Gilbert's hopes at this stage ran high. He had not +dreamed that the initial success of the League would be so great. +Recording a sensational increase in the sale of the paper, he wrote +on November 13, 1926: "It was when we faced defeat that we were +surprised by victory; and we are quite serious in believing that this +is part of a practical philosophy that may yet outlast the philosophy +of bluff." + +Recording a meeting of the League: he wrote: + + We find it difficult to express the effect the meeting had upon us. + We were astonished, we were overwhelmed. Had we anything to do with + the making of this ardent, eager, indefatigable creature? The answer + is, of course, that though we had something to do with the shaping of + the body, we had nothing to do with the birth of the soul. That was a + miracle, a miracle we had hoped for, and which yet, when it happened, + overwhelmed us. We have the happy feeling that we have helped to + shape something which will go far above and beyond us. . . . There + were well over 100 members present, many of them spoke, and nearly + all the others would have spoken if there had been time to hear them. + It was a great night.* + +[* November 13, 1926.] + +Father Vincent McNabb has said truly that there are no words for the +real things. Thus Distributism is not only a rather ugly word but +also a word holding less than half the content of the idea they were +aiming at. Belloc covered more of it in the title of his book: the +_Restoration of Property_, while perhaps a better name still was _The +Outline of Sanity_. This Chesterton had chosen for a series of +articles that became a book. He was asking for a return to the sanity +of field and workshop, of craftsman and peasant, from the insanity of +trusts and machinery, of unemployment, over-production and +starvation. "We are destroying food because we do not need it. We are +starving men because we do not need them." + +After the first meeting of the League, the notes of the week recorded +that the printing order for the paper based on actual demand had +risen in two weeks from 4,650 to 7,000. "Of course we owe everything +to the League which in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Croydon, +Chatham, Worthing, Chorley, Cambridge, Oxford, Bath and London has +made the newsagents aware of the paper." By November 27, the sales +had risen to over 8,000. Then was held the first formal meeting of +the central branch of the League, at which it was agreed: "that +members should make a habit of dealing at small shops." They should +avoid even small shops which sweat their employees, each branch +should prepare a list of small shops for the use of its members. + + And that is only a beginning. We hope to enlist the support of the + small farmer and the small master craftsman. We hope, little by + little, to put the small producer in touch with the small retailer. + We hope in the end to establish within the state a community, almost + self-supporting, of men and women pledged to Distributism, and to a + large extent practising it. Less and less, then, will the juggling of + finance have power over us; for it does not matter what they call the + counters when you are exchanging hams for handkerchiefs, or pigs for + pianos. + +The Cockpit is worth reading during the months that follow, for here +were voiced any criticisms that the readers had to make of the paper +and of the League--any criticism that the League had to make of +itself. There was plenty. Many leaguers and readers felt for instance +that the spirit of criticism of others was too fully developed in the +paper, so that when attempts were made to act on distributive +principles by people not in league with the League they were given +short shrift instead of meeting even modified encouragement. The +League was begged to spend more time clarifying its principles, less +time in criticism. But much more fundamental was the constantly +recurrent question: When is the League going to begin to do +something? To this the answer, given often by G.K. himself was that, +while the League hoped in time to create that community of which he +had written, its own work was only that of Propaganda--of a wider and +wider dissemination of the principles of Distributism. Their work, +they said, was to talk. + +Outdoor propaganda started in Glasgow and came thence to London. In +October 1931 the Secretary said they must "convince men there is a +practical alternative to Capitalism and Socialism, _by showing them +how to set about achieving it."_ And in November he subscribed to +opinions voiced in the Cockpit for the last two years by saying that +the London Branch acted in the spirit of "a pleasant Friday evening +debating society, which regarded discussion as an end in itself." One +would imagine that all this meant a call to action, but the action +was merely the establishment of a Research Department and the start +of a new paper _The Distributist_ for the discussion of the League's +domestic business. The Research Secretary will explain his plans, +enroll volunteers and allot tasks, thus "equipping the League with +the information for lack of which it is as yet unable to agree on +practical measures." The effectiveness of its Propaganda would, +members were told, depend on its research. + +"The pious appointment of investigators," wrote a Leader in _G.K.'s +Weekly_ in reference to a Government commission, "to report what is +already common knowledge is nothing less than a face-saving, +time-marking, shifty expedient." I don't think this article was one +of Gilbert's, but I do wonder whether as time went on he did not +recall his own old comparison between the early Christian and the +modern Socialist. For Distributists far more than Socialists should +have been vowed to action. There was a grave danger both of making +their propaganda ineffective by lack of example and of weakening +themselves as Distributists. Yet there were many difficulties in +their path, some of which may best be seen if we go back a little and +recall the way in which the Encyclical _Rerum Novarum_ was received +by Catholics at the end of the last century. Written in Europe where +the remains of the mediaeval social structure still lingered on far +more than in industrial England or America, it was taken by the more +conservative Catholics as a general confirmation of the established +order. I well remember people like my own father and Father Bernard +Vaughan quoting it in this sense. And if they tended to advert to +only one half of it, the more radical Catholics readily obliged by +appearing conscious solely of the other half and thus enabling +themselves to be dismissed as one-sided. + +Unfortunately they were worse than one-sided: they were curiously +blind, with rare exceptions, to those true implications of the +document which spelt Distributism--for which the word had not then +been coined--or the _Restoration of Property_. _"The law, therefore, +should favour ownership and its policy should be to induce as many +people as possible to become owners._ Many excellent results will +follow from this; and first of all, property will certainly become +more equitably divided. For the effect of social change and +revolution has been to divide society into two widely different +castes. . . . _If workpeople can be encouraged to look forward to +obtaining a share in the land, the result will be that the the gulf +between vast wealth and deep poverty will be bridged over, and the +two orders will be brought nearer together."_* Yet the Pope's words +were treated almost as an acceptance of the existing conditions of +property by the more conservative, while the more radical simply +tried to evade them. The question of my youth undoubtedly was: how +far can a Catholic go on the road to Socialism? + +[* _Rerum Novarum_ (translation in Husslein's _The Christian Social +Manifesto_). Italics mine.] + +Distributism would seem today to have cut like a sword the knot of +this mental confusion, but it did not do so for many people. I +suppose the leading Distributist among the clergy was Father Vincent +McNabb and I have heard him called a Socialist a hundred times. And +even among those who had accepted the Distributist ideal and had now +had fifteen years of the _New Witness_ and _G.K.'s Weekly_ to +meditate upon--to say nothing of the Belloc and Chesterton +books--there was still a good deal of confusion of mind to be cleared +up. The Chesterbelloc had begun a mental revolution, but even the +mind cannot be turned upside down in a moment of time; and then there +is the will to be considered. + +Gilbert often claimed that the Society he advocated was the norm, +that the modern world was abnormal, was insane. But to achieve the +normal in an abnormal world calls for high courage and a high degree +of energy. It is much easier to sit and drink beer while planning the +world that one wishes was there--the world of simplicity, hard work +and independence. And about the details of this new world there was +room for a variety of opinion. The Distributists soon began to argue +and even to quarrel--about the admission of machinery into the +Distributist state, about the nature of one another's Distributism +and what was necessary to constitute a Distributist. The effect on +Gilbert is interesting, for it showed his belief in the importance of +the League. He hoped, he said, that the quarrel would not "turn into +a dispute"--that it would remain a personal quarrel. "For impersonal +quarrel is schism." He urged again and again that the dogmas of their +creed should be defined. + + Heaven forbid that we should ever be True Distributists: as a + substitute for being Distributists. It would be a dismal thing to + join the long and wavering procession of True Christians, True + Socialists, True Imperialists; who are now progressing drearily into + a featureless future; ready to change anything whatever except their + names. These people escape endlessly by refusing definition which + they call dogma. . . . + + Practical politics are necessary, but they are in a sense narrow; + and by themselves they do tend to split the world up into small + sects. Only dogma is sufficiently universal to include us all. + +Of the world surrounding him which refused definitions he said, +"because there is no image there is nothing except imaginaries."* But +I think there must have been some blushes on Distributists' cheeks as +they read his apology for some slight absence of mind. He explained +his own "ghastly ignorance" of the details of the dispute, "which is +bound up with the economic facts of the position," with the fact +especially of + +[* October 12, 1929.] + + my own highly inadequate rendering of the part of the Financier. I + am the thin and shadowy approximation to a Capitalist. . . . I could + only manage until very lately to keep this paper in existence at all, + by earning the money in the open market; and more especially in that + busy and happy market where corpses are sold in batches; I mean the + mart of Murder and Mystery, the booth of the Detective Story. Many a + squire has died in a dank, garden arbour, transfixed by a mysterious + dagger, many a millionaire has perished silently though surrounded by + a ring of private secretaries, in order that Mr. Belloc may have a + paper in which he is allowed to point out that a great Empire does + not default because it is growing richer. Many a shot has rung out in + the silent night, many a constable has hurled himself through a + crashing door, from under which there crawled a crimson stain, in + order that there might be a page somewhere for Mr. Kenrick's virile + and logical exposition of the principles of Distributism. Many an + imperial jewel has vanished from its golden setting, many a detective + crawled about on the carpet for clues, before some of those little + printers' bills could be settled which enabled the most distinguished + and intelligent of Distributists to denounce each other as + Capitalists and Communists, in the columns of the Cockpit and + elsewhere. This being my humble and even highly irrelevant + contribution to the common team-work, it is obvious that it could not + be done at the same time as a close following of the varying shades + of thought in the Distributist debates. And, this ignorance of mine, + though naturally very irritating to people better informed, has at + least the advantage of giving some genuineness to my impartiality. I + have never belonged distinctively to any of the different + Distributist groups. I have never had time. + +As time went on however and the disputes continued, he wrote a series +of articles* which have in them that note so special to him, so +embarrassing to some of his admirers, of deep and genuine respect for +every person and every opinion. The small numbers of the +Distributists, the greatness of the work to be done by them, would +make any split in their ranks "a tremendous tragedy." The difficulty +in keeping any movement in being was that of holding together the +ardent pioneers and the rank and file. + +[* September 10, 17, 24, October 1, 1932.] + + Men who really have common convictions tend to break up. It is only + those who have no convictions who always hang together. . . . Roughly + the position is that there is a moderate body which regards + extremists as visionary; a more extreme body which regards moderates + as ineffective; and lastly a catastrophic simplification in the + social scene, which makes the simple enthusiast seem more fitted to + the simple disaster. + +There were two approaches that should be made to these differences. +The first was to state the fundamental principles of Distributism. +The crux of the quarrel was the question of machinery. But even those +who held that machinery should be abolished in the Distributist State +held it, he claimed, not as a first principle, but as a deduction +from their first principles. Chesterton himself felt that machinery +should be limited but not abolished; the order of things had been +historically that men had been deprived of property and enslaved on +the land before the machine-slavery of industrialism had become +possible. The whole history of the machine might have been reversed +in a state of free men. If a machine were used on a farm employing +fifty men that would do the work of forty, it means forty men become +unemployed, "but it is only because they were employed that they are +unemployed. Now you and I, I hope to heaven, are not trying to +increase employment. It is almost the only thing that is as bad as +unemployment." In other words, he did not want men to be employees. +Men working for themselves, men their own employers, their own +employees--that was the objective of Distributism. A wide +distribution of property was its primary aim. And he did not want the +League to consist entirely of extremists lest it should be thought to +consist entirely of cranks, especially at a moment when "intelligent +people are beginning to like Distributism _because_ Distributism is +normal." + +The other approach was heralded in the final article of the series +(October 1, 1932) by a reference to the excitement over the Buckfast +Benedictines who had just built their Abbey Church with their own +hands--an adventure + + to which, if I understand it as completely as I share it, the + English blood will never be entirely cold. But about these new heroes + of architecture there is one note that is not new; that comes from a + very ancient tradition of psychology and morals. And that is that the + adventurer has a right to his adventure; and the amateur has a right + to his hobby; or rather to his love. But neither has any right to a + general judgment of coldness or contempt for those whose hobby is + human living; and whose chief adventures are at home. You will never + hear the builders of Buckfast shouting aloud, "Down with Downside; + for it was designed by a careful Gothic architect!" You will never + hear them say, "How contemptible are these Catholics who pray in + common churches; tawdry with waxwork imagery and Repository Art." Of + the great adventurers who advance out of the Christian past, in + search of Christian future, you could never say that the pioneers + despise the army. + +What seemed to Chesterton the oddest feature in the opposition to his +idea of sanity was the apparent assumption that he was offering an +impossible ideal to a world that was already working quite well. With +bland disregard of the breakdown of their own system, the orthodox +economists were challenging him to establish the flawlessness of his. +They laughed at the Distributist desire if not to abolish at least to +limit machinery. They adjured him to be more practical. Chesterton +had replied in an earlier article: + + There may be, and we ourselves believe there are, a certain number + of things that had better be always done by machinery. . . . + Machinery is now being used to produce numberless things that nobody + needs. Machinery is being used to produce more machinery, to be used + merely for the production of things that nobody needs. Machinery is + being used to produce very badly things that everybody wants produced + very well. + + Machinery is being used for enormously expensive transport of + things that might just as well be used where they are. Machinery is + being used to take things thousands of miles in order to sell them + and bring them back again because they are not sold. Machinery is + being used to produce ornament that nobody ever looks at and + architecture that nobody wants to look at. Machinery is taking + suicides to Monte Carlo and coals to Newcastle, and all normal human + purpose and intelligence to Bedlam; and our critics gaze at it + reverently and ask us how we expect ever to be so practical as that.* + +[* June 13, 1925.] + +This desperate situation must be met by strengthening the home, +re-establishing the small workshop, re-creating the English +peasantry. But first the ground might have to be cleared. + +One phrase used in his articles--the "catastrophic simplification of +the social scene"--reminds us once more how keenly aware Gilbert was +of something that had not yet happened, the present war with its +break-up of the social order. In the article, from which I have been +quoting, he compares the urgency of the hour to the period of the +French Revolution; in his _Outline of Sanity_ seven years earlier he +had stressed the Distributist ideal as the last chance to + + do deliberately and well what nemesis will do wastefully and + without pity; whether we cannot build a bridge from these slippery + downward slopes to freer and firmer land beyond, without consenting + yet that our most noble nation must descend into that valley of + humiliation in which nations disappear from history.* + +[* _Outline of Sanity_, p. 34.] + +In this book which he had tried in vain, he tells us, to make "a +grammar of Distributism," he touches on the enormous changes that had +made such a grammar of far greater urgency. When _Rerum Novarum_ was +issued, or even eighteen years later when G.K. wrote _What's Wrong +With the World_, individualist competition had not yet given place to +the Trust, Combine or Merger. "The American Trust is not private +enterprise. It would be truer to call the Spanish Inquisition private +judgment." The decline of trade had hardly begun at the turn of the +Century, liberty was still fairly widespread. But today we had lost +liberty as well as property and were living under the worst features +of a Socialist State. "I am one of those who believe that the cure +for centralisation is decentralisation." + +Both in the book and in the paper he urged constantly a double line +of escape towards the restoration of freedom, initiative, property +and the free family: the one line was the comparatively negative one +of winning such concessions from the State as would make action +possible, the other was personal action to be taken without any State +aid or even encouragement. The germ of recovery lay in human nature. +If you get poison out of a man's system "the time will come when he +himself will think he would like a little ordinary food. If things +even begin to be released they will begin to recover." To the +question did Chesterton believe Distributism would save England, he +answered, "No, I think Englishmen will save England, if they begin to +have half a chance. I am therefore in this sense hopeful. I believe +that the breakdown has been a breakdown of machinery and not of men." + +A most difficult question to answer is the degree of the League's +success. Its stated aim was propaganda, the spreading of ideas. +"There is a danger that the tendency to regard talking as negligible +may invade our little movement . . . our main business is to talk." +One sees the point, of course; yet I cannot help feeling that it +would have been better if the majority of Leaguers had done some bit +of constructive work towards a Distributist world and sweated out of +their system the irritability that found vent in some of their +quarrels. After all the fight for freedom as far as it concerned +attacking government was carried on week by week by the small group +running the paper. "The main body of Distributists would have learnt +their own principles better by trying to act them, and been far more +effective in conveying them to others." + +Some members saw the need of individual action. Father Vincent set +out in one number of the paper Fifteen Things that men could do for +themselves as a step to the practice of a Distributist philosophy. +Father Vincent, indeed, must be put beside Chesterton and Belloc as a +really great Distributist writer. Useful books were written too by +Mr. Heseltine and Mr. Blyton, who both also set to work to grow their +own food. Mr. Blyton is still writing and still growing food. A +workshop was started at Glasgow (probably the most active of the +Branches), Father Vincent came to a League meeting clad in home-spun +and home-woven garments, Mr. Blyton urged the example of what had +been done by the Society of Friends in creating real wealth in the +hands of the poor by their allotment schemes. (A weakness was +visible, I think, in the very different and contemptuous treatment of +Ford's effort to promote part-time farming among his workers during +the depression because it was made by Ford, who was certainly no +Distributist.) + +But the most inspiring article in the paper in many a year was +written by a man who, having tried in vain to get his writings +printed, decided to start practising Distributism. He had pondered +long, he says, on how the Rank and File of the Movement who were +neither writers nor speakers should help, and the answer came to him +"Do it yourself." After a fascinating description of how he built +"the nucleus of a dwelling house against the time that a small plot +of land could be secured" he ends: + + By responsible work a man can best realise the dignity of his human + personality. But most of us are caught in the net of industry and the + best way out would seem to be to create, that is to employ one's + leisure in conscious creative effort. This usually means the use of + hand as well as head, and the concentration on some familiar craft. + The aim also should be to acquire ownership in a small way; that is + to acquire the means of production. If we are not at all events + partly independent, how is it possible to urge on others the + principles of small ownership. + +In saying this he spoke from experience, for he had found that before +he began his experiment his friends were exasperated by references to +the principles of Distributism, while the sight of the building in +progress began to convert them. + +I have found many letters striking the note of gratitude to Gilbert +for his goodness and the inspiration he has given. One of these, +written by a sailor from H.M.S. _Hood_, is pure Distributism: "Your +articles are so interesting tho' so hard to understand. . . . Why not +come down a bit and educate the working class who are always in +trouble because they don't know what they want. You see, sir, your +use of words and phrases are so complicated, personally that's why +I'm so fascinated when I read them, but really us average Council +School educated people can't learn from you as we should . . . but +what I do understand helps me to live. . . ." + +The sailor goes on to tell the story of his life: a workhouse child, +a farm boy: a seaman on a submarine who spent his "danger money" on a +bit of land in Cornwall, married now and with two boys. "What a thrill +of pleasure we have when we gaze over our land. . . . To be reared in +a workhouse and then to leave a freehold home and land to one's +children may not seem much to most people but still out of that my +sons can build again. . . . I feel you understand this letter, what +is in my heart, and I want to thank you very much for what you have +done for me." + +Towards the end of September 1932 the League held a meeting to which +Gilbert came "as peacemaker." In the course of his speech he remarked +that he had often said harsh things of America in the days of her +prosperity but that in these days of adversity we might learn much +from that country. He instanced the saying he had heard from a +business man on his recent visit, "There's nothing for it but to go +back to the farm," and noted the fact that America still had this +large element of family farms as a basis for recovery. The suggestion +that Distributists wanted to turn everybody into peasants had been +another point answered in _The Outline_--"What we offer is +proportion. We wish to correct the proportions of the modern state."* +A considerable return to the family farm would greatly improve this +proportion. + +[* _Outline of Sanity_, p. 56.] + +But if he had spoken "harshly" of the United States it was nothing to +the way he had talked of the British Empire. Although at moments he +saw in imagination the romance of the fact that England had acquired +an Empire "absentmindedly" through Englishmen with the solitary +spirit of adventure and discovery, yet he had an unfortunate habit of +abusing the Dominions. They were the "suburbs" of England (a curious +phrase from the man who found suburbs "intoxicating"); we could not +learn from them as we could from Europe for they were inferior to us; +these and many other hard things he would throw out again and again +in his articles. One letter in the _Cockpit_ reproached him; from a +New Zealander of English descent it asked him whether he really meant +that those of his own race were so utterly indifferent to him; +whether he really preferred Bohemians and Norwegians to Britons. The +letter received no answer. + +My husband and I used to wonder with secret smiles whether he was the +Australian from whom Gilbert derived the idea of that country as a +"raw and remote colony." Belloc also, in a letter extolling the +Faith, asked "what else would print civilised stuff in Australasia?" +Many years earlier Gilbert had written, in reviewing a book on the +Cottages of England, of the inconsistency of the English upper +classes who exalt the achievement of the national character in +creating the Empire and disparage it concerning the possibility of +re-creating the rural life of England. "Their creed contains two +great articles: first that the common Englishman can get on anywhere, +and second that the common Englishman cannot get on in England." +Surely Chesterton had this same inconsistency, as it were, in +reverse? The common Englishman was great in England, the common +Irishman was great in Ireland, the common Scot was a figure of +romance in Scotland, but when these common men created a new country +that new country became contemptible. + +The Empire took a magnificent revenge, for it was in the "Suburbs of +England" that Distributism was first taken seriously and used as +practical politics. A far more effectively distributist paper than +_The Distributist_ appeared in Ceylon under the able editorship of +J. P. de Fonseka, in which action was recorded and the movements of +Government watched and sometimes affected from the Distributist +angle, and Catholic Social thinking formed on Distributist lines. +This paper has a considerable effect also in India. But of course the +main Distributist impact has been felt in the States, in Canada and +in Australia. + +There is a double-edged difficulty in talking about the influence of +anyone on his times. On the one hand, as Mgr. Knox pointed out, all +our generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so +completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton. +One sees unacknowledged (and unconscious) quotations from him in +books and articles, one hears them in speeches and sermons. On the +other hand into the making of a movement there flow so many streams +that it is possible to claim too much for a single influence however +powerful. An American Distributist said to me lately that the movement +set on foot by Chesterton had reached incredible proportions for one +generation. I think this is true but we have also to render thanks +(for example) to the suicide of the commercial-capitalist-combine +which created the void for our philosophy. That the Distributist +League has had much influence I doubt: in the United States the +Chesterton spirit is better represented by that admirable paper +_Free America_ than by the American Distributists--for _Free +America_ is offering us precisely what the League has for the most +part failed to offer--the laboratory test of the Distributist ideal. +Every number carries stories of men who have in part-time or +whole-time farming, in small shops, in backyard industries tried out +Distributism and can tell us how it has worked and _how to work it_. +Its editors Herbert Agar, Ralph Borsodi, Canon Ligutti and others, +all foremost in the Ruralist movement, acknowledge debt to Chesterton +and are carrying on the torch. Monsignor Ligutti's own work in the +field of part-time farming, his own periodical and the thoughts that +inspire the Catholic Rural Life Movement of America are among the +most important manifestations of that universal religious and rural +awakening for which Chesterton worked so hard and longed so ardently. + +In Canada the Antigonish movement has shown a happy blending of +theory and practise. For the University itself has in its Extension +Movement and by its organ _The Maritime Co-operator_ provided the +theory, while up and down the country co-operative groups have built +their own houses and canneries, started their own co-operative stores +and savings banks, and made the Maritime Provinces a hopeful and +property-owning community of small farmers and fisher folk. Several +important books have grown out of this movement and at its basis lies +the insistence on adult education which shall make ordinary men +"Masters of their Destiny." Surely it is the authentic voice of +Chesterton when Dr. Tompkins says "Trust the little fellow" or Dr. +Coady declares "The people are great and powerful and can do +everything." + +In Australia Distributism has given a fresh slant to both Labour and +Catholic leadership. The direct debt to Chesterton of the _Australian +Catholic Worker_ is immense, and while the paper also owes much to +_The Catholic Worker_ of America and to the Jocistes of France and +Belgium, we find too that in America, France, and Belgium, Chesterton +himself is studied more than any other Catholic Englishman. The +Campion Society founded in Melbourne in 1931, the Catholic Guild of +Social Studies in Adelaide, the Aquinas Society in Brisbane, the +Chesterton Club in Perth and the Campion Society in Sydney have all +based their thinking and their action on the Chesterbelloc +philosophy. These groups have closely analysed Belloc's _Servile +State_ and _Restoration of Property_ and have applied its principles +in their social action in a most interesting fashion. Thus they +opposed--and helped to defeat--a scheme for compulsory national +insurance chiefly on the ground that "the social services in a modern +State were the insurance premiums which Capitalism paid on its life +policy." With wages high enough to keep families in reasonable +comfort and save a little, with well distributed property, national +insurance would be rendered unnecessary. Yet on the other hand they +supported--and won--national "child endowment" because although +fundamentally only a palliative this at least strengthened the family +by supplementing wages and helping parents towards ownership and +property. + +Most important however of all the Australian developments has been +the approval of the main Distributist ideal by the Australasian +Hierarchy as the aim of Catholic Social Action. This was especially +set out in their Statement on Social Justice, issued on occasion of +the first Social Justice Sunday in 1940.* The Hierarchy of New +Zealand joined with that of Australia in establishing this +celebration for the third Sunday after Easter. Indeed, the social +policy of Australian Catholicism has produced the slogan "Property +for the People," while the policy has been brought into action both +by many scattered individuals in that huge but thinly populated +country and in organised fashion by the Rural Life movements with +their own organs of expression. + +[* Published by the Australian C.T.S.] + +If it is difficult to estimate the impact of mind upon mind it +becomes bewilderingly impossible to weigh, in such a movement as +Distributism, the actual practical effects. Partly because, while +Distributism leads naturally to co-operation (an individual, says +Chesterton, is only the Latin word for an atom and to reduce society +to individuals is to smash it to atoms), still the movement is +essentially local, the groups usually small. + +For my own part I have travelled a good deal, always with a primary +interest in social developments, and everywhere I have found +Chesterton or his derivatives. The numbers in America alone--both in +the States and Canada--who are trying out these ideas in big and +small communities is amazing. I did begin to make a list of vital +movements beginning with the Jocistes and the American Catholic +Worker, roving over the world and trying to estimate in each movement +I had met the proportion of Chesterton's influence, and again the +extent to which one movement is in debt to another--but I gave it up +in despair. One can only say that certainly there has been a great +stirring of the waters in every country: each has taken and has given +to the other: and most of those thus co-operating have been the +"little" men whom G.K. loved and in whom Dr. Tompkins tells us to +trust. To utter nobly the thoughts of that little man was, Chesterton +held, the highest aim that poet or prophet could set before him. +Distributism is that little man's philosophy. Chesterton gave it +large utterance. + +And he could do it the more richly because--as he said many years ago +of the religious philosophy that was the basis of his social +outlook--"I did not make it. God and humanity made it and it made me." + +Meanwhile he himself distributed royally. He gave help to the +Catholic Land Movement, to Cecil Houses, to all who asked him for +help. He educated several nieces and nephews of Frances and gave +money or lent it in considerable sums to old friends in difficulties. +If some event--perhaps Judgment Day--should call together all those +helped financially by Gilbert and Frances, I think they will be +surprised to meet one another and to discover what a lot of them +there are. They gave too to the Catholic Church at Beaconsfield, +which later became Gilbert's monument, and to which Top Meadow was +left after Frances's death. But even Top Meadow was distributed, a +small piece being cut off the garden and left to Dorothy Collins. And +I think even in a Distributist heaven it must add to Gilbert's +happiness to see the seventeen rabbits, the chickens and the +beehives--to say nothing of the huge quantities of vegetables +produced on this fragment of his property. + +For this war like the last, with all its suffering, will, if the +Bureaucracy permit it, again energise the people of England into that +creative action which is the only soil for the seed of Distributism. +It began by distributing the people. And London was no place for a +Distributist movement. It is no chance that the growth of this +philosophy is among small groups and in the countryside. "On the +land," as Father Vincent often says, "you need not waste a moment of +time or a scrap of material." This is the fierce and pious thrift +that Gilbert saw in his youth as so poetical and in his age as a part +of the philosophy of Distributism. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +Silver Wedding + + +THE CONSIDERATION OF the Distributist League that flowed out of the +foundation of _G.K.'s Weekly_ in 1925 has carried us some years ahead +of our story. Back then to 1926 when Frances and Gilbert had been +married 25 years. + +One of the things taught me long ago when I first visited them at +Beaconsfield was that it was properly to be called Beckonsfield: that +it was not named for Disraeli but that he, impertinently, had chosen +to be named for it. Gilbert often spelt it Bekonsfield to impress his +point. Both in theory and practice he had a lot of local patriotism +and a little of that special pride taken by all men in houses built +by themselves. But most of his pride went out to the fact that his +home was intensely English. He quoted a lover of Sussex who said +among the beech trees of Buckinghamshire, "This is really the most +English part of England." He felt it "no accident that has called +this particular stretch of England the home counties." Public life +was so ugly just now, the decay of patriotism under the corroding +influence of an evil and cowardly sort of pacifism was hateful to +him, but England still remained to re-vitalise the English when the +time should come. The oaks that had made our ships could still fill +us with "heroic memories; of Nelson dying under the low oaken beams +or Collingwood scattering the acorns that they might grow into +battleships." Yet if, he said, "I were choosing an entirely English +emblem, I should choose the beech-tree." Beaconsfield was, by one +theory, named from the beech forests that surrounded it, and while +the oaks suggested adventure and the British lion, the beeches +suggest rather the pigs that feed upon their mast and villages that +grow up in the hollows and slow curves of the hills. + +"The return to the real England with real Englishmen would be a +return to the beech-woods, which still make this town like a home. At +least they did until recently. I shall probably be told tomorrow that +several beech forests have been removed to enable a motorist, +temporarily deaf and blind, to go from Birmingham to Brighton." + +It is at Top Meadow, whither they moved in 1922, that I always see +Frances and Gilbert in a memory picture. They were to live there for +the rest of their lives, and life there was the quiet background for +all the vast mental activity and the journeying over England and +Ireland and Europe and America that marked the years that remained. + +The house began simply as a huge room or studio built in the field +opposite Overroads. At one end was a stage which became the dining +room: at the other end a minute study for Gilbert. The roof was high +with great beams: at the study end was a musicians' gallery. A wide +open fireplace held two rushbottomed seats on one of which Frances +sat in winter. They were the only warm corners, but Gilbert did not +feel the cold and certainly could not have fitted into the inglenook. +Opposite the fire was a long low window looking into the prettiest +garden, where St. Francis stood guardian and preached perpetually to +the birds. A pool held water lilies; and the flowers that surrounded +the pool and the house were also cut and brought indoors in great +quantities. Frances loved to have them in glowing masses against the +background of books. + +New shelves had to be added every year as the books accumulated. Big +as the room was, the wall space was not enough and one large bookcase +was built out from the wall near the fireplace into the middle of the +room, as in a public library. It looked well there and it screened +one from the bitterest blasts. For the place seemed full of air from +the four winds of heaven. The rest of the house was built on to this +room and looked tiny beside it. Kitchen and servants' quarters, two +fair-sized and one very small bedroom, a minute sitting room for +Frances where she kept her collection of tiny things--toys and +ornaments mostly less than an inch, many far smaller, that were the +delight of children. She had not, Gilbert remarked, allowed her taste +to guide her in choosing a husband. + +A mixture of Gilbert's strong and weak qualities affected his +dealings with his dependents. I am not sure he felt certain that it +was quite right that he should have a gardener: anyhow, no man was +ever paid so highly and allowed to idle so completely as was the +gardener I remember there, an exceedingly able gardener when he chose +to work. To such trifles as the disappearance of coal or tools, +neither Gilbert nor Frances would dream of adverting. And they were +entirely at the mercy of a "hard case" story at all times. One man +used to call weekly to receive ten shillings--for what service no one +was able to form the faintest conception. Should he fail to appear +Gilbert mailed the money. He was found one day fighting another man +on the doorstep for daring to beg from Mr. Chesterton! + +From a conventional point of view the maids were inconceivably +casual. Neither Gilbert nor Frances would have thought it right to +insist on caps or indeed on any sort of uniform. It is my impression +that I have been waited on at dinner by someone garbed in a skirt, a +sweater and a pair of bedroom slippers. And the parlor maid took for +granted her own presence beside Frances and Dorothy Collins as a +chief mourner at Gilbert's funeral. + +According to Bernard Shaw, writing of Dickens, marriage between a +genius and an ordinary or normal woman could not succeed--the gap was +too wide. Dickens had thought he could go through with it, only +because he had not measured the gap. In this theory, as in so much +else, Gilbert stood violently opposed to Shaw. No doubt he must at +times have realised that there was an intellectual gap between +himself and the ordinary man or woman, but it was a thing utterly +unimportant. Character, love, sanity: these things mattered +infinitely more, and he more than once depicts the genius as +painfully climbing to reach the ordinary. + +His views concerning the sexes were equally at variance with those +of Shaw and of most of the moderns. He was quite frankly the +old-fashioned man and Frances was the old-fashioned woman. They both +agreed that there is one side of life that belongs to man--the side +of endless cigars smoked over endless discussions about the universe. +Gilbert, in _What's Wrong With the World_, tells us that the voice in +which the working woman summons her husband from the tavern is the +same voice as that of the hostess who, leaving the men in the dining +room, tells her husband not to stay too long over the cigars. + +Of this voice he entirely approved so long as it did not ask to stay +on in the dining room. He often said that the important thing for a +country was that the men should be manly, the women womanly: the +thing he hated was the modern hybrid: the woman who gate-crashes the +male side of life: no one, he had said in a letter of his engagement +time, "takes such a fierce pleasure as I do in things being +themselves." And both he and Frances found amusement in that "eternal +equality" which Gilbert saw in the sexes so long as they kept their +eternal separateness. If everything, he said, is trying to be red +some things are redder than others, but there is an eternal and +unalterable equality between red and green. + +It so happens that in the matter of the wives of great men he had +something to say more than once. He longed to hear the point of view +of Mrs. Cobbett who "remains in the background of his life in a sort +of powerful silence." He combated Shaw's notion that the young poet +would repudiate domestic toils for his wife: rather he would idealise +them--though this, Gilbert admits, might at times be hard on the +wife. But the matter is best expressed in the love scene in one of +his later romances: _Tales of the Long Bow:_ + + That valley had a quality of repose with a stir of refreshment, + as if the west wind had been snared in it and tamed into a summer + air. . . . + + "What would you say if I turned the world upside down and set my + foot upon the sun and the moon?" + + "I should say," replied Joan Hardy, still smiling, "that you wanted + somebody to look after you." + + He stared at her for a moment in an almost abstracted fashion as if + he had not fully understood; then he laughed quite suddenly and + uncontrollably, like a man who has seen something very close to him + that he knows he is a fool not to have seen before. So a man will + fall over something in a game of hiding-and-seeking, and get up + shaken with laughter. + + "What a bump your mother earth gives you when you fall out of an + aeroplane," he said. "What a thing is horse-sense, and how much finer + really than the poetry of Pegasus! And when there is everything else + as well that makes the sky clean and the earth kind, beauty and + bravery and the lifting of the head--well, you are right enough, + Joan. Will you take care of me?"* + +[* Pp. 89, 119.] + +Frances was not especially interesting intellectually although she +had much more mind than Joan in the story, but above all she carried +with her a "quality of repose with a stir of refreshment." + +"Will you take care of me?" + +Neither of them probably had measured at first all that that care +would mean. Only bit by bit would the full degree of his physical +dependence, as we have seen it through the years, become clear to +her. The strenuous campaign in the matter of appearances begun during +the engagement might alter in direction but had rather to be +intensified in degree as he grew older. Shaving, bathing, even +dressing were daily problems to him. "Heat the water," an early +secretary at Overroads heard Frances saying to the cook, "Mr. +Chesterton is going to have a bath." And "O, need I," came in tones +of deepest depression from the study. The thought of that vast form +climbing into and out of the bathtub does make one realise how a +matter of easy everyday practice to the normal person became to him +almost a heroic venture. His tie, his boots, were equally a problem: +I remember his appearing once at breakfast in two ties and claiming, +when I noticed it, that it proved he paid too much, not too little, +attention to dress. Doctors, dentists, oculists were all needed at +times, but Gilbert would never discover the need or achieve +appointments or the keeping of them. Still more serious was the +question of how the two were to live and to do all the acts of +generosity that to them both seemed almost more necessary than their +own living. Hard as he worked, Dorothy Collins has told me that when +she came to them in this year (1926) they had almost nothing saved. + +It may be remembered that Gilbert wrote to Frances during their +engagement that his only quality as a shopper was ability to get rid +of money and that he was not good at "such minor observances" as +bringing home what he had bought or even remembering what it was. +Through boyhood and into manhood his parents, as we have seen, had +never given him money to handle and he certainly never learnt to +handle it later in life. "He spent money like water," Belloc told me. +Realising his own incapacity he arranged fairly early to have Frances +look after their finances, bank the money and draw checks. "When we +set up a house, darling," he had said, "I think you will have to do +the shopping." All he handled was small sums by way of pocket +money--"very playfully regarded by both" Father O'Connor writes, for +he had often witnessed the joke that they made of it. + +"What could she do," he continues, "when Gilbert went out with +£5.18.6 or words to that effect, and came back invariably without a +copper, not knowing where his money had gone?" + +At a hotel in Warsaw the manager entreated him not to bring every +beggar in town around the door. He could never refuse a beggar and +the money not given away was probably dropped in the street or in a +shop. The solution they hit upon was that of accounts at the shops +and hotels or anything that could not simply be brought home by +Frances and placed by his side. Father O'Connor wrote to Dorothy +Collins of "the loving care with which Frances anticipated all his +wishes--never was the cigar box out of date--_you_ know this, and it +was so long before you came. And his toddle to the Railway Hotel for +port or a quart according to climatic conditions. . . . She devised +and built the studio for Gilbert to play at and play in. It used to +be crowded at receptions, as on the night when Gilbert broke his arm. +He had been toying with the tankard that evening, to the detriment of +social intercourse, but not much, I thought. We were all in good +fettle. The _Ballad of the White Horse_ was just going to the +printers. That was never penned in Fleet Street. Nor _The Everlasting +Man_. He wrote verbosely there in the office. At Beaconsfield he was +pulled together, braced." + +The studio, become the house, almost certainly cost more than they +had planned--building always does--but the two great drains were the +benefactions and the paper. Frances signed, as a matter of course, +every check Gilbert wanted, but I imagine it was sometimes with a +little sigh that she wrote the checks for the endless telephones, +telegrams, printers' bills and other expenses that poured out to +support a paper which to her seemed chiefly a drain on Gilbert's +energies that could not but diminish his creative writing. In the six +years 1927-1933, he paid over £3000 into the paper. 1931-2 were the +worst years. In them the checks she had to sign totalled £1500. + +The last sentences quoted from Father O'Connor touch on the +deepest--perhaps the only deep--problem for them both. For far the +hardest thing was the struggle against the real danger that he might +again drink too much, as he had before the illness that so nearly +killed him in 1915. This struggle was rendered especially hard by two +elements in her make-up: Frances wanted always to give Gilbert +exactly what _he_ wanted, and she hated to admit even to herself +anything that could be called a fault in him. She saw the overwork +that she was powerless to stop: she could not but be aware how great +it made the temptation. It was for her to remember the old illness, +to be vigilant without worrying him, to help him against himself. + +After the long illness Dr. Pocock had advised total abstinence for +some years, largely because, as he told me, Gilbert, unless specially +warned, ate and drank absentmindedly anything that happened to be +there! He observed this prohibition faithfully until Dr. Pocock left +Beaconsfield in 1919. Dr. Bakewell, who succeeded him advised +moderation but only occasionally found it necessary to order total +abstention. It was the amount of liquid he feared rather than its +nature. When he forbade wine he did so because wine increased the +general tendency to absorb liquid. For Gilbert was always unslakeably +thirsty. Daily he drank several bottles of Vichy Water or Evian, also +of claret at what may be called the "open" seasons, and many cups of +tea and coffee. Spirits he practically never touched, nor such +heavier wines as port and sherry. But even two bottles of claret or +Burgundy, although usually appearing to brighten his intellect, might +well be a serious strain on the digestion of a man who overworked the +mind without exercising the body. "He loved to sip a glass of wine," +Monsignor O'Connor writes, "and to stroll between sips in and out of +his study, brooding and jotting, and then the dictation was ready for +the morning." + +Dorothy Collins once kept a record for a few weeks of the number of +words dictated of the book of the moment--usually thirteen to +fourteen thousand, about twenty-one hours weekly--exclusive of +journalism, editing and lecturing. The pressure was tremendous and +increasing, nor was it felt by Gilbert only. In a letter to Maurice +Baring at the time of his conversion he writes: "For deeper reasons +than I could ever explain, my mind has to turn especially on the +thought of my wife, whose life has been in many ways a very heroic +tragedy; and to whom I am so much in debt of honour that I cannot +bear to leave her, even psychologically, if it be possible by tact +and sympathy to take her with me." + +Frances would indeed have been amazed to find herself cast for such a +part. Her life had held two tragic events--Gertrude's death and the +much sadder death of her brother, believed to have killed himself. +With her faith and her profound affections such an end had stabbed +deep. Yet certainly Frances did not view herself as other than happy: +in fact, I think she very seldom thought about herself at all. There +was something of heroism in this very self-forgetfulness. Frances +never had good health and for some years had suffered from arthritis +of the spine. Yet intimate as I was I knew this only after her death. +My husband was saying lately that had he been asked to choose +adjectives to describe Frances he would have chosen "cheerful" and +"well-balanced." Of all the people we have known we felt she was one +of the closest to the norm of sanity and mental health: quite an +achievement for a woman suffering from a really painful complaint. + +Yet I think when Gilbert used the strong phrase "heroic tragedy" he +saw with his great insight that his frail wife, beside their heavy +cross of childlessness, beside the burden of her own physical and +spiritual sufferings, was carrying the weight of his achievement, and +that it was not a light one. Heroic was the right word but tragedy +the wrong, for this life given to her keeping ended on a note of +triumph. + +The treatment of a situation of this kind can, of course, easily be +made unreal. In the sort of golden glow cast by the imagination on +Fleet Street with its taverns and its drinks, next morning's headache +is always omitted: but even the finer, deeper glow of the domestic +hearth has its ashy moments. No finite beings can conduct their lives +with complete absence of errors and regrets. In any human +relationship, however perfect, the people concerned sometimes bore or +annoy or even hurt one another. That is one of the main things that +sends Catholics week by week or month by month to the Confessional, +which brings for everyman something of the renewal and re-creation of +daily joy that the genius Gilbert saw when he wrote _Manalive_. In +this story the hero is always eloping with his own wife and marrying +her again. Flora Finching's "It was not ecstasy it was comfort" is a +common enough view of a reasonably successful marriage, but Gilbert +wanted to keep and did keep the flashes of ecstasy. When he wrote +_Manalive_ he had been married eleven years and he used a thought +that had inspired a poem to Frances while they were engaged. The +heroine in the story keeps changing her second name, but the name is +always a colour: in one town the hero runs away with her as Mary +Grey, in another as Mary Green. Thus as a girl Gilbert had seen +Frances in green and had understood why green trees and fields are +beautiful; had seen her in grey and had learnt a new love for grey +winter days, and the grey robes of palmers; and in blue-- + + Then saw I how the fashioner + Splashed reckless blue on sky and sea + And ere 'twas good enough for her + He tried it on eternity. + +When they came back from Jerusalem Gilbert dedicated to Frances the +_Ballad of St. Barbara_ and we find him again at his old trick: +seeing as her throne the great stones of the mediaeval walls, seeing +nature as her background. With all apologies to the cynics I am +afraid that the judgment of the biographer upon all the evidence must +be that after twenty-five years Gilbert not only loved his wife +tenderly, but was still ardently in love with her! + +A curious prayer of his youth was fulfilled as they celebrated this +year their silver wedding. + + A wan new garment of young green, + Touched as you turned your soft brown hair; + And in me surged the strangest prayer + Ever in lover's heart hath been. + + That I who saw your youth's bright page, + A rainbow change from robe to robe, + Might see you on this earthly globe, + Crowned with the silver crown of age. + + Your dear hair powdered in strange guise, + Your dear face touched with colours pale, + And gazing through the mask and veil + The mirth of your immortal eyes.* + +[* "The Last Masquerade," _Collected Poems_, pp. 348-9.] + +Four years earlier Frances had aided Gilbert in making the decision +for which she was not yet herself ready, to do the act which he +called "the most difficult of all my acts of freedom." And indeed +much of that freedom of full manhood he owed to her. + +Now after four years of waiting she was almost ready to join him. She +wrote to Father O'Connor: + + June 20 [1926] + + DEAR PADRE-- + + I want now, as soon as I can see a few days clear before me to + place myself under instruction to enter the Church. The whole + position is full of difficulties and I pray you Padre to tell me the + first step to take. I _don't_ want my instruction to be here. I don't + want to be the talk of Beaconsfield and for people to say I've only + followed Gilbert. It isn't true and I've had a hard fight not to let + my love for him lead me to the truth. I knew you would not accept me + for such motives. But I am very tired and very worried. Many things + are difficult for me. My health included which makes strenuous + attention a bit of a strain. I know you understand--Tell me what I + shall do. + + Yours affecly + + FRANCES CHESTERTON. + +Between this letter and the next Gilbert and Frances celebrated +their silver wedding. + + July 12 + + MY DEAR PADRE-- + + We have had such a week of alarums and excitements that I had not + even time to thank you for the spoons. They are just what I like and + incidentally just what I wanted. I feel so hopeless at getting out of + this net of responsibilities in which I am at present enmeshed and to + find time for instruction. I feel I have a lot to learn and I think + after all I had better go quietly to Father Walker* and talk to him. + Gilbert is writing to you himself. I know he thinks I have made + myself rather unhappy about things--and he is so involved with the + paper (I pray he gives it up) we have not been able to talk over + things sensibly. Please be very patient with me, because it is so + difficult to get clear. My nephew Peter is very ill and I have to + spend a lot of time with my poor sister. + +[* The Parish Priest.] + + Yrs gratefully + + FRANCES CHESTERTON. + + [Undated] + + DEAR PADRE-- + + Many grateful thanks. Did you receive your copy of the "Incredulity + of Father Brown." It was put aside for you, but I do not know if it + was sent off or appropriated by somebody else. I have written to + Father Walker and after having seen him and had a talk I shall know + what I ought to do. It is only the mass of work, the paper, my poor + Peter and money worries that keep me on the edge from morning till + night. I feel the paper must go, it is too much for Gilbert (4 days + work always) and consequently too much for me who have to attend to + everything else. Trying to settle an income-tax dispute has nearly + brought me to tears. + + You will understand how difficult it is to get time to think and + adjust my conclusions. + + Yrs affect. + + FRANCES CHESTERTON. + +This group of letters is for Frances amazingly unreserved. I have +never known a happier Catholic than she was once the shivering on the +bank was over and the plunge had been taken. One would say she had +been in the Church all her life. + +This was indeed a year of fulfillment: the year of the completion of +their home, for they surprisingly acquired a daughter! I sometimes +wondered why Frances and Gilbert had never adopted a child: they +lavished much love on nieces, nephews and godchildren, but this was +the only fulfillment to their longing until almost old age--and even +then their conscious act was merely that of engaging a secretary. +They had had many secretaries before, some of whom came with a quite +inadequate training. "They learnt on Gilbert," as a friend once put +it. It was difficult, too, for the secretaries, since neither Gilbert +nor Frances had any idea of hours or of the arrangement of work. It +was quite probable that Gilbert would suddenly want to dictate late +in the evening or again that Frances would ask the secretary of the +moment to run into the village for the fish in the middle of the +morning. Hence rather general discomfort. Gilbert dictated straight +to the typewriter, so shorthand was not needed. He went very slowly +with many pauses. But it is typical of this period that no carbons +were kept of letters sent, no files of letters received. + +In 1926 came Dorothy Collins. Not only did she bring order out of +chaos, but she became first the very dear friend of both Frances and +Gilbert and finally all that their own daughter could have been. I +remember how Frances talked of her to me when she was hoping Dorothy +would become a Catholic (which she did some years later) and again +when she herself was left solitary by her husband's death, and how I +felt with inward thanksgiving that no child could mean more to her +mother. But long before this stage was reached came a great +lightening of the burden of living. No longer would Frances cry over +income tax returns, no longer would money worry her. Chauffeur as +well as secretary Dorothy drove them both to London for engagements +and through England and Europe on holidays or lecture tours. She went +with them to America and handled the business of their second tour +there. Now when friends rang up to make arrangements Frances or +Gilbert could say: "Would you ring again when Dorothy comes in. I'm +not quite sure. She keeps the engagement book." And while Dorothy +sternly warded off the undesirables, it worked out much better for +friends as no engagement book had been kept before with any +regularity. Now engagements were kept as well as an engagement book. +Frances would still deal with the clothing question, but Dorothy +handled it if she were unwell, and in every case delivered him +punctually and brought him home again. A few of the lectures and +debates of these years were: "Is Journalism Justifiable?", "An Aspect +of St. Francis of Assisi," "The Problem of Liberty," "Is the House of +Commons any Use," "What Poland Is," "Culture and the Coming Peril," +"Progress and Old Books," "Americanization," "The Modern Novel," "If +I Were a Dictator." + +The excitement of Catholics everywhere had been intense when Gilbert +came into the church: in England it was almost as great over Frances. +Her real wish to remain in the background, her dislike of publicity, +were seldom believed in by those who did not know her. I happened to +be present at a conversation between the proprietor and the editor of +a Catholic paper which had displayed a poster all over London +announcing her conversion. One of them had heard that she was annoyed +and for a moment both seemed a little dashed. Then said one: "Of +course she has to pretend not to like it"--and this was at once +accepted by the other: for both took for granted that such publicity +could in reality have given her nothing but pleasure. + +It was difficult at first for either Frances or Gilbert to see the +wood for the trees in their new environment, and it was the greatest +good fortune that the year of Frances's reception was also that of +the new simplification following upon Dorothy's arrival. For the +preceding few years had resembled the hectic period of the lionising +of the young Chesterton of 1904. Requests poured in, for lectures, +for articles, for introductions to books. "Are there no other +Catholics to do things?" Frances asked me rather plaintively. Of +these years Monsignor Knox said later, "his health had begun to +decline, and he was overworked, partly through our fault." + +A dip into the post bag brings up some letters from Father Martindale +to Gilbert and Frances passing on various requests, but also +realising the difficulty: "I sympathize with all desperately busy +men": "I have already protected him by advising small or fussy groups +not to invite him now and again." The solitary recollection I have of +any interest Gilbert showed in a review of his books is the remark he +made to my husband when Father Martindale had said of _The Queen of +Seven Swords_ "Francis Thompson is here outpassed." Gilbert repeated +the phrase and said eagerly: "He wouldn't say it unless he meant it, +would he?" + +C.C.M., who has himself been caricatured talking on the radio, typing +and eating at the same time, as different from G.K.C. as possible in +his pale slimness and almost transparent appearance, was no less busy +over a thousand activities. It was interesting that he should ask +Gilbert's help, especially in that cementing of Catholics throughout +the Empire that has always so passionately preoccupied him. In the +War he had discovered in military hospitals the ordinary Englishman +and above all the ordinary Australian and New Zealander. To them and +to the Apostolate of the Sea he was to devote primarily all his later +life. + +Writing therefore to counsel the Chestertons as to which Catholic +works should have precedence, we find him wanting an article for a +New Zealand paper "the only one of its sort in N.Z., and you may say +that it affects the _entire Catholic_ community of the two islands," +an autographed book for "a hulking devotee of yours and a member of +the Australia rugger team, I think eight of them are Catholics." This +"would give enormous joy to him" and "would be known in no time +throughout Australia. Do try to." + +From South Africa he wrote to Frances: + + You will be surprised to get a letter from me from a nameless place + 50 miles inland from the Nyanga mountains, which you will find + (variously spelt) westward from, say Beira on the African east coast. + This is the reason-- + + Recently a boy in a kraal here was found cutting pious pictures + from a newspaper that he had somehow got hold of (he was a good + little Catholic!). "Why are you cutting out that one?" "Because + _this_ is a Great Mukuru in the Catholic Church." (Mukuru is + Potentate and will serve from St. Joseph right along to the Pope, not + to mention the Little Flower. . . .) The Great Mukuru in this case + was yourself! So there! + + I hope you will smile with pleasure, but not try to answer, as + please God I sail on the 31st and ought to be back in London in early + Sept., a good deal better, thank God. + + Please remember me affectionately to Gilbert. This is the first + time a typemachine has clicked just here; its accompaniment, in an + otherwise dead silence, is a distant gurgling yodel, so to say--some + native feeling happy in the brilliantly hot sunlight, which, all the + same, cannot make the thin air hot. I sleep (when possible) under + furs, with the occasional insect dropping off the thatch over my head. + +Later, planning a meeting for the Apostolate of the Sea at Queen's +Hall, he writes to Gilbert: + + Similarly Fr. McNabb must be given his head and I have told him he + shall be given it. I hope to be purely practical and possibly a + little sentimental. . . . The Seaman is everywhere, yet, for us, + nowhere. He carries everywhere his child's heart, man's body, hungry + unfed soul, unique power of feeding his goodness into others. The + all-round (the world) man; the sea-limited man; the man whose life + is made up of storms and stars; the most secretive and the most + open-hearted man of any. . . . Now _I_ will do all the clumsy stuff. + _You_ pull it all up into the human-sublime divine-humble air. + +He has no privacy, and is more lonely than anyone. He has Water, and +God; and MUST find Christ walking over the waves towards him. And no +ghost. + +Father Vincent McNabb who was to be "given his head" at this meeting +was not a new friend of Catholic days but a very old one. A friendly +critic of my manuscript asks whether he, even more than Belloc or +Chesterton, does not merit the title of the Father of Distributism. +At least he brings into the movement something none other could +bring. He bases his social philosophy closely on the gospels--of +which his knowledge is almost unique--and his articles bear such +titles as "The Economics of Bethlehem" or "Big Scale Agriculture and +the Gospels." Hatred of machinery has combined with love of poverty +to sunder him from a typewriter, and these articles are all +handwritten in most exquisite and legible script. His letters have +always come in old envelopes turned inside out; he walks whenever +possible and wears a shabby white habit and broken boots. Both +Frances and Gilbert loved him dearly and their rare meetings were red +letter days for both. Besides the link of Distributism the two men +were united in caring deeply for the reawakened interest in St. +Thomas and his philosophy. + +The Benedictine, as well as the Dominican, outlook and history +especially appealed to Gilbert, and the friendship with Father +Ignatius Rice, which had begun almost with the century, grew +steadily. He assisted, as we have seen, at Gilbert's reception into +the Church: and whenever they met after that Gilbert would remind +him, "We were together on the great day." + +High Wycombe was the Chesterton's parish until, largely by their +help, a church could be built at Beaconsfield. At first this church +was served by Father Walker, parish priest of High Wycombe. It was he +who had prepared Gilbert for his First Communion and he has sent me +some of his recollections: + + It certainly did not take long to prepare him for he evidently knew + as much as I could tell him. Nevertheless, he said I was to treat him + as I would any child whom I was teaching. This, knowing the man whom + I was instructing, for I had at the time carefully waded through his + Orthodoxy twice, was, indeed, an undertaking of magnitude. However, I + went through the catechism (he was importunate that I should use it + as he said all the children made use of it), very meticulously + explaining all the details, to which he lent a most vigilant and + unswerving attention. For instance, he wanted me to explain the + reason of the drop of water being put into the wine at the preparing + of the chalice for the Holy Sacrifice. + +Father Walker describes Gilbert opening a bazaar and spending +lavishly at every stall, afterwards being photographed in his +company. Father Walker himself weighed 245 lbs., and the caption was +"Giants in the Faith." On his departure, Gilbert presided at the +farewell meeting and made a speech which, says Father Walker, "gave +me no end of delight." Father (now Monsignor) Smith became the first +rector of Beaconsfield as a separate parish. The Chestertons loved +the little church there which later became Gilbert's memorial and to +which, among other things, they gave a very beautiful statue of Our +Lady. But when it had first been dedicated there had been for both +Frances and Gilbert a deep disappointment. Curiously enough, neither +of them had any devotion to the Little Flower who was chosen as +Patron: they had hoped for a dedication to the English Martyrs. Later +Gilbert used to tell Dorothy, who loved St. Thérèse, that he could +not care for her, "with all apologies to you, Dorothy." + +He did not go often to Confession, Dorothy says, but when he did go +you could hear him all over the church. Getting up in the morning was +always a fearful effort to him, and starting for early Mass he would +say to her, "what but religion would bring us to such an evil pass!" + +Meanwhile the books went on. In 1926 appeared _The Outline of Sanity, +The Catholic Church and Conversion_, chiefly concerned with his own +mental history, _The Incredulity of Father Brown_ and _The Queen of +Seven Swords_. In 1927 for the first time his scattered poems were +brought into the volume of _Collected Poems_. + +St. Augustine asks whether we can praise God before we know Him: +Gilbert answered that question when by praise and thanksgiving he +came as a boy to the discovery of God, beginning by a passionate +desire to thank someone for the Universe. There is much praise in the +Collected Poems. There is the note of hope in an almost hopeless +fight in _The Ballad of the White Horse_. There are lovely poems to +his wife. Since Browning none has understood the Sacrament of +Marriage as well as Gilbert Chesterton. + +In 1927 there also appeared, beside a couple of pamphlets: + +The Return of Don Quixote +Robert Louis Stevenson +The Secret of Father Brown +The Judgment of Dr. Johnson + +_Robert Louis Stevenson_ took Gilbert back to his boyhood and is by +general agreement among the best of his literary studies. But the +best thing he ever said apropos of Stevenson came not in this book +but in his attack on the "science" of eugenics: + + Keats died young; but he had more pleasure in a minute than a + Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had lung trouble; and it may, for + all I know, have been perceptible to the Eugenic eye even a + generation before. But who would perform that illegal operation: the + stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter bursting with good news, + confiscating a hamper full of presents and prizes, pouring torrents + of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this is a faint approximation + for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors of Stevenson. This, + however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson it is not merely + a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he got. If he had + died without writing a line, he would have had more red-hot joy than + is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I owe so much, let + the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that the stars of + the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among the days of + the year, because it shut not up the days of his mother's womb? I + respectfully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my mouth.* + +[* _Eugenics and Other Evils,_ p. 57.] + +When the _Stevenson_ itself appeared, Sir Edmund Gosse wrote: + + I have just finished reading the book in which you smite the + detractors of R.L.S. hip and thigh. I cannot express without a sort + of hyperbole the sentiments which you have awakened; of joy, of + satisfaction, of relief, of malicious and vindictive pleasure. We are + avenged at last. . . . + + It is and always since his death has been impossible for me to + write anything which went below the surface of R.L.S. I loved him, + and still love him, too tenderly to analyse him. But you, who have + the privilege of not being dazzled by having known him, have taken + the task into your strong competent hands. You could not have done it + better. + + The latest survivor, the only survivor, of his little early circle + of intimate friends thanks you from the bottom of his heart. + +_Don Quixote_ is a fantasia about the future: in which the study of +heraldry leads to the discovery of England and the centuries of her +happiness and of her faith. Increasingly Gilbert saw the only future +for his country in a re-marriage between those divorced three hundred +years ago: England and the Catholic Church. _Don Quixote_ is among +the less good of his books, but like all the works of these years it +is saturated with Catholicism. I wondered whether I felt more +admiration or amazement when a man once asked us to publish a book on +Chesterton saying, "I am an atheist myself but that doesn't matter, +as I don't deal with his religion." + +As a young man Gilbert had wanted to marry the religion of Dr. +Johnson to the Republicanism of Wilkes and in his Catholic faith of +today he saw simply the rounding out and the completing of the +religion of Dr. Johnson. _The Judgment of Dr. Johnson_, his play +about that great man was, like _Magic_, an immense succès d'estime +but not a stage success: it was brilliantly acted and appreciatively +criticised but could not win a public. Bernard Shaw was still +constantly urging Gilbert towards the drama. Belloc too believed he +could write a successful play and he and Anstey (author of _Vice +Versa_) suggested the dramatising of a Belloc story. But neither the +scenario they jointly sketched for Belloc's _Emerald_ nor another +made by Gilbert alone for his own _Flying Inn_ ever reached the stage. + +I remember going with the Chestertons to a pre-view of a Father Brown +picture. Two of the stories had been cleverly combined, the cast was +first rate, including Una O'Connor and Walter Connolly, and I came +out feeling convinced that Father Brown would become another Charlie +Chan. The stories would adapt so well, abounding as they do in scenes +impossible for the stage but perfectly easy for the screen--high +walls, windows, ladders, flying harlequins. But the first picture +failed (possibly because it was too short) and no more were made. The +drama remained the one field in which he had no success. + +Shaw's name for Gilbert and Belloc--the Chesterbelloc--had come by +the public to be used for the novels in which they collaborated. +Belloc wrote the story, Chesterton drew the pictures, and the +resulting product was known as the Chesterbelloc. A number of letters +from Mr. Belloc beg Gilbert to do the drawings early in order to help +the story. "I have already written a number of _situations_ which you +might care to sketch. I append a list. Your _drawing_ makes all the +difference to my _thinking:_ I see the people in action more +clearly." And again, "I can't write till I have the inspiration of +your pencil. For the comedy in me is ailing." + +Belloc would come over to Beaconsfield for a day or a night and the +two men retire into Gilbert's minute study whence hoots of laughter +would be heard. At the end of a couple of hours they would emerge +with the drawings for a book complete, indeed several more than were +needed. + +Father Rice asked Gilbert once what he was writing and he replied, +"My publishers have demanded a fresh batch of corpses." The little +detective-priest ("I am very fond," said one reader to Chesterton, +"of that officious little loafer") became a feature in crime +anthologies, and when Anthony Berkeley in 1929 wanted to found the +Detective Club he wrote that it "would be quite incomplete without +the creator of Father Brown." + +Gilbert soon became President. "Needless to say," writes Dorothy +Sayers, "he read his part of the initiation ceremony with tremendous +effect and enormous gusto." + +In an article Gilbert wrote about the Club, he called it "a very +small and quiet conspiracy, to which I am proud to belong." Meeting +in various restaurants its members would "discuss various plots and +schemes of crime." Some results of these discussions may be seen in +the Initiation ceremonies which he made public in the article +"thereby setting a good example to the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, the +Illuminati . . . and all the other secret societies which now conduct +the greater part of public life, in the age of Publicity and Public +Opinion." + + _The Ruler shall say to the Candidate:_ + + M.N. is it your firm desire to become a Member of the Detection + Club? + + _Then the Candidate shall answer in a loud voice:_ + + That is my desire. + + _Ruler:_ + + Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the + crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to + bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine + Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, + Coincidence or Act of God? + + _Candidate:_ + + I do. + + _Ruler:_ + + Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? + + _Candidate:_ + + I do. + + _Ruler:_ + + Do you promise to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Gangs, + Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, + Super-Criminals and Lunatics; and utterly and for ever to forswear + Mysterious Poisons unknown to Science? + + _Candidate:_ + + I do. + + _Ruler:_ + + Will you honour the King's English? + + _Candidate:_ + + I will. + + _Then the Ruler shall ask:_ + + M.N. Is there anything you hold sacred? + + _Then the Candidate having named a Thing which he holds of peculiar + sanctity, the Ruler shall ask:_ + + M.N. Do you swear by (_Here the Ruler shall name the Thing which + the Candidate has declared to be his Peculiar Sanctity_) to observe + faithfully all these promises which you have made, so long as you are + a member of the Club? + + _But, if the Candidate is not able to name a Thing which he holds + sacred, then the Ruler shall propose the Oath in this manner + following:_ + + M.N. Do you, as you hope to increase your Sales, swear to observe + faithfully all these promises which you have made, so long as you are + a member of the Club? + +A book called _The Floating Admiral_ was brought out by the Club. +Chesterton wrote the introduction and each member produced one +chapter. Reading it without inside knowledge I conceived that the +idea was for each to clear up the problems created by his predecessor +and create fresh ones for his successor. Gilbert tells of the subtler +joke underlying the story: + + Perhaps the most characteristic thing that the Detection Club ever + did was to publish a detective story, which was quite a good + detective story, but the best things in which could not possibly be + understood by anybody except the gang of criminals that had produced + it. It was called _The Floating Admiral_, and was written somewhat + uproariously in the manner of one of those "paper games" in which + each writer in turn continues a story of which he knows neither head + nor tail. It turned out remarkably readable, but the joke of it will + never be discovered by the ordinary reader; for the truth is that + almost every chapter thus contributed by an amateur detective is a + satire on the personal peculiarities of the last amateur detective. + This, it will be sternly said, is not the way to become a + best-seller. It is a matter of taste; but to my mind there is always + a curious tingle of obscure excitement, in the works of this kind + which have remained here and there in literary history; the sort of + book that it is even more enjoyable to write than to read. + +_The Floating Admiral_ was a fair success financially. "We hired a +sort of garret," writes Monsignor Knox "with the proceeds, as Club +Rooms; and on the night after we all received our keys the premises +were burglariously entered; why or by whom is still a mystery, but it +was a good joke that it should happen to the Detective Club." + +Lord Peter and Father Brown and Monsieur Poirot--how were the mighty +fallen! + +There is a custom in both English and Scottish universities of +electing a Lord Rector with the accompaniment of much undergraduate +"ragging" of the choicest kind. The candidates usually each represent +a political party but personal popularity has much to say in their +success. At the Scottish universities the contests are particularly +spirited, and his keen sense of fun made Gilbert ready to accept +frequent invitations to stand. At Glasgow in 1925 Austen Chamberlain +got 1242, votes, Chesterton 968 and Sidney Webb 285. "What swamped +you," wrote Jack Phillimore, always critical of the gentler sex, "was +the women, whose simple snobbery cannot get past the top hat and +frock coat and Right Honourable . . . Boyle was never kidnapped: +others were removed into the mountains." + +The last sentence might have been lifted from Sir Walter: it refers +to a pleasing habit among Scots undergraduates of kidnapping the +supporters of their opponents and keeping them safely concealed till +after the election. + +Whether or not it was through their simple snobbery, as Professor +Phillimore said, it was certainly the women's vote that swamped him: +of the 374 votes by which Austen Chamberlain beat Chesterton, the men +only accounted for 20, the women for 354. But it must have been some +profounder passion that caused one of England's leading women +novelists to write to the Secretary of the Glasgow University Liberal +Club: + + I fail to see why you should desire to embarrass Liberalism at one + of its least happy moments by associating it with that village idiot + on a large scale who is responsible for the muddled economics and + disagreeable fantastics of "G.K.'s Weekly." + +This was the outlook of that official Liberalism which had long made +it so difficult for Gilbert to go on calling himself a Liberal. The +Servile State was in full swing and official Liberalism asked nothing +better than to be allowed to operate it. Whether Belloc and Cecil +Chesterton had been right or wrong at an earlier date in seeing the +political parties in collusion it is certain that by now an utter +bankruptcy in statesmanship had reduced them all to saying the same +things while they did nothing. Ten years later, on the day of the +last General election of his life, Gilbert wrote: + + The Liberal has formed the opinion that Peace is decidedly + preferable to its alternative of War; and that this should be + achieved through support of the League of Nations interfering with + the ambitions of other nations. The Ministerialist, on the other + hand, holds that we should, if possible, employ a machinery called + the League of Nations; with the object of securing Peace, to which he + is much attached. The Ministerialist demands that strong action + should be taken to reduce Unemployment; but the Liberal does not + scruple to retort that Unemployment is an evil, against which strong + action must be taken. The Liberal thinks that we ought to revive our + Trade, thus thwarting and throwing himself across the path of the + National Tory, who still insists that our Trade should be revived. + Thus the two frowning cohorts confront each other; and I hear the + noise of battle even as I write. + +In June 1928 he was invited to stand for Edinburgh University. He +replied: + + I do hope you will forgive me if there has been any delay in + acknowledging your exceedingly flattering communication; I have been + away from home and moving about a good deal; and have only just + returned from London. Certainly there is nothing which I should feel + as so great an honour, or one so exciting or so undeserved, as to + receive even the invitation to stand for such a position in the great + University that has already been so generous to me. If you really + think it would be of any service to your cause, I can hardly refuse + such a compliment. Of course you understand that it is only in a + rather independent sense, though as I think in the right sense, that + I shall always call myself a Liberal; indeed, I find it difficult to + imagine any real sort of Liberal who is not really an independent + Liberal. I am quite certain I am not a Tory or a Socialist. + +He was defeated at this election by Winston Churchill who got 864 +votes to 593 for G.K. and 332 for Mrs. Sidney Webb. He was again +defeated at Aberdeen in 1933, coming second to Major Elliott, the +other candidates being C. M. Grieve and Aldous Huxley. At one stage +of the contest the _Daily Express_ writes: "The Huxley supporters are +smarting under the surprise attack made by the Chestertonians at the +Huxley concert at the week-end and are preparing reprisals." + +The following letter is G.K.'s reply to the first proposal from the +Aberdeen students: + + 25th October, 1933 + + I can at least assure you that the delay in acknowledging properly + the most flattering compliment which you have paid me was not due to + any notion of neglecting it. It was due to the practical necessity at + the moment of discovering and deciding on a fact which may, for all I + know, save you the trouble of further consideration of the matter; + and it is for this reason that I mention the practical difficulty + first. I now find that I shall almost certainly be obliged to be out + of England (and Scotland) for about three or four months, or + conceivably a little more, beginning about the middle of January. I + do not know what preliminary formalities would be demanded of me as a + candidate, or when the demand for them would arise. But I was so + strongly impressed with the honour you have paid me that I thought it + my duty to find out the facts on this particular point, so that you + might act on it in any way you think right. In any case, if the delay + thus involved has placed you in any difficulty, I need not say that I + shall fully understand your finding the project unworkable; and I + shall be quite content to remember the compliment of the request. + + There is another consideration which would help the practical side + of the case; and for that I fear I must make the practical enquiries + of you, as people understanding the circumstances. You do not mention + the Party you represent; and though I am, like most of us, long past + attaching a horrid sanctity to the name, I hope you will forgive that + much curiosity in a poor bewildered journalist, who has been + exhibited in many lights and cross-lights. I was put up as a + candidate at Glasgow as a Liberal, which is really quite true; but I + think I managed in my election pamphlet to give my own definition of + Liberalism. I have also more recently, on a public platform in + Glasgow, supported my friend Mr. Compton Mackenzie when he stood as a + Scottish Nationalist. Both these positions I am quite prepared to + defend; but in the latter, you might naturally prefer a Nationalist + candidate who was not only a quarter of a Scotsman. I may remark that + as the quarter is called Keith, and comes from Aberdeen, I am rather + thrilled at the name of Marischal College. + +There is one other point I think it only right to mention, for your +sake as much as my own. You know the local conditions. Do you think +it likely that we should be left with one and a half votes, looking a +little ridiculous, because the miserable quarter of a Scot happens to +have the same religion as Bruce and Maxy Stuart? I only ask for +information; which you alone could supply. But it may be that the +considerations I have already mentioned have disposed of the matter. +Believe me, my gratitude is none the less. + +Gilbert said of my father that he showed an embarrassing respect for +younger men. Surely Gilbert's own tone of respect must here have +embarrassed even undergraduates. The uncertainty of success or +failure only troubled him as it might affect his supporters. The +sporting element in the contest appealed to his undying boyishness. + +Perhaps this chapter may find its best conclusion in the vivid +memories written down in answer to my request of one of Gilbert's +younger friends--Douglas Woodruff--who came to know him in the year +of that Silver Wedding which meant so much that I have chosen it for +the title of a chapter covering much of Chesterton's Catholic life. + + Chesterton devotes a long passage in the _Autobiography_ to the + dinner given at the old Adelphi Terrace Hotel to Belloc on his + sixtieth birthday, in July 1930. I remember very well the high old + fashioned car the Chestertons used to hire in Beaconsfield, for I + accompanied him with particular instructions to deliver him safely + and on time, as was very necessary for he was in the Chair. We might + have lost him, for we went first to the Times Office where I was then + working, as I had proofs to correct before disappearing for the rest + of the evening, and he was seized with the idea that it would be very + good fun for him to enter Printing House Square and have it announced + that it was Mr. Chesterton come to write the leaders, having brought + the thunder with him under his cloak. Quite early on the drive up he + began speculating about who would be at the party, and when he had + suggested various figures who were certainly not going to be there he + said with a mixture of regret and acceptance, "There is always such a + _sundering_ quality about Belloc's quarrels." When he rose to propose + the toast he said at once that if he or anybody else in the room was + remembered at all in the future it would be because they had been + associated with the guest of the evening. He meant that. The evening + stood out in his memory because it was so unlike the ordinary sort of + dinners he knew where he was a principal figure. It delighted him + that without any programme or premeditation all the thirty diners in + turn made speeches, in the main parody speeches. It was, in short, a + party and not a performance. + + In the decade when I had the good fortune to know Topmeadow he was + still paying the price of a literary fame which he had sought in + youth because it meant success in his calling and an income, but + which became a barrier he was always meeting and breaking through. + Many literary men genuinely enough prefer company in which they are + on just the same footing as everyone else to company in which they + are little Kings, but Chesterton was exceptional in liking to live in + the fullest equality of intercourse not only with all sorts of men + but with the lesser practitioners of his own calling. He sought the + affection and not the admiration of his fellow men, or, more + precisely, he sought neither: what he sought was to do things like + discovering the truth in their company. No man more naturally + distinguished between a man and his views, or found easier the + theological injunction to hate the sin but love the sinner. One of + the few occasions on which I recall him as rather hurt was just after + he had met Stanley Baldwin, at Taplow, and had not been welcomed as a + fellow Englishman sharing immense things like the love of the English + country or English letters, but with a cold correctitude from a + politician who seemed chiefly conscious he was meeting in G.K. a man + who week by week sought to bring political life into hatred, ridicule + and contempt. + + He was not made by nature for the kind of journalistic tradition + which Belloc and Cecil Chesterton established and his loyal affection + for them made him adopt. I recall him expounding to the lawyers of + the Thomas More Society the absurdity of the legal definition of + libel, arguing that of its nature free discussion meant arousing at + any rate ridicule and contempt if not hatred against men and measures + of which you disapproved. It was ridicule that he preferred to + arouse. The lawyers were quite unconvinced, as they generally are + when laymen have any complaints about the law, and they soon realized + that to Chesterton the whole idea of involving the law because of + arguments and discussions and invective was hitting below the belt. + + He could be seen at his happiest in the Mock Trials which were held + every summer for the last ten years of his life at the London School + of Economics, for the King Edward VII Hospital Fund. He was relied + upon year after year to prosecute. One year it was leading actors and + actresses, another year sculptors and architects, another year + politicians, another Headmasters. He entered completely into the + spirit of an entertainment which combined two of his abiding + interests, public debate and private theatricals. That was a setting + in which he could completely exemplify his favourite recipe for the + modern world, that it should be approached in a spirit of + intellectual ferocity and personal amiability. But what marked his + own contributions to these affairs was the intellectual "ferocity," + in the weight and content of his criticism. Most of the eminent men + who consented to take part came to play a game for the sake of the + Hospitals, and because they rarely unbent like that in public they + were wholly facetious and trivial. To Chesterton there was no + difficulty or incongruity in combining the fun of acting with the + fun of genuine intellectual discussion. When he prosecuted the + Headmasters of leading public schools for Destroying Freedom of + Thought I came down in a lift with them afterwards and found they + were volubly nettled at the drastic and serious case he had made + inside the stage setting of burlesque, and seemed to think he had not + been playing the game when he wrapped up so much meaning in his + speech and examinations. This had never entered his head; it had come + perfectly naturally to him to make wholly real and material points + even in a mock trial and with a wealth of fun. But he liked being one + of a troupe on a stage very much more than being a lonely and eminent + figure on a platform, because to him the great attraction of + discussion was that it should be a joint quest, a mental walk with an + object in view, but also with an eye for everything that might and + would turn up on the way. + + He laughed his high laugh--like Charlemagne his voice was unequal + to his physical scale--at his own jokes because they came to him as + part of the joint findings of the quest, something he had seen and + collected and brought for the pot. When he made jokes about his size + as he so commonly did at the outset of a speech, it was to get rid of + the elevation of the platform, and to get on to easy equal terms with + the audience; "I am not a cat burglar," he began to the Union at + Oxford, and had won them. The radio suited him so excellently, + precisely because it is a personal sitting down man to man + relationship that the successful broadcaster must establish; that was + the relationship inside which he naturally thought. His difficulty + was that while he had not the faintest desire to be "a Literary Man," + and still less a Prophet, the kind of truth he divined was, in fact, + on the scale of the prophets. It seemed to me that over the last + decade of his life he found himself more and more in the dilemma that + in the life of his mind he was living with ideas, the fruit of a + contemplative preoccupation with the Incarnation and the Sacraments, + which he shrank from talking about, from a natural humility and a + clear and grateful understanding of the Catholic tradition of + reverence and reticence. + + England is full enough of men to whom the distinction between the + platform and the pulpit is very unreal; they have a moral message and + they do not much mind where they give it. But Chesterton, unlike most + public men who deal in general ideas, did not come to the idea of + public speaking through the Protestant tradition but through the + secular tradition, the freethinker's debate, the political and not + the religious side of Hyde Park oratory, where men in knots shout one + another down, not where some lonely longhaired prophet declaims + conversion. After he became a Catholic he sought to set himself + frontiers, the apologetic territory suitable for a layman like + himself. But he found himself more and more preoccupied with a + territory further inland, penetrating all the time to the deeper + meaning of the creed he had embraced. He could look back and see how + most of his early books had seized upon some essential part of + Catholic doctrine. . . . He had written what he had seen at the time, + but he did not stop looking because he had written, and then he + always continued to see more, the great contemplative. + + He looked out on the universe from a very solid tower of + observation because in all but the deepest sense of the word he + always had a home. His lasting significance is his pilgrimage, but + the spiritual journey was lived out in a warmly rich setting. When he + wrote of "the home" he was not dealing with a notion but with a + surrounding reality, one on which he had opened his eyes as a baby + and which he enjoyed without a break to the end. Frances Chesterton + is among the great wives of our literary history. When he said "I can + never have enough nothing to do," it was the remark of a man with a + house he was generally in, a house full of things. + + He loved to produce cigars and wine, but tea also remained an + important fixed part of the day, in the Victorian tradition, and when + he was told by the doctor he had better drink nothing, he had many + alternatives, like detective stories read over tea and buns, which + other lovers of wine would perhaps have found no consolation. Other + men are secret drinkers, he would confide, I am a secret teetotaller. + The first time I had tea with him, in Artillery Mansions in 1926, I + was much struck that he brought three detective stories to the + teatable. I imagine he always had time for _Jack Redskin on the + Trail_, or whatever it might be because he had the gift, to an extent + I have never seen elsewhere, of opening a book and as it were pouring + the contents down in one draught like a champion German beer drinker. + He once seized from my shelves in Lincoln's Inn, Wyndham Lewis's + _Apes of God_ saying it was a book he had not seen and wanted to see. + It is a folio and I suggested he should take it away. But he opened + it and stood reading it and here and there, not a process which could + be called dipping, but a kind of sucking out of the printed contents, + as though he were a vacuum cleaner and you could see the lines of + type leaving the pages and being absorbed. When he put it down it was + to discuss the thesis and illustrations of the book as a man fully + possessed of its whole standpoint. Once he made one of his common + confusions and forgot he was addressing the Wiseman Dining Society on + the Oxford Movement. In the train from Beaconsfield he said how nice + it was that he had not got to speak. Frances Chesterton told him not + to be silly, he knew he was speaking on the Oxford Movement. He was + visibly disconcerted at the start, for many grave seniors had + assembled to hear him; but all went well in the discussion as soon as + he was attacked for something he had said about Newman's views. You + cannot catch me out about Newman, he said, with joy of battle, and he + produced then and there a most detailed account of just where in + Newman's writings the points in question were developed. Yet he was + curiously content to read what happened to come his way and to rely + upon his friends for references and facts, remembering what they + might tell him, but not ordering the books which would have greatly + strengthened him in the sort of newspaper arguments in which he was + so often employed. He had a large collection of books at Topmeadow, + but they gave the impression that they had assembled themselves. + Masses of them were adventure stories, many were presentation copies + from writers. You felt that they had got into the house knowing that + it was a hospitable one, if not built for books, and that they would + probably be allowed to stay. But he had a study which would barely + home him, and the library room he did eventually build was only + finished as he died. + + I think nothing is more superficial or belittling to him than the + idea that while he might have liked the real country he could not + like Beaconsfield, as it developed into a dormitory town while he + lived there. His sympathies were far too wide. He liked to tell how + he had had to complain of the noise made by an adjoining Cinema + Company. His secretary had said Mr. Chesterton finds he cannot write; + and the Cinema people replied we are well aware of that. + + He liked to think of Mr. Garvin near by, "not that I see him very + much," he said, "but I like to think that that great factory is + steaming away night and day." He had great satisfaction when a friend + and I, driving away in the evening, knocked down a white wooden post + outside the house in starting the car. He held that he had witnessed + just how many a grand old local custom must have originated, in men + covering up their mistakes by saying they were fulfilling a ritual + which had fallen into neglect. You must say you did it on purpose, he + said, say it was a rite too long omitted and it will soon be kept up + every year and men will forget its origin, and it will be known as + the Bump of Beaconsfield. When a friend of his brought him a + two-bladed African spear, he said, as he threw it about the lawn, + that it was sad to think how many lawns there were in Beaconsfield + and how few weapons were ever thrown on any of them, although all men + enjoyed, or would enjoy spear throwing more, he believed, than they + enjoyed clock golf. He at any rate was a genuinely free man, who did + what it amused and pleased him to do, and did not think he had to + choose between the forms of activity or rest currently pursued by his + neighbours. Much of the serene atmosphere of his home came from that + quiet resolute practice of the liberty of a free mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +Columbus + + +_He wished to discover America. His gay and thoughtless friends, who +could not understand him, pointed out that America had already been +discovered, I think they said by Christopher Columbus, some time ago, +and that there were big cities of Anglo-Saxon People there already, +New York and Boston and so on. But the Admiral explained to them, +kindly enough, that this had nothing to do with it. They might have +discovered America, but he had not_. + +From _A Fragment_, in _The Coloured Lands_. + +IN THE CHAPTER of his _Autobiography_ entitled "The Incomplete +Traveller" Chesterton has said "after all, the strangest country I +ever visited was England." It was of the very essence of his +philosophy that each one of us has to make again the discoveries of +our ancestors if we are to be travellers and not trippers. "The +traveller sees what he sees; the tripper sees what he has come to +see." Thus Chesterton tried to discover each country that he visited +and he records that the nearer countries are sometimes harder to +discover than the more remote. For Poland is more akin to England +than is France: Ireland more mysterious than Italy. + +France, Ireland and supremely Palestine brought their contribution to +that mental and spiritual development traced in earlier chapters. On +Ireland, Rome, Jerusalem and the United States he wrote books. It may +really be said that on the States he wrote two books, for in the +volume of essays _Sidelights on New London and Newer York_ which +followed his second visit he showed a much greater understanding than +in _What I Saw in America_. His first visit took place in 1921-22, +his second in 1930. + +On the first trip Frances kept clippings of almost all their +interviews. Gilbert himself said that, while the headlines in +American newspapers became obscure in their violent efforts to +startle, what was written underneath the headlines was usually good +journalism and the press cuttings of this tour bear out his remark. +Interviewers report accurately and with a good deal of humour. +Sketches of G.K.'s personal appearance abound, and if occasionally +they contradict one another in detail they yet contrive to convey a +vivid and fairly truthful impression of the "leonine" head, the bulky +form, the gestures and mannerisms. That a man of letters and lecturer +should choose to wear proudly not one of these titles but that of +journalist, was pleasing and flattering to the brotherhood. The +atmosphere of the tour is best conveyed by rather copious quotation. +A crowd of journalists met him at the boat. One of them writes of + + . . . his voluminous figure, quite imposing when he stands up, + though not so abundantly Johnsonian as his pictures lead one to + expect. He has cascades of grey hair above a pinkly beaming face, a + rather straggly blond mustache, and eyes that seem frequently to be + taking up infinity in a serious way. + + His falsetto laugh, prominent teeth and general aspect are rather + Rooseveltian. . . . + + Mr. Chesterton, who is accompanied by Mrs. Chesterton, and who will + deliver a lecture soon in Boston on the Ignorance of the Educated, + said he did not expect to go further west than Chicago, since "having + seen both Jerusalem and Chicago, I think I shall have touched on the + extremes of civilization." + +In the event he visited Omaha and Oklahoma City and went south as far +as Nashville, Tennessee. + +Possibly Frances had thought she would pass unnoticed but in fact, +besides constant photographs of the pair, the lynx eye of the +interviewer was upon her as much as upon him. On arrival at New York: + + He shook hands with some half-dozen Customs officials who welcomed + him to the city on their own behalf. The impression given by Mr. + Chesterton as he moved majestically along the pier or on the ship was + one of huge bulk. To the ordinary sized people on the pier he seemed + to blot out the liner and the river. Mrs. Chesterton was busy with + the baggage. + + "My wife understands these things," he said with a sweep of his + stick. "I don't." . . . + + In order to get the two figures into the same picture one of the + newspaper photographers requested Mr. Chesterton to sit in a big + armchair while his wife stood beside him. When they were settled in + the required pose he exclaimed: "I say I don't like this; people will + think that I am a German." + +Another newspaper remarks: "He was accompanied by his wife, who +looked very small beside him. She attended to the baggage +examination, opening trunks and bags while her husband delivered a +short essay on the equality of men and women in England since the +war." This reporter was perhaps not without irony: but if it actually +happened like that, G.K. must have seen the joke too for he has a +similar situation in the first scene of his play "The Judgement of +Dr. Johnson." The same reporter adds that Chesterton speaks in +essays, so that his interviewers "received a brief essay instead of a +direct reply to a leading question." + +We next come upon them in their New York hotel: + + I found, with Mrs. Chesterton at the Biltmore, this big, gentle, + leonine man of letters six feet of him and 200 odd lbs. There is a + delightful story of how an American, driving with him through London, + remarked "Everyone seems to know you, Mr. Chesterton." + + "Yes," mournfully responded the gargantuan author, "and if they + don't they ask." + + He really doesn't look anything like as fat as his caricatures make + him, however, and he has a head big enough to go with his massive + tallness. His eyes are brilliant English blue behind the big rimmed + eyeglasses: his wavy hair, steel grey; his heavy mustache, bright + yellow. Physically he is the crackling electric spark of the + heaven-home-and-mother party, the only man who can give the cleverest + radical debaters a Roland for their Oliver. + +In subsequent interviews G.K.'s height grew to six foot three and his +weight to 300 lbs. (which was surely closer to the mark); his +mannerisms were greatly remarked. + + Mr. Chesterton speaks clearly, in a rather high-pitched voice. He + accompanies his remarks with many nervous little gestures. His hands, + at times, stray into his pockets. He leans over the reading desk as + if he would like to get down into the audience and make it a sort of + heart-to-heart talk. + + Mr. Chesterton's right hand spent a restless and rather disturbing + evening. It would start from the reading desk at which he stood and + fall to the points of that vast waistcoat which inspired the + description of him as "a fellow of infinite vest." It would wander + aimlessly a moment about his--stomach is a word that is taboo among + the polite English--equator, and then shift swiftly to the rear until + the thumb found the hip pocket. There the hand would rest a moment, + to return again to the reading desk and to describe once more the + quarter circle. Once in a while it would twist a ring upon the left + hand, once in a while it would be clasped behind the broad back, but + only for a moment. To the hip pocket and back again was its + sentry-go, and it was a faithful soldier. + +Several interviewers remark on the unexpected calibre of his voice. +He himself spoke of it as "the mouse that came forth from the +mountain." + + One would never suspect him of being our leading American + best-seller. His accent, mannerisms, and dress are pro-Piccadilly and + he likes his Oolong with a lump of sugar. He thinks with his cigar, a + black London cheeroot. + + He, Gilbert K. Chesterton, was sipping a cup of tea, expertly + brewed by Mrs. Chesterton when a reporter yesterday entered his room + at the Blackstone [in Chicago]. Before he submitted to interrogation + he lighted the cigar. + + "My muse," he explained. "A Parnassian pleasure. Tobacco smoke is + the Ichor of mental life. Some men write with a pencil, others with a + typewriter, I write with my cigar." . . . + + Throughout the interview he was profoundly concerned not with the + subjects under discussion, but with the black cheeroot. Seven times + it went out. Seven times he relighted it. The eighth time he tossed + it away. + +When asked which of his works he considered the greatest, he said: "I +don't consider any of my works in the least great." . . . + +"Slang," he said, "is too sacred and precious to be used +promiscuously. Its use should be led up to reverently for it +expresses what the King's English could not." + +"Seeing and hearing a man like Gilbert Keith Chesterton," said a +Detroit newspaper, "makes a meal for the imagination that no reading +of books by him or about him can accomplish." + +He spoke Sunday in Orchestra Hall on the Ignorance of the Educated; +it grows more difficult as his tour progresses, he admits, and the +Lecture, he insists, grows worse. His thesis is that "the besetting +evil of all educated people is that they tend to substitute theories +for things." The uneducated man never makes this mistake. He states +the simple fact that he sees a German drinking beer: he does not say +"there is a Teuton consuming alcohol." + +At Toronto the Chairman--a professor of English--thought that there +must have been an error in the title as printed, and announced that +Mr. Chesterton would speak on The Ignorance of the _Un_educated. +Another Detroit newspaper quotes from the lecture: + + There is a deeper side to such fallacies. The whole catastrophe of + the Great War may be traced to the racial theory. If people had + looked at peoples as nations in place of races the intolerable + ambition of Prussia might have been stopped before it attained the + captaincy of the South German States. + +The only other lecture subjects mentioned are "Shall We Abolish the +Inevitable" and "The Perils of Health." There are innumerable +caricatures. One by Cosmo Hamilton is accompanied with a story of how +he once debated with Chesterton. The subject was: "There is no law in +England." G.K. made so overwhelming a case that Hamilton decided the +only way of making reply possible was to twist the subject making it +"there are no laws in England" and "go off at 1000 tangents like a +worried terrier." + + To hear Chesterton's howl of joy when he twigged how I had slipped + out, to see him double himself up in an agony of laughter at my + personal insults, to watch the effect of his sportsmanship on a + shocked audience who were won to mirth by his intense and + pea-hen-like quarks of joy was a sight and a sound for the gods. + + Probably Chesterton has forgotten this incident but I haven't and + never will, and I carried away from that room a respect and + admiration for this tomboy among dictionaries, this philosophical + Peter Pan, this humorous Dr. Johnson, this kindly and gallant cherub, + this profound student and wise master which has grown steadily ever + since. + +In the _Daily Sketch_, Hamilton later described G.K. speaking in this +debate: + + During the whole inspired course of his brilliant reasoning, he + caught the little rivulets which ran down his face, and just as they + were about to drop from the first of his several chins flicked them + generously among the disconcerted people who sat actually at his + feet. From time to time, too, unaware of this, he grasped deep into + his pockets and rattled coins and keys, going from point to point, + from proof to proof, until the Constitution of England was quite + devoid of Law and out from under his waistcoat bulged a line of shirt. + + It was monstrous, gigantic, amazing, deadly, delicious. Nothing + like it has ever been done before or will ever be seen, heard and + felt like it again. + +A clever caricature depicts Dickens in one corner, his arms full of +bricks, hammers and jagged objects, labelled "American Notes." The +rest of the picture is an immense drawing of a smiling Chesterton, +his arms full of roses, labelled "Kind Words for America." He is +pointing at Dickens and saying: "America must have changed a great +deal since then." + +Not only Gilbert but also Frances was constantly interviewed. "I tell +them," one interviewer quotes her as saying, "that I didn't know I +was the wife of a great man till I came to America. It never bothered +me before." + + This, coming from one of those English wives, so popularly + portrayed as representing the acme of submission, was delightful. A + slight, slim little figure, looking slighter and slimmer in the wake + of her overshadowing husband, with an outward appearance of + unsurpassed mildness and meekness which her conversation readily + dispelled, the wife of this delightful Englishman of letters + presented a very intimate Chestertonian paradox. + +Frances kept a Diary of which almost the first entry is "So far my +feelings towards this country are entirely hostile, but it would be +unfair to judge too soon. We have refused all invitations; it's the +only thing to do." This idea they must have abandoned, for one paper +after Gilbert's death describes him as an immense success socially +but "a big bland failure" as a lecturer. As the tour proceeds the +entries in the Diary become more favorable but unlike her letters +from Poland--where what she liked best was anything really +Polish--the Diary shows Frances as singling out for approval those +things approximately English--e.g., houses where she stayed in Boston +and Philadelphia. She hated hustle, heat and crowds, and the Diary is +full of remarks about her exhaustion. + +G.K. commented in one interview on the different conception of a Club +in England and in America. While groups of men entertained him, +Women's Clubs were entertaining his wife. But an English Club "is +really a promoter of unsociability. . . . And while the English woman +in her Club does not, perhaps, stare into vacancy with the same +fervour, fixity and ferocity as the English man, still there is +something of the sort, you know." After a lecture in Philadelphia a +lady asked him, "Mr. Chesterton, what makes women talk so much?" +Heaving himself out of his chair, he answered only "God, Madam." + +Two further caricatures were an impression drawn by Will Coyne for +the New York _Evening Post_ of Chesterton as Porthos of the Pen, and +another, drawn for the New York _Herald_ by Stewart Davis, of +Chesterton supplying "Paradoxygen to the World." This was accompanied +by a poem called Paradoxygen, by Edward Anthony: + + O Gilbert I know there are many who like + Your talks on the darkness of light, + The shortness of length and the weakness of strength + And the one on the lowness of height. + + My neighbour keeps telling me "How I adore + His legality of the illicit + And I've also a liking intense for his striking + Obscurity of the explicit." + + But I am unmoved. What's the reason? 0, well, + The same I intend to expound + Some evening next week, when I'm going to speak + On the shallowness of the profound. + +"Everyone who goes to America for a short time," said G.K., "is +expected to write a book; and nearly everybody does." In accordance +with this convention he wrote _What I Saw in America_. He did see a +great deal. The same imagination that had found the mediaeval aspect +of Jerusalem saw many elements missed not only by the ordinary +tourist but by the people themselves who live nearest to them. Thus +he keenly appreciated the traditional elements in Philadelphia, +Boston and Baltimore: + + In coming into some of these more stable cities of the States I + felt something quite sincerely of that historic emotion which is + satisfied in the eternal cities of the Mediterranean. I felt in + America what many Americans suppose can only be felt in Europe. I + have seldom had that sentiment stirred more simply and directly than + when I saw from afar off, above that vast grey labyrinth of + Philadelphia, great Penn upon his pinnacle like the graven figure of + a god who had fashioned a new world; and remembered that his body lay + buried in a field at the turning of a lane, a league from my own door. + +In Baltimore the Catholic history appealed to him yet more strongly, +and, invited to visit Cardinal Gibbons, he felt himself touching "the +end of a living chain." In Boston, "much more beautiful than its +name," he companioned again with the Autocrat and recalled how in his +own youth English and American literature seemed to be one thing. +Indeed he was there reminded even "of English things that have +largely vanished from England." Washington he saw both as a beautiful +city and an idea--"a sort of paradise of impersonal politics without +personal commerce." And in Nashville, Tennessee it was "with a sort +of intensity of feeling" that he found himself "before a dim and +faded picture; and from the dark canvas looked forth the face of +Andrew Jackson, watchful like a white eagle." + +The things Chesterton chose for description all have relevance to the +main thesis of the book which has often been missed and which emerges +most clearly in the first and the last chapters. He insists always +that he writes as a foreigner--and indeed repeats frequently that it +is by keeping our own distinct nationality that Englishmen and +Americans will best understand and like one another--but he writes +also as a man not unconscious of history. Thus writing, the older +cities represent to him one trend in the States and New York another. +I am sorry to say that he does not appreciate New York as he ought, +because of his dislike of cosmopolitanism. Its beauty he sees as +breath-taking: not solid and abiding but a kind of fairyland. The +lights on Broadway evoked from him the exclamation "What a glorious +garden of wonders this would be for anyone who was lucky enough to be +unable to read," and he imagines a simple peasant who fancies that +they must be announcing in letters of fire: "Liberty, Equality, +Fraternity," and must be put up on occasion of some great national +feast, whereas they are but advertising signs put up to make money. + +The Skyline seemed to him most lovely: "vertical lines that suggest a +sort of rush upwards, as of great cataracts topsy turvy--the strong +daylight finds everywhere the broken edges of things and the sort of +hues we see in newly turned earth or the white sections of +trees. . . ." He feels the intense "imaginative pleasure of those +dizzy turrets and dancing fires." But he ends with the note that +really spoilt New York for him: "If those nightmare buildings were +really all built for nothing, how noble they would be." + +Advertisement, Big Business, Monopoly might have invaded the old +traditionary cities of America as they had those of England, but New +York existed (he felt) as a new and startling expression of them. +They shrieked in every light and from every sky-scraper. The whole +question of America was: would the older simpler really great +historical tradition win, or would it be defeated by the new and +towering evil? He has an interesting chapter on the countryside, +finding hope in the considerable extension of small ownership among +the farmers and in the houses built from the growing material that +wood is, but he is again depressed at the reflection that the culture +of the countryside is not its own but imported from the +towns--therefore itself largely commercialised. + +Roaming over the world in search of his examples Chesterton sees the +ideal of the early republicans as dead in the republics of today, and +nowhere more dead than in America. It would be useless, he feels, to +invoke Jefferson or Lincoln in the modern world against the tyranny +of wage-slavery or in favour of racial justice because "the bridge of +brotherhood had broken down in the modern mind." + +Jefferson the Deist "said the sight of slavery in his country made +him tremble, remembering that God is just," but the modern who has +lost these absolute standards has "grown dizzy with degree and +relativity." Hence came the same terrible peril in both England and +America: that in the eyes of the new plutocracy the idea of manhood +has gone. "There were different sorts of apes; but there was no doubt +that we were the superior sort." + +Only in one direction did he see real hope. The new dreams of the +18th century had gone, but the ancient dogmas of the Catholic Church +remained. Catholics might forget brotherhood, like their fellows, but +"the Catholic type of Christianity had rivetted itself irrevocably to +the manhood of all men." "The church would always continue to ordain +negroes and canonise beggars and labourers." "Where its faith was +fixed by creeds and councils it could not save itself even by +surrender. . . . THERE IS NO BASIS FOR DEMOCRACY EXCEPT IN A DOGMA +ABOUT THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF MAN." + +I have put that final sentence in capitals for it is the climax both +of Gilbert's thinking about America and of one of the most important +trains of thought that brought him to the home of liberty secured for +the human race by dogma--that is to say by revealed truth. He went +home to be received into the Catholic Church as I have earlier +related. + +_What I Saw in America_ is of special importance in relation to later +discussions in _G.K.'s Weekly_. While the journalists seemed +convinced on his first visit that he had nothing but roses to throw, +and compared him favorably to Dickens, a collection of quotations +could be made from _G.K.'s Weekly_ of a quite opposite kind, yet I do +not think he ever attacks America as much as he attacks England. He +was himself much amused at finding he was expected to be either "For +America" or "Against America," both of which attitudes appeared to +him absurd. In that sense he was neither for nor against his own +country. He liked Americans, he disliked certain trends in America: +because he loved England he disliked the same trends even more in +England. Certain things in modern civilisation which he hated he did +regard as primarily American. American comfort to him seemed acute +discomfort. He thought every American lives in an "airless furnace in +the middle of which he sits and eats lumps of ice." + +He had a great hatred of intelligence tests which he called the +"palpable balderdash of irresponsible Yankee boomsters. . . . It is +really one of the maladies of American democracy to be swept by these +prairie fires of pseudo-scientifc fads, and throw itself into +Eugenics or Anthropometric inquiry with the buoyancy of babies." He +believed that there was more democracy in America than in England. +But he hated what he called the "glare of American Advertisement." He +spoke of a "common thief like the American Millionaire" but he +certainly did not exclude the English Millionaire from the same +indictment. His whole view of advertisement reaches a peak in an +article* entitled "If You Have Smiles." + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, December 10, 1927.] + + We read the other day an absolutely solemn and almost tender piece + of advice, in a leading American magazine, about the preservation of + Beauty and Health. It was intended quite seriously. . . . After + describing in most complicated detail how the young woman of today + (well known to be enamored of all that is natural and free) is to + strap up her head and face every night, as if it had to be bandaged + after an accident, it proceeds to say with the most refined American + accent: "With the face thus fixed in smile formation: . . ." but we + have a difficulty about taking this serious advice of American Beauty + Business even so seriously as to meditate on its social menace. The + prospect of such a world of idiots ought to depress us, but . . . no, + it is no good. Our faces are fixed in smile formation when we think + of that American. + +He repeated often how much he liked the inhabitants of Main Street +(grievously wronged by Sinclair Lewis). + + American ideals are not nearly so nice as American realities. We + lament not so much what Babbitt is as what he is trying to be. What + he is is a simple and kindly man . . . what he's trying to be is the + abomination of desolation; the Man who made Salesmanship an Art; the + Man Who Would Not Stay Down; the Man Who Got the Million Dollar Post + After Taking Our Correspondence Course; the Man Who Learned Social + Charm in Six Lessons.* + +[* Jan. 14, 1928.] + +At the time of the depreciation of the franc Belloc's articles in +_G.K.'s Weekly_, echoed in the Leaders, pointed to finance, +especially American finance, as the criminal that was forcing down +the French currency. An American correspondent in the paper attacked +these attacks on the ground that they were inspired by British +Imperialism! Chesterton felt it a little hard to be at this date +confused with Kipling. He replied that his correspondent committed +"the blunder of an extravagant and excessive admiration for England." +He speaks of + + that tremendous procession that passed through Paris, literally an + army of cripples. It was a march of all those walking units, those + living fragments of humanity that had been left by the long stand of + five years upon the French frontiers; a devastated area that passed + endlessly like a river . . . they illustrate the main fact that + France was in the center of that far-flung fighting line of + civilization; that it was upon her that the barbarian quarrel + concentrated; and that is an historical fact which the foolish vanity + of many Englishmen, as well as of many Americans, is perpetually + tempted to deny. Our critic is therefore quite beside the mark if he + imagines that I am trying to score off his country out of a cheap + jealousy on behalf of my own. My jealousy is for justice and for a + large historical understanding of this great passage in history. My + own country won glory enough in that and other fields to make it + quite unnecessary for any sane Englishman to shut his eyes to Europe + in order to brag about England. . . . I have not the faintest doubt + what Thomas Jefferson would have said, if he had been told that a few + financial oligarchs who happen to live in New York, were beating down + the French wealth; and had then seen pass before him that awful + panorama of the wrecks of the French Republican Army; heart-shaking, + like a resurrection of the dead. . . . I do not admit, therefore, + that in supporting the French peasants and soldiers against the money + dealers and wire-pullers of the town, I am attacking America or even + merely defending France.* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Sept. 1, 1926.] + +On November 6 and 13, 1926 he writes two articles on "The Yankee and +the Chinaman," in which he contrasts the philosophic spirit with the +so-called scientific. Like Bishop Barnes in England wanting to +analyse the Consecrated Host, Edison was reported in America as +having said that he would find out if there was a soul by some +scientific test: + + Any philosophic Chinaman would know what to think of a man who + said, "I have got a new gun that will shoot a hole through your + memory of last Monday," or "I have got a saw sharp enough to cut up + the cube root of 666," or "I will boil your affection for Aunt Susan + until it is quite liquid." + +In 1927 Gilbert, Frances and Dorothy spent a month in Poland where +immense enthusiasm was shown for the man who had consistently +proclaimed Poland's greatness and its true place in Europe. + +Invited by the Government, "all the hospitality I received," he says, +"was far too much alive to remind me of anything official." One of +the multitude of unwritten books of which G.K. dreamed was a book +about Poland. The Poles and the English were, he felt, alike in many +things but the Englishman had never been given the opportunity to +understand the Pole. We knew nothing of their history and did not +understand the resurrection we had helped to bring about. "The +nonsense talked in the newspapers when they discuss what they call +the Polish Corridor" was only possible from want of realisation of +what Poland had been before she was rent in three by Prussia, Austria +and Russia. Thus too we did not realise "the self-evident fact that +the Poles always have a choice of evils." Pilsudski told him that _of +the two_ he preferred Germany to Russia, while Dmowski voiced the +more general opinion in telling him that _of the two_ he preferred +Russia to Germany. For the moment at any rate tortured Poland was +herself and incredibly happy. Revival in this agricultural country +had been amazingly swift. Peasant proprietors abounded and lived well +on twelve acres or so, while even labourers possessed plots of land +and a cow or two. + +"The P.E.N. Club Dinner," Frances wrote in a letter to her mother, +"was, I fancy, considered by the Poles a huge success. If numbers +indicate anything, it certainly was. I found it a little embarrassing +to have to eat hot kidneys and mushrooms standing about with hundreds +of guests, and this was only the preliminary to a long dinner that +followed and refreshments that apparently continued until two o'clock +in the morning. The speeches were really perfectly marvellous and +delivered in English quite colloquial and very witty and showing a +detailed knowledge of Gilbert's works which no Englishman of my +acquaintance possesses. Gilbert made an excellent, in fact, a very +eloquent speech in reply, which drew forth thunders of applause." + +Their hosts drove the Chestertons all over the country and showed +them home life on the little farms, home industries and +arts--brightly woven garments and pottery for use, not for +exhibition--and the great historic scenes of Poland's history. With +the scene he remembered most vividly, Gilbert's musings on Poland +conclude: they were visiting a young nobleman who excused the +devastation of his own home by Bolshevik soldiers in the heat of +battle but added, "There is only one thing I really resent." + + . . . He led us out into a long avenue lined with poplars; and at + the end of it was a statue of the Blessed Virgin; with the head and + the hands shot off. But the hands had been lifted; and it is a + strange thing that the very mutilation seemed to give more meaning to + the attitude of intercession; asking mercy for the merciless race of + men.* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 330.] + +Karel Capek who had long wanted Chesterton to visit Prague wrote +mournfully, "You wrote me that it would be difficult for you to come +to Prague this spring. But it was in the newspapers that you were +last month in Warsaw; why in Heaven's sake did you not come to Prague +on this occasion? What a pity for us! Now we are waiting for a +compensation." Two earlier letters had shown him eager for +contributions from Chesterton for a leading review. Another +delightful letter is dated December 24th (no year given): + + MY DEAR MR. CHESTERTON, + + It is just Christmas Eve; my friends presented me with some of your + books, and I cannot omit to thank you for the consolation and trust I + found there as already so many times. Be blessed, Mr. Chesterton. + + I wrote you twice without getting any answer; but it is Christian + to insist, and so I write you again. Please, would you be so kind to + tell me, if it shall be possible for you to come next year to Prague? + Our PEN club is anxious to invite you as our guest of honour. If you + would like to come next spring, I beg you to be my guest. You are + fond of old things: Prague is one. You shall find here so many people + who cherish you. I like you myself as no other writer; it's for yours + sake that being in London I went to habit in Notting-Hill and it is + for yours sake that I liked it. I cannot believe that I should not + meet you again. Please, come to Prague. + + I wish you a happy New Year, Mr. Chesterton. You must be happy, + making your readers happier. You are so good. + + Yours sincerely, + + KAREL CAPEK. + +He never, alas, got to Prague, or to many another country that wanted +him. There are letters asking him to lecture in Australia, to lecture +again in U.S.A., in South America "to make them aware of English +thought and literature." "The Argentine Intelligencia," says Philip +Guedalla, "is acutely aware of your writings. Local professors +terrified me by asking me on various occasions to explain the precise +position which you occupied in our Catholic youth. . . . A visit from +you would mean a very great deal to British intellectual prestige in +these parts." + +No Catholic Englishman was anything like so widely known in Europe. +Books have been written about him in many languages and his works +translated into French, German, Dutch, Czech, Russian, Polish, +Spanish and Italian. A letter from Russia asks for his photograph for +_The Magazine of International Literature_ as a writer whose works +are well known in the Soviet Union. The Kulturbund in Vienna sends an +emissary inviting him there also and, like Prague, the Vienna P.E.N. +Club wants him. + +"You have a distressing habit," Maude Royden once wrote, "of being +the only person one really wants to hear on certain subjects." + +A visit to Rome in 1929 produced _The Resurrection of Rome_. Despite +brilliant passages the book is disappointing. It bears no comparison +with _The New Jerusalem_ and gives an impression of being thrown +together hastily before the ideas had been thought through to their +ultimate conclusions. Perhaps Rome was too big even for Chesterton. + +He never loved the Renaissance as he did the Middle Ages, but he saw +it not as primarily pagan but as one more example of the immense +vitality of a Catholicism which had had so many rebirths that it had +buried its own past deeper than the past of paganism. He loved the +fountains that threw their water everywhere and he felt about Rome +that the greatest monuments might be removed and yet the city's +personality would remain. For Rome is greater than her monuments. He +wanted to argue with those who cared for Pagan Rome alone and who +spent their time despising the "oratory in stone" of the Papal city +and gazing only on the Forum. "And it never once occurs to them to +remember that the old Romans were Italians, or to ask what a Forum +was for." + +He was, as usual, constantly invited to lecture--at the English +College, the Scots College, the American College, the Beda. At the +Holy Child Convent he spoke to a crowded audience on "Thomas More and +Humanism." Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., thanking him, remarked on the +mental resemblance between More and Chesterton, saying that he could +quite well imagine them sitting together making jokes, some of them +very good and some of them very bad. "Chesterton and More," says +Father Vincent McNabb, "were both cockneys." Gilbert's classical +insight also seemed to him like the great Chancellor's; "Erasmus says +that though More didn't know much Greek, he knew what the words ought +to mean." + +He interviewed Mussolini and found that Mussolini was interviewing +him, so that he talked at some length of Distributism and his own +social ideal. Mussolini knew at least some of Gilbert's books. He +told Cyril Clemens that he had keenly enjoyed _The Man Who Was +Thursday_. He promised at the end of this interview that he would go +away and think over what Chesterton had said, and it might have been +better for the world had he kept that promise. For what had been said +was an outline of the one possible alternative to the growing tyranny +of governments. + +From his anxiety to be fair to Fascism, Gilbert was often accused of +being in favour of it, but, both in this book and in several +articles, having given the case for it he went on to give the case +against it--a much stronger case than that usually given by its +opponents. The case for Fascism lay in the breakdown of true +democracy and the reign of the tyranny of wealth in the democratic +countries. Chesterton would, he said, have been on the side of the +Partito Popolare as against the Fascism that succeeded it; in England +and America he would "have infinitely preferred that the purgation of +our plutocratic politics should have been achieved by Radicals and +Republicans. It was they who did not prefer it." It was not that +Fascism was not open to attack but "that Liberalism has unfortunately +lost the right to attack it." + +Those of us who were in Italy at that time will remember the truth of +his description of the vitality and happiness that seemed to glow +among the people. _Giovinezza, bellezza_, heard everywhere, had then +no hollow sound at the heart of it. Italy was radiant with hope. + +In Mussolini himself Gilbert saluted a belief in "the civic necessity +of Virtue," in the "ideal that public life should be public," in +human dignity, in respect for women as mothers, in piety and the +honour due to the dead. Yet, summing up the man and the movement, he +saw it as primarily the sort of riot that is provoked by the evils of +an evil government, only "in the Italy of the twentieth century the +rioters have become the rulers." For although Mussolini had in many +ways made his rule popular, although in his concessions to modern +ideas and inventions he was "rather breathlessly progressive," yet in +the true sense of the word Mussolini was a Reactionary. A Reactionary +is one who merely reacts against something, or permits "that +something to make [him] do something against it. . . . A Reactionary +is one in whom weariness itself has become a form of energy. Even +when he is right there is always a danger that what was really good +in the previous society may be destroyed by what is good in the new +one." + +Mussolini's reaction was against the Liberalism in which as an idea +Chesterton still believed, it was a reaction from democracy to +authority. And his weakness, the fundamental weakness of Fascism was +that "it appeals to an appetite for authority, without very clearly +giving the authority for the appetite. . . . When I try to put the +case for it in philosophical terms, there is some doubt about the +ultimates of the philosophy." It seemed to Chesterton that there were +only two possible fixed and orderly constitutions, hereditary +Monarchy or Majority Rule. The demand of the Fascists to hold power +as an intelligent and active minority was in fact to invite other +intelligent and active minorities to dispute that rule; and then only +by tyranny could anarchy be prevented. + +"Fascism," he said in summary, "has brought back order into the +State; but this will not be lasting unless it has brought back order +into the mind." + +The two things in the Roman visit that remain most prominent in +Dorothy's memory are Gilbert's loss of a medal of Our Lady that he +always wore and his audience with the Holy Father. The loss of the +medal seemed to distress him out of all normal proportion. He had the +elevator boy looking for it on hands and knees and gave him a huge +reward for finding it. Gilbert has left no record of his Papal +audience. But, says Dorothy, it excited him so greatly that he did no +work for two days before the event or two days after. + +Their second visit to America in 1930-31 was far better enjoyed by +Gilbert, and also I think by Frances until she got ill, because on it +they came much closer to the real people of the country, especially +during the period when he was lecturing at the University of Notre +Dame, Indiana. They lived at a little house in South Bend and he +lectured every night, alternating a course on Victorian Literature +with one on the great figures of Victorian history. There were 36 +lectures all told, and the average attendance at each lecture was 500. + +At Notre Dame and the Sister College of St. Mary's, I felt the best +way to get the atmosphere of this visit would be to get together for +a talk the people who remembered Gilbert: they would stimulate one +another's memories. I invoked the aid of Sister Madeleva and she +suggested the two Fathers Leo Ward, Professors Engels and O'Grady, +and, best of all Johnnie Mangan the chauffeur. Johnnie is a great +institution at Notre Dame. He remembered driving my father nearly +thirty years ago and he had specially vivid memories of the +Chesterton period. We all sat in a circle in Sister Madeleva's +sitting room. I give here the notes I took. + + Johnnie Mangan: "It was the hardest job getting him into the car, + harder getting him out. He'd walk on the porch and all the children + came. He'd talk to the children on the road. Money meant nothing to + him: the lady would give me the money saying himself would leave it + in the shop if the barber wasn't honest enough to give change. + + "He enjoyed everything: when they dedicated the stadium he stayed + till the very end. Father O'Donnell introduced him to all the naval + officers and he was the last off the ground. He enjoyed talking to + all the naval officers. He loved cheer-leading." + + Mr. O'Grady: "He spent one evening in Professor Phillips' room + after the lecture from 9 to 2.30 A.M. His host was deaf, G.K. learnt + later, and he made another date when he found his host had missed + most of the fun." + + Mr. Engels: "He would sit around consuming home-made ale by the + quart; said the head of the philosophy faculty made the best brew in + the college. Enjoyed little drives round the countryside. The faculty + were a little shy of inviting him." + + "In a lecture he got an immense laugh by calling Queen Elizabeth an + 'old crock.' He then laughed above all the rest." + +Mr. Engels noticed mannerisms: "The constant shifting of his great +bulk around," "rotating while he was talking," "flipping his +eyeglasses," "lumbering on to the stage, going through all his +pockets, finally finding a piece of dirty yellow paper and talking +from it as if most laboriously gathered and learned notes. But the +paper was only for show. Father Burke saw him get out of the cab, he +got on to the stair landing and then saw G.K.'s yellow paper on the +ground. He had delivered his whole course with hardly a single +note--occasionally looked through material for a quarter of an hour +or so before speaking." All thought him a great entertainer as well +as an informing talker. "No one enjoyed himself more than he did." +Trying to get him for an informal gathering they mentioned they had +some Canadian Ales--quite something in Prohibition days. + + G.K.: "The ales have it." + + Johnnie: "He'd chat all the time he was driving." + + Father Leo L. Ward: "The problem of getting G.K. to and fro in a + coupe was only solved by backing him in." + +They remembered G.K. "in Charley's big chair, his hands barely +touching over his great expanse." + +They recalled that on receiving his honorary degree he said the last +time he received one at Edinburgh they tapped him with John Knox's +hat. He did not expect anything so drastic here: perhaps they might +tap him with Tom Heflin's sombrero.* When he had been invited to Notre +Dame he was not certain where it was but with a name like that, even +if it were in the mountains of the moon, he should feel at home. "If +I ever meet anybody who suggests there's something Calvinistic or +Puritanical in Catholicism I shall ask, 'Have you ever heard of +the University of Notre Dame?'" + +[* Tom Heflin was the fiercely anti-Catholic Senator from Alabama.] + + Johnnie: "He'd do anything she'd say, or Miss Collins. They + certainly had that man by the neck, but they took wonderful care of + him." + + Mr. O'Grady: "It was a very intelligent arrangement. And did they + tidy him." + + Johnnie: "Very much so. It was their business every evening." + + Sister Madeleva: "Did he walk on the campus and see the students?" + + Johnnie: "He didn't walk much only to Charlie Phillips' rooms. He + didn't mind being a little late but his lady and Miss Collins loaded + him into the car to get him there on time. + + "The woman they lodged with used to swear like a trooper. But she + (the landlady) cried like a kid when he left. And he and the lady + seemed lonesome at leaving her. + + "In his spare time at the house he would be drawing some fancy + stuff." + + "What did he talk to you about?" + + Johnnie: "He'd just talk about the country, he'd admire the streams + and things like that. I took him to the Virgin Forest and I could + hardly get him back. He even got out to notice the trees. He spent + almost an hour. The women raved at me and said I must get him back at + a certain time. He'd ask me the names of the trees. He loved rivers + and would ask me about the fish. At one time Father O'Donnell thought + he should drive to Chicago or some big town but he didn't care for + towns, said they all looked alike to him, so after that we always + went to the country." + +Someone asked, "Did he ever get grouchy?" + + Johnnie: "He always had a smile. Was always calling kids over to + talk to him. He'd touch one with his stick to make him look round and + play with him, and then he'd laugh himself sick playing with them. + The kids were always around him. The ones of four or five years, + those were the ones he'd notice the most. He liked to ask them things + and then if they gave a good answer he could get a good laugh at it." + + Mr. O'Grady: "I know he enjoyed himself here. I met him in Ottawa + afterwards. He was autographing a book, the pen was recalcitrant and + he shook it over the rug, 'Dear me, I'm always cluttering up people's + rugs.' His cousin in Ottawa had him completely surrounded by ash + trays but the cigar had ash almost half length and it was falling + everywhere." + + Father Ward: "Father Miltner one evening in pleasant fall weather + found G.K. on the porch. The campus was empty. He got a grunt in + return to his greeting, tried three or four times, almost no answer. + G.K. looked glum. + + "'Well, you're not very gay this evening.' + + "'One should be given the luxury of a little private grouch once in + a while.'" + + To Johnnie--"Did he take the lecture business seriously?" + + "No. He just wanted five minutes on the porch when he would talk to + no one but the kids." + + Mr. O'Grady: "He said once, 'What I like about notes is that when + once you begin you can completely disregard them.' He stood for the + first lecture but mostly he sat. He enjoyed a joke so much, and they + enjoyed his enjoyment." + + Mr. Engels: "For the first lecture he stood--part of him stood + behind a little rostrum, after that he sat at a big table." + +Father Leo R. Ward was at Oxford when he debated "That the Law is a +Hass" and was amazed at the way the undergraduates adored him. "His +opponent begged them not to vote for G.K. at this critical moment in +the world's history. They cheered G.K. but voted against him to make +the other fellow feel good." + + Sister Madeleva: "What did he do for recreation?" + + Johnnie: "He did a lot of--sketching I guess you'd call it--and + he'd read the papers." + + Sister Madeleva: "Did he like the campus?" + + Johnnie: "Very much." + + "Did he ever go down to the Grotto?" + + Johnnie: "He seen it but he never got out of the car." + + "Was it hard for him to walk?" + + Johnnie: "No, he could walk kinda fast, but it was so hard for him + to get in or out of the car." + + "Where did he go to church?" + + Johnnie: "He came here to Notre Dame. He was close to 400 lbs. but + he'd never give it away. He'd break an ordinary scale, I guess. I + brought him under the main building, he got stuck in the door of the + car. Father O'Donnell tried to help. Mr. Chesterton said it reminded + him of an old Irishwoman: 'Why don't you get out sideways?' 'I have + no sideways.'" + +To the debate with Darrow, Frances Taylor Patterson had gone a little +uneasy lest Chesterton's arguments "might seem somewhat literary in +comparison with the trained scientific mind and rapier tongue of the +famous trial lawyer." She found however that both trained mind and +rapier tongue were the property of G.K.C. + + I have never heard Mr. Darrow alone, but taken relatively, when + that relativity is to Chesterton, he appears positively muddle headed. + + As Chesterton summed it up, he felt as if Darrow had been arguing + all afternoon with his fundamentalist aunt, and simply kept sparring + with a dummy of his own mental making. When something went wrong with + the microphone, Darrow sat back until it could be fixed. Whereupon + G.K.C. jumped up and carried on in his natural voice, "Science you + see is not infallible!" . . . Chesterton had the audience with him + from the start, and when it was over, everyone just sat there, not + wishing to leave. They were loath to let the light die!* + +[* _Chesterton_ by Cyril Clemens, pp. 67-68.] + +As in England, so also in the States, Gilbert's debating was held to +be far better than his straight lecturing. He never missed the +opportunity for a quick repartee and yet when he scored the audience +felt that he did so with utter kindness. At a debate with Dr. Horace +T. Bridges of the Ethical Cultural Society on "Is Psychology a +Curse?" Bishop Craig Stewart who presided, describes how: + + In his closing remarks Chesterton devastatingly sideswiped his + opponent and wound up the occasion in a storm of laughter and + applause, "It is clear that I have won the debate, and we are all + prepared to acknowledge that psychology is a curse. Let us, however, + be magnanimous. Let us allow at least one person in this unhappy + world to practice this cursed psychology, and I should like to + nominate Dr. Bridges." + +The Bishop on another occasion introduced Gilbert at a luncheon in +Chicago by quoting Oliver Herford's lines: + + When plain folks such as you and I + See the sun sinking in the sky, + We think it is the setting sun: + But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton + Is not so easily misled; + He calmly stands upon his head, + And upside down obtains a new + And Chestertonian point of view. + Observing thus how from his nose + The sun creeps closer to his toes + He cries in wonder and delight + How fine the sunrise is tonight! + +The fact that nearly all the headlines he chose sounded like +paradoxes, the fact that they did not themselves agree with him, had +on Chesterton's opponents and on some members of his audience one +curious effect. Dr. Bridges when asked his opinion of his late +sparring partner, after paying warm tribute to his brilliance as a +critic, his humour and his great personal charm, discovered in his +"subconscious" (Is Psychology a Curse?) "a certain intellectual +recklessness that made him indifferent to truth and reality . . . +fundamentally--perhaps I should say subconsciously--he was a +thorough-going skeptic and acted upon the principle that, since we +cannot really be positive about anything we had better believe what +it pleases us to believe." + +So too at the British University of Aberystwyth when Chesterton spoke +on "Liberty," taking first historically the fights of Barons against +despots, yeomen against barons, factory hands against owners, and +then giving as a modern instance the fight of the pedestrian to keep +the liberty of the highway, we are told that "the Senior History +Lecturer and some others were of the opinion that the whole thesis of +the address was a gigantic leg-pull." + +Chesterton must have seen again the fixed stare on the faces of the +Nottingham tradesmen thirty years earlier on the famous occasion when +he himself "got up and played with water." But that earlier audience +had the intellectual advantage over the university professors that +they + + Tried to find out what he meant + With infinite inquiring. + +Gilbert often said that his comic illustrations ought not to have +prevented this. But it was really more his inability to resist making +himself into a figure of fun. He was funny and the jokes were funny +but they did prevent his really being given by all the position given +him by so many, of the modern Dr. Johnson. + +It is possible, though not easy, to imagine Johnson dragged from the +station to his hotel by forty undergraduates of Aberystwyth while +members of the O.T.C. secured a footing on the carriage armed with a +battle axe (borrowed from the Arts Department), hoes, rakes, spades, +etc.--their officers having refused them the privilege of bearing +arms on the occasion. + +But it is scarcely possible to imagine the Doctor called upon for a +speech standing on the steps of the hotel and saying, "You need never +be ashamed of the athletic prowess of this College. The Pyramids, we +are told, were built by slave labour. But the slaves were not +expected to haul the pyramids in one piece!"* + +[* _Chesterton_ by Cyril Clemens, p. 50.] + +In San Francisco I saw many people who had met Gilbert including a +journalist who took him to a "bootleg joint"--which is Western for a +Speakeasy. There he asked for "some specialty of the house" and was +offered a Mule. + +"Six of these babies will put you on your ear," remarked the +bartender. + +"What did he say about my ear?" Gilbert queried. + +He downed three of the potent mixture, in spite of his theory against +cocktails and his host remarked his continued poise with admiration +while the bartender commented "He can take it," another slang +expression that appeared to be new to Gilbert. He told his host, Mr. +Williams, that he delighted in meeting such folk as bartenders and +all the simpler people whom he saw too seldom. This suggested an +idea--would he come out to a school across the bay which could not +afford his fees, because it educated the daughters of poorer +Catholics. He agreed at once and not only talked to them brilliantly +for three quarters of an hour, but also wrote for the children about +50 autographs. + +But of course, he had forgotten something--an engagement to attend a +big social function. A huge car arrived at the school complete with +chauffeur and several agitated ladies. "Mr. Chesterton, you have +broken an important engagement." "I have filled an important +engagement," he answered, "lecturing to the daughters of the poor." + +If it were possible for Gilbert to be better loved anywhere than in +England that anywhere was certainly America. From coast to coast I +have met his devotees. I have come across only one expression of the +opposite feeling--and that from a man who seems (from his opening +sentence) to have been unable to stay away from the lectures he so +detested: + + I heard Chesterton some six or seven times in this country. His + physical make-up repelled me. He looked like a big eater and + animalism is repugnant to most of us. His appearance was against him. + + Not one of his lectures seemed to me worth the price of admission + and some of them were so bad that they seemed contemptuous morsels + flung at audiences for whom he adjudged anything good enough. + + One of his lectures, at the Academy Brooklyn, was a great + disappointment. And he charged $1,000 for it. It was not worth $10 + and Chesterton knew it. After the lecture, he remarked to a friend of + mine, "I think that was the worst lecture I ever gave." He may have + been right. Certainly it was the worst I ever heard him give. But he + took the thousand and a bonus of $200 for the extra large crowd in + attendance. No: I did not like Chesterton. + +What of the money? With his American agent Chesterton had a quite +usual arrangement: he received half the fees paid. The agent made +engagements, paid travelling expenses and received for this the other +half. Out of the half Chesterton received, he paid a further ten per +cent to the London agent who had introduced him to the American +agent; he also had to pay the expenses of his wife and his secretary +and further gave a large present to his secretary for her trouble on +the tour: the rest went chiefly into _G.K.'s Weekly_. I doubt if he +could have told anyone at what figure the original fee stood for any +lecture. + +One of the Basilian Fathers, then a novice, remembers Gilbert's +appearance in Toronto. The subject of this lecture was "Culture and +the Coming Peril." The Coming Peril, he explained, was not Bolshevism +(because Bolshevism had now been tried--"The best way to destroy a +Utopia is to establish it. The net result of Bolshevism is that the +modern world will not imitate it"). Nor by Coming Peril did he mean +another great war (the next great war, he added, "would happen when +Germany tried to monkey about with the frontiers of Poland"). The +Coming Peril was the intellectual, educational, psychological, +artistic overproduction which, equally with economic overproduction, +threatened the well-being of contemporary civilisation. People were +inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of +vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, +thought, or creation from within themselves. + +At question period he was asked: + +"Why is Dean Inge gloomy?" + +"Because of the advance of the Catholic Church. Next question please." + +"How tall are you and what do you weigh?" + +"I am six feet two inches, but my weight has never been accurately +calculated." + +"Is George Bernard Shaw a coming peril?" + +"Heavens, no. He is a disappearing pleasure." + +For an apparently haphazard collection of essays _Sidelights on New +London and Newer York_, published on his return to England from the +second visit, has a surprising unity. Blitzed in London and out of +print in New York it is now hard to obtain, which is a pity as it is +full of good things. Discussing the fashions of today Chesterton +attempts "to remove these things from the test of time and subject +them to the test of truth," and this rule of an eternal test is the +one he tried to apply in all his comments. Obviously nothing human is +perfect--and this includes the human judgment, even Chesterton's +judgment. Talking of the past or of the present, of England or +America, he may often have been wrong and he would certainly have +been the last man to claim infallibility for his judgments. His +weakness as a critic was perhaps a tendency to get his proportions +wrong--to make too much of some things he saw or experienced, to +little of others. His qualities were intellectual curiosity and +personal amiability together with the measuring rod of an eternal +standard. + +This second visit to America only deepened in Gilbert's mind many of +the impressions made by the first. Yet the atmosphere of the book is +curiously different from that of _What I Saw in America_. Living in +the country even a few months had so greatly deepened his +understanding. He still preferred the Quakers to the Puritans, "The +essential of the Puritan mood is the misdirection of moral anger." He +still felt that as a whole the United States had started with "a +great political idea, but a small spiritual idea": that it needed a +"return to the vision" in politics and sociology. It was the fashion +today to laugh at the wish for "great open spaces," yet the "real +sociological object in going to America was to find those open +spaces. It was not to find more engineers and electric batteries and +mechanical gadgets in the home. These may have been the result of +America: they were not the causes of America." Asked why he admired +America yet hated Americanisation, he replied: + + I should have thought that I had earned some right to apply this + obvious distinction to any foreign country, since I have consistently + applied it to my own country. If the egoism is excusable, I am myself + an Englishman (which some identify with an egoist) and I have done my + best to praise and glorify a number of English things: English inns, + English roads, English jokes and jokers; even to the point of + praising the roads for being crooked or the humour for being Cockney; + but I have invariably written, ever since I have written at all, + against the cult of British Imperialism. + + And when that perilous power and opportunity, which is given by + wealth and worldly success, largely passed from the British Empire to + the United States, I have applied exactly the same principle to the + United States. I think that Imperialism is none the less Imperialism + because it is spread by economic pressure or snobbish fashion rather + than by conquest; indeed I have much more respect for the Empire that + is spread by fighting than for the Empire that is spread by finance.* + +[* _Sidelights on New London & Newer York_, p. 178.] + +He felt that the real causes for admiration, the real greatness of +America, could be found partly through facing its incompleteness and +defects, partly through contemplating the character of the greatest +and most typical of Americans, Abraham Lincoln. + + Whilst I was in America, I often lingered in small towns and + wayside places; and in a curious and almost creepy fashion the great + presence of Abraham Lincoln continually grew upon me. I think it is + necessary to linger a little in America, and especially in what many + would call the most uninteresting or unpleasing parts of America, + before this strong sense of a strange kind of greatness can grow upon + the soul. . . . The externals of the Middle West affect an Englishman + as ugly, and yet ugliness is not exactly the point. There are things + in England that are quite as ugly or even uglier. Rows of red brick + villas in the suburbs of a town in the Midlands are, one would + suppose, as hideous as human half-wittedness could invent or endure. + But they are different. They are complete; they are, in their way, + compact; rounded and finished with an effect that may be prim or + smug, but is not raw. The surroundings of them are neat, if it be in + a niggling fashion. But American ugliness is not complete even as + ugliness. It is broken off short; it is ragged at the edges; even its + worthy objects have around them a sort of halo of refuse. Somebody + said of the rugged and sardonic Dr. Temple, once Archbishop of + Canterbury: "There are no polished corners in our Temple." + + . . . there are no polished corners even in the great American + cities, which are full of fine and stately classical buildings, not + unworthy to be compared to temples. Nobody seems to mind the + juxtaposition of unsightly things and important things. There is some + deep difference of feeling about the need for completeness and + harmony, and there is the same thing in the political and ethical + life of the great Western nation. It was out of this landscape that + the great President came, and one might almost trace a fanciful + shadow of his figure in the thin trees and the stiff wooden pillars. + A man of any imagination might look down these strange streets, with + their frame-houses filled with the latest conveniences and surrounded + with the latest litter, till he could see approaching down the long + perspective that long ungainly figure, with the preposterous + stove-pipe hat and the rustic umbrella and deep melancholy eyes, the + humour and the hard patience and the heart that fed upon hope + deferred. + + That is admiring Abraham Lincoln, and that is admiring America.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 168-170.] + +Among the "stately and classical buildings" were those making up the +University of Notre Dame where he had been lecturing and which turned +his musings in a direction they were ever inclined to take. Founded +by a group of Frenchmen a century ago with a capital of four hundred +dollars in a small log building on a clearing of ten acres, the +University today numbers forty-five buildings on a seventeen hundred +acre campus. The gold dome of the Church visible from miles away, the +interesting combination of the extraordinary fame of its football +team with a keen spiritual life, especially fascinated Gilbert. He +wrote a poem dedicated to the University and called "The Arena." In +it he pictures first the golden image on "the gilded house of Nero" +that stood for all the horrors of the Pagan Amphitheatre. Then comes +in contrast another image: + + I have seen, where a strange country + Opened its secret plains about me, + One great golden dome stand lonely with its golden image, one + Seen afar, in strange fulfilment, + Through the sunlit Indian summer + That Apocalyptic portent that has clothed her with the Sun. + +The boys shout "Notre Dame" as they watch the fortunes of the fray +and Chesterton sees Our Lady presiding fittingly even over a football +contest. + + And I saw them shock the whirlwind + Of the world of dust and dazzle: + And thrice they stamped, a thunderclap; and thrice the sand-wheel + swirled; + And thrice they cried like thunder + On Our Lady of the Victories, + The Mother of the Master of the Masterers of the World. + +He recurs to a favourite thought that the Mother of Sorrows is the +cause of human joy: + + Queen of Death and deadly weeping + Those about to live salute thee, + Youth untroubled; youth untortured; hateless war and harmless mirth + And the New Lord's larger largesse + Holier bread and happier circus, + Since the Queen of Sevenfold Sorrow has brought joy upon the earth. + +No wonder that, as Johnnie Mangan said, you could not drag him away +from the game, if the game meant also a meditation. The "holier +bread" came perhaps to his mind from the fact that the average of +Daily Communion is unusually high at Notre Dame. + +When he desired for Americans a return to their great political +vision he desired also an opening of the eyes to that greater +spiritual vision which was to him the supreme opportunity of the +human spirit. E. S. P. Haynes in _Fritto Misto_, comments on the +absence of any reference to universities in _What I Saw in America_. +Nor have I anywhere found any discussion by Chesterton of the +intellectual quality of Catholic education--any comparison with the +secular teaching--either in England or in America. But that the +problems of these two countries and of all the world could be solved +only by what that golden Dome housed he cried with no uncertain +voice. Death is in the world around, Resurrection in the Church of +the God who died and rose again. + + Queen of Death and Life undying + Those about to live salute thee. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +The Soft Answer + + +_I have only one virtue that I know of +I could really forgive unto seventy times seven_. + +The Notebook + +ONE OF THE commonest of biographers' problems is the question of +quarrels and broken friendships. At the distance of time separating a +life from its record some of these look so empty of meaning as to +imperil any reputation--yet they happened, and when they were +happening they probably appeared full of significance. Other quarrels +involve issues of importance in which the biographer cannot take +wholeheartedly the side of his hero. Thus my own father, writing +_his_ father's life, had to pronounce judgment on Newman's side in +the issues that divided them, yet later, writing Newman's biography, +he had to admit the faults of temper that at least weakened the +Cardinal's case. For only so could he tell an entirely truthful story. + +In Chesterton's life there is no such problem. Attacks on public +characters in his paper, attacks on abuses and ideas, absorbed all +his pugnacity. Fellow writers, rival journalists, friends, furnished +often enough material for a quarrel; but Chesterton would never take +it up. He excelled in the soft answer--not that answer which seeming +soft subtly provokes to wrath, but the genuine article. Belloc said +of him that he possessed "the two virtues of humility and +charity"--those most royal of all Christian virtues. In the heat of +argument he retained a fairness of mind that saw his opponent's case +and would never turn an argument into a quarrel. And most people both +liked him and felt that he liked them. While he was having his great +controversy with Blatchford back in 1906, it is clear from letters +between them that the two men remained on the friendliest terms. + +Edward Macdonald writes of his experiences of Chesterton when he was +working with him on the paper. + + He loved all the jokes about his size. He was the first to see the + point and to roar with laughter when Douglas Woodruff introduced him + to a meeting as "Mr. Chesterton who has just been looking round in + America. . . ." + + He came into the office once on Press Day and saw the disordered + pile of papers and proofs on my desk. The place was certainly in an + awful mess. I wanted to show him a particular letter and shoved my + hand into the middle of one pile and was lucky enough to put my hand + right on the right document. G.K.C. complimented me on a filing + system that demanded a keen memory and then remarked enviously "I + wish they'd let me have a desk like that at home." + + When Thomas Derrick drew his famous cartoon of G.K.C. milking a cow + he hesitated to give it to me for fear that G.K.C. would be offended. + I wanted to print it in a special number and telephoned to + Beaconsfield. + + "Mr. Chesterton, I have here a cartoon of Derrick and would like to + put it in the special number. But as you are the subject of the + cartoon Derrick is afraid you may not like it." + + "I would rather it were not printed," he replied. "I never liked + the idea of my name being used in the title of the paper and don't + want well-intentioned but embarrassing personalities. Of course, if + it were highly satirical, insulting and otherwise unflattering I'd + gladly have it on the front-page." + + I assured him that it was anything but flattering and on the + front-page it went. It was used as the frontispiece of G.K.'s + Miscellany. + + Many of the obituary writers said that he hated the cinema. In fact + he told me once that he had long wished to write a new translation of + Cyrano and would like to try his hand at a film scenario of the play. + His fingers had itched in the first place to retranslate the duel + scene in order to restore the strength of the ballade in English. + When he saw the film version of a Father Brown story I asked him what + he thought of it. He had liked the film as a film and the acting. He + added as an afterthought, "It gave me an idea for a new Father Brown + story." + + A short-hand note was taken of the famous debate with Bernard Shaw. + It was decided to devote four pages of _G.K.'s Weekly_ to a report + which I tried to compile by avoiding the third person and + concentrating on significant quotations. But whereas Shaw put his + points in a few words from which elaboration could be cut, G.K.C.'s + argument was so closely knit that it was difficult to leave out + passages without spoiling the effect. He walked into the room as my + pencil went through a fairly long extract from Shaw's speech. + + "And whose words are you so gaily murdering?" he asked. + + "Shaw's, Mr. Chesterton." + + "Very well. Now put them all back and murder mine. I refuse to deny + Shaw a full opportunity to state his case in my paper." + + As a result Shaw's speech took up a great part of the space + allotted and G.K.C. was inadequately reported. + +He was always careful if he had reviewed a book in the paper +criticising its ideas to take an immediate opportunity to show the +author his warm personal friendliness. Middleton Murry, sending him a +book of his own, criticised G.K. as "Perverse" for thinking communism +and capitalism alike. + + Your clean idea [of liberty and property] delights me, I believe, + quite as much as it does you. But it is a vision and a dream, in this + capitalistic world. . . . The communist is the man who has made up + his mind to "go through with" the grim business of Capitalism to the + bitter end because he knows there is no going back. He makes a choice + between following a dream which he _knows_ is only a dream, and + following a hope which he knows his own devotion may help to make + real. Communism is the faith which a man wins through blank and utter + despair. . . . + + For my own part, if it were possible, I would rather see the world + converted to Christianity than to communism. But the world has had + its chance of becoming Christian; it will not get it again. . . . + + The wrath to come--that is what communism is. And we can flee from + it only by repentance. And repentance itself means communism. That is + the fact as I see it. I hope, and sometimes dream, that we shall have + the communism of repentance, and not the communism of wrath here in + England. + +Chesterton replied (May 19, 1932): + + Thank you so very much for your most interesting and generous + letter, which reached me indirectly and was delayed; also for your + most interesting and generous book, which I immediately sat down and + read at a sitting; which in its turn so stimulated me that I + immediately wrote a rapid and rather curt reply for my own little + rag. I fear you will find the reply more controversial than I meant + it to be; for your book is so packed with challenges that I could not + but make my very short article a thing packed with mere repartees. + But I do hope you will understand how warm a sympathy I have with + very much of what you say and with all the motives with which you say + it. Needless to say, I agree with every word you say against + Capitalism; but I particularly want to congratulate you on what you + say about parasitic Parliamentary Labour. I thought that chapter was + quite triumphant. + + As for the rest, it is true that it has not shaken me in my + conviction that the Catholic Church is larger than you or me, than + your moods or mine; and the heroic but destructive mood in which you + write is a very good example. You say that Christ set the example of + a self-annihilation which seems to me almost nihihist; but I will + never deny that Catholics have saluted that mood as the Imitation of + Christ. Lately a friend of mine, young, virile, handsome, happily + circumstanced, walked straight off and buried himself in a monastery; + never, so to speak, to reappear on earth. Why did he do it? + Psychologically, I cannot imagine. Not, certainly, from fear of hell + or wish to be "rewarded" by heaven. As an instructed Catholic, he + knew as well as I do that he could save his soul by normal living. I + can only suppose that there is something in what you say; that Christ + and others do accept a violent reversal of all normal things. But why + do you say that Christ did it and has left no Christians who do it? + Our Church has stood in the derision of four hundred years, because + there were still Christians who did it. And they did it to + themselves, as Christ did; you will not misunderstand me if I say + that this is different from throwing out a violent theory for other + people to follow. + + Now for the application. Some of these monks, less cloistered, are + to my knowledge, helping the English people to get back to the + ownership of their own land; renewing agriculture as they did in the + Dark Ages. Why do you say there is no chance for this normal property + and liberty? You can only mean to say of our scheme exactly what you + yourself admit about the Communist scheme. That it requires awful and + almost inhuman sacrifices; that we must turn the mind upside-down; + that we must alter the whole psychology of modern Englishmen. We must + do that to make them Communists. Why is it an answer to say we must + do that to make them Distributists? I could point out many ways in + which our ideal is nearer and more native to men; but I will not + prolong this debate. I should be very sorry that you should think it + is only a debate. I only ask you to believe that we sympathise where + we do not agree; but on this we do not agree. + +Mr. Murry wrote later of Gilbert: "I liked the man immensely and he +was a very honourable opponent of mine, much the most honourable I +ever encountered."* + +[* Mark Twain Quarterly, Chesterton Memorial No.] + +_G.K.'s Weekly_ was of course Gilbert's own platform, so perhaps +his care to apologise and his great magnanimity are more remarkable +in incidents outside its columns. T. S. Eliot had his platform--he +edited the _Criterion_. Chesterton on being reproached by him for a +hasty article not only apologised but dedicated a book to Mr. Eliot. +He had written confusing him with another critic who disapproved of +alliteration and had also misquoted a stanza of his poetry. Mr. Eliot +had written: + + I should like you to know that it was apparently your "sympathetic + reviewer," not I, who made the remark about alliteration; to which it + seems he added a more general criticism of mine: so that _snob_ is + not the right corrective. Some of your comments seem to be based on a + belief that I object to alliteration. + + And may I add, as a humble versifier, that I _prefer_ my verse to + be quoted correctly, if at all. + +Chesterton replied: + + I am so very sorry if my nonsense in the _Mercury_ had any general + air of hostility, to say nothing of any incidental injustices of + which I was quite unaware. I meant it to be quite amiable; like the + tremulous badinage of the Oldest Inhabitant in the bar parlour, when + he has been guyed by the brighter lads of the village. I cannot + imagine that I ever said anything about you or any particular person + being a snob; for it was quite out of my thoughts and too serious for + the whole affair. I certainly did have the impression, from the way + the reviewer put it, that you disapproved of my alliteration; I also + added that you would be quite right if you did. I certainly did quote + you from memory, and even quote from a quotation; I also mentioned + that I was doing so casual a thing. Of course, on the strictest + principles, all quotations should be verified; and I should certainly + have done so if I had in any way resented anything you said, or been + myself writing in a spirit of resentment. If you think a letter to + the _Mercury_ clearing up these points would be fairer to everybody, + of course I should be delighted to write one. + +This attitude of the "oldest inhabitant" was the Chestertonian +fashion of accepting the youthful demand for something new. When a +young writer in _Colosseum_ alluded to him as out of date he took it +with the utmost placidity. "Good," he said to Edward Macdonald. "I +like to see people refusing to accept the opinions of others before +they've examined them themselves. They're perfectly entitled to say +that I'm not a literary lion but a Landseer lion." Mr. Eliot's answer +was a request to Gilbert to write in the _Criterion_ and an +explanation that he had felt in a false position since he rather +liked alliteration than otherwise. + +Thus too when Chesterton had answered a newspaper report of a speech +made by C. E. M. Joad, the latter complained that it was a criticism +"not of anything that I think, but of a garbled newspaper caricature +of a few of the things I think, taken out of their context and +falsified." + +He added that he had not said science would destroy religion but that +at its present rate of decline the _Church of England_ would become a +dead letter in a hundred and fifty years. Next, that science "has no +bearing upon the spiritual truths of religion," but + + has been presented, at any rate by the Church of England, in a + texture of obsolete ideas about the nature of the physical universe + and the behaviour of physical things which science has shown to be + untrue. + + Finally that religion is vital but it is in Mysticism that the core + of religion lies for me, and mystical experience, as I understand it, + does not want organizing. + + I may be wrong in all this, but I hope that this explanation, such + as it is, will lead you to think that I am not such an arrogant fool + as your article suggests. + +Chesterton replied (May 4, 1930): + + I hope you will forgive my delay in thanking you for your very + valuable and reasonable letter; but I have been away from home; and + for various reasons my correspondence has accumulated very heavily. I + am extremely glad to remember that, even before receiving your + letter, I was careful to say in my article that my quarrel was not + personally with you, but with the newspapers which had used what you + said as a part of a stupid stunt against organised religion. I am + even more glad to learn that they had misused your name and used what + you did not say. I ought to have known, by this time, that they are + quite capable of it; and I entirely agree that the correction you + make in the report makes all the difference in the world. I do not + think I ever meant or said that you were an arrogant fool or anything + like it; but most certainly it is one thing to say that religion will + die in a century (as the report stated) and quite another to say that + the Church of England will experience a certain rate of decline, + whether the prediction be true or no. I shall certainly take some + opportunity to correct my statement prominently in the _Illustrated + London News_; I hope I should do so in any case; but in this case it + supports my main actual contention; that there is in the press a very + vulgar and unscrupulous attack on the historic Christian Church. + + The four points you raise are so interesting that I feel I ought to + touch on them; though you will forgive me if I do so rather rapidly. + With the first I have already dealt; and in that matter I can only + apologise, both for myself and my unfortunate profession; and + touching the second I do not suppose we should greatly disagree; I + merely used it as one example of the futility of fatalistic + prophecies such as the one attributed by the newspapers to you. But a + thorough debate between us, if there were time for it, touching the + third and fourth points, might possibly remove our differences, but + would certainly reveal them. + + In the third paragraph you say something that has been said many + times, and doubtless means something; but I can say quite honestly + that I have never been quite certain of what it means. Naturally I + hold no brief for the Church of England as such; indeed I am inclined + to congratulate you on having found any one positive set of "ideas," + obsolete or not, which that Church is solidly agreed in "presenting." + But I have been a member of that Church myself, and in justice to it, + I must say that neither then nor now did I see clearly what are these + things "about the nature of the physical universe, which science has + shown to be untrue." I was not required as an Anglican, any more than + as a Catholic, to believe that God had two hands and ten fingers to + mould Adam from clay; but even if I had been, it would be rather + difficult to define the scientific discovery that makes it + impossible. I should like to see the defined Christian dogma written + down and the final scientific discovery written against it. I have + never seen this yet. What I have seen is that even the greatest + scientific dogmas are not final. We have just this moment agreed that + the ideas of the physical universe, which are really and truly + "obsolete," are the very ideas taught by physicists thirty years ago. + What I think you mean is that science has shown _miracles_ to be + untrue. But miracles are not ideas about the nature of the physical + universe. They are ideas about the nature of a power capable of + breaking through the nature of the physical universe. And science has + not shown that to be untrue, for anybody who can think. + + Lastly, you say that it is indeed necessary that Religion should + exist, but that its essence is Mysticism; and this does not need to + be organised. I should answer that nothing on earth needs to be + organised so much as Mysticism. You say that man tends naturally to + religion; he does indeed; often in the form of human sacrifice or the + temples of Sodom. Almost all extreme evil of that kind is mystical. + The only way of keeping it healthy is to have some rules, some + responsibilities, some definitions of dogma and moral function. That + at least, as you yourself put it, is what I think; and I hope you + will not blame me for saying so. But as to what I said, in that + particular article, it was quite clearly written upon wrong + information and it will give me great pleasure to do my best to + publish the fact. + +In any such argument Gilbert was never, in the words of the Gospel, +"willing to justify himself." He only wanted to justify certain +ideas, and the thought of having misrepresented anyone else was +distressing to him. + +Even the hardened controversialist Coulton wrote in the course of one +of their arguments: + + If I speak very plainly of your historical methods, it is not that + I do not fully respect your conversion. I have more sympathy with + your Catholicity than (partly no doubt by my own fault) you may be + inclined to think; I believe you to have made a sacrifice of the sort + that is never altogether vain; it is therefore part of my faith that + you are near to that which I also am trying to approach; and, if this + belief does little or nothing to colour my criticisms in this + particular discussion, that is because I believe true Catholicism, + like true Protestantism, can only gain by the explosion of historical + falsehoods, if indeed they be false, with the least possible delay. + If (on the other hand) they are truths then you may be trusted to + make out the best possible case for them, and my words will recoil + upon myself. + +The dispute was about Puritanism and Catholicism. It was republished +as a pamphlet. It is the only case I have found in which Chesterton +wrote several versions of one letter (to the _Cambridge Review_). In +its final form he omitted one illuminating illustration. Coulton had +maintained that the mediaevals condemned dancing as much as the +Puritans and had dug up various mouldy theologians who classed it as +a mortal sin. Father Lopez retorted by a quotation from St. Thomas +saying it was quite right to dance at weddings and on such like +occasions, provided the dancing was of a decent kind. + +Chesterton comments: + + We have already travelled very far from the first vision of Mr. + Coulton, of Dark Ages full of one monotonous wail over the mortal sin + of dancing. To class it seriously as a mortal sin is to class it with + adultery or theft or murder. It is interesting to imagine St. Thomas + and the moderate moralists saying: "You may murder at weddings; you + may commit adultery to celebrate your release from prison; you may + steal if you do not do it with immodest gestures," and so on. The + calm tone of St. Thomas about the whole thing is alone evidence of a + social atmosphere different from that described. + +The rest of his analysis of Coulton's method of dealing with a +historical document and distorting it is in the published version. A +valuable part of Chesterton's line is also interesting as a comment +on his own historical work. The expert he says is so occupied with +detail that he overlooks the broad facts that anyone could see. On +this point the review of Coulton's Mediaeval History in the _Church +Times_ is illuminating. The reviewer noted that in the index under +the word "Church" occurred such notes as: "soldiers sleeping in," +"horses stabled in," and other allusions to extraordinary happenings. +But nowhere, he said, could he find any mention of the normal use of +a church--that men prayed in it. + +With H. G. Wells several interchanges of letters have shown in +earlier chapters how the soft answer turned aside a wrath easily +aroused, but also easily dissipated. Another exchange of letters only +three years before Gilbert's death must be given. The third letter is +undated and I am not sure if it belongs here or refers to another of +Gilbert's reviews of a book of Wells. + + 47 Chiltern Court, N.W.I. Dec. 10, 1933 + + DEAR OLD G.K.C. + + An _Illustrated London News_ Xmas cutting comes like the season's + greetings. If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your + Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if + I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you. + + My warmest good wishes to you and Mrs. G.K.C. + + H.G. + + MY DEAR H.G., + + I do hope my secretary let you know that at the moment when I got + your most welcome note I was temporarily laid out in bed and able to + appreciate it, but not to acknowledge it. As to the fine point of + theology you raise--I am content to answer (with the subtle and + exquisite irony of the Yanks) I should worry. If I turn out to be + right, you will triumph, not by being a friend of mine, but by being + a friend of Man, by having done a thousand things for men like me in + every way from imagination to criticism. The thought of the vast + variety of that work, and how it ranges from towering visions to tiny + pricks of humour, overwhelmed me suddenly in retrospect: and I felt + we had none of us ever said enough. Also your words, apart from their + generosity, please me as the first words I have heard for a long time + of the old Agnosticism of my boyhood when my brother Cecil and my + friend Bentley almost worshipped old Huxley like a god. I think I + have nothing to complain of except the fact that the other side often + forget that we began as free-thinkers as much as they did: and there + was no earthly power but thinking to drive us on the way we went. + Thanking you again a thousand times for your letter . . . and + everything else. + + Yours always + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + MY DEAR CHESTERTON: + + You write wonderful praise and it leaves me all aquiver. My warmest + thanks for it. But indeed that wonderful fairness of mind is very + largely a kind of funk in me--I know the creature from the + inside--funk and something worse, a kind of deep, complex cunning. + Well anyhow you take the superficial merit with infinite charity--and + it has inflated me and just for a time I am an air balloon over the + heads of my fellow creatures. + + Yours ever + + H. G. WELLS. + +Gilbert loved to praise his fellows in the field of letters even when +their philosophy differed from his own. In the obituaries in _G.K.'s +Weekly_ this is especially noticeable. Of two men of letters who died +in 1928, he wrote with respect and admiration although with a mind +divided between pure literary appreciation and those principles +whereby he instinctively measured all things. Of Sir Edmund Gosse he +wrote "The men from whom we would consent to learn are dying." G.K. +felt he could never himself appreciate without judging, but he could +learn from Gosse a uniquely "sensitive impartiality." With him "there +passes away a great and delicate spirit which might in some sense be +called the spirit of the eighteenth century; which might indeed be +very rightly called the spirit of reason and civilisation."* + +[* May 26th, 1928.] + +"These are the things we hoped would stay and they are going," he +quoted from Swinburne, and of him and of Hardy, who died in 1928, and +in whom he saluted "an honourable dignity and simplicity" he felt +that though they had stated something false about the universe--that +all the good things are fugitive and only the bad things +unchanged--yet ". . . something rather like it might be a half truth +about the world. I mean about the modern world. . . ." These poets +lamented the passing of roses and sunbeams, but in the modern world + + it is rather as if, in some inverted witchcraft the rose tree + withered and faded from sight, and the rose leaves remained hovering + in empty air. It is as if there could be sunbeams when there was no + more sun. It is not only the better but the bigger and stronger part + of a thing that is sacrificed to the small and secondary part. The + real evil in the change that has been passing over Society is the + fact that it has sapped foundations and, worse still, has not shaken + the palaces and spires. It is as if there was a disease in the world + that only devours the bones. We have not weakened the gilded parody + of marriage, we have only weakened the marriage: . . . we have not + abolished the House of Lords because it was not democratic. We have + merely preserved the aristocracy, on condition that it shall not be + aristocratic. . . . We have not yet even disestablished the Church; + but there is a very pressing proposal that we should turn out of it + the only people who really believe it is the Church. . . . There is + now in the minds of nearly all Capitalists a sort of corrupt + communism. . . . the Bank remains, The Fund remains, The Foreign + Financier remains, Parliamentary Procedure remains, Jix remains. + These are the things we hoped would go; but they are staying. + +Sixteen years earlier Chesterton had in _The Victorian Age in +Literature_ characterised Hardy's novels as "the village atheist +brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot." Yet Cyril Clemens +has told me that Hardy recited to him some of Chesterton's poetry, +and I think this obituary links with that fact in showing that a +profound difference in their philosophy of life did not prevent a +mutual appreciation and even admiration. + +Gilbert Chesterton entered the last years of his life having made no +enemies in the exceedingly sensitive literary world to which he +primarily belonged. Whether he had made any in the world of politics +I do not know, but he certainly felt no enmities. He said once it was +impossible to hate anything except an idea, and to him I think it +was. Against one politician who died in 1930 he had many years ago +launched his strongest bit of ironical writing--Lord Birkenhead, then +F. E. Smith, who had spoken of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill as +having "shocked the conscience of every Christian community in +Europe."--The last lines of Chesterton's mordant answer ran + + For your legal cause or civil + You fight well and get your fee; + For your God or dream or devil + You will answer, not to me. + Talk about the pews and steeples + And the cash that goes therewith: + But the souls of Christian peoples . . . + Chuck it, Smith. + +Later, Smith had stood with Sir Edward Carson against Cecil +Chesterton at the old Bailey. Now he was dead and many who had feared +him in his lifetime were blackening his memory with subtle sneers and +innuendo. Gilbert refused to join in this and he wrote in his paper: +"In him we were confronted by and fought, not a set of principles but +a man. . . . Lord Birkenhead was a great fighter! with one more pagan +virtue--pride--he would have been a great pagan." + +Lord Balfour died in the same year. With him neither the paper nor +its editor had fought personally, but upon almost all his policies +had stood in opposition. Yet few better appreciations of him appeared +than the article entitled by Chesterton "A Man of Distinction." + + The English squire was an unconscious aristocrat; the Scotch laird + was a conscious aristocrat; and Lord Balfour with all his social + grace and graciousness, was conscious and even self-conscious. But + this was only another way of saying that he had a mind which mirrored + everything, including himself; and that, whatever else he did, he did + not act blindly or in the dark. He was sometimes quite wrong; but his + errors were purely patriotic; both in the narrow sense of nationalism + and in the larger sense of loyalty and disinterestedness. + +He instances Balfour's policies in Ireland and Egypt and continues: + + In some ways he seems to me to have been too good a Stoic to be + entirely a good Christian; or rather (to put it more correctly) to + feel, like the rest of us, that he was a bad Christian. . . . There + was much more in him of the Scotch Puritan than of the English + Cavalier. + + It is supremely characteristic of the present Parliamentary + atmosphere that everybody accused Lord Balfour of incomprehensible + compromise and vagueness, because he was completely logical and + absolutely clear. Clarity does look like a cloud of confusion to + people whose minds live in confusion twice confounded. . . . + + . . . people said his distinctions were fine distinctions; and so + they were; very fine indeed. A fine distinction is like a fine + painting or a fine poem or anything else fine; a triumph of the human + mind . . . the great power of distinction; by which a man becomes in + the true sense distinguished.* + +[* March 29, 1930.] + +The distinction Mr. Swinnerton draws* between Belloc and Chesterton +may be a little too absolute, but substantially it is right. "One +reason for the love of Chesterton was that while he fought he sang +lays of chivalry and in spite of all his seriousness warred against +wickedness rather than a fleshly opponent, while Belloc sang only +after the battle and warred against men as well as ideas." + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 88.] + +Did the tendency to find good in his opponents, did Chesterton's +universal charity deaden, as Belloc believes, the effect of his +writing? + + He wounded none, but thus also he failed to provide weapons + wherewith one may wound and kill folly. Now without wounding and + killing, there is no battle; and thus, in this life, no victory; + but also no peril to the soul through hatred.* + +[* _The Place of Chesterton in English Letters_, p. 81.] + +In various controversies during the final years of _G.K.'s Weekly_ +the very opposite opinion is expressed. Hoffman Nickerson writes of +the "subversive" nature of Chesterton's work, of his giving weapons +to Communism and doing his bit towards starting "a very nasty class +war" in America. Mr. Nickerson was allowed to develop this theme in +a series of articles in Chesterton's own paper. Correspondents too +complained often enough in the paper of its attacks on vested +interests and on other schools of thought than its own. + +In the course of a controversy with Mr. Penty, in which I think G.K. +most distinctly misunderstood his opponent but in which both men kept +the friendliest tone, Penty says that Chesterton treats as a drive +much that he himself would call a drift: that the mind is more +in fault than the will of mankind in getting the world into its +present mess. With this diagnosis Chesterton certainly agreed for +the greater part of mankind. He spoke often of a "madness in the +modern mind." Psychology meant "the mind studying itself instead of +studying the truth" and it was part of what had destroyed the mind. +"Advertisements often tell us to Watch this Blank Space. I confess I +do watch that blank space, the modern mind, not so much for what will +appear in it, as for what has already disappeared from it." + +Thus too when the Rev. Dick Shepherd remarrying a divorced +woman--i.e., encouraging her to take again the solemn vow she had +already broken--said that he heard the voice of Christ: "Go in +peace," it was not for impiety that Chesterton condemned him. He +wrote with restraint "There is scarcely a shade of difference left +between meaning well and meaning nothing." + +Was Penty still right in thinking he saw a drive where he ought to +see a drift and Nickerson in thinking he was dangerously subversive +in his attitude to the rich? And anyhow what about Belloc? + +I incline to think that the truth was that while G.K. could never +hate an individual he could hate a group. If he suddenly remembered +an individual in that group he hastily excepted him from the group in +order to leave the objects of his hatred entirely impersonal. Thus he +hated politicians but found real difficulty in hating a politician. +He hated what he called the plutocracy, but no individual rich man. I +do think however that while believing firmly in original sin he was +somewhat inclined to see it as operative more especially in the +well-to-do classes. His championship of the poor was in no way +impersonal. His burning love and pity went out to every beggar. He +tended to love all men but the poor he loved with an undivided heart, +and when he thought of them his thoughts grew harsh towards the rich +who were collectively their oppressors. + +I doubt if he allowed enough for the degree of stupidity required to +amass a fortune. He would have agreed that love of money narrowed the +mind: I doubt if he fully grasped that only a mind already narrow can +love money so exclusively as to pursue it successfully. And I am +pretty sure he did not allow enough for the fact that rich like poor +are caught today in the machinery they have created. He saw the +bewildered, confused labourer who has lost his liberty: he failed to +see the politician also bewildered, the millionaire also confused, +afraid to let go for fear he might be submerged. And yet at moments +he did see it. He wrote in the paper a short series of articles on +men of the nineteenth century who had created the confusion of today; +on Malthus, Adam Smith and Darwin. Far from its being true that +supernatural religion had first been destroyed and morality lost in +consequence, it had been the Christian morality that was first +destroyed in the mind. G.K. summarised Adam Smith's teachings as: +"God so made the world that He could achieve the good if men were +sufficiently greedy for the goods." Thus the man of today "whenever +he is tempted to be selfish half remembers Smith and self-interest. +Whenever he would harden his heart against a beggar, he half +remembers Malthus and a book about population; whenever he has +scruples about crushing a rival he half remembers Darwin and his +scruples become unscientific." Because none of these theories were in +their own day seen as heresies and denounced as heresies they have +lived on vaguely to poison the atmosphere and the mind of today. + +English Conservatives had been shocked when Chesterton began: Mr. +Nickerson was shocked when he was ending: because he demanded a +revolution. Surely, Mr. Nickerson said, if he looked at Communism +closely he would prefer Capitalism. He not only would, he constantly +said he did. But he wanted a Revolution from both: he preferred that +it should not be "nasty" for what he wanted was the Christian +Revolution. Like all revolutions however it must begin in the mind +and he felt less and less hopeful as he watched that blank space. + +But I do not believe that Chesterton failed because he had not at his +command the weapon of hatred. Here Belloc surely makes the same +mistake that Swift (whom he instances) made and for the same reason. +The Frenchman and the Irishman understand the rapier of biting satire +as does not the Englishman: for direct abuse of anyone, no matter how +richly merited, nearly always puts the Englishman on the side of the +man who is being abused. What happened to Swift's Gulliver--that most +fierce attack upon the human race? The English people drew its sting +and turned it into a nursery book that has delighted their children +ever since. There are more ways than one of winning a battle: you can +win the man instead of the argument and Chesterton won many men. Or +you can take a weapon that once belonged chiefly to the enemy but +which Chesterton wrested from him; a very useful weapon: the laugh. + +Orthodoxy, doctrinal and moral, was a lawful object of amusement to +Voltaire and his followers but now the laugh has passed to the other +side and Chesterton was (with Belloc himself) the first to seize this +powerful weapon. Thus when Bishop Barnes of Birmingham said that St. +Francis was dirty and probably had fleas many Catholics were furious +and spoke in solemn wrath. Chesterton wrote the simple verse + + _A Broad-minded Bishop Rebukes the Verminous Saint Francis_ + + If Brother Francis pardoned Brother Flea + There still seems need of such strange charity + Seeing he is, for all his gay goodwill + Bitten by funny little creatures still. + +I shall never forget going to hear Chesterton debate on Birth Control +with some Advanced Woman or other. Outside the hall were numbers of +her satellites offering their literature. I was just about to say +something unpleasant to one of them when a verse flashed into my mind: + + If I had been a Heathen, + I'd have crowned Neaera's curls, + And filled my life with love affairs, + My house with dancing girls! + But Higgins is a Heathen + And to lecture-rooms is forced + Where his aunts who are not married + Demand to be divorced. + +The rebuke died on my lips: why get angry with the poor old aunts of +Higgins demanding the destruction of their unconceived and +inconceivable babies? + +Swinburne had mocked at Christian virtue but the Dolores of +Chesterton replied to him: + + I am sorry old dear if I hurt you, + No doubt it is all very nice, + With the lilies and languors of virtue + And the raptures and roses of vice. + But the notion impels me to anger + That vice is all rapture for me, + And if you think virtue is languor + Just try it and see. + +But in fact G.K. did not merely use laughter as a weapon: he was +often simply amused--and did not conceal it. He told Desmond Gleeson +that he remembered reading Renan's Christ "while I was standing in +the queue waiting to see 'Charley's Aunt.' But it is obvious which is +the better farce for 'Charley's Aunt' is still running." No wonder +that Eileen Duggan when she pictured him as a modern St. George saw +him "shouting gleefully 'Bring on your dragons.'" Even dragons may be +bothered by the unexpected. And it may well be that when the rapier +of anger has been blunted against the armour of some accustomed +fighter he will be driven off the field by gales of Chestertonian +laughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +Our Lady's Tumbler + + +_I hate to be influenced. I like to be commanded or to be free. In +both of these my own soul can take a clear and conscious part: for +when I am free it must be for something that I really like, and not +something that I am persuaded to pretend to like: and when I am +commanded, it must be by something I know, like the Ten Commandments. +But the thing called Pressure, of which the polite name is +Persuasion, I always feel to be a hidden enemy. It is all a part of +that worship of formlessness, and flowing tendencies, which is really +the drift of cosmos back into chaos. I remember how I suddenly +recoiled in youth from the influence of Matthew Arnold (who said many +things very well worth saying) when he told me that God was "a stream +of tendency." Since then I have hated tendencies: and liked to know +where I was going and go there--or refuse_. + +_G.K.'s Weekly_, Aug. 18, 1928. + +IN 1932, WHEN Gilbert had been in the Church just ten years and +Frances six, my husband and I met them at the Eucharistic Congress in +Dublin. They were staying at the Vice-Regal Lodge and were very happy +in that gathering of the Catholic world brought about by the +Congress. It was this thought of the potential of the faith for a +unity the League of Nations could not achieve--only dogma is strong +enough to unite mankind--that gave its title to the book _Christendom +in Dublin_. + +In the crowd that thronged to that great gathering he saw Democracy. +Its orderliness was more than a mere organisation: it was +Self-determination of the People. "A whole mob, what many would call +a whole rabble, was doing exactly what it wanted; and what it wanted +was to be Christian." The mind of that crowd was stretched over the +centuries as the faint sound of St. Patrick's bell that had been +silent so many centuries was heard in Phoenix Park at the +Consecration of the Mass: it was stretched over the earth as the +people of the earth gathered into one place which had become for the +time Rome or the Christian Centre. + +During the Congress an Eastern priest accosted G.K. with praise of +his writings. His own mind full of the great ideas of Christendom and +the Faith, he felt a huge disproportion in the allusion to himself. +And when later the priest asked to be photographed at his side it +flashed through G.K.'s mind that he had heard in the East that an +idiot was supposed to bring luck. This sort of humorous yet sincere +intellectual humility startles us in the same kind of way as does the +spiritual humility of the saints. We have to accept it in the same +kind of way--without in the least understanding it, but simply +because we cannot fail to see it. + +But the world could fail even to see it. It could and did fail in +imagining a mind so absorbed in the contemplation of Infinite +Greatness that its own pin-point littleness became an axiom: rather +it seemed an affectation--none the less an affectation and much the +less pardonable because the laughter was directed against others as +well as against himself. + +There is an old mediaeval story of a tumbler who, converted and +become a monk, found himself inapt at the offices of Choir and +Scriptorium so he went before a statue of Our Lady and there played +all his tricks. Quite exhausted at last he looked up at the statue +and said, "Lady, this is a choice performance." There is more than a +touch of Our Lady's tumbler in Gilbert. He knew he could give in his +own fashion a choice performance, but meeting a priest come from a +far land where he had reconciled a hitherto schismatic group with the +great body of the Catholic Church, who could forgive sins and offer +the Holy Sacrifice, he truly felt "something disproportionate in +finding one's own trivial trade, or tricks of the trade, amid the +far-reaching revelations of such a trysting-place of all the tribes +of men."* + +[* _Christendom in Dublin_, p. 35.] + +His awe and reverence for priests was, says Father Rice, enormous. +"He would carefully weigh their opinion however fatuous." His comment +on the bad statues and fripperies which so many Catholics find a +trial was: "It shows the wisdom of the Church. The whole thing is so +terrific that if people did not have these let-downs they would go +mad." + +Yet it may have been a fear of excess of this special let-down that +made him reluctant to go to Lourdes. Lisieux he never liked but he +was, Dorothy says, fascinated by Lourdes when she persuaded him to +go. He went several times to the torch-light procession and he said +as he had said in Dublin, "This is the only real League of Nations." + +The thing he liked best in Dublin was the spontaneous outburst of +little altars and amateur decorations in the poorest quarters of the +city. The story he loved to tell was that of the old woman who said +when on the last day the clouds looked threatening: "Well, if it +rains now He will have brought it on Himself." + +The year of the Congress two other books were published: _Sidelights +on New London and Newer York_, already discussed, and _Chaucer_. The +books contrast agreeably: one throwing the ideal against the real of +his own day, the other evoking his ideal from the past. The _Chaucer_ +was much criticised--chiefly because he was not a Chaucer scholar. As +a matter of fact the notion of his writing this book did not +originate with Chesterton but with Richard de la Mare who had +projected a series of essays called "The Poets on the Poets." This +developed, still at his suggestion, into a literary biography of +Chaucer. But in any event G.K. had all his life combatted the notion +that only a scholar should write on such themes. He stood resolutely +for the rights of the amateur: yet I think the scholar might well +start off with some exasperation on reading that if Chaucer had been +called the Father of English poetry, so had "an obscure Anglo-Saxon +like Caedmon," whose writing was "not in that sense poetry and not in +any sense English." It is a curious example of one of the faults +Chesterton himself most hated--overlooking something because it was +too big: something too that he had realised in an earlier work--for +Caedmon spoke the language of Alfred the Great. + +In a brilliant garnering of the fruits of her scholarship--_Word +Hoard_--Margaret Williams has quoted Chesterton's Alfred as a +stirring expression of the significance of the spiritual conquest of +England by Christianity. In the same book she shows how superficial +is the view which believes that the English language was a creation +of the Norman Conquest. The struggle, she says "between the English +and French tongues lasted for some three hundred years, until the two +finally blended into a unified language, basically Teutonic, richly +romantic. The English spirit emerged predominant by a moral victory +over its conqueror. . . ."* + +[* _Word Hoard_ by Margaret Williams, p. 4.] + +No one would wish that Chesterton should have ignored the immense +debt owed by our language to the French tributary that so enriched +its main stream, but it seems strange that in his hospitable mind, in +which Alfred's England held so large a place, he should not have +found room for an appreciation of the Saxon structure of Chaucer and +for all that makes him unmistakably one in a line of which Caedmon +was the first great poet. In this book, only his debt to France is +stressed, because England is to be thought of as part of Europe--and +the part she is a part of is apparently France! + +Yet what excellent things there are in the book: + + The great poet exists to show the small man how great he is. . . . + + The great poet is alone strong enough to measure that broken + strength we call the weakness of man. + + The real vice of the Victorians was that they regarded history as a + story that ended well because it ended with the Victorians. They + turned all human records into one three-volume novel; and were quite + sure that they themselves were the third volume. + +He quotes Troilus and Cressida on "The Christian majesty of the +mystery of marriage": + + Any man who really understands it does not see a Greek King sitting + on an ivory throne, nor a feudal lord sitting on a faldstool but God + in a primordial garden, granting the most gigantic of the joys of the + children of men. + + When we talk of wild poetry, we sometimes forget the parallel of + wild flowers. They exist to show that a thing may be more modest and + delicate for being wild. + + Romance was a strange by-product of Religion; all the more because + Religion, through some of its representatives may have regretted + having produced it. . . . Even the Church, as imperfectly represented + on its human side, contrived to inspire even what it had denounced, + and transformed even what it had abandoned. + +The best chapter is the last: The Moral of the Story--and that moral +is: "That no man should desert that [Catholic] civilisation. It can +cure itself but those who leave it cannot cure it. Not Nestorius, nor +Mahomet, nor Calvin, nor Lenin have cured, nor will cure the real +evils of Christendom; for the severed hand does not heal the whole +body." + +Healing must come from a recovery of the norm, of the balance, of the +equilibrium that mediaeval philosophy and culture were always +seeking. "The meaning of Aquinas is that mediaevalism was always +seeking a centre of gravity. The meaning of Chaucer is that, when +found, it was always a centre of gaiety. . . ." + +The name of Aquinas thus introduced on almost the last page of this +book shows Chesterton's mind already busy on the next and perhaps +most important book of his life: _St. Thomas Aquinas_. + +"Great news this," wrote Shaw to Frances, "about the Divine Doctor. I +have been preaching for years that intellect is a passion that will +finally become the most ecstatic of all the passions; and I have +cherished Thomas as a most praiseworthy creature for being my +forerunner on this point." + +When we were told that Gilbert was writing a book on St. Thomas and +that we might have the American rights, my husband felt a faint +quiver of apprehension. Was Chesterton for once undertaking a task +beyond his knowledge? Such masses of research had recently been done +on St. Thomas by experts of such high standing and he could not +possibly have read it all. Nor should we have been entirely reassured +had we heard what Dorothy Collins told us later concerning the +writing of it. + +He began by rapidly dictating to Dorothy about half the book. So far +he had consulted no authorities but at this stage he said to her: + +"I want you to go to London and get me some books." + +"What books?" asked Dorothy. + +"I don't know," said G.K. + +She wrote therefore to Father O'Connor and from him got a list of +classic and more recent books on St. Thomas. G.K. "flipped them +rapidly through," which is, says Dorothy, the only way she ever saw +him read, and then dictated to her the rest of his own book without +referring to them again. There are no marks on any of them except a +little sketch of St. Thomas which was drawn in the margin opposite a +description of the affair, which G.K. so vividly dramatises, of Siger +of Brabant. + +Had we known all this we should have been asking ourselves even more +definitely: What will the experts say? Of the verdict of the greatest +of them we were not long left in doubt. Etienne Gilson, who has given +two of the most famous of philosophical lecture series--the Gifford +Lectures at Aberdeen and the William James Lectures at Harvard--had +begun his admiration for Chesterton with _Greybeards at Play_ and had +thought _Orthodoxy_ "the best piece of apologetic the century had +produced." When _St. Thomas_ appeared he said to a friend of mine +"Chesterton makes one despair. I have been studying St. Thomas all my +life and I could never have written such a book." After Gilbert's +death, asked to give an appreciation, he returned to the same topic-- + + I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book + ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for + such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a + "clever" book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty + years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who, perhaps, have + themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail + to perceive that the so-called "wit" of Chesterton has put their + scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which they had tried to + demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less + clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was + one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he + was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either + help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could + understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he + apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being + witty. That is all they can see of him.* + +[* _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, pp. 150-151.] + +In joining the Church Chesterton had found like all converts, from +St. Paul to Cardinal Newman, that he had come into the land of +liberty and especially of intellectual liberty. "Conversion," he +said, "calls on a man to stretch his mind, as a man awakening from +sleep may stretch his arms and legs."* + +[* _Well and Shallows_, p. 130.] + +I suppose one of the reasons why the surrounding world finds it hard +to receive this statement from a convert is that he has only to look +around him to see so many Catholics wrapped in slumbers as placid as +the next man's. To this very real difficulty, and to all its +implications, Chesterton unfortunately seldom adverted. To the +scandal wrought by evil Catholics, historical or contemporary, he was +not blind--he summarised one element in the Reformation conflict: + + Bad men who had no right to their right reason + Good men who had good reason to be wrong. + +But I wish that with his rare insight into minds he had analysed us +average Catholics. He might have startled us awake by explaining to +non-Catholics _how_ those who know such Truths and feed upon such +Food can yet appear so dull and lifeless. Anyhow, whether the fault +lie in part with us or entirely with the world at large, certain it +is that in that world a convert is always expected to justify not +merely his beliefs but his sincerity in continuing to hold them. I +wonder if the Pharisees said of St. Paul that they were sure he +really wanted to return to his old allegiance as some said it of +Newman, or spoke as Arnold Bennett did when he accused Chesterton of +being Modernist in his secret thoughts? Were St. Paul's epistles an +Apologia pro Vita Sua? + +An Apologia does not of course mean an apology but a justification, +and the ground on which justification was sometimes demanded amused +Gilbert rather than annoying him. Playing the Parlour Game which +consists of guessing at what point in an article on hydraulics, +elegiacs or neo-Platonism Dean Inge will burst into his daily attack +on the Church, he wrote: + + The Dean of St. Paul's got to business, in a paragraph in the + second half of his article, in which he unveiled to his readers all + the horrors of a quotation from Newman; a very shocking and shameful + passage in which the degraded apostate says that he is happy in his + religion, and in being surrounded by the things of his religion; that + he likes to have objects that have been blessed by the holy and + beloved, that there is a sense of being protected by prayers, + sacramentals and so on; and that happiness of this sort satisfies the + soul. The Dean, having given us this one ghastly glimpse of the + Cardinal's spiritual condition, drops the curtain with a groan and + says it is Paganism. How different from the Christian orthodoxy of + Plotinus!* + +[* _The Thing_, pp. 156-7.] + +This playful, not to say frivolous, tone was fresh cause of annoyance +to those who were apt to be annoyed. It is easier to understand their +objection than the opposite one: that he became dull and prosy after +he joined the Church (or alternatively after he left Fleet Street for +Beaconsfield). The only real difficulty about his later work arises +from the riot of his high spirits. In his own style I must say there +are moments when even I want to read the Riot Act. And those who +admire him less feel this more keenly. Bad puns, they say, wild and +sometimes ill-mannered jokes are perhaps pardonable in youth but in +middle age they are inexcusable. The complainants against _The Thing_ +are in substance the complainants against _Orthodoxy_ grown more +vehement with the passage of years. + +The idea had been adumbrated of calling one of his books: _Joking +Apart_ and only rejected because of the fear that if he said he was +_not_ joking everyone would be quite certain that he was. This +greatly amused G.K. and he began the book (it actually appeared as +_The Well and the Shallows_) with "An Apology for Buffoons." After +defending the human instinct of punning he remarked that "many +moderns suffer from the disease of the suppressed pun." They are +actuated even in their thinking by merely verbal association. + + I for one greatly prefer the sort of frivolity that is thrown to + the surface like froth to the sort of frivolity that festers under + the surface like slime. To pelt an enemy with a foolish pun or two + will never do him any grave injustice; the firework is obviously a + firework and not a deadly fire. It may be playing to the gallery, but + even the gallery knows it is only playing.* + +[* _Well and Shallows_, pp. 11-12.] + +Such playing was a necessity if the gallery, i.e. all the people, +were to be made to listen; if the things you were thinking about were +important to them as well as to yourself: if the ideas were more +important than the dignity or reputation of the person who uttered +them. In this book Gilbert sketched briefly one side of his reason +for feeling these ideas of paramount importance for everybody. "My +Six Conversions" concerned reasons given him by the world that would +have made him become a Catholic if he were not one already. + +He had been brought up to treasure liberty and in his boyhood the +world had seemed freer than the Church. Today in a world of Fascism, +Communism and Bureaucracy the Church alone offered a reasoned +liberty. He had been brought up to reverence certain ideals of +purity: today they were laughed at everywhere but in the Church. The +"sure conclusions" of Science that had stood foursquare in his +boyhood had become like a dissolving view. Liberalism had abdicated +when the people of Spain freely chose the Church and English Liberals +defended the forcing upon them of a minority rule. "There are no +Fascists; there are no Socialists; there are no Liberals; there are +no Parliamentarians. There is the one supremely inspiring and +irritating institution in the world and there are its enemies." Above +all, he felt increasingly, as time went on that those who left the +Faith did not get Freedom but merely Fashion; that there was +something ironic in the name the atheists chose when they called +themselves Secularists. By definition they had tied themselves to the +fashion of this world that passeth away. + +These six conversions then were what the world would have forced upon +him: the Church as an alternative to a continually worsening +civilisation. While he hated the Utopias of the Futurists and while +he accepted the Christian view of life as a probation he felt too +that life today was abnormally degraded and unhappy. + + There is a sense in which men may be made normally happy; but there + is another sense in which we may truly say, without undue paradox, + that what they want is to get back to their normal unhappiness. At + present they are suffering from an utterly abnormal unhappiness. They + have got all the tragic elements essential to the human lot to + contend with; time and death and bereavement and unrequited affection + and dissatisfaction with themselves. But they have not got the + elements of consolation and encouragement that ought normally to + renew their hopes or restore their self-respect. They have not got + vision or conviction, or the mastery of their work, or the loyalty of + their household, or any form of human dignity. Even the latest + Utopians, the last lingering representatives of that fated and + unfortunate race, do not really promise the modern man that he shall + do anything, or own anything, or in any effectual fashion be + anything. They only promise that, if he keeps his eyes open, he will + see something; he will see the Universal Trust or the World State or + Lord Melchett coming in the clouds in glory. But the modern man + cannot even keep his eyes open. He is too weary with toil and a long + succession of unsuccessful Utopias. He has fallen asleep.* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, October 20, 1928.] + +Chesterton demanded urgently that the worldlings who had failed to +make the world workable should abdicate. "The organic thing called +religion has in fact the organs that take hold on life. It can feed +where the fastidious doubter finds no food; it can reproduce where +the solitary sceptic boasts of being barren." In short, in religion +alone was Darwin justified, for Catholicism was the "spiritual +Survival of the Fittest."* + +[* _Well and Shallows_, p. 82.] + +If these Six Conversions are read without the balancing of something +deeper they have the superficial look that belongs of necessity to +Apologetics. Some essays in _The Well and the Shallows_, most of _The +Thing, Christendom in Dublin_, and above all, _The Queen of Seven +Swords_ give us that deeper quieter thinking when the mind is +meditating upon the great mysteries of the faith. + +Only very occasionally is it possible to glimpse beneath Gilbert's +reserve, but such glimpses are illuminating. Father Walker, who +prepared him for his First Communion, writes, "It was one of the most +happy duties I had ever to perform. . . . That he was perfectly well +aware of the immensity of the Real Presence on the morning of his +First Communion, can be gathered from the fact that he was covered +with perspiration when he actually received Our Lord. When I was +congratulating him he said, 'I have spent the happiest hour of my +life.'" + +Yet he went but seldom to Holy Communion, and an unfinished letter to +Father Walker gives the reason. "The trouble with me is that I am +much too frightened of that tremendous Reality on the altar. I have +not grown up with it and it is too much for me. I think I am morbid; +but I want to be told so by authority." + +And in _Christendom in Dublin_, he says: "The word Eucharist is but a +verbal symbol, we might say a vague verbal mask, for something so +tremendous that the assertion and the denial of it have alike seemed +a blasphemy; a blasphemy that has shaken the world with the +earthquake of two thousand years." + +I have heard it said that in these later years Gilbert's writing +became obscure, and I think it is partly true. Only partly, for the +old clarity is still there except when he is dealing with matters +almost too deep for human speech. He wrote in _The Thing:_ + + A thinking man can think himself deeper and deeper into Catholicism + . . . the great mysteries like the Blessed Trinity or the Blessed + Sacrament are the starting-point for trains of thought . . . + stimulating, subtle and even individual. . . . To accept the Logos as + a truth is to be in the atmosphere of the absolute, not only with St. + John the Evangelist, but with Plato and all the great mystics of the + world. . . . To exalt the Mass is to enter into a magnificent world + of metaphysical ideas, illuminating all the relations of matter and + mind, of flesh and spirit, of the most impersonal abstractions as + well as the most personal affections. . . . Even what are called the + fine doctrinal distinctions are not dull. They are like the finest + operations of surgery; separating nerve from nerve but giving life. + It is easy enough to flatten out everything around for miles with + dynamite if our only object is to give death. But just as the + physiologist is dealing with living tissues so the theologian is + dealing with living ideas; and if he draws a line between them it is + naturally a very fine line. + +If there appears a contradiction in the picture of Chesterton the +philosopher pondering on the Logos and Chesterton the child offering +trinkets to Our Lady, we may remember the Eternal Wisdom "playing in +the world, playing before God always" whose delight is to be with the +children of men. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +The Living Voice + + +CHESTERTON SPOKE ONCE of the keen joy for the intellect of +discovering the causes of things, but he was not greatly interested +in science. He would have said that although the physical sciences +did represent an advance in the grasp of truth it was, in the words +of Browning, only the "very superficial truth." He desired a +knowledge of causes that did not dwell simply on what was secondary +but led back to the First and Final Cause. To the mediaeval thinker, +science was fascinating as Philosophy's little sister: it was to +Philosophy what Nature was to man. Nature had been to St. Francis a +little lovely, dancing sister. Science had been to St. Thomas the +handmaid of philosophy. The modern world thought these proportions +fantastic. Huxley used Nature as a word for God. Physical Science had +ousted Philosophy. + +An American friend lately told me of a girl who, asked if she +believed in God replied, "Sure, I believe in God, but I'm not nuts +about Him." Gilbert was not "nuts" about Science: therefore in a +world that saw nothing else to be "nuts" about he was called its +enemy. And as with other things taken more solemnly by most moderns +he preferred to get fun out of the inventions of the age. + +He wrote in a fairly early number of _G.K.'s Weekly:_ + + ESKIMO SONG + + . . . So that the audience in Chicago will have the advantage of + hearing Eskimos singing. (Or words to that effect.) + + --_Wireless Programme_. + + Oh who would not want such a wonderful thing + As the pleasure of hearing the Eskimos sing? + I wish I had Eskimos out on the lawn, + Or perched on the window to wake me at dawn: + With Eskimos singing in every tree + Oh that would be glory, be glory for me! + + Oh list to the song that the Eskimos sing, + When the penguin would be if he could on the wing, + Would soar to the sun if he could, like the lark, + But for most of the time it is totally dark. + + Or hark to the bacchanal songs that resound + When they're making a night of it half the year round, + And carousing for months till the morning is pale, + Go home with the milk of the walrus and whale. + + Oh list to the sweet serenades that are hers, + Who expensively gowned in most elegant furs, + Leans forth from the lattice delighted to know + That her heart is like ice and her hand is like snow. + + * * * * * + + God bless all the dear little people who roam + And hail in the icebergs the hills of their home; + For I might not object to be listening in + If I hadn't to hear the whole programme begin. + And the President preach international peace, + And Parricide show an alarming increase, + And a Justice at Bootle excuse the police, + And how to clean trousers when spotted with grease, + And a pianist biting his wife from caprice, + And an eminent Baptist's arrival at Nice, + And a banker's regrettably painless decease, + And the new quarantine for the plucking of geese, + And a mad millionaire's unobtrusive release, + And a marquis divorced by a usurer's niece-- + If all of these items could suddenly cease + And leave me with one satisfactory thing + I really _should_ like to hear Eskimos sing. + +This was hardly the expression of an attitude to science, but he did +have such an attitude. Life was to him a story told by God: the +people in it the characters in that story. But since the story was +told by God it was, quite literally, a magic story, a fairy story, a +story full of wonders created by a divine will. As a child a toy +telephone rigged up by his father from the house to the end of the +garden had breathed that magic quality more than the Transatlantic +Cable could reveal it in later life. It did not need mechanical +inventions to make him see life as marvellous. His over-ruling +interest was not in mechanics but in Will: the will of God had +created the laws of nature and could supersede them: the will of Man +could discover these laws and harness them to its purposes. Gold is +where you find it and the value of science depends on the will of +man: a position which may not sound so absurd in the light of the +harnessing of science to the purposes of destruction. When discussing +machines "we sometimes tend," said Chesterton in _Sidelights_, "to +overlook the quiet and even bashful presence of the machine gun." + +There was an impishness in Gilbert, especially in his youth, that +encouraged the idea of his enmity to science. Where he saw a long +white beard he felt like tweaking it: an enquiring nose simply asked +to be pulled. It was only in (comparatively) sober age that he +bothered in _The Everlasting Man_ to explain "I am not at issue in +this book with sincere and genuine scholars, but with a vast and +vague public opinion which has been prematurely spread from certain +imperfect investigations."* That "vast and vague public opinion" +certainly suspected him of irreverence even towards sincere and +genuine scholars. Yet it was by his use of the most marvelous of +modern inventions that he won in the end the widest hearing among +that public that he had ever known. + +[* _The Everlasting Man_, p. 67.] + +It is not so many years ago that we donned earphones in a doubtful +hope of being able to hear something over the radio. It is the less +surprising that it was only in the last few years of his life that +Gilbert became first interested in the invention and presently one of +the broadcasters most in request by the B.B.C. He felt about the +radio as he did about most modern inventions: that they were splendid +opportunities that were not being taken--or else were being taken to +the harm of humanity by the wrong people. What was the use of +"calling all countries" if you had nothing to say to them. + +"What much modern science fails to realise," he wrote, "is that there +is little use in knowing without thinking." + +And again, writing about the amazing discoveries of the day: "Nobody +is taking the smallest trouble to consider who in the future will be +in command of the electricity and capable of giving us the shocks. +With all the shouting about the new marvels, hardly anybody utters a +word or even a whisper about how they are to be prevented from +turning into the old abuses. . . . People sometimes wonder why we not +infrequently refer to the old scandal covered by the word Marconi. It +is precisely because all these things are really covered by that +word. There could not be a shorter statement of the contradiction +than in men howling that word as a discovery and hushing it up as a +story."* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Aug. 15, 1925.] + +For the thing that really frightened him about the radio was its +possibilities as a new instrument of tyranny. The British +Broadcasting Company holds in England a monopoly and is to a +considerable extent under Government control. It is possible to +forbid advertising programmes because the costs are met by a tax of +10 sh. a year levied on the possession of a radio set. + +In an article called "The Unseen Catastrophe" (January 28, +1928) Gilbert wrote: + + Suppose you had told some of the old Whigs, let alone Liberals, + that there was an entirely new type of printing press, eclipsing all + others; and that as this was to be given to the King, all printing + would henceforth be government printing. They would be roaring like + rebels, or even regicides, yet that is exactly what we have done with + the whole new invention of wireless. Suppose it were proposed that + the king's officers should search all private houses to make sure + there were no printing presses, they would be ready for a new + revolution. Yet that is exactly what is proposed for the protection + of the government monopoly of broadcasting. . . . There is really no + protection against propaganda . . . being entirely in the hands of + the government; except indeed, the incredible empty-headedness of + those who govern. . . . On that sort of thing at least, we are all + Socialists now. It is wicked to nationalize mines or railroads; but + we lose no time in nationalizing tongues and talk . . . we might once + have used, and we shall now never use, the twentieth century science + against the nineteenth century hypocrisy. It was prevented by a + swift, sweeping and intolerant State monopoly; a monster suddenly + swallowing all rivals, alternatives, discussions, or delays, with one + snap of its gigantic jaws. That is what I mean by saying, "We cannot + see the monsters that overcome us." But I suppose that even Jonah, + when once he was swallowed, could not see the whale. + +In the autumn of 1932 Gilbert was first asked to undertake a series +of radio talks for the B.B.C. Every one seems agreed that he was an +extraordinary success. Letters from Broadcasting House are full of +such remarks as: "You do it admirably," "quite superb at the +microphone." In one his work is called "unique." Radio was now added +to all his other activities during the four years he still had to +live. Dorothy kept a diary in which she noted in one year the giving +of as many as forty lectures, and entered reminders of engagements of +the most varying kinds all over England: from the King's Garden Party +to the Aylesbury Education Committee and the Oxford Union: to +Scotland for Rectorial Campaigns: dinners at the Inner Temple and the +Philosophical Society: Detection Club dinners and Mock Trials, at one +of which he was Defendant on the charge of "perversely preferring the +past to the present." + +Besides the books discussed in the last chapter, the Dickens' +_Introductions_ and the _Collected Poems_ were republished in 1933. +Other books were planned, including one on Shakespeare. + +That same year Gilbert's mother died. During her last illness Frances +was torn between London and Beaconsfield, for her own mother was +dying in a Nursing Home at Beaconsfield, her mother-in-law at Warwick +Gardens. Once I drove with her between the two and she told me how +she suffered at the difficulty of giving help to two dying Agnostics. +She told me on that drive how she knew her mother-in-law had not +liked her but had lately made her very happy by saying she realised +now that she had been the right wife for Gilbert. To a cousin, Nora +Grosjean, Frances spoke too of how she and Mrs. Edward had drawn +together in those last days and she added, "No mother ever thinks any +woman good enough for her son." Nora Grosjean also reports, "Aunt +Marie said to me more than once, 'I always respect Frances--she kept +Gilbert out of debt.'" + +Warwick Gardens had been their home so long that vast accumulations +of papers had piled up there. "Mister Ed." too had been in a sort +keeper of the family archives. Gilbert glanced at the mass and, as I +mentioned at the beginning of this book, told the dustman to carry it +off. Half had already gone when Dorothy Collins arrived and saved the +remainder. She piled it into her car and drove back to Beaconsfield, +Gilbert keeping up a running commentary all the way on "the hoarding +habits of women." + +The money that came to Gilbert and Frances after Mrs. Edward's death +made it possible for them to plan legacies not only for friends and +relatives but also for the Catholic Church in Beaconsfield with which +they had increasingly identified their lives and their interests. +Their special dream was that Top Meadow itself should be a +convent--best of all a school--and in this hope they bequeathed it to +the Church. + +A year later another family event, this time a joyful one, took +Gilbert back to his youth; Mollie Kidd, daughter of Annie Firmin, +became engaged to be married. She was a rather special young cousin +to Gilbert both because of the old affection for her mother and +because she had played hostess to him in Canada when her mother was +ill. He wrote + + Postmark. Aug. 28, 1934 + + MY DEAR MOLLIE, + + I am afraid that chronologically, or by the clock, I am relatively + late in sending you my most warm congratulations--and yet I do assure + you that I write as one still thrilled and almost throbbing with good + news. It would take pages to tell you all I feel about it: beginning + with my first memory of your mother, when she was astonishingly like + you, except that she had yellow plaits of hair down her back. I do + not absolutely insist that you should now imitate her in this: but + you would not be far wrong if you imitate her in anything. And so + on--till we come to the superb rhetorical passage about You and the + right fulfilment of Youth. It would take pages: and that is why the + pages are never written. We bad correspondents, we vile non-writers + of letters, have a sort of secret excuse, that no one will ever + listen to till the Day of Judgment, when all infinite patience will + have to listen to so much. It is often because we think so much about + our friends that we do not write to them--the letters would be too + long. Especially in the case of wretched writing men like me, who + feel in their spare time that writing is loathsome and thinking about + their friends pleasant. In the course of turning out about ten + articles, on Hitler, on Humanism, on determinism, on Distributism, on + Dollfuss and Darwin and the Devil knows what, there really are + thoughts about real people that cross my mind suddenly and make me + really happy in a real way: and one of them is the news of your + engagement. Please believe, dear Mollie, that I am writing the truth, + though I am a journalist: and give my congratulations to everyone + involved. + + Yours with love, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +And in that year came two bits of public recognition of rather +different kinds. He was elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule +II--Honoris causa; and he and Belloc were given by the Pope the title +of Knight Commander of St. Gregory with Star. During these years the +paper had gone steadily on "at some considerable inconvenience" +because, he said, he still felt it had a part to play. At home and +abroad the scene had been steadily darkening. In July 1930, three +years before Hitler came to the Chancellorship, we find the following +among the notes of the Week: + + When we are told that the ancient Marshal Hindenburg is now + Dictator of Germany we suspect a note of exaggeration . . . + Hindenburg never was the dictator of anything and never will be. He + is, however the man who keeps the seat warm for a Dictator to come. + Hindenburg has led us back to Frederick the Great. . . . + + Hindenburg has now given rein to the extreme Nationalists, with the + delivered provinces to support him in the flush of patriotism. And + the extreme Nationalists have only one policy: to reconstitute the + unjust frontiers of Germany, which Europe fought to amend. + + In 1931 had come the Customs Union between Germany and Austria, the + obvious impotence of the League of Nations to restrain Japan, the + "National" Government and falling sterling in England. Less than two + years later Hitler was Chancellor of Germany, and in 1934 came the + murder of Dollfuss. Chesterton wrote of the tragedy whereby the name + Germany was taken from Austria and given to Prussia. With Dollfuss + fell all that was left of the Holy Roman Empire: the barbarians had + invaded the center of our civilisation and like the Turks besieging + Vienna had struck at its heart. He regarded Hitler merely as the tool + of Prussianism. The new Paganism was the logical outcome of the old + Prussianism: it was too the apotheosis of tyranny. "In the Pagan + State, in antiquity or modernity, you cannot appeal from Tyranny to + God; because the Tyranny is the God." + +Belloc solemnly warned our country that we were making inevitable +"the death in great pain of innumerable young Englishmen now +boys. . . . It may be in two years or in five or in ten the blow will +fall." (November 8, 1934.) + +Yet even this seemed less terrible to Chesterton than the state of +mind then prevailing: the mood--nay the fever--of pacifism that +demanded the isolation of England from Europe's peril. He called it +"Mafficking for peace": a sort of Imperialism that forgot that the +Atlantic is wider than the Straits of Dover and allowed Lord +Beaverbrook to regard England as a part of Canada. "Englishmen who +have felt that fever will one day look back on it with shame." "This +most noble and generous nation," he wrote with a note of agony, +"which lost its religion in the seventeenth century has lost its +morals in the twentieth." + +The League of Nations had, G. K. held, been thought at first to be a +kind of Pentecost but had in reality "come together to rebuild the +Tower of Babel." And this because it had no common basis in religion. +"Humanitarianism does not unite humanity. For even one isolated man +is half divine." But today man had despaired of man. "Hope for the +superman is another name for despair of man." + +Reading a recent commentary in a review, I suddenly saw that politics +and economics were not what mattered most in the paper. The +commentary in question was to the effect that _G.K.'s Weekly_ was +inferior to the _New Witness_ because G.K. had "only" general +principles and ideas and no detailed inside knowledge of how the +world of finance and politics was going. Looking again through the +articles I had marked as most characteristically his, I saw that they +were not only chiefly about ideas and principles but also that they +were mostly pure poetry. Chesterton was, I believe, greatest and most +permanently effective when he was moved, not by a passing irritation +with the things that pass, but by the great emotions evoked by the +Eternal, emotions which in Eternity alone will find full fruition. + +There are in the paper articles in which, appearing to speak out of +his own knowledge, he is merely repeating information given him by +Belloc. And it was quite out of Chesterton's character to write with +certainty about what he did not know with certainty. Hence this +writing is his weakest. But the paper has, too, some of his strongest +work and his mind as he drew to the end of life lingered on thoughts +that had haunted him in its beginning. + + Before the Boer War had introduced me to politics, or worse still + to politicians [he wrote in a Christmas article in 1934], I had some + vague and groping ideas of my own about a general view or vision of + existence. It was a long time before I had anything worth calling a + religion; what I had was not even sufficiently coherent to be called + a philosophy. But it was, in a sense, a view of life; I had it in the + beginning; and I am more and more coming back to it in the end. . . . + my original and almost mystical conviction of the miracle of all + existence and the essential excitement of all experience.* + +[* December 6, 1934.] + +This he felt must be the profound philosophy by which Distributism +should succeed and whereby he tested the modern world and found it +wanting-- + + something of which Christmas is the best traditional symbol. It was + then no more than a notion about the point at which extremes meet, + and the most common thing becomes a cosmic and mystical thing. I did + not want so much to alter the place and use of things as to weight + them with a new dimension; to deepen them by going down to the + potential nothing; to lift them to infinity by measuring from zero. + + The most logical form of this is in thanks to a Creator; but at + every stage I felt that such praises could never rise too high; + because they could not even reach the height of our own thanks for + unthinkable existence, or horror of more unthinkable non-existence. + And the commonest things, as much as the most complex, could thus + leap up like fountains of praise. . . . + + We shall need a sort of Distributist psychology, as well as a + Distributist philosophy. That is partly why I am not content with + plausible solutions about credit or corporative rule. We need a new + (or old) theory and practice of pleasure. The vulgar school of panem + et circenses only gives people circuses; it does not even tell them + how to enjoy circuses. But we have not merely to tell them how to + enjoy circuses. We have to tell them how to enjoy enjoyment.* + +[* December 13, 1934.] + +In attacking a special abuse, Chesterton was most successful when he +took the thought to a deeper depth. The following Christmas (1935) he +wrote: + + We live in a terrible time, of war and rumour of war. . . . + International idealism in its effort to hold the world together . . . + is admittedly weakened and often disappointed. I should say simply + that it does not go deep enough. . . . If we really wish to make + vivid the horrors of destruction and mere disciplined murder we must + see them more simply as attacks on the hearth and the human family; + and feel about Hitler as men felt about Herod. + +The modern world tended to gild pure gold and then try to scrape the +gilt off the gingerbread, to paint the lily and then complain of its +gaudiness. Thus it had vulgarised Christmas and now demanded the +abolition of Christmas because it was vulgar. It was the truth he had +emphasised years ago in contrast with Shaw: the world had spoilt the +ideas but it was the Christian ideas the world needed, if only in +order to recover the human ideas. He went on-- + + If we want to talk about poverty, we must talk about it as the + hunger of a human being. . . . We must say first of the beggar, not + that there is insufficient housing accommodation, but that he has not + where to lay his head . . . we must talk of the human family in + language as plain and practical and positive as that in which mystics + used to talk of the Holy Family. We must learn again to use the naked + words that describe a natural thing. . . . Then we shall draw on the + driving force of many thousand years, and call up a real + humanitarianism out of the depths of humanity. + +I should like to collect all the essays and poems on Christmas; he +wrote several every year, yet each is different, each goes to the +heart of his thought. As Christopher Morley says: "One of the simple +greatnesses of G.K.C. shows in this, that we think of him +instinctively toward Christmas time."* Some men, it may be, are best +moved to reform by hate, but Chesterton was best moved by love and +nowhere does that love shine more clearly than in all he wrote about +Christmas. It will be for this philosophy, this charity, this poetry +that men will turn over the pages of _G.K.'s Weekly_ a century hence +if the world still lasts. It is for us who are his followers to see +that they are truly creative. Destruction of evil is a great work but +if it leaves only a vacuum, nature abhors that vacuum. Creation is +what matters for the future and Chesterton's writing is creative. + +[* _Mark Twain Quarterly_, Spring, 1937.] + +So too with the radio. In this new medium his mind was alert to +present his new-old ideas, his fundamental philosophy of life after +some fresh fashion. A letter from Broadcasting House (Nov. 2, 1932) +after his first talk records the delight of all who heard it: + + The building rings with your praises! I knew I was not alone in my + delight over your first talk. I think even you in your modesty will + find some pleasure in hearing what widespread interest there is in + what you are doing. You bring us something very rare to the + microphone. I am most anxious that you should be with us till after + Christmas. You will have a vast public by Christmas and it is good + that they should hear you. Would you undertake six further + fortnightly talks from January 16th onwards? + +He was asked to submit a manuscript but promised he should not be +kept to the letter of it. "We should like you to make variations as +these occur to you as you speak at the microphone. Only so can the +talk have a real show of spontaneity about it." "You will forgive +me," one official writes, "if I insist on speaking to you personally. +That is how I think of our relations." G.K. was unique and they told +him so. + +A lot of reading was necessary for these talks--each one dealing with +from four to ten books--and also a principle of selection. The +principle Gilbert chose for one series was historical: "Literature +lives by history. Otherwise it exists: like trigonometry." In the +fifth talk of the Autumn series of 1934, he gives a general idea of +what he has been attempting. + + This is the hardest job I have had in all these wireless talks; and + I confront you in a spirit of hatred because of the toils I have + endured on your behalf; but, after all, what are my sufferings + compared to yours? Incredible as it may seem to anybody who has heard + these talks, they had originally a certain consistent plan. I dealt + first with heroic and half-legendary stories, touched upon medieval + chivalry, then on the party-heroes of Elizabethan or Puritan times; + then on the eighteenth century and then the nineteenth. In this + address I had meant to face the twentieth century; but I find it + almost faceless, largely featureless; and, anyhow, very bewildering. + I had meant to take books typical of the twentieth century as a book + on Steele is typical of the eighteenth or a book on Rossetti of the + nineteenth. And I have collected a number of most interesting + twentieth century books, claiming to declare a twentieth-century + philosophy; they really have a common quality; but I rather hesitate + to define it. Suppose I said that the main mark of the twentieth + century in ethics as in economics, is bankruptcy. I fear you might + think I was a little hostile in my criticism. Suppose I said that all + these books are marked by a brilliant futility. You might almost + fancy that I was not entirely friendly to them. You would be + mistaken. All of them are good; some of them are very good indeed. + But the question does recur; what is the good of being good in that + way? . . . + + Mr. Geoffrey West's curious "Post War Credo" has one Commandment. + He does say, he does shout, we might say, he does yell, that there + must be No War . . . but he cannot impose his view because authority + has gone; and he cannot prove his view; because reason has gone. So + again it all comes back to taste. And I have enjoyed the banquet of + these excellent books; but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. + +The peculiar half-official half-private direction of Broadcasting +House is based on a theory of strict impartiality towards all +opinions and an attempt simply to give the public the programmes that +the public wants. Whether it is possible to maintain such a position +is another question: that this is the theory there is no doubt--and +one result is an abiding uncertainty of mind in most of the officials. + +Broadcasting House hangs suspended in the air of public opinion and +that fickle breath leaves them in no security as to any of their +artists. The resulting sensitiveness became soothed as the months +passed on and they got as near to trusting Chesterton as they ever +come with any one. True, letters came attacking him, but far more +enthusiastically approving of him. And the attacks he answered often +by private letters that turned the critic into a friend. + +Some of his suggestions were not acceptable. He was warned off a +proposed humorous talk about Dean Inge and Bishop Barnes in a series +called "Speeches that never happened"--("Subject too serious," "avoid +religion"). But he was later asked to talk in a series on Freedom as +a Catholic and also to debate with Bertrand Russell on "Who should +bring up our children." In this debate he was especially brilliant, +says Maurice Baring; and another friend wrote "I have just been +listening not without joy to your putting it across Mr. Bertrand +Russell. . . . + +"_Afterthought:_ What a Mincer! It struck me very much, having read +much of his writing with interest. It just shows that the spoken word +still has something that the written one can't convey. Is there a +Mincing Mind, of which a mincing voice is the outward and visible +warning?" + +It was interesting that the last few years of Gilbert's life should +have furnished this unique opportunity of contact through the spoken +word between him and the English people. His voice on the radio had +none of the defects that marred it in a hall: his material was far +better arranged, his delivery perfect. He seemed to be there beside +the listener, talking in amity and exchanging confidences. The +morning after his death Edward Macdonald passed a barber's shop off +Chancery Lane. The man was lathering a customer's face but +recognising Mr. Macdonald, left the customer and ran out brush in +hand. + +"I just want to say I was sorry to hear the news," he said. "He was a +grand man." + +Mr. Macdonald asked him if he knew Chesterton well. + +"Never read a word he wrote," the barber answered. "But I always +listened to him on the wireless. He seemed to be sitting beside me in +the room." + +"That man," Edward Macdonald comments, "emphasised what I still +think: that G.K.C. in another year or so would have become the +dominating voice from Broadcasting House." + +In 1934 Gilbert had jaundice and on his recovery he started with +Frances and Dorothy on one of those trips that were his greatest +pleasure. They went to Rome--it was Holy Year--and thence to Sicily, +intending to go on to Palestine. At Syracuse, however, Gilbert became +really ill with inflammation of the nerves of the neck and shoulders. +They stayed five weeks in Syracuse, gave up the trip to Palestine and +returned home by Malta. Gilbert and Frances were to have dined at +Admiralty House but he was too unwell to dine out and only came up +one afternoon. Lady Fisher remembers going to see them at the Osborne +Hotel. Gilbert was sitting on a rickety basket chair, obviously in +pain and talking a good deal in order to hide it. She sympathised +with him for the cold weather, his obvious physical misery, and the +discomfort of his chair. + +"You must never sympathise with me," Gilbert answered, "for I can +always turn every chair into a story." + +The next year they motored in France and Italy and Gilbert records in +the _Autobiography_ an experience in a French café when he felt a +rare thrill--not in talking on the radio but in listening--on a day +that "was dateless, even for my dateless life; for I had forgotten +time and had no notion of anything anywhere, when in a small French +town I strolled into a café noisy with French talk. Wireless songs +wailed unnoted; which is not surprising, for French talk is much +better than wireless. And then, unaccountably, I heard a voice +speaking in English; and a voice I had heard before. For I heard the +words, '. . . wherever you are, my dear people, whether in this +country or beyond the sea,' and I remembered Monarchy and an ancient +cry; for it was the King; and that is how I kept the Jubilee." + +After he got home I remember how delightedly Gilbert quoted the +captions on two banners hung in the heart of the London slums. One +read, "Down with Capitalism--God Save the King." The other read, +"Lousy but loyal." He knew that it was true and it served to increase +the passionate quality of his pity. Patient he could be for himself, +but the lot of the poor aroused in him a terrible anger--and in a +broadcast on Liberty he gave that anger vent. For worse than the +presence of lice in our slums was the absence of liberty. He would +gladly, he said, have spoken merely as an Englishman but he had been +asked to speak as a Catholic, and therefore, "I am going to point out +that Catholicism created English liberty; that the freedom has +remained exactly in so far as the faith has remained; and that where +it is true that all our Faith has gone, all our freedom is going. If +I do this, I cannot ask most of you to agree with me; if I did +anything else, I could not ask any of you to respect me." + +Other speakers in the series had dwelt on the liberty secured to +Englishmen by our Parliamentary and Juridical system, both, he noted +of Catholic origin. But in his eyes even that liberty was being +imperilled today where it was not lost, while the most important +freedom of all--freedom to handle oneself and one's daily life--had +disappeared for the mass of the people. The liberty so widely praised +that followed the Reformation + + has been a limited liberty because it was only a literary + liberty. . . . You always talked about verbal liberty; you hardly + ever talked about vital liberty . . . the faddist was free to preach + his fads; but the free man was no longer free to protect his + freedom. . . . Monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, responsible forms of + rule, have collapsed under plutocracy, which is irresponsible rule. + And this has come upon us because we departed from the old morality + in three essential points. First, we supported notions against normal + customs. Second, we made the State top-heavy with a new and secretive + tyranny of wealth. And third, we forgot that there is no faith in + freedom without faith in free will. A servile fatalism dogs the creed + of materialism; because nothing, as Dante said, less than the + generosity of God could give to Man, after all ordinary orderly + gifts, the noblest of all things, which is Liberty. + +The thoughts that had thronged and pressed on him for half a century +found final expression in these broadcasts. Most of all in two talks: +one given only three months before his death in a series entitled +"The Spice of Life," the other two years earlier in one called "Seven +Days Hard." He was haunted by the ingratitude of humanity. As in his +boyhood, he saw the wonder of the world that God has given to the +children of men and he saw them unconscious of that wonder. What did +a week mean for most of them? Seven dull days. What did it really +mean? "What has really happened during the last seven days and +nights? Seven times we have been dissolved into darkness as we shall +be dissolved into dust; our very selves, so far as we know, have been +wiped out of the world of living things; and seven times we have been +raised alive like Lazarus, and found all our limbs and senses +unaltered, with the coming of the day." + +Seven days of human life, the meaning of the phrase, "the spice of +life," both brought the same recurring motif that "a great many +people are at this moment paying rather too much attention to the +spice of life, and rather too little attention to life." Not in any +"distraction from life is the secret we are all seeking, the secret +of enjoying life. I am perfectly certain that all our world will end +in despair unless there is some way of making the mind itself, the +ordinary thoughts we have at ordinary times, more healthy and more +happy than they seem to be just now, to judge by most modern novels +and poems. . . ." A week had never been for Chesterton just seven +days hard, although he had worked hard enough. He had enjoyed the +spice of life, he had liked Beer and Skittles and the distractions of +life and its high points of achievement. + + But it is much more important to remember that I have been + intensely and imaginatively happy in the queerest because the + quietest places. I have been filled with life from within in a cold + waiting-room, in a deserted railway junction. I have been completely + alive sitting on an iron seat under an ugly lamp-post at a third rate + watering place. In short, I have experienced the mere excitement of + existence in places that would commonly be called as dull as + ditchwater. And, by the way, is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with + microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun. + +The younger generation were despairing of life in the face of life's +manifold gifts. Chesterton as a youth had revolted against the +pessimism of his elders, now he revolted as an old man against a +young generation corroded by a yet more poisonous pessimism. "The +Hollow Men" T. S. Eliot had called a poem and in it came the lines + + This is the way the world ends + This is the way the world ends + This is the way the world ends + Not with a bang but a whimper. + + Forgive me if I say in my old world fashion, that I'm damned if I + ever felt like that . . . I knew that the world was perishable and + would end, but I did not think it would end with a whimper, but, if + anything, with a trump of doom . . . I will even be so indecently + frivolous as to burst into song, and say to the young pessimists: + + Some sneer; some snigger; some simper; + In the youth where we laughed, and sang. + And they may end with a whimper + But we will end with a bang. + +His last message for this generation was the sound of a trumpet +calling us to resurrection. A dead world must find life again, must +go back to the meaning of the book of Genesis at which it had learnt +to sneer: must realise a week once more with--"the grandeur of that +conception, by which a week has become a wonderful and mystical thing +in which Man imitates God in his labour and in his rest." + +Through his call sounds a note of most solemn warning. + + Unless we can bring men back to enjoying the daily life which + moderns call a dull life, our whole civilisation will be in ruins in + about fifteen years. Whenever anybody proposes anything really + practical, to solve the economic evil today, the answer always is + that the solution would not work, because the modern town populations + would think life dull. That is because they are entirely unacquainted + with life. They know nothing but distractions from life; dreams which + may be found in the cinema; that is, brief oblivions of life. . . . + Unless we can make daybreak and Daily bread and the creative secrets + of labour interesting in themselves, there will fall on all our + civilisation a fatigue which is the one disease from which + civilisations do not recover. So died the great Pagan civilisation; + of bread and circuses and forgetfulness of the household gods.* + +[* _The Listener_, January 31, 1934.] + +This splendid world that God has given us, and the furniture of it as +the writer of Genesis saw it in his vision, has in it the material of +happiness in labour and in the true end of labour. "For the true end +of all creation is completion; and the true end of all completion is +contemplation." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +Last Days + + +DOROTHY TOLD ME one day in 1935 that Gilbert had written the +beginning of an autobiography some years before but had laid it +aside. She had, she said, a superstitious feeling about urging him to +get on with it--as though the survey of his life and the end of his +life would somehow be tied together. I urged her to get over this +feeling because of all the book would mean to the world. After this +talk she got out the manuscript and laid it on Gilbert's desk. He +read what he had written and immediately set about dictating the rest +of the book. + +Early in 1936 he told a group of friends that the book was finished. +One of them said "Nunc dimittis" and Edward Macdonald, who was +present, commented: "The words were chilling, though he seemed to be +in fairly good health. But certainly he was tired. . . ." + +The book showed no sign of fatigue. High-spirited and intensely +amusing, it seemed to promise many more--for into almost old age he +had carried the imagination and energy in which as a very young man +we saw his resemblance to the youthful Dickens. + +Reviewing his life with the thread of thanksgiving that had been his +clue throughout, he looked back on it as "indefensibly happy" and it +was in truth a rich and full human existence. Yet Father Vincent, who +knew him intimately, speaks of him in these last years as heartbroken +by public events, as suffering with the pains of creation. "He was +crucified to his thought. Like St. Thomas he was never away from his +thought. A fellow friar had to care for Thomas, to feed him 'sicut +nutrix' because of his absorption in his thought." Thus Father +Vincent saw Frances cherishing Gilbert both mind and body. + +A friend, protesting vehemently against the phrase "crucified to his +thought" says, "It was his life-long beatitude to observe and ponder +and conclude." + +Of his own so-called paradoxes Gilbert was wont to maintain that it +was God not he, who made them, and here we have surely one of the +paradoxes of human life. Intense vitality, joy in living, vigor of +creative thought bring to their owners immense happiness _and_ acute +suffering. + +Is it not a part of the most fundamental of all antinomies--the +greatness and the littleness of man? Created for eternity and +prisoned in time, we have no perfect joy in this world, and the +reaching upward and outward of the mind is at once the keenest joy +and the fiercest pain--rather as we talk of growing pains. Only +Gilbert loved to grow so much that he would not think of the pain. +"You must never pity me," he said to Lady Fisher, and all through his +life he was saying and meaning "You must never pity me." + +But while he was writing the _Autobiography_ and giving thanks for +his life, its last months were shadowed by trials especially heavy +for a man of his imagination and temperament. For now more than ever +his thought was not allowed to concentrate on those realities where +the joy of contemplation overpowers the pain of growth. + +He loved Italy--even more than France he says in one letter--yet he +could not but condemn the invasion of Abyssinia. The shadow of the +Spanish war loomed on the horizon and behind it a darker shadow. In +his political thinking Chesterton was haunted by the present war. +Then too, while public controversy did not trouble him at all, he +hated any breach of the peace within the ranks of his own small army. +The fights among the staff of the paper about Distributism had been +as nothing compared with those about Abyssiania. There are leading +articles taking one line and letters in the Cockpit in violent +opposition. Maurice Reckitt writes in _As it Happened:_ + +In the last autumn of his life I wrote to him privately in distress +at the line which the _Weekly_ was taking on Abyssinia, and saying +that I felt that I ought to leave the board, as I was so much out of +sympathy with this. I received this reply, from which I have deleted +only some personal references: + +"Top Meadow, Beaconsfield 19th September 1935. + +"MY DEAR MR. MAURICE RECKITT, + +"I do hope you will forgive me for the delay in answering your most +important letter, involving as it does tragic dooms of separation +which I hope need not be fulfilled. . . . I should like to ask you to +defer your decision at least until you have seen the next week's +number of the paper, in which I expand further the argument I have +used in the current number and bring it, I think, rather nearer to +your natural and justifiable point of view. Between ourselves, and +without prejudice to anybody, I do think myself that there ought to +have been a more definite condemnation of the attack on Abyssinia. +The whole thing happened while I was having a holiday. . . . + +"Very shortly, the mortal danger, to me, is the rehabilitation of +Capitalism, in spite of the slump, which will certainly take the form +of a hypocritical patriotism and glorification of England, at the +expense of Italy or anybody else. For the moment I only want you to +understand that this is the mountainous peril that towers in my own +mind. + +"Yours always, + +"G. K. CHESTERTON." + +Three months later in _G.K.'s Weekly_ he wrote about the whole matter +in an article in which he treated the question as largely one of +proportion. Not enough was being said in England of her own or the +League's position about Japan's attack on China: too much (in +proportion) about Italy in Abyssinia. "If the League of Nations +really were an impartial judicial authority; and if (what is about as +probable) I were one of the judges; and if the Abyssinian Case were +brought before me, I should decide instantly against Italy. I have +again and again in this place stated in the strongest words the +particular case against Italy." He was against Italy in Abyssinia as +he had been against England in South Africa. But "I should not be +bound to rejoice at the Prussians riding into Paris because it might +prevent the British riding into Pretoria." + +"Tragic dooms of separation" on public issues were not the only +trouble with _G.K.'s Weekly:_ the staff were also engaged in violent +personal quarrels about which Gilbert was asked to take sides--was +even bitterly reproached by one for supposedly favouring another. It +would be hard today to say what it was all about, but two of the +contestants have told me since that had they had the least notion how +ill he was getting they would have died rather than so distress him. +For it was a real and a very deep distress. + +It may be remembered that Miss Dunham noted how Gilbert used to make +a mysterious sign in the air as he lit his cigar. That sign, says +Dorothy, was the sign of the cross. Long ago he had written of human +life as something not grey and drab but shot through with strong and +even violent colours that took the pattern of the Cross. He saw the +Cross signed by God on the trees as their branches spread to right +and left: he saw it signed by man as he shaped a paling or a door +post. The habit grew upon him of making it constantly: in the air +with his match, as he lit his cigar, over a cup of coffee. As he +entered a room he would make on the door the sign of our Redemption. +No, we must never pity him even when his life was pressed upon by +that sign which stands for joy through pain. + +Those nearest to him grew anxious quite early in 1936. He was +overtired and working with the weary insistence that over-fatigue can +bring. The remedy so often successful of a trip to the continent was +tried. They went to Lourdes and Lisieux and he seemed better and sang +a good deal in his tuneless voice as Dorothy drove them through the +lanes of France. From Lisieux he wrote a pencilled letter, long and +almost illegible "under the shadow of the shrine"--trying to +reconcile the disputants with himself and with one another. + +The summer was cold and bleak and the tour was all too short. Home +again his mind seemed not to grip as well as usual and he began to +fall asleep during his long hours of work. The doctor was called and +thought very seriously of the state of his heart--that heart which +many years ago another doctor had called too small for his enormous +frame. The thought of a Chesterton whose heart was too small presents +a paradox in his own best manner. + +To Edward Macdonald who had missed a message that he was too ill to +be visited, Gilbert talked in his old fashion and promised a poem he +had just thought of for the paper--on St. Martin of Tours. "The point +is that he was a true Distributist. He gave _half_ his cloak to the +beggar." + +Soon after this he fell into a sort of reverie from which awaking he +said: + +"The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and +every one must choose his side." + +Frances and he had both thought his recovery in 1916 was a miracle. +"I did not dare," said Frances, "to pray for another miracle." + +Monsignor Smith anointed him and then Father Vincent arrived in +response to a message from Frances which he thought meant she wanted +him to see Gilbert for the last time. Taken to the sick room he sang +over the dying man the Salve Regina. This hymn to Our Lady is sung in +the Dominican Order over every dying friar and it was surely fitting +for the biographer of St. Thomas and the ardent suppliant of Our Lady: + +"Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, vita dulcedo et spes nostra +salve. . . . Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc +exsilium ostende. . . ." + +Gilbert's pen lay on the table beside his bed and Father Vincent +picked it up and kissed it. + +It was June 14, 1936, the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, +the same Feast as his reception into the Church fourteen years +earlier. The Introit for that day's Mass was printed on his Memorial +card, so that, as Father Ignatius Rice noted with a smile, even his +Memorial card had a joke about his size: + +The Lord became my protector and he brought me forth into a large +place. He saved me because he was well pleased with me. I will love +thee O Lord my strength. The Lord is my firmament and my refuge and +my deliverer. + +To these words from the Mass, Frances added Walter de la Mare's +tribute: + + Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way + Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest; + The mills of Satan keep his lance in play, + Pity and innocence his heart at rest. + +The day of the funeral was one of blazing sunshine. "One of your +days," Gilbert would have said to Frances. Grey days were his, when +nature's colours he said were brightest against her more sombre +background, sunny days were hers for she loved a blue blazing sky. +The little church near the railway was filled to overflowing by his +friends from London, from all over England, from France even and from +America. All Beaconsfield wanted to honour him, so the funeral +procession instead of taking the direct route passed through the old +town where he had so often sat in the barber's shop and chatted with +his fellow citizens. At Top Meadow we gathered to talk. Frances a few +of us saw for a little while in her own room. With that utter +self-forgetfulness that was hers she said to her sister-in-law, "It +was so much worse for you. You had Cecil for such a short time." + +Later Mgr. Knox preached in Westminster Cathedral to a crowd far +vaster. Both Frances and Cardinal Hinsley received telegrams from +Cardinal Pacelli (now Pope Pius XII). To Cardinal Hinsley he cabled +"Holy Father deeply grieved death Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton +devoted son Holy Church gifted Defender of the Catholic Faith. His +Holiness offers paternal sympathy people of England assures prayers +dear departed, bestows Apostolic Benediction." This telegram was read +to the vast crowd in the Cathedral and found an echo in the hearts of +his fellow countrymen. + +Hugh Kingsmill wrote to Cyril Clemens: "My friend Hesketh Pearson was +staying with me when I read of Chesterton's death. I told him of it +through the bathroom door, and he sent up a hollow groan which must +have echoed that morning all over England." It was with reason that +the Pope offered his sympathy not to Catholics alone, but to all the +people of England. To the policeman who said at the funeral, "We'd +all have been here if we could have got off duty. He was a grand +man." To the man at the _Times_ office who broke in on the +announcement of his death, "Good God. That isn't _our_ Chesterton, is +it?" To the barber who had to leave his customer unshaved that he +might talk to Edward Macdonald. To all of us, his friends, on whom +the loss lay almost unbearably heavy. To those for whom his presence +would have pierced and lightened even the dark shadow of the war. To +all the people of England. + +Once more a Pope had bestowed upon an Englishman the title Defender +of the Faith. The first man to receive it had been Henry VIII and the +words are still engraved on the coins of England. The secular press +would not print the telegram in full because it bestowed upon a +subject a royal title. + +After Gilbert's death Frances tried to take up life again. She +visited her cousins in Germany, a university professor and his +English wife, who were undergoing the persecution of the Swastika. +She was deeply moved by their suffering and the peril they stood in. + +Home again she surrounded herself more than ever with children, +taking a Catechism class and encouraging her small scholars to come +to Top Meadow where her garden also helped her towards a difficult +peace and serenity, rendered harder by the struggle with ill health. +Soon we began to realise that the physical weakness, which all her +courage could not overcome, was more than merely her old malady. +"What did Frances die of?" Bernard Shaw wrote to me. "Was it of +widowhood?" + +In fact it was a most painful cancer heroically endured. She was +cared for by Dorothy and presently by the nuns of the Bon Secours. +Her friends visited her as they were allowed. Father Vincent McNabb, +after a talk of almost an hour, noted how never once did she speak of +herself or of her suffering. + +Her concerns were for Dorothy, for the Church, and for Gilbert's +memory; Eric Gill's monument, the biography, the permanence of his +own writing. She survived him little more than two years. Near the +end, from the face of a dying woman shrunken with pain, we still +could see those "great heavenly eyes that seem to make the truth at +the heart of things almost too terribly simple and naked for the sons +of flesh."* + +[* Letter from Gilbert, see [Chapter VIII].] + + + + +APPENDIX A + +AN EARLIER CHESTERTON + + +BOTH THE _Autobiography_ and _Prison Life_ of George Laval Chesterton +are worth reading. There is conscious humour: we feel it might be our +own Chesterton when we hear the Captain describing himself as +"laughing immoderately" because he had made a fool of himself and +others were laughing at him. There is unconscious humour, especially +in the astonishing style, full of such phrases as "I was the most +obnoxious to peril," or "something not far removed from impunity +stalked abroad." + +Captain Chesterton started life as a soldier. During the Peninsular +War his regiment was stationed at Cartagena. "It was a subject of +deep mortification to most of us to be thus supinely occupied in this +lone garrison, thereby being debarred from the Peninsular medal, and +hence a widespread disaffection on that most tender subject which no +reasoning has been equal to dispel." However, later he saw a good +deal of active service, being in the War of 1812, in the course of +which the battle of Bladensburg was fought and Washington fell to the +British arms. "The astonished slaves," he says, describing the +advance on Washington, "rested from their work in the fields +contiguous; and the awe-struck peasants and yeomen of this portion of +America beheld with perturbation the tremendous preparations to +devastate their blooming country." + +To the smaller professional armies of that day peace was a +misfortune, and in his quaint style Captain Chesterton describes the +demonstrations of joy on the part of himself and his fellow officers +at the escape of Napoleon from Elba, foreseeing, as he frankly +observes, "a scope for further adventure and hope of personal +advancement." This hope was short-lived and we next see him fighting +in the British Legion of a rebel South American army against Spain. +The general mismanagement of this expedition, and the fact that the +Republicans killed all their prisoners "was a death blow to all my +past enthusiasm in the Republican cause." Many British officers +"participating with me in the detestation for cold-blooded butchery, +conspired from that moment to elude this detested service. . . . Mark +ye who delight in transcendant Liberalism . . . the cruel exigencies +of such a warfare." + +In his acceptance of "transcendant Liberalism," yet his determination +to see truly what passed before his eyes and when needful to change +his standpoint, this earlier Chesterton was much like the later. He +had not the genius of Gilbert, he could not see so far, but he shared +his refusal to be blinded by custom, theory or even patriotism. In +his accounts of army life he had commented fearlessly on the cruelty +of the punishments and described his fellow officers as made ill by +seeing a private receive five hundred lashes. He had noted corruption +in the "Train Service" which "was consequently divested of its +genuine claim to honour." Fêted by the planters of Jamaica, he had +yet spoken with horror of their slave ownership. + +Now he was appointed governor of a prison in England and here began +the great work of his life in a frontal attack on the corruptions he +discovered. The yardsmen did a secret traffic in all the goods +forbidden in the prison, there were caches of tobacco, spirits and +such things under the pavements, the weaker prisoners were robbed by +the stronger. The women's and men's quarters were so arranged that by +connivance of the jailors frequent meetings took place. On one of +these occasions Captain Chesterton himself appeared: + + My hands were seized with tender empressement, and I was addressed + as "my love," "My darling," "my dear creature:" and all the + conventional endearments of the pavé were showered upon me. I had to + struggle for enlargement, and beat a hasty retreat, quite confounded + by my initiation into "prison discipline." And the consternation + occasioned by this discovery became perfectly electric.* + +[* _Revelations of Prison Life_, pp. 84-85.] + +Attempts to bribe him were followed by attempts to kill him, but he +stood firm. Mrs. Fry invoked his aid to improve the home conditions +to which the prisoners had to return. Chesterton turned to Dickens +and to Dickens's friend, Miss Coutts, in defiance of a narrow-minded +magistrate + + who perversely insisted (as was by cynical interpretation literally + too true) that Miss Coutts had no right to confer with prisoners + within those walls, nor was it "to be tolerated that Mr. Charles + Dickens should walk into the prison whenever he pleased."* + +[* Ibid., p. 186.] + +From Cold Bath Fields the reforms begun by Captain Chesterton and +warmly seconded by Dickens spread to other prisons, "Although (he +declares) I consented to forego pecuniary advantage, I cling the more +tenaciously to the credit of my past exertions; when, beset with +fraud, ferocity, and moral pollution, I achieved a triumph fraught +with civilizing influences."* + +[* Ibid., p. v.] + + + + +APPENDIX B + +Prize Poem Written at St. Paul's + + +This is the only version I have been able to find. Across the top is +written in another hand: "This is not exactly the same as given in +the prize poem." The difference is probably slight. + +ST. FRANCIS XAVIER +The Apostle of the Indies + +He left his dust, by all the myriad tread +Of yon dense millions trampled to the strand, +Or 'neath some cross forgotten lays his head +Where dark seas whiten on a lonely land: +He left his work, what all his life had planned, +A waning flame to flicker and to fall, +Mid the huge myths his toil could scarce withstand, +And the light died in temple and in hall, +And the old twilight sank and settled over all. + +He left his name, a murmur in the East, +That dies to silence amid older creeds, +With which he strove in vain: the fiery priest +Of faiths less fitted to their ruder needs: +As some lone pilgrim, with his staff and beads, +Mid forest-brutes whom ignorance makes tame, +He dwelt, and sowed an Eastern Church's seeds +He reigned a teacher and a priest of fame: +He died and dying left a murmur and a name. + +He died: and she, the Church that bade him go, +Yon dim Enchantress with her mystic claim, +Has ringed his forehead with her aureole-glow, +And monkish myths, and all the whispered fame +Of miracle, has clung about his name: +So Rome has said: but we, what answer we +Who in grim Indian gods and rites of shame +O'er all the East the teacher's failure see, +His eastern church a dream, his toil a vanity. + +This then we say: as Time's dark face at last +Moveth its lips of thunder to decree +The doom that grew through all the murmuring past +To be the canon of the times to be: +No child of truth or priest of progress he +Yet not the less a hero of his wars +Striving to quench the light he could not see, +And God, who knoweth all that makes and mars, +Judges his soul unseen which throbs among the stars. + +God only knows, man failing in his choice, +How far apparent failure may succeed, +God only knows what echo of His voice +Lives in the cant of many a fallen creed, +God only gives the labourer his meed +For all the lingering influence widely spread +Broad branching into many a word and deed +When dim oblivion veils the fountain-head; +So lives and lingers on the spirit of the dead. + +This then we say: let all things further rest +And this brave life, with many thousands more +Be gathered up in the eternal's breast +In that dim past his Love is bending o'er +Healing all shattered hopes and failure sore: +Since he had bravely looked on death and pain +For what he chose to worship and adore +Cast boldly down his life for loss or gain +In the eternal lottery: not to be in vain. + + + + +APPENDIX C + +The Chestertons + + +The composition of _The Chestertons_ is not without interest for the +student of legendary literature. By a curious paradox the book had to +be strikingly untrue to be accepted as true, since the jokes about +sisters-in-law are legion, so that mere commonplace shafts of what is +called "feminine spite" would have gained little credence. Yet on the +other hand, Mrs. Cecil Chesterton was able (to quote _The Mikado_) to +get from her husband a good deal of "corroborative detail designed to +give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." +Of these details some are true, some false, all arranged to support +the main untruth of Frances and Gilbert's relation to one another. +The thesis of the book is that Gilbert was an unhappy and frustrated +man (a) because Frances shrank from consummating their marriage, and +(b) because she dragged him away from his London life and friends to +bury him in a middle class suburb. + +I confess that I am Victorian enough heartily to dislike writing this +appendix. Yet it is necessary, for many who read _The Chestertons_ +have supposed that a story told by so near a connection must be true. + +The ground was laid for the introduction of the Legend by the tale of +the Red Haired Phantom, if I may describe it in the terms of a ghost +story. That ghost was easy to lay (see Introduction). Next comes the +odd account of Gilbert and Frances' honeymoon and of the years that +followed. It is of course possible that the first night of their +marriage was not happy--especially in the Victorian days of reticence +which left wife and even possibly husband unprepared for life +together: (though this did not normally prevent a happy marriage and +a pack of children afterwards). But I find it impossible to imagine +Cecil Chesterton, like the bridesmaid on the honeymoon, receiving and +passing on such a story as that of Gilbert "quivering with +self-reproach" so that after the first night he "dared not even +contemplate a repetition. . . . Gilbert, young and vital, was +condemned to a pseudo-monastic life, in which he lived with a woman +but never enjoyed one." (p. 282) + +There is a psychological reason for thinking this story especially +improbable and a physical reason for dismissing it as actually +impossible. + +A white horse had from his childhood been for Gilbert the supreme +sign of romance, and he had chosen to spend the first night of his +honeymoon at the White Horse Inn. From his honeymoon he wrote home +that he had "a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife. What +more can any man want?" Ten years later he wrote _The Ballad of the +White Horse_ and dedicated it to Frances, saying, + +"O go you onward, where you are +Shall honour and laughter be. +Past purpled forest and pearled foam, +God's winged pavilion free to roam, +Your face, that is a wandering home, +A flying home for me." + +And over thirty years later he wrote again of beginning his honeymoon +under the shadow of the White Horse, and compared it to a trip to +fairyland. + +Can any human being read the record of this recurrent motif and +reconcile it with Mrs. Cecil's picture? + +Let me refer again to _The Ballad of The White Horse_. Is it +conceivable that any man should write after ten years of frustration +and unhappiness: + + Up through an empty house of stars + Being what heart you are, + Up the inhuman steeps of space + As on a staircase go in grace + Carrying the firelight on your face + Beyond the loneliest star. + +This is not the way a man writes to a neurotic cold-hearted woman who +has made a hermit of him! + +Mrs. Cecil was of course never in the intimacy of the family. She +only married Cecil in 1917--by which date Gilbert and Frances had +been married sixteen years--and before that she was merely an +acquaintance. But Frances's intimates could have told her how absurd +her story was, for by a rare good fortune the operation Frances +underwent to enable her to bear children is itself evidence one could +hardly have hoped for in a matter which civilized people are not much +given to discussing. Frances talked of the operation to Monsignor +O'Connor, to Dorothy Collins and to Annie Firmin, and I have quoted +the doctor's letter about it (see above, [Chapter XV]). It was an +abiding tragedy for both husband and wife that it was unsuccessful. +Frances would have shrunk from no suffering in her passionate wish +for a child. + +There is another curiosity in the Legend: Gilbert, despite this +story, was apparently perfectly happy in London during the _first +eight years of marriage:_ it was only after the removal to +Beaconsfield and in almost middle life that he began to be +"frustrated." + +Poor Frances: what a picture of her had been proposed for posterity: +so powerful she could waft Gilbert away from London and from his +friends, could force him to make her his banker and reduce him to a +"bounty" strictly limited to half-a-crown, yet so powerless that "she +had to sign" the cheques for _G.K.'s Weekly_, much as she hated it. +Her poetry (described as "quite charming") is spoken of as appearing +in "little Parish Magazines"--the only papers she cared to read owing +to her implacable hatred for Fleet Street. It is hard to picture +Frances with an implacable hatred for anything, and it will be +remembered that she actually begged Father O'Connor to leave Gilbert +to be "a jolly journalist." The periodicals in which her poems +appeared were _The Observer_, _The Sunday Times_, _The Daily Chronicle,_ +the _Westminster Gazette_ and _The New Witness_. Personally I have +never much admired Frances's verse, but a professional journalist +might have been quite pleased at "making" all these papers. Not one +poem ever appeared in a Parish Magazine so far as either Dorothy or I +have been able to ascertain. The point is not a very important one +but the sneer is symptomatic. + +A curious magic pervades _The Chestertons:_ succulent sausages appear +in the kitchen at Overstrand Mansions, and flowing torrents of beer, +so that Gilbert can steal away from an unsympathetic wife to consume +them with his Fleet Street friends. A studio materialises in a meadow +at Beaconsfield. Can we imagine Gilbert cooking or even ordering +sausages, getting beer to the flat, designing or discovering the +studio? Anyone thinking about what really happened would realise that +Frances ordered the beer and sausages, Frances built the studio. But +that is not the sort of thought we are to think about Frances. + +About her we are told: that she always wore the wrong colors: that +she gave Gilbert insufficient and indigestible food: that she did not +know what work meant: that Mrs. Belloc thought Gilbert ought to beat +her: that she kept the journalists away when Gilbert was dying (in +point of fact both telephone and door bell were so near the sick room +that the use of both had to be avoided): that she did not give her +guests enough to eat at his funeral: that she actually sought the +quiet of her own room instead of staying downstairs to receive +condolences when her husband's coffin had just been lowered into the +grave. + +With all this spate of detail, we are not told that Frances left +£1000 to Mrs. Cecil plus £500 for her Cecil Houses. + +Even if I could have ignored the attack on Frances, I should be +obliged as his biographer to deal with the attack on Gilbert--more +subtly but no less certainly made. The story of the marriage affects +Gilbert as much as Frances, and the book culminates in the final +assertion that his drinking killed him. Here are the comments (sent +to me by Dorothy) of the doctor who attended Gilbert and Frances from +1919 until they died: + +"Today Dr. Bakewell came in and answered the questions about the book +which we asked him. + +"(1) He says that the idea that G.K. was better when drinking in Fleet +Street because the stimulus of conversation would eat up effects of +the alcohol is absolute nonsense. It would have just as bad an effect +under any conditions. Dr. Bakewell said that G.K. was his patient for +nearly twenty years and during that time he never treated him for +alcoholism or saw any trace of it, though in an absentminded way he +was always liable to drink too much of anything if it were +there--even water. + +"Without the 'understanding, loving, tactful care' of Frances he would +have died twenty years before. Certainly if he had racketted around +Fleet Street any longer. + +"Dr. Bakewell said Gilbert was 'perfectly happy in Beaconsfield and +not in any way frustrated. There was no frustration of any kind and +no longing for London life or friends.' He was very intimate with +Gilbert and would have known if there had been. + +"(2) The doctor says that Gilbert died of a failing heart owing to +fatty degeneration, leading to dropsy. + +"(3) Frances had arthritis of the spine. (Not curvature as stated by +Mrs. Cecil.) + +"The doctor said that he put him on the water wagon several times and +when this was done Gilbert observed the rule most meticulously. Dr. +Bakewell said that he did not do it very often because he did not +consider that drink was in any way affecting Gilbert's health during +the greater part of the time he knew him." + +In a later conversation he added that when he did forbid alcohol at +certain periods it was simply to make liquid less attractive, as too +much of even water was bad for Gilbert. + +The statement made by Mrs. Cecil that drinking in London was not so +serious because the talk and excitement among friends would carry off +the effects, is thought by doctors almost comic. Dr. Bakewell denies +it absolutely: Dr. Pocock who, it will be remembered, attended +Gilbert during his illness of 1914-15 says, "Absolute nonsense: would +probably have been worse in London." He adds also, "I cannot +understand why such an attack was made upon G.K. From my personal +observation he owed a very great deal to Mrs. G.K. who greatly helped +his restoration to health." + +One can get one's pen'orth of fun out of the chapter on the Exile of +Beaconsfield when one remembers the true story of those years: Rome, +Jerusalem, U.S.A., Poland, France, Spain, Malta, lectures all over +England, lively contests for the Lord Rectorship of three +universities, London again and again--for editing, mock trials, +debates and Distributist Beanos--and frequently in furnished flats +which Frances would take for the winter months. One can only suppose +that Mrs. Cecil was so little intimate with them that she did not +realise all this. + +And then Beaconsfield itself--parties in the Studio; people down from +London, visitors from Poland, France, America, Italy, Holland and +other countries; the Eric Gills, the Bernard Shaws, the Garvins, the +Emile Cammaerts and others living in the neighborhood; the guest room +always occupied by some intimate. Meanwhile the books poured out of +the little study. Mrs. Cecil thinks Gilbert hardly ever again wrote a +masterpiece after leaving Battersea, yet in support of this idea she +lists as masterpieces _The Ball and the Cross_ (written at +Beaconsfield), _Lepanto_ (written at Beaconsfield), _Magic_ (written +at Beaconsfield), _Stevenson_ (written at Beaconsfield) and _The +Ballad of the White Horse_(mainly written at Beaconsfield). Of all +the books she mentions in this connection only three were written in +London! And she admits that the world at large did not share her view +of the sterilizing effect of Beaconsfield, for she writes, "Meanwhile +his fame grew wider, his sales greater. In exile he ruled a literary +world."* + +[* P. 83.] + +Gilbert left to Mrs. Cecil Chesterton sums equal to those later left +to her by Frances--£1000 for herself and £500 for Cecil Houses. + +The ingratitude that omitted all mention of these benefactions struck +the imagination of several of the Chesterton family as the worst +feature in the book. But to Gilbert and Frances the giving of money +even in their own lifetime was a slight matter. They had given +something far greater. + +Why is the memory of Cecil Chesterton alive today? Because of his +brother's labors. Why is it possible for Mrs. Cecil to declare that +he was the greater editor, to imply that he was the greater man? +Because Gilbert kept saying so. Never has such devotion been shown by +one brother to the memory of another: never has the greater man +exalted the lesser to such a pedestal. + +We are told in _The Chestertons_ that Frances sacrificed both Gilbert +and herself on the altar of her family. Truly there was much +self-sacrifice in the lives of both to family, friends and causes. +They did not feel it as self-sacrifice to enrich the lives of others +even at cost to themselves. + +But the heaviest cost they paid lay in the years of a toil that was +literally killing Gilbert while Frances watched him growing old too +soon and straining his heart with work crushingly heavy: and if there +was a single altar for that supreme sacrifice it was no other than +the altar of Cecil's memory. + + + + +Acknowledgments + + +I am exceedingly grateful to the following publishers for permission +to quote from these books: + +DODD, MEAD & CO.: +_The Man Who Was Thursday; Orthodoxy; The Napoleon of Notting Hill; +Heretics; George Bernard Shaw; The Ball and the Cross; The Poet and +the Lunatic; Alarms and Discursions; The Ballad of the White Horse; +What's Wrong with the World; Manalive; Sidelights on New London and +Newer York; The Uses of Diversity; The History of England; Irish +Impressions; Collected Poems; The Queen of Seven Swords; The +Everlasting Man; Cobbett; Outline of Sanity; Tales of the Long Bow; +What I Saw in America; The Thing; The Defendant; The Barbarism of +Berlin: or The Appetite of Tyranny; Eugenics and Other Evils; +Collected Poems; G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism_ (by Cecil Chesterton). + +DOUBLEDAY DORAN: +_St. Francis of Assisi; The Years Between_. + +E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.: +_Criticisms and Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens_. + +FARRAR & RINEHART: +_Chaucer_. + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: +_Robert Browning; The Catholic Church and Conversion_. + +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: +_The Victorian Age in Literature_. + +G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS: +_Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading_. + +UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME: +_The Arena_. + +"Gehazi," by Rudyard Kipling, from _The Years Between_, copyright +1914, 1919 by Rudyard Kipling, is reprinted by permission of Mrs. +Bambridge and Doubleday Doran and Co., Inc., of New York, and The +Macmillan Company, of Canada, publishers. + + + + +Bibliography + + +In this list I have given dates of earliest publication. In some +cases publication in England preceded that in the United States. + +1900. _Greybeards at Play_. R. B. Johnson. 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Carlyle, _Past and Present_. + _Nonsense Rhymes_, by W. C. Monkhouse. + _R.L.S._, in Bookman Booklets. + _Tolstoy_, in Bookman Booklets. + +1903. _Boswell. Life of Johnson Extracts_. + +1904. 0. W. Holmes, _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. Red Letter + Library. + Carlyle, _Sartor Resartus_. National Library. + Bunyan, _Pilgrim's Progress_. National Library. + +1905. Maxim Gorky, _Creatures That Once Were Men_. + +1906. _Dickens_ in Everyman Library. Prefaces to all volumes. + _Matthew Arnold_. Everyman Library. + _Elsie Lang_. Literary London. + _Characteristics of R.L.S_. Little Books for Bookmen. + _Tennyson as an Intellectual Force_. Little Books for Bookmen. + +1907. _The Book of Job_. + George Haw, _From Workhouse to Westminster: Will Crooks_. + +1908. Ruskin, _Poems_. Muses Library. + W. W. Crotch, _The Cottage Homes of England_. + +1909. Darrell Figgis. _A Vision of Life_. + Margaret Arndt, _Meadows of Play_. + +1910. _Thackeray, Selection_. Masters of Literature Series. + _Eyes of Youth, Anthology_. + +1911. _Johnson, Extracts_. Ed. Alice Meynell. + Thackeray, _The Book of Snobs_. Red Letter Library. + +1912. _Famous Paintings, Reproduced in Colour_. + A. V. Baverstock, _English Agricultural Labourer_. + _Aesop's Fables_. Translated by Vernon Jones. + +1913. Dickens, _The Christmas Carol_. Waverley Dickens. + +1915. _Bohemia's Claim for Freedom_. London, Czech Committee. + +1916. C. C. Mendell and E. Shanks, _Hilaire Belloc_. + Cobbett, _Cottage Economy_. + Harewranath Maitra, _Hinduism_. + +1917. S. Nordentoft, _Practical Pacifism and Its Adversaries_. + +1918. Sybil Bristowe, _Provocations_. + William Dyson, _Australia at War_. + Leonard Merrick, _House of Lynch_. + +1919. Cecil Chesterton, _History of the U. S. A_. + Bernard Capes, _The Skeleton Key_. + +1920. M. E. Jones, _Life in Old Cambridge_. + +1921. Vivienne Dayrell, _Little Wings_. + H. M. Bateman, _A Book of Drawings_. + +1922. Jane Austen, _Love and Friendship_. + +1923. Irene Hernaman, _Child Mediums_. + 0. R. Vassall Phillips, _The Mustard Tree_. + +1924. 0. F. Dudley, _Will Men Be Like Gods_. + Greville Macdonald, _George Macdonald and His Wife_. + _Catholic Who's Who_. + P. M. Wright, _Purple Hours_. + +1925. Fulton Sheen, _God and Intelligence_. + Alexander Arnoux, _Abishag_. Trans. Joyce Davis. + +1926. A. H. Godwin, _Gilbert and Sullivan_. + Johnson, _Rasselas_. + _Catholic Who's Who_. + L. G. Sieveking, _Bats in the Belfry_. + _The Man Who Was Thursday_, Dramatized Version. + W. S. Masterman, _The Wrong Letter_. + _Royal Society of Literature, Essays_, Vol. vi. + +1927. E. Turner, _Grandmamma's Book of Rhymes_. + G. C. Heseltine, _The Change_. Essays on the Land. + H. Massis, _Defence of the West_. + _Forster's Life of Dickens_. Everyman Library. + +1928. Mary Webb, _The Golden Arrow_. + +1929. H. Ghéon, _The Secret of the Cure D'ars_, trans. F. Sheed. + W. R. Titterton, _Drinking Songs_. + +1930. Miss C. Noran, _Book on Spanish History_. + _King Lear_. De Luxe Edition. Illustrated Yunge. + Introduction to _Vanity Fair_, Thackeray. Limited Edition + Club, New York. + +1931. _Giotto's Frescoes at Assisi Reproduced_. + John Gibbons, _Through Unknown Portugal_. + F. Goetel, _The Messenger of the Snow_. + Francis Thompson, _The Hound of Heaven_. + A. A. Thomas, _The Burns We Love_. + J. P. de Fonseka, _Serendipitry_. + Daniel O'Grady, _Cosmology_. + +1932. Gleeson, _Essays_. + _Essays of the Year_, Argonaut Press. + _Six Centuries of English Literature_, Vol. vi. Meredith to + Rupert Brooke. + Mrs. Homewood, _Reminiscences_. + _Penn Country Book_. + +1933. _Life of Sydney Smith_. Hesketh Pearson. + _Tale of Two Cities_. + +1934. _Peregrine Pickle_. First Edition Club, U. S. A. + Pamphlet on _Nazi Germany_ for Friends of Europe publication, + edited by Lord Tyrrell. + _G.K.'s Miscellany_. + +1935. Fr. Dowsell, _The Betrayal: A Passion Play_. + Fr. Vincent McNabb, _Book of Essays_. + _Detective Stories_. Collection from Hutchinson. + +1936. F. A. MacNutt, _A Papal Chamberlain_. + +1935. Letterpress to _Stations of the Cross_, by F. Brangwyn. + +I doubt whether the list of introductions is complete but Dorothy +Collins has done her best to make it so. Of the books and essays +about Chesterton there is no end. Those I have used in writing this +book are + +_Father Brown on Chesterton_, Monsignor O'Connor. +_G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism_, Cecil Chesterton. +_The Place of Chesterton in English Literature_, Hilaire Belloc. +_The Laughing Prophet_, Emile Cammaerts. +_G. K. Chesterton_, Cyril Clemens. + +For the chapters on Sociology I have consulted the invaluable series +on the English Labourer by the Hammonds, C. S. Orpen's _Open Fields_, +Trevelyan's _Social History of England_, Cobbett's _Rural Rides and +Cottage Economy_ and Haas' _English Labourer_. + +For the Marconi Chapter I have used the Reports of the Parliamentary +Commission and of the trial of Cecil Chesterton, C. F. G. Masterman's +_Life_ and that of Lord Reading, and contemporary press accounts. + +Throughout I have made use of the files of _The Eyewitness, The New +Witness_ and _G.K.'s Weekly_. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON*** + + +******* This file should be named 18707-8.txt or 18707-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/0/18707 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/18707-8.zip b/18707-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4d0e4d6 --- /dev/null +++ b/18707-8.zip diff --git a/18707.txt b/18707.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a207efe --- /dev/null +++ b/18707.txt @@ -0,0 +1,25983 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, by Maisie Ward + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Gilbert Keith Chesterton + + +Author: Maisie Ward + + + +Release Date: June 28, 2006 [eBook #18707] +[Most recently updated October 20, 2006] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON*** + + +E-text prepared by David McClamrock + + + +Transcriber's note + + This electronic edition is intended to contain the complete, + unaltered text of the first published edition of _Gilbert + Keith Chesterton_ by Maisie Ward (New York: Sheed & Ward, + 1943), with the following exceptions: + + The index, and a few other references to page numbers that do + not exist in this edition, have been omitted. + + Italics are represented by underscores at the beginning and + end, _like this_. + + Footnotes* have been placed directly below the paragraph + referring to them and enclosed in brackets. + + [* Like this.] + + Any other deviations from the text of the first edition may be + regarded as defects and attributed to the transcriber. + + + + + +GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON + +by + +MAISIE WARD + + + + + + + +CONTENTS + +Introduction: Chiefly Concerning Sources + + +CHAPTER + + I Background for Gilbert Keith Chesterton + II Childhood + III School Days + IV Art Schools and University College + V The Notebook + VI Towards a Career + VII Incipit Vita Nova + VIII To Frances + IX A Long Engagement + X Who is G.K.C.? + XI Married Life in London + XII Clearing the Ground for Orthodoxy + XIII Orthodoxy + XIV Bernard Shaw + XV From Battersea to Beaconsfield + XVI A Circle of Friends + XVII The Disillusioned Liberal + XVIII The Eye Witness + XIX Marconi + XX The Eve of the War (1911-1915) + XXI The War Years + XXII After the Armistice + XXIII Rome via Jerusalem + XXIV Completion + XXV The Reluctant Editor (1925-1930) + XXVI The Distributist League and Distributism + XXVII Silver Wedding +XXVIII Columbus + XXIX The Soft Answer + XXX Our Lady's Tumbler + XXXI The Living Voice + XXXII Last Days + +Appendices: + +Appendix A--An Earlier Chesterton +Appendix B--Prize Poem Written at St. Paul's +Appendix C--_The Chestertons_ + +Bibliography + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +Chiefly Concerning Sources + + +THE MATERIAL FOR this book falls roughly into two parts: spoken and +written. Gilbert Chesterton was not an old man when he died and many +of his friends and contemporaries have told me incidents and recalled +sayings right back to his early boyhood. This part of the material +has been unusually rich and copious so that I could get a clearer +picture of the boy and the young man than is usually granted to the +biographer. + +The book has been in the making for six years and in three countries. +Several times I hid it aside for some months so as to be able to get +a fresh view of it. I talked to all sorts of people, heard all sorts +of ideas, saw my subject from every side; I went to Paris to see one +old friend, to Indiana to see others, met for the first time in +lengthy talk Maurice Baring, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw; went to +Kingsland to see Mr. Belloc; gathered Gilbert's boyhood friends of +the Junior Debating Club in London and visited "Father Brown" among +his Yorkshire moors. + +Armed with a notebook, I tried to miss none who had known Gilbert +well, especially in his youth: E. C. Bentley, Lucian Oldershaw, +Lawrence Solomon, Edward Fordham. I had ten long letters from Annie +Firmin, my most valuable witness as to Gilbert's childhood. For +information on the next period of his life, I talked to Monsignor +O'Connor, to Hilaire Belloc, Maurice Baring, Charles Somers Cocks, F. +Y. Eccles and others, besides being now able to draw on my own +memories. Frances I had talked with on and off about their early +married years ever since I had first known them, but she was, alas, +too ill and consequently too emotionally unstrung during the last +months for me to ask her all the questions springing in my mind. +"Tell Maisie," she said to Dorothy Collins, "not to talk to me about +Gilbert. It makes me cry." + +For the time at Beaconsfield, out of a host of friends the most +valuable were Dr. Pocock and Dr. Bakewell. Among priests, Monsignors +O'Connor and Ronald Knox, Fathers Vincent McNabb, O.P. and Ignatius +Rice, O.S.B. were especially intimate. + +Dorothy Collins's evidence covers a period of ten years. That of H. +G. Wells and Bernard Shaw is reinforced by most valuable letters +which they have kindly allowed me to publish. + +Then too Gilbert was so much of a public character and so popular +with his fellow journalists that stories of all kinds abound: +concerning him there is a kind of evidence, and very valuable it is, +that may be called a Boswell Collective. It is fitting that it should +be so. We cannot picture G.K. like the great lexicographer +accompanied constantly by one ardent and observant witness, pencil in +hand, ready to take notes over the teacups. (And by the way, in spite +of an acquaintance who regretted in this connection that G.K. was not +latterly more often seen in taverns, it was over the teacups, even +more than over the wine glasses, that Boswell made his notes. I have +seen Boswell's signature after wine--on the minutes of a meeting of +The Club--and he was in no condition then for the taking of notes. +Even the signature is almost illegible.) But it is fitting that +Gilbert, who loved all sorts of men so much, should be kept alive for +the future by all sorts of men. From the focussing of many views from +many angles this picture has been composed, but they are all views of +one man, and the picture will show, I think, a singular unity. When +Whistler, as Gilbert himself once said, painted a portrait he made +and destroyed many sketches--how many it did not matter, for all, +even of his failures, were fruitful--but it would have mattered +frightfully if each time he looked up he found a new subject sitting +placidly for his portrait. Gilbert was fond of asking in the _New +Witness_ of people who expressed admiration for Lloyd George: "Which +George do you mean?" for, chameleon-like, the politician has worn +many colours and the portrait painted in 1906 would have had to be +torn up in 1916. But gather the Chesterton portraits: read the files +when he first grew into fame: talk to Mr. Titterton who worked with +him on the _Daily News_ in 1906 and on _G.K.'s Weekly_ in 1936, +collect witnesses from his boyhood to his old age, from Dublin to +Vancouver: individuals who knew him, groups who are endeavoring to +work out his ideas: all will agree on the ideas and on the man as +making one pattern throughout, one developing but integrated mind and +personality. + +Gathering the material for a biography bears some resemblance to +interrogating witnesses in a Court of Law. There are good witnesses +and bad: reliable and unreliable memories. I remember an old lady, a +friend of my mother's, who remarked with candour after my mother had +confided to her something of importance: "My dear, I must go and +write that down immediately before my imagination gets mixed with my +memory." One witness must be checked against another: there will be +discrepancies in detail but the main facts will in the end emerge. + +Just now and again, however, a biographer, like a judge, meets a +totally unreliable witness. + +One event in this biography has caused me more trouble than anything +else: the Marconi scandal and the trial of Cecil Chesterton for +criminal libel which grew out of it. As luck would have it, it was on +this that I had to interrogate my most unreliable witness. I had seen +no clear and unbiased account so I had to read the many pages of Blue +Book and Law Reports besides contemporary comment in various papers. +I have no legal training, but one point stuck out like a spike. Cecil +Chesterton had brought accusations against Godfrey Isaacs not only +concerning his own past career as a company promoter, but also +concerning his dealings with the government over the Marconi +contract, in connection with which he had also fiercely attacked +Rufus Isaacs, Herbert Samuel and other ministers of the Crown. But in +the witness box he accepted the word of the very ministers he had +been attacking, and declared that he no longer accused them of +corruption: which seemed to me a complete abandonment of his main +position. + +Having drafted my chapter on Marconi, I asked Mrs. Cecil Chesterton +to read it, but more particularly to explain this point. She gave me +a long and detailed account of how Cecil had been intensely reluctant +to take this course, but violent pressure had been exerted on him by +his father and by Gilbert who were both in a state of panic over the +trial. Unlikely as this seemed, especially in Gilbert's case, the +account was so circumstantial, and from so near a connection, that I +felt almost obliged to accept it. What was my amazement a few months +later at receiving a letter in which she stated that after "a great +deal of close research work, re-reading of papers, etc." (in +connection with her own book _The Chestertons_) and after a talk with +Cecil's solicitors, she had become convinced that Cecil had acted as +he had because "the closest sleuthing had been unable to discover any +trace" of investments by Rufus Isaacs in English Marconis. "For this +reason Cecil took the course he did--not through family pressure. +That pressure, _I still feel_,* was exerted, though possibly not +until the trial was over." + +[* Italics mine.] + +It was, then, the lady's feelings and not facts that had been offered +to me as evidence, and it was the merest luck that my book had not +appeared before Cecil's solicitors had spoken. + +The account given in Lord Birkenhead's _Famous Trials_ is the Speech +for the Prosecution. Mrs. Cecil Chesterton's chapter is an +impressionist sketch of the court scene by a friend of the defendant. +What was wanted was an impartial account, but I tried in vain to +write it. The chronology of events, the connection between the +Government Commission and the Libel Case, the connection between the +English and American Marconi companies--it was all too complex for +the lay mind, so I turned the chapter over to my husband who has had +a legal training and asked him to write it for me. + +_The Chestertons_ is concerned with Gilbert and Frances as well as +with Cecil; and the confusion between memory and imagination--to say +nothing of reliance on feelings unsupported by facts--pervades the +book. It can only be called a Legend, so long growing in Mrs. Cecil's +mind that I am convinced that when she came to write her book she +firmly believed in it herself. The starting-point was so ardent a +dislike for Frances that every incident poured fuel on the flame and +was seen only by its light. When I saw her, the Legend was beginning +to shape. She told me various stories showing her dislike: facts +offered by me were either denied or twisted to fit into the pattern. +I do not propose to discuss here the details of a thoroughly +unreliable book. Most of them I think answer themselves in the course +of this biography. With one or two points I deal in Appendix C. But I +will set down here one further incident that serves to show just how +little help this particular witness could ever be. + +For, like Cecil's solicitors, I spoilt one telling detail for her. +She told me with great enthusiasm that Cecil had said that Gilbert +was really in love not with Frances but with her sister Gertrude, and +that Gertrude's red hair accounted for the number of red-headed +heroines in his stories. I told her, however, on the word of their +brother-in-law, that Gertrude's hair was not red. Mr. Oldershaw in +fact seemed a good deal amused: he said that Gilbert never looked at +either of the other sisters, who were "not his sort," and had eyes +only for Frances. Mrs. Cecil however would not relinquish this dream +of red hair and another love. In her book she wishes "red-gold" hair +on to Annie Firmin, because in the _Autobiography_ Gilbert had +described her golden plaits. But unluckily for this new theory +Annie's hair was yellow,* which is quite a different colour. And +Annie, who is still alive, is also amused at the idea that Gilbert +had any thought of romance in her connection. + +[* See G.K.'s letter to her daughter, p. 633 [Chapter XXXI].] + +When Frances Chesterton gave me the letters and other documents, she +said: "I don't want the book to appear in a hurry: not for at least +five years. There will be lots of little books written about Gilbert; +let them all come out first. I want your book to be the final and +definitive Biography." + +The first part of this injunction I have certainly obeyed, for it +will be just seven years after his death that this book appears. For +the second half, I can say only that I have done the best that in me +lies to obey it also. And I am very grateful to those who have +preceded me with books depicting one aspect or another of my subject. +I have tried to make use of them all as part of my material, and some +are "little" merely in the number of their pages. I am especially +grateful to Hilaire Belloc, Emile Cammaerts, Cyril Clemens and +"Father Brown" (who have allowed me to quote with great freedom). I +want to thank Mr. Seward Collins, Mr. Cyril Clemens and the +University of Notre Dame for the loan of books; Mrs. Bambridge for +the use of a letter from Kipling and a poem from _The Years Between_. + +Even greater has been the kindness of those friends of my own and of +Gilbert Chesterton's who have read this book in manuscript and made +very valuable criticisms and suggestions: May Chesterton, Dorothy +Collins, Edward Connor, Ross Hoffman, Mrs. Robert Kidd, Arnold Lunn, +Mgr. Knox, Father Murtagh, Father Vincent McNabb, Lucian Oldershaw, +Beatrice Warde, Douglas Woodruff, Monsignor O'Connor. + +Most of the criticisms were visibly right, while even those with +which I could not concur showed me the weak spot in my work that had +occasioned them. They have helped me to improve the book--I think I +may say enormously. + +One suggestion I have not followed--that one name should be used +throughout: either Chesterton or Gilbert or G.K., but not all three. +I had begun with the idea of using "Chesterton" when speaking of him +as a public character and also when speaking of the days before I did +in fact call him "Gilbert." But this often left him and Cecil mixed +up: then too, though I seldom used "G.K." myself, other friends +writing to me of him often used it. I began to go through the +manuscript unifying--and then I noticed that in a single paragraph of +his _Bernard Shaw_ Gilbert uses "GBS," "Shaw," "Bernard Shaw," and +"Mr. Shaw." Here was a precedent indeed, and it seemed to me that it +was really the natural thing to do. After all we do talk of people +now by one name, now by another: it is a matter of slight importance +if of any, and I decided to let it go. + +As to size, I am afraid the present book is a large one--although not +as large as Boswell's _Johnson_ or _Gone with the Wind_. But in this +matter I am unrepentant, for I have faith in Chesterton's own public. +The book is large because there is no other way of getting Chesterton +on to the canvas. It is a joke he would himself have enjoyed, but it +is also a serious statement. For a complete portrait of Chesterton, +even the most rigorous selection of material cannot be compressed +into a smaller space. I have first written at length and then cut and +cut. + +At first I had intended to omit all matter already given in the +_Autobiography_. Then I realised that would never do. For some things +which are vital to a complete Biography of Chesterton are not only +told in the _Autobiography_ better than I could tell them, but are +recorded there and nowhere else. And this book is not merely a +supplement to the _Autobiography_. It is the Life of Chesterton. + +The same problem arises with regard to the published books and I have +tried to solve it on the same line. There has rung in my mind Mr. +Belloc's saying: "A man is his mind." To tell the story of a man of +letters while avoiding quotation from or reference to his published +works is simply not to tell it. At Christopher Dawson's suggestion I +have re-read all the books _in the order in which they were written_, +thus trying to get the development of Gilbert's mind perfectly clear +to myself and to trace the influences that affected him at various +dates. For this reason I have analysed certain of the books and not +others--those which showed this mental development most clearly at +various stages, or those (too many alas) which are out of print and +hard to obtain. But whenever possible in illustrating his mental +history I have used unpublished material, so that even the most +ardent Chestertonian will find much that is new to him. + +For the period of Gilbert's youth there are many exercise books, +mostly only half filled, containing sketches and caricatures, lists +of titles for short stories and chapters, unfinished short stories. +Several completed fairy stories and some of the best drawings were +published in _The Coloured Lands_. Others are hints later used in his +own novels: there is a fragment of _The Ball and the Cross_, a first +suggestion for _The Man Who Was Thursday_, a rather more developed +adumbration of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_. This I think is later +than most of the notebooks; but, after the change in handwriting, +apparently deliberately and carefully made by Gilbert around the date +at which he left St. Paul's for the Slade School, it is almost +impossible to establish a date at all exactly for any one of these +notebooks. Notes made later when he had formed the habit of dictation +became difficult to read, not through bad handwriting, but because +words are abbreviated and letters omitted. + +Some of the exercise books appear to have been begun, thrown aside +and used again later. There is among them one only of real +biographical importance, a book deliberately used for the development +of a philosophy of life, dated in two places, to which I devote a +chapter and which I refer to as _the_ Notebook. This book is as +important in studying Chesterton as the Pensees would be for a +student of Pascal. He is here already a master of phrase in a sense +which makes a comparison with Pascal especially apt. For he often +packs so much meaning into a brilliant sentence or two that I have +felt it worth while, in dealing especially with some of the less +remembered books, to pull out a few of these sentences for quotation +apart from their context. + +Other important material was to be found in _G.K.'s Weekly_, in +articles in other periodicals, and in unpublished letters. With some +of the correspondences I have made considerable use of both sides, +and if anyone pedantically objects that that is unusual in a +biography I will adapt a phrase of Bernard Shaw's which you will find +in this book, and say, "Hang it all, be reasonable! If you had the +choice between reading me and reading Wells and Shaw, wouldn't you +choose Wells and Shaw." + + + + +GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON + + + + +CHAPTER I + +Background for Gilbert Keith Chesterton + +IT IS USUAL to open a biography with some account of the subject's +ancestry. Chesterton, in his _Browning_, after some excellent foolery +about pedigree-hunting, makes the suggestion that middle-class +ancestry is far more varied and interesting than the ancestry of the +aristocrat: + + The truth is that aristocrats exhibit less of the romance of + pedigree than any other people in the world. For since it is their + principle to marry only within their own class and mode of life, + there is no opportunity in their case for any of the more interesting + studies in heredity; they exhibit almost the unbroken uniformity of + the lower animals. It is in the middle classes that we find the + poetry of genealogy; it is the suburban grocer standing at his shop + door whom some wild dash of Eastern or Celtic blood may drive + suddenly to a whole holiday or a crime. + +This may provide fun for a guessing game but is not very useful to a +biographer. The Chesterton family, like many another, had had the ups +and downs in social position that accompany the ups and downs of +fortune. Upon all this Edward Chesterton, Gilbert's father, as head +of the family possessed many interesting documents. After his death, +Gilbert's mother left his papers undisturbed. But when she died +Gilbert threw away, without examination, most of the contents of his +father's study, including all family records. Thus I cannot offer any +sort of family tree. But it is possible to show the kind of family +and the social atmosphere into which Gilbert Chesterton was born. + +Some of the relatives say that the family hailed from the village of +Chesterton--now merged into Cambridge, of which they were Lords of +the Manor, but Gilbert refused to take this seriously. In an +introduction to a book called _Life in Old Cambridge_, he wrote: + +I have never been to Cambridge except as an admiring visitor; I have +never been to Chesterton at all, either from a sense of unworthiness +or from a faint superstitious feeling that I might be fulfilling a +prophecy in the countryside. Anyone with a sense of the savour of the +old English country rhymes and tales will share my vague alarm that +the steeple might crack or the market cross fall down, for a smaller +thing than the coincidence of a man named Chesterton going to +Chesterton. + +At the time of the Regency, the head of the family was a friend of +the Prince's and (perhaps as a result of such company) dissipated his +fortunes in riotous living and incurred various terms of imprisonment +for debt. From his debtors' prisons he wrote letters, and sixty years +later Mr. Edward Chesterton used to read them to his family: as also +those of another interesting relative, Captain George Laval +Chesterton, prison reformer and friend of Mrs. Fry and of Charles +Dickens. A relative recalls the sentence: "I cried, Dickens cried, we +all cried," which makes one rather long for the rest of the letter. + +George Laval Chesterton left two books, one a kind of autobiography, +the other a work on prison reform. It was a moment of enthusiasm for +reform, of optimism and of energy. Dickens was stirring the minds of +Englishmen to discover the evils in their land and rush to their +overthrow. Darwin was writing his _Origin of Species_, which in some +curious way increased the hopeful energy of his countrymen: they +seemed to feel it much more satisfying to have been once animal and +have become human than to be fallen gods who could again be made +divine. Anyhow, there were giants in those days and it was hope that +made them so. + +When by an odd confusion the _Tribune_ described G. K. Chesterton as +having been born about the date that Captain Chesterton published his +books, he replied in a ballade which at once saluted and attacked: + + I am not fond of anthropoids as such, + I never went to Mr. Darwin's school, + Old Tyndall's ether, that he liked so much + Leaves me, I fear, comparatively cool. + I cannot say my heart with hope is full + Because a donkey, by continual kicks, + Turns slowly into something like a mule-- + I was not born in 1856. + + Age of my fathers: truer at the touch + Than mine: Great age of Dickens, youth and yule: + Had your strong virtues stood without a crutch, + I might have deemed man had no need of rule, + But I was born when petty poets pule, + When madmen used your liberty to mix + Lucre and lust, bestial and beautiful, + I was not born in 1856.* + +[* Quoted in _G. K. Chesterton: A criticism_. Aliston Rivers (1908) +pp. 243-244.] + +Both _Autobiography_ and _Prison Life_ are worth reading.* They +breathe the "Great Gusto" seen by Gilbert in that era. He does not +quote them in his _Autobiography_, but, just mentioning Captain +Chesterton, dwells chiefly on his grandfather, who, while George +Laval Chesterton was fighting battles and reforming prisons, had +succeeded to the headship of a house agents' business in Kensington. +(For, the family fortunes having been dissipated, Gilbert's +great-grandfather had become first a coal merchant and then a house +agent.) A few of the letters between this ancestor and his son remain +and they are interesting, confirming Gilbert's description in the +_Autobiography_ of his grandfather's feeling that he himself was +something of a landmark in Kensington and that the family business +was honourable and important. + +[* See Appendix A.] + +The Chestertons, whatever the ups and downs of their past history, +were by now established in that English middle-class respectability +in which their son was to discover--or into which he was to bring--a +glow and thrill of adventurous romance. Edward Chesterton, Gilbert's +father, belonged to a serious family and a serious generation, which +took its work as a duty and its profession as a vocation. I wonder +what young house-agent today, just entering the family business, +would receive a letter from his father adjuring him to "become an +active steady and honourable man of business," speaking of "abilities +which only want to be judiciously brought out, of course assisted +with your earnest co-operation." + +Gilbert's mother was Marie Grosjean, one of a family of twenty-three +children. The family had long been English, but came originally from +French Switzerland. Marie's mother was from an Aberdeen family of +Keiths, which gave Gilbert his second name and a dash of Scottish +blood which "appealed strongly to my affections and made a sort of +Scottish romance in my childhood." Marie's father, whom Gilbert never +saw, had been "one of the old Wesleyan lay-preachers and was thus +involved in public controversy, a characteristic which has descended +to his grandchild. He was also one of the leaders of the early +Teetotal movement, a characteristic which has not."* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 11-12.] + +When Edward became engaged to Marie Grosjean he complained that his +"dearest girl" would not believe that he had any work to do, but he +was in fact much occupied and increasingly responsible for the family +business. + +There is a flavour of a world very remote from ours in the packet of +letters between the two and from their various parents, aunts and +sisters to one another during their engagement. Edward illuminates +poems "for a certaln dear good little child," sketches the "look out +from home" for her mother, hopes they did not appear uncivil in +wandering into the garden together at an aunt's house and leaving the +rest of the company for too long. He praises a friend of hers as +"intellectual and unaffected, two excellent things in woman," +describes a clerk sent to France with business papers who "lost them +all, the careless dog, except the _Illustrated London News_." + +A letter to Marie from her sister Harriette is amusing. She describes +her efforts at entertaining in the absence of her mother. The company +were "great swells" so that her brother "took all the covers of the +chairs himself and had the wine iced and we dined in full dress--it +was very awful--considering myself as hostess." Poor girl, it was a +series of misfortunes. "The dinner was three-quarters of an hour +late, the fish done to rags." She had hired three dozen wine-glasses +to be sure of enough, but they were "brought in in twos and threes at +a time and then a hiatus as if they were being washed which they were +not." + +In the letters from parents and older relatives religious observances +are taken for granted and there is an obvious sincerity in the many +allusions to God's will and God's guidance of human life. No one +reading them could doubt that the description of a dying relative as +"ready for the summons" and to "going home" is a sincere one. Other +letters, notably Harriette's, do not lack a spice of malice in +speaking of those whose religion was unreal and affected--a +phenomenon that only appears in an age when real religion abounds. + +Doubtless her generation was beginning to see Christianity with less +than the simplicity of their parents. They were hearing of Darwin and +Spencer, and the optimism which accompanied the idea of evolution was +turning religion into a vague glow which would, they felt, survive +the somewhat childish dogmas in which our rude ancestors had tried to +formulate it. But with an increased vagueness went also, with the +more liberal--and the Chestertons were essentially liberal both +politically and theologically--an increased tolerance. In several of +his letters, Edward Chesterton mentions the Catholic Church, and +certainly with no dislike. He went on one occasion to hear Manning +preach and much admired the sermon, although he notes too that he +found in it "no distinctively Roman Catholic doctrine." He belonged, +however, to an age that on the whole found the rest of life more +exciting and interesting than religion, an age that had kept the +Christian virtues and still believed that these virtues could stand +alone, without the support of the Christian creed. + +The temptation to describe dresses has always to be sternly resisted +when dealing with any part of the Victorian era, so merely pausing to +note that it seems to have been a triumph on the part of Mrs. +Grosjean to have cut a _short_ skirt out of 81/2 yards of material, I +reluctantly lay aside the letters at the time when Edward Chesterton +and Marie were married and had set about living happily ever after. + +These two had no fear of life: they belonged to a generation which +cheerfully created a home and brought fresh life into being. In doing +it, they did a thousand other things, so that the home they made was +full of vital energies for the children who were to grow up in it. +Gilbert recollects his father as a man of a dozen hobbies, his study +as a place where these hobbies formed strata of exciting products, +awakening youthful covetousness in the matter of a new paint-box, +satisfying youthful imagination by the production of a toy-theatre. +His character, serene and humorous as his son describes him, is +reflected in his letters. Edward Chesterton did not use up his mental +powers in the family business. Taught by his father to be a good man +of business, he was in his private life a man of a thousand other +energies and ideas. "On the whole," says his son, "I am glad he was +never an artist. It might have stood in his way in becoming an +amateur. It might have spoilt his career; his private career. He +could never have made a vulgar success of all the thousand things be +did so successfully." + +Here, Gilbert sees a marked distinction between that generation of +business men and the present in the use of leisure; he sees hobbies +as superior to sport. "The old-fashioned Englishman, like my father, +sold houses for his living but filled his own house with his life. A +hobby is not merely a holiday. . . . It is not merely exercising the +body instead of the mind, an excellent but now largely a recognised +thing. It is exercising the rest of the mind; now an almost neglected +thing." Edward Chesterton practised "water-colour painting and +modelling and photography and stained glass and fretwork and magic +lanterns and mediaeval illumination." And, moreover, "knew all his +English literature backwards." + +It has become of late the fashion for any one who writes of his own +life to see himself against a dark background, to see his development +frustrated by some shadow of heredity or some horror of environment. +But Gilbert saw his life rather as the ancients saw it when _pietas_ +was a duty because we had received so much from those who brought us +into being. This Englishman was grateful to his country, to his +parents, to his home for all that they had given him. + + I regret that I have no gloomy and savage father to offer to the + public gaze as the true cause of all my tragic heritage; no pale-faced + and partially poisoned mother whose suicidal instincts have cursed + me with the temptations of the artistic temperament. I regret that + there was nothing in the range of our family much more racy than a + remote and mildly impecunious uncle; and that I cannot do my duty + as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I + am. I am not clear about what that is; but I am pretty sure that + most of it is my own fault. And I am compelled to confess that I + look back to that landscape of my first days with a pleasure that + should doubtless be reserved for the Utopias of the Futurist.* + +[* G. K. Chesterton. _Autobiography_, pp. 22-3.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +Childhood + + +GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON was born on May 29, 1874 at a house in +Sheffield Terrace, Campden Hill, just below the great tower of the +Waterworks which so much impressed his childish imagination. Lower +down the hill was the Anglican Church of St. George, and here he was +baptised. When he was about five, the family moved to Warwick +Gardens. As old-fashioned London houses go, 11 Warwick Gardens is +small. On the ground floor, a back and front room were for the +Chestertons drawing-room and dining-room with a folding door between, +the only other sitting-room being a small study built out over the +garden. A long, narrow, green strip, which must have been a good deal +longer before a row of garages was built at the back, was Gilbert's +playground. His bedroom was a long room at the top of a not very high +house. For what is in most London houses the drawing-room floor is in +this house filled by two bedrooms and there is only one floor above it. + +Cecil was five years younger than Gilbert, who welcomed his birth +with the remark, "Now I shall always have an audience," a prophecy +remembered by all parties because it proved so singularly false. As +soon as Cecil could speak, he began to argue and the brothers' +intercourse thenceforward consisted of unending discussion. They +always argued, they never quarrelled. + +There was also a little sister Beatrice who died when Gilbert was +very young, so young that he remembered a fall she had from a +rocking-horse more clearly than he remembered her death, and in his +memory linked with the fall the sense of loss and sorrow that came +with the death. + +It would be impossible to tell the story of his childhood one half +so well as he has told it himself. It is the best part of his +_Autobiography_. Indeed, it is one of the best childhoods in +literature. For Gilbert Chesterton most perfectly remembered the +exact truth, not only about what happened to a child, but about how +a child thought and felt. What is more, he sees childhood not as an +isolated fragment or an excursion into fairyland, but as his "real +life; the real beginnings of what should have been a more real life; +a lost experience in the land of the living." + + I was subconsciously certain then, as I am consciously certain now, + that there was the white and solid road and the worthy beginning of + the life of man; and that it is man who afterwards darkens it with + dreams or goes astray from it in self-deception. It is only the grown + man who lives a life of make-believe and pretending; and it is he who + has his head in a cloud.* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 49.] + +Here are the beginnings of the man's philosophy in the life and +experience of the child. He was living in a world of reality, and +that reality was beautiful, in the clear light of "an eternal +morning," which "had a sort of wonder in it, as if the world were as +new as myself." A child in this world, like God in the moment of +creation, looks upon it and sees that it is very good. It was not +that he was never unhappy as a child, and he had his share of bodily +pain. "I had a fair amount of toothache and especially earache." But +the child has his own philosophy and makes his own proportion, and +unhappiness and pain "are of a different texture or held on a +different tenure." + + What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a + wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a + miraculous world. What gives me this shock is almost anything I + really recall; not the things I should think most worth recalling. + This is where it differs from the other great thrill of the past, all + that is connected with first love and the romantic passion; for that, + though equally poignant, comes always to a point; and is narrow like + a rapier piercing the heart, whereas the other was more like a + hundred windows opened on all sides of the head.* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 31-32.] + +These windows opening on all sides so much more swiftly for the +genius than for the rest of us, led to a result often to be noted in +the childhood of exceptional men: a combination of backwardness and +precocity. Gilbert Chesterton was in some ways a very backward child. +He did not talk much before three. He learnt to read only at eight. + +He loved fairy tales; as a child he read them or had them read aloud +to him: as a big boy he wrote and illustrated a good many, some of +which are printed in _The Coloured Lands_. I have found several +fragments in praise of Hans Andersen written apparently in his +schooldays. In the chapter of _Orthodoxy_ called "The Ethics of +Elfland" he shows how the truth about goodness and happiness came to +him out of the old fairy tales and made the first basis for his +philosophy. And George Macdonald's story _The Princess and the +Goblin_ made, he says, "a difference to my whole existence, which +helped me to see things in a certain way from the start." It is the +story of a house where goblins were in the cellar and a kind of fairy +godmother in a hidden room upstairs. This story had made "all the +ordinary staircases and doors and windows into magical things." It +was the awakening of the sense of wonder and joy in the ordinary +things always to be his. Still more important was the realization +represented by the goblins below stairs, that "When the evil things +besieging us do appear, they do not appear outside but inside." In +life as in this story there is + + . . . a house that is our home, that is rightly loved as our home, + but of which we hardly know the best or the worst, and must always + wait for the one and watch against the other. . . . Since I first + read that story some five alternative philosophies of the universe + have come to our colleges out of Germany, blowing through the world + like the east wind. But for me that castle is still standing in the + mountains, its light is not put out.* + +[* Introduction to _George Macdonald and His Wife_.] + +All this to Gilbert made the story the "most real, the most +realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life" of +any story he ever read--then or later! Another recurrent image in +books by the same author is that of a great white horse. And Gilbert +says, "To this day I can never see a big white horse in the street +without a sudden sense of indescribable things."* + +[* Ibid.] + +Of his playmates, "one of my first memories," he writes in the +_Autobiography_, "is playing in the garden under the care of a girl +with ropes of golden hair; to whom my mother afterwards called out +from the house, 'You are an angel'; which I was disposed to accept +without metaphor. She is now living in Vancouver as Mrs. Robert Kidd." + +Mrs. Kidd, then Annie Firmin, was the daughter of a girlhood friend +of Mrs. Chesterton's. She called her "Aunt Marie." She and her +sister, Gilbert says in the _Autobiography_, "had more to do with +enlivening my early years than most." She has a vivid memory of +Sheffield Terrace where all three Chesterton children were born and +where the little sister, Beatrice, whom they called Birdie, died. +Gilbert, in those days, was called Diddie, his father then and later +was "Mr. Ed" to the family and intimate friends. Soon after Birdie's +death they moved to Warwick Gardens. Mrs. Kidd writes: + + . . . the little boys were never allowed to see a funeral. If one + passed down Warwick Gardens, they were hustled from the nursery + window at once. Possibly this was because Gilbert had such a fear of + sickness or accident. If Cecil gave the slightest sign of choking at + dinner, Gilbert would throw down his spoon or fork and rush from the + room. I have seen him do it so many times. Cecil was fond of animals. + Gilbert wasn't. Cecil had a cat that he named Faustine, because he + wanted her to be abandoned and wicked--but Faustine turned out to be + a gentleman! + +Gilbert's story-telling and verse-making began very early, but not, I +think, in great abundance; his drawing even earlier, and of this +there is a great deal. There is nothing very striking in the written +fragments that remain, but his drawings even at the age of five are +full of vigour. The faces and figures are always rudimentary human +beings, sometimes a good deal more, and they are taken through +lengthy adventures drawn on the backs of bits of wall paper, of +insurance forms, in little books sewn together, or sometimes on long +strips glued end to end by his father. These drawings can often be +dated exactly, for Edward Chesterton, who later kept collections of +press-cuttings and photographs of his son, had already begun to +collect his drawings, writing the date on the back of each. With the +earlier ones he may, one sometimes suspects, have helped a little, +but it soon becomes easy to distinguish between the two styles. + +Edward Chesterton was the most perfect father that could have been +imagined to help in the opening of windows on every side. "My father +might have reminded people of Mr. Pickwick, except that he was always +bearded and never bald; he wore 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," was there. When asked her preference + she would say, diffidently, "I think I'll take a little mutton!" + "Don't be a fool, Alice, you know you like chicken,"--and chicken + she got. + +Visitors to the house in later years dwell on Mrs. Chesterton's +immense spirit of hospitality, the gargantuan meals, the eager desire +that guests should eat enormously, and the wittiness of her +conversation. Schoolboy contemporaries of Gilbert say that although +immensely kind, she alarmed them by a rather forbidding +appearance--"her clothes thrown on anyhow, and blackened and +protruding teeth which gave her a witchlike appearance. . . . The +house too was dusty and untidy." She called them always by their +surnames, both when they were little boys and after they grew up, +"Oldershaw, Bentley, Solomon." + +"Not only," says Miss May Chesterton, "did Aunt Marie address +Gilbert's friends by their surnames, but frequently added darling to +them. I have heard her address Bentley when a young man thus; +'Bentley darling, come and sit over here,' to which invitation he +turned a completely deaf ear as he was perfectly content to remain +where he was!" + +"Indiscriminately, she also addressed her maids waiting at table with +the same endearment." + +A letter written when Gilbert was only six would seem to show that +Mrs. Chesterton had not yet become so reckless about her appearance, +and was still open to the appeal of millinery. ("She always was," +says Annie.) The letter is from John Barker of High Street, +Kensington, and is headed in handwriting, "Drapery and Millinery +Establishment, Kensington High Street, September 21, 1880." + + MADAM, + + We are in receipt of instructions from Mr. Edward Chesterton to + wait upon you for the purpose of offering for your selection a Bonnet + of the latest Parisian taste, of which we have a large assortment + ready for your choice; or can, if preferred, make you one to order. + + Our assistant will wait upon you at any time you may appoint, + unless you would prefer to pay a visit to our Millinery department + yourself. + + Mr. Chesterton informs us that as soon as you have made your + selection he will hand us a cheque for the amount. + + We are given to understand that Mr. Chesterton proposes this + transaction as a remembrance of the anniversary of what, he instructs + us to say, he regards as a happy and auspicious event. We have + accordingly entered it in our books in that aspect. + + In conveying, as we are desired to do, Mr. Chesterton's best wishes + for your health and happiness for many future anniversaries, may we + very respectfully join to them our own, and add that during many + years to come we trust to be permitted to supply you with goods of + the best description for cash, on the principle of the lowest prices + consistent with excellence of quality and workmanship. + + We have the honour to be Madam Your most obedient Servants + + JOHN BARKER & Co. + +The order entered in their books "under that aspect," the readiness +to provide millinery "for cash," convinces you (as G.K. himself says +of another story) that Dick Swiveller really did say, "When he who +adores thee has left but the name--in case of letters and parcels." +Dickens _must_ have dictated the letter to John Barker. After all, he +was only dead ten years. + +"Aunt Marie used to say," adds Annie Firmin, "that Mr. Ed married her +for her beautiful hair, it was auburn, and very long and wavy. He +used to sit behind her in Church. She liked pretty clothes, but +lacked the vanity to buy them for herself. I have a little blue +hanging watch that he bought her one day--she always appreciated +little attentions." + +The playmates of Gilbert's childhood are not described in the +_Autobiography_ except for Annie's "long ropes of golden hair." But +in one of the innumerable fragments written in his early twenties, he +describes a family of girls who had played with him when they were +very young together. It is headed, "Chapter I. A Contrast and a +Climax," and several other odd bits of verse and narrative introduce +the Vivian family as early and constant playmates. + + One of the best ways of feeling a genuine friendly enthusiasm for + persons of the other sex, without gliding into anything with a + shorter name, is to know a whole family of them. The most + intellectual idolatry at one shrine is apt to lose its purely + intellectual character, but a genial polytheism is always bracing and + platonic. Besides, the Vivians lived in the same street or rather + "gardens" as ourselves, and were amusing as bringing one within sight + of what an old friend of mine, named Bentley, called with more than + his usual gloom and severity of expression, "the remote outpost of + Kensington Society." + + For these reasons, and a great many much better ones, I was very + much elated to have the family, or at least the three eldest girls + who represent it to the neighbourhood, standing once more on the + well-rubbed lawn of our old garden, where some of my earliest + recollections were of subjecting them to treatment such as I + considered appropriate to my own well-established character of + robber, tying them to trees to the prejudice of their white frocks, + and otherwise misbehaving myself in the funny old days, before I went + to school and became a son of gentlemen only. I have never been able, + in fact I have never tried, to tell which of the three I really liked + best. And if the severer usefulness and domesticity of the eldest + girl, with her quiet art-colours, and broad, brave forehead as pale + as the white roses that clouded the garden, if these maturer + qualities in Nina demanded my respect more than the levity of the + others, I fear they did not prevent me feeling an almost equal tide + of affection towards the sleepy acumen and ingrained sense of humour + of Ida, the second girl and book-reader for the family: or Violet, a + veritably delightful child, with a temper as formless and erratic as + her tempest of red hair. + + "What old memories this garden calls up," said Nina, who like many + essentially simple and direct people, had a strong dash of sentiment + and a strong penchant for being her own emotional pint-stoup on the + traditional subjects and occasions. "I remember so well coming here + in a new pink frock when I was a little girl. It wasn't so new when + I went away." + + "I certainly must have been a brute," I replied. "But I have + endeavoured to make a lifetime atone for my early conduct." And + I fell to thinking how even Nina, miracle of diligence and + self-effacement, remembered a new pink frock across the abyss of + the years. . . . Walking with my old friends round the garden, I + found in every earth-plot and tree-root the arenas of an active + and adventurous life in early boyhood. . . .* + +[* Unpublished fragment.] + +Edward Chesterton was a Liberal politically and what has been called +a Liberal Christian religiously. When the family went to +church--which happened very seldom--it was to listen to the sermons +of Stopford Brooke. Some twenty years later, Cecil was to remark with +amusement that he had as a small boy heard every part of the teaching +now (1908) being set out by R. J. Campbell under the title, "The New +Religion." The Chesterton Liberalism entered into the view of history +given to their children, and it produced from Gilbert the only poem +of his childhood worth quoting. I cannot date it, but the very +immature handwriting and curious spelling mark it as early. + +Probably most children have read, or at any rate up to my own +generation, had read, Aytoun's _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, and +played at being Cavaliers as a result. But Gilbert could not play at +being a Cavalier. He had learned from his father to be a Roundhead, +as had every good Liberal of that day. What was to be done about it? +He took the _Lays_ and rewrote them in an excellent imitation of +Aytoun, but on the opposite side. In view of his own later +developments such a line as "Drive the trembling Papists backwards" +has an ironic humour. But one wonders what Aytoun himself would have +made of a small boy who took his rhythm and sometimes his very words, +turned his hero into a traitor ("false Montrose") and his traitor +Argyll into a hero! I have left the spelling untouched. + + Sing of the Great Lord Archibald + Sing of his glorious name + Sing of his covenenting faith + And his evelasting fame. + + One day he summoned all his men + To meet on Cruerchin's brow + Three thousand covenenting chiefs + Who no master would allow + + Three thousand Knights + With clamores drawn + And targets tough and strong + Knights who for the right + Would ever fight + And never bear the wrong. + + And he creid (his hand uplifted) + "Soldiers of Scotland hear my vow + Ere the morning shall have risen + I will lay the trators low + Or as ye march from the battle + Marching back in battle file + Ye shall there among the corpses + Find the body of Argyll. + + Soldiers Soldiers onward onward + Onward soldiers follow me + Come, remember ye the crimes + Of the fiend of fell Dundee + Onward let us draw our clamores + Let us draw them on our foes + Now then I am threatened with + The fate of false Montrose. + + Drive the trembling Papists backwards + Drive away the Tory's hord + Let them tell thier hous of villians + They have felt the Campbell's sword." + + And the next morn he arose + And he girded on his sword + They asked him many questions + But he answered not a word. + And he summoned all his men + And he led them to the field + And We creid unto our master + That we'd die and never yield. + That same morn we drove right backwards + All the servants of the Pope + And Our Lord Archibald we saved + From a halter and a rope + Far and fast fled all the trators + Far and fast fled all the Graemes + Fled that cursed tribe who lately + Stained there honour and thier names. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +School Days + + +CURIOUSLY ENOUGH Gilbert does not in the _Autobiography_ speak of any +school except St. Paul's. He went however first to Colet Court, +usually called at that time Bewsher's, from the name of the +Headmaster. Though it is not technically the preparatory school for +St. Paul's, large numbers of Paulines do pass through it. It stands +opposite St. Paul's in the Hammersmith Road and must have been felt +by Gilbert as one thing with his main school experience, for he +nowhere differentiates between the two. + +St. Paul's School is an old city foundation which has had among its +scholars Milton and Marlborough, Pepys and Sir Philip Francis and a +host of other distinguished men. The editor of a correspondence +column wrote a good many years later in answer to an enquirer: "Yes, +Milton and G. K. Chesterton were both educated at St. Paul's school. +We fancy however that Milton had left before Chesterton entered the +school." In an early life of Sir Thomas More we learn of the keen +rivalry existing in his day between his own school of St. Anthony and +St. Paul's, of scholastic "disputations" between the two, put an end +to by Dean Colet because they led to brawling among the boys, when +the Paulines would call those of St. Anthony "pigs" and the pigs +would call the Paulines "pigeons"--from the pigeons of St. Paul's +Cathedral. Now, however, St. Anthony's is no more, and St. Paul's +School has long moved to the suburbs and lies about seven minutes' +walk along the Hammersmith Road from Warwick Gardens. Gilbert +Chesterton was twelve when he entered St. Paul's (in January 1887) +and he was placed in the second Form. + +His early days at school were very solitary, his chief occupation +being to draw all over his books. He drew caricatures of his masters, +he drew scenes from Shakespeare, he drew prominent politicians. He +did not at first make many friends. In the _Autobiography_ he makes a +sharp distinction between being a child and being a boy, but it is a +distinction that could only be drawn by a man. And most men, I fancy, +would find it a little difficult to say at what moment the +transformation occurred. G.K. seems to put it at the beginning of +school life, but the fact that St. Paul's was a day-school meant that +the transition from home to school, usual in English public-school +education,* was never in his case completely made. No doubt he is +right in speaking in the _Autobiography_ of "the sort of prickly +protection like hair" that "grows over what was once the child," of +the fact that schoolboys in his time "could be blasted with the +horrible revelation of having a sister, or even a Christian name." +Nevertheless, he went home every evening to a father and mother and +small brother; he went to his friends' houses and knew their sisters; +school and home life met Daily instead of being sharply divided into +terms and holidays. + +[* The terminology for English schools came into being largely before +the State concerned itself with education. A Private School is one +run by an individual or a group for private profit. A Public School +is not run for private profit; any profits there may be are put back +into the school. Mostly they are run by a Board of Governors and very +many of them hold the succession to the old monastic schools of +England (e.g., Charterhouse, Westminster, St. Paul's). They are +usually, though not necessarily, boarding schools, and the fees are +usually high. Elementary schools called Board Schools were paid for +out of local rates and run by elected School Boards. They were later +replaced by schools run by the County Councils.] + +This fact was of immense significance in Gilbert's development. Years +later he noted as the chief defect of Oxford that it consisted almost +entirely of people educated at boarding-schools. For good, for evil, +or for both, a boy at a day-school is educated chiefly at home. + + In the atmosphere of St. Paul's is found little echo of the dogma + of the Head Master of Christ's Hospital. "Boy! The school is your + father! Boy! The school is your mother." Nor, as far as we know has + any Pauline been known to desire the substitution of the august + abstraction for the guardianship of his own people. Friendships + formed in this school have a continual reference to home life, nor + can a boy possibly have a friend long without making the acquaintance + and feeling the influence of his parents and his surroundings. . . . + The boys' own amusements and institutions, the school sports, the + school clubs, the school magazine, are patronised by the masters, but + they are originated and managed by the boys. The play-hours of the + boys are left to their several pleasures, whether physical or + intellectual, nor have any foolish observations about the battle of + Waterloo being won on the cricket-field, or such rather unmeaning + oracles, yet succeeded in converting the boys' amusements into a + compulsory gymnastic lesson. The boys are, within reasonable limits, + free.* + +[* MS. _History of J.D.C_. written about 1894.] + +Gilbert calls the chapter on his school days, "How to be a Dunce," +and although in mature life he was "on the side of his masters" and +grateful to them "that my persistent efforts not to learn Latin were +frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping +the contamination of the language of Aristotle and Demosthenes," he +still contrasts childhood as a time when one "wants to know nearly +everything" with "the period of what is commonly called education; +that is, the period during which I was being instructed by somebody +I did not know about something I did not want to know." + +The boy who sat next to him in class, Lawrence Solomon (later Senior +Tutor of University College, London), remembered him as sleepy and +indifferent in manner but able to master anything when he cared to +take the trouble--as he very seldom did. He was in a class with boys +almost all his juniors. Lucian Oldershaw, who later became his +brother-in-law, says of Gilbert's own description of his school life +that it was as near a pose as Gilbert ever managed to get. He wanted +desperately to be the ordinary schoolboy, but he never managed to +fulfil this ambition. Tall, untidy, incredibly clumsy and +absent-minded, he was marked out from his fellows both physically and +intellectually. When in the later part of his school life some sort +of physical exercises were made compulsory, the boys used to form +parties to watch his strange efforts on the trapeze or parallel bars. +In these early days, he was (he says of himself) "somewhat solitary," +but not unhappy, and perfectly good-humoured about the tricks which +were inevitably played on a boy who always appeared to be half asleep. + +"He sat at the back of the room," says Mr. Fordham, "and never +distinguished himself. We thought him the most curious thing that +ever was." His schoolfellows noted how he would stride along, +"apparently muttering poetry, breaking into inane laughter." The kind +of thing he was muttering we learn from a sentence in the +_Autobiography:_ "I was one day wandering about the streets in that +part of North Kensington, telling myself stories of feudal sallies +and sieges, in the manner of Walter Scott, and vaguely trying to +apply them to the wilderness of bricks and mortar around me." + +"I can see him now," wrote Mr. Fordham, "very tall and lanky, +striding untidily along Kensington High Street, smiling and sometimes +scowling as he talked to himself, apparently oblivious of everything +he passed; but in reality a far closer observer than most, and one +who not only observed but remembered what he had seen." It was only +of himself that he was really oblivious. + +Mr. Oldershaw remembers that on one occasion on a very cold day they +filled his pockets with snow in the playground. When class +reassembled, the snow began to melt and pools to appear on the floor. +A small boy raised his hand: "Please Sir, I think the laboratory sink +must be leaking again. The water is coming through and falling all +over Chesterton." + +The laboratory sink was an old offender and the master must have been +short-sighted. "Chesterton," he said, "go up to Mr. ---- and ask him +with my compliments to see that the trouble with the sink is put +right immediately." Gilbert, with water still streaming from both +pockets, obediently went upstairs, gave the message and returned +without discovering what had happened. + +The boys who played these jokes on him had at the same time an +extraordinary respect, both for his intellectual acquirements and for +his moral character. One boy, who rather prided himself in private +life on being a man about town, stopped him one day in the passage +and said solemnly, "Chesterton, I am an abandoned profligate." G.K. +replied, "I'm sorry to hear it." "We watched our talk," one of them +said to me, "when he was with us." His home and upbringing were felt +by some of his schoolfellows to have definitely a Puritan tinge about +them, although on the other hand the more Conservative elements +regarded them as politically dangerous. Mr. Oldershaw relates that +his own father, who was a Conservative in politics and had also +joined the Catholic Church, seriously warned him against the +Agnosticism and Republicanism of the Chesterton household. But even +at this age his schoolfellows recognised that he had begun the great +quest of his life. "We felt," said Oldershaw, "that he was looking +for God." + +I suppose it was in part the keenness of the inner vision that +produced the effect of external sleepiness and made it possible to +pack Gilbert's pockets with snow; but it was also the fact that he +was observing very keenly the kind of thing that other people do not +bother to observe. I remember my mother telling me, when I first came +out, that she had almost ceased trying to draw people's characters +and imaginatively construct their home lives, because for the first +time in her life she was trying to notice how they were dressed. She +was not noticeably successful. Gilbert Chesterton never even tried to +see what everyone else saw. All the time he was seeing qualities in +his friends, ideas in literature and possibilities in life. And all +this world of imagination had, on his own theory, to be carefully +concealed from his masters. In the _Autobiography_ he describes +himself walking to school fervently reciting verses which he +afterwards repeated in class with a determined lack of expression and +woodenness of voice; but when he assumes that this is how all boys +behave, he surely attributes his own literary enthusiasms far too +widely. One would rather gather that he supposed the whole of St. +Paul's School to be in the conspiracy to conceal their love of +literature from their masters! Such of his own schoolboy papers as +can be found show an imagination rare enough at any age, and an +enthusiasm not commonly to be found among schoolboys. A very early +one, to judge by the handwriting, is on the advantages for an +historical character of having long hair, illustrated by the history +of Mary Queen of Scots and Charles the First. In the contrast he +draws between Mary and Elizabeth, appear qualities of historical +imagination that might well belong to a mature and experienced writer. + + . . . As in the cause of the fleeting heartless Helen, the Trojan + War is stirred up, and great Ajax perishes, and the gentle Patroclus + is slain, and mighty Hector falls, and godlike Achilles is laid low, + and the dun plains of Hades are thickened with the shades of Kings, + so round this lovely giddy French princess, fall one by one the + haughty Dauphin, the princely Darnley, the accomplished Rizzio, the + terrible Bothwell, and when she dies, she dies as a martyr before the + weeping eyes of thousands, and is given a popular pity and regret + denied to her rival, with all her faults of violence and vanity, a + greater and a purer woman. + + It must indeed have been a terrible scene, the execution of that + unhappy Queen, and it is a scene that has been described by too + many and too able writers for me to venture on a picture of it. But + the continually lamented death of Mary of Scotland seems to me + happy compared with the end of her greater and sterner rival. As I + think on the two, the vision of the black scaffold, the grim headsman, + the serene captive, and the weeping populace fades from me and is + replaced by a sadder vision: the vision of the dimly-lighted + state-bedroom of Whitehall. Elizabeth, haggard and wild-eyed has + flung herself prone upon the floor and refuses to take meat or drink, + but lies there, surrounded by ceremonious courtiers, but seeing with + that terrible insight that was her curse, that she was alone, that + their homage was a mockery, that they were waiting eagerly for her + death to crown their intrigues with her successor, that there was not + in the whole world a single being who cared for her: seeing all this, + and bearing it with the iron fortitude of her race, but underneath + that invincible silence the deep woman's nature crying out with a + bitter cry that she is loved no longer: thus gnawed by the fangs of a + dead vanity, haunted by the pale ghost of Essex, and helpless and + bitter of heart, the greatest of Englishwomen passed silently away. + Of a truth, there are prisons more gloomy than Fotheringay and deaths + more cruel than the axe. Is there no pity due to those who undergo + these? + +It is surprising to read the series of form reports written on a boy +who at fifteen or sixteen could do work of this quality. Here are the +half-yearly reports made by his Form Masters from his first year in +the school at the age of thirteen to the time he left at the age of +eighteen. + +_December 1887_. Too much for me: means well by me, I believe, but +has an inconceivable knack of forgetting at the shortest notice, is +consequently always in trouble, though some of his work is well done, +when he does remember to do it. He ought to be in a studio not at +school. Never troublesome, but for his lack of memory and absence of +mind. + +_July 1888_. Wildly inaccurate about everything; never thinks for two +consecutive moments to judge by his work: plenty of ability, perhaps +in other directions than classics. + +_December 1888_. Fair. Improving in neatness. Has a very fair stock +of general knowledge. + +_July 1889_. A great blunderer with much intelligence. + +_December 1889_. Means well. Would do better to give his time to +"Modern" subjects. + +_July 1890_. Can get up any work, but originates nothing. + +_December 1890_. Takes an interest in his English work, but otherwise +has not done well. + +_July 1891_. He has a decided literary aptitude, but does not trouble +himself enough about school work. + +_December 1891. Report missing_. + +_July 1892_. Not on the same plane with the rest: composition quite +futile, but will translate well and appreciate what he reads. Not a +quick brain, but possessed by a slowly moving tortuous imagination. +Conduct always admirable. + +What is much clearer from the mass of notebooks and odd sheets of +paper belonging to these years than from the _Autobiography_ is the +degree to which the two processes of resisting and absorbing +knowledge were going on simultaneously. At school he was, he says, +asleep but dreaming in his sleep; at home he was still learning +literature from his father, going to museums and picture galleries +for enjoyment, listening to political talk and engaging in arguments, +writing historical plays and acting them, and above all drawing. + +To most of his early writing it is nearly impossible to affix a +date--with the exception of a "dramatic journal," kept by fits and +starts during the Christmas holidays when he was sixteen. G.K. +solemnly tells the reader of this diary to take warning by it, to +beware of prolixity, and it does in fact contain many more words to +many fewer ideas than any of his later writings. But it is useful in +giving the atmosphere of those years. Great part is in dialogue, the +author appearing throughout as Your Humble Servant, his young brother +Cecil as the Innocent Child. + +The first scene is the rehearsal of a dramatic version of Scott's +_Woodstock_. This has been written by Your Humble Servant who is at +the same time engaged on a historic romance. At intervals in the +languid rehearsing, endless discussions take place: between Oldershaw +and G.K. on Thackeray, between Oldershaw, his father and G.K. on +Royal Supremacy in the Church of England. The boys, walking between +their two houses, "discuss Roman Catholicism, Supremacy, Papal v. +Protestant Persecutions. Your Humble Servant arrives at 11 Warwick +Gardens to meet Mr. Mawer Cowtan, Master Sidney Wells and Master +William Wells. Conversation about Frederick the Great, Voltaire and +Macaulay. Cheerful and enlivening discourse on Germs, Dr. Koch, +Consumption and Tuberculosis." + +"Conservative" Oldershaw regards his friend as a "red hot raging +Republican" and it is interesting to note already faint +foreshadowings of Gilbert's future political views. His parents had +made him a Liberal but it seemed to him later, as he notes in the +_Autobiography_, that their generation was insufficiently alive to the +condition and sufferings of the poor. Open-eyed in so many matters, +they were not looking in that particular direction. And so it was +only very gradually that he himself began to look. + +Your Humble Servant read Oldershaw Elizabeth Browning's "Cry of the +Children," which the former could scarcely trust himself to read, but +which the latter candidly avowed that he did not like. Part and +parcel of Oldershaw's optimism is a desire not to believe in pictures +of real misery, and a desire to find out compensating pleasures. I +think there was a good deal in what he said, but at the same time I +think that there is real misery, physical and mental, in the low and +criminal classes, and I don't believe in crying peace where there is +no peace. + +Of his brother, Gilbert notes, "Innocent Child's fault is not a +servile reverence for his elder brother, whom he regards, I believe, +as a mild lunatic." And Oldershaw recalls his own detestation of +Cecil, who would insist on monopolising the conversation when +Gilbert's friends wanted to talk to him. "An ugly little boy creeping +about," Mr. Fordham calls him. "Cecil had no vanity," writes Mrs. +Kidd, "and thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was not beautiful; +when he was about 14 he said at dinner one day: 'I think I shall +marry X (a very plain cousin); between us we might produce the +missing link.' Aunt Marie was shocked!" + +Many of the games arise from the skill in drawing of both Gilbert and +his father. A long history of two of the Masters drawn by Gilbert +shows them in the Salvation Army, as Christy Minstrels, as editors of +a new revolutionary paper, "La Guillotine," as besieged in their +office by a mob headed by Lord Salisbury, the Archbishop of +Canterbury and other Conservative leaders. Getting tired at last of +the adventures of these two mild scholars, Gilbert starts a series of +Shakespeare plays drawn in modern dress. + + Shylock as an aged Hebrew vendor of dilapidated vesture, with a + tiara of hats, Antonio as an opulent and respectable city-merchant, + Bassanio as a fashionable swell and Gratiano as his loud and + disreputable "pal" with large checks and a billy-cock hat. Portia was + attired as a barrister in wig and gown and Nerissa as a clerk with a + green bag and a pen behind his ear. This being much appreciated, Your + Humble Servant questions what portion of the Bard of Avon he shall + next burlesque. + +The little group seems certainly at this date to be living in a land +in which 'tis always afternoon. In one house or another tea-time +goes on until signs of dinner make their appearance. The boys only +move from one hospitable dining-room to another, or adjourn to their +own bedrooms where Gilbert piles book on book and reduces even neat +shelves to the same chaos that reigns in his own room. + +The Christmas holidays to which the "dramatic journal" belongs came a +few months after the founding of the Junior Debating Club, which +became so central in Gilbert's life and which he treated with a +gravity, solemnity even, such as he never showed later for any cause, +a gravity untouched by humour. It was a group of about a dozen boys, +started with the idea that it should be a Shakespeare Club, but +immediately changed into a general discussion club. They met every +week at the home of one or other and after a hearty tea some member +read a paper which was then debated. + +At the age of twenty, when he had left school two years, G.K. wrote a +solemn history of this institution in which the question of whether +it was right or wrong to insist on penny fines for rowdy behaviour is +canvassed with passionate feeling! One boy who was expelled asked to +be readmitted, saying, "I feel so lonely without it." Gilbert's +enthusiasm over this incident could be no greater had he been a +bishop welcoming the return of an apostate to the Christian fold. I +suppose it was partly because of his early solitary life at school, +partly because of the general trend of his thought, partly that at +this later date he was under the influence of Walt Whitman and cast +back upon his earlier years a sort of glow or haze of Whitman +idealism. Anyhow, the Junior Debating Club became to him a symbol of +the ideal friendship. They were Knights of the Round Table. They were +Jongleurs de Dieu. They were the Human Club through whom and in whom +he had made the grand discovery of Man. They were his youth +personified. The note is still struck in the letters of his +engagement period, and it was only forty years later, writing his +_Autobiography_, that he was able to picture with a certain humorous +detachment this group of boys who met to eat buns and criticise the +universe. + +A year after their first meeting, the energy of Lucian Oldershaw +produced a magazine called _The Debater_. At first it was turned out +at home on a duplicator--the efficiency of the production being such +that the author of any given paper was able occasionally to recognise +a few words of his own contribution. Later it was printed and gives a +good record of the meetings and discussions. It shows the energy and +ardour of the debaters and also their serious view of themselves and +their efforts. At first they are described as Mr. C, Mr. F, etc. +Later the full name is given. Besides the weekly debates, they +started a Library, a Chess Club, a Naturalists' Society and a +Sketching Club, regular meetings of which are chronicled. + +"The Chairman [G.K.C.] said a few words," runs a record, after some +months of existence, "stating his pride at the success of the Club, +and his belief in the good effect such a literary institution might +have as a protest against the lower and unworthy phases of school +life. His view having been vehemently corroborated, the meeting broke +up." + +In one fairly typical month papers were read on "Three Comedies of +Shakespeare," "Pope," and "Herodotus," and when no paper was produced +there was a discussion on Capital Punishment. In another, the +subjects were "The Brontes," "Macaulay as an Essayist," "Frank +Buckland" (the naturalist) and "Tennyson." A pretty wide range of +reading was called for from schoolboys in addition to their ordinary +work, even though on one occasion the Secretary sternly notes that +the reading of the paper occupied only three and one-half minutes. +But they were not daunted by difficulties or afraid of bold attempts. + +Mr. Digby d'Avigdor on one occasion "delivered a paper entitled 'The +Nineteenth Century: A Retrospect.' He gave a slight resume of the +principal events, with appropriate tribute to the deceased great of +this century." + +Mr. Bertram, reading a paper on Milton, "dealt critically with his +various poems, noting the effective style of 'L'Allegro,' giving the +story of the writing of 'Comus' and cursorily analysing 'Paradise +Lost,' and 'Paradise Regained.'" + +"After discussing the adaptability of _Hamlet_ to the stage, Mr. +Maurice Solomon"--who may have been quite fifteen--"passed on to +review the chief points in the character of the Prince of Denmark, +concluding with a slight review of the other characters which he did +not think Shakespeare had given much attention to." + +In a discussion on the new humorists, we find the Secretary "taking +grievous umbrage at certain unwarrantable attacks which he considered +Mr. Andrew Lang had lately made on these choice spirits." This +discussion arose from a paper by the Chairman on the new school of +poetry "in which, in spite of its good points, he condemned the +absence of the sentiment of the moral, which he held to be the really +stirring and popular element in literature." + +Evidently some of his friends tended towards a youthful cynicism for +in a paper on Barrie's _Window in Thrums_ Gilbert apologises to "such +of you as are much bitten with the George Moore state of mind." + +The book which describes the rusty emotions and toilsome lives of the +Thrums weavers will always remain a book that has given me something, +and the fact that mine is merely the popular view and that what I +feel in it can be equally felt by the majority of fellow-creatures, +this fact, such is my hardened and abandoned state, only makes me +like the book more. I have long found myself in that hopeless +minority that is engaged in protecting the majority of mankind from +the attacks of all men. . . . + +In this sentiment we recognise the G.K. that is to be, but not when +we find him seconding Mr. Bentley in the motion that "a scientific +education is much more useful than a classic." + +"Mr. M," reading a paper on Herodotus, "gave a minute account of the +life of the historian, dwelling much upon the doubt and controversy +surrounding his birth and several incidents of his history"; while +"Mr. F. read a paper on Newspapers, tracing their growth from the +Acta Diurna of the later Roman Empire to the hordes of papers of the +present day." + +Perhaps best of all these efforts was that of Mr. L.D., who "after +describing the governments of England, France, Russia, Germany and +the United States, proceeded to give his opinion on their various +merits, first saying that he personally was a republican." + +Of the boys that appear in _The Debater_, Robert Vernede was killed +in the Great War; Laurence Solomon at his death in 1940 was Senior +Tutor of University College, London; his brother Maurice who became +one of the Directors of the General Electric Company is now an +invalid. I read a year or so ago an interesting _Times_ obituary of +Mr. Bertram, who was Director of Civil Aviation in the Air Ministry; +Mr. Salter became a Principal in the Treasury, having practised as a +solicitor up to the War; Mr. Fordham, a barrister, was one of the +Legal Advisers to the Ministry of Labour and has now retired. + +The two outstanding "debaters" in G.K.'s life were Lucian Oldershaw +who became his brother-in-law and will often reappear in these pages, +and Edmund Clerihew Bentley, his friend of friends. Closely united as +was the whole group, Lucian Oldershaw once told me that they were +frantically jealous of one another: "We would have done anything to +get the first place with Gilbert." + +"But you know," I said "who had it." + +"Yes," he replied, "our jealousy of Bentley was overwhelming." + +Mr. Bentley became a journalist and was for long on the editorial +staff of the _Daily Telegraph_, but he is best known for his +detective stories--especially _Trent's Last Case_--and as the +inventor of a special form of rhyme, known from his second name as +the Clerihew. He wrote the first of these while still at school, and +the best were later published in a volume called _Biography for +Beginners_, which G.K. illustrated. Everyone has his favourite. My +own is: + + Sir Christopher Wren + Said "I am going to dine with some men, + If anybody calls + Say I'm designing St. Paul's." + +Or possibly: + + The people of Spain think Cervantes + Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes, + An opinion resented most bitterly + By the people of Italy. + +Bentley was essentially a holiday as well as term-time companion and +when they were not together a large correspondence between the two +boys gives some idea of how and where Gilbert spent his summer +holidays. They are very much schoolboy letters and not worth quoting +at full length, but it is interesting to compare both style and +content with the later letters. All the letters begin "Dear Bentley." +The first use of his Christian name only occurs after both had left +school. + + Austria House + Pier Street + Ventnor, Isle of Wight + (undated, probably 1890) + + Although you dropt some hints about Paris when you were last + in our humble abode, I presume that this letter, if addressed to your + usual habitation, will reach you at some period. Ventnor, where, as + you will perceive we are, is, I will not say built upon hills, but + emptied into the cracks and clefts of rocks so that the geography of + the town is curious and involved. . . . + + My brother is intent upon "The Three Midshipmen" or "The Three + Admirals" or the three coal-scuttles or some other distinguished trio + by that interminable ass Kingston. I looked at it today and wondered + how I ever could have enjoyed his eternal slave schooners and African + stations. I would not give a page of "Mansfield Park" or a verse of + "In Memoriam" for all the endless fighting of blacks and boarding of + pirates through which the three hypocritical vagabonds ever went. I + am getting old. How old it will shortly be necessary for me to state + precisely, for, as you doubtless know there is going to be a + Census. . . . + + I have been trying to knock into shape a story, such as we spoke + about the other day, about the first introduction of Tea, and I should + be glad of your assistance and suggestions. I think I shall lay the + scene in Holland where the merits of tea were first largely agitated, + and fill the scene with the traditional Dutch figures such as I sketch. + I find in Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature" which I consulted + before coming away that a French writer wrote an elaborate treatise + to prove that tea merchants were always immoral members of society. + It would be rather curious to apply the theory to the present + day. . . . + + 11, Warwick Gardens, + Kensington. + (undated.) + + I direct this letter to your ancient patrimonial estate unknowing + whether it will reach you or where it will reach you if it does; + whether you are shooting polar bears on the ice-fields of Spitzbergen + or cooking missionaries among the cannibals of the South Pacific. + But wherever you are I find some considerable relief in turning from + the lofty correspondence of the secretary (with no disparagement + of my much-esteemed friend, Oldershaw) to another friend + (ifelow-mecallimso as Mr. Verdant Greene said) who can discourse on + some other subjects besides the Society, and who will not devote the + whole of his correspondence to the questions of that excellent and + valuable body. The Society is a very good thing in its way (being + the President I naturally think so) but like other good things, you + may have too much of it, and I have had. . . . + + As I said before, I don't know where you are disporting yourself, + beyond some hurried remark about Paris which you dropped in our + hurried interview in one of the "brilliant flashes of silence" between + those imbecile screams and yells and stamping, which even the + natural enthusiasm at the prospect of being "broken up" cannot + excuse. + + 6, The Quadrant, + North Berwick, Haddington, + Scotland. + (? 1891.) + + You will probably guess that as far as personal taste and instincts + are concerned, I share all your antipathy to the noisy Plebian + excursionist. A visit to Ramsgate during the season and the vision of + the crowded, howling sands has left in me feelings which all my + Radicalism cannot allay. At the same time I think that the lower + orders are seen unfavorably when enjoying themselves. In labour and + trouble they are more dignified and less noisy. Your suggestion as to + a series of soliloquies is very flattering and has taken hold of me + to the extent of writing a similar ballad on Simon de Montfort. The + order in which they come is rather incongruous, particularly if I + include the list I have in mind for the future thus--Danton, William + III, Simon de Montfort, Rousseau, David and Russell. . . . I rejoice + to say that this is a sequestered spot into which Hi tiddly hi ti, + etc. and all the ills in its train have not penetrated. + +In these last two letters there are sentences of a kind not to be +found anywhere else in Chesterton. The disparagement of Lucian +Oldershaw's excessive enthusiasm for the Junior Debating Club, the +solemn reprobation of the "imbecile screams and yells and stamping" +of the last day at school before the summer holidays, the antipathy +expressed for the rowdy enjoyments of the lower orders--these things +are not in the least like either the Chesterton that was to be or the +Chesterton that then was. But they are very much like Bentley. He was +two years younger than Chesterton, but far older than his years and +seemed indeed to the other boys (and perhaps to himself) like an +elderly gentleman smiling a remote amused smile at the enthusiasms of +the young. I get the strongest feeling that at this stage Chesterton +not only admired him--as he was to do all his life--but wanted to be +like him, to say the kind of thing he thought Bentley would say. This +phase did not last, as we shall see; it had gone by the time +Chesterton was at the Slade School. + + 6, The Quadrant, + North Berwick + Haddington, Scotland. + (undated, probably 1891.) + + DEAR BENTLEY, + + We have been here three days and my brother loudly murmurs that we + have not yet seen any of "the sights." For my part I abominate + sights, and all people who want to look at them. A great deal more + instruction, to say nothing of pleasure is to be got out of the + nearest haystack or hedgerow taken quietly, than in trotting over two + or three counties to see "the view" or "the site" or the + extraordinary cliff or the unusual tower or the unreasonable hill or + any other monstrosity deforming the face of Nature. Anybody can make + sights but nobody has yet succeeded in making scenery. (Excuse the + unaccountable pencil drawing in the middle which was drawn + unconsciously on the back of the unfinished letter.) . . . + + 9, South Terrace, + Littlehampton, Sussex. + (undated.) + + . . . I agree with you in your admiration for Paradise Lost, but + consider it on the whole too light and childish a book for persons of + our age. It is all very well, as small children to read pretty + stories about Satan and Belial, when we have only just mastered our + "Oedipus" and our Herbert Spencer, but when we grow older we get to + like Captain Marryat and Mr. Kingston and when we are men we know + that Cinderella is much better than any of those babyish books. As + regards one question which you asked, I may remark that the children + of Israel [presumably the Solomons] have not gone unto Horeb, neither + unto Sittim, but unto the land that is called Shropshire they went, + and abode therein. And they came unto a city, even unto the city that + is called Shrewsbury, and there they builded themselves an home, + where they might abide. And their home was in the land that was + called Castle Street and their home was the 25th tabernacle in that + land. And they abode with certain of their own kin until their season + be over and gone. And lo! they spake unto me by letter, saying, + "Heard ye aught of him that is called Bentley? Is he in the house of + his fathers or has he come unto a strange land?" Here endeth the 2nd + Lesson. + + Hotel de Lille & d'Albion, + 223, Rue St. Honore, + Paris. + (undated, probably 1892.) + + . . . They showed us over the treasures of the Cathedral, among + which, as was explained by the guide, who spoke a little English, was + a cross given by Louis XIV to _"Meess"_ Lavalliere. I thought that + concession to the British system of titles was indeed touching. I + also thought, when reflecting what the present was, and where it was + and then to whom it was given, that this showed pretty well what the + religion of the Bourbon regime was and why it has become impossible + since the Revolution. + + Grand Hotel du Chemin de Fer, + Arromanches (Calvados) + (undated) + + . . . Art is universal. This remark is not so irrelevant and Horace + Greeley-like as it may appear. I have just had a demonstration of its + truth on the coach coming down here. Two very nice little French boys + of cropped hair and restless movements were just in front of us and + my pater having discovered that the book they had with them was a + prize at a Paris school, some slight conversation arose. Not thinking + my French altogether equal to a prolonged interview, I took out a + scrap of paper and began, with a fine carelessness to draw a picture + of Napoleon I, hat, chin, attitude, all complete. This, of course, + was gazed at rapturously by these two young inheritors of France's + glory and it ended in my drawing them unlimited goblins to keep for + the remainder of the interview. + +In May 1891, the Chairman of the J.D.C. attained the maturity of +seventeen. + + The Secretary then rose and in a speech in which he extolled the + merits of the Chairman as a chairman, and mentioned the benefit which + the Junior Debating Club received on the day of which this was the + anniversary, viz., the natal day of Mr. Chesterton, proposed that a + vote wishing him many happy returns of the day and a long continuance + in the Chair of the Club should be passed. This was carried with + acclamations. The Chairman replied after restoring Order. . . . + +Naturally this question of order among a crowd of boys loomed large. +At the beginning a number of rules were passed giving great powers to +the Chairman, "which that gentleman," he says of himself, "lenient by +temperament and republican by principles, certainly would never have +put in force. . . . It was seldom enough," he continues: + + that a boy of fifteen* found himself in the position of the + Chairman, an attitude of command and responsibility over a body of + his friends and equals, and it was not to be expected that they would + easily take to the state of things. Nor was the Chairman himself, + like the Secretary, protected and armed by any personal aptitude for + practical proceedings. But solely by the certain degree of respect + entertained for his character and acquirements. This respect, sincere + and even excessive as it frequently was, contrasted somewhat + humorously with the common inattention to questions of order, nor + could anything be more noisy than the loyalty of Fordham and Langdon + Davies, with the exception of their interruptions. It may then fairly + be said that the troubles and discussions of the first months of the + Club's existence centred practically round the question of order, the + first of the great difficulties of this most difficult enterprise. + How boys who could scarcely be got to behave quietly under the + strictest schoolmasters could ever be brought to obey the rebuke of + their equal and schoolfellow: how a heterogeneous pack of average + schoolboys could organise themselves into a self-governing republic, + these were problems of real and stupendous difficulty. The fines of a + penny and of twopence, which were instituted at the first meeting, + were found hopelessly incompetent to cope with the bursts of + oblivious hilarity. Fordham in particular, whose constant breaches of + order threatened to exhaust even the extensive treasury of that + spoilt and opulent young gentleman, soon left calculation far behind, + nor can the story be better or more brightly told than by himself. + "Mr. F.," he wrote, "at one time, after considerable calculation + found that he was in debt to the extent of some 10 or 11 shillings; + but as he felt that by refusing to pay the sum he would be striking a + blow for the liberty of the subject, he manfully held out against + what he considered an unjust punishment for such diminutive + frivolities as he had indulged in." . . . At times incidents of a + disturbing and playful nature have roused the wrath of the Chairman + and Secretary to a pitch awful to behold. At one time Mr. H. (a + member who soon resigned) spent a considerable part of a meeting + under the table, till he found himself used as a public footstool and + a doormat combined. At another as Mr. Bentley was departing from the + scene of chaos a penny bun of the sticky order caressingly stung his + honoured cheek, sped upon its errand of mercy by the unerring aim of + Mr. F.** + +[* He was, in fact, sixteen when the J.D.C. began.] + +[** MS. _History of the J.D.C_.] + +Mr. Fordham well remembers how G.K. one day took him +aside at the Oldershaws' house and told him that he really must +be less exuberant. This historic occasion was always alluded +to later as "the day on which the Chairman spoke seriously to +Mr. F." + +After various resignations order was restored, and a little later two +of the chief recalcitrants asked to be received back into the Club. +"I feel so lonely without it," one of them had remarked; and G.K. +comments, "This has always appeared to the present writer one of the +most important speeches in the history of the Club. . . . The Junior +Debating Club had come through its moments of difficulty and was a +fact and an establishment." + +Nor was the circulation of _The Debater_ long confined to members of +the Club and their own circle of friends and relatives. Some of the +boys had no doubt a regular allowance, but probably a small one. +Gilbert himself says in his diary that he had no income "except +errant sixpences." And printers' bills had to be paid. Moreover in +the first number the editor Lucian Oldershaw confessed frankly that +one reason for the paper's existence was "that the Society may not +degenerate into the position of a mutual admiration Society by +totally lacking the admiration of outsiders." The staff were able +immediately to note, "Any apprehensions we may have felt on the +morning of the publication of _The Debater_ were speedily dispelled, +when by nightfall we had disposed of all our copies." Of a later +issue the energetic editor sold sixty-five copies in the course of +the summer holidays. Masters, too, began to read it and at last a +copy was hid on the table of the High Master, Mr. Walker. Cecil +Chesterton describes the High Master as a gigantic man with a booming +voice. Some Paulines believed he had given Gilbert the first +inspiration for the personality of "Sunday" in _The Man Who Was +Thursday_. Another contemporary says that he was reputed to take no +interest in anything except examination successes, and that the boys +were amazed at the effect on him of reading _The Debater_. Reading in +the light of his future, one sees qualities in Gilbert's work not to +be found in that of the other contributors, but it is worth noting +that the J.D.C. members were in fact a quite unusually able group. +Almost every one of them took brilliant scholarships to Oxford or +Cambridge; the High Master had never boasted of so many scholarships +from one set of boys. And in reading _The Debater_ (an enjoyment I +wish others could share) one has to bear in mind the relative ages of +the contributors. It is, I think, striking that all these boys should +have recognised Gilbert's quality and accepted his leadership, for +they were all a year or so younger than he was and yet were in the +same form. They knew that this was only because G.K. would not bother +to do his school work; still, I think that at that age they showed +insight by knowing it. + +Gilbert's work is to be found in every number of _The +Debater_--usually verse as well as prose. Both Fordham and Oldershaw +remember most vividly the effect of reading a fanciful essay on +Dragons in the first number. "The Dragon," it began, "is the most +cosmopolitan of impossibilities." And the boys, rolling the words on +their tongues, murmured to one another, "This is literature." + +Except for a very occasional flash the one element not yet visible in +these _Debater_ essays is humour. This is curious, because some of +his most brilliant fooling belongs to the same period. In a +collection made after his death, _The Coloured Lands_ is an +illustrated jeu d'esprit of 1891, _Half Hours in Hades:_ "an +elementary handbook of demonology" which is as amusing a thing as he +ever wrote. The drawings he made for it show specimens of the +evolution of various types of devil into various types of humans: the +devils themselves are carefully classified--the common or garden +serpent (Tentator Hortensis), the red devil (Diabolus Mephistopheles) +the blue devil (Caeruleus Lugubrius) etc. Mr. J. Milton's "specimen" +is discussed and various methods of pursuing observations in +supernatural history which "possesses an interest which will remain +after health, youth and even life have departed." + +There is nothing of this kind in _The Debater_. Besides the +historical soliloquies mentioned in the letter to Bentley, there are +poems in which he is beginning to feel after his religious +philosophy. One of these in a very early number shows considerable +power for a boy not yet seventeen. + + ADVENIAT REGNUM TUUM + + Not that the widespread wings of wrong brood o'er a moaning earth, + Not from the clinging curse of gold, the random lot of birth; + Not from the misery of the weak, the madness of the strong, + Goes upward from our lips the cry, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" + Not only from the huts of toil, the dens of sin and shame, + From lordly halls and peaceful homes the cry goes up the same; + Deep in the heart of every man, where'er his life be spent, + There is a noble weariness, a holy discontent. + Where'er to mortal eyes has come, in silence dark and lone, + Some glimmer of the far-off light the world has never known, + Some ghostly echoes from a dream of earth's triumphal song, + Then as the vision fades we cry, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" + Long ages, from the dawn of time, men's toiling march has wound + Towards the world they ever sought, the world they never found; + Still far before their toiling path the glimmering promise lay, + Still hovered round the struggling race, a dream by night and day. + Mid darkening care and clinging sin they sought their unknown home, + Yet ne'er the perfect glory came--Lord, will it ever come? + The weeding of earth's garden broad from all its growths of wrong, + When all man's soul shall be a prayer, and all his life a song. + Aye, though through many a starless night we guard the flaming oil, + Though we have watched a weary watch, and toiled a weary toil, + Though in the midnight wilderness, we wander still forlorn, + Yet bear we in our hearts the proof that God shall send the dawn. + Deep in the tablets of our hearts he writes that yearning still, + The longing that His hand hath wrought shall not his hand fulfil? + Though death shall close upon us all before that hour we see, + The goal of ages yet is there--the good time yet to be: + Therefore, tonight, from varied lips, in every house and home, + Goes up to God the common prayer, "Father, Thy Kingdom come."* + +[* _The Debater_, Vol. I. March-April, 1891.] + +Gilbert's prose work in _The Debater_ must have been little less +surprising to any master who had merely watched him slumbering at a +desk. His historical romance "The White Cockade" is immature and +unimportant. But essays on Spenser, Milton, Pope, Gray, Cowper, +Burns, Wordsworth, "Humour in Fiction," "Boys' Literature," Sir +Walter Scott, Browning, the English Dramatists, showed a range and a +quality of literary criticism alike surprising. Perhaps most +surprising, however, is the fact that all this does not seem to have +made clear to either masters or parents the true nature of Gilbert's +vocation. He suffered at this date from having too many talents. For +he still went on drawing and his drawings seemed to many the most +remarkable thing about him, and were certainly the thing he most +enjoyed doing. + +Even now his school work had not brought him into the highest +form--called not the Sixth, as in most schools, but the Eighth: the +highest form he ever reached was 6B. But in the Summer term of 1892 +he entered a competition for a prize poem, and won it. The subject +chosen was St. Francis Xavier. I give the poem in Appendix A. It is +not as notable as some other of his work at that time: what is +interesting is that in it this schoolboy expresses with some power a +view he was later to explode yet more powerfully. He might have +claimed for himself what he said of earlier writers--it is not true +that they did not see our modern difficulties: they saw through them. +Never before had this contest been won by any but an Eighth Form boy, +and almost immediately afterwards Gilbert was amazed to find a short +notice posted on the board: "G. K. Chesterton to rank with the +Eighth.--F. W. Walker, High Master." + +The High Master at any rate had travelled far from the atmosphere of +the form reports when Mrs. Chesterton visited him in 1894 to ask his +advice about her son's future. For he said, "Six foot of genius. +Cherish him, Mrs. Chesterton, cherish him." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Art Schools and University College + +WHEN ALL GILBERT'S friends were at Oxford or Cambridge, he used to +say how glad he was that his own choice had been a different one. He +never sighed for Oxford. He never regretted his rather curious +experiences at an Art School--two Art Schools really, although he +only talks of one in the _Autobiography_, for he was for a short time +at a School of Art in St. John's Wood (Calderon's, Lawrence Solomon +thought), whence he passed to the Slade School. He was there from +1892 to 1895 and during part of that time he attended lectures on +English Literature at University College. + +The chapter on the experiences of the next two years is called in the +_Autobiography_," How to be a Lunatic," and there is no doubt that +these years were crucial and at times crucifying in Gilbert's life. +During a happily prolonged youth (he was now eighteen and a half) he +had developed very slowly, but normally. Surrounded by pleasant +friendships and home influences he had never really become aware of +evil. Now it broke upon him suddenly--probably to a degree +exaggerated by his strong imagination and distorted by the fact that +he was undergoing physical changes usually belonging to an earlier +age. + +Towards the end of his school life Gilbert's voice had not yet +broken. His mother took him to a doctor to be overhauled and was told +that his brain was the largest and most sensitive the doctor had ever +seen. "A genius or an idiot" was his verdict on the probabilities. +Above all things she was told to avoid for him any sort of shock. +Physically, mentally, spiritually he was on a very large scale and +probably for that reason of a slow rate of development. The most +highly differentiated organisms are the slowest to mature, and +without question Gilbert did mature very late. He was now passing +through the stage described by Keats: "The imagination of a boy is +healthy and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is +a space of life between"--a period unhealthy or at least ill-focussed. + +Intellectually Gilbert suffered at this time from an extreme +scepticism. As he expressed it he "felt as if everything might be a +dream" as if he had "projected the universe from within." The +agnostic doubts the existence of God. Gilbert at moments doubted the +existence of the agnostic. + +Morally his temptations seem to have been in some strange psychic +region rather than merely physical. The whole period is best +summarised in a passage from the _Autobiography_, for looking back +after forty years Gilbert still saw it as deeply and darkly +significant: as both a mental and moral extreme of danger. + + There is something truly menacing in the thought of how quickly I + could imagine the maddest, when I had never committed the mildest + crime . . . there was a time when I had reached that condition of + moral anarchy within, in which a man says, in the words of Wilde, + that "Atys with the blood-stained knife were better than the thing I + am." I have never indeed felt the faintest temptation to the + particular madness of Wilde, but I could at this time imagine the + worst and wildest disproportions and distortions of more normal + passion; the point is that the whole mood was overpowered and + oppressed with a sort of congestion of imagination. As Bunyan, in his + morbid period, described himself as prompted to utter blasphemies, I + had an overpowering impulse to record or draw horrible ideas and + images; lunging deeper and deeper as in a blind spiritual suicide.* + +[* Pp. 88-9.] + +Two of his intimate friends, finding at this time a notebook full of +these horrible drawings, asked one another, "Is Chesterton going mad?" + +He dabbled too in spiritualism until he realised that he had reached +the verge of forbidden and dangerous ground: + + I would not altogether rule out the suggestion of some that we were + playing with fire; or even with hell-fire. In the words that were + written for us there was nothing ostensibly degrading, but any amount + that was deceiving. I saw quite enough of the thing to be able to + testify with complete certainty, that something happens which is not + in the ordinary sense natural, or produced by the normal and + conscious human will. Whether it is produced by some subconscious but + still human force, or by some powers, good, bad, or indifferent, + which are external to humanity, I would not myself attempt to decide. + The only thing I will say with complete confidence, about that mystic + and invisible power, is that it tells lies. The lies may be larks or + they may be lures to the imperilled soul or they may be a thousand + other things; but whatever they are, they are not truths about the + other world; or for that matter about this world.* + +[*_Autobiography_, p. 77.] + +He told Father O'Connor some years later* that "he had used the +planchette freely at one time, but had to give it up on account of +headaches ensuing . . . 'after the headaches came a horrid feeling as +if one were trying to get over a bad spree, with what I can best +describe as a bad smell in the mind.'" + +[*_Father Brown on Chesterton,_ p. 74.] + +Idling at his work he fell in with other idlers and has left a vivid +description in a _Daily News_ article called, "The Diabolist," of one +of his fellow students. + + . . . It was strange, perhaps, that I liked his dirty, drunken + society; it was stranger still, perhaps, that he liked my society. + For hours of the day he would talk with me about Milton or Gothic + architecture; for hours of the night he would go where I have no wish + to follow him, even in speculation. He was a man with a long, + ironical face, and close red hair; he was by class a gentleman, and + could walk like one, but preferred, for some reason, to walk like a + groom carrying two pails. He looked like a sort of super-jockey; as + if some archangel had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the + half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first + and last time. + + . . . He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me + despair of his soul. A common, harmless atheist would have denied + that religion produced humility or humility a simple joy; but he + admitted both. He only said, "But shall I not find in evil a life of + its own? Granted that for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks + will go out; will not the expanding pleasure of ruin . . ." + + "Do you see that fire?" I asked. "If we had a real fighting + democracy, some one would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper + that you are." + + "Perhaps," he said, in his tired, fair way. "Only what you call + evil I call good." + + He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the + steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my + hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his + voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled; but + then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, + "Nobody can possibly know." And then I heard those two or three words + which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the + Diabolist say, "I tell you I have done everything else. If I do that + I shan't know the difference between right and wrong." I rushed out + without daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not know + whether it was hell or the furious love of God. + + I have since heard that he died; it may be said, I think, that he + committed suicide; though he did it with tools of pleasure, not with + tools of pain. God help him, I know the road he went; but I have + never known or even dared to think what was that place at which he + stopped and refrained.* + +[* Quoted in _G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism_. Alston Rivers Ltd. 1908, +pp. 20-22.] + +Revulsion from the atmosphere of evil took Gilbert to no new thing +but to a strengthening of old ties and a mystic renewal of them. The +J.D.C. was idealised into a mystical city of friends: + + A LIST + + I know a friend, very strong and good. He is the best friend in the + world, + + I know another friend, subtle and sensitive. He is certainly the best + friend on earth. + + I know another friend: very quiet and shrewd, there is no friend so + good as he. + + I know another friend, who is enigmatical and reluctant, he is the + best of all. + + I know yet another: who is polished and eager, he is far better + than the rest. + + I know another, who is young and very quick, he is the most beloved + of all friends, + + I know a lot more and they are all like that. + + Amen. + + THE COSMIC FACTORIES + + What are little boys made of? + + Bentley is made of hard wood with a knot in it, a complete set of + Browning and a strong spring; + + Oldershaw of a box of Lucifer matches and a stylographic pen; + + Lawrence of a barrister's wig: files of Punch and salt, + + Maurice of watch-wheels, three riders and a clean collar. + + Vernede is made of moonlight and tobacco, + + Bertram is mostly a handsome black walking-stick. + + Waldo is a nice cabbage, with a vanishing odour of cigarettes, + + Salter is made of sand and fire and an university extension ticket. + + But the strongest element in all can not be expressed; I think it + is a sort of star.* + +[* From _The Notebook_.] + +There are fragments of a Morality Play entitled "The Junior Debating +Club," of a modern novel in which everyone of the Debaters makes his +appearance, of a mediaeval story called "The Legend of Sir Edmund of +the Brotherhood of the Jongleurs de Dieu." Notes, fragments, letters, +all show an intense individual interest that covered the life of each +of his friends. If one of them is worried, he worries too; if one +rejoices, he rejoices exceedingly. They write to him about their +ideas and views, their relations with one another, their reactions in +the world of Oxford life, their love affairs. "I am in need of some +literary tonic or blood-letting," says Vernede, "which you alone can +supply." + +"I only hope," writes Bertram, "you may be as much use in the world +in future as you have been in the past to your friends." + +"Most of the absent Club," writes Salter separated from the others, +"lie together in my pocket at this moment." And Gilbert writes in +_The Notebook:_ + + AN IDYLL + + Tea is made; the red fogs shut round the house but the gas burns. + I wish I had at this moment round the table + A company of fine people. + Two of them are at Oxford and one in Scotland and two at other + places. + But I wish they would all walk in now, for the tea is made. + +Gilbert was devoted to them all. But as we have seen, Bentley's was +the supreme friendship of his youth. It was a friendship in foolery +as we are told by the dedication of _Greybeards at Play:_ + + He was through boyhood's storm and shower + My best my nearest friend, + We wore one hat, smoked one cigar + One standing at each end. + +It was a deeply serious friendship as we are told in the dedication +of _The Man Who Was Thursday_. With Bentley alone he shared the + + Doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, + And day had broken on the streets ere it broke upon the brain. + +Most young men write or at least begin novels of which they are +themselves the heroes. Gilbert wrote and illustrated a fairy story +about a boyish romance of Lucian Oldershaw's while two unfinished +novels have Bentley for hero. He is, too, in the mediaeval story, Sir +Edmund of the Brotherhood of the Jongleurs de Dieu. Gilbert sings, +like all young poets, of first love--but it is Bentley's not his own: +he was as much excited about a girl Bentley had fallen in love with +as if he had fallen in love with her himself. And where a London +street has a special significance one discovers it is because of a +memory of Bentley's. To Bentley then, with whom all was shared, +Gilbert wrote, when through friendship and the goodness of things he +had come out again into the daylight. The second thought that had +saved him had largely grown out of the first. The J.D.C. meant +friendship. Friendship meant the highest of all good things and all +good things called for gratitude. As he gave thanks he drew near to +God. + + Dunedin Lodge + Forth Street + North Berwick. + (undated, but probably Long Vac., 1894.) + + Your letter was most welcome: in which, however, it does not differ + widely from most of your letters. I read somewhere in some fatuous + Complete Letter-writer or something, that it is correct to imitate + the order of subjects, etc. observed by your correspondent. In + obedience to this rule of breeding I will hurriedly remark that my + holiday has been nice enough in itself; we walk about; lie on the + sand; go and swim in the sea when it generally rains; and the + combination gets in our mouths and we say the name of the Professor + in the "Water Babies." Inwardly speaking, I have had a funny time. A + meaningless fit of depression, taking the form of certain absurd + psychological worries came upon me, and instead of dismissing it and + talking to people, I had it out and went very far into the abysses, + indeed. The result was that I found that things when examined, + necessarily _spelt_ such a mystically satisfactory state of things, + that without getting back to earth, I saw lots that made me certain + it is all right. The vision is fading into common day now, and I am + glad. The frame of mind was the reverse of gloomy, but it would not + do for long. It is embarrassing, talking with God face to face, as a + man speaketh to his friend. + +And in another letter: + + A cosmos one day being rebuked by a pessimist replied, "How can you + who revile me consent to speak by my machinery? Permit me to reduce + you to nothingness and then we will discuss the matter." Moral. You + should not look a gift universe in the mouth. + +Another powerful influence in the direction of mental health was the +discovery of Walt Whitman's poetry. "I shall never forget," Lucian +Oldershaw writes, "reading to him from the Canterbury Walt Whitman in +my bedroom at West Kensington. The seance lasted from two to three +hours, and we were intoxicated with the excitement of the discovery." + +For some time now we shall find Gilbert dismissing belief in any +positive existence of evil and treating the universe on the Whitman +principle of jubilant and universal acceptance. He writes, too, in +the Whitman style. By far the most important of his notebooks is one +which, by amazing good fortune, can be dated, beginning in 1894 and +continuing for several years. In its attitude to man it is +Whitmanesque to a high degree, yet it is also most characteristically +Chestertonian. Whitman is content with a shouting, roaring optimism +about life and humanity. Chesterton had to find for it a +philosophical basis. Heartily as he disliked the literary pessimism +of the hour, he was not content simply to exchange one mood for +another. For whether he was conscious of it at the time or not, he +did later see Walt Whitman's outlook as a mood and not a philosophy. +It was a mood, however, that Chesterton himself never really lost, +solely because he did discover the philosophy needed to sustain it. +And thereby, even in this early Notebook, he goes far beyond Whitman. +Even so early he knew that a philosophy of man could not be a +philosophy of man only. He already _feels_ a presence in the universe: + + It is evening + And into the room enters again a large indiscernable presence. + Is it a man or a woman? + Is it one long dead or yet to come? + That sits with me in the evening. + +This again might have been only a mood--had he not found the +philosophy to sustain it too. It is remarkable how much of this +philosophy he had arrived at in The Notebook, before he had come to +know Catholics. Indeed the Notebook seems to me so important that it +needs a chapter to itself with abundant quotation. + +Meanwhile, what was Gilbert doing about his work at University +College? Professor Fred Brown told Lawrence Solomon that when he was +at the Slade School he always seemed to be writing and while +listening to lectures he was always drawing. It is probably true +that, as Cecil Chesterton says, he shrank from the technical toils of +the artist as he never did later from those of authorship; and none +of the professors regarded him as a serious art student. They pointed +later to his illustrations of _Biography for Beginners_ as proof that +he never learnt to draw. Yet how many of the men who did learn +seriously could have drawn those sketches, full of crazy energy and +vitality? I know nothing about drawing, but anyone may know how +brilliant are the illustrations to _Greybeards at Play_ or _Biography +for Beginners_, and later to Mr. Belloc's novels. And anyone can see +the power of line with which he drew in his notebooks unfinished +suggestions of humanity or divinity. Anyone, too, can recognise a +portrait of a man, and faces full of character continue to adorn +G.K.'s exercise books. Of living models he affected chiefly +Gladstone, Balfour, and Joe Chamberlin. In hours of thought he made +drawings of Our Lord with a crown of thorns or nailed to a +cross--these suddenly appear in any of his books between fantastic +drawings or lecture notes. As the mind wandered and lingered the +fingers followed it, and as Gilbert listened to lectures, he would +even draw on the top of his own notes. He had always had facility and +that facility increased, so that in later years he often completed in +a couple of hours the illustrations to a novel of Belloc's. Nor were +these drawings merely illustrations of an already completed text, for +Mr. Belloc has told me that the characters were often half suggested +to him by his friend's drawings. + +On one, at any rate, of his vacations, Gilbert went to Italy, and two +letters to Bentley show much of the way his thoughts were going: + + Hotel New York + Florence. + (undated, probably 1894.) + + DEAR BENTLEY, + + I turn to write my second letter to you and my first to Grey + [Maurice Solomon], just after having a very interesting conversation + with an elderly American like Colonel Newcome, though much better + informed, with whom I compared notes on Botticelli, Ruskin, Carlyle, + Emerson and the world in general. I asked him what he thought of + Whitman. He answered frankly that in America they were "hardly up to + him." "We have one town, Boston," he said precisely, "that has got up + to Browning." He then added that there was one thing everyone in + America remembered: Whitman himself. The old gentleman quite kindled + on this topic, "Whitman was a real Man. A man who was so pure and + strong that we could not imagine him doing an unmanly thing anywhere." + It was odd words to hear at a table d'hote, from your next door + neighbour: it made me quite excited over my salad. + + You see that this humanitarianism in which we are entangled asserts + itself where, by all guidebook laws, it should not. When I take up my + pen to write to you, I am thinking more of a white-moustached old + Yankee at an hotel than about the things I have seen within the same + 24 hours: the frescoes of Santa Croce, the illuminations of St. + Marco; the white marbles of the tower of Giotto; the very Madonnas of + Raphael, the very David of Michael Angelo. Throughout this tour, in + pursuance of our theory of travelling, we have avoided the guide: he + is the death-knell of individual liberty. Once only we broke through + our rule and that was in favour of an extremely intelligent, nay + impulsive young Italian in Santa Maria Novella, a church where we saw + some of the most interesting pieces of mediaeval painting I have ever + seen, interesting not so much from an artistic as from a moral and + historical point of view. Particularly noticeable was the great + fresco expressive of the grandest mediaeval conception of the + Communion of Saints, a figure of Christ surmounting a crowd of all + ages and stations, among whom were not only Dante, Petrarca, Giotto, + etc., etc., but Plato, Cicero, and best of all, Arius. I said to the + guide, in a tone of expostulation, "Heretico!" (a word of impromptu + manufacture). Whereupon he nodded, smiled and was positively radiant + with the latitudinarianism of the old Italian painter. It was + interesting for it was a fresh proof that even the early Church + united had a period of thought and tolerance before the dark ages + closed around it. There is one thing that I must tell you more of + when we meet, the tower of Giotto. It was built in a square of + Florence, near the Cathedral, by a self-made young painter and + architect who had kept sheep as a boy on the Tuscan hills. It is + still called "The Shepherd's Tower." What I want to tell you about is + the series of bas-reliefs, which Giotto traced on it, representing + the creation and progress of man, his discovery of navigation, + astronomy, law, music and so on. It is religious in the grandest + sense, but there is not a shred of doctrine (even the Fall is + omitted) about this history in stone. If Walt Whitman had been an + architect, he would have built such a tower, with such a story on it. + As I want to go out and have a good look at it before we start for + Venice tomorrow, I must cut this short. I hope you are enjoying + yourself as much as I am, and thinking about me half as much as I am + about you. + + Your very sincere friend, + GILBERT K. CHESTERTON. + +No one would have enjoyed more than Gilbert rereading this letter in +after years and noting the suggestion that the fifteenth century +belonged to the early church and preceded the Dark Ages. And I think, +too, that even in Giotto's Tower, he might later have discovered some +roots of doctrine. + + Grand Hotel De Milan + (undated) + + DEAR BENTLEY, + + I write you a third letter before coming back, while Venice and + Verona are fresh in my mind. Of the former I can really only + discourse viva voce. Imagine a city, whose very slums are full of + palaces, whose every other house wall has a battered fresco, or a + gothic bas-relief; imagine a sky fretted with every kind of pinnacle + from the great dome of the Salute to the gothic spires of the Ducal + Palace and the downright arabesque orientalism of the minarets of St. + Mark's; and then imagine the whole flooded with a sea that seems only + intended to reflect sunsets, and you still have no idea of the place + I stopped in for more than 48 hours. Thence we went to Verona, where + Romeo and Juliet languished and Dante wrote most of "Hell." The + principal products (1) tombs: particularly those of the Scala, a very + good old family with an excellent taste in fratricide. Their three + tombs (one to each man I mean: one man, one grave) are really + glorious examples of three stages of Gothic: of which more when we + meet. (2) Balconies: with young ladies hanging over them; really + quite a preponderating feature. Whether this was done in obedience to + local associations and in expectation of a Romeo, I can't say. I can + only remark that if such was the object, the supply of Juliets seemed + very much in excess of the demand. (3) Roman remains: on which, + however, I did not pronounce a soliloquy beginning, "Wonderful + people . . ." which is the correct thing to do. Just as I get to this + I receive your letter and resolve to begin another sheet of paper. I + did read Rosebery's speech and was more than interested; I was + stirred. The old order (of parliamentary forms, peerages, Whiggism + and right honourable friends) has changed, yielding place to the new + (of industrialism, county council sanitation, education and the + Kingdom of Heaven at hand) and, whatever the Archbishop of + Canterbury may say, God fulfils himself in many ways, even by local + government. . . . + + Several things in your letter require notice. First the accusation + levelled against me of being prejudiced against Professor Huxley, I + repel with indignation and scorn. You are not prejudiced against + cheese because you like oranges; and though the Professor is not + Isaiah or St. Francis or Whitman or Richard le Gallienne (to name + some of those whom I happen to affect) I should be the last person in + the world to say a word against an earnest, able, kind-hearted and + most refreshingly rational man: by far the best man of his type I + know. As to what you say on education generally, I am entirely with + you, but it will take a good interview to say how much. As for the + little Solomons, I am prepared to [be] fond of all of them, as I am + of all children, even the grubby little mendicants that run these + Italian streets. I am glad you and Grey have pottered. Potter again. + I have had such a nice letter from Lawrence. It makes me think it is + all going "to be the fair beginning of a time." + +Had the months of art study only developed in Gilbert Chesterton his +power of drawing, they might still have been worthwhile. But they +gave him, too, a time to dream and to think which working for a +University degree would never have allowed. His views and his mind +were developing fast, and he was also developing a power to which we +owe some of his best work--depth of vision. + +Most art criticism is the work of those who never could have been +artists--which is possibly why it tends to be so critical. Gilbert, +who could perhaps have been an artist, preferred to appreciate what +the artist was trying to say and to put into words what he read on +the canvas. Hence both in his _Watts_ and his _Blake_ we get what +some of us ask of an art critic--the enlargement of our own powers of +vision. This is what made Ruskin so great an art critic, a fact once +realised, today forgotten. He may have made a thousand mistakes, he +had a multitude of foolish prejudices, but he opened the eyes of a +whole generation to see and understand great art. + +G.K. was to begin his published writings with poetry and art +criticism--in other words with vision. And this vision he partly owed +to the Slade School. Here is a letter (undated) to Bentley containing +a hint of what eight years later became a book on Watts: + + On Saturday I saw two exhibitions of pictures. The first was the + Royal Academy, where I went with Salter. There was one picture there, + though the walls were decorated with frames very prettily. As to the + one picture, if you look at an Academy catalogue you will see + "Jonah": by G. F. Watts, and you will imagine a big silly picture of + a whale. But if you go to Burlington House you will see something + terrible. A spare, wild figure, clad in a strange sort of green with + his head flung so far back that his upper part is a miracle of + foreshortening, his hands thrust out, his face ghastly with ecstasy, + his dry lips yelling aloud, a figure of everlasting protest and + defiance. And as a background (perfect in harmony of colour) you have + the tracery of the Assyrian bas-reliefs, such as survive in wrecks in + the British Museum, a row of those processions of numberless captives + bowing before smiling Kings: a cruel sort of art. And the passionate + energy of that lonely screaming figure in front, makes you think of a + great many things besides Assyrians: among others of some words of + Renan: I quote from memory: "But the trace of Israel will be eternal. + She it was who alone among the tyrannies of antiquity, raised her + voice for the helpless, the oppressed, the forgotten." + + But this only expresses a fraction of it. The only thing to do is + to come and look at this excited gentleman with bronze skin and hair + that approaches green, his eyes simply white with madness. And Jonah + said, "Yea, I do well to be angry: even unto death." + +He had learnt to look at colour, to look at line, to describe +pictures. But far more important than this, he could now create in +the imagination gardens and sunsets and sheer colour, so as to give +to his novels and stories pictorial value, to his fantasies glow, and +to his poetry vision of the realities of things. In his very first +volume of Essays, _The Defendant_, were to be passages that could be +written only by one who had learnt to draw. For instance, in "A +Defence of Skeletons": + + The actual sight of the little wood, with its grey and silver sea + of life is entirely a winter vision. So dim and delicate is the heart + of the winter woods, a kind of glittering gloaming, that a figure + stepping towards us in the chequered twilight seems as if he were + breaking through unfathomable depths of spiders' webs. + +In the year 1895, in which G.K. left art for publishing, he came of +age "with a loud report." He writes to Bentley: + + Being twenty-one years old is really rather good fun. It is one of + those occasions when you remember the existence of all sorts of + miscellaneous people. A cousin of mine, Alice Chesterton, daughter of + my Uncle Arthur, writes me a delightfully cordial letter from Berlin, + where she is a governess; and better still, my mother has received a + most amusing letter from an old nurse of mine, an exceptionally nice + and intelligent nurse, who writes on hearing that it is my + twenty-first birthday. Billy (an epithet is suppressed) gave me a + little notebook and a little photograph frame. The first thing I did + with the notebook was to make a note of his birthday. The first thing + I shall do with the frame will be to get Grey to give me a photograph + of him to put into it. Yes, it is not bad, being twenty-one, in a + world so full of kind people. . . . + + I have just been out and got soaking and dripping wet; one of my + favourite dissipations. I never enjoy weather so much as when it is + driving, drenching, rattling, washing rain. As Mr. Meredith says in + the book you gave me, "Rain, O the glad refresher of the grain, and + welcome waterspouts of blessed rain." (It is in a poem called "Earth + and a Wedded Woman," which is fat.) Seldom have I enjoyed a walk so + much. My sister water was all there and most affectionate. Everything + I passed was lovely, a little boy pickabacking another little boy + home, two little girls taking shelter with a gigantic umbrella, the + gutters boiling like rivers and the hedges glittering with rain. And + when I came to our corner the shower was over, and there was a great + watery sunset right over No. 80, what Mr. Ruskin calls an "opening + into Eternity." Eternity is pink and gold. This may seem a very + strange rant, but it is one of my "specimen days." I suppose you + would really prefer me to write as I feel, and I am so constituted + that these Daily incidents get me that way. Yes, I like rain. It + means something, I am not sure what; something freshening, cleaning, + washing out, taking in hand, not caring-a-damn-what-you-think, + doing-its-duty, robust, noisy, moral, wet. It is the Baptism of the + Church of the Future. + + Yesterday afternoon (Sunday) Lawrence and Maurice came here. We were + merely infants at play, had skipping races round the garden and + otherwise raced. ("Runner, run thy race," said Confucius, "and in the + running find strength and reward.") After that we tried talking about + Magnus, and came to some hopeful conclusions. Magnus is all right. As + for Lawrence and Grey, if there is anything righter than all right, + they are that. . . . + + There is an expression in Meredith's book which struck me immensely: + "the largeness of the evening earth." The sensation that the Cosmos + has all its windows open is very characteristic of evening, just as + it is at this moment. I feel very good. Everything out of the window + looks very, very flat and yellow: I do not know how else to describe + it. + + It is like the benediction at the end of the service. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +The Notebook + + +I AM WRITING THIS chapter at a table facing Notre Dame de Paris in +front of a cafe filled with arguing French workmen--in the presence +of God and of Man; and I feel as if I understood the one hatred of +G.K.'s life: his loathing of pessimism. "Is a man proud of losing his +hearing, eyesight or sense of smell? What shall we say of him who +prides himself on beginning as an intellectual cripple and ending as +an intellectual corpse?"* + +[* From _The Notebook_.] + + SOME PROPHECIES + + Woe unto them that keep a God like a silk hat, that believe not in + God, but in a God. + + Woe unto them that are pompous for they will sooner or later be + ridiculous. + + Woe unto them that are tired of everything, for everything will + certainly be tired of them. + + Woe unto them that cast out everything, for out of everything they + will be cast out. + + Woe unto them that cast out anything, for out of that thing they + will be cast out. + + Woe unto the flippant, for they shall receive flippancy. + + Woe unto them that are scornful for they shall receive scorn. + + Woe unto him that considereth his hair foolishly, for his hair will + be made the type of him. + + Woe unto him that is smart, for men will hold him smart always, + even when he is serious.* + +[* Ibid.] + +A pessimist is a man who has never lived, never suffered: "Show me a +person who has plenty of worries and troubles and I will show you a +person who, whatever he is, is not a pessimist." + +This idea G.K. developed later in the _Dickens_, dealing with the +alleged over-optimism of Dickens--Dickens who if he had learnt to +whitewash the universe had learnt it in a blacking factory, Dickens +who had learnt through hardship and suffering to accept and love the +universe. But that he wrote later. The quotations given here come +from the Notebook begun in 1894 and used at intervals for the next +four or five years, in which Gilbert wrote down his philosophy step +by step as he came to discover it. The handwriting is the work of art +that he must have learnt and practised, so different is it from his +boyhood's scrawl. Each idea is set down as it comes into his mind. +There is no sequence. In this book and in _The Coloured Lands_ may be +seen the creation of the Chesterton view of life--and it all took +place in his early twenties. From the seed-thoughts here, _Orthodoxy_ +and the rest were to grow--here they are only seeds but seeds +containing unmistakably the flower of the future: + + They should not hear from me a word + Of selfishness or scorn + If only I could find the door + If only I were born. + +He makes the Unborn Babe say this in his first volume of poems. And +in the Notebook we see how the babe coming into the world must keep +this promise by accepting life with its puzzles, its beauty, its +fleetingness: "Are we all dust? What a beautiful thing dust is +though." "This round earth may be a soap-bubble, but it must be +admitted that there are some pretty colours on it." "What is the good +of life, it is fleeting; what is the good of a cup of coffee, it is +fleeting. Ha Ha Ha." + +The birthday present of birth, as he was later to call it in +_Orthodoxy_, involved not bare existence only but a wealth of other +gifts. "A grievance," he heads this thought: + + Give me a little time, + I shall not be able to appreciate them all; + If you open so many doors + And give me so many presents, O Lord God. + +He is almost overwhelmed with all that he has and with all that is, +but accepts it ardently in its completeness. + + If the arms of a man could be a fiery circle embracing the round + world, I think I should be that man. + +Yet in the face of all this splendour the pessimist dares to find +flaws: + + The mountains praise thee, O Lord! + But what if a mountain said, + "I praise thee; + But put a pine-tree halfway up on the left + It would be much more effective, believe me." + It is time that the religion of prayer gave + place to the religion of praise. + +If the mountains must praise God, if the religion of praise expresses +the truth of things, how much more does it express the truth of +humanity--or rather of men, for he saw humanity not as an abstraction +but as the sum of human and intensely individual beings: + + Once I found a friend + "Dear me," I said "he was made for me." + But now I find more and more friends + Who seem to have been made for me + And more and yet more made for me, + Is it possible we were all made for each other + all over the world? + +And on another page comes perhaps the most significant phrase in the +book: "I wonder whether there will ever come a time when I shall be +tired of any one person." Hence a fantastic thought of a way of +making the discovery of more people to know and to like: + + THE HUMAN CIRCULATING LIBRARY NOTES + + Get out a gentleman for a fortnight, then change him for a lady, or + your ticket. No person to be kept out after a fortnight, except with + the payment of a penny a day. Any person morally or physically + damaging a man will be held responsible. The library omnibus calls + once a week leaving two or three each visit. Man of the season--old + standard man. + +Or better still: + + My great ambition is to give a party at which everybody should meet + everybody else and like them very much. + + AN INVITATION + + Mr. Gilbert Chesterton + requests the pleasure + Of humanity's company + to tea on Dec. 25th 1896. + Humanity Esq., The Earth, Cosmos E. + +G.K. liked everybody very much, and everything very much. He liked +even the things most of us dislike. He liked to get wet. He liked to +be tired. After that one short period of struggle he liked to call +himself "always perfectly happy." And therefore he wanted to say, +"Thank you." + + You say grace before meals + All right. + But I say grace before the play and the opera, + And grace before the concert and pantomime, + And grace before I open a book, + And grace before sketching, painting, + Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing; + And grace before I dip the pen in the ink. + +Each day seemed a special gift; something that might not have been: + + EVENING + + Here dies another day + During which I have had eyes, ears, hands + And the great world round me; + And with tomorrow begins another. + Why am I allowed two? + + THE PRAYER OF A MAN WALKING + + I thank thee, O Lord, for the stones in the street + I thank thee for the hay-carts yonder and for the + houses built and half-built + That fly past me as I stride. + But most of all for the great wind in my nostrils + As if thine own nostrils were close. + + THE PRAYER OF A MAN RESTING + + The twilight closes round me + My head is bowed before the Universe + I thank thee, O Lord, for a child I knew seven years ago + And whom I have never seen since. + + Praised be God for all sides of life, for friends, lovers, art, + literature, knowledge, humour, politics, and for the little red cloud + away there in the west-- + +For, if he was to be grateful, to whom did he owe gratitude? Here is +the chief question he asked and answered at this time. At school he +was looking for God, but at the age of 16 he was, he tells us in +_Orthodoxy_, an Agnostic in the sense of one who is not sure one way +or the other. Largely it was this need for gratitude for what seemed +personal gifts that brought him to belief in a personal God. Life was +personal, it was not a mere drift; it had will in it, it was more +like a story. + + A story is the highest mark + For the world is a story and every part of it + And there is nothing that can touch the world or any part of it + That is not a story. + +And again, with the heading, "A Social Situation." + + We must certainly be in a novel; + What I like about this novelist is that he takes + such trouble about his minor characters. + +The story shapes from man's birth and it is as he meets the other +characters that he finds he is in the right story. + + A MAN BORN ON THE EARTH + + Perhaps there has been some mistake + How does he know he has come to the right place? + But when he finds friends + He knows he has come to the right place. + + You say it is a love affair + Hush: it is a new Garden of Eden + And a new progeny will people a new earth + God is always making these experiments. + +Life is a story: who tells it? Life is a problem: who sets it? + + The world is a problem, not a Theorem + And the word of the last Day will be Q.E.F. + +God sets the problem, God tells the story, but can those know Him who +are characters in His story, who are working out His problem? + + Have you ever known what it is to walk along a road in such a frame + of mind that you thought you might meet God at any turn of the path? + +For this a man must be ready, against this he must never shut the +door. + + There is one kind of infidelity blacker than all infidelities, + Worse than any blow of secularist, pessimist, atheist, + It is that of those persons + Who regard God as an old institution. + + VOICES + + The axe falls on the wood in thuds, "God, God." + The cry of the rook, "God," answers it + The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice of the brook, say the + same name; + All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby, + Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap + Repeat in a thousand languages-- + God. + +Next in his thought comes a point where he hesitates as to the +meeting place between God and Man. How and where can these two +incommensurates find a meeting place? What is Incarnation? The +greatness and the littleness of Man obsessed Chesterton as it did +Pascal; it is the eternal riddle: + + TWO STRANDS + + Man is a spark flying upwards. God is everlasting. + + Who are we, to whom this cup of human life has been given, to ask + for more? Let us love mercy and walk humbly. What is man, that thou + regardest him? + + Man is a star unquenchable. God is in him incarnate. + + His life is planned upon a scale colossal, of which he sees + glimpses. Let him dare all things, claim all things: he is the son + of Man, who shall come in the clouds of glory. + + [I] saw these two strands mingling to make the religion of man. + +"A scale colossal, of which he sees glimpses." This, I think, is the +first hint of the path that led Gilbert to full faith in Our Lord. In +places in these notes he regards Him certainly only as Man--but even +then as _The_ Man, the _Only_ Man in whom the colossal scale, the +immense possibilities, of human nature could be dreamed of as +fulfilled. Two notes on Marcus Aurelius are significant of the way +his mind was moving. + + MARCUS AURELIUS + + A large-minded, delicate-witted, strong man, + following the better thing like a thread between his hands. + + Him we cannot fancy choosing the lower even by mistake; we cannot + think of him as wanting for a moment in any virtue, sincerity, mercy, + purity, self-respect, good manners. + + Only one thing is wanting in him. He does not + command me to perform the impossible. + + THE CARPENTER + + The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. + Yes: he was soliloquising, not making something. + Do not the words of Jesus ring + Like nails knocked into a board + In his father's workshop? + +On two consecutive pages are notes showing how his mind is wrestling +with the question, the answer to which would complete his philosophy: + + XMAS DAY + + Good news: but if you ask me what it is, I know not; + It is a track of feet in the snow, + It is a lantern showing a path, + It is a door set open. + + THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST + + I live in an age of varied powers and knowledge, + Of steam, science, democracy, journalism, art: + But when my love rises like a sea, + I have to go back to an obscure tribe and a slain man + To formulate a blessing. + + JULIAN + + "Vicisti Galilaee," he said, and sank conquered + After wrestling with the most gigantic of powers, + A dead man. + + THE CRUCIFIED + + On a naked slope of a poor province + A Roman soldier stood staring at a gibbet, + Then he said, "Surely this was a righteous man," + And a new chapter of history opened, + Having that for its motto. + + PARABLES + + There was a man who dwelt in the east centuries ago, + And now I cannot look at a sheep or a sparrow, + A lily or a cornfield, a raven or a sunset, + A vineyard or a mountain, without thinking of him; + If this be not to be divine, what is it? + +Cecil Chesterton tells us Gilbert read the Gospels partly because he +was not forced to read them: I suppose this really means that he read +them with a mature mind which had not been dulled to their reception +by a childhood task of routine lessons. But I do not think at this +date it had occurred to him to question the assumption of the period: +that official Christianity, its priesthood especially, had travestied +the original intention of Christ. This idea is in the _Wild Knight_ +volume (published in 1900) and more briefly in a suggestion in the +Notebook for a proposed drama: + + Gabriel is hammering up a little theatre and the child looks at his + hands, and finds them torn with nails. + + _Clergyman_. The Church should stand by the powers that be. + + _Gabriel_. Yes? . . . That is a handsome crucifix you have there at + your chain. + +That the clergy, that the Christian people, should have settled down +to an acceptance of a faulty established order, should not be alert +to all that Our Lord's life signified, was one of the problems. It +was, too, a matter of that cosmic loyalty which he analyses more +fully in _Orthodoxy_. Here he simply writes: + + It is not a question of Theology, It is a question of whether, + placed as a sentinel of an unknown watch, you will whistle or not. + +Sentinels do go to sleep and he was coming to feel that this want of +vigilance ran through the whole of humanity. In "White Wynd," a +sketch written at this time,* he adumbrates an idea to which he was +to return again in _Manalive_ especially, and in _Orthodoxy_--that we +can by custom so lose our sense of reality that the only way to enjoy +and be grateful for our possessions is to lose them for a while. The +shortest way home is to go round the world. In this story of "White +Wynd" he applies the parable only to each man's life and the world he +lives in. But in _Orthodoxy_ he applies it to the human race who have +lost revealed truth by getting so accustomed to it that they no +longer look at it. And already in the Notebook he is calling the +attention of a careless multitude to "that great Empire upon which +the sun never sets. I allude to the Universe." + +[* It is published in _The Coloured Lands_.] + +Most of the quotations about Our Lord come in the later part of the +book: in the earlier pages he dreams that "to this age it is given to +write the great new song, and to compile the new Bible, and to found +the new Church, and preach the new Religion." And in one rather +obscure passage he seems to hint at the thought that Christ might +come again to shape this new religion. + +Going round the world, Gilbert was finding his way home; the explorer +was rediscovering his native country. He himself has given us all the +metaphors for what was happening now in his mind. Without a single +Catholic friend he had discovered this wealth of Catholic truth and +he was still travelling. "All this I felt," he later summed it up in +_Orthodoxy_, "and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And +all this time I had not even thought of Catholic theology." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Towards a Career + + +A CURIOUS LITTLE incident comes towards the end of +Gilbert's time at the Slade School. In a letter he wrote to +E. C. Bentley we see him, on the eve of his 21st birthday, being +invited to write for the _Academy_: + + Mr. Cotton is a little bristly, bohemian man, as fidgetty as a + kitten, who runs round the table while he talks to you. When he + agrees with you he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head. When he + means anything rather seriously he ends up with a loud nervous laugh. + He talks incessantly and is mad on the history of Oxford. I sent him + my review of Ruskin and he read it before me (Note. Hell) and + delivered himself with astonishing rapidity to the following effect: + "This is very good: you've got something to say: Oh, yes: this is + worth saying: I agree with you about Ruskin and about the Century: + this is good: you've no idea: if you saw some stuff: some reviews I + get: the fellows are practised but of all the damned fools: you've no + idea: they know the trade in a way: but such infernal asses: as send + things up: but this is very good: that sentence does run _nicely:_ + but I like your point: make it a little longer and then send it in: + I've got another book for you to review: you know Robert Bridges? Oh + very good, very good: here it is: about two columns you know: by the + way: keep the Ruskin for yourself: you deserve that anyhow." + + Here I got a word in: one of protest and thanks. But Mr. Cotton + insisted on my accepting the Ruskin. So I am really to serve Laban. + Laban proves on analysis to be of the consistency of brick. It is + such men as this that have made our Cosmos what it is. At one point + he said, literally dancing with glee: "Oh, the other day I stuck some + pins into Andrew Lang." I said, "Dear me, that must be a very good + game." It was something about an edition of Scott, but I was told + that Andrew "took" the painful operation "very well." We sat up + horribly late together talking about Browning, Afghans, Notes, the + Yellow Book, the French Revolution, William Morris, Norsemen and Mr. + Richard le Gallienne. "I don't despair for anyone," he said suddenly. + "Hang it all, that's what you mean by humanity." This appears to be a + rather good editor of the _Academy_. And my joy in having begun my + life is very great. "I am tired," I said to Mr. Brodribb, "of writing + only what I like." "Oh well," he said heartily, "you'll have no + reason to make that complaint in journalism." + +But here is a mystery. Nowhere in the _Academy_ columns for 1895 +or 1896 are to be seen the initials G.K.C., yet at that date all +the reviews are signed. Mr. Eccles, who was writing for it at +the time, told me that he had no recollection of G.K. among the +contributors--and later he came to know him well when both were +together on the _Speaker_. In any case, the idea of reviewing for no +reward except the book reviewed would scarcely appeal to a more +practical man than Gilbert as a hopeful beginning. Perhaps the +mystery is solved by the fact that soon after the date of this letter +Mr. Cotton got an appointment in India. To Mr. Eccles it appeared +somewhat ironical that the unpaid contributors to the _Academy_ were +circularised with a suggestion of contributions of money towards a +parting present for their late editor. + +The actual beginning of G.K.'s journalism was in _The Bookman_; and +in the _Autobiography_ he insists that it was a matter of mere luck: +"these opportunities were merely things that happened to me." While +still at the Slade School, he was, as we have seen, attending English +lectures at University College. There he met a fellow-student, Ernest +Hodder Williams, of the family which controlled the publishing house +of Hodder & Stoughton. He gave Chesterton some books on art to review +for _The Bookman_, a monthly paper published by the firm. "I need not +say," G.K. comments, "that having entirely failed to learn how to +draw or paint, I tossed off easily enough some criticisms of the +weaker points of Rubens or the misdirected talents of Tintoretto. I +had discovered the easiest of all professions, which I have pursued +ever since." But neither in the art criticism he wrote for _The +Bookman_ nor in the poems he was to publish in _The Outlook_ and _The +Speaker_ was there a living. He left the Slade School and went to +work for a publisher. + +Mr. Redway, in whose office Gilbert now found himself, was a +publisher largely of spiritualist literature. Gilbert has described +in his _Autobiography_ his rather curious experience of ghostly +authorship, but he relates nothing of his office experience, which is +described in another undated letter to Mr. Bentley: + + I am writing this letter just when I like most to write one, late + at night, after a beastly lot of midnight oil over a contribution for + a _Slade Magazine_, intended as a public venture. I am sending them a + recast of that "Picture of Tuesday." + + Like you, I am beastly busy, but there is something exciting about + it. If I must be busy (as I certainly must, being an approximately + honest man) I had much rather be busy in a varied, mixed up way, with + half a hundred things to attend to, than with one blank day of + monotonous "study" before me. To give you some idea of what I mean. I + have been engaged in 3 different tiring occupations and enjoyed them + all. (1) Redway says, "We've got too many MSS; read through them, + will you, and send back those that are too bad at once." I go slap + through a room full of MSS, criticising deuced conscientiously, with + the result that I post back some years of MSS to addresses, which I + should imagine, must be private asylums. But one feels worried, + somehow. . . . + + (2) Redway says, "I'm going to give you entire charge of the press + department, sending copies to Reviews, etc." Consequence is, one has + to keep an elaborate book and make it tally with other elaborate + books, and one has to remember all the magazines that exist and what + sort of books they'd crack up. I used to think I hated + responsibility: I am positively getting to enjoy it. (3) There is + that confounded "Picture of Tuesday" which I have been scribbling at + the whole evening, and have at last got it presentable. This sounds + like mere amusement, but, now that I have tried other kinds of hurry + and bustle, I solemnly pledge myself to the opinion that there is no + work so tiring as writing, that is, not for fun, but for publication. + Other work has a repetition, a machinery, a reflex action about it + somewhere, but to be on the stretch inventing fillings, making them + out of nothing, making them as good as you can for a matter of four + hours leaves me more inclined to lie down and read Dickens than I + ever feel after nine hours ramp at Redway's. The worst of it is that + you always think the thing so bad too when you're in that state. I + can't imagine anything more idiotic than what I've just finished. + Well, enough of work and all its works. By all means come on Monday + evening, but don't be frightened if by any chance I'm not in till + about 6.30, as Monday is a busy day. Of course you'll stop to + dinner . . . what an idiotically long time 8 weeks is. . . . + +This letter does not seem to bear out the suggestion in Cecil's book* +of Gilbert's probable uselessness to the publishers for whom he +worked. After all, literacy is more needful to most publishers than +automatic practicality, because it is so very much rarer. Probably +G.K. would have been absolutely invaluable had he been a little less +kind-hearted. His dislike of sending back a manuscript and making an +author unhappy would have been a bar to his utility as a reader. But +there are lots of other things to do besides rejecting manuscripts, +and two later letters show how capable Gilbert was felt to be in +doing most of them. + +[* _G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism_, see p. 23.] + +The exact date at which he left Redway's for the publishing firm of +Fisher Unwin (of 11 Paternoster Buildings) I cannot discover, but it +was fairly early and he was several years with Fisher Unwin, only +gradually beginning to move over into journalism. + +"He did nothing for himself," says Lucian Oldershaw, "till we +[Bentley and Oldershaw] came down from Oxford and pushed him." + +The following letters belong to 1898, being written to Frances when +they were already engaged, but I put them here as they give some +notion of the work he did for his employer. + + . . . The book I have to deal with for Unwin is an exhaustive and I + am told interesting work on "Rome and the Empire" a kind of + realistic, modern account of the life of the ancient world. I have + got to fix it up, choose illustrations, introductions, notes, etc., + and all because I am the only person who knows a little Latin and + precious little Roman history and no more archaeology than a blind + cat. It is entertaining, and just like our firm's casual way. The + work ought to be done by an authority on Roman antiquities. If I + hadn't been there they would have given it to the office boy. + + However, I shall get through it all right: the more I see of the + publishing world, the more I come to the conclusion that I know next + to nothing, but that the vast mass of literary people know less. This + is sometimes called having "a public-school education."* + +[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 11, 1898).] + +* * * + + I have a lot of work to do, as Unwin has given the production of an + important book entirely into my hands, as a kind of invisible editor. + It is complimentary, but very worrying, and will mean a lot of time + at the British Museum.* + +[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 29, 1898).] + + 11 Paternoster Bldgs. + (Postmark, December 1898) + + . . . For fear that you should really suppose that my observations + about being busy are the subterfuges of a habitual liar, I may give + you briefly some idea of the irons at present in the fire. As far as + I can make out there are at least seven things that I have undertaken + to do and everyone of them I ought to do before any of the others. + + 1st. There is the book about Ancient Rome which I have to do for + T.F.U.--arrange and get illustrations etc. This all comes of showing + off. It is a story with a moral (Greedy Gilbert: or Little Boys + Should be Seen and not Heard). A short time ago I had to read a + treatise by Dean Stubbs on "The Ideal Woman of the Poets" in which + the Dean remarked that "all the women admired by Horace were + wantons." This struck me as a downright slander, slight as is my + classical knowledge, and in my report I asked loftily what Dean + Stubbs made of those noble lines on the wife who hid her husband + from his foes. + + _Splendide mendax et in omne virgo + Nobilis aevum_ + + One of the purest and stateliest tributes ever made to a woman. + (The lines might be roughly rendered "A magnificent liar and a noble + lady for all eternity"; but no translation can convey the + organ-voice of the verse, in which the two strong and lonely words + "noble" and "eternity" stand solitary for the last line.) In + consequence of my taking up the cudgels against a live Dean for the + manly moral sense of the dear old Epicurean, the office became + impressed with a vague idea that I know something about Latin + literature--whereas, as a matter of fact I have forgotten even the + line before the one I quoted. However, in the most confidential and + pathetic manner I was entrusted with doing with "Rome et l'Empire" + work which ought to be done by a scholar. . . . + + 2nd. Then there is Captain Webster. You ask (in gruff, rumbling + tones) "Who is Captain Webster?" I will tell you. + + Captain Webster is a small man with a carefully waxed moustache and + a very Bond Street get up, living at the Grosvenor Hotel. Talking to + him you would say: he is an ass, but an agreeable ass, a humble, + transparent honourable ass. He is an innocent and idiotic butterfly. + The interesting finishing touch is that he has been to New Guinea for + four years or so, and had some of the most hideous and extravagant + adventures that could befall a modern man. His yacht was surrounded + by shoals of canoes full of myriads of cannibals of a race who file + their teeth to look like the teeth of dogs, and hang weights in their + ears till the ears hang like dogs' ears, on the shoulder. He held his + yacht at the point of the revolver and got away, leaving some of his + men dead on the shore. All night long he heard the horrible noise of + the banqueting gongs and saw the huge fires that told his friends + were being eaten. Now he lives in the Grosvenor Hotel. Captain + Webster finds the pen, not only mightier than the sword, but also + much more difficult. He has written his adventures and we are to + publish them and I am translating the honest captain into English + grammar, a thing which appals him much more than Papuan savages. This + means going through it carefully of course and rewriting many parts + of it, where relatives and dependent sentences have been lost past + recovery. I went to see him, and his childlike dependence on me was + quite pathetic. His general attitude was, "You see I'm such a damned + fool." And so he is. But when I compare him with the Balzacian + hauteur and the preposterous posing of many of our Fleet Street + decadent geniuses, I feel a movement of the blood which declares that + perhaps there are worse things than War. (Between ourselves, I have a + sneaking sympathy with fighting: I fought horribly at school. It is + well you should know my illogicalities.) + + 3rd. There is the selection of illustrations for the History of + China we are producing. I know no more of China than the Man in the + Moon (less, for he has seen it, at any rate), except what I got from + reading the book, but of course I shall make the most of what I do + know and airily talk of La-o-tsee and Wu-sank-Wei, criticise + Chung-tang and Fu-Tche, compare Tchieu Lung with his great successor, + whose name I have forgotten, and the Napoleonic vigour of Li with the + weak opportunism of Woo. Before I have done I hope people will be + looking behind for my pig-tail. The name I shall adopt will be + Tches-Ter-Ton. + + 4th. A MS to read translated from the Norwegian: a History of the + Kiss, Ceremonial, Amicable, Amatory, etc.--in the worst French + sentimental style. God alone knows how angry I am with the author of + that book. I am not sure that I shall not send up the brief report. + "A snivelling hound." + + 5th. The book for Nutt [_Greybeards at Play_], which has reached + its worst stage, that of polishing up for the eye of Nutt, instead of + merely rejoicing in the eye of God. Do you know this is the only one + of the lot about which I am at all worried. I do not feel as if + things like the Fish poem are really worth publishing. I know they + are better than many books that are published, but Heaven knows that + is not saying much. In support of some of my work I would fight to + the last. But with regard to this occasional verse I feel a humbug. + To publish a book of my nonsense verses seems to me exactly like + summoning the whole of the people of Kensington to see me smoke + cigarettes. + + Macgregor told me that I should do much better in the business of + literature if I found the work more difficult. My facility, he said, + led me to undervalue my work. I wonder whether this is true, and + those silly rhymes are any good after all. + + 6th. The collection of more serious poems of which I spoke to you. + You shall have a hand in the selection of these when you get back. + + 7th. The Novel--which though I have put it aside for the present, + yet has become too much a part of me not to be constantly having + chapters written--or rather growing out of the others. + + And all these things, with the exception of the last one, are + supposed to be really urgent, and to be done immediately. . . . Now I + hope I have sickened you forever of wanting to know the details of my + dull affairs. But I hope it may give you some notion of how hard it + really is to get time for writing just now. For you see they are none + of them even mechanical things: they all require some thinking about. + + I am afraid . . . that if you really want to know what I do, you + must forgive me for seeming egoistic. That is the tragedy of the + literary person: his very existence is an assertion of his own mental + vanity: he must pretend to be conceited even if he isn't. . . . + +Beginning to publish, beginning to write, and still developing +mentally at a frantic rate--this is a summary of the years 1895-8. + +As the Notebook shows, Gilbert was reflecting deeply at this time on +the relations both between God and man and between man and his fellow +man. The realisation that their relations had gone very far wrong was +necessarily followed--for Gilbert's _mind_ was an immensely practical +one--by the question of what the proposed remedies were worth. He has +told us that he became a Socialist at this time only because it was +intolerable not to be a Socialist. The Socialists seemed the only +people who were looking at conditions as they were and finding them +unendurable. Christian Socialism seemed at first sight, for anyone +who admired Christ, to be the obvious form of Socialism, and, in a +fragment of this period, G.K. traces the resemblance of modern +collectivism to early Christianity. + + The points in which Christian and Socialistic collectivism are at + one are simple and fundamental. As, however, we must proceed + carefully in this matter, we may state these points of resemblance + under three heads. + + (1) Both rise from the deeps of an emotion, the emotion of compassion + for misfortune, as such. This is really a very important point. + Collectivism is not an intellectual fad, even if erroneous, but a + passionate protest and aspiration: it arises as a secret of the + heart, a dream of the injured feeling, long before it shapes itself + as a definite propaganda at all. The intellectual philosophies ally + themselves with success and preach competition, but the human heart + allies itself with misfortune and suggests communism. + + (2) Both trace the evil state of society to "covetousness," the + competitive desire to accumulate riches. Thus, both in one case and + the other, the mere possession of wealth is in itself an offence + against moral order, the absence of it in itself a recommendation and + training for the higher life. + + (3) Both propose to remedy the evil of competition by a system of + "bearing each other's burdens" in the literal sense, that is to say, + of levelling, silencing and reducing one's own chances, for the + chance of your weaker brethren. The desirability, they say, of a + great or clever man acquiring fame is small compared with the + desirability of a weak and broken man acquiring bread. The strong man + is a man, and should modify or adapt himself to the hopes of his + mates. He that would be first among you, let him be the servant of + all. + + These are the three fountains of collectivist passion. I have not + considered it necessary to enter into elaborate proof of the presence + of these three in the Gospels. That the main trend of Jesus' + character was compassion for human ills, that he denounced not merely + covetousness but riches again and again, and with an almost impatient + emphasis, and that he insisted on his followers throwing up personal + aims and sharing funds and fortune entirely, these are plain matters + of evidence presented again and again, and, in fact, of common + admission. + +Yet that uncanny thing in Gilbert which always forced him to see +facts, mutinied again at this point and produced another fragment in +which he has moved closer to Christianity and thereby further away +from modern Socialism. The world he lived in contained a certain +number of Christians who were, he found, highly doubtful about the +Christian impulse of Socialism. And most of his Socialist friends had +about them a tone of bitterness and an atmosphere of hopelessness +utterly unlike the tone and the atmosphere of Christianity. Just as +atheists were the first people to turn Gilbert from Atheism towards +dogmatic Christianity, so the Socialists were now turning him from +Socialism. + +The next fragment is rather long, but it was never published and I +think it so important, as showing how his mind was moving, that it +cannot well be shortened. It is a document of capital importance for +the biography of Chesterton. + + Now, for my own part, I cannot in the least agree with those who + see no difference between Christian and modern Socialism, nor do I + for a moment join in some Christian Socialists' denunciations of + those worthy middle-class people who cannot see the connection. For I + cannot help thinking that in a way these latter people are right. No + reasonable man can read the Sermon on the Mount and think that its + tone is not very different from that of most collectivist speculation + of the present day, and the Philistines feel this, though they cannot + distinctly express it. There is a difference between Christ's + Socialist program and that of our own time, a difference deep, + genuine and all important, and it is this which I wish to point out. + + Let us take two types side by side, or rather the same type in the + two different atmospheres. Let us take the "rich young man" of the + Gospels and place beside him the rich young man of the present day, + on the threshold of Socialism. If we were to follow the difficulties, + theories, doubts, resolves, and conclusions of each of these + characters, we should find two very distinct threads of + self-examination running through the two lives. And the essence of + the difference was this: the modern Socialist is saying, "What will + society do?" while his prototype, as we read, said, "What shall I + do?" Properly considered, this latter sentence contains the whole + essence of the older Communism. The modern Socialist regards his + theory of regeneration as a duty which society owes to him, the early + Christian regarded it as a duty which he owed to society; the modern + Socialist is busy framing schemes for its fulfilment, the early + Christian was busy considering whether he would himself fulfil it + there and then; the ideal of modern Socialism is an elaborate Utopia + to which he hopes the world may be tending, the ideal of the early + Christian was an actual nucleus "living the new life" to whom he + might join himself if he liked. Hence the constant note running + through the whole gospel, of the importance, difficulty and + excitement of the "call," the individual and practical request made + by Christ to every rich man, "sell all thou hast and give to the + poor." + + To us Socialism comes speculatively as a noble and optimistic + theory of what may [be] the crown of progress, to Peter and James and + John it came practically as a crisis of their own Daily life, a + stirring question of conduct and renunciation. + + We do not therefore in the least agree with those who hold that + modern Socialism is an exact counterpart or fulfilment of the + socialism of Christianity. We find the difference important and + profound, despite the common ground of anti-selfish collectivism. The + modern Socialist regards Communism as a distant panacea for society, + the early Christian regarded it as an immediate and difficult + regeneration of himself: the modern Socialist reviles, or at any rate + reproaches, society for not adopting it, the early Christian + concentrated his thoughts on the problem of his own fitness and + unfitness to adopt it: to the modern Socialist it is a theory, to the + early Christian it was a call; modern Socialism says, "Elaborate a + broad, noble and workable system and submit it to the progressive + intellect of society." Early Christianity said, "Sell all thou hast + and give to the poor." + + This distinction between the social and personal way of regarding + the change has two sides, a spiritual and a practical which we + propose to notice. The spiritual side of it, though of less direct + and revolutionary importance than the practical, has still a very + profound philosophic significance. To us it appears something + extraordinary that this Christian side of Socialism, the side of the + difficulty of the personal sacrifice, and the patience, cheerfulness, + and good temper necessary for the protracted personal surrender is so + constantly overlooked. The literary world is flooded with old men + seeing visions and young men dreaming dreams, with various stages of + anti-competitive enthusiasm, with economic apocalypses, elaborate + Utopias and mushroom destinies of mankind. And, as far as we have + seen, in all this whirlwind of theoretic excitement there is not a + word spoken of the intense practical difficulty of the summons to the + individual, the heavy, unrewarding cross borne by him who gives up + the world. + + For it will not surely be denied that not only will Socialism be + impossible without some effort on the part of individuals, but that + Socialism if once established would be rapidly dissolved, or worse + still, diseased, if the individual members of the community did not + make a constant effort to do that which in the present state of human + nature must mean an effort, to live the higher life. Mere state + systems could not bring about and still less sustain a reign of + unselfishness, without a cheerful decision on the part of the members + to forget selfishness even in little things, and for that most + difficult and at the same time most important personal decision + Christ made provision and the modern theorists make no provision at + all. Some modern Socialists do indeed see that something more is + necessary for the golden age than fixed incomes and universal stores + tickets, and that the fountain heads of all real improvement are to + be found in human temper and character. Mr. William Morris, for + instance, in his "News from Nowhere" gives a beautiful picture of a + land ruled by Love, and rightly grounds the give-and-take camaraderie + of his ideal state upon an assumed improvement in human nature. But + he does not tell us how such an improvement is to be effected, and + Christ did. Of Christ's actual method in this matter I shall speak + afterwards when dealing with the practical aspect, my object just now + is to compare the spiritual and emotional effects of the call of + Christ, as compared to those of the vision of Mr. William Morris. + When we compare the spiritual attitudes of two thinkers, one of whom + is considering whether social history has been sufficiently a course + of improvement to warrant him in believing that it will culminate in + universal altruism, while the other is considering whether he loves + other people enough to walk down tomorrow to the market-place and + distribute everything but his staff and his scrip, it will not be + denied that the latter is likely to undergo certain deep and acute + emotional experiences, which will be quite unknown to the former. And + these emotional experiences are what we understand as the spiritual + aspect of the distinction. For three characteristics at least the + Galilean programme makes more provision; humility, activity, + cheerfulness, the real triad of Christian virtues. + + Humility is a grand, a stirring thing, the exalting paradox of + Christianity, and the sad want of it in our own time is, we believe, + what really makes us think life dull, like a cynic, instead of + marvellous, like a child. With this, however, we have at present + nothing to do. What we have to do with is the unfortunate fact that + among no persons is it more wanting than among Socialists, Christian + and other. The isolated or scattered protest for a complete change in + social order, the continual harping on one string, the necessarily + jaundiced contemplation of a system already condemned, and above all, + the haunting pessimistic whisper of a possible hopelessness of + overcoming the giant forces of success, all these impart undeniably + to the modern Socialist a tone excessively imperious and bitter. Nor + can we reasonably blame the average money-getting public for their + impatience with the monotonous virulence of men who are constantly + reviling them for not living communistically, and who after all, are + not doing it themselves. Willingly do we allow that these latter + enthusiasts think it impossible in the present state of society to + practise their ideal, but this fact, while vindicating their + indisputable sincerity, throws an unfortunate vagueness and + inconclusiveness over their denunciations of other people in the same + position. Let us compare with this arrogant and angry tone among the + modern Utopians who can only dream "the life," the tone of the early + Christian who was busy living it. As far as we know, the early + Christians never regarded it as astonishing that the world as they + found it was competitive and unregenerate; they seem to have felt + that it could not in its pre-Christian ignorance have been anything + else, and their whole interest was bent on their own standard of + conduct and exhortation which was necessary to convert it. They felt + that it was by no merit of theirs that they had been enabled to enter + into the life before the Romans, but simply as a result of the fact + that Christ had appeared in Galilee and not in Rome. Lastly, they + never seem to have entertained a doubt that the message would itself + convert the world with a rapidity and ease which left no room for + severe condemnation of the heathen societies. + + With regard to the second merit, that of activity, there can be + little doubt as to where it lies between the planner of the Utopia + and the convert of the brotherhood. The modern Socialist is a + visionary, but in this he is on the same ground as half the great men + of the world, and to some extent of the early Christian himself, who + rushed towards a personal ideal very difficult to sustain. The + visionary who yearns toward an ideal which is practically impossible + is not useless or mischievous, but often the opposite; but the person + who is often useless, and always mischievous, is the visionary who + dreams with the knowledge or the half-knowledge that his ideal is + impossible. The early Christian might be wrong in believing that by + entering the brotherhood men could in a few years become perfect even + as their Father in Heaven was perfect, but he believed it and acted + flatly and fearlessly on the belief: this is the type of the higher + visionary. But all the insidious dangers of the vision; the idleness, + the procrastination, the mere mental aestheticism, come in when the + vision is indulged, as half our Socialistic conceptions are, as a + mere humour or fairy-tale, with a consciousness, half-confessed, that + it is beyond practical politics, and that we need not be troubled + with its immediate fulfilment. The visionary who believes in his own + most frantic vision is always noble and useful. It is the visionary + who does not believe in his vision who is the dreamer, the idler, the + Utopian. This then is the second moral virtue of the older school, an + immense direct sincerity of action, a cleansing away, by the sweats + of hard work, of all those subtle and perilous instincts of mere + ethical castle-building which have been woven like the spells of an + enchantress, round so many of the strong men of our own time. + + The third merit, which I have called cheerfulness, is really the + most important of all. We may perhaps put the comparison in this way. + It might strike many persons as strange that in a time on the whole + so optimistic in its intellectual beliefs as this is, in an age when + only a small minority disbelieve in social progress, and a large + majority believe in an ultimate social perfection, there should be + such a tired and blase feeling among numbers of young men. This, we + think, is due, not to the want of an ultimate ideal, but to that of + any immediate way of making for it: not of something to hope but of + something to do. A human being is not satisfied and never will be + satisfied with being told that it is all right: what he wants is not + a prediction of what other people will be hundreds of years hence, to + make him cheerful, but a new and stirring test and task for himself, + which will assuredly make him cheerful. A knight is not contented + with the statement that his commander has hid his plans so as to + insure victory: what the knight wants is a sword. This demand for a + task is not mere bravado, it is an eternal and natural part of the + higher optimism, as deep-rooted as the foreshadowing of perfection. + +I do not know whether Gilbert would yet have actually called himself +a Christian. He was certainly tending towards the more Christian +elements in his surroundings. It seems pretty clear from all he wrote +and said later that he did not hold that transformation to have been +fully effected until after his meeting with Frances, to whom he wrote +many years later: + + Therefore I bring these rhymes to you + Who brought the Cross to me. + +These papers are undated and are arranged in no sequence. It is +possible this last one was written after their first meeting. Certain +it is that in it he had begun feeling after a more Christian +arrangement of society than Socialism offered--and particularly after +an arrangement better suited to the nature of man. This thought of +man's nature as primary was to remain the basis of his social +thinking to the end of his life. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Incipit Vita Nova + + +IN THE NOTEBOOK may be seen Gilbert's occasional thoughts +about his own future love story. + + SUDDENLY IN THE MIDST + + Suddenly in the midst of friends, + Of brothers known to me more and more, + And their secrets, histories, tastes, hero-worships, + Schemes, love-affairs, known to me + Suddenly I felt lonely. + Felt like a child in a field with no more games to play + Because I have not a lady + to whom to send my thought at that hour + that she might crown my peace. + + MADONNA MIA + + About her whom I have not yet met + I wonder what she is doing + Now, at this sunset hour, + Working perhaps, or playing, worrying or laughing, + Is she making tea, or singing a song, or writing, + or praying, or reading + Is she thoughtful, as I am thoughtful + Is she looking now out of the window + As I am looking out of the window? + +But a few pages later comes the entry: + + F.B. + + You are a very stupid person. + I don't believe you have the least idea how nice you are. + +F.B. was Frances, daughter of a diamond merchant some time dead. The +family was of French descent, the name de Blogue having been somewhat +unfortunately anglicised into Blogg. They had fallen from +considerable wealth into a degree of poverty that made it necessary +for the three daughters to earn a living. Frances was never strong +and Gilbert has told how utterly exhausted she was at the end of each +day's toil--"she worked very hard as secretary of an educational +society in London."* The family lived in Bedford Park, a suburb of +London that went in for artistic housing and a kind of garden-city +atmosphere long before this was at all general. Judging by their +photographs the three girls must all have been remarkably pretty, and +young men frequented the house in great numbers, among them Brimley +Johnson who was engaged to Gertrude, and Lucian Oldershaw who later +married Ethel. Some time in 1896, Oldershaw took Gilbert to call and +Gilbert, literally at first sight, fell in love with Frances. + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 153.] + + TO MY LADY + + God made you very carefully + He set a star apart for it + He stained it green and gold with fields + And aureoled it with sunshine + He peopled it with kings, peoples, republics + And so made you, very carefully. + All nature is God's book, filled with his rough sketches for you.* + +[* _The Notebook_.] + +When almost forty years later Gilbert was writing his +_Autobiography_, Frances asked him to keep her out of it. The liking +they both had for keeping private life private made him call it "this +very Victorian narrative." Nevertheless he tells us something of the +early days of their acquaintance. Gilbert had mentioned the moon: + + She told me in the most normal and unpretentious tone that she + hated the moon. I talked to the same lady several times afterwards; + and found that this was a perfectly honest statement of the fact. Her + attitude on this and other things might be called a prejudice; but it + could not possibly be called a fad, still less an affectation. She + really had an obstinate objection to all those natural forces that + seemed to be sterile or aimless; she disliked loud winds that seemed + to be going nowhere; she did not care much for the sea, a spectacle + of which I was very fond; and by the same instinct she was up against + the moon, which she said looked like an imbecile. On the other hand, + she had a sort of hungry appetite for all the fruitful things like + fields and gardens and anything connected with production; about + which she was quite practical. She practised gardening; in that + curious cockney culture she would have been quite ready to practise + farming; and on the same perverse principle, she actually practised a + religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both to me and to + the whole fussy culture in which she lived. Any number of people + proclaimed religions, chiefly oriental religions, analysed or argued + about them; but that anybody could regard religion as a practical + thing like gardening was something quite new to me and, to her + neighbours, new and incomprehensible. She had been, by an accident, + brought up in the school of an Anglo-Catholic convent; and to all + that agnostic or mystic world, practising a religion was much more + puzzling than professing it. She was a queer card. She wore a green + velvet dress barred with grey fur, which I should have called + artistic, but that she hated all the talk about art; and she had an + attractive face, which I should have called elvish, but that she + hated all the talk about elves. But what was arresting and almost + blood-curdling about her, in that social atmosphere, was not so much + that she hated it, as that she was entirely unaffected by it. She + never knew what was meant by being "under the influence" of Yeats or + Shaw or Tolstoy or anybody else. She was intelligent, with a great + love of literature, and especially of Stevenson. But if Stevenson had + walked into the room and explained his personal doubts about personal + immortality, she would have regretted that he should be wrong upon + the point; but would otherwise have been utterly unaffected. She was + not at all like Robespierre, except in a taste for neatness in dress; + and yet it is only in Mr. Belloc's book on Robespierre that I have + ever found any words that describe the unique quality that cut her + off from the current culture and saved her from it. "God had given + him in his mind a stone tabernacle in which certain great truths were + preserved imperishable."* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 151-3.] + +A letter to a friend, Mildred Wain, who was now engaged to Waldo +d'Avigdor, makes the future tolerably easy to foresee. + + . . . My brother wishes me to thank you with ferocious gratitude + for the music, which he is enjoying tremendously. It reminds me + rather of what Miss Frances Blogg--but that is another story. + + In your last letter you enquired whether I saw anything of the + Bloggs now. If you went and put that question to them there would be + a scene. Mrs. Blogg would probably fall among the fire-irons, Knollys + would foam in convulsions on the carpet, Ethel would scream and take + refuge on the mantelpiece and Gertrude faint and break off her + engagement. Frances would--but no intelligent person can affect an + interest in what she does. + +Lawrence Solomon told me that Mrs. Edward Chesterton did not approve +of the rather arty-crafty atmosphere of Bedford Park--that earliest +of Garden Cities, so conventionally unconventional--where Frances +lived. She did not like her son's friendship with the Bloggs and she +had chosen for him a girl who she felt would make him an ideal wife: +"Very open air," Mr. Solomon said. "Not booky, but good at games and +practical." He was not sure whether Gilbert realised this, but +personally I believe that Gilbert realised everything. + +"Of course you know," Annie Firmin wrote to me, "that Aunt Marie +never liked Frances? Or Bentley?" Annie was the girl chosen by +Gilbert's mother. She was very much a member of the family. + +"Did Gilbert ever speak to you," she wrote to me recently, "of the +old Saturday night parties at Barnes, at the home of the +grandparents--every Saturday night the family, or as many of it as +could, used to go down to Barnes to supper, and the 'boys' and Tom +Gilbert, Alice Chesterton's husband, used to sing round the supper +table. Many a one I went to when I was staying at Warwick Gardens. We +used to go on a red Hammersmith bus, before the days of motor cars." + +On a longer trip they stayed at Berck in Belgium, and Cecil had a +strange idea, apparently regarded by him as humorous, which measures +the family absence of a Christian sense at this date. "Cecil urged me +to sit at the foot of the big Crucifix in the village street and let +him photograph me as Mary Magdalen! I _didn't_, and I don't know how +he thought he'd get away with the modern clothing." + +Whatever Gilbert's mother may have planned for them, neither she nor +Gilbert had any romantic feeling for each other. Indeed Cecil was +definitely her favourite and she believed him the favourite of both +parents also. "He had more heart," she says, "than the more brilliant +Gilbert." Anyhow, his heart was shown more openly to her. + +"Cecil was not much given to versifying," she wrote in another +letter, "he sent me the enclosed when my son was born. I value it so +much." Headed "To Annie" the poem is a long one. It begins with the +"ancient comradeship, loyal and unbroken" in which they had "first +seen life together." + + Shining nights, tumultuous days, + Joy swift caught in sudden ways, + All the laughter, love and praise, + All the joys of living + + These we shared together dear, + Plot and jest and story, + This is hid, shut off, unknown, + Seeing that to you alone + Is the wondrous Kingdom shown + And the power and Glory! + +Annie's thoughts, then, and Cecil's were not greatly on the elder +brother, who was pursuing his own romance with a heart that seems to +have been fairly adequate in its energies. + +Most mothers have watched their sons through one or more experiences +of calf love: Gilbert indicates in the _Autobiography_--and I knew +it, too, from some jokes he and Frances used to make--that he had had +one or two fancies before the coming of Reality. He must then +convince his mother that Reality had come: he must overcome a +prejudice avowed by neither: he must call on the deeps of a mother's +feelings so effectively that it would never now be avowed, that it +might indeed be swept away. + +And so, sitting at a table in a seaside lodging, as his mother sat in +the same room or moved about making cocoa for the family, Gilbert +tried to express what even for him was the inexpressible. + + 1 Rosebery Villas + Granville Road + Felixstowe. + + MY DEAREST MOTHER, + + You may possibly think this a somewhat eccentric proceeding. You + are sitting opposite and talking--about Mrs. Berline. But I take this + method of addressing you because it occurs to me that you might + possibly wish to turn the matter over in your mind before writing or + speaking to me about it. + + I am going to tell you the whole of a situation in which I believe + I have acted rightly, though I am not absolutely certain, and to ask + for your advice on it. It was a somewhat complicated one, and I + repeat that I do not think I could rightly have acted otherwise, but + if I were the greatest fool in the three kingdoms and had made + nothing but a mess of it, there is one person I should always turn to + and trust. Mothers know more of their son's idiocies than other + people can, and this has been peculiarly true in your case. I have + always rejoiced at this, and not been ashamed of it: this has always + been true and always will be. These things are easier written than + said, but you know it is true, don't you? + + I am inexpressibly anxious that you should give me credit for + having done my best, and for having constantly had in mind the way in + which you would be affected by the letter I am now writing. I do hope + you will be pleased. + + Almost eight years ago, you made a remark--this may show you that + if we "jeer" at your remarks, we remember them. The remark applied to + the hypothetical young lady with whom I should fall in love and took + the form of saying "If she is good, I shan't mind who she is." I + don't know how many times I have said that over to myself in the last + two or three days in which I have decided on this letter. + + Do not be frightened; or suppose that anything sensational or final + has occurred. I am not married, my dear mother, neither am I engaged. + You are called to the council of chiefs very early in its + deliberations. If you don't mind I will tell you, briefly, the whole + story. + + You are, I think, the shrewdest person for seeing things whom I + ever knew: consequently I imagine that you do not think that I go + down to Bedford Park every Sunday for the sake of the scenery. I + should not wonder if you know nearly as much about the matter as I + can tell in a letter. Suffice it to say however briefly (for neither + of us care much for gushing: this letter is not on Mrs. Ratcliffe + lines) that the first half of my time of acquaintance with the Bloggs + was spent in enjoying a very intimate, but quite breezy and Platonic + friendship with Frances Blogg, reading, talking and enjoying life + together, having great sympathies on all subjects; and the second + half in making the thrilling, but painfully responsible discovery + that Platonism, on my side, had not the field by any means to itself. + That is how we stand now. No one knows, except her family and + yourself. + + My dearest mother, I am sure you are at least not unsympathetic. + Indeed we love each other more than we shall either of us ever be + able to say. I have refrained from sentiment in this letter--for I + don't think you like it much. But love is a very different thing from + sentiment and you will never laugh at that. I will not say that you + are sure to like Frances, for all young men say that to their + mothers, quite naturally, and their mothers never believe them, also, + quite naturally. Besides, I am so confident, I should like you to + find her out for yourself. She is, in reality, very much the sort of + woman you like, what is called, I believe, "a Woman's Woman," very + humorous, inconsequent and sympathetic and defiled with no offensive + exuberance of good health. + + I have nothing more to say, except that you and she have occupied + my mind for the last week to the exclusion of everything else, which + must account for my abstraction, and that in her letter she sent the + following message: "Please tell your mother soon. Tell her I am not + so silly as to expect her to think me good enough, but really I will + try to be." + + An aspiration which, considered from my point of view, naturally + provokes a smile. + + Here you give me a cup of cocoa. Thank you. + + Believe me, my dearest mother, + + Always your very affectionate son + + GILBERT. + +What exactly Gilbert meant by saying they were "not engaged" it is +hard to surmise, in view of Frances's message to her future +mother-in-law. Of his sensations when proposing Gilbert gives some +idea in the _Autobiography:_ + + It was fortunate, however, that our next most important meeting was + not under the sign of the moon but of the sun. She has often + affirmed, during our later acquaintance, that if the sun had not been + shining to her complete satisfaction on that day, the issue might + have been quite different. It happened in St. James's Park; where + they keep the ducks and the little bridge, which has been mentioned + in no less authoritative a work than Mr. Belloc's Essay on Bridges, + since I find myself quoting that author once more. I think he deals + in some detail, in his best topographical manner, with various + historic sites on the Continent; but later relapses into a larger + manner, somewhat thus: "The time has now come to talk at large about + Bridges. The longest bridge in the world is the Forth Bridge, and the + shortest bridge in the world is a plank over a ditch in the village + of Loudwater. The bridge that frightens you most is the Brooklyn + Bridge, and the bridge that frightens you least is the bridge in St. + James's Park." I admit that I crossed that bridge in undeserved + safety; and perhaps I was affected by my early romantic vision of the + bridge leading to the princess's tower. But I can assure my friend + the author that the bridge in St. James's Park can frighten you a + good deal.* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 154-5.] + +Now, with Frances promised to him, Gilbert could enjoy everything +properly, could execute, verbally at least, a wild fantasia. Among +the first of his friends to be written to was Mildred Wain, because, +as he says in a later letter, he felt towards her deep gratitude "for +forming a topic of conversation on my first visit to a family with +which I have since formed a dark and shameful connection." + + DEAR MILDRED, + + On rising this morning, I carefully washed my boots in hot water + and blacked my face. Then assuming my coat with graceful ease and + with the tails in front, I descended to breakfast, where I gaily + poured the coffee on the sardines and put my hat on the fire to boil. + These activities will give you some idea of my frame of mind. My + family, observing me leave the house by way of the chimney, and take + the fender with me under one arm, thought I must have something on my + mind. So I had. + + My friend, I am engaged. I am only telling it at present to my real + friends: but there is no doubt about it. The next question that + arises is--whom am I engaged to? I have investigated this problem + with some care, and, as far as I can make out, the best authorities + point to Frances Blogg. There can I think be no reasonable doubt that + she is the lady. It is as well to have these minor matters clear in + one's mind. + + I am very much too happy to write much; but I thought you might + remember my existence sufficiently to be interested in the incident. + + Waldo has been of so much help to me in this and in everything, and + I am so much interested in you for his sake and your own, that I am + encouraged to hope our friendship may subsist. If ever I have done + anything rude or silly, it was quite inadvertent. I have always + wished to please you. + +To Annie Firmin he wrote: + + I can only think of the day, one of the earliest I can recall of my + life, when you came in and helped me to build a house with bricks. I + am building another one now, and it would not have been complete + without your going over it. + +To others he wrote such sentences as he could put together in the +whirlwind of his happiness. For himself he stammered in a verse that +grew with the years into his great love poetry. + + God made thee mightily, my love, + He stretched his hands out of his rest + And lit the star of east and west + Brooding o'er darkness like a dove. + God made thee mightily, my love. + + God made thee patiently, my sweet, + Out of all stars he chose a star + He made it red with sunset bar + And green with greeting for thy feet. + God made thee mightily, my sweet. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +To Frances + + +THIS CHAPTER CAN be written only by Gilbert himself. It might seem +that he had no words left for an emotion heightened beyond the love +of his friends and the joyous acceptance of existence. But in these +letters he shows the truth of his own theory, that to love each thing +separately strengthens the power of loving, to have tried to love +everyone is, as he tells Frances, no bad preparation for loving her. +The emotion of falling in love had both intensified his appreciation +of all things and cast for him a vivid light on past, present and +future, so that in the last of these letters he sketches his life +down to the moment when a new life begins. + +". . . I am looking over the sea and endeavouring to reckon up the +estate I have to offer you. As far as I can make out my equipment for +starting on a journey to fairyland consists of the following items. + +"1st. A Straw Hat. The oldest part of this admirable relic shows +traces of pure Norman work. The vandalism of Cromwell's soldiers has +left us little of the original hat-band. + +"2nd. A Walking Stick, very knobby and heavy: admirably fitted to +break the head of any denizen of Suffolk who denies that you are the +noblest of ladies, but of no other manifest use. + +"3rd. A copy of Walt Whitman's poems, once nearly given to Salter, +but quite forgotten. It has his name in it still with an affectionate +inscription from his sincere friend Gilbert Chesterton. I wonder if +he will ever have it. + +"4th. A number of letters from a young lady, containing everything +good and generous and loyal and holy and wise that isn't in Walt +Whitman's poems. + +"5th. An unwieldy sort of a pocket knife, the blades mostly having an +edge of a more varied and picturesque outline than is provided by the +prosaic cutter. The chief element however is a thing 'to take stones +out of a horse's hoof.' What a beautiful sensation of security it +gives one to reflect that if one should ever have money enough to buy +a horse and should happen to buy one and the horse should happen to +have a stone in his hoof--that one is ready; one stands prepared, +with a defiant smile! + +"6th. Passing from the last miracle of practical foresight, we come +to a box of matches. Every now and then I strike one of these, +because fire is beautiful and burns your fingers. Some people think +this waste of matches: the same people who object to the building of +Cathedrals. + +"7th. About three pounds in gold and silver, the remains of one of +Mr. Unwin's bursts of affection: those explosions of spontaneous love +for myself, which, such is the perfect order and harmony of his mind, +occur at startlingly exact intervals of time. + +"8th. A book of Children's Rhymes, in manuscript, called the 'Weather +Book' about 3/4 finished, and destined for Mr. Nutt.* I have been +working at it fairly steadily, which I think jolly creditable under +the circumstances. One can't put anything interesting in it. They'll +understand those things when they grow up. + +[* _Greybeards at Play_.] + +"9th. A tennis racket--nay, start not. It is a part of the new +regime, and the only new and neat-looking thing in the Museum. We'll +soon mellow it--like the straw hat. My brother and I are teaching +each other lawn tennis. + +"10th. A soul, hitherto idle and omnivorous but now happy enough to +be ashamed of itself. + +"11th. A body, equally idle and quite equally omnivorous, absorbing +tea, coffee, claret, sea-water and oxygen to its own perfect +satisfaction. It is happiest swimming, I think, the sea being about a +convenient size. + +"12th. A Heart--mislaid somewhere. And that is about all the property +of which an inventory can be made at present. After all, my tastes +are stoically simple. A straw hat, a stick, a box of matches and some +of his own poetry. What more does man require? . . ." + +". . . The City of Felixstowe, as seen by the local prophet from the +neighbouring mountain-peak, does not strike the eye as having +anything uncanny about it. At least I imagine that it requires rather +careful scrutiny before the eerie curl of a chimney pot, or the elfin +wink of a lonely lamp-post brings home to the startled soul that it +is really the City of a Fearful Folk. That the inhabitants are not +human in the ordinary sense is quite clear, yet it has only just +begun to dawn on me after staying a week in the Town of Unreason with +its monstrous landscape and grave, unmeaning customs. Do I seem to be +raving? Let me give my experiences. + +"I am bound to admit that I do not think I am good at shopping. I +generally succeed in getting rid of money, but other observances, +such as bringing away the goods that I've paid for, and knowing what +I've bought, I often pass over as secondary. But to shop in a town of +ordinary tradesmen is one thing: to shop in a town of raving lunatics +is another. I set out one morning, happy and hopeful with the +intention of buying (a) a tennis racket (b) some tennis balls (c) +some tennis shoes (d) a ticket for a tennis ground. I went to the +shop pointed out by some villager (probably mad) and went in and said +I believed they kept tennis rackets. The young man smiled and +assented. I suggested that he might show me some. The young man +looked positively alarmed. 'Oh,' he said, 'We haven't got any--not +got any here.' I asked 'Where?' 'Oh, they're out you know. All +round,' he explained wildly, with a graphic gesture in the direction +of the sea and the sky. 'All out round. We've left them all round at +places.' To this day I don't know what he meant, but I merely asked +when they would quit these weird retreats. He said in an hour: in an +hour I called again. Were they in now? 'Well not in--not in, just +yet,' he said with a sort of feverish confidentialness, as if he +wasn't quite well. 'Are they still--all out at places?' I asked with +restrained humour. 'Oh no!' he said with a burst of reassuring pride. +'They are only out there--out behind, you know.' I hope my face +expressed my beaming comprehension of the spot alluded to. +Eventually, at a third visit, the rackets were produced. None of +them, I was told by my brother, were of any first-class maker, so +that was outside the question. The choice was between some good, neat +first-hand instruments which suited me, and some seedy-looking +second-hand objects with plain deal handles, which would have done at +a pinch. I thought that perhaps it would be better to get a +good-class racket in London and content myself for the present with +economising on one of these second-hand monuments of depression. So I +asked the price. '10/6' was the price of the second-hand article. I +thought this large for the tool, and wondered if the first-hand +rackets were much dearer. What price the first-hand? '7/6' said the +Creature, cheery as a bird. I did not faint. I am strong. + +"I rejected the article which was dearer because it had been hallowed +by human possession, and accepted the cheap, new crude racket. Except +the newness there was no difference between them whatever. I then +asked the smiling Maniac for balls. He brought me a selection of +large red globes nearly as big as Dutch cheeses. I said, 'Are these +tennis-balls?' He said, 'Oh did you want tennis-balls?' I said +Yes--they often came in handy at tennis. The goblin was however quite +impervious to satire, and I left him endeavouring to draw my +attention to his wares in general, particularly to some zinc baths +which he seemed to think should form part of the equipment of a +tennis-player. + +"Never before or since have I met a being of that order and degree of +creepiness. He was a nightmare of unmeaning idiocy. But some mention +ought to be made of the old man at the entrance to the tennis ground +who opened his mouth in parables on the subject of the fee for +playing there. He seemed to have been wound up to make only one +remark, 'It's sixpence.' Under these circumstances the attempt to +discover whether the sixpence covered a day's tennis or a week or +fifty years was rather baffling. At last I put down the sixpence. +This seemed to galvanise him into life. He looked at the clock, which +was indicating five past eleven and said, 'It's sixpence an hour--so +you'll be all right till two.' I fled screaming. + +"Since then I have examined the town more carefully and feel the +presence of something nameless. There is a claw-curl in the sea-bent +trees, an eye-gleam in the dark flints in the wall that is not of +this world. + +"When we set up a house, darling (honeysuckle porch, yew clipt hedge, +bees, poetry and eight shillings a week), I think you will have to do +the shopping. Particularly at Felixstowe. There was a great and +glorious man who said, 'Give us the luxuries of life and we will +dispense with the necessities.' That I think would be a splendid +motto to write (in letters of brown gold) over the porch of our +hypothetical home. There will be a sofa for you, for example, but no +chairs, for I prefer the floor. There will be a select store of +chocolate-creams (to make you do the Carp with) and the rest will be +bread and water. We will each retain a suit of evening dress for +great occasions, and at other times clothe ourselves in the skins of +wild beasts (how pretty you would look) which would fit your taste in +furs and be economical. + +"I have sometimes thought it would be very fine to take an ordinary +house, a very poor, commonplace house in West Kensington, say, and +make it symbolic. Not artistic--Heaven--O Heaven forbid. My blood +boils when I think of the affronts put by knock-kneed pictorial +epicures on the strong, honest, ugly, patient shapes of necessary +things: the brave old bones of life. There are aesthetic pottering +prigs who can look on a saucepan without one tear of joy or sadness: +mongrel decadents that can see no dignity in the honourable scars of +a kettle. So they concentrate all their house decoration on coloured +windows that nobody looks out of, and vases of lilies that everybody +wishes out of the way. No: my idea (which is much cheaper) is to make +a house really allegoric: really explain its own essential meaning. +Mystical or ancient sayings should be inscribed on every object, the +more prosaic the object the better; and the more coarsely and rudely +the inscription was traced the better. 'Hast thou sent the Rain upon +the Earth?' should be inscribed on the Umbrella-stand: perhaps on the +Umbrella. 'Even the Hairs of your Head are all numbered' would give a +tremendous significance to one's hairbrushes: the words about 'living +water' would reveal the music and sanctity of the sink: while 'our +God is a consuming Fire' might be written over the kitchen-grate, to +assist the mystic musings of the cook--Shall we ever try that +experiment, dearest. Perhaps not, for no words would be golden enough +for the tools you had to touch: you would be beauty enough for one +house. . . ." + +". . . By all means let us have bad things in our dwelling and make +them good things. I shall offer no objection to your having an +occasional dragon to dinner, or a penitent Griffin to sleep in the +spare bed. The image of you taking a Sunday school of little Devils +is pleasing. They will look up, first in savage wonder, then in vague +respect; they will see the most glorious and noble lady that ever +lived since their prince tempted Eve, with a halo of hair and great +heavenly eyes that seem to make the good at the heart of things +almost too terribly simple and naked for the sons of flesh: and as +they gaze, their tails will drop off, and their wings will sprout: +and they will become Angels in six lessons. . . . + +"I cannot profess to offer any elaborate explanation of your mother's +disquiet but I admit it does not wholly surprise me. You see I happen +to know one factor in the case, and one only, of which you are wholly +ignorant. I know you . . . I know one thing which has made me feel +strange before your mother--I know the value of what I take away. I +feel (in a weird moment) like the Angel of Death. + +"You say you want to talk to me about death: my views about death are +bright, brisk and entertaining. When Azrael takes a soul it may be to +other and brighter worlds: like those whither you and I go together. +The transformation called Death may be something as beautiful and +dazzling as the transformation called Love. It may make the dead man +'happy,' just as your mother knows that you are happy. But none the +less it is a transformation, and sad sometimes for those left behind. +A mother whose child is dying can hardly believe that in the +inscrutable Unknown there is anyone who can look to it as well as +she. And if a mother cannot trust her child easily to God Almighty, +shall I be so mean as to be angry because she cannot trust it easily +to me? I tell you I have stood before your mother and felt like a +thief. I know you are not going to part: neither physically, +mentally, morally nor spiritually. But she sees a new element in your +life, wholly from outside--is it not natural, given her temperament, +that you should find her perturbed? Oh, dearest, dearest Frances, let +us always be very gentle to older people. Indeed, darling, it is not +they who are the tyrants, but we. They may interrupt our building in +the scaffolding stages: we turn their house upside down when it is +their final home and rest. Your mother would certainly have worried +if you had been engaged to the Archangel Michael (who, indeed, is +bearing his disappointment very well): how much more when you are +engaged to an aimless, tactless, reckless, unbrushed, strange-hatted, +opinionated scarecrow who has suddenly walked into the vacant place. +I could have prophesied her unrest: wait and she will calm down all +right, dear. God comfort her: I dare not. . . ." + +". . . Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born of comfortable but honest +parents on the top of Campden Hill, Kensington. He was christened at +St. George's Church which stands just under that more imposing +building, the Waterworks Tower. This place was chosen, apparently, in +order that the whole available water supply might be used in the +intrepid attempt to make him a member of Christ, a child of God and +an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven. + +"Of the early years of this remarkable man few traces remain. One of +his earliest recorded observations was the simple exclamation, full +of heart-felt delight, 'Look at Baby. Funny Baby.' Here we see the +first hint of that ineffable conversational modesty, that shy social +self-effacement, which has ever hidden his light under a bushel. His +mother also recounts with apparent amusement an incident connected +with his imperious demand for his father's top-hat. 'Give me that +hat, please.' 'No, dear, you mustn't have that.' 'Give me that hat.' +'No, dear--' 'If you don't give it me, I'll say 'At.' An exquisite +selection in the matter of hats has indeed always been one of the +great man's hobbies. + +"When he had drawn pictures on all the blinds and tablecloths and +towels and walls and windowpanes it was felt that he required a +larger sphere. Consequently he was sent to Mr. Bewsher who gave him +desks and copy-books and Latin grammars and atlases to draw pictures +on. He was far too innately conscientious not to use these materials +to draw on. To other uses, asserted by some to belong to these +objects, he paid little heed. The only really curious thing about his +school life was that he had a weird and quite involuntary habit of +getting French prizes. They were the only ones he ever got and he +never tried to get them. But though the thing was quite mysterious to +him, and though he made every effort to avoid it, it went on, being +evidently a part of some occult natural law. + +"For the first half of his time at school he was very solitary and +futile. He never regretted the time, for it gave him two things, +complete mental self-sufficiency and a comprehension of the +psychology of outcasts. + +"But one day, as he was roaming about a great naked building land +which he haunted in play hours, rather like an outlaw in the woods, +he met a curious agile youth with hair brushed up off his head. +Seeing each other, they promptly hit each other simultaneously and +had a fight. Next day they met again and fought again. These Homeric +conflicts went on for many days, till one morning in the crisis of +some insane grapple, the subject of this biography quoted, like a +war-chant, something out of Macaulay's _Lays_. The other started and +relaxed his hold. They gazed at each other. Then the foe quoted the +following line. In this land of savages they knew each other. For the +next two hours they talked books. They have talked books ever since. +The boy was Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The incident just narrated is +the true and real account of the first and deepest of our hero's male +connections. But another was to ensue, probably equally profound and +far more pregnant with awful and dazzling consequences. Bentley +always had a habit of trying to do things well: twelve years of the +other's friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a +peculiar desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of +an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black +Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half +thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea +yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian +Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. 'That night,' as +Shakespeare says, 'there was a star.' + +"These three persons soon became known through the length and breadth +of St. Paul's School as the founders of a singular brotherhood. It +was called the J.D.C. No one, we believe, could ever have had better +friends than did the hero of this narrative. We wish that we could +bring before the reader the personality of all the Knights of that +eccentric round table. Most of them are known already to the reader. +Even the subject himself is possibly known to the reader. Bertram, +who seemed somehow to have been painted by Vandyck, a sombre and +stately young man, a blend of Cavalier and Puritan, with the physique +of a military father and the views of an ethical mother and a soul of +his own which for sheer simplicity is something staggering. Vernede +with an Oriental and inscrutable placidity varied every now and then +with dazzling agility and Meredithian humour. Waldo d'Avigdor who +masks with complete fashionable triviality a Hebraic immutability of +passion tried in a more ironical and bitter service than his Father +Jacob. Lawrence and Maurice Solomon, who show another side of the +same people, the love of home, the love of children, the meek and +malicious humour, the tranquil service of a law. Salter who shows how +beautiful and ridiculous a combination can be made of the most +elaborate mental cultivation and artistic sensibility and omniscience +with a receptiveness and a humility extraordinary in any man. These +were his friends. May he be forgiven for speaking of them at length +and with pride? Some day we hope the reader may know them all. He +knew these people; he knew their friends. He heard Mildred Wain say +'Blogg' and he thought it was a funny name. Had he been told that he +would ever pronounce it with the accents of tears and passion he +would have said, in his pride, that the name was not suitable for +that purpose. But there are _oukh eph' emin_ [Greek characters in +original]. . . . + +"He went for a time to an Art School. There he met a great many +curious people. Many of the men were horrible blackguards: he was not +exactly that: so they naturally found each other interesting. He went +through some rather appalling discoveries about human life and the +final discovery was that there is no Devil--no, not even such a thing +as a bad man. + +"One pleasant Saturday afternoon Lucian said to him, 'I am going to +take you to see the Bloggs.' 'The what?' said the unhappy man. 'The +Bloggs,' said the other, darkly. Naturally assuming that it was the +name of a public-house he reluctantly followed his friend. He came to +a small front-garden; if it was a public-house it was not a +businesslike one. They raised the latch--they rang the bell (if the +bell was not in the close time just then). No flower in the pots +winked. No brick grinned. No sign in Heaven or earth warned him. The +birds sang on in the trees. He went in. + +"The first time he spent an evening at the Bloggs there was no one +there. That is to say there was a worn but fiery little lady in a +grey dress who didn't approve of 'catastrophic solutions of social +problems.' That, he understood, was Mrs. Blogg. There was a long, +blonde, smiling young person who seemed to think him quite off his +head and who was addressed as Ethel. There were two people whose +meaning and status he couldn't imagine, one of whom had a big nose +and the other hadn't. . . . Lastly, there was a Juno-like creature in +a tremendous hat who eyed him all the time half wildly, like a shying +horse, because he said he was quite happy. . . . + +"But the second time he went there he was plumped down on a sofa +beside a being of whom he had a vague impression that brown hair grew +at intervals all down her like a caterpillar. Once in the course of +conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as +plainly as if he had read it in a book: 'If I had anything to do with +this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she +would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me: +if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she +would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget +me. I may never see her again. Goodbye.' It was all said in a flash: +but it was all said. . . . + +"Two years, as they say in the playbills, is supposed to elapse. And +here is the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the +sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering +record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he +has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often +been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he is called upon to be. +Let him now declare it and hereafter for ever hold his peace. + +"But there are four lamps of thanksgiving always before him. The +first is for his creation out of the same earth with such a woman as +you. The second is that he has not, with all his faults, 'gone after +strange women.' You cannot think how a man's self-restraint is +rewarded in this. The third is that he has tried to love everything +alive: a dim preparation for loving you. And the fourth is--but no +words can express that. Here ends my previous existence. Take it: it +led me to you." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A Long Engagement + + +GILBERT SYMPATHIZED WITH his future mother-in-law's anxiety at +Frances's engagement to "a self-opinionated scarecrow," but I doubt +if it at all quickly occurred to him that the basis of that anxiety +was the fact that he was earning only twenty-five shillings a week! +Frances herself, Lucian Oldershaw, and the rest of his friends +believed he was a genius with a great future and this belief they +tried to communicate to Frances's family. But even if they succeeded, +faith in the future did not pay dividends in a present income on +which to set up house. A widow, considering her daughter's future, +might well feel a little anxiety. But one can see wheels within +wheels of family conclaves and matters to perplex the simple which +drew another letter from Gilbert to Frances: + + . . . It is a mystic and refreshing thought that I shall never + understand Bloggs. + + That is the truth of it . . . that this remarkable family + atmosphere . . . this temperament with its changing moods and its + everlasting will, its divine trust in one's soul and its tremulous + speculations as to one's "future," its sensitiveness like a tempered + sword, vibrating but never broken: its patience that can wait for + Eternity and its impatience that cannot wait for tea: its power of + bearing huge calamities, and its queer little moods that even those + calamities can never overshadow or wipe out: its brusqueness that + always pleases and its over-tactfulness that sometimes wounds: its + terrific intensity of feeling, that sometimes paralyses the outsider + with conversational responsibility: its untranslatable humour of + courage and poverty and its unfathomed epics of past tragedy and + triumph--all this glorious confusion of family traits, which, in no + exaggerative sense, make the Gentiles come to your light and the folk + of the nations to the brightness of your house--is a thing so utterly + outside my own temperament that I was formed by nature to admire and + not understand it. God made me very simply--as he made a tree or a + pig or an oyster: to perform certain functions. The best thing he + gave me was a perfect and unshakable trust in those I love. . . . + +Gilbert's sympathy with his future mother-in-law may have been put +to some slight strain by an incident related by Lucian Oldershaw. +Mrs. Blogg begged him to talk to Gilbert about his personal +appearance--clothes and such matters--and to entreat him to make an +effort to improve it. One can imagine how much he must have disliked +the commission! Anyhow, he decided it would be better to do it away +from home and he suggested to Gilbert a trip to the seaside. Arrived +there he broached the subject. Gilbert, he says, was not the least +angry, but answered quite seriously that Frances loved him as he was +and that it would be absurd for him to try to alter. It was only out +of a later and deeper experience of women that he was able to write +"A man's friends like him but they leave him as he is. A man's wife +loves him and is always trying to change him." + +A good many things happened in the course of this long engagement. +Frances and Gilbert were both young and long engagements were normal +at that period, when the idea of a wife continuing to earn after +marriage was unheard of. There were obvious disadvantages in the long +delay before marriage but also certain advantages. The two got to +know each other with a close intimacy: they were comrades as well as +lovers and carried both these relationships into married life. For +the biographer the advantage has been immense, since every separation +between the pair meant a batch of letters. The discerning will have +noted that there are in these letters considerable excisions: parts +Frances would not show even to the biographer. . But they are the +richest quarry from which to dig for the most important period of any +man's life; the period richest in mental development and the shaping +of character. It is, too, the only period of his adult life when +Gilbert wrote letters at all, unless they were absolutely unavoidable. + +Even in a small family two members will tend to draw together more +closely than the rest, and this was so with Frances and her sister +Gertrude. They adored one another and Frances offered her to Gilbert +as a sister, with especially confident pride. He had never had a +sister since babyhood and he enjoyed it. The happiness of the +engagement was terribly broken into by the sudden death of Gertrude +in a street accident. Frances was absolutely shattered. The next +group of letters belongs to the months after Gertrude's death, when +Gilbert was still trying to be a publisher, but, urged on by Frances, +beginning also to be a writer. During part of this time she had gone +abroad for rest and recovery after the shock. Gilbert pictures her +reading his letters "under the shadow of an alien cathedral." + +None of these letters are dated but most of them have kept their +postmarks. + + 11, Paternoster Buildings + (postmarked July 8, 1899) + + . . . I am black but comely at this moment: because the cyclostyle + has blacked me. Fear not. I shall wash myself. But I think it my duty + to render an accurate account of my physical appearance every time I + write: and shall be glad of any advice and assistance. . . . I have + been reading Lewis Carroll's remains, mostly Logic, and have much + pleasure in enlivening you with the following hilarious query: "Can a + Hypothetical, whose protasis is false, be legitimate? Are two + Hypotheticals of the forms, _If A, then B_, and _If A then not B_ + compatible?" I should think a Hypothetical could be, if it tried + hard. . . . + + To return to the Cyclostyle. I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so + inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce + pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of + water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the + steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the + same with people. When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we + touch the deepest philosophy. + + I will not ask you to forgive this rambling levity. I, for one have + sworn, I do not hesitate to say it, by the sword of God that has + struck us, and before the beautiful face of the dead, that the first + joke that occurred to me I would make, the first nonsense poem I + thought of I would write, that I would begin again at once with a + heavy heart at times, as to other duties, to the duty of being + perfectly silly, perfectly extravagant, perfectly trivial, and as far + as possible, amusing. I have sworn that Gertrude should not feel, + wherever she is, that the comedy has gone out of our theatre. This, I + am well aware, will be misunderstood. But I have long grasped that + whatever we do we are misunderstood--small blame to other people; for, + we know ourselves, our best motives are things we could neither + explain nor defend. And I would rather hurt those who can shout than + her who is silent. + + You might tell me what you feel about this: but I am myself + absolutely convinced that gaiety that is the bubble of love, does not + annoy me: the old round of stories, laughter, family ceremonies, + seems to me far less really inappropriate than a single moment of + forced silence or unmanly shame. . . . + +I have always imagined Frances did not know of her mother's efforts +to tidy Gilbert, but very early in their engagement she began her own +abortive attempts to make him brush his hair, tie his tie straight +and avoid made-up ones, attend to the buttons on his coat, and all +the rest. It would seem that for a time at any rate he made some +efforts, but evidently simply regarded the whole thing as one huge +joke. + + 11 Warwick Gardens + (Postmarked July 9th, 1899) + + . . . I am clean. I am wearing a frockcoat, which from a + superficial survey seems to have no end of buttons. It must be + admitted that I am wearing a bow-tie: but on careful research I find + that these were constantly worn by Vikings. A distinct allusion to + them is made in that fine fragment, the Tryggvhessa Saga, where the + poet says, in the short alliterative lines of Early Norse poetry: + + Frockcoat Folding then + Hakon Hardrada + Bow-tie Buckled + Waited for war + +(Brit. Mus. Mss. CCCLXIX lines 99981-99985) + + I resume. My appearance, as I have suggested, is singularly + exemplary. My boots are placed, after the fastidious London fashion, + on the feet: the laces are done up, the watch is going, the hair is + brushed, the sleeve-links are inserted, for of such is the Kingdom of + Heaven. As for my straw hat, I put it on eighteen times + consecutively, taking a run and a jump to each try, till at last I + hit the right angle. I have not taken it off for three days and + nights lest I should disturb that exquisite pose. Ladies, princes, + queens, ecclesiastical processions go by in vain: I do not remove it. + That angle of the hat is something to mount guard over. As Swinburne + says--"Not twice on earth do the gods do this." + + It is at present what is, I believe, called a lovely summer's + night. To say that it is hot would be as feeble a platitude as the + same remark would be in the small talk of Satan and Beelzebub. + + If there were such a thing as _blue_-hot iron, it would describe + the sky tonight. I cannot help dreaming of some wild fairy-tale in + which the whole round cosmos should be a boiling pot, with the flames + of Purgatory under it, and that soon I shall have the satisfaction of + seeing such a thing as boiled mountains, boiled cities, and a boiled + moon and stars. A tremendous picture. Yet I am perfectly happy as + usual. After all, why should we object to be boiled? Potatoes, for + example, are better boiled than raw--why should we fear to be boiled + into new shapes in the cauldron? These things are an allegory. + + . . . I am so glad to hear you say . . . that, in your own words "it + is good for us to be here"--where you are at present. The same remark, + if I remember right, was made on the mountain of the Transfiguration. + It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that + remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought + to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the + long Vision we call life--other things superficially, but this always + in our depths. "It is good for us to be here--it is good for us to be + here," repeating itself eternally. And if, after many joys and + festivals and frivolities, it should be our fate to have to look on + while one of us is, in a most awful sense of the words, "transfigured + before our eyes": shining with the whiteness of death--at least, I + think, we cannot easily fancy ourselves wishing not to be at our + post. Not I, certainly. It was good for me to be there. + +* * * * + + 11 Warwick Gardens + (postmarked July 11, 1899.) + + . . . The novel, after which you so kindly enquire, is proceeding + headlong. It received another indirect stimulus today, when Mr. + Garnett insisted on taking me out to lunch, gave me a gorgeous repast + at a restaurant, succeeded in plucking the secret of my private + employment from my bosom, and made me promise to send him some + chapters of it. I certainly cannot complain of not being + sympathetically treated by the literary men I know. I wonder where + the jealous, spiteful, depreciating man of letters we read of in + books has got to. It's about time he turned up, I think. Excuse me + for talking about these trivialities. . . . + + I have made a discovery: or I should say seen a vision. I saw it + between two cups of black coffee in a Gallic restaurant in Soho: but + I could not express it if I tried. + + But this was one thing that it said--that all good things are one + thing. There is no conflict between the gravestone of Gertrude and a + comic-opera tune played by Mildred Wain. But there is everlasting + conflict between the gravestone of Gertrude and the obscene pomposity + of the hired mute: and there is everlasting conflict between the + comic-opera tune and any mean or vulgar words to which it may be set. + These, which man hath joined together, God shall most surely sunder. + That is what I am feeling . . . now every hour of the day. All good + things are one thing. Sunsets, schools of philosophy, babies, + constellations, cathedrals, operas, mountains, horses, poems--all + these are merely disguises. One thing is always walking among us in + fancy-dress, in the grey cloak of a church or the green cloak of a + meadow. He is always behind, His form makes the folds fall so + superbly. And that is what the savage old Hebrews, alone among the + nations, guessed, and why their rude tribal god has been erected on + the ruins of all polytheistic civilisations. For the Greeks and + Norsemen and Romans saw the superficial wars of nature and made the + sun one god, the sea another, the wind a third. They were not + thrilled, as some rude Israelite was, one night in the wastes, alone, + by the sudden blazing idea of all being the same God: an idea worthy + of a detective story. + + 11, Paternoster Buildings + (postmarked July 14, 1899.) + + . . . costume slightly improved. The truth is that a mystical and + fantastic development has taken place. My clothes have rebelled + against me. Weary of scorn and neglect, they have all suddenly come + to life and they dress me by force every morning. My frockcoat leaps + upon me like a lion and hangs on, dragging me down. As I struggle my + boots trip me up--and the laces climb up my feet (never missing a + hole) like snakes or creepers. At the same moment the celebrated grey + tie springs at my throat like a wild cat. + + I am told that the general effects produced by this remarkable + psychical development are superb. Really the clothes must know + best. Still it is awkward when a mackintosh pursues one down the + street. . . . + + . . . There is nothing in God's earth that really expresses the + bottom of the nature of a man in love except Burns' songs. To the man + not in love they must seem inexplicably simple. When he says, "My + love is like the melody that's sweetly played in tune," it seems + almost a crude way of referring to music. But a man in love with a + woman feels a nerve move suddenly that Dante groped for and + Shakespeare hardly touched. What made me think of Burns, however, was + that one of his simple and sudden things, hitting the right nail so + that it rings, occurs in the song of "O a' the airts the wind can + blaw," where he merely says that there is nothing beautiful anywhere + but it makes him think of the woman. That is not really a mere + aesthetic fancy, a chain of sentimental association--it is an actual + instinctive elemental movement of the mind, performed automatically + and instantly. . . . + + Felixstowe (undated) + + . . . I have as you see, arrived here. I have done other daring + things, such as having my hair shampooed, as you commanded, and also + cut. The effect of this is so singularly horrible that I have found + further existence in London impossible. Public opinion is too strong + for me. . . . There are many other reasons I could give for being + pleased to come: such as that I have some time for writing the novel; + that I can make up stories I don't intend to write . . . that there + are phosphorescent colours on the sea and a box of cigarettes on the + mantelpiece. + + Some fragments of what I felt [about Gertrude's death] have + struggled out in the form of some verses which I am writing out for + you. But for real strength (I don't like the word "comfort") for real + peace, no human words are much good except perhaps some of the + unfathomable, unintelligible, unconquerable epigrams of the Bible. I + remember when Bentley had a burning boyish admiration for Professor + Huxley, and when that scientist died some foolish friend asked him + quite flippantly in a letter what he felt about it. Bentley replied + with the chapter and verse reference to one of the Psalms, alone on a + postcard. The text was, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the + death of one of his saints." The friend, I remember, thought it "a + curious remark about Huxley." It strikes me as a miraculous remark + about anybody. It is one of those magic sayings where every word hits + a chain of association, God knows how. + + "Precious"--we could not say that Gertrude's death is happy or + providential or sweet or even perhaps good. But it is something. + "Beautiful" is a good word--but "precious" is the only right word. + + It is this passionate sense of the _value_ of things: of the + richness of the cosmic treasure: the world where every star is a + diamond, every leaf an emerald, every drop of blood a ruby, it is + this sense of preciousness that is really awakened by the death of + His saints. Somehow we feel that even their death is a thing of + incalculable value and mysterious sweetness: it is awful, tragic, + desolating, desperately hard to bear--but still "precious." . . . + Forgive the verbosity of one whose trade it is to express the + inexpressible. + +The verses he speaks of in this letter, Frances treasured greatly. +She showed them to me, in a book which opens with a very touching +prayer in her own writing. In a later chapter I quote the lines in +which Gilbert writes of his own tone-deafness, and of how he saw what +music meant as he watched his wife's face. Something of the same +effect is produced on me by these verses. Gilbert was not of course +tone-deaf to this tragedy, yet it was chiefly in its effect on +Frances that it affected him. + + The sudden sorrow smote my love + That often falls twixt kiss and kiss + And looking forth awhile she said + Can no man tell me where she is. + +And again + + Stricken they sat: and through them moved + My own dear lady, pale and sweet. + + This soul whose clearness makes afraid + Our souls: this wholly guiltless one-- + No cobweb doubts--no passion smoke + Have veiled this mirror from Thy sun. + +In letters to Frances he could enter so deeply into her grief as to +make it his own. But when he wrote verse and spoke as it were to +himself or to God, the reflected emotion was not enough. These verses +could never rank with his real poetry. + +It was not possible in fact for a man so happily in love to dwell +lastingly on any sorrow. And I cannot avoid the feeling that, quite +apart from any theory, cheerfulness was constantly "breaking in." For +Gilbert was a very happy man. Across the top of one of his letters is +written: "You can always tell the real love from the slight by the +fact that the latter weakens at the moment of success; the former is +quadrupled." + +The next of his letters is a mingling of the comic and the fantastic, +very special to G.K.C. + + 11, Paternoster Buildings + (postmarked Sept. 29, 1899.) + + . . . I fear, as you say, that my letters do not contain many + practical details about myself: the letters are not very long to + begin with, as I think it better to write something every day + than a long letter when I have leisure: and when I have a little + time to think in, I always think of the Kosmos first and the Ego + afterwards. I admit, however, that you are not engaged to the + Kosmos: dear me! what a time the Kosmos would have! All its + Comets would have their hair brushed every morning. The Whirlwind + would be adjured not to walk about when it was talking. The + Oceans would be warmed with hot-water pipes. Not even the lowest + forms of life would escape the crusade of tidiness: you would + walk round and round the jellyfish, looking for a place to put in + shirt-links. + + Under these circumstances, then, I cannot but regard it as + fortunate that you are only engaged to your obedient Microcosm: a + biped inheriting some of the traits of his mother, the Kosmos, its + untidiness, its largeness, its irritating imperfection and its + profound and hearty intention to go on existing as long as it + possibly can. + + I can understand what you mean about wanting details about me, for + I want just the same about you. You need only tell me "I went down + the street to a pillar-box," I shall know that you did it in a + manner, blindingly, staggeringly, crazily beautiful. It is quite + true, as you say, that I am a person wearing _certain_ clothes with a + _certain_ kind of hair. I cannot get rid of the impression that there + is something scorchingly sarcastic about the underlining in this + passage. . . . + + . . . as to what I do every day: it depends on which way you want + it narrated: what we all say it is, or what it really is. + + What we all say happens every day is this: I wake up: dress myself, + eat bacon and bread and coffee for breakfast: walk up to High St. + Station, take a fourpenny ticket for Blackfriars, read the Chronicle + in the train, arrive at 11, Paternoster Buildings: read a MS called + "The Lepers" (light comedy reading) and another called "The + Preparation of Ryerson Embury"--you know the style--till 2 o'clock. + Go out to lunch, have--(but here perhaps it would be safer to become + vague), come back, work till six, take my hat and walking-stick and + come home: have dinner at home, write the Novel till 11, then write + to you and go to bed. That is what, we in our dreamy, deluded way, + really imagine is the thing that happens. What really happens (but + hist! are we observed?) is as follows. + + Out of the starless night of the Uncreated, that was before the + stars, a soul begins to grope back to light. It gropes its way + through strange, half-lighted chambers of Dreams, where in a brown + and gold twilight, it sees many things that are dimly significant, + true stories twisted into new and amazing shapes, human beings whom + it knew long ago, sitting at the windows by dark sunsets, or talking + in dim meadows. But the awful invading Light grows stronger in the + dreams, till the soul in one last struggle, plunges into a body, as + into a house and wakes up within it. Then he rises and finds himself + in a wonderful vast world of white light and clear, frankly coloured + shapes, an inheritor of a million stars. On enquiry he is informed + that his name is Gilbert Keith Chesterton. This amuses him. + + He goes through a number of extraordinary and fantastic rituals; + which the pompous elfland he has entered demands. The first is that + he shall get inside a house of clothing, a tower of wool and flax; + that he shall put on this foolish armour solemnly, one piece after + another and each in its right place. The things called sleevelinks he + attends to minutely. His hair he beats angrily with a bristly tool. + For this is the Law. Downstairs a more monstrous ceremony attends him. + + He has to put things inside himself. He does so, being naturally + polite. Nor can it be denied that a weird satisfaction follows. He + takes a sword in his hand (for what may not befall him in so strange + a country!) and goes forth: he finds a hole in the wall, a little + cave wherein sits One who can give him the charm that rules the horse + of water and fire. He finds an opening and descends into the bowels + of the earth. Down, among the roots of the Eternal hills, he finds a + sunless temple wherein he prays. And in the centre of it he finds a + lighted temple in which he enters. Then there are noises as of an + earthquake and smoke and fire in the darkness: and when he opens the + door again he is in another temple, out of which he climbs into + another world, leagues and leagues away. And when he asks the meaning + of the vision, they talk gibberish and say, "It is a train." + + So the day goes, full of eerie publishers and elfin clerks, till he + returns and again puts things inside him, and then sits down and + makes men in his own head and writes down all that they said and did. + And last of all comes the real life itself. For half-an-hour he + writes words upon a scrap of paper, words that are not picked and + chosen like those that he has used to parry the strange talk of the + folk all day, but words in which the soul's blood pours out, like the + body's blood from a wound. He writes secretly this mad diary, all his + passion and longing, all his queer religion, his dark and dreadful + gratitude to God, his idle allegories, the tales that tell themselves + in his head; the joy that comes on him sometimes (he cannot help it!) + at the sacred intoxication of existence: the million faults of + idleness and recklessness and the one virtue of the unconquered + adoration of goodness, that dark virtue that every man has, and hides + deeper than all his vices--he writes all this down as he is writing + it now. And he knows that if he sticks it down and puts a stamp on it + and drops it into the mouth of a little red goblin at the corner of + the street--he knows that all this wild soliloquy will be poured into + the soul of one wise and beautiful lady sitting far away beyond seas + and rivers and cities, under the shadow of an alien Cathedral. . . . + This is not all so irrelevant as you may think. It was this line of + feeling that taught me, an utter Rationalist as far as dogma goes, + the lesson of the entire Spirituality of things--an opinion that + nothing has ever shattered since. I can't express myself on the + point, nobody can. But it is _only_ the spirituality of things that + we are sure of. That the eyes in your face are eyes I do not know: + they may have other names and uses. I know that they are _good_ or + beautiful, or rather spiritual. I do not know on what principle the + Universe is run, I know or feel that it is _good_ or spiritual. I do + not know what Gertrude's death was--I know that it was beautiful, for + I saw it. We do not feel that it is so beautiful now--why? Because we + do not see it now. What we see now is her absence: but her Death is + not her absence, but her Presence somewhere else. That is what we + _knew_ was beautiful, as long as we could see it. Do not be + frightened, dearest, by the slow inevitable laws of human nature, we + shall climb back into the mountain of vision: we shall be able to use + the word, with the accent of Whitman. "Disembodied, triumphant, dead." + +In the _Notebook_ he was writing: + + There is a heart within a distant town + Who loves me more than treasure or renown + Think you it strange and wear it as a crown. + + Is not the marvel here; that since the kiss + And dizzy glories of that blinding bliss + One grief has ever touched me after this. + +We see Gilbert in the next two letters more concerned about a grand +dinner of the J.D.C. than about his future fame and fortune. In the +second he mentions almost casually that he is leaving Fisher Unwin. +From now on he was to live by his pen. + + 11 Warwick Gardens, W. + Tuesday Night. 3rd Oct. 1899. + + . . . Nothing very astonishing has happened yet, though many + astonishing things will happen soon. The Final perfection of Humanity + I expect shortly. The _Speaker_ for this week--the first of the _New + Speaker_, is coming out soon, and may contain something of mine though + I cannot be quite sure. A rush of the Boers on Natal, strategically + quite possibly successful, is anticipated by politicians. The rising + of the sun tomorrow morning is predicted by astronomers. My father + again is engaged in the crucial correspondence with Fisher Unwin, at + least it has begun by T.F.U. stating his proposed terms--a rise of + 5/--from October, another rise possible but undefined in January, 10 + per cent royalty for the Paris book and expenses for a fortnight in + Paris. These, as I got my father to heartily agree, are vitiated to + the bone as terms by the absence of any assurance that I shall not + have to write "Paris," for which I am really paid nothing, _outside_ + the hours of work for which I am paid 25/--. In short, the net result + would be that instead of gaining more liberty to rise in the literary + world, I should be selling the small liberty of rising that I have + now for five more shillings. This my father is declining and asking + for a better settlement. The diplomacy is worrying, yet I enjoy it: I + feel like Mr. Chamberlain on the eve of war. I would stop with T.F.U. + for L100 a year--but not for less. Which means, I think, that I shall + not stop at all. + + But all these revolutions, literary, financial and political fade + into insignificance compared with the one really tremendous event of + this week. It will take place on Saturday next. The sun will stand + still upon Leicester Square and the Moon on the Valley of Wardour St. + For then will assemble the Grand Commemorative Meeting of the Junior + Debating Club. The Secretary, Mr. L.R.F. Oldershaw, will select a + restaurant, make arrangements and issue the proclamations, or, to use + the venerable old Club phrase "the writs." When this gorgeous + function is over, you must expect a colossal letter. Everyone of the + old Brotherhood, scattered over many cities and callings, has hailed + the invitation, and is coming, with the exception of Bentley, who + will send a sensational telegram from Paris. The fun is expected to + be fast and furious, the undercurrent of emotion (twelve years old) + is not likely to be much disguised. As I say, I will write you a + sumptuous description of it; it is somewhat your due, for the thing + is, and always will be, one of the main strands of my life. . . . + + None can say what will occur. It is one of those occasions when + Englishmen are not much like the pictures of them in Continental + satires . . . there is more in this old affair of ours than possibly + meets the eye. It is a thing that has left its roots deep in the + hearts of twelve strangely different men. . . . And now that seven of + us have found the New Life that can only be found in Woman, it would + be mean indeed not to turn back and thank the old. . . . + + 11, Warwick Gardens, W. + + . . . This is the colossal letter. I trust you will excuse me if + the paper is conceived on a similar scale of Babylonian immensity. I + cannot make out exactly whether I did or did not post a letter I + wrote to you on Saturday. If I did not, I apologise for missing the + day. If I did, you will know by this time one or two facts that may + interest you, the chief of which is that I am certainly leaving + Fisher Unwin, with much mutual courtesy and goodwill. + + This fact may interest you, I repeat: at this moment I am not sure + whether it interests me. For my head, to say nothing of another + organ, is filled with the thundering cheers and songs of the dinner + on Saturday night. It was, I may say without hesitation, a breathless + success. Cholmeley, who must be experienced being both a + schoolmaster, a diner out and a clever man, told me he had never in + his life heard eleven better speeches. I quite agree with him, merely + adding his own. Everyone was amusing and what is much better, + singularly characteristic. Will you forgive me, dearest, if I reel + off to the only soul that can be trusted to enjoy my enjoyment, a + kind of report of the meeting? It will revivify my own memories. And + one thing at least that I said in my speech I thoroughly believed + in--"if there is any prayer I should be inclined to make it is that I + should forget nothing in my life." + + The proceedings opened with dinner. The illustrated menus were wildly + appreciated: every person got all the rest to sign on the menu and + then took it away as a memento. Then the telegrams from Kruger, + Chamberlain, Dreyfus and George Meredith were read. Then I proposed + the toast of the Queen. I merely said that nothing could ever be + alleged against the Queen, except the fact that she is not a member + of the J.D.C. and that I thought it spoke well for the chivalry of + Englishmen that with this fact she had never been publicly taunted. I + said I knew that the virtues of Queen Victoria had become somewhat + platitudinous, but I thought it was a fortunate country in which the + virtues of its powerful ones are platitudes. The toast was then + drunk. . . . + + After a pause and a little conversation, I called upon Lawrence + Solomon to propose the toast of "The School." He was very amusing + indeed. Most of his speech would not be very comprehensible to an + outsider for it largely consisted of an ingenious dove-tailing of the + sentences in the Latin and Greek Arnold. I shall never forget the + lucid and precise enunciation with which he delivered the idiotic + sentences in those works, more especially where he said, "such a + course would be more agreeable to Mr. Cholmeley and I would rather + gratify such a man as he than see the King of the Persians." + + Cholmeley, amid roars of welcome, rose to respond. I think I must + have told you in a former letter that Cholmeley is a former + classmaster of ours, a former house-master of Bentley's, and one of + the nicest men at St. Paul's. We invited him as the only visitor. He + said a great deal that was very amusing, mostly a commentary on + Solomon's remarks about the Latin Arnold. One remark he made was that + he possessed one particular Latin Arnold, formerly the property of + the President, which he had withdrawn from him "with every expression + of contumely"--because it was drawn all over with devils. He made + some very sound remarks about the Club as an answer to the common + charge against St. Paul's School that it was aridly scholastic, + without spontaneous growth in culture or sentiment. + + Then Fordham proposed "The Ladies." He was killing. Fordham is a + personality whom I think you do not know. He is one of the most + profoundly humourous men I ever knew, but his humour is more thickly + coated on him, so to speak, than Bentley or Oldershaw, i.e., it is + much more difficult to make him serious. He is one of the most + fascinating "typical Englishmen" I ever knew: strong, generous, + flippant on principle, rowdy by physical inspiration, successful, + popular, married--a man to discharge all the normal functions of life + well. But his most entertaining gift which he displayed truly + sumptuously on this occasion is a wonderful gift of burlesque and + stereotyped rhetoric. With melodramatic gestures he drew attention to + the torrents of the President's blood pouring "from the wound of the + tiny god." Amid sympathetic demonstration he protested against the + pathos of the toast, "the conquered on the field of battle toasting + the conquerors." As the only married member of the Club he ventured + to give us some advice on (A) Food, (B) Education, (C) Intercourse. + He sat down in a pure whirlwind of folly, without saying a word about + the feelings that were in all hearts, including his own, just then. + But I was delighted to find that marriage had not taken away an inch + of his incurable silliness. + + Nothing could be a greater contrast than the few graceful and + dignified but very restrained words in which Bertram responded to + the toast. He is not a man who cares to make fun of women, however + genially. + + Then came Langdon-Davies, whom I called upon to propose "The Club." + His was perhaps the most interesting case of all. When I knew + Langdon-Davies in the Junior Debating Club, he was one of the most + frivolous young men I ever knew. . . . But knowing that he was a good + speaker in a light style, and had been President of the Cambridge + Union, I put him down to propose the Club, thinking that we should + have enough serious speaking and would be well to err on the side of + entertainment. + + Langdon-Davies got up and proceeded to deliver a speech that + made me jump. It was, I thought, the best speech of the evening: + but I am sure it was the most serious, the most sympathetic and a + long way the most frankly emotional. + + He said that the Club was not now a club in the strict sense. It + was two things preeminently and everlastingly--a memory and an + influence. He spoke with a singular sort of subdued vividness of the + influence the Club had had on him in boyhood. He then turned to the + history of the Club. And here, my dearest lady, I am pained to have + to report that he launched suddenly and dramatically into a most + extraordinary, and apparently quite sincere eulogium upon myself and + the influence I had on my schoolfellows. I will not repeat his + words--I did not believe them, but they took me by surprise and shook + me somewhat. Mr. B. N. Langdon-Davies, I may remark, and yourself, + are the only persons who have ever employed the word "genius" in + connection with me. I trust it will not occur again. + + I replied. My speech was a medley, but it appeared very successful. + I discussed largely the absence of any successor to the J.D.C. I + described how I watched the boys leaving school today--a solitary + figure, clad in the latest fashion, moodily pacing the Hammersmith + Road--and asked myself "where among these is the girlish gush of a + Bentley--the passionate volubility of a Vernede, the half-ethereal + shyness of a Fordham?!!" I admitted that we had had misfortunes, one + of us had a serious illness, another had had a very good story in the + Strand Magazine: but I thought that a debating club of 12 members + that had given three presidents to the University Unions, had not + done badly. The rest was sentimental. Then began a most extraordinary + game of battledore and shuttlecock. Vernede proposed the Secretary, + Mr. Oldershaw. Mr. Oldershaw, instead of replying properly, proposed + Mr. Bentley and the absent members. Waldo responded for these or + rather instead of responding proposed Mr. Maurice Solomon. Mr. + Maurice Solomon instead of responding proposed Mr. Salter. The latter + was the only one who had not spoken and on rising he explained his + reasons for refusing. He had not been in the same room with Mr. + Cholmeley, he said, since he had sat five years ago in the Lower + Fourth and Mr. Cholmeley had told him that he talked too much. He had + no desire on his first reappearance to create in Mr. Cholmeley's mind + the idea that he had been at it ever since. + + After this we passed on to singing and nearly brought down the roof + of Pinoli's restaurant. Cholmeley, the awful being of whose classic + taste in Greek iambics I once stood in awe, sang with great feeling a + fragment of lyric literature of which the following was, as far as I + remember, the refrain: + + "Singing Chooral-i-chooral-i-tiddity + Also--Chooral-i-chooral-i-tay + And chanting Chooral-i-chooral-i-dititty + Not forgetting--chooral-i-chooral-i-day--" + + Vernede sang a Sussex pothouse chorus in an indolent and refined + way which was exquisitely incongruous: Waldo and Langdon-Davies also + sang. I recited an Ode which I had written for the occasion and + Lucian recited one of Bentley's poems that came out in an Oxford + magazine. Then we sang the Anthem* of the J.D.C., of which the words + are, "I am a Member--I'm a Member--Member of the J.D.C. I belong to + it forever--don't you wish that you were me." + +[* It was sung to the tune of "Clementine."] + + Then we paid the bill. Then we borrowed each other's arms and legs + in an inextricable tangle and sang "Auld Lang Syne." Then we broke up. + + There now. Five mortal pages of writing and nothing about you in + it. How relieved you must be, wearied out with allusions to your hair + and your soul and your clothes and your eyes. And yet it has been + every word of it about you really. I like to make my past vivid to + you, especially this past, not only because it was on the whole, a + fine, healthy, foolish, manly, enthusiastic, idiotic past, with the + very soul of youth in it. Not only because I am a victim of the + prejudice, common I trust to all mankind, that no one ever had such + friends as I had. . . . + +Readers of the _Autobiography_ will remember that many many years +later, at the celebration of Hilaire Belloc's sixtieth birthday, the +guests threw the ball to one another in just this same fashion. +Chesterton had by then so far forgotten this earlier occasion that he +spoke of the Belloc birthday party as the only dinner in his life at +which every diner made a speech. + +Two more extracts from his letters must be given, showing the efforts +made by Frances to look after Gilbert, and his reactions. One of his +friends remarked that Gilbert's life was unique in that, never having +left home for a boarding school or University, he passed from the +care of his mother to the care of his wife. I think too that the +degree of his physical helplessness affected all who came near him +with the feeling that while he might lead them where he would +intellectually, it was their task to look after a body that would +otherwise be wholly neglected. + + The old religionists used to talk about a man being "a fool for + Christ's sake"--certainly I have been a blithering fool for your + sake. I went to see the doctor, as you requested. He asked me what he + could do for me. I told him I hadn't the least idea, but people + thought my cold had been going on long enough. He said, "I've no + doubt it has." He then, to afford some relief to the idiotic futility + of the situation, wrote me a prescription, which I read on my way up + to business, weeping over the pathetic parts and laughing heartily at + the funny ones. I have since had some of it. It tastes pretty aimless. + + I cannot remember for certain whether I mentioned in my letter that + I had had an invitation including yourself, from my Aunt Kate for + this Friday. As you do not refer to it, I expect I didn't--so I wrote + to her giving both our thanks and explaining the state of affairs. + "All is over," I said, "between that lady and myself. Do not name her + to me, lest the hideous word 'Woman' should blind me to the seraphic + word 'Aunt.' My life is a howling waste--but what matter? Ha! Ha! + Ha!" I cannot remember my exact words, of course. . . . + + . . . I am a revolting object. My hair is a matted chaos spread all + over the floor, my beard is like a hard broom. My necktie is on the + wrong way up: my bootlaces trail half-way down Fleet St. Why not? + When one's attempts at reformation are "not much believed in" what + other course is open but a contemptuous relapse into liberty? + + Your last letter makes me much happier. I put great faith in the + healing power of the great winds and the sun. "Nature," as Walt + Whitman says, "and her primal sanities." Mrs. S . . . , also, is a + primal sanity. It is not, I believe, considered complimentary, in a + common way, to approach an attractive lady and say pleasantly, "You + are thousands of years old." Or, "You seem to me as old as the + mountains." Therefore I do not say it. But I always feel that anyone + beautiful and strong is really old--for the really old things are not + decrepit: decrepit things are dying early. The Roman Empire was + decrepit. A sunrise cloud is old. + + So I think there are some people, who even in their youth, seem to + have existed always: they bear the mark of the elemental things: the + things that recur; they are as old as springtime, as old as + daybreak--as old as Youth. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Who is G.K.C.? + + +THE BOER WAR--and the whole country enthusiastically behind it. The +Liberal Party as a whole went with the Conservatives. The leading +Fabians--Bernard Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, Hubert Bland, Cecil +Chesterton and the "semi-detached Fabian" H. G. Wells--were likewise +for the war. Only a tiny minority remained in opposition, most of +whom were pacifists or cranks of one kind or another. To the sane +minority of this minority Gilbert found himself belonging. It is +something of a tribute to the national feeling at such a moment of +tension that (as an American has noted) "Chesterton was the one +British writer, utterly unknown before, who built up a great +reputation, and it was gained, not through nationalistic support, but +through determined and persistent opposition to British policy."* + +[* _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, p. 20.] + +In his _Daily News_ column a correspondent later asked him to define +his position. Chesterton replied, "The unreasonable patriot is one +who sees the faults of his fatherland with an eye which is clearer +and more merciless than any eye of hatred, the eye of an irrational +and irrevocable love." His attitude sprang, he claimed, not from +defect but from excess of patriotism. + +It is hard to imagine anything that would clarify better the ideas of +a strong mind than finding itself in opposition. This opposition +began at home, in argument with Cecil. Later the two brothers would +agree about most main issues, but now Cecil was a Tory democrat, +Gilbert a pro-Boer, and what was known as a little Englander. The tie +between the two brothers was very close. As the "Innocent Child" +developed into the combative companion, there is no doubt that he +proportionately affected Gilbert. All their friends talk of the +endless amicable arguments through which both grew. Conrad Noel +remembers parties at Warwick Gardens during the Boer War at which the +two brothers "would walk up and down like the two pistons of an +engine" to the disorganisation of the company and the dismay of their +parents. It was at this time that Frances, engaged to a deeply +devoted Gilbert, found even that devotion insufficient to pry him and +Cecil apart when an argument had got well under way. + +"I must go home, Gilbert. I shall miss my train." + +Usually he would have sprung to accompany her, but now she must miss +many trains before the brothers could be separated. + +Frances told me that when they were at the seaside the landlady would +sometimes clear away breakfast, leaving the brothers arguing, come to +set lunch and later set dinner while still they argued. They had come +to the seaside but they never saw the sea. + +Once Frances was staying with them at a house they had taken by the +sea. Her room was next to Cecil's and she could not sleep for the +noise of the discussion that went on hour after hour. About one in +the morning she rapped on the wall and said, "O Cecil, do send +Gilbert to bed." A brief silence followed, and then the remark, in a +rather abashed voice, "There's no one here." Cecil had been arguing +with himself. Gilbert too argued with himself for the stand he was +taking was a hard one. Mr. Belloc has told me that he felt Gilbert +suffered at any word against England, that his patriotism was +passionate. And now he had himself to say that he believed his +country to be in the wrong. To admit it to himself, to state it to +others. + +This autumn of 1899 G.K. began to write for the _Speaker_. The weekly +of this title had long been in a languishing condition when it was +taken over by a group of young Liberals of very marked views. Hammond +became editor and Philip Comyns Carr sub-editor. Sir John Simon was +among the group for a short while, but he soon told one of them that +he feared close association with the _Speaker_ might injure his +career. F. Y. Eccles was in charge of the review department. He is +able to date the start of what was known as the "new" _Speaker_ with +great exactitude, for when the first number was going to press the +ultimatum had been sent to Kruger and the editors hesitated as to +whether they should take the risk of announcing that it was war in +South Africa. They decided against, but before their second number +appeared war had been declared. + +My difficulty in getting a picture of the first meeting of Belloc and +Chesterton illustrates the problem of human testimony and the limits +of that problem. For I imagine a scripture critic, old style, would +end by concluding that the men never met at all. + +F. Y. Eccles, E. C. Bentley and Lucian Oldershaw all claim to have +made the momentous introduction, Mr. Eccles adding that it took place +at the office of the _Speaker_, while Gilbert himself has described +the meeting twice: once in the street, once in a restaurant. Belloc +remembers the introduction as made in the year 1900 by Lucian +Oldershaw, who was living at the time with Hammond. Mr. Oldershaw +usually has the accuracy of the hero-worshipper and upon this matter +he adds several amusing details. For some time he had been trying to +get the group on the _Speaker_ to read Chesterton and had in vain +taken several articles to the office. Mr. Eccles declared the +handwriting was that of a Jew and he prejudiced Belloc, says +Oldershaw, against reading "anything written by my Jew friend." + +But when at last they did meet, Belloc "opened the conversation by +saying in his most pontifical manner, 'Chesterton, you wr-r-ite very +well.'" Chesterton was then 26, Belloc four years older. It was at +the Mont Blanc, a restaurant in Gerrard St., Soho, and the meeting +was celebrated with a bottle of Moulin au Vent. + +The first description given by Gilbert himself is at once earlier and +more vivid than the better known one in the _Autobiography_. + + When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us + that he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more + uproarious and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked + into the night, and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. + When I have said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not + merely _bons mots_, I have said all that can be said in the most + serious aspect about the man who has made the greatest fight for good + things of all the men of my time. + + We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho + restaurant; his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist + and French Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes, + which are like a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin. . . . + + The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt + for three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about + the South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most + of us were writing on the _Speaker_. . . . + + . . . What he brought into our dream was this Roman appetite for + reality and for reason in action, and when he came into the door + there entered with him the smell of danger.* + +[* Introduction to: _Hilaire Belloc: The Man and His Work_ by C. C. +Mandell and E. Shanks, 1916.] + +"It was from that dingy little Soho cafe," Chesterton writes in the +_Autobiography_, "that there emerged the quadruped, the twiformed +monster Mr. Shaw has nicknamed the Chesterbelloc." + +Listening to Belloc is intoxicating. I have heard many brilliant +talkers, but none to whom that word can so justly be applied. He goes +to your head, he takes you off your feet, he leaves you breathless, +he can convince you of anything. My mother and brother both counted +it as one of the great experiences of their lives to have dined with +Belloc in a small Paris Restaurant (Aux Vendanges de Bourgogne) and +then to have walked with him the streets of that glorious city while +he discoursed of its past. Imagination staggers before the picture of +a Belloc in his full youth and vigour in a group fitted to strike +from him his brightest fire at a moment big with issues for the +world's future. + +In Chesterton's _Autobiography_ a chapter is devoted to the "Portrait +of A Friend," while Belloc in turn has said something of Chesterton +in obituary notices and also in a brief study of his position in +English literature. None of these documents give much notion of the +intellectual flame struck out by one mind against the other. It has +often been asked how much Belloc influenced Chesterton. + +The best test of an influence in a writer's life is to compare what +he wrote before with what he wrote after he was first subjected to +it. It is easy to apply this test to Belloc's influence on G.K.C. +because of the mass we still have of his boyhood writings. In pure +literature, in philosophy and theology he remains untouched by the +faintest change. Pages from the Notebook could be woven into +_Orthodoxy_, essays from _The Debater_ introduced into _The Victorian +Age in Literature_, and it would look simply like buds and flowers on +the same bush. Belloc has characterized himself as ignorant of +English literature and says he learnt from Chesterton most of what he +knows of it, while there is no doubt Chesterton was by far the +greater philosopher. + +With politics, sociology, and history (and the relation of religion +to all three) it is different. Belloc himself told me he thought the +chief thing he had done for Chesterton when they first met was to +open his eyes to reality--Chesterton had been unusually young for his +twenty-six years and unusually simple in regard to the political +scene. He was in fact the young man he himself was later to describe +as knowing all about politics and nothing about politicians. The four +years between the two men seemed greater than it was, partly because +of Belloc's more varied experience of life--French military training, +life at Oxford, wide travel and an early marriage. + +Belloc, then, could teach Chesterton a certain realism about +politics--which meant a certain cynicism about politicians. Far more +valuable, however, was what Belloc had to give him in sociology. We +have seen that G.K. was already dissatisfied with Socialism before he +met Belloc; it may be that by his consideration of the nature of man +he would later have reached the positions so individually set out in +_What's Wrong with the World_--but this can only remain a theoretical +question. For Belloc did actually at this date answer the +sociological question that Chesterton at this date was putting: +answered it brilliantly and answered it truly. Every test that G.K. +could later apply--of profound human reality, of truth divinely +revealed--convinced him that the answer was true. + +He had, he has told us, been a Socialist because it was so horrible +not to be one, but he now learned of the historical Christian +alternative--equally opposed to Socialism and to Capitalism-- +well-distributed property. This had worked in the past, was still +working in many European countries, could be made to work again in +England. The present trend appeared to Belloc to be towards the +Servile State, and in the book with this title and a second book _The +Restoration of Property_ he later developed his sociology. After this +first meeting, two powerful and very different minds would +reciprocally influence one another. An admirer of both told me that +he thought Chesterton got the idea of small property from Belloc but +gave Belloc a fuller realization of the position of the family. One +difference between them is that Belloc writes sociology as a textbook +while Chesterton writes it as a human document. All the wealth of +imagination that Belloc pours into _The Path to Rome_ or _The Four +Men_ he sternly excludes from the Servile State. The poet, traveller, +essayist is one man, the sociologist another. + +The third field of influence was history. Here Belloc did Chesterton +two great services--he restored the proportion of English history, +and he put England back into its context. Since the Reformation, +English history had been written with all the stress on the +Protestant period. Lingard had written earlier but had not been +popularized and certainly would not be used at St. Paul's School. And +even Lingard had laid little stress on the social effects of the +Reformation. Mr. Hammond's contemporary work on English social +history fitted into Belloc's more vivid if less documented +vision--none of this could be disregarded by later writers. + +Belloc, too, restored that earlier England to the Christendom to +which it belonged. The England of Macaulay or of Green had, like Mr. +Mantalini's dowager, either no outline or a "demned outline" for it +was cut out of a larger map. And Chesterton was always seeking an +outline of history. + +To get England back into the context of Christendom is a great thing: +just how great must depend upon how rightly Christendom is conceived. +One cannot always escape the feeling that Belloc conceives it too +narrowly. His famous phrase "The Faith is Europe and Europe is the +Faith" omits too much--the East out of which Christianity came; the +new worlds into which Europe has flowed. Belloc of course knows these +things and has often said them. It is rather a question of emphasis, +of how things loom in the mind when judgments have to be made. In +that sense he does tend to narrow the Faith to Europe: in exactly the +same sense he does tend to narrow Europe to France. Born in France of +a French father, educated in England, Belloc chose his mother's +nationality, chose to be English; but his Creator had chosen +differently, and there is not much a man can do in competition with +his Creator. I do not for a moment suggest that Belloc, having chosen +to be English, is conscious of anything but loyalty to the country of +his adoption. The thing lies far below the mind's conscious +movements. Belloc thinks of himself as an Englishman with a patriotic +duty to criticise his country, but his feelings are not really those +of an Englishman. Once at least he recognised this when he wrote the +verse: + +England to me that never have malingered, +Nor spoken falsely, nor your flattery used, +_Nor even in my rightful garden lingered_--: * +What have you not refused? + +[* Italics mine.] + +And just as France was Belloc's rightful garden so England was +Chesterton's. When first they talked of the Church he told Belloc +that he wanted the example of "someone entirely English who should +none the less have come in." When criticising his country his voice +has the note of pain that only love can give. Belloc saw him as +intensely national "English of the English . . . a mirror of +England . . . he writes with an English accent." + +It is of some interest that after meeting Belloc Gilbert added notes +to two early poems, each note reflecting a judgment of Belloc's--on +the Dreyfus case which Belloc saw as all French Catholics saw it: on +Anglo-American relations which Belloc saw as most Latin Europeans +would see it. + +(1) The first was the poem entitled "To a Certain Nation"--addressed +to France in commentary on the Dreyfus case of 1899 which must be +briefly explained for those who are too young to remember the +excitement it caused. Captain Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French +army, had been found guilty of treachery and sent to Devil's Island. +All France was divided into two camps on the question of his guilt or +innocence. In general, Catholics and what we should call the Right +were all for his guilt; atheists, anti-clericals and believers in the +Republic were for his innocence. Passions were roused to fury on both +sides. English opinion was almost entirely for his innocence. I was a +small girl at the time and I remember that my brother and I amused +ourselves by crying _Vive Dreyfus_, on all possible and impossible +occasions, for the annoyance of our pious French governess. I +remember also that our parents were startled by the vehemence of the +French Catholic paper _La Croix_ from which our governess imbibed her +views. Ultimately the case was reopened, and Dreyfus, after years of +horror on Devil's Island, found not guilty and restored to his rank +in the army. But there are, I know, Catholic Frenchmen alive today +who refuse to believe in his innocence and hold that the whole thing +was a Jewish-Masonic plot that hampered the French espionage service +and nearly lost us the war of 1914. + +In the first edition of _The Wild Knight_, written before the meeting +with Belloc, Gilbert, like any other English Liberal, had assumed +Dreyfus' innocence and in the poem "To a Certain Nation" had +reproached the France of the Revolution, the France he had loved, as +unworthy of herself. + + . . . and we + Who knew thee once, we have a right to weep. + +The Note in the second edition shows him as now undecided +about Dreyfus' guilt and concludes: "There may have been a fog +of injustice in the French courts; I know that there was a fog +of injustice in the English newspapers." + +(2) In "An Alliance" Chesterton had gloried in "the blood of Hengist" +and hymned an Anglo-American alliance with the enthusiasm of a young +Republican who took for granted the links of language and of origin +that might draw together two great countries into something +significant: + + In change, eclipse, and peril + Under the whole world's scorn, + By blood and death and darkness + The Saxon peace is sworn; + That all our fruit be gathered + And all our race take hands, + And the sea be a Saxon river + That runs through Saxon lands. + +But in the Note to the second edition, he says: + + In the matter of the "Anglo-American Alliance" I have come to see + that our hopes of brotherhood with America are the same in kind as + our hopes of brotherhood with any other of the great independent + nations of Christendom. And a very small study of history was + sufficient to show me that the American Nation, which is a hundred + years old, is at least fifty years older than the Anglo-Saxon race.* + +[* Collected Poems, p. 318.] + +The poem was of course only a boyish expression of a boyish dream; +like all dreams, like all boyhood dreams especially, it omitted too +much; yet it contained a thought that might well have borne rich +fruit in Gilbert's Catholic life. + +My mother told me once that when after three years' study of Queen +Elizabeth's character she came to a different conclusion from Belloc, +she found it almost impossible to resist his power and hold on to her +own view. It must be realised that Chesterton actually preferred the +attitude of a disciple. A mutual friend has told me that Chesterton +listened to Belloc all the time and said very little himself. In +matters historical where he felt his own ignorance, Gilbert's +tendency was simply to make an act of faith in Belloc. + +On nothing were the two men more healthily in accord than on the Boer +War. In an interesting study of Belloc, prefixed to a French +translation of _Contemporary England_, F. Y. Eccles explains how he +and most of the _Speaker_ group differed from the pacifist pro-Boers, +who hated the South African war because they hated all wars. The +young Liberals on the _Speaker_ were not pacifists. They hated the +war because they thought it would harm England--harm her morally--to +be fighting for an unjust cause, and even materially to be shedding +the blood of her sons and pouring out her wealth at the bidding of a +handful of alien financiers. Thus far Gilbert was among one group +with whom he was in fullest sympathy. But I think he went further. +Mr. Eccles told me that most of the _Speaker_ group had no sympathy +with the Boers. Gilbert had. He thought of them as human beings who +might well have been farmers of Sussex or of Kent, something of an +older civilization, resisting money power and imperialism and +perishing thereby. + +Few, indeed, of the Liberal Party held Chesterton's ideal--an England +territorially small, spiritually great. The _Speaker_ was struggling +against odds: it was the voice of a tiny group. To Gilbert it seemed +that this mattered nothing so long as that little group held to their +great ideas, so long as the paper represented not merely a group or a +party but the Liberal Idea. In an unfinished letter to Hammond is to +be found this idea as he saw it and his dawning disappointment even +with the paper that most nearly stood for it: + + I am just about to commit a serious impertinence. I believe however + that you will excuse it because it is about the paper and I know + there is not another paper dead or alive for which I would take the + trouble or run the risk of offence. + + I am hearing on all sides the _Speaker_ complained of by the very + people who should be and would be (if they could) its enthusiastic + supporters and I cannot altogether deny the truth of their + objections, though I am glad to notice both in them and in myself the + fact that those objections are tacitly based on the assumption of the + _Speaker_ having an aim and standard higher than other papers. If the + _Speaker_ were a mere party rag like "Judy" or "The Times," it would be + only remarkable for moderation, but to us who have built hopes on it + as the pioneer of a younger and larger political spirit it is + difficult to be silent when we find it, as it seems to us, poisoned + with that spirit of ferocious triviality which is the spirit of + Birmingham eloquence, and with that evil instinct which has + disintegrated the Irish party, the instinct for hating the man who + differs from you slightly, more than the man who differs from you + altogether. + + Of two successive numbers during the stress of the fight (a fight + in which we had first to unite our army and then to use it) a + considerable portion was devoted, first to sneering at "The Daily + News" and then to sneering at "The Westminster Gazette." . . . + + There is a sentence in the Book of Proverbs which expresses the + whole of my politics. "For the liberal man deviseth liberal things + and by his liberality he shall stand." Now what I object to is + sneering at "The Westminster" as a supporter of Chamberlain when + everyone knows that it hardly lets a day pass without an ugly + caricature of him. What I object to in this is that it is talking + Brummagem--it is not "devising liberal things" but spiteful, + superficial, illiberal things. It is claptrap and temporary + deception of the "Patriotism before Politics" order. . . . + + To all this you will say there is an obvious answer. The _Speaker_ + is a party paper and does not profess to be otherwise. But here I am + sure we are mistaking our mission. What the _Speaker_ is (I hope and + believe) destined to do, is to renovate Liberalism, and though + Liberalism (like every other party) is often conducted by claptrap, + it has never been renovated by claptrap, but by great command of + temper and the persistent exposition of persuasive and unanswerable + truths. It is while we are in the desert that we have the vision: we + being a minority, must be all philosophers: we must think for both + parties in the State. It is no good our devoting ourselves to the + flowers of mob oratory with no mob to address them to. We must, like + the Free Traders, for instance, have discoveries, definite truths and + endless patience in explaining them. We must be more than a political + party or we shall cease to be one. Time and again in history victory + has come to a little party with big ideas: but can anyone conceive + anything with the mark of death more on its brow than a little party + with little ideas?* + +[* Undated, handwritten letter in a notebook.] + +Such Liberalism was not perhaps of this world. It certainly was not +of the Liberal Party! + +Gilbert argued much with himself during these years. He had come out +of his time of trial with firm faith in God and in man. But his +philosophy was still in the making, and he made it largely out of the +material supplied by ordinary London suburban society and by the +rather less usual society of cranks and enthusiasts so plentiful at +the end of the nineteenth century. He has written in the +_Autobiography_ of the artistic and dilettante groups where everyone +discussed religion and no one practised it, of the Christian +Socialists and other societies into which he and Cecil found their +way, and of some of the friendships they formed. Among these one of +the closest was with Conrad Noel who wrote in answer to my request +for his recollections: + + We met G.K.C. for the first time at the Stapleys' in Bloomsbury + Square, at a series of meetings of the Christo-Theosophic Society. He + was like a very big fish out of water; he was comparatively thin, + however, in those days, nearly forty years ago. We had been much + intrigued by the weekly contribution of an unknown writer to "The + Speaker" and "The Nation"--brilliant work, and my wife and I, + independently, came to the conclusion when we heard this young man + speak that it must be he. The style was unmistakable. + + I thought of writing to him to congratulate him on his speech, but + before I could do so, I got a letter from him, saying that he was + coming to hear me in the same series in a week or so; it was thus we + first became acquainted, and the acquaintance ripened into a warm + friendship with us both. He and his brother Cecil were in and out of + our flat in Paddington Green, where I was assistant curate. He was + genial, bubbling over with jokes, at which he roared with laughter. + +The question was becoming insistent: when would there be enough money +for Frances and Gilbert to get married? + +In one letter Frances asks him what he thinks of Omar Khayyam. He +replies at great length, and concludes: + + You see the result of asking me for an opinion. I have written it + very hurriedly: if I had paused I might make an essay of it. + (Commercial Pig!) Never mind, sweetheart, that Essay might be a + sauce-pan some day--or at any rate a cheap toast-rack. + +Of his belief in God, in man, in goodness, as against the pessimist +outlook of the day, Gilbert, as we have seen, felt profound +certitude. That his outlook was one that held him back from many +fields of opportunity he was already partly conscious. A fragment of +a letter to Frances expresses this feeling. + + . . . I find I cannot possibly come tonight as my Canadian uncle + keeps his last night in England in a sort of family party. And I + abide by my father's house--said our Lady of the Snows. + + I have just had a note from Rex, asking me, with characteristic + precision, if I can produce a play in the style of Maeterlinck by + 6.50 this afternoon, or words to that effect. The idea is full of + humour. He remarks, as a matter of fact that there is just a remote + chance of his getting the Stage Society to act my play of The Wild + Knight. This opens to me a vista of quite new ambition. Why only at + the Stage Society?--I see a visionary programme. + + The Wild Knight . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Charles Hawtree + Captain Redfeather . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Penley + Olive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Katie Seymour + Priest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sir Henry Irving + Lord Orm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Arthur Roberts + + I am working and must get on with my work. I do not feel any + despondency about it because I know it is good and worth doing. It is + extraordinary how much more moral one is than one imagines. At school + I never minded getting into a row if it were _really_ not my fault. + Similarly, I have never cared a rap for rejections or criticisms, + since I had got a point of view to express which I was certain held + water. Some people think it holds water--on the brain. But I don't + mind. Bless them. + + I am afraid, darling, that this doctrine of patience is hard on + you. But really it's a grand thing to think oneself right. It's what + this whole age is starving for. Something to suffer for and go mad + and miserable over--that is the only luxury of the mind. I wish I + were a convinced Pro-Boer and could stare down a howling mob. But I + _am_ right about the Cosmos, and Schopenhauer and Co. are wrong. . . . + +Two interesting points in this letter are the remark about wishing to +be a convinced Pro-Boer--which he certainly became--and the +suggestion of a possible performance of _The Wild Knight_. Perhaps +the letter was written before he had finally taken his stand (it has +no dating postmark), or perhaps it merely means that his convictions +on the cosmos are more absolute than on the war. As to _The Wild +Knight:_ it was never acted and its publication was made possible +only by the generosity of Gilbert's father. For a volume of comic +verse, _Greybeards at Play_, which appeared earlier in the same year +(1900), he could find a publisher, but serious poetry has never been +easy to launch. + +The letter that follows has a more immediate bearing on their +own future: + + 11, Warwick Gardens, + Good Friday. 1900. + + . . . As you have tabulated your questions with such alarming + precision I must really endeavour to answer them categorically. + + (1) How am I? I am in excellent health. I have an opaque cold in my + head, cough tempestuously and am very deaf. But these things I count + as mere specks showing up the general blaze of salubrity. I am + getting steadily better and I don't mind how slowly. As for my + spirits a cold never affects them: for I have plenty to do and think + about indoors. One or two little literary schemes--trifles + doubtless--claim my attention. + + (2) Am I going away at Easter? The sarcastic might think it a + characteristic answer, but I can only reply that I had banished the + matter from my mind, a vague problem of the remote future until you + asked it: but since this is Easter and we are not gone away I suppose + we are not going away. + + (3) I will meet you at Euston on Tuesday evening though hell itself + should gape and bid me stop at home. + + (4) I am not sure whether a review on Crivelli's art is out this + week: I am going to look. + + (5) Alas! I have not been to Nutt. There are good excuses, but they + are not the real ones. I will write to him now. Yes: Now. + + (6) Does my hair want cutting? My hair seems pretty happy. You are + the only person who seems to have any fixed theory on this. For all I + know it may be at that fugitive perfection which has moved you to + enthusiasm. Three minutes after this perfection, I understand, a + horrible degeneration sets in: the hair becomes too long, the figure + disreputable and profligate: and the individual is unrecognised by + all his friends. It is he that wants cutting then, not his hair. + + (7) As to shirt-links, studs and laces, I glitter from head to foot + with them. + + (8) I have had a few skirmishes with Knollys but not the general + engagement. When this comes off, you shall have news from our + correspondent. (Knollys was Frances's brother.) + + (9) I have got a really important job in reviewing--the Life of + Ruskin for the _Speaker_. As I have precisely 73 theories about Ruskin + it will be brilliant and condensed. I am also reviewing the Life of + the Kendals, a book on the Renascence and one on Correggio for "The + Bookman." + + (10) How far is it to Babylon? Babylon I am firmly convinced is just + round the corner: if one could be only certain which corner. This + conviction is the salt of my life. + + (11) Really and truly I see no reason why we should not be married + in April if not before. I have been making some money calculations + with the kind assistance of Rex, and as far as I can see we could + live in the country on quite a small amount of regular literary + work. . . + + P.S. Forgot the last question. + + (12) Oddly enough, I was writing a poem. Will send it to you. + +Gilbert's engagement had given him the impetus to earn more but he +was always entirely unpractical. His salary at Fisher Unwin's had +been negligible and he was not making much yet by the journalism +which was now his only source of income. The repeated promise to +"write to Nutt" is very characteristic. For Nutt was the manager of +the solitary publisher who was at the moment prepared to put a book +of Gilbert's on the market at his own risk! + +Although they did not manage to get married this year, by the end of +it he was becoming well known. The articles, in the _Speaker_ +especially, were attracting attention and _Greybeards at Play_ had a +considerable success. This, the first of Gilbert's books to be +published, is a curiosity. It is made up of three incredibly witty +satirical poems--"The Oneness of the Philosopher with Nature," "The +Dangers Attending Altruism on the High Seas" and "The Disastrous +Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes." The illustrations drawn by +himself are as witty as the verses. By the beginning of 1901 his work +was being sought for by other Liberal periodicals and he was writing +regularly for the _Daily News_. The following letter to Frances bears +the postmark Feb. 8, 1901. + + Somewhere in the Arabian Nights or some such place there is a story + of a man who was Emperor of the Indies for one day. I am rather in + the position of that person: for I am Editor of the _Speaker_ for one + day. Hammond is unwell and Hirst has gone to dine with John Morley, + so the latter asked me to see the paper through for this number. + Hence this notepaper and the great hurry and brevity which I fear + must characterise this letter. + + There are a few minor amusing things, however, that I have a moment + to mention. + + (1) The "Daily News" have sent me a huge mass of books to review, + which block up the front hall. A study of Swinburne--a book on + Kipling--the last Richard le Gallienne--all very interesting. See if + I don't do some whacking articles, all about the stars and the moon + and the creation of Adam and that sort of thing. I really think I + could work a revolution in Daily paper--writing by the introduction + of poetical prose. + + (2) Among other books that I have to review came, all unsolicited, + a book by your old friend Schofield. Ha! Ha! Ha! It's about the + Formation of Character, or some of those low and beastly amusements. + I think of introducing parts of my Comic Opera of the P.N.E.U. into + the articles. + + (3) Another rather funny thing is the way in which my name is being + spread about. Belloc declares that everyone says to him "Who + discovered Chesterton?" and that he always replies "The genius + Oldershaw." This may be a trifle Gallic, but Hammond has shown me + more than one letter from Cambridge dons and such people demanding + the identity of G.K.C. in a quite violent tone. They excuse + themselves by offensive phrases in which the word "brilliant" occurs, + but I shouldn't wonder if there was a thick stick somewhere at the + back of it. + + Belloc, by the way, has revealed another side of his extraordinary + mind. He seems to have taken our marriage much to heart, for he talks + to me, no longer about French Jacobins and Mediaeval Saints, but + entirely about the cheapest flats and furniture, on which, as on the + others, he is a mine of information, assuring me paternally that + "it's the carpet that does you." I should think this fatherly tone + would amuse you. + + Now I must leave off: for the pages have come up to be seen through + the press. . . . + +_Greybeards at Play_ its author never took very seriously. It was not +included in his Collected Poems and he does not even mention it in +his _Autobiography_. He attached a great deal more importance to _The +Wild Knight and Other Poems_. It was a volume of some fifty poems, +many of which had already appeared in _The Outlook_ and _The +Speaker_. It was published late in 1900 and produced a crop of +enthusiastic reviews and more and more people began to ask one +another, "Who is G. K. Chesterton?" + +One reviewer wrote: "If it were not for the haunting fear of losing a +humourist we should welcome the author of _The Wild Knight_ to a high +place among the poets." Another spoke of the "curious intensity" of +the volume. Among those who were less pleased was John Davidson, on +whom the book had been fathered by one reviewer, and who denied +responsibility for such "frantic rubbish," and also a "reverent" +reviewer who complained, "It is scattered all over with the name of +God." + +To Frances, Gilbert wrote: + + I have been taken to see Mrs. Meynell, poet and essayist, who is + enthusiastic about the Wild Knight and is lending it to all her + friends. + + Last night I went to Mrs. Cox's Book Party. My costume was a great + success, everyone wrestled with it, only one person guessed it, and + the rest admitted that it was quite fair and simple. It consisted of + wearing on the lapel of my dress coat the following letters. + U.U.N.S.I.J. Perhaps you would like to work this out all by + yourself--But no, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. The book I + represented was "The Letters of Junius." + +Mrs. Meynell never came to know Gilbert well and her daughter says in +the biography that her mother realised his "critical approval" +(admiration would be a better word) of her own work only by reading +his essays. But he once wrote an introduction for a book of hers and +her admiration of him would break out frequently in amusing +exclamations: "I hope the papers are nice to my Chesterton. He is +mine much more, really, than Belloc's."* "If I had been a man, and +large, I should have been Chesterton."** + +[* _Alice Meynell_, p. 259.] + +[** _Ibid._, p. 260.] + +Brimley Johnson, who was to have been Gilbert's brother-in-law, sent +_The Wild Knight_ to Rudyard Kipling. His reply is amusing and also +touching, for Mr. Johnson was clearly pouring out, in interest in +Gilbert's career and in forwarding his marriage with Frances, the +affections that might merely have been frozen by Gertrude's death. + + The Elms, Rottingdean, + Nov. 28th. + + DEAR MR. JOHNSON, + + Many thanks for _The Wild Knight_. Of course I knew some of the + poems before, notably _The Donkey_ which stuck in my mind at the + time I read it. + + I agree with you that there is any amount of promise in the + work--and I think marriage will teach him a good deal too. It will be + curious to see how he'll develop in a few years. We all begin with + arrainging [sic] and elaborating all the Heavens and Hells and stars + and tragedies we can lay our poetic hands on--Later we see folk--just + common people under the heavens-- + + Meantime I wish him all the happiness that there can be and for + yourself such comfort as men say time brings after loss. It's apt to + be a weary while coming but one goes the right way to get it if one + interests oneself in the happiness of other folk. Even though the + sight of this happiness is like a knife turning in a wound. + + Yours sincerely, + + RUDYARD KIPLING. + + P.S. Merely as a matter of loathsome detail, Chesterton has a bad + attack of "aureoles." They are spotted all over the book. I think + every one is bound in each book to employ unconsciously some pet word + but that was Rossetti's. + + Likewise I notice "wan waste" and many "wans" and things that + "catch and cling." He is too good not to be jolted 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. + + Hammond sent for me today and asked me seriously if I would help + him in writing a book on Fox, sharing work, fame and profits. I told + him that I had no special talent for research: he replied that he had + no talent for literary form. I then said that I would be delighted to + give him such assistance as I honestly thought valuable enough for + him to split his profits for, that I thought I could give him such + assistance in the matter of picturesqueness and plan of idea, more + especially as Fox was a great hero of mine and the philosophy of his + life involves the whole philosophy of the Revolution and of the love + of mankind. We arranged that we would make a preliminary examination + of the Fox record and then decide. . . .* + +[* This book was never written nor even, I think, begun.] + +Three more letters, two to Frances, one to his mother, complete the +outline of this eventful period. He was now determined to get married +quickly. For the first time and entirely without rancour, he realised +the inevitable competition in the world of journalism. The struggle +for success meant men fighting one another. Other journalists were +fighting him; but truly enough, though with a rare dispassionateness, +he realised that this meant a need for Daily bread in others similar +to his own. + + 11, Warwick Gardens, W. + (postmark: Feb. 19, 1901) + + . . . I hope that in your own beautiful kindness you will be + indulgent just at this time if I only write rough letters or + postcards. I am for the first time in my life, thoroughly _worried_, + and I find it a rather exciting and not entirely unpleasant + sensation. But everything depends just now, not only on my sticking + hard to work and doing a lot of my very best, but on my thinking + about it, keeping wide awake to the turn of the market, being ready + to do things not in half a week, but in half an hour; getting the + feelings and tendencies of other men and generally living in work. I + am going to see Lehmann tomorrow and many things may come of it. I + cannot express to you what it is to feel the grip of the great wheel + of real life on you for the first time. For the first time I know + what is meant by the word "enemies"--men who deliberately dislike you + and oppose your career--and the funny thing is that I don't dislike + them at all myself. Poor devils--very likely they want to be married + in June too. + + I am a Socialist, but I love this fierce old world and am beginning + to find a beauty in making money (in moderation) as in making + statues. Always through my head one tune and words of Kipling set to + it. + + "They passed one resolution, your sub-committee believe + You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse + of Eve. + And till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen + We'll work for ourselves and a woman, for ever and ever--Amen." + + 11, Warwick Gardens, W. + (postmark: March 4, 1901) + + . . . I have delayed this letter in a scandalous manner because I + hoped I might have the arrangements with the _Daily News_ to tell + you; as that is again put off, I must tell you later. The following, + however, are grounds on which I believe everything will turn out + right this year. It is arithmetic. "The Speaker" has hitherto paid me + L70 a year, that is L6 a month. It has now raised it to L10 a month, + which makes L120 a year. Moreover they encourage me to write as much + as I like in the paper, so that assuming that I do something extra + (poem, note, leader) twice a month or every other number, which I can + easily do, that brings us to nearly L150 a year. So much for "The + Speaker." Now for the "Daily News," both certainties and + probabilities. Hammond (to whom you will favour me by being eternally + grateful) pushed me so strongly with Lehmann for the post of manager + of the literary page that it is most probable that I shall get + it. . . . If I do, Hammond thinks they couldn't give me less than + L200 a year. So that if this turns out right, we have L350, say, + without any aid from "Bookman," books, magazine articles or stories. + + Let us however, put this chance entirely on one side and suppose + that they can give me nothing but regular work on the "Daily News." I + have just started a set of popular fighting articles on literature in + the "Daily News" called "The Wars of Literature." They will appear at + least twice a week, often three times. For each of these I am paid + about a guinea and a half. This makes about L3 a week which is L144 a + year. Thus with only the present certainties of "Speaker" and "Daily + News" we have L264 a year, or very likely (with extra "Speaker" + items) L288, close on L300. This again may be reinforced by all sorts + of miscellaneous work which I shall get now my name is getting known, + magazine articles, helping editors or publishers, reading Mss. and so + on. In all these calculations I have kept deliberately under the + figures, not over them: so that I don't think I have failed + altogether to bring my promise within reasonable distance of fact + already. Belloc suggested that I should write for the "Pilot" and as + he is on it, he will probably get me some work. Hammond has become + leader-writer on the "Echo" and will probably get me some reviewing + on that. And between ourselves, to turn with intense relief, from all + this egotism, Hammond and I have a little scheme on hand for getting + Oldershaw a kind of editorial place on the "Echo" where they want a + brisk but cultivated man of the world. I think we can bring it off: + it is a good place for an ambitious young man. It would give me more + happiness than I can say, while I am building my own house of peace, + to do something for the man who did so much in giving me my reason + for it. + + For well Thou knowest, O God most wise + How good on earth was his gift to me + Shall this be a little thing in thine eyes + That is greater in mine than the whole great sea? + + I am afraid . . . that this is a very dull letter. But you know + what I am. I can be practical, but only deliberately, by fixing my + mind on a thing. In this letter, I sum up my last month's thinking + about money resources. I haven't given a thought yet to the + application and distribution of them in rent, furniture, etc. When I + have done thinking about that you will get another dull letter. I can + keep ten poems and twenty theories in my head at once. But I can only + think of one practical thing at a time. The only conclusion of this + letter is that on any calculation whatever, we ought to have L300 a + year, and be on the road to four in a little while. With this before + you I daresay you (who are more practical than I) could speculate and + suggest a little as to the form of living and expenditure. . . . + +Gilbert's mother perhaps needed more convincing. The letter to her +has no postmark but the L300 a year has grown to almost L500 and a +careful economy is promised. + + Mrs. Barnes + The Orchards + Burley. Hants. + + MY DEAREST MOTHER, + + Thank you very much for your two letters. If you get back to + Kensington before me (I shall return on Thursday night: I find I work + here very well) would you mind sending on any letters. You might send + on the cheque: though that is not necessary. + + There is a subject we have touched on once or twice that I want to + talk to you about, for I am very much worried in my mind as to + whether you will disapprove of a decision I have been coming to with + a very earnest belief that I am seeking to do the right thing. I have + just had information that my screw from "The Speaker" will be yet + further increased from L120 a year to L150, or, if I do the full + amount I can, L190 a year. I have also had a request from the "Daily + News" to do two columns a week regularly, which [is] rather over L100 + a year, besides other book reviews. My other sources of income which + should bring the amount up to nearly L150 more, at any rate, I will + speak of in a moment. + + There is something, as I say, that is distressing me a great deal. + I believe I said about a year ago that I hoped to get married in a + year, if I had money enough. I fancy you took it rather as a joke: I + was not so certain about it myself then. I have however been coming + very seriously to the conclusion that if I pull off one more + affair--a favourable arrangement with Reynolds' Newspaper, whose + editor wants to see me at the end of this week, I shall, unless you + disapprove, make a dash for it this year. When I mentioned the matter + a short time ago, you said (if I remember right) that you did not + think I ought to marry under L400 or L500 a year. I was moved to go + into the matter thoroughly then and there, but as it happened I knew + I had one or two bargains just coming of which would bring me nearer + to the standard you named, so I thought I would let it stand over + till I could actually quote them. Believe me, my dearest mother, I am + not considering this affair wildly or ignorantly: I have been doing + nothing but sums in my head for the last months. This is how matters + stand. The _Speaker_ editor says they will take as much as I like to + write. If I write my maximum I get L192 a year from them. From the + _Daily News_, even if I do not get the post on the staff which was half + promised me, I shall get at least L100 a year with a good deal over + for reviews outside "The Wars of Literature." That makes nearly L300. + With the Manchester Sunday Chronicle I have just made a bargain by + which I shall get L72 a year. This makes L370 a year altogether. The + matter now, I think, largely depends on Reynolds' Newspaper. If I do, + as is contemplated, weekly articles and thumbnail sketches, they + cannot give me less than L 100 a year. This would bring the whole to + L470 a year, or within L30 of your standard. Of course I know quite + well that this is not like talking of an income from a business or a + certain investment. But we should live a long way within this income, + if we took a very cheap flat, even a workman's flat if necessary, had + a woman in to do the laborious Daily work and for the rest waited on + ourselves, as many people I know do in cheap flats. Moreover, + journalism has its ups as well as downs, and I, I can fairly say, am + on the upward wave. Without vanity and in a purely businesslike + spirit I may say that my work is talked about a great deal. It is at + least a remarkable fact that every one of the papers I write for (as + detailed above) came to me and asked me to do work for them: from the + _Daily News_ down to the Manchester Sunday Chronicle. I have, as I say, + what seems to me a sufficient income for a start. That I shall have + as good and better I am as certain as that I sit here. I know the + clockwork of these papers and among one set of them I might almost + say that I am becoming the fashion. + + Do not, please, think that I am entertaining this idea without + realising that I shall have to start in a very serious and economical + spirit. I have worked it out and I am sure we could live well within + the above calculations and leave a good margin. + + I make all these prosaic statements because I want you to + understand that I know the risks I think of running. But it is not + any practical question that is distressing me: on that I think I see + my way. But I am terribly worried for fear you should be angry or + sorry about all this. I am only kept in hope by the remembrance that + I had the same fear when I told you of my engagement and that you + dispelled it with a directness and generosity that I shall not + forget. I think, my dear Mother, that we have always understood each + other really. We are neither of us very demonstrative: we come of + some queer stock that can always say least when it means most. But I + do think you can trust me when I say that I think a thing really + right, and equally honestly admit that I can hardly explain why. To + explain why I know it is right would be to communicate the + incommunicable, and speak of delicate and sacred things in bald + words. The most I can say is that I know Frances like the back of my + hand and can tell without a word from her that she has never + recovered from a wound* and that there is only one kind of peace that + will heal it. + +[* Gertrude's death.] + + I have tried to explain myself in this letter: I can do it better + in a letter, somehow, but I do not think I have done it very + successfully. However, with you it does not matter and it never will + matter, how my thoughts come tumbling out. You at least have always + understood what I meant. + + Always your loving son, + + GILBERT. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Married Life in London + + +_The suburbs are commonly referred to as prosaic. That is a matter of +taste. Personally I find them intoxicating_. + +Introduction to _Literary London_. + +THE WEDDING DAY drew near and the presents were pouring in. + +"I feel like the young man in the Gospel," said Gilbert to Annie +Firmin, "sorrowful, because I have great possessions." + +Conrad Noel married Gilbert and Frances at Kensington Parish Church +on June 28, 1901. As Gilbert knelt down the price ticket on the sole +of one of his new shoes became plainly visible. Annie caught Mrs. +Chesterton's eye and they began to laugh helplessly. Annie thinks, +too, that for once in their lives Gilbert and Cecil did not argue at +the Reception. + +Lucian Oldershaw drove ahead to the station with the heavy luggage, +put it on the train and waited feverishly. That train went off (with +the luggage), then another, and at last the happy couple appeared. +Gilbert had felt it necessary to stop on the way "in order to drink a +glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in +another." The milk he drank because in childhood his mother used to +give him a glass in that shop. The revolver was for the defense of +his bride against possible dangers. They followed the luggage by a +slow train. + +This love of weapons, his revolver, his favourite sword-stick, +remained with him all his life. It suggested the adventures that he +always bestowed on the heroes of his stories and would himself have +loved to experience. He noted in _Twelve Types_ Scott's love of armour +and of weapons for their own sakes--the texture, the power, the +beauty of a sword-hilt or a jewelled dagger. As a child would play +with these things Gilbert played with them, but they stood also in +his mind for freedom, adventure, personal responsibility, and much +else that the modern world had lost. + +The honeymoon was spent on the Norfolk Broads. On the way they +stopped at Ipswich "and it was like meeting a friend in a fairy-tale +to find myself under the sign of the White Horse on the first day of +my honeymoon." Annie Firmin was staying in Warwick Gardens for the +wedding and afterwards. Gilbert's first letter, from the Norfolk +Broads, began "I have a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a +knife: what more can any man want on a honeymoon." + +Asked on his return what wallpapers he would prefer in the house they +had chosen, he asked for brown paper so that he could draw pictures +everywhere. He had by no means abandoned this old habit, and Annie +remembers an illness during which he asked for a long enough pencil +to draw on the ceiling. Their quaint little house in Edwardes Square, +Kensington, lent to them by Mr. Boore, an old friend of Frances, was +close to Warwick Gardens. "I remember the house well," wrote E. C. +Bentley later, "with its garden of old trees and its general air of +Georgian peace. I remember too the splendid flaming frescoes, done in +vivid crayons, of knights and heroes and divinities with which G.K.C. +embellished the outside wall at the back, beneath a sheltering +portico. I have often wondered whether the landlord charged for them +as dilapidations at the end of the tenancy." + +They were only in Edwardes Square for a few months and then moved to +Overstrand Mansions, Battersea, where the rest of their London life +was spent. It was here I came to know them a few years later. As soon +as they could afford it they threw drawing-room and dining-room +together to make one big room. At one end hung an Engagement board +with what Father O'Connor has described as a _"loud_ inscription"-- +LEST WE FORGET. Beside the engagements was pinned a poem by Hilaire +Belloc: + + Frances and Gilbert have a little flat + At eighty pounds a year and cheap at that + Where Frances who is Gilbert's only wife + Leads an unhappy and complaining life: + while Gilbert who is Frances' only man + Puts up with it as gamely as he can. + +The Bellocs chose life in the country much earlier than the +Chestertons, and an undated letter to Battersea threatens due +reprisals in an exclusion from their country home, if the Chestertons +are not prepared to receive him in town at a late hour. + + Kings Land, Shipley, Horsham + + It will annoy you a good deal to hear that I am in town tomorrow + Wednesday evening and that I shall appear at your Apartment at 10.45 + or 10.30 at earliest. P.M.! You are only just returned. You are + hardly settled down. It is an intolerable nuisance. You heartily wish + I had not mentioned it. + + Well, you see that [arrow pointing to "Telegrams, Coolham, + Sussex"], if you wire there before _One_ you can put me off, but if + you do I shall melt your keys, both the exterior one which forms the + body or form of the matter and the interior one which is the mystical + content thereof. + + Also if you put me off I shall not have you down here ever to see + the _Oak Room_, the _Tapestry Room_, the _Green Room_ etc. + + Yrs, + H.B. + +Early in his Battersea life Gilbert received a note from Max +Beerbohm, the great humourist, introducing himself and suggesting a +luncheon together. + + I am quite different from my writings (and so, I daresay, are you + from yours)--so that we should not necessarily fail to hit it off. + + I, in the flesh, am modest, full of commonsense, very genial, and + rather dull. + + What you are remains to be seen--or not to be seen--by me, according + to your decision. + +Gilbert's decision was for the meeting and an instant liking grew +into a warm friendship. As in J.D.C. days Gilbert had written verse +about his friends, so now did he try to sum up an impression, perhaps +after some special talk: + + And Max's queer crystalline sense + Lit, like a sea beneath a sea, + Shines through a shameless impudence + As shameless a humility. + Or Belloc somewhat rudely roared + But all above him when he spoke + The immortal battle trumpets broke + And Europe was a single sword.* + +[* Unpublished fragment.] + +Somewhere about this time must have occurred the incident +mentioned by George Bernard Shaw in a note which appeared +in the _Mark Twain Quarterly_ (Spring, 1937): + +I cannot remember when I first met Chesterton. I was so much struck +by a review of Scott's _Ivanhoe_ which he wrote for the _Daily News_ +in the course of his earliest notable job as feuilletonist to that +paper that I wrote to him asking who he was and where he came from, +as he was evidently a new star in literature. He was either too shy +or too lazy to answer. The next thing I remember is his lunching with +us on quite intimate terms, accompanied by Belloc. + +The actual first meeting, forgotten by Shaw, is remembered by +Gilbert's brother-in-law, Lucian Oldershaw. He and Gilbert had gone +together to Paris where they visited Rodin, then making a bust of +Bernard Shaw. Mr. Oldershaw introduced Gilbert to G.B.S., who, +Rodin's secretary told them, had been endeavouring to explain at some +length the nature of the Salvation Army, leading up (one imagines) to +an account of Major Barbara. At the end of the explanation, Rodin's +secretary remarked--to a rather apologetic Shaw--"The Master says you +have not much French but you impose yourself." + +"Shaw talked Gilbert down," Mr. Oldershaw complained. That the famous +man should talk more than the beginner is hardly surprising, but all +through Gilbert's life the complaint recurs on the lips of his +admirers, just as a similar complaint is made by Lockhart about Sir +Walter Scott. Chesterton, like Scott, abounded in cordial admiration +of other men and women and had a simple enjoyment in meeting them. +And Chesterton was one of the few great conversationalists--perhaps +the only one--who would really rather listen than talk. + +In 1901 appeared his first book of collected essays, _The Defendant_. +The essays in it had already appeared in _The Speaker_. Like all his +later work it had the mixed reception of enthusiasts who saw what he +meant, and puzzled reviewers who took refuge in that blessed word +"paradox." "Paradox ought to be used," said one of these, "like +onions to season the salad. Mr. Chesterton's salad is all onions. +Paradox has been defined as 'truth standing on her head to attract +attention.' Mr. Chesterton makes truth cut her throat to attract +attention." + +Without denying that his love of a joke led him into indefensible +puns and suchlike fooleries (though Mgr. Ronald Knox tells me he is +prepared to defend all of G.K.'s puns), I think nearly all his +paradoxes were either the startling expression of an entirely +neglected truth, or the startling re-emphasis of the neglected side +of a truth. Once, he said: "It is a paradox, but it is God, and not +I, who should have the credit of it." He proved his case a few years +later in the chapter of _Orthodoxy_ called "The Paradoxes of +Christianity." What it amounted to was roughly this: paradox must be +of the nature of things because of God's infinity and the limitations +of the world and of man's mind. To us limited beings God can express +His idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent +contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is +suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner we startle +the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do +it we shall miss a great deal of truth. + +Chesterton also saw many proverbs and old sayings as containing a +truth which the people who constantly repeated them had forgotten. +The world was asleep and must be awakened. The world had gone +placidly mad and must be violently restored to sanity. That the +methods he used annoyed some is undeniable, but he did force people +to think, even if they raged at him as the unaccustomed muscles came +into play. + +"I believe," he said in a speech at this date, "in getting into +hot water. I think it keeps you clean." And he believed intensely +in keeping out of a narrow stream of merely literary life. To +those who exalted the poet above the journalist he gave this +answer: + + The poet writing his name upon a score of little pages in the + silence of his study, may or may not have an intellectual right to + despise the journalist: but I greatly doubt whether he would not + morally be the better if he saw the great lights burning on through + darkness into dawn, and heard the roar of the printing wheels + weaving the destinies of another day. Here at least is a school of + labour and of some rough humility, the largest work ever published + anonymously since the great Christian cathedrals.* + +[* "A Word for the Mere Journalist." _Darlington North Star:_ +February 3, 1902.] + +He plunged then into the life of Fleet Street and held it his +proudest boast to be a journalist. But he had his own way of being a +journalist: + + On the whole, I think I owe my success (as the millionaires say) to + having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best + advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best + sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the + exact opposite. For what they all told me was that the secret of + success in journalism was to study the particular journal and write + what was suitable to it. And, partly by accident and ignorance and + partly through the real rabid certainties of youth, I cannot remember + that I ever wrote any article that was at all suitable to any + paper. . . . I wrote on a Nonconformist organ like the old _Daily + News_ and told them all about French cafes and Catholic cathedrals; + and they loved it, because they had never heard of them before. I + wrote on a robust Labour organ like the old _Clarion_ and defended + mediaeval theology and all the things their readers had never heard + of; and their readers did not mind me a bit.* + +[* _Autobiography_, pp. 185-6.] + +Mr. Titterton, who worked also on the _Daily News_ and came at this +time to know G.K. in the Pharos Club, says that at first he was +rather shy of the other men on the staff but after a dinner at which +he was asked to speak he came to know and like them and to be at home +in Fleet Street. He liked to work amid human contact and would write +his articles in a public-house or in the club or even in the street, +resting the paper against a wall. + +Frank Swinnerton records* a description given him by Charles +Masterman of + + how Chesterton used to sit writing his articles in a Fleet St. + cafe, sampling and mixing a terrible conjunction of drinks, while + many waiters hovered about him, partly in awe, and partly in case he + should leave the restaurant without paying for what he had had. One + day . . . the headwaiter approached Masterman. "Your friend," he + whispered, admiringly, "he very clever man. He sit and laugh. And + then he write. And then he laugh at what he write." + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 94.] + +He loved Fleet Street and did a good deal of drinking there. But not +only there. When (in the _Autobiography_) he writes of wine and song +it is not Fleet Street and its taverns that come back to his mind but +"the moonstruck banquets given by Mr. Maurice Baring," the garden in +Westminster where he fenced with real swords against one more +intoxicated than himself, songs shouted in Auberon Herbert's rooms +near Buckingham Palace. + +After marriage Frances seems to have given up the struggle, so +ardently pursued during their engagement, to make him tidy. By a +stroke of genius she decided instead to make him picturesque. The +conventional frock-coat worn so unconventionally, the silk hat +crowning a mat of hair, disappeared, and a wide-brimmed slouch hat +and flowing cloak more appropriately garbed him. This was especially +good as he got fatter. He was a tall man, six foot two. As a boy he +had been thin, but now he was rapidly putting on weight. Neither he +nor Cecil played games (the tennis did not last!) but they used to go +for long walks, sometimes going off together for a couple of days at +a time. Gilbert still liked to do this with Frances, but the +sedentary Daily life and the consumption of a good deal of beer did +not help towards a graceful figure. By 1903 G.K. was called a fat +humourist and he was fast getting ready to be Dr. Johnson in various +pageants. By 1906--he was then thirty-two--he had become famous +enough to be one of the celebrities painted or photographed for +exhibitions; and Bernard Shaw described a photo of him by Coburn: + + Chesterton is "our Quinbus Flestrin," the young Man Mountain, a + large abounding gigantically cherubic person who is not only large in + body and mind beyond all decency, but seems to be growing larger as + you look at him--"swellin' wisibly," as Tony Weller puts it. Mr. + Coburn has represented him as flowing off the plate in the very act + of being photographed and blurring his own outlines in the process. + Also he has caught the Chestertonian resemblance to Balzac and + unconsciously handled his subject as Rodin handled Balzac. You may + call the placing of the head on the plate wrong, the focussing wrong, + the exposure wrong if you like, but Chesterton is right and a right + impression of Chesterton is what Mr. Coburn was driving at. + +The change in his appearance G.K. celebrated in a stanza of his +"Ballade of the Grotesque": + + I was light as a penny to spend, + I was thin as an arrow to cleave, + I could stand on a fishing-rod's end + With composure, though on the _qui vive_; + But from Time, all a-flying to thieve, + The suns and the moons of the year, + A different shape I receive; + The shape is decidedly queer. + +"London," said a recently arrived American, "is the most marvellously +fulfilling experience. I went to see Fleet Street this morning, and +met G. K. Chesterton face to face. Wrapped in a cloak and standing in +the doorway of a pie-shop, he was composing a poem reciting it aloud +as he wrote. The most striking thing about the incident was that no +one took the slightest notice." + +I doubt if any writer, except Dickens, has so quickly become an +institution as Chesterton. Nor, of course, would his picturesqueness +in Fleet Street or his swift success as a journalist have +accomplished this but for the vast output of books on every +conceivable subject. + +But before I come to the books written during those years at +Battersea, a word must be said of another element besides his +journalistic contacts that was linking G.K. with a wider world than +the solely literary. We have seen that even when his religion was at +its lowest point, in the difficult Art School days, he never lost it +entirely--"I hung on to religion by one thin thread of thanks." In +the years of the Notebook, he advanced very far in his pondering on +and acceptance of the great religious truths. But this did not as yet +mean attachment to a Church. Then he met Frances. "She actually +practised a religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both +to me and to the whole fussy culture in which she lived." Now that +they were married, Frances, as a convinced Anglo-Catholic, was +bringing more clergy and other Anglican friends into Gilbert's +circle. Moreover, he was lecturing all over England, and this brought +him into contact with all sorts of strange religious beliefs. "Amid +all this scattered thinking . . . I began to piece together fragments +of the old religious scheme; mainly by the various gaps that denoted +its disappearance. And the more I saw of real human nature, the more +I came to suspect that it was really rather bad for all these people +that it had disappeared."* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 177.] + +In 1903-04 he had a tremendous battle (the detail of which will be +treated in the next chapter) in the _Clarion_ with Robert Blatchford. +In it he adumbrated many of the ideas that were later developed in +_Orthodoxy_. Of the arguments used by Blatchford and his atheist +friends, G.K. wrote that the effect on his own mind was: "Almost thou +persuadest me to be a Christian." In a diary kept by Frances +spasmodically during the years 1904-05, she notes that Gilbert has +been asked to preach as the first of a series of lay preachers in a +city church. She writes: + +_March 16th_. One of the proudest days of my life. Gilbert preached +at St. Paul's, Covent Garden for the C.S.U. [Christian Social Union] +_Vox populi vox Dei_. A crammed church--he was very eloquent and +restrained. Sermons will be published afterwards. + +Published they were: under the title, _Preachers from the Pew_. + +_March 30th_. The second sermon: "The Citizen, the Gentleman and the +Savage." Even better than last week. "Where there is no vision the +people perisheth." + +When it is remembered that the _Browning_, the _Watts_, _Twelve +Types_ and the _Napoleon of Notting Hill_ had all been published and +received with acclaim, it is touching that Frances should speak thus +of the "proudest day" of her life. That Gilbert should himself have +vision and show it to others remained her strongest aspiration. Not +thus felt all his admirers. The Blatchford controversy on matters +religious became more than many of them could bear. + +A plaintive correspondent (says the _Daily News_), who seems to have +had enough of the eternal verities and the eternal other things, +sends us the following "lines written on reading Mr. G. K. +Chesterton's forty-seventh reply to a secularist opponent": + + What ails our wondrous "G.K.C." + Who late, on youth's glad wings, + Flew fairylike, and gossip'd free + Of translunary things, + + That thus, in dull didactic mood, + He quits the realms of dream, + And like some pulpit-preacher rude, + Drones on one dreary theme? + + Stern Blatchford, _thou_ hast dashed the glee + Of our Omniscient Babe; + Thy name alone now murmurs he, + Or that of dark McCabe. + + All vain his cloudy fancies swell, + His paradox all vain, + Obsessed by that malignant spell + Of Blatchford on the brain. + + H.S.S.* + +[* _Daily News_, 12 January, 1904.] + +Mr. Noel has a livelier memory of Gilbert's religious and social +activities. On one occasion he went to the Battersea flat for a +meeting at which he was to speak and Gilbert take the chair, to +establish a local branch of the Christian Social Union. The two men +got into talk over their wine in the dining-room (then still a +separate room) and Frances came in much agitated. "Gilbert you must +dress. The people will be arriving any moment. + +"Yes, yes, I'll go." + +The argument was resumed and went on with animation. Frances came +back. "Gilbert, the drawing-room is half full and people are still +arriving." At last in despair she brought Gilbert's dress-clothes +into the dining-room and made him change there, still arguing. Next +he had to be urged into the drawing-room. Established at a small +table he began to draw comic bishops, quite oblivious of the fact +that he was to take the chair at the now assembled meeting. Finally +Frances managed to attract his attention, he leaped up overthrowing +the small table and scattering the comic bishops. + +"Surely this story," said a friend to whom I told it, "proves what +some people said about Chesterton's affectation. He must have been +posing." + +I do not think so, and those who knew Gilbert best believed him +incapable of posing. But he was perfectly capable of wilfulness and +of sulking like a schoolboy. It amused him to argue with Mr. Noel, it +did not amuse him at all to take the chair at a meeting. So, as he +was not allowed to go on arguing, he drew comic bishops. + +There was, too, more than a touch of this wilfulness in the second +shock he administered to respectable Battersea later in the evening. +An earnest young lady asked the company for counsel as to the best +way of arranging her solitary maid's evening out. "I'm so afraid," +ended the appeal, "of her going to the Red Lion." + +"Best place she could go," said Gilbert. And occasionally he would +add example to precept, for society and Fleet Street were not the +only places for human intercourse. "At present," commented a +journalist, "he is cultivating the local politics of Battersea; in +secluded ale houses he drinks with the frequenters and learns their +opinions on municipal milk and on Mr. John Burns." + +"Good friends and very gay companions," Gilbert calls the Christian +Social Union group of whom, beside Conrad Noel, were Charles +Masterman, Bishop Gore, Percy Dearmer, and above all Canon Scott +Holland. Known as "Scotty" and adored by many generations of young +men, he was "a man with a natural surge of laughter within him, so +that his broad mouth seemed always to be shut down on it in a grimace +of restraint."* Like Gilbert, he suffered from the effect of urging +his most serious views with apparent flippancy and fantastic +illustrations. In the course of a speech to a respectable Nottingham +audience he remarked, "I dare say several of you here have never been +in prison." + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 169.] + +"A ghastly stare," says Gilbert, describing this speech, "was fixed +on all the faces of the audience; and I have ever since seen it in my +own dreams; for it has constituted a considerable part of my own +problem." + +Gilbert's verses, summarizing the meeting as it must have sounded to +a worthy Nottingham tradesman, are quoted in the _Autobiography_ and +completed in _Father Brown on Chesterton_. I have put them together +here for they show how merrily these men were working to change the +world. + + The Christian Social Union here + Was very much annoyed; + It seems there is some duty + Which we never should avoid, + And so they sang a lot of hymns + To help the Unemployed. + + Upon a platform at the end + The speakers were displayed + And Bishop Hoskins stood in front + And hit a bell and said + That Mr. Carter was to pray, + And Mr. Carter prayed. + + Then Bishop Gore of Birmingham + He stood upon one leg + And said he would be happier + If beggars didn't beg, + And that if they pinched his palace + It would take him down a peg. + + He said that Unemployment + Was a horror and a blight, + He said that charities produced + Servility and spite, + And stood upon the other leg + And said it wasn't right. + + And then a man named Chesterton + Got up and played with water, + He seemed to say that principles + Were nice and led to slaughter + And how we always compromised + And how we didn't orter. + + Then Canon Holland fired ahead + Like fifty cannons firing, + We tried to find out what he meant + With infinite enquiring, + But the way he made the windows jump + We couldn't help admiring. + + I understood him to remark + (It seemed a little odd.) + That half a dozen of his friends + had never been in quod. + He said he was a Socialist himself, + And so was God. + + He said the human soul should be + Ashamed of every sham, + He said a man should constantly + Ejaculate "I am" + When he had done, I went outside + And got into a tram. + +Partly perhaps to console himself for the loss of his son's Daily +company, chiefly, I imagine, out of sheer pride and joy in his +success, Edward Chesterton started after the publication of _The Wild +Knight_ pasting all Gilbert's press-cuttings into volumes. Later I +learnt that it had long been Gilbert's weekly penance to read these +cuttings on Sunday afternoon at his father's house. Traces of his +passage are visible wherever a space admits of a caricature, and +occasionally, where it does not, the caricature is superimposed on +the text. + +His growing fame may be seen by the growing size of these volumes and +the increased space given to each of his books. _Twelve Types_ in +1902 had a good press for a young man's work and was taken seriously +in some important papers, but its success was as nothing compared +with that of the _Browning_ a year later. The bulk of _Twelve Types_, +as of _The Defendant_, had appeared in periodicals, but never in his +life did Gilbert prepare a volume of his essays for the press without +improving, changing and unifying. It was never merely a collection, +always a book. + +Still, the _Browning_ was another matter. It was a compliment for a +comparatively new author to be given the commission for the English +Men of Letters Series. Stephen Gwynn describes the experience of the +publishers: + +On my advice the Macmillans had asked him to do Browning in the +"English Men of Letters," when he was still not quite arrived. Old +Mr. Craik, the Senior Partner, sent for me and I found him in white +fury, with Chesterton's proofs corrected in pencil; or rather not +corrected; there were still thirteen errors uncorrected on one page; +mostly in quotations from Browning. A selection from a Scotch ballad +had been quoted from memory and three of the four lines were wrong, I +wrote to Chesterton saying that the firm thought the book was going +to "disgrace" them. His reply was like the trumpeting of a crushed +elephant. But the book was a huge success.* + +[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, p. 14.] + +In fact, it created a sensation and established G.K. in the front +rank. Not all the reviewers liked it, and one angry writer in the +_Athenaeum_ pointed out that, not content with innumerable +inaccuracies about Browning's descent and the events of his life, +G.K. had even invented a line in "Mr. Sludge the Medium." But every +important paper had not only a review but a long review, and the vast +majority were enthusiastic. Chesterton claimed Browning as a poet not +for experts but for every man. His treatment of the Browning love +affair, of the poet's obscurity, of "The Ring and the Book," all +receive this same praise of an originality which casts a true and +revealing light for his readers. As with all his literary criticism, +the most famous critics admitted that he had opened fresh windows on +the subject for themselves. + +This attack on his inaccuracy and admiration for his insight +constantly recurs with Chesterton's literary work. Readers noted that +in the _Ballad of the White Horse_ he made Alfred's left wing face +Guthrum's left wing. He was amused when it was pointed out, but never +bothered to alter it. His memory was prodigious. All his friends +testify to his knowing by heart pages of his favourite authors (and +these were not few). Ten years after his time with Fisher Unwin, +Frances told Father O'Connor that he remembered all the plots and +most of the characters of the "thousands" of novels he had read for +the firm. But he trusted his memory too much and never verified. +Indeed, when it was a question merely of verbal quotation he said it +was pedantic to bother, and when latterly Dorothy Collins looked up +his references he barely tolerated it. + +Again while he constantly declared that he was no scholar, he said +things illuminating even to scholars. Thus, much later, when +Chesterton's _St. Thomas Aquinas_ appeared, the Master-General of the +Dominican Order, Pere Gillet, O.P., lectured on and from it to large +meetings of Dominicans. Mr. Eccles told me that talking of Virgil, +G.K. said things immensely illuminating for experts on Latin poetry. +In a very different field, Mr. Oldershaw noted after their trip to +Paris that though he could set Gilbert right on many a detail yet his +generalisations were marvellous. He had, said Mr. Eccles, an +intuitive mind. He had, too, read more than was realised, partly +because his carelessness and contempt for scholarship misled. Where +the pedant would have referred and quoted and cross-referred, he went +dashing on, throwing out ideas from his abundance and caring little +if among his wealth were a few faults of fact or interpretation. +"Abundance" was a word much used of his work just now, and in the +field of literary criticism he was placed high, and had an +enthusiastic following. We may assume that the _Browning_ had +something to do with Sir Oliver Lodge's asking him in the next year +(1904) to become a candidate for the Chair of Literature at +Birmingham University. But he had no desire to be a professor. + +Frances, in her diary, notes some of their widening contacts and +engagements. The mixture of shrewdness and simplicity in her comments +will be familiar to those who knew her intimately. Meeting her for +the first time I think the main impression was that of the "single +eye." She abounded in Gilbert's sense, as my mother commented after +an early meeting, and ministered to his genius. Yet she never lost an +individual, markedly feminine point of view, which helped him +greatly, as anyone can see who will read all he wrote on marriage. He +shows an insight almost uncanny in the section called, "The Mistake +About Women" in _What's Wrong with the World_. "Some people," he said +in a speech of 1905, "when married gain each other. Some only lose +themselves." The Chestertons gained each other. And by the sort of +paradox he loved, Frances did so by throwing the stream of her own +life unreservedly into the greater river of her husband's. She writes +in her Diary, for 1904: + + Gilbert and I meet all sorts of queer, well-known, attractive, + unattractive people and I expect this book will be mostly about + them. . . . + + Feb. 17th. We went together to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Colvin's "At + home." It was rather jolly but too many clever people there to be + really nice. The clever people were Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Henry + James, Mr. Laurence Binyon, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, and a great many + more. Mr. and Mrs. Colvin looked so happy. + + Feb. 23rd. Gilbert went as Mr. Lane's guest to a dinner of the "Odd + Volumes" at the Imperial Restaurant. The other guest was Baden + Powell. He and Gilbert made speeches. . . . + + March 8th. Gilbert was to speak on "Education" at a C.S.U. meeting + at Sion College, but a debate on the Chinese Labour in South Africa + was introduced instead and went excitingly. There is to be a big + meeting of the C.S.U. to protest. Though I suppose it's all no good + now. When the meeting was over we adjourned to a tea-shop and had + immense fun. Gilbert, Percy Dearmer and Conrad Noel walked together + down Fleet Street, and never was there a funnier sight. Gilbert's + costume consisted of a frock coat, huge felt hat and walking stick + brandished in the face of the passers-by, to their exceeding great + danger. Conrad was dressed in an old lounge suit of sober grey with a + clerical hat jauntily stuck on the back of his head (which led + someone to remark, "Are you here in the capacity of a private + gentleman, poor curate, or low-class actor?"). Mr. Dearmer was clad + in wonderful clerical garments of which he alone possesses the + pattern, which made him look like a Chaucer Canterbury Pilgrim or a + figure out of a Noah's ark. They swaggered down the roadway talking + energetically. At tea we talked of many things, the future of the + "Commonwealth" chiefly . . . + + March 22nd. Meeting of Christian Theosophical Society at which + Gilbert lectured on "How Theosophy appears to a Christian." He was + very good. Herbert Burrows vigorously attacked him in debate + afterwards . . . _Napoleon of Notting Hill_ was published. + + April 27th. The Bellocs and the Noels came here to dinner. Hilaire + in great form recited his own poetry with great enthusiasm the whole + evening . . . + + May 9th. the Literary Fund Dinner. About the greatest treat I ever + had in my life. J. M. Barrie presided. He was so splendid and so + complimentary. Mrs. J. M. Barrie is very pretty, but the most + beautiful woman there was Mrs. Anthony Hope--copper coloured hair, + masses, with a wreath of gardenias--green eyes--and a long neck, very + beautiful figure. The speakers were Barrie, Lord Tennyson, Comyns + Carr, A. E. W. Mason, Mrs. Craigie (who acquitted herself + wonderfully) and Mrs. Flora Annie Steel. After the formal dinner was + a reception at which everyone was very friendly. It is wonderful the + way in which they all accept Gilbert, and one well-known man told me + he was the biggest man present. Anyhow there was the feeling of + brotherhood and fellowship in the wielding of "the lovely and + loathely pen" (J. M. Barrie's speech). + + May 12th. Went to see Max Beerbohm's caricature of Gilbert at the + Carfax Gallery. "G.K.C.--humanist--kissing the World." It's more like + Thackeray, very funny though. + + June 9th. A political "at home" at Mrs. Sidney Webb's--saw Winston + Churchill and Lloyd George. Politics and nothing but politics is dull + work though, and an intriguer's life must be a pretty poor affair. + Mrs. Sidney Webb looked very handsome and moved among her guests as + one to the manner born. I like Mrs. Leonard Courtenay who is always + kind to me. Charlie Masterman and I had a long talk on the iniquities + of the "Daily News" and goodness knows they are serious enough. + + June 22nd. An "at home" at Mrs. ----'s proved rather a dull affair + save for a nice little conversation with Watts Dunton. His walrusy + appearance which makes the bottom of his face look fierce, is + counteracted by the kindness of his little eyes. He told us the inner + story of Whistler's "Peacock Room" which scarcely redounds to + Whistler's credit. The Duchess of Sutherland was there and many + notabilities. Between ourselves Mr. ---- is a good-hearted snob. His + wife nice, intelligent, but affected (I suppose unconsciously). I + don't really like the "precious people." They worry me. + + June 30th. Graham Robertson's "at home" was exceedingly select. I + felt rather too uncultivated to talk much. Mr. Lane tucked his arm + into mine and requested to know the news which means, "tell me all + your husband is doing, or going to do, how much is he getting, who + will publish for him, has he sold his American rights, etc." Cobden's + three daughters looked out of place, so solid and sincere are they. + It was all too grand. No man ought to have so much wealth. + + July 5th. Gilbert went today to see Swinburne--I think he found it + rather hard to reconcile the idea with the man, but he was + interested, though I could not gather much about the visit. He was + amused at the compliments which Watts Dunton and Swinburne pay to + each other unceasingly. + + December 8th. George Alexander has an idea that he wants Gilbert to + write a play for him, and sent for him to come and see him. He was + apparently taken with the notion of a play on the Crusades, and + although there is at present no love incident in Gilbert's mind, + Alexander introduced and acted the supposed love scene with great + spirit. It may come off some day perhaps. + + December 31st. H. Belloc's been very ill but is better, thank God. + + 1905 + + Feb. 1st. Gilbert, a guest at the "Eighty Club" dinner. Rhoda and I + went to after dinner speeches. G. W. E. Russell (Chair). Augustine + Birrell guest and Sir Henry Fowler. It amused me hugely. Russell so + imprudent and reckless, Birrell so prudent and incapable of giving + himself away, Sir Henry Fowler so commonplace and trite. He looked so + wicked. I thought of Mr. Haldane's story of Fowler's fur coat and his + single remark on examining it: "skunk." + + Feb. 11th. Rather an interesting lunch at Mrs. J. R. Green's. Jack + Yeats and Mrs. Thursby were there. The atmosphere is too political + and I imagine Mrs. Green to be a bit of a wire-puller, though I + believe a nice woman. + + Feb. 24th. Mr. Halliwell Sutcliffe came over. He is amusing and + nice. Very puzzled at Gilbert's conduct, which on this particular + occasion was peculiarly eccentric. + + March 9th. I had an amusing lunch at the Hotel Cecil with Miss + Bisland (representative of McClure). Evidently thinks a lot of + Gilbert and wants his work for McClure. O ye gods and little fishes! + The diplomatic service ought to be all conducted by women. I offered + her Margaret's poems in exchange for a short interview with Meredith + which she wishes Gilbert to undertake. + + March 14th. Gilbert dined at the Buxtons, met Asquith. + + March 19th. Lienie is in town and we have been with her to call on + the Duchess of Sutherland. When I had got used to the splendour it + was jolly enough. Her Grace is a pretty, sweet woman who was very + nervous, but got better under the fire of Gilbert's chaff. She made + him write in her album which he did, a most ridiculous poem of which + he should be ashamed. It must be truly awful to live in the sort of + way the Duchess does and endeavour to keep sane. + + May 20th. Words fail me when I try to recall the sensation aroused + by a J.D.C. dinner. It seems so odd to think of these men as boys, to + realize what their school life was and what a powerful element the + J.D.C. was in the lives of all. And there were husbands and wives, + and the tie so strong, and the long, long thoughts of schoolboys and + schoolgirls fell on us, as if the battle were still to come instead + of raging round us. + + May 24th. We went together to see George Meredith. I suppose many + people have seen him in his little Surrey Cottage; Flint Cottage, + Boxhill. He has a wonderful face and a frail old body. He talks + without stopping except to drink ginger-beer. He told us many + stories, mostly about society scandals of some time back. I remember + he asked Gilbert, "Do you like babies?" and when Gilbert said, "Yes," + he said "So do I, especially in the comet stage." + + June 5th. Granville Barker came to see Gilbert, touching the + possibility of a play. + + June 29th. A garden party at the Bishop's House, Kennington. The + Bishop told me that A. J. Balfour was very impressed with "Heretics." + Guild of St. Matthew Service and rowdy supper. Gilbert made an + excellent speech. + + July 5th. Gilbert dined at the Asquiths; met Rosebery. I think he + hated it. + + July 16th. Gilbert went to see Mrs. Grenfell at Taplow. He met + Balfour, Austen Chamberlain and George Wyndham. Had an amusing time, + no doubt. Says Balfour is most interesting to talk to but appears + bored. George Wyndham is delightful. + +One felt always with both Frances and Gilbert that this society life +stayed on the surface--amusing, distracting, sometimes welcome, +sometimes boring--but never infringing the deeper reality of their +relationships with old friends, with their own families, with each +other. Frances wrote endless business and other letters for them +both: in just a handful, mainly to Father O'Connor, does she show her +deeper life of thought and feeling. Gilbert had little time now for +writing anything but books and articles. Never a very good +correspondent he had become an exceedingly bad one. Annie Firmin's +engagement to Robert Kidd produced one of the few letters that exist. +It is handwritten and undated. + + A Restaurant somewhere. + + MY DEAR ANNIE, + + I have thought of you, I am quite certain, more often than I have + of any human being for a long time past--except my wife who recalls + herself continually to me by virtues, splendours, agreeable memories, + screams, pokers, brickbats and other things. And yet, though whenever + my mind was for an instant emptied of theology and journalism and + patriotism and such rot, it has been immediately filled with you, I + have never written you a line. + + I am not going to explain this and for a good reason. It is a part + of the Mystery of the Male, and you will soon, even if you do not + already, get the hang of it, by the society of an individual who + while being unmistakably a much better man than I am, is nevertheless + male. I can only say that when men want a thing they act quite + differently to women. We put off everything we want to do, in the + ordinary way. If the Archangel Michael wrote me a complimentary + letter tomorrow (as perhaps he may) I should put it in my pocket, + saying, "How admirable a reply shall I write to that in a week or a + month or so." I put off writing to you because I wanted to write + something that had in it all that you have been, to me, to all of us. + And now instead I am scrawling this nonsense in a tavern after lunch. + + My very dear old friend, I am of a sex that very seldom takes real + trouble, that forgets the little necessities of time, that is by + nature lazy. I never wanted really but one thing in my life and that + I got. Any person inspecting 60 Overstrand Mansions may see that + somewhat excitable thing--free of charge. In another person, whom + with maddening jealousy I suspect of being some inches taller than I + am, I believe I notice the same tendency towards monomania. He also, + being as I have so keenly pointed out, male, he also--I think has + only wanted one thing seriously in his life. He also has got it: + another male weakness which I recognize with sympathy. + + All my reviewers call me frivolous. Do you think all this kind of + thing frivolous? Damn it all (excuse me) what can one be but + frivolous about serious things? Without frivolity they are simply too + tremendous. That you, who, with your hair down your back, played at + bricks with me in a house of which I have no memory except you and + the bricks, that you should be taken by someone of my miserable + sex--as you ought to be--what is one to say? I am not going to wish + you happiness, because I am quite placidly certain that your + happiness is inevitable. I know it because my wife is happy with me + and the wild, weird, extravagant, singular origin of this is a + certain enduring fact in my psychology which you will find paralleled + elsewhere. + + God bless you, my dear girl. + + Yours ever, + GILBERT CHESTERTON. + +Married in 1903, Annie and her husband took another flat in +Overstrand Mansions. + +"Gilbert never cared what he wore," she writes. "I remember one night +when my husband and I were living in the same block of flats he came +in to ask me to go and sit with Frances who wasn't very well, while +he went down to the House to dine with Hugh Law--Gilbert was very +correctly dressed except for the fact that he had on one boot and one +slipper! I pointed it out to him, and he said: 'Do you think it +matters?' I told him I was sure Frances would not like him to go out +like that--the only argument to affect him! When he was staying with +me here in Vancouver, Dorothy Collins had to give him the once-over +before he went lecturing--they had left Frances in Palos Verdes as +she wasn't well." + +In 1904, were published a monograph on Watts, _The Napoleon of +Notting Hill_, and an important chapter in a composite book, _England +a Nation_. + +The _Watts_ is among the results of Gilbert's art studies. Its +reviewers admired it somewhat in the degree of their admiration +for the painter. But for a young man at that date to have seen the +principles of art he lays down meant rare vision. The portrait-painter, +he says, is trying to express the reality of the man himself but +"he is not above taking hints from the book of life with its +quaint old woodcuts." G.K. makes us see all the painter could have +thought or imagined as he sets us before "Mammon" or "Jonah" or +"Hope" and bids us read their legend and note the texture and lines +of the painting. His distinction between the Irish mysticism of Yeats +and the English mysticism of Watts is especially valuable, and the +book, perhaps even more than the _Browning_ or the _Dickens_, +manifests Gilbert's insight into the mind of the last generation. The +depths and limitations of the Victorian outlook may be read in _G. F. +Watts_. + +The story of the writing of _The Napoleon_ was told me in part by +Frances, while part appeared in an interview* given by Gilbert, in +which he called it his first important book: + +[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, pp. 16-17.] + + I was "broke"--only ten shillings in my pocket. Leaving my worried + wife, I went down Fleet Street, got a shave, and then ordered for + myself, at the Cheshire Cheese, an enormous luncheon of my favourite + dishes and a bottle of wine. It took my all, but I could then go to + my publishers fortified. I told them I wanted to write a book and + outlined the story of "Napoleon of Notting Hill." But I must have + twenty pounds, I said, before I begin. + + "We will send it to you on Monday." + + "If you want the book," I replied, "you will have to give it to me + today as I am disappearing to write it." They gave it. + +Frances meanwhile sat at home thinking, as she told me, hard thoughts +of his disappearance with their only remaining coin. And then +dramatically he appeared with twenty golden sovereigns and poured +them into her lap. Referring to this incident later, Gilbert said, +"What a fool a man is, when he comes to the last ditch, not to spend +the last farthing to satisfy the inner man before he goes out to +fight a battle with wits." But it was his way to let the money +shortage become acute and then deal with it abruptly. Frank +Swinnerton relates that when, as a small boy, he was working for J. +M. Dent, Gilbert appeared after office hours with a Dickens preface +but refused to leave it because Swinnerton, the only soul left in the +place, could not give him the agreed remuneration. + +The _Napoleon_ is the story of a war between the London suburbs, and +grew largely from his meditations on the Boer War. Besides being the +best of his fantastic stories, it contains the most picturesque +account of Chesterton's social philosophy that he ever gave. But it +certainly puzzled some of the critics. One American reviewer feels +that he might have understood the book if he "had an intimate +knowledge of the history of the various boroughs of London and of +their present-day characteristics." Others treat the story as a mere +joke, and many feel that it is a bad descent after the _Browning_. +"Too infernally clever for anything," says one. + +Auberon Quin, King of England, chosen by lot (as are all kings and +all other officials by the date of this story, which is a romance of +the future), is one of the two heroes of this book. He is simply a +sense of humour incarnate. His little elfish face and figure was +recognised by old Paulines as suggested by a form master of their +youth; but by the entire reviewing world as Max Beerbohm. The +illustrations by Graham Robertson were held to be unmistakably Max. +Frances notes in her diary: + + A delightful dinner party at the Lanes. . . . The talk was mostly + about _Napoleon_. Max took me in to dinner and was really nice. He is + a good fellow. His costume was extraordinary. Why should an evening + waistcoat have four large white pearl buttons and why should he look + that peculiar shape? He seems only pleased at the way he has been + identified with King Auberon. "All right, my dear chap," he said to + G., who was trying to apologize. "Mr. Lane and I settled it all at a + lunch." I think he was a little put out at finding no red carpet put + down for his royal feet and we had quite a discussion as to whether + he ought to precede me into the dining room. Graham Robertson was on + my left. He was jolly too, kept on producing wonderful rings and + stones out of his pockets. He said he wished he could go about + covered in the pieces of a chandelier. The other guests were lady + Seton, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Mr. W. W. Howells and his daughter (too + Burne-Jonesy to be really attractive), Mr. Taylor (police + magistrate), and Mrs. Eichholz (Mrs. Lane's mother) who is more + beautiful than anything except a wee baby. In fact, she looks exactly + like one, so dainty and small. She can never at any time have been as + pretty as she is now. + + Gilbert and Max and I drove to his house (Max's), where he basely + enticed us in. He gave me fearful preserved fruits which ruined my + dress--but he made himself very entertaining. Home 1.30. + +Caring for nothing in the world but a joke, King Auberon decrees that +the dull and respectable London boroughs shall be given city guards +in resplendent armour, each borough to have its own coat of arms, its +city walls, tocsin, and the like. The idea is taken seriously by the +second hero, Adam Wayne of Notting Hill, an enthusiast utterly +lacking any sense of humour, who goes to war with the other boroughs +of London to protect a small street which they have designed to pull +down in the interests of commercial development. Pimlico, Kensington +and the rest attack Notting Hill. Men bleed and die in the contest +and by the magic of the sword the old ideas of local patriotism and +beauty in civic life return to England. The conventional politician, +Barker, who begins the story in a frock-coat and irreproachable silk +hat, ends it clad in purple and gold. + +When Notting Hill, become imperial minded, goes down to destruction +in a sea of blood, Auberon Quin confesses to Wayne that this whole +story, so full of human tragedy and hopes and fears, had been merely +the outcome of a joke. To him all life was a joke, to Wayne an epic; +and this antagonism between the humorist and the fanatic has created +the whole wild story. Wayne has the last word: + + "I know of something that will alter that antagonism, something + that is outside us, something that you and I have all our lives + perhaps taken too little account of. The equal and eternal human + being will alter that antagonism, for the human being sees no real + antagonism between laughter and respect, the human being, the common + man, whom mere geniuses like you and me can only worship like a god. + When dark and dreary days come, you and I are necessary, the pure + fanatic, the pure satirist. We have between us remedied a great + wrong. We have lifted the modern cities into that poetry which every + one who knows mankind knows to be immeasurably more common than the + commonplace. But in healthy people there is no war between us. We are + but the two lobes of the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love are + everywhere. The cathedrals, built in the ages that loved God, are + full of blasphemous grotesques. The mother laughs continually at the + child, the lover laughs continually at the lover, the wife at the + husband, the friend at the friend. Auberon Quin, we have been too + long separated; let us go out together. You have a halberd and I a + sword, let us start our wanderings over the world. For we are its two + essentials. Come, it is already day." + + In the blank white light Auberon hesitated a moment. Then he made + the formal salute with his halberd, and they went away together into + the unknown world. + +This is very important to the understanding of Chesterton. With him, +profound gravity and exuberant fooling were always intermingled and +some of his deepest thoughts are conveyed by a pun. He always claimed +to be intensely serious while hating to be solemn and it was a +mixture apt to be misunderstood. If gravity and humour are the two +lobes of the average man's brain, the average man does not bring them +into play simultaneously to anything like the extent that Chesterton +did. + +Auberon Quin and Adam Wayne are the most living individuals in any of +his novels--just because they are the two lobes of his brain +individualised. All his stories abound in adventure, are admirable in +their vivid descriptions of London or the countryside of France or +England seen in fantastic visions. They are living in the portrayal +of ideas by the road of argument. But the characters are chiefly +energies through whose lips Gilbert argues with Gilbert until some +conclusion shall be reached. + +In 1905 came _The Club of Queer Trades_--least good of the +fantasia--and even admirers have begun to wonder if too many fields +are being tried; in 1906, _Dickens_ and _Heretics_. + +It will remain a moot point whether the _Browning_ or the _Dickens_ +is Chesterton's best work of literary criticism. The _Dickens_ is the +more popular, largely because Dickens is the more popular author. +Most Dickens idolators read anything about their idol if only for the +pleasure of the quotations. And no Dickens idolator could fail to +realise that here was one even more rapt in worship than himself. +After the publication of _Charles Dickens_, Chesterton undertook a +series of prefaces to the novels. In one of them he took the trouble +to answer one only of the criticisms the book had produced: the +comment that he was reading into the work of Dickens something that +Dickens did not mean. + + Criticism does not exist to say about authors the things that they + knew themselves. It exists to say the things about them which they + did not know themselves. If a critic says that the _Iliad_ has a + pagan rather than a Christian pity, or that it is full of pictures + made by one epithet, of course he does not mean that Homer could have + said that. If Homer could have said that the critic would leave Homer + to say it. The function of criticism, if it has a legitimate function + at all, can only be one function--that of dealing with the + subconscious part of the author's mind which only the critic can + express, and not with the conscious part of the author's mind, which + the author himself can express. Either criticism is no good at all (a + very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an + author the very things that would have made him jump out of his + boots.* + +[* Introduction to "Old Curiosity Shop." Reprinted in _Criticisms and +Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens_, 1933 ed. pp. 51-2.] + +He attended not at all to the crop of comments on his inaccuracies. +One reviewer pointed out that Chesterton had said that every postcard +Dickens wrote was a work of art; but Dickens died on June 9th, 1870 +and the first British postcard was issued on October 1st, 1870. "A +wonderful instance of Dickens's never-varying propensity to keep +ahead of his age." After all, what did such things matter? Bernard +Shaw, however, felt that they did. He wrote a letter from which I +think Gilbert got an important hint, utilized later in his +introduction to _David Copperfield:_ + + 6th September, 1906. + + DEAR G.K.C. + + As I am a supersaturated Dickensite, I pounced on your book and + read it, as Wegg read Gibbon and other authors, right slap through. + + In view of a second edition, let me hastily note for you one or two + matters. First and chiefly, a fantastic and colossal howler in the + best manner of Mrs. Nickleby and Flora Finching. + + There is an association in your mind (well founded) between the + quarrel over Dickens's determination to explain his matrimonial + difficulty to the public, and the firm of Bradbury and Evans. There + is also an association (equally well founded) between B. & E. and + Punch. They were the publishers of Punch. But to gravely tell the XX + century that Dickens wanted to publish his explanation in Punch is + gas and gaiters carried to an incredible pitch of absurdity. The + facts are: B. & E. were the publishers of Household Words. They + objected to Dickens explaining in H.W. He insisted. They said that in + that case they must take H.W. out of his hands. Dickens, like a lion + threatened with ostracism by a louse in his tail, published his + explanation, which stands to this day, and informed his readers that + they were to ask in future, not for Household Words, but for All the + Year Round. Household Words, left Dickensless, gasped for a few weeks + and died. All the Year Round, in exactly the same format, flourished + and entered largely into the diet of my youth. + + * * * * * + + There is a curious contrast between Dickens's sentimental + indiscretions concerning his marriage and his sorrows and quarrels, + and his impenetrable reserve about himself as displayed in his + published correspondence. He writes to his family about waiters, + about hotels, about screeching tumblers of hot brandy and water, and + about the seasick man in the next berth, but never one really + intimate word, never a real confession of his soul. David Copperfield + is a failure as an autobiography because when he comes to deal with + the grown-up David, you find that he has not the slightest intention + of telling you the truth--or indeed anything--about himself. Even the + child David is more remarkable for the reserves than for the + revelations: he falls back on fiction at every turn. Clennam and Pip + are the real autobiographies. + + I find that Dickens is at his greatest after the social awakening + which produced _Hard Times_. Little Dorrit is an enormous work. The + change is partly the disillusion produced by the unveiling of + capitalist civilization, but partly also Dickens's discovery of the + gulf between himself as a man of genius and the public. That he did + not realize this early is shown by the fact that he found out his + wife _before he married her_ as much too small for the job, and yet + plumbed the difference so inadequately that he married her thinking + he could go through with it. When the situation became intolerable, + he must have faced the fact that there was something more than + "incompatibilities" between him and the average man and woman. Little + Dorrit is written, like all the later books, frankly and somewhat + sadly, _de haut en bas_. In them Dickens recognizes that quite + everyday men are as grotesque as Bunsby. Sparkler, one of the most + extravagant of all his gargoyles, is an untouched photograph almost. + Wegg and Riderhood are sinister and terrifying because they are + simply real, which Squeers and Sikes are not. And please remark that + whilst Squeers and Sikes have their speeches written with anxious + verisimilitude (comparatively) Wegg says, "Man shrouds and grapple, + Mr. Venus, or she dies," and Riderhood describes Lightwood's sherry + (when retracting his confession) as, "I will not say a hocussed wine, + but a wine as was far from 'elthy for the mind." Dickens doesn't care + what he makes Wegg or Riderhood or Sparkler or Mr. F's aunt say, + because he knows them and has got them, and knows what matters and + what doesn't. Fledgeby, Lammle, Jerry Cruncher, Trabbs's boy, Wopsle, + etc. etc. are human beings as seen by a master. Swiveller and + Mantalini are human beings as seen by Trabbs's boy. Sometimes + Trabbs's boy has the happier touch. When I am told that young John + Chivery (whose epitaphs you ignore whilst quoting Mrs. Sapsea's) + would have gone barefoot through the prison against rules for little + Dorrit had it been paved with red hot ploughshares, I am not so + affected by his chivalry as by Swiveller's exclamation when he gets + the legacy--"For she (the Marchioness) shall walk in silk attire and + siller hae to spare." Edwin Drood is no good, in spite of the stone + throwing boy, Buzzard and Honeythunder. Dickens was a dead man before + he began it. Collins corrupted him with plots. And oh! the + Philistinism; the utter detachment from the great human heritage of + art and philosophy! Why not a sermon on that? + + G.B.S. + +Note in the Introduction to _David Copperfield_ what G.K. says as to +the break between the two halves of the book. He calls it an instance +of weariness in Dickens--a solitary instance. Is not Shaw's +explanation at once fascinating and probable? + +Kate Perugini, the daughter of Dickens, wrote two letters of immense +enthusiasm about the book saying it was the best thing written about +her father since Forster's biography. But she shatters the theory put +forth by Chesterton that Dickens thrown into intimacy with a large +family of girls fell in love with them all and happened unluckily to +marry the wrong sister. At the time of the marriage her mother, the +eldest of the sisters, was only eighteen, Mary between fourteen and +fifteen "very young and childish in appearance," Georgina eight and +Helen three! Nothing could better illustrate the clash between +enthusiasm and despair that fills a Chestertonian while reading any +of his literary biographies. For so much is built on this theory +which the slightest investigation would have shown to be baseless. + +_Heretics_ aroused animosity in many minds. Dealing with Browning or +Dickens a man may encounter literary prejudices or enthusiasms, but +there is not the intensity of feeling that he finds when he gets into +the field with his own contemporaries. Reviewers who had been +extending a friendly welcome to a beginner found that beginner +attacking landmarks in the world of letters, venturing to detest +Ibsen and to ask William Archer whether he hung up his stocking on +Ibsen's birthday, accusing Kipling of lack of patriotism. It is, said +one angrily, "unbecoming to spend most of his time criticising his +contemporaries." "His sense of mental perspective is an extremely +deficient one." "The manufacture of paradoxes is really one of the +simplest processes conceivable." "Mr. Chesterton's sententious +wisdom." + +In fact it was like the scene in _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ when +most people present were purple with anger but an intellectual few +were purple with laughter. And even now most of the reviewers seemed +not to understand where G.K. stood or what was his philosophy. +"Bernard Shaw," says one, "whom _as a disciple_* he naturally +exalts." This, after a series of books in which G.K. had exposed, +with perfect lucidity and a wealth of examples, a view of life +differing from Shaw's in almost every particular. One reviewer +clearly discerned the influence of Shaw in _The Napoleon of Notting +Hill_, "but without a trace of Shaw's wonderful humour and +perspicacity." + +[* Italics mine.] + +Belloc's approval was hearty. He wrote: + + I am delighted with what I have read in the _Daily Mail_. Hit them + again. Hurt them. Continue to binge and accept my blessing. Give them + hell. It is the only book of yours I have read right through. Which + shows that I don't read anything. Which is true enough. This letter + is written in the style of Herbert Paul. Continue to bang them about. + + You did wrong not to come to the South coast. Margate is a fraud. + What looks like sea in front of it is really a bank with hardly any + water over it. I stuck on it once in the year 1904 so I know all + about it. Moreover the harbour at Margate is not a real harbour. + Ramsgate round the corner has a real harbour on the true sea. In both + towns are citizens not averse to bribes. Do not fail to go out in a + boat on the last of the ebb as far as the Long Nose. There you will + see the astonishing phenomenon of the tide racing down the North + Foreland three hours before it has turned in the estuary of the + Thames, which you at Margate foolishly believe to be the sea. Item no + one in Margate can cook. + +Gilbert was not really concerned in this book to bang his +contemporaries about so much as to study their mistakes and so +discover what was wrong with modern thought. Shaw, George Moore, +Ibsen, Wells, The Mildness of the Yellow Press, Omar and the Sacred +Vine, Rudyard Kipling, Smart novelists and the Smart Set, Joseph +McCabe and a Divine Frivolity--the collection was a heterogeneous +one. And in the introduction the author tells us he is not concerned +with any of these men as a brilliant artist or a vivid personality, +but "as a Heretic--that is to say a man whose view of things has the +hardihood to differ from mine . . . as a man whose philosophy is +quite solid, quite coherent and quite wrong. I revert to the +doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general +hope of getting something done." + +In _England a Nation_ and even more in the study of Kipling in this +book there is one touch of inconsistency which we shall meet with +again in his later work. He hated Imperialism yet he glorified +Napoleon; himself ardently patriotic he accused Kipling of lack of +patriotism on the ground that a man could not at once love England +and love the Empire. For there was a curious note in the +anti-Imperialism of the Chesterbelloc that has not always been +recognised. The ordinary anti-Imperialist holds that England has no +right to govern an Empire and that her leadership is bad for the +other dominions. But the Chesterbelloc view was that the Dominions +were inferior and unworthy of a European England. The phrase "suburbs +of England" (quoted in a later chapter) was typical. But Kipling was +thrilled by those suburbs and Chesterton, who had as a boy admired +Kipling, attacks him in _Heretics_ for lack of patriotism. _Puck of +Pook's Hill_ was not yet written, but like Kipling's poem on Sussex +it expressed a patriotism much akin to Gilbert's own. Remember the +man who returned from the South African veldt to be the Squire's +gardener--"Me that have done what I've done, Me that have seen what +I've seen"--that man, with eyes opened to a sense of his own tragedy, +was speaking for Chesterton's people of England who "have not spoken +yet." Yes, they have spoken through the mouth of English genius: as +Langland's Piers Plowman, as Dickens's Sam Weller, but not least as +Kipling's Tommy Atkins. It was a pity Chesterton was deaf to this +last voice. With a better understanding of Kipling he might in turn +have made Kipling understand what was needed to make England "Merrie +England" once again, have given him the philosophy that should make +his genius fruitful. + +For the huge distinction between Chesterton and most of his +contemporaries lay not in the wish to get something done but in the +conviction that the right philosophy alone could produce fruitful +action. A parable in the Introduction shows the point at which his +thinking had arrived. + +Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, +let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull +down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is +approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of +the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value +of Light. If Light be in itself good." At this point he is somewhat +excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, +the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about +congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as +things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled +the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some +because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, +because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a +lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash +municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And +there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, +gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there +comes back the conviction that the monk was Right after all, that all +depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have +discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.* + +[* _Heretics_, pp. 22-3.] + +Every year during this time at Battersea, the press books reveal an +increasing flood of engagements. Gilbert lectures for the New Reform +Club on "political watchwords," for the Midland Institute on "Modern +Journalism," for the Men's Meeting of the South London Central +Mission on "Brass Bands," for the London Association of Correctors of +the Press at the Trocadero, for the C.S.U. at Church Kirk, +Accrington, at the Men's Service in the Colchester Moot Hall. He +debates at the St. German's Literary Society, maintaining "that the +most justifiable wars are the religious wars"; opens the Anti-Puritan +League at the Shaftesbury Club, speaks for the Richmond and Kew +branch of the P.N.E.U. on "The Romantic Element in Morality," for the +Ilkley P.S.A., on "Christianity and Materialism," and so on without +end. All these are on a few pages of his father's collection, +interspersed with clippings recording articles in reviews +innumerable, introductions to books, interviews and controversies. + +There was almost no element of choice in these engagements. G.K. was +intensely good-natured and hated saying No. He was the lion of the +moment and they all wanted him to roar for them. In spite of the +large heading, "Lest we forget," that met his eye daily in the +drawing-room, he did forget a great deal--in fact, friends say he +forgot any engagement made when Frances was not present to write it +down directly it was made. She had to do memory and all the practical +side of life for him. There might have been one slight chance of +making Gilbert responsible in these matters--that chance was given to +his parents and by them thrown away. How far it is even possible to +groom and train a genius is doubtful: anyhow no attempt was made. +Waited on hand and foot by his mother, never made to wash or brush +himself as a child, personally conducted to the tailor as he grew +older, given by his parents no money for which to feel responsible, +not made to keep hours--how could Frances take a man of twenty-seven, +and make him over again? + +But there is, of course, a most genuine difficulty in all this, which +Gilbert once touched on when he denied the accusation of absence of +mind. It was, he claimed, presence of mind--on his thoughts--that +made him unaware of much else. And indeed no man can be using his +mind furiously in every direction at once. Anyone who has done even a +little creative work, anyone even who has lived with people who do +creative work, knows the sense of bewilderment with which the mind +comes out of the world of remoter but greater reality and tries to +adjust with that daily world in which meals are to be ordered, +letters answered, and engagements kept. What must this pain of +adjustment not have been to a mind almost continuously creative? For +I have never known anyone work such long hours with a mind at such +tension as Gilbert's. + +There was no particular reason why he should have written his article +for the _Daily News_ as the reporter writes his--at top speed at a +late hour--but he usually did. The writing of it was left till the +last minute and, if at home, he would need Frances to get it off for +him before the deadline was reached. But he often wrote by preference +in Fleet Street--at the Cheshire Cheese or some little pub where +journalists gathered--and then he would hire a cab to take the +article a hundred yards or so to the _Daily News_ office. + +The cab in those days was the hansom with its two huge wheels over +which one perilously ascended, while the driver sat above, only to be +communicated with by opening a sort of trap door in the roof. Gilbert +once said that the imaginative Englishman in Paris would spend his +days in a cafe, the imaginative Frenchman in London would spend his +driving in a hansom. In the _Napoleon_, the thought of the cab moves +him to write: + + Poet whose cunning carved this amorous cell + Where twain may dwell. + +E. V. Lucas, his daughter tells us, used to say that if one were +invited to drive with Gilbert in a hansom cab it would have to be two +cabs: but this is not strictly true. For in those days I drove with +Gilbert and Frances too in a hansom--he and I side by side, she on +his knee. We must have given to the populace the impression he says +any hansom would give on first view to an ancient Roman or a simple +barbarian--that the driver riding on high and flourishing his whip +was a conqueror carrying off his helpless victims. + +Like the "buffers" at the Veneering election, he spent much of his +time "taking cabs and getting about"--or not even getting about in +them, but leaving them standing at the door for hours on end. Calling +on one publisher he placed in his hands a letter that gave excellent +reasons why he could not keep the engagement! The memory so admirable +in literary quotations was not merely unreliable for engagements but +even for such matters as street numbers and addresses. Edward +Macdonald, who worked with him later, on _G.K.'s Weekly_, relates how +some months after the paper had changed its address he failed one day +to turn up at a board meeting. + +Finally he appeared with an explanation. On calling a taxi at +Marylebone he realized that he could not give the address, so he told +the driver to take him to Fleet Street. There as his memory still +refused to help, he stopped the taxi outside a tea-shop, left it +there while he was inside, and ordering a cup of tea began to turn +out all his pockets in the hope of finding a letter or a proof +bearing the address. Then as no clue could be found, he told the +driver to take him to a bookstall that stocked the paper. At the +first and second he drew blanks but at the third bought a copy of his +own paper and thus discovered the address. + +I am not sure at what date he began to hate writing anything by hand. +My mother treasured two handwritten letters. I have none after a +friendship of close on thirty years. But I remember on his first +visit to my parents' home in Surrey his calling Frances that he might +dictate an article to her. His writing was pictorial and rather +elaborate. "He drew his signature rather than writing it," says +Edward Macdonald, who remembers him saying as he signed a cheque: +"'With many a curve my banks I fret.' I wonder if Tennyson fretted +his." At one of our earliest meetings I asked him to write in my +Autograph Book. It was at least five years before the _Ballad of the +White Horse_ appeared, but the lines may be found almost unchanged in +the ballad: + + VERSES MADE UP IN A DREAM + (which you won't believe) + + People, if you have any prayers + Say prayers for me. + And bury me underneath a stone + In the stones of Battersea. + Bury me underneath a stone, + With the sword that was my own; + To wait till the holy horn is blown + And all poor men are free. + +The dream went on, he said, for pages and pages. And I think Frances +was anxious, for the mind must find rest in sleep. + +The little flat at Battersea was a vortex of requests and +engagements, broken promises and promises fulfilled, author's ink and +printer's ink, speeches in prospect and speeches in memory, meetings +and social occasions. A sincere admirer wrote during this period of +his fears of too great a strain on his hero--and from 1904 to 1908 +the only change was an increase of pressure: + + I see that Chesterton has just issued a volume on the art of G. F. + Watts. His novel was published yesterday. Soon his monograph on + Kingsley should be ready. I believe he has a book on some modern + aspects of religious belief in the press. He is part-editor of the + illustrated Booklets on great authors issued by the Bookman. He is + contributing prefaces and introductions to odd volumes in several + series of reprints. He is a constant contributor to the _Daily News_ + and the _Speaker_; he is conducting a public controversy with + Blatchford of the _Clarion_ on atheism and free-thinking; he is + constantly lecturing and debating and dining out; it is almost + impossible to open a paper that does not contain either an article or + review or poem or drawing of his, and his name is better known now to + compositors than Bernard Shaw. + + Now, both physically and mentally Chesterton is a Hercules, and + from what I hear of his methods of work he is capable of a great + output without much physical strain; nevertheless, it is clear, I + think to anyone that at his present rate of production he must either + wear or tear. No man born can keep so many irons in the fire and not + himself come between the hammer and the anvil. It is a pitiable thing + to have a good man spend himself so recklessly; and I repeat once + more that if he and his friends have not the will or power to + restrain him, then there should be a conspiracy of editors and + publishers in his favour. Not often is a man like Chesterton born. He + should have his full chance. And that can only come by study and + meditation, and by slow, steady accumulation of knowledge and wisdom.* + +[* Shan F. Bullock in the _Chicago Evening Post_, 9th April, 1906.] + +In a volume made up of Introductions written at this time to +individual novels of Dickens, we find a passage that might well be +Gilbert's summary of his own life: + + The calls upon him at this time were insistent and overwhelming; + this necessarily happens at a certain stage of a successful writer's + career. He was just successful enough to invite others and not + successful enough to reject them . . . there was almost too much work + for his imagination, and yet not quite enough work for his + housekeeping. . . . And it is a curious tribute to the quite curious + greatness of Dickens that in this period of youthful strain we do not + feel the strain but feel only the youth. His own amazing wish to + write equalled or outstripped even his readers' amazing wish to read. + Working too hard did not cure him of his abstract love of work. + Unreasonable publishers asked him to write ten novels at once; but he + wanted to write twenty novels at once. + +Thus too with Gilbert. The first eight years of his married life saw +in swift succession the publication of ten books comprising literary +and art criticism and biography, poetry, fiction (or rather fantasy), +light essays and religious philosophy. All these were so full at once +of the profound seriousness of youth, and of the bubbling wine of its +high spirits, as to recall another thing Gilbert said: that Dickens +was "accused of superficiality by those who cannot grasp that there +is foam upon deep seas." That was the matter in dispute about +himself, and very furiously disputed it was during these years. Was +G.K. serious or merely posing, was he a great man or a mountebank, +was he clear or obscure, was he a genius or a charlatan? "Audacious +reconciliation," he pleaded--or rather asserted, for his tone could +seldom be called a plea, "is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme +seriousness." + + A man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels, + or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is + taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it + passes. But a man who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus + must have some serious view of the universe. The man who should write + a dialogue between two early Christians might be a mere writer of + dialogues. But a man who should write a dialogue between an early + Christian and the Missing Link would have to be a philosopher. The + more widely different the types talked of, the more serious and + universal must be the philosophy which talks of them. The mark of the + light and thoughtless writer is the harmony of his subject matter; + the mark of the thoughtful writer is its apparent diversity. The most + flippant lyric poet might write a pretty poem about lambs; but it + requires something bolder and graver than a poet, it requires an + ecstatic prophet, to talk about the lion lylng down with the lamb.* + +* G. K. Chesterton. _Criticisms and Appreciations of the World of +Charles Dickens_. Dent. 1933 pp. 68-9. + +A man starting to write a thesis on Chesterton's sociology once +complained bitterly that almost none of his books were indexed, so +he had to submit to the disgusting necessity of reading them all +through, for some striking view on sociology might well be embedded +in a volume of art criticism or be the very centre of a fantastic +romance. Chesterton's was a philosophy universal and unified and it +was at this time growing fast and finding exceedingly varied +techniques of expression. But the whole of it was in a sense in each +of them--in each book, almost in each poem. As he himself says of the +universe of Charles Dickens, "there was something in it--there is in +all great creative writers--like the account in Genesis of the light +being created before the sun, moon and stars, the idea before the +machinery that made it manifest. Pickwick is in Dickens's career the +mere mass of light before the creation of sun or moon. It is the +splendid, shapeless substance of which all his stars are ultimately +made." And again, "He said what he had to say and yet not all he had +to say. Wild pictures, possible stories, tantalising and attractive +trains of thought, perspectives of adventure, crowded so continually +upon his mind that at the end there was a vast mass of them left +over, ideas that he literally had not the opportunity to develop, +tales that he literally had not the time to tell." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Clearing the Ground for Orthodoxy + + +G. K. CHESTERTON: A CRITICISM (published anonymously in 1908) was a +challenge thrown to the world of letters, for it demanded the +recognition of Chesterton as a force to be reckoned with in the +modern world. As its title implied, the book was by no means a +tribute of sheer admiration and agreement. Gilbert was rebuked for +that love of a pun or an effective phrase that sometimes led him into +indefensible positions. It was hotly asked of him that he should +abandon his unjust attitude toward Ibsen. He was accused of calling +himself a Liberal and being in fact a Tory. But even in differing +from him the book showed him as of real importance, not least in the +sketch given of his life and of the influences that had contributed +to the formation of his mind. It did too another thing: it clarified +his philosophical position for the world at large. For some time now +many had been demanding such a clarification. When G.K. attacked the +Utopia of Wells and of Shaw, both Wells and Shaw had been urgent in +their demands that he should play fair by setting forth his own +Utopia. When he attacked the fundamental philosophy of G. S. Street, +Mr. Street retorted that it would be time for him to worry about his +philosophy when G.K.'s had been unfolded. (G.K.'s retort to this was +_Orthodoxy_!) + +_G. K. Chesterton: a Criticism_--far the best book that has ever been +written about Chesterton--showed at last a mind that had really +grasped his philosophy and could even have outlined his Utopia. +Perhaps this was the less surprising as it ultimately turned out to +have been written by his brother Cecil. + +I do not know at what stage Cecil revealed his authorship, but I +remember that at first Frances told me only that they suspected Cecil +because it was from the angle of his opinions that the book +criticised many of Gilbert's. However, I was at that date only an +acquaintance and the truth may still have been a family secret. At +any rate Cecil it was, and it is small wonder if after all those +years of arguing he understood something of the man with whom he had +been measuring forces. But he did better than that--for he explained +him to others without ever having resort to these arguments, which +after all were more or less private property. He explained G.K.'s +general philosophy from the _Napoleon_, his ideas of cosmic good from +_The Wild Knight_ and _The Man Who Was Thursday_, which had just been +published that same year, 1908. + +In this last fantastic story the group of anarchists (distinguished +by being called after the days of the week) turn out, through a +series of incredible adventures to be, all save one, detectives in +disguise. The gigantic figure of Sunday before whom they all tremble +turns from the chief of the anarchists, chief of the destructive +forces, into--what? The sub-title, "A Nightmare," is needed, for +Sunday would seem to be some wild vision, seen in dreams, not merely +of forces of good, of sanity, of creation, but even of God Himself. + +When, almost twenty years later, _The Man Who Was Thursday_ was +adapted for the stage,* Chesterton said in an interview: + +[* By Ralph Neale and Mrs. Cecil Chesterton.] + + In an ordinary detective tale the investigator discovers that some + amiable-looking fellow who subscribes to all the charities, and is + fond of animals, has murdered his grandmother, or is a trigamist. I + thought it would be fun to make the tearing away of menacing masks + reveal benevolence. + + Associated with that merely fantastic notion was the one that there + is actually a lot of good to be discovered in unlikely places, and + that we who are fighting each other may be all fighting on the right + side. I think it is quite true that it is just as well we do not, + while the fight is on, know all about each other; the soul must be + solitary; or there would be no place for courage. + + A rather amusing thing was said by Father Knox on this point. He + said that he should have regarded the book as entirely pantheist and + as preaching that there was good in everything if it had not been for + the introduction of the one real anarchist and pessimist. But he was + prepared to wager that if the book survives for a hundred years--which + it won't--they will say that the real anarchist was put in afterwards + by the priests. + + But, though I was more foggy about ethical and theological matters + than I am now, I was quite clear on that issue; that there was a + final adversary, and that you might find a man resolutely turned away + from goodness. + + People have asked me whom I mean by Sunday. Well, I think, on the + whole, and allowing for the fact that he is a person in a tale--I + think you can take him to stand for Nature as distinguished from God. + Huge, boisterous, full of vitality, dancing with a hundred legs, + bright with the glare of the sun, and at first sight, somewhat + regardless of us and our desires. + + There is a phrase used at the end, spoken by Sunday: "Can ye drink + from the cup that I drink of?" which seems to mean that Sunday is + God. That is the only serious note in the book, the face of Sunday + changes, you tear off the mask of Nature and you find God. + +Monsignor Knox* has called _The Man Who Was Thursday_ "an +extraordinary book, written as if the publisher had commissioned him +to write something rather like the Pilgrim's Progress in the style of +the Pickwick Papers"--which explains perhaps why some reviewers +called it irreverent. The very wildness of it conveys a sense of +thoughts seething and straining in an effort to express the +inexpressible. Later in his more definitely philosophical books G.K. +could say calmly much that here he splashes "on a ten leagued canvas +with brushes of comet's hair"--with all the violent directness of a +vision. + +[* In the panegyric preached at Westminster Cathedral, June 27, 1936.] + +Of that vision his brother began the interpretation in his +challenging book. Reactions were interesting, for even those who +wanted most ardently to say that Cecil's book should not have been +written found that it was necessary to say it loudly and to say it at +great length. Their very violence showed their sense of Chesterton as +a peril even when they abused anyone who felt him to be a portent. It +was not the kind of contempt that is really bestowed on the +contemptible. + +The _Academy_ expended more than two columns saying; + + We propose to deal with the quack and leave his sycophants and + lickspittles to themselves . . . + + One skips him in his numerous corners of third and fourth rate + journals [e.g. _The Illustrated London News_, _The Bookman_, _Daily + News_!] and one avoids his books because they are always and + inevitably a bore. + +Lancelot Bathurst had also dared to write of G.K. in his Daily life +as a journalist, so the article goes on: + + Let us kneel with the Hon. Lancelot at his greasy burgundy-stained + shrine, what time the jingling hansom waits us with its rolling + occupant and his sword-stick and his revolver and his pockets stacked + with penny dreadfuls. . . . + + The fact is we have in Mr. Chesterton the true product of the + deboshed hapenny press. . . . If the hapenny papers ceased to notice + him forthwith it seems to us more than probable that he would cease + at once to be of the highest importance in literary circles and the + Bishops and Members of Parliament who have honoured him with their + kind notice would be compelled to drop him. . . . + +Most of the reviews were very different from this one, which is +certainly great fun (although some few other reviewers suggested +that Gilbert himself wrote the _Criticism_). I have wondered whether +the _Academy_ notices of his own books, all much like this, were +written by a personal enemy or merely by one of the "jolly people" as +he often called them who were maddened by his views. + +For some years now Gilbert had been gathering in his mind the +material for _Orthodoxy_. Some of the ideas we have seen faintly +traced in the Notebook and _The Coloured Lands_, but they all grew to +maturity in the atmosphere of constant controversy. In a controversy +with the Rev. R. J. Campbell we see, for instance, his convictions +about the reality of sin shaping under our eyes. Discussing Modernism +in the _Nation_, he analyses the difference between the true +development of an idea and the mere changing from one idea to +another. Modernism claiming to be a development was actually an +abandonment of the Christian idea. + +For the Catholic, this is among the most interesting of his +controversies. In the course of it he refers to "the earlier works of +Newman and the literature of the Oxford Movement" to support his view +of the Anglican position. I have already said that Chesterton read +far more than was usually supposed, because he read so quickly and +with so little parade of learning, and it has been too lightly +assumed that the statement in _Orthodoxy_ that he avoided works of +Christian Apologetic meant that he had not read any of the great +Christian writers of the past. True, he was not then or at any time +reading books of Apologetic. He must, however, have been reading +something more life-giving, as we learn from a single hint. Asked to +draw up a Scheme of Reading for 1908 in _G.K.'s Weekly_, he suggests +Butler's _Analogy_, Coleridge's _Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit_, +Newman's _Apologia_, St. Augustine's _Confessions_ and the _Summa_ of +St. Thomas Aquinas. + +It was absurd, he said in this article, to suppose that the ancients +did not see our modern problems. The truth was that the great +ancients not only saw them, but saw through them. Butler had sketched +the "real line along which Christianity must ultimately be defended." +These great writers all remained modern, while the "New Theology" +takes one back to the time of crinolines. "I almost expect to see Mr. +R. J. Campbell in peg-top trousers, with very long side-whiskers." + +In this controversy, although not yet a Catholic, he showed the gulf +between the Modernist theory of development and the Newman doctrine, +with a clarity greater than any Catholic writer of the time. + + A man who is always going back and picking to pieces his own first + principles may be having an amusing time but he is not developing as + Newman understood development. Newman meant that if you wanted a tree + to grow you must plant it finally in some definite spot. It may be (I + do not know and I do not care) that Catholic Christianity is just now + passing through one of its numberless periods of undue repression and + silence. But I do know this, that when the great Powers break forth + again, the new epics and the new arts, they will break out on the + ancient and living tree. They cannot break out upon the little shrubs + that you are always pulling up by the roots to see if they are + growing. + +Against R. J. Campbell he showed in a lecture on "Christianity and +Social Reform" how belief in sin as well as in goodness was more +favourable to social reform than was the rather woolly optimism that +refused to recognize evil. "The nigger-driver will be delighted to +hear that God is immanent in him. . . . The sweater that . . . he has +not in any way become divided from the supreme perfection of the +universe." If the New Theology would not lead to social reform, the +social Utopia to which the philosophy of Wells and of Shaw was +pointing seemed to Chesterton not a heaven on earth to be desired, +but a kind of final hell to be avoided, since it banished all freedom +and human responsibility. Arguing with them was again highly +fruitful, and two subjects he chose for speeches are suggestive--"The +Terror of Tendencies" and "Shall We Abolish the Inevitable?" + +In the _New Age_ Shaw wrote about Belloc and Chesterton and so did +Wells, while Chesterton wrote about Wells and Shaw, till the +Philistines grew angry, called it self-advertisement and log-rolling +and urged that a Bill for the abolition of Shaw and Chesterton should +be introduced into Parliament. But G.K. had no need for advertisement +of himself or his ideas just then: he had a platform, he had an eager +audience. Every week he wrote in the _Illustrated London News_, +beginning in 1905 to do "Our Notebook" (this continued till his death +in 1936). He was still writing every Saturday in the _Daily News_. +Publishers were disputing for each of his books. Yet he rushed into +every religious controversy that was going on, because thereby he +could clarify and develop his ideas. + +The most important of all these was the controversy with Blatchford, +Editor of the _Clarion_, who had written a rationalist Credo, +entitled _God and My Neighbour_. In 1903-4, he had the generosity and +the wisdom to throw open the _Clarion_ to the freest possible +discussion of his views. The Christian attack was made by a group of +which Chesterton was the outstanding figure, and was afterwards +gathered into a paper volume called _The Doubts of Democracy_. + +One essay in this volume, written in 1903, is of primary importance +in any study of the sources of _Orthodoxy_, for it gives a brilliant +outline of one of the main contentions of the book and shows even +better than _Orthodoxy_ itself what he meant by saying that he had +first learnt Christianity from its opponents. It is clear that by now +he believed in the Divinity of Christ. The pamphlet itself has fallen +into oblivion and Chesterton's share of it was only three short +essays. I think it well to quote a good deal from the first of these, +because in it he has put in concentrated form and with different +illustrations what he developed five years later. There is nothing +more packed with thought in the whole of his writings than these +essays. + + The first of all the difficulties that I have in controverting Mr. + Blatchford is simply this, that I shall be very largely going over + his own ground. My favourite text-book of theology is _God and My + Neighbour_, but I cannot repeat it in detail. If I gave each of my + reasons for being a Christian, a vast number of them would be Mr. + Blatchford's reasons for not being one. + + For instance, Mr. Blatchford and his school point out that there + are many myths parallel to the Christian story; that there were Pagan + Christs, and Red Indian Incarnations, and Patagonian Crucifixions, + for all I know or care. But does not Mr. Blatchford see the other + side of the fact? If the Christian God really made the human race, + would not the human race tend to rumours and perversions of the + Christian God? If the centre of our life is a certain fact, would not + people far from the centre have a muddled version of that fact? If we + are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is it odd that + Patagonians should dream of a Son of God? + + The Blatchfordian position really amounts to this--that because a + certain thing has impressed millions of different people as likely or + necessary, therefore it cannot be true. And then this bashful being, + veiling his own talents, convicts the wretched G.K.C. of paradox . . . + + The story of a Christ is very common in legend and literature. So + is the story of two lovers parted by Fate. So is the story of two + friends killing each other for a woman. But will it seriously be + maintained that, because these two stories are common as legends, + therefore no two friends were ever separated by love or no two lovers + by circumstances? It is tolerably plain, surely, that these two + stories are common because the situation is an intensely probable and + human one, because our nature is so built as to make them almost + inevitable . . . + + Thus, in this first instance, when learned sceptics come to me and + say, "Are you aware that the Kaffirs have a sort of Incarnation?" I + should reply: "Speaking as an unlearned person, I don't know. But + speaking as a Christian, I should be very much astonished if they + hadn't." + + Take a second instance. The Secularist says that Christianity has + been a gloomy and ascetic thing, and points to the procession of + austere or ferocious saints who have given up home and happiness and + macerated health and sex. But it never seems to occur to him that the + very oddity and completeness of these men's surrender make it look + very much as if there were really something actual and solid in the + thing for which they sold themselves. They gave up all pleasures for + one pleasure of spiritual ecstasy. They may have been mad; but it + looks as if there really were such a pleasure. They gave up all human + experiences for the sake of one superhuman experience. They may have + been wicked, but it looks as if there were such an experience. + + It is perfectly tenable that this experience is as dangerous and + selfish a thing as drink. A man who goes ragged and homeless in order + to see visions may be as repellant and immoral as a man who goes + ragged and homeless in order to drink brandy. That is a quite + reasonable position. But what is manifestly not a reasonable + position, what would be, in fact, not far from being an insane + position, would be to say that the raggedness of the man, and the + stupefied degradation of the man, proved that there was no such thing + as brandy. That is precisely what the Secularist tries to say. He + tries to prove that there is no such thing as supernatural experience + by pointing at the people who have given up everything for it. He + tries to prove that there is no such thing by proving that there are + people who live on nothing else. + + Again I may submissively ask: "Whose is the Paradox?" . . . + + Take a third instance. The Secularist says that Christianity + produced tumult and cruelty. He seems to suppose that this proves it + to be bad. But it might prove it to be very good. For men commit + crimes not only for bad things, far more often for good things. For + no bad things can be desired quite so passionately and persistently + as good things can be desired, and only very exceptional men desire + very bad and unnatural things. + + Most crime is committed because, owing to some peculiar + complication, very beautiful or necessary things are in some + danger . . . + + . . . And when something is set before mankind that is not only + enormously valuable, but also quite new, the sudden vision, the + chance of winning it, the chance of losing it, drive them mad. It has + the same effect in the moral world that the finding of gold has in + the economic world. It upsets values, and creates a kind of cruel + rush. + + We need not go far for instances quite apart from the instances of + religion. When the modern doctrines of brotherhood and liberality + were preached in France in the eighteenth century the time was ripe + for them, the educated classes everywhere had been growing towards + them, the world to a very considerable extent welcomed them. And yet + all that preparation and openness were unable to prevent the burst of + anger and agony which greets anything good. And if the slow and + polite preaching of rational fraternity in a rational age ended in + the massacres of September, what an _a fortiori_ is here! What would + be likely to be the effect of the sudden dropping into a dreadfully + evil century of a dreadfully perfect truth? What would happen if a + world baser than the world of Sade were confronted with a gospel + purer than the gospel of Rousseau? + + The mere flinging of the polished pebble of Republican idealism + into the artificial lake of eighteenth century Europe produced a + splash that seemed to splash the heavens, and a storm that drowned + ten thousand men. What would happen if a star from heaven really fell + into the slimy and bloody pool of a hopeless and decaying humanity? + Men swept a city with the guillotine, a continent with a sabre, + because Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were too precious to be + lost. How if Christianity was yet more maddening because it was yet + more precious? + + But why should we labour the point when One who knew human nature + as it can really be learnt, from fishermen and women and natural + people, saw from his quiet village the track of this truth across + history, and, in saying that He came to bring not peace but a sword, + set up eternally His colossal realism against the eternal + sentimentality of the Secularist? + + Thus, then, in the third instance, when the learned sceptic says: + "Christianity produced wars and persecutions," we shall reply: + "Naturally." + + And, lastly, let me take an example which leads me on directly to + the general matter I wish to discuss for the remaining space of the + articles at my command. The Secularist constantly points out that the + Hebrew and Christian religions began as local things; that their god + was a tribal god; that they gave him material form, and attached him + to particular places. + + This is an excellent example of one of the things that if I were + conducting a detailed campaign I should use as an argument for the + validity of Biblical experience. For if there really are some other + and higher beings than ourselves, and if they in some strange way, at + some emotional crisis, really revealed themselves to rude poets or + dreamers in very simple times, that these rude people should regard + the revelation as local, and connect it with the particular hill or + river where it happened, seems to me exactly what any reasonable + human being would expect. It has a far more credible look than if + they had talked cosmic philosophy from the beginning. If they had, I + should have suspected "priestcraft" and forgeries and third-century + Gnosticism. + + If there be such a being as God, and He can speak to a child, and + if God spoke to a child in the garden, the child would, of course, + say that God lived in the garden. I should not think it any less + likely to be true for that. If the child said: "God is everywhere; an + impalpable essence pervading and supporting all constituents of the + Cosmos alike"--if, I say, the infant addressed me in the above terms, + I should think he was much more likely to have been with the + governess than with God. + + So if Moses had said God was an Infinite Energy, I should be + certain he had seen nothing extraordinary. As he said He was a + Burning Bush, I think it very likely that he did see something + extraordinary. For whatever be the Divine Secret, and whether or no + it has (as all people have believed) sometimes broken bounds and + surged into our world, at least it lies on the side furthest away + from pedants and their definitions, and nearest to the silver souls + of quiet people, to the beauty of bushes, and the love of one's + native place. + + Thus, then, in our last instance (out of hundreds that might be + taken), we conclude in the same way. When the learned sceptic says: + "The visions of the Old Testament were local, and rustic, and + grotesque," we shall answer: "Of course. They were genuine." + + Thus, as I said at the beginning, I find myself, to start with, + face to face with the difficulty that to mention the reasons that I + have for believing in Christianity is, in very many cases, simply to + repeat those arguments which Mr. Blatchford, in some strange way, + seems to regard as arguments against it. His book is really rich and + powerful. He has undoubtedly set up these four great guns of which I + have spoken. I have nothing to say against the size and ammunition of + the guns. I only say that by some strange accident of arrangement he + has set up those four pieces of artillery pointing at himself. If I + were not so humane, I should say: "Gentlemen of the Secularist Guard, + fire first." + +He goes on in the next essay to talk of the positive arguments for +Christianity, of "this religious philosophy which was, and will be +again, the study of the highest intellects and the foundation of the +strongest nations, but which our little civilisation has for a while +forgotten." Very briefly he then deals with Determinism and Freewill, +the need for the Supernatural and the question of the Fall. Dealing +with the Fall he uses one of his most brilliant illustrations. We +speak, he says, of a manly man, but not of a whaley whale. "If you +wanted to dissuade a man from drinking his tenth whisky, you would +slap him on the back and say, 'Be a man.' No one who wished to +dissuade a crocodile from eating his tenth explorer would slap it on +the back and say, 'be a crocodile.' For we have no notion of a +perfect crocodile; no allegory of a whale expelled from his Whaley +Eden." + +Continuing the swift sketch of some elements of Christian theology, +Chesterton next deals with Miracles. While the development in +_Orthodoxy_ makes this section look very slight, there are passages +that make one realize the mental wealth of a man who could afford to +leave them behind and rush on. Blatchford had said that no English +judge would accept the evidence for the resurrection and G.K. answers +that possibly Christians have not all got "such an extravagant +reverence for English judges as is felt by Mr. Blatchford himself. +The experiences of the Founder of Christianity have perhaps left us +in a vague doubt of the infallibility of Courts of Law." + +In reference to the many rationalists whose refusal to accept any +miracle is based on the fact that "Experience is against it," he +says: "There was a great Irish Rationalist of this school who when he +was told that a witness had seen him commit a murder said that he +could bring a hundred witnesses who had not seen him commit it." + +The final essay on "The Eternal Heroism of the Slums" has two main +points. It begins with an acknowledgment of the crimes of Christians, +only pointing out that while Mr. Blatchford outlaws the Church for +this reason, he is prepared to invoke the State whose crimes are far +worse. But the most vigorous part of the essay is a furious attack on +determinism. Blatchford apparently held that bad surroundings +inevitably produced bad men. Chesterton had seen the heroism of the +poor in the most evil surroundings and was furious at "this +association of vice with poverty, the vilest and the oldest and the +dirtiest of all the stories that insolence has ever flung against the +poor." Men can and do lead heroic lives in the worst of circumstances +because there is in humanity a power of responsibility, there is +freewill. Blatchford, in the name of humanity, is attacking the +greatest of human attributes. + + More numerous than can be counted, in all the wars and persecutions + of the world, men have looked out of their little grated windows and + said, "at least my thoughts are free." "No, No," says the face of Mr. + Blatchford, suddenly appearing at the window, "your thoughts are the + inevitable result of heredity and environment. Your thoughts are as + material as your dungeons. Your thoughts are as mechanical as the + guillotine." So pants this strange comforter, from cell to cell. + + I suppose Mr. Blatchford would say that in his Utopia nobody would + be in prison. What do I care whether I am in prison or no, if I have + to drag chains everywhere. A man in his Utopia may have, for all I + know, free food, free meadows, his own estate, his own palace. What + does it matter? he may not have his own soul. + +An architect once discoursed to me on the need of humility in face of +the material; the stone and marble of his building. Thus Chesterton +was humble before the reality he was seeking to interpret. Pride, he +once defined as "the falsification of fact by the introduction of +self." To learn, a man must "subtract himself from the study of any +solid and objective thing." This humility he had in a high degree and +also that rarer humility which saw his friends and his opponents +alike as his intellectual equals. "Almost anybody," Monsignor Knox +once said, "was an ordinary person compared with him." But this was +an idea that certainly never occurred to him. + +The philosophy shaping into _Orthodoxy_ was stimulated by newspaper +controversy, and also by the talk in which Gilbert always delighted. +As I have noted he loved to listen and he was a little slow in +getting off the mark with his own contribution. Many years later an +American interviewer described him, when he did get going, as +answering questions in brief essays. Frank Swinnerton has admirably +described the manner of speech so well remembered by his friends: + + His speech is prefaced and accompanied by a curious sort of + humming, such as one may hear when glee singers give each other the + note before starting to sing. He pronounces the word "I" (without + egotism) as if it were "Ayee," and drawls, not in the highly + gentlemanly manner which Americans believe to be the English accent, + and which many English call the Oxford accent, but in a manner + peculiar to himself, either attractive or the reverse according to + one's taste (to me attractive).* + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 94.] + +Even more attractive to most of us was his fashion of making us feel +that we had contributed something very worthwhile. He would take +something one had said and develop it till it shone and glowed, not +from its own worth but from what he had made of it. Almost anything +could thus become a starting point for a train of his best thought. +And the style disliked by some in his writings was so completely the +man himself that it was the same in conversation as in his books. He +would approach a topic from every side throwing light on those +contradictory elements that made a paradox. He himself had what he +attributes to St. Thomas--"that instantaneous presence of mind which +alone really deserves the name of wit." Asked once the traditional +question what single book he would choose if cast on a desert island, +he replied Thomas's _Guide to Practical Shipbuilding_. + +In talk, as in his books, G.K. loved to play upon words, and +sometimes of course this was merely a matter of words and the puns +were bad ones. Once, for instance, after translating the French +phrase for playing truant as "he goes to the bushy school--or the +school among the bushes," he adds "not lightly to be confounded with +the Art School at Bushey." This is indefensible, but rare. +Christopher Morley has noted how "his play upon words often led to a +genuine play upon thoughts. . . . One of Chesterton's best +pleasantries was his remark on the so-called Emancipation of Women. +'Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry _We will +not be dictated to:_ and proceeded to become stenographers.'" He +complained in a review of a novel "Every modern man is an atlas +carrying the world; and we are introduced to a new cosmos with every +new character. . . . Each man has to be introduced accompanied by his +cosmos, like a jealous wife or on the principle of 'love me love my +dogma.'" + +Each of Chesterton's readers can think of a hundred instances of this +inspired fooling: many have been given in this book and many will yet +be given. But the thing went far deeper than fooling: it has been +compared by Mr. Belloc to the gospel parables as a method of teaching +and of illumination. "He made men see what they had not seen before. +He made them _know_. He was an architect of certitude, whenever he +practiced the art in which he excelled." + +Belloc's analysis of this special element in Chesterton's style, +alike written and spoken, is of first rate importance to an +understanding of the man whose mind at this date was still rapidly +developing while his method of expression had become what it remained +to the end of his life. + + His unique, his capital, genius for illustration by parallel, by + example, is his peculiar mark. The word "peculiar" is here the + operative word. . . . No one whatsoever that I can recall in the + whole course of English letters had his amazing--I would almost say + superhuman--capacity for parallelism. + + Now parallelism is a gift or method of vast effect in the + conveyance of truth. + + Parallelism consists in the illustration of some unperceived truth + by its exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known + and perceived . . . + + Whenever Chesterton begins a sentence with, "It is as though" (in + exploding a false bit of reasoning), you may expect a stroke of + parallelism as vivid as a lightning flash. + + . . . Always, in whatever manner he launched the parallelism, he + produced the shock of illumination. He _taught_. + + Parallelism was so native to his mind; it was so naturally a fruit + of his mental character that he had difficulty in understanding why + others did not use it with the same lavish facility as himself. + + I can speak here with experience, for in these conversations with + him or listening to his conversation with others I was always + astonished at an ability in illustration which I not only have never + seen equalled, but cannot remember to have seen attempted. He never + sought such things; they poured out from him as easily as though they + were not the hard forged products of intense vision, but spontaneous + remarks.* + +[* _On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters_, pp. 36-41.] + +To return to the Blatchford controversy: a final point of interest is +a psychological one. G.K. admits his difficulty in using in his +arguments the reverent solemnity of the Agnostic. He realizes that he +is thought flippant because he is amusing on a subject where he is +more certain than "of the existence of the moon. . . . Christianity +is itself so jolly a thing that it fills the possessor of it with a +certain silly exuberance, which sad and high-minded Rationalists +might reasonably mistake for mere buffoonery." But if this is his own +psychology he faces too the special difficulty of theirs--the main +and towering barrier that he wished but hardly hoped to surmount. He +was the first person, I think, to see that Free Thought was no longer +a young movement, but old and even fossilized. It had formed minds +which were now too set to be altered. It had its own dogmas and its +own most rigid orthodoxy. "You are armed to the teeth," he told the +readers of the _Clarion_, "and buttoned up to the chin with the great +agnostic Orthodoxy, perhaps the most placid and perfect of all the +orthodoxies of men. . . . I approach you with the reverence and the +courage due to a bench of bishops." + +The _Clarion_ controversy was, as we have seen, in 1903 and +1904, when Chesterton was approaching thirty. Others of those +I have mentioned came later. But I don't think any or even all +of them fully explain the depth and richness of _Orthodoxy_. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Orthodoxy + + +_Philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. . . . A cosmic +philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is +constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private +religion than he can possess a private sun and moon_. + +_Introduction to the Book of Job_. + +BECAUSE _Orthodoxy_ is supremely Chesterton's own history of his mind +more must be said of it than of his other published works. For "This +book is the life of a man. And a man is his mind." The Notebook shows +him thinking and feeling in his youth exactly on the lines that he +recalls--but they were only lines--in fact an outline. The richness +of life was needed, the richness of thought, to turn the outline into +the masterpiece. No man, not even Chesterton, could have written +_Orthodoxy_ at the age of twenty. It was sufficiently remarkable that +he should have written it at thirty-five: but only a man who had been +thinking along those lines at twenty and much earlier could have +written it at all. For the book is as he says "a sort of slovenly +autobiography." It is not so much an argument for Orthodoxy as the +story of how one man discovered Orthodoxy as the only answer to the +riddle of the universe. + +In an interview, given shortly after its publication, Gilbert told of +a temptation that had once been his and which he had overcome almost +before he realized he had been tempted. That temptation was to become +a prophet like all the men in _Heretics_, by emphasizing one aspect of +truth and ignoring the others. To do this would, he knew, bring him a +great crowd of disciples. He had a vision--which constantly grew +wider and deeper--of the many-sided unity of Truth, but he saw that +all the prophets of the age, from Walt Whitman and Schopenhauer to +Wells and Shaw, had become so by taking one side of truth and making +it all of truth. It is so much easier to see and magnify a part than +laboriously to strive to embrace the whole: + + . . . a sage feels too small for life, + And a fool too large for it. + +Not that he condemned as fools the able men of his generation. For +Wells he had a great esteem, for Shaw a greater. Whitman he had in +his youth almost idolized. But increasingly he recognized even +Whitman as representing an idea that was too narrow because it was +only an aspect. There was not room in Whitman's philosophy for some +of the facts he had already discovered and he felt he had not yet +completed his journey. He must not, for the sake of being a prophet +and of having a following, sacrifice--I will not say a truth already +found, but a truth that might still be lurking somewhere. He could +not be the architect of his own intellectual universe any more than +he had been the creator of sun, moon and earth. "God and humanity +made it," he said of the philosophy he discovered, "and it made me." + +He had begun in boyhood, as we have seen, by realizing that the world +as depicted in fairy tales was saner and more sensible than the world +as seen by the intellectuals of his own day. These men had lost the +sense of life's value. They spoke of the world as a vast place +governed by iron laws of necessity. Chesterton felt in it the +presence of will, while the mere thought of vastness was to him about +as cheerful a conception as that of a jail that should with its cold +empty passages cover half the county. "These expanders of the +universe had nothing to show us except more and more infinite +corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that was +divine." + + These people professed that the universe was one coherent thing; + but they were not fond of the universe. But I was frightfully fond of + the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did + so; and it never seemed to mind. Actually and in truth I did feel + that these dim dogmas of vitality were better expressed by calling + the world small than by calling it large. For about infinity there + was a sort of carelessness which was the reverse of the fierce and + pious care which I felt touching the pricelessness and the peril of + life. They showed only a dreary waste; but I felt a sort of sacred + thrift. For economy is far more romantic than extravagance. To them + stars were an unending income of halfpence; but I felt about the + golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one + sovereign and one shilling. + + These subconscious convictions are best hit off by the colour and + tone of certain tales. Thus I have said that stories of magic alone + can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of + eccentric privilege. I may express this other feeling of cosmic + cosiness by allusion to another book always read in boyhood, + "Robinson Crusoe," which I read about this time, and which owes its + eternal vivacity to the fact that it celebrates the poetry of limits, + nay, even the wild romance of prudence. Crusoe is a man on a small + rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing + in the book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The + greatest of poems is an inventory. . . + + I really felt (the fancy may seem foolish) as if all the order and + number of things were the romantic remnant of Crusoe's ship. That + there are two sexes and one sun, was like the fact that there were + two guns and one axe. It was poignantly urgent that none should be + lost; but somehow, it was rather fun that none could be added. The + trees and the planets seemed like things saved from the wreck: and + when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked + in the confusion. I felt economical about the stars as if they were + sapphires (they are called so in Milton's Eden): I hoarded the hills. + For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to + talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is + literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: + for there cannot be another one.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter IV, pp. 112-5.] + +A fragment of an essay on Hans Anderson that cannot be later than the +age of seventeen shows Gilbert trying to shape part of what he calls +here, "The Ethics of Elfland," but a large part was, as he says, +"subconscious." In this chapter he sums up the results of musings +about the universe begun so long ago--small wonder that he had seemed +to sleep over his lessons while he was seeing these visions and +dreaming these dreams which after every effort to tell them he still +knows remains half untold: + + . . . the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my + ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. + These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt + before I could think; that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I + will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that + this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a + supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural + explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to + satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I + have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel + as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to + mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of + art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this + purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as + dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of + humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by + not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to + whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my + mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a + remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man + had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods; he had saved them from + a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel + it. And all the time I had not even thought of Christian theology.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 155-6.] + +This theology came with the answers to all the tremendous questions +asked by life. Here the convert has one great advantage over the +Catholic brought up in the Faith. Most of us hear the answers before +we have asked the questions: hence intellectually we lack what G.K. +calls "the soils for the seeds of doctrine." It is nearly impossible +to understand an answer to a question you have not formulated. And +without the sense of urgency that an insistent question brings, many +people do not even try. All the years of his boyhood and early +manhood Chesterton was facing the fundamental questions and hammering +out his answers. At first he had no thought of Christianity as even a +possible answer. Growing up in a world called Christian, he fancied +it a philosophy that had been tried and found wanting. It was only as +he realized that the answers he was finding for himself always fitted +into, were always confirmed by, the Christian view of things that he +began to turn towards it. He sees a good deal of humour in the way he +strained his voice in a painfully juvenile attempt to utter his new +truths, only to find that they were not his and were not new, but +were part of an eternal philosophy. + +In the chapter called "The Flag of the World" he tells of the moment +when he discovered the confirmation and reinforcing of his own +speculations by the Christian theology. The point at which this came +concerned his feelings about the men of his youth who labelled +themselves Optimist and Pessimist. Both, he felt, were wrong. It must +be possible at once to love and to hate the world, to love it more +than enough to get on with it, to hate it enough to get it on. And +the Church solved this difficulty by her doctrine of creation and of +Original Sin. "God had written not so much a poem, but rather a play; +a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left +to human actors and stage-managers who had since made a great mess of +it." + +As to that mess the Christian could be as pessimist as he liked, as +to the original design he must be optimist, for it was his work to +restore it. "St. George could still fight the dragon . . . if he were +as big as the world he could yet be killed in the name of the world." + + And then followed an experience impossible to describe. It was as + if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and + unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent + connection--the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this + hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of + loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world + without being worldly. I found this projecting feature of Christian + theology, like a sort of hard spike, the dogmatic insistence that God + was personal, and had made a world separate from Himself. The spike + of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world--it had evidently + been meant to go there--and then the strange thing began to happen. + When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one + after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie + exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery + falling into its place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one + part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as + clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered + by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one + who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. + And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and + turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back + to the first fields of my childhood. All those blind fancies of + boyhood which in the fourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace on + the darkness, became suddenly transparent and sane. I was right when + I felt that I would almost rather say that grass was the wrong colour + than say that it must by necessity have been that colour: it might + verily have been any other. My sense that happiness hung on the crazy + thread of a condition did mean something when all was said: it meant + the whole doctrine of the Fall. Even those dim and shapeless monsters + of notions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend, + stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides of the + creed. The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and + cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work + of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars + might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my haunting instinct + that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be + guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that had been the + wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to + Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a + golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter V, pp. 142-4.] + +In a chapter called "The Paradoxes of Christianity," the richness of +his mind is most manifest; and in that chapter can best be seen what +Mr. Belloc meant when he told me Chesterton's style reminded him of +St. Augustine's. Talking over with an old schoolfellow of his the +list of books he had, as we have seen, drawn up for _T.P.'s Weekly_, +I discovered deep doubt as to whether Gilbert would really have read +these books, as most of us understand reading, combined with a +conviction that he would have got out of them at a glance more than +most of us by prolonged study. I have certainly never known anyone +his equal at what the schoolboy calls "degutting" a book. He did not +seem to study an author, yet he certainly knew him. + +But it remained that his own mind, reflecting and experiencing, made +of his own life his greatest storehouse, so that in all this book +there was, as my father pointed out in the _Dublin Review_ at the +time, an intensely original new light cast on the eternal philosophy +about which so much had already been written. The discovery specially +needed, perhaps, for his own age was that Christianity represented a +new balance that constituted a liberation. The ancient Greek or +Roman had aimed at equilibrium by enforcing moderation and getting +rid of extremes. Christianity "made moderation out of the still crash +of two impetuous emotions." It "got over the difficulty of combining +furious opposites by keeping them both, and keeping them both +furious." "The more I considered Christianity, the more I felt +that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of +that order was to give room for good things to run wild." Thus +inside Christianity the pacifist could become a monk, and the +warrior a Crusader, St. Francis could praise good more loudly +than Walt Whitman, and St. Jerome denounce evil more darkly than +Schopenhauer--but both emotions must be kept in their place. I +remember how George Wyndham laughed as he recited to us the paragraph +where this idea reached its climax. + + And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and + justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was + fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the + lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is + constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when + the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that + is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is + simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the + lamb. The real problem is--can the lion lie down with the lamb and + still retain his royal ferocity? _That_ is the problem the Church + attempted; _that_ is the miracle she achieved.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter VI, pp. 178-9.] + +All this applied not only to the release of the emotions, the +development of all the elements that go to make up humanity, but even +more to the truths of Revelation. A heresy always means lopping off a +part of the truth and, therefore, ultimately a loss of liberty. +Orthodoxy, in keeping the whole truth, safeguarded freedom and +prevented any one of the great and devouring ideas she was teaching +from swallowing any other truth. This was the justification of +councils, of definitions, even of persecutions and wars of religion: +that they had stood for the defence of reason as well as of faith. +They had stood to prevent the suicide of thought which must result if +the exciting but difficult balance were lost that had replaced the +classical moderation. + + The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some + things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the + irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and + some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep + the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, + of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong + enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember + that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a + lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of + a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of + prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to + turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. . . . A sentence + phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the + best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the + dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter + eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order + that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be + careful, if only that the world might be careless. + + This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into + a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, + and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as + orthodoxy. It was sanity; and to be sane is more dramatic than to be + mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, + seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude + having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The + Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet + it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one + idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so as + exactly to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge + bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make + Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid + an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox + Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the + orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to + have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been + easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the + bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is + easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; + the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a + modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of + those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after + fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of + Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple + to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one + at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from + Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and + tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; + and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the + ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth + reeling but erect.* + +[* _Orthodoxy_, Chapter VI, pp. 182-5.] + +No quotation can adequately convey the wealth of thought in the book. +Yet amazingly, the _Times_ reviewer rebuked G.K. for substituting +emotion for intellect, partly on the strength of a sentence in the +chapter called "The Maniac." "The madman is the man who has lost +everything except his reason." The reviews, when one reads them as a +whole, exactly confirm what Wilfrid Ward said in the _Dublin Review:_ +that whereas he had regarded _Orthodoxy_ as a triumphant vindication +of his own view that G.K. was a really profound thinker, he found to +his amazement that those who had thought him superficial, hailed it +as a proof of theirs. + +Obviously with a man so much concerned with ultimates the place +accorded him in letters will depend upon whether one agrees or +disagrees with his conclusions. In a country that is not Catholic +this consideration must affect the standing of any Catholic thinker. +Thus Newman was considered by Carlyle to have "the brain of a +moderate sized rabbit," yet by others his is counted the greatest +mind of the century. Similarly Arnold Bennett could credit Chesterton +with only a second-class intellectual apparatus--because he was a +dogmatist. To this Chesterton replied (in _Fancies versus Facts_): +"In truth there are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas +and know it and those who accept dogmas and don't know it. My only +advantage over the gifted novelist lies in my belonging to the former +class." If one grasps the Catholic view of dogma the answer is +satisfying; if not the objector is left with his original +objection--as against Chesterton, as against Newman. And Chesterton +had the extra disadvantage of being a journalist famous for his jokes +now moving in Newman's unquestioned field of philosophy and theology. +It was in part the difficulty of convincing a man against his will. +These critics, as Wilfrid Ward pointed out, read superficially and +looked only at the fooling, the fantastic puns and comparisons, +ignoring the underlying deep seriousness and lines of thought that +made him, as it then seemed boldly, rank Chesterton with such writers +as Butler, Coleridge and Newman. Taking as his text the saying, +"Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth," +Wilfrid Ward called his article, "Mr. Chesterton among the Prophets." + +He showed especially the curious confusion made in such comments as +the one I have quoted from the _Times_, and made clearer what +Chesterton was really saying by a comparison with the "illative +sense" of Cardinal Newman. It is the usual difficulty of trying to +express a partly new idea. Newman had coined an expression, but it +did not express all he meant, still less all that Chesterton meant. +Yet it was difficult to use the word "reason" in this particular +discussion, without giving to it two different meanings. For in two +chapters, "The Maniac" and "The Suicide of Thought," Chesterton was +concerned to show that Authority was needed for the defence of reason +(in the larger sense) against its own power of self-destruction. Yet +the maniac commits this suicide by an excessive use of reason (in the +narrower sense). "He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by +charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more +logical for losing certain sane affections. . . . He is in the clean +and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful +point." + +To Chesterton it seemed that most of the modern religions and +philosophies were like the argument by which a madman suffering from +persecution mania proves that he is in a world of enemies: it is +complete, it is unanswerable, yet it is false. The madman's mind +"moves in a perfect but narrow circle. . . . The insane explanation +is quite as complete as the sane one, only it is not so large. . . . +There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing +as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern + religions." Philosophies such as Materialism, Idealism, Monism, all +have in their explanations of the universe this quality of the +madman's argument of "covering everything and leaving everything +out." The Materialist, like the Madman is "unconscious of the alien +energies and the large indifference of the earth; he is not thinking +of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers +or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large and +the cosmos is so very small." + + +People sometimes say, "life is larger than logic," when they want to +dismiss logic, but that was not Chesterton's way. He wanted logic, he +needed logic, as part of the abundance of the mind's life, as part of +a much larger whole. What was the word--we are looking for it +still--for a use of the mind that included all these things; logic +and imagination, mysticism and ecstasy and poetry and joy; a use of +the mind that could embrace the universe and reach upwards to God +without losing its balance. The mind must work in time, yet it can +reach out into Eternity: it is conditioned by space but it can +glimpse infinity. The modern world had imprisoned the mind. Far more +than the body it needed great open spaces. And Chesterton, breaking +violently out of prison, looked around and saw how the Church had +given health to the mind by giving it space to move in and great +ideas to move among. Chesterton, the poet, saw too that man is a poet +and must therefore, "get his head into the heavens." He needs +mysticism and among Her great ideas, the Church gives him mysteries. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Bernard Shaw + +_This chapter was read by G.B.S. His remarks are printed in +footnotes. [A facsimile of the] one page altered substantially by him +is [omitted in this plain-text electronic edition]_. + +WHEN ANYONE IN the early years of the century made a list of the +English writers most in the public eye, such a list always included +the names of Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton. But a good many +people in writing down these names did so with unconcealed irritation +and I think it is important at this stage to see why. + +These men were constantly arguing with each other; but the literary +public felt all the same that they represented something in common, +and the literary public was by no means sure that it liked that +something. It could not quite resist Bernard Shaw's plays; it loved +Chesterton whenever it could rebuke him affectionately for paradox +and levity. What that public succumbed to in these men was their art: +it was by no means so certain that it liked their meaning. And so the +literary public elected to say that Shaw and Chesterton were having a +cheap success by standing on their heads and declaring that black was +white. The audience watched a Shaw v. Chesterton debate as a sham +fight or a display of fireworks, as indeed it always partly was; for +each of them would have died rather than really hurt the other. But +Shaw and Chesterton were operating on their minds all the time. They +were allowed to sit in the stalls and applaud. But they were +themselves being challenged; and that spoilt their comfort. + +Chesterton in his _Autobiography_ complains of the falsity of most of +the pictures of England during the Victorian era. The languishing, +fainting females, who were in fact far stronger-minded than their +grand-daughters today, the tyrannical pious fathers, the dull +conventional lives: it all rings false to anyone who grew up in an +average Victorian middle-class home and was happy enough there. There +was, however, one thing fundamentally wrong in such homes; and it was +on this fundamental sin that he agreed with Shaw in waging a +relentless war. + +The middle classes of England were thoroughly and smugly satisfied +with social conditions that were intolerable for the great mass of +their fellow countrymen. They had erected between the classes +artificial barriers and now did not even look over the top of them. I +remember how when my mother started a settlement in South London the +head worker told us she often saw women groping in the dirt under the +fish barrows for the heads and tails of fishes to boil for their +children. The settlement began to give the children dinners of +dumplings or rice pudding and treacle, and many well-to-do friends +would give my mother a pound or so to help this work. But the +suggestion that government should intervene was Socialism: the idea +that here was a symptom of a widespread evil, was scouted utterly. +People might have learnt much from their own servants of how the rest +of humanity were living, but while, said Chesterton, they laughed at +the idea of the mediaeval baron whose vassals ate below the salt, +their own vassals ate and lived below the floor. At no time in the +Christian past had there been such a deep and wide cleavage in +humanity. + +The first thing that G.K.C. and G.B.S., Wells too, and Belloc, were +all agreed upon was that the upper and middle classes of England must +be reminded, if need were by a series of earthquakes, that they were +living in an unreal world. They had forgotten the human race to which +they belonged. They, a tiny section, spoke of the mass of mankind as +"the poor" or "the lower orders" almost as they might speak of the +beasts of the forest, as beings of a different race. Chesterton had a +profound and noble respect for the poor: Shaw declared that they were +"useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished." But for both men, +the handful of quarrelsome cliques called the literary world was far +too small, because it was so tiny a section of the human race. + +Shaw and Chesterton had, in fact, discovered the social problem. +Today, whether people intend to do anything about it or not, it is +impossible to avoid knowing something about it. But at that date the +idea was general that all was as well as could be expected in an +imperfect world. The trades unionists were telling a different story, +but they could not hope to reach intellectually the classes they were +attacking. Here were men who could not be ignored, and I cannot but +think that it was sometimes the mere utterance of unwelcome truth in +brilliant speech that aroused the cry of "paradox." + + I hear many people [wrote Chesterton], complain that Bernard Shaw + deliberately mystifies them. I cannot imagine what they mean; it + seems to me that he deliberately insults them. His language, + especially on moral questions, is generally as straight and solid as + that of a bargee and far less ornate and symbolic than that of a + hansom-cabman. The prosperous English Philistine complains that Mr. + Shaw is making a fool of him. Whereas Mr. Shaw is not in the least + making a fool of him; Mr. Shaw is, with laborious lucidity, calling + him a fool. G.B.S. calls a landlord a thief; and the landlord, + instead of denying or resenting it, says, "Ah, that fellow hides his + meaning so cleverly that one can never make out what he means, it is + all so fine-spun and fantastical." G.B.S. calls a statesman a liar to + his face, and the statesman cries in a kind of ecstasy, "Ah, what + quaint, intricate and half-tangled trains of thought! Ah, what + elusive and many-coloured mysteries of half-meaning!" I think it is + always quite plain what Mr. Shaw means, even when he is joking, and + it generally means that the people he is talking to ought to howl + aloud for their sins. But the average representative of them + undoubtedly treats the Shavian meaning as tricky and complex, when it + is really direct and offensive. He always accuses Shaw of pulling his + leg, at the exact moment when Shaw is pulling his nose.* + +[* _George Bernard Shaw_, pp. 82-3.] + +Chesterton was, however, in agreement with the ordinary citizen and +in disagreement with Shaw as to much of Shaw's essential teaching. +And here we touch a matter so involved that even today it is hard to +disentangle it completely. I suppose it will always be possible for +two observers to look at human beings acting, to hear them talking, +and to arrive at two entirely different interpretations of what they +mean. This is certainly the case with any very recent period, and +perhaps especially with our own recent history. We have within living +memory ended a period and begun an exceedingly different period, and +we tend to judge the former by the light--or the darkness--of the +latter. The Victorian age, even in its extreme old age, was still +tacitly assuming and legally enforcing as axioms the Christian moral +system, especially in regard to marriage and all sex questions, and +the sacred nature of property. To read many disquisitions on that +period today one would suppose that no one living really believed in +these things: that humbug explained the first and greed the second. + +This is surely a false perspective. The age was an enormously +conventional one: these fundamental ideas had become fossilized and +meaningless for an increasing number of younger people. But when +Bernard Shaw called himself an atheist out of a kind of insane +generosity towards Bradlaugh (see his letter to G.K. later in this +chapter) or described all property as theft, it was a real moral +indignation that was roused in many minds. Real, but exceedingly +confused. It testified to the need of the ordinary man to live by a +creed that he need not question. Shaw and Chesterton were +philosophers, and philosophers love asking questions as well as +answering them. But the average man wants to live by his creed, not +question it, and the elder Victorians had still some kind of creed. + +There were many who believed in God. There were others who believed +that the Christian moral system must remain, because it had commended +itself to man's nature as the highest and best and was the true fruit +of evolutionary progress. There were certainly some who were angry +because they thought chaos must follow any tampering with the +existing social order. But if you take the mass of those who tried to +laugh Bernard Shaw aside and grew angry when they could not do so, +you find at the root of the anger an intense dislike of having any +part of a system questioned which was to them unquestionable, which +they had erected into a creed. They thought Shaw's ideas dangerous +and wanted to keep them from the young. They did not want anyone to +ask how a civilisation had laid its principles open to this brilliant +and effective siege. They hated Shaw's questions before they began to +hate his answers. And that is probably why so many linked Chesterton +with Shaw--he gave different answers, but he was asking many of the +same questions. He questioned everything as Shaw did--only he pushed +his questions further: they were deeper and more searching. Shaw +would not accept the old Scriptural orthodoxy; G.K. refused to accept +the new Agnostic orthodoxy; neither man would accept the orthodoxy of +the scientists; both were prepared to attack what Butler had called +"the science ridden, art ridden, culture ridden, afternoon-tea ridden +cliffs of old England." + +They attacked first by the mere process of asking questions; and the +world thus questioned grew uneasy and seemed to care curiously little +for the fact that the two questioners were answering their own +questions in an opposite fashion. Where Shaw said: "Give up +pretending you believe in God, for you don't," Chesterton said: +"Rediscover the reasons for believing or else our race is lost." +Where Shaw said: "Abolish private property which has produced this +ghastly poverty," Chesterton said: "Abolish ghastly poverty by +restoring property." + +And the audience said: "these two men in strange paradoxes seem to us +to be saying the same thing, if indeed they are saying anything at +all." Chesterton wrote later of a young man whose aunt "had +disinherited him for Socialism because of a lecture he had delivered +against that economic theory"; and I well remember how often after my +own energetic attempts to explain why a Distributist was not a +Socialist, I was met with a weary, "Well, it's just the same." It was +just the same question; it was an entirely different answer, but the +audience, annoyed by the question, never seemed to listen to the +answer. One man was saying: "Sweep away the old beliefs of humanity +and start fresh"; the other was saying: "Rediscover your reasons for +these profound beliefs, make them once more effective, for they are +of the very nature of man." + +Shaw and Chesterton were themselves deeply concerned about the +answers. Both sincere, both dealing with realities, they were +prepared to accept each other's sincerity and to fight the matter +out, if need were, endlessly. Being writers they conducted their +discussions in writing: being journalists they did so mainly in the +newspapers, to the delight or fury of other journalists. A jealous +few were enraged at what they called publicity hunting, but most +realised that it was not a private fight. Anyone might join in and a +good many did. + +Belloc was in the fight as early as Chesterton, and of course, on the +same side. G.B.S. who had invented "The Chesterbelloc" declared that +Chesterton felt obliged to embrace the dogmas of Catholicism lest +Belloc's soul should be damned. H. G. Wells agreed in the main with +Shaw: both were Fabians and both were ready with a Fabian Utopia for +humanity, which Belloc and Chesterton felt would be little better +than a prison. Cecil Chesterton, coming in at an angle of his own, +wrote some effective articles. He was a Fabian--actually an official +Fabian--but his outlook already embraced many of the Chesterbelloc +human and genial ideals, although he still ridiculed their Utopia of +the peasant state, small ownership and all that came later to be +called Distributism. Like the _Clarion_, the _New Age_ (itself a +Socialist paper) saw the wisdom of giving a platform to both sides, +and in this paper appeared the best articles that the controversy +produced. + +Meanwhile the private friendship between G.B.S. and G.K.C. was +growing apace. Very early on, Shaw had begun to urge G.K. to write a +play. G.K. was, perhaps, beginning to feel that newspaper controversy +did not give him space to say all he wanted about Shaw (or perhaps it +was merely that Messrs. Lane had persuaded him to promise them a book +on Shaw for a series they were producing!). Anyhow, in a letter of +1908, Shaw again urges the play and gives interesting information for +the book. + + Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. + 1st March 1908. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + What about that play? It is no use trying to answer me in The New + Age: the real answer to my article is the play. I have tried fair + means: The New Age article was the inauguration of an assault below + the belt. I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as + a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers + your laziness a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to + serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to + you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if + necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by + intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to + the British drama. You are played out as an essayist: your ardor is + soddened, your intellectual substance crumbled, by the attempt to + keep up the work of your twenties in your thirties. Another five + years of this; and you will be the apologist of every infamy that + wears a Liberal or Catholic mask. You, too, will speak of the + portraits of Vecelli and the Assumption of Allegri, and declare that + Democracy refuses to lackey-label these honest citizens as Titian and + Correggio. Even that colossal fragment of your ruined honesty that + still stupendously dismisses Beethoven as "some rubbish about a + piano" will give way to remarks about "a graceful second subject in + the relative minor." Nothing can save you now except a rebirth as a + dramatist. I have done my turn; and I now call on you to take yours + and do a man's work. + + It is my solemn belief that it was my Quintessence of Ibsenism that + rescued you and all your ungrateful generation from Materialism and + Rationalism.* You were all tired young atheists turning to Kipling + and Ruskinian Anglicanism whilst I, with the angel's wings beating in + my ears from Beethoven's 9th symphony (oh blasphemous Walker in + deafness), gave you in 1880 and 1881 two novels in which you had your + Rationalist-secularist hero immediately followed by my Beethovenian + hero. True, nobody read them; but was that my fault? They are read + now, it seems, mostly in pirated reprints, in spite of their + appalling puerility and classical perfection of style (you are right + as to my being a born pedant, like all great artists); and are at + least useful as documentary evidence that I was no more a materialist + when I wrote _Love Among the Artists_ at 24 than when I wrote + _Candida_ at 39. + +[* Cecil avowed this as far as he was concerned. G.B.S.] + + My appearances on the platform of the Hall of Science were three + in number. Once for a few minutes in a discussion, in opposition to + Bradlaugh, who was defending property against Socialism. Bradlaugh + died after that, though I do not claim to have killed him. The + Socialist League challenged him to debate with me at St. James's + Hall; but we could not or would not agree as to the proposition to be + debated, he insisting on my being bound by all the publications of + the Democratic Federation (to which I did not belong) and I refusing + to be bound by anything on earth or in heaven except the proposition + that Socialism would benefit the English people. And so the debate + never came off. + + Now in those days they were throwing Bradlaugh out of the House of + Commons with bodily violence; and all one could do was to call + oneself an atheist all over the place, which I accordingly did. At + the first public meeting of the Shelley Society at University + College, addressed by Stopford Brooke, I made my then famous (among + 100 people) declaration "I am a Socialist, an Atheist and a + Vegetarian" (ergo, a true Shelleyan) whereupon two ladies who had + been palpitating with enthusiasm for Shelley under the impression + that he was a devout Anglican, resigned on the spot. + + My second Hall of Science appearance was after the last of the + Bradlaugh-Hyndman debates at St. James's Hall, where the two + champions never touched the ostensible subject of their + difference--the Eight Hours Day--at all, but simply talked Socialism + or Anti-Socialism with a hearty dislike and contempt for one another. + G. V. Foote was then in his prime as the successor of Bradlaugh; and + as neither the Secularists nor the Socialists were satisfied with the + result of the debate, it was renewed for two nights at the Hall of + Science between me and Foote. A verbatim report was published for + sixpence and is now a treasure of collectors. Having the last word on + the second night, I had to make a handsome wind-up; and the + Secularists were much pleased by my declaring that I was altogether + on Foote's side in his struggle with the established religion of the + country. + + When Bradlaugh died, the Secularists wanted a new leader, because + B.'s enormous and magnetic personality left a void that nobody was + big enough to fill--it was really like the death of Napoleon in that + world. There was J. M. Robertson, Foote, and Charles Watts. But + Bradlaugh liked Foote as little as most autocrats like their + successors; and when he, before his death surrendered the gavel (the + hammer for thumping the table to secure order at a meeting) which was + the presidential sceptre of the National Secular Society, he did so + with an ill will which he did not attempt to conceal; and so though + Foote was the nearest size to Bradlaugh's shoes then available, he + succeeded him at the disadvantage of inheriting the distrust of the + old chief. J. M. Robertson you know: he was not a mob orator. Watts + was not sufficient: he had neither Foote's weight (being old) nor + Robertson's scholarship. + + So whilst the survivors of Bradlaugh were trying to keep up the + Hall of Science and to establish a memorial library, etc. there, they + cast round for new blood. What more natural than that they should + think of me as a man not afraid to call himself an atheist and able + to hold his own on the platform? Accordingly, they invited me to + address them; and one memorable night I held forth on Progress in + Freethought. I was received with affectionate hope; and when the + chairman announced that I was giving my share of the gate to the + memorial library (I have never taken money for lecturing) the + enthusiasm was quite touching. The anti-climax was super-Shavian. I + proceeded to smash materialism, rationalism, and all the philosophy + of Tyndall, Helmholtz, Darwin and the rest of the 1860 people into + smithereens. I ridiculed and exposed every inference of science, and + justified every dogma of religion, especially showing that the + Trinity and the Immaculate Conception were the merest common sense. + That finished me up as a possible leader of the N.S.S. Robertson came + on the platform, white with honest Scotch Rationalist rage, and + denounced me with a fury of conviction that startled his own + followers. Never did I grace that platform again. I repeated the + address once to a branch of the N.S.S. on the south side of the + Thames--Kensington, I think--and was interrupted by yells of rage + from the veterans of the society. The Leicester Secularists, a pious + folk, rich and independent of the N.S.S., were kinder to me; but they + were no more real atheists than the congregation of St. Paul's is + made wholly of real Christians. + + Foote is still bewildered about me, imagining that I am a pervert. + But anybody who reads my stuff from the beginning (a Shelleyan + beginning, as far as it could be labelled at all) will find implicit, + and sometimes explicit, the views which, in their more matured form, + will appear in that remarkable forthcoming masterpiece, "Shavianism: + a Religion." + + By the way, I have omitted one more appearance at the Hall of + Science. At a four nights' debate on Socialism between Foote and Mrs. + Besant, I took the chair on one of the nights. + + I take advantage of a snowy Sunday afternoon to scribble all this + down for you because you are in the same difficulty that beset me + formerly: namely, the absolute blank in the history of the immediate + past that confronts every man when he first takes to public life. + Written history stops several decades back; and the bridge of + personal recollection on which older men stand does not exist for the + recruit. Nothing is more natural than that you should reconstruct me + as the last of the Rationalists (his real name is Blatchford); and + nothing could be more erroneous. It would be much nearer the truth to + call me, in that world, the first of the mystics. + + If you can imagine the result of trying to write your spiritual + history in complete ignorance of painting, you will get a notion of + trying to write mine in ignorance of music. Bradlaugh was a + tremendous platform heavyweight; but he had never in his life, as far + as I could make out, seen anything, heard anything or read anything + in the artistic sense. He was almost beyond belief incapable of + intercourse in private conversation. He could tell you his adventures + provided you didn't interrupt him (which you were mostly afraid to + do, as the man was a mesmeric terror); but as to exchanging ideas, or + expressing the universal part of his soul, you might as well have + been reading the letters of Charles Dickens to his family--those + tragic monuments of dumbness of soul and noisiness of pen. Lord help + you if you ever lose your gift of speech, G.K.C.! Don't forget that + the race is only struggling out of its dumbness, and that it is only + in moments of inspiration that we get out a sentence. All the rest is + padding. + + Yours ever + G. BERNARD SHAW. + +In the book on Shaw which appeared in August 1909, G.K. did as he had +done with his other literary studies: gave (inaccurately) only as +much biography as seemed absolutely necessary, and mainly discussed +ideas. He saw Shaw as an Irishman, yet lacking the roots of +nationality since he belonged to a mainly alien governing class. He +saw him as a Puritan yet without the religious basis of Puritanism. +And thirdly, he saw him as so swift a progressive as to be ahead of +his own thought and ready to slay it in the name of progress. + +All these elements in Shaw made for strength but also created +limitations, "Shaw is like the Venus of Milo; all that there is of +him is admirable." Where he fails is in being unable to see and +embrace the full complexity of life. "His only paradox is to pull out +one thread or cord of truth longer and longer into waste and +fantastic places. He does not allow for that deeper sort of paradox +by which two opposite cords of truth become entangled in an +inextricable knot. Still less can he be made to realise that it is +often this knot which ties safely together the whole bundle of human +life . . . here lies the limitation of that lucid and compelling +mind; he cannot quite understand life, because he will not accept its +contradictions." Humanity is built of these contradictions, therefore +Shaw pities humanity more than he loves it. "It was his glory that he +pitied animals like men; it was his defect that he pitied men almost +too much like animals. Foulon said of the democracy, 'Let them eat +grass.' Shaw said, 'Let them eat greens.' He had more benevolence but +almost as much disdain." + +As a vegetarian and a water drinker Shaw himself lacked, in +Chesterton's eyes, something of complete humanity. And in discussing +social problems he was more economist than man. "Shaw (one might +almost say) dislikes murder, not so much because it wastes the life +of the corpse as because it wastes the time of the murderer." This +lack of the full human touch is felt, even in the plays, because Shaw +cannot be irrational where humanity always is irrational. In +_Candida_ "It is completely and disastrously false to the whole +nature of falling in love to make the young Eugene complain of the +cruelty which makes Candida defile her fair hands with domestic +duties. No boy in love with a beautiful woman would ever feel +disgusted when she peeled potatoes or trimmed lamps. He would like +her to be domestic. He would simply feel that the potatoes had become +poetical and the lamps gained an extra light. This may be irrational; +but we are not talking of rationality, but of the psychology of first +love.* It may be very unfair to women that the toil and triviality of +potato-peeling should be seen through a glamour of romance; but the +glamour is quite as certain a fact as the potatoes. It may be a bad +thing in sociology that men should deify domesticity in girls as +something dainty and magical; but all men do. Personally I do not +think it a bad thing at all; but that is another argument."** + +[* No two love affairs are the same. This sentence assumed that they +are all the same. To Eugene, the poet living in a world of +imagination and abhorring reality, Candida was what Dulcinea was to +Don Quixote. G.B.S.] + +[** _George Bernard Shaw_, pp. 120-1.] + +Yet Shaw's limitations are those of a great man and a genius. In an +age of narrow specialism he has "stood up for the fact that +philosophy is not the concern of those who pass through Divinity and +Greats, but of those who pass through birth and death." In an age +that has almost chosen death, "Shaw follows the banner of life; but +austerely, not joyously." Nowhere, in dealing with Shaw's philosophy, +does Chesterton note his debt to Butler. Shaw has himself mentioned +it, and no reader of Butler could miss it, especially in this matter +of the Life Force. It is the special paradox of our age, Chesterton +notes, that the life force should thus need assertion and can thus be +followed without joy. + + To every man and woman, bird, beast, and flower, life is a + love-call to be eagerly followed. To Bernard Shaw it is merely a + military bugle to be obeyed. In short, he fails to feel that the + command of Nature (if one must use the anthropomorphic fable of + Nature instead of the philosophic term God) can be enjoyed as well as + obeyed. He paints life at its darkest and then tells the babe unborn + to take the leap in the dark. That is heroic; and to my instinct at + least Schopenhauer looks like a pigmy beside his pupil. But it is the + heroism of a morbid and almost asphyxiated age. It is awful to think + that this world which so many poets have praised has even for a time + been depicted as a man-trap into which we may just have the manhood + to jump. Think of all those ages through which men have talked of + having the courage to die. And then remember that we have actually + fallen to talking of having the courage to live.* + +[* _George Bernard Shaw_. Week-End Library, p. 190.] + +Here comes the great parting of the two men's thought. G.K. believed +in God and in joy. But he saw that Shaw had much of value for this +strange diseased world. His primary value was not merely (as some +said) that he woke it up. The literary world might not be awake to +the social evil, but it was painfully awake to the ills, real or +imaginary, inherent in human life. + + We do not need waking up; rather we suffer from insomnia, with all + its results of fear and exaggeration and frightful waking dreams. The + modern mind is not a donkey which wants kicking to make it go on. The + modern mind is more like a motor-car on a lonely road which two + amateur motorists have been just clever enough to take to pieces but + are not quite clever enough to put together again.* + +[Ibid., pp. 245-6.] + +Shaw had not merely asked questions of the age: that would have been +worse than useless. What he had done was at moments to rise above his +own thoughts and give, through his characters, inspired answers: G.K. +instances _Candida_, with its revelation of the meaning of marriage +when the woman stays with the strong man because he is so weak and +needs her. And Shaw had brought back philosophy into drama--that is, +he had recreated the atmosphere, lost since Shakespeare,* in which +men were thinking, and might, therefore, find the answers that the +age needed. And here again we come back to the world which these men +were shaking and to the respective philosophies with which they +looked at it. It was a world of conventions and these conventions had +become empty of meaning. Throw them away, said Shaw and Wells; no, +said Chesterton; keep them and look for their meaning; Revolution +does not mean destruction: it means restoration. + +[* Hard on Goethe and Ibsen, to say nothing of Mozart's Magic Flute +and Beethoven's 9th symphony. G.B.S.] + +The same sort of discussion buzzed around this book as around the +controversies of which it might be called a prolongation. Shaw +himself reviewed it in an article in the _Nation_, in which he called +it, "the best work of literary art I have yet provoked. . . . +Everything about me which Mr. Chesterton had to divine he has divined +miraculously. But everything that he could have ascertained easily by +reading my own plain directions on the bottle, as it were, remains +for him a muddled and painful problem." From an interchange of +private letters it would seem that the move to Beaconsfield took +place later in this year than I had supposed. Bernard Shaw's letter +is probably not written many days after an undated one to him from +G.K.: + + 48, Overstrand Mansions, + Battersea Park. S.W. + + DEAR BERNARD SHAW, + + I trust our recent tournaments have not rendered it contrary to the + laws of romantic chivalry (which you reverence so much) for me to + introduce to you my friend Mr. Pepler, who is a very nice man indeed + though a social idealist, and who has, I believe, something of a + practical sort to ask of you. Please excuse abruptness in this letter + of introduction; we are moving into the country and every piece of + furniture I begin to write at is taken away and put into a van. + + Always yours sincerely, + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + 10, Adelphi Terrace, W.C. + 30th October 1909. + + CHESTERTON. + SHAW SPEAKS. + ATTENTION! + + I saw your man and consoled him spiritually; but that is not the + subject of this letter. I still think that you could write a useful + sort of play if you were started. When I was in Kerry last month I + had occasionally a few moments to spare; and it seemed to me quite + unendurable that you should be wasting your time writing books about + me. I liked the book very much, especially as it was so completely + free from my own influence, being evidently founded on a very hazy + recollection of a five-year-old perusal of Man and Superman; but a + lot of it was fearful nonsense. There was one good thing about the + scientific superstition which you came a little too late for. It + taught a man to respect facts. You have no conscience in this + respect; and your punishment is that you substitute such dull + inferences as my "narrow puritan home" for delightful and fantastic + realities which you might very easily have ascertained if you had + taken greater advantage of what is really the only thing to be said + in favour of Battersea; namely, that it is within easy reach of + Adelphi Terrace. However, I have no doubt that when Wilkins Micawber + junior grew up and became eminent in Australia, references were made + to his narrow puritan home; so I do not complain. If you had told the + truth, nobody would have believed it. + + Now to business. When one breathes Irish air, one becomes a + practical man. In England I used to say what a pity it was you did + not write a play. In Ireland I sat down and began writing a scenario + for you. But before I could finish it I had come back to London; and + now it is all up with the scenario: in England I can do nothing but + talk. I therefore now send you the thing as far as I scribbled it; + and I leave you to invent what escapades you please for the hero, and + to devise some sensational means of getting him back to heaven again, + unless you prefer to end with the millennium in full swing.* + +[* The scenario dealt with the return of St. Augustine to the England +he remembered converting.] + + But experience has made me very doubtful of the efficacy of help as + the means of getting work out of the right sort of man. When I was + young I struck out one invaluable rule for myself, which was, + Whenever you meet an important man, contradict him. If possible, + insult him. But such a rule is one of the privileges of youth. I no + longer live by rules. Yet there is one way in which you may possibly + be insultable. It can be plausibly held that you are a venal ruffian, + pouring forth great quantities of immediately saleable stuff, but + altogether declining to lay up for yourself treasures in heaven. It + may be that you cannot afford to do otherwise. Therefore I am quite + ready to make a deal with you. + + A full length play should contain about 18,000 words (mine + frequently contain two or three times that number). I do not know + what your price per thousand is. I used to be considered grossly + extortionate by Massingham and others for insisting on L3. 18,000 + words at L3 per thousand is L54. I need make no extra allowance for + the republication in book form, because even if the play aborted as + far as the theatre is concerned, you could make a book of it all the + same. Let us assume that your work is worth twice as much as mine; + this would make L108. I have had two shockingly bad years of it + pecuniarily speaking, and am therefore in that phase of extravagance + which straitened means have always produced in me. Knock off 8% as a + sort of agent's commission to me for starting you on the job and + finding you a theme. This leaves L100. I will pay you L100 down on + your contracting to supply me within three months with a mechanically + possible, i.e., stageable drama dealing with the experiences of St. + Augustine after re-visiting England. The literary copyright to be + yours, except that you are not to prevent me making as many copies as + I may require for stage use. The stage right to be mine; but you are + to have the right to buy it back from me for L250 whenever you like.* + The play, if performed, to be announced as your work and not as a + collaboration. All rights which I may have in the scenario to go with + the stage right and literary copyright as prescribed as far as you + may make use of it. What do you say? There is a lot of spending in + L100. + +[* I could not very well offer him L100 as a present. G.B.S.] + + One condition more. If it should prove impossible to achieve a + performance otherwise than through the Stage Society (which does not + pay anything), a resort to that body is not to be deemed a breach of + the spirit of our agreement. + + Do you think it would be possible to make Belloc write a comedy? If + he could only be induced to believe in some sort of God instead of in + that wretched little conspiracy against religion which the pious + Romans have locked up in the Vatican, one could get some drive into + him. As it is, he is wasting prodigious gifts in the service of King + Leopold and the Pope and other ghastly scarecrows. If he must have a + Pope, there is quite a possible one at Adelphi Terrace. + + For the next few days I shall be at my country quarters, Ayot St. + Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. I have a motor car which could carry me on + sufficient provocation as far as Beaconsfield; but I do not know how + much time you spend there and how much in Fleet Street. Are you only + a week-ender; or has your wise wife taken you properly in hand and + committed you to a pastoral life. + + Yours ever, + G. BERNARD SHAW. + + P.S. Remember that the play is to be practical (in the common + managerial sense) only in respect of its being mechanically + possible as a stage representation. It is to be neither a + likely-to-be-successful play nor a literary lark: it is to be + written for the good of all souls. + +Among the reviewers of the book, our old friend, the _Academy_, +surprised me by hating Shaw so much more than Chesterton that the +latter came off quite lightly. There was a good deal of the usual +misunderstanding and lists were made of self-contradictions on the +author's part. Still in the main the press was sympathetic and even +enthusiastic. But when Shaw reviewed Chesterton on Shaw, more than +one paper waxed sarcastic on the point of royalties and remuneration +gained by these means. The funniest of the more critical comments on +the way these men wrote of one another was a suggestion made in the +_Bystander_ that Shaw and Chesterton were really the same person: + + . . . Shaw, it is said, tired of socialism, weary of wearing + Jaegers, and broken down by teetotalism and vegetarianism, sought, + some years ago, an escape from them. His adoption, however, of these + attitudes had a decided commercial value, which he did not think it + advisable to prejudice by wholesale surrender. Therefore he, in order + to taste the forbidden joys of individualistic philosophy, meat, food + and strong drink, created "Chesterton." This mammoth myth, he + decided, should enjoy all the forms of fame which Shaw had to deny + himself. Outwardly, he should be Shaw's antithesis. He should be + beardless, large in girth, smiling of countenance, and he should be + licensed to sell paradoxes only in essay and novel form, all stage + and platform rights being reserved by Shaw. To enable the imposition + to be safely carried out, Shaw hit on the idea of residence close to + the tunnel which connects Adelphi with the Strand. Emerging from his + house plain, Jaeger-clad, bearded and saturnine Shaw, he entered the + tunnel, in a cleft in which was a cellar. Here he donned the + Chesterton properties, the immense padding of chest, and so on, the + Chesterton sombrero hat and cloak and pince-nez, and there he left + the Shaw beard and the Shaw clothes, the Shaw expression of + countenance, and all the Shaw theories. He emerged into the Strand + "G.K.C.," in whose identity he visited all the cafes, ate all the + meats, rode in all the cabs, and smiled on all the sinners. The day's + work done, the Chesterton manuscripts delivered, the proofs read, the + bargains driven, the giant figure returned to the tunnel, and once + again was back in Adelphi, the Shaw he was when he left it--back to + the Jaegers, the beard, the Socialism, the statistics, and the + sardonic letters to the _Times_.* + +[* From _The Bystander_. 1 September, 1909.] + +Bernard Shaw is a man of unusual generosity, but I think from his +letters he must also be quite a good man of business. G.K. was so +greatly the opposite that G.B.S. urged him again and again to do the +most ordinary things to protect the literary rights of himself and +others. Thus, in the only undated letter in the whole packet, he begs +Gilbert to back up the Authors' Society: + + MY DEAR G.K.C., + + I am one of the unhappy slaves who, on the two big committees of + your Trade Union (the Society of Authors) drudge at the heartbreaking + work of defending our miserable profession against being devoured, + body and soul, by the publishers--themselves a pitiful gang of + literature-struck impostors who are crumpled up by the booksellers, + who, though small folk, are at least in contact with reality in the + shape of the book buyer. It is a ghastly and infuriating business, + because the authors _will_ go to lunch with their publishers and sell + them anything for L20 over the cigarettes, but it has to be done; and + I, with half a dozen others, have to do it. + + Now I missed the last committee meeting (electioneering: I am here + doing two colossal meetings of miners every night for Keir Hardie); + but the harassed secretary writes that it was decided to take + proceedings in the case of a book of yours which you (oh Esau, Esau!) + sold to John--(John is a--well--no matter: when you take your turn on + the committee you will find him out) and that though the German + lawyer has had L7 and is going ahead (L7 worth of law in Germany + takes you to the House of Lords) everything is hung up because you + will not answer Thring's* letters. Thring, in desperation, appeals to + me, concluding with characteristic simplicity that we must be friends + because you have written a book about me. As the conclusion is + accidentally and improbably true, I now urge you to give him whatever + satisfaction he requires. I have no notion what it is, or what the + case is about; but at least answer his letters, however infuriating + they may be. Remember: you pay Thring only L500, for which you get + integrity, incorruptibility, implacability, and a disposition greatly + to find quarrel in a straw on your behalf (even with yourself) and + don't complain if you don't get L20,000 worth of tact into the + bargain. And your obligations to us wretched committee men are simply + incalculable. We get nothing but abuse and denigration: authors weep + with indignation when we put our foot on some blood-sucking, + widow-cheating, orphan starving scoundrel and ruthlessly force him to + keep to his mite of obligation under an agreement which would have + revolted Shylock: unless the best men, the Good Professionals, help + us, we are lost. We get nothing and spend our time like water for you. + +[* Herbert Thring was the barrister employed by the Society of +Authors.] + + All we ask you to do is to answer Thring and let us get along with + your work. + + Look here: will you write to Thring. + + _Please_ write to Thring. + + I say: have you written to Thring yet? + + G.B.S. + +I doubt whether he had. Those chance sums he poured from time to time +into Frances' lap were usually not what they should have been, an +advance on a royalty. _Orthodoxy_ he sold outright for L100. No man +ever worked so hard to earn so little. + +When later Gilbert employed Messrs. A. P. Watt as his literary agents +a letter to them (undated, of course, and written on the old +notepaper of his first Battersea flat) shows a mingling of gratitude +to his agents with entire absence of resentment towards his +publishers, which might be called essence of Chesterton: + + The prices you have got me for books, compared with what I used + weakly to demand, seem to me to come out of fairyland. It seems to me + that there is a genuine business problem which creates a permanent + need for a literary agent. It consists in this--that our work, even + when it has become entirely a duty and a worry, still remains in some + vague way a pleasure. And how can we put a fair price on what is at + once a worry and a pleasure? Suppose someone comes to me and says, "I + offer you sixpence for your _History of the Gnostic Heresy_." Why, + after all, should I charge more than sixpence for a work it was so + exuberant to write? You, on the other hand, seeing it from the + outside, would say that it was worth--so and so. And you would get it. + +Shaw continued his attempts to stimulate the reluctant playwright. +Two years after drafting the scenario, he writes: + + 10 Adelphi Terrace, W.C. + 5th April 1912. + + DEAR MRS. CHESTERTON, + + I have promised to drive somebody to Beaconsfield on Sunday + morning; and I shall be in that district more or less for the rest of + the day. If you are spending Easter at Overroads, and have no + visitors who couldn't stand us, we should like to call on you at any + time that would be convenient. + + The convenience of time depends on a design of my own which I wish + to impart to you first. I want to read a play to Gilbert. It began by + way of being a music-hall sketch; so it is not 31/2 hours long as + usual: I can get through it in an hour and a half. I want to insult + and taunt and stimulate Gilbert with it. It is the sort of thing he + could write and ought to write: a religious harlequinade.* In fact, + he could do it better if a sufficient number of pins were stuck into + him. My proposal is that I read the play to him on Sunday (or at the + next convenient date), and that you fall into transports of + admiration of it; declare that you can never love a man who cannot + write things like that; and definitely announce that if Gilbert has + not finished a worthy successor to it before the end of the third + week next ensuing, you will go out like the lady in A Doll's House, + and live your own life--whatever that dark threat may mean. + +[* Androcles and The Lion evidently. G.B.S.] + + If you are at home, I count on your ready complicity; but the + difficulty is that you may have visitors; and if they are pious + Gilbert will be under a tacit obligation not to blaspheme, or let me + blaspheme, whilst they are beneath his roof (my play is about + Christian Martyrs, and perfectly awful in parts); and if they are + journalists, it will be necessary to administer an oath of secrecy. I + don't object to the oath; and nothing would please Gilbert more than + to make them drink blood from a skull: the difficulty is, they + wouldn't keep it. In short, they must be the right sort of people, of + whom the more the merrier. + + Forgive this long rigmarole: it is only to put you in possession of + what _may_ happen if you approve, and your invitations and domestic + circumstances are propitious. + + Yours sincerely, + G. BERNARD SHAW. + +Chesterton at last did write _Magic_--but that belongs to another +chapter. + +Like the demand for a play, the theme of finance recurs with great +frequency in Shaw's letters, and after _Magic_ appeared he wrote to +Frances telling her that "in Sweden, where the marriage laws are +comparatively enlightened, I believe you could obtain a divorce on +the ground that your husband threw away an important part of the +provision for your old age for twenty pieces of silver. . . . In +future, the moment he has finished a play and the question of +disposing of it arises, lock him up and bring the agreement to me. +Explanations would be thrown away on him." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +From Battersea to Beaconsfield +(1909-1911) + + +IN 1909, WITH _Orthodoxy_ well behind him, and _George Bernard Shaw_ +just published, Gilbert and his wife left London for the small +country town that was to be their home for the rest of their lives. +It was an odd coincidence that they should leave Overstrand Mansions, +Battersea, and come to Overroads, Beaconsfield, for they did not name +their new home but found it ready christened. + +It will be remembered that in one of the letters during the +engagement Gilbert had suggested a country home. The reason for the +choice of Beaconsfield he gives in the _Autobiography:_ + + After we were married, my wife and I lived for about a year in + Kensington, the place of my childhood; but I think we both knew that + it was not to be the real place for our abode. I remember that we + strolled out one day, for a sort of second honeymoon, and went upon a + journey into the void, a voyage deliberately objectless. I saw a + passing omnibus labelled "Hanwell" and, feeling this to be an + appropriate omen,* we boarded it and left it somewhere at a stray + station, which I entered and asked the man in the ticket-office where + the next train went to. He uttered the pedantic reply, "Where do you + want to go to?" And I uttered the profound and philosophical + rejoinder, "Wherever the next train goes to." It seemed that it went + to Slough; which may seem to be singular taste, even in a train. + However, we went to Slough, and from there set out walking with even + less notion of where we were going. And in that fashion we passed + through the large and quiet cross-roads of a sort of village, and + stayed at an inn called The White Hart. We asked the name of the + place and were told that it was called Beaconsfield (I mean of course + that it was called Beconsfield and not Beaconsfield), and we said to + each other, "This is the sort of place where some day we will make + our home."** + +[* At Hanwell is London's most famous lunatic asylum.] + +[** _Autobiography_, p. 219.] + +They both wanted a home. They both deeply desired a family. The wish +is normal to both man and woman, normal in a happy marriage, and +theirs was unusually happy; it was almost abnormally keen in both +Frances and Gilbert. Few men have so greatly loved children. As a +schoolboy his letters are full of it--making friends with Scottish +children on the sands, with French children by the medium of +pictures. Later he was writing "In Defence of Baby Worship" and +welcoming with enthusiasm the arrival of his friends' children into +the world. + +In the Notebook he had written: + + Sunlight in a child's hair. + It is like the kiss of Christ upon all children. + I blessed the child: and hoped the blessing would go with him + And never leave him; + And turn first into a toy, and then into a game + And then into a friend, + And as he grew up, into friends + And then into a woman. + + GRASS AND CHILDREN + + Grass and children + There seems no end to them. + But if there were but one blade of grass + Men would see that it is fairer than lilies, + And if we saw the first child + We should worship it as the God come on earth. + + ROUNDS + + I find that most round things are nice, + Particularly Eternity and a baby. + +Frances cared no less deeply both for Eternity and for babies and for +many years went on hoping for the family that would complete their +lives. At last it was decided to have an operation to enable her to +have children. Her doctor writes: + + I well remember an incident which occurred during her convalescence + from that operation. I received a telephone call from the matron of + the Nursing Home in which Mrs. Chesterton was staying, suggesting + that I should come round and remonstrate with Mr. Chesterton. On my + arrival I found him sitting on the stairs, where he had been for two + hours, greatly incommoding passers up and down and deaf to all + requests to move on. It appeared that he had written a sonnet to his + wife on her recovery from the operation and was bringing it to give + her. He was not however satisfied with the last line, but was + determined to perfect it before entering her room to take tea with + her. + +By the time they left London she must, I think, have given up the +hope she had so long cherished. Still if there could not be children +there might be perhaps something of a home. In the conditions of +their life, there was danger that any house of bricks and mortar +should be rather a headquarters than a home, and it was lucky that he +was able to feel she took home with her wherever they went-- + + Your face that is a wandering home + A flying home for me. + +The years before them were to be filled with the vast activities that +not only took Gilbert to London and all over England incessantly, but +were to take him increasingly over Europe and America. Beaconsfield +gave a degree of quiet that made it possible, when they were able to +be at home, not to be swamped by engagements and to lead a life of +their own. Gilbert could go to London when he liked, but he need not +always be on tap, so to say, for all the world. Frances could have a +garden and indulge her hungry appetite for all that was fruitful. +G.K., later, under the title "The Homelessness of Jones"* showed his +love for a house rather than a flat, and they gave even to their +first little house "Overroads" the stamp of a real home. + +[* A chapter in _What's Wrong with the World_.] + +For a man and his wife to leave London for the country might seem to +be their own affair. Not so, however, with the Chestertons. After a +lapse of over thirty years I find the matter still a subject of +furious controversy and indeed passion. Frances, says one school of +opinion, committed a crime against the public good by removing +Gilbert from Fleet Street. No, says the other school, she had to move +him or he would have died of working too hard and drinking too much. +The suggestion, which I believe to be a fact, that Gilbert himself +wanted to move, is seldom entertained. + +There is in all this the legitimate feeling of distress among any +group at losing its chief figure, its pride and joy. "I lost +Gilbert," Lucian Oldershaw once said, "first when I introduced him to +Belloc, next when he married Frances, and finally when he joined the +Catholic Church. . . . I rejoiced, though perhaps with a maternal +sadness, at all these fulfillments." + +Cecil wanted his brother always on hand. Belloc was already in the +country--a far more remote country--but even he, coming up to London, +mourned to my mother, "she has taken my Chesterton from me." Talking +it over however after the lapse of years, he agreed that in all +probability the move was a wise one. What may be called the smaller +fry of Fleet Street are less reasonable. One cannot avoid the feeling +that in all this masculine life so sure of its manhood, there +lingered something of the "schwaermerei" of the Junior Debating Club +furiously desiring each to be first with Gilbert. And in his love of +Fleet Street he so identified himself with them all that they felt he +was one of them and did not recognise the horizons wider than theirs +that were opening before him. + +My husband and I are experts in changing residences and we listened +with the amusement of experts to the talk of theorists. For it was so +constantly assumed that on one side of a choice is disaster, on the +other perfection. Actually perfection does not belong to this earthly +state: if you go to Rome, as Gilbert himself once said, you sacrifice +a rich suggestive life at Wimbledon. Newman writing of a far greater +and more irrevocable choice called his story _Loss and Gain_--but he +had no doubt that the gain outweighed the loss. There were in +Gilbert's adult life three other big decisions--decisions of the +scale that altered its course. The first was his marriage. The second +was his reception into the Church. The third was his continued +dedication to the paper that his brother and Belloc had founded. In +deciding to marry Frances he was acting against his mother's wishes, +to which he was extremely sensitive. His decision to become a +Catholic had to be made alone: he had the sympathy of his wife but +not her companionship. In the decision to edit the paper he had not +even fully her sympathy: she always felt his creative work to be so +much more important and to be imperilled by the overwork the paper +brought. Gilbert was a man slow in action but it would be exceedingly +difficult to find instances of his doing anything that he did not +want to do. The theorists about marriage are like the theorists about +moving house, if they do not know that decisions made by one party +alone are rare indeed and stick out like spikes in the life of a +normal and happy couple. Of the vast majority of decisions it is hard +to say who makes them. They make themselves: after endless talk: on +the tops of omnibuses going to Hanwell or elsewhere: out walking: +breakfasting--especially breakfasting in bed. They make +themselves--above all in the matter of a move--in fine weather: +during a holiday: on a hot London Sunday: when a flat is stuffy: when +the telephone rings all day: when a book is on the stocks. + +Other writers have left London that they might create at leisure and +choose their own times for social intercourse. Why does no one say +their wives dragged them away? Simply, I think, that being less kind +and considerate than Gilbert, they do not mind telling their friends +that they are not always wanted. This Gilbert could not do. If people +said how they would miss him, how they hated his going, he would +murmur vague and friendly sounds, from which they deduced all they +wanted to deduce. Was it more weakness or strength, that tenderness +of heart that could never faintly suggest to his friends that they +would miss him more than he would miss them? "I never wanted but one +thing in my life," he had written to Annie Firmin. And that "one +thing" he was taking with him. + +Anyhow, the move accomplished, he enjoyed defending it in every +detail, and did so especially in his _Daily News_ articles. The rush +to the country was not uncommon in the literary world of the moment, +and his journalist friends had urged the point that Beaconsfield was +not true country, was suburban, was being built over. His friends, +G.K. replied, were suffering from a weak-minded swing from one +extreme to the other. Men who had praised London as the only place to +live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a +station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to +depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so +distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival +ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely +inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous +heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation +which the other friend had thoughtlessly overlooked." + +Gilbert, on the contrary, noted soon after his arrival that +Beaconsfield was beginning to be built over and he noted it with +satisfaction. "Within a stone's throw of my house they are building +another house. I am glad they are building it and I am glad it is +within a stone's throw." He did not want a desert, he did not want a +large landed estate, he wanted what he had got--a house and a garden. +He adventurously explored that garden, finding a kitchen-garden that +had "somehow got attached" to the premises, and wondering why he +liked it; speaking to the gardener, "an enterprise of no little +valour," and asking him the name "of a strange dark red rose, at once +theatrical and sulky," which turned out to be called Victor Hugo; +"watching (with regret) a lot of little black pigs being turned out +of my garden." + +Watching the neighbouring house grow up from its foundation he noted +in an article called, "The Wings of Stone," what was the reality of a +staircase. We pad them with carpets and rail them with banisters, yet +every "staircase is truly only an awful and naked ladder running up +into the infinite to a deadly height." (A correspondent pointed out +in a letter to the _Daily News_ that here he had touched a reality +keenly felt by primitive peoples. When Cetewayo, King of Zululand, +visited London, he would go upstairs only on hands and knees and that +with manifest terror.) The paddings of civilisation may be useful, +yet Gilbert held more valuable a realisation of the realities of +things. Vision is not fancy, but the sight of truth. + +In the Notebook he had written + + There are three things that make me think; + things beyond all poetry: + A yellow space or rift in evening sky: + A chimney or pinnacle high in the air; + And a path over a hill. + +Chesterton had always the power of conveying in words a painter's +vision of some unforgettable scene with the poet's words for what the +artist not only sees but imagines. Such flashes became more frequent +as he looked through the doorway of his little house. Go through _The +Ball and the Cross_ with this in mind and you will see what I mean. +"The crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of +some sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken." "There +is nothing more beautiful than thus to look as it were through the +archway of a house; as if the open sky were an interior chamber, and +the sun a secret lamp of the place." Best of all to illustrate this +special quality is a longer passage from the _Poet and the Lunatics_. + + For the most part he was contented to see the green semicircles of + lawn repeat themselves like a pattern of green moons; for he was not + one to whom repetition was merely monotony. Only in looking over a + particular gate at a particular lawn, he became pleasantly conscious, + or half conscious, of a new note of colour in the greenness; a much + bluer green, which seemed to change to vivid blue, as the object at + which he was gazing moved sharply, turning a small head on a long + neck. It was a peacock. But he had thought of a thousand things + before he thought of the obvious thing. The burning blue of the + plumage on the neck had reminded him of blue fire, and blue fire had + reminded him of some dark fantasy about blue devils, before he had + fully realised even that it was a peacock he was staring at. And the + tail, that trailing tapestry of eyes, had led his wandering wits away + to those dark but divine monsters of the Apocalypse whose eyes were + multiplied like their wings, before he had remembered that a peacock, + even in a more practical sense, was an odd thing to see in so + ordinary a setting. + +Yet always to Chesterton the beauty of nature was enhanced by the +work of men, and if in London men had swarmed too closely, it was not +to get away from them but to appreciate them more individually that +he chose the country. Yes, his literary friends would say: in the +real country that is true; the farmer, the labourer, even the village +barber and the village tradesmen are worth knowing, but not suburban +neighbours. Against such discrimination the whole democracy of +Chesterton stood in revolt. All men were valuable, all men were +interesting, the doctor as much as the barber, the clergyman as much +as the farmer. All men were children of God and citizens of the +world. If he had a choice in the matter it was discrimination against +the literary world itself with all the fads that tended to smother +its essential humanity. Nothing would have induced him to +discriminate against the suburban. In the last year of his life he +wrote in the _Autobiography:_ "I have lived in Beaconsfield from the +time when it was almost a village, to the time when, as the enemy +profanely says, it is a suburb." + +For the author of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ this would hardly be +a conclusive argument against any place. We should, he once said, +"regard the important suburbs as ancient cities embedded in a sort of +boiling lava spouted up by that volcano, the speculative builder." +That "lava" itself he found interesting, but beneath or beside it a +little town like Beaconsfield had its share in the great sweep of +English history. Something of the "seven sunken Englands" could be +found in the Old Town which custom marked off pretty sharply from the +"New Town." Burke had lived in Beaconsfield and was buried there; and +Gilbert once suggested to Mr. Garvin that they should appear at a +local festival, respectively as Fox ("a part for which I have no +claim except in circumference") and Burke ("I admire Burke in many +things while disagreeing with him in nearly everything. But Mr. +Garvin strikes me as being rather like Burke"). + +At the barber's he was often seen sitting at the end of a line +patiently awaiting his turn, for he could never shave himself and it +was only years later that Dorothy Collins conceived and put into +execution the bold project of bringing the barber to the house. +Probably an article would be shaping while he waited and the barber's +conversation might put the finishing touches to it. There were in +fact two barbers, one of the old town, one of the new. "I once +planned," he says, "a massive and exhaustive sociological work, in +several volumes, which was to be called 'The Two Barbers of +Beaconsfield' and based entirely upon the talk of the two excellent +citizens to whom I went to get shaved. For those two shops do indeed +belong to two different civilisations." + +Despite his love for London, Gilbert had always felt that life in a +country town held one point of special superiority--in it you +discovered the Community. In London you chose your friends--which +meant that you narrowed your life to people of one kind. He had noted +in the family itself a valuable widening: + + The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into + a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we + have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us + and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a + surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt + from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being + born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world + which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without + us, into a world that we have not made.* + +[* _Heretics_, pp. 191-2.] + +Here in Beaconsfield the Chestertons grew into the community: the +clergyman, the doctor, the inn-keeper, the barber, the gardener. And +like the relatives who spring upon you at birth these worthy citizens +seemed to Gilbert potentials of vast excitement and varied interest. +Discussing an event of much later date--a meeting to decide whether a +crucifix might be erected as a local war memorial--he thus describes +the immense forces he found in that small place: + + Those who debated the matter were a little group of the inhabitants + of a little country town; the rector and the doctor and the bank + manager and the respectable tradesmen of the place, with a few + hangers-on like myself, of the more disreputable professions of + journalism or the arts. But the powers that were present there in the + spirit came out of all the ages and all the battlefields of history; + Mahomet was there and the Iconoclasts, who came riding out of the + East to ruin the statues of Italy, and Calvin and Rousseau and the + Russian anarchs and all the older England that is buried under + Puritanism; and Henry the Third ordering the little images for + Westminster and Henry the Fifth, after Agincourt, on his knees before + the shrines of Paris. If one could really write that little story of + that little place, it would be the greatest of historical monographs.* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 244.] + +A keen observer often added to the Beaconsfield community in those +days was Father (now Monsignor) John O'Connor, close friend of both +Gilbert and Frances and inspirer of "Father Brown" of detective fame. +They had first become friends in 1904 when they met at the house of a +friend in Keighley, Yorkshire, and walked back over the moors +together to visit Francis Steinthal at Ilkley. This Jew, of Frankfort +descent, was a great friend of the Chestertons and on their many +visits to him the friendship with Father O'Connor ripened. With both +Frances and Gilbert it was among the closest of their lives. Their +letters to him show it: the long talks, and companionable walks over +the moors, have an atmosphere of intimacy that is all the more +convincing because so little stressed in his book. Father O'Connor +has a pardonable pride in the idea that their talks suggested ideas +to Gilbert, he takes pleasure in his character of "Father Brown," but +he reveals the atmosphere of unique confidence and intimacy by the +very absence of all parade of it. + +Both he and Gilbert have told the story of how the idea of the +detective priest first dawned. On their second meeting Father +O'Connor had startled, indeed almost shattered Gilbert, with certain +rather lurid knowledge of human depravity which he had acquired in +the course of his priestly experience. At the house to which they +were going, two Cambridge undergraduates spoke disparagingly of the +"cloistered" habits of the Catholic clergy, saying that to them it +seemed that to know and meet evil was a far better thing than the +innocence of such ignorance. To Gilbert, still under the shock of a +knowledge compared with which "these two Cambridge gentlemen knew +about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator," +the exquisite irony of this remark suggested a thought. Why not a +whole comedy of cross purposes based on the notion of a priest with a +knowledge of evil deeper than that of the criminal he is converting? +He carried out this idea in the story of "The Blue Cross," the first +Father Brown detective story. Father O'Connor's account adds the +details that he had himself once boasted of buying five sapphires for +five shillings, and that he always carried a large umbrella and many +brown paper parcels. At the Steinthal dining table, an artist friend +of the family made a sketch of Father O'Connor which later appeared +on the wrapper of _The Innocence of Father Brown_. + +Beyond one or two touches of this sort the idea had been a suggestion +for a character, not a portrait, and in the _Autobiography_ and in +the _Dickens_ Gilbert has a good deal to say of interest to the +novelist about how such suggestions come and are used. He never +believed that Dickens drew a portrait, as it were, in the round. +Nature just gives hints to the creative artist. And it used to amuse +"Father Brown" to find that such touches of observation as noting +where an ash-tray had got hidden behind a book seemed to Gilbert +quasi miraculous. Left to himself he merely dropped ashes on the +floor from his cigar. "He did not smoke a pipe and cigarettes were +prone to set him on fire in one place or another." + +A frequent visitor, Father O'Connor noted his fashion of work and +reading, and the abstracted way he often moved and spoke. "Call it +mooning, but he never mooned. He was always working out something in +his mind, and when he drifted from his study to the garden and was +seen making deadly passes with his sword-stick at the dahlias, we +knew that he had got to a dead end in his composition and was getting +his thoughts into order." + +He played often, too, with a huge knife which he had for twenty-four +years. He took it abroad with him, took it to bed: Frances had to +retrieve it often from under his pillow in some hotel. Once at a +lecture in Dublin he drew it absent-mindedly to sharpen a pencil: as +it was seven and a half inches long shut, and fourteen open, the +amusement of the audience may be imagined. In origin it was, Father +O'Connor relates, a Texan or Mexican general utility implement. It +was with this knife that he won my daughter's heart many years later +when she, aged three, had not seen him for some time and had grown +shy of him. A little scared of his enormousness she stood far off. He +did not look in her direction but began to open and shut the vast +blade. Next she was on his knee. A little later we heard her remark, +"Uncle Gilbert, you make jokes just like my Daddy." And from him +came, "I do my best." + +The prototype of Father Brown tells of the easy job in detection when +Gilbert had been reading a book: + + He had just been reading a shilling pamphlet by Dr. Horton on the + Roman Menace or some such fearful wild fowl. I knew he had read it, + because no one else could when he had done. Most of his books, as and + when read, had gone through every indignity a book may suffer and + live. He turned it inside out, dog-eared it, pencilled it, sat on it, + took it to bed and rolled on it, and got up again and spilled tea on + it--if he were sufficiently interested. So Dr. Horton's pamphlet had + a refuted look when I saw it. + +Father O'Connor was not the only friend who was added to the +Beaconsfield group with some frequency. It was easy enough to run +down from London or over from Welwyn (home of G.B.S.) or from Oxford +or Cambridge. It was most conveniently central. Gilbert's brethren of +the pen were especially apt to appear at all seasons and always found +friendly welcome. For he continued to call himself neither poet nor +philosopher but journalist. Father O'Connor had tried to persuade +him, as he neatly puts it, to "begin to print on handmade paper with +gilt edges." But Frances begged him to drop the idea: "You will not +change Gilbert, you will only fidget him. He is bent on being a jolly +journalist, to paint the town red, and he does not need style to do +that. All he wants is buckets and buckets of red paint." + +Journalists coming down from London describe the "jolly" welcome, +beer poured, the sword-stick flourished, conversation flowing as +freely as the beer. It meant a pleasant afternoon and it meant good +copy. They visited him in the country, they observed him in town. One +interviewer returned with a photo which showed Chesterton "in a +somewhat neglige condition," the result as he admitted of reading W. +W. Jacobs "rolling about on the floor waving his legs in the air." + +He was seen working a swan boat at the White City: "he collapsed it +and the placid lake became a raging sea." He was seen thinking and +even reading under the strangest weather conditions: one man saw him +under a gas lamp in the street in pouring rain with an open book in +his hand. Reading in Fleet Street one day Gilbert discovered suddenly +that the Lord Mayor's Show was passing. He began to reflect on the +Show so deeply that he forgot to look at it. + +Overroads I remember as a little triangular house, much too small for +the sort of fun the Chestertons enjoyed. Frances bought a field +opposite to it and there built a studio. The night the studio was +opened Father O'Connor remembers a large party at which charades were +acted. He himself as Canon Cross-Keys gave away the word so that +"Belfry" was loudly shouted by the opposition group. The rival +company acting Torture got away with it successfully, especially, +complains our Yorkshire priest "as 'ure' was pronounced 'yaw' in the +best southern manner." + +On that night, returning to the house, Father O'Connor offered his +arm to Gilbert who "refused it with a finality foreign to our +friendship." Father O'Connor went on ahead and Gilbert following in +the dark stumbled over a flowerpot and broke his arm. Perhaps because +his size made him self-consciously aware of awkwardness Gilbert hated +being helped. Father Ignatius Rice, another close friend, says the +only time he ever saw Gilbert annoyed was when he offered him an arm +going upstairs. + +Gilbert and Frances would both visit Father O'Connor in his Yorkshire +Parish of Heckmondwike. One year they took rooms at Ilkley and he +remembers Gilbert adorning with huge frescoes the walls of the attic +and Frances sitting in the window singing, "O swallow, swallow flying +south" while Gilbert "did a blazon of some fantastic coat of arms." + +The closeness of the intimacy is seen in a letter quoted by Father +O'Connor* in which Gilbert explained why Frances and he were unable +to come to Heckmondwike for a promised visit. + +[* _Father Brown on Chesterton_, p. 123.] + + (July 3rd, 1909) + + I would not write this to anyone else, but you combine so unusually + in your own single personality the characters of (1) priest, (2) + human being, (3) man of the world, (4) man of the other world, (5) + man of science, (6) old friend, (7) new friend, not to mention + Irishman and picture dealer, that I don't mind suggesting the truth + to you. Frances has just come out of what looked bad enough to be an + illness, and is just going to plunge into one of her recurrent + problems of pain and depression. The two may be just a bit too much + for her and I want to be with her every night for a few days--there's + an Irish Bull for you! + + One of the mysteries of Marriage (which must be a Sacrament and an + extraordinary one too) is that a man evidently useless like me can + yet become at certain instants indispensable. And the further oddity + (which I invite you to explain on mystical grounds) is that he never + feels so small as when he knows that he is necessary. + +But sometimes she would send him off whether she was well or ill, and +on Father O'Connor would rest the heavy responsibility of getting him +on to his next destination or safe back home. He tells of one such +experience. + + He was most dutiful and obedient to orders, but they had to be + written ones and backed by the spoken word. He brought his + dress-suit, oh! with what loving care, to Bradford on Sunday for + Sheffield for Monday, but a careful host found it under the bed in + Bradford just as his train left for Sheffield. Sent at once it was to + Beaconsfield, where it landed at 5 P.M. on Thursday, just allowing + him ten minutes to change and entrain for London. + + Scene at Beaconsfield: + + "What on earth have you done with your dress-suit, Gilbert?" + + "I must have left it behind, darling, but I brought back the ties, + didn't I?"* + +[* Ibid., p. 43.] + +Another time he came back without his pyjamas. They had been lost +early in the journey. "Why didn't you buy some more?" his wife asked. +"I didn't know pyjamas were things you could buy," he said, +surprised. Probably if one were Gilbert one couldn't! Father O'Connor +arriving at Overroads without baggage found that Gilbert's pyjamas +went around him exactly twice. + +Lecturing engagements had of course not come to an end with the move +although they had (mercifully) somewhat lessened. What increased with +the distance from London was the problem--never fully solved--of +getting Gilbert to the right place at the right time and in clothes +not too wildly wrong. When he lectured in Lancashire they stayed at +Crosby with Francis Blundell (my brother-in-law), and my sister +remembers Frances as incessantly looking through her bag for letters +and sending telegrams to confirm engagements that had come unstuck or +to refuse others that were in debate. The celebrated and now almost +legendary telegram from Gilbert to Frances told as from a hundred +different cities was really sent: "Am in Market Harborough. Where +ought I to be?" + +Desperate, she wired, "Home," because, as she told me later, it was +easier to get him home and start him off again. That day's engagement +was lost past recall. + +Charles Rowley of the Ancoats Brotherhood received a wire, reply +paid, from Snow Hill Station, Birmingham: "Am I coming to you tonight +or what?" Reply: "Not this Tuesday but next Wednesday." + +So home he came again to Overroads. + +The Chestertons made a host of friends in Beaconsfield but the +children always held pride of place. The doctor's little boy, running +along the top of the wall, looked down at Gilbert and remarked to his +delight, "I think you're an ogre." But when the nurse was heard +threatening punishment if he did not get down "that minute," the +child was told by the ogre, "This wall is meant for little boys to +run along." One child, asked after a party if Mr. Chesterton had been +very clever, said, "You should see him catch buns in his mouf." + +What was unusual both with Gilbert and Frances was the fact that they +never allowed their disappointment in the matter of children to make +them sour or jealous of others who had the joy that they had not. All +through their lives they played with other people's children: they +chose on a train a compartment full of children: they planned +amusements, they gave presents to the children of their friends. Over +my son's bed hangs a silver crucifix chosen with loving care by +Frances after Gilbert had stood godfather to him. And he was one of +very many. + +Gilbert was however a complete realist as to the ways and manners of +the species he so loved. + + Playing with children [he wrote at this time] is a glorious thing: + but the journalist in question has never understood why it was + considered a soothing or idyllic one. It reminds him, not of watering + little budding flowers, but of wrestling for hours with gigantic + angels and devils. Moral problems of the most monstrous complexity + besiege him incessantly. He has to decide before the awful eyes of + innocence, whether, when a sister has knocked down a brother's + bricks, in revenge for the brother having taken two sweets out of his + turn, it is endurable that the brother should retaliate by scribbling + on the sister's picture-book, and whether such conduct does not + justify the sister in blowing out the brother's unlawfully lit match. + + Just as he is solving this problem upon principles of the highest + morality, it occurs to him suddenly that he has not written his + Saturday article; and that there is only about an hour to do it in. + He wildly calls to somebody (probably the gardener) to telephone to + somewhere for a messenger; he barricades himself in another room and + tears his hair, wondering what on earth he shall write about. A + drumming of fists on the door outside and a cheerful bellowing + encourage and clarify his thoughts. . . . He sits down desperately; + the messenger rings at the bell; the children drum on the door; the + servants run up from time to time to say the messenger is getting + bored; and the pencil staggers along, making the world a present of + fifteen hundred unimportant words, and making Shakespeare a present + of a portion of Gray's _Elegy_; putting "fantastic roots wreathed + high" instead of "antique roots peep out."* Then the journalist sends + off his copy and turns his attention to the enigma of whether a + brother should commandeer a sister's necklace because the sister + pinched him at Littlehampton. + +[* Chesterton had actually made this slip, and the present quotation +is from the article he wrote in apology.] + +In the Notebook he had written: + + NORTH BERWICK + + On the sands I romped with children + Do you blame me that I did not improve myself + By bottling anemones? + But I say that these children will be men and women + And I say that the anemones will not be men and women + (Not just yet, at least, let us say). + And I say that the greatest men of the world might romp with + children + And that I should like to see Shakespeare romping with children + And Browning and Darwin romping with children + And Mr. Gladstone romping with children + And Professor Huxley romping with children + And all the Bishops romping with children; + And I say that if a man had climbed to the stars + And found the secrets of the angels, + The best thing and the most useful thing he could do + Would be to come back and romp with children. + + M. V. + + An almost elvish little girl with loose brown hair, doing + needlework. I have spoken to her once or twice. + I think I must get another book of the same size as this + to make notes about her. + +From the Christmas party at Overroads all adults were excluded--no +nurses, no parents. The children would hang on Gilbert's neck in an +ecstasy of affection and he and Frances schemed out endless games for +them. Gilbert had started a toy theatre before he left London, +cutting out and painting figures and scenery, and devising plots for +plays. Two of the favourites were "St. George and the Dragon" and +"The Seven Champions of Christendom." + +The atmosphere of Overroads is perhaps best conveyed through +Gilbert's theories concerning his toy theatre and the other +theatricals such as Charades sometimes played there. When it came to +the toy theatre set up to amuse the children, he frankly felt that he +was himself child No. 1 and got the most amusement out of it. He felt +too that the whole thing was good enough to be worth analysing in its +rules and its effects. And so he drew up a paper of rules and +suggestions for its use. + + I will not say positively that a toy-theatre is the best of + theatres; though I have had more fun out of it than out of any other. + But I will say positively that the toy-theatre is the best of all + toys. It sometimes fails; but generally because people are mistaken + in the matter of what it is meant to do, and what it can or cannot be + expected to do; as if people should use a toy balloon as a football + or a skipping rope as a hammock. . . . + + Now the first rule may seem rather contradictory; but it is quite + true and really quite simple. In a small theatre, because it is a + small theatre, you cannot deal with small things. Because it is a + small theatre it must only deal with large things. You can introduce + a dragon; but you cannot really introduce an earwig; it is too small + for a small theatre. And this is true not only of small creatures, + but of small actions, small gestures and small details of any + kind. . . . All your effects must be made to depend on things like + scenery and background. The sky and the clouds and the castles and + the mountains and so on must be the exciting things; along with other + things that move all of a piece, such as regiments and processions; + great and glorious things can be done with processions. . . . In a + real comedy the whole excitement may consist in the nervous curate + dropping his tea-cup; though I do not recommend this incident for the + drama of the drawing-room. But if he were nervous, let us say, about + a thunderstorm, the toy-theatre could hardly represent the + nervousness but it might manage the thunder-storm. It might be quite + sensational and yet entirely simple; for it would largely consist of + darkening the stage and making horrible noises behind the + scenes. . . . + + The second and smaller rule, that really follows from this, is that + everything dramatic should depend not on a character's action, but + simply on his appearance. Shakespeare said of actors that they have + their exits and their entrances; but these actors ought really to + have nothing else except exits and entrances. The trick is to so + arrange the tale that the mere appearance of a person tells the + important truth about him. Thus, supposing the drama to be about St. + George let us say, the mere abrupt appearance of the dragon's head + (if of a proper ferocity) will be enough to explain that he intends + to eat people; and it will not be necessary for the dragon to explain + at length, with animated gestures and playful conversation, that his + nature is carnivorous and that he has not merely dropped in to tea. + +There is some further discussion on colour effects ("I like very gay +and glaring colours, and I like to give them a good chance to +glare"). The paper concludes on a more serious note: + + It is an old story, and for some a sad one, that in a sense these + childish toys are more to us than they can ever be to children. We + never know how much of our after imaginations began with such a + peep-show into paradise. I sometimes think that houses are + interesting because they are so like doll houses and I am sure the + best thing that can be said for many large theatres is that they may + remind us of little theatres. . . . + + I do not look back, I look forward to this kind of puppet play; I + look forward to the day when I shall have time to play with it. Some + day when I am too lazy to write anything, or even to read anything, I + shall retire into this box of marvels; and I shall be found still + striving hopefully to get inside a toy-theatre. + +Adults as well as children enjoyed this toy and it was often +described by interviewers. Like the sword-stick, the great cloak and +flapping hat, it was felt by some to be Gilbert's way of attracting +attention. But it was just one of Gilbert's ways of amusing himself. +A small nephew of Frances was living with them at the time and it was +funny to watch him fencing with his huge uncle who was obviously +enjoying himself rather the more of the two. On my first visit to +Overroads, I noticed how as we talked my host's pencil never ceased. +One evening I collected and kept an imposing red Indian and a +caricature of Chesterton himself in a wheelbarrow being carried off +to the bonfire. I came in too for one of the grown-up parties in +which guessing games were a feature. Lines from the poets were +illustrated and we had to guess them. At another party, Dr. Pocock +told me, G.K. did the Inns of Beaconsfield, of which the most +successful drawing was that of a sadly dilapidated dragon being +turned away from the inn door: "Dragon discovers with disgust that he +cannot put up at the George." + +Sometimes these drawings were the prize of whoever guessed the line +of verse they illustrated, sometimes they were sold for a local +charity. The Babies' Convalescent Home was a favourite object and one +admirable picture (reproduced in _The Coloured Lands_) shows the +"Despair of King Herod at discovering children convalescing from the +Massacre." The two closest friendships of early Beaconsfield life +were with the rector, Mr. Comerline and his wife, who are now dead, +and Dr. and Mrs. Pocock. Dr. Pocock was the Chestertons' doctor as +well as their friend, and he tells me that his great difficulty in +treating Gilbert lay in his detachment from his own physical +circumstances. If there was anything wrong with him he usually didn't +notice it. "He was the most uncomplaining person. You had to hunt him +all over" to find out if anything was wrong. + +This detachment from circumstances still extended to his appearance +and Frances one day begged Dr. Pocock to take him to a good tailor. +It was a huge success: he had never looked so well as he did now--for +a few weeks. And then the tailor said to Dr. Pocock, "Mr. Chesterton +has broken my heart. It took twice the material and twice the time to +make for him, but I _was_ proud of it." His tailor like his doctor +was apt to become a friend. Mrs. Pocock recalls how he would go to a +dinner of the tradesmen of Beaconsfield and come back intensely +interested and wanting to tell her all about it. + +"You always went away," Dr. Pocock said, "chuckling over something," +and he summed up the years of their friendship, saying, "You never +saw him without getting delight from his presence." + +Sometimes he would grow abstracted in the train of his own thought, +and Father Ignatius Rice remembers an occasion when he was one of a +group discussing really bad lines of poetry. Gilbert broke into +something Frances was saying with the words, "That irritating person +Milton"--then, realising he had interrupted her, he broke off and +apologised profusely. When she had finished he went on "That +irritating person Milton--I can't find a single bad line in him." + +Frances one day came in rather suddenly when Dr. Pocock was there, +and Gilbert exclaimed, "Oh you've broken it." She looked round +thinking she must have knocked something over. "No," he said, "it was +an idea." "It will come back," said Frances. "No," he said, "it got +broken." More usually he was indifferent to interruptions: sometimes +he welcomed them as grist for his mind's mill. Daily life went on +around him and often in his articles one can find traces of Frances's +daily activities as well as his own. + +Attending him for his broken arm, Dr. Pocock told him at a certain +stage to write something--anything--to see if he could use a pen +again. After an instant's thought, Gilbert headed his paper with the +name of a prominent Jew and wrote: + + I am fond of Jews + Jews are fond of money + Never mind of whose + I am fond of Jews + Oh, but when they lose + Damn it all, it's funny. + +The name at the head (which wild horses would not drag from me) is +the key to this impromptu. It was really true that Gilbert was fond +of very many Jews. In his original group of J.D.C. friends, four Jews +had been included and with three of these his friendship continued +through life. Lawrence Solomon and his wife were among the +Beaconsfield neighbours and he saw them often. There was another kind +of Jew he very heartily disliked but he was at great pains to draw +this distinction himself. + +Speaking at the Jewish West End Literary Society in 1911 he put the +question of what the real Jewish problem was. The Jews, he said, were +a race, born civilised. You never met a Jewish clod or yokel. They +represented one of the highest of civilised types. But while all +other races had local attachments, the Jews were universal and +scattered. They could not be expected to have patriotism for the +countries in which they made their homes: their patriotism could be +only for their race. In principle, he believed in the solution of +Zionism. And then the reporter in large letters made a headline: "Mr. +Chesterton said that speaking generally, as with most other +communities, 'THE POOR JEWS WERE NICE AND THE RICH WERE NASTY.'" + +Many years later in Palestine he was to be driven around the country, +as he has described in _The New Jerusalem_, by one of these less +wealthy Jews who had sacrificed his career in England to his national +idealism. And later yet, after G.K.'s death, Rabbi Wise, a leader of +American Jewry, paid him tribute (in a letter to Cyril Clements dated +September 8, 1937): + + Indeed I was a warm admirer of Gilbert Chesterton. Apart from his + delightful art and his genius in many directions, he was, as you + know, a great religionist. He as Catholic, I as Jew, could not have + seen eye to eye with each other, and he might have added + "particularly seeing that you are cross-eyed"; but I deeply respected + him. When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with + all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. + Blessing to his memory! + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +A Circle of Friends + + +IN THE LAST chapter, this chapter and to a considerable extent those +that follow, down to the break made by Gilbert's illness and the war +of 1914, it is unavoidable that the same years should be retraced to +cover a variety of aspects. For their home was for both Gilbert and +Frances the centre of a widening circle. Although I visited +Overroads, it seems to me, looking back, I saw them just then much +more frequently in London and elsewhere. Several times they stayed at +Lotus, our Surrey home. The first time it was a weekend of blazing +summer weather. Lady Blennerhassett was there--formerly Countess +Leyden and a favourite disciple of Doellinger. I remember she +delighted Gilbert by her comment on Modernism. "I must," she said, +"have the same religion as my washerwoman, and Father Tyrrell's is +not the religion for my washerwoman." We sat on the terrace in the +sunshine and Lady Blennerhassett asked suddenly whether the soles of +our boots were, like hers, without hole or blemish. We all looked +very odd as we stuck our feet out and tried to see the soles. +Gilbert, offered a wicker chair, preferred the grass because, he +said, there was grave danger he might unduly "modify" the chair. + +After a meeting of the Westminster Dining Society (the predecessor of +the Wiseman), he wrote my mother an unnecessary apology: + + DEAR MRS. WILFRID WARD-- + + I have wanted for some days past to write to you, but could not + make up my mind whether I was making my position worse or better. But + I do want to apologise to you for the way in which I threw out your + delightful Catholic Dining Society affair the other day. I behaved + badly, dined badly, debated badly and left badly; yet the explanation + is really simple. I was horribly worried, and I do not worry well; + when I am worried I am like a baby. My wife was that night just ill + enough to make a man nervous, a stupid man, and I had sworn to her + that I would fulfill some affairs that night on which she was keen. + As she is better now and only wants rest, I feel normal and realise + what a rotter I must have looked that night. As Belloc wrote in a + beautiful epitaph-- + + "He frequently would flush with fear when other people paled, + He Tried to Do his Duty . . . but how damnably he failed." + + This is the epitaph of yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +My father and mother were hardly less excited than I at the discovery +of the greatest man of the age, for so we all felt him to be. Gilbert +later described my father as "strongly co-operative" with another's +mind, and this was perhaps his own chief characteristic in +conversation. The two men did not agree on politics, but on religion +their agreement was deep and constantly grew deeper as they +co-operated in exploring it. Our headquarters were in Surrey but when +we came up to London every spring my parents wanted to bring the +Chestertons into touch with all their friends. They tended to think +of their luncheon table as Chesterton "supported" by those most +worthy of the honour. One of the first was of course George Wyndham, +already a friend and admirer of Gilbert's. At this luncheon they +discussed the modern press, 18th Century lampoons, the ingredients of +a good English style, the lawfulness of Revolution, the causes of +Napoleon, Scripture criticism, Joan of Arc, public executions, how to +bring about reforms. It was absurd, G.K. said, to think that gaining +half a reform led to the other half. Supposing it was agreed that +every man ought to have a cow, but you say, "We can't manage that +just yet: give him half a cow." He doesn't care for it and he leaves +it about, and he never asks for the other half. + +Talking of the Eastern and Western races Gilbert said it was curious +that while the Easterns were so logical and clear in their religion, +they were so unpractical in every-day life; the religion of the +Westerns is mystical and full of paradoxes. Yet they are far more +practical. "The Eastern says fate governs everything and he sits and +looks pretty; we believe in Free-will and Predestination and we +invent Babbage's Calculating Machine." + +As the group grew into one another's thought the talk intensified and +we got from considering East and West to considering our own +countrymen. What makes a man essentially English? Dickens had it. +Johnson had it. "You couldn't," said G.K., "imagine a Scotch Johnson, +or an Irish Johnson, or a French or German Johnson." + +George Wyndham told us, as we got on to the topic of patriotism, that +he had a fear he hardly liked to utter. As we urged him he said he +feared a big war might come and we might be defeated. Gilbert agreed +that he too had felt that fear. "But," he said, "if you were to say +that in the House or I to write it in a paper we should be denounced +as unpatriotic." + +Small wonder the talk had time to range, for these scrappy notes are +all that remain of a meeting beginning about one o'clock and lasting +until five. At that hour two little old sisters, the Miss Blounts, +known in our family as "the little B's," happened to call on my +mother. I shall never forget their faces as they looked at the huge +man in the armchair, and the other guests all absorbed and animated, +and realised that they were interrupting a luncheon party. A swift +glance at the little old ladies, another at the clock, and the party +broke up, to remain my most cherished memory for months: until my +next visit to their home, when Gilbert and I arrived at the use of +each other's Christian names, an agreement that he insisted on +calling The Pact of Beaconsfield. + +How deep he saw when in his "Defence of Hermits" he analysed a chief +joy of human intercourse: + + . . . The best things that happen to us are those we get out of + what has already happened. If men were honest with themselves, they + would agree that actual social engagements, even with those they + love, often seem strangely brief, breathless, thwarted or + inconclusive. Mere society is a way of turning friends into + acquaintances. The real profit is not in meeting our friends, but in + having met them. Now when people merely plunge from crush to crush, + and from crowd to crowd, they never discover the positive joy of + life. They are like men always hungry, because their food never + digests; also, like those men, they are cross.* + +[* _The Well and the Shallows_, pp. 104-5.] + +There was time in the country for the food of social intercourse to +digest. I notice too that in the list of Gilbert's friends +quiet-voiced men stood high: Max Beerbohm, Jack Phillimore, Monsignor +O'Connor, Monsignor Knox, his own father, Maurice Baring: all these +represent a certain spaciousness and leisureliness which was what he +asked of friendship. Even if they were in a hurry, they never seemed +so. + +Jack Phillimore both he and we saw on and off at this time but had +often to enjoy in anticipation or in retrospect. Professor, at one +time of Greek at another of Latin, at Glasgow University, he was the +kind of man Gilbert specially appreciated: he wrote of Phillimore +after his death something curiously like what he wrote of his own +father--"he was a supreme example of unadvertised greatness, and the +thing which is larger inside than outside." At Oxford Phillimore had +been known as "one of Belloc's lambs." He was very much one of the +group who were to run the _Eye-Witness_ and _New Witness_ but though +he always adored Belloc, no one who knew him in the fulness of his +powers could think of him as anyone's lamb. He was a quiet, humorous, +deeply intelligent man: a scholar of European repute, whose knowledge +of Mediaeval Latin verse equalled his Classical scholarship. + +Gilbert's keen observation of his friends is never shown better than +in what he wrote of Phillimore: + + Like a needle pricking a drum, his quietude seemed to kill all the + noise of our loud plutocracy and publicity. In all this he was + supremely the scholar, with not a little of the satirist. + + And yet there was never any man alive who was so unlike a don. His + religion purged him of intellectual pride, and certainly of that + intellectual vanity which so often makes a sort of seething fuss + underneath the acid sociability of academic centres. He had none of + the tired omniscience which comes of intellectual breeding in and in. + He seemed to be not so much a professor as a practiser of learning. + He practised it quietly but heartily and humorously, exactly as if it + had been any other business. If he had been a sailor, like his father + the Admiral, he would have minded his own business with exactly the + same smile and imperceptible gesture. Indeed, he looked much more + like a sailor than a professor; his dark square face and clear eyes + and compact figure were of a type often seen among sailors; and in + whatever academic enclave he stood, he always seemed to have walked + in from outside, bringing with him some of the winds of the world and + some light from the ends of the earth.* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Nov. 27, 1926.] + +To return to my own notes. It is horribly characteristic that I wrote +them in an undated notebook, but I think that luncheon which lasted +so long must have been in 1911. The same year my father persuaded +both the Synthetic Society to elect Chesterton and Chesterton to +attend the Synthetic. Of his first meeting my father wrote to George +Wyndham: + + Had you been at the Synthetic last night you would have witnessed a + memorable scene. + + Place: Westminster Palace Hotel. Time: 9.40. + + A. J. B. [Arthur Balfour, leader of the Conservative Party] is + speaking persuasively and in carefully modulated tones to an + attentive audience. Suddenly a crash as though the door were blown + open. A. J. B. brought to a halt. The whole company look round and in + rushes a figure exactly like the pictures of Mr. Wind when he blows + open the door and forces an entrance in the German child's story "Mr. + Wind and Madame Rain"--a figure enormous and distended, a kind of + walking mountain but with large rounded corners. It was G. K. C. who, + enveloped in a huge Inverness cape of light colour, thus made his + debut at the Synthetic. He rushed (not walked) to a chair, and was + dragged chair and all by Waggett and me as near as might be to the + table, where with a fresh crash he deposited his stick, and then his + hat. And there he sat, eager and attentive, forgetting all about his + stick and hat and coat, filling up the whole space at the bottom of + the table, drawing caricatures of the company on a sheet of foolscap, + a memorable figure, very welcome to me, but arousing the fury of the + conventional and the "dreary and well-informed" well represented by + Bailey Saunders who has been at me here half the morning trying to + convince me that he will ruin the society and ought never to have + been elected. + +Some of the reactions of this new recruit have been touched on in his +_Autobiography:_ + + There I met old Haldane, yawning with all his Hegelian abysses, who + appeared to me as I must have appeared to a neighbour in a local + debating club when he dismissed metaphysical depths and pointed at me + saying: "There is that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to take his + sport therein." . . . + + There also I met Balfour, obviously preferring any philosophers + with any philosophies to his loyal followers of the Tory Party. + Perhaps religion is not the opium of the people, but philosophy is + the opium of the politicians. + +My father belonged to another group besides the Synthetic Society for +which it seemed to him that Gilbert was even more ideally fitted. +_The_ Club was founded by Dr. Johnson, the home of the best talk in +the land, where Garrick and Goldsmith were at times shouted down by +the great Lexicographer--a sign, said Chesterton, of his modesty and +his essential democracy: Johnson was too democratic to reign as king +of his company: he preferred to contend with them as an equal. The +old formula still in use had informed my father "you have had the +honour to be elected," but Wilfrid Ward felt that the election of the +modern Dr. Johnson would be an honour to The Club. To his intense +disgust he found that only George Wyndham could be relied upon for +whole-hearted support. What may be called the "social" element in the +Club had become too strong to welcome a man who boasted in all +directions of belonging to the Middle Classes and whose friends +merely urged the claim that he was one of the few today who could +talk as well as Johnson. + +Gilbert met many politicians in other ways but only with one of them +did he feel a really close harmony. Of George Wyndham's opinions he +said in the _Autobiography_ that they were "of the same general +colour as my own," and he went on to stress the word "colour" as +significant of the whole man. To depict him in political cartoons as +"St. George" had not in it the sort of absurdity of the pictures of +the more frigid and philosophic Balfour as "Prince Arthur." George +really did suggest the ages of chivalry. "He had huge sympathy with +gypsies and tramps." There was about him "an inward generosity that +gave a gusto or relish to all he did." + +The Chestertons' appreciation of George Wyndham was deepened for them +both by an affection, indeed almost a reverence, for "the deep +mysticism of his wife; a woman not to be forgotten by anyone who ever +knew her, and still less to be merely praised by anyone who +adequately appreciated her." For a period at any rate Gilbert and +Frances were much in contact with the extreme Anglo-Catholic group in +the Church of England. In the best of that group--and many of them +are very very good--there is a sense of taking part in a crusade to +restore Catholicism to the whole country. Canon Scott Holland led a +campaign for social justice and many of the same group mixed this +with devotion to Our Lady, belief in the Real Presence, and a +profound love of the Catholic past of England. George Wyndham's wife, +Lady Grosvenor, was one of this group and also her friend Father +Philip Waggett of the Cowley Fathers. Father Waggett, a member of the +Synthetic Society and intimate with my parents, became also intimate +with the Chestertons. + +Ralph Adams Cram described his own meeting with Chesterton, arranged +by Father Waggett. + + Father Waggett asked my wife and myself once when we were staying + in London, whom we would like best to meet--"anyone from the King + downward." We chose Chesterton who was a very particular friend of + Father Waggett. At that time we put on a dinner at the Buckingham + Palace Hotel (in those days the haunt of all the County families) and + in defiance of fate, had this dinner in the public dining room. We + had as guests Father Waggett, G. K. C. and Mrs. Chesterton. The + entrance into the dining room of the short processional created + something of a sensation amongst the aforesaid County families there + assembled. Father Waggett, thin, cropheaded monk in cassock and rope; + G. K. C., vast and practically globular; little Mrs. Chesterton, very + South Kensington in moss green velvet; my wife and myself. + + The dinner was a riot. I have the clearest recollection of G. K. C. + seated ponderously at the table, drinking champagne by magnums, + continually feeding his face with food which, as he was constantly + employed in the most dazzling and epigrammatic conversation, was apt + to fall from his fork and rebound from his corporosity, until the + fragments disappeared under the table. + + He and Father Waggett egged each other on to the most preposterous + amusements. Each would write a triolet for the other to illustrate. + They were both as clever with the pencil as with the pen, and they + covered the backs of menus with most astonishing literary and + artistic productions. I particularly remember G. K. C. suddenly + looking out of the dining room window towards Buckingham Palace and + announcing that he was now prepared "to write a disloyal triolet!" + This was during the reign of King Edward VII, and the result was + convincing. I have somewhere the whole collection of these literary + productions with their illustrations, but where they are I do not + know.* + +[* _Chesterton_ by Cyril Clemens, pp. 36-37.] + +On a second visit of the Chestertons to Lotus, George Wyndham was +there. He had told us of his habit of "shouting the Ballad of the +White Horse to submissive listeners" and we had hoped for the same +treat. But Gilbert got the book and kicked it under his chair defying +us to recover it. We had at that time a vast German cook--of a girth +almost equal to his own and possessed of unbounded curiosity in the +matter of our guests. Gilbert declared that as he sat peacefully in +the drawing room she approached him holding out a paper which he +supposed to be a laundry list, and then started back exclaiming that +she had thought him to be Mrs. Ward. + +It was on this visit that he remarked to a lady who happened to be +the granddaughter of a Duke: "You and I who belong to the jolly old +upper Middle Classes." Had he been told about her ancestry he would, +I imagine, have felt that he had paid her an implied compliment by +not being aware of it. For into the world of the aristocracy he and +Frances had been received in London, and he viewed it with the same +calm humour and potential friendliness as he had for all the rest of +mankind. When Frances in her Diary pitied the Duchess of Sutherland +and felt that a single day of such a life as the Duchess lived would +drive her crazy, she was expressing Gilbert's taste as well as her +own for a certain simplicity of life. Social position neither excited +nor irritated him. He liked or disliked an aristocrat exactly as he +liked or disliked a postman. Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton really +were, as Conrad Noel said, personally unconcerned about class. They +had, however, a principle against the position of the English +aristocracy which will be better understood in the light of their +general social and historical outlook. What might be called the +social side of it was often expressed by G.K. when lecturing on +Dickens. Thus, speaking at Manchester for the Dickens centenary, he +was reported as saying: + + The objection to aristocracy was quite simple. It was not that + aristocrats were all blackguards. It was that in an aristocratic + state, people sat in a huge darkened theatre and only the stage was + lighted. They saw five or six people walking about and they said, + "That man looks very heroic striding about with a sword." Plenty of + people outside in the street looked more heroic striding about with + an umbrella; but they did not see these things, all the lights being + turned out. That was the really philosophic objection to an + aristocratic society. It was not that the lord was a fool. He was + about as clever as one's own brother or cousin. It was because one's + attention was confined to a few people that one judged them as one + judged actors on the stage, forgetting everybody else. + +Chesterton thought everybody should be remembered whether suburban, +proletarian, aristocrat or pauper. Shortly after the removal to +Beaconsfield he was summoned to give evidence before a Parliamentary +Commission on the question of censorship of the theatre. Keep it, he +said, to the surprise of many of his friends, but change the manner +of its exercise. Let it be no longer censorship by an expert but by a +jury--by twelve ordinary men. These will be the best judges of what +really makes for morality and sound sense. He had come to give +evidence, he said, not as a writer but as the representative of the +gallery, and he was concerned only with "the good and happiness of +the English people." + +One bewildered Commissioner was understood to murmur that their terms +of reference were not quite so wide as that. + +The chapter in the _Autobiography_ called "Friendships and Foolery" +ends suddenly with a reference to the war but, like the whole book, +it leaps wildly about. One point in it is interesting and links up +with the introduction to Titterton's _Drinking Songs_ that Gilbert +later wrote. To shout a chorus is natural to mankind and G.K. claims +that he had done it long before he heard of Community Singing. He +sang when out driving, or walking over the moors with Father +O'Connor; he sang in Fleet Street with Titterton and his journalist +friends; he sang the _Red Flag_ on Trade Union platforms and _England +Awake_ in Revolutionary groups. There was, he claims, a legend that +in Auberon Herbert's rooms not far from Buckingham Palace "we sang +Drake's Drum with such passionate patriotism that King Edward the +Seventh sent in a request for the noise to stop." + +Yet it was all but impossible to teach Gilbert a tune, and Bernard +Shaw felt this (as we have seen) a real drawback to his friend's +understanding of his own life and career. Music was to Shaw what line +and color were to Chesterton; but to Chesterton singing was just +making a noise to show he felt happy. Once he wrote a poem called +"Music"--but only as one more flower in the wreath he was always +weaving for Frances--who was, says Monsignor Knox, the heroine of all +his novels.* + +[* _The Listener_, June 19, 1941.] + + Sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, + He that made me sealed my ears, + And the pomp of gorgeous noises, + Waves of triumph, waves of tears, + + Thundered empty round and past me, + Shattered, lost for evermore, + Ancient gold of pride and passion, + Wrecked like treasure on a shore. + + But I saw her cheek and forehead + Change, as at a spoken word, + And I saw her head uplifted + Like a lily to the Lord. + + Nought is lost, but all transmuted, + Ears are sealed, yet eyes have seen; + Saw her smiles (0 soul be worthy!), + Saw her tears (0 heart be clean!)* + +[* _Collected Poems_, p. 129.] + +Against the background of all these activities the books went on +pouring out as fast from Overroads as they had from Overstrand. A +town full of friends forty minutes' journey from London was not +exactly the desert into which admirers had advised Gilbert to flee, +but he would never have been happy in a desert: he needed human +company. He also needed to produce. "Artistic paternity," he once +said, "is as wholesome as physical paternity." And certainly he never +ceased to bring forth the children of his mind. Within two years of +the move seven books were published: + +The Ball and the Cross, February 1910, +What's Wrong with the World, June 1910, +Alarms and Discursions, November 1910, +Blake, November 1910, +Criticisms and Appreciations of Dickens, January 1911, +Innocence of Father Brown, August 1911, +Ballad of the White Horse, August 1911. + +Of these books, _Alarms and Discursions_ and the Dickens criticisms +are collections and arrangements of already published essays. +Meanwhile other essays were being written to become in turn other +books at a later date. + +The _Blake_ is a brilliant short study of art and mysticism. After +reading it you feel you understand Blake in quite a new way. And then +you wonder--is this illumination light on Blake or simply light on +Chesterton? It must never be forgotten that the writer was himself a +"spoilt" artist--which means a man with almost enough art in him to +have been in the ranks of men consecrated for life to art's service. + +"Father Brown" had first made his appearance in magazines and these +detective stories became the most purely popular of Gilbert's books. +It was a new genre: detection in which the mind of a man means more +than his footprints or cigar ash, even to the detective. The one +reproduced in most anthologies--"The Invisible Man"--depends for its +solution on the fact that certain people are _morally_ invisible. To +the question "Has anyone been here" the answer "No" does not include +the milkman or the postman: thus the postman is the morally invisible +man who has committed the crime. A thread of this sort runs through +all the stories, but they are, like all his romances, full too of +escape and peril and wild adventure. + +Life on several occasions imitated Gilbert's fancies. Thus the Azeff +revelations followed his fantastic idea in _The Man Who Was Thursday_ +of the anarchists who turn out to be detectives in disguise. The +technique of Father Brown himself was imitated by a man in Detroit +who recovered a stolen car by putting himself imaginatively in the +thief's place and driving an exactly similar car around likely +corners till he came suddenly upon his own, left in a lonely road. He +wrote to tell Gilbert of this adventure. + +From Chicago came an even odder example. "It is extremely difficult," +wrote the _Tribune_, "to determine the proper relationship of the +Chiesa-Prudente-Di Cossato duels to Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton's book, +_The Ball and the Cross"_ . . . + + The flight in search of a duelling ground; the pursuit by the + police; the friendly intervention of the anarchist wineshop-keeper, + Volpi; the offer of his backyard for fighting purposes; the + unfriendly intervention of the police; the friendly intervention of + the reporters; the renewed and insistently unfriendly intervention of + the police commissioner; the disgust of the duellists; the extreme + disgust of the anarchist; the renewed flight of the fighters, + seconds, physicians, reporters, and the anarchist over the back + fences--all these and other incidents are essentially Chestertonian. + + The Di Cossato affair was carried off with fully as much spirit and + dash; with fully as many automobiles, seconds, physicians, reporters + and police, all scampering over the country roads until the artistic + deputy and the aged veteran of the war of 1859, outdistancing their + pursuers, could find opportunity in comparative peace to cut the + glorious gashes of satisfied honour in each other's faces.* + +[* _Chicago Tribune_, 12 March 1910.] + +Two months after this an interviewer from the _Daily News_ visited +Beaconsfield and splashed headlines in the paper to the effect that +the spirit of Chesterton was inspiring a fight between the +leaseholders in Edwardes Square and a firm which had bought up their +garden to erect a super-garage. Barricades were erected by day and +destroyed in the night: a wild-eyed beadle held the fort with a +garden roller, and said G.K. "the creatures of my Napoleon [of +Notting Hill] have entered into the bodies of the staid burghers of +Kensington." + +In none of these cases was there any likelihood, as the _Chicago +Tribune_ noted, of the actors in life having read the books they were +spiritedly staging. "Ideas have a life of their own," the _Daily +News_ interviewer tentatively ventured, but he may have been puzzled +as G.K. "agreed heartily" in the words, "I am no dirty nominalist." + +Chesterton kept the reviewers busy as well as the interviewers and in +all his stories they noted one curiosity: "If time and space--or any +circumstances--interfere with the cutting of his Gordian knots, he +commands time and space to make themselves scarce, and circumstances +to be no more heard of." + +About time and space this is true in a unique degree. For him time +seems to have had no existence, or perhaps rather to have been like a +telescope elongating and shortening at will. As a young man, it may +be remembered, he gave in the course of one letter two quite +irreconcilable statements of the length of time since events in his +school days. He had indeed the same difficulty about time as about +money--he mentions in the _Autobiography_ that after his watch was +stolen during a pro-Boer demonstration he never bothered to possess +another. In his stories this oddity became more marked. In _The Ball +and the Cross_ he relates adventures performed in leaping on and off +an omnibus in such fashion that the bus must have covered several +miles of ground: and then we are suddenly told it had gone the few +score yards from the bottom of Ludgate Hill to the top. Still +stranger are the records in _The Man Who Was Thursday_ and _Manalive_ +of the happenings of a single day, while in _The Return of Don +Quixote_ a new organisation of society is described as though many +years old and then suddenly announced as having been on foot some +weeks. + +But to return for one moment to the more serious aspects of the work +of these years. While _What's Wrong with the World_ (discussed in +some detail in the next chapter) is the first sketch of his social +views--a kind of blueprint for a sane and human sort of world--the +other books with all their foolery hold a serious purpose. They +should be read as illustrations of the philosophy of _Orthodoxy_-- +both the book he had written and the thing of which he had said "God +and humanity made it and it made me." + +"This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before +the reader," he says of his essays (in the "Introduction on +Gargoyles" in _Alarms and Discursions_), "does not consist of +separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various +islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite +cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing +else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. But +I am very sure of the style of the architecture and of the +consecration of the church." + +The story of _The Ball and the Cross_, already indicated to the +reader by the American-Italian duel which seemed like a parody of it, +has the double interest of its bearing on the world of Chesterton's +day and its glimpses at a stranger world to come. A young Highlander, +coming to London, sees in an atheist bookshop an insult to Our Lady. +He smashes the window and challenges the owner to a duel. Turnbull, +the atheist, is more than ready to fight; but the world, caring +nothing for religious opinions, regards anyone ready to fight for +them as a madman and is mainly concerned with keeping the peace. +Pursued by all the resources of modern civilisation, the two men +spend the rest of the book starting to fight, being interrupted and +arrested by the police, escaping, arguing and fighting again. They +end up in an asylum with a garden where again they talk endlessly and +where the power of Lucifer the prince of this world has enclosed +everyone who has been concerned in their wild flight, so that no +memory of it may live on the earth. + +The two sides of Chesterton's brain are engaged in the duel of minds +in this book, and some of his best writing is in it, both in the +description of the wild rush across sea and land and in the +discussions between the two men. G.K.'s affection for the sincere +atheist is noteworthy and his hatred is reserved for the shuffler and +the compromiser. It was grand to have such a man as Turnbull to +convert--"one of those men in whom a continuous appetite and industry +of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady. His heart +was in the right place but he was quite content to leave it there. +His head was his hobby." This might be Chesterton himself--in fact, +it is Chesterton himself--and the climax belongs to a later world +than that of 1911. For pointing to the Ball bereft of the Cross, the +Highlander calls out: "It staggers, Turnbull. It cannot stand by +itself; you know it cannot. It has been the sorrow of your life. +Turnbull, this garden is not a dream, but an apocalyptic fulfillment. +This garden is the world gone mad." + +About the time this book appeared Gilbert was asked by an Anglican +Society to lecture at Coventry. He said "What shall I lecture on?" +They answered "Anything from an elephant to an umbrella." "Very +well," he said, "I will lecture on an umbrella." He treated the +umbrella as a symbol of increasing artificiality. We wear hair to +protect the head, a hat to protect the hair, an umbrella to protect +the hat. Gilbert said once he was willing to start anywhere and +develop from anything the whole of his philosophy. In the Notebook +he had written: + + BOOTLACES + + Once I looked down at my bootlaces + Who gave me my bootlaces? + The bootmaker? Bah! + Who gave the bootmaker himself? + What did I ever do that I should be given bootlaces? + +After the lecture on the umbrella two priests saw him at the railway +bookstall and asked him if the rumour was true that he was thinking +of joining the Church. He answered, "It's a matter that is giving me +a great deal of agony of mind, and I'd be very grateful if you would +pray for me." + +The following year he broached the subject to Father O'Connor when +they were alone in a railway carriage. He said he had made up his +mind, but he wanted to wait for Frances "as she had led him into the +Anglican Church out of Unitarianism." Frances told Father O'Connor +when he came to Overroads later, at the beginning of Gilbert's +illness, that she "could not make head or tail" of some of her +husband's remarks, especially one about being buried at Kendal Green. +When Father O'Connor told her what had been on Gilbert's mind she was +half amused at the hints he had been dropping: she recognised his +reluctance to move without her, but I think she probably realised too +that even to himself his conviction seemed in those years at times +more absolute, at times less. We shall see in a later chapter his own +analysis of his very slow progress. Meanwhile in his books he was at +once deepening and widening his vision of the faith. + +Fragments of verse used in _The Ballad of the White Horse_ had come +to Gilbert in his sleep; a great white horse had been the romance of +his childhood; the beginning of his honeymoon under the sign of the +White Horse at Ipswich had been "a trip to fairyland." But it is hard +to say when the motif of the White Horse, the verses ringing in his +head, and the ideas that make the poem, came together into what many +think the greatest work of his life. + +In _Father Brown on Chesterton_ we are told of the long time the poem +took in the making. They talked of it on the Yorkshire moors in 1906 +and Father O'Connor noted how Frances "cherished it. . . . I could +see she was more in love with it than with anything else he had in +hand." Father O'Connor also gives some interesting illustrations of +the way talk ministers to a work of genius. He had begun one day "by +saying lightly that none of us could become great men without leaning +on the little ones: could not well begin our day but for those who +started theirs first for our sake, lighting the fire and cooking the +breakfast." This was said just before the dressing bell rang and +between the bell and dinner Gilbert had written about nine verses +beginning with King Alfred's meditation: + + And well may God with the serving folk + Cast in His dreadful lot + Is not He too a servant + And is not He forgot? + +In 1907, Gilbert published in the _Albany Review_ a "Fragment from a +Ballad Epic of Alfred" which evoked the comment "Mr. Chesterton +certainly has in each eye a special Roentgen ray attachment." + +He wrote _The White Horse_ guided by his favourite theory that to +realise history we should not delve into the details of research but +try only to see the big things--for it is those that we generally +overlook. + + People talk about features of interest; but the features never make + up a face. . . . They will toil wearily off to the tiniest inscription + or darkest picture that is mentioned in a guide book as having some + reference to Alfred the Great or William the Conqueror; but they care + nothing for the sky that Alfred saw or the hills on which William + hunted. + +In the King Alfred country especially can be found "the far-flung +Titanic figure of the Giant Albion whom Blake saw in visions, +spreading to our encircling seas."* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Apr. 16, 1927.] + +Gilbert wrote a sketch for the _Daily News_ about this time, telling +how an old woman in a donkey cart whom they had left far behind on +the road went driving triumphantly past when the car they were in +broke down. For this expedition, as so often later, he made full use +of the modern invention he derided. In an open touring car hired for +the occasion, Gilbert in Inverness cape and shapeless hat, Frances +beside him snugly wrapped up, they + + Saw the smoke-hued hamlets quaint + With Westland King and Westland Saint, + And watched the western glory faint + Along the road to Frome. + +The note struck in the dedication and recurring throughout the poem +is that of the Christian idea which had made England great and which +he had learnt from Frances: + + Wherefore I bring these rhymes to you + Who brought the cross to me, + Since on you flaming without flaw + I saw the sign that Guthrum saw + When he let break his ships of awe + And laid peace on the sea. + +In the poem Christian men, whether they be Saxon or Roman or Briton +or Celt, are banded together to fight the heathen Danes in defence of +the sacred things of faith, in defence of the human things of daily +life, in defence even of the old traditions of pagan England + + . . . because it is only Christian men + guard even heathen things. + +Gilbert constantly disclaimed the idea that he took trouble over +anything: "taking trouble has never been a weakness of mine": but in +what might be termed a large and loose way he really did take immense +trouble over what interested him. King Alfred is not an almost +mythical figure like King Arthur and an outline of his story with +legendary fringes can be traced in the Wessex country and confirmed +by literature. Gilbert wanted this general story: he did not want +antiquarian exactness of detail. + +Into the mouths of Guthrum and of King Alfred, he put the expression +of the pagan and the Christian outlook. Nor did he hesitate to let +King Alfred prophesy at large concerning the days of G. K. +Chesterton. The poem is a ballad in the sense of the old ballads that +were stirring stories: it is also an expression of the threefold love +of Gilbert's life: his wife, his country and his Faith. And as in all +great poetry, there is a quality of eternity in this poem that has +made it serve as an expression of the eternal Spirit of man. + +During the first world war many soldiers had it with them in the +trenches: "I want to tell you," the widow of a sailor wrote, "that a +copy of the Ballad of the White Horse went down into the Humber with +the R.38. My husband loved it as his own soul--never went anywhere +without it." + +Almost thirty years have passed and today the poem still speaks. +Greeting Jacques Maritain on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, +Dorothy Thompson quoted King Alfred's assertion of Christian freedom +against "the pagan nazi conquerors of his day." After Crete the +_Times_ had the shortest first leader in its history. Under the +heading _Sursum Corda_ was a brief statement of the disaster, +followed by the words of Our Lady to King Alfred: + + I tell you naught for your comfort, + Yea, naught for your desire, + Save that the sky grows darker yet + And the sea rises higher. + Night shall be thrice night over you, + And heaven an iron cope. + Do you have joy without a cause, + Yea, faith without a hope? + +The unbreakable strength of that apparently faint and tenuous thread +of faith appeared in the sequel. Many had the ballad in hand in those +dark days; many others wrote to the _Times_ asking the source of the +quotation. Months later when Winston Churchill spoke of "the end of +the beginning," the _Times_ returned to _The White Horse_ and gave +the opening of Alfred's speech at Ethandune: + + "The high tide!" King Alfred cried. + "The high tide and the turn!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +The Disillusioned Liberal + + +_The English were not wrong in loving liberty. They were only wrong +in losing it_. + +_G.K.'s Weekly_, June 1, 1933. + +ONE MAIN DIFFICULTY in writing biography lies in the various strands +that run through every human life. It is as I have already said +impossible to keep a perfect chronological order with anyone whose +occupations and interests were so multifarious. In the present +chapter and the two that follow we shall consider the movement of +Chesterton's mind upon politics and sociology. This will involve +going back to the general election of 1906 and forward to the Marconi +Trial of 1913. For those who are interested in his poetry or his +humour or his philosophy or his theology but not at all in his +sociological and political outlook, I fear that these three chapters +may loom a little uninvitingly. If they are tempted to skip them +altogether, I shall not blame them; yet they will miss a great deal +that is vital to the understanding of his whole mind and the course +his life was to take. These are not the most entertaining chapters in +the book, but if we are really to know Chesterton the events they +cover must be considered most carefully. + +As a boy Gilbert Chesterton spoke of politics as absorbing "for every +ardent intellect"; and during these years he was himself deeply +concerned with the politics of England. The ideal Liberalism sketched +in his letter to Hammond during the Boer War [Chapter X] had appeared +to him, if not perfectly realised, at least capable of realisation, +in the existing Liberal Party. The Tory Party was in power and all +its acts, to say nothing of its general ineptitude, appeared to +Liberals as positive arguments for their own party. At this date so +convinced a Tory as Lord Hugh Cecil could describe his own party as +"to mix metaphors, an eviscerated ruin."* Several letters and +postcards from Mr. Belloc announcing his own election as Liberal +member for South Salford show the high hope with which young +Liberalism was viewing the world in 1906: + +[* In a letter to Wilfrid Ward.] + + (undated) + + I have, as you will have seen, pulled it off by 852. It is huge + fun. I am now out against all Vermin: Notably South African Jews. The + Devil is let loose: let all men beware. H. B. + + (Written across top of letter) + + Tomorrow Monday Meet the Manchester train arriving Euston 6.10 and + oblige your little friend HB _St. Hilary's Day_. + + Don't fail to meet that train. Stamps are cheap! HB + + I beg you. I implore you. _Meet that 6.10 train_. + + HB + + Stamps are a drug in the market. + 852 + Meet that train! + Stamps are _given away_ now in _Salford_. + +From 1902, when the general election left the Conservatives still in +power, until 1906 the Liberal party had been, as Chesterton described +it, "in the desert." And the younger members of the party were deeply +concerned with hammering out a positive philosophy which might +inspire a true programme for their own party. A group of them wrote a +book called _England A Nation_ with the sub-title _Papers of A +Patriot's Club_. The Patriot's Club had no real existence, but I +imagine that Lucian Oldershaw who edited the book believed that its +publication might create the club. Belloc was not one of the +contributors, but Hugh Law wrote ably on Ireland, J. L. Hammond on +South Africa, and Conrad Noel, Henry Nevinson and C. F. G. Masterman +on other aspects of the political scene. + +The whole book is on a fairly high level but Chesterton's essay was +the only one much noticed by reviewers. It was the introductory +chapter, far longer than any of the others, and gave the key to the +whole book. Entitled "The idea of Patriotism" it was, like _The +Napoleon of Notting Hill_, which it does much to illumine, a plea for +patriotism that was really for England and not for the British +Empire. Such a patriotism recognizes the limitations proper to +nationality and admits, nay admires, other patriotisms for other +nations. Thus, in Chesterton's eyes a true English patriot should +also be an ardent home ruler for Ireland since Ireland too was a +nation. + +He stressed the danger that the nationhood of England should be +absorbed and lost in the Imperial idea. The claim that in an empire +the various races could learn much from one another he considered a +bit of special pleading on the part of Imperialists. England had +learned much from France and Germany but, although Ireland had much +to teach, we had not learned from Ireland. The real patriotism of the +Englishman had been dimmed both by the emphasis on the Imperial idea +and by the absence of roots in his own land. The governing classes +had destroyed those roots and had almost forgotten the existence of +the people. From the dregs and off-scourings of the population a vast +empire had been created, but the people of England were not allowed +to colonize England. + +The Education Bill of 1902, brought in by the Conservatives and +giving financial support to Church schools, saw Gilbert in general +agreement with the Liberal attacks. He did not yet appreciate the +Catholic idea that education must be of one piece and he did not +think it fair that the country should support specifically Catholic +schools. Parents could give at home the religious instruction they +wanted their children to have. But with that fairness of mind which +made it so hard for him to be a party man he saw why the Liberal +"compromise" of simple Bible teaching for all in the State schools +could not be expected to satisfy Catholics. He wrote to the _Daily +News:_ + + The Bible compromise is certainly in favour of the Protestant view + of the Bible. The thing, properly stated, is as plain as the nose on + your face. Protestant Christianity believes that there is a Divine + record in a book; that everyone ought to have free access to that + book; that everyone who gets hold of it can save his soul by it, + whether he finds it in a library or picks it off a dustcart. Catholic + Christianity believes that there is a Divine army or league upon + earth called the Church; that all men should be induced to join it; + that any man who joins it can save his soul by it without ever + opening any of the old books of the Church at all. The Bible is only + one of the institutions of Catholicism, like its rites or its + priesthood; it thinks the Bible only efficient when taken as part of + the Church. . . . This being so, a child could see that if you have + the Bible taught alone, anyhow, by anybody, you do definitely decide + in favour of the first view of the Bible and against the second. + +Discussing a few years later whether it was possible or satisfactory +to teach the Bible simply as Literature he put his finger on the +Catholic objection. "I should not mind," he said, "children being +told about Mohammed because I am not a Mohammedan. If I were a +Mohammedan I should very much want to know what they were told about +him." + +While as for the unfortunate teacher: in case a child should ask if +the things in the Bible happened, "Either the teacher must answer him +insincerely and that is immorality, or he must answer him sincerely, +and that is sectarian education, or he must refuse to answer him at +all, and that is first of all bad manners and a sort of timid +tyranny . . ." + +Chesterton's Liberalism received a further shock from the fact that +Liberals, in attacking the Bill, were attacking also the Catholic +faith and raising the cry of No Popery. In a correspondence with Dr. +Clifford he reminded him of how they had stood together against +popular fanaticism during the Boer War. + + There are two cries always capable of raising the English in their + madness--one that the Union Jack is being pulled down, and one that + the Pope is being set up. And upon the man who raises one of them + responsibility will lie heavy till the last day. For when they are + raised, the best are mixed with the worst, every rational compromise + is dashed to pieces, every opponent is given credit for the worst + that the worst of his allies has by his worst enemy been said to + have said. That horror of darkness swept across us when the war + began. . . . + + Beyond all question this is true--that if we choose to fight on the + "No Popery" cry, we may win. But I can imagine something of which I + should be prouder than of any victory--the memory that we had shown + our difference from Mr. Chamberlain simply and finally in this--that + to our hand had lain (as it once laid to his) an old, an effectual, + an infallible, and a filthy weapon, and that we let it lie.* + +[* Letter to the _Daily News_, October 1902.] + +Yet it was fairly easy to be a Liberal in opposition. At the +elections of 1902 (which the Liberals lost) and 1906 (which they won) +Chesterton canvassed for the Liberal party. Charles Masterman used to +tell a story of canvassing a street in his company. Both started at +the same end on opposite sides of the road. Masterman completed his +side and came back on the other to find Chesterton still earnestly +arguing at the first house. For he was passionately serious in his +belief that the Liberal Party stood for a real renewal, even +revolution, in the life of England. "At the present moment of +victory," says the report of a speech by Gilbert following the great +swing of the Liberal party into power in 1906, he called for "that +magnanimity towards the defeated that characterized all great +conquerors. It was important that all should develop--even the Tory." +It needed the experience of seeing the Liberal party in power to +shake his faith. + +In the new House of Commons the Conservatives were in a minority: +against them were the two old parties--the Liberals and the Irish +members who were in general allied to them, and a small group forming +a new party known as Labour. The Labour Members who got into +Parliament in 1906 and 1909 were regarded by Conservatives as being a +kind of left-wing extension of the Liberal Party. Such a Liberal as +Chesterton saw them there with delight, and, although he would still +have called himself a Liberal, he at first hoped in the Labour men as +something more truly expressive of the people's wishes. + +In an introduction to _From Workhouse to Westminster_, a life of Will +Crooks, Gilbert expressed a good deal of his own political +philosophy. As a democrat he believed in the ideal of direct +government by the people. But obviously this was only possible in a +world that was also his ideal--a world consisting of small and even +of very small states. The democrat's usual alternative, +representative government, was, Gilbert said, symbolic in character. +Just as religious symbolism "may for a time represent a real emotion +and then for a time cease to represent anything, so representative +government may for a time represent the people, and for a time cease +to represent anything." + +Further, the very idea of representation itself involved two +perfectly distinct notions: a man throws a shadow or he throws a +stone. "In the first sense, it is supposed that the representative is +like the thing he represents. In the second case, it is only supposed +that the representative is useful to the thing he represents." +Workmen, like Conservatives, sent men to Parliament not to show what +they themselves were like, but to attack the other party in their +name. "The Labour Members as a class are not representatives but +missiles. . . . Working men are not at all like Mr. Keir Hardie. If +it comes to likeness, working men are more like the Duke of +Devonshire. But they throw Mr. Keir Hardie at the Duke of Devonshire, +knowing that he is so curiously shaped as to hurt anything at which +he is thrown."* In the same way Mr. Balfour was entirely unlike the +Tory squires who used him as a weapon. To this rule, that men do not +choose to be represented by their like, Chesterton took Will Crooks +as the one exception: + +[* Introduction to _From Workhouse to Westminster_, p. XV.] + + You have not yet seen the English people in politics. It has not + yet entered politics. Liberals do not represent it; Tories do not + represent it; Labour Members, on the whole, represent it rather less + than Tories or Liberals. When it enters politics it will bring with + it a trail of all the things that politicians detest; prejudices (as + against hospitals), superstitions (as about funerals), a thirst for + respectability passing that of the middle classes, a faith in the + family which will knock to pieces half the Socialism of Europe. If + ever that people enters politics it will sweep away most of our + revolutionists as mere pedants. It will be able to point only to one + figure, powerful, pathetic, humorous and very humble, who bore in any + way upon his face the sign and star of its authority.* + +[* Ibid., p. XX.] + +It was sad enough after this to see Will Crooks fathering one of +those very Bills for the interference with family life which +Chesterton most hated. But, indeed, the years that followed the 1906 +election are a story of a steadily growing disillusionment with the +realities of representative government in England. + +Chesterton wrote regularly for the _Daily News_ and was regarded as +one of their most valuable contributors. But when, following an +attack in the House of Commons on the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman +over the sale of peerages, he sent in an article on the subject, the +Editor A. G. Gardiner wrote (July 12, 1907): + + I have left your article out tonight not because I do not entirely + agree with its point of view but because just at this moment it would + look like backing Lea's unmannerly attack on C. B. I am keeping the + article in type for a later occasion when the general question is not + complicated with a particularly offensive incident. + +It was a test case, and it seemed to Chesterton not a question of +good manners, but of something far more fundamental. The assertion +had been made in the House of Commons that peerages were being sold, +and that the price of such sales was the chief support of the secret +party funds. But the _Daily News_ was a Liberal paper and this was an +attack on the Liberal party. Chesterton replied (July 11, 1907): + + I am sure you know by this time that I never resent the exclusion + of my articles as such. I should always trust your literary judgment, + if it were a matter of literature only: and I daresay you have often + saved me from an indiscretion and your readers from a bore. + Unfortunately this matter of the party funds is not one of that sort. + My conscience does not often bother you, but just now the animal is + awake and roaring. Your paper has always championed the rights of + conscience, so mine naturally goes to you. If you disagreed with me, + it would be another matter. But since you agree with me (as I was + sure you would) it becomes simply a question of which is the more + important, politeness or political morality. I agree that Lea did go + to the point of being unmannerly. So did Plimsoll, so did Bradlaugh: + so did the Irish members. But surely it would be a very terrible + thing if anyone could say "The _Daily News_ suppressed all demand for + the Plimsoll line," or "The _Daily News_ did not join in asking for + Bradlaugh's political rights." I am sure that this is not your idea. + You think that this matter can be better raised later on. I am + convinced of its urgency. I am so passionately convinced of its + urgency that if you will not help me to raise it now, I must try some + other channel. They are going on Monday to raise a "breach of + privilege" (which is simply an aristocratic censorship of the Press) + in order to crush this question through the man who raised it: and to + crush it forever. I have said that I think Lea's questions violent + and needless. But they are not attacking his questions. They are + attacking his letter, which contains nothing that I do not think, + probably nothing that you do not think. Lea is to be humiliated and + broken because he said that titles are bought; as they are: because + he said that poor members are reminded of their dependence on the + party funds; as they are: because he said that all this was hypocrisy + of public life; as it is. . . . + + One thing is quite certain. Unless some Liberal journalists speak + on Monday or Tuesday, the secret funds and the secret powers are + safe. These Parliamentary votes mark eras: they are meant to. And + that vote will not mark a defence of C. B. The letter had nothing to + do with C. B. It will mark the final decision that any repetition of + what Lea said in his letter is an insult to the House. That is, any + protest against bought titles will be an insult to the House. Any + protest against secret funds will be an insult to the House. + + I would willingly burn my article if I were only sure you would + publish one yourself tomorrow on the same lines. But if not, here is + at least one thing you can do. An article, even signed, may perhaps + commit the paper too much. But your paper cannot be committed by + publishing a letter from me stating my opinions. It might publish a + letter from Joe Chamberlain, stating his opinions. I therefore send + you a short letter, pointing out the evil, and disassociating it as + far as possible from the indiscretions of Lea. I am sure you will + publish this, for it is the mere statement of a private opinion and + as I am not an M. P. I can say what I like about Parliament. You will + not mind my confessing to you my conviction and determination in this + matter. I do not think we could quarrel, even if we had to separate. + +The letter was published, and was quoted in the House of Commons by +Lord Robert Cecil amid general applause. But it was twenty years +before a Bill was passed that forbade this particular unpleasantness. + +While political corruption stirred Chesterton deeply, I think his +outlook was even more affected by the progressive Socialism of +Liberal legislation. He had honestly believed that the Liberal Party +stood, on the whole, for liberty. He found that it stood increasingly +for daily and hourly interference with the lives of the people. He +found too that the Liberal papers, which he held should have been +foremost in criticism of these measures, were as determined to uphold +measures brought in by a Liberal Government as they had been to +attack anything that the Tories brought forward. + +It has been well said by Mr. Belloc that Chesterton could never write +as a party man. But to the ordinary party newspaper such an attitude +was utterly incomprehensible. I think that we can also see at this +point how alien his fundamental outlook was from that even of the +best members of his own Party. A great admirer said to me the other +day that it had taken her a long time to appreciate Chesterton's +sociology. "You see, I was brought up to think that it was quite +right for the poor to have their teeth brushed by officials." This is +undoubtedly the normal Socialistic outlook and the outlook most +abhorrent to Chesterton. "The philanthropist," he once said, "is not +a brother; he is a supercilious aunt." + +The five years of Liberal Government had been disillusioning to many +others besides Belloc and the Chesterton brothers. Probably many men +in newspaper offices and elsewhere continued vaguely to support the +party to which their own paper belonged. But there were others who +were in those days going through a struggle between principles and +Party which became increasingly acute. Gilbert has described his own +feelings in a review of Galsworthy's play _Loyalties_, written +several years later during the first World War. + + . . . The author of _Loyalty_ suffers one simple and amazing + delusion. He imagines that in those pre-war politics Liberalism was + on the side of Labour. On this point at least I can correct him from + the most concrete experience. In the newspaper office where his hero + lingered, wondering how much longer he could stand its Pacifism, I + was lingering and wondering how much longer I could stand its + complete and fundamental Capitalism, its invariable alliance with the + employer, its invariable hostility to the striker. No such scene as + that in which the Liberal editor paced the room raving about his + hopes of a revolution ever occurred in the Liberal newspaper office + that I knew; the least hint of a revolution would have caused quite + as much horror there as in the offices of the _Morning Post_. On + nothing was the Pacifist more pacifist than upon that point. No + workman so genuine as the workman who figures in _Loyalty_ ever + figured among such Liberals. The fact is that such Liberalism was in + no way whatever on the side of Labour; on the contrary, it was on the + side of the Labour Party. . . . + +Both Chesterton and Belloc had begun to point out that a Free Press +had almost disappeared from England. The revenue of most of the +newspapers depended not on subscriptions but on advertisement. +Therefore nothing could be said in them which was displeasing to +their wealthy advertisers. Nor was this the worst of it. Very rich +men were often owners of half a dozen papers or more and dictated +their policy. An outstanding example was Alfred Harmsworth--Lord +Northcliffe--whose newspapers ranged from the _Times_ through the +_Daily Mail_ to _Answers_. Thus to every section of the English +people, Harmsworth was able to convey day by day such news as he +thought best together with his own outlook and philosophy of life +such as it was. Still worse, the _Times_ had not lost in the eyes of +Europe, to say nothing of America, that reputation it had held so +long of being _the_ official expression of English opinion. It was +still the _Jupiter_ of Trollope's day, the maker of ministries or +their undoing. In the days of a Free Press a paper held such a +position in virtue of the talents of its staff. Editors were then +powerful individuals and would brook little interference. But today +the editor was commonly only the mouthpiece of the owner. + +It is surprising that Gilbert and the official Liberal Press so long +tolerated one another. The _Daily News_ and other papers owned by Mr. +Cadbury (of Cadbury's Cocoa) were often referred to as "the Cocoa +Press" and it happened that it was not in the end political +disagreement alone that brought the Chesterton-Cadbury alliance to an +end. In one of Gilbert's poems in praise of wine are the lines: + + Cocoa is a cad and coward, + Cocoa is a vulgar beast. + +In the _Autobiography_ he tells us that after he had published the +poem he felt he could write no longer for the _Daily News_. He went +from the _Daily News_ to the _Daily Herald_, to the Editor of which +he wrote that the _News_ "had come to stand for almost everything I +disagree with; and I thought I had better resign before the next +great measure of social reform made it illegal to go on strike." G.K. +was a considerable asset to any paper and had recently been referred +to by Shaw (in a debate with Belloc) as "a flourishing property of +Mr. Cadbury's." + +Politically the break was bound to come, for even when _Dickens_ was +published Gilbert Chesterton had reached the stage of saying "as much +as ever I did, more than ever I did, I believe in Liberalism. But +there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals." At +this time too he infuriated an orthodox Liberal journalist by saying +of the party leaders "some of them are very nice old gentlemen, some +of them are very nasty old gentlemen, and some of them are old +without being gentlemen at all." An orthodox church journalist in a +periodical charmingly entitled _Church Bells_ got angrier yet. "A +certain Mr. G. K. Chesterton," he wrote, had, when speaking for the +C.S.U. in St. Paul's Chapter House, remarked "the best of his +Majesty's Ministers are agnostics, and the worst devil worshippers." +_Church Bells_ cries out: "We only mention this vulgar falsehood +because we regret that an association, with which the names of many +of our respected ecclesiastics are connected, should have allowed the +bad taste and want of all gentlemanly feeling displayed by the words +quoted, to have passed unchallenged." "Vulgar falsehood" is surely +charming. + +But perhaps even deeper than his disillusionment with any Party was +his growing sense of the unreality of the political scene. He has +described it in the _Autobiography:_ + + I was finding it difficult to believe in politics; because the + reality seemed almost unreal, as compared with the reputation or the + report. I could give twenty instances to indicate what I mean, but + they would be no more than indications, because the doubt itself was + doubtful. I remember going to a great Liberal club, and walking about + in a large crowded room, somewhere at the end of which a bald + gentleman with a beard was reading something from a manuscript in a + low voice. It was hardly unreasonable that we did not listen to him, + because we could not in any case have heard; but I think a very large + number of us did not even see him . . . it is possible, though not + certain, that one or other of us asked carelessly what was supposed + to be happening in the other corner of the large hall. . . . Next + morning I saw across the front of my Liberal paper in gigantic + headlines the phrase: "Lord Spencer Unfurls the Banner." Under this + were other remarks, also in large letters, about how he had blown the + trumpet for Free Trade and how the blast would ring through England + and rally all the Free-Traders. It did appear, on careful + examination, that the inaudible remarks which the old gentleman had + read from the manuscript were concerned with economic arguments for + Free Trade; and very excellent arguments too, for all I know. But the + contrast between what that orator was to the people who heard him, + and what he was to the thousands of newspaper-readers who did not + hear him, was so huge a hiatus and disproportion that I do not think + I ever quite got over it. I knew henceforward what was meant, or what + might be meant, by a Scene in the House, or a Challenge from the + Platform, or any of those sensational events which take place in the + newspapers and nowhere else.* + +[* Pp. 201-2.] + +As in _Orthodoxy_ Chesterton had formulated his religious beliefs, so +in _What's Wrong with the World_ he laid the foundations of his +sociology. It will be remembered that, giving evidence before the +Commission on the Censorship, Chesterton declared himself to be +concerned only with the good and happiness of the English people. +Where he differed from nearly every other social reformer was that he +believed that they should themselves decide what was for their own +good and happiness. + +"The body of ideas," says Monsignor Knox of Gilbert's sociology, +"which he labelled, rather carelessly, 'distributism' is a body of +ideas which still lasts, and I think will last, but it is not exactly +a doctrine, or a philosophy; it is simply Chesterton's reaction to +life."* + +[* _The Listener_, June 19, 1941.] + +It may be said that a man's philosophy is in the main a formulation +of his reaction to life. Anyhow life seems to be the operative +word--for it is the word that best conveys the richness of this first +book of Chesterton's sociology. All the wealth of life's joys, life's +experiences, is poured into his view of man and man's destiny. +Already developing manhood to its fullest potential he found in this +book a new form of expression. To quote Monsignor Knox again, "I call +that man intellectually great who is an artist in thought . . . I +call that man intellectually great who can work equally well in any +medium." The poet-philosopher worked surprisingly well in the medium +of sociology. + +He had intended to call the book, "What's Wrong?" and it begins on +this note of interrogation. The chapter called "The Medical Mistake" +is a brilliant attack on the idea that we must begin social reform by +diagnosing the disease. "It is the whole definition and dignity of +man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we +find the disease." The thing that is most terribly wrong with our +modern civilisation is that it has lost not only health but the clear +picture of health. The doctor called in to diagnose a bodily illness +does not say: we have had too much scarlet fever, let us try a little +measles for a change. But the sociological doctor does offer to the +dispossessed proletarian a cure which, says Chesterton, is only +another kind of disease. We cannot work towards a social ideal until +we are certain what that ideal should be. We must, therefore, begin +with principles and we are to find those principles in the nature of +man, largely through a study of his history. Man has had +historically--and man needs for his fulfilment--the family, the home +and the possession of property. The notion of property has, for the +modern age, been defiled by the corruptions of Capitalism; but modern +Capitalism is really a negation of property because it is a denial of +its limitations. He summarises this idea with one of his most +brilliant illustrations: "It is the negation of property that the +Duke of Sutherland should have all the farms in one estate; just as +it would be the negation of marriage if he had all our wives in one +harem." + +But property in its real meaning is almost the condition for the +survival of the family. It is its protection, it is the opportunity +of its development. God has the joy of unlimited creation--He can +make something out of nothing; but He has given to Man the joy of +limited creation--Man can make something out of anything. "Fruitful +strife with limitations," self-expression "with limits that are +strict and even small,"--all this belongs to the artist, but also to +the average man. "Property is merely the art of the democracy." + +The family, protected by the possession of some degree of property, +will grow by its own laws. What are these laws? Clearly there are two +sets of problems, one concerned with life within the family, the +other with the relation of the family to the state. These two sets of +problems provide the subject-matter of the book. On both Chesterton +felt that there had been insufficient thinking. Thus he says of the +first: "There is no brain-work in the thing at all; no root query of +what sex is, of whether it alters this or that." And of the second: +"It is quite unfair to say that Socialists believe in the State but +do not believe in the Family. But it is true to say that Socialists +are especially engaged in strengthening and renewing the State; and +they are not especially engaged in strengthening and renewing the +Family. They are not doing anything to define the functions of +father, mother and child, as such--they have no firm instinctive +sense of one thing being in its nature private and another public." + +It is precisely this kind of root-thinking that the book does. In the +free family there will be a division of the two sides of life, +between the man and the woman. The man must be, to a certain extent, +a specialist; he must do one thing well enough to earn the daily +bread. The woman is the universalist; she must do a hundred things +for the safeguarding and development of the home. The modern fad of +talking of the narrowness of domesticity especially provoked +Chesterton. "I cannot," he said + + with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When + domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty + arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means + dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man + might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at + Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because + it is trifling, colourless and of small import to the soul, then as I + say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen + Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours + and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, + boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain + area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can + understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how + it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other + people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell + one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the + same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a + woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not + because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her + task; I will never pity her for its smallness.* + +[* _What's Wrong With the World_, chapter 3, "The Emancipation of +Domesticity."] + +While he was writing these pages and after their appearance in print, +G.K. was constantly asked to debate the question of Women's Suffrage. +He was an anti-suffragist, partly because he was a democrat. The +suffrage agitation in England was conducted by a handful of women, +mainly of the upper classes; and it gave Cecil Chesterton immense +pleasure to head articles on the movement with the words, "Votes for +Ladies." G.K. too felt that the suffrage agitation was really doing +harm by dragging a red herring across the path of necessary social +reform. If the vast majority of women did not want votes it was +undemocratic to force votes upon them. Also, if rich men had +oppressed poor men all through the course of history, it was +exceedingly probable that rich women would also oppress poor women. +Both in _What's Wrong With the World_ and in debating on the subject, +Chesterton brushed aside as absurd and irrelevant the suggestion that +women were inferior to men and what was called the physical force +argument. But he did maintain that if the vote meant anything at all +(which it probably did not in the England he was living in), it meant +that side of life which belongs to masculinity and which the normal +woman dislikes and rather despises. + + All we men had grown used to our wives and mothers, and + grandmothers, and great aunts all pouring a chorus of contempt upon + our hobbies of sport, drink and party politics. And now comes Miss + Pankhurst with tears in her eyes, owning that all the women were + wrong and all the men were right. . . . We told our wives that + Parliament had sat late on most essential business; but it never + crossed our minds that our wives would believe it. We said that + everyone must have a vote in the country; similarly our wives said + that no one must have a pipe in the drawing-room. In both cases the + idea was the same. "It does not matter much, but if you let those + things slide there is chaos." We said that Lord Huggins or Mr. + Buggins was absolutely necessary to the country. We knew quite well + that nothing is necessary to the country except that the men should + be men and the women women. We knew this; we thought the women knew + it even more clearly; and we thought the women would say it. + Suddenly, without warning, the women have begun to say all the + nonsense that we ourselves hardly believed when we said it. . . .* + +[* From chapter VII, _The Modern Surrender_.] + +All the agitated reformers who were running about and offering their +various nostrums were prepared to confess that something had gone +very wrong with modern civilisation. But they suggested that what was +wrong with the present generation of adults could be set right for +the coming generation by means of education. In the last part of the +book, "Education or the Mistake about the Child," he put the +unanswerable question: How are we to give what we have not got? "To +hear people talk one would think [education] was some sort of magic +chemistry, by which, out of a laborious hotch-potch of hygienic +meals, baths, breathing-exercises, fresh-air and freehand drawing, we +can produce something splendid by accident; we can create what we +cannot conceive." The social reformers who were talking about +education seem not to have seen very clearly what they meant by the +word. They argued about whether it meant putting ideas into the child +or drawing ideas out of the child. In any case, as Chesterton pointed +out, you must choose which kind of ideas you are going to put in or +even which kind you are going to draw out. "There is indeed in each +living creature a collection of forces and functions; but education +means producing these in particular shapes and training them for +particular purposes, or it means nothing at all." + +But to decide what they were trying to produce was altogether too +much for the men who were directing education in our Board Schools. +The Public Schools of England were often the target of Chesterton's +attacks; but they had, he declared, one immense superiority over the +Board Schools. The men who directed them knew exactly what they +wanted and were on the whole successful in producing it. Those +responsible for the Board Schools seemed to have no idea excepting +that of feebly imitating the Public Schools. One disadvantage of this +was that, at its worst and at its best, the Public School idea could +only be applicable to a small governing class. The other disadvantage +was that whereas in the Public Schools the masters were working with +the parents and trying to give the boys the same general shape as +their homes would give them, the Board Schools were doing nothing of +the kind. The schoolmaster of the poor never worked with the parents; +often he ignored them; sometimes he positively worked against them. +Such education was, Chesterton held, the very reverse of that which +would prevail in a true democracy. "We have had enough education for +the people; we want education by the people." + +Chesterton felt keenly that while the faddists were perfectly +prepared to take the children out of the hands of any parents who +happened to be poor, they had not really the courage of their own +convictions. They would expatiate upon methods; they could not define +their aims; they would take refuge in such meaningless terms as +progress or efficiency or success. They were not prepared to say what +they wanted to succeed in producing, towards what goal they were +progressing or what was the test of efficiency. And part of this +inability arose from their curious fear of the past. Most movements +of reform have looked to the past for great part of their +inspiration. To reform means to shape anew, and he pointed out that +every revolution involves the idea of a return. On this point, G.K. +attacked two popular sayings. One was "You can't put the clock back"; +but, he said, you can and you do constantly. The clock is a piece of +mechanism which can be adjusted by the human finger. "There is +another proverb: 'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; +which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, +please God, I will make it again." + +It is easy to understand that this sort of philosophy should be out +of tune with the Socialist who looked with contempt on the wisdom of +his forefathers. It is less easy to understand why it was +unacceptable also to most of the Tories. One reviewer asked whether +Mr. Chesterton was the hoariest of Conservatives or the wildest of +Radicals. And with none of his books are the reviews so bewildered as +they are with this one. "The universe is ill-regulated," said the +_Liverpool Daily Post_, "according to the fancy of Mr. Chesterton; +but we are inclined to think that if the deity were to talk over +matters with him, he would soon come to see that a Chestertonian +cosmos would be no improvement on things as they are." On the other +hand, the _Toronto Globe_ remarks, "His boisterous optimism will not +admit that there is anything to sorrow over in this best of all +possible worlds." The _Observer_ suggested that Chesterton would find +no disciples because "his converts would never know from one week to +another what they had been converted to"; while the _Yorkshire Post_ +felt that the chief disadvantage of the book was that "a shrewd +reader can pretty accurately anticipate Mr. Chesterton's point of +view on any subject whatsoever." + +It seems almost incredible that so definite a line of thought, so +abundantly illustrated, should not have been clear to all his +readers. Some reviewers, one supposes, had not read the book; but +surely the _Daily Telegraph_ was deliberately refusing to face a +challenge when it wrote: "His whole book is an absurdity, but to be +absurd for three hundred pages on end is itself a work of genius." +That particular reviewer was shirking a serious issue. He was the +official Tory. But those whom I might call the unofficial Tories, +such men for instance as my own father, received much of this book +with delight and yet declined to take Chesterton's sociology +seriously. And I think it is worth trying to see why this was the +case. + +In a letter to the _Clarion_, G.K. outlines his own position: "If you +want praise or blame for Socialists I have enormous quantities of +both. Roughly speaking (1) I praise them to infinity because they +want to smash modern society. (2) I blame them to infinity because of +what they want to put in its place. As the smashing must, I suppose, +come first, my practical sympathies are mainly with them."* + +[* Letter to the _Clarion_, February 8, 1910.] + +Such a confession of faith seemed shocking to the honest +old-fashioned Tory. And because it shocked him, he made the mistake +of calling it irresponsible. Chesterton frequently urged revolution +as the only possible means of changing an intolerable state of +things. But the word "revolution" suggested streets running with +blood. And, on the other hand, they had not the very faintest +conception of how intolerable the state of things was against which +Chesterton proposed to revolt. I think it must be said too that he +was a little hazy as to the exact nature of the revolution he +proposed. He certainly hoped to avoid the guillotine! And even when +urging the restoration of the common lands to the people of England, +he appended a note in which he talked of a land purchase scheme +similar to that which George Wyndham had introduced in Ireland. But +besides this tinge of vagueness in what he proposed, there was +another weakness in his presentment of his sociology which I think +was his chief weakness as a writer. + +It would be hard to find anyone who got so much out of words, +proverbs, popular sayings. He wrung every ounce of meaning out of +them; he stood them on their heads; he turned them inside out. And +everything he said he illustrated with an extraordinary wealth of +fancy; but when you come to illustration by way of concrete facts +there is a curious change. In his sociology, he did the same thing +that his best critics blamed in his literary biographies. He would +take some one fact and appear to build upon it an enormous +superstructure and then, very often, it would turn out that the fact +itself was inaccurately set down; and the average reader, discovering +the inaccuracy, felt that the entire superstructure was on a rotten +foundation and had fallen with it to the ground. Yet the ordinary +reader was wrong. The "fact" had not been the foundation of his +thought, but only the thing that had started him thinking. If the +"fact" had not been there at all, his thinking would have been +neither more nor less valid. But most readers could not see the +distinction. + +It is a little difficult to make the point clear; but anyone who has +read the _Browning_ and the _Dickens_ and then read the reviews of +them will recognise what I mean. It was universally acknowledged that +Chesterton might commit a hundred inaccuracies and yet get at the +heart of his subject in a way that the most painstaking biographer +and critic could not emulate. The more deeply one reads Dickens or +Browning, the more even one studies their lives, the more one is +confirmed as to the profound truth of the Chesterton estimate and the +genius of his insight. A superficial glance sees only the errors; a +deeper gaze discovers the truth. It is exactly the same with his +sociology. But here we are in a field where there is far more +prejudice. When Chesterton talked of State interference and used +again and again the same illustration--that of children whose hair +was forcibly cut short in a Board School--two questions were asked by +Socialists: Was this a solitary incident? Was it accurately reported? +When a pained doctor wrote to the papers saying the incident had been +merely one of a request to parents who had gladly complied for fear +their children should catch things from other and dirtier children, +it appeared as though G.K. had built far too much on this one point. +It was not the case. He was not building on the incident, he was +illustrating by the incident. But it must be admitted that he was +incredibly careless in investigating such incidents; and quite +indifferent as to his own accuracy. And this was foolish, for he +could have found in Police Court records, in the pages of _John Bull_ +and later of the _Eye Witness_ itself, abundance of well verified +illustrations of his thesis. + +In the same way, when he talked of the robbery of the people of +England by the great landlords, he did not take the slightest trouble +to prove his case to the many who knew nothing of the matter. It must +be remembered that the sociological side of English history was only +just beginning to be explored to any serious extent. In the _Village +Labourer_, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond point out to what an extent they had +had to depend on the Home Office papers and contemporary documents +for the mass of facts which this book and the _Town Labourer_ brought +for the first time to the knowledge of the general public. Chesterton +had worked with Hammond on the _Speaker_ for some years. Just as with +his book about Shaw so too with the background of his sociology he +could have gone round the corner and got the required information. He +knew the thing in general terms; he would not be bothered to make +that knowledge convincing to his readers. If to his genius for +expounding ideas had been added an awareness of the necessity of +marshalling and presenting facts, he must surely have convinced all +men of goodwill. + +For in this matter the facts were there to marshal. It was less than +a hundred years since the last struggle of the English yeomen against +a wholesale robbery and confiscation that catastrophically altered +the whole shape of our country. And it seems to have left no trace in +the memory of the English poor. In _Northanger Abbey_, Jane Austen +describes Catherine Morland finding the traces of an imaginary crime. +But Chesterton comments that the crime she failed to discover was the +very real one that the owner of Northanger Abbey was not an Abbot. +The ordinary Englishman, however, thinks little of a crime that +consisted in robbing "a lot of lazy monks." That they had possessed +so much of the land of England merely seemed to make the act a more +desirable one: yet it was a confiscation, not so much of monks' land +as of the people's land administered by the monasteries. + +What is even less realised is how much of the structure of the +mediaeval village remained after the Reformation and how widespread +was small ownership nearly to the end of the eighteenth century, when +Enclosures began estimated by the Hammonds at five million acres. +This land ceased in effect to be the common property of the poor and +became the private property of the rich. This business of the +Enclosures must be treated at some little length because it had the +same key position in Chesterton's sociological thinking as the +Marconi Case (shortly to be discussed) had in his political. + +In every village of England had been small freeholders, copyholders +and cottagers, all of whom had varying degrees of possession in the +common lands which were administered by a manorial court of the +village. These common lands were not mere stretches of heath and +gorse but consisted partly of arable cultivated in strips with strict +rules of rotation, partly of grazing land and partly of wood and +heath. Most people in the village had a right to a strip of arable, +to cut firing of brushwood and turf, and rushes for thatch, and to +pasture one or more cows, their pigs and their geese. A village +cowherd looked after all the animals and brought them back at night. +Cobbett in his _Cottage Economy_ (to a new edition of which +Chesterton wrote a preface) reckoned that a cottager with a +quarter-acre of garden could well keep a cow on his own cabbages plus +commonland grazing, could fatten his own pig and have to buy very +little food for his family except grain and hops for home-baking and +brewing. He puts a cottager's earnings, working part-time for a +farmer, at about 10 sh. a week. This figure would vary, but the +possession of property in stock and common rights would tide over bad +times. A man with fire and food could be quasi-independent; and +indeed some of the larger farmers, witnessing before Enclosure +Enquiry Committees, complained of this very spirit of independence as +producing idleness and "sauciness." + +The case for the Enclosures was that improved agricultural methods +could not be used in the open fields: more food was grown for +increasing town populations: much waste land ploughed: livestock +immeasurably improved. Only later was the cost counted when cheap +imported food for these same towns had slain English agriculture. The +"compensation" in small plots or sums of money could not for the +smaller commoners replace what they had lost--even when they +succeeded in getting it. Claims had to be made in writing--and few +cottagers could write. How difficult too to reduce to its money value +a claim for cutting turf or pasturing pigs and geese. A commissioner, +who had administered twenty Enclosure Acts, lamented to Arthur Young +that he had been the means of ruining two thousand poor people. But +the gulf was so great between rich and poor that all that the commons +had meant to the poor was not glimpsed by the rich. Arthur Young had +thought the benefits of common "perfectly contemptible," but by 1801 +he was deeply repentant and trying in vain to arrest the movement he +had helped to start. + +Before enclosure, the English cottager had had milk, butter and +cheese in plenty, home-grown pork and bacon, home-brewed beer and +home-baked bread, his own vegetables (although Cobbett scorned green +rubbish for human food and advised it to be fed to cattle only), his +own eggs and poultry. After enclosure, he could get no milk, for the +farmers would not sell it; no meat, for his wages could not buy it; +and he no longer had a pig to provide the fat bacon commended by +Cobbett. Working long hours he lived on bread, potatoes and tea, and +insufficient even of these. Lord Winchelsea, one of the very few +landowners who resisted the trend of the time, mentioned in the House +of Lords the discovery of four labourers, starved to death under a +hedge, and said this was a typical occurrence. + +At the beginning of the Enclosure period the Industrial Revolution +was barely in its infancy. A large part of the spinning, weaving and +other manufactures was carried on in the cottages of men who had +gardens they could dig in and cows and pigs of their own. The +invention of power machines, the discovery of coal wherewith those +machines could be worked, led to the concentration of factories in +the huge cities. But it was the drift from the villages of +dispossessed men, together with the cheap child labour provided by +Poor Law Guardians, that made possible the starvation wages and the +tyranny of the factory system. And here the tyrants were largely of a +different class. There were some landowners who also had factories, +and more who possessed coal-mines, but many of the manufacturers had +themselves come from the class of the dispossessed. + +Successful manufacturers made money--a great deal of money. Many of +the men's appeals gave the figures at which the goods were sold in +contrast with their rate of wages, and the contrast is startling. So, +as the towns grew, the masters left the smoke they were creating and +bought country places and became country gentlemen, preserved their +own game and judged their own tenants. And thus disappeared yet +another section of the ancient country folk. For the large landowners +would seldom sell and the land bought by the new men was mostly the +land of small farmers and yeomen. This was the age of new country +houses with a hundred rooms and vast offices that housed an army of +servants. "Labour was cheap," the descendants of those who built just +then will tell you, as they gaze disconsolate at their unwieldy +heritage. Old and new families alike built or rebuilt, added and +improved. + +Cobbett rode rurally and angrily through the ruins of a better +England (described a century earlier by another horseman, Daniel +Defoe). Goldsmith mourned an early example in his "Deserted Village," +but they are the only voices in an abundant literature. Jane Austen +is, indeed, the perfect example of what Chesterton always +realised--the ignorance that was almost innocence with which the +wealthy had done their work of destruction. He did not account them +as evil as they would seem by a mere summary of events. And what he +saw at the root of those events was in his eyes still present: +England was still possessed and still governed by a minority. The +Conservatives were "a minority that was rich," the liberals "a +minority that was mad." And those two minorities tended to join +together and rob and oppress the ordinary man, in the name of some +theory of progress and perfection. + +Thus the Protestant Reformation had closed the monasteries, which +were the poor man's inns, in the name of a purer religion; the +economists had taken away his land and driven him into the factories +with a promise of future wealth and prosperity. These had been the +experts of their day. Now the new experts were telling him with equal +eagerness that hygienic flats and communal kitchens would bring about +for him the new Jerusalem. But never did the expert think of asking +Jones, the ordinary man, what he himself wanted. Jones just wanted +the "divinely ordinary things"--a house of his own and a family life. +And that was still denied him as is related in the chapter called +"The Homelessness of Jones." + +In a debate in the Oxford Union, G.K. maintained that the House of +Lords was a menace to the State, because it failed precisely in what +was supposed to be its main function, that of conservation. It had +not saved, it had destroyed the Church lands and the common lands; it +was ready to pass any Bill that affected only the lower classes. "We +are all Socialists now," Sir William Harcourt had lately said, and +Chesterton saw that Socialism would mean merely further restriction +of liberty and continued coercion of the poor by the experts and the +rich. So, looking at the past, Chesterton desired a restoration which +he often called a Revolution. There were two forms of government that +might succeed--a real Monarchy, in which one ordinary man governed +many ordinary men--or a real democracy, in which many ordinary men +governed themselves. Aristocracy may have begun well in England when +it was an army protecting England: when the Duke was a Dux. Now it +was merely plutocracy and it had become "an army without an enemy +billeted on the people." + +All this and more formed the background of Chesterton's mind. But +what he wrote was a comment on the scene, not a picture of it. He +wrote of the terrible irony whereby "the Commons were enclosing the +commons." He spoke of the English revolution of the eighteenth +century, "a revolution of the rich against the poor." He mourned with +Goldsmith the destruction of England's peasantry. He cried aloud like +Cobbett, for he too had discovered the murder of England his mother. +But his cry was unintelligible and his hopes of a resurrection +unmeaning to those who knew not what had been done to death. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +The Eye Witness + + +THE PUBLICATION OF _What's Wrong With the World_ brings us to 1910. +Gilbert had, as we have seen, originally intended to call the book +_What's Wrong?_ laying some emphasis on the note of interrogation. It +amused him to perplex the casual visitor by going off to his study +with the muttered remark: "I must get on with What's Wrong." The +change of name and the omission of the note of interrogation (both +changes the act of his publishers) represented a certain loss, for +indeed Gilbert was still asking himself what was wrong when he was +writing this book, although he was very certain what was right--his +ideals were really a clear picture of health. His doubts about the +achievement of those ideals in the present world and with his present +political allegiance were, as he suggests in the _Autobiography_, +vague but becoming more definite. + +Did this mean that he ever looked hopefully towards the other big +division of the English political scene--the Tory or Conservative +party to which his brother had once declared he belonged without +knowing it? That would be a simpler story than what really happened +in his mind--and I confess that I am myself sufficiently vague and +doubtful about part of what the Chesterbelloc believed they were +discovering, to find it a little difficult to describe it clearly. +Cecil Chesterton and Belloc set down their views in a book called +_The Party System_. Gilbert made his clear in letters to the Liberal +Press. + +The English party system had often enough been attacked for its +obvious defects and indeed the _New Witness's_ even livelier +contemporary _John Bull_ was shouting for its abolition. But Belloc +and Cecil Chesterton had their own line. Their general thesis was +that not only did the people of England not govern, Parliament did +not govern either. The Cabinet governed and it was chosen by the real +rulers of the party. For each party was run by an oligarchy, and run +roughly on the same lines. Lists were given of families whose +brothers-in-law and cousins (though not yet their sisters and their +aunts) found place in the Ministry of one or other political party. +Moreover, the governing families on both sides were in many cases +connected by birth or marriage and all belonged to the same social +set. But money too was useful: men could buy their way in. Each party +had a fund, and those who could contribute largely had of necessity +an influence on party policy. The existent Liberal Government had +brought to a totally new peak the art of swelling its fund by the +sale of titles: which in many instances meant the sale of hereditary +governing powers, since those higher titles which carry with them a +seat in the House of Lords were sold like the others, at a higher +rate naturally. For the rank and file member, a political career no +longer meant the chance for talents and courage to win recognition in +an open field. A man who believed that his first duty was to +represent his constituents stood no chance of advancement. Certainly +a private member could not introduce a bill as his own and get it +debated on its merits. + +None of this was new, though the book did it rather exceptionally +well. What was new was the theory that the two party oligarchies were +secretly one, that the fights between the parties were little more +than sham fights. The ordinary party member was unaware of this +secret conspiracy between the leaders and would obey the call of the +party Whip and accept a sort of military discipline with the genuine +belief that the defeat of his party would mean disaster to his +country. + +Belloc had discovered for himself the impotence of the private +member. He had, as we have seen, been elected to Parliament by South +Salford in 1906 as a Liberal. In Parliament he proposed a measure for +the publication of the names of subscribers to the Party Funds. +Naturally enough the proposal got nowhere. Also naturally enough the +Party Funds were not forthcoming to support him at the next election. +He fought and won the seat as an Independent. At the second election +of 1910 he declined to stand, having lucidly explained to the House +of Commons in a final speech that a seat there was of no value under +the existing system. + +Thus Belloc's own experience, and a thousand other things, went to +prove the stranglehold the rulers of the party had on the party. But +did it prove, or did the book establish, the theory of a +behind-scenes conspiracy between the small groups who controlled each +of the great historical parties, which was the theme not only of _The +Party System_ but also of Belloc's brilliant political novels-- +notably _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_ and _Pongo and the Bull?_ + +Of the stranglehold there was no doubt and Gilbert soon found it too +much for his own allegiance to the Liberal Party or any other. At the +election of 1910, he addressed a Liberal meeting at Beaconsfield and +dealt vigorously with constant Tory questions and interjections from +the back of the hall. He obviously enjoyed the fight and a little +later he spoke for the "League of Young Liberals" and was +photographed standing at the back of their van. But although he went +to London to vote for John Burns in Battersea and would probably have +continued to vote Liberal or Labour, he showed at a Women's Suffrage +meeting in 1911 a growing scepticism about the value of the vote. He +was reported as saying, "If I voted for John Burns now, I should not +be voting for anything at all (laughter)." + +It must have been irritating that this interpolation "laughter" was +liable to occur when Chesterton was most serious; he did not change +quickly but in the alteration of his outlook towards his party, his +growing doubt whether it stood for any real values, he was very +serious. In the years that followed the coming into power of +Liberalism there were a multitude of Acts described as of little +importance and passed into law after little or no discussion. At the +same time, private members complained that they could get no +attention for really urgent matters of social reform. The _Nation_, +as a party paper, defended the state of things and talked of official +business and of want of time. Their attitude was vigorously attacked +by Gilbert, whose first letter (Jan. 17, 1911) ended with this +paragraph: + + Who ever dreamed of getting "perfect freedom and fulness of + discussion" except in heaven? The case urged against Cabinets is + that we have no freedom and no discussion, except that laid down + despotically by a few men on front benches. Your assurance that + Parliament is very busy is utterly vain. It is busy on things the + dictators direct. That small men and small questions get squeezed out + among big ones, that is a normal disaster. With us, on the contrary, + it is the big questions that get squeezed out. The Party was not + allowed really to attack the South African War, for fear it should + alienate Mr. Asquith. It was not allowed to object to Mr. Herbert + Gladstone (or is it Lord Gladstone? This blaze of democracy blinds + one) when he sought to abolish the Habeas Corpus Act, and leave the + poorer sort of pickpockets permanently at the caprice of their + jailers. Parliament is busy on the aristocratic fads; and mankind + must mark time with a million stamping feet, while Mr. Herbert Samuel + searches a gutter-boy for cigarettes. That is what you call the + congestion of Parliament. + +The Editor of the _Nation_ was so rash as to append to this letter +the words, "We must be stupid for we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton +means." This was too good an opening to be lost. G.K. returned to the +charge and I feel that this correspondence is so important in various +ways that the next two letters should be given in full. + + Sir, + + In a note to my last week's letter you remark, "We must be stupid; + but we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton means." As an old friend I + can assure you that you are by no means stupid; some other + explanation of this unnatural darkness must be found; and I find it + in the effect of that official party phraseology which I attack, and + which I am by no means alone in attacking. If I had talked about + "true Imperialism," or "our loyalty to our gallant leader," you might + have thought you knew what I meant; because I meant nothing. But I do + mean something; and I do want you to understand what I mean. I will, + therefore, state it with total dullness, in separate paragraphs; and + I will number them. + + (1) I say a democracy means a State where the citizens first desire + something and then get it. That is surely simple. + + (2) I say that where this is deflected by the disadvantage of + representation, it means that the citizens desire a thing and tell + the representatives to get it. I trust I make myself clear. + + (3) The representatives, in order to get it at all, must have some + control over detail; but the design must come from popular desire. + Have we got that down? + + (4) You, I understand, hold that English M. P.s today do thus obey + the public in design, varying only in detail. That is a quite clear + contention. + + (5) I say they don't. Tell me if I am getting too abstruse. + + (6) I say our representatives accept designs and desires almost + entirely from the Cabinet class above them; and practically not at + all from the constituents below them. I say the people does not wield + a Parliament which wields a Cabinet. I say the Cabinet bullies a + timid Parliament which bullies a bewildered people. Is that plain? + + (7) If you ask why the people endure and play this game, I say they + play it as they would play the official games of any despotism or + aristocracy. The average Englishman puts his cross on a ballot-paper + as he takes off his hat to the King--and would take it off if there + were no ballot-papers. There is no democracy in the business. Is that + definite? + + (8) If you ask why we have thus lost democracy, I say from two + causes; (a) The omnipotence of an unelected body, the Cabinet; (b) + the party system, which turns all politics into a game like the Boat + Race. Is that all right? + + (9) If you want examples I could give you scores. I say the people + did not cry out that all children whose parents lunch on cheese and + beer in an inn should be left out in the rain. I say the people did + not demand that a man's sentence should be settled by his jailers + instead of by his judges. I say these things came from a rich group, + not only without any evidence, but really without any pretence, that + they were popular. I say the people hardly heard of them at the + polls. But here I do not need to give examples, but merely to say + what I mean. Surely I have said it now. + + Yours, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + January 26th, 1911. + + _Editor's Note_. + + Mr. Chesterton is precise enough now, but he is precisely wrong. + There are grains of truth in his premises, a bushel of exaggeration + in his conclusions. We have not "lost democracy"; the two instances + which he alleges, both of which we dislike, are too small to prove so + large a case. + +To this G. K. replied: + + Sir, + + I want to thank you for printing my letters, and especially for + your last important comment, in which you say that the Crimes and + Children's Acts were bad, but are "too small" to support a charge of + undemocracy. And I want to ask you one last question, which is the + question. + + Why do you think of these things as small? They are really + enormous. One alters the daily habits of millions of people; the + other destroys the public law of thousands of years. What can be more + fundamental than food, drink, and children? What can be more + catastrophic than putting us back in the primal anarchy, in which a + man was flung into a dungeon and left there "till he listened to + reason?" There has been no such overturn in European ethics since + Constantine proclaimed the cross. + + Why do you think of these things as small? I will tell you. + Unconsciously, no doubt, but simply and solely because the Front + Benches did not announce them as big. They were not "first-class + measures"; they were not "full-dress debates." The governing class + got them through in the quick, quiet, secondary way in which they + pass things that the people positively detests; not in the pompous, + lengthy, oratorical way in which they present measures that the + people merely bets on, as it might on a new horse. A "first-class + measure" means, for instance, tinkering for months at some tottery + compromise about a Religious Education that doesn't exist. The reason + is simple. "Sound Church Teaching" and "Dogmatic Christianity" both + happen to be hobbies in the class from which Cabinets come. But going + to public-houses and going to prison are both habits with which that + class is, unfortunately, quite unfamiliar. It is ready, therefore, at + a stroke of the pen, to bring all folly into the taverns and all + injustice into the jails. + + Yours, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + February 2nd, 1911. + +It was not only in the _Nation_ that such letters as these appeared. +"We can't write in every paper at once," runs a letter in the _New +Age_. "We do our best." ("We" meant Gilbert, Cecil and Hilaire +Belloc.) And G.K. goes on to answer four questions which have been +put by a correspondent signing himself, "Political Journalist." + + First, in whose eyes but ours has the Party System lost credit? I + say in nearly everybody's. If this were a free country, I could + mention offhand a score of men within a stone's throw; an innkeeper, + a doctor, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a civil servant. As it is, I may + put it this way. In a large debating society I proposed to attack the + Party System, and for a long time I could not get an opposer. At + last, I got one. He defended the Party System on the ground that + people must be bamboozled more or less. + + Second, he asks if the Party System does not govern the country to + the content of most citizens. I answer that Englishmen are happy + under the Party System solely and exactly as Romans were happy under + Nero. That is, not because government was good, but because Life is + good, even without good government. Nero's slaves enjoyed Italy, not + Nero. Modern Englishmen enjoy England but certainly not the British + Constitution. The legislation is detested, wherever it is even felt. + The other day a Cambridge don complained that, when out bicycling + with his boys, he had to leave them in the rain while he drank a + glass of cider. Count the whole series of human souls between a + costermonger and a Cambridge don, and you will see a nation in mutiny. + + Third, "What substitute, etc., etc." Here again, the answer is + simple and indeed traditional. I suggest we should do what was always + suggested in the riddles and revolutions of the recent centuries. In + the seventeenth century phrase, I suggest that we should "call a free + Parliament!" + + Fourth, "Is Democracy compatible with Parliamentary Government?" + God forbid. Is God compatible with Church Government? Why should He + be? It is the other things that have to be compatible with God. A + church can only be a humble effort to utter God. A Parliament can + only be a humble effort to express Man. But for all that, there is a + deal of commonsense left in the world, and people do know when + priests or politicians are honestly trying to express a mystery--and + when they are only taking advantage of an ambiguity. + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +Encouraged by the excitement that had attended the publication of +_The Party System_ its authors decided to attempt a newspaper of +their own. This paper is still in existence but it has in the course +of its history appeared under four different titles. To avoid later +confusion I had better set these down at the outset. + +The Eye Witness, June 1911-October 1912 +The New Witness, November 1912-May 1923 +G. K.'s Weekly, 1925-1936 +The Weekly Review, 1936 till today + +During the first year of its existence the _Eye Witness_ was edited +by Belloc. Cecil Chesterton took over the editorship after a short +interregnum during which he was assistant editor. Charles Granville +had financed it. When he went bankrupt the title was altered to _The +New Witness_. When Cecil joined the Army in 1916, G.K. became Editor. +In 1923 the paper died, but two years later rose again under the +title, _G.K.'s Weekly_. After Gilbert's own death Belloc took it back. +Today, as _The Weekly Review_, it is edited by Reginald Jebb, Belloc's +son-in-law. With all these changes of name, the continuity of the +paper is unmistakable. Its main aim may be roughly defined under two +headings. 1. To fight for the liberty of Englishmen against +increasing enslavement to a Plutocracy. 2. To expose and combat +corruption in public life. + +The fight for Liberty appears in the letters quoted above in the form +of an attack on certain bills: Belloc unified and defined it with +real genius in the articles which became two of his most important +books: _The Servile State_ and _The Restoration of Property_. If +these two books be set beside Chesterton's _What's Wrong With the +World_ and _The Outline of Sanity_ the Chesterbelloc sociology stands +complete. + +In his _Cobbett_, G.K. was later to emphasise the genius with which +Cobbett saw the England of today a hundred years before it was there +to be seen. Belloc in the same way saw both what was coming and the +way in which it was coming. Especially far-sighted was his attitude +to Lloyd George's Compulsory Health Insurance Act. It was the first +act of the kind in England and the scheme in outline was: every week +every employed person must have a stamp stuck on a card by his +employer, of which he paid slightly less and the employer slightly +more than half the cost. The money thus saved gave the insured person +free medical treatment and a certain weekly sum during the period of +illness. Agricultural labourers were omitted from the act and a +ferment raged on the question of domestic servants, who were +eventually included in its operation. It was practically acknowledged +that this was done to make the Act more workable financially. For +domestic servants were an especially healthy class and, moreover, in +most upper and middle-class households they were already attended by +the family doctor without cost to themselves. + +The company in which the _Eye Witness_ found itself in opposing this +Act was indeed a case of "strange bedfellows." For the opposition was +led by the Conservatives (on the ground that the Act was Socialism). +Many a mistress and many a maid did I hear in those days in good +Conservative homes declaring they would rather go to prison than +"lick Lloyd George's stamps." Most Liberals, on the other hand, +regarded the Act as an example of enlightened legislation for the +benefit of the poor. The _Eye Witness_ saw in it the arrival of the +Servile State. Their main objections cut deep. As with compulsory +education, but in much more far-reaching fashion, this Act took away +the liberty and the personal responsibilities of the poor--and in +doing so put them into a category--forever ticketed and labelled, +separated from the other part of the nation. As people for whom +everything had to be done, they were increasingly at the mercy of +their employers, of Government Inspectors, of philanthropic +societies, increasingly slaves. + +What was meant by the Servile State? It was, said Belloc, an +"arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the +families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labour +for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the +whole community with the mark of such labour." It was, quite simply, +the return of slavery as the condition of the poor: and the +Chesterbelloc did not think, then or ever, that any increase of +comfort or security was a sufficient good to be bought at the price +of liberty. + +In a section of the paper called "Lex versus the Poor" the editor +made a point of collecting instances of oppression. A series of +articles attacked the Mentally Deficient Bill whereby poor parents +could have their children taken from them--those children who most +needed them and whom they often loved and clung to above the others, +and a Jewish contributor to the paper, Dr. Eder, pointed out in +admirable letters how divided was the medical profession itself on +what constituted mental deficiency and whether family life was not +far more likely to develop the mind than segregation with other +deficients in an Institution. + +To the official harriers of the poor were added further inspectors +sent by such societies as the National Society for the Prevention of +Cruelty to Children. Cruelty to children, as Gilbert often pointed +out, is a horrible thing, but very seldom proved of parents against +their own children. The word was stretched to cover anything that +these inspectors called neglect. Lately we have read of a case, and +many like it were reported in the _New Witness_, where failure to +wash children adequately was called cruelty. And what was the remedy? +To take away the father, the breadwinner, to prison. For insufficient +food and clothes to substitute destitution, for insufficient care to +remove the only one the children had to care for them at all: always +to break up the family. + +Worst of all was the question of school attendance: While a child of +three was dying of starvation, the mother was at the Police Court +where she was fined for not sending an older child to school. As she +could not pay the fine her husband was sent to prison for a week. A +child died of consumption. The parents said at the inquest they had +not dared to keep her at home when she got sick, for fear of the +school inspector. + +As he had in _What's Wrong With the World_ been fired by the thought +of the landless poor of England, so now these stories stirred Gilbert +deeply. He saw the philanthropists like the Pharisees, unheeding the +wisdom learned by the Wise Men at Bethlehem: saw them with their busy +pencils peering at the Mother's omissions while the vast crimes of +the State went unchallenged. He wrote a poem called "The Neglected +Child" and "dedicated in a glow of Christian Charity to a +philanthropic Society." + + The Teachers in the temple + They did not lift their eyes + For the blazing star on Bethlehem + Or the Wise Men grown wise. + + They heeded jot and tittle, + They heeded not a jot + The rending voice in Ramah + And the children that were not. + + Or how the panic of the poor + Choked all the fields with flight, + Or how the red sword of the rich + Ran ravening through the night. + + They made their notes; while naked + And monstrous and obscene + A tyrant bathed in all the blood + Of men that might have been. + + But they did chide Our Lady + And tax her for this thing, + That she had lost Him for a time + And sought Him sorrowing. + +To most of the _Eye Witness_ group the fight for freedom was so bound +up with the fight against corruption that all was but one fight. I +think that when they looked back they were too much inclined to see +the shadow of Lloyd George behind them as well as around them: that +in fact the Liberal Party of those years had brought with it a new +descent in political decency--a descent which would have startled +both Gladstone and the more cynical Disraeli. Of this more when we +come to Marconi. Meanwhile there was certainly a whole lot to fight +about and the group responsible for the _Witness_, not content with +the pen, formed a Society entitled "The League for Clean Government," +with Mr. John Scurr as Secretary. This League specialised in +promoting the candidature of independent Members of Parliament for +such vacancies as occurred between general elections, and in +attacking Party "place men." Doubtless other elements were present at +some of these by-elections but the League boasted its success on +several occasions, notably in the three defeats sustained by C. F. G. +Masterman. + +Charles Masterman had been with Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton a member +of the group of young Christian Socialists that drew its inspiration +in great part from Canon Scott Holland. He had gone further than most +of them in his practical sympathy and understanding for the +destitute. With a friend he had taken a workman's flat in the slums +and he had written a somewhat florid but very moving book recording +conditions experienced as well as observed. He was one of the Young +Liberals who entered Parliament full of ardour to fight the battles +of the poor. The sequel as they saw it may best be told by Belloc and +Cecil Chesterton themselves. In _The Party System_ they wrote: + + . . . Mr. Masterman entered Parliament as a Liberal of independent + views. During his first two years in the House he distinguished + himself as a critic of the Liberal Ministry. He criticised their + Education Bill. He criticised with especial force the policy of Mr. + John Burns at the Local Government Board. His conduct attracted the + notice of the leaders of the party. He was offered office, accepted + it, and since then has been silent, except for an occasional + rhetorical exercise in defence of the Government. One fact will be + sufficient to emphasise the change. On March 13th, 1908, Mr. + Masterman voted for the Right to Work Bill of the Labour Party. In + May of the same year he accepted a place with a salary of L1200 a + year--it has since risen to L1500. On April 20th, 1909, he voted, at + the bidding of the Party Whips, against the same Bill which he had + voted for in the previous year. Yet this remarkable example of the + "peril of change"* does not apparently create any indignation or even + astonishment in the political world which Mr. Masterman adorns. On + the contrary, he seems to be generally regarded as a politician of + exceptionally high ideals. No better instance need be recorded of the + peculiar atmosphere it is the business of these pages to describe. + +[* The title of one of Masterman's books was _In Peril of Change_.] + +At the succeeding General Election, Masterman was not re-elected. And +he failed again in a couple of by-elections. In all these elections, +the League for Clean Government campaigned fiercely against him. +There was certainly in the feeling of Belloc and Cecil Chesterton +towards Masterman a great deal of the bitterness that moved Browning +to write, "Just for a handful of silver he left us," and I do not +think there is anything in the history of the paper that created so +strong a feeling against it in certain minds. There seemed something +peculiarly ungenerous in the continued attacks after a series of +defeats, in the insistence with which Masterman's name was dragged +in, always accompanied by sneers. Replying to a remonstrance to this +effect, Cecil Chesterton, then Editor of the _New Witness_, stated +that in his considered opinion it was a duty to make a successful +career impossible to any man convicted of selling his principles for +success. + +I dwell on this matter of Masterman for two reasons. The first is +that it was one of the rare occasions on which Gilbert Chesterton +disagreed with his brother and Belloc. Gilbert was a very faithful +friend: it would be hard to find a broken friendship in his life. He +had moreover much of the power that aroused his enthusiasm in +Browning of going into the depths of a character and discovering the +virtue concealed there. And as with Browning his explanation took +account of elements that really existed but could find no place in a +more narrowly adverse view. + +"Many of my own best friends," he wrote of Masterman, "entirely +misunderstood and underrated him. It is true that as he rose higher +in politics, the veil of the politician began to descend a little on +him also; but he became a politician from the noblest bitterness on +behalf of the poor; and what was blamed in him was the fault of much +more ignoble men. . . . But he was also an organiser and liked +governing; only his pessimism made him think that government had +always been bad, and was now no worse than usual. Therefore, to men +on fire for reform, he came to seem an obstacle and an official +apologist." After G.K. became Editor of the _New Witness_ the attacks +on Masterman ceased, but he did not differ from the two earlier +Editors in his views on the ethics of political action or the +principles of social reform. + +The second reason for which the Masterman matter must be dwelt on is +because it affords the best illustration of one curious fact in +connection with the _Eye_ and _New Witness_ campaign. When the _Life +of Masterman_ recently appeared I seized it eagerly that I might read +an authoritative defence of his position. I searched the Index under +_Eye Witness, New Witness, Cecil Chesterton_ and _League for Clean +Government_. No one of them was mentioned. At last I discovered under +_Belloc_ and _Scurr_ a faint allusion to their activities at a +by-election in which Belloc was coupled with the Protestant Alliance +leader Kensit as part of a contemptible opposition, and the unnamed +League for Clean Government described as "those working with Mr. +Scurr"! Clearly where it is possible to use against something +powerful the weapon of ignoring it as though it were something +obscure, that weapon is itself a powerful one. Against the _New +Witness_ it was used perpetually. + +A paper which included among its contributors Hilaire Belloc, G. K. +Chesterton, J. S. Phillimore, E. C. Bentley, Wells, Shaw, Katharine +Tynan, Desmond McCarthy, F. Y. Eccles, G. S. Street--to name only +those who come first to mind--obviously stood high. Cecil +Chesterton's own editorials, Hugh O'Donnell's picturesque series +_Twenty Years After_, the high level of the reviewing and (oddly +enough, considering the paper's outlook) the financial articles of +Raymond Radclyffe, were all outstanding. The sales (at sixpence) were +never enormous but the readers were on a high cultural level. The +correspondence pages are always interesting. + +The _Eye Witness_ group, besides courage, had high spirits and they +had wit. "Capulet's" rhymes; the series of ballades written by +Baring, Bentley, Phillimore, Belloc and G.K.C.; "Mrs. Markham's +History" written by Belloc; there was little of this quality in the +other weeklies. Side by side with the serious attacks was a line of +satire and of sheer fooling. The silver deal in India was being +attacked in the editorials, while Mrs. Markham explained to Tommy how +good, kind Lord Swaythling, really a Samuel, had lent money to his +brother Mr. Montague (another Samuel) for the benefit of the poor +people of India. The next week Tommy and Rachel grew enthusiastic +about the kindness of Lord Swaythling in _borrowing_ money that +the Indian Government could not use. Mrs. Markham too made Rachel +take a pencil and write out a list of Samuels including the +Postmaster-General, now so busy over the Marconi Case. The next +lesson was about titles. Then came one about policemen, and finally +about company promoters and investments. How a promoter guesses there +is oil somewhere, how money is lent to dig for it ("But, Mamma! How +can money dig?"), how the Company promoter may find no oil, how if +they think he has cheated them the rich men who lent their money can +have him tried by twelve good men and true--(_Tommy:_ "How do they +know the men are good and true, Mamma?" _Mrs. M.:_ "They do this by +taking them in alphabetical order out of a list."). + +Perhaps the combination of irony thinly veiling intensity of purpose, +with humour sometimes degenerating into wild fooling, damned them in +the eyes of many. But there was a more serious obstacle to the real +effectiveness they might otherwise have had. When it was unavoidable +to name the _New Witness_ its opponents referred to it as though to a +"rag." Why was this possible? Principally I think because of the +violence of its language. Most Parliamentary matters to which it made +reference were spoken of as instances of "foul" corruption or "dirty" +business. Transactions by Ministers were said to "stink," while the +Ministers themselves were described as carrying off or distributing +"swag" and "boodle." In Vol. II of the _Eye Witness_, for instance, we +find the "game of boodle," "dirty trick," "Keep your eye on the +Railway Bill: you are going to be fleeced," and "stunt" and "ramp" +_passim_. Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs are always called +"George" and "Isaacs." The General of the Salvation Army is +invariably "Old Booth," while in the headlines the word "Scandal" +constantly recurs. Even admirers were at times like Fox's followers +who + + Groaned "What a passion he was in tonight! + Men in a passion must be in the wrong + And heavens how dangerous when they're built so strong." + Thus the great Whig amid immense applause + Scared off his clients and bawled down his cause, + Undid reform by lauding Revolution + Till cobblers cried "God save the Constitution." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Marconi + + +IN HIS _Autobiography_ Gilbert Chesterton has set down his belief +that the Marconi Scandal will be seen by historians as a landmark in +English history. To him personally the revelations produced by it +were a great shock and gave the death-blow to all that still lingered +of his belief in the Liberal Party. For the rest of his life it may +almost be called an obsession with him. In his eyes it was so great a +landmark that as others spoke of events as pre- or post-war, he +divided the political history of England into pre- and post-Marconi. +It meant as much for his political outlook as the Enclosures for his +social. It is necessary to know what happened in the Marconi Case if +we are to understand a most important element in Chesterton's mental +history. + +The difficulty is to know what did happen. The main lines of a very +complicated bit of history have never, so far as I know, been +disentangled by anyone whose only interest was to disentangle them: +and the partisans have naturally tangled them more. I wrote a draft +chapter after reading the two thousand page report of the +Parliamentary Committee, the six hundred page report of Cecil +Chesterton's Trial, and masses of contemporary journalism. Then, in +the circumstances I have related in the Introduction, I called in my +husband's aid. The rest of this chapter is mainly his. + +I. WHAT THE MINISTERS DID + +The Imperial Conference of 1911 had approved the plan of a chain +of state-owned wireless stations to be erected throughout the +British Empire. The Post Office--Mr. Herbert Samuel being the +Postmaster-General--was instructed to put the matter in hand. After +consideration of competing systems, the Marconi was chosen. The +Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of London--of which Mr. Godfrey Isaacs +was Managing Director--was asked to tender for the work. Its tender +was accepted on March 7, 1912. The main terms of the tender were as +follows: + +The Company was to erect stations in various parts of the Empire at a +cost to the Government of L60,000 per station; these were then to be +operated by the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions +and Colonies concerned; and the Marconi Company was to receive 10% of +the gross receipts. The Agreement was for 28 years, though the +Postmaster-General might terminate it at the end of eighteen years. +But there was one further clause (Clause 10) allowing for termination +_at any time_ if the Government should find it advantageous to use a +different system. + +The acceptance of this tender was only the first stage. A contract +had to be drawn up, and nothing would be finalised till this contract +had been accepted by Parliament. In fact the contract was not +completed till July 19. On that day it was placed on the table of the +House of Commons. + +For the understanding of the Marconi Case, the vital period is the +four months of 1912 between March 7, when the tender was accepted, +and July 19 when the contract was tabled. Let us concentrate upon +that four-month period. The Postmaster-General issued no statement +whatever on the matter but on March 8 the Company sent out a circular +to its shareholders telling them the good news--but making the news +look even better than it was by omitting all reference to Clause 10, +which entitled the Government to substitute some rival system at any +time it pleased. The Postmaster-General issued no correction because, +as he said later, he had not been aware of the omission. + +Immediately after, Godfrey Isaacs left for America to consider the +affairs of the American Marconi Company, capitalised at $1,600,000, +of which he was a Director. More than half its shares were owned by +the English Company. On behalf of the English Company he bought up +the rights of the American Company's principal rival, and then sold +these rights (at a profit not stated but apparently very +considerable) to the American Company for $1,400,000. To handle all +this and allow for vast developments hoped for from this purchase and +from a very favourable agreement Godfrey Isaacs had negotiated with +Western Union, the American Company was to be re-organized as a +$10,000,000 Company--two million shares at $5 each. The American +Company--whose own repute in America was too low for any hope of +raising money on that scale from the American public--seems to have +agreed to the Godfrey Isaacs plan only on condition that the English +Company should guarantee the subscription; and Godfrey Isaacs made +himself personally responsible for placing 500,000 shares. (It should +be remembered that the pound was then worth just under five dollars: +a $5 share was worth L1.1.3, or L1 1/16 in English money.) + +Godfrey Isaacs returned to England. On April 9 he lunched with his +brothers Harry and Rufus--Rufus being Attorney-General in the British +Government. He told them of the arrangements he had made--arrangements +which were not yet made known to the public--and of the new stock +about to be issued, and offered them 100,000 shares, out of the +500,000 for which he had made himself responsible, at the face value +of L1.1.3. Rufus refused--one reason for his refusal being that the +shares were not a good "buy," as the prospects of the Company did not +warrant so large a new issue of capital. Harry took 50,000. + +We now come to the transactions which the public was later to lump +together rather crudely as "Ministers Gambling in Marconis." + +A. On April 17--roughly a week after the luncheon--Rufus Isaacs +bought 10,000 of Harry's shares at L2. He made the point later that +buying from Godfrey would have been improper as Godfrey was director +of a company with which the Government was negotiating, but that it +was all right to buy from Harry who had bought from Godfrey. (Harry +having paid only L1.1.3 was willing to let Rufus have them for the +same price. But Rufus thought it only fair to pay the higher price. +This is all the more remarkable because only a week earlier he had +thought these same shares bad value at roughly half the price he was +now prepared to pay.) Of his 10,000 shares, Rufus immediately sold +1000 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, and 1000 +to the Master of Elibank, who was chief Whip of the Liberal Party +then in office. It is to be noted that no money passed at this time +in any of those transactions: Rufus did not pay Harry, Lloyd George +and Elibank did not pay Rufus. + +Nor did the shares pass. Indeed the shares did not as yet exist, as +it was not till the next day, April 18, that the American Marconi +Company authorised the issue of the new capital. On the day after +that, April 19, the shares were put on the market at L3.5.0. That +same day they rose to L4. In the course of the day Rufus Isaacs sold +700 shares at an average price of L3.6.6, which on the face of it +looks like clearing L3000 more than he had paid for all his shares +and still having 3000 shares left. But he explained later that there +had been pooling arrangements between himself and his brother, and +himself and his two friends: so that the upshot of his day's +transactions was that he had sold 2856 of his own shares, and 357 +each for Lloyd George and Elibank.* The triumvirate therefore still +had 6430 shares of which 1286 belonged to Lloyd George and Elibank. + +[* Rufus' explanation boils down to this: he and Harry had arranged +that whatever either sold in the course of the day should be totalled +and divided in the proportion of their holdings. Rufus sold 7000 +shares, Harry 10,850: a total of 17,850. Rufus had taken 1/5 of +Harry's 50,000 shares, so one-fifth of the shares sold were allotted +as his--i.e. 3570. Lloyd George and Elibank had each taken 1/10 of +Rufus', therefore each was considered to have sold 357.] + +On April 20 these two sold a further 1000 of their 1286 shares at +L3.5/32. + +B. On May 22 Lloyd George and Elibank bought 3000 more shares at +L2.5/32. As they were not due to deliver the shares previously sold +by them at L3.6.6 and L3.5/32 till June 20, this new purchase had +something of the look of a "bear" transaction. + +C. In April and May the Master of Elibank bought 3000 shares for the +account of the Liberal Party, of whose funds he had charge. + +These three transactions are all that the three politicians ever +admitted, and nothing more was ever proved against them. As we have +seen there was no documentary evidence of the principal transaction +(the one I have called A), except that Rufus sold 7000 shares on +April 19. In his acquiring of the shares, no broker was employed. +Rufus did not pay Harry for the shares until January 6, 1913, some +nine months later, when the enquiry was already on. There was no +evidence other than his own word that 10,000 was the number he had +agreed to take or L2 the price that he had agreed to pay, or that he +had bought from Harry and not from Godfrey, or that of the 7000 +shares he had certainly sold at a huge profit on April 19 half were +sold for Harry. There was, indeed, no evidence that the shares were +not a gift. + +Even on what they admitted, they had obviously acted improperly. The +contract with the English Marconi Company was not yet completed, +Parliament had not been informed of its terms, Parliament therefore +had yet to decide whether it would accept or reject it. Three members +of Parliament had committed two grave improprieties: + +(1) They had purchased shares--directly or at one remove--from the +Managing Director of a Company seeking a contract from Parliament, in +circumstances that were practically equivalent to receiving a gift of +money from him. They received shares which the general public could +not have bought till two days later and then only at over 50% more +than the politicians paid.* (On this count, the fact that the shares +were American Marconis made no difference: the point is that they +were valuable shares sold to ministers at a special low price. This +need not have been bribery, but it is a fact that one way of bribing +a man is to buy something from him at more than it is worth, or sell +something to him at less than it is worth.) + +[* H. T. Campbell of Bullett, Campbell & Grenfell, the English +Marconi Company's official brokers, gave evidence before the +Parliamentary Committee that it would have been impossible for the +general public to buy the shares before April 19. And as we have +seen, they opened on that day at L3.5.0.] + +(2) They--and through the Chief Whip's action the whole Liberal +Party, though it did not know it--were financially interested in the +acceptance by Parliament of the contract. For though they had not +bought shares in the English Company (with which the contract was +being made) but with the American Company (which had no direct +interest in the contract), none the less it would have lowered the +value of the American shares if the British Parliament had rejected +the Marconi System and chosen some other in preference. I may say at +once that I feel no certainty that the transaction was a sinister +effort to bribe ministers. But had it been, exactly the right +ministers were chosen. They were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who +has charge of the nation's purse; the Attorney-General, who advises +upon the legality of actions proposed; the Chief Whip, who takes the +Party forces into the voting lobby. It was this same Chief Whip, the +Master of Elibank, that had carried the sale of honours to a new +height in his devotion to the increase of his Party's funds. + +II. THE PARLIAMENTARY ENQUIRY + +On July 19, 1912, the contract was put on the table of the House of +Commons. In the ordinary course it would have come up for a vote some +time before the end of the Parliamentary Session. But criticism of +the contract was growing on the ground that it was too favourable to +the Marconi Company. And rumours were flying that members of the +Government had been gambling in Marconi shares (which, as we have +seen, they had, though not in English Marconis). + +Even before the tabling of the contract, members of Parliament, +notably Major Archer-Shee, a Conservative, had been harrying Mr. +Herbert Samuel, the Postmaster-General. On July 20, and in weekly +articles following, it was attacked as a thoroughly bad contract by a +writer in the _Outlook_, Mr. W. R. Lawson. On August 1, a Labour +Member asked a question in the House about the rising price of +Marconis. The feeling that enquiry was needed was so strong that on +August 6, the last day but one of the session, the Prime Minister +(who knew something of his colleagues' purchase of Marconis but never +mentioned it) promised the House that the Marconi Agreement would not +be rushed through without full discussion. In spite of this Herbert +Samuel* and Elibank both tried hard to get the contract approved that +day or the next. When it was quite clear that Parliament would not +allow this, Herbert Samuel insisted on making a general statement on +the contract. He too knew of the Ministers' dealings in American +Marconis, but did not mention them. There was no debate or division. +The question of ratification or rejection was postponed till the +House should meet again in October. + +[* The argument he put to Major Archer-Shee, M.P. was that the +stations were urgently needed for Imperial defence.] + +On August 8, Cecil Chesterton's paper the _New Witness_ launched its +first attack on the whole deal (though without reference to +Ministerial gambling in Marconis) under the headline "The Marconi +Scandal": + + Isaacs' brother is Chairman of the Marconi Company. It has + therefore been secretly arranged between Isaacs and Samuel that the + British people shall give the Marconi Company a very large sum of + money through the agency of the said Samuel, and for the benefit of + the said Isaacs. Incidentally, the monopoly that is about to be + granted to Isaacs No. 2, through the ardent charity of Isaacs No. 1 + and his colleague the Postmaster-General, is a monopoly involving + antiquated methods, the refusal of competing tenders far cheaper and + far more efficient, and the saddling of this country with corruptly + purchased goods, which happen to be inferior goods. + +The article went on to say that these "swindles" were apt to occur in +any country, but that England alone lacked the will to punish them: +"it is the lack of even a minimum standard of honour urging even +honest men to protest against such villainy that has brought us where +we are." + +In September L. J. Maxse's _National Review_ had a criticism of the +contract by Major Archer-Shee, M.P., with editorial comment as well. +In the same month the _Morning Post_ and the _Spectator_ pressed for +further enquiry. The October number of the _National Review_ +contained a searching criticism of the whole business and called +special attention to the Stock Exchange gamble in American Marconis. + +A few days later--on October 11--the re-assembled House of Commons +held the promised debate. In the light of what we know, it is +fascinating to read how nobody told a lie exactly and the truth was +concealed all the same. Here is Sir Rufus Isaacs. He begins by +formulating the rumours against Mr. Herbert Samuel and Mr. Lloyd +George and himself. But he is careful to formulate them in such a way +that he can truthfully deny them. The rumours, he says, were that the +Ministers had dealt in the shares of a Company with which the +Government was negotiating a contract: "Never from the beginning . . . +have I had one single transaction with the shares of that Company." + +Literally true, as you see. The contract was with the English +Company, the shares he had bought were in the American Company. He +made no allusion to that purchase. + +Mr. Herbert Samuel--who is not accused of having purchased shares +himself but who knew of what his colleagues had done--treads the same +careful line: "I say that these stories that members of the Cabinet, +knowing the contract was in contemplation, and feeling that possibly +the price of shares might rise, themselves, directly or indirectly +bought any of those shares, or took any interest in this Company +through any other party whatever, have not one syllable of truth in +them. Neither I myself nor any of my colleagues have at any time held +one shilling's worth of shares in this Company, directly or +indirectly, or have derived one penny profit from the fluctuations in +their prices." However, he promised a Parliamentary Committee to +enquire into the whole affair. + +Isaacs had denied any transactions with "that Company," Samuel with +"this Company." Neither had ventured to say "the English +Company"--for that would instantly have raised the question of the +American Company. It is an odd truth that has to be phrased so +delicately. Lloyd George, the first of the ministers to speak, +managed better. He flew into a rage with an interjector: "The hon. +member said something about the Government, and he has talked about +'rumours.' I want to know what these rumours are. If the hon. +gentleman has any charge to make against the Government as a whole, +or against individual members of it, I think it ought to be stated +openly. The reason why the Government wanted _a frank discussion +before going to Committee_* was because we wanted to bring here these +rumours, these sinister rumours, that have been passing from one foul +lip to another behind the backs of the House." He sat down, still in +a white heat, without having denied anything. + +[* Italics mine.] + +The Master of Elibank did not deny anything either. He was not there. +He was, indeed, no longer in the House of Commons. He had inherited +the title of Lord Murray of Elibank. He had left England in August +and did not return till the enquiry was over: nor did he send any +communication of any sort. + +As we have seen, no literal lie was told. But Parliament and the +country assumed that the Ministers had denied any gambling in +Marconis of any sort. And the Ministers must have known that this was +what their denials had been taken to mean.* + +[* Rufus Isaacs' son mentions a theory held by some (though he thinks +there are strong arguments against it) that Rufus' silence was due to +instructions from the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, who was not +anxious to have the connection of Lloyd George with the matter +disclosed, "fearing that his personal unpopularity would lead to such +an exacerbation of the attacks that the prestige of the whole +Government might be seriously impaired." (_Rufus Isaacs, First +Marquess of Reading_, pp. 248-9.)] + +On October 29 the names were announced of the members appointed to +the promised Committee of Enquiry. As usual they represented the +various parties in proportion to their numbers in the House. The +Liberals were in office, supported by Irish Nationalists and Labour +Members: 9 members of the Committee (including the Chairman) were +from these parties; 6 were Conservatives. One might have expected +that the careful evasions in the House would have meant only a brief +respite for the Ministers who had been so economical of the truth. +They would appear before the Committee and then the whole thing would +emerge. But though the Committee was appointed at the end of October +and met three times most weeks thereafter, five months went by and no +Minister was called. The plain fact is that Mr. Samuel's department, +the Post Office, slanted the enquiry in a different direction right +at the start by putting in evidence a confidential Blue Book and +suggesting that Sir Alexander King, secretary to the Post Office, be +heard first. + +On the question of the goodness or badness of the contract itself, +the Committee uncovered much that was interesting. It emerged that +the Poulsen System had offered to erect stations at a cost of about +L36,000 less per station than the Marconi, and that the Admiralty +itself had estimated a cost, if they were undertaking the work, about +the same as the Poulsen offer. But, by a confusion as to whether +their figure did or did not include freight charges, the Admiralty +estimate had been put down at L10,000 higher than it was! Nor was +this the only confusion. When Sir Alexander King spoke of +"concessions" made to the Government by the Marconi Company, he +admitted under cross-questioning that there was no written record of +these concessions. He spoke of various vitally important +conversations and was not able to produce a Minute. Letters referred +to were found to have been lost from the Post Office files. + +Further, it appeared that while most rigid tests were to be required +of the other systems, the Marconi people had been constantly taken +almost on their own word alone. "Mr. Isaacs and Mr. Marconi both told +us," said Sir Alexander King at one point, when asked whether he had +had technical advice on a point of working. + +"You will excuse me," said Mr. Harold Smith, "if for the moment I +ignore the opinion of Mr. Marconi and Mr. Isaacs. I ask you who was +the expert who gave you this information." + +Then too as to the terms. The Government had proposed 3% on the gross +takings. Godfrey Isaacs had held out for 10%, and got it. Moreover, +the royalty was to be paid as long as a single Marconi patent was in +use at the stations. Considering that by the Patents Act the +Government had the legal right to take over _any_ invention while +paying reasonable compensation, the provision which gave so high a +royalty to the Marconi Company was severely criticised. Again the +right was given to the Marconi Company to advise on any fresh +invention that should be offered to the Post Office--which meant that +any invention made by their rivals was entirely at their mercy. + +Naturally enough the question was pressed home whether the Post +Office had really sought the advice of its own technical experts. It +transpired that a technical sub-committee had been called once, and +had recommended a further investigation of the Poulsen System. The +report of this sub-committee had been shelved, and the members never +summoned for a second meeting. + +Early in January 1913, the Parliamentary Committee (against the +advice of Herbert Samuel) asked for a special sub-committee of +experts to go into the merits of the various wireless systems and +report within three months at latest. It is not surprising that the +_New Witness_ commented on this as "a surrender of the most decided +type, for it proposes to do what Samuel himself clearly ought to have +done before he entered into the contract." + +The report of this technical sub-committee showed that there had been +a good deal of exaggeration in the first attack by the _New Witness_ +on the worth of the Marconi System. If one single system was to be +used, it was the only one capable of carrying out the Government's +requirements. But the sub-committee held that as wireless was in a +state of rapid development, it would be better not to be tied to any +one system. And they added that while the nature of the contract +itself was not within their terms of reference, they must not be held +to approve it. + +From its examination of the contract, the Committee passed on to +examine journalists and others as to the rumours against Ministers. +And still the Ministers were not called. + +On February 12, 1913, L. J. Maxse, Editor of _The National Review_, +was being examined by the Committee. Suddenly he put his finger on +the precise spot. Having expressed surprise at the non-appearance of +Ministers, he went on: "One might have conceived that they would have +appeared at its first sitting clamoring to state in the most +categorical and emphatic manner that neither directly nor indirectly, +in their own names or in other people's names, have they had any +transactions whatsoever, either in London, Dublin, New York, +Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, or any other financial centre, in any +shares in any Marconi Company throughout the negotiations with the +Government. . . ." + +"Any shares in any Marconi Company": the direct question was at last +put. + +On February 14, just two days later, something very curious happened. +_Le Matin_, a Paris Daily paper, published a story to the effect that +Mr. Maxse had charged that Samuel, Rufus Isaacs and Godfrey Isaacs +had bought shares in the English Marconi Company at 50 francs (about +L2 in those days) before the negotiations with the Government were +started and had resold them at 200 francs (about L8) when the public +learnt that the contract was going through. It was an extraordinary +piece of clumsiness for any paper to have printed such a story: +certainly Mr. Maxse had made no such charge. It was an extraordinary +stroke of luck, if the Ministers wanted to tell their story in Court, +that they should have this kind of clumsy libel to deny. And it is at +least a coincidence that Rufus Isaacs happened, as his son tells us, +to be in Paris when _Le Matin_ printed the story. Samuel and Rufus +Isaacs announced that they would prosecute and that Sir Edward Carson +and F. E. Smith were their counsel. This decision to prosecute a not +very important French newspaper, while taking no such step against +papers in their own country, caused Gilbert Chesterton to write a +"song of Cosmopolitan Courage":* + +[* _New Witness_, Vol. I, p. 655.] + + I am so swift to seize affronts, + My spirit is so high, + Whoever has insulted me + Some foreigner must die. + + I brought a libel action, + For the Times had called me "thief," + Against a paper in Bordeaux, + A paper called _Le Juif_. + + _The Nation_ called me "cannibal" + I could not let it pass-- + I got a retractation + From a journal in Alsace. + + And when _The Morning Post_ raked up + Some murders I'd devised, + A Polish organ of finance + At once apologised. + + I know the charges varied much; + At times, I am afraid + _The Frankfurt Frank_ withdrew a charge + The _Outlook_ had not made. + + And what the true injustice + Of the _Standard's_ words had been, + Was not correctly altered + In the _Young Turk's Magazine_. + + I know it sounds confusing-- + But as Mr. Lammle said, + The anger of a gentleman + Is boiling in my head. + +The hearing of the case against _Le Matin_ came on March 19. As that +paper had withdrawn and apologised only three days after printing the +story, there was no actual necessity for statements by Rufus Isaacs +and Samuel. But they had decided to answer Maxse's question, to admit +the dealings in American Marconis which they had not mentioned to the +House of Commons: or rather to get their lawyer to tell the story and +then answer his questions on the matter in a Court case where there +could be no cross-examination because the Defendants were not +contesting the case. Sir Edward Carson mentioned the American +purchase at the end of a long speech and almost as an afterthought-- +"really the matter is so removed from the charges made in the libel +that I only go into it at all . . . because of the position of the +Attorney-General and because he wishes in the fullest way to state +this deal, so that it may not be said that he keeps anything +whatsoever back." As _The Times_ remarked (9 June, 1913): "The fact +was stated casually, as though it had been a matter at once trifling +and irrelevant. Only persons of the most scrupulous honour, who +desired that nothing whatsoever should remain hid would, it was +suggested, have thought necessary to mention it at all." + +The statement was not really as full as Carson's phrasing would seem +to suggest. The court was told that Rufus Isaacs had bought 10,000 +shares--but not from whom he had bought them: that he had paid market +price, but not what the price was, nor that the shares were not on +the market: that he had sold 1000 shares each to Lloyd George and +Elibank, and had sold some on their behalf, but not that these two +had had further buyings and sellings on their own. It was stated for +Sir Rufus and reiterated by him that he had lost money on the +deal--the reason being that while he had gained on the shares sold, +the shares he still held had slumped. (It is difficult to see why +Rufus Isaacs and later Lloyd George made such a point of the loss on +their Marconi transactions. They can hardly have bought the shares in +order to lose money on them, and their initial sellings showed a very +large profit. Indeed Rufus Isaacs' loss depended on his having paid +his brother L2 for the shares, and again upon the 7000 shares he sold +on the opening day being only partly on his own behalf, and there is +only his own word for these two statements. If Rufus lost, he lost to +his brother, who had been willing to sell at cost price, with whom he +had a pooling arrangement, and who made an enormous profit. If Rufus +lost, the loss remained in the family.) + +A week after the hearing of the _Matin_ case, Rufus Isaacs appeared +for the first time before the Parliamentary Committee, almost five +months after its formation. His problem was not so much to explain +his dealings in American Marconis, as to account for his silence in +the House of Commons. His one desire that day in Parliament, it +seems, had been to answer the "foul lies" being uttered against him, +which he was "quite unable to find any foundation for, quite unable +to trace the source of, quite unable to understand how they were +started": obviously his dealings in American Marconis could have no +possible bearing on these rumours, so he did not mention them: "I +confined my speech entirely . . . to dealing with the four specific +charges _which I formulated."_* + +[* Italics mine.] + +The Chairman, Sir Albert Spicer, suggested that one way to scotch the +rumours would have been to mention his investment in American +Marconis, "because both being Marconis you could easily understand +one might get confused with the other." This question always drove +Rufus Isaacs into a rage and indeed he met all difficult questions +with rages which to this day, across the gulf of thirty years, seem +simulated, and not convincingly. + +Why had he not earlier asked the Committee to hear the story of the +American shares? "I took the view . . . that I had no right to claim +any preferential position . . . and it seemed to me that it might +almost savour of presumption if I had asked the Committee to take my +evidence or any Minister's evidence, out of the ordinary turn in +which the Committee desired it." All the same he had once written a +letter to the Committee asking to be heard but "on consideration did +not send it." + +During his examination the element of strain between the two parties +on the Committee, which had been evident throughout the enquiry, was +very much intensified--Lord Robert Cecil and the Conservatives +courteously but tenaciously trying to get at the truth, the +Ministerialists determined to shield their man. There is a most +unpleasing contrast between the earlier bullying of the journalists +(who after all were not on trial) and the deference the majority now +showed to Ministers (who were). + +Rufus Isaacs twisted and turned incredibly. But he did admit to Lord +Robert Cecil that he had obtained the shares before they were +available to the general public and at a price lower than that at +which they were afterwards introduced to them. He tried later to +modify this admission by saying that he had been told of dealings by +others before April 17, but he could give no details: and the +evidence of the Marconi Company's broker (quoted above) is decisive. + +Two points of special interest emerged from his evidence. The first +was that he had not told the whole story in the _Matin_ case. He now +mentioned that Lloyd George and Elibank had sold a further 1000 of +the shares he held for them on the second day, July 20; and went on +to tell of the purchase of 3000 shares by the same pair, the +so-called "bear" transaction of May 22. The second was more +unpleasing still. He admitted that he had told the story of the +American Marconis privately to two friends _on the Committee_-- +Messrs. Falconer and Booth--who had kept the matter to themselves and +had--or at least appeared to have--continually steered the Committee +away from this dangerous ground. Rufus Isaacs' son actually says that +his father "had informed Mr. Falconer and Mr. Handel Booth privately +of these transactions, in order that they might be forearmed when the +journalists came to give evidence."* + +[* _Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading_, p. 256.] + +On March 28 Lloyd George appeared before the Committee. Mrs. Charles +Masterman gives an account of Rufus Isaacs grooming Lloyd George for +the event: + + There was a really very comic, though somewhat alarming, scene + between Rufus and George on the following Sunday. George had to give + evidence on the Monday--the following day--and Rufus discovered that + George was still in a perfect fog as to what his transaction really + had been, and began talking about "buying a bear." I have never seen + Rufus so nearly lose his temper, and George got extremely sulky, + while Rufus patiently reminded him what he had paid, what he still + owed, when he had paid it, who to, and what for. It was on that + occasion also that Charlie and Rufus tried to impress upon him with + all the force in their power to avoid technical terms and to stick as + closely as possible to the plainest and most ordinary language. _As + is well known, George made a great success of his evidence_.* + (Italics mine.) + +[* _C. F. G. Masterman_, p. 255.] + +I cannot imagine why she thought so. Hugh O'Donnell's description in +the _New Witness_ of Isaacs and Lloyd George as they appeared before +the Committee accords perfectly with the impression produced by a +reading of the evidence: + + . . . While the simile of a panther at bay, anxious to escape, but + ready with tooth and claw, might be applied to Sir Rufus Isaacs, + something more like "a rat in a corner" might be suggested by the + restless, snapping, furious little figure which succeeded. Let us + compromise by saying that Mr. Lloyd George was singularly like a + spitting, angry cat, which had got, perhaps, out of serious danger + from her pursuers, but which caterwauled and spat and swore with + vigour and venomousness quite surprising in that diminutive bulk. + "Dastardly," "dishonourable," "disgraceful," "disreputable," + "skulking," "cowardly!" + +Asked why he had not mentioned his Marconi purchases in the House of +Commons, Lloyd George gave two answers: (1) "There was no time on a +Friday afternoon" (2) "I could not get up and take time when two +Ministers had already spoken." Why had he not asked to be heard +sooner by the Committee? He understood that Sir Rufus had expressed +the willingness of all the accused Ministers to be heard. Like Sir +Rufus, Lloyd George mentioned that he had lost money on his Marconi +transactions. + +The obstruction within the Committee continued to the end. The +question had arisen whether Godfrey had had the right to sell the +shares at his own price or for his own profit. He had sold a +considerable number of shares to relations and friends at L1.1.3, +whereas shares were sold to the general public at L3.5.0. Others of +his shares he sold on the Stock Exchange at varying prices, all high. +But were the shares his? Or did they belong to the English Company? +If they were his he was entitled to sacrifice vast profits on some by +selling at cost to his relations, and to take solid profits on others +by selling at what he could get in the open market. But if he was +simply selling as an agent of the Company, he had no right to make so +fantastic a present of one lot of shares and was bound to hand over +to the Company profits made on the others. + +He told the Committee that the 500,000 shares had been sold to him +outright but that he had passed on L46,000 of profits to the Company. +He said that a record of this sale of 500,000 shares to him would be +found in the minutes of the English Company. The books of the Company +were inspected and it was found that no such minute existed. Lord +Robert Cecil naturally wished to recall Godfrey Isaacs to explain the +discrepancy between his statements and the records. The usual 8 to 6 +majority decided that there was no need to recall Godfrey. It looked +rather as if the shares Godfrey had sold to Harry and Harry to Rufus +at such favourable prices belonged to--and should have been sold for +the profit of--the Company. + +On May 7 the Committee concluded its hearings and its members were +marshalling their ideas for the Report. But there was one fact for +them and the public still to learn. Early in June they were re-called +to hear about it. A London stockbroker had absconded: a trustee was +appointed to handle his affairs and it was discovered that the +fleeing stockbroker had acted for the still absent Elibank, had +indeed bought American Marconis for him--a total of 3000: and as it +later appeared, these had been bought for the funds of the Liberal +Party. The comment of _The Times_ (June 9, 1913) on "the totally +unnecessary difficulty which has been placed in the way of getting at +the truth" seems moderate enough. + +III. THE TRIAL OF CECIL CHESTERTON + +Meanwhile the _New Witness_ had not been neglecting its +self-appointed task of striking at every point that looked +vulnerable. On January 9, 1913, an article appeared attacking the +city record of Mr. Godfrey Isaacs and listing the bankrupt +companies--there were some twenty of them--of which he had been +promoter or director. Some more ardent spirit in the _New Witness_ +office sent sandwichmen to parade up and down in front of Godfrey +Isaacs' own office bearing a placard announcing his "Ghastly +failures." Cecil Chesterton said later that he had not ordered this +to be done, but he refused to disclaim responsibility. The placard +was the last straw. Godfrey's solicitors wrote to Cecil saying that +Godfrey would prosecute unless Cecil promised to make no further +statement reflecting on his honour till both had given evidence +before the Parliamentary Committee. Cecil replied: "I am pleased to +hear that your client, Mr. Godfrey Isaacs, proposes to bring an +action against me." And in the _New Witness_ (February 27, 1913) he +wrote: "We are up against a very big thing. . . . You cannot have the +honour (and the fun) of attacking wealthy and powerfully entrenched +interests without the cost. We have counted the cost; we counted it +long ago. We think it good enough--much more than good enough." + +The case came on at the Old Bailey on May 27. It is worth recalling +the exact position at this time. The Parliamentary Committee had +concluded its hearings three weeks earlier and was now preparing its +report. (Cecil Chesterton had not given evidence before it, for +though he had frequently demanded to be summoned, when at last the +summons came he excused himself on the plea of ill-health and the +further plea that he wished to reserve his evidence for his own +trial.) the _Matin_ case had been heard a couple of months earlier. +Everything that was ever to be known about ministerial dealings in +Marconis was by now known, except for Elibank's separate purchase on +behalf of the Party Funds, which was made public just at the end of +the trial. + +Sir Edward Carson and F. E. Smith were again teamed, as in the +_Matin_ case. The charge was criminal libel. Cecil insisted on facing +the charge alone. His various contributors had joined in the attack +but Cecil would not give the names of the authors of unsigned +articles and took full responsibility as Editor. Carson's opening +speech for the Prosecution divided the six alleged libels under two +main heads: One set, said Carson, charged Godfrey Isaacs with being a +corrupt man who induced his corrupt brother to use his influence with +the corrupt Samuel to get a corrupt contract entered into. The +opening attack under this head has already been quoted. Later +attacks did not diminish in violence: "the swindle or rather +theft--impudent and barefaced as it is": "when Samuel was caught with +his hand in the till (or Isaacs if you prefer to put it that way)." + +The second set charged that Godfrey Isaacs had had transactions with +various companies which, had the Attorney-General not been his +brother, would have got him prosecuted. There is the same violence +here: "This is not the first time in the Marconi affair that we find +these two gentlemen [Godfrey and Rufus] swindling": and again: "the +files at Somerset House of the Isaacs companies cry out for vengeance +on the man who created them, who manipulated them, who filled them +with his own creatures, who worked them solely for his own ends, and +who sought to get rid of some of them when they had served his +purpose by casting the expense of burial on to the public purse." + +There is no need to describe the case in detail. On the charges +concerned with the contract and ministerial corruption, the same +witnesses (with the notable exception of Lloyd George) gave much the +same evidence as before the Parliamentary Committee. Very little that +was new emerged. The contract looked worse than ever after Cecil +Chesterton's Counsel, Ernest Wild, had examined witnesses, but Mr. +Justice Phillimore insisted that it had nothing to do with the case +"whether the contract was badly drawn or improvident." + +But indeed all this discussion of the contract was given an air of +unreality by the extraordinary line the Chesterton Defence took. It +distinguished between the two sets of charges, offering to justify +the second (concerning Godfrey Isaacs' business record) but claiming +that the first set brought accusation of corruption not against +Godfrey but against Rufus and Herbert Samuel--who were not the +prosecutors. It was an impossible position to say that Ministers were +fraudulently giving a fraudulent contract to Godfrey Isaacs but that +this did not mean that he was in the fraud. Cecil showed up unhappily +under cross-examination on this matter, but from the point of view of +his whole campaign worse was to follow: for Cecil withdrew the +charges of corruption he had levelled at the Ministers! + +Here are extracts from the relevant sections of the cross-examination +by Sir Edward Carson: + + Carson: And do you now accuse him [Godfrey Isaacs] of any + abominable business--I mean in relation to obtaining the contract? + + Cecil Chesterton: Yes, certainly; I now accuse Mr. Isaacs of very + abominable conduct between March 7 and July 19. + + Carson: Do you accuse the Postmaster General of dishonesty or + corruption? + + C. Chesterton: What I accused the Postmaster General of was of + having given a contract which was a byword for laxity and thereby + laying himself open reasonably to the suspicion that he was + conferring a favour on Mr. Godfrey Isaacs because he was the + Attorney-General's brother. + + Carson: I must repeat my question, do you accuse the + Postmaster-General of anything dishonest or dishonourable? + + C. Chesterton: After the Postmaster-General's denials on oath I + must leave the question; I will not accuse him of perjury. + + Carson: And therefore you do not accuse him of anything dishonest + or dishonourable? + + AFTER SOME FURTHER QUESTIONING + + Judge: That is evasion. Do you or do you not accuse him? + + C. Chesterton: I have said "No." + + LATER + + C. Chesterton: My idea at that time was that Sir Rufus Isaacs had + influenced Mr. Samuel to benefit Godfrey Isaacs. + + Carson: You have not that opinion now? + + C. Chesterton: Sir Rufus has denied it on oath and I accepted his + denial. + +Cecil still insisted that though the Ministers had not been +corrupted, what had come to light about Godfrey's offer of American +Marconi shares to his brother showed that Godfrey had tried to +corrupt them. Godfrey could not have enjoyed the case very much. +There was much emphasis on his concealment of Clause 10 (allowing the +Government to terminate at any time): and Sir Alexander King, +secretary to the Post Office, admitted that Godfrey Isaacs had asked +that it be kept quiet: but this was not among the accusations Cecil +had levelled at him. In his summing up, Mr. Justice Phillimore +indicated the possibility that the shares Godfrey had so gaily sold +belonged not to himself but to the English Marconi Company--merely +adding that this question was not relevant to the present case. +Further the record of his company failures _was_ rather ghastly. + +Here is a section of his cross-examination as to the companies he had +been connected with before the Marconi Company--remember that there +were twenty of them! + + Wild: I am trying to discover a success. + + Judge: It is not an imputation against a man that he has been a + failure. + + Wild: Here are cases after cases of failure. + + Isaacs: That is my misfortune. + + Judge: You might as well cross-examine any speculative widow. + + Wild: A speculative widow would not be concerned in the management. + + * * * + + Wild: Can you point to one success except Marconi in the whole of + your career? + + Isaacs: In companies? + + Wild: Yes. + + Isaacs: A complete success, no; I should not call any one of them a + complete success, but I may say that each of them was an endeavour to + develop something new. + +But Carson had made the point in his opening speech that though +Godfrey Isaacs had been connected with so many failures, he had not +been accused by the shareholders of anything dishonourable: in his +closing speech he pointed out that "not one single City man had been +brought forward to say that he had been deceived to the extent of one +sixpence by the representations of Mr. Isaacs." And indeed the +evidence called by the Defence in this present case, however +suspicious it may have made some of his actions appear, did not +establish beyond doubt any actual illegality. + +The trial ended on June 9. The Judge summed up heavily against Cecil +Chesterton. The jury was out only forty minutes. The verdict was +"Guilty." Cecil Chesterton, says the _Times_, "smiled and waved his +hand to friends and relations who sat beside the dock." The Judge +preached him a solemn little homily and then imposed a fine of L100 +and costs. The Chestertons and all who stood with them held that so +mild a fine instead of a prison sentence for one who had been found +guilty of criminal libel on so large a scale was in itself a moral +victory. "It is a great relief to us," ran the first Editorial in the +_New Witness_ after the conclusion of the trial, "to have our hands +free. We have long desired to re-state our whole case about the +Marconi disgrace, in view of the facts that are now before us and the +English people. . . . When we began our attack . . . we were striking +at something very powerful and very dangerous . . . we were striking +at it in the dark. The politicians saw to that. Our defence is that +if we had not ventured to strike in the dark, we and the people of +England should be in the dark still." + +There can be no question of Cecil Chesterton's courage. But he may +have exaggerated a little in saying that if the _New Witness_ had not +struck in the dark the nation would still be in the dark: Parliament +had already refused to approve the contract without proper discussion +and the _Outlook_ was attacking vigorously, _before_ the first _New +Witness_ attack. And there are grave drawbacks to the making of +charges in the dark which later have to be withdrawn. Cecil's +withdrawal of his charges against the Ministers and his failure to +substantiate his charges against Godfrey's company record may have +done more to hinder than help the cause of clean government. But his +courage remains: and, if one has to choose, one prefers the +immoderate man who said more than he knew to the careful men who said +so much less. Gilbert giving evidence at the trial had said that he +envied his brother the dignity of his present position. And with the +Isaacs brothers in mind, one sees the point. + +IV. AFTER THOUGHTS + +Four days after the verdict against Cecil Chesterton, the +Parliamentary Committee produced its report. There had been a draft +report somewhat critical of the Marconi-buying Ministers by the +Chairman, Sir Albert Spicer; and another considerably more critical +by Lord Robert Cecil. Lord Robert's report said that Rufus Isaacs had +committed "grave impropriety in making an advantageous purchase of +shares . . . upon advice and information not yet fully available to +the public. . . . By doing so he placed himself, however unwittingly, +in a position in which his private interests or sense of obligation +might easily have been in conflict with his public duty. . . ." Of +his silence in the House, Lord Robert said: "We regard that reticence +as a grave error of judgment and as wanting in frankness and in +respect for the House of Commons." + +Upon this Rufus Isaacs' son comments: "The vehemence of this language +was not calculated to commend the draft to the majority of the +Committee." Vehemence seems hardly the word; but at any rate the +Committee did not adopt either Lord Robert's report or Sir Albert +Spicer's. + +By the usual party vote of 8 to 6, it adopted a report prepared by +Mr. Falconer (one of the two whom Rufus Isaacs had approached +privately) which simply took the line that the Ministers had acted in +good faith and refrained from criticising them. + +Parliament debated the matter a few days later on a Conservative +motion: "That this House regrets the transactions of certain of its +Ministers in the shares of the Marconi Company of America, and the +want of frankness displayed by Ministers in their communications on +the subject to the House." Rufus Isaacs' son speaks of the certain +ruin of his father's career if "by some unpredictable misadventure" +the motion had been carried. It would indeed have had to be an +"unpredictable misadventure" for the voting was on the strictest +party lines: which means that the House did not express its real +opinion at all: the motion was defeated by 346 to 268. Lloyd George +and Rufus Isaacs expressed regret for any indiscretion there might +have been in their actions: Rufus explained that he would not have +bought the shares--"if I had thought that men could be so suspicious +of any action of mine." In the debate the Leader of the Opposition, +Arthur Balfour, somewhat disdainfully refused to make political +capital out of the business. Lloyd George and Isaacs were loudly +cheered by their own Party--though whether they were cheered for +having bought American Marconis or for having concealed the purchase +from the House there is now no means of discovering. At any rate +their careers were not damaged: the one went on to become Lord Chief +Justice of England and later Viceroy of India: the other became Prime +Minister during the war of 1914-1918. + +One question arising from the episode is whether it meant what Cecil +Chesterton and Belloc thought it meant in the world of party +politics, or something entirely different. They seem throughout to +have assumed that their thesis of collusion between the Party Leaders +was proved by this scandal: it seems to me quite as easy to make the +case that it was _disproved_. + +A Conservative first raises the matter by inconvenient questions in +the House. A group of young Conservatives pay the costs of Cecil +Chesterton's defence. When a Parliamentary Committee is appointed to +enquire into the alleged corruption, the story of every session +becomes one of a Conservative minority trying hard to ferret out the +truth and a ministerial majority determined to prevent their +succeeding. Finally the leading Conservative Commissioner, Lord +Robert Cecil, issues a restrained but most damning report which is, +as a matter of course, rejected by the Liberal majority. + +A Conservative M.P. told me he thought the great mistake made was +that it had all been made "too much of a party question." Unless you +already disbelieved quite violently in the existence of the two +parties this would certainly be the effect upon you of reading the +report of the Commission Sessions, and all that can be set against it +is the fact that Mr. Balfour did, in the House of Commons, utter a +conventional form of words which, as has been said, really amounted +to a refusal to make political capital out of the affair. + +I do not say, for I do not pretend to know, if this is the correct +interpretation: it is certainly the obvious one. + +Douglas Jerrold in a brilliant article on Belloc,* treats his theory +of the Party System as a false one, and maintains that he mistook for +collusion that degree of co-operation that alone could enable a +country to be governed at all under a party system. A certain +continuity must be preserved if, in the old phrase, "The King's +Government is to be carried on"--but such continuity did not spell a +corrupt collusion. If at this distance of time such a view can be +held by a man of Mr. Jerrold's ability it could certainly be held at +the time by the majority--and it may be that the continual assumption +of an unproved fact got in the way in the fight against more obvious +evil. + +[* "Hilaire Belloc and the Counter Revolution" in _For Hilaire +Belloc_.] + +For bound up with this question is another: _The Eye Witness_ seemed +so near success and yet never quite succeeded. Might it have done so +had it been founded with a single eye to creative opportunity--to the +attack on the Servile State and the building of some small beginning +of an alternative? _G.K.'s Weekly_ was a slight improvement from that +point of view--for it did create the Distributist League; but both +papers, I think, had from their inception a divided purpose that made +failure almost inevitable. + +The fight against corruption which had been placed equal with the +fight for property and liberty at the start of the _Eye Witness_ is a +noble aim. But, like the other, it is a life work. To do it a man +must have time to spend verifying rumours or exploding them, +following up clues, patiently waiting on events. I began to read the +files with an assumption of the accuracy of the claims of the _Eye_ +and _New Witness_ as to its own achievement in all this, but when the +dates and facts in the Marconi case had been tabulated for me +chronologically I began to wonder. Again and again the editor stated +that _The New Witness_ had been first to unearth the Marconi matter. +But it hadn't. As we have seen, questions in the House and attacks in +other papers had _preceded_ their first mention of the subject. + +So too the statement that the Marconi affair had proved how little +Englishmen cared about corruption seemed almost absurd when one read +not only the Conservative but also the Liberal comment of the time. +"Political corruption is the Achilles heel of Liberalism," said an +outstanding Liberal Editor; while Hugh O'Donnell in the _New Witness_ +paraphrased the wail of the "Cadbury" papers: + + 'Tis the voice of the Cocoa + I hear it exclaim + O Geordie, dear Geordie + Don't do it again. + +Just how scandalous _was_ the Marconi scandal? At this distance of +time it is difficult to arrive at any clear view. There are two main +problems--the contract and the purchase of American Marconis. + +The contract seems very definitely to have been unduly favourable to +the Company; clauses were so badly drawn that they had to be +supplemented by letters which had no legal effect; documents were +lost, other tenders misinterpreted, other systems perhaps not fully +examined, the report of a sub-committee shelved, Godfrey Isaacs +allowed to issue a misleading report without correction from the Post +Office. It all may spell corruption: but it need not. No one familiar +with the workings of a Government department is likely to be +surprised at any amount of muddle and incompetence. Matters are +forgotten and then in the effort to make up for lost time important +steps are simply omitted. Officials are pig-headed and unreasonable. +And as to lost documents-- + +What of the ministers' dealings in shares? Godfrey may have been +using Rufus to purchase ministerial favour. If so, he could hardly +have done so on the comparatively small scale of the dealings known +to us. The few thousand involved could not have meant an enormous +amount to Rufus. He had, it is true, begun his career on the Stock +Exchange, found himself insolvent and been "hammered." But he had +gone on to make large sums at the Bar--up to thirty thousand pounds a +year; and his salary as Attorney-General was twenty thousand a year. + +There may, of course, have been far heavier purchases than we know +about: the piece-by-piece emergence of what we do know gives us no +confidence that all the pieces ever emerged. We have only the word of +the two brothers for most of the story and one comes to feel that +their word has no great meaning. But, allowing for all that, it is +possible that Godfrey may have wanted Rufus to have the American +shares out of family affection; of the shares Godfrey personally +disposed of, a very large number went to relations and close +friends--mother, sisters, his wife's relations--who certainly could +not help to get his contract through Parliament. If this, the most +charitable interpretation, is also the true one, Rufus and his +political friends acted with considerable impropriety in snatching at +this opportunity of quick and easy money. The rest of the story is of +their efforts to prevent this impropriety being discovered. Had they +mentioned it openly in Parliament on October 11, the matter might +have ended there. But they lacked the nerve: the occasion passed: and +nothing remained, especially for Rufus, but evasion, shiftiness, +half-truth passing as whole truth, the farce of indignant virtue--a +performance which left him not a shred of dignity and ought to have +made it unthinkable that he should ever again be given public office. +The perfect word on the whole episode was uttered, not by either +Gilbert or Cecil Chesterton or by any of their friends, but by +Rudyard Kipling. The case had meant a great deal to him. On June 15, +a Conservative neighbour of Kipling wrote to Gilbert: + + I cannot let the days pass without writing to congratulate you and + your brother on the result of the Isaacs Trial. . . . I do feel, as + many thousands of English people must feel, that the _New Witness_ is + fighting on the side of English Nationalism and that is our common + battle. My neighbour, Rudyard Kipling, has followed every phase of + the fight with interest of such a kind that it almost precluded his + thinking of anything else at all and when he gets hold of the _New + Witness_ (my copy) I never can get it back again. You see, however + much we have all disagreed--do disagree--we are all in the same boat + about a lot of things of the first rank. . . . We can't afford to + differ just now if we do agree--it's all too serious. + +When Isaacs was appointed Viceroy of India, Kipling wrote the poem: + + GEHAZI + + Whence comest thou, Gehazi + So reverend to behold + In scarlet and in ermine + And chain of England's gold? + From following after Naaman + To tell him all is well; + Whereby my zeal has made me + A judge in Israel. + + Well done, well done, Gehazi, + Stretch forth thy ready hand, + Thou barely 'scaped from Judgment, + Take oath to judge the land. + Unswayed by gift of money + Or privy bribe more base, + Or knowledge which is profit + In any market place. + + Search out and probe, Gehazi, + As thou of all canst try + The truthful, well-weighed answer + That tells the blacker lie: + The loud, uneasy virtue, + The anger feigned at will, + To overbear a witness + And make the court keep still. + + Take order now, Gehazi, + That no man talk aside + In secret with the judges + The while his case is tried, + Lest he should show them reason, + To keep the matter hid, + And subtly lead the questions + Away from what he did. + + Thou mirror of uprightness, + What ails thee at thy vows, + What means the risen whiteness + Of skin between thy brows? + The boils that shine and burrow, + The sores that slough and bleed-- + The leprosy of Naaman + On thee and all thy seed? + + Stand up, stand up, Gehazi, + Draw close thy robe and go + Gehazi, judge in Israel. + A leper white as snow! + +As the _Times_ leading article of June 19, 1913, put it: "A man is +not blamed for being splashed with mud. He is commiserated. But if he +has stepped into a puddle which he might easily have avoided, we say +that it is his own fault. If he protests that he did not know it was +a puddle, we say that he ought to know better; but if he says that it +was after all quite a clean puddle, then we judge him deficient in +the sense of cleanliness. And the British public like their public +men to have a very nice sense of cleanliness." + +That, fundamentally, was what troubled Gilbert Chesterton then and +for the rest of his life. He was not himself an investigator of +political scandals--in that field he trusted his brother and Belloc, +and on this particular matter Cecil had certainly said more than he +knew and possibly more than was true. But it did not take an expert +to know that some of the men involved in the Marconi Case had no very +nice sense of cleanliness: and these men were going to be dominant in +the councils of England, and to represent England in the face of the +world, for a long time to come. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +The Eve of the War (1911-1915) + + +DURING THE EARLIER YEARS of the _New Witness_ Gilbert had nothing to +do with the editing, and his contributions to it were only part of +the continuing volume of his weekly journalism. It would be almost +impossible to trace all the articles in papers and magazines that +were never republished: the volumes of essays appearing year by year +probably contained the best among them. He was still in 1911 writing +for the _Daily News_ and every week until his death he continued to +do "Our Notebook" for the _Illustrated London News_. I have found an +unpublished ballade he wrote on the subject: + + BALLADE OF A PERIODICAL + + In icy circles by the Behring Strait, + In moony jungles where the tigers roar, + In tropic isles where civil servants wait, + And wonder what the deuce they're waiting for, + In lonely lighthouses beyond the Nore, + In English country houses crammed with Jews, + Men still will study, spell, perpend and pore + And read the Illustrated London News. + + Our fathers read it at the earlier date + And twirled the funny whiskers that they wore + Ere little Levy got his first estate + Or Madame Patti got her first encore. + While yet the cannon of the Christian tore + The lords of Delhi in their golden shoes + Men asked for all the news from Singapore + And read the Illustrated London News. + + But I, whose copy is extremely late + And ought to have been sent an hour before + I still sit here and trifle with my fate + And idly write another ballad more. + I know it is too late; and all is o'er, + And all my writings they will now refuse + I shall be sacked next Monday. So be sure + And read the Illustrated London News. + + ENVOY + + Prince, if in church the sermon seems a bore + Put up your feet upon the other pews, + Light a Fabrica de Tabagos Flor + And read the Illustrated London News. + +Debating and lecturing went on, and an amusing letter from Bernard +Shaw shows the preparations for a Three Star Show--Shaw against +Chesterton with Belloc in the chair--in 1911. An exactly similar +debate years later was published in a slender volume entitled _Do We +Agree?_ On both occasions the crowd was enormous and many had to be +turned away. All three men were immensely popular figures and all +three were at their best debating in a hall of moderate size where +swift repartee could be followed by the whole audience. + +Gilbert always shone on these occasions. The challenge of a debate +brought forth all his powers of wit and humour. His opponent +furnished material on which he could work. And how he enjoyed +himself! Frank Swinnerton once heard him laugh so much that he gave +himself hiccups for the rest of the evening. I heard him against Miss +Cicely Hamilton and against Mr. Selfridge and felt the only drawback +to be that the fight was so very unequal. The Selfridge debate in +particular was sheer cruelty, so utterly unaware was the business man +that he was being intellectually massacred by a man who regarded all +that Selfridge's stores stood for as the ruin of England. +Occasionally Mr. Selfridge looked bewildered when the audience rocked +with laughter at some phrase that clearly conveyed no meaning to him +at all. But so complete was his failure to understand what it was all +about that when the meeting was over he asked if Chesterton would not +write his name with a diamond on a window of his store already graced +with many great names. For once Chesterton was at a loss for words. +"Oh, how jolly!" he murmured feebly. + +Very different was it when he debated with Bernard Shaw with Belloc +as third performer. + + Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. + 27th Oct. 1911. + + Don't be dismayed: this doesn't need a reply. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + With reference to this silly debate of ours, what you have to bear + in mind is this. + + I am prepared to accept any conditions. If they seem unfair to me + from the front of the house, all the better for me; therefore do not + give me that advantage unless you wish to, or are--as you probably + are--as indifferent to the rules as I am. + + The old Hyndman-Bradlaugh & Shaw-Foote debates (S-F. was a + two-nighter) were arranged thus. Each debater made 3 speeches: 1 of + 30 minutes, 1 of 15 and 1 of 10. Strict time was kept (the audiences + were intensely jealous of the least departure from the rules); and + the chairman simply explained the conditions and called Time without + touching the subject of debate. + + The advantages of this were, (a) that the opponent or the opener + could introduce fresh matter up to the end of his second speech, and + was tied up in that respect for the last 10 minutes only, and (b) + that the debate was one against one, and not one against two (and + with less time allowed for him at that), as it must have been had the + chairman dealt with the subject. + + The disadvantages for us are that we both want Belloc to let + himself go (I simply thirst for the blood of his Servile State--I'll + Servile him); and nobody wants to tie you down to matter previously + introduced when you make your final reply. We shall all three talk + all over the shop--possibly never reaching the Socialism + department--and Belloc will not trouble himself about the rules of + public meeting and debate, even if there were any reason to suppose + that he is acquainted with them. (Do you recollect how Parnell and + Biggar floored the House in the palmy days of obstruction by meanly + getting up the subject of public order, which no one else suspected + the existence of?) + + I therefore conclude that we had better make it to some extent a + clowns' cricket match, and go ahead as in the debates with Sanders & + Macdonald & Cicely Hamilton, which were all wrong technically. In a + really hostile debate it is better to be as strict as possible; but + as this is going to be a performance in which three Macs who are on + the friendliest terms in private will belabor each other recklessly + on wooden scalps and pillowed waistcoats and trouser seats, we need + not be particular. + + Still, you had better know exactly what you are doing: hence this + wildly hurried scrawl. + + Did you see my letter in Tuesday's _Times?_ Magnificent! + + My love to Mrs. Chesterton, and my most distinguished consideration + to Winkle.* To hell with the Pope! + +[* The Chestertons' dog who preceded Quoodle of the poem.] + + Ever + + G.B.S. + + P.S. I told Sanders to explain to you that you would be entitled to + half the gate (or a third if Belloc shares) and that you were likely + to overlook this if you were not warned. I take it that you have + settled this somehow. + +At the second of these debates Belloc opened the proceedings by +announcing to the audience "You are about to listen, I am about to +sneer." His only contribution to the debate was to recite a poem: + + Our civilisation + Is built upon coal + Let us chant in rotation + Our civilisation + That lump of damnation + Without any soul + Our civilisation + Is built upon coal. + +Bernard Shaw was on the friendliest terms with the others and admired +their genius but thought it ill directed. Belloc, he had told +Chesterton, was "wasting prodigious gifts" in the service of the Pope. + +"I have not met G.K.C.: Shaw always calls him a man of colossal +genius" writes Lawrence of Arabia to a friend. + +As a lecturer Chesterton's success was less certain than as a +debater. Many of his greatest admirers say they have heard him give +very poor lectures. He was often nervous and worried beforehand. "As +a lecture," wrote the _Yorkshire Weekly Post_ after a performance +in this year (1911), "it was a fiasco, but as an exhibition of +Chesterton it was pleasing." Although his writing appeared almost +effortless he did in fact take far more pains about it than he did in +preparing for a lecture. He seemed quite incapable of remembering the +time or place of appointment, or of getting there on time, if at all. +Stories are told of his non-appearance on various platforms. My +husband remembers a meeting in a London theatre at which Chesterton +had been billed as one of the speakers. The meeting, arranged by the +Knights of the Blessed Sacrament, was well under way before he +arrived, panting but unperturbed. His apology ran something like +this: "As knights you will understand my not being here at the +beginning, for the whole point of knighthood was that the knight +should arrive late but not too late. Had St. George not been late +there would have been no story. Had he been too late, there would +have been no princess." + +Even more annoying was his habit of beginning his lecture by saying +he had not prepared it. Such a remark is not likely to please any +audience, least of all an audience that has paid for admission and +knows that the lecturer is receiving a large fee. But money, whether +he was receiving it or giving it away, meant nothing to him. He had +not a strong voice, and I have seen him, when a microphone was +provided, holding a paper of notes between himself and it. An ardent +admirer of his writing told me he made far too many jokes about his +size. Yet how pleasing they sometimes were: when his Chairman for +instance, after a long wait, said he had feared a traffic accident: +"Had I met a tram-car," Chesterton replied, "it would have been a +great, and if I may say so, an equal encounter." + +He thought badly of his own lecturing and began once by saying: "I +might call myself a lecturer; but then again I fear some of you may +have attended my lectures." + +Actually, in spite of the jokes, his thoughts were centred entirely +on his subject, not on himself. An anonymous Society Diarist quoted +by Cosmo Hamilton writes of an occasion when: "he was given, rather +foolishly, a little gold period chair and as he made his points it +slowly collapsed under him. He rose just in time and sinking into +another chair that someone put behind him began at the word he had +last spoken. No acting could have secured such an effect of complete +indifference. It was evident that he had barely noticed the incident." + +Ellis Roberts completes the picture. He knew Gilbert already as a +brilliant talker and came to hear him from a platform: + +"I remember the manner of his lecture. It seemed to be written on a +hundred pieces of variously shaped paper, written in ink and pencil +(of all colours) and in chalk. All the pages were in a splendid and +startling disorder and I remember being at first a little +disappointed. Then the papers were abandoned and G.K.C. talked."* + +[* _Reading for Pleasure_, p. 96.] + +At this time Bernard Shaw scored a victory over his friend. For +beside lecturing, journalism and the publication of three +considerable and two minor books, Chesterton between 1911 and the War +wrote the play that Shaw had been so insistently demanding. The books +were: _Manalive_ 1911, _A Miscellany of Men_ (Essays) 1912, _The +Victorian Age in Literature_ February 1913, _The Wisdom of Father +Brown_ 1914, _The Flying Inn_ 1914. The play was _Magic_ produced at +the Little Theatre in October 1913. One who admired it was George +Moore. He wrote to Forster Bovill (November 24, 1913): + + I followed the comedy of _Magic_ from the first line to the last with + interest and appreciation, and I am not exaggerating when I say that + I think of all modern plays I like it the best. Mr. Chesterton wished + to express an idea and his construction and his dialogue are the best + that he could have chosen for the expression of that idea: therefore, + I look upon the play as practically perfect. The Prologue seems + unnecessary, likewise the magician's love for the young lady. That + she should love the magician is well enough, but it materialises him + a little too much if he returns that love. I would have preferred her + to love him more and he to love her less. But this spot, if it be a + spot, is a very small one on a spotless surface of excellence. + + I hope I can rely upon you to tell Mr. Chesterton how much I + appreciated his Play as I should like him to know my artistic + sympathies. + +"Artistic sympathies" is not ungenerous considering how Chesterton +had written of George Moore in _Heretics_. + +It is rather comic that all the reviews hailing from Germany where +the play was very soon produced compare Chesterton with Shaw and many +of them say that he is the better playwright. "He means more to it," +a Munich paper was translated as saying, "than the good old Shaw." +Chesterton's superiority can hardly be entertained in the matter of +technique. Actually what the critic meant was that he preferred the +ideas of Chesterton to the ideas of Shaw. Both men were chiefly +concerned with ideas. But while Shaw excelled chiefly in presenting +them through brilliant dialogue, G.K.'s deeper thoughts were conveyed +in another fashion. The Duke might almost, it is true, have been a +Shaw character, but the fun the audience got out of him was the least +thing they received. Chesterton once said that he suspected Shaw of +being the only man who had never written any poetry. Many of us +suspect that Chesterton never wrote anything else. This play is a +poem and the greatest character in it is atmosphere. Chesterton +believed in the love of God and man, he believed in the devil: love +conquers diabolical evil and the atmosphere of this struggle is felt +even in the written page and was felt more vividly in the theatre. +After a passage of many years those who saw it remember the moment +when the red lamp turned blue as a felt experience. + +But as to popularity, in England at least, it would be absurd to +compare G.K. with G.B.S. The play's run was a brief one and it was +years before he attempted another. + +Chesterton was fighting corruption, fighting the Servile State. Above +all things he was fighting sterility, fighting it in the name of +life--life with its richness, its variety, its sins and its virtues, +with its positively outrageous sanity. "Thank you for being alive," +wrote an admirer to him. + +_Manalive_ is above all things a hymn to life. It is the acid test of +a Chestertonian. Reviewers became wildly enthusiastic or bitterly +scornful. Borrowing from his own phrase about Pickwick I am inclined +to say that men not in love with life will not appreciate _Manalive_-- +nor, I should imagine, heaven. The ideas that make up the book had +been long in his head. The story of White Wynd written while he was +at the Slade School tells one half of the story, an unpublished +fragment of the same period entitled "The Burden of Balham" the +other half. The Great Wind that blows Innocent Smith to Beacon House +is the wind of life and it blows through the whole story. Before an +improvised Court of Law Smith is tried on three charges: +housebreaking--but it was his own house that he broke into to renew +the vividness of ownership; bigamy--but it was his own wife with whom +he repeatedly eloped to renew the ecstasy of first love; murder with +a large and terrifying revolver--but he dealt life not death from its +barrel. For he used it only to threaten those who said they were +tired of life or that life was not worth living, and he forced them +through fear of death to hymn the praises of life. + +The explanation given by Smith to Dr. Eames, the Master of +Brakespeare College, of his ideas and his purpose gives the note of +fooling and profundity filling the whole book. + + "I want both my gifts to come virgin and violent, the death and the + life after death. I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the + Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him--only to bring him to + life. I begin to see a new meaning in being the skeleton at the + feast." + + "You can scarcely be called a skeleton," said Dr. Eames smiling. + + "That comes of being so much at the feast," answered the massive + youth. "No skeleton can keep his figure if he is always dining out. + But that is not quite what I meant: what I mean is that I caught a + kind of glimpse of the meaning of death and all that--the skull and + the crossbones, the _Memento Mori_. It isn't only meant to remind us + of a future life, but to remind us of a present life too. With our + weak spirits we should grow old in Eternity if we were not kept young + by death. Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for us, as + nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers." + +_Manalive_ appeared in 1911. Next year came what is perhaps his +best-known single piece of writing, the _Battle of Lepanto_. In the +spring of 1912 he had taken part in a debate at Leeds, affirming that +all wars were religious wars. Father O'Connor supported him with a +magnificent description of the battle of Lepanto. Obviously it seized +Gilbert's mind powerfully, for while he was still staying with Father +O'Connor, he had begun to jot down lines and by October of that year +the poem was published. One might fill a book with the tributes it +has received from that day to this. Perhaps none pleased him more +than a note from John Buchan (June 21, 1915): "The other day in the +trenches we shouted your Lepanto." + +_The Victorian Age in Literature_ made many of his admirers again +express the wish that he would stay in the field of pure literature. +His characterisations of some of the Victorian writers were sheer +delight. + + Ruskin had a strong right hand that wrote of the great mediaeval + Minsters in tall harmonies and traceries as splendid as their own; + and also, so to speak, a weak and feverish left hand that was always + fidgeting and trying to take the pen away--and write an evangelical + tract about the immorality of foreigners . . . it is not quite unfair + to say of him that he seemed to want all parts of the Cathedral + except the altar. + + Tennyson was a provincial Virgil . . . he tried to have the + universal balance of all the ideas at which the great Roman had + aimed: but he hadn't got hold of all the ideas to balance. Hence his + work was not a balance of truths, like the universe. It was a balance + of whims; like the British Constitution . . . he could not think up + to the height of his own towering style. + + . . . while Emily Bronte was as unsociable as a storm at midnight + and while Charlotte Bronte was at best like that warmer and more + domestic thing a house on fire--they do connect themselves with the + calm of George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments + of the feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would + have felt rather ill if they had seen the things they foreran. + +The best and most profound part of the book was however the working +out of certain generalisations--the effect on the literature of the +period of the Victorian compromise between religion and rationalism +("Macaulay, it is said, never talked about his religion: but Huxley +was always talking about the religion he hadn't got"): the break-up +of the compromise when Victorian Protestantism and Victorian +rationalism simultaneously destroyed one another; the uniqueness of +the nonsense-writing of the later Victorian period. + +In one illuminating passage Chesterton defends what seems at first +sight merely his own habit of getting dates and events in their wrong +order. + + The mind moves by instincts, associations, premonitions and not by + fixed dates, or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur + simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. + Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: + notions will be first defined long after they are dead . . . thus + Wordsworth shrank back into Toryism, as it were, from a Shelleyan + extreme of pantheism as yet disembodied. Thus Newman took down the + iron sword of dogma to parry a blow not yet delivered, that was + coming from the club of Darwin. For this reason no one can understand + tradition or even history who has not some tenderness for anachronism. + +This was not merely special pleading: it contains a profound truth. +Wilfrid Ward proved it of Newman in the biography that G.K. had +probably just been reading. Chesterton noted it himself in his book +on Cobbett who, as he said, saw what was not yet there. It is almost +the definition of genius. Already at this date Chesterton and Belloc +were fighting much that to the rest of us only became fully apparent +long afterwards. + +"I think you would make a very good God," wrote E. V. Lucas to +Chesterton. There is indeed something divine in an almost ceaseless +outpouring of creative energy. But only God can create tirelessly and +Chesterton was at this time beginning to be tired. You can see it in +_The Flying Inn_. The book is still full of vitality and the lyrics +in it, later published separately under the title _Wine, Water and +Song_, are as good in that kind as any that he ever wrote. But +with all its vigour the book is a less joyful one than _Manalive_ +and it is a much more angry one. _Manalive_ was a paean of joy to +life. _The Flying Inn_ is fighting for something necessary to its +fulness--freedom. + +It must have been just while he was writing it that there were +threatenings of a case against him by Lever Brothers on account of a +lecture given at the City Temple on "The Snob as Socialist." In +answering a question he spoke of Port Sunlight as "corresponding to a +Slave Compound." Others besides Lever Brothers were shocked and some +clarification was certainly called for. Belloc and Chesterton meant +by Slavery not that the poor were being bullied or ill treated but +that they had lost their liberty. Gilbert went so far as to point out +how much there was to be said in defence of a Slave state. Under +Slavery the poor were usually fed, clothed and housed adequately. +Slaves had often been much more comfortable in the past than were +free men in the world of today. A model employer might by his +regulations greatly increase the comfort of his workers and yet +enslave them. + +A letter from Bernard Shaw advising him to get up certain details +asks the question of whether the workman at Port Sunlight would +forfeit his benefits and savings should he leave. "If this is so," +wrote Shaw, "then, though Lever may treat him as well as Pickwick +would no doubt have treated old Weller, if he had consented to take +charge of his savings, Lever is master of his employee's fate, and +captain of his employee's soul, which is slavery." He went on to +offer financial help in fighting the case. The "Christian Commonweal" +had reported Chesterton's speech and was also threatened with the +law. To the editor G. K. wrote: + + Only a hasty line to elongate the telephone. I am sorry about this + business for one reason only; and that is that you should be even + indirectly mixed up in it. Lever can sue me till he bursts: I'm not + afraid of him. But it does seem a shame when I've often attacked you + (always in good faith and what was meant for good humour), and when + you've heaped coals of fire by printing my most provocative words, + that your chivalry should get you even bothered about it. I am truly + sorry and ask pardon--of you, but not of old Sun and Soapsuds, I can + tell you. + + Another very hasty line about the way I shall, if necessary, + answer; about which I feel pretty confident. I should say it is + absurd to have libel actions about Controversies, instead of about + quarrels. It would mean every Capitalist being prosecuted for saying + that Socialism is robbery and every Socialist for saying property is + theft. By great luck, the example lies at the threshold of the + passage quoted. The worst I said of Port Sunlight was that it was a + slave-compound. Why, that was the very phrase about which half the + governing class argued with the other half a few years ago! Are all + who called the Chinese slaves to be sued by all who didn't? Am I + prosecuted for a terminology . . . enough, you know the rest. Go on + with the passage and you will see the luck continues. Abrupt, brief, + and perhaps abbreviated as my platform answer was, it really does + contain all the safeguards against imputing cruelty or human crime to + poor Lever. It defines slavery as the imposition of the master's + private morality; as in the matter of the pubs. It expressly suggests + it does not imply cruelty: for it goes out of its way to say that + such slaves may be better off under such slavery. So they were, + physically, both in Athens and Carolina. It then says that a merely + mystical thing, which I think is Christianity, makes me think this + slavery damnable, even if it is comfortable. I would defend all this, + as a lawful sociological comment, in any Court in civilisation. + + I tell you my line of defence, to use discreetly and at your + discretion. If the other side are bent on fighting, I should reserve + the defence. If they seem open to reason, I should point out that it + is on our side. + +His old schoolfellow Salter was also his solicitor and a letter to +Wells shows in part the advice Salter gave. + + DEAR WELLS, + + I am asked to make a suggestion to you that looks like, and indeed + is, infernal impudence: but which a further examination will rob of + most of its terrors. Let not these terrors be redoubled when I say + that the request comes from my solicitor. It is a great lark; I am + writing for him when he ought to be writing for me. + + In the forthcoming case of Lever v. Chesterton & Another, the + Defendant Chesterton will conduct his own case; as his heart is not, + like that of the lady in the song, Another's. He wants to fight it + purely as a point of the liberty of letters and public speech; and to + show that the phrase "slavery" (wherein I am brought in question) is + current in the educated controversy about the tendency of Capitalism + today. The solicitor, rather to my surprise, approves this general + sociological line of defence; and says that I may be allowed one or + two witnesses of weight and sociological standing--not (of course) to + say my words are defensible, still less that my view is right--but + simply to say that the Servile State, and Servile terms in connection + with it, are known to them as parts of a current and quite + unmalicious controversy. He has suggested your name: and when I have + written this I have done my duty to him. You could not, by the laws + of evidence, be asked to mix yourself up with my remarks on Lever: + you could only be asked, if at all, whether there was or was not a + disinterested school of sociology holding that Capitalism is close to + Slavery--quite apart from anybody. Do you care to come and see the + fun? + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +The suggested line was so successful that Wells's testimony was not +called for. The case was withdrawn. No apology was even asked from +Gilbert, whose solicitor tells me that Messrs. Lever "behaved very +reasonably when once it was made clear to them that Gilbert was not +a scurrilous person making a vulgar and slanderous attack upon their +business." + +With H. G. Wells as with Shaw, Gilbert's relations were exceedingly +cordial, but with a cordiality occasionally threatened by explosions +from Wells. Gilbert's soft answer however invariably turned away +wrath and all was well again. "No one," Wells said to me, "ever had +enmity for him except some literary men who did not know him." They +met first, Wells thinks, at the Hubert Blands, and then Gilbert +stayed with Wells at Easton. There they played at the non-existent +game of Gype and invented elaborate rules for it. Cecil came too and +they played the War game Wells had invented. "Cecil," says Wells, +comparing him with Gilbert, "seemed condensed: not quite big enough +for a real Chesterton." + +They built too a toy theatre at Easton and among other things +dramatized the minority report of the Poor Law Commission. The play +began by the Commissioners taking to pieces Bumble the Beadle, +putting him into a huge cauldron and stewing him. Then out from the +cauldron leaped a renewed rejuvenated Bumble several sizes larger +than when he went in. + +In the early days of their acquaintance Wells remembers meeting the +whole Chesterton family in the street of a French town and inviting +them to lunch. His own youngest son, a small boy, had left the room +for a moment when Wells exclaimed: "Where's Frank? Good God, Gilbert, +you're sitting on him." + +The anxious way in which Gilbert got up and turned apologetically +towards his own chair was unforgettable. An absent-minded man who in +a gesture of politeness once gave his seat to three ladies in a bus +might well be alarmed over the fate of a small boy found under him. + +In his memoirs Wells relates another pleasing story of a +Chestertonian encounter: + + I once saw [Henry] James quarrelling with his brother William + James, the psychologist. He had lost his calm; he was terribly + unnerved. He appealed to me, to me of all people, to adjudicate on + what was and what was not permissible in England. William was arguing + about it in an indisputably American accent, with an indecently naked + reasonableness. I had come to Rye with a car to fetch William James + and his daughter to my home at Sandgate. William had none of Henry's + passionate regard for the polish upon the surface of life and he was + immensely excited by the fact that in the little Rye inn, which had + its garden just over the high brick wall of the garden of Lamb House, + G. K. Chesterton was staying. William James had corresponded with our + vast contemporary and he sorely wanted to see him. So with a + scandalous directness he had put the gardener's ladder against that + ripe red wall and clambered up and peeped over! + + Henry had caught him at it. It was the sort of thing that isn't + done. It was most emphatically the sort of thing that isn't + done. . . . Henry instructed the gardener to put away that ladder and + William was looking thoroughly naughty about it. + + To Henry's manifest relief, I carried William off and in the road + just outside the town we ran against the Chestertons who had been for + a drive in Romney Marsh; Chesterton was heated and I think rather + swollen by the sunshine; he seemed to overhang his one-horse fly; he + descended slowly but firmly; he was moist and steamy but cordial; we + chatted in the road and William got his coveted impression. + +The two must have suited each other a good deal better than +Chesterton and the more conventional brother. Of Henry's reactions +there was a comment from the other side of the Atlantic. + +The _Louisville Post_ reported that Henry James, being asked on a +visit to his native country, "What do you think of Chesterton in +England?" replied "In England we do not think of Chesterton." The +_Post_ commented rather neatly "This 'we' of our compatriot must be +considered as either mythical or editorial--unless indeed it refers +to that small and exquisite circle which immediately surrounds and +envelopes him." In his _Autobiography_ Gilbert is appreciative but +amusing, describing Henry James's reactions to the arrival of Belloc +from a walking tour unbrushed, unwashed and unshaven. After reading +_Dickens_, William wrote from Cambridge, Mass.: + + O, Chesterton, but you're a darling! I've just read your + Dickens--it's as good as Rabelais. Thanks! + +Wells, asked to debate with Gilbert, wrote to Frances: + + Spade House, Sandgate. (undated) + + DEAR MRS. CHESTERTON + + God forbid that I should seem a pig [here a small pig is drawn] and + indeed I am not and of all the joys in life nothing would delight me + more than a controversy with G.K.C., whom indeed I adore. [Here is + drawn a tiny Wells adoring a vast Chesterton.] + + But--I have been recklessly promising all and everyone who asks me to + lecture or debate; "If ever I do so again it will be for you," and if + once I break the vow I took last year-- + + Also we are really quite in agreement. It's a mere difference in + fundamental theory which doesn't really matter a rap--except for + after dinner purposes. + + Yours ever, + + H. G. Wells. + +Frances thought Wells was good for Gilbert, he tells me, because he +took him out walking, but when the two men were alone Gilbert would +say supplicatingly "We won't go for a walk today, will we?" "He +thought it terrifying," said Wells, "the way my wife tidied up." +Frances, too, tidied up, but cautiously. "She prevented G.K.," says +Wells, "from becoming too physically gross. He ought not to have been +allowed to use the word 'jolly' more than forty times a day." + +He could not, Wells thought, have gone on living in a London which +was that of ordinary social life, whether Mayfair or Bloomsbury. +"Either the country or Dr. Johnson's London." And of the relation +seen by Chesterton between liberty and conviviality he said, "Every +time he lifted a glass of wine he lifted it against Cadbury." + +In spite of growing restrictions as to sales and hours the Inn still +remained for Chesterton a symbol of freedom in a world increasingly +enslaved. It was pointed out to him how great a peril lay in drink, +how homes were broken up and families destroyed through drunkenness. +After the war began, a letter from one of his readers stressed a real +danger: + + Now I do beg you, Mr. Chesterton, much as you love writing in + praise of drink, to give it a rest during the war. . . . You may have + the degradation of any number of silly boys to your account without + knowing it. . . . + + I have written with a freedom--you will say perhaps rudeness--which + a casual meeting with you, and a great admiration for your work by no + means justifies, but which other things perhaps do. I beg you to + forgive me. + +It seems to me that this charge he never quite answered. To claim +liberty is one thing, to hymn the glories of wine is quite another. +And when he was attacked for the latter he always defended the +former, saying that he did not deny the peril but that all freedom +meant peril--peril must be preferred to slavery. There were things in +which a man must be free to choose even if his choice be evil. This +was a part of Chesterton's whole philosophy about drink--a subject on +which he wrote constantly. It is interesting to note the stages of +its development in his mind. + +The Chesterton family had not a Puritan tradition in the sense of +being teetotal. But Lucian Oldershaw tells me that in their boyhood +he always felt G.K. himself to be a bit of a Puritan and I have come +upon a boyish poem that seems to confirm this in the matter of wine. + + THE TEA POT + + Raised high on tripod, flashing bright, the Holy Silver Urn + Within whose inmost cavern dark, the secret waters burn + Before the temple's gateway the subject tea-cups bow + And pass it steaming with thy gift, thy brown autumnal glow. + Within thy silver fortress, the tea-leaf treasure piled + O'er which the fiery fountain pours its waters undefiled + Till the witch-water steals away the essence they enfold + And dashes from the yawning spout a torrent-arch of gold. + Then fill an honest cup my lads and quaff the draught amain + And lay the earthen goblet down, and fill it yet again + Nor heed the curses on the cup that rise from Folly's school + The sneering of the drunkard and the warning of the fool. + + * * * + + Leave to the Stuart's cavalier the revel's blood-red wine + To hiccup out a tyrant's health and swear his Right Divine + Mine, Cromwell's* cup to stir within, the spirit cool and sure + To face another Star Chamber, a second Marston Moor. + Leave to the genius-scorner, the sot's soul-slaying urns + That stained the fame of Addison, and wrecked the life of Burns + For Etty's hand his private Pot, that for no waiter waits** + For Cowper's lips his "Cup that cheers but not inebriates." + + Goal of Infantine Hope, Unknown, mystic Felicity + Sangrael of childish quest much sought, aethereal "Real Tea" + Thy faintest tint of yellow on the milk and water pale + Like Midas' stain on Pactolus, gives joy that cannot fail. + +[* Cromwell's teapot was among the first used in England.] + +[** Etty, the artist made his own tea in all hotels in a private pot.] + +Childhood's "May I have _real_ tea" had grown into the tea-table of +the Junior Debating Club, and Lucian Oldershaw remembers Gilbert as a +young man still lunching at tea shops. I found recently two versions +of a fragment of a story called "The Human Club," written when he was +at the Slade School. The second version opens: + + A meal was spread on the table, for the members of the Human Club + were, as their name implies, human, however glorified and + transformed: the meal, however, consisted principally of tea and + coffee, for the Humans were total abstainers, not with the virulent + assertion of a negative formula, but as an enlightened ratification + of a profound social effort (hear, hear), not as the meaningless + idolatry (cheers) of an isolated nostrum (renewed cheers), but as a + chivalrous sacrifice for the triumph of a civic morality (prolonged + cheers and uproar). + + The aims of the Human Club were many but among the more practical + and immediate was the entire perfection of everything. + + "Perfection is impossible," said the host, Eric Peterson, bowing + his colossal proportions over the coffee-pot. He was in the habit of + showing these abrupt rifts of his train of thought, like gigantic + fragments of a frieze. But he said then quite simply, with no change + in his bleak blue eyes, "perfection is impossible, thank God. The + impossible is the eternal." + +We are a long way from tea the "Oriental," cocoa the "vulgar +beast," and wine the true festivity of man that we find in _Wine, +Water and Song_. Chesterton had meanwhile discovered the +wine-drinking peasants of France and Italy: he had discovered what +were left of the old-fashioned inns of England where cider or beer +are drunk by the sort of Englishmen he had come to love best--the +poor. In his revolt against that dreary and pretentious element that +he most hated in the middle classes he had come to feel that the life +of the poor, as they themselves had shaped it when they were free +men, was the ideal. And that ideal included moderate drinking, +drinking to express joy in life and to increase it. + +Already in _Heretics_ (1904) he had in the essay called "Omar and the +Sacred Vine" attacked the evil of pessimistic drinking. A man should +never drink because he is miserable, he will be wise to avoid drink +as a medicine for, health being a normal thing, he will tend in +search of it to drink too much. But no man expects pleasure all the +time, so if he drinks for pleasure the danger of excess is less. + + The sound rule in the matter would appear to be like many other + rules--a paradox. Drink because you are happy, but never because you + are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you + will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when + you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing + peasants of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is + rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because + you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient + health of the world.* + +[* _Heretics_. John Lane, chapter VII, p. 103.] + +But the human will must be brought into action and the gifts of God +must be taken with the thanksgiving that is restraint. "We must thank +God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them." The +topic seemed to fascinate him; he returned to it again and again. In +one essay he described himself opening all the windows in a private +bar to get rid of the air of secrecy that he hated. Wine should be +taken, not secretly but + + Frankly and in fellowship As men in inns do dine. + +Cocktails he abominated--and in fact strong spirits were almost as +evil as wine and beer were good. In an essay "The Cowardice of +Cocktails"* he is especially scathing in his comment on those who +urge "that they give a man an appetite for his meals." + +[* From _Sidelights on New London & Newer York,_ p. 45.] + + This is unworthy of a generation that is always claiming to be + candid and courageous. In the second aspect, it is utterly unworthy + of a generation that claims to keep itself fit by tennis and golf and + all sorts of athletics. What are these athletes worth if, after all + their athletics, they cannot scratch up such a thing as a natural + appetite? Most of my own work is, I will not venture to say, + literary, but at least sedentary. I never do anything except walk + about and throw clubs and javelins in the garden. But I never require + anything to give me an appetite for a meal. I never yet needed a tot + of rum to help me to go over the top and face the mortal perils of + luncheon. + + Quite rationally considered, there has been a decline and + degradation in these things. First came the old drinking days which + are always described as much more healthy. In those days men worked + or played, hunted or herded or ploughed or fished, or even, in their + rude way, wrote or spoke, if only expressing the simple minds of + Socrates or Shakespeare, and _then_ got reasonably drunk in the + evening when their work was done. We find the first step of the + degradation, when men do not drink when their work is done, but drink + in order to do their work. Workmen used to wait in queues outside the + factories of forty years ago, to drink nips of neat whisky to enable + them to face life in the progressive and scientific factory. But at + least it may be admitted that life in the factory was something that + it took some courage to face. These men felt they had to take an + anaesthetic before they could face pain. What are we to say of those + who have to take an anaesthetic before they can face pleasure? What + of those, who when faced with the terrors of mayonnaise eggs or + sardines, can only utter a faint cry for brandy? What of those who + have to be drugged, maddened, inspired and intoxicated to the point + of partaking of meals, like the Assassins to the point of committing + murders? If, as they say, the use of the drug means the increase of + the dose, where will it stop, and at what precise point of frenzy and + delusion will a healthy grown-up man be ready to rush headlong upon a + cutlet or make a dash for death or glory at a ham-sandwich? This is + obviously the most abject stage of all; worse than that of the man + who drinks for the sake of work, and much worse than that of the man + who drinks for the sake of play. + +Wine, Chesterton maintained, should not be drunk as an aid to +creative production, yet one may find that increased power of +creation sometimes follows in its wake. And here of course was a +danger to a man who worked as hard as Chesterton. He sometimes spoke +of himself as "idle," but I think it would be hard to match either +his output or his hours of creative work. I remember one visit that I +paid to Beaconsfield when he was writing one of his major books. He +was in his study by 10 in the morning, emerged for lunch at 1 and went +back from about 2:30 to 4:30. After tea he worked again until a 7:30 +dinner. His wife and I went to bed about 10:30 leaving him preparing +his material for the next day. Towards 1 A.M. a ponderous tread as he +passed my door on his way to bed woke me to a general impression of +an earthquake. + +In a passage in _Magic_ G.K. makes his hero say, "I happen to have +what is called a strong head and I have never been really drunk." It +was true of himself, but in these years just before the Great War, +before his own severe illness, intimate friends have told me that +they had seen him unlike himself, that they felt he had come to +depend, "almost absent-mindedly" one said, on the stimulus of wine +for the sheer physical power to pour forth so much. + +Besides overwork G.K. was in these years mentally oppressed by the +strain of the Marconi Case, and then almost overwhelmed by the horror +of the World War. A man very tender of heart, sensitive and intensely +imaginative, he could not react as calmly as Cecil himself did to +what both believed the probability of the latter's imprisonment. And +when that strain was removed there remained the stain on national +honour, the opening gulf into which he saw his country falling. To +him the Marconi Case was a heavier burden than the war. For, as he +saw it, in the Marconi Case the nation was wrong in enduring +corruption and in the war the nation was magnificently right in +resisting tyranny. + +So Chesterton felt, yet the outbreak of the war with all its human +suffering to mind and body weighed heavily upon him too. He wrote +_The Barbarism of Berlin_ of which I will say something in the next +chapter--for it belongs to those writings of the war period the +series of which is so consistent that in his _Autobiography_ he was +able to claim that he had no sympathy "with the rather weak-minded +reaction that is going on round us. At the first outbreak of the War +I attended the conference of all the English men of letters, called +together to compose a reply to the manifesto of the German +professors. I at least among all those writers can say, 'What I have +written I have written.'" + +Then his illness came upon him. Dr. Pocock, coming for a first visit, +found the bed partly broken under the weight of the patient who was +lying in a grotesquely awkward position, his hips higher than his +head. + +"You must be horribly uncomfortable," he said. + +"Why, now you mention it," said G.K., like a man receiving a new +idea, "I suppose I am." + +The doctor ordered a water-bed, and almost the last words he heard +before the patient sank into coma were, "I wonder if this bally ship +will ever get to shore." + +The illness lasted several months. We can follow its progress (and +his) in extracts from letters* written to Father O'Connor by Frances: + + Nov. 25th, 1914. You must pray for him. He is seriously ill and I + have two nurses. It is mostly heart-trouble, but there are + complications. He is quite his normal self, as to head and brain, and + he even dictates and reads a great deal. + + Dec. 29th, 1914. Gilbert had a bad relapse on Christmas Eve, and + now is being desperately ill. He is not often conscious, and is so + weak--I feel he might ask for you--if so I shall wire. Dr. is still + hopeful, but I feel in despair. + + Jan. 3rd, 1915. If you came he would not know you, and this + condition may last some time. The brain is dormant, and must be kept + so. If he is sufficiently conscious at any moment to understand, I + will ask him to let you come--or will send on my own responsibility. + Pray for his soul and mine. + + Jan. 7th, 1915. Gilbert seemed decidedly clearer yesterday, and + though not quite so well today the doctor says he has reason to hope + the mental trouble is working off. His heart is stronger, and he is + able to take plenty of nourishment. Under the circumstances therefore + I am hoping and praying he may soon be sufficiently himself to tell + us what he wants done. I am dreadfully unhappy at not knowing how he + would wish me to act. His parents would never forgive me if I acted + only on my own authority. I do pray to God He will restore him to + himself that we may know. I feel in His mercy He will, even if death + is the end of it--or the beginning shall I say? + + Jan. 12th, 1915. He is really better I believe and by the mercy of + God I dare hope he is to be restored to us. Physically he is + stronger, and the brain is beginning to work normally, and soon I + trust we shall be able to ask him his wishes with regard to the + Church. I am so thankful to think that we can get at his desire. + +In January 1915 Frances wrote to my mother: "Gilbert remains much the +same in a semi-conscious condition--sleeping a great deal. I feel +absolutely hopeless; it seems impossible it can go on like this. The +impossibility of reaching him is too terrible an experience and I +don't know how to go through with it. I pray for strength and you +must pray for me." + +"Dearest Josephine," she wrote in a later undated letter, "Gilbert is +today a little better, after being practically at a standstill for +the past week. He asked for me today, which is a great advance, and +hugged me. I feel like Elijah (wasn't it?) and shall go in the +strength of that hug forty days. The recovery will be very slow, the +doctors tell me, and we have to prevent his using his brain at all." + +In this letter she begged to see my mother, and I remember when they +met she told her that one day she had tried to test whether Gilbert +was conscious by asking him, "Who is looking after you?" "He answered +very gravely, 'God' and I felt so small," she said. Presently Frances +told my mother that Gilbert had talked to her about coming into the +Catholic Church. It was just at this time that she wrote to tell +Father O'Connor that Gilbert said to her "Did you think I was going +to die?" and followed this with the question, "Does Father O'Connor +know?" After her conversation with my mother Frances wrote to her: + + March 21 + + I think I would rather you did not tell anyone just yet of what I + told you regarding my husband and the Catholic Church. Not that I + doubt for a moment that he meant it and knew what he was saying and + was relieved at saying it, but I don't want the world at large to be + able to say that he came to this decision, when he was weak and + unlike himself. He will ratify it no doubt when his complete manhood + is restored. I know it was not weakness that made him say it, but you + will understand my scruples. I know in God's good time he will make + his confession of faith--and if death comes near him again I shall + know how to act. + + Thanks for all your sympathy. I _did_ enjoy seeing you. + +On Easter Eve Frances wrote two letters, one to Father O'Connor, one +to my mother. To Father O'Connor she said: + + All goes well here, though still very very slowly--G's mind is + gradually clearing, but it is still difficult to him to distinguish + between the real and the unreal. I am quite sure he will soon be able + to think and act for himself, but I dare not hurry matters at all. I + have told him I am writing to you often and he said, "That is + right--I'll see him soon. I want to talk to him." He wanders at + times, but the clear intervals are longer. He repeated the Creed last + night, this time in English. + +To my mother: + + I feel the enormous significance of the resurrection of the body + when I think of my dear husband, just consciously laying hold of life + again. Indeed, I will pray that your dear ones may be kept in safety. + God bless you for all your sympathy. I am so glad that Gilbert's + decision (for I am sure it was a decision) has made you so happy. I + dare not hurry anything, the least little excitement upsets him--last + night he said the Creed and asked me to read parts of Myers' "St. + Paul." He still wanders a good deal when tired but is certainly a + little stronger. Love and Easter blessings to you all. + +We ourselves were passing then through the shadow of death. Almost as +Gilbert rose again to this life my father passed into life eternal. +One of the very few letters I possess in Gilbert's own handwriting +was also one of the first he wrote on recovery. It was to my mother: + + I fear I have delayed writing to you, and partly with a vague + feeling that I might so find some way of saying what I feel on your + behalf and others'; and of course it has not come. Somewhat of what + the world and a wider circle of friends have lost I shall try to say + in the _Dublin Review_, by the kindness of Monsignor Barnes, who has + invited me to contribute to it; but of all I feel, and Frances feels, + and of the happy times we have had in your house, I despair of saying + anything at all. + + I can only hope you and yours will be able to read between the + lines of what I write either here or there; and understand that the + simultaneous losses of a good friend and a fine intellect have a way + of stunning rather than helping the expression of either. I would say + I am glad he lived to see what I feel to be a rebirth of England, if + his mere presence in an older generation did not prove to me that + England never died. + +This sense of the rebirth of England gave to Gilbert's restored life +a special quality of triumph that abode down to the end of the war. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +The War Years + + +GILBERT WAS TAKING up life again and with it the old friendships and +the old debates, in the new atmosphere created by the war. + +To Bernard Shaw he wrote: + + June 12th, 1915 + + MY DEAR BERNARD SHAW, + + I ought to have written to you a long time ago, to thank you for + your kind letter which I received when I had recovered and still more + for many other kindnesses that seem to have come from you during the + time before the recovery. I am not a vegetarian; and I am only in a + very comparative sense a skeleton. Indeed I am afraid you must + reconcile yourself to the dismal prospect of my being more or less + like what I was before; and any resumption of my ordinary habits must + necessarily include the habit of disagreeing with you. What and where + and when is "Uncommon Sense about the War?" How can I get hold of it? + I do not merely ask as one hungry for hostilities, but also as one + unusually hungry for good literature. "Il me faut des geants," as + Cyrano says; so I naturally wish to hear the last about you. You + probably know that I do not agree with you about the War; I do not + think it is going on of its own momentum; I think it is going on in + accordance with that logical paradox whereby the thing that is most + difficult to do is also the thing that must be done. If it were an + easy war to end it would have been a wicked war to begin. If a cat + has nine lives one must kill it nine times, saving your humanitarian + feelings, and always supposing it is a witch's cat and really draws + its powers from Hell. I have always thought that there was in Prussia + an evil will; I would not have made it a ground for going to war, but + I was quite sure of it long before there was any war at all. But I + suppose we shall some day have an opportunity of arguing about all + that. Meanwhile my thanks and good wishes are as sincere as my + opinions; and I do not think those are insincere. + + Yours always sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +Bernard Shaw replied: + + 22nd June 1915 + + MY DEAR CHESTERTON + + I am delighted to learn under your own hand that you have recovered + all your health and powers with an unimpaired figure. You have also + the gratification of knowing that you have carried out a theory of + mine that every man of genius has a critical illness at 40, Nature's + object being to make him go to bed for several months. Sometimes + Nature overdoes it: Schiller and Mozart died. Goethe survived, though + he very nearly followed Schiller into the shades. I did the thing + myself quite handsomely by spending eighteen months on crutches, + having two surgical operations, and breaking my arm. I distinctly + noticed that instead of my recuperation beginning when my breakdown + ended, it began before that. The ascending curve cut through the tail + of the descending one; and I was consummating my collapse and rising + for my next flight simultaneously. + + It is perfectly useless for you to try to differ with me about the + war. NOBODY can differ with me about the war: you might as well + differ from the Almighty about the orbit of the sun. I have got the + war right; and to that complexion, you too must come at last, your + nature not being a fundamentally erroneous one. + + At the same time, it is a great pity you were not born in Ireland. + You would have had the advantage of hearing the burning patriotism of + your native land expressing itself by saying exactly the same things + about England that English patriotism now says about Prussia, and of + recognizing that though they were entirely true, they were also a + very great nuisance, as they prevented people from building the + future by conscientious thought. Also, Cecil would have seen what the + Catholic Church is really like when the apostolic succession falls to + the farmer's son who is cleverer with school books than with + agricultural implements. In fact you would have learned a devil of a + lot of things for lack of which you often drive me to exclaim + "Gilbert, Gilbert, why persecutest thou me." + + As to the evil will, of course there is an evil will in Prussia. + Prussia isn't Paradise. I have been fighting that evil will, in + myself and others, all my life. It is the will of the brave Barabbas, + and of the militant Nationalists who admired him and crucified the + pro-Gentile. But the Prussians must save their own souls. They also + have their Shaws and Chestertons and a divine spark in them for these + to work on. . . . What we have to do is to make ridiculous the cry of + "Vengeance is mine, saith Podsnap," and, whenever anyone tells an + Englishman a lie, to explain to the poor devil that it is a lie, and + that he must stop cheering it as a splendid speech. For an Englishman + never compares speeches either with facts or with previous speeches: + to him a speech is art for art's sake, the disciples of our favoured + politicians being really, if they only knew it, disciples of + Whistler. Also, and equally important, we have to bear in mind that + the English genius does not, like the German, lie in disciplined + idealism. The Englishman is an Anarchist and a grumbler: he has no + such word as Fatherland, and the idea which he supposes corresponds + to it is nothing but the swing of a roaring chorus to a patriotic + song. Also he is a muddler and a slacker, because tense and + continuous work means thought; and he is lazy and fat in the head. + But as long as he is himself, and grumbles, it does not matter. Given + a furious Opposition screaming for the disgrace of tyrannical and + corrupt ministers, and a press on the very verge of inviting Napoleon + to enter London in triumph and deliver a groaning land from the + intolerable burden of its native rulers' incapacity and rapacity and + obsolescence, and the departments will work as well as the enemy's + departments (perhaps better), and the government will have to keep + its wits at full pressure. But once let England try what she is + trying now: that is, to combine the devoted silence and obedience of + the German system with the slack and muddle of Coodle and Doodle, and + we are lost. Unless you keep up as hot a fire from your ink-bottle on + the Government as the soldier keeps up from the trenches you are + betraying that soldier. Of course they will call you a pro-German. + What of that? They call ME a pro-German. We also must stand fire. As + Peer Gynt said of hell, if the torture is only moral, it cannot be so + very bad. + + I grieve to say that some fool has stolen my title, and issued a + two page pamphlet called Uncommon Sense about the War. So I shall + have to call mine More Common Sense About the War. It is not yet in + type: I haven't yet quite settled its destination. Any chance of + seeing you both if we drive over from Ayot to Beaconsfield some + Sunday or other afternoon. + + Yours ever, + + G.B.S. + +Wells too was rejoicing over his recovery-- + + DEAR OLD G.K.C., + + I'm so delighted to get a letter from you again. As soon as I can I + will come to Beaconsfield and see you. I'm absurdly busy in bringing + together the Rulers of the country and the scientific people of whom + they are totally ignorant. Lloyd George has never heard of + Ramsey--and so on, and the hash and muddle and quackery on our + technical side is appalling. It all means boys' lives in Flanders and + horrible waste and suffering. Well, anyhow if we've got only obscure + and cramped and underpaid scientific men we have a bench of fine fat + bishops and no end of tremendous lawyers. One of the best ideas for + the Ypres position came from Robert Mond but the execution was too + difficult for our officers to attempt. So we've got a row of wounded + and mangled men that would reach from Beaconsfield to Great + Marlow--just to show we don't take stock in these damned scientific + people. + + Yours ever, + + H.G. + +No one however mad could have called Gilbert a pro-German: it was +perhaps the only accusation the _New Witness_ escaped. But while he +largely agreed with Shaw's analysis of the Englishman as a natural +Anarchist and grumbler, while he believed in the voluntary principle +and disliked conscription, his general outlook was as different from +Shaw's as were the pamphlets they both wrote. + +In a book addressed to a German professor G.K. frankly confessed the +real _Crimes of England_, for which she was now making reparation. + +To any Englishman living in the native atmosphere the suggestion that +England had been preparing an aggression against Germany seemed more +than faintly ludicrous. We were not engaged in plotting in Europe--on +the contrary we were far too careless of Europe. And the funds of the +Liberal Party (which was in power) actually depended chiefly on +Quaker Millionaires who were noted pacifists and at whose bidding +national honour was jeopardised by our delay in declaring our support +of France. We were not prepared for war and probably only the shock +of the invasion of Belgium made certain our stand with France. + + . . . It may seem an idle contradiction to say that our strength in + this war came from not being prepared. But there is a truth that + cannot be otherwise expressed. The strongest thing in sane anger is + surprise. If we had time to think we might have thought better--that + is worse. Everything that could be instinctive managed to be strong; + the instant fury of contempt with which the better spirit in our + rulers flung back the Prussian bribe; the instant solidarity of all + parties; above all, the brilliant instinct by which the Irish leader + cast into the scale of a free Europe the ancient sword of Ireland.* + +[* _The Uses of Diversity_.] + +Our crimes were in the past, not the present. The first had been when +we gave aid to Prussia against Austria, Austria which was "not a +nation" but "a kind of Empire, a Holy Roman Empire that never came," +which "still retained something of the old Catholic comfort for the +soul." We had helped to put Prussia instead of Austria at the head of +the Germanies--Prussia which in the person of Frederick the Great +"hated everything German and everything good." Francophile as +Chesterton was, he yet had a certain tenderness for those old +Germanies which "preserved the good things that go with small +interests and strict boundaries, music, etiquette, a dreamy +philosophy and so on." + +Our next crimes had been in calling Prussia to our aid against +Napoleon and in failing to assist Denmark against her. And by far our +worst had been the using of Prussian mercenaries with their ghastly +tradition of cruelty in Ireland in the '98. + +There is in this little book one drawback from the historian's point +of view: its view of the past is so oddly selective. Doubtless it is +lawful to examine your own nation's conscience as you do your +own--and not your neighbour's. Yet history should be rather an +examination of facts than an examination of conscience. And +historically Richelieu's policies had had quite something to say in +the creation of Prussia; the conscript armies of the French +Revolution had first made Europe into an armed camp. It was an undue +simplification to insist exclusively on The Crimes of England. + +But even while he did so Chesterton rejoiced that now at long last +England was on the right side, on the side of Europe and of sanity. +The _New Witness_ group had always seen the issue as their countrymen +were now suddenly beginning to see it. They had no sympathy with the +"liberal" thinking, made in Germany, that had in the name of biblical +and historical criticism been undermining the bases of Christianity. +Their love of logic and of clarity had made German philosophy +intolerable to them--it was wind, and it was fog. Finally their love +of France had always made them conceive of Europe as centering in +that country. For them there was one profound satisfaction even amid +the horrors of war: that the issues were so clear. + +But were they as clear to the whole world? If not they must be made +so. + +There were two main problems to be overcome in this matter, one of +which was less pronounced at the time than it became later--the +economic interpretation of history. Started by Karl Marx the idea that +all history can be interpreted solely by economic causes has come +since to have an extraordinary popularity even among those whose own +philosophy and sociology are most widely removed from Marx. It is a +view which Chesterton would always have dismissed with the contempt +it deserves. Both he and Belloc saw as the determining factor in +history, because it is the determining factor in human life, the free +will of man. This does not mean that they would deny that the +economic factor has often been powerful in conquering man's liberty, +or a motive in its exercise. But Chesterton regarded the present age +as a diseased one precisely because the money motive held so +disproportionate a place in it. He looked back to the past and saw +the world of today as almost unique in that respect. He looked +forward to the future and hoped for a release from it. + +And as he looked back into the past he saw something in the history +of mankind far stronger than the economic motive--whether that mean +the strife for wealth or the mere struggle for subsistence. He saw +the all-pervading power of religion, which in bygone ages had +presided over man's activities and turned the exercise of that most +noble faculty free-will to the building of a civilization today +undreamed of. + +But in 1914 it was easier to get away from the economic +interpretation of history than it was to overcome another difficulty +in the minds of those who had not the Chesterton vision of Europe, +and to whom it seemed that in a war between nations it was extremely +likely that all parties were more or less equally to blame. +"History," said Chesterton, "tends to be a facade of faded +picturesqueness for most of those who have not specially studied it: +a more or less monochrome background for the drama of their own day." +But the nature of that background and the vision of today's drama +will vary with the varying angle of historic vision. + +There were two possible meanings for the statement that all nations +were to blame for the world war. All nations had gone away from God. +Motives of personal and national greed had ousted the old ideal of +Christendom. It might roughly be said that no nation was seriously +trying to seek the Kingdom of God and His Justice. International +Finance had become a shadow resting on all the earth, and it could +not have got this power if Governments had been governing solely for +the good of their peoples. "Bow down your heads before God," is the +invocation constantly used in the Missal during the penitential +season of Lent and the government of every nation needed this call to +repentance. + +With this interpretation Chesterton would have agreed. All nations +were to blame for the predisposing causes that made a world-war +possible. But when we come to the question of actual responsibility +for making this particular war, the statement means something very +different and something with which Chesterton was prepared to join +issue. Against him those who disliked France or England, and saw the +history of those two countries as a history of Imperialism, were +saying: if Germany had not attacked France, France would have +attacked Germany; or: England would have been equally treacherous if +it had paid her--look at the Treaty of Limerick. + +Chesterton kept imploring people simply to look at the facts. Germany +had in fact broken her word to France and attacked her. France had +not attacked Germany. Germany had invaded Belgium. England had not +invaded Holland "to seize a naval and commercial advantage; and +whether they say that we wished to do it in our greed or feared to do +it in our cowardice, the fact remains that we did not do it. Unless +this common-sense principle be kept in view, I cannot conceive how +any quarrel can possibly be judged. A contract may be made between +two persons solely for material advantage on each side: but the moral +advantage is still generally supposed to lie with the person who +keeps the contract."* + +[* _The Barbarism of Berlin_, 15-16.] + +The promise and the vow were fundamental to Chesterton's view of +human life. Discussing divorce he claims as essential to manhood the +right to bind oneself and to be taken at one's word. The marriage vow +was almost the only vow that remained out of the whole mediaeval +conception of chivalry and he could not endure to see it set at +nought. But even in the modern world there still remained some notion +of the sacredness of a solemn promise. + +"It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through +time, is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, +but from brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the +Old Testament, when it summed up the dark, irresponsible enormity of +Leviathan in the words, 'Will he make a pact with thee?' . . . The +vow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark to the +dog; his voice whereby he is known."* There were two chief marks +whereby it seemed to Chesterton that the Prussian invasion of Belgium +was fundamentally an attack on civilization. Contempt for a promise +was the first. He called it the war on the word. + +[* Ibid., 32-33.] + +The other mark of barbarism he called the refusal of reciprocity. +"The Prussians," he wrote, "had been told by their literary men that +everything depends upon Mood: and by their politicians that all +arrangements dissolve before 'necessity.'"* This was not merely a +contempt for the word but also an assumption that German necessity +was like no other necessity because the German "cannot get outside +the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is free to break the +law; and also to appeal to the law." Thus the Kaiser at once violated +the Hague Convention openly himself and wrote to the President of the +United States to complain that the Allies were violating it. "For +this principle of a quite unproved racial supremacy is the last and +worst of the refusals of reciprocity."** + +[* Ibid., 37.] + +[* Ibid., p. 60.] + +If these two ideas were allowed to prevail they must destroy +civilization and so to Chesterton the war was a crusade and, to his +profound joy, was understood as such by the people of England. The +democratic spirit of our country "is rather unusually sluggish and +far below the surface. And the most genuine and purely popular +movement that we have had since the Chartists has been the enlistment +for this war." Chesterton loved the heroic humour of the trenches: +the cry of "Early Doors" from the boys rushing on death; the term +Blighty for England and congratulations on a severe wound as a "good +Blighty one"; the song under showers of bullets, "When It's Raining +Keep Your Umbrella Up." The English, he once said, had no religion +left except their sense of humour but I think he meant that they hung +out humour somewhat defiantly as a smoke-screen for other things. + +Anyhow he doubted neither that the war was worth winning nor that it +could be won by our soldiers and sailors. And with the soldiers and +sailors stood the munition workers and the Trades Unions which had +sacrificed their cherished rights for the war period. If the only +danger to England was on the Home Front it was not, in his eyes, to +be found in the mass of the nation. Nor was he at first too +apprehensive of the actions of the Government. Asquith and Sir Edward +Grey might have been slow in declaring war but both were patriotic +Englishmen and with them stood with equal patriotism the mass of the +governing classes. If as has later been said the war had really been +brought about by English political and financial interests, it is +strange that Lord Desborough, head of the London house of J. P. +Morgan and a leading financier of England, should have lost his two +elder sons and the Prime Minister his eldest. + +But the _New Witness_ did see two dangers at home which might +jeopardise the success of our armies in the field and bring about a +premature and dishonourable peace. These were international finance, +and the Press magnates. + +Nothing so reminds me of how we were all feeling about the Daily +papers just then as finding this letter to E. C. Bentley (dated July +20, 1915): + + I was delighted to hear from you though very sorry to hear you have + been bad. I mean physically bad; morally and intellectually you have + evidently been very good. Seriously, I think you have done something + to save this country; for the _Telegraph_ continues to be almost the + only paper that the crisis has sobered and not tipsified. I take it + in myself and know many others who do so. Part of the fun about + 'Armsworth is that quite a lot of old ladies of both sexes go about + distinguishing elaborately between the _Daily Mail_ and the _Times_.* + It is a stagnant state of mind created in people who have never been + forced by revolution or other public peril to distinguish between the + things they are used to and the thoughts for which the things are + supposed to stand. If you printed the whole of Ally Sloper's Half + Holiday and called it the Athenaeum, they would read it with unmoved + faces. So long as St. Paul's Cathedral stood in the usual place they + would not mind if there was a Crescent on top of it instead of a + Cross. By the way, I see the Germans have actually done what I + described as a wild fancy in the Flying Inn; combined the Cross and + the Crescent in one ornamental symbol. . . . + +[* Both these papers were then owned by the same man--Alfred +Harmsworth, who had become Lord Northcliffe.] + +I am inclined to think that the attack upon Harmsworth which the _New +Witness_ developed attributed too much to purposed malice and did not +allow enough for the journalistic craving for news and for "scoops." +Probably some of the posters and articles to which they objected were +not the work of Lord Northcliffe but of some young journalist anxious +to sell his paper. Nevertheless the _New Witness_ attack was not only +largely justified but was also remarkably courageous. The staff of +the _New Witness_ were themselves journalists and men of letters. In +both capacities as powerful a newspaper owner as Lord Northcliffe +could damage them severely--and did. Never henceforward would any of +them be able to write in one of his numerous papers, never would one +of their books receive a favourable review. For Belloc did not +hesitate to call Lord Northcliffe a traitor for the way in which he +had attacked Kitchener, while Cecil amused himself by reviewing and +pointing out the illiteracy of that strange peer's own writing. Later +too when the Harmsworth papers were in full cry for the fall of +Asquith and the substitution of Lloyd George, the _New Witness_ took +a strong stand. They pointed out too the way in which censorship was +exercised against the smaller newspapers while the Northcliffe press +seemed immune. Here was the fundamental danger. Whatever the motive, +some of the attacks and articles printed were undoubtedly calculated, +in military language, to cause alarm and despondency. It was +appalling that in time of war this should be permitted; and, as they +saw it, permitted because the Harmsworth millions had been used to +secure a hold on certain politicians. To the _New Witness_ "George" +was simply Harmsworth's man. + +Meanwhile at Easter, 1916, came the awful tragedy of the Irish +rising. Chesterton had fallen into the sleep of his long illness soon +after the splendid gesture in which Redmond had offered the sword of +Ireland to the allied cause. And there seems little doubt that in +making this offer Redmond had with him, for the last time, the people +of Ireland. Recruiting began well but that awful fate of stupidity +that seems to overtake every Englishman dealing with Ireland even now +was overwhelming the two countries. Sir Francis Vane, an Irish +officer in the British Army, described in a series of articles in the +_New Witness_ the blunders made in the recruiting campaign: such +things as prominent Protestant Unionists being brought to the fore, +national sentiment discouraged, waving of Union Jacks, appeals to +patriotism not for Ireland but for England. + +Vane himself found his attempt at recruiting on national lines +unpopular with authority and in the midst of his successful effort +was recalled to England. Still, though recruiting slackened, the +cause of the Allies remained in Ireland the popular cause and the +Easter Rising was the work only of a handful of men. Its immediate +cause was the fact that although the Home Rule Bill had been passed +and was on the Statute Book its operation was again deferred. All +Irishmen saw this as a breach of faith yet the majority were not at +that time behind the rising. The severity of its repression turned +it almost overnight into a national cause and erected yet another +barrier against friendship between England and Ireland. + +For this friendship Chesterton longed ardently and worked +passionately, nor did he believe the barriers insurmountable. He even +held that there was between the people of the two countries a natural +amity. "There is something common to all the Britons, which even +Acts of Union have not torn asunder. The nearest name for it is +insecurity, something fitting in men walking on cliffs and the verge +of things. Adventure, a lonely taste in liberty, a humour without +wit, perplex their critics and perplex themselves. Their souls are +fretted like their coasts."* The Irish and the English had suffered +oppression at the same hands--those of the rulers of England. If +Prussian soldiers had been used against Irish peasants, so too had +they been used against English Chartists. A typical Englishman, +William Cobbett, had suffered fine and long imprisonment because of +his protest against the flogging of an English soldier by a German +mercenary. + +[* _A Short History of England_, p. 7.] + +"Telling the truth about Ireland," wrote Chesterton, "is not very +pleasant to a patriotic Englishman; but it is very patriotic."* For +the lack of the essential patriotism of admitting past sin the rulers +of England were perpetuating an evil that many of them sincerely +desired to end. For this was a case where the right road could only +be found by retracing the steps of a long road of wrong. + +[* _The Crimes of England_, p. 57.] + +Before the end of the war G.K. visited Ireland and in the book that +he wrote after this visit may be found his best analysis of all this +matter. Ireland, he believed, was making a mistake in not throwing +herself into the cause of the defeat of Germany, not because she owed +anything to England but because of what Prussia was and of what +Europe meant. Ireland had been the friend of France and the enemy of +Prussia long before England had been either; she would do well to +hold to her ancient allegiance. + +It was true that Ireland had been betrayed by the Liberal promise of +Home Rule--but the men who betrayed her were the Marconi men! Redmond +had made the great mistake of his career when from motives of +patriotism for Ireland he had helped the party hacks of the +Government Committee to whitewash these men, who had gone on to +betray Ireland as they were then betraying England. England too +needed Home Rule. England too needed deliverance from her "degenerate +and unworthy governing class." + +There are a few pages in _Irish Impressions_--now out of print-which +find their place here in illustration of what he meant by his +championship of nationality: + + A brilliant writer . . . once propounded to me his highly personal + and even perverse type of internationalism by saying, as a sort of + unanswerable challenge, "Wouldn't you rather be ruled by Goethe than + by Walter Long?" I replied that words could not express the wild love + and loyalty I should feel for Mr. Walter Long, if the only + alternative were Goethe. I could not have put my own national case in + a clearer or more compact form. I might occasionally feel inclined to + kill Mr. Long; but under the approaching shadow of Goethe, I should + feel more inclined to kill myself. That is the deathly element in + denationalisation; that it poisons life itself, the most real of all + realities. . . . + +Some people felt it an affectation that the Irish should put up their +street signs in Gaelic but G.K. defended it. "It is well to remember +that these things, which we also walk past every day, are exactly the +sort of things that always have, in the nameless fashion, the +national note." + + It is this sensation of stemming a stream, of ten thousand things + all pouring one way, labels, titles, monuments, metaphors, modes of + address, assumptions in controversy, that make an Englishman in + Ireland know that he is in a strange land. Nor is he merely + bewildered, as among a medley of strange things. On the contrary, if + he has any sense, he soon finds them united and simplified to a + single impression, as if he were talking to a strange person. He + cannot define it, because nobody can define a person, and nobody can + define a nation. He can only see it, smell it, hear it, handle it, + bump into it, fall over it, kill it, be killed for it, or be damned + for doing it wrong. He must be content with these mere hints of its + existence; but he cannot define it, because it is like a person, and + no book of logic will undertake to define Aunt Jane or Uncle William. + We can only say, with more or less mournful conviction, that if Aunt + Jane is not a person, there is no such thing as a person. And I say + with equal conviction that if Ireland is not a nation, there is no + such thing as a nation. . . . + +* * * * + +In September 1916 Cecil Chesterton bade farewell to the _New +Witness_. He was in the army as a private in the East in the East +Surreys, and G.K. took over the editorship. + + I like Chesterton's paper, the _New Witness_ [wrote an American + journalist in the _New York Tribune_ (no, _not_ yet Herald-Tribune)], + since G.K.C. has taken it over. . . . Gilbert Chesterton seems to me + the best thing England has produced since Dickens. . . . I like the + things he believes in, and I hate sociological experts and + prohibitionists and Uhlan officers, which are the things he hates. I + feel in him that a very honest man is speaking. . . . I like his + impudence to Northcliffe. . . . As a journalist Chesterton gets only + about a quarter of himself into action. But even a quarter of + Chesterton is good measure. . . . He works very hard at his + journalism. That is why he doesn't do it as well as his careless + things, which give him fun. But for all that there is no other + editorial page in England or the United States written with the snap, + wit and honest humanity of his paragraphs. I hope he won't blunt + himself by overwork. It would be an international loss if that sane, + jolly mind is bent to routine. England has need of him. + +The overwork and the high quality of it were alike undeniable, but +after the long repose of his illness G.K. seemed like a giant +refreshed and ready to run his course. Each week's _New Witness_ had +an Editorial, besides the paragraphs of which the _New York Tribune_ +speaks (not all of these however written by himself), and a signed +article under the suggestive general heading "At the Sign of the +World's End." The difference between articles and a real book, and +the degree of work needed to turn the one into the other, may be seen +if the essays on Marriage in the paper be compared with _The +Superstition of Divorce_ for which they furnished material, and those +on Ireland with _Irish Impressions_. There were besides very many +articles in other papers English and American and he was also writing +his _History of England_. + +If all Englishmen had kept the same unwavering gaze at reality as +Chesterton much of what he called "the rather feeble-minded reaction" +that followed the war might have been avoided and with it the advent +of Hitler. Particularly he opposed the tendency to call "Kaiserism" +what is now called "Hitlerism" and should always be called +Prussianism. While agreeing that care should be taken not to write of +German atrocities that could not be substantiated he insisted that +there was no ground for forgetting or ignoring the findings of the +American enquiry in Belgium which had established more than enough. +These horrors, the bombing of civilians, shelling of open towns and +sinking of passenger ships culminating with the Lusitania, were in +the main what brought America into the war. Here, as with England, +Chesterton did not admit as primary what has since been so +exclusively stressed--the economic motive. Here as with England he +took the volunteer army as one great proof of the will of a Nation. +And those of us who remember can testify that in America as in +England the will of the people was ahead of the decision of the +politicians. + +On one point Chesterton's articles have a special interest: the +question of reprisals. When the Germans broke yet another of the +promises of the Hague Convention and initiated the use of poison gas +there was much discussion as to the ethics of reprisals and G.K. used +against reprisals two arguments one of which was a rare example of a +fallacy in his arguments. If a wasp stings you, he said, you do not +sting back. No, we might reply, but you squash it--you have as a man +an advantage over a wasp and so do not need to use its own weapons to +defeat it. + +His other argument is far more powerful--is indeed overwhelming. If +you use, even as reprisals, unlawful weapons, it is harder to prove +you did not initiate them. And I remember well another feeling at the +time expressed by G.K. which was I believe that of the majority of +English people--if we use these things, if we accept the Prussian +gospel of "frightfulness" then spiritually we have lost the war. +Spiritually Prussia has conquered: as she has engulfed the old +Germanies and, first imposing her rule, then gained acceptance of her +ideas, so it may be with us. Ideas are everything and the barbarians +destroy more with ideas even than by material weapons, horrible as +these may be. + +Inclined at first to hope for the fruits of democracy from the +Russian revolution Chesterton was soon being reproached by H. G. +Wells for "dirty" suspiciousness about the Bolshevik leaders and +their motives. But the collapse of Russia and the defeat of Rumania +alike only strengthened the necessity of the fight to a finish with +Prussia that became as the months passed the absorbing aim of the +_New Witness_. In the treaties respectively of Brest-Litovsk and +Bukarest Germany imposed upon these two countries incredibly harsh +terms. + +Thus wrote the _New Witness_ after the Treaty of Bukarest: + + We should like to ask the Pacifists and Semi-Pacifists, who are + fond of official documents, if they have read the White Paper dealing + with the plain facts about the peace with Roumania. If they have a + single word to say on the subject, we should be much interested to + hear what it is. It makes absolutely plain two facts, both of which + have a sort of frightful humour after all the humanitarian talk about + no annexations and no indemnities. The first is that the conquerors + have annexed in a direct and personal sense beyond what is commonly + meant by annexation; the second is that they have indemnified + themselves by an immediate coercion and extortion, which is generally + veiled by the forms of a recognised indemnity. In annexing some nine + thousand square miles, they have been particular to attach whole + forests to the hunting-grounds of Hungarian nobles and the timber + of Hungarian wood merchants; not merely annexing as a conqueror + annexes, but rather stealing as an individual steals. Further, the + fun growing fast and furious, they have taken country containing a + hundred and thirty thousand Roumanians, merely because it is + uninhabited land. For the second point, we often speak figuratively + of tyrants enslaving a country; but Teutons do literally enslave. All + the males of the occupied land, which happens to be two-thirds of + Roumania, are driven to work on pain of death or prison. All this is + clear and satisfactory enough; but the White Paper keeps the best to + the last. It is this sentence we would commend to our peaceful + friends: "The German delegates informed the Roumanian delegates, who + were appalled at being required to accept such conditions, that they + would appreciate their moderation when they knew those which would be + imposed on the Western Powers after the victory of the Central + Empires." + +The reminder was needed. Far less than most people was Chesterton +subject to that weakness of the human spirit that brings weariness in +sustained effort and premature relaxation. Prussia had not, he said, +shown any evidence of repentance--merely of regret for lack of +success. The Kaiser said he had not wanted this war. No, said +Chesterton, he wanted a very different war. Chesterton might and did +say later that he himself had wanted a very different peace--the +destruction of Prussia, the reconstruction of the old German +states--but at present he wanted only to fight on until this became +possible. + +I do not think he ever hated anybody--but he did hate Prussianism as +the "wickedness that hindered loving," and he had no liking for "the +patronizing pacifism of the gentleman [it was Romain Rolland] who +took a holiday in the Alps and said he was above the struggle; as if +there were any Alp from which the soul can look down on Calvary. +There is, indeed, one mountain among them that might be very +appropriate to so detached an observer--the mountain named after +Pilate, the man who washed his hands."* + +[* _Uses of Diversity_, p. 40 (Fountain Library)] + +His keen imagination could visualize the sufferings caused by war. +Vicariously he knew something of the life of the trenches, for Cecil +like many another C. Man* had managed to get to France. A delightful +article on Comradeship shows, what letters from soldiers confirm, how +perfectly at home was Private Chesterton among his fellows and how +much loved by them. + +[* English soldiers are classed A, B, or C, according to their degree +of physical fitness, and Cecil was in Class C.] + +I can understand a pagan, but not a Christian, who simply dismisses +the suffering of our soldiers as useless. He is like Dr. Hyde +scorning Father Damien or like those who cried at the foot of the +Cross: He saved others, Himself He cannot save. They saved others +these men, their suffering was that of the human race whose head is +Christ. With Him they bore, even if they knew it not, that mysterious +burden of humanity that makes some men question God's existence but +draws others into conscious membership of His mystical body. Many +were so drawn in those days and there seemed a new lifting up of the +Cross. The _New Witness_ does, I think, lack one note a little. They +were too busy hating Prussianism to give thought to the Christian +command to love Prussians, whose sufferings too were those of +humanity. + +Into the opposite error there was no risk that they would fall. Never +for them would heroism be belittled in the name of the very horrors +it was encountering. In one article Belloc touched on this strange +perversion and reminded his readers that the power to ravage and +destroy was not really a new result of modern machinery. Attila and +his Huns had inflicted even greater devastation and had left a desert +behind them. Barbarism in its nature was destructive and we were +encountering barbarism. In so doing we were acting the part of +Christian men. + +But the old fights still had to be waged on the home front: against +the money power and against what the _New Witness_ called Prussianism +at home. Unceasingly they battled for fair treatment for soldiers' +wives and children, for freedom from unmeaning and unnecessary +regulations, against the profiteering by big firms and the consequent +crushing of small. About two thousand small butchers' shops for +instance had to close at the very beginning of the war owing to a +cornering of supplies by the large firms. Against this and all the +ramifications of the meat "scandal" the _New Witness_ struggled, +publishing, they claimed, facts unpublished elsewhere and inspiring +questions in the House of Commons. Belloc's irony, Chesterton's wit, +point these articles and make them worth reading as literature; and +there is some of the old fooling. A further series on the Servile +State is attacked by Shaw who thinks that Belloc, since he is not a +Socialist, must be a follower of Herbert Spencer! G.K. accounts for +this by saying that Shaw had not read Belloc. "How do you know," +retorts Shaw, "it is not Herbert Spencer I have not read? Suppose you +had your choice of not reading a book by Belloc and not reading one +by Spencer which would you choose? Hang it all, be reasonable." + +The economic front was never abandoned and the paper continued to +attack all forms of Socialism including the recreation of Bumble by +Mrs. Sidney Webb, with all the regimentation of the poor "for their +own good" that Bumble represented. The inner secrets of the Fabian +Office are unfolded by Shaw in a letter to Gilbert (dated Aug. 6, +1917). + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + If you want to expose a scandalous orgy in the _New Witness_, you + may depend on the following as being a correct account by an eye + witness. + + You know that there is a body called The Fabian Research + Department, of which I have the hollow honour to be Perpetual Grand, + the real moving spirit being Mrs. Sidney Webb. A large number of + innocent young men and women are attracted to this body by promises + of employment by the said Mrs. S.W. in works of unlimited and + inspiring uplift, such as are unceasingly denounced, along with + Marconi and other matters, in your well-written organ. + + Well, Mrs. Sidney Webb summoned all these young things to an + uplifting At Home at the Fabian office lately. They came in crowds + and sat at her feet whilst she prophesied unto them, with occasional + comic relief from the unfortunate Perpetual Grand. At the decent hour + of ten o'clock, she bade them good night and withdrew to her own + residence and to bed. For some accidental reason or other I lingered + until, as I thought, all the young things had gone home. I should + explain that I was in the two pair back. At last I started to go home + myself. As I descended the stairs I was stunned by the most infernal + din I have ever heard, even at the front, coming from the Fabian + Hall, which would otherwise be the back yard. On rushing to this + temple I found the young enthusiasts sprawling over tables, over + radiators, over everything except chairs, in a state of scandalous + abandonment, roaring at the tops of their voices and in a quite + unintelligible manner a string of presumably obscene songs, + accompanied on the piano with frantic gestures and astonishing + musical skill by a man whom I had always regarded as a respectable + Fabian Researcher, but who now turned out to be a Demon Pianist + out-Heroding (my secretary put in two rs, and explains that she was + thinking of Harrods) Svengali. A horribly sacrilegious character was + given to the proceedings by the fact that the tune they were singing + when I entered was Luther's hymn _Eine Feste Burg ist Unser Gott_. As + they went on (for I regret to say that my presence exercised no + restraint whatever) they sang their extraordinary and + incomprehensible litany to every tune, however august its + associations, which happened to fit it. These, if you please, are the + solemn and sour neophytes whose puritanical influence has kept you in + dread for so many years. + + But I have not told you the worst. Before I fled from the building + I did at last discover what words it was they were singing. When it + first flashed on me, I really could not believe it. But at the end of + the next verse no doubt or error was possible. The young maenad + nearest me was concluding every strophe by shrieking that she didn't + care where the water went if it didn't get into the wine.* Now you + know. + +[* The refrain of a poem in _The Flying Inn_.] + + I have since ascertained that a breviary of this Black Mass can be + obtained at the Fabian Office, with notes of the numbers of the hymns + Ancient and Modern, and all the airs sacred and profane, to which + your poems have been set. + + This letter needs no answer--indeed, admits of none. I leave you to + your reflections. + + Ever + + G.B.S. + +"The Shaw Worm Turns on Wells" was a headline in the _New Witness_ +over a vigorous and light-hearted attack. The others were apt to +score off Wells in these exchanges because he lost light-heartedness +and became irritable. Even with Gilbert he sometimes broke out, +although in a calmer moment he told Shaw that to get angry with +Chesterton was an impossibility. With Cecil Chesterton it was only +too easy to get angry at any rate as he appeared in the _New Witness_. +But I think when he heard Cecil was in France Wells must have +regretted one of the letters he wrote to Gilbert, just before the +change of editorship. + +It was curious, the contrast between the genial personality so loved +by his friends and the waspishness so often shown by Cecil and his +staff in the columns of the paper. "His extraordinary personality," +writes E. S. P. Haynes, "wonderfully penetrated the eccentricity of +his appearance. His features were slightly fantastic and his voice +was as loudly discordant as his laughter; but the real charm and +generosity of his character were so transparent that one never seemed +to be conscious of the physical medium." + +Yet with all my sympathy for many of the _New Witness_ ideas my +nerves jangle when I read the volumes of Cecil's editorship, and I +think jangled nerves explain if they do not excuse this outburst by +Wells: + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + Haven't I on the whole behaved decently to you? Haven't I always + shown a reasonable civility to you and your brother and Belloc? + Haven't I betrayed at times a certain affection for you? Very well, + then you will understand that I don't start out to pick a needless + quarrel with the _New Witness_ crowd. But this business of the + Hueffer book in the _New Witness_ makes me sick. Some disgusting + little greaser named ---- has been allowed to insult old F.M.H. in a + series of letters that make me ashamed of my species. Hueffer has + many faults no doubt but firstly he's poor, secondly he's notoriously + unhappy and in a most miserable position, thirdly he's a better + writer than any of your little crowd and fourthly, instead of + pleading his age and his fat and taking refuge from service in a + greasy obesity as your Brother has done, he is serving his country. + His book is a great book and ---- just lies about it--I guess he's a + dirty minded priest or some such unclean thing--when he says it is + the story of a stallion and so forth. The whole outbreak is so + envious, so base, so cat-in-the-gutter-spitting-at-the-passer-by, + that I will never let the _New Witness_ into the house again. + + Regretfully yours, + + H. G. WELLS. + +Gilbert replied: + + 11 Warwick Gardens, Kensington W. + + MY DEAR WELLS, + + As you will see by the above address I have been away from home; + and must apologise for delay; I am returning almost at once, however. + Most certainly you have always been a good friend to me, and I have + always tried to express my pride in the fact. I know enough of your + good qualities in other ways to put down everything in your last + letter to an emotion of loyalty to another friend. Any quarrel + between us will not come from me; and I confess I am puzzled as to + why it should come from you, merely because somebody else who is not + I dislikes a book by somebody else who is not you, and says so in an + article for which neither of us is even remotely responsible. I very + often disagree with the criticisms of ----; I do not know anything + about the book or the circumstances of Hueffer. I cannot help being + entertained by your vision of ----, who is not a priest, but a poor + journalist, and I believe a Free-Thinker. But whoever he may be (and + I hardly think the problem worth a row between you and me) he has a + right to justice: and you must surely see that even if it were my + paper, I could not either tell a man to find a book good when he + found it bad, or sack him for a point of taste which has nothing in + the world to do with the principles of the paper. For the rest, + Haynes represents the _New Witness_ much more than a reviewer does, + being both on the board and the staff; and he has put your view in + the paper--I cannot help thinking with a more convincing logic. Don't + you sometimes find it convenient, even in my case, that your friends + are less touchy than you are? + + By all means drop any paper you dislike, though if you do it for + every book review you think unfair, I fear your admirable range of + modern knowledge will be narrowed. Of the paper in question I will + merely say this. My brother and in some degree the few who have + worked with him have undertaken a task of public criticism for the + sake of which they stand in permanent danger of imprisonment and + personal ruin. We are incessantly reminded of this danger; and no one + has ever dared to suggest that we have any motive but the best. If + you should ever think it right to undertake such a venture, you will + find that the number of those who will commit their journalistic + fortunes to it is singularly small: and includes some who have more + courage and honesty than acquaintance with the hierarchy of art. It + is even likely that you will come to think the latter less important. + + Yours, sans rancune, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. On re-reading your letter in order to be as fair as I am + trying to be, I observe you specially mention ----'s letters. You + will see, of course, that this does not make any difference; to stop + letters would be to stop Haynes' letter and others on your side; and + these could not be printed without permitting a rejoinder. I post + this from Beaconsfield, where anything further will find me. + +It ended as all quarrels did that anyone started with Gilbert: + + DEAR G.K.C. + + Also I can't quarrel with you. But the Hueffer business aroused my + long dormant moral indignation and I let fly at the most sensitive + part of the _New Witness_ constellation, the only part about whose + soul I care. I hate these attacks on rather miserable exceptional + people like Hueffer and Masterman. I know these aren't perfect men + but their defects make quite sufficient hells for them without these + public peltings. I suppose I ought to have written to C.C. instead of + to you. One of these days I will go and have a heart to heart talk to + him. Only I always get so amiable when I meet a man. He, C.C., needs + it--I mean the talking to. + + Yours ever + + H.G. + +Through the war's progress Wells appeared to Chesterton to be +expressing with a powerful and individual genius not his own +considered views but the reactions of public opinion. As Mr. Britling +he saw the war through, and even called it "a war to end war." As Mr. +Clissold he asked of what use it had all been. Chesterton speaks of +him as a "rather unstable genius," and the genius and instability +alike can be seen in his meteor appearances in the _New Witness_ and +in his books. Several of these he sent to Gilbert, who wrote (Sept. +12, 1917): + + I have been trying for a long time, though perpetually baulked + with business and journalism, to write and thank you for sending me, + in so generous a manner, your ever interesting and delightful books; + especially as divisions touching the things we care most about, drive + me, every time I review them, to deal more in controversy and less in + compliment than I intend. The truth and the trouble, is that both of + us are only too conscious that there is a Great War going on all the + time on the purely mental plane; and I cannot help thinking your view + is often a heresy; and I know only too well that when you lead it, it + is likely to be a large heresy. I fear that being didactic means + being disproportionate; and that the temptation to attack something I + think I can correct leads to missing (in my writing, not in my + reading) a thousand fine things that I could never imitate. It is + lucky for me that you are not very often a book-reviewer, when I + bring out my own shapeless and amateurish books. + +In the _Autobiography_ G.K. calls Wells a sportive but spiritual +child of Huxley. He delighted in his wit and swiftness of mind, but +he summarized in the same book the quality which runs through all his +work. + + I have always thought that he re-acted too swiftly to everything; + possibly as a part of the swiftness of his natural genius. I have + never ceased to admire and sympathise; but I think he has always been + too much in a state of reaction. To use the name which would probably + annoy him most, I think he is a permanent reactionary. Whenever I met + him, he seemed to be coming from somewhere, rather than going + anywhere. . . . And he was so often nearly right, that his movements + irritated me like the sight of somebody's hat being perpetually + washed up by the sea and never touching the shore. But I think he + thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the + mind. Whereas I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the + mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. + +No change of mood in the public meant any change in the _New Witness_ +group. In a powerful article in reply to an old friend who asked for +peace because the war was destroying freedom, Belloc told him that +freedom had gone long since for the mass of Englishmen. "How many," +wrote G.K., "pacifists or semi-pacifists . . . resisted the detailed +destruction of all liberty for the populace _before the war?_ It is a +bitter choice between freedom and patriotism, but how many fought for +freedom before it gave them the chance of fighting against +Patriotism?"* + +[* _New Witness_, May 31, 1917.] + +Again and again they touched the spot on the question of trading with +the enemy. In this as in all their attacks they made one point of +enormous importance. Do not, they said, look for traitors and spies +among waiters and small traders--look up, not down. You will find +them in high places if you will dare to look. They dared. + +And here came in once more what was commonly regarded as a strange +crank peculiar to the Chesterbelloc--their outlook towards Jews. +Usually those who referred to it spoke of a religious prejudice. +Again and again the _New Witness_, not always patiently but with +unvarying clarity, explained. They had no religious prejudice against +Jews, they had not even a racial prejudice against Jews (though this +I think was true only of some of the staff). Their only prejudice was +against the pretence that a Jew was an Englishman. + +It was undeniable that there were (for example) Rothschilds in Paris, +London and Berlin, all related and conducting an international family +banking business. There were d'Erlangers in London and Paris +(pronounced in the French style) whose cousins were Erlangers +(pronounced in the German style) in Berlin. How, the _New Witness_ +asked, could members of such families feel the same about the war as +an Englishman? They could not, to put it at its lowest, have the same +primary loyalty to England or to Germany either. Their primary +loyalty must be, indeed it ought to be, to their own race and kindred. + +Yet this was surely an excessive simplification. We have only to +remember that lately a son of the d'Erlanger house died gallantly as +an English airman: we have only to remember the thousands of Jews who +fought in our ranks in this war and the last. Very many Jews _are_ +patriotic for England and for America: many were patriotic for +Germany. This, no doubt, makes the problem more acute, but any +discussion is nonsense that omits this certain fact. There are Jews +patriotic first for the country they live in, the country that gave +them home and citizenship, of which often their wives and mothers are +descended; there are others who feel that Jewry is their _patria_. + +This was the fact the _New Witness_ could never forget. A Jew might +not be specially pro-German in feeling, yet his actions might help +Germany by being pro-Jewish. International Jewish trading _was_ +trading with the enemy and was to a very large extent continuing in +spite of assurances to the contrary. Moreover international finance +was getting nervous over the continuance of the war as a menace to +its own future: it wanted peace, a peace that should still leave it +in possession in this country--and in Germany. Gilbert Chesterton was +passionately determined to cast it out. + +He was a Zionist. He wished for the Jewish people the peaceful +possession of a country of their own, but he demanded urgently that +they should no longer be allowed to govern his country. Marconi still +obsessed him, and the surrender of English politics to the money +power seemed to him to represent as great a danger for the future as +Prussianism. For a moment the two dangers were the one danger, and +against them was set the people of England. + +It was at this moment that Chesterton published his epic of the +English people which he called a History. Frank Swinnerton has told* +how this book came to be written. Chatto & Windus (for whom +Swinnerton worked) had asked G.K. to write a history of England: he +refused "on the ground that he was no historian." Later he signed a +contract with the same publishers for a book of essays, then +discovered that he was already under contract to give this book to +another firm. He asked Chatto & Windus to cancel their contract and +offered to write something else for them. Swinnerton's account +continues: + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 93.] + + The publishers, concealing jubilation, sternly recalled their + original proposal for a short history of England. Shrieks and groans + were distinctly heard all the way from Beaconsfield, but the promise + was kept. The _Short History of England_ was what Chesterton must + have called a wild and awful success. It probably has been the most + generally read of all his books. But while the credit for it is his, + he must not be blamed for impudence in essaying history, when the + inspiration arose in another's head (not mine) and when in fact no + man ever went to the writing of a literary work with less confidence. + +You can find no dates in this History and a minimum of facts, but you +can find vision. The history professors at London University said to +Lawrence Solomon that it was full of inaccuracies, yet "He's got +something we hadn't got." G.K. might well have borrowed from Newman +and called it an Essay in Aid of a History of England. He showed +"something of the great moral change which turned the Roman Empire +into Christendom, by which each great thing, to which it afterwards +gave birth, was baptised into a promise or at least into a hope of +permanence. It may be that each of its ideas was, as it were, mixed +with immortality." + +The English people had been free and happy as a part of this great +thing, cultivating their own land, establishing by their Guilds a +social scheme based upon "pity and a craving for equality," building +cathedrals and worshipping God, with the "Holy Land much nearer to a +plain man's house than Westminster, and immeasurably nearer than +Runnymede." All life was made lovely by "this prodigious presence of +a religious transfiguration in common life" and only began to darken +with the successful "Rebellion of the Rich" under Henry VIII. + +Probably too big a proportion is given by Chesterton to the great +crime that overshadowed for him the rest of English history. Yet he +does justice in brilliant phrasing to the Eighteenth Century Whigs: +still more to Chatham and Burke and to Dr. Johnson whom he so loved +and to whom he was often compared. But supremely he loved Nelson "who +dies with his stars on his bosom and his heart upon his sleeve." For +Nelson was the type and chief exemplar of the ordinary Englishman. + + . . . the very hour of his death, the very name of his ship, are + touched with that epic completeness which critics call the long arm + of coincidence and prophets the hand of God. His very faults and + failures were heroic, not in a loose but in a classic sense; in that + he fell only like the legendary heroes, weakened by a woman, not + foiled by any foe among men. And he remains the incarnation of a + spirit in the English that is purely poetic; so poetic that it + fancies itself a thousand things, and sometimes even fancies itself + prosaic. At a recent date, in an age of reason, in a country already + calling itself dull and business-like, with top-hats and factory + chimneys already beginning to rise like towers of funereal + efficiency, this country clergyman's son moved to the last in a + luminous cloud, and acted a fairy tale. He shall remain as a lesson + to those who do not understand England, and a mystery to those who + think they do. In outward action he led his ships to victory and died + upon a foreign sea; but symbolically he established something + indescribable and intimate, something that sounds like a native + proverb; he was the man who burnt his ships, and who for ever set the + Thames on fire. + +The _Ballad of the White Horse_ had been a poem about English legends +and origins. The _History_ too was called a poem by the reviewers. +And it was. It was a poem about Falstaff and Sam Weller and even the +Artful Dodger who in so many British colonies had turned into +Robinson Crusoe. His rulers had tried to educate him, they had tried +to Germanize him and to teach him "to embrace a Saxon because he was +the other half of an Anglo-Saxon." All English culture had been based +for a century and more on ardent admiration for German _Kultur_. And +then-- + + . . . the day came, and the ignorant fellow found he had other + things to learn. And he was quicker than his educated countrymen, + for he had nothing to unlearn. + + He in whose honour all had been said and sung, stirred, and + stepped across the border of Belgium. Then were spread out before + men's eyes all the beauties of his culture and all the benefits of his + organization; then we beheld under a lifting daybreak what light + we had followed and after what image we had laboured to refashion + ourselves. Nor in any story of mankind has the irony of God chosen + the foolish things so catastrophically to confound the wise. For the + common crowd of poor and ignorant Englishmen, because they only + knew that they were Englishmen, burst through the filthy cobwebs + of four hundred years and stood where their fathers stood when they + knew that they were Christian men. The English poor, broken in + every revolt, bullied by every fashion, long despoiled of property, + and now being despoiled of liberty, entered history with a noise of + trumpets, and turned themselves in two years into one of the iron + armies of the world. And when the critic of politics and literature, + feeling that this war is after all heroic, looks around him to find the + hero, he can point to nothing but a mob. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +After the Armistice + +THE MONTHS THAT followed the signing of the Armistice were the +darkest in Gilbert Chesterton's life. Nothing but the immense natural +high spirits of the _New Witness_ group could have carried them +through the many years in which they cried their unheeded warnings to +England. But now as the war drew to an end a new note of optimism had +become audible. The Prussian menace was almost conquered. Our +soldiers would return and would bring with them the courage and +confidence of victors. They might overthrow the governing plutocracy +and build again an England of freedom and sanity. But one soldier did +not return--the one to whom this group looked for comradeship and +inspiration. On December 6, 1918, Cecil Chesterton died in hospital +in France. + +"His courage was heroic, native, positive and equal," wrote Belloc, +"always at the highest potentiality of courage. . . ." + +Gilbert wrote: + + He lived long enough to march to the victory which was for him a + supreme vision of liberty and the light. The work which he put first + he did before he died. The work which he put second, but very near to + the other, he left for us to do. There are many of us who will + abandon many other things, and recognize no greater duty than to do + it. + +This second work was the fight at home against corruption and for +freedom for the English people. It is impossible to remember Gilbert +Chesterton vividly and to write the word bitterness. It was rather +with a profound and burning indignation that he thought of his fellow +Englishmen who had fought and died--and then looked up and saw +"Marconi George" and "Marconi Isaacs," still rulers of the fate of +his country. Thus meditating he wrote an "Elegy in a Country +Churchyard." + + The men that worked for England + They have their graves at home: + And bees and birds of England + About the cross can roam. + + But they that fought for England, + Following a falling star, + Alas, alas for England + They have their graves afar. + + And they that rule in England, + In stately conclave met, + Alas, alas for England + They have no graves as yet.* + +[* _Collected Poems_, p. 65.] + +Strange irony of Cecil Chesterton's last weeks: his old enemy Godfrey +Isaacs brought an action for perjury against Sir Charles Hobhouse. +Both men's Counsel agreed and the judge stressed that perjury lay on +one side or the other. The case was given against Isaacs. He appealed +and his appeal was dismissed. Perjury had lain on one side or the +other! + +Meanwhile news came that Rufus Isaacs, now Lord Reading, had gone +with Lloyd George to Paris to attend the Peace Conference. All that +this might mean: the peril to Poland: the danger of a Prussia kept at +the head of the Germanies for the sake of international finance: an +abasement of England before those countries that had not forgotten +Marconi: all this was vivid to Gilbert Chesterton. In the same number +of the _New Witness_ in which he mourned his brother (Dec. 13, 1918), +he wrote under "The Sign of the World's End" an Open Letter to Lord +Reading: + + My Lord--I address to you a public letter as it is upon a public + question: it is unlikely that I should ever trouble you with any + private letter on any private question; and least of all on the + private question that now fills my mind. It would be impossible + altogether to ignore the irony that has in the last few days brought + to an end the great Marconi duel in which you and I in some sense + played the part of seconds; that personal part of the matter ended + when Cecil Chesterton found death in the trenches to which he had + freely gone; and Godfrey Isaacs found dismissal in those very Courts + to which he once successfully appealed. But believe me I do not write + on any personal matter; nor do I write, strangely enough perhaps, + with any personal acrimony. On the contrary, there is something in + these tragedies that almost unnaturally clarifies and enlarges the + mind; and I think I write partly because I may never feel so + magnanimous again. It would be irrational to ask you for sympathy; + but I am sincerely moved to offer it. You are far more unhappy; for + your brother is still alive. + + If I turn my mind to you and your type of politics it is not wholly + and solely through that trick of abstraction by which in moments of + sorrow a man finds himself staring at a blot on the tablecloth or an + insect on the ground. I do, of course, realise, with that sort of + dull clarity, that you are in practise a blot on the English + landscape, and that the political men who made you are the creeping + things of the earth. But I am, in all sincerity, less in a mood to + mock at the sham virtues they parade than to try to imagine the more + real virtues which they successfully conceal. In your own case there + is the less difficulty, at least in one matter. I am very willing to + believe that it was the mutual dependence of the members of your + family that has necessitated the sacrifice of the dignity and + independence of my country; and that if it be decreed that the + English nation is to lose its public honour, it will be partly + because certain men of the tribe of Isaacs kept their own strange + private loyalty. I am willing to count this to you for a virtue as + your own code may interpret virtue; but the fact would alone be + enough to make me protest against any man professing your code and + administering our law. And it is upon this point of your public + position, and not upon any private feelings, that I address you today. + + Not only is there no question of disliking any race, but there is + not here even a question of disliking any individual. It does not + raise the question of hating you; rather it would raise, in some + strange fashion, the question of loving you. Has it ever occurred to + you how much a good citizen would have to love you in order to + tolerate you? Have you ever considered how warm, indeed how wild, + must be our affection for the particular stray stock-broker who has + somehow turned into a Lord Chief Justice, to be strong enough to make + us accept him as Lord Chief Justice? It is not a question of how much + we dislike you, but of how much we like you; of whether we like you + more than England, more than Europe, more than Poland the pillar of + Europe, more than honour, more than freedom, more than facts. It is + not, in short, a question of how much we dislike you, but of how far + we can be expected to adore you, to die for you, to decay and + degenerate for you; for your sake to be despised, for your sake to be + despicable. Have you ever considered, in a moment of meditation, how + curiously valuable you would really have to be, that Englishmen + should in comparison be careless of all the things you have + corrupted, and indifferent to all the things that you may yet + destroy? Are we to lose the War which we have already won? That and + nothing else is involved in losing the full satisfaction of the + national claim of Poland. Is there any man who doubts that the Jewish + International is unsympathetic with that full national demand? And is + there any man who doubts that you will be sympathetic with the Jewish + International? No man who knows anything of the interior facts of + modern Europe has the faintest doubt on either point. No man doubts + when he knows, whether or no he cares. Do you seriously imagine that + those who know, that those who care, are so idolatrously infatuated + with Rufus Daniel Isaacs as to tolerate such risk, let alone such + ruin? Are we to set up as the standing representative of England a + man who is a standing joke against England? That and nothing else is + involved in setting up the chief Marconi Minister as our chief + Foreign Minister. It is precisely in those foreign countries with + which such a minister would have to deal, that his name would be, and + has been, a sort of pantomime proverb like Panama or the South Sea + Bubble. Foreigners were not threatened with fine and imprisonment for + calling a spade a spade and a speculation a speculation; foreigners + were not punished with a perfectly lawless law of libel for saying + about public men what those very men had afterwards to admit in + public. Foreigners were lookers-on who were really allowed to see + most of the game, when our public saw nothing of the game; and they + made not a little game of it. Are they henceforth to make game of + everything that is said and done in the name of England in the + affairs of Europe? Have you the serious impudence to call us + Anti-Semites because we are not so extravagantly fond of one + particular Jew as to endure this for him alone? No, my lord; the + beauties of your character shall not so blind us to all elements of + reason and self-preservation; we can still control our affections; + if we are fond of you, we are not quite so fond of you as that. If we + are anything but Anti-Semite, we are not Pro-Semite in that peculiar + and personal fashion; if we are lovers, we will not kill ourselves + for love. After weighing and valuing all your virtues, the qualities + of our own country take their due and proportional part in our + esteem. Because of you she shall not die. + + We cannot tell in what fashion you yourself feel your strange + position, and how much you know it is a false position. I have + sometimes thought I saw in the faces of such men as you that you felt + the whole experience as unreal, a mere masquerade; as I myself might + feel it if, by some fantastic luck in the old fantastic civilisation + of China, I were raised from the Yellow Button to the Coral Button, + or from the Coral Button to the Peacock's Feather. Precisely because + these things would be grotesque, I might hardly feel them as + incongruous. Precisely because they meant nothing to me I might be + satisfied with them, I might enjoy them without any shame at my own + impudence as an alien, adventurer. Precisely because I could not feel + them as dignified, I should not know what I had degraded. My fancy may + be quite wrong; it is but one of many attempts I have made to imagine + and allow for an alien psychology in this matter; and if you, and + Jews far worthier than you, are wise they will not dismiss as + Anti-Semitism what may well prove the last serious attempt to + sympathise with Semitism. I allow for your position more than most + men allow for it; more, most assuredly, than most men will allow for + it in the darker days that yet may come. It is utterly false to + suggest that either I or a better man than I, whose work I now + inherit, desired this disaster for you and yours, I wish you no such + ghastly retribution. Daniel son of Isaac. Go in peace; but go. + + Yours, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +In those last sentences the spirit of prophecy was upon Chesterton +after a truly dark and deep fashion. Yet even he did not guess that +the retribution he feared would fall, not upon that "tribe of Isaacs" +thus established in English government, but upon the unfortunate +Jewish people as a whole, from the German nation that Isaacs had gone +to Paris to protect. For there was no doubt in Chesterton's mind that +it was his work at the Peace Conference to strive for the survival of +Prussia, no matter how Europe and the rest of the Germanies suffered. +The _New Witness_ hated the Treaty of Versailles in its eventual form +as much as Hitler hates it, but for a very different reason. + +All human judgments are limited and no doubt there was a mixture of +truth and error in Chesterton's view of the years that followed. But +in the universal reaction from the war-spirit to Pacifism the truths +he was urging received scant attention, his really amazing prophecies +fell on deaf ears. "He will almost certainly," Monsignor Knox has +said,* "be remembered as a prophet, in an age of false prophets." And +it is not insignificant that today it has become the fashion to say, +as he said twenty-five years ago and steadily reiterated, that the +peace of 1918 was only an armistice. + +[* In the panegyric preached in Westminster Cathedral, June 27, 1936.] + +Just before leaving England for the Front, Cecil had married Miss Ada +Jones, who had long worked with him on the paper, and who continued +to write both for it and later for _G.K.'s Weekly_, doing especially +the dramatic criticism under the pen-name of J. K. Prothero. Later on +she was to become famous for her exploit in spending a fortnight +investigating in the guise of a tramp the London of down-and-out +women. She wrote _In Darkest London_ and founded the Cecil Houses to +improve the very bad conditions she had discovered and in memory of +her husband. At this date Mrs. Cecil Chesterton visited Poland and +wrote a series of articles describing the Polish struggle for life +and freedom. Several Poles also contributed articles to the paper. +There was not I imagine on the staff one single writer with the kind +of ignorance that enabled Lloyd George to confess in Paris that he +did not know where Teschen was. + +Here was the first tragedy of Versailles. The representatives of both +America and England were ignorant of the reality of Europe: Wilson +was (as Chesterton often said) a much better man than Lloyd George, +but he knew as little of the world which he had come to reconstruct. +He was, too, a political doctrinaire preferring "what was not there" +in the shape of a League of Nations to the real nations of Poland or +Italy. And with the American as with the Welshman international +finance stood beside the politicians and whispered in their ears. An +interesting article appeared in the _New Witness_ by an American who +said that no leading journal in his own country would print it any +more than any English one. He described the opposition of masses of +ordinary Americans to the League of Nations and how a Chicago banker, +who however had no international interests, had heartily agreed with +this opposition. But the same banker had written to him next day +eating his own words. In the interim he had met the other bankers. +This American correspondent held with the _New Witness_ that the +League of Nations was mainly a device of international finance so +framed as to enlist also the support of pacifist idealists who really +believed it would make for peace. + +Only one thing, said the _New Witness_, would make for a stable +peace: remove Prussia from her position at the head of Germany: make +her regaining of it impossible. Make a strong Poland, and a strong +Italy, as well as a strong France. Later on they said they had +disapproved of the weakening of Austria, but though I do not doubt +that this is true in principle I cannot find much mention of Austria +in the paper: Poland, Italy and Ireland fill their columns--and the +freeing of England. + +They claimed that theirs was in the main the policy of +Clemenceau--but both Chesterton and Belloc admitted that Clemenceau, +even if he desired a strong Poland as a barrier between Germany and +Russia, shared with his colleagues an equal responsibility in the +destruction of Austria which proved so fatal. He was too much a +freemason to desire many Catholic states. The interests of France +were not those of Italy, which certainly went to the wall and was +turned thereby from friend and ally into enemy. And the _New Witness_ +summed up the fate of Ireland in the suggestion that Lloyd George had +said to Wilson: "If you won't look at Ireland, I won't look at +Mexico." Both Lloyd George and Wilson were too anti-Catholic to do +other than dislike (in Lloyd George's case _hate_ is the word) +Catholic Poland. It is certain that Lloyd George in particular worked +savagely against the Poland that should have been. A commission +appointed by the Peace Conference reported in favour of Poland owning +the port of Danzig and territory approximating to her age-long +historic boundaries and in particular including East Prussia in which +there was still a majority of Poles: Lloyd George sent back the +report for revision: they made it again on the same lines. + +It was a strange anomaly that this man should have sat at the Council +Table representing a great country. In the past men had sat there who +not only knew much of Europe themselves but who had as their advisers +the Foreign office with all its experience and tradition. Belloc +pointed out in an article on Versailles that the English tradition +had been to hold a balance between conflicting extremes and thus to +bring about a peace that at least ensured stability for a long +period. But here was a man too ignorant to realize the dangers of his +own ignorance and therefore seek help from experience. This peace +would be, Belloc foretold, the parent of many wars. The Czechs got +much of what they wanted just as d'Annunzio got Fiume for Italy--by +seizing it. Poland waited for Versallles and enlisted her allies, yet +while the Peace Conference was actually in session Germans were +persecuting Poles in East Prussia so that many thousands of them fled +into Poland proper and thus diminished the Polish population of East +Prussia before any plebiscite could be taken there. + +Lloyd George and Churchill sent a British expeditionary force to +Archangel to assist the "White" Russians but when the Bolsheviks +invaded Poland she was not supported. Nor did the Allies send her the +raw material they had promised, to rebuild her commercial life. Again +and again our papers reported pogroms in Poland. Yet close +investigation by writers for the _New Witness_ failed to discover any +pogroms in the cities in which they were reported as occurring. + +Powerful are the words in which, in April 1919, Chesterton foretells +the future that will result if power and her historic port are +refused to Poland. + + . . . We know that a flood threatens the West from the meeting of + two streams, the revenge of Germany and the anarchy of Russia; and we + know that the West has only one possible dyke against such a flood, + which is not the mere existence, but the might and majesty of Poland. + We know that without some such Christian and chivalric shield on that + side, we shall have half Europe and perhaps half Asia on our backs. + + We know exactly what the Germans think about our nationalities in + the West, and exactly what the Bolshevists think about any + nationalities anywhere. We know that if the Poles have a port and a + powerful line of communication with the West, they will be eager to + help the West. We know that if they have no port they will have no + reason to help the West and no power to help anybody. We know that if + they lose their port it will not be by any act of English public + opinion or any public opinion, but by the most secret of all secret + diplomacy; that it will not even be given up by the English to the + Germans, but by German Jews to other German Jews. We know that such + international adventurers would still find themselves floating on the + top of any tide that drowned the nations, and that they do not care + what nations they drown. We know that out of the whole world the + Polish port is the one place that should have been held, and the one + place that is being surrendered. + + In short, we know what everybody knows and scarcely anybody says. + + There is one word to be added for those detached persons who see no + particular objection to England ceasing to be English, who do not + care about the national names of the West, which have been the + greatest words in the poetry of the world. So far as we know there is + only one ideal they do care about, and they will not get it. Whatever + else this betrayal means it does not mean peace. The Poles have + raised revolution after revolution, when three colossal Empires + prevented them from being a nation at all. It is not in the realm of + sanity to suppose that, if we make them half a nation, they will not + some day attempt to be a whole nation. But we shall come back to the + place where we started, after another cycle of terror and torment and + abominable butchery--and to a place where we might, in peace and + perfect safety, stand firm today. + +"Not by any act of English public opinion" would Poland be weakened, +not by any act of English opinion Prussia strengthened or Ireland +oppressed. It was the horror of the situation that no act of English +public opinion seemed possible, for the organs of action were +stultified. When they _could_ act by fighting and by dying Englishmen +had done it grandly. Not all that they had done had, Chesterton +believed, been lost. Because of them the Cross once more had replaced +the crescent over the Holy City of Jerusalem, because of them Alsace +and Lorraine were French once more and Poland lived again. But their +sufferings and their death had not availed yet to save England. + + And what is theirs, though banners blow on Warsaw risen again, Or + ancient laughter walks in gold through the vineyards of Lorraine, + Their dead are marked on English stones, their loves on English + trees, How little is the prize they win, how mean a coin for these-- + How small a shrivelled laurel-leaf lies crumpled here and curled; + They died to save their country and they only saved the world.* + +[* _Collected Poems_, pp. 79-80, "The English Graves."] + +In the _New Witness_ he wrote (July 25, 1919): + + On Peace Day I set up outside my house two torches, and twined them + with laurel; because I thought at least there was nothing pacifist + about laurel. But that night, after the bonfire and the fireworks had + faded, a wind grew and blew with gathering violence, blowing away the + rain. And in the morning I found one of the laurelled posts torn off + and lying at random on the rainy ground; while the other still stood + erect, green and glittering in the sun. I thought that the pagans + would certainly have called it an omen; and it was one that strangely + fitted my own sense of some great work half fulfilled and half + frustrated. And I thought vaguely of that man in Virgil, who prayed + that he might slay his foe and return to his country; and the gods + heard half the prayer, and the other half was scattered to the winds. + For I knew we were right to rejoice; since the tyrant was indeed + slain and his tyranny fallen for ever; but I know not when we shall + find our way back to our own land. + +English soldiers in Ireland felt, as we all remember, a strong +sympathy with the Irish people: most of them, said the _New Witness_, +became Sinn Feiners. This was an exaggeration, but certainly their +opposition to acting as terrorists led to the employment in their +stead of the jail-birds known as Black and Tans. + +And in England itself the feeling was stirring that grew stronger as +the years passed. The soldiers, who were the nation, had won the +victory, the politicians had thrown it away. A rushed election before +most of the men were demobilized had brought back the same old +politicians by turning, so G.K. put it, "collusion" into "coalition." +A Coalition Government had been in wartime "comprehensible and +defensible; precisely because it is not concerned with construction +or reconstruction but only with the warding off of destruction." A +peace-time coalition could do nothing but show up the absurdity of +the old party labels. For if these meant anything they meant that +their wearers wanted an entirely different kind of construction, at +which therefore they could not collaborate. How could a real Tory +co-operate in construction with a genuine Radical? It was the +culmination of unreality. + +The idea that it succeeded (for the moment) because the country +really believed that Lloyd George had won the war seemed to +Chesterton the crowning absurdity. It succeeded because the party +machines combined to finance their candidates and offered them to a +rather dazed country whose men were still in great numbers under +arms. "There is naturally no dissentient when hardly anybody seems to +be sentient. Indifference is called unanimity." + +How then could this indifference be thrown off: How could the +returning manhood of the nation be given a true democracy: was there +still hope? If there was, never had the _New Witness_ been more +needed than now. It had told the truth about political corruption, +today it had to fight it: "We are not divided now into those who know +and those who do not know. We are divided now into those who care and +those who do not care." Thus wrote Chesterton in an article about his +own continued editorship of the paper. + + Politics would never have been my province, either in the highest + or the lowest sense. . . . I have hitherto known myself to be merely + a stop-gap; but my action, or rather inaction, as a stop-gap, has + come terribly to an end. That gap will never be filled now, till God + restores all the noble ruin that we name the world; and the wisest + know best that the gap will yawn as hopelessly in the history of + England as in the story of our private lives. I must now either + accept this duty entirely or abandon it entirely. I will not abandon + it; for every instinct and nerve of intelligence I have tells me that + this is a time when it must not be abandoned. I must accept a + comparison that must be a contrast, and a crushing contrast; but + though I can never be so good as my brother, I will see if I can be + better than myself. + +The same attacks on financiers and others constantly reiterated might +well have put Gilbert in the dock where his brother had stood. But I +think the upshot of the case against Cecil had not been entirely +encouraging to the winners. Then too, G.K.'s immense popularity made +such an attack a still more doubtful move. Cecil had been less +well-known than Gilbert: but far better known than a Mr. Fraser and a +Mr. Beamish, a pair of cranks against whom Sir Alfred Mond brought a +libel action in 1919 for having--in a placard shown in a window in a +back street--called him a traitor and accused him of having traded +with the enemy. + +In this case Sir Alfred Mond (of the Mond Nickel Company) giving +evidence: "said that he always disregarded charges made by +irresponsible persons. Charges had been made against him in the _New +Witness_ which was edited by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. All the world +regarded Mr. Chesterton as 'irresponsible,' but he was certainly +amusing, and he (the witness) had read most of his books. He had once +procured with some difficulty a copy of the _New Witness."_ HIS +LORDSHIP--Did Mr. Chesterton charge the witness with being a traitor? +Mr. SMITH (Counsel for the defence)--Yes, in the _New Witness."_ + +"Irresponsible" was not quite the _mot juste_. The unfortunate Fraser +and Beamish were not of the metal to win that or any case in that or +any court. There was a kind of solemn buffoonery in choosing these +two as responsible opponents in preference to the irresponsible G.K. +Chesterton. At any rate damages of L5000 were given against +them--which gives some measure of the risk G.K. took in making +exactly the same attacks. + +Gilbert had not so much natural buoyancy as Cecil: he got far less +fun out of making these attacks. Still less had he the recklessness +that made Cecil indifferent even to the charge of inaccuracy. That +charge was in fact the only one that Gilbert feared. Writing to a +contributor whose article he had held back in order to verify an +accusation made in it, Gilbert remarked that he had no fear of a +lawsuit when he was certain of his facts: he did not fear fine or +imprisonment:--he had one fear only, "I am afraid of being answered." + +There was another thing he feared: hurting or distressing his +friends. This was especially a danger for one, so many of whose +friends were also his opponents in politics or religion: and who was +now editing a paper of so controversial a character. With H. G. Wells +he had a real bond of affection, and an interesting correspondence +with and about him illustrates all Gilbert's qualities; consideration +for his subordinates: for his friendships; concern for the integrity +of his paper: sense of responsibility to Cecil's memory. + +During an editorial absence the assistant editor, Mr. Titterton, had +accepted a series of articles called "Big Little H. G. Wells" from +Edwin Pugh, which seemed to be turning into an attack on Wells +instead of an appreciation. Chesterton wrote to Mr. Titterton and +simultaneously to Wells himself-- + + DEAR WELLS, + + The sudden demands of other duties, which I really could not see + how to avoid, has prevented my attending to the _New Witness_ lately: + and I have only just heard, on the telephone, that you have written a + letter to the paper touching an unfortunate difference between you + and Edwin Pugh. I don't yet know the contents of your letter but of + course I have told my _locum tenens_ that it is to be printed + whatever it is, this week or next. I am really exceedingly distressed + to have been out of the business at the time; but if you knew the + circumstances I think you would see the difficulty; and my editorial + absence has not been a holiday. As it is, I agreed to the general + idea of a study of your work by Pugh; and I confess it never even + crossed my mind that anybody would write such a thing except as a + tribute to your genius and the intellectual interest of the subject; + nor can I believe it now. It may strike you as so ironical as to be + incredible; but it is really one of those ironies that are also + facts, that I rather welcomed the idea of a criticism in the paper + (which so often differs from you) from a modernist and collectivist + standpoint more like your own. I should imagine Pugh would agree with + you more than I do, and not less. I will not prejudge the quarrel + till I understand more of it; but I now write at once to tell you + that I would not dream of tolerating anything meant to be a mere + personal attack on you, even if I resigned my post on the point; and + I had already written to the office to say so. But I do not believe + for a moment that Pugh means any such thing; I regarded him as a + strong Wellsian and even more of an admirer than myself; though he + might be so modern as to use a familiar and mixed method of + portraiture, which is too modern for my tastes, but which many use + besides he. For the moment I suggest a possible misunderstanding, + which he may well correct by a further explanation. I had said + something myself in my weekly article, demurring to a possible + undervaluing of you, long before I heard of your own letter. Even + when I am in closer touch with things, of course, many things appear + in the paper with which I wholly disagree; but the notion of a mere + campaign against you would always have seemed to me as abominable and + absurd as it does now; I do not believe any one can entertain it; and + certainly I do not. I am perfectly willing to do you anything that + can fairly be shown to be justice, whether it were explanation or + apology or anything else. This is all I can say without your letter + and Pugh's side of the case; but I feel I should say this at once. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. I have arranged for your letter to appear in next week's + number; but I may have more light on Pugh's attitude by then. + +To Titterton he wrote: + + . . . I do hope this work will not turn into anything that looks + like a mere attack on Wells, especially in the rather realistic and + personal modern manner, which I am perhaps too Victorian myself to + care very much about. I do not merely feel this because I have + managed to keep Wells as a friend on the whole. I feel it much more + (and I know you are a man to understand such sentiments) because I + have a sort of sense of honour about him as an enemy, or at least a + potential enemy. We are so certain to collide in controversial + warfare, that I have a horror of his thinking I would attack him with + anything but fair controversial weapons. My feeling is so entirely + consistent with a faith in Pugh's motives, as well as an admiration + of his talents, that I honestly believe I could explain this to him + without offence. . . . + + I am honestly in a very difficult position on the _New Witness_, + because it is physically impossible for me really to edit it, and + also do enough outside work to be able to edit it unpaid, as well as + having a little over to give it from time to time. What we should + have done without the loyalty and capacity of you and a few others I + can't imagine. I cannot oversee everything that goes into the + paper; . . . I cannot resign, without dropping as you truly said, the + work of a great man who is gone; and who, I feel, would wish me to + continue it. It is like what Stevenson said about marriage and its + duties: "There is no refuge for you; not even suicide." But I should + have to consider even resignation, if I felt that the acceptance of + Pugh's generosity really gave him the right to print something that I + really felt bound to disapprove. It may be that I am needlessly + alarmed over a slip or two of the pen, in vivid descriptions of a + very odd character, and that Pugh really admires his Big Little H. G. + as much as I thought he did at the beginning of the business. . . . + If the general impression on the reader's mind is of the Big Wells + and not the Little Wells, I think the doubt I mean would really be + met. + +Somehow the letter to Titterton got into the hands of a Mr. Hennessy +who, after Gilbert's death, sent it to Wells. + +Wells wrote, "Thank you very much for that letter of G.K.C.'s. It is +exactly like him. From first to last he and I were very close friends +and never for a moment did I consider him responsible for Pugh's +pathetic and silly little outbreak. I never knew anyone so steadily +true to form as G.K.C." + +Besides the cleansing of public life two other things were seen as +vital by the _New Witness_, the restoration of well-distributed +property and the restoration of liberty. Under the heading +"Reconstruction of Property" Belloc set out a series of proposals, +highly practical and very far from what is usually called +revolutionary: that savings for instance made on a small scale should +be helped by a very high rate of interest; that the purchase by small +men of small parcels of land or businesses or houses should be freed +from legal charges while these should be made heavier for those who +purchased on a large scale thus encouraging small property and +checking huge accumulation. He pointed out how vast sums could be +found for such subsidies out of the money spent today on an education +which the poor detested for their children and which most of the +wealthy admitted to be an abject failure. Most of those, he noted, +who oppose Distributism do so on the ground that the proposals are +unpractical or revolutionary, which generally means that they have +not examined the proposals. His own were certainly practical and +would by many be called reactionary. But he admitted one +doubt--besides the overwhelming difficulty of turning the current of +modern Socialism--the doubt whether Englishmen from long disuse had +not lost the appetite for property. + +Chesterton's own line of approach to the double problem was also +twofold. In a volume of Essays published near the end of the war and +called _The Utopia of Usurers_ he remarked: "That anarchic future +which the more timid Tories professed to fear has already fallen upon +us. We are ruled by ignorant people." + +The old aristocracy of England, in his view, had made many mistakes +but certain things they had understood very well. The modern +governing class "cannot face a fact, or follow an argument, or feel +a tradition; but least of all can they, upon any persuasion read +through a plain impartial book, English or foreign, that is not +specially written to soothe their panic or to please their pride." +There had been reality in the claim of the old aristocracy to +understand matters not known to the people. They had read history; +they were familiar with other languages and other lands. They had a +great tradition of foreign diplomacy. Even the study of philosophy +and theology, today confined to a handful of experts, was not alien +to them. On all this had rested what right they had to govern. But +today "They rule them by the smiling terror of an ancient secret. +They smile and smile but they have forgotten the secret." + +On the other hand the ordinary workman had the advantage over his +probably millionaire master by the necessity of knowing something. He +must be able to use his tools, he must know "enough arithmetic to +know when prices have risen." The hard business of living taught him +something. Give him a chance of more through property and liberty and +see what he will build on that foundation. The war had already shown +not only the courage of our men but their contrivance: their trench +newspapers, songs and jests: their initiative as sailors and as +airmen: at home the same thing was happening. Allotments had sprung +up everywhere and solved the problem of potato shortage. Men were +doing for themselves a rough kind of building. The inclination to get +away from the machine and do things oneself was on the increase. + +Armistice and the men's return were heralded by outdoor tea-parties +with ropes stretched across the streets for safety. The outburst of +pageants was spontaneous and national. "It is time," said Chesterton, +"for an army of amateurs; for England is perishing of the +professionals." Vitality seemed to be flowing back into national +life, but Bureaucracy does not love vitality. Agitated Town Councils +met and stopped the tea-parties; fought against street markets +through which allotment holders could sell their produce cheaply; put +heavy rates on land reclaimed and buildings erected by hard work. +Town families living in single rooms had secured plots on building +estates and run up shacks for themselves and their families. They +were forbidden to live in these dwellings--only intended as +temporary, but far more healthy than living eight people to a room in +a slum. The _New Witness_ suspected that the real objection in the +eyes of Councillors was a lowering of the value of neighbouring plots +for wealthier purchasers. + +Worst of all, the allotments were taken: fields sold for speculative +building, land dug in public parks taken away in the name of +"amenities." The little spark that could have been fanned into a +flame was crushed out. + +An episode of a few years later best illustrates the spirit +Chesterton was fighting. In 1926 a threat arose to the traffic +monopoly from soldiers who put their war gratuities into the purchase +of omnibuses which they drove themselves. The London General Omnibus +Company decided to crush them and with the aid of a Government +Commission succeeded. Chesterton's paper followed the struggle with +passionate interest. Just as he believed that the small shop actually +served the public better than the large, so too he believed that +these owner-drivers would serve it better than the Combine. But if it +could have been proved that the Combine was more efficient Gilbert +would still have championed the Independents. It was better for the +Community that men should take responsibility and initiative for +themselves even if the work could be done more efficiently by wage +slaves. To his dismay he found that the Trade Unions did not dream of +applying this test and that they were aligned against the Pirates--as +the independent owners were usually called. + +He had always been an ardent supporter of the Trade Unions. To him it +had seemed they were trying to do the work of the ancient Guilds +under far more difficult conditions. But after the war for the first +time a little note of doubt creeps into his voice when he is speaking +of them. They were still vocal for the rights of labour, but they had +begun to lay stress exclusively on the less important of those rights. + +Writing of the loss of the allotments he suggested in one article +that the Trades Unions might well use some part of their funds in +purchasing land to be held in perpetuity by their members. But I doubt +if he much expected that they would do so. Many Trade Unionists were +working for the Bus Company and were more concerned about their +conditions of work than about the handful of drivers who were their +own masters. But the Unions had begun to stress almost solely the +question of hours and of wages; to fight for good conditions but no +longer for control or ownership: to demand security but to agree to +abandon many of their rights in return. + +It was a chill fear and for long he resisted it, but in these +terrible years it had begun to shake him. Were the people of England +losing the appetite for freedom and for property? Were the Trades +Unions, from lack of leadership and confusion of thought, beginning +to accept the Servile State? + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +Rome via Jerusalem + + +SHORTLY AFTER THE war Gilbert and Frances set out on their travels, +going in 1919 to Palestine, home through Italy early in 1920, and +starting out again the following year for a lecture tour in the +United States. + +To his friendship with Maurice Baring Gilbert owed their being able +to make the first of these journeys as well as much else. The picture +entitled "Conversation Piece" of Chesterton, Belloc and Baring is +well known. Was it Chesterton himself who christened it "Baring, +Overbearing and Past Bearing?" Many elements united the three in a +close friendship: love of literature, love of Europe, a common view +of the philosophy of history and of life. Frances Chesterton often +said that of all her husband's friends she thought there was none he +loved better than Maurice Baring. They often wrote ballades +together--a French form which they, with Phillimore and others, had +re-popularised in English. A telegram from Gilbert refusing a +celebration runs like a refrain: + + Prince, Yorkshire holds me now + By Yorkshire hams I'm fed + I can't assist your row + I send ballades instead. + +These "Ballades Urbane" were a feature in the _New Witness_--but many +of those the three friends composed were strictly not for publication +but recited to friends behind closed doors. Gilbert's memory was +useful: he knew all his own and the others: Once Belloc forgot the +Envoi to one of his own ballades and Gilbert finished it for him. +Even to Maurice Baring, G.K. wrote less often than he intended and +one apologetic ballade carries the refrain: + + I write no letters to the men I love. + + I have always fancied that Maurice Baring gave Gilbert the idea for + his story _The Man Who Knew Too Much_. First in the diplomatic + service, then doing splendidly as an airman in the war, a member of + the great banking family, related to most of the aristocracy and + intimate with most of the rest, he is like the hero of the book in a + sort of detachment, a slight irony about a world that he has not + cared to conquer. Impossible for a mere acquaintance to say whether + he views that world with all the disillusionment of Chesterton's + hero--but anyhow such a suggestion from life is never more than a + hint for creative art. Another side is seen in the _Autobiography_-- + in the stories of Maurice Baring plunging into the sea in evening + dress on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, and of the smashing + by Gilbert of a wine-glass that became in retrospect a priceless + goblet (which had "stood by Charlemagne's great chair and served St. + Peter at High Mass") and now inspired the refrain: + + I like the sound of breaking glass. + +A good deal of glass was broken by the stones of this group of men +whose own house was made of tolerably strong materials. + +There is quite a bundle of Mr. Baring's letters to Gilbert, and, in +spite of the apologetic ballade, a fair number of answers. Two of +these last are written early in 1919, the second of which opens the +question of the Jerusalem visit: + + May 23, 1919 + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + I am the Prince of unremembered towers destroyed before the birth + of Babylon; I am also the (writer) of unremembered letters, and to a + much greater extent the designer and imaginer of unwritten letters: + and I cannot remember whether I ever acknowledged properly your + communications about Claudel, especially your interesting remarks + about the comparative coolness of Henri de Regnier about him. It + struck me because I think it is part of something I have noticed + myself; a curious and almost premature conservatism in the older + generation of revolutionaries, particularly when they were pagan + revolutionaries. Not that I suppose de Regnier is particularly old or + in the stock sense a revolutionist; but I think you will know the + break between the generations to which I refer. I remember having + exactly the same experience the only time I ever talked to Swinburne. + I had regarded (and resisted) him in my boyhood as a sort of + Antichrist in purple, like Nero holding his lyre, and I found him + more like a very well-read Victorian old maid, almost entirely a + _laudator temporis acti_ disposed to say that none of the young men + would ever come up to Tennyson--which may be quite true for all I + know. I fancy it has something to do with the very fact that their + revolt was pagan, and being temporal was also temporary. When that + particular fashion in caps of liberty has gone out, they have nothing + to fall back on but the feeling which Swinburne himself puts into the + mouth of the pagan on the day when Constantine issued the + proclamation. + + "But to me their new device is barren, the days are bare + Things long gone over suffice, and men forgotten that were." + + I only tell you all this because you might find it amusing to keep + an eye on the _New Statesman_ as well as the _New Witness_, where + there is a small repetition of the same thing. Bernard Shaw has + written an article which is supposed to be about his view of me and + Socialism; but which may be said more truly to be about his blindness + to Hilary and his Servile State. It is quite startling to me to find + how wholly he misses Hilary's point; and how wildly he falls back on + a sort of elderly impatience with our juvenile paradox and + fantasticality. I shall answer him as abusively as my great personal + liking for him will allow and I think Hilary is going to do the same; + so if you ever see such papers, you might enjoy the fun. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR MAURICE, + + Thank you ever so much for your interesting letter. I think you are + right every time about Gosse and Claudel; or rather about Claudel and + Gosse. For though I think Gosse a very valuable old Victorian in his + way, I do not think he is on the same scale as the things that have + lately been happening in the world; and Claudel is one of them. He + has happened like a great gun going off; and I think I saw a line of + his on the subject of such a discharge of artillery in the war. It + ran, "And that which goes forth is France; terrible as the Holy + Ghost." I doubt if Gosse has ever seen that France even in a flash + and a bang; I don't see how he could. Remember the religion in which + he grew up, by his own very graphic account of it; a man is not + entirely emancipated from such very positive Puritanism by anything + so negative as Agnosticism. Nothing but a religion can cast out a + religion. Being so sensitive on behalf of Renan is simply not + understanding the great historical passions about a heresiarch. It + means that famous intellectuals must not hate each other; because + they all belong to the Saville Club. Please do not think I mean + merely that Gosse is a snob; I think he is a jolly old gentleman and + a good critic of French poetry; but not of _Gesta Dei per Francos_. + Your points against him are quite logical; I suppose the controversy + will not be conducted in public, or I should feel inclined to join in + it. Anyhow, I wish it could be continued between us as a conversation + in private, for I have long wanted to talk to you about serious + things. + + Meanwhile, as not wholly unconnected with the serious things, could + you possibly do me a great favour? It is very far from being the + first great favour you have done me; and I should fear that anyone + less magnanimous would fancy I only wrote to you about such things. + But the situation is this. An excellent offer has been made to me to + write a book about Jerusalem, not political but romantic and + religious, so to speak; I conceive it as mostly about pilgrimages and + crusades, in poetical prose, and working up to Allenby's great + entrance. The offer includes money to go to Jerusalem but cannot + include all the political or military permissions necessary to go + there. I have another motive for wanting to go there, which is much + stronger than the desire to write the book though I do think I could + do it in the right way and, what matters more, on the right side. + Frances is to come with me, and all the doctors in creation tell her + she can only get rid of her neuritis if she goes to some such place + and misses part of an English winter. I would do anything to bring it + off, for that reason alone. You are a man who knows everybody; do you + know anybody on Allenby's staff; or know anybody who knows anybody on + Allenby's staff; or know anybody who would know anybody who would + know anything about it? I am told that it cannot be done as yet in + the ordinary way by Cook's; and that the oracle must be worked in + some such fashion. If you should be so kind as to refer to any + worried soldier or official, I should like it understood that I am + not nosing about touching any diplomatic or military matter; France + in Syria, or any copy for the _New Witness_. I only want to write + semi-historical rhetoric on the spot. If you could possibly help in + this matter, I really think you would be helping things you yourself + care about; and one person, not myself, who deserves it. I will not + say it would be killing two birds with one stone, which might seem a + tragic metaphor; but bringing one bird at least to life; and allowing + the other bird, who is a goose, to go on a wild goose-chase. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +It was much needed change and refreshment for both Gilbert and +Frances. Her Diary shows a vivid enjoyment of all the scenes and +happenings: going into the Church of the Nativity with a door "so low +you can hardly get in--this done to prevent the cattle from straying +in"; seeing camels on the roof of a convent; standing godmother to an +Armenian carpenter's baby: + + The officiator in a cape of white silk embroidered in gold and a + wonderful crown supposed to represent the temple. The godfather (a + young man) was in a red velvet gown. After a good many prayers and + much chanting the babe, beautifully dressed, was taken to the font + (which was in the side of the wall) and there were more prayers and + chanting. Then cushions were laid on the floor and the child + undressed, all of us assisting. At this point I was asked to stand + Godmother and gladly consented. The baby, by this time quite naked, + was handed to the priest who immersed him completely under the water + three times--giving him the name of Pedros (Peter). Before being + re-clothed he was anointed with oil--the forebead, eyes, nose, mouth, + ears, heart, hands and feet all being signed with the Cross. The + child was by this time crying lustily and it was some business to get + him dressed, especially as he was swaddled in bands very completely. + When ready he was handed to me and he lay stiff in my arms whilst I + held two large lighted candles. I followed the priest from the font + to the little altar, where a chain and a little gold cross were bound + round his head (signifying that he was now a Christian). Then the + priest touched his lips with the sacramental wafer, and touched his + nose with myrrh. After the Blessing, we left the church in a + procession, the godfather carrying the baby. At the threshold of the + house the priest took it and delivered it to the mother who sat + waiting for it, also holding the two candles. Again the priests + muttered a few prayers and blessed mother, child and godparents. The + father is an Armenian carpenter by trade--very nice people. Mother + very pretty. The parents insisted that we should stay for + refreshments and we were handed a very nice liquor in lovely little + glasses and a very beautiful sort of pastry. Afterwards cups of weak + tea and cakes. + +The various rites and ceremonies in Jerusalem interested Frances +deeply but the Diary shows no awareness of the differences that +separated the various kinds of Christians. The Diary ends with the +return through Rome where she and I met, to the surprise of both of +us, in the street, while a friend travelling with them met my mother. +"Both meetings were miraculous," Frances comments. Since the letters +to my mother during Gilbert's illness in 1915 we had heard no more +about his spiritual pilgrimage. There was much eager talk at this +meeting but no opportunity occurred and certainly none was sought for +any confidences. As we waved goodbye after their departing train my +mother said thoughtfully: "Frances did rather play off Jerusalem +against Rome, didn't she?" + +In fact, as we learned later, this visit to Jerusalem had been a +determining factor in Gilbert's conversion. Many people both in and +outside the Church had been wondering what had so long delayed him. +The mental progress from the vague Liberalism of the _Wild Knight_ to +the splendid edifice of _Orthodoxy_ had been a swift one. For the +book was written in 1908 and already several years earlier in +_Heretics_ and in his newspaper contests with Blatchford, Gilbert +Chesterton had shown his firm belief in the Godhead of Our Lord, in +Sacraments, in Priesthood and in the Authority of the Church. But it +was not yet the Catholic and Roman Church. There is a revealing +passage in the _Autobiography:_ "And then I happened to meet Lord +Hugh Cecil. I met him at the house of Wilfrid Ward, that great +clearing house of philosophies and theologies. . . . I listened to +Lord Hugh's very lucid statements of his position. . . . The +strongest impression I received was that he was a Protestant. I was +myself still a thousand miles from being a Catholic; but I think it +was the perfect and solid Protestantism of Lord Hugh that fully +revealed to me that I was no longer a Protestant." + +The time that thousand miles took is a real problem--the years before +the illness during which he talked of joining the Church, the seven +further years before he joined it. Cecil Chesterton had been received +before the war--just at the beginning of the Marconi Case, in +fact--and the entire outlook of both brothers had seemed to make this +inevitable, not only theologically but sociologically and +historically. Alike in their outlook on Europe today or on the great +ages of the past, it was a Catholic civilisation based on Catholic +theology that seemed to them the only true one for a full and rich +human development. + +I think in this matter a special quality and its defect could be seen +in Gilbert. For most people intensity of thought is much more +difficult than action. With him it was the opposite. He used his mind +unceasingly, his body as little as possible. I remember one day going +to see them when he had a sprained ankle and learning from Frances +how happy it made him because nobody could bother him to take +exercise. The whole of practical life he left to her. But joining the +Church was not only something to be thought about, it was something +really practical that had to be done, and here Frances could not help +him. + +"He will need Frances," said Father O'Connor to my mother, "to take +him to church, to find his place in his prayer-book, to examine his +conscience for him when he goes to Confession. He will never take all +those hurdles unaided." Frances never lifted a finger to prevent +Gilbert from joining the Catholic Church. But obviously before she +was convinced herself she could not help him. The absence of help was +in this case a very positive hindrance. + +I remember one day on a picnic Gilbert coming up to me with a very +disconsolate expression and asking where Frances was. I said, "I +don't know but I can easily find her. Do you want her?" He answered, +"I don't want her now but I may want her at any minute." Many men +depend upon their wives but very few men admit it so frankly. And if +he was unpractical to a point almost inconceivable, Frances herself +could be called practical only in comparison with him. The confused +mass of papers through which she had to hunt to find some important +document lingers in the memory. + +Another element that made action lag behind conviction with +Chesterton was his perpetual state of overwork. Physically inactive, +his mind was never barren but issued in an immense output: several +books every year besides editing and articles: there were even two +years in which no fewer than six books were published. To focus his +attention on the deepest matters, it was vital to escape from the net +of work and worry. + +Returning from Jerusalem, Gilbert wrote from Alexandria to Maurice +Baring: + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + To quote a poet we agree in thinking ridiculously underrated by + recent fashions, my boat is on the shore and my bark is on the sea; + but before I go, Tom Moore (if I may so by a flight of fancy describe + you), I feel impelled to send you this hurried line to thank you, so + far as this atrocious hotel pen will allow me, for the wonderful time + I have had in Palestine, which is so largely owing to you. There is + also something even more important I want very much to discuss with + you; because of certain things that have been touched on between us + in former times. I will only say here that my train of thought, which + really was one of thought and not fugitive emotion, came to an + explosion in the Church of the Ecce Homo in Jerusalem; a church which + the guidebooks call new and the newspapers call Latin. I fear it may + be at least a month before we meet; for the journey takes a fortnight + and may be prolonged by a friend ill in Paris; and I must work the + moment I return to keep a contract. But if we could meet by about + then I could thank you better for many things. + + Yours illegibly, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +The contract that had to be kept was in all probability the writing +of _The New Jerusalem_. It is a glorious book. Until I read them more +carefully I had always accepted G.K.'s own view that books of travel +were a weak spot in his multifarious output. He said of himself that +he always tended to see such enormous significance in every detail +that he might just as well describe railway signals near Beaconsfield +as the light of sunset over the Golden Horn. But _The New Jerusalem_ +is no mere book of description. It is the book of a man seeing a +vision. To understand how this vision broke upon him we have first to +try to understand something jealously hidden by Gilbert +Chesterton--his own suffering. Even as a boy--in the days of the +toothache and still more torturing earache--he had written + + Though pain be stark and bitter + And days in darkness creep + Not to that depth I sink me + That asks the world to weep. + +So much did he acclaim himself enrolled under the banner of joy that +I think most people miss the companion picture to the favourite one +of the Happy Warrior. No warrior can fight untiringly through a long +lifetime without wounds, without temptations to abandon the struggle +and seek a less glorious peace. If in what are commonly called +practical matters Chesterton was weak, he was in this almost +superhumanly strong. His fame did not rest upon success in the field +of sociology and politics. He could have increased it by neglecting +the good of England for which he fought, and living in literature, +poetry and fantasy. Here all acclaimed him great, whereas most +tolerated or despised as a hobby or a weakness the work he was +pouring into the fight for England. In this time after the Armistice +it was by a naked effort of the will that he held his ground. The +loss of Cecil with his light-hearted courage, his energy and +buoyancy, was immeasurable. And I know--for we talked of it +together--that Frances had not the complete sympathy with Gilbert +over the paper that she had over his other work. It seemed to her too +great a drain on his time and energy: it made the writing of his +important books more difficult. She would not, she told me, try to +stop it as she knew how much he cared, but she would have rejoiced if +he had chosen to let it go. + +And the fight that he had almost enjoyed in Cecil's company had +become a harder one, not merely because he was alone but because the +nature of the foe had changed. He was fighting now not individual +abuses but the mood of pessimism that had overtaken our civilisation. +In an article entitled _Is It Too Late?_ he defined this pessimism as +"a paralysis of the mind; an impotence intrinsically unworthy of a +free man." He stated powerfully the case of those who held that our +civilisation was dying and that it was too late to make any further +efforts: + + The future belongs to those who can find a real answer to that real + case. . . . The omens and the auguries are against us. There is no + answer but one; that omens and auguries are heathen things; and that + we are not heathens. . . . We are not lost unless we lose + ourselves. . . . Great Alfred, in the darkness of the Ninth Century, + when the Danes were beating at the door, wrote down on his copy of + Boethius his denial of the doctrine of fate. We, who have been + brought up to see all the signs of the times pointing to improvement, + may live to see all the signs in heaven and earth pointing the other + way. If we go on it must be in another name than that of the Goddess + of Fortune. + +It was that other Name, in which he had so long believed, that he +realised with the freshness of novelty on this journey to Jerusalem. +He made in the Holy City and in the fields of Palestine a new +discovery of Christ and of the Christian Thing. As he looked over the +Dead Sea and almost physically realised what evil meant, he heard the +voice of the divine Deliverer saying to the demons: "Go forth and +trouble him not any more." In the cave at Bethlehem he realised the +"little local infancy" whereby the creator of the world had chosen to +redeem the world. All through the book there are glimpses of what he +tells more fully in _The Everlasting Man_. Between the two books all +that he had seen and thought in Palestine lay in his mind, and grew +there, and fructified for our understanding. But he had seen it all +in that first vision. + +Jerusalem first impressed Chesterton as a mediaeval city and from its +turrets he could readily picture Godfrey de Bouillon, Richard the +Lion-Hearted and Saint Louis of France. Through the Crusades he views +what was meant by Christendom and sets over against it at once the +greatness and the barrenness of Islam: + + The Moslem had one thought, and that a most vital one; the + greatness of God which levels all men. But the Moslem had not one + thought to rub against another, because he really had not another. It + is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention, + or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The + Creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex; + they can breed thoughts. + +Today we of Christendom have fallen below ourselves but yet we have +something left of the power to create whether it be a theology or a +civilisation. Talking to an old Arab in the desert, Chesterton heard +him say that in all these years of Turkish rule the Turks had never +given to the people a cup of cold water. And as the old man spoke he +heard the clank of pipes and he knew that it was the English soldiers +who were bringing water through the desert to Jerusalem. + +A chapter on Zionism discusses with sympathy to both parties the +difficulties of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. In Palestine he +found his Jewish friend and co-worker on the _New Witness_, Dr. Eder, +who had gone there ardent in the cause of Zionism; and Chesterton +himself remained convinced that some system akin to Zionism was the +only possible solution of this enormous problem--possibly a system of +Jewish cantons in various countries. But he was equally convinced +that the English government was destroying the chances of success for +Zionism by sending Jews as governors in England's name to that or any +other Eastern country. + +Even in this book there is struck at times a note of the doom he +feared was overhanging us. He heard "Islam crying from the turret and +Israel wailing from the wall," and yet he seemed too to hear a voice +from all the peoples of Jerusalem "bidding us weep not for them, who +have faith and clarity and a purpose, but weep for ourselves and for +our children." In his fighting articles he had asserted the supremacy +of the human will over fate: in this book he sees how that will must +be renewed, purified and made once more mighty by the same power that +built the ancient civilisation of Christendom. + +Jerusalem gave to Chesterton the fuller realisation of two great +facts. First he saw that the supernatural was needed not only to +conquer the powers of evil but even to restore the good things that +should be natural to man. As he put it in the later book, "Nature may +not have the name of Isis; Isis may not be really looking for Osiris. +But it is true that Nature is really looking for something. Nature is +always looking for the supernatural." Yet man, even strengthened by +the supernatural, cannot suffice for the fight, without a leader who +is more than man. In the land of Christ's childhood, His teaching and +His suffering, there came to Gilbert Chesterton "a vision more vivid +than a man walking unveiled upon the mountains, seen of men and +seeing; a visible God." + +All visions must fade into the light of common day, and the return +home meant the resumption of hard labour. + +"For the moment," wrote Gilbert to Maurice Baring, "as Balzac said, I +am labouring like a miner in a landslide. Normally I would let it +slide. But if I did in this case I should break two or three really +important contracts, which I find I have returned from Jerusalem just +in time to save." + +(A few years later when Sheed and Ward started, Gilbert wanted to +write a number of books for us to publish. His secretary found that +he had then thirty books contracted for with a variety of publishers!) + +He had got home in April 1920: and a lecture tour was planned for the +United States at the beginning of the following year. The eight +months between saw the completion and publication of _The Uses of +Diversity_ (collected essays), _The New Jerusalem_ and _The +Superstition of Divorce_. And still went on the _New Witness_, the +_Illustrated London News_, articles, introductions, lectures, +conferences. Two letters to Maurice Baring clearly belong to these +months: + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + I am so awfully distressed to hear you are unwell again; I do not + know whether I ought even to bother you with my sentiments; beyond my + sympathy; but if it is not too late, or too early, I will call on you + early next week; probably Monday, but I will let you know for certain + before then. I would have called on you long ago, let alone written, + but for this load of belated work which really seems to bury me day + after day. I never realised before that business can really block out + much bigger things. As you may possibly guess, I want to consider my + position about the biggest thing of all, whether I am to be inside it + or outside it. I used to think one could be an Anglo-Catholic and + really inside it; but if that was (to use an excellent phrase of your + own) only a Porch, I do not think I want a Porch, and certainly not a + Porch standing some way from the building. A Porch looks so silly, + standing all by itself in a field. Since then, unfortunately, there + have sprung up round it real ties and complications and difficulties; + difficulties that seemed almost duties. But I will not bother you + with all that now; and I particularly do not want you to bother + yourself, especially to answer this unless you want to. I know I have + your sympathy; and please God, I shall get things straight. Sometimes + one suspects the real obstacles have been the weaknesses one knows to + be wrong, and not the doubts that might be relatively right, or at + least rational. I suppose all this is a common story; and I hope so; + for wanting to be uncommon is really not one of my weaknesses. They + are worse, probably, but they are not that. There are other and in + the ordinary sense more cheerful things I would like to talk of; + things I think we could both do for causes we certainly agree about. + Meanwhile, thank you for everything; and be sure I think of you very + much. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + MY DEAR MAURICE, + + This is the shortest, hastiest and worst written letter in the + world. It only tells you three things: (1) that I thank you a + thousand times for the book; (2) that I have to leave for America for + a month or two, earlier than I expected; But I am glad, for I shall + see something of Frances, without walls of work between us; and (3) + that I have pretty well made up my mind about the thing we talked + about. Fortunately, the thing we talked about can be found all over + the world. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +I will not write here of the American scene but will talk of it in a +later chapter along with the second tour Gilbert made in the States. +It seems best to complete now the story of his journey of the mind. A +reserved man tells more of himself indirectly than directly. Readers +of the _Autobiography_ complain that it is concerned with everything +in the world except G. K. Chesterton. You can certainly search its +pages in vain for any account of the process of his conversion: for +that you must look elsewhere: in the poems to Our lady, in _The +Catholic Church and Conversion_, in _The Well and the Shallows_, and +in the letters here to be quoted. + +In _The Catholic Church and Conversion_ he sketches the three phases +through which most converts pass, all of which he had himself +experienced. He sums them up as "patronizing the Church, discovering +the Church, and running away from the Church." In the first phase a +man is taking trouble ("and taking trouble has certainly never been a +particular weakness of mine") to find out the fallacy in most +anti-Catholic ideas. In the second stage he is gradually discovering +the great ideas enshrined in the Church and hitherto hidden from him. +"It is these numberless glimpses of great ideas, that have been +hidden from the convert by the prejudices of his provincial culture, +that constitute the adventurous and varied second stage of the +conversion. It is, broadly speaking, the stage in which the man is +unconsciously trying to be converted. And the third stage is perhaps +the truest and most terrible. It is that in which the man is trying +not to be converted. He has come too near to the truth, and has +forgotten that truth is a magnet, with the powers of attraction and +repulsion."* + +[* _The Catholic Church and Conversion_, p. 61.] + + To a certain extent it is a fear which attaches to all sharp and + irrevocable decisions; it is suggested in all the old jokes about the + shakiness of the bridegroom at the wedding or the recruit who takes + the shilling and gets drunk partly to celebrate, but partly also to + forget it. But it is the fear of a fuller sacrament and a mightier + army. . . . * + +[* Ibid., p. 65.] + + The man has exactly the same sense of having committed or + compromised himself; or having been in a sense entrapped, even if he + is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is not so + much glad as simply terrified. It may be that this real psychological + experience has been misunderstood by stupider people and is + responsible for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a mere + trap. But that legend misses the whole point of the psychology. It is + not the Pope who has set the trap or the priests who have baited it. + The whole point of the position is that the trap is simply the truth. + The whole point is that the man himself has made his way towards the + trap of truth, and not the trap that has run after the man. All steps + except the last step he has taken eagerly on his own account, out of + interest in the truth; and even the last step, or the last stage, + only alarms him because it is so very true. If I may refer once more + to a personal experience, I may say that I for one was never less + troubled by doubts than in the last phase, when I was troubled by + fears. Before that final delay I had been detached and ready to + regard all sorts of doctrines with an open mind. Since that delay has + ended in decision, I have had all sorts of changes in mere mood; and + I think I sympathise with doubts and difficulties more than I did + before. But I had no doubts or difficulties just before. I had only + fears; fears of something that had the finality and simplicity of + suicide. But the more I thrust the thing into the back of my mind, + the more certain I grew of what Thing it was. And by a paradox that + does not frighten me now in the least, it may be that I shall never + again have such absolute assurance that the thing is true as I had + when I made my last effort to deny it.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 62-3.] + +The whole of Catholic theology can be justified, says Gilbert, if you +are allowed to start with those two ideas that the Church is +popularly supposed to oppose: Reason and Liberty. "To become a +Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. It +is so in exactly the same sense in which to recover from palsy is not +to leave off moving but to learn how to move." The convert has learnt +long before his conversion that the Church will not force him to +abandon his will. "But he is not unreasonably dismayed at the extent +to which he may have to use his will." This was the crux for Gilbert. +"There is in the last second of time or hairbreadth of space, before +the iron leaps to the magnet, an abyss full of all the unfathomable +forces of the universe. The space between doing and not doing such a +thing is so tiny and so vast." + +Father Maturin said after his conversion that for at least ten years +before it the question had never been out of his mind for ten waking +minutes. It was about ten years since Gilbert had first talked to +Father O'Connor of his intention to join the Church, but in his case +thought on the subject could not have been so continuous. Still he +had time for patronising, discovery, and running away, all in +leisurely fashion. External efforts to help him had been worse than +useless: as he indicates in _The Catholic Church and Conversion_, +they had always put him back. + +"Gilbert could not be hustled," says Maurice Baring of his whole +habit of mind and body. + +"You could fluster Gilbert but not hustle him," says Father O'Connor. + +They were both too wise to try. + +In two letters Gilbert said that the two people who helped him most +at this time were Maurice Baring and Father Ronald Knox, who had both +gone through the same experience themselves. + +Besides the positive mental processes of recognition, repulsion and +attraction exercised by the Church, Gilbert was affected to some +extent both by affection for the Church of England and disappointment +with it. The profound joy of his early conversion to Christianity was +linked with Anglicanism and so too were many friendships and the +continued attachment to it of Frances. But what he said to Maurice +Baring about a Porch is representative. Like Father Maturin he felt +he owed so much to his Anglican friends: he hated to stress overmuch +the revulsion from Anglicanism in the process of conversion. But it +did at this date contribute to the converging arguments. + +He wrote to Maurice Baring: + + So many thanks for the sermons, which I will certainly return as + you suggest. I had the other day a trying experience, and I think a + hard case of casuistry; I am not sure that I was right; but also not + by any means sure I was wrong. Long ago, before my present crisis, I + had promised somebody to take part in what I took to be a small + debate on labour. Too late, by my own carelessness, I found to my + horror it had swelled into a huge Anglo-Catholic Congress at the + Albert Hall. I tried to get out of it, but I was held to my promise. + Then I reflected that I could only write (as I was already writing) + to my Anglo-Catholic friends on the basis that I was one of them now + in doubt about continuing such; and that their conference in some + sense served the same purpose as their letters. What affected me + most, however, was that by my own fault I had put them into a hole. + Otherwise, I would not just now speak from or for their platform, + just as I could not (as yet at any rate) speak from or for yours. So + I spoke very briefly, saying something of what I think about social + ethics. Whether or not my decision was right, my experience was + curious and suggestive, though tragic; for I felt it like a farewell. + There was no doubt about the enthusiasm of those thousands of + Anglo-Catholics. But there was also no doubt, unless I am much + mistaken, that many of them besides myself would be Roman Catholics + rather than accept things they are quite likely to be asked to + accept--for instance, by the Lambeth Conference. For though my own + distress, as in most cases I suppose, has much deeper grounds than + clerical decisions, yet if I cannot stay where I am, it will be a + sort of useful symbol that the English Church has done something + decisively Protestant or Pagan. I mean that to those to whom I cannot + give my spiritual biography, I can say that the insecurity I felt in + Anglicanism was typified in the Lambeth Conference. I am at least + sure that much turns on that Conference, if not for me, for large + numbers of those people at the Albert Hall. A young Anglo-Catholic + curate has just told me that the crowd there cheered all references + to the Pope, and laughed at every mention of the Archbishop of + Canterbury. It's a queer state of things. I am concerned most, + however, about somebody I value more than the Archbishop of + Canterbury; Frances, to whom I owe much of my own faith, and to whom + therefore (as far as I can see my way) I also owe every decent chance + for the controversial defence of her faith. If her side can convince + me, they have a right to do so; if not, I shall go hot and strong to + convince her. I put it clumsily, but there is a point in my mind. + Logically, therefore, I must await answers from Waggett and Gore as + well as Knox and McNabb; and talk the whole thing over with her, and + then act as I believe. + + This is a dusty political sort of letter, with nothing in it but + what I think and nothing of what I feel. For that side of it, I can + only express myself by asking for your prayers. + +The accident of his having to speak at this Congress, where he was +received with enormous enthusiasm, probably led to a fuller analysis +of this element in his thought. I put here a letter he wrote to +Maurice Baring soon after his conversion, because it sums up the +Anglican question as he finally saw it: + + Feb. 14th, 1923 + + Please forgive me for the delay; but I have been caught in a + cataract of letters and work in connection with the new paper we are + trying to start; and am now dictating this under conditions that make + it impossible for it to resemble anything so personal and intimate as + the great unwritten epistle to which you refer. But I will note down + here very hurriedly and in a more impersonal way, some of the matters + that have affected me in relation to the great problem. + + To begin with, I am shy of giving one of my deepest reasons because + it is hard to put it without offence, and I am sure it is the wrong + method to offend the wavering Anglo-Catholic. But I believe one of my + strongest motives was mixed up with the idea of honour. I feel there + is something mean about not making complete confession and + restitution after a historic error and slander. It is not the same + thing to withdraw the charges against Rome one by one, or restore the + traditions to Canterbury one by one. Suppose a young prig refuses to + live with his father or his friend or his wife, because wine is drunk + in the house or there are Greek statues in the hall. Suppose he goes + off on his own and develops broader ideas. On the day he drinks his + first glass of wine, I think it is essential to his honour that he + should go back to his father or his friend and say, "You are right + and I was wrong, and we will drink wine together." It is not + consonant with his honour that he should set up a house of his own + with wine and statues and every parallel particular, and still treat + the other as if he were in the wrong. That is mean because it is + making the best of both; it is combining the advantages of being + right with the advantages of having been wrong. Any analogy is + imperfect; but I think you see what I mean. + + The larger version of this is that England has really got into so + wrong a state, with its plutocracy and neglected populace and + materialistic and Servile morality, that it must take a sharp turn + that will be a sensational turn. No _evolution_ into Catholicism will + have that moral effect. Christianity is the religion of repentance; + it stands against modern fatalism and pessimistic futurism mainly in + saying that a man can go back. If we do decidedly go back it will + show that religion is alive. For the rest, I do not say much about + the details of continuity and succession, because the truth is they + did not much affect me. What I see is that we cannot complain of + England suffering from being Protestant and at the same time claim + that she has always been Catholic. That there has always been a High + Church Party is true; that there has always been an Anglo-Catholic + Party may be true, but I am not so sure of it. But there is one + matter arising from that which I do think important. Even the High + Church Party, even the Anglo-Catholic Party only confronts a + particular heresy called Protestantism upon particular points. It + defends ritual rightly or even sacramentalism rightly, because these + are the things the Puritans attacked. If it is not the heresy of an + age, at least it is only the anti-heresy of an age. But since I have + been a Catholic, I have become conscious of being in a much vaster + arsenal, full of arms against countless other potential enemies. The + Church, as the Church and not merely as ordinary opinion, has + something to say to philosophies which the merely High Church has + never had occasion to think about. If the next movement is the very + reverse of Protestantism, the Church will have something to say about + it; or rather has already something to say about it. You might unite + all High Churchmen on the High Church quarrel, but what authority is + to unite them when the devil declares his next war on the world? + + Another quality that impresses me is the power of being decisive + first and being proved right afterwards. This is exactly the quality + a supernatural power would have; and I know nothing else in modern + religion that has it. For instance, there was a time when I should + have thought psychical enquiry the most reasonable thing in the + world, and rather favourable to religion. I was afterwards convinced, + by experience and not merely faith, that spiritualism is a practical + poison. Don't people see that _when_ that is found in experience, a + prodigious prestige accrues to the authority which, long before the + experiment, did not pretend to enquire but simply said, "Drop it." + We feel that the authority did not discover; it knew. There are a + hundred other things of which that story is true, in my own + experience. But the High Churchman has a perfect right to be a + spiritualistic enquirer; only he has not a right to claim that his + authority knew beforehand the truth about spiritualistic enquiry. + + Of course there are a hundred things more to say; indeed the + greatest argument for Catholicism is exactly what makes it so hard to + argue for it. It is the scale and multiplicity of the forms of truth + and help that it has to offer. And perhaps, after all, the only thing + that you and I can really say with profit is exactly what you + yourself suggested; that we are men who have talked to a good many + men about a good many things, and seen something of the world and the + philosophies of the world and that we have not the shadow of a doubt + about what was the wisest act of our lives. + +This letter, as we have seen, was written afterwards. Meanwhile the +story of the last slow but by no means uncertain steps is best told +in a series of undated letters to Father Ronald Knox: + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + It is hard not to have a silly feeling that demons, in the form of + circumstances, get in the way of what concerns one most, and I have + been distracted with details for which I have to be responsible, in + connection with the _New Witness_, which is in a crisis about which + shareholders etc. have to be consulted. I can't let my brother's + paper, that stands for all he believed in, go without doing all I + can; and I am trying to get it started again, with Belloc to run it + if possible. But the matter of our meeting has got into every chink + of my thoughts, even the pauses of talk on practical things. I could + not explain myself at that meeting; and I want to try again now. + + I could not explain what I mean about my wife without saying much + more. I see in principle it is not on the same level as the true + Church; for nothing can be on the same level as God. But it is on + quite a different level from social sentiments about friends and + family. I have been a rottenly irresponsible person till I began to + wear the iron ring of Catholic responsibilities. But I really have + felt a responsibility about her, more serious than affection, let + alone passion. First, because she gave me my first respect for + sacramental Christianity; second, because she is one of the good + who mysteriously suffer. . . . . + + I have, however, a more practical reason for returning to this + point. So far as my own feelings go, I think I might rightly make + application to be instructed as soon as possible; but I should not + like to take so serious a step without reopening the matter with her, + which I could do by the end of a week. I have had no opportunity + before, because she has only just recovered from an illness, and is + going away for a few days. But at about the end of next week, say, + everything ought to be ready. Meanwhile I will write to you again, as + I ought to have done before, but this tangle of business ties me up + terribly just now. Perhaps you could tell me how I could arrange + matters with some priest or religious in London, whose convenience it + would suit if I came up once or twice a week, or whatever is + required; or give me the address of someone to write to, if that is + the correct way. There are priests at High Wycombe which is nearer; + but I imagine they are very busy parochial clergy. + + I had meant to write to you about the convictions involved in a + more abstract way, but I fear I have filled my letter with one + personal point. But, as I say, I will write to you again about the + other matters; and as they are more intellectual and less emotional, + I hope I may be a little more coherent. + + Yours very sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. This has been delayed even longer than I thought, for business + bothers of my own and the paper's, plus finishing a book and all my + journalism, are bewildering me terribly. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + Please excuse this journalistic paper, but the letter-block seems + undiscoverable at this time of night. I ought to have written before; + but we have been in some family trouble; my father is very ill, and + as he is an old man, my feelings are with him and my mother in a way + more serious than anything except the matter of our correspondence. + Essentially, of course, it does not so much turn the current of my + thoughts as deepen it; to see a man so many million times better than + I am, in every way, and one to whom I owe everything, under such a + shadow makes me feel, on top of all my particular feelings, the + shadow that lies on us all. I can't tell you what I feel of course; + but I hope I may ask for your prayers for my people and for me. My + father is the very best man I ever knew of that generation that never + understood the new need of a spiritual authority; and lives almost + perfectly by the sort of religion men had when rationalism was + rational. I think he was always subconsciously prepared for the next + generation having less theology than he has; and is rather puzzled at + its having more. But I think he understood my brother's conversion + better than my mother did; she is more difficult, and of course I + cannot bother her just now. However, my trouble has a practical side, + for which I originally mentioned it. As this may bring me to London + more than I thought, it seems possible I might go there after all, + instead of Wycombe, if I knew to whom to go. Also I find I stupidly + destroyed your letter with the names of the priests at Wycombe to + whom you referred me. Would it bother you very much to send me the + names again, and any alternative London ones that occur to you; and I + will let you know my course of action then. Please forgive the + disorder of my writing--and feeling. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + I was just settling down three days ago to write a full reply to + your last very kind letter, which I should have answered long before, + when I received the wire that called me instantly to town. My father + died on Monday; and since then I have been doing the little I can for + my mother; but even that little involves a great deal of + business--the least valuable sort of help. I will not attempt to tell + you now all that this involves in connection with my deeper feelings + and intentions; for I only send you this interim scribble as an + excuse for delaying the letter I had already begun; and which nothing + less than this catastrophe would have prevented me finishing. I hope + to finish it in a few days. I am not sure whether I shall then be + back in Beaconsfield; but if so it will be at a new address: + + Top Meadow + Beaconsfield. + + Yours in haste, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + I feel horribly guilty in not having written before, and I do most + earnestly hope you have not allowed my delay to interfere with any of + your own arrangements. I have had a serious and very moving talk with + my wife; and she is only too delighted at the idea of your visit in + itself; in fact she really wants to know you very much. + Unfortunately, it does not seem very workable at the time to which I + suppose you referred. I imagine it more or less corresponds to next + week; and we have only one spare bedroom yet, which is occupied by a + nurse who is giving my wife a treatment that seems to be doing her + good and which I don't want to stop if I can help it. I am sure you + will believe that my regret about this difficulty is really not the + conventional apology; though heaven knows all sorts of apologies are + due to you. Touching the other idea of Lady Lovat's most generous + invitation I am not so sure, as that again depends at the moment on + the treatment; but of course I shall let Lady Lovat know very soon in + any case; and make other arrangements, as you suggested. In our + conversation my wife was all that I hope you will some day know her + to be; she is incapable of wanting me to do anything but what I think + right; and admits the same possibility for herself: but it is much + more of a wrench for her, for she has been able to practise her + religion in complete good faith; which my own doubts have prevented + me from doing. + + I will write again very soon. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + P.S. I am ashamed to say this has been finished fully forty-eight + hours after I meant it to go, owing to executor business. Nobody so + unbusinesslike as I am ought to be busy. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + This is only a wild and hasty line to show I have not forgotten, + and to ask you if it would be too late if I let you know in a day or + two, touching your generous suggestion about your vacation. I shall + know for certain, I think, at latest by the end of the week; but just + at the moment it depends on things still uncertain, about a nurse who + is staying here giving my wife a treatment of radiant heat--one would + hardly think needed in this weather; but it seems to be doing her + good, I am thankful to say. If this is pushing your great patience + too far, please do not hesitate to make other arrangements if you + wish to; and I shall no doubt be able to do the same. But I should + love to accept your suggestion if possible. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + Just as I am emerging from the hurricane of business I mentioned to + you, I find myself under a promise a year old to go and lecture for a + week in Holland; and I write this almost stepping on to the boat. I + don't in the least want to go; but I suppose the great question is + there as elsewhere. Indeed, I hear it is something of a reconquered + territory; some say a third of this heroic Calvinist state is now + Catholic. I have no time to write properly; but the truth is that + even before so small a journey I have a queer and perhaps + superstitious feeling that I should like to repeat to you my + intention of following the example of the worthy Calvinists, please + God; so that you could even cite it if there were ever need in a good + cause. I will write to you again and more fully about the business of + instruction when I return, which should be in about ten days. + + Yours always sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + DEAR FATHER KNOX, + + I ought to have written long ago to tell you what I have done about + the most practical of business matters. I have again been torn in + pieces by the wars of the _New Witness_; but I have managed to have + another talk with my wife, after which I have written to our old + friend Father O'Connor and asked him to come here, as he probably + can, from what I hear. I doubt whether I can possibly put in words + why I feel sure this is the right thing, not so much for my sake as + for hers. We talk about misunderstandings; but I think it is possible + to understand too well for comfort; certainly too well for my powers + of psychological description. Frances is just at the point where Rome + acts both as the positive and the negative magnet; a touch would turn + her either way; almost (against her will) to hatred, but with the + right touch to a faith far beyond my reach. I know Father O'Connor's + would be the touch that does not startle, because she knows him and + is fond of him; and the only thing she asked of me was to send for + him. If he cannot come, of course I shall take other action and let + you know. I doubt if most people could make head or tail of this + hasty scrawl: but I think you will understand. + + Yours sincerely, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +Father Knox wrote on July 17, 1922, "I'm awfully glad to hear that +you've sent for Father O'Connor and that you think he's likely to be +available. I must say that, in the story, Father Brown's powers of +neglecting his parish always seemed to me even more admirable than +Dr. Watson's powers of neglecting his practice; so I hope this trait +was drawn from the life." + +Father O'Connor has described the two days before the reception: "On +Thursday morning, on one of our trips to the village, I told Mrs. +Chesterton: 'There is only one thing troubling Gilbert about the +great step--the effect it is going to have on you.' 'Oh! I shall be +infinitely relieved. You cannot imagine how it fidgets Gilbert to +have anything on his mind. The last three months have been +exceptionally trying. I should be only too glad to come with him, if +God in His mercy would show the way clear, but up to now He has not +made it clear enough to me to justify such a step.' So I was able to +reassure Gilbert that afternoon. We discussed at large such special +points as he wished, and then I told him to read through the Penny +Catechism to make sure there were no snags to a prosperous passage. +It was a sight for men and angels all the Friday to see him wandering +in and out of the house with his fingers in the leaves of the little +book, resting it on his forearm whilst he pondered with his head on +one side." + +The ceremony took place in a kind of shed with corrugated iron roof +and wooden walls--a part of the Railway Hotel, for at this time +Beaconsfield had no Catholic Church. Father Ignatius Rice, O.S.B., +another old and dear friend, came over from the Abbey at Douai, to +join Father O'Connor at breakfast at the Inn and they afterwards +walked up together to Top Meadow. What follows is from notes made by +my husband of a conversation with Father Rice. They found Gilbert in +an armchair reading the catechism "pulling faces and making noises as +he used to do when reading." + + He got up and stuffed the catechism in his pocket. At lunch he + drank water and poured wine for everyone else. About three they set + out for the Church. Suddenly Father O'Connor asked G.K. if he had + brought the Ritual. G.K. plunged his hand in his pocket, pulled out a + threepenny shocker with complete absence of embarrassment, and went + on searching till at last he found the prayer book. + + While G.K. was making his confession to Father O'Connor, Frances + and Father Rice went out of the chapel and sat on the yokels' bench + in the bar of the inn. She was weeping. + + After the baptism the two priests came out and left Gilbert and + Frances inside. Father Rice went back for something he had forgotten + and he saw them coming down the aisle. She was still weeping, and + Gilbert had his arm round her comforting her. . . . + + He wrote the sonnet on his conversion that day. He was in brilliant + form for the rest of the day, quoting poetry and jesting in the + highest spirits. . . . + + He joined the Church "to restore his innocence." Sin was almost the + greatest reality to him. He became a Catholic because of the Church's + practical power of dealing with sin. + +Immediately, he wrote to his mother and to Maurice Baring, who had +anxiously feared he had perhaps offended Gilbert, so long was it +since he had heard from him. + + MY DEAREST MOTHER, + + I write this (with the worst pen in South Bucks) to tell you + something before I write about it to anyone else; something about + which we shall probably be in the position of the two bosom friends + at Oxford, who "never differed except in opinion." You have always + been so wise in not judging people by their opinions, but rather the + opinions by the people. It is in one sense a long story by this time; + but I have come to the same conclusion that Cecil did about needs of + the modern world in religion and right dealing, and I am now a + Catholic in the same sense as he, having long claimed the name in its + Anglo-Catholic sense. I am not going to make a foolish fuss of + reassuring you about things I am sure you never doubted; these things + do not hurt any relations between people as fond of each other as we + are; any more than they ever made any difference to the love between + Cecil and ourselves. But there are two things I should like to tell + you, in case you do not realise them through some other impression. I + have thought about you, and all that I owe to you and my father, not + only in the way of affection, but of the ideals of honour and freedom + and charity and all other good things you always taught me: and I am + not conscious of the smallest break or difference in those ideals; + but only of a new and necessary way of fighting for them. I think, as + Cecil did, that the fight for the family and the free citizen and + everything decent must now be waged by [the] one fighting form of + Christianity. The other is that I have thought this out for myself + and not in a hurry of feeling. It is months since I saw my Catholic + friends and years since I talked to them about it. I believe it is + the truth. I must end now, you know with how much love; for the post + is going. + + Always your loving son, + + GILBERT. + + DEAR MAURICE, + + My abominable delay deserves every penalty conceivable, hanging, + burning and boiling in oil; but really not so inconceivable an idea + as that I should be offended with you at any time (let alone after + all you have done in this matter) however thoroughly you might be + justified in being offended with me. Really and truly my delay, + indefensible as it is, was due to a desire and hope of writing you a + letter quite different from all those I have had to write to other + people; a very long and intimate letter, trying to tell you all about + this wonderful business, in which you have helped me so much more + than anyone else. The only other person I meant to write to in the + same style is Father Knox; and his has been delayed in the same + topsy-turvy way. I am drowning in whirlpools of work and worry over + the _New Witness_ which nearly went bankrupt for good this week. But + worry does not worry so much as it did before . . . Unless it is + adding insult to injury, I shall send the long letter after all. This + I send off instantly on receipt of yours. Please forgive me; you see + I humiliate myself by using your stamped envelope. + + Yours always, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +This sense that the Church was needed to fight for the world was +very strong in Gilbert when he hailed it to his mother as the "one +fighting form of Christianity." In the _New Witness_ he answered near +this time a newspaper suggestion that the Church ought to "move with +the times." + + The Cities of the Plain might have remarked that the heavens above + them did not altogether fit in with their own high civilisation and + social habits. They would be right. Oddly enough, however, when + symmetry was eventually restored, it was not the heavens that had + been obliged to adapt themselves. . . . + + The Church cannot move with the times; simply because the times are + not moving. The Church can only stick in the mud with the times, and + rot and stink with the times. In the economic and social world, as + such, there is no activity except that sort of automatic activity + that is called decay; the withering of the high Powers of freedom and + their decomposition into the aboriginal soil of slavery. In that way + the world stands much at the same stage as it did at the beginning of + the Dark Ages. And the Church has the same task as it had at the + beginning of the Dark Ages; to save all the light and liberty that + can be saved, to resist the downward drag of the world, and to wait + for better days. So much a real Church would certainly do; but a real + Church might be able to do more. It might make its Dark Ages + something more than a seed-time; it might make them the very reverse + of dark. It might present its more human ideal in such abrupt and + attractive a contrast to the inhuman trend of the time, as to inspire + men suddenly for one of the moral revolutions of history; so that men + now living shall not taste of death until they have seen justice + return. + + We do not want, as the newspapers say, a Church that will move with + the world. We want a Church that will move the world. We want one + that will move it away from many of the things towards which it is + now moving; for instance, the Servile State. It is by that test that + history will really judge, of any Church, whether it is the real + Church or no. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +Completion + + +THERE IS ONE part of this story that has not been told with the rest: +Our Lady's share in Gilbert's conversion. The Chesterton family had +been quite without the strange Protestant prejudice that in the minds +of many Englishmen sets the Mother of God against God the Son. Our +lady was respected though of course not invoked. In a boyhood poem +Gilbert took the blasphemous lines of Swinburne's "Hymn to +Proserpine" and wrote a kind of parody in reverse turning the poem +into a hymn to Mary. He would, too, recite Swinburne's own lines +"deliberately directing them away from Swinburne's intention and +supposing them addressed to the new Christian Queen of life, rather +than to the fallen Pagan queen of death." + + But I turn to her still; having seen she shall surely abide + in the end + Goddess and maiden and queen be near me now and befriend. + +Nor was it only admiration for art that made him write--also in early +youth: + + THE NATIVITY OF BOTTICELLI + + Do you blame me that I sit hours before this picture? + But if I walked all over the world in this time + I should hardly see anything worth seeing that is not + in this picture. + +Father O'Connor sees in _The Catholic Church and Conversion_ a hint +that Mr. Belloc had been of those who tried to hustle Gilbert in his +younger days. But on this profound reality of Mary's help they could +meet many years before Gilbert had finished the slow rumination of +mind and the painful effort of will that had held him so long. Here +is an early letter Belloc wrote to his friend: + + Reform Club, Manchester. + 11 Dec. 1907. + + MY DEAR GILBERT, + + I am a man afraid of impulse in boats, horses and all action though + driven to it. I have never written a letter such as I am writing now, + though I have desired to write some six or seven since I became a + grown man. In the matter we discussed at Oxford I have a word to say + which is easier to say on paper than by word of mouth, or rather, + more valuable. All intellectual process is doubtful, all + inconclusive, save pure deduction, which is a game if one's first + certitudes are hypothetical and immensely valuable if one's first + certitude is fixed, yet remains wholly dependent on that. + + Now if we differed in all main points I would not write thus, but + there are one or two on which we agree. One is "Vere passus, + immolatus in cruce pro homine." Another is in a looking up to our + Dear Lady, the blessed Mother of God. + + I recommend to you this, that you suggest to her a comprehension for + yourself, of what indeed is the permanent home of the soul. If it is + here you will see it, if it is there you will see it. She never fails + us. She has never failed me in any demand. + + I have never written thus--as I say--and I beg you to see nothing + in it but what I say. There is no connection the reason can + seize--but so it is. If you say "I want this" as in your case to know + one way or the other--she will give it you: as she will give health + or necessary money or success in a pure love. She is our Blessed + Mother. + + I have not used my judgment in this letter. I am inclined to + destroy it, but I shall send it. Don't answer it. + + Yours ever + + H. BELLOC. + + At top of letter: "My point is If it is right She knows. If it is + not right She knows." + +Gilbert believed it, and he knew that as he came to the Church he was +coming to Our Lady. + + Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our lady did + not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the + thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, + and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the + world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the + condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or + was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or + was a challenge to myself--I never doubted that this figure was the + figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being + still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The + instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I + tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her! When I + finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest + of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy + little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the + thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.* + +[* _The Well and the Shallows_, pp. 176-7.] + +In his _Chaucer_, G.K. quoted with considerable amusement a learned +critic who said it was "possible" that the poet had "passed through a +period of intense devotion, more especially towards the Virgin Mary." +"It is," he comments. "It does occur from time to time. I do not +quite understand why Chaucer must have 'passed through' this fit of +devotion; as if he had Mariolatry like the measles. Even an amateur +who has encountered this malady may be allowed to testify that it +does not usually visit its victim for a brief 'period'; it is +generally chronic and (in some sad cases I have known) quite +incurable."* + +[* _Chaucer_, p. 121.] + +_The Queen of Seven Swords_ is the great expression of Gilbert's +"chronic" love of Our Lady: + + And men looked up at the woman made for the morning + When the stars were young, + For whom more rude than a beggar's rhyme in the gutter + These songs were sung. + +"The Return of Eve" exemplified a favourite thought of his: when the +journalist keeps repeating that the life of religion does not lie in +dusty dogmas we should stop him with a great shout, for he is wrong +at the very start. It is from the seed of dogma and from that seed +alone that all the Powers of art and poetry and devotion spring. In +the days of his boyhood, when he thought of Our lady with a vague +and confused respect as _"The_ Madonna" he could not have written +"The Return of Eve." That flower came from the seed of the doctrine of +the Immaculate Conception. + +Our lady is the Mother of God and our Mother: this doctrine blossomed +as he wrote: + + I found One hidden in every home + A voice that sings about the house. + A nurse that scares the nightmares off + A mother nearer than a spouse + + Whose picture once I saw; and there + Wild as of old and weird and sweet + In sevenfold splendour blazed the moon + Not on her brow; beneath her feet. + +This poem, "The White Witch" has in it a mingling of the old +classical stories of his boyhood and the new light of Christian +reality. In _The Everlasting Man_ he saw the myths as hunger and the +Faith as bread. Men's hearts today were withered because they had +forgotten to eat their bread. The hunger of the pagans was a +healthier thing than the jaded sterility of the modern world. Our +Lady was ready to give that world the Bread of Life once more. And as +he meditated on the mystery of the Virgin Birth he saw God making +purity creative. She alone who overcame all heresies could overcome +the hideous heresy of birth prevention. + + That Christ from this creative purity + Came forth your sterile appetites to scorn. + So: in her house Life without Lust was born, + So in your house Lust without Life shall die. + +"Gaude, Virgo Maria, cunctas haereses sola interemisti." Was this +phrase from Our Lady's office ringing in Gilbert's mind as he sang of +the Seven Champions of Christendom disarmed and worsted in the fight, +going back to Our Lady to find that she had hidden their swords where +the gospels tell us she hid and pondered all things--in her heart? +From her wounded heart, Mary takes the seven swords to rearm the +saints who have to reconquer the earth. + +Certainly he must often have thought of the Litany. So many verses +are based on it. Our Lord as a baby climbs the Ivory Tower of His +Mother's body and kisses the Mystic Rose of her lips: + + A woman was His walking home + Foederis Arca Ora pro nobis. + +And he thinks of the sun, moon and stars as trinkets for her to play +with: + + With the great heart a woman has + And the love of little things. + +For she is a woman: Regina Angelorum, Queen of Powers and Archangels, +she yet belongs to the human race. + + Our lady went into a strange country, + Our lady, for she was ours + And had run on the little hills behind the houses + And pulled small flowers; + But she rose up and went into a strange country + With strange thrones and powers. + +From a welter of comment and correspondence that followed his +conversion--challenging, scorning, rejoicing, welcoming, I select two +letters from the two closest of Gilbert's Catholic friends--Hilaire +Belloc and Maurice Baring. + + i.VIII.22. + + MY DEAR GILBERT, + + I write to you, from these strange surroundings, the first line + upon the news you gave me. I must write to you again when I have + collected myself: for my reactions are abominably slow. I have, + however, something to say immediately: and that is why I write this + very evening, just after seeing Eleanor off at the Station. The thing + I have to say is this (I could not have said it before your step: I + can say so now. Before it would have been like a selected pleading.) + The Catholic Church is the exponent of Reality. It is true. Its + doctrines in matters large and small are statements of what is. This + it is which the ultimate act of the intelligence accepts. This it is + which the will deliberately confirms. And that is why Faith though an + act of the Will is Moral. If the Ordnance Map tells us that it is 11 + miles to [a place] then, my mood of lassitude as I walk through the + rain at night making it feel like 30, I use the Will and say "No." My + intelligence has been convinced and I compel myself to use it against + my mood. It is 11 and though I feel in the depths of my being to have + gone 30 miles and more, I _know_ it is not yet 11 I have gone. + + I am by all my nature of mind sceptical. . . . And as to the doubt + of the soul I discover it to be false: a mood: not a conclusion. My + conclusion--and that of all men who have ever once seen it--is the + Faith; Corporate, organised, a personality, teaching. A thing, not a + theory. It. + + To you, who have the blessing of profound religious emotion, this + statement may seem too desiccate. It is indeed not enthusiastic. It + lacks meat. + + It is my misfortune. In youth I had it: even till lately. Grief has + drawn the juices from it. I am alone and unfed, the more do I affirm + the Sanctity, the Unity, the Infallibility of the Catholic Church. By + my very isolation do I the more affirm it, as a man in a desert knows + that water is right for man: or as a wounded dog not able to walk, + yet knows the way home. + + The Catholic Church is the natural home of the human spirit. The + odd perspective picture of life which looks like a meaningless puzzle + at first, seen from that one standpoint takes a complete order and + meaning, like the skull in the picture of the Ambassadors. + + So much for my jejune contribution: not without value; because I + know you regard my intelligence--a perilous tool God gave me for his + own purposes; one bringing nothing to me. + + But beyond this there will come in time, if I save my soul, the + flesh of these bones--which bones alone I can describe and teach. I + know--without feeling (an odd thing in such a connection) the reality + of Beatitude: which is the goal of Catholic Living. + + In hac urbe lux solennis + Ver aeternum pax perennis + Et aeterna gaudia. + + Yours, + + H. B. + +Maurice Baring wrote: + + August 25: 1922. + + MY DEAR GILBERT, + + When I wrote to you the other day I was still cramped by the + possibility of the news not being true although I _knew_ it was true. + I felt it was true at once. Curiously enough I felt it had happened + before I saw the news in the newspaper at all. I felt that your ship + had arrived at its port. But the more I felt this, the more unwilling + I was to say anything before I heard the news from a source other + than the newspapers. I gave way to an excess, a foolish excess + perhaps of scruple. But you will, I think, understand this. In + writing to you the other day I expressed not a tenth part of what I + felt and feel and that baldly and inadequately. Nothing for years has + given me so much joy. I have hardly ever entered a church without + putting up a candle to Our Lady or to St. Joseph or St. Anthony for + you. And both this year and last year in Lent I made a Novena for + you. I know of many other people, better people far than I, who did + the same. Many Masses were said for you and prayers all over England + and Scotland in centres of Holiness. I will show you some day a + letter from some Nuns on the subject. A great friend of mine one of + the greatest saints I have known, Sister Mary Annunciation of the + Convent Orphanage, Upper Norwood, used always to pray for you. She, + alas, died last year. + + Did I ever quote you a sentence of Bernard Holland on the subject + of Kenelm Henry Digby when the latter was received? + + "Father Scott . . . who, at last, guided him through the narrow + door where one must bend one's head, into the internal space and + freedom of the eternal and universal Catholic Church." _Space_ and + _freedom:_ that was what I experienced on being received; that is + what I have been most conscious of ever since. It is the exact + opposite of what the ordinary Protestant conceives to be the case. To + him and not only to him but to the ordinary English agnostic the + convert to Catholicism is abandoning his will and his independence, + sometimes they think even his nationality; at the best they think he + is sheltering himself in a walled garden; at the worst they think he + has closed on himself an iron door: and shackled himself with foolish + chains and sold his birthright for a crown of tinsel. + + And yet their own experience, the testimony of their eyes if they + would only use them, ought to suggest to them that they might perhaps + be mistaken. + + It would be difficult for anyone to make out a case for the + UnEnglishness of Manning or indeed of any prominent English Catholic + whether a born Catholic or a convert. + + It would be difficult for them to prove that Belloc was a writer + wanting in independence. It would be difficult for them to convince + any one that Father Vaughan and Lord Fitzalan were wearing foolscaps. + + And anybody who has thought about history or looked on at politics + must have reflected that freedom resides where there is order and not + where there is license: or no-order. + + It is true in politics; it is true in art. It is the basis of our + whole social life in England. Russia has just given us the most + startling of object lessons. The English with their passion for + Committees, their Club-rules and their well organised traffic are + daily realising the fact, however little they may recognise the + theory. Only the law can give us freedom, said Goethe talking of art. + "Und das Gesetz kann nur die Freiheit geben." + + Well all I have to say, Gilbert, is what I think I have already + said to you, and what I have said not long ago in a printed book. + That I was received into the Church on the Eve of Candlemass 1909, + and it is perhaps the only act in my life, which I am quite certain I + have never regretted. Every day I live, the Church seems to me more + and more wonderful; the Sacraments more and more solemn and + sustaining; the voice of the Church, her liturgy, her rules, her + discipline, her ritual, her decisions in matters of Faith and Morals + more and more excellent and profoundly wise and true and right, and + her children stamped with something that those outside Her are + without. There I have found Truth and reality and everything outside + Her is to me compared with Her as dust and shadow. Once more God + bless you and Frances. Please give her my love. In my prayers for you + I have always added her name. + + Yours, + + MAURICE. + +It was a bit of great good fortune, although at the time he did not +feel it so, that the death of the _New Witness_ in 1922 for lack of +funds, left Gilbert some months for uninterrupted creative thought +before _G.K.'s Weekly_ took its place. Lawrence Solomon, friend of +his boyhood and at this time a near neighbour, has told me not only +how happy his conversion had made Gilbert but also how it had seemed +to bring him increased strength of character. Worry, he had told +Maurice Baring, did not worry so much as of old because of a +fundamental peace. In this atmosphere were written two of his most +important books: _St. Francis of Assisi_ published 1923, _The +Everlasting Man_ published 1925. + +In a poem he has expressed his sense of conversion as a new light +that had transfigured life: indeed of a new life given to him: + + After one moment when I bowed my head + And the whole world turned over and came upright, + And I came out where the old road shone white, + I walked the ways and heard what all men said. + + * * * * * + + They rattle reason out through many a sieve + That stores the sand and lets the gold go free: + And all these things are less than dust to me + Because my name is Lazarus and I live.* + +[* _Collected Poems_, p. 387, "The Convert."] + +Both books shine with that light on the white road of man's +endeavour, thrill with that life. Gilbert felt now the clue to +history in his fingers and he used it increasingly. _The Everlasting +Man_ is the _Orthodoxy_ of his later life and one difficulty in +dealing with it adequately was expressed in a letter from William +Lyon Phelps thanking the author for "a magnificent work of genius and +never more needed than now. I took out my pencil to mark the most +important passages, but I quickly put my pencil in my pocket for I +found I had to mark every sentence." Reading the book for perhaps the +seventh time I can only say (I hope without irreverence) what G.K. +himself says happens to those who can read the words of the Gospels +"simply enough." They "will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon +them. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words +about such words as these." + +"Rocks rolled upon them." Did he not feel crushed, overwhelmed at +times by his own thought on these immensities, or can the philosopher +carry his thoughts as lightly as Gilbert so often seemed to carry +his? I think not always. He must have needed superhuman strength to +conceive and give birth to this mighty book. The thoughts sketched in +_The New Jerusalem_ had grown to their full fruition in an atmosphere +of meditation. It would be much easier to give an outline of _The +Everlasting Man_ than of _Orthodoxy_, much harder to give an idea of +it. For _Orthodoxy_ consists of a hundred brilliant arguments while +_The Everlasting Man_ really is a vision of history supported by a +historical outline. Comparing his own effort with that of H. G. +Wells, Chesterton says, "I do not believe that the best way to +produce an outline of history is to rub out the lines." He is like +Wells however in not being a specialist but claiming "the right of +the amateur to do his best with the facts the specialists +provide"--only their specialists are different specialists and their +facts therefore largely different facts. + +Chesterton, unlike most converts, wrote concerning his own conversion +the least interesting of his later books: but in _The Everlasting Man_ +he is not at all concerned with his own spiritual wayfaring, he +merely wants to make everyone else look at what he has come to see at +the end of the way. The book is an attempt to get outside Man and +thus see him as the strange being he really is: to get outside +Christianity and see for the first time its uniqueness among the +religions of the world. Why are not all men aware of the uniqueness +of Man among the animals and the uniqueness of the Church among +religions? Because they do not really look at either. Familiarity has +dulled the edge of awareness. Men must be made to see them as though +for the first time; and it is the towering achievement of this book +that reading it we do so see them. "I desire to help the reader to +see Christendom from the outside in the sense of seeing it as a whole +against the background of other historic things; just as I desire him +to see humanity as a whole against the background of natural things. +And I say that in both cases when seen thus, they stand out from +their background like supernatural things." This being his desire, he +divides the book into two parts--"the first being the main adventure +of the human race in so far as it remained heathen; and the second a +summary of the real difference that was made by it becoming +Christian." + +Notable as the first part is, it is only a preparation for the +second, which shows the Church not as one religion among many but as +the only religion, for it is the only Thing that binds into one both +Philosophy (or Thought) and Mythology (or Poetry), giving us a Logos +Who is also the Hero of the strangest story in the world. He asks the +man who talks of reading the Gospels really to read them as he might +read his daily paper and to feel the terrific shock of the words of +Christ to the Pharisees or the behaviour of Christ to the +money-changers: to look at the uniqueness of the Church that has died +so often but like Her Founder risen again from the dead. + +Two untrue things, he felt, were constantly reiterated about the +gospel--one that the Church had overlaid and made difficult a plain +and simple story: the other that the hero of this story was merely +human and taught a morality suitable to his own age, inapplicable in +our more complicated society. To anyone who really read the gospels +the instant impression would be rather that they were full of dark +riddles which only historic Christianity has clarified. The Eunuchs +of the heavenly Kingdom would be an idea dark and terrible but for +the historic beauty of Catholic virginity. The ideal of man and woman +"in one flesh" inseparable and sanctified by a sacrament became clear +in the lives of the great married saints of Christendom. The apparent +idealisation of idleness above service in the story of Mary and +Martha was lit up by the sight of Catherine and Clare and Teresa +shining above the little home at Bethany. The meek inheriting the +earth became the basis of a new Social Order when the mystical monks +reclaimed the lands that the practical kings had lost. + +Thus if the gospel was a riddle the Church was the answer to the +riddle because both were created by One Who Knew: Who saw the ages in +which His own creation was to find completion: Whose morality was not +one of another age but of another world. + +Chesterton gathered history in his mind and saw together before the +Christmas Crib the shepherds who had found their shepherd, the +philosopher kings who "would stand for the same human ideal if their +names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were +those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their +thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had +their reward. But even in order to understand that reward, we must +understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was +the completion of the incomplete."* + +[* _The Everlasting Man_, p. 211.] + +G.K. too had needed the completion of incomplete human thought: he +too had followed the star from a far country. It had been a fancy of +his boyhood, caught from a fairytale, that evil lurked somewhere in a +hidden room of the human house and the human heart. He saw in the +history of the ancients a consciousness of the Fall, in the sadness +of their songs a sense of "the Presence of the Absence of God." But +at Bethlehem he saw the transformation that had come upon the whole +race of man with that little local infancy concealing the mighty +power of God who had put Himself under the feet of the world. + + It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart + of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from + within. It is as if he found something at the back of his own heart + that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would + call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose + strength is in that winged levity with which they brush us and pass. + It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness, that is there made + eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in + some strange fashion become a strengthening and a repose; it is the + broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended + unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the + mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only + the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more + human than humanity. + +[* Ibid., p. 223.] + +It seems to me profoundly significant that Gilbert studied first in +the little Poor Man of Assisi what Christ could do in one man before +he came on to the study of what He had done in mankind as a whole, of +Who He was who had done it. For the man thus chosen embodied the +ideals that Gilbert had seen dimly in his boyhood--ideals that most +of us accept a little reluctantly from the Church, but which had +actually attracted him towards the Church. St. Francis "had found the +secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure". . . +"he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom +everybody disliked him for liking." "By nature he was the sort of man +who has that vanity which is the opposite of pride, that vanity which +is very near to humility. He never despised his fellow creatures and +therefore he never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures, +including the admiration of his fellow creatures." "He was above all +things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of +giving which is called thanksgiving. If another great man wrote a +grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of +acceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very +depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss." + +Here, in St. Francis, Gilbert saw the apotheosis of his old boyish +thought--that thanksgiving is a duty and a joy, that we should love +not "humanity" but each human. Things shadowed in the Notebook are in +_St. Francis_, for + + the transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of + revolution; by which one for whom all things illustrate and + illuminate God becomes one for whom God illustrates and illuminates + all things. It is rather like the reversal whereby a lover might say + at first sight that a lady looked like a flower, and say afterwards + that all flowers reminded him of his lady. A saint and a poet + standing by the same flower might seem to say the same thing; but + indeed though they would both be telling the truth, they would be + telling different truths. For one the joy of life is a cause of + faith, for the other rather a result of faith.* + +[* _St. Francis of Assisi_, p. 111.] + +_The Everlasting Man_ and the _St. Francis_ seem to me the highest +expression of Gilbert's mysticism. I have hesitated to use the word +for it is not one to be used lightly but I can find no other. Like +most Catholics I have been wont to believe that to be a mystic a man +must first be an ascetic and Gilbert was not an ascetic in the +ordinary sense. But is there not for the thinker an asceticism of the +mind, very searching, very purifying? In his youth he had told +Bentley that creative writing was the hardest of hard labour. That +sense of the pressure of thought that made Newman call creative +writing "getting rid of pain by pain"; the profound depression that +often follows; the exhaustion that seems like a bottomless pit. St. +Theresa said the hardest penance was easier than mental prayer: was +not much of Gilbert's thought a contemplation? + +Faith, thanksgiving, love, surely these far above bodily asceticism +can so clear a man's eyesight that he may fittingly be called a +mystic since he sees God everywhere. "The less a man thinks of +himself, the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of +God." Only a poet who was more than a poet could see so clearly of +what like St. Francis was. + + When we say that a poet praises the whole creation, we commonly + mean only that he praises the whole cosmos. But this sort of poet + does really praise creation, in the sense of the act of creation. He + praises the passage or transition from nonentity to entity; there + falls here also the shadow of that archetypal image of the bridge, + which has given to the priest his archaic and mysterious name. The + mystic who passes through the moment when there is nothing but God + does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings in which there + was really nothing else. He not only appreciates everything but the + nothing of which everything was made. In a fashion he endures and + answers even the earthquake irony of the Book of Job; in some sense + he is there when the foundations of the world are laid, with the + mornings stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy.* + +[* _St. Francis of Assisi_, pp. 112-13.] + +But there was in all those years another element besides the giving +of thanks and the joy of creation: an abiding grief for the sorrows +of the sons of men and especially those of his own land. In this mood +the _Cobbett_ was written. + +Nine years separate the publication of _William Cobbett_ from that of +the _History of England_. Written at the time when Englishmen were +fighting so magnificently, that book had radiated G.K.'s own mood of +hope, but to read _Rural Rides_, to meditate on Cobbett's England, +and then turn to the England of the hour was not cheerful. For +Cobbett "did not draw precise diagrams of things as they were. He +only had frantic and fantastic nightmares of things as they are."* +And these nightmares haunted Cobbett's biographer. + +[* _Cobbett_, p. 22.] + + What he saw was not an Eden that cannot exist, but rather an + Inferno that can exist, and even that does exist. What he saw was the + perishing of the whole English power of self-support, the growth of + cities that drain and dry up the countryside, the growth of dense + dependent populations incapable of finding their own food, the + toppling triumph of machines over men, the sprawling omnipotence of + financiers over patriots, the herding of humanity in nomadic masses + whose very homes are homeless, the terrible necessity of peace and + the terrible probability of war, all the loading up of our little + island like a sinking ship; the wealth that may mean famine and the + culture that may mean despair; the bread of Midas and the sword of + Damocles. In a word, he saw what we see, but he saw it when it was + not there. And some cannot see it--even when it is there.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 14, 15.] + +Two men had written of the Reformation as the ultimate origin of +these evils at a time when it was still the fashion to treat it as +the dawn of all good. Lingard, himself a Catholic, had written +cautiously, with careful documentation and moderate tone. Cobbett, a +Protestant, had written hastily and furiously, but both men had drawn +in essentials the same picture. Chesterton suspected that Cobbett was +treated with contempt, Lingard with respect, largely because of the +difference in the tone of the two men. Lingard spoke restrainedly but +Cobbett's voice was raised in a loud cry: + + He was simply a man who had discovered a crime: ancient like many + crimes; concealed like all crimes. He was as one who had found in a + dark wood the bones of his mother, and suddenly knew she had been + murdered. He knew now that England had been secretly slain. Some, he + would say, might think it a matter of mild regret to be expressed in + murmurs. But when he found a corpse he gave a shout; and if fools + laughed at anyone shouting, he would shout the more, till the world + should be shaken with that terrible cry in the night. + + It is that ringing and arresting cry of "Murder!" wrung from him as + he stumbled over those bones of the dead England, that distinguishes + him from all his contemporaries.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 176-77.] + +Yet, for the Christian, hope remains: no murder can be the end. +"Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God +who knew the way out of the grave." This quotation is from the +chapter called "Five Deaths of the Faith" in _The Everlasting Man_. +Several times in the book Chesterton puts aside tempting lines of +thought with the remark that he intends to develop them later--in one +of the unwritten books that he always felt were so much better than +those he actually wrote. Would any human life have been long enough +to develop them all? Anyhow, even the whole of this life was not +available. + +As I turn to the story of the weekly paper rising again from its +ashes I ask myself the question I have often asked: was it worth +while? I cannot answer the question. Something of his manhood seemed +to Gilbert bound up with this struggle, and it may be he would have +been a lesser man had he abandoned it. And yet at moments imagining +the poetry, the philosophy that might have been ours--another _White +Horse_, another _Everlasting Man_--I am tempted to wish that these +years had not thus been sacrificed to the paper which enshrined his +brother's memory. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +The Reluctant Editor (1925-1930) + + +_I tell you naught for your comfort +Yea naught for your desire +Save that the sky grows darker yet +And the sea rises higher. + +Ballad of the White Horse_ + +COULD GILBERT HAVE divided his life between literary work, his home +at Top Meadow, and those other elements called in the _Autobiography_ +"Friendship and Foolery," that life might well have been as he +himself called it "indefensibly fortunate and happy." But he could +not. Part of his philosophy of joy was that thanks must be given--for +sunsets, for dandelions, for beech trees, for home and friends. And +this thanks could only be the taking of his part in the fight. He +would never, he once said, have turned of his own accord to politics: +it is arguable that it would have been better if he never had. But +his brother had plunged into the fray with that very political paper +the _New Witness_ and his brother's death had left it in Gilbert's +hands. He felt the task to be a sacred legacy, and when the paper +died for lack of funds his one thought was how to start it again. + +For many months he kept the office in being and paid salaries to a +skeleton staff, consisting of Mr. Gander, the deaf old manager, Miss +Dunham (now Mrs. Phillips) and an office boy. Mr. Titterton would +stroll in and play cricket with the office boy with a paper ball and +a walking-stick. Endless discussions were held as to how to re-start +the paper and whether under the old name or a new one. Bernard Shaw +had his own view. He wrote: + + 11 Feb.: 1923 + + MY DEAR CHESTERTON + + Not presume to dictate (I have all Jingle's delicacy); but if + everybody else is advising you, why should not I? + + _T.P.'s Weekly_ always had a weakly sound. But it established + itself sufficiently to make that form of title the trade mark of a + certain sort of paper. Hence _Jack O'London's Weekly_. It also set + the trade sheep running that way. + + You have the precedents of Defoe and Cobbett for using your own + name; but _D.D.'s Weekly_ is unthinkable, and W.C.'s Weekly indecent. + Your initials are not euphonious: they recall that brainy song of my + boyhood, U-pi-dee. + + Jee Kay see, kay see, kay see, + Jee Kay see, Jee Kay see. + Jee Kay see, Kay see, Kay see, + Jee Kay see Kay see. + + Chesterton is a noble name; but Chesterton is Weakly spoils it. + Call it simply + + CHESTERTON'S + + That is how it will be asked for at the bookstalls. You may be + obliged to call later ventures _Chesterton's Daily_ or _Chesterton's + Annual_, but this one needs no impertinently superfluous definition: + _Chesterton's Perennial_ is amusing enough to be excusable; but a + joke repeated every week is no joke. A picture cover like that of + Punch might stand even that test if it were good enough; but where + are you to find your Doyle? + + Week is a detestable snivelling word: nothing can redeem it, not + even the sermon on the Mount. Seven Days is better, But reminds one + of the police court as well as of the creation. Every Seven Days + would sound well. But _Chesterton's_ leaves no room for anything + else. I am more than usually sure that I am right. + + Frances quite agrees with me. How would you like it if she were to + publish a magazine and call it Fanny's First Paper? + + Ever + + G.B.S. + +If Gilbert answered this letter his answer has disappeared. He seems +to have asked permission to publish it--probably with a view to +collecting further opinions. + + 10 Adelphi Terrace, London, W.C.2. + February 16th 1923. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + Of course you may publish any letter of mine that you care to, at + your discretion. + + . . . But not only will the publication of a letter from me not add + one to your circulation (nothing but a permanent feature will do + that), but it may lead you to disregard the advice I give to all the + people who start Labour papers (about two a week or so), which always + is, "Don't open with an article to say that your paper supplies a + want; don't blight your columns with 'messages'; don't bewilder your + readers with the family jokes of your clique; else there will be no + second number." Ponder this: it is sound. + + Your main difficulty is that the class whose champion you have made + yourself reads either Lloyd's or nothing. To the rural proprietor, + no longer a peasant, art, including _belles lettres_, is immorality, + and people who idealize peasants, unpractical fools. Also the Roman + Catholic Church, embarrassed by recruits of your type and born + scoffers like Belloc, who cling to the Church because its desecration + would take all the salt out of blasphemy, will quietly put you on the + unofficial index. The Irish will not support an English journal + because it occasionally waves a Green flag far better than they can + wave it themselves. And the number of Jews who will buy you just to + see what you say about them is not large enough to keep you going. + Thus there is absolutely no public for your policy; and though there + is a select one for yourself one and indivisible, it is largely + composed of people to whom your oddly assorted antipathies and + pseudo-racial feuds are uncongenial. Besides, on these fancies of + yours you have by this time said all you have to say so many thousand + times over, that your most faithful admirers finally (and always + suddenly) discover they are fed up with the _New Witness_ and cannot + go on with it. This last danger becomes greater as you become older, + because when we are young we can tell ourselves a new story every + night between our prayers and our sleep; but later on we find + ourselves repeating the same story with intensifications and + improvements night after night until we are tired of it; and in the + end (which you have not yet reached) a story revived from the old + repertory has to last for months, and is more and more shaky as a + protection against thinking of business, or lying there a prey to + unwelcome reminiscences. And what happens to the story of the + imaginative child happens also to the sermon or the feuilleton of the + adult. It is inevitably happening to you. + + That is the case against the success of CHESTERTON'S. + + Your only chance finally is either to broaden your basis, or to + have no basis at all, like Dickens in "Household Words" and "All The + Year Round," and say, "Give me something with imagination in it, and + I can do without politics or theoretic sociology of any kind." This + is perhaps the only true catholicism in literature; but it will + hardly serve your turn; because all the articles and stories that + Dickens got are now mopped up by the popular press, which in his day + stuck to politics and news and nothing else. So I am afraid you will + have to stand for a policy, or at least a recognisable attitude, + unless you are prepared to write a detective story every week and + make Belloc write a satirical story as well. + + You could broaden your basis if you had money enough to try the + experiment of giving ten poor but honest men in Beaconsfield and ten + more in London capital enough to start for themselves as independent + farmers and shopkeepers. The result would be to ruin 18 out of the + twenty, and possibly to ruin the lot. You would then learn from your + feelings what you would never learn from me, that what men need is + not property but honorable service. Confronted either with 20 men + ruined by your act, or 18 ruined and one Fascination Fledgby owning + half a street in London, and the other half a parish in Bucks, you + would--well, perhaps join the Fabian Society. + + The pseudo race feuds you should drop, simply because you cannot + compete with the _Morning Post_, which gives the real thing in its + succulent savagery whilst you can give only a "wouldn't hurt a fly" + affectation of it. In religion too you are up against the fact that + an editor, like an emperor, must not belong to a sect. Wells is on + the right tack: my tack. See my prefaces to Androcles and Methuselah. + We want the real Catholic Church above the manufactured one. The + manufactured one is useful as the Salvation Army is useful, or the + formulas of the Church of Christ Scientist; but they do not strike on + the knowledge box of the modern intellectual; and it is on the modern + intellectual that you are depending. I am an Irishman, and know how + far the official Catholic Church can go. Your ideal Church does not + exist and never can exist within the official organization, in which + Father Dempsey will always be efficient and Father Keegan futile if + not actually silenced; and I know that an officially Catholic + Chesterton is an impossibility. + + However, you must find out all this for yourself as I found it out + for myself. Mere controversy is waste of time; and faith is a curious + thing. I believe that you would not have become a professed official + Catholic if you did not believe that you believe in + transubstantiation; but I find it quite impossible to believe that + you believe in transubstantiation any more than, say, Dr. Saleeby + does. You will have to go to Confession next Easter; and I find the + spectacle--the box, your portly kneeling figure, the poor devil + inside wishing you had become a Fireworshipper instead of coming + there to shake his soul with a sense of his ridiculousness and + yours--all incredible, monstrous, comic, though of course I can put a + perfect literary complexion on it in a brace of shakes. + + Now, however, I am becoming personal (how else can I be sincere?). + Besides I am going on too long and the lunch bell is ringing. So + forgive me, and don't bother to answer unless you cannot help it. + + Ever, + + G. BERNARD SHAW. + +Meanwhile, Shaw as usual responded cordially to Gilbert's wish to +make him an early attraction in the paper--but also as usual urged +him towards the theatre: + + 10th Dec. 1924. + + By all means send me a screed about Joan [of Arc] for the cockpit. + But I protest I have no views about her. I am only the first man + modest enough to know his place _aupres d'elle_ as a simple reporter + and old stage hand. + + You should write plays instead of editing papers. Why not do George + Fox, who was released from the prisons in which Protestant England + was doing its best to murder him, by the Catholic Charles II? George + and Joan were as like as two peas in pluck and obstinacy. + + G.B.S. + +The specimen advance number was published before the end of 1924. In +the leading article G.K. gave his reasons for agreeing finally to use +his own name--although in the form attacked by Shaw. He had first +viewed the proposal with a "horror which has since softened into +loathing." He had looked for a title that should indicate the paper's +policy. But while that policy was in fact a support of human +normality: well-distributed property, freedom and the family--yet the +surrounding atmosphere was so abnormal that "any title defining our +doctrine makes it look doctrinaire." A name like _The Distributive +Review_ would suggest that a Distributist was like a Socialist, a +crank or a pedant with a new theory of human nature. "It is so old +that it has become new. At the same time I want a title that does +suggest that the paper is controversial and that this is the general +trend of its controversy. I want something that will be recognised as +a flag, however fantastic and ridiculous, that will be in some sense +a challenge, even if the challenge be received only with genial +derision. I do not want a colourless name; and the nearest I can get +to something like a symbol is merely to fly my own colours." + +Although the paper was never exclusively Catholic, that flag was for +G.K. as it had been for Cecil of a very definite pattern and very +clear colours: religiously the paper stood for Catholic Christianity, +socially for the theory of small ownership, personal responsibility +and property. It was in strong opposition especially to Socialism and +even more to Communism. Bernard Shaw, Gilbert once said, wanted to +distribute money among the poor--"we want to distribute power." + +During the last part of Cecil's editorship his wife had been +Assistant Editor of the _New Witness_ and she had so continued when +Gilbert first became Editor. But she was neither a Catholic nor a +Distributist. Religion seems not to have interested her, and her +political outlook was entirely different from Gilbert's. In _The +Chestertons_ she dismissed Distributism as "quite without first +principles" and "a pious hope and no more."* Obviously it was +impossible for Gilbert to start his new paper with an Assistant +Editor in entire disagreement with his views. I have sometimes +wondered whether his intense dislike of having to tell Mrs. Cecil +this was not almost as strong a factor in the delay as the money +problem. + +[* I have learnt, as this book goes to press, that Mrs. Cecil became +a Catholic in 1941.] + +There was no break in their relations: she went on writing for the +paper, doing chiefly the dramatic criticism. But it is clear from her +own account of the incident that she wholly misconstrued Gilbert's +attitude and did not realise how far she herself had drifted from +Cecil's views as well as from Gilbert's. + +Shaw wrote again: + + Reid's Palace Hotel + Funchal, Madeira. + 16th January, 1925. + + MY DEAR G.K.C. + + The sample number has followed me out here. What a collector's + treasure! + + Considering that I had Cecil's own assurance that my Quintessence + of Ibsenism rescued him from Rationalism, and that it was written in + 1889 (I abandoned Rationalism consciously and explicitly in 1881) I + consider John Prothero's introduction of me to your readers as a + recently converted Materialist Rationalist to be a most unnatural + act; and it would serve her right if I never spoke to her again. + + Rationalism is the bane of the Church. A Roman priest always wants + to argue with you. A Church of England parson flies in terror from an + argument, a fundamentally sensible course. George Fox simply knocked + arguers out with his "I have experimental knowledge of God." St. + Thomas Aquinas was like me: he knew the worthlessness of + ratiocination because he could do it so well, and yet despaired of + the Inspirationists in practical life because they did it so badly. + + J.K.P. doesn't know her way about in this controversy; and I cannot + take up her challenge. + + What makes me uneasy about the prospectus is that you drag in + anti-prohibition. You might as well have declared for Brighter London + at once, or said that the paper would be printed at the office of the + _Morning Advertiser_. You run the risk of the money coming from The + Trade. However, _non olet_. Only, remember the fate of all the + editors--Gardiner, Donald, Massingham, etc., etc.--who have written + without regard to their proprietors. The strength of your position is + that they can hardly carry on with your name in the title without + you. But they can kill the paper by stopping supplies if it does not + pay; and the chances are that it will not. I have never had a + farthing of interest on my shares in the New Statesman, and don't + expect I ever shall. Therefore keep your list of shareholders as + various and as uncommercial as you can: get Catholic money rather + than beer money. + + As I am the real patentee of the Distributive State, and the D.S. + is Socialism; and as, furthermore, the Church must remain at least + neutral on Prohibition, as in the United States, where a Catholic + priest has just set a praiseworthy example of neutrality by bringing + about a record cop of bootleggers, and as the success of Prohibition + is so overwhelming that it is bound to become a commonplace of + civilization, you must regard it as at least possible that you will + some day make the paper Socialist and Dry (with a capital). Therefore + do not undertake to oppose anything: stand for what you propose to + advocate, whether as to property or drink or anything else, but don't + state your solutions as antitheses. + + By the way, don't propose equal distribution of land. It is like + equal distribution of metal, rough on those who get the lead and + rather too jolly for those who get the gold. Your equal distribution + must come to equal distribution of the national income in terms of + money. + + The L500 a year is absurd. Do you realize that it is L250 at + pre-war rates, and subject to heavy taxation: net L375--pre-war + 182-10-0? You have sold yourself into slavery for ten years for + L3-10-2 a week. Are you quite mad? Make it at least L1500, plus + payment for copy. + + Ever + + G.B.S. + +Of course it was not merely a question of inadequate payment for his +work: as time went on, a large part of the financial burden of the +paper had to be carried by him. Lord Howard de Walden helped +generously and so did Mr. Chivers. Other donations came in but mostly +very small ones. No proper accounts were kept: no watch on how the +money went. And from time to time Gilbert would pay off a printing +bill of L500 or so and go ahead hoping for better times. The money +aspect did not worry him, I think, at first. There was always more to +be made by a little extra effort: though a time was to come when +every extra effort wearied him cruelly. But there was one thing he +could not bear--quarrels on the Board or on the staff and above all +the suggestion that he should adjudicate. + +"He was a bad judge of men," one of his staff told me. "He never +shirked an intellectual issue, but in a practical crisis he was +inclined to slide out." + +"He could never," said another, "stand up to accusations from one man +against another." + +The first start was made with the existing staff of three. Miss +Dunham was sub-editor and was usually left to see the paper through +the press. G.K. would come up once or twice a week and dictate his +own articles. + +"You never knew when he was coming," she says, "but you always knew +when he was there by the smell of his cigar." He was practically a +chain smoker and he always used the same brand. He left drawings on +the blotter and everything else. He had no idea of time and when he +said, "I think I'll go out now," he might stay out an hour or so, or +he might not return at all. Lighting a cigar or cigarette he would +make a sign in the air with the match. He never omitted this ritual, +and Miss Dunham thinks it became like tapping the railings was to Dr. +Johnson. + +"He used to come in and swing about on his little feet," she said. +And it is true that his feet like his voice seemed too small to +belong to the rest of him. Her great difficulty was that she could +not get him to read and select among the contributions: too often +this was left to her and she felt painfully inadequate to the task. + +For the first year all the Notes of the Week were written by G.K. +Then he got Mr. Titterton as Assistant Editor: and after that, said +the Assistant Editor with simplicity, "You couldn't always tell good +Titterton from bad Chesterton." Everyone who worked at the office +adored G.K.: especially the "little" people, typists, secretaries, +office boys. + +"He was so kind," Miss Dunham said. "He never got angry. He never +minded being interrupted. If his papers blew away he never got +impatient. His patience hurt one." She had never seen him angry. + +That the paper was ever got out seems wonderful as the staff recall +those days. Yet I think that all the stories about Gilbert's +inefficiency as Editor have contributed towards an impression that I +shared myself until quite lately--that _G.K.'s Weekly_ was +immeasurably inferior to the _New Witness_. Going more carefully +through the files I have begun to question that impression. + +The paper was produced under certain obvious disadvantages. Even +spending some days a week in London and telephoning freely it is not +easy to edit a paper from the country. Gilbert thought of himself as +a bad editor, and was not in fact a very good one. The contributions +he accepted were uneven in quality: both Leaders and Notes of the +Week when not written by him tended to be weak imitations of either +himself or Belloc--tinged at times with an air of omniscience +tolerable in Belloc but quite intolerable in his imitators. Just +occasionally the equally unedited Notes and Leader were in +contradiction of each other. Yet the paper remains an exceedingly +interesting one. Analysing my earlier and late impressions I +concluded that my earlier feeling of boredom sprang from the +inevitable effect of the _New Witness_ coming first and therefore +having been read first. It is a disadvantage of consistency that, as +Bernard Shaw remarked, you have said the same thing, you have told +the same story, so often as the years go by. + +Taking a rest of a year and returning fresh to _G.K.'s Weekly_ I was +surprised at finding how much I enjoyed reading it and also at +finding that it had been of more practical use than I remembered to +the cause it served. The trend of the whole world is to make the +State powerful and the family powerless. It was something that in +these years _G.K.'s Weekly_ should have helped to smash two bills of +this nature-the Mental Deficiency and the Canal Children's Bills. +Both these aimed at taking children from their parents, the first in +the cause of health, the second of education. Against both Gilbert +wrote brilliantly and successfully. + +_G.K.'s Weekly_ has much more G.K. in it and quite as much Belloc as +in the earlier years of the _New Witness_. Eric Gill, too, long a +friend of the Chestertons, became the chief contributor on art. In +1925 he spent a night at Top Meadow to discuss the policy of the +paper, especially with reference to industrialism and art. A little +later the Gills moved from Wales much nearer to Beaconsfield and the +two men met fairly often. Gill's letters are interesting. They are +mostly before the visit to Beaconsfield and probably led to it. He +begins by attacking Gilbert for "(1) supporting Orpenism as against +Byzantinism and (2) thinking that the art of painting _began_ with +Giotto, whereas Giotto was really much more the end." + +In June 1925, G.K. was asking him to write about Epstein. Gill agreed +to do so but insisted that Chesterton and Belloc must not disagree +with him but "accept my doctrine as the doctrine of _G.K.'s Weekly_ +in matters of art--just as I accept yours in other matters." "I don't +intend to write for you as an outsider (have I not put almost my last +quid into your blooming Company?--7% or not). . . . God forbid that +you should have an art critic who'll go round the picture shows for +you and write bilge about this painter and that--this 'art movement' +and that." + +In the first state of effervescence the labour he delighted in quite +deadened the pain of the Editor's chair. Gilbert was prepared if +necessary to write the whole paper and to treat it as a variant on +the Toy Theatre or the Sword Stick: + + It was said that the Chicago pork machine used every part of a pig + except the squeal. It might be said that the Fleet Street press + machine uses only the squeal. . . . + + In short, nobody reading the newspapers could form the faintest + notion of how intelligent we newspaper people are. The whole machine + is made to chop up each mind into meaningless fragments and waste the + vast mass even of those. Such a thing as one complete human being + appearing in the press is almost unknown; and when an attempt is made + at it, it necessarily has a certain air of eccentric egotism. That is + a risk which I am obliged to run everywhere in this paper and + especially on this page. As I have said, the whole business of + actually putting a paper together is a new game for me to play, to + amuse my second childhood; and it combines some of the characters of + a jigsaw and a crossword puzzle. But at least I am called upon to do + a great many different sorts of things; and am not tied down to that + trivial specialism of the proletarian press.* + +[* March 28, 1925.] + +And again + + This paper exists to insist on the rights of man; on possessions + that are of much more political importance than the principle of one + man one vote. I am in favour of one man one house, one man one field; + nay I have even advanced the paradox of one man one wife. But I am + almost tempted to add the more ideal fancy of one man one + magazine . . . to say that every citizen ought to have a weekly paper + of this sort to splash about in . . . this kind of scrap book to keep + him quiet.* + +[* April 4, 1925.] + +G.K. goes on to talk of an old idea of his: that a young journalist +should write one article for the _Church Times_ and another for the +_Pink 'Un_ and then put them into the wrong envelopes. + + It is that sort of contrast and that sort of combination that I am + going to aim at in this paper . . . I cannot see why convictions + should look dull or why jokes should be insincere. I should like a + man to pick up this paper for amusement and find himself involved in + an argument. I should like him to pursue it purely for the sake of + argument and find himself pulled up short by a joke . . . I never can + see why a thing should not be both popular and serious; that is, in + the sense of being both popular and sincere. + +For the paper had a most serious purpose. He acknowledged its defects +of bad printing (which the printers indignantly denied), bad +proof-reading, bad editing, and claimed "to raise against the banner +of advertisement the noble banner of apology." Because a creative +revolution was what he wanted, words and forms were hard to find. It +was easy to dress up stale ideas in a new dress but the terminology +for something outside the old hack party programmes had to be fresh +minted. + +He proposed various changes after a few months' running and +introduced them thus: + +We should be only too glad if for this week only our readers would +have the tact to retire and leave us alone. We are in a Hegelian +condition, a condition not so much of Being as of Becoming. And no +generous person should spy on an unfortunate fellow creature who is +going through the horrible and degrading experience of being a +Hegelian. It is even more embarrassing than being caught in the very +act of evolution, which every clear headed person would desire to +avoid.* + +[* December 12, 1925.] + +In this number he began _The Return of Don Quixote_ and also a sort +of scrapbook. He invited contributions dealing with every sort of +approach to Distributism and promised "more than one series of +constructive proposals and definite schemes of legislation. We do not +promise that all these schemes will exactly agree with each other or +that we shall agree with all of them. Some will be more conservative, +some more drastic than our own view." This article ends on an +ambitious note. Very varying schemes will be admitted, but the idea +of the paper will thereby be strengthened not destroyed-- + + For what we desire is not a paltry party programme but a + Renaissance. + +It was not the first time he had demanded a revolution but, as the +depression hit our country and Big Business seemed less and less +capable of coping with it, the demand became more understandable and +the fight against Monopoly more urgent. + + A thinking man should always attack the strongest thing in + his own time. For the strongest thing of the time is always + too strong. . . . The great outstanding fact and feature of + our time is Monopoly.* + +[* April 25, 1925.] + +I have already referred to a debate on Monopoly between Chesterton +and Mr. Gordon Selfridge, in which Selfridge, with the familiar +unreality of the millionaire, maintained that there was no such +thing. Anyone was free to open a store in rivalry of Selfridge's or +to start a paper that should eclipse the _Daily Mail!_ The only real +monopoly, he added gracefully, was that of a genius like Chesterton +whose work the ordinary man could not emulate. The graceful +compliment Chesterton answered by offering to share his last epigram +with Mr. Selfridge: but as to the main contention, what could he say? +It was at once too easy and absolutely impossible to answer such a +speech--or more truly such a speaker: only in a Country of the Blind +could he have won a hearing. But Chesterton persevered. Even in 1924 +the shadow of large scale unemployment had begun. And at this +singularly inappropriate time came the Empire Exhibition at Wembley. +In the failure of its appeal Chesterton saw hope: for he believed +that from a frank facing of truth his country might yet conquer the +coming perils. + + That was the real weakness of Wembley; that it so completely + mistook the English temperament as to appeal to a stale mood. It + appealed to a stale mood of success; when we need to appeal to a + new and more noble mood of failure, or at least of peril. The + English . . . no longer care to be told of an Empire on which the sun + never sets. Tell them the sun is setting, and they will fight though + the battle go against them to the going down of the sun: if they do + not stay it, like Joshua. . . . + + We seriously propose that England should take her stand among the + unhappy nations; it is too dismal a fate to go on being one of the + happy ones. We must be as proud as Spain and Poland and Serbia; + nations made more dear to their lovers by their disasters. Our + disasters have begun; but they do not seem to have endeared us to + anybody in particular. Our sorrow has come; but we gain no extra + loyalty by it. The time has come to claim our crown of thorns; or at + least not to cover it any longer with such exceedingly faded flowers.* + +[* March 21, 1925.] + +Always Chesterton was haunted by the present war. He had seen the +Prussian peril conquered: he saw it rising again. Even before the +advent of Hitler he knew that the tribe which had stolen from Austria +and Denmark, had invaded France and crushed Poland was without +repentance, and he feared that again the stupidity (or the greed) +behind English and American policy was giving it another opportunity-- +"Those sturdy Teutons," he wrote ironically, "from whom we were +descended up to the outbreak of the Great War, and from whom we are +now showing signs of being descended again." + +The misfortune was that Englishmen had ceased to try to get free from +"a secret government; conducted by we know not whom, and achieving we +know not what. The real national life of our country is unconscious +of its own national policy. The right hand of the Englishman, that +holds the plough or the sword, knows not what his left hand doth with +the pen and the cheque-book. Man is man; and Mond is master of his +fate." For our government he apologised to France. He saw it as one +and the same fight--against a heathenish money power and heathen +Prussia. And the beating of the dark wings of enemy aeroplanes +sounded in his dreams. As early as 1925 he wrote a Christmas play of +St. George and the Dragon in which the Turkish Knight embodied his +vision of Prussia and St. George spoke prophetically for England. + + SAINT GEORGE: I know that this is sure + Whatever man can do, man can endure, + Though you shall loose all laws of fight, and fashion + A torture chamber from a tilting yard, + Though iron hard as doom grow hot as passion, + Man shall be hotter, man shall be more hard, + And when an army in your hell fire faints, + You shall find martyrs who were never saints. + + _(They wound each other and the doctor comes to the help of the + Turkish knight.)_ + + PRINCESS: Why should we patch this pirate up again? + Why should you always win and win in vain? + Bid him not cut the leg but cut the loss. + + SAINT GEORGE: I will not fire upon my own red cross. + + PRINCESS: If you lay there, would he let you escape? + + SAINT GEORGE: I am his conqueror and not his ape. + + DOCTOR: Be not so sure of conquering. He shall rise + On lighter feet, on feet that vault the skies. + Science shall make a mighty foot and new, + Light as the feather feet of Perseus flew, + Long as the seven leagued boots in tales gone by, + This shall bestride the sea and ride the sky. + Thus shall he fly, and beat above your nation + The clashing pinions of Apocalypse, + Ye shall be deep sea fish in pale prostration + Under the sky foam of his flying ships. + + When terror above your cities, dropping doom, + Shall shut all England in a lampless tomb, + Your widows and your orphans now forlorn + Shall be no safer than the dead they mourn. + When all their lights grow dark, their lives grow gray, + What will those widows and those orphans say? + + SAINT GEORGE: Saint George for Merrie England. + +He saw the aeroplanes in vision and he saw courage and patriotism. I +think he must rejoice today that betrayal of the allied cause has not +been at the hands of an Englishman. He had said many hard things +about the English aristocracy and gentry: but these two virtues he +had always granted were theirs. And in his vision he saw hope: + + England may soon be poor enough to be praised with an undivided + heart. We are not sure that the ruins of Wembley may not be the + restoration of Westminster. It is when a nation has recovered from + the illusion of owning everything that it discovers that it does + stand for something; and for that something it will fight with a + lucid and just tenacity which no mere megalomania can comprehend. We + are not so perverse as to wish to see England ruined that she may be + respected. But we do think she will be happy in having the sort of + respect that could remain even if she were ruined. Patriotic as the + English have always been, the patriotism of their educated class has + seldom had this peculiar sort of extra energy that is given by a + conscience completely at rest. If that were added, they might well + make such a stand as would astound the world. All their other + virtues, their humour and sporting spirit and freedom from the + morbidities and cruelties of fatigue, might enter into their full + heritage when joined to the integrity and intellectual dignity that + belong to self defence and self respect. We are far from sure that + the world has not yet to see our nation in its finest phase. + + What may be in the womb of night we know not, nor what are those dim + outlines that show on the horizon. + +"In truth" he wrote, "no man knows how near we are to death or to +dawn. I am not sure whether I am making this speech from a +scaffolding or a scaffold." + +It is easy for the young to undertake hard things: they never know +how hard they are. And they are certain of success. The "lessons of +experience" signify to the young that other men have failed: their +own experience shall teach others the meaning of success. But to +begin again at fifty, with the special spring of youth gone and with +the sad lessons of one's own experience in the mind: this calls +indeed for a rare courage. Gilbert knew all the cost in time, energy, +money and reputation that he would have to pay--that he did pay. And +he stood increasingly alone. Cecil's had been the irreparable loss, +but others of the old circle were dropping out and their places were +not filled. + +Jack Phillimore's death in 1926 was a heavy blow. To his memory +Gilbert dedicated _The Queen of Seven Swords_, published the year of +his death. + + You go before me on all roads + On bridges broad enough to spread + Between the learned and the dunce + Between the living and the dead. + +The gulf between the Socialist group and the Distributist had become +far more obvious than of yore: Shaw and Wells would still write for +G.K. but only because he was their friend. If F. Y. Eccles, if +Desmond McCarthy today contributed, it would too be chiefly from +affection for Gilbert. One article by Mr. McCarthy described the old +days when the original _Eye Witness_ was in being and he, Cecil and +Belloc sat around the table editing it and sticking triolets thrown +off in hot haste into those nasty little spaces left by articles that +did not quite fit, or supplying three or four articles and a Ballade +Urbane while the printers waited. + + We have to print a triolet + When space is clamouring for matter + We try to put it off and yet + We have to print a triolet + It is with infinite regret + That we admit the silly patter + We have to print a triolet + When space is clamouring for matter. + +Such joyous scrambles are proper to youth, and now none of them were +young. + +All authors worthy of the name have found their platform and made +permanent engagements by middle life: professional men are absorbed +by work and life: they simply had not time to give as of yore to +build up this new-old venture. The names of Shaw and Wells continue +to appear among the contributors, often enough in religious debate. +Reading the files and visiting the two men to talk of Gilbert, I made +one discovery that is curious from whichever side you look at it. Two +able and indeed brilliant men betrayed not only an amazing degree of +ignorance concerning the tenets of Catholicism but also a bland +conviction that they knew them well. Wells in conversation based his +claim on the fact that he had long been intimately acquainted with an +ex-nun. Shaw I fancy felt he must know all about something that had +surrounded him in infancy--for, as the reader must have noticed, he +is much preoccupied by the thought of his Irish descent and education. + +But what seems to me even stranger about the situation is the absence +on the Catholic side of any effort to explain to these men the +doctrines they misconstrued. When Wells, for instance, gave a crude +and inaccurate statement of the doctrine of the Fall, Belloc laughed +at him, Chesterton and Father McNabb both wrote long and picturesque +articles, illuminating to a believer but, as instruction to an +unbeliever, quite useless. A correspondence that seemed likely to +drag on forever ended abruptly with Wells asking about the Fall, +"Tell me, did it really happen?" to which Chesterton briefly replied, +"Yes." + +I imagine he thought he and the other writers had said this several +times already, but in fact they had not. Perhaps they did not realise +where the beginning must be made in instructing otherwise instructed +men on the subject of Catholicism. It is all very interesting and +curious. But it largely explains why Bernard Shaw found it hard to +believe that Gilbert believed in Transubstantiation. Has any Catholic +ever explained the philosophic meaning of Transubstantiation to the +Great old Irish Man of English Letters? Even Gilbert was perhaps too +much inclined simply to play the fool in high-spirited fashion with +those who attacked the Faith in his paper or other papers. But then +how well he played it! + +Here are some imaginary interviews on + + . . . the recently discovered traces of an actual historical Flood: + a discovery which has shaken the Christian world to its foundations + by its apparent agreement with the Book of Genesis. . . . + + The Dean of St. Paul's remarked: "I do not see that there is any + cause for alarm. Protestantism is still founded on an impregnable + rock: on that deep and strong foundation of disbelief in the Bible + which supports the spiritual and intellectual life of all true + Christians today. Even if dark doubts should arise, and it should + seem for the moment as if certain passages in the Scripture story + were true, we must not lose heart; the cloud will pass: and we have + still the priceless possession of the Open Bible, with all its + inexhaustible supply of errors and inconsistencies: a continual + source of interest to scholars and a permanent bulwark against + Rome. . . ." + + Mr. H. G. Wells exclaimed: "I am interested in the Flood of the + future: not in any of these little local floods that may have taken + place in the past. I want a broader, larger, more complete and + coordinated sort of Flood: a Flood that will really cover the whole + ground. I want to get people to understand that in the future we + shall not divide water, in this petty way, into potty little ponds + and lakes and rivers: it will be one big satisfying thing, the same + everywhere. _Apres moi le Deluge_. Belloc in his boorish boozy way + may question my knowledge of French; but I fancy that quotation will + settle him."* + +[* March 30, 1929.] + +On the favourite topic of modern advertisement, having read an essay +which said that good salesmanship made "everything in the garden +beautiful," Gilbert again thought of Genesis: + + There was only one actor in that ancient drama who seems to have + had any real talent for salesmanship. He seems to have undertaken to + deliver the goods with exactly the right preliminaries of promises + and praise. He knew all about advertisement: we may say he knew all + about publicity, though not at the moment addressing a very large + public. He not only took up the slogan of Eat More Fruit, but he + distinctly declared that any customers purchasing his particular + brand of fruit would instantly become as gods. And as this is exactly + what is promised to the purchasers of every patent medicine, popular + tonic, saline draught or medicinal wine at the present day, there can + be no question that he was in advance of his age. It is extraordinary + that humanity, which began with the apple and ended with the patent + medicine, has not even yet become exactly like gods. It is still more + extraordinary (and probably the result of a malicious interpolation + by priests at a later date) that the record ends with some + extraordinary remarks to the effect that one thus pursuing the bright + career of Salesmanship is condemned to crawl on his stomach and eat a + great deal of dirt.* + +[* March 23, 1929.] + +The relation between Belloc and the paper, as between Belloc and +Gilbert himself, was a unique one. Not indeed its "onlie begetter," +he was equally with Cecil begetter of the original paper and its +first editor. He was Gilbert's chief guide to the historical and +political scene of Europe. Both men shared, had fought all their +lives for, their ideas of Freedom, the Family, Restoration of +Property and all that is involved in Catholic Christianity. And +Belloc said repeatedly that he had no platform for the continuous +expression of these ideas. Such books as his _Cruise of the Nona_ +found still as wide a public as had _The Path to Rome_ a quarter +century earlier, and in those books his philosophy may be read. But +he had, too, urgent commentaries on Foreign Affairs and Current +Politics--and for these _G.K.'s Weekly_ became his platform as +completely as the _New Witness_ had been in the past. To Gilbert this +appeared one chief value of his paper: in an article from which I +quote in the next chapter he gives it as one of the two reasons for +which he toiled to keep _G.K.'s Weekly_ in existence. + +Week by week Belloc on Current or Foreign Affairs wrote of what was +happening and what would presently come of it. And who can say +reading those articles today that it would not have changed the +defeats of this war into victory at a far earlier date had our +statesmen read and heeded--the analysis for instance of the peril of +the aeroplane, of the threat to the Empire from Japan, the importance +of keeping Italy's friendship in the Mediterranean, the growing +strength of Germany and the awful risk we took in allowing her to +rearm, in failing to arm against her? + +Whether he was right or, as many held, wildly wrong about what +underlay our failures of judgment, his views must be briefly traced +because of their effect on Gilbert and others. In the financial world +he saw England in the first years after the war dominated by the +International Banking Power, which made us as it were a local branch +of Wall Street. In his view it was the bankers both of America and +England who first insisted that Germany could not pay her reparations +and later made England repudiate her own war debts to America (though +she had, he showed, already paid in interest and principal more than +half of what had been lent). The banks did this because they had lent +commercially both to Germany and England sums whose safety meant more +to them than moneys merely owing to the nations--which would not +benefit the banks! England thus became subservient to the United +States and had to follow American financial policies. It was these +policies that led to the abandonment of the unwritten alliance with +France and especially to allowing Germany to rearm (helped by loans +from these same banks), to reoccupy the Rhineland and remilitarise +the Ruhr. + +Next, in Belloc's view, came a worse stage yet in which the banks had +given place to Big Business which was increasingly controlling +Parliament. The plutocracy that had bit by bit eaten into our +aristocracy and gained ascendancy in the Govemment was not, like our +ancient aristocracy, trained for the business and was utterly +uninformed especially in foreign affairs. The one remaining hope, the +permanent officials, especially of the Foreign Office, were less and +less listened to; latterly he held too that even the Foreign Office +had lost its old sure touch. Hence a constant vacillation in our +policies which weakened England's position and made certain some +terrible disaster. + +This fear is ever present in Belloc's articles and ever brooded on by +the Editor. He rallied his forces to urge, week after week, the +possible alternative to disaster--the recovery by the people of +England of power and freedom, the restoration of England to its place +in a restored Europe, freed from the German menace. Despite the +natural high spirits a certain gloom and more than a touch of +fierceness mark the work of these years. Summing up "the twenties" +of the century, Chesterton saw them as singularly bankrupt spiritually +and intellectually, and he foresaw from their sowing a miserable +harvest. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +The Distributist League and Distributism + + +_To say we must have Socialism or Capitalism is like saying we must +choose between all men going into monasteries and a few men having +harems. If I denied such a sexual alternative I should not need to +call myself a monogamist; I should be content to call myself a man_. + +Advance number of _G.K.'s Weekly_, Nov. 1924 + +FROM _G.K.'s Weekly_ grew THE DISTRIBUTIST LEAGUE. Its start in 1926 +was marked by intense enthusiasm, and its progress was recorded week +by week in the paper. The inaugural meeting took place in Essex Hall, +Essex Street, Strand, on September 17, 1926. G.K. summed up their aim +in the words: "Their simple idea was to restore possession." He added +that Francis Bacon had long ago said: "Property is like muck, it is +good only if it be spread." The following week the first committee +meeting took place. Chesterton was elected President; Captain Went, +Secretary, and Maurice Reckitt, Treasurer. It was planned to form a +branch in Birmingham. Alternative names were discussed: The Cobbett +Club, the Luddite League, the League of Small Property: + + The Cow and Acres, however suitable as the name of a public house at + which we could assemble, is too limited as an economic statement. . . . + + The League of the Little People (President, Mr. G. K. Chesterton) + may seem at first too suggestive of the fairies; but it has been + strongly supported among us: + + And again: Suppose we call our movement, "The Lost Property + League" . . . the idea of the restoration of lost property is far + more essential to our whole conception than even the idea of liberty, + as now commonly understood. The Liberty and Property Defense League + implies that property is there to be defended. "The Lost Property + League" describes the exact state of the case.* + +[* From an article called, "Name This Child" and another later +article.] + +In October another meeting of the central branch was held in Essex +Hall to debate "Have We Lost Liberty?" The Croydon and Birmingham +branches were arranging meetings, G.K. conferred with the members of +the Manchester branch, and Glasgow announced that it was only +awaiting the christening to form a branch. Bath held its first public +meeting, with the Mayor in the chair, and the meeting had to overflow +into a very large hall. + +It was decided to reduce the price of the paper to twopence-- +Twopenny Trash* was the title of the leading article--in order to +give the League an opportunity of extending the paper's radius of +action as an organ of the League's principles. . . . _"Every reader +who has been buying one copy at sixpence, must take three copies at +twopence_ until his two surplus copies have secured two new +readers. . . . The League would have to make itself responsible for +the success of this experiment and save the paper which gave it +birth, or die of inanition, for it is certainly not yet strong +enough to leave its mother."** + +[* This was the name given to Cobbett's _Weekly Register_ by his +enemies.] + +[** _G.K.'s Weekly_, November 6, 1926.] + +It is clear that Gilbert's hopes at this stage ran high. He had not +dreamed that the initial success of the League would be so great. +Recording a sensational increase in the sale of the paper, he wrote +on November 13, 1926: "It was when we faced defeat that we were +surprised by victory; and we are quite serious in believing that this +is part of a practical philosophy that may yet outlast the philosophy +of bluff." + +Recording a meeting of the League: he wrote: + + We find it difficult to express the effect the meeting had upon us. + We were astonished, we were overwhelmed. Had we anything to do with + the making of this ardent, eager, indefatigable creature? The answer + is, of course, that though we had something to do with the shaping of + the body, we had nothing to do with the birth of the soul. That was a + miracle, a miracle we had hoped for, and which yet, when it happened, + overwhelmed us. We have the happy feeling that we have helped to + shape something which will go far above and beyond us. . . . There + were well over 100 members present, many of them spoke, and nearly + all the others would have spoken if there had been time to hear them. + It was a great night.* + +[* November 13, 1926.] + +Father Vincent McNabb has said truly that there are no words for the +real things. Thus Distributism is not only a rather ugly word but +also a word holding less than half the content of the idea they were +aiming at. Belloc covered more of it in the title of his book: the +_Restoration of Property_, while perhaps a better name still was _The +Outline of Sanity_. This Chesterton had chosen for a series of +articles that became a book. He was asking for a return to the sanity +of field and workshop, of craftsman and peasant, from the insanity of +trusts and machinery, of unemployment, over-production and +starvation. "We are destroying food because we do not need it. We are +starving men because we do not need them." + +After the first meeting of the League, the notes of the week recorded +that the printing order for the paper based on actual demand had +risen in two weeks from 4,650 to 7,000. "Of course we owe everything +to the League which in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Croydon, +Chatham, Worthing, Chorley, Cambridge, Oxford, Bath and London has +made the newsagents aware of the paper." By November 27, the sales +had risen to over 8,000. Then was held the first formal meeting of +the central branch of the League, at which it was agreed: "that +members should make a habit of dealing at small shops." They should +avoid even small shops which sweat their employees, each branch +should prepare a list of small shops for the use of its members. + + And that is only a beginning. We hope to enlist the support of the + small farmer and the small master craftsman. We hope, little by + little, to put the small producer in touch with the small retailer. + We hope in the end to establish within the state a community, almost + self-supporting, of men and women pledged to Distributism, and to a + large extent practising it. Less and less, then, will the juggling of + finance have power over us; for it does not matter what they call the + counters when you are exchanging hams for handkerchiefs, or pigs for + pianos. + +The Cockpit is worth reading during the months that follow, for here +were voiced any criticisms that the readers had to make of the paper +and of the League--any criticism that the League had to make of +itself. There was plenty. Many leaguers and readers felt for instance +that the spirit of criticism of others was too fully developed in the +paper, so that when attempts were made to act on distributive +principles by people not in league with the League they were given +short shrift instead of meeting even modified encouragement. The +League was begged to spend more time clarifying its principles, less +time in criticism. But much more fundamental was the constantly +recurrent question: When is the League going to begin to do +something? To this the answer, given often by G.K. himself was that, +while the League hoped in time to create that community of which he +had written, its own work was only that of Propaganda--of a wider and +wider dissemination of the principles of Distributism. Their work, +they said, was to talk. + +Outdoor propaganda started in Glasgow and came thence to London. In +October 1931 the Secretary said they must "convince men there is a +practical alternative to Capitalism and Socialism, _by showing them +how to set about achieving it."_ And in November he subscribed to +opinions voiced in the Cockpit for the last two years by saying that +the London Branch acted in the spirit of "a pleasant Friday evening +debating society, which regarded discussion as an end in itself." One +would imagine that all this meant a call to action, but the action +was merely the establishment of a Research Department and the start +of a new paper _The Distributist_ for the discussion of the League's +domestic business. The Research Secretary will explain his plans, +enroll volunteers and allot tasks, thus "equipping the League with +the information for lack of which it is as yet unable to agree on +practical measures." The effectiveness of its Propaganda would, +members were told, depend on its research. + +"The pious appointment of investigators," wrote a Leader in _G.K.'s +Weekly_ in reference to a Government commission, "to report what is +already common knowledge is nothing less than a face-saving, +time-marking, shifty expedient." I don't think this article was one +of Gilbert's, but I do wonder whether as time went on he did not +recall his own old comparison between the early Christian and the +modern Socialist. For Distributists far more than Socialists should +have been vowed to action. There was a grave danger both of making +their propaganda ineffective by lack of example and of weakening +themselves as Distributists. Yet there were many difficulties in +their path, some of which may best be seen if we go back a little and +recall the way in which the Encyclical _Rerum Novarum_ was received +by Catholics at the end of the last century. Written in Europe where +the remains of the mediaeval social structure still lingered on far +more than in industrial England or America, it was taken by the more +conservative Catholics as a general confirmation of the established +order. I well remember people like my own father and Father Bernard +Vaughan quoting it in this sense. And if they tended to advert to +only one half of it, the more radical Catholics readily obliged by +appearing conscious solely of the other half and thus enabling +themselves to be dismissed as one-sided. + +Unfortunately they were worse than one-sided: they were curiously +blind, with rare exceptions, to those true implications of the +document which spelt Distributism--for which the word had not then +been coined--or the _Restoration of Property_. _"The law, therefore, +should favour ownership and its policy should be to induce as many +people as possible to become owners._ Many excellent results will +follow from this; and first of all, property will certainly become +more equitably divided. For the effect of social change and +revolution has been to divide society into two widely different +castes. . . . _If workpeople can be encouraged to look forward to +obtaining a share in the land, the result will be that the the gulf +between vast wealth and deep poverty will be bridged over, and the +two orders will be brought nearer together."_* Yet the Pope's words +were treated almost as an acceptance of the existing conditions of +property by the more conservative, while the more radical simply +tried to evade them. The question of my youth undoubtedly was: how +far can a Catholic go on the road to Socialism? + +[* _Rerum Novarum_ (translation in Husslein's _The Christian Social +Manifesto_). Italics mine.] + +Distributism would seem today to have cut like a sword the knot of +this mental confusion, but it did not do so for many people. I +suppose the leading Distributist among the clergy was Father Vincent +McNabb and I have heard him called a Socialist a hundred times. And +even among those who had accepted the Distributist ideal and had now +had fifteen years of the _New Witness_ and _G.K.'s Weekly_ to +meditate upon--to say nothing of the Belloc and Chesterton +books--there was still a good deal of confusion of mind to be cleared +up. The Chesterbelloc had begun a mental revolution, but even the +mind cannot be turned upside down in a moment of time; and then there +is the will to be considered. + +Gilbert often claimed that the Society he advocated was the norm, +that the modern world was abnormal, was insane. But to achieve the +normal in an abnormal world calls for high courage and a high degree +of energy. It is much easier to sit and drink beer while planning the +world that one wishes was there--the world of simplicity, hard work +and independence. And about the details of this new world there was +room for a variety of opinion. The Distributists soon began to argue +and even to quarrel--about the admission of machinery into the +Distributist state, about the nature of one another's Distributism +and what was necessary to constitute a Distributist. The effect on +Gilbert is interesting, for it showed his belief in the importance of +the League. He hoped, he said, that the quarrel would not "turn into +a dispute"--that it would remain a personal quarrel. "For impersonal +quarrel is schism." He urged again and again that the dogmas of their +creed should be defined. + + Heaven forbid that we should ever be True Distributists: as a + substitute for being Distributists. It would be a dismal thing to + join the long and wavering procession of True Christians, True + Socialists, True Imperialists; who are now progressing drearily into + a featureless future; ready to change anything whatever except their + names. These people escape endlessly by refusing definition which + they call dogma. . . . + + Practical politics are necessary, but they are in a sense narrow; + and by themselves they do tend to split the world up into small + sects. Only dogma is sufficiently universal to include us all. + +Of the world surrounding him which refused definitions he said, +"because there is no image there is nothing except imaginaries."* But +I think there must have been some blushes on Distributists' cheeks as +they read his apology for some slight absence of mind. He explained +his own "ghastly ignorance" of the details of the dispute, "which is +bound up with the economic facts of the position," with the fact +especially of + +[* October 12, 1929.] + + my own highly inadequate rendering of the part of the Financier. I + am the thin and shadowy approximation to a Capitalist. . . . I could + only manage until very lately to keep this paper in existence at all, + by earning the money in the open market; and more especially in that + busy and happy market where corpses are sold in batches; I mean the + mart of Murder and Mystery, the booth of the Detective Story. Many a + squire has died in a dank, garden arbour, transfixed by a mysterious + dagger, many a millionaire has perished silently though surrounded by + a ring of private secretaries, in order that Mr. Belloc may have a + paper in which he is allowed to point out that a great Empire does + not default because it is growing richer. Many a shot has rung out in + the silent night, many a constable has hurled himself through a + crashing door, from under which there crawled a crimson stain, in + order that there might be a page somewhere for Mr. Kenrick's virile + and logical exposition of the principles of Distributism. Many an + imperial jewel has vanished from its golden setting, many a detective + crawled about on the carpet for clues, before some of those little + printers' bills could be settled which enabled the most distinguished + and intelligent of Distributists to denounce each other as + Capitalists and Communists, in the columns of the Cockpit and + elsewhere. This being my humble and even highly irrelevant + contribution to the common team-work, it is obvious that it could not + be done at the same time as a close following of the varying shades + of thought in the Distributist debates. And, this ignorance of mine, + though naturally very irritating to people better informed, has at + least the advantage of giving some genuineness to my impartiality. I + have never belonged distinctively to any of the different + Distributist groups. I have never had time. + +As time went on however and the disputes continued, he wrote a series +of articles* which have in them that note so special to him, so +embarrassing to some of his admirers, of deep and genuine respect for +every person and every opinion. The small numbers of the +Distributists, the greatness of the work to be done by them, would +make any split in their ranks "a tremendous tragedy." The difficulty +in keeping any movement in being was that of holding together the +ardent pioneers and the rank and file. + +[* September 10, 17, 24, October 1, 1932.] + + Men who really have common convictions tend to break up. It is only + those who have no convictions who always hang together. . . . Roughly + the position is that there is a moderate body which regards + extremists as visionary; a more extreme body which regards moderates + as ineffective; and lastly a catastrophic simplification in the + social scene, which makes the simple enthusiast seem more fitted to + the simple disaster. + +There were two approaches that should be made to these differences. +The first was to state the fundamental principles of Distributism. +The crux of the quarrel was the question of machinery. But even those +who held that machinery should be abolished in the Distributist State +held it, he claimed, not as a first principle, but as a deduction +from their first principles. Chesterton himself felt that machinery +should be limited but not abolished; the order of things had been +historically that men had been deprived of property and enslaved on +the land before the machine-slavery of industrialism had become +possible. The whole history of the machine might have been reversed +in a state of free men. If a machine were used on a farm employing +fifty men that would do the work of forty, it means forty men become +unemployed, "but it is only because they were employed that they are +unemployed. Now you and I, I hope to heaven, are not trying to +increase employment. It is almost the only thing that is as bad as +unemployment." In other words, he did not want men to be employees. +Men working for themselves, men their own employers, their own +employees--that was the objective of Distributism. A wide +distribution of property was its primary aim. And he did not want the +League to consist entirely of extremists lest it should be thought to +consist entirely of cranks, especially at a moment when "intelligent +people are beginning to like Distributism _because_ Distributism is +normal." + +The other approach was heralded in the final article of the series +(October 1, 1932) by a reference to the excitement over the Buckfast +Benedictines who had just built their Abbey Church with their own +hands--an adventure + + to which, if I understand it as completely as I share it, the + English blood will never be entirely cold. But about these new heroes + of architecture there is one note that is not new; that comes from a + very ancient tradition of psychology and morals. And that is that the + adventurer has a right to his adventure; and the amateur has a right + to his hobby; or rather to his love. But neither has any right to a + general judgment of coldness or contempt for those whose hobby is + human living; and whose chief adventures are at home. You will never + hear the builders of Buckfast shouting aloud, "Down with Downside; + for it was designed by a careful Gothic architect!" You will never + hear them say, "How contemptible are these Catholics who pray in + common churches; tawdry with waxwork imagery and Repository Art." Of + the great adventurers who advance out of the Christian past, in + search of Christian future, you could never say that the pioneers + despise the army. + +What seemed to Chesterton the oddest feature in the opposition to his +idea of sanity was the apparent assumption that he was offering an +impossible ideal to a world that was already working quite well. With +bland disregard of the breakdown of their own system, the orthodox +economists were challenging him to establish the flawlessness of his. +They laughed at the Distributist desire if not to abolish at least to +limit machinery. They adjured him to be more practical. Chesterton +had replied in an earlier article: + + There may be, and we ourselves believe there are, a certain number + of things that had better be always done by machinery. . . . + Machinery is now being used to produce numberless things that nobody + needs. Machinery is being used to produce more machinery, to be used + merely for the production of things that nobody needs. Machinery is + being used to produce very badly things that everybody wants produced + very well. + + Machinery is being used for enormously expensive transport of + things that might just as well be used where they are. Machinery is + being used to take things thousands of miles in order to sell them + and bring them back again because they are not sold. Machinery is + being used to produce ornament that nobody ever looks at and + architecture that nobody wants to look at. Machinery is taking + suicides to Monte Carlo and coals to Newcastle, and all normal human + purpose and intelligence to Bedlam; and our critics gaze at it + reverently and ask us how we expect ever to be so practical as that.* + +[* June 13, 1925.] + +This desperate situation must be met by strengthening the home, +re-establishing the small workshop, re-creating the English +peasantry. But first the ground might have to be cleared. + +One phrase used in his articles--the "catastrophic simplification of +the social scene"--reminds us once more how keenly aware Gilbert was +of something that had not yet happened, the present war with its +break-up of the social order. In the article, from which I have been +quoting, he compares the urgency of the hour to the period of the +French Revolution; in his _Outline of Sanity_ seven years earlier he +had stressed the Distributist ideal as the last chance to + + do deliberately and well what nemesis will do wastefully and + without pity; whether we cannot build a bridge from these slippery + downward slopes to freer and firmer land beyond, without consenting + yet that our most noble nation must descend into that valley of + humiliation in which nations disappear from history.* + +[* _Outline of Sanity_, p. 34.] + +In this book which he had tried in vain, he tells us, to make "a +grammar of Distributism," he touches on the enormous changes that had +made such a grammar of far greater urgency. When _Rerum Novarum_ was +issued, or even eighteen years later when G.K. wrote _What's Wrong +With the World_, individualist competition had not yet given place to +the Trust, Combine or Merger. "The American Trust is not private +enterprise. It would be truer to call the Spanish Inquisition private +judgment." The decline of trade had hardly begun at the turn of the +Century, liberty was still fairly widespread. But today we had lost +liberty as well as property and were living under the worst features +of a Socialist State. "I am one of those who believe that the cure +for centralisation is decentralisation." + +Both in the book and in the paper he urged constantly a double line +of escape towards the restoration of freedom, initiative, property +and the free family: the one line was the comparatively negative one +of winning such concessions from the State as would make action +possible, the other was personal action to be taken without any State +aid or even encouragement. The germ of recovery lay in human nature. +If you get poison out of a man's system "the time will come when he +himself will think he would like a little ordinary food. If things +even begin to be released they will begin to recover." To the +question did Chesterton believe Distributism would save England, he +answered, "No, I think Englishmen will save England, if they begin to +have half a chance. I am therefore in this sense hopeful. I believe +that the breakdown has been a breakdown of machinery and not of men." + +A most difficult question to answer is the degree of the League's +success. Its stated aim was propaganda, the spreading of ideas. +"There is a danger that the tendency to regard talking as negligible +may invade our little movement . . . our main business is to talk." +One sees the point, of course; yet I cannot help feeling that it +would have been better if the majority of Leaguers had done some bit +of constructive work towards a Distributist world and sweated out of +their system the irritability that found vent in some of their +quarrels. After all the fight for freedom as far as it concerned +attacking government was carried on week by week by the small group +running the paper. "The main body of Distributists would have learnt +their own principles better by trying to act them, and been far more +effective in conveying them to others." + +Some members saw the need of individual action. Father Vincent set +out in one number of the paper Fifteen Things that men could do for +themselves as a step to the practice of a Distributist philosophy. +Father Vincent, indeed, must be put beside Chesterton and Belloc as a +really great Distributist writer. Useful books were written too by +Mr. Heseltine and Mr. Blyton, who both also set to work to grow their +own food. Mr. Blyton is still writing and still growing food. A +workshop was started at Glasgow (probably the most active of the +Branches), Father Vincent came to a League meeting clad in home-spun +and home-woven garments, Mr. Blyton urged the example of what had +been done by the Society of Friends in creating real wealth in the +hands of the poor by their allotment schemes. (A weakness was +visible, I think, in the very different and contemptuous treatment of +Ford's effort to promote part-time farming among his workers during +the depression because it was made by Ford, who was certainly no +Distributist.) + +But the most inspiring article in the paper in many a year was +written by a man who, having tried in vain to get his writings +printed, decided to start practising Distributism. He had pondered +long, he says, on how the Rank and File of the Movement who were +neither writers nor speakers should help, and the answer came to him +"Do it yourself." After a fascinating description of how he built +"the nucleus of a dwelling house against the time that a small plot +of land could be secured" he ends: + + By responsible work a man can best realise the dignity of his human + personality. But most of us are caught in the net of industry and the + best way out would seem to be to create, that is to employ one's + leisure in conscious creative effort. This usually means the use of + hand as well as head, and the concentration on some familiar craft. + The aim also should be to acquire ownership in a small way; that is + to acquire the means of production. If we are not at all events + partly independent, how is it possible to urge on others the + principles of small ownership. + +In saying this he spoke from experience, for he had found that before +he began his experiment his friends were exasperated by references to +the principles of Distributism, while the sight of the building in +progress began to convert them. + +I have found many letters striking the note of gratitude to Gilbert +for his goodness and the inspiration he has given. One of these, +written by a sailor from H.M.S. _Hood_, is pure Distributism: "Your +articles are so interesting tho' so hard to understand. . . . Why not +come down a bit and educate the working class who are always in +trouble because they don't know what they want. You see, sir, your +use of words and phrases are so complicated, personally that's why +I'm so fascinated when I read them, but really us average Council +School educated people can't learn from you as we should . . . but +what I do understand helps me to live. . . ." + +The sailor goes on to tell the story of his life: a workhouse child, +a farm boy: a seaman on a submarine who spent his "danger money" on a +bit of land in Cornwall, married now and with two boys. "What a thrill +of pleasure we have when we gaze over our land. . . . To be reared in +a workhouse and then to leave a freehold home and land to one's +children may not seem much to most people but still out of that my +sons can build again. . . . I feel you understand this letter, what +is in my heart, and I want to thank you very much for what you have +done for me." + +Towards the end of September 1932 the League held a meeting to which +Gilbert came "as peacemaker." In the course of his speech he remarked +that he had often said harsh things of America in the days of her +prosperity but that in these days of adversity we might learn much +from that country. He instanced the saying he had heard from a +business man on his recent visit, "There's nothing for it but to go +back to the farm," and noted the fact that America still had this +large element of family farms as a basis for recovery. The suggestion +that Distributists wanted to turn everybody into peasants had been +another point answered in _The Outline_--"What we offer is +proportion. We wish to correct the proportions of the modern state."* +A considerable return to the family farm would greatly improve this +proportion. + +[* _Outline of Sanity_, p. 56.] + +But if he had spoken "harshly" of the United States it was nothing to +the way he had talked of the British Empire. Although at moments he +saw in imagination the romance of the fact that England had acquired +an Empire "absentmindedly" through Englishmen with the solitary +spirit of adventure and discovery, yet he had an unfortunate habit of +abusing the Dominions. They were the "suburbs" of England (a curious +phrase from the man who found suburbs "intoxicating"); we could not +learn from them as we could from Europe for they were inferior to us; +these and many other hard things he would throw out again and again +in his articles. One letter in the _Cockpit_ reproached him; from a +New Zealander of English descent it asked him whether he really meant +that those of his own race were so utterly indifferent to him; +whether he really preferred Bohemians and Norwegians to Britons. The +letter received no answer. + +My husband and I used to wonder with secret smiles whether he was the +Australian from whom Gilbert derived the idea of that country as a +"raw and remote colony." Belloc also, in a letter extolling the +Faith, asked "what else would print civilised stuff in Australasia?" +Many years earlier Gilbert had written, in reviewing a book on the +Cottages of England, of the inconsistency of the English upper +classes who exalt the achievement of the national character in +creating the Empire and disparage it concerning the possibility of +re-creating the rural life of England. "Their creed contains two +great articles: first that the common Englishman can get on anywhere, +and second that the common Englishman cannot get on in England." +Surely Chesterton had this same inconsistency, as it were, in +reverse? The common Englishman was great in England, the common +Irishman was great in Ireland, the common Scot was a figure of +romance in Scotland, but when these common men created a new country +that new country became contemptible. + +The Empire took a magnificent revenge, for it was in the "Suburbs of +England" that Distributism was first taken seriously and used as +practical politics. A far more effectively distributist paper than +_The Distributist_ appeared in Ceylon under the able editorship of +J. P. de Fonseka, in which action was recorded and the movements of +Government watched and sometimes affected from the Distributist +angle, and Catholic Social thinking formed on Distributist lines. +This paper has a considerable effect also in India. But of course the +main Distributist impact has been felt in the States, in Canada and +in Australia. + +There is a double-edged difficulty in talking about the influence of +anyone on his times. On the one hand, as Mgr. Knox pointed out, all +our generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so +completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton. +One sees unacknowledged (and unconscious) quotations from him in +books and articles, one hears them in speeches and sermons. On the +other hand into the making of a movement there flow so many streams +that it is possible to claim too much for a single influence however +powerful. An American Distributist said to me lately that the movement +set on foot by Chesterton had reached incredible proportions for one +generation. I think this is true but we have also to render thanks +(for example) to the suicide of the commercial-capitalist-combine +which created the void for our philosophy. That the Distributist +League has had much influence I doubt: in the United States the +Chesterton spirit is better represented by that admirable paper +_Free America_ than by the American Distributists--for _Free +America_ is offering us precisely what the League has for the most +part failed to offer--the laboratory test of the Distributist ideal. +Every number carries stories of men who have in part-time or +whole-time farming, in small shops, in backyard industries tried out +Distributism and can tell us how it has worked and _how to work it_. +Its editors Herbert Agar, Ralph Borsodi, Canon Ligutti and others, +all foremost in the Ruralist movement, acknowledge debt to Chesterton +and are carrying on the torch. Monsignor Ligutti's own work in the +field of part-time farming, his own periodical and the thoughts that +inspire the Catholic Rural Life Movement of America are among the +most important manifestations of that universal religious and rural +awakening for which Chesterton worked so hard and longed so ardently. + +In Canada the Antigonish movement has shown a happy blending of +theory and practise. For the University itself has in its Extension +Movement and by its organ _The Maritime Co-operator_ provided the +theory, while up and down the country co-operative groups have built +their own houses and canneries, started their own co-operative stores +and savings banks, and made the Maritime Provinces a hopeful and +property-owning community of small farmers and fisher folk. Several +important books have grown out of this movement and at its basis lies +the insistence on adult education which shall make ordinary men +"Masters of their Destiny." Surely it is the authentic voice of +Chesterton when Dr. Tompkins says "Trust the little fellow" or Dr. +Coady declares "The people are great and powerful and can do +everything." + +In Australia Distributism has given a fresh slant to both Labour and +Catholic leadership. The direct debt to Chesterton of the _Australian +Catholic Worker_ is immense, and while the paper also owes much to +_The Catholic Worker_ of America and to the Jocistes of France and +Belgium, we find too that in America, France, and Belgium, Chesterton +himself is studied more than any other Catholic Englishman. The +Campion Society founded in Melbourne in 1931, the Catholic Guild of +Social Studies in Adelaide, the Aquinas Society in Brisbane, the +Chesterton Club in Perth and the Campion Society in Sydney have all +based their thinking and their action on the Chesterbelloc +philosophy. These groups have closely analysed Belloc's _Servile +State_ and _Restoration of Property_ and have applied its principles +in their social action in a most interesting fashion. Thus they +opposed--and helped to defeat--a scheme for compulsory national +insurance chiefly on the ground that "the social services in a modern +State were the insurance premiums which Capitalism paid on its life +policy." With wages high enough to keep families in reasonable +comfort and save a little, with well distributed property, national +insurance would be rendered unnecessary. Yet on the other hand they +supported--and won--national "child endowment" because although +fundamentally only a palliative this at least strengthened the family +by supplementing wages and helping parents towards ownership and +property. + +Most important however of all the Australian developments has been +the approval of the main Distributist ideal by the Australasian +Hierarchy as the aim of Catholic Social Action. This was especially +set out in their Statement on Social Justice, issued on occasion of +the first Social Justice Sunday in 1940.* The Hierarchy of New +Zealand joined with that of Australia in establishing this +celebration for the third Sunday after Easter. Indeed, the social +policy of Australian Catholicism has produced the slogan "Property +for the People," while the policy has been brought into action both +by many scattered individuals in that huge but thinly populated +country and in organised fashion by the Rural Life movements with +their own organs of expression. + +[* Published by the Australian C.T.S.] + +If it is difficult to estimate the impact of mind upon mind it +becomes bewilderingly impossible to weigh, in such a movement as +Distributism, the actual practical effects. Partly because, while +Distributism leads naturally to co-operation (an individual, says +Chesterton, is only the Latin word for an atom and to reduce society +to individuals is to smash it to atoms), still the movement is +essentially local, the groups usually small. + +For my own part I have travelled a good deal, always with a primary +interest in social developments, and everywhere I have found +Chesterton or his derivatives. The numbers in America alone--both in +the States and Canada--who are trying out these ideas in big and +small communities is amazing. I did begin to make a list of vital +movements beginning with the Jocistes and the American Catholic +Worker, roving over the world and trying to estimate in each movement +I had met the proportion of Chesterton's influence, and again the +extent to which one movement is in debt to another--but I gave it up +in despair. One can only say that certainly there has been a great +stirring of the waters in every country: each has taken and has given +to the other: and most of those thus co-operating have been the +"little" men whom G.K. loved and in whom Dr. Tompkins tells us to +trust. To utter nobly the thoughts of that little man was, Chesterton +held, the highest aim that poet or prophet could set before him. +Distributism is that little man's philosophy. Chesterton gave it +large utterance. + +And he could do it the more richly because--as he said many years ago +of the religious philosophy that was the basis of his social +outlook--"I did not make it. God and humanity made it and it made me." + +Meanwhile he himself distributed royally. He gave help to the +Catholic Land Movement, to Cecil Houses, to all who asked him for +help. He educated several nieces and nephews of Frances and gave +money or lent it in considerable sums to old friends in difficulties. +If some event--perhaps Judgment Day--should call together all those +helped financially by Gilbert and Frances, I think they will be +surprised to meet one another and to discover what a lot of them +there are. They gave too to the Catholic Church at Beaconsfield, +which later became Gilbert's monument, and to which Top Meadow was +left after Frances's death. But even Top Meadow was distributed, a +small piece being cut off the garden and left to Dorothy Collins. And +I think even in a Distributist heaven it must add to Gilbert's +happiness to see the seventeen rabbits, the chickens and the +beehives--to say nothing of the huge quantities of vegetables +produced on this fragment of his property. + +For this war like the last, with all its suffering, will, if the +Bureaucracy permit it, again energise the people of England into that +creative action which is the only soil for the seed of Distributism. +It began by distributing the people. And London was no place for a +Distributist movement. It is no chance that the growth of this +philosophy is among small groups and in the countryside. "On the +land," as Father Vincent often says, "you need not waste a moment of +time or a scrap of material." This is the fierce and pious thrift +that Gilbert saw in his youth as so poetical and in his age as a part +of the philosophy of Distributism. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +Silver Wedding + + +THE CONSIDERATION OF the Distributist League that flowed out of the +foundation of _G.K.'s Weekly_ in 1925 has carried us some years ahead +of our story. Back then to 1926 when Frances and Gilbert had been +married 25 years. + +One of the things taught me long ago when I first visited them at +Beaconsfield was that it was properly to be called Beckonsfield: that +it was not named for Disraeli but that he, impertinently, had chosen +to be named for it. Gilbert often spelt it Bekonsfield to impress his +point. Both in theory and practice he had a lot of local patriotism +and a little of that special pride taken by all men in houses built +by themselves. But most of his pride went out to the fact that his +home was intensely English. He quoted a lover of Sussex who said +among the beech trees of Buckinghamshire, "This is really the most +English part of England." He felt it "no accident that has called +this particular stretch of England the home counties." Public life +was so ugly just now, the decay of patriotism under the corroding +influence of an evil and cowardly sort of pacifism was hateful to +him, but England still remained to re-vitalise the English when the +time should come. The oaks that had made our ships could still fill +us with "heroic memories; of Nelson dying under the low oaken beams +or Collingwood scattering the acorns that they might grow into +battleships." Yet if, he said, "I were choosing an entirely English +emblem, I should choose the beech-tree." Beaconsfield was, by one +theory, named from the beech forests that surrounded it, and while +the oaks suggested adventure and the British lion, the beeches +suggest rather the pigs that feed upon their mast and villages that +grow up in the hollows and slow curves of the hills. + +"The return to the real England with real Englishmen would be a +return to the beech-woods, which still make this town like a home. At +least they did until recently. I shall probably be told tomorrow that +several beech forests have been removed to enable a motorist, +temporarily deaf and blind, to go from Birmingham to Brighton." + +It is at Top Meadow, whither they moved in 1922, that I always see +Frances and Gilbert in a memory picture. They were to live there for +the rest of their lives, and life there was the quiet background for +all the vast mental activity and the journeying over England and +Ireland and Europe and America that marked the years that remained. + +The house began simply as a huge room or studio built in the field +opposite Overroads. At one end was a stage which became the dining +room: at the other end a minute study for Gilbert. The roof was high +with great beams: at the study end was a musicians' gallery. A wide +open fireplace held two rushbottomed seats on one of which Frances +sat in winter. They were the only warm corners, but Gilbert did not +feel the cold and certainly could not have fitted into the inglenook. +Opposite the fire was a long low window looking into the prettiest +garden, where St. Francis stood guardian and preached perpetually to +the birds. A pool held water lilies; and the flowers that surrounded +the pool and the house were also cut and brought indoors in great +quantities. Frances loved to have them in glowing masses against the +background of books. + +New shelves had to be added every year as the books accumulated. Big +as the room was, the wall space was not enough and one large bookcase +was built out from the wall near the fireplace into the middle of the +room, as in a public library. It looked well there and it screened +one from the bitterest blasts. For the place seemed full of air from +the four winds of heaven. The rest of the house was built on to this +room and looked tiny beside it. Kitchen and servants' quarters, two +fair-sized and one very small bedroom, a minute sitting room for +Frances where she kept her collection of tiny things--toys and +ornaments mostly less than an inch, many far smaller, that were the +delight of children. She had not, Gilbert remarked, allowed her taste +to guide her in choosing a husband. + +A mixture of Gilbert's strong and weak qualities affected his +dealings with his dependents. I am not sure he felt certain that it +was quite right that he should have a gardener: anyhow, no man was +ever paid so highly and allowed to idle so completely as was the +gardener I remember there, an exceedingly able gardener when he chose +to work. To such trifles as the disappearance of coal or tools, +neither Gilbert nor Frances would dream of adverting. And they were +entirely at the mercy of a "hard case" story at all times. One man +used to call weekly to receive ten shillings--for what service no one +was able to form the faintest conception. Should he fail to appear +Gilbert mailed the money. He was found one day fighting another man +on the doorstep for daring to beg from Mr. Chesterton! + +From a conventional point of view the maids were inconceivably +casual. Neither Gilbert nor Frances would have thought it right to +insist on caps or indeed on any sort of uniform. It is my impression +that I have been waited on at dinner by someone garbed in a skirt, a +sweater and a pair of bedroom slippers. And the parlor maid took for +granted her own presence beside Frances and Dorothy Collins as a +chief mourner at Gilbert's funeral. + +According to Bernard Shaw, writing of Dickens, marriage between a +genius and an ordinary or normal woman could not succeed--the gap was +too wide. Dickens had thought he could go through with it, only +because he had not measured the gap. In this theory, as in so much +else, Gilbert stood violently opposed to Shaw. No doubt he must at +times have realised that there was an intellectual gap between +himself and the ordinary man or woman, but it was a thing utterly +unimportant. Character, love, sanity: these things mattered +infinitely more, and he more than once depicts the genius as +painfully climbing to reach the ordinary. + +His views concerning the sexes were equally at variance with those +of Shaw and of most of the moderns. He was quite frankly the +old-fashioned man and Frances was the old-fashioned woman. They both +agreed that there is one side of life that belongs to man--the side +of endless cigars smoked over endless discussions about the universe. +Gilbert, in _What's Wrong With the World_, tells us that the voice in +which the working woman summons her husband from the tavern is the +same voice as that of the hostess who, leaving the men in the dining +room, tells her husband not to stay too long over the cigars. + +Of this voice he entirely approved so long as it did not ask to stay +on in the dining room. He often said that the important thing for a +country was that the men should be manly, the women womanly: the +thing he hated was the modern hybrid: the woman who gate-crashes the +male side of life: no one, he had said in a letter of his engagement +time, "takes such a fierce pleasure as I do in things being +themselves." And both he and Frances found amusement in that "eternal +equality" which Gilbert saw in the sexes so long as they kept their +eternal separateness. If everything, he said, is trying to be red +some things are redder than others, but there is an eternal and +unalterable equality between red and green. + +It so happens that in the matter of the wives of great men he had +something to say more than once. He longed to hear the point of view +of Mrs. Cobbett who "remains in the background of his life in a sort +of powerful silence." He combated Shaw's notion that the young poet +would repudiate domestic toils for his wife: rather he would idealise +them--though this, Gilbert admits, might at times be hard on the +wife. But the matter is best expressed in the love scene in one of +his later romances: _Tales of the Long Bow:_ + + That valley had a quality of repose with a stir of refreshment, + as if the west wind had been snared in it and tamed into a summer + air. . . . + + "What would you say if I turned the world upside down and set my + foot upon the sun and the moon?" + + "I should say," replied Joan Hardy, still smiling, "that you wanted + somebody to look after you." + + He stared at her for a moment in an almost abstracted fashion as if + he had not fully understood; then he laughed quite suddenly and + uncontrollably, like a man who has seen something very close to him + that he knows he is a fool not to have seen before. So a man will + fall over something in a game of hiding-and-seeking, and get up + shaken with laughter. + + "What a bump your mother earth gives you when you fall out of an + aeroplane," he said. "What a thing is horse-sense, and how much finer + really than the poetry of Pegasus! And when there is everything else + as well that makes the sky clean and the earth kind, beauty and + bravery and the lifting of the head--well, you are right enough, + Joan. Will you take care of me?"* + +[* Pp. 89, 119.] + +Frances was not especially interesting intellectually although she +had much more mind than Joan in the story, but above all she carried +with her a "quality of repose with a stir of refreshment." + +"Will you take care of me?" + +Neither of them probably had measured at first all that that care +would mean. Only bit by bit would the full degree of his physical +dependence, as we have seen it through the years, become clear to +her. The strenuous campaign in the matter of appearances begun during +the engagement might alter in direction but had rather to be +intensified in degree as he grew older. Shaving, bathing, even +dressing were daily problems to him. "Heat the water," an early +secretary at Overroads heard Frances saying to the cook, "Mr. +Chesterton is going to have a bath." And "O, need I," came in tones +of deepest depression from the study. The thought of that vast form +climbing into and out of the bathtub does make one realise how a +matter of easy everyday practice to the normal person became to him +almost a heroic venture. His tie, his boots, were equally a problem: +I remember his appearing once at breakfast in two ties and claiming, +when I noticed it, that it proved he paid too much, not too little, +attention to dress. Doctors, dentists, oculists were all needed at +times, but Gilbert would never discover the need or achieve +appointments or the keeping of them. Still more serious was the +question of how the two were to live and to do all the acts of +generosity that to them both seemed almost more necessary than their +own living. Hard as he worked, Dorothy Collins has told me that when +she came to them in this year (1926) they had almost nothing saved. + +It may be remembered that Gilbert wrote to Frances during their +engagement that his only quality as a shopper was ability to get rid +of money and that he was not good at "such minor observances" as +bringing home what he had bought or even remembering what it was. +Through boyhood and into manhood his parents, as we have seen, had +never given him money to handle and he certainly never learnt to +handle it later in life. "He spent money like water," Belloc told me. +Realising his own incapacity he arranged fairly early to have Frances +look after their finances, bank the money and draw checks. "When we +set up a house, darling," he had said, "I think you will have to do +the shopping." All he handled was small sums by way of pocket +money--"very playfully regarded by both" Father O'Connor writes, for +he had often witnessed the joke that they made of it. + +"What could she do," he continues, "when Gilbert went out with +L5.18.6 or words to that effect, and came back invariably without a +copper, not knowing where his money had gone?" + +At a hotel in Warsaw the manager entreated him not to bring every +beggar in town around the door. He could never refuse a beggar and +the money not given away was probably dropped in the street or in a +shop. The solution they hit upon was that of accounts at the shops +and hotels or anything that could not simply be brought home by +Frances and placed by his side. Father O'Connor wrote to Dorothy +Collins of "the loving care with which Frances anticipated all his +wishes--never was the cigar box out of date--_you_ know this, and it +was so long before you came. And his toddle to the Railway Hotel for +port or a quart according to climatic conditions. . . . She devised +and built the studio for Gilbert to play at and play in. It used to +be crowded at receptions, as on the night when Gilbert broke his arm. +He had been toying with the tankard that evening, to the detriment of +social intercourse, but not much, I thought. We were all in good +fettle. The _Ballad of the White Horse_ was just going to the +printers. That was never penned in Fleet Street. Nor _The Everlasting +Man_. He wrote verbosely there in the office. At Beaconsfield he was +pulled together, braced." + +The studio, become the house, almost certainly cost more than they +had planned--building always does--but the two great drains were the +benefactions and the paper. Frances signed, as a matter of course, +every check Gilbert wanted, but I imagine it was sometimes with a +little sigh that she wrote the checks for the endless telephones, +telegrams, printers' bills and other expenses that poured out to +support a paper which to her seemed chiefly a drain on Gilbert's +energies that could not but diminish his creative writing. In the six +years 1927-1933, he paid over L3000 into the paper. 1931-2 were the +worst years. In them the checks she had to sign totalled L1500. + +The last sentences quoted from Father O'Connor touch on the +deepest--perhaps the only deep--problem for them both. For far the +hardest thing was the struggle against the real danger that he might +again drink too much, as he had before the illness that so nearly +killed him in 1915. This struggle was rendered especially hard by two +elements in her make-up: Frances wanted always to give Gilbert +exactly what _he_ wanted, and she hated to admit even to herself +anything that could be called a fault in him. She saw the overwork +that she was powerless to stop: she could not but be aware how great +it made the temptation. It was for her to remember the old illness, +to be vigilant without worrying him, to help him against himself. + +After the long illness Dr. Pocock had advised total abstinence for +some years, largely because, as he told me, Gilbert, unless specially +warned, ate and drank absentmindedly anything that happened to be +there! He observed this prohibition faithfully until Dr. Pocock left +Beaconsfield in 1919. Dr. Bakewell, who succeeded him advised +moderation but only occasionally found it necessary to order total +abstention. It was the amount of liquid he feared rather than its +nature. When he forbade wine he did so because wine increased the +general tendency to absorb liquid. For Gilbert was always unslakeably +thirsty. Daily he drank several bottles of Vichy Water or Evian, also +of claret at what may be called the "open" seasons, and many cups of +tea and coffee. Spirits he practically never touched, nor such +heavier wines as port and sherry. But even two bottles of claret or +Burgundy, although usually appearing to brighten his intellect, might +well be a serious strain on the digestion of a man who overworked the +mind without exercising the body. "He loved to sip a glass of wine," +Monsignor O'Connor writes, "and to stroll between sips in and out of +his study, brooding and jotting, and then the dictation was ready for +the morning." + +Dorothy Collins once kept a record for a few weeks of the number of +words dictated of the book of the moment--usually thirteen to +fourteen thousand, about twenty-one hours weekly--exclusive of +journalism, editing and lecturing. The pressure was tremendous and +increasing, nor was it felt by Gilbert only. In a letter to Maurice +Baring at the time of his conversion he writes: "For deeper reasons +than I could ever explain, my mind has to turn especially on the +thought of my wife, whose life has been in many ways a very heroic +tragedy; and to whom I am so much in debt of honour that I cannot +bear to leave her, even psychologically, if it be possible by tact +and sympathy to take her with me." + +Frances would indeed have been amazed to find herself cast for such a +part. Her life had held two tragic events--Gertrude's death and the +much sadder death of her brother, believed to have killed himself. +With her faith and her profound affections such an end had stabbed +deep. Yet certainly Frances did not view herself as other than happy: +in fact, I think she very seldom thought about herself at all. There +was something of heroism in this very self-forgetfulness. Frances +never had good health and for some years had suffered from arthritis +of the spine. Yet intimate as I was I knew this only after her death. +My husband was saying lately that had he been asked to choose +adjectives to describe Frances he would have chosen "cheerful" and +"well-balanced." Of all the people we have known we felt she was one +of the closest to the norm of sanity and mental health: quite an +achievement for a woman suffering from a really painful complaint. + +Yet I think when Gilbert used the strong phrase "heroic tragedy" he +saw with his great insight that his frail wife, beside their heavy +cross of childlessness, beside the burden of her own physical and +spiritual sufferings, was carrying the weight of his achievement, and +that it was not a light one. Heroic was the right word but tragedy +the wrong, for this life given to her keeping ended on a note of +triumph. + +The treatment of a situation of this kind can, of course, easily be +made unreal. In the sort of golden glow cast by the imagination on +Fleet Street with its taverns and its drinks, next morning's headache +is always omitted: but even the finer, deeper glow of the domestic +hearth has its ashy moments. No finite beings can conduct their lives +with complete absence of errors and regrets. In any human +relationship, however perfect, the people concerned sometimes bore or +annoy or even hurt one another. That is one of the main things that +sends Catholics week by week or month by month to the Confessional, +which brings for everyman something of the renewal and re-creation of +daily joy that the genius Gilbert saw when he wrote _Manalive_. In +this story the hero is always eloping with his own wife and marrying +her again. Flora Finching's "It was not ecstasy it was comfort" is a +common enough view of a reasonably successful marriage, but Gilbert +wanted to keep and did keep the flashes of ecstasy. When he wrote +_Manalive_ he had been married eleven years and he used a thought +that had inspired a poem to Frances while they were engaged. The +heroine in the story keeps changing her second name, but the name is +always a colour: in one town the hero runs away with her as Mary +Grey, in another as Mary Green. Thus as a girl Gilbert had seen +Frances in green and had understood why green trees and fields are +beautiful; had seen her in grey and had learnt a new love for grey +winter days, and the grey robes of palmers; and in blue-- + + Then saw I how the fashioner + Splashed reckless blue on sky and sea + And ere 'twas good enough for her + He tried it on eternity. + +When they came back from Jerusalem Gilbert dedicated to Frances the +_Ballad of St. Barbara_ and we find him again at his old trick: +seeing as her throne the great stones of the mediaeval walls, seeing +nature as her background. With all apologies to the cynics I am +afraid that the judgment of the biographer upon all the evidence must +be that after twenty-five years Gilbert not only loved his wife +tenderly, but was still ardently in love with her! + +A curious prayer of his youth was fulfilled as they celebrated this +year their silver wedding. + + A wan new garment of young green, + Touched as you turned your soft brown hair; + And in me surged the strangest prayer + Ever in lover's heart hath been. + + That I who saw your youth's bright page, + A rainbow change from robe to robe, + Might see you on this earthly globe, + Crowned with the silver crown of age. + + Your dear hair powdered in strange guise, + Your dear face touched with colours pale, + And gazing through the mask and veil + The mirth of your immortal eyes.* + +[* "The Last Masquerade," _Collected Poems_, pp. 348-9.] + +Four years earlier Frances had aided Gilbert in making the decision +for which she was not yet herself ready, to do the act which he +called "the most difficult of all my acts of freedom." And indeed +much of that freedom of full manhood he owed to her. + +Now after four years of waiting she was almost ready to join him. She +wrote to Father O'Connor: + + June 20 [1926] + + DEAR PADRE-- + + I want now, as soon as I can see a few days clear before me to + place myself under instruction to enter the Church. The whole + position is full of difficulties and I pray you Padre to tell me the + first step to take. I _don't_ want my instruction to be here. I don't + want to be the talk of Beaconsfield and for people to say I've only + followed Gilbert. It isn't true and I've had a hard fight not to let + my love for him lead me to the truth. I knew you would not accept me + for such motives. But I am very tired and very worried. Many things + are difficult for me. My health included which makes strenuous + attention a bit of a strain. I know you understand--Tell me what I + shall do. + + Yours affecly + + FRANCES CHESTERTON. + +Between this letter and the next Gilbert and Frances celebrated +their silver wedding. + + July 12 + + MY DEAR PADRE-- + + We have had such a week of alarums and excitements that I had not + even time to thank you for the spoons. They are just what I like and + incidentally just what I wanted. I feel so hopeless at getting out of + this net of responsibilities in which I am at present enmeshed and to + find time for instruction. I feel I have a lot to learn and I think + after all I had better go quietly to Father Walker* and talk to him. + Gilbert is writing to you himself. I know he thinks I have made + myself rather unhappy about things--and he is so involved with the + paper (I pray he gives it up) we have not been able to talk over + things sensibly. Please be very patient with me, because it is so + difficult to get clear. My nephew Peter is very ill and I have to + spend a lot of time with my poor sister. + +[* The Parish Priest.] + + Yrs gratefully + + FRANCES CHESTERTON. + + [Undated] + + DEAR PADRE-- + + Many grateful thanks. Did you receive your copy of the "Incredulity + of Father Brown." It was put aside for you, but I do not know if it + was sent off or appropriated by somebody else. I have written to + Father Walker and after having seen him and had a talk I shall know + what I ought to do. It is only the mass of work, the paper, my poor + Peter and money worries that keep me on the edge from morning till + night. I feel the paper must go, it is too much for Gilbert (4 days + work always) and consequently too much for me who have to attend to + everything else. Trying to settle an income-tax dispute has nearly + brought me to tears. + + You will understand how difficult it is to get time to think and + adjust my conclusions. + + Yrs affect. + + FRANCES CHESTERTON. + +This group of letters is for Frances amazingly unreserved. I have +never known a happier Catholic than she was once the shivering on the +bank was over and the plunge had been taken. One would say she had +been in the Church all her life. + +This was indeed a year of fulfillment: the year of the completion of +their home, for they surprisingly acquired a daughter! I sometimes +wondered why Frances and Gilbert had never adopted a child: they +lavished much love on nieces, nephews and godchildren, but this was +the only fulfillment to their longing until almost old age--and even +then their conscious act was merely that of engaging a secretary. +They had had many secretaries before, some of whom came with a quite +inadequate training. "They learnt on Gilbert," as a friend once put +it. It was difficult, too, for the secretaries, since neither Gilbert +nor Frances had any idea of hours or of the arrangement of work. It +was quite probable that Gilbert would suddenly want to dictate late +in the evening or again that Frances would ask the secretary of the +moment to run into the village for the fish in the middle of the +morning. Hence rather general discomfort. Gilbert dictated straight +to the typewriter, so shorthand was not needed. He went very slowly +with many pauses. But it is typical of this period that no carbons +were kept of letters sent, no files of letters received. + +In 1926 came Dorothy Collins. Not only did she bring order out of +chaos, but she became first the very dear friend of both Frances and +Gilbert and finally all that their own daughter could have been. I +remember how Frances talked of her to me when she was hoping Dorothy +would become a Catholic (which she did some years later) and again +when she herself was left solitary by her husband's death, and how I +felt with inward thanksgiving that no child could mean more to her +mother. But long before this stage was reached came a great +lightening of the burden of living. No longer would Frances cry over +income tax returns, no longer would money worry her. Chauffeur as +well as secretary Dorothy drove them both to London for engagements +and through England and Europe on holidays or lecture tours. She went +with them to America and handled the business of their second tour +there. Now when friends rang up to make arrangements Frances or +Gilbert could say: "Would you ring again when Dorothy comes in. I'm +not quite sure. She keeps the engagement book." And while Dorothy +sternly warded off the undesirables, it worked out much better for +friends as no engagement book had been kept before with any +regularity. Now engagements were kept as well as an engagement book. +Frances would still deal with the clothing question, but Dorothy +handled it if she were unwell, and in every case delivered him +punctually and brought him home again. A few of the lectures and +debates of these years were: "Is Journalism Justifiable?", "An Aspect +of St. Francis of Assisi," "The Problem of Liberty," "Is the House of +Commons any Use," "What Poland Is," "Culture and the Coming Peril," +"Progress and Old Books," "Americanization," "The Modern Novel," "If +I Were a Dictator." + +The excitement of Catholics everywhere had been intense when Gilbert +came into the church: in England it was almost as great over Frances. +Her real wish to remain in the background, her dislike of publicity, +were seldom believed in by those who did not know her. I happened to +be present at a conversation between the proprietor and the editor of +a Catholic paper which had displayed a poster all over London +announcing her conversion. One of them had heard that she was annoyed +and for a moment both seemed a little dashed. Then said one: "Of +course she has to pretend not to like it"--and this was at once +accepted by the other: for both took for granted that such publicity +could in reality have given her nothing but pleasure. + +It was difficult at first for either Frances or Gilbert to see the +wood for the trees in their new environment, and it was the greatest +good fortune that the year of Frances's reception was also that of +the new simplification following upon Dorothy's arrival. For the +preceding few years had resembled the hectic period of the lionising +of the young Chesterton of 1904. Requests poured in, for lectures, +for articles, for introductions to books. "Are there no other +Catholics to do things?" Frances asked me rather plaintively. Of +these years Monsignor Knox said later, "his health had begun to +decline, and he was overworked, partly through our fault." + +A dip into the post bag brings up some letters from Father Martindale +to Gilbert and Frances passing on various requests, but also +realising the difficulty: "I sympathize with all desperately busy +men": "I have already protected him by advising small or fussy groups +not to invite him now and again." The solitary recollection I have of +any interest Gilbert showed in a review of his books is the remark he +made to my husband when Father Martindale had said of _The Queen of +Seven Swords_ "Francis Thompson is here outpassed." Gilbert repeated +the phrase and said eagerly: "He wouldn't say it unless he meant it, +would he?" + +C.C.M., who has himself been caricatured talking on the radio, typing +and eating at the same time, as different from G.K.C. as possible in +his pale slimness and almost transparent appearance, was no less busy +over a thousand activities. It was interesting that he should ask +Gilbert's help, especially in that cementing of Catholics throughout +the Empire that has always so passionately preoccupied him. In the +War he had discovered in military hospitals the ordinary Englishman +and above all the ordinary Australian and New Zealander. To them and +to the Apostolate of the Sea he was to devote primarily all his later +life. + +Writing therefore to counsel the Chestertons as to which Catholic +works should have precedence, we find him wanting an article for a +New Zealand paper "the only one of its sort in N.Z., and you may say +that it affects the _entire Catholic_ community of the two islands," +an autographed book for "a hulking devotee of yours and a member of +the Australia rugger team, I think eight of them are Catholics." This +"would give enormous joy to him" and "would be known in no time +throughout Australia. Do try to." + +From South Africa he wrote to Frances: + + You will be surprised to get a letter from me from a nameless place + 50 miles inland from the Nyanga mountains, which you will find + (variously spelt) westward from, say Beira on the African east coast. + This is the reason-- + + Recently a boy in a kraal here was found cutting pious pictures + from a newspaper that he had somehow got hold of (he was a good + little Catholic!). "Why are you cutting out that one?" "Because + _this_ is a Great Mukuru in the Catholic Church." (Mukuru is + Potentate and will serve from St. Joseph right along to the Pope, not + to mention the Little Flower. . . .) The Great Mukuru in this case + was yourself! So there! + + I hope you will smile with pleasure, but not try to answer, as + please God I sail on the 31st and ought to be back in London in early + Sept., a good deal better, thank God. + + Please remember me affectionately to Gilbert. This is the first + time a typemachine has clicked just here; its accompaniment, in an + otherwise dead silence, is a distant gurgling yodel, so to say--some + native feeling happy in the brilliantly hot sunlight, which, all the + same, cannot make the thin air hot. I sleep (when possible) under + furs, with the occasional insect dropping off the thatch over my head. + +Later, planning a meeting for the Apostolate of the Sea at Queen's +Hall, he writes to Gilbert: + + Similarly Fr. McNabb must be given his head and I have told him he + shall be given it. I hope to be purely practical and possibly a + little sentimental. . . . The Seaman is everywhere, yet, for us, + nowhere. He carries everywhere his child's heart, man's body, hungry + unfed soul, unique power of feeding his goodness into others. The + all-round (the world) man; the sea-limited man; the man whose life + is made up of storms and stars; the most secretive and the most + open-hearted man of any. . . . Now _I_ will do all the clumsy stuff. + _You_ pull it all up into the human-sublime divine-humble air. + +He has no privacy, and is more lonely than anyone. He has Water, and +God; and MUST find Christ walking over the waves towards him. And no +ghost. + +Father Vincent McNabb who was to be "given his head" at this meeting +was not a new friend of Catholic days but a very old one. A friendly +critic of my manuscript asks whether he, even more than Belloc or +Chesterton, does not merit the title of the Father of Distributism. +At least he brings into the movement something none other could +bring. He bases his social philosophy closely on the gospels--of +which his knowledge is almost unique--and his articles bear such +titles as "The Economics of Bethlehem" or "Big Scale Agriculture and +the Gospels." Hatred of machinery has combined with love of poverty +to sunder him from a typewriter, and these articles are all +handwritten in most exquisite and legible script. His letters have +always come in old envelopes turned inside out; he walks whenever +possible and wears a shabby white habit and broken boots. Both +Frances and Gilbert loved him dearly and their rare meetings were red +letter days for both. Besides the link of Distributism the two men +were united in caring deeply for the reawakened interest in St. +Thomas and his philosophy. + +The Benedictine, as well as the Dominican, outlook and history +especially appealed to Gilbert, and the friendship with Father +Ignatius Rice, which had begun almost with the century, grew +steadily. He assisted, as we have seen, at Gilbert's reception into +the Church: and whenever they met after that Gilbert would remind +him, "We were together on the great day." + +High Wycombe was the Chesterton's parish until, largely by their +help, a church could be built at Beaconsfield. At first this church +was served by Father Walker, parish priest of High Wycombe. It was he +who had prepared Gilbert for his First Communion and he has sent me +some of his recollections: + + It certainly did not take long to prepare him for he evidently knew + as much as I could tell him. Nevertheless, he said I was to treat him + as I would any child whom I was teaching. This, knowing the man whom + I was instructing, for I had at the time carefully waded through his + Orthodoxy twice, was, indeed, an undertaking of magnitude. However, I + went through the catechism (he was importunate that I should use it + as he said all the children made use of it), very meticulously + explaining all the details, to which he lent a most vigilant and + unswerving attention. For instance, he wanted me to explain the + reason of the drop of water being put into the wine at the preparing + of the chalice for the Holy Sacrifice. + +Father Walker describes Gilbert opening a bazaar and spending +lavishly at every stall, afterwards being photographed in his +company. Father Walker himself weighed 245 lbs., and the caption was +"Giants in the Faith." On his departure, Gilbert presided at the +farewell meeting and made a speech which, says Father Walker, "gave +me no end of delight." Father (now Monsignor) Smith became the first +rector of Beaconsfield as a separate parish. The Chestertons loved +the little church there which later became Gilbert's memorial and to +which, among other things, they gave a very beautiful statue of Our +Lady. But when it had first been dedicated there had been for both +Frances and Gilbert a deep disappointment. Curiously enough, neither +of them had any devotion to the Little Flower who was chosen as +Patron: they had hoped for a dedication to the English Martyrs. Later +Gilbert used to tell Dorothy, who loved St. Therese, that he could +not care for her, "with all apologies to you, Dorothy." + +He did not go often to Confession, Dorothy says, but when he did go +you could hear him all over the church. Getting up in the morning was +always a fearful effort to him, and starting for early Mass he would +say to her, "what but religion would bring us to such an evil pass!" + +Meanwhile the books went on. In 1926 appeared _The Outline of Sanity, +The Catholic Church and Conversion_, chiefly concerned with his own +mental history, _The Incredulity of Father Brown_ and _The Queen of +Seven Swords_. In 1927 for the first time his scattered poems were +brought into the volume of _Collected Poems_. + +St. Augustine asks whether we can praise God before we know Him: +Gilbert answered that question when by praise and thanksgiving he +came as a boy to the discovery of God, beginning by a passionate +desire to thank someone for the Universe. There is much praise in the +Collected Poems. There is the note of hope in an almost hopeless +fight in _The Ballad of the White Horse_. There are lovely poems to +his wife. Since Browning none has understood the Sacrament of +Marriage as well as Gilbert Chesterton. + +In 1927 there also appeared, beside a couple of pamphlets: + +The Return of Don Quixote +Robert Louis Stevenson +The Secret of Father Brown +The Judgment of Dr. Johnson + +_Robert Louis Stevenson_ took Gilbert back to his boyhood and is by +general agreement among the best of his literary studies. But the +best thing he ever said apropos of Stevenson came not in this book +but in his attack on the "science" of eugenics: + + Keats died young; but he had more pleasure in a minute than a + Eugenist gets in a month. Stevenson had lung trouble; and it may, for + all I know, have been perceptible to the Eugenic eye even a + generation before. But who would perform that illegal operation: the + stopping of Stevenson? Intercepting a letter bursting with good news, + confiscating a hamper full of presents and prizes, pouring torrents + of intoxicating wine into the sea, all this is a faint approximation + for the Eugenic inaction of the ancestors of Stevenson. This, + however, is not the essential point; with Stevenson it is not merely + a case of the pleasure we get, but of the pleasure he got. If he had + died without writing a line, he would have had more red-hot joy than + is given to most men. Shall I say of him, to whom I owe so much, let + the day perish wherein he was born? Shall I pray that the stars of + the twilight thereof be dark and it be not numbered among the days of + the year, because it shut not up the days of his mother's womb? I + respectfully decline; like Job, I will put my hand upon my mouth.* + +[* _Eugenics and Other Evils,_ p. 57.] + +When the _Stevenson_ itself appeared, Sir Edmund Gosse wrote: + + I have just finished reading the book in which you smite the + detractors of R.L.S. hip and thigh. I cannot express without a sort + of hyperbole the sentiments which you have awakened; of joy, of + satisfaction, of relief, of malicious and vindictive pleasure. We are + avenged at last. . . . + + It is and always since his death has been impossible for me to + write anything which went below the surface of R.L.S. I loved him, + and still love him, too tenderly to analyse him. But you, who have + the privilege of not being dazzled by having known him, have taken + the task into your strong competent hands. You could not have done it + better. + + The latest survivor, the only survivor, of his little early circle + of intimate friends thanks you from the bottom of his heart. + +_Don Quixote_ is a fantasia about the future: in which the study of +heraldry leads to the discovery of England and the centuries of her +happiness and of her faith. Increasingly Gilbert saw the only future +for his country in a re-marriage between those divorced three hundred +years ago: England and the Catholic Church. _Don Quixote_ is among +the less good of his books, but like all the works of these years it +is saturated with Catholicism. I wondered whether I felt more +admiration or amazement when a man once asked us to publish a book on +Chesterton saying, "I am an atheist myself but that doesn't matter, +as I don't deal with his religion." + +As a young man Gilbert had wanted to marry the religion of Dr. +Johnson to the Republicanism of Wilkes and in his Catholic faith of +today he saw simply the rounding out and the completing of the +religion of Dr. Johnson. _The Judgment of Dr. Johnson_, his play +about that great man was, like _Magic_, an immense succes d'estime +but not a stage success: it was brilliantly acted and appreciatively +criticised but could not win a public. Bernard Shaw was still +constantly urging Gilbert towards the drama. Belloc too believed he +could write a successful play and he and Anstey (author of _Vice +Versa_) suggested the dramatising of a Belloc story. But neither the +scenario they jointly sketched for Belloc's _Emerald_ nor another +made by Gilbert alone for his own _Flying Inn_ ever reached the stage. + +I remember going with the Chestertons to a pre-view of a Father Brown +picture. Two of the stories had been cleverly combined, the cast was +first rate, including Una O'Connor and Walter Connolly, and I came +out feeling convinced that Father Brown would become another Charlie +Chan. The stories would adapt so well, abounding as they do in scenes +impossible for the stage but perfectly easy for the screen--high +walls, windows, ladders, flying harlequins. But the first picture +failed (possibly because it was too short) and no more were made. The +drama remained the one field in which he had no success. + +Shaw's name for Gilbert and Belloc--the Chesterbelloc--had come by +the public to be used for the novels in which they collaborated. +Belloc wrote the story, Chesterton drew the pictures, and the +resulting product was known as the Chesterbelloc. A number of letters +from Mr. Belloc beg Gilbert to do the drawings early in order to help +the story. "I have already written a number of _situations_ which you +might care to sketch. I append a list. Your _drawing_ makes all the +difference to my _thinking:_ I see the people in action more +clearly." And again, "I can't write till I have the inspiration of +your pencil. For the comedy in me is ailing." + +Belloc would come over to Beaconsfield for a day or a night and the +two men retire into Gilbert's minute study whence hoots of laughter +would be heard. At the end of a couple of hours they would emerge +with the drawings for a book complete, indeed several more than were +needed. + +Father Rice asked Gilbert once what he was writing and he replied, +"My publishers have demanded a fresh batch of corpses." The little +detective-priest ("I am very fond," said one reader to Chesterton, +"of that officious little loafer") became a feature in crime +anthologies, and when Anthony Berkeley in 1929 wanted to found the +Detective Club he wrote that it "would be quite incomplete without +the creator of Father Brown." + +Gilbert soon became President. "Needless to say," writes Dorothy +Sayers, "he read his part of the initiation ceremony with tremendous +effect and enormous gusto." + +In an article Gilbert wrote about the Club, he called it "a very +small and quiet conspiracy, to which I am proud to belong." Meeting +in various restaurants its members would "discuss various plots and +schemes of crime." Some results of these discussions may be seen in +the Initiation ceremonies which he made public in the article +"thereby setting a good example to the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, the +Illuminati . . . and all the other secret societies which now conduct +the greater part of public life, in the age of Publicity and Public +Opinion." + + _The Ruler shall say to the Candidate:_ + + M.N. is it your firm desire to become a Member of the Detection + Club? + + _Then the Candidate shall answer in a loud voice:_ + + That is my desire. + + _Ruler:_ + + Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the + crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to + bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine + Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, + Coincidence or Act of God? + + _Candidate:_ + + I do. + + _Ruler:_ + + Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? + + _Candidate:_ + + I do. + + _Ruler:_ + + Do you promise to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Gangs, + Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, + Super-Criminals and Lunatics; and utterly and for ever to forswear + Mysterious Poisons unknown to Science? + + _Candidate:_ + + I do. + + _Ruler:_ + + Will you honour the King's English? + + _Candidate:_ + + I will. + + _Then the Ruler shall ask:_ + + M.N. Is there anything you hold sacred? + + _Then the Candidate having named a Thing which he holds of peculiar + sanctity, the Ruler shall ask:_ + + M.N. Do you swear by (_Here the Ruler shall name the Thing which + the Candidate has declared to be his Peculiar Sanctity_) to observe + faithfully all these promises which you have made, so long as you are + a member of the Club? + + _But, if the Candidate is not able to name a Thing which he holds + sacred, then the Ruler shall propose the Oath in this manner + following:_ + + M.N. Do you, as you hope to increase your Sales, swear to observe + faithfully all these promises which you have made, so long as you are + a member of the Club? + +A book called _The Floating Admiral_ was brought out by the Club. +Chesterton wrote the introduction and each member produced one +chapter. Reading it without inside knowledge I conceived that the +idea was for each to clear up the problems created by his predecessor +and create fresh ones for his successor. Gilbert tells of the subtler +joke underlying the story: + + Perhaps the most characteristic thing that the Detection Club ever + did was to publish a detective story, which was quite a good + detective story, but the best things in which could not possibly be + understood by anybody except the gang of criminals that had produced + it. It was called _The Floating Admiral_, and was written somewhat + uproariously in the manner of one of those "paper games" in which + each writer in turn continues a story of which he knows neither head + nor tail. It turned out remarkably readable, but the joke of it will + never be discovered by the ordinary reader; for the truth is that + almost every chapter thus contributed by an amateur detective is a + satire on the personal peculiarities of the last amateur detective. + This, it will be sternly said, is not the way to become a + best-seller. It is a matter of taste; but to my mind there is always + a curious tingle of obscure excitement, in the works of this kind + which have remained here and there in literary history; the sort of + book that it is even more enjoyable to write than to read. + +_The Floating Admiral_ was a fair success financially. "We hired a +sort of garret," writes Monsignor Knox "with the proceeds, as Club +Rooms; and on the night after we all received our keys the premises +were burglariously entered; why or by whom is still a mystery, but it +was a good joke that it should happen to the Detective Club." + +Lord Peter and Father Brown and Monsieur Poirot--how were the mighty +fallen! + +There is a custom in both English and Scottish universities of +electing a Lord Rector with the accompaniment of much undergraduate +"ragging" of the choicest kind. The candidates usually each represent +a political party but personal popularity has much to say in their +success. At the Scottish universities the contests are particularly +spirited, and his keen sense of fun made Gilbert ready to accept +frequent invitations to stand. At Glasgow in 1925 Austen Chamberlain +got 1242, votes, Chesterton 968 and Sidney Webb 285. "What swamped +you," wrote Jack Phillimore, always critical of the gentler sex, "was +the women, whose simple snobbery cannot get past the top hat and +frock coat and Right Honourable . . . Boyle was never kidnapped: +others were removed into the mountains." + +The last sentence might have been lifted from Sir Walter: it refers +to a pleasing habit among Scots undergraduates of kidnapping the +supporters of their opponents and keeping them safely concealed till +after the election. + +Whether or not it was through their simple snobbery, as Professor +Phillimore said, it was certainly the women's vote that swamped him: +of the 374 votes by which Austen Chamberlain beat Chesterton, the men +only accounted for 20, the women for 354. But it must have been some +profounder passion that caused one of England's leading women +novelists to write to the Secretary of the Glasgow University Liberal +Club: + + I fail to see why you should desire to embarrass Liberalism at one + of its least happy moments by associating it with that village idiot + on a large scale who is responsible for the muddled economics and + disagreeable fantastics of "G.K.'s Weekly." + +This was the outlook of that official Liberalism which had long made +it so difficult for Gilbert to go on calling himself a Liberal. The +Servile State was in full swing and official Liberalism asked nothing +better than to be allowed to operate it. Whether Belloc and Cecil +Chesterton had been right or wrong at an earlier date in seeing the +political parties in collusion it is certain that by now an utter +bankruptcy in statesmanship had reduced them all to saying the same +things while they did nothing. Ten years later, on the day of the +last General election of his life, Gilbert wrote: + + The Liberal has formed the opinion that Peace is decidedly + preferable to its alternative of War; and that this should be + achieved through support of the League of Nations interfering with + the ambitions of other nations. The Ministerialist, on the other + hand, holds that we should, if possible, employ a machinery called + the League of Nations; with the object of securing Peace, to which he + is much attached. The Ministerialist demands that strong action + should be taken to reduce Unemployment; but the Liberal does not + scruple to retort that Unemployment is an evil, against which strong + action must be taken. The Liberal thinks that we ought to revive our + Trade, thus thwarting and throwing himself across the path of the + National Tory, who still insists that our Trade should be revived. + Thus the two frowning cohorts confront each other; and I hear the + noise of battle even as I write. + +In June 1928 he was invited to stand for Edinburgh University. He +replied: + + I do hope you will forgive me if there has been any delay in + acknowledging your exceedingly flattering communication; I have been + away from home and moving about a good deal; and have only just + returned from London. Certainly there is nothing which I should feel + as so great an honour, or one so exciting or so undeserved, as to + receive even the invitation to stand for such a position in the great + University that has already been so generous to me. If you really + think it would be of any service to your cause, I can hardly refuse + such a compliment. Of course you understand that it is only in a + rather independent sense, though as I think in the right sense, that + I shall always call myself a Liberal; indeed, I find it difficult to + imagine any real sort of Liberal who is not really an independent + Liberal. I am quite certain I am not a Tory or a Socialist. + +He was defeated at this election by Winston Churchill who got 864 +votes to 593 for G.K. and 332 for Mrs. Sidney Webb. He was again +defeated at Aberdeen in 1933, coming second to Major Elliott, the +other candidates being C. M. Grieve and Aldous Huxley. At one stage +of the contest the _Daily Express_ writes: "The Huxley supporters are +smarting under the surprise attack made by the Chestertonians at the +Huxley concert at the week-end and are preparing reprisals." + +The following letter is G.K.'s reply to the first proposal from the +Aberdeen students: + + 25th October, 1933 + + I can at least assure you that the delay in acknowledging properly + the most flattering compliment which you have paid me was not due to + any notion of neglecting it. It was due to the practical necessity at + the moment of discovering and deciding on a fact which may, for all I + know, save you the trouble of further consideration of the matter; + and it is for this reason that I mention the practical difficulty + first. I now find that I shall almost certainly be obliged to be out + of England (and Scotland) for about three or four months, or + conceivably a little more, beginning about the middle of January. I + do not know what preliminary formalities would be demanded of me as a + candidate, or when the demand for them would arise. But I was so + strongly impressed with the honour you have paid me that I thought it + my duty to find out the facts on this particular point, so that you + might act on it in any way you think right. In any case, if the delay + thus involved has placed you in any difficulty, I need not say that I + shall fully understand your finding the project unworkable; and I + shall be quite content to remember the compliment of the request. + + There is another consideration which would help the practical side + of the case; and for that I fear I must make the practical enquiries + of you, as people understanding the circumstances. You do not mention + the Party you represent; and though I am, like most of us, long past + attaching a horrid sanctity to the name, I hope you will forgive that + much curiosity in a poor bewildered journalist, who has been + exhibited in many lights and cross-lights. I was put up as a + candidate at Glasgow as a Liberal, which is really quite true; but I + think I managed in my election pamphlet to give my own definition of + Liberalism. I have also more recently, on a public platform in + Glasgow, supported my friend Mr. Compton Mackenzie when he stood as a + Scottish Nationalist. Both these positions I am quite prepared to + defend; but in the latter, you might naturally prefer a Nationalist + candidate who was not only a quarter of a Scotsman. I may remark that + as the quarter is called Keith, and comes from Aberdeen, I am rather + thrilled at the name of Marischal College. + +There is one other point I think it only right to mention, for your +sake as much as my own. You know the local conditions. Do you think +it likely that we should be left with one and a half votes, looking a +little ridiculous, because the miserable quarter of a Scot happens to +have the same religion as Bruce and Maxy Stuart? I only ask for +information; which you alone could supply. But it may be that the +considerations I have already mentioned have disposed of the matter. +Believe me, my gratitude is none the less. + +Gilbert said of my father that he showed an embarrassing respect for +younger men. Surely Gilbert's own tone of respect must here have +embarrassed even undergraduates. The uncertainty of success or +failure only troubled him as it might affect his supporters. The +sporting element in the contest appealed to his undying boyishness. + +Perhaps this chapter may find its best conclusion in the vivid +memories written down in answer to my request of one of Gilbert's +younger friends--Douglas Woodruff--who came to know him in the year +of that Silver Wedding which meant so much that I have chosen it for +the title of a chapter covering much of Chesterton's Catholic life. + + Chesterton devotes a long passage in the _Autobiography_ to the + dinner given at the old Adelphi Terrace Hotel to Belloc on his + sixtieth birthday, in July 1930. I remember very well the high old + fashioned car the Chestertons used to hire in Beaconsfield, for I + accompanied him with particular instructions to deliver him safely + and on time, as was very necessary for he was in the Chair. We might + have lost him, for we went first to the Times Office where I was then + working, as I had proofs to correct before disappearing for the rest + of the evening, and he was seized with the idea that it would be very + good fun for him to enter Printing House Square and have it announced + that it was Mr. Chesterton come to write the leaders, having brought + the thunder with him under his cloak. Quite early on the drive up he + began speculating about who would be at the party, and when he had + suggested various figures who were certainly not going to be there he + said with a mixture of regret and acceptance, "There is always such a + _sundering_ quality about Belloc's quarrels." When he rose to propose + the toast he said at once that if he or anybody else in the room was + remembered at all in the future it would be because they had been + associated with the guest of the evening. He meant that. The evening + stood out in his memory because it was so unlike the ordinary sort of + dinners he knew where he was a principal figure. It delighted him + that without any programme or premeditation all the thirty diners in + turn made speeches, in the main parody speeches. It was, in short, a + party and not a performance. + + In the decade when I had the good fortune to know Topmeadow he was + still paying the price of a literary fame which he had sought in + youth because it meant success in his calling and an income, but + which became a barrier he was always meeting and breaking through. + Many literary men genuinely enough prefer company in which they are + on just the same footing as everyone else to company in which they + are little Kings, but Chesterton was exceptional in liking to live in + the fullest equality of intercourse not only with all sorts of men + but with the lesser practitioners of his own calling. He sought the + affection and not the admiration of his fellow men, or, more + precisely, he sought neither: what he sought was to do things like + discovering the truth in their company. No man more naturally + distinguished between a man and his views, or found easier the + theological injunction to hate the sin but love the sinner. One of + the few occasions on which I recall him as rather hurt was just after + he had met Stanley Baldwin, at Taplow, and had not been welcomed as a + fellow Englishman sharing immense things like the love of the English + country or English letters, but with a cold correctitude from a + politician who seemed chiefly conscious he was meeting in G.K. a man + who week by week sought to bring political life into hatred, ridicule + and contempt. + + He was not made by nature for the kind of journalistic tradition + which Belloc and Cecil Chesterton established and his loyal affection + for them made him adopt. I recall him expounding to the lawyers of + the Thomas More Society the absurdity of the legal definition of + libel, arguing that of its nature free discussion meant arousing at + any rate ridicule and contempt if not hatred against men and measures + of which you disapproved. It was ridicule that he preferred to + arouse. The lawyers were quite unconvinced, as they generally are + when laymen have any complaints about the law, and they soon realized + that to Chesterton the whole idea of involving the law because of + arguments and discussions and invective was hitting below the belt. + + He could be seen at his happiest in the Mock Trials which were held + every summer for the last ten years of his life at the London School + of Economics, for the King Edward VII Hospital Fund. He was relied + upon year after year to prosecute. One year it was leading actors and + actresses, another year sculptors and architects, another year + politicians, another Headmasters. He entered completely into the + spirit of an entertainment which combined two of his abiding + interests, public debate and private theatricals. That was a setting + in which he could completely exemplify his favourite recipe for the + modern world, that it should be approached in a spirit of + intellectual ferocity and personal amiability. But what marked his + own contributions to these affairs was the intellectual "ferocity," + in the weight and content of his criticism. Most of the eminent men + who consented to take part came to play a game for the sake of the + Hospitals, and because they rarely unbent like that in public they + were wholly facetious and trivial. To Chesterton there was no + difficulty or incongruity in combining the fun of acting with the + fun of genuine intellectual discussion. When he prosecuted the + Headmasters of leading public schools for Destroying Freedom of + Thought I came down in a lift with them afterwards and found they + were volubly nettled at the drastic and serious case he had made + inside the stage setting of burlesque, and seemed to think he had not + been playing the game when he wrapped up so much meaning in his + speech and examinations. This had never entered his head; it had come + perfectly naturally to him to make wholly real and material points + even in a mock trial and with a wealth of fun. But he liked being one + of a troupe on a stage very much more than being a lonely and eminent + figure on a platform, because to him the great attraction of + discussion was that it should be a joint quest, a mental walk with an + object in view, but also with an eye for everything that might and + would turn up on the way. + + He laughed his high laugh--like Charlemagne his voice was unequal + to his physical scale--at his own jokes because they came to him as + part of the joint findings of the quest, something he had seen and + collected and brought for the pot. When he made jokes about his size + as he so commonly did at the outset of a speech, it was to get rid of + the elevation of the platform, and to get on to easy equal terms with + the audience; "I am not a cat burglar," he began to the Union at + Oxford, and had won them. The radio suited him so excellently, + precisely because it is a personal sitting down man to man + relationship that the successful broadcaster must establish; that was + the relationship inside which he naturally thought. His difficulty + was that while he had not the faintest desire to be "a Literary Man," + and still less a Prophet, the kind of truth he divined was, in fact, + on the scale of the prophets. It seemed to me that over the last + decade of his life he found himself more and more in the dilemma that + in the life of his mind he was living with ideas, the fruit of a + contemplative preoccupation with the Incarnation and the Sacraments, + which he shrank from talking about, from a natural humility and a + clear and grateful understanding of the Catholic tradition of + reverence and reticence. + + England is full enough of men to whom the distinction between the + platform and the pulpit is very unreal; they have a moral message and + they do not much mind where they give it. But Chesterton, unlike most + public men who deal in general ideas, did not come to the idea of + public speaking through the Protestant tradition but through the + secular tradition, the freethinker's debate, the political and not + the religious side of Hyde Park oratory, where men in knots shout one + another down, not where some lonely longhaired prophet declaims + conversion. After he became a Catholic he sought to set himself + frontiers, the apologetic territory suitable for a layman like + himself. But he found himself more and more preoccupied with a + territory further inland, penetrating all the time to the deeper + meaning of the creed he had embraced. He could look back and see how + most of his early books had seized upon some essential part of + Catholic doctrine. . . . He had written what he had seen at the time, + but he did not stop looking because he had written, and then he + always continued to see more, the great contemplative. + + He looked out on the universe from a very solid tower of + observation because in all but the deepest sense of the word he + always had a home. His lasting significance is his pilgrimage, but + the spiritual journey was lived out in a warmly rich setting. When he + wrote of "the home" he was not dealing with a notion but with a + surrounding reality, one on which he had opened his eyes as a baby + and which he enjoyed without a break to the end. Frances Chesterton + is among the great wives of our literary history. When he said "I can + never have enough nothing to do," it was the remark of a man with a + house he was generally in, a house full of things. + + He loved to produce cigars and wine, but tea also remained an + important fixed part of the day, in the Victorian tradition, and when + he was told by the doctor he had better drink nothing, he had many + alternatives, like detective stories read over tea and buns, which + other lovers of wine would perhaps have found no consolation. Other + men are secret drinkers, he would confide, I am a secret teetotaller. + The first time I had tea with him, in Artillery Mansions in 1926, I + was much struck that he brought three detective stories to the + teatable. I imagine he always had time for _Jack Redskin on the + Trail_, or whatever it might be because he had the gift, to an extent + I have never seen elsewhere, of opening a book and as it were pouring + the contents down in one draught like a champion German beer drinker. + He once seized from my shelves in Lincoln's Inn, Wyndham Lewis's + _Apes of God_ saying it was a book he had not seen and wanted to see. + It is a folio and I suggested he should take it away. But he opened + it and stood reading it and here and there, not a process which could + be called dipping, but a kind of sucking out of the printed contents, + as though he were a vacuum cleaner and you could see the lines of + type leaving the pages and being absorbed. When he put it down it was + to discuss the thesis and illustrations of the book as a man fully + possessed of its whole standpoint. Once he made one of his common + confusions and forgot he was addressing the Wiseman Dining Society on + the Oxford Movement. In the train from Beaconsfield he said how nice + it was that he had not got to speak. Frances Chesterton told him not + to be silly, he knew he was speaking on the Oxford Movement. He was + visibly disconcerted at the start, for many grave seniors had + assembled to hear him; but all went well in the discussion as soon as + he was attacked for something he had said about Newman's views. You + cannot catch me out about Newman, he said, with joy of battle, and he + produced then and there a most detailed account of just where in + Newman's writings the points in question were developed. Yet he was + curiously content to read what happened to come his way and to rely + upon his friends for references and facts, remembering what they + might tell him, but not ordering the books which would have greatly + strengthened him in the sort of newspaper arguments in which he was + so often employed. He had a large collection of books at Topmeadow, + but they gave the impression that they had assembled themselves. + Masses of them were adventure stories, many were presentation copies + from writers. You felt that they had got into the house knowing that + it was a hospitable one, if not built for books, and that they would + probably be allowed to stay. But he had a study which would barely + home him, and the library room he did eventually build was only + finished as he died. + + I think nothing is more superficial or belittling to him than the + idea that while he might have liked the real country he could not + like Beaconsfield, as it developed into a dormitory town while he + lived there. His sympathies were far too wide. He liked to tell how + he had had to complain of the noise made by an adjoining Cinema + Company. His secretary had said Mr. Chesterton finds he cannot write; + and the Cinema people replied we are well aware of that. + + He liked to think of Mr. Garvin near by, "not that I see him very + much," he said, "but I like to think that that great factory is + steaming away night and day." He had great satisfaction when a friend + and I, driving away in the evening, knocked down a white wooden post + outside the house in starting the car. He held that he had witnessed + just how many a grand old local custom must have originated, in men + covering up their mistakes by saying they were fulfilling a ritual + which had fallen into neglect. You must say you did it on purpose, he + said, say it was a rite too long omitted and it will soon be kept up + every year and men will forget its origin, and it will be known as + the Bump of Beaconsfield. When a friend of his brought him a + two-bladed African spear, he said, as he threw it about the lawn, + that it was sad to think how many lawns there were in Beaconsfield + and how few weapons were ever thrown on any of them, although all men + enjoyed, or would enjoy spear throwing more, he believed, than they + enjoyed clock golf. He at any rate was a genuinely free man, who did + what it amused and pleased him to do, and did not think he had to + choose between the forms of activity or rest currently pursued by his + neighbours. Much of the serene atmosphere of his home came from that + quiet resolute practice of the liberty of a free mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +Columbus + + +_He wished to discover America. His gay and thoughtless friends, who +could not understand him, pointed out that America had already been +discovered, I think they said by Christopher Columbus, some time ago, +and that there were big cities of Anglo-Saxon People there already, +New York and Boston and so on. But the Admiral explained to them, +kindly enough, that this had nothing to do with it. They might have +discovered America, but he had not_. + +From _A Fragment_, in _The Coloured Lands_. + +IN THE CHAPTER of his _Autobiography_ entitled "The Incomplete +Traveller" Chesterton has said "after all, the strangest country I +ever visited was England." It was of the very essence of his +philosophy that each one of us has to make again the discoveries of +our ancestors if we are to be travellers and not trippers. "The +traveller sees what he sees; the tripper sees what he has come to +see." Thus Chesterton tried to discover each country that he visited +and he records that the nearer countries are sometimes harder to +discover than the more remote. For Poland is more akin to England +than is France: Ireland more mysterious than Italy. + +France, Ireland and supremely Palestine brought their contribution to +that mental and spiritual development traced in earlier chapters. On +Ireland, Rome, Jerusalem and the United States he wrote books. It may +really be said that on the States he wrote two books, for in the +volume of essays _Sidelights on New London and Newer York_ which +followed his second visit he showed a much greater understanding than +in _What I Saw in America_. His first visit took place in 1921-22, +his second in 1930. + +On the first trip Frances kept clippings of almost all their +interviews. Gilbert himself said that, while the headlines in +American newspapers became obscure in their violent efforts to +startle, what was written underneath the headlines was usually good +journalism and the press cuttings of this tour bear out his remark. +Interviewers report accurately and with a good deal of humour. +Sketches of G.K.'s personal appearance abound, and if occasionally +they contradict one another in detail they yet contrive to convey a +vivid and fairly truthful impression of the "leonine" head, the bulky +form, the gestures and mannerisms. That a man of letters and lecturer +should choose to wear proudly not one of these titles but that of +journalist, was pleasing and flattering to the brotherhood. The +atmosphere of the tour is best conveyed by rather copious quotation. +A crowd of journalists met him at the boat. One of them writes of + + . . . his voluminous figure, quite imposing when he stands up, + though not so abundantly Johnsonian as his pictures lead one to + expect. He has cascades of grey hair above a pinkly beaming face, a + rather straggly blond mustache, and eyes that seem frequently to be + taking up infinity in a serious way. + + His falsetto laugh, prominent teeth and general aspect are rather + Rooseveltian. . . . + + Mr. Chesterton, who is accompanied by Mrs. Chesterton, and who will + deliver a lecture soon in Boston on the Ignorance of the Educated, + said he did not expect to go further west than Chicago, since "having + seen both Jerusalem and Chicago, I think I shall have touched on the + extremes of civilization." + +In the event he visited Omaha and Oklahoma City and went south as far +as Nashville, Tennessee. + +Possibly Frances had thought she would pass unnoticed but in fact, +besides constant photographs of the pair, the lynx eye of the +interviewer was upon her as much as upon him. On arrival at New York: + + He shook hands with some half-dozen Customs officials who welcomed + him to the city on their own behalf. The impression given by Mr. + Chesterton as he moved majestically along the pier or on the ship was + one of huge bulk. To the ordinary sized people on the pier he seemed + to blot out the liner and the river. Mrs. Chesterton was busy with + the baggage. + + "My wife understands these things," he said with a sweep of his + stick. "I don't." . . . + + In order to get the two figures into the same picture one of the + newspaper photographers requested Mr. Chesterton to sit in a big + armchair while his wife stood beside him. When they were settled in + the required pose he exclaimed: "I say I don't like this; people will + think that I am a German." + +Another newspaper remarks: "He was accompanied by his wife, who +looked very small beside him. She attended to the baggage +examination, opening trunks and bags while her husband delivered a +short essay on the equality of men and women in England since the +war." This reporter was perhaps not without irony: but if it actually +happened like that, G.K. must have seen the joke too for he has a +similar situation in the first scene of his play "The Judgement of +Dr. Johnson." The same reporter adds that Chesterton speaks in +essays, so that his interviewers "received a brief essay instead of a +direct reply to a leading question." + +We next come upon them in their New York hotel: + + I found, with Mrs. Chesterton at the Biltmore, this big, gentle, + leonine man of letters six feet of him and 200 odd lbs. There is a + delightful story of how an American, driving with him through London, + remarked "Everyone seems to know you, Mr. Chesterton." + + "Yes," mournfully responded the gargantuan author, "and if they + don't they ask." + + He really doesn't look anything like as fat as his caricatures make + him, however, and he has a head big enough to go with his massive + tallness. His eyes are brilliant English blue behind the big rimmed + eyeglasses: his wavy hair, steel grey; his heavy mustache, bright + yellow. Physically he is the crackling electric spark of the + heaven-home-and-mother party, the only man who can give the cleverest + radical debaters a Roland for their Oliver. + +In subsequent interviews G.K.'s height grew to six foot three and his +weight to 300 lbs. (which was surely closer to the mark); his +mannerisms were greatly remarked. + + Mr. Chesterton speaks clearly, in a rather high-pitched voice. He + accompanies his remarks with many nervous little gestures. His hands, + at times, stray into his pockets. He leans over the reading desk as + if he would like to get down into the audience and make it a sort of + heart-to-heart talk. + + Mr. Chesterton's right hand spent a restless and rather disturbing + evening. It would start from the reading desk at which he stood and + fall to the points of that vast waistcoat which inspired the + description of him as "a fellow of infinite vest." It would wander + aimlessly a moment about his--stomach is a word that is taboo among + the polite English--equator, and then shift swiftly to the rear until + the thumb found the hip pocket. There the hand would rest a moment, + to return again to the reading desk and to describe once more the + quarter circle. Once in a while it would twist a ring upon the left + hand, once in a while it would be clasped behind the broad back, but + only for a moment. To the hip pocket and back again was its + sentry-go, and it was a faithful soldier. + +Several interviewers remark on the unexpected calibre of his voice. +He himself spoke of it as "the mouse that came forth from the +mountain." + + One would never suspect him of being our leading American + best-seller. His accent, mannerisms, and dress are pro-Piccadilly and + he likes his Oolong with a lump of sugar. He thinks with his cigar, a + black London cheeroot. + + He, Gilbert K. Chesterton, was sipping a cup of tea, expertly + brewed by Mrs. Chesterton when a reporter yesterday entered his room + at the Blackstone [in Chicago]. Before he submitted to interrogation + he lighted the cigar. + + "My muse," he explained. "A Parnassian pleasure. Tobacco smoke is + the Ichor of mental life. Some men write with a pencil, others with a + typewriter, I write with my cigar." . . . + + Throughout the interview he was profoundly concerned not with the + subjects under discussion, but with the black cheeroot. Seven times + it went out. Seven times he relighted it. The eighth time he tossed + it away. + +When asked which of his works he considered the greatest, he said: "I +don't consider any of my works in the least great." . . . + +"Slang," he said, "is too sacred and precious to be used +promiscuously. Its use should be led up to reverently for it +expresses what the King's English could not." + +"Seeing and hearing a man like Gilbert Keith Chesterton," said a +Detroit newspaper, "makes a meal for the imagination that no reading +of books by him or about him can accomplish." + +He spoke Sunday in Orchestra Hall on the Ignorance of the Educated; +it grows more difficult as his tour progresses, he admits, and the +Lecture, he insists, grows worse. His thesis is that "the besetting +evil of all educated people is that they tend to substitute theories +for things." The uneducated man never makes this mistake. He states +the simple fact that he sees a German drinking beer: he does not say +"there is a Teuton consuming alcohol." + +At Toronto the Chairman--a professor of English--thought that there +must have been an error in the title as printed, and announced that +Mr. Chesterton would speak on The Ignorance of the _Un_educated. +Another Detroit newspaper quotes from the lecture: + + There is a deeper side to such fallacies. The whole catastrophe of + the Great War may be traced to the racial theory. If people had + looked at peoples as nations in place of races the intolerable + ambition of Prussia might have been stopped before it attained the + captaincy of the South German States. + +The only other lecture subjects mentioned are "Shall We Abolish the +Inevitable" and "The Perils of Health." There are innumerable +caricatures. One by Cosmo Hamilton is accompanied with a story of how +he once debated with Chesterton. The subject was: "There is no law in +England." G.K. made so overwhelming a case that Hamilton decided the +only way of making reply possible was to twist the subject making it +"there are no laws in England" and "go off at 1000 tangents like a +worried terrier." + + To hear Chesterton's howl of joy when he twigged how I had slipped + out, to see him double himself up in an agony of laughter at my + personal insults, to watch the effect of his sportsmanship on a + shocked audience who were won to mirth by his intense and + pea-hen-like quarks of joy was a sight and a sound for the gods. + + Probably Chesterton has forgotten this incident but I haven't and + never will, and I carried away from that room a respect and + admiration for this tomboy among dictionaries, this philosophical + Peter Pan, this humorous Dr. Johnson, this kindly and gallant cherub, + this profound student and wise master which has grown steadily ever + since. + +In the _Daily Sketch_, Hamilton later described G.K. speaking in this +debate: + + During the whole inspired course of his brilliant reasoning, he + caught the little rivulets which ran down his face, and just as they + were about to drop from the first of his several chins flicked them + generously among the disconcerted people who sat actually at his + feet. From time to time, too, unaware of this, he grasped deep into + his pockets and rattled coins and keys, going from point to point, + from proof to proof, until the Constitution of England was quite + devoid of Law and out from under his waistcoat bulged a line of shirt. + + It was monstrous, gigantic, amazing, deadly, delicious. Nothing + like it has ever been done before or will ever be seen, heard and + felt like it again. + +A clever caricature depicts Dickens in one corner, his arms full of +bricks, hammers and jagged objects, labelled "American Notes." The +rest of the picture is an immense drawing of a smiling Chesterton, +his arms full of roses, labelled "Kind Words for America." He is +pointing at Dickens and saying: "America must have changed a great +deal since then." + +Not only Gilbert but also Frances was constantly interviewed. "I tell +them," one interviewer quotes her as saying, "that I didn't know I +was the wife of a great man till I came to America. It never bothered +me before." + + This, coming from one of those English wives, so popularly + portrayed as representing the acme of submission, was delightful. A + slight, slim little figure, looking slighter and slimmer in the wake + of her overshadowing husband, with an outward appearance of + unsurpassed mildness and meekness which her conversation readily + dispelled, the wife of this delightful Englishman of letters + presented a very intimate Chestertonian paradox. + +Frances kept a Diary of which almost the first entry is "So far my +feelings towards this country are entirely hostile, but it would be +unfair to judge too soon. We have refused all invitations; it's the +only thing to do." This idea they must have abandoned, for one paper +after Gilbert's death describes him as an immense success socially +but "a big bland failure" as a lecturer. As the tour proceeds the +entries in the Diary become more favorable but unlike her letters +from Poland--where what she liked best was anything really +Polish--the Diary shows Frances as singling out for approval those +things approximately English--e.g., houses where she stayed in Boston +and Philadelphia. She hated hustle, heat and crowds, and the Diary is +full of remarks about her exhaustion. + +G.K. commented in one interview on the different conception of a Club +in England and in America. While groups of men entertained him, +Women's Clubs were entertaining his wife. But an English Club "is +really a promoter of unsociability. . . . And while the English woman +in her Club does not, perhaps, stare into vacancy with the same +fervour, fixity and ferocity as the English man, still there is +something of the sort, you know." After a lecture in Philadelphia a +lady asked him, "Mr. Chesterton, what makes women talk so much?" +Heaving himself out of his chair, he answered only "God, Madam." + +Two further caricatures were an impression drawn by Will Coyne for +the New York _Evening Post_ of Chesterton as Porthos of the Pen, and +another, drawn for the New York _Herald_ by Stewart Davis, of +Chesterton supplying "Paradoxygen to the World." This was accompanied +by a poem called Paradoxygen, by Edward Anthony: + + O Gilbert I know there are many who like + Your talks on the darkness of light, + The shortness of length and the weakness of strength + And the one on the lowness of height. + + My neighbour keeps telling me "How I adore + His legality of the illicit + And I've also a liking intense for his striking + Obscurity of the explicit." + + But I am unmoved. What's the reason? 0, well, + The same I intend to expound + Some evening next week, when I'm going to speak + On the shallowness of the profound. + +"Everyone who goes to America for a short time," said G.K., "is +expected to write a book; and nearly everybody does." In accordance +with this convention he wrote _What I Saw in America_. He did see a +great deal. The same imagination that had found the mediaeval aspect +of Jerusalem saw many elements missed not only by the ordinary +tourist but by the people themselves who live nearest to them. Thus +he keenly appreciated the traditional elements in Philadelphia, +Boston and Baltimore: + + In coming into some of these more stable cities of the States I + felt something quite sincerely of that historic emotion which is + satisfied in the eternal cities of the Mediterranean. I felt in + America what many Americans suppose can only be felt in Europe. I + have seldom had that sentiment stirred more simply and directly than + when I saw from afar off, above that vast grey labyrinth of + Philadelphia, great Penn upon his pinnacle like the graven figure of + a god who had fashioned a new world; and remembered that his body lay + buried in a field at the turning of a lane, a league from my own door. + +In Baltimore the Catholic history appealed to him yet more strongly, +and, invited to visit Cardinal Gibbons, he felt himself touching "the +end of a living chain." In Boston, "much more beautiful than its +name," he companioned again with the Autocrat and recalled how in his +own youth English and American literature seemed to be one thing. +Indeed he was there reminded even "of English things that have +largely vanished from England." Washington he saw both as a beautiful +city and an idea--"a sort of paradise of impersonal politics without +personal commerce." And in Nashville, Tennessee it was "with a sort +of intensity of feeling" that he found himself "before a dim and +faded picture; and from the dark canvas looked forth the face of +Andrew Jackson, watchful like a white eagle." + +The things Chesterton chose for description all have relevance to the +main thesis of the book which has often been missed and which emerges +most clearly in the first and the last chapters. He insists always +that he writes as a foreigner--and indeed repeats frequently that it +is by keeping our own distinct nationality that Englishmen and +Americans will best understand and like one another--but he writes +also as a man not unconscious of history. Thus writing, the older +cities represent to him one trend in the States and New York another. +I am sorry to say that he does not appreciate New York as he ought, +because of his dislike of cosmopolitanism. Its beauty he sees as +breath-taking: not solid and abiding but a kind of fairyland. The +lights on Broadway evoked from him the exclamation "What a glorious +garden of wonders this would be for anyone who was lucky enough to be +unable to read," and he imagines a simple peasant who fancies that +they must be announcing in letters of fire: "Liberty, Equality, +Fraternity," and must be put up on occasion of some great national +feast, whereas they are but advertising signs put up to make money. + +The Skyline seemed to him most lovely: "vertical lines that suggest a +sort of rush upwards, as of great cataracts topsy turvy--the strong +daylight finds everywhere the broken edges of things and the sort of +hues we see in newly turned earth or the white sections of +trees. . . ." He feels the intense "imaginative pleasure of those +dizzy turrets and dancing fires." But he ends with the note that +really spoilt New York for him: "If those nightmare buildings were +really all built for nothing, how noble they would be." + +Advertisement, Big Business, Monopoly might have invaded the old +traditionary cities of America as they had those of England, but New +York existed (he felt) as a new and startling expression of them. +They shrieked in every light and from every sky-scraper. The whole +question of America was: would the older simpler really great +historical tradition win, or would it be defeated by the new and +towering evil? He has an interesting chapter on the countryside, +finding hope in the considerable extension of small ownership among +the farmers and in the houses built from the growing material that +wood is, but he is again depressed at the reflection that the culture +of the countryside is not its own but imported from the +towns--therefore itself largely commercialised. + +Roaming over the world in search of his examples Chesterton sees the +ideal of the early republicans as dead in the republics of today, and +nowhere more dead than in America. It would be useless, he feels, to +invoke Jefferson or Lincoln in the modern world against the tyranny +of wage-slavery or in favour of racial justice because "the bridge of +brotherhood had broken down in the modern mind." + +Jefferson the Deist "said the sight of slavery in his country made +him tremble, remembering that God is just," but the modern who has +lost these absolute standards has "grown dizzy with degree and +relativity." Hence came the same terrible peril in both England and +America: that in the eyes of the new plutocracy the idea of manhood +has gone. "There were different sorts of apes; but there was no doubt +that we were the superior sort." + +Only in one direction did he see real hope. The new dreams of the +18th century had gone, but the ancient dogmas of the Catholic Church +remained. Catholics might forget brotherhood, like their fellows, but +"the Catholic type of Christianity had rivetted itself irrevocably to +the manhood of all men." "The church would always continue to ordain +negroes and canonise beggars and labourers." "Where its faith was +fixed by creeds and councils it could not save itself even by +surrender. . . . THERE IS NO BASIS FOR DEMOCRACY EXCEPT IN A DOGMA +ABOUT THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF MAN." + +I have put that final sentence in capitals for it is the climax both +of Gilbert's thinking about America and of one of the most important +trains of thought that brought him to the home of liberty secured for +the human race by dogma--that is to say by revealed truth. He went +home to be received into the Catholic Church as I have earlier +related. + +_What I Saw in America_ is of special importance in relation to later +discussions in _G.K.'s Weekly_. While the journalists seemed +convinced on his first visit that he had nothing but roses to throw, +and compared him favorably to Dickens, a collection of quotations +could be made from _G.K.'s Weekly_ of a quite opposite kind, yet I do +not think he ever attacks America as much as he attacks England. He +was himself much amused at finding he was expected to be either "For +America" or "Against America," both of which attitudes appeared to +him absurd. In that sense he was neither for nor against his own +country. He liked Americans, he disliked certain trends in America: +because he loved England he disliked the same trends even more in +England. Certain things in modern civilisation which he hated he did +regard as primarily American. American comfort to him seemed acute +discomfort. He thought every American lives in an "airless furnace in +the middle of which he sits and eats lumps of ice." + +He had a great hatred of intelligence tests which he called the +"palpable balderdash of irresponsible Yankee boomsters. . . . It is +really one of the maladies of American democracy to be swept by these +prairie fires of pseudo-scientifc fads, and throw itself into +Eugenics or Anthropometric inquiry with the buoyancy of babies." He +believed that there was more democracy in America than in England. +But he hated what he called the "glare of American Advertisement." He +spoke of a "common thief like the American Millionaire" but he +certainly did not exclude the English Millionaire from the same +indictment. His whole view of advertisement reaches a peak in an +article* entitled "If You Have Smiles." + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, December 10, 1927.] + + We read the other day an absolutely solemn and almost tender piece + of advice, in a leading American magazine, about the preservation of + Beauty and Health. It was intended quite seriously. . . . After + describing in most complicated detail how the young woman of today + (well known to be enamored of all that is natural and free) is to + strap up her head and face every night, as if it had to be bandaged + after an accident, it proceeds to say with the most refined American + accent: "With the face thus fixed in smile formation: . . ." but we + have a difficulty about taking this serious advice of American Beauty + Business even so seriously as to meditate on its social menace. The + prospect of such a world of idiots ought to depress us, but . . . no, + it is no good. Our faces are fixed in smile formation when we think + of that American. + +He repeated often how much he liked the inhabitants of Main Street +(grievously wronged by Sinclair Lewis). + + American ideals are not nearly so nice as American realities. We + lament not so much what Babbitt is as what he is trying to be. What + he is is a simple and kindly man . . . what he's trying to be is the + abomination of desolation; the Man who made Salesmanship an Art; the + Man Who Would Not Stay Down; the Man Who Got the Million Dollar Post + After Taking Our Correspondence Course; the Man Who Learned Social + Charm in Six Lessons.* + +[* Jan. 14, 1928.] + +At the time of the depreciation of the franc Belloc's articles in +_G.K.'s Weekly_, echoed in the Leaders, pointed to finance, +especially American finance, as the criminal that was forcing down +the French currency. An American correspondent in the paper attacked +these attacks on the ground that they were inspired by British +Imperialism! Chesterton felt it a little hard to be at this date +confused with Kipling. He replied that his correspondent committed +"the blunder of an extravagant and excessive admiration for England." +He speaks of + + that tremendous procession that passed through Paris, literally an + army of cripples. It was a march of all those walking units, those + living fragments of humanity that had been left by the long stand of + five years upon the French frontiers; a devastated area that passed + endlessly like a river . . . they illustrate the main fact that + France was in the center of that far-flung fighting line of + civilization; that it was upon her that the barbarian quarrel + concentrated; and that is an historical fact which the foolish vanity + of many Englishmen, as well as of many Americans, is perpetually + tempted to deny. Our critic is therefore quite beside the mark if he + imagines that I am trying to score off his country out of a cheap + jealousy on behalf of my own. My jealousy is for justice and for a + large historical understanding of this great passage in history. My + own country won glory enough in that and other fields to make it + quite unnecessary for any sane Englishman to shut his eyes to Europe + in order to brag about England. . . . I have not the faintest doubt + what Thomas Jefferson would have said, if he had been told that a few + financial oligarchs who happen to live in New York, were beating down + the French wealth; and had then seen pass before him that awful + panorama of the wrecks of the French Republican Army; heart-shaking, + like a resurrection of the dead. . . . I do not admit, therefore, + that in supporting the French peasants and soldiers against the money + dealers and wire-pullers of the town, I am attacking America or even + merely defending France.* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Sept. 1, 1926.] + +On November 6 and 13, 1926 he writes two articles on "The Yankee and +the Chinaman," in which he contrasts the philosophic spirit with the +so-called scientific. Like Bishop Barnes in England wanting to +analyse the Consecrated Host, Edison was reported in America as +having said that he would find out if there was a soul by some +scientific test: + + Any philosophic Chinaman would know what to think of a man who + said, "I have got a new gun that will shoot a hole through your + memory of last Monday," or "I have got a saw sharp enough to cut up + the cube root of 666," or "I will boil your affection for Aunt Susan + until it is quite liquid." + +In 1927 Gilbert, Frances and Dorothy spent a month in Poland where +immense enthusiasm was shown for the man who had consistently +proclaimed Poland's greatness and its true place in Europe. + +Invited by the Government, "all the hospitality I received," he says, +"was far too much alive to remind me of anything official." One of +the multitude of unwritten books of which G.K. dreamed was a book +about Poland. The Poles and the English were, he felt, alike in many +things but the Englishman had never been given the opportunity to +understand the Pole. We knew nothing of their history and did not +understand the resurrection we had helped to bring about. "The +nonsense talked in the newspapers when they discuss what they call +the Polish Corridor" was only possible from want of realisation of +what Poland had been before she was rent in three by Prussia, Austria +and Russia. Thus too we did not realise "the self-evident fact that +the Poles always have a choice of evils." Pilsudski told him that _of +the two_ he preferred Germany to Russia, while Dmowski voiced the +more general opinion in telling him that _of the two_ he preferred +Russia to Germany. For the moment at any rate tortured Poland was +herself and incredibly happy. Revival in this agricultural country +had been amazingly swift. Peasant proprietors abounded and lived well +on twelve acres or so, while even labourers possessed plots of land +and a cow or two. + +"The P.E.N. Club Dinner," Frances wrote in a letter to her mother, +"was, I fancy, considered by the Poles a huge success. If numbers +indicate anything, it certainly was. I found it a little embarrassing +to have to eat hot kidneys and mushrooms standing about with hundreds +of guests, and this was only the preliminary to a long dinner that +followed and refreshments that apparently continued until two o'clock +in the morning. The speeches were really perfectly marvellous and +delivered in English quite colloquial and very witty and showing a +detailed knowledge of Gilbert's works which no Englishman of my +acquaintance possesses. Gilbert made an excellent, in fact, a very +eloquent speech in reply, which drew forth thunders of applause." + +Their hosts drove the Chestertons all over the country and showed +them home life on the little farms, home industries and +arts--brightly woven garments and pottery for use, not for +exhibition--and the great historic scenes of Poland's history. With +the scene he remembered most vividly, Gilbert's musings on Poland +conclude: they were visiting a young nobleman who excused the +devastation of his own home by Bolshevik soldiers in the heat of +battle but added, "There is only one thing I really resent." + + . . . He led us out into a long avenue lined with poplars; and at + the end of it was a statue of the Blessed Virgin; with the head and + the hands shot off. But the hands had been lifted; and it is a + strange thing that the very mutilation seemed to give more meaning to + the attitude of intercession; asking mercy for the merciless race of + men.* + +[* _Autobiography_, p. 330.] + +Karel Capek who had long wanted Chesterton to visit Prague wrote +mournfully, "You wrote me that it would be difficult for you to come +to Prague this spring. But it was in the newspapers that you were +last month in Warsaw; why in Heaven's sake did you not come to Prague +on this occasion? What a pity for us! Now we are waiting for a +compensation." Two earlier letters had shown him eager for +contributions from Chesterton for a leading review. Another +delightful letter is dated December 24th (no year given): + + MY DEAR MR. CHESTERTON, + + It is just Christmas Eve; my friends presented me with some of your + books, and I cannot omit to thank you for the consolation and trust I + found there as already so many times. Be blessed, Mr. Chesterton. + + I wrote you twice without getting any answer; but it is Christian + to insist, and so I write you again. Please, would you be so kind to + tell me, if it shall be possible for you to come next year to Prague? + Our PEN club is anxious to invite you as our guest of honour. If you + would like to come next spring, I beg you to be my guest. You are + fond of old things: Prague is one. You shall find here so many people + who cherish you. I like you myself as no other writer; it's for yours + sake that being in London I went to habit in Notting-Hill and it is + for yours sake that I liked it. I cannot believe that I should not + meet you again. Please, come to Prague. + + I wish you a happy New Year, Mr. Chesterton. You must be happy, + making your readers happier. You are so good. + + Yours sincerely, + + KAREL CAPEK. + +He never, alas, got to Prague, or to many another country that wanted +him. There are letters asking him to lecture in Australia, to lecture +again in U.S.A., in South America "to make them aware of English +thought and literature." "The Argentine Intelligencia," says Philip +Guedalla, "is acutely aware of your writings. Local professors +terrified me by asking me on various occasions to explain the precise +position which you occupied in our Catholic youth. . . . A visit from +you would mean a very great deal to British intellectual prestige in +these parts." + +No Catholic Englishman was anything like so widely known in Europe. +Books have been written about him in many languages and his works +translated into French, German, Dutch, Czech, Russian, Polish, +Spanish and Italian. A letter from Russia asks for his photograph for +_The Magazine of International Literature_ as a writer whose works +are well known in the Soviet Union. The Kulturbund in Vienna sends an +emissary inviting him there also and, like Prague, the Vienna P.E.N. +Club wants him. + +"You have a distressing habit," Maude Royden once wrote, "of being +the only person one really wants to hear on certain subjects." + +A visit to Rome in 1929 produced _The Resurrection of Rome_. Despite +brilliant passages the book is disappointing. It bears no comparison +with _The New Jerusalem_ and gives an impression of being thrown +together hastily before the ideas had been thought through to their +ultimate conclusions. Perhaps Rome was too big even for Chesterton. + +He never loved the Renaissance as he did the Middle Ages, but he saw +it not as primarily pagan but as one more example of the immense +vitality of a Catholicism which had had so many rebirths that it had +buried its own past deeper than the past of paganism. He loved the +fountains that threw their water everywhere and he felt about Rome +that the greatest monuments might be removed and yet the city's +personality would remain. For Rome is greater than her monuments. He +wanted to argue with those who cared for Pagan Rome alone and who +spent their time despising the "oratory in stone" of the Papal city +and gazing only on the Forum. "And it never once occurs to them to +remember that the old Romans were Italians, or to ask what a Forum +was for." + +He was, as usual, constantly invited to lecture--at the English +College, the Scots College, the American College, the Beda. At the +Holy Child Convent he spoke to a crowded audience on "Thomas More and +Humanism." Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., thanking him, remarked on the +mental resemblance between More and Chesterton, saying that he could +quite well imagine them sitting together making jokes, some of them +very good and some of them very bad. "Chesterton and More," says +Father Vincent McNabb, "were both cockneys." Gilbert's classical +insight also seemed to him like the great Chancellor's; "Erasmus says +that though More didn't know much Greek, he knew what the words ought +to mean." + +He interviewed Mussolini and found that Mussolini was interviewing +him, so that he talked at some length of Distributism and his own +social ideal. Mussolini knew at least some of Gilbert's books. He +told Cyril Clemens that he had keenly enjoyed _The Man Who Was +Thursday_. He promised at the end of this interview that he would go +away and think over what Chesterton had said, and it might have been +better for the world had he kept that promise. For what had been said +was an outline of the one possible alternative to the growing tyranny +of governments. + +From his anxiety to be fair to Fascism, Gilbert was often accused of +being in favour of it, but, both in this book and in several +articles, having given the case for it he went on to give the case +against it--a much stronger case than that usually given by its +opponents. The case for Fascism lay in the breakdown of true +democracy and the reign of the tyranny of wealth in the democratic +countries. Chesterton would, he said, have been on the side of the +Partito Popolare as against the Fascism that succeeded it; in England +and America he would "have infinitely preferred that the purgation of +our plutocratic politics should have been achieved by Radicals and +Republicans. It was they who did not prefer it." It was not that +Fascism was not open to attack but "that Liberalism has unfortunately +lost the right to attack it." + +Those of us who were in Italy at that time will remember the truth of +his description of the vitality and happiness that seemed to glow +among the people. _Giovinezza, bellezza_, heard everywhere, had then +no hollow sound at the heart of it. Italy was radiant with hope. + +In Mussolini himself Gilbert saluted a belief in "the civic necessity +of Virtue," in the "ideal that public life should be public," in +human dignity, in respect for women as mothers, in piety and the +honour due to the dead. Yet, summing up the man and the movement, he +saw it as primarily the sort of riot that is provoked by the evils of +an evil government, only "in the Italy of the twentieth century the +rioters have become the rulers." For although Mussolini had in many +ways made his rule popular, although in his concessions to modern +ideas and inventions he was "rather breathlessly progressive," yet in +the true sense of the word Mussolini was a Reactionary. A Reactionary +is one who merely reacts against something, or permits "that +something to make [him] do something against it. . . . A Reactionary +is one in whom weariness itself has become a form of energy. Even +when he is right there is always a danger that what was really good +in the previous society may be destroyed by what is good in the new +one." + +Mussolini's reaction was against the Liberalism in which as an idea +Chesterton still believed, it was a reaction from democracy to +authority. And his weakness, the fundamental weakness of Fascism was +that "it appeals to an appetite for authority, without very clearly +giving the authority for the appetite. . . . When I try to put the +case for it in philosophical terms, there is some doubt about the +ultimates of the philosophy." It seemed to Chesterton that there were +only two possible fixed and orderly constitutions, hereditary +Monarchy or Majority Rule. The demand of the Fascists to hold power +as an intelligent and active minority was in fact to invite other +intelligent and active minorities to dispute that rule; and then only +by tyranny could anarchy be prevented. + +"Fascism," he said in summary, "has brought back order into the +State; but this will not be lasting unless it has brought back order +into the mind." + +The two things in the Roman visit that remain most prominent in +Dorothy's memory are Gilbert's loss of a medal of Our Lady that he +always wore and his audience with the Holy Father. The loss of the +medal seemed to distress him out of all normal proportion. He had the +elevator boy looking for it on hands and knees and gave him a huge +reward for finding it. Gilbert has left no record of his Papal +audience. But, says Dorothy, it excited him so greatly that he did no +work for two days before the event or two days after. + +Their second visit to America in 1930-31 was far better enjoyed by +Gilbert, and also I think by Frances until she got ill, because on it +they came much closer to the real people of the country, especially +during the period when he was lecturing at the University of Notre +Dame, Indiana. They lived at a little house in South Bend and he +lectured every night, alternating a course on Victorian Literature +with one on the great figures of Victorian history. There were 36 +lectures all told, and the average attendance at each lecture was 500. + +At Notre Dame and the Sister College of St. Mary's, I felt the best +way to get the atmosphere of this visit would be to get together for +a talk the people who remembered Gilbert: they would stimulate one +another's memories. I invoked the aid of Sister Madeleva and she +suggested the two Fathers Leo Ward, Professors Engels and O'Grady, +and, best of all Johnnie Mangan the chauffeur. Johnnie is a great +institution at Notre Dame. He remembered driving my father nearly +thirty years ago and he had specially vivid memories of the +Chesterton period. We all sat in a circle in Sister Madeleva's +sitting room. I give here the notes I took. + + Johnnie Mangan: "It was the hardest job getting him into the car, + harder getting him out. He'd walk on the porch and all the children + came. He'd talk to the children on the road. Money meant nothing to + him: the lady would give me the money saying himself would leave it + in the shop if the barber wasn't honest enough to give change. + + "He enjoyed everything: when they dedicated the stadium he stayed + till the very end. Father O'Donnell introduced him to all the naval + officers and he was the last off the ground. He enjoyed talking to + all the naval officers. He loved cheer-leading." + + Mr. O'Grady: "He spent one evening in Professor Phillips' room + after the lecture from 9 to 2.30 A.M. His host was deaf, G.K. learnt + later, and he made another date when he found his host had missed + most of the fun." + + Mr. Engels: "He would sit around consuming home-made ale by the + quart; said the head of the philosophy faculty made the best brew in + the college. Enjoyed little drives round the countryside. The faculty + were a little shy of inviting him." + + "In a lecture he got an immense laugh by calling Queen Elizabeth an + 'old crock.' He then laughed above all the rest." + +Mr. Engels noticed mannerisms: "The constant shifting of his great +bulk around," "rotating while he was talking," "flipping his +eyeglasses," "lumbering on to the stage, going through all his +pockets, finally finding a piece of dirty yellow paper and talking +from it as if most laboriously gathered and learned notes. But the +paper was only for show. Father Burke saw him get out of the cab, he +got on to the stair landing and then saw G.K.'s yellow paper on the +ground. He had delivered his whole course with hardly a single +note--occasionally looked through material for a quarter of an hour +or so before speaking." All thought him a great entertainer as well +as an informing talker. "No one enjoyed himself more than he did." +Trying to get him for an informal gathering they mentioned they had +some Canadian Ales--quite something in Prohibition days. + + G.K.: "The ales have it." + + Johnnie: "He'd chat all the time he was driving." + + Father Leo L. Ward: "The problem of getting G.K. to and fro in a + coupe was only solved by backing him in." + +They remembered G.K. "in Charley's big chair, his hands barely +touching over his great expanse." + +They recalled that on receiving his honorary degree he said the last +time he received one at Edinburgh they tapped him with John Knox's +hat. He did not expect anything so drastic here: perhaps they might +tap him with Tom Heflin's sombrero.* When he had been invited to Notre +Dame he was not certain where it was but with a name like that, even +if it were in the mountains of the moon, he should feel at home. "If +I ever meet anybody who suggests there's something Calvinistic or +Puritanical in Catholicism I shall ask, 'Have you ever heard of +the University of Notre Dame?'" + +[* Tom Heflin was the fiercely anti-Catholic Senator from Alabama.] + + Johnnie: "He'd do anything she'd say, or Miss Collins. They + certainly had that man by the neck, but they took wonderful care of + him." + + Mr. O'Grady: "It was a very intelligent arrangement. And did they + tidy him." + + Johnnie: "Very much so. It was their business every evening." + + Sister Madeleva: "Did he walk on the campus and see the students?" + + Johnnie: "He didn't walk much only to Charlie Phillips' rooms. He + didn't mind being a little late but his lady and Miss Collins loaded + him into the car to get him there on time. + + "The woman they lodged with used to swear like a trooper. But she + (the landlady) cried like a kid when he left. And he and the lady + seemed lonesome at leaving her. + + "In his spare time at the house he would be drawing some fancy + stuff." + + "What did he talk to you about?" + + Johnnie: "He'd just talk about the country, he'd admire the streams + and things like that. I took him to the Virgin Forest and I could + hardly get him back. He even got out to notice the trees. He spent + almost an hour. The women raved at me and said I must get him back at + a certain time. He'd ask me the names of the trees. He loved rivers + and would ask me about the fish. At one time Father O'Donnell thought + he should drive to Chicago or some big town but he didn't care for + towns, said they all looked alike to him, so after that we always + went to the country." + +Someone asked, "Did he ever get grouchy?" + + Johnnie: "He always had a smile. Was always calling kids over to + talk to him. He'd touch one with his stick to make him look round and + play with him, and then he'd laugh himself sick playing with them. + The kids were always around him. The ones of four or five years, + those were the ones he'd notice the most. He liked to ask them things + and then if they gave a good answer he could get a good laugh at it." + + Mr. O'Grady: "I know he enjoyed himself here. I met him in Ottawa + afterwards. He was autographing a book, the pen was recalcitrant and + he shook it over the rug, 'Dear me, I'm always cluttering up people's + rugs.' His cousin in Ottawa had him completely surrounded by ash + trays but the cigar had ash almost half length and it was falling + everywhere." + + Father Ward: "Father Miltner one evening in pleasant fall weather + found G.K. on the porch. The campus was empty. He got a grunt in + return to his greeting, tried three or four times, almost no answer. + G.K. looked glum. + + "'Well, you're not very gay this evening.' + + "'One should be given the luxury of a little private grouch once in + a while.'" + + To Johnnie--"Did he take the lecture business seriously?" + + "No. He just wanted five minutes on the porch when he would talk to + no one but the kids." + + Mr. O'Grady: "He said once, 'What I like about notes is that when + once you begin you can completely disregard them.' He stood for the + first lecture but mostly he sat. He enjoyed a joke so much, and they + enjoyed his enjoyment." + + Mr. Engels: "For the first lecture he stood--part of him stood + behind a little rostrum, after that he sat at a big table." + +Father Leo R. Ward was at Oxford when he debated "That the Law is a +Hass" and was amazed at the way the undergraduates adored him. "His +opponent begged them not to vote for G.K. at this critical moment in +the world's history. They cheered G.K. but voted against him to make +the other fellow feel good." + + Sister Madeleva: "What did he do for recreation?" + + Johnnie: "He did a lot of--sketching I guess you'd call it--and + he'd read the papers." + + Sister Madeleva: "Did he like the campus?" + + Johnnie: "Very much." + + "Did he ever go down to the Grotto?" + + Johnnie: "He seen it but he never got out of the car." + + "Was it hard for him to walk?" + + Johnnie: "No, he could walk kinda fast, but it was so hard for him + to get in or out of the car." + + "Where did he go to church?" + + Johnnie: "He came here to Notre Dame. He was close to 400 lbs. but + he'd never give it away. He'd break an ordinary scale, I guess. I + brought him under the main building, he got stuck in the door of the + car. Father O'Donnell tried to help. Mr. Chesterton said it reminded + him of an old Irishwoman: 'Why don't you get out sideways?' 'I have + no sideways.'" + +To the debate with Darrow, Frances Taylor Patterson had gone a little +uneasy lest Chesterton's arguments "might seem somewhat literary in +comparison with the trained scientific mind and rapier tongue of the +famous trial lawyer." She found however that both trained mind and +rapier tongue were the property of G.K.C. + + I have never heard Mr. Darrow alone, but taken relatively, when + that relativity is to Chesterton, he appears positively muddle headed. + + As Chesterton summed it up, he felt as if Darrow had been arguing + all afternoon with his fundamentalist aunt, and simply kept sparring + with a dummy of his own mental making. When something went wrong with + the microphone, Darrow sat back until it could be fixed. Whereupon + G.K.C. jumped up and carried on in his natural voice, "Science you + see is not infallible!" . . . Chesterton had the audience with him + from the start, and when it was over, everyone just sat there, not + wishing to leave. They were loath to let the light die!* + +[* _Chesterton_ by Cyril Clemens, pp. 67-68.] + +As in England, so also in the States, Gilbert's debating was held to +be far better than his straight lecturing. He never missed the +opportunity for a quick repartee and yet when he scored the audience +felt that he did so with utter kindness. At a debate with Dr. Horace +T. Bridges of the Ethical Cultural Society on "Is Psychology a +Curse?" Bishop Craig Stewart who presided, describes how: + + In his closing remarks Chesterton devastatingly sideswiped his + opponent and wound up the occasion in a storm of laughter and + applause, "It is clear that I have won the debate, and we are all + prepared to acknowledge that psychology is a curse. Let us, however, + be magnanimous. Let us allow at least one person in this unhappy + world to practice this cursed psychology, and I should like to + nominate Dr. Bridges." + +The Bishop on another occasion introduced Gilbert at a luncheon in +Chicago by quoting Oliver Herford's lines: + + When plain folks such as you and I + See the sun sinking in the sky, + We think it is the setting sun: + But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton + Is not so easily misled; + He calmly stands upon his head, + And upside down obtains a new + And Chestertonian point of view. + Observing thus how from his nose + The sun creeps closer to his toes + He cries in wonder and delight + How fine the sunrise is tonight! + +The fact that nearly all the headlines he chose sounded like +paradoxes, the fact that they did not themselves agree with him, had +on Chesterton's opponents and on some members of his audience one +curious effect. Dr. Bridges when asked his opinion of his late +sparring partner, after paying warm tribute to his brilliance as a +critic, his humour and his great personal charm, discovered in his +"subconscious" (Is Psychology a Curse?) "a certain intellectual +recklessness that made him indifferent to truth and reality . . . +fundamentally--perhaps I should say subconsciously--he was a +thorough-going skeptic and acted upon the principle that, since we +cannot really be positive about anything we had better believe what +it pleases us to believe." + +So too at the British University of Aberystwyth when Chesterton spoke +on "Liberty," taking first historically the fights of Barons against +despots, yeomen against barons, factory hands against owners, and +then giving as a modern instance the fight of the pedestrian to keep +the liberty of the highway, we are told that "the Senior History +Lecturer and some others were of the opinion that the whole thesis of +the address was a gigantic leg-pull." + +Chesterton must have seen again the fixed stare on the faces of the +Nottingham tradesmen thirty years earlier on the famous occasion when +he himself "got up and played with water." But that earlier audience +had the intellectual advantage over the university professors that +they + + Tried to find out what he meant + With infinite inquiring. + +Gilbert often said that his comic illustrations ought not to have +prevented this. But it was really more his inability to resist making +himself into a figure of fun. He was funny and the jokes were funny +but they did prevent his really being given by all the position given +him by so many, of the modern Dr. Johnson. + +It is possible, though not easy, to imagine Johnson dragged from the +station to his hotel by forty undergraduates of Aberystwyth while +members of the O.T.C. secured a footing on the carriage armed with a +battle axe (borrowed from the Arts Department), hoes, rakes, spades, +etc.--their officers having refused them the privilege of bearing +arms on the occasion. + +But it is scarcely possible to imagine the Doctor called upon for a +speech standing on the steps of the hotel and saying, "You need never +be ashamed of the athletic prowess of this College. The Pyramids, we +are told, were built by slave labour. But the slaves were not +expected to haul the pyramids in one piece!"* + +[* _Chesterton_ by Cyril Clemens, p. 50.] + +In San Francisco I saw many people who had met Gilbert including a +journalist who took him to a "bootleg joint"--which is Western for a +Speakeasy. There he asked for "some specialty of the house" and was +offered a Mule. + +"Six of these babies will put you on your ear," remarked the +bartender. + +"What did he say about my ear?" Gilbert queried. + +He downed three of the potent mixture, in spite of his theory against +cocktails and his host remarked his continued poise with admiration +while the bartender commented "He can take it," another slang +expression that appeared to be new to Gilbert. He told his host, Mr. +Williams, that he delighted in meeting such folk as bartenders and +all the simpler people whom he saw too seldom. This suggested an +idea--would he come out to a school across the bay which could not +afford his fees, because it educated the daughters of poorer +Catholics. He agreed at once and not only talked to them brilliantly +for three quarters of an hour, but also wrote for the children about +50 autographs. + +But of course, he had forgotten something--an engagement to attend a +big social function. A huge car arrived at the school complete with +chauffeur and several agitated ladies. "Mr. Chesterton, you have +broken an important engagement." "I have filled an important +engagement," he answered, "lecturing to the daughters of the poor." + +If it were possible for Gilbert to be better loved anywhere than in +England that anywhere was certainly America. From coast to coast I +have met his devotees. I have come across only one expression of the +opposite feeling--and that from a man who seems (from his opening +sentence) to have been unable to stay away from the lectures he so +detested: + + I heard Chesterton some six or seven times in this country. His + physical make-up repelled me. He looked like a big eater and + animalism is repugnant to most of us. His appearance was against him. + + Not one of his lectures seemed to me worth the price of admission + and some of them were so bad that they seemed contemptuous morsels + flung at audiences for whom he adjudged anything good enough. + + One of his lectures, at the Academy Brooklyn, was a great + disappointment. And he charged $1,000 for it. It was not worth $10 + and Chesterton knew it. After the lecture, he remarked to a friend of + mine, "I think that was the worst lecture I ever gave." He may have + been right. Certainly it was the worst I ever heard him give. But he + took the thousand and a bonus of $200 for the extra large crowd in + attendance. No: I did not like Chesterton. + +What of the money? With his American agent Chesterton had a quite +usual arrangement: he received half the fees paid. The agent made +engagements, paid travelling expenses and received for this the other +half. Out of the half Chesterton received, he paid a further ten per +cent to the London agent who had introduced him to the American +agent; he also had to pay the expenses of his wife and his secretary +and further gave a large present to his secretary for her trouble on +the tour: the rest went chiefly into _G.K.'s Weekly_. I doubt if he +could have told anyone at what figure the original fee stood for any +lecture. + +One of the Basilian Fathers, then a novice, remembers Gilbert's +appearance in Toronto. The subject of this lecture was "Culture and +the Coming Peril." The Coming Peril, he explained, was not Bolshevism +(because Bolshevism had now been tried--"The best way to destroy a +Utopia is to establish it. The net result of Bolshevism is that the +modern world will not imitate it"). Nor by Coming Peril did he mean +another great war (the next great war, he added, "would happen when +Germany tried to monkey about with the frontiers of Poland"). The +Coming Peril was the intellectual, educational, psychological, +artistic overproduction which, equally with economic overproduction, +threatened the well-being of contemporary civilisation. People were +inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of +vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, +thought, or creation from within themselves. + +At question period he was asked: + +"Why is Dean Inge gloomy?" + +"Because of the advance of the Catholic Church. Next question please." + +"How tall are you and what do you weigh?" + +"I am six feet two inches, but my weight has never been accurately +calculated." + +"Is George Bernard Shaw a coming peril?" + +"Heavens, no. He is a disappearing pleasure." + +For an apparently haphazard collection of essays _Sidelights on New +London and Newer York_, published on his return to England from the +second visit, has a surprising unity. Blitzed in London and out of +print in New York it is now hard to obtain, which is a pity as it is +full of good things. Discussing the fashions of today Chesterton +attempts "to remove these things from the test of time and subject +them to the test of truth," and this rule of an eternal test is the +one he tried to apply in all his comments. Obviously nothing human is +perfect--and this includes the human judgment, even Chesterton's +judgment. Talking of the past or of the present, of England or +America, he may often have been wrong and he would certainly have +been the last man to claim infallibility for his judgments. His +weakness as a critic was perhaps a tendency to get his proportions +wrong--to make too much of some things he saw or experienced, to +little of others. His qualities were intellectual curiosity and +personal amiability together with the measuring rod of an eternal +standard. + +This second visit to America only deepened in Gilbert's mind many of +the impressions made by the first. Yet the atmosphere of the book is +curiously different from that of _What I Saw in America_. Living in +the country even a few months had so greatly deepened his +understanding. He still preferred the Quakers to the Puritans, "The +essential of the Puritan mood is the misdirection of moral anger." He +still felt that as a whole the United States had started with "a +great political idea, but a small spiritual idea": that it needed a +"return to the vision" in politics and sociology. It was the fashion +today to laugh at the wish for "great open spaces," yet the "real +sociological object in going to America was to find those open +spaces. It was not to find more engineers and electric batteries and +mechanical gadgets in the home. These may have been the result of +America: they were not the causes of America." Asked why he admired +America yet hated Americanisation, he replied: + + I should have thought that I had earned some right to apply this + obvious distinction to any foreign country, since I have consistently + applied it to my own country. If the egoism is excusable, I am myself + an Englishman (which some identify with an egoist) and I have done my + best to praise and glorify a number of English things: English inns, + English roads, English jokes and jokers; even to the point of + praising the roads for being crooked or the humour for being Cockney; + but I have invariably written, ever since I have written at all, + against the cult of British Imperialism. + + And when that perilous power and opportunity, which is given by + wealth and worldly success, largely passed from the British Empire to + the United States, I have applied exactly the same principle to the + United States. I think that Imperialism is none the less Imperialism + because it is spread by economic pressure or snobbish fashion rather + than by conquest; indeed I have much more respect for the Empire that + is spread by fighting than for the Empire that is spread by finance.* + +[* _Sidelights on New London & Newer York_, p. 178.] + +He felt that the real causes for admiration, the real greatness of +America, could be found partly through facing its incompleteness and +defects, partly through contemplating the character of the greatest +and most typical of Americans, Abraham Lincoln. + + Whilst I was in America, I often lingered in small towns and + wayside places; and in a curious and almost creepy fashion the great + presence of Abraham Lincoln continually grew upon me. I think it is + necessary to linger a little in America, and especially in what many + would call the most uninteresting or unpleasing parts of America, + before this strong sense of a strange kind of greatness can grow upon + the soul. . . . The externals of the Middle West affect an Englishman + as ugly, and yet ugliness is not exactly the point. There are things + in England that are quite as ugly or even uglier. Rows of red brick + villas in the suburbs of a town in the Midlands are, one would + suppose, as hideous as human half-wittedness could invent or endure. + But they are different. They are complete; they are, in their way, + compact; rounded and finished with an effect that may be prim or + smug, but is not raw. The surroundings of them are neat, if it be in + a niggling fashion. But American ugliness is not complete even as + ugliness. It is broken off short; it is ragged at the edges; even its + worthy objects have around them a sort of halo of refuse. Somebody + said of the rugged and sardonic Dr. Temple, once Archbishop of + Canterbury: "There are no polished corners in our Temple." + + . . . there are no polished corners even in the great American + cities, which are full of fine and stately classical buildings, not + unworthy to be compared to temples. Nobody seems to mind the + juxtaposition of unsightly things and important things. There is some + deep difference of feeling about the need for completeness and + harmony, and there is the same thing in the political and ethical + life of the great Western nation. It was out of this landscape that + the great President came, and one might almost trace a fanciful + shadow of his figure in the thin trees and the stiff wooden pillars. + A man of any imagination might look down these strange streets, with + their frame-houses filled with the latest conveniences and surrounded + with the latest litter, till he could see approaching down the long + perspective that long ungainly figure, with the preposterous + stove-pipe hat and the rustic umbrella and deep melancholy eyes, the + humour and the hard patience and the heart that fed upon hope + deferred. + + That is admiring Abraham Lincoln, and that is admiring America.* + +[* Ibid., pp. 168-170.] + +Among the "stately and classical buildings" were those making up the +University of Notre Dame where he had been lecturing and which turned +his musings in a direction they were ever inclined to take. Founded +by a group of Frenchmen a century ago with a capital of four hundred +dollars in a small log building on a clearing of ten acres, the +University today numbers forty-five buildings on a seventeen hundred +acre campus. The gold dome of the Church visible from miles away, the +interesting combination of the extraordinary fame of its football +team with a keen spiritual life, especially fascinated Gilbert. He +wrote a poem dedicated to the University and called "The Arena." In +it he pictures first the golden image on "the gilded house of Nero" +that stood for all the horrors of the Pagan Amphitheatre. Then comes +in contrast another image: + + I have seen, where a strange country + Opened its secret plains about me, + One great golden dome stand lonely with its golden image, one + Seen afar, in strange fulfilment, + Through the sunlit Indian summer + That Apocalyptic portent that has clothed her with the Sun. + +The boys shout "Notre Dame" as they watch the fortunes of the fray +and Chesterton sees Our Lady presiding fittingly even over a football +contest. + + And I saw them shock the whirlwind + Of the world of dust and dazzle: + And thrice they stamped, a thunderclap; and thrice the sand-wheel + swirled; + And thrice they cried like thunder + On Our Lady of the Victories, + The Mother of the Master of the Masterers of the World. + +He recurs to a favourite thought that the Mother of Sorrows is the +cause of human joy: + + Queen of Death and deadly weeping + Those about to live salute thee, + Youth untroubled; youth untortured; hateless war and harmless mirth + And the New Lord's larger largesse + Holier bread and happier circus, + Since the Queen of Sevenfold Sorrow has brought joy upon the earth. + +No wonder that, as Johnnie Mangan said, you could not drag him away +from the game, if the game meant also a meditation. The "holier +bread" came perhaps to his mind from the fact that the average of +Daily Communion is unusually high at Notre Dame. + +When he desired for Americans a return to their great political +vision he desired also an opening of the eyes to that greater +spiritual vision which was to him the supreme opportunity of the +human spirit. E. S. P. Haynes in _Fritto Misto_, comments on the +absence of any reference to universities in _What I Saw in America_. +Nor have I anywhere found any discussion by Chesterton of the +intellectual quality of Catholic education--any comparison with the +secular teaching--either in England or in America. But that the +problems of these two countries and of all the world could be solved +only by what that golden Dome housed he cried with no uncertain +voice. Death is in the world around, Resurrection in the Church of +the God who died and rose again. + + Queen of Death and Life undying + Those about to live salute thee. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +The Soft Answer + + +_I have only one virtue that I know of +I could really forgive unto seventy times seven_. + +The Notebook + +ONE OF THE commonest of biographers' problems is the question of +quarrels and broken friendships. At the distance of time separating a +life from its record some of these look so empty of meaning as to +imperil any reputation--yet they happened, and when they were +happening they probably appeared full of significance. Other quarrels +involve issues of importance in which the biographer cannot take +wholeheartedly the side of his hero. Thus my own father, writing +_his_ father's life, had to pronounce judgment on Newman's side in +the issues that divided them, yet later, writing Newman's biography, +he had to admit the faults of temper that at least weakened the +Cardinal's case. For only so could he tell an entirely truthful story. + +In Chesterton's life there is no such problem. Attacks on public +characters in his paper, attacks on abuses and ideas, absorbed all +his pugnacity. Fellow writers, rival journalists, friends, furnished +often enough material for a quarrel; but Chesterton would never take +it up. He excelled in the soft answer--not that answer which seeming +soft subtly provokes to wrath, but the genuine article. Belloc said +of him that he possessed "the two virtues of humility and +charity"--those most royal of all Christian virtues. In the heat of +argument he retained a fairness of mind that saw his opponent's case +and would never turn an argument into a quarrel. And most people both +liked him and felt that he liked them. While he was having his great +controversy with Blatchford back in 1906, it is clear from letters +between them that the two men remained on the friendliest terms. + +Edward Macdonald writes of his experiences of Chesterton when he was +working with him on the paper. + + He loved all the jokes about his size. He was the first to see the + point and to roar with laughter when Douglas Woodruff introduced him + to a meeting as "Mr. Chesterton who has just been looking round in + America. . . ." + + He came into the office once on Press Day and saw the disordered + pile of papers and proofs on my desk. The place was certainly in an + awful mess. I wanted to show him a particular letter and shoved my + hand into the middle of one pile and was lucky enough to put my hand + right on the right document. G.K.C. complimented me on a filing + system that demanded a keen memory and then remarked enviously "I + wish they'd let me have a desk like that at home." + + When Thomas Derrick drew his famous cartoon of G.K.C. milking a cow + he hesitated to give it to me for fear that G.K.C. would be offended. + I wanted to print it in a special number and telephoned to + Beaconsfield. + + "Mr. Chesterton, I have here a cartoon of Derrick and would like to + put it in the special number. But as you are the subject of the + cartoon Derrick is afraid you may not like it." + + "I would rather it were not printed," he replied. "I never liked + the idea of my name being used in the title of the paper and don't + want well-intentioned but embarrassing personalities. Of course, if + it were highly satirical, insulting and otherwise unflattering I'd + gladly have it on the front-page." + + I assured him that it was anything but flattering and on the + front-page it went. It was used as the frontispiece of G.K.'s + Miscellany. + + Many of the obituary writers said that he hated the cinema. In fact + he told me once that he had long wished to write a new translation of + Cyrano and would like to try his hand at a film scenario of the play. + His fingers had itched in the first place to retranslate the duel + scene in order to restore the strength of the ballade in English. + When he saw the film version of a Father Brown story I asked him what + he thought of it. He had liked the film as a film and the acting. He + added as an afterthought, "It gave me an idea for a new Father Brown + story." + + A short-hand note was taken of the famous debate with Bernard Shaw. + It was decided to devote four pages of _G.K.'s Weekly_ to a report + which I tried to compile by avoiding the third person and + concentrating on significant quotations. But whereas Shaw put his + points in a few words from which elaboration could be cut, G.K.C.'s + argument was so closely knit that it was difficult to leave out + passages without spoiling the effect. He walked into the room as my + pencil went through a fairly long extract from Shaw's speech. + + "And whose words are you so gaily murdering?" he asked. + + "Shaw's, Mr. Chesterton." + + "Very well. Now put them all back and murder mine. I refuse to deny + Shaw a full opportunity to state his case in my paper." + + As a result Shaw's speech took up a great part of the space + allotted and G.K.C. was inadequately reported. + +He was always careful if he had reviewed a book in the paper +criticising its ideas to take an immediate opportunity to show the +author his warm personal friendliness. Middleton Murry, sending him a +book of his own, criticised G.K. as "Perverse" for thinking communism +and capitalism alike. + + Your clean idea [of liberty and property] delights me, I believe, + quite as much as it does you. But it is a vision and a dream, in this + capitalistic world. . . . The communist is the man who has made up + his mind to "go through with" the grim business of Capitalism to the + bitter end because he knows there is no going back. He makes a choice + between following a dream which he _knows_ is only a dream, and + following a hope which he knows his own devotion may help to make + real. Communism is the faith which a man wins through blank and utter + despair. . . . + + For my own part, if it were possible, I would rather see the world + converted to Christianity than to communism. But the world has had + its chance of becoming Christian; it will not get it again. . . . + + The wrath to come--that is what communism is. And we can flee from + it only by repentance. And repentance itself means communism. That is + the fact as I see it. I hope, and sometimes dream, that we shall have + the communism of repentance, and not the communism of wrath here in + England. + +Chesterton replied (May 19, 1932): + + Thank you so very much for your most interesting and generous + letter, which reached me indirectly and was delayed; also for your + most interesting and generous book, which I immediately sat down and + read at a sitting; which in its turn so stimulated me that I + immediately wrote a rapid and rather curt reply for my own little + rag. I fear you will find the reply more controversial than I meant + it to be; for your book is so packed with challenges that I could not + but make my very short article a thing packed with mere repartees. + But I do hope you will understand how warm a sympathy I have with + very much of what you say and with all the motives with which you say + it. Needless to say, I agree with every word you say against + Capitalism; but I particularly want to congratulate you on what you + say about parasitic Parliamentary Labour. I thought that chapter was + quite triumphant. + + As for the rest, it is true that it has not shaken me in my + conviction that the Catholic Church is larger than you or me, than + your moods or mine; and the heroic but destructive mood in which you + write is a very good example. You say that Christ set the example of + a self-annihilation which seems to me almost nihihist; but I will + never deny that Catholics have saluted that mood as the Imitation of + Christ. Lately a friend of mine, young, virile, handsome, happily + circumstanced, walked straight off and buried himself in a monastery; + never, so to speak, to reappear on earth. Why did he do it? + Psychologically, I cannot imagine. Not, certainly, from fear of hell + or wish to be "rewarded" by heaven. As an instructed Catholic, he + knew as well as I do that he could save his soul by normal living. I + can only suppose that there is something in what you say; that Christ + and others do accept a violent reversal of all normal things. But why + do you say that Christ did it and has left no Christians who do it? + Our Church has stood in the derision of four hundred years, because + there were still Christians who did it. And they did it to + themselves, as Christ did; you will not misunderstand me if I say + that this is different from throwing out a violent theory for other + people to follow. + + Now for the application. Some of these monks, less cloistered, are + to my knowledge, helping the English people to get back to the + ownership of their own land; renewing agriculture as they did in the + Dark Ages. Why do you say there is no chance for this normal property + and liberty? You can only mean to say of our scheme exactly what you + yourself admit about the Communist scheme. That it requires awful and + almost inhuman sacrifices; that we must turn the mind upside-down; + that we must alter the whole psychology of modern Englishmen. We must + do that to make them Communists. Why is it an answer to say we must + do that to make them Distributists? I could point out many ways in + which our ideal is nearer and more native to men; but I will not + prolong this debate. I should be very sorry that you should think it + is only a debate. I only ask you to believe that we sympathise where + we do not agree; but on this we do not agree. + +Mr. Murry wrote later of Gilbert: "I liked the man immensely and he +was a very honourable opponent of mine, much the most honourable I +ever encountered."* + +[* Mark Twain Quarterly, Chesterton Memorial No.] + +_G.K.'s Weekly_ was of course Gilbert's own platform, so perhaps +his care to apologise and his great magnanimity are more remarkable +in incidents outside its columns. T. S. Eliot had his platform--he +edited the _Criterion_. Chesterton on being reproached by him for a +hasty article not only apologised but dedicated a book to Mr. Eliot. +He had written confusing him with another critic who disapproved of +alliteration and had also misquoted a stanza of his poetry. Mr. Eliot +had written: + + I should like you to know that it was apparently your "sympathetic + reviewer," not I, who made the remark about alliteration; to which it + seems he added a more general criticism of mine: so that _snob_ is + not the right corrective. Some of your comments seem to be based on a + belief that I object to alliteration. + + And may I add, as a humble versifier, that I _prefer_ my verse to + be quoted correctly, if at all. + +Chesterton replied: + + I am so very sorry if my nonsense in the _Mercury_ had any general + air of hostility, to say nothing of any incidental injustices of + which I was quite unaware. I meant it to be quite amiable; like the + tremulous badinage of the Oldest Inhabitant in the bar parlour, when + he has been guyed by the brighter lads of the village. I cannot + imagine that I ever said anything about you or any particular person + being a snob; for it was quite out of my thoughts and too serious for + the whole affair. I certainly did have the impression, from the way + the reviewer put it, that you disapproved of my alliteration; I also + added that you would be quite right if you did. I certainly did quote + you from memory, and even quote from a quotation; I also mentioned + that I was doing so casual a thing. Of course, on the strictest + principles, all quotations should be verified; and I should certainly + have done so if I had in any way resented anything you said, or been + myself writing in a spirit of resentment. If you think a letter to + the _Mercury_ clearing up these points would be fairer to everybody, + of course I should be delighted to write one. + +This attitude of the "oldest inhabitant" was the Chestertonian +fashion of accepting the youthful demand for something new. When a +young writer in _Colosseum_ alluded to him as out of date he took it +with the utmost placidity. "Good," he said to Edward Macdonald. "I +like to see people refusing to accept the opinions of others before +they've examined them themselves. They're perfectly entitled to say +that I'm not a literary lion but a Landseer lion." Mr. Eliot's answer +was a request to Gilbert to write in the _Criterion_ and an +explanation that he had felt in a false position since he rather +liked alliteration than otherwise. + +Thus too when Chesterton had answered a newspaper report of a speech +made by C. E. M. Joad, the latter complained that it was a criticism +"not of anything that I think, but of a garbled newspaper caricature +of a few of the things I think, taken out of their context and +falsified." + +He added that he had not said science would destroy religion but that +at its present rate of decline the _Church of England_ would become a +dead letter in a hundred and fifty years. Next, that science "has no +bearing upon the spiritual truths of religion," but + + has been presented, at any rate by the Church of England, in a + texture of obsolete ideas about the nature of the physical universe + and the behaviour of physical things which science has shown to be + untrue. + + Finally that religion is vital but it is in Mysticism that the core + of religion lies for me, and mystical experience, as I understand it, + does not want organizing. + + I may be wrong in all this, but I hope that this explanation, such + as it is, will lead you to think that I am not such an arrogant fool + as your article suggests. + +Chesterton replied (May 4, 1930): + + I hope you will forgive my delay in thanking you for your very + valuable and reasonable letter; but I have been away from home; and + for various reasons my correspondence has accumulated very heavily. I + am extremely glad to remember that, even before receiving your + letter, I was careful to say in my article that my quarrel was not + personally with you, but with the newspapers which had used what you + said as a part of a stupid stunt against organised religion. I am + even more glad to learn that they had misused your name and used what + you did not say. I ought to have known, by this time, that they are + quite capable of it; and I entirely agree that the correction you + make in the report makes all the difference in the world. I do not + think I ever meant or said that you were an arrogant fool or anything + like it; but most certainly it is one thing to say that religion will + die in a century (as the report stated) and quite another to say that + the Church of England will experience a certain rate of decline, + whether the prediction be true or no. I shall certainly take some + opportunity to correct my statement prominently in the _Illustrated + London News_; I hope I should do so in any case; but in this case it + supports my main actual contention; that there is in the press a very + vulgar and unscrupulous attack on the historic Christian Church. + + The four points you raise are so interesting that I feel I ought to + touch on them; though you will forgive me if I do so rather rapidly. + With the first I have already dealt; and in that matter I can only + apologise, both for myself and my unfortunate profession; and + touching the second I do not suppose we should greatly disagree; I + merely used it as one example of the futility of fatalistic + prophecies such as the one attributed by the newspapers to you. But a + thorough debate between us, if there were time for it, touching the + third and fourth points, might possibly remove our differences, but + would certainly reveal them. + + In the third paragraph you say something that has been said many + times, and doubtless means something; but I can say quite honestly + that I have never been quite certain of what it means. Naturally I + hold no brief for the Church of England as such; indeed I am inclined + to congratulate you on having found any one positive set of "ideas," + obsolete or not, which that Church is solidly agreed in "presenting." + But I have been a member of that Church myself, and in justice to it, + I must say that neither then nor now did I see clearly what are these + things "about the nature of the physical universe, which science has + shown to be untrue." I was not required as an Anglican, any more than + as a Catholic, to believe that God had two hands and ten fingers to + mould Adam from clay; but even if I had been, it would be rather + difficult to define the scientific discovery that makes it + impossible. I should like to see the defined Christian dogma written + down and the final scientific discovery written against it. I have + never seen this yet. What I have seen is that even the greatest + scientific dogmas are not final. We have just this moment agreed that + the ideas of the physical universe, which are really and truly + "obsolete," are the very ideas taught by physicists thirty years ago. + What I think you mean is that science has shown _miracles_ to be + untrue. But miracles are not ideas about the nature of the physical + universe. They are ideas about the nature of a power capable of + breaking through the nature of the physical universe. And science has + not shown that to be untrue, for anybody who can think. + + Lastly, you say that it is indeed necessary that Religion should + exist, but that its essence is Mysticism; and this does not need to + be organised. I should answer that nothing on earth needs to be + organised so much as Mysticism. You say that man tends naturally to + religion; he does indeed; often in the form of human sacrifice or the + temples of Sodom. Almost all extreme evil of that kind is mystical. + The only way of keeping it healthy is to have some rules, some + responsibilities, some definitions of dogma and moral function. That + at least, as you yourself put it, is what I think; and I hope you + will not blame me for saying so. But as to what I said, in that + particular article, it was quite clearly written upon wrong + information and it will give me great pleasure to do my best to + publish the fact. + +In any such argument Gilbert was never, in the words of the Gospel, +"willing to justify himself." He only wanted to justify certain +ideas, and the thought of having misrepresented anyone else was +distressing to him. + +Even the hardened controversialist Coulton wrote in the course of one +of their arguments: + + If I speak very plainly of your historical methods, it is not that + I do not fully respect your conversion. I have more sympathy with + your Catholicity than (partly no doubt by my own fault) you may be + inclined to think; I believe you to have made a sacrifice of the sort + that is never altogether vain; it is therefore part of my faith that + you are near to that which I also am trying to approach; and, if this + belief does little or nothing to colour my criticisms in this + particular discussion, that is because I believe true Catholicism, + like true Protestantism, can only gain by the explosion of historical + falsehoods, if indeed they be false, with the least possible delay. + If (on the other hand) they are truths then you may be trusted to + make out the best possible case for them, and my words will recoil + upon myself. + +The dispute was about Puritanism and Catholicism. It was republished +as a pamphlet. It is the only case I have found in which Chesterton +wrote several versions of one letter (to the _Cambridge Review_). In +its final form he omitted one illuminating illustration. Coulton had +maintained that the mediaevals condemned dancing as much as the +Puritans and had dug up various mouldy theologians who classed it as +a mortal sin. Father Lopez retorted by a quotation from St. Thomas +saying it was quite right to dance at weddings and on such like +occasions, provided the dancing was of a decent kind. + +Chesterton comments: + + We have already travelled very far from the first vision of Mr. + Coulton, of Dark Ages full of one monotonous wail over the mortal sin + of dancing. To class it seriously as a mortal sin is to class it with + adultery or theft or murder. It is interesting to imagine St. Thomas + and the moderate moralists saying: "You may murder at weddings; you + may commit adultery to celebrate your release from prison; you may + steal if you do not do it with immodest gestures," and so on. The + calm tone of St. Thomas about the whole thing is alone evidence of a + social atmosphere different from that described. + +The rest of his analysis of Coulton's method of dealing with a +historical document and distorting it is in the published version. A +valuable part of Chesterton's line is also interesting as a comment +on his own historical work. The expert he says is so occupied with +detail that he overlooks the broad facts that anyone could see. On +this point the review of Coulton's Mediaeval History in the _Church +Times_ is illuminating. The reviewer noted that in the index under +the word "Church" occurred such notes as: "soldiers sleeping in," +"horses stabled in," and other allusions to extraordinary happenings. +But nowhere, he said, could he find any mention of the normal use of +a church--that men prayed in it. + +With H. G. Wells several interchanges of letters have shown in +earlier chapters how the soft answer turned aside a wrath easily +aroused, but also easily dissipated. Another exchange of letters only +three years before Gilbert's death must be given. The third letter is +undated and I am not sure if it belongs here or refers to another of +Gilbert's reviews of a book of Wells. + + 47 Chiltern Court, N.W.I. Dec. 10, 1933 + + DEAR OLD G.K.C. + + An _Illustrated London News_ Xmas cutting comes like the season's + greetings. If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your + Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if + I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you. + + My warmest good wishes to you and Mrs. G.K.C. + + H.G. + + MY DEAR H.G., + + I do hope my secretary let you know that at the moment when I got + your most welcome note I was temporarily laid out in bed and able to + appreciate it, but not to acknowledge it. As to the fine point of + theology you raise--I am content to answer (with the subtle and + exquisite irony of the Yanks) I should worry. If I turn out to be + right, you will triumph, not by being a friend of mine, but by being + a friend of Man, by having done a thousand things for men like me in + every way from imagination to criticism. The thought of the vast + variety of that work, and how it ranges from towering visions to tiny + pricks of humour, overwhelmed me suddenly in retrospect: and I felt + we had none of us ever said enough. Also your words, apart from their + generosity, please me as the first words I have heard for a long time + of the old Agnosticism of my boyhood when my brother Cecil and my + friend Bentley almost worshipped old Huxley like a god. I think I + have nothing to complain of except the fact that the other side often + forget that we began as free-thinkers as much as they did: and there + was no earthly power but thinking to drive us on the way we went. + Thanking you again a thousand times for your letter . . . and + everything else. + + Yours always + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + + MY DEAR CHESTERTON: + + You write wonderful praise and it leaves me all aquiver. My warmest + thanks for it. But indeed that wonderful fairness of mind is very + largely a kind of funk in me--I know the creature from the + inside--funk and something worse, a kind of deep, complex cunning. + Well anyhow you take the superficial merit with infinite charity--and + it has inflated me and just for a time I am an air balloon over the + heads of my fellow creatures. + + Yours ever + + H. G. WELLS. + +Gilbert loved to praise his fellows in the field of letters even when +their philosophy differed from his own. In the obituaries in _G.K.'s +Weekly_ this is especially noticeable. Of two men of letters who died +in 1928, he wrote with respect and admiration although with a mind +divided between pure literary appreciation and those principles +whereby he instinctively measured all things. Of Sir Edmund Gosse he +wrote "The men from whom we would consent to learn are dying." G.K. +felt he could never himself appreciate without judging, but he could +learn from Gosse a uniquely "sensitive impartiality." With him "there +passes away a great and delicate spirit which might in some sense be +called the spirit of the eighteenth century; which might indeed be +very rightly called the spirit of reason and civilisation."* + +[* May 26th, 1928.] + +"These are the things we hoped would stay and they are going," he +quoted from Swinburne, and of him and of Hardy, who died in 1928, and +in whom he saluted "an honourable dignity and simplicity" he felt +that though they had stated something false about the universe--that +all the good things are fugitive and only the bad things +unchanged--yet ". . . something rather like it might be a half truth +about the world. I mean about the modern world. . . ." These poets +lamented the passing of roses and sunbeams, but in the modern world + + it is rather as if, in some inverted witchcraft the rose tree + withered and faded from sight, and the rose leaves remained hovering + in empty air. It is as if there could be sunbeams when there was no + more sun. It is not only the better but the bigger and stronger part + of a thing that is sacrificed to the small and secondary part. The + real evil in the change that has been passing over Society is the + fact that it has sapped foundations and, worse still, has not shaken + the palaces and spires. It is as if there was a disease in the world + that only devours the bones. We have not weakened the gilded parody + of marriage, we have only weakened the marriage: . . . we have not + abolished the House of Lords because it was not democratic. We have + merely preserved the aristocracy, on condition that it shall not be + aristocratic. . . . We have not yet even disestablished the Church; + but there is a very pressing proposal that we should turn out of it + the only people who really believe it is the Church. . . . There is + now in the minds of nearly all Capitalists a sort of corrupt + communism. . . . the Bank remains, The Fund remains, The Foreign + Financier remains, Parliamentary Procedure remains, Jix remains. + These are the things we hoped would go; but they are staying. + +Sixteen years earlier Chesterton had in _The Victorian Age in +Literature_ characterised Hardy's novels as "the village atheist +brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot." Yet Cyril Clemens +has told me that Hardy recited to him some of Chesterton's poetry, +and I think this obituary links with that fact in showing that a +profound difference in their philosophy of life did not prevent a +mutual appreciation and even admiration. + +Gilbert Chesterton entered the last years of his life having made no +enemies in the exceedingly sensitive literary world to which he +primarily belonged. Whether he had made any in the world of politics +I do not know, but he certainly felt no enmities. He said once it was +impossible to hate anything except an idea, and to him I think it +was. Against one politician who died in 1930 he had many years ago +launched his strongest bit of ironical writing--Lord Birkenhead, then +F. E. Smith, who had spoken of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill as +having "shocked the conscience of every Christian community in +Europe."--The last lines of Chesterton's mordant answer ran + + For your legal cause or civil + You fight well and get your fee; + For your God or dream or devil + You will answer, not to me. + Talk about the pews and steeples + And the cash that goes therewith: + But the souls of Christian peoples . . . + Chuck it, Smith. + +Later, Smith had stood with Sir Edward Carson against Cecil +Chesterton at the old Bailey. Now he was dead and many who had feared +him in his lifetime were blackening his memory with subtle sneers and +innuendo. Gilbert refused to join in this and he wrote in his paper: +"In him we were confronted by and fought, not a set of principles but +a man. . . . Lord Birkenhead was a great fighter! with one more pagan +virtue--pride--he would have been a great pagan." + +Lord Balfour died in the same year. With him neither the paper nor +its editor had fought personally, but upon almost all his policies +had stood in opposition. Yet few better appreciations of him appeared +than the article entitled by Chesterton "A Man of Distinction." + + The English squire was an unconscious aristocrat; the Scotch laird + was a conscious aristocrat; and Lord Balfour with all his social + grace and graciousness, was conscious and even self-conscious. But + this was only another way of saying that he had a mind which mirrored + everything, including himself; and that, whatever else he did, he did + not act blindly or in the dark. He was sometimes quite wrong; but his + errors were purely patriotic; both in the narrow sense of nationalism + and in the larger sense of loyalty and disinterestedness. + +He instances Balfour's policies in Ireland and Egypt and continues: + + In some ways he seems to me to have been too good a Stoic to be + entirely a good Christian; or rather (to put it more correctly) to + feel, like the rest of us, that he was a bad Christian. . . . There + was much more in him of the Scotch Puritan than of the English + Cavalier. + + It is supremely characteristic of the present Parliamentary + atmosphere that everybody accused Lord Balfour of incomprehensible + compromise and vagueness, because he was completely logical and + absolutely clear. Clarity does look like a cloud of confusion to + people whose minds live in confusion twice confounded. . . . + + . . . people said his distinctions were fine distinctions; and so + they were; very fine indeed. A fine distinction is like a fine + painting or a fine poem or anything else fine; a triumph of the human + mind . . . the great power of distinction; by which a man becomes in + the true sense distinguished.* + +[* March 29, 1930.] + +The distinction Mr. Swinnerton draws* between Belloc and Chesterton +may be a little too absolute, but substantially it is right. "One +reason for the love of Chesterton was that while he fought he sang +lays of chivalry and in spite of all his seriousness warred against +wickedness rather than a fleshly opponent, while Belloc sang only +after the battle and warred against men as well as ideas." + +[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 88.] + +Did the tendency to find good in his opponents, did Chesterton's +universal charity deaden, as Belloc believes, the effect of his +writing? + + He wounded none, but thus also he failed to provide weapons + wherewith one may wound and kill folly. Now without wounding and + killing, there is no battle; and thus, in this life, no victory; + but also no peril to the soul through hatred.* + +[* _The Place of Chesterton in English Letters_, p. 81.] + +In various controversies during the final years of _G.K.'s Weekly_ +the very opposite opinion is expressed. Hoffman Nickerson writes of +the "subversive" nature of Chesterton's work, of his giving weapons +to Communism and doing his bit towards starting "a very nasty class +war" in America. Mr. Nickerson was allowed to develop this theme in +a series of articles in Chesterton's own paper. Correspondents too +complained often enough in the paper of its attacks on vested +interests and on other schools of thought than its own. + +In the course of a controversy with Mr. Penty, in which I think G.K. +most distinctly misunderstood his opponent but in which both men kept +the friendliest tone, Penty says that Chesterton treats as a drive +much that he himself would call a drift: that the mind is more +in fault than the will of mankind in getting the world into its +present mess. With this diagnosis Chesterton certainly agreed for +the greater part of mankind. He spoke often of a "madness in the +modern mind." Psychology meant "the mind studying itself instead of +studying the truth" and it was part of what had destroyed the mind. +"Advertisements often tell us to Watch this Blank Space. I confess I +do watch that blank space, the modern mind, not so much for what will +appear in it, as for what has already disappeared from it." + +Thus too when the Rev. Dick Shepherd remarrying a divorced +woman--i.e., encouraging her to take again the solemn vow she had +already broken--said that he heard the voice of Christ: "Go in +peace," it was not for impiety that Chesterton condemned him. He +wrote with restraint "There is scarcely a shade of difference left +between meaning well and meaning nothing." + +Was Penty still right in thinking he saw a drive where he ought to +see a drift and Nickerson in thinking he was dangerously subversive +in his attitude to the rich? And anyhow what about Belloc? + +I incline to think that the truth was that while G.K. could never +hate an individual he could hate a group. If he suddenly remembered +an individual in that group he hastily excepted him from the group in +order to leave the objects of his hatred entirely impersonal. Thus he +hated politicians but found real difficulty in hating a politician. +He hated what he called the plutocracy, but no individual rich man. I +do think however that while believing firmly in original sin he was +somewhat inclined to see it as operative more especially in the +well-to-do classes. His championship of the poor was in no way +impersonal. His burning love and pity went out to every beggar. He +tended to love all men but the poor he loved with an undivided heart, +and when he thought of them his thoughts grew harsh towards the rich +who were collectively their oppressors. + +I doubt if he allowed enough for the degree of stupidity required to +amass a fortune. He would have agreed that love of money narrowed the +mind: I doubt if he fully grasped that only a mind already narrow can +love money so exclusively as to pursue it successfully. And I am +pretty sure he did not allow enough for the fact that rich like poor +are caught today in the machinery they have created. He saw the +bewildered, confused labourer who has lost his liberty: he failed to +see the politician also bewildered, the millionaire also confused, +afraid to let go for fear he might be submerged. And yet at moments +he did see it. He wrote in the paper a short series of articles on +men of the nineteenth century who had created the confusion of today; +on Malthus, Adam Smith and Darwin. Far from its being true that +supernatural religion had first been destroyed and morality lost in +consequence, it had been the Christian morality that was first +destroyed in the mind. G.K. summarised Adam Smith's teachings as: +"God so made the world that He could achieve the good if men were +sufficiently greedy for the goods." Thus the man of today "whenever +he is tempted to be selfish half remembers Smith and self-interest. +Whenever he would harden his heart against a beggar, he half +remembers Malthus and a book about population; whenever he has +scruples about crushing a rival he half remembers Darwin and his +scruples become unscientific." Because none of these theories were in +their own day seen as heresies and denounced as heresies they have +lived on vaguely to poison the atmosphere and the mind of today. + +English Conservatives had been shocked when Chesterton began: Mr. +Nickerson was shocked when he was ending: because he demanded a +revolution. Surely, Mr. Nickerson said, if he looked at Communism +closely he would prefer Capitalism. He not only would, he constantly +said he did. But he wanted a Revolution from both: he preferred that +it should not be "nasty" for what he wanted was the Christian +Revolution. Like all revolutions however it must begin in the mind +and he felt less and less hopeful as he watched that blank space. + +But I do not believe that Chesterton failed because he had not at his +command the weapon of hatred. Here Belloc surely makes the same +mistake that Swift (whom he instances) made and for the same reason. +The Frenchman and the Irishman understand the rapier of biting satire +as does not the Englishman: for direct abuse of anyone, no matter how +richly merited, nearly always puts the Englishman on the side of the +man who is being abused. What happened to Swift's Gulliver--that most +fierce attack upon the human race? The English people drew its sting +and turned it into a nursery book that has delighted their children +ever since. There are more ways than one of winning a battle: you can +win the man instead of the argument and Chesterton won many men. Or +you can take a weapon that once belonged chiefly to the enemy but +which Chesterton wrested from him; a very useful weapon: the laugh. + +Orthodoxy, doctrinal and moral, was a lawful object of amusement to +Voltaire and his followers but now the laugh has passed to the other +side and Chesterton was (with Belloc himself) the first to seize this +powerful weapon. Thus when Bishop Barnes of Birmingham said that St. +Francis was dirty and probably had fleas many Catholics were furious +and spoke in solemn wrath. Chesterton wrote the simple verse + + _A Broad-minded Bishop Rebukes the Verminous Saint Francis_ + + If Brother Francis pardoned Brother Flea + There still seems need of such strange charity + Seeing he is, for all his gay goodwill + Bitten by funny little creatures still. + +I shall never forget going to hear Chesterton debate on Birth Control +with some Advanced Woman or other. Outside the hall were numbers of +her satellites offering their literature. I was just about to say +something unpleasant to one of them when a verse flashed into my mind: + + If I had been a Heathen, + I'd have crowned Neaera's curls, + And filled my life with love affairs, + My house with dancing girls! + But Higgins is a Heathen + And to lecture-rooms is forced + Where his aunts who are not married + Demand to be divorced. + +The rebuke died on my lips: why get angry with the poor old aunts of +Higgins demanding the destruction of their unconceived and +inconceivable babies? + +Swinburne had mocked at Christian virtue but the Dolores of +Chesterton replied to him: + + I am sorry old dear if I hurt you, + No doubt it is all very nice, + With the lilies and languors of virtue + And the raptures and roses of vice. + But the notion impels me to anger + That vice is all rapture for me, + And if you think virtue is languor + Just try it and see. + +But in fact G.K. did not merely use laughter as a weapon: he was +often simply amused--and did not conceal it. He told Desmond Gleeson +that he remembered reading Renan's Christ "while I was standing in +the queue waiting to see 'Charley's Aunt.' But it is obvious which is +the better farce for 'Charley's Aunt' is still running." No wonder +that Eileen Duggan when she pictured him as a modern St. George saw +him "shouting gleefully 'Bring on your dragons.'" Even dragons may be +bothered by the unexpected. And it may well be that when the rapier +of anger has been blunted against the armour of some accustomed +fighter he will be driven off the field by gales of Chestertonian +laughter. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +Our Lady's Tumbler + + +_I hate to be influenced. I like to be commanded or to be free. In +both of these my own soul can take a clear and conscious part: for +when I am free it must be for something that I really like, and not +something that I am persuaded to pretend to like: and when I am +commanded, it must be by something I know, like the Ten Commandments. +But the thing called Pressure, of which the polite name is +Persuasion, I always feel to be a hidden enemy. It is all a part of +that worship of formlessness, and flowing tendencies, which is really +the drift of cosmos back into chaos. I remember how I suddenly +recoiled in youth from the influence of Matthew Arnold (who said many +things very well worth saying) when he told me that God was "a stream +of tendency." Since then I have hated tendencies: and liked to know +where I was going and go there--or refuse_. + +_G.K.'s Weekly_, Aug. 18, 1928. + +IN 1932, WHEN Gilbert had been in the Church just ten years and +Frances six, my husband and I met them at the Eucharistic Congress in +Dublin. They were staying at the Vice-Regal Lodge and were very happy +in that gathering of the Catholic world brought about by the +Congress. It was this thought of the potential of the faith for a +unity the League of Nations could not achieve--only dogma is strong +enough to unite mankind--that gave its title to the book _Christendom +in Dublin_. + +In the crowd that thronged to that great gathering he saw Democracy. +Its orderliness was more than a mere organisation: it was +Self-determination of the People. "A whole mob, what many would call +a whole rabble, was doing exactly what it wanted; and what it wanted +was to be Christian." The mind of that crowd was stretched over the +centuries as the faint sound of St. Patrick's bell that had been +silent so many centuries was heard in Phoenix Park at the +Consecration of the Mass: it was stretched over the earth as the +people of the earth gathered into one place which had become for the +time Rome or the Christian Centre. + +During the Congress an Eastern priest accosted G.K. with praise of +his writings. His own mind full of the great ideas of Christendom and +the Faith, he felt a huge disproportion in the allusion to himself. +And when later the priest asked to be photographed at his side it +flashed through G.K.'s mind that he had heard in the East that an +idiot was supposed to bring luck. This sort of humorous yet sincere +intellectual humility startles us in the same kind of way as does the +spiritual humility of the saints. We have to accept it in the same +kind of way--without in the least understanding it, but simply +because we cannot fail to see it. + +But the world could fail even to see it. It could and did fail in +imagining a mind so absorbed in the contemplation of Infinite +Greatness that its own pin-point littleness became an axiom: rather +it seemed an affectation--none the less an affectation and much the +less pardonable because the laughter was directed against others as +well as against himself. + +There is an old mediaeval story of a tumbler who, converted and +become a monk, found himself inapt at the offices of Choir and +Scriptorium so he went before a statue of Our Lady and there played +all his tricks. Quite exhausted at last he looked up at the statue +and said, "Lady, this is a choice performance." There is more than a +touch of Our Lady's tumbler in Gilbert. He knew he could give in his +own fashion a choice performance, but meeting a priest come from a +far land where he had reconciled a hitherto schismatic group with the +great body of the Catholic Church, who could forgive sins and offer +the Holy Sacrifice, he truly felt "something disproportionate in +finding one's own trivial trade, or tricks of the trade, amid the +far-reaching revelations of such a trysting-place of all the tribes +of men."* + +[* _Christendom in Dublin_, p. 35.] + +His awe and reverence for priests was, says Father Rice, enormous. +"He would carefully weigh their opinion however fatuous." His comment +on the bad statues and fripperies which so many Catholics find a +trial was: "It shows the wisdom of the Church. The whole thing is so +terrific that if people did not have these let-downs they would go +mad." + +Yet it may have been a fear of excess of this special let-down that +made him reluctant to go to Lourdes. Lisieux he never liked but he +was, Dorothy says, fascinated by Lourdes when she persuaded him to +go. He went several times to the torch-light procession and he said +as he had said in Dublin, "This is the only real League of Nations." + +The thing he liked best in Dublin was the spontaneous outburst of +little altars and amateur decorations in the poorest quarters of the +city. The story he loved to tell was that of the old woman who said +when on the last day the clouds looked threatening: "Well, if it +rains now He will have brought it on Himself." + +The year of the Congress two other books were published: _Sidelights +on New London and Newer York_, already discussed, and _Chaucer_. The +books contrast agreeably: one throwing the ideal against the real of +his own day, the other evoking his ideal from the past. The _Chaucer_ +was much criticised--chiefly because he was not a Chaucer scholar. As +a matter of fact the notion of his writing this book did not +originate with Chesterton but with Richard de la Mare who had +projected a series of essays called "The Poets on the Poets." This +developed, still at his suggestion, into a literary biography of +Chaucer. But in any event G.K. had all his life combatted the notion +that only a scholar should write on such themes. He stood resolutely +for the rights of the amateur: yet I think the scholar might well +start off with some exasperation on reading that if Chaucer had been +called the Father of English poetry, so had "an obscure Anglo-Saxon +like Caedmon," whose writing was "not in that sense poetry and not in +any sense English." It is a curious example of one of the faults +Chesterton himself most hated--overlooking something because it was +too big: something too that he had realised in an earlier work--for +Caedmon spoke the language of Alfred the Great. + +In a brilliant garnering of the fruits of her scholarship--_Word +Hoard_--Margaret Williams has quoted Chesterton's Alfred as a +stirring expression of the significance of the spiritual conquest of +England by Christianity. In the same book she shows how superficial +is the view which believes that the English language was a creation +of the Norman Conquest. The struggle, she says "between the English +and French tongues lasted for some three hundred years, until the two +finally blended into a unified language, basically Teutonic, richly +romantic. The English spirit emerged predominant by a moral victory +over its conqueror. . . ."* + +[* _Word Hoard_ by Margaret Williams, p. 4.] + +No one would wish that Chesterton should have ignored the immense +debt owed by our language to the French tributary that so enriched +its main stream, but it seems strange that in his hospitable mind, in +which Alfred's England held so large a place, he should not have +found room for an appreciation of the Saxon structure of Chaucer and +for all that makes him unmistakably one in a line of which Caedmon +was the first great poet. In this book, only his debt to France is +stressed, because England is to be thought of as part of Europe--and +the part she is a part of is apparently France! + +Yet what excellent things there are in the book: + + The great poet exists to show the small man how great he is. . . . + + The great poet is alone strong enough to measure that broken + strength we call the weakness of man. + + The real vice of the Victorians was that they regarded history as a + story that ended well because it ended with the Victorians. They + turned all human records into one three-volume novel; and were quite + sure that they themselves were the third volume. + +He quotes Troilus and Cressida on "The Christian majesty of the +mystery of marriage": + + Any man who really understands it does not see a Greek King sitting + on an ivory throne, nor a feudal lord sitting on a faldstool but God + in a primordial garden, granting the most gigantic of the joys of the + children of men. + + When we talk of wild poetry, we sometimes forget the parallel of + wild flowers. They exist to show that a thing may be more modest and + delicate for being wild. + + Romance was a strange by-product of Religion; all the more because + Religion, through some of its representatives may have regretted + having produced it. . . . Even the Church, as imperfectly represented + on its human side, contrived to inspire even what it had denounced, + and transformed even what it had abandoned. + +The best chapter is the last: The Moral of the Story--and that moral +is: "That no man should desert that [Catholic] civilisation. It can +cure itself but those who leave it cannot cure it. Not Nestorius, nor +Mahomet, nor Calvin, nor Lenin have cured, nor will cure the real +evils of Christendom; for the severed hand does not heal the whole +body." + +Healing must come from a recovery of the norm, of the balance, of the +equilibrium that mediaeval philosophy and culture were always +seeking. "The meaning of Aquinas is that mediaevalism was always +seeking a centre of gravity. The meaning of Chaucer is that, when +found, it was always a centre of gaiety. . . ." + +The name of Aquinas thus introduced on almost the last page of this +book shows Chesterton's mind already busy on the next and perhaps +most important book of his life: _St. Thomas Aquinas_. + +"Great news this," wrote Shaw to Frances, "about the Divine Doctor. I +have been preaching for years that intellect is a passion that will +finally become the most ecstatic of all the passions; and I have +cherished Thomas as a most praiseworthy creature for being my +forerunner on this point." + +When we were told that Gilbert was writing a book on St. Thomas and +that we might have the American rights, my husband felt a faint +quiver of apprehension. Was Chesterton for once undertaking a task +beyond his knowledge? Such masses of research had recently been done +on St. Thomas by experts of such high standing and he could not +possibly have read it all. Nor should we have been entirely reassured +had we heard what Dorothy Collins told us later concerning the +writing of it. + +He began by rapidly dictating to Dorothy about half the book. So far +he had consulted no authorities but at this stage he said to her: + +"I want you to go to London and get me some books." + +"What books?" asked Dorothy. + +"I don't know," said G.K. + +She wrote therefore to Father O'Connor and from him got a list of +classic and more recent books on St. Thomas. G.K. "flipped them +rapidly through," which is, says Dorothy, the only way she ever saw +him read, and then dictated to her the rest of his own book without +referring to them again. There are no marks on any of them except a +little sketch of St. Thomas which was drawn in the margin opposite a +description of the affair, which G.K. so vividly dramatises, of Siger +of Brabant. + +Had we known all this we should have been asking ourselves even more +definitely: What will the experts say? Of the verdict of the greatest +of them we were not long left in doubt. Etienne Gilson, who has given +two of the most famous of philosophical lecture series--the Gifford +Lectures at Aberdeen and the William James Lectures at Harvard--had +begun his admiration for Chesterton with _Greybeards at Play_ and had +thought _Orthodoxy_ "the best piece of apologetic the century had +produced." When _St. Thomas_ appeared he said to a friend of mine +"Chesterton makes one despair. I have been studying St. Thomas all my +life and I could never have written such a book." After Gilbert's +death, asked to give an appreciation, he returned to the same topic-- + + I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book + ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for + such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a + "clever" book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty + years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who, perhaps, have + themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail + to perceive that the so-called "wit" of Chesterton has put their + scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which they had tried to + demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less + clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was + one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he + was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either + help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could + understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he + apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being + witty. That is all they can see of him.* + +[* _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, pp. 150-151.] + +In joining the Church Chesterton had found like all converts, from +St. Paul to Cardinal Newman, that he had come into the land of +liberty and especially of intellectual liberty. "Conversion," he +said, "calls on a man to stretch his mind, as a man awakening from +sleep may stretch his arms and legs."* + +[* _Well and Shallows_, p. 130.] + +I suppose one of the reasons why the surrounding world finds it hard +to receive this statement from a convert is that he has only to look +around him to see so many Catholics wrapped in slumbers as placid as +the next man's. To this very real difficulty, and to all its +implications, Chesterton unfortunately seldom adverted. To the +scandal wrought by evil Catholics, historical or contemporary, he was +not blind--he summarised one element in the Reformation conflict: + + Bad men who had no right to their right reason + Good men who had good reason to be wrong. + +But I wish that with his rare insight into minds he had analysed us +average Catholics. He might have startled us awake by explaining to +non-Catholics _how_ those who know such Truths and feed upon such +Food can yet appear so dull and lifeless. Anyhow, whether the fault +lie in part with us or entirely with the world at large, certain it +is that in that world a convert is always expected to justify not +merely his beliefs but his sincerity in continuing to hold them. I +wonder if the Pharisees said of St. Paul that they were sure he +really wanted to return to his old allegiance as some said it of +Newman, or spoke as Arnold Bennett did when he accused Chesterton of +being Modernist in his secret thoughts? Were St. Paul's epistles an +Apologia pro Vita Sua? + +An Apologia does not of course mean an apology but a justification, +and the ground on which justification was sometimes demanded amused +Gilbert rather than annoying him. Playing the Parlour Game which +consists of guessing at what point in an article on hydraulics, +elegiacs or neo-Platonism Dean Inge will burst into his daily attack +on the Church, he wrote: + + The Dean of St. Paul's got to business, in a paragraph in the + second half of his article, in which he unveiled to his readers all + the horrors of a quotation from Newman; a very shocking and shameful + passage in which the degraded apostate says that he is happy in his + religion, and in being surrounded by the things of his religion; that + he likes to have objects that have been blessed by the holy and + beloved, that there is a sense of being protected by prayers, + sacramentals and so on; and that happiness of this sort satisfies the + soul. The Dean, having given us this one ghastly glimpse of the + Cardinal's spiritual condition, drops the curtain with a groan and + says it is Paganism. How different from the Christian orthodoxy of + Plotinus!* + +[* _The Thing_, pp. 156-7.] + +This playful, not to say frivolous, tone was fresh cause of annoyance +to those who were apt to be annoyed. It is easier to understand their +objection than the opposite one: that he became dull and prosy after +he joined the Church (or alternatively after he left Fleet Street for +Beaconsfield). The only real difficulty about his later work arises +from the riot of his high spirits. In his own style I must say there +are moments when even I want to read the Riot Act. And those who +admire him less feel this more keenly. Bad puns, they say, wild and +sometimes ill-mannered jokes are perhaps pardonable in youth but in +middle age they are inexcusable. The complainants against _The Thing_ +are in substance the complainants against _Orthodoxy_ grown more +vehement with the passage of years. + +The idea had been adumbrated of calling one of his books: _Joking +Apart_ and only rejected because of the fear that if he said he was +_not_ joking everyone would be quite certain that he was. This +greatly amused G.K. and he began the book (it actually appeared as +_The Well and the Shallows_) with "An Apology for Buffoons." After +defending the human instinct of punning he remarked that "many +moderns suffer from the disease of the suppressed pun." They are +actuated even in their thinking by merely verbal association. + + I for one greatly prefer the sort of frivolity that is thrown to + the surface like froth to the sort of frivolity that festers under + the surface like slime. To pelt an enemy with a foolish pun or two + will never do him any grave injustice; the firework is obviously a + firework and not a deadly fire. It may be playing to the gallery, but + even the gallery knows it is only playing.* + +[* _Well and Shallows_, pp. 11-12.] + +Such playing was a necessity if the gallery, i.e. all the people, +were to be made to listen; if the things you were thinking about were +important to them as well as to yourself: if the ideas were more +important than the dignity or reputation of the person who uttered +them. In this book Gilbert sketched briefly one side of his reason +for feeling these ideas of paramount importance for everybody. "My +Six Conversions" concerned reasons given him by the world that would +have made him become a Catholic if he were not one already. + +He had been brought up to treasure liberty and in his boyhood the +world had seemed freer than the Church. Today in a world of Fascism, +Communism and Bureaucracy the Church alone offered a reasoned +liberty. He had been brought up to reverence certain ideals of +purity: today they were laughed at everywhere but in the Church. The +"sure conclusions" of Science that had stood foursquare in his +boyhood had become like a dissolving view. Liberalism had abdicated +when the people of Spain freely chose the Church and English Liberals +defended the forcing upon them of a minority rule. "There are no +Fascists; there are no Socialists; there are no Liberals; there are +no Parliamentarians. There is the one supremely inspiring and +irritating institution in the world and there are its enemies." Above +all, he felt increasingly, as time went on that those who left the +Faith did not get Freedom but merely Fashion; that there was +something ironic in the name the atheists chose when they called +themselves Secularists. By definition they had tied themselves to the +fashion of this world that passeth away. + +These six conversions then were what the world would have forced upon +him: the Church as an alternative to a continually worsening +civilisation. While he hated the Utopias of the Futurists and while +he accepted the Christian view of life as a probation he felt too +that life today was abnormally degraded and unhappy. + + There is a sense in which men may be made normally happy; but there + is another sense in which we may truly say, without undue paradox, + that what they want is to get back to their normal unhappiness. At + present they are suffering from an utterly abnormal unhappiness. They + have got all the tragic elements essential to the human lot to + contend with; time and death and bereavement and unrequited affection + and dissatisfaction with themselves. But they have not got the + elements of consolation and encouragement that ought normally to + renew their hopes or restore their self-respect. They have not got + vision or conviction, or the mastery of their work, or the loyalty of + their household, or any form of human dignity. Even the latest + Utopians, the last lingering representatives of that fated and + unfortunate race, do not really promise the modern man that he shall + do anything, or own anything, or in any effectual fashion be + anything. They only promise that, if he keeps his eyes open, he will + see something; he will see the Universal Trust or the World State or + Lord Melchett coming in the clouds in glory. But the modern man + cannot even keep his eyes open. He is too weary with toil and a long + succession of unsuccessful Utopias. He has fallen asleep.* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, October 20, 1928.] + +Chesterton demanded urgently that the worldlings who had failed to +make the world workable should abdicate. "The organic thing called +religion has in fact the organs that take hold on life. It can feed +where the fastidious doubter finds no food; it can reproduce where +the solitary sceptic boasts of being barren." In short, in religion +alone was Darwin justified, for Catholicism was the "spiritual +Survival of the Fittest."* + +[* _Well and Shallows_, p. 82.] + +If these Six Conversions are read without the balancing of something +deeper they have the superficial look that belongs of necessity to +Apologetics. Some essays in _The Well and the Shallows_, most of _The +Thing, Christendom in Dublin_, and above all, _The Queen of Seven +Swords_ give us that deeper quieter thinking when the mind is +meditating upon the great mysteries of the faith. + +Only very occasionally is it possible to glimpse beneath Gilbert's +reserve, but such glimpses are illuminating. Father Walker, who +prepared him for his First Communion, writes, "It was one of the most +happy duties I had ever to perform. . . . That he was perfectly well +aware of the immensity of the Real Presence on the morning of his +First Communion, can be gathered from the fact that he was covered +with perspiration when he actually received Our Lord. When I was +congratulating him he said, 'I have spent the happiest hour of my +life.'" + +Yet he went but seldom to Holy Communion, and an unfinished letter to +Father Walker gives the reason. "The trouble with me is that I am +much too frightened of that tremendous Reality on the altar. I have +not grown up with it and it is too much for me. I think I am morbid; +but I want to be told so by authority." + +And in _Christendom in Dublin_, he says: "The word Eucharist is but a +verbal symbol, we might say a vague verbal mask, for something so +tremendous that the assertion and the denial of it have alike seemed +a blasphemy; a blasphemy that has shaken the world with the +earthquake of two thousand years." + +I have heard it said that in these later years Gilbert's writing +became obscure, and I think it is partly true. Only partly, for the +old clarity is still there except when he is dealing with matters +almost too deep for human speech. He wrote in _The Thing:_ + + A thinking man can think himself deeper and deeper into Catholicism + . . . the great mysteries like the Blessed Trinity or the Blessed + Sacrament are the starting-point for trains of thought . . . + stimulating, subtle and even individual. . . . To accept the Logos as + a truth is to be in the atmosphere of the absolute, not only with St. + John the Evangelist, but with Plato and all the great mystics of the + world. . . . To exalt the Mass is to enter into a magnificent world + of metaphysical ideas, illuminating all the relations of matter and + mind, of flesh and spirit, of the most impersonal abstractions as + well as the most personal affections. . . . Even what are called the + fine doctrinal distinctions are not dull. They are like the finest + operations of surgery; separating nerve from nerve but giving life. + It is easy enough to flatten out everything around for miles with + dynamite if our only object is to give death. But just as the + physiologist is dealing with living tissues so the theologian is + dealing with living ideas; and if he draws a line between them it is + naturally a very fine line. + +If there appears a contradiction in the picture of Chesterton the +philosopher pondering on the Logos and Chesterton the child offering +trinkets to Our Lady, we may remember the Eternal Wisdom "playing in +the world, playing before God always" whose delight is to be with the +children of men. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +The Living Voice + + +CHESTERTON SPOKE ONCE of the keen joy for the intellect of +discovering the causes of things, but he was not greatly interested +in science. He would have said that although the physical sciences +did represent an advance in the grasp of truth it was, in the words +of Browning, only the "very superficial truth." He desired a +knowledge of causes that did not dwell simply on what was secondary +but led back to the First and Final Cause. To the mediaeval thinker, +science was fascinating as Philosophy's little sister: it was to +Philosophy what Nature was to man. Nature had been to St. Francis a +little lovely, dancing sister. Science had been to St. Thomas the +handmaid of philosophy. The modern world thought these proportions +fantastic. Huxley used Nature as a word for God. Physical Science had +ousted Philosophy. + +An American friend lately told me of a girl who, asked if she +believed in God replied, "Sure, I believe in God, but I'm not nuts +about Him." Gilbert was not "nuts" about Science: therefore in a +world that saw nothing else to be "nuts" about he was called its +enemy. And as with other things taken more solemnly by most moderns +he preferred to get fun out of the inventions of the age. + +He wrote in a fairly early number of _G.K.'s Weekly:_ + + ESKIMO SONG + + . . . So that the audience in Chicago will have the advantage of + hearing Eskimos singing. (Or words to that effect.) + + --_Wireless Programme_. + + Oh who would not want such a wonderful thing + As the pleasure of hearing the Eskimos sing? + I wish I had Eskimos out on the lawn, + Or perched on the window to wake me at dawn: + With Eskimos singing in every tree + Oh that would be glory, be glory for me! + + Oh list to the song that the Eskimos sing, + When the penguin would be if he could on the wing, + Would soar to the sun if he could, like the lark, + But for most of the time it is totally dark. + + Or hark to the bacchanal songs that resound + When they're making a night of it half the year round, + And carousing for months till the morning is pale, + Go home with the milk of the walrus and whale. + + Oh list to the sweet serenades that are hers, + Who expensively gowned in most elegant furs, + Leans forth from the lattice delighted to know + That her heart is like ice and her hand is like snow. + + * * * * * + + God bless all the dear little people who roam + And hail in the icebergs the hills of their home; + For I might not object to be listening in + If I hadn't to hear the whole programme begin. + And the President preach international peace, + And Parricide show an alarming increase, + And a Justice at Bootle excuse the police, + And how to clean trousers when spotted with grease, + And a pianist biting his wife from caprice, + And an eminent Baptist's arrival at Nice, + And a banker's regrettably painless decease, + And the new quarantine for the plucking of geese, + And a mad millionaire's unobtrusive release, + And a marquis divorced by a usurer's niece-- + If all of these items could suddenly cease + And leave me with one satisfactory thing + I really _should_ like to hear Eskimos sing. + +This was hardly the expression of an attitude to science, but he did +have such an attitude. Life was to him a story told by God: the +people in it the characters in that story. But since the story was +told by God it was, quite literally, a magic story, a fairy story, a +story full of wonders created by a divine will. As a child a toy +telephone rigged up by his father from the house to the end of the +garden had breathed that magic quality more than the Transatlantic +Cable could reveal it in later life. It did not need mechanical +inventions to make him see life as marvellous. His over-ruling +interest was not in mechanics but in Will: the will of God had +created the laws of nature and could supersede them: the will of Man +could discover these laws and harness them to its purposes. Gold is +where you find it and the value of science depends on the will of +man: a position which may not sound so absurd in the light of the +harnessing of science to the purposes of destruction. When discussing +machines "we sometimes tend," said Chesterton in _Sidelights_, "to +overlook the quiet and even bashful presence of the machine gun." + +There was an impishness in Gilbert, especially in his youth, that +encouraged the idea of his enmity to science. Where he saw a long +white beard he felt like tweaking it: an enquiring nose simply asked +to be pulled. It was only in (comparatively) sober age that he +bothered in _The Everlasting Man_ to explain "I am not at issue in +this book with sincere and genuine scholars, but with a vast and +vague public opinion which has been prematurely spread from certain +imperfect investigations."* That "vast and vague public opinion" +certainly suspected him of irreverence even towards sincere and +genuine scholars. Yet it was by his use of the most marvelous of +modern inventions that he won in the end the widest hearing among +that public that he had ever known. + +[* _The Everlasting Man_, p. 67.] + +It is not so many years ago that we donned earphones in a doubtful +hope of being able to hear something over the radio. It is the less +surprising that it was only in the last few years of his life that +Gilbert became first interested in the invention and presently one of +the broadcasters most in request by the B.B.C. He felt about the +radio as he did about most modern inventions: that they were splendid +opportunities that were not being taken--or else were being taken to +the harm of humanity by the wrong people. What was the use of +"calling all countries" if you had nothing to say to them. + +"What much modern science fails to realise," he wrote, "is that there +is little use in knowing without thinking." + +And again, writing about the amazing discoveries of the day: "Nobody +is taking the smallest trouble to consider who in the future will be +in command of the electricity and capable of giving us the shocks. +With all the shouting about the new marvels, hardly anybody utters a +word or even a whisper about how they are to be prevented from +turning into the old abuses. . . . People sometimes wonder why we not +infrequently refer to the old scandal covered by the word Marconi. It +is precisely because all these things are really covered by that +word. There could not be a shorter statement of the contradiction +than in men howling that word as a discovery and hushing it up as a +story."* + +[* _G.K.'s Weekly_, Aug. 15, 1925.] + +For the thing that really frightened him about the radio was its +possibilities as a new instrument of tyranny. The British +Broadcasting Company holds in England a monopoly and is to a +considerable extent under Government control. It is possible to +forbid advertising programmes because the costs are met by a tax of +10 sh. a year levied on the possession of a radio set. + +In an article called "The Unseen Catastrophe" (January 28, +1928) Gilbert wrote: + + Suppose you had told some of the old Whigs, let alone Liberals, + that there was an entirely new type of printing press, eclipsing all + others; and that as this was to be given to the King, all printing + would henceforth be government printing. They would be roaring like + rebels, or even regicides, yet that is exactly what we have done with + the whole new invention of wireless. Suppose it were proposed that + the king's officers should search all private houses to make sure + there were no printing presses, they would be ready for a new + revolution. Yet that is exactly what is proposed for the protection + of the government monopoly of broadcasting. . . . There is really no + protection against propaganda . . . being entirely in the hands of + the government; except indeed, the incredible empty-headedness of + those who govern. . . . On that sort of thing at least, we are all + Socialists now. It is wicked to nationalize mines or railroads; but + we lose no time in nationalizing tongues and talk . . . we might once + have used, and we shall now never use, the twentieth century science + against the nineteenth century hypocrisy. It was prevented by a + swift, sweeping and intolerant State monopoly; a monster suddenly + swallowing all rivals, alternatives, discussions, or delays, with one + snap of its gigantic jaws. That is what I mean by saying, "We cannot + see the monsters that overcome us." But I suppose that even Jonah, + when once he was swallowed, could not see the whale. + +In the autumn of 1932 Gilbert was first asked to undertake a series +of radio talks for the B.B.C. Every one seems agreed that he was an +extraordinary success. Letters from Broadcasting House are full of +such remarks as: "You do it admirably," "quite superb at the +microphone." In one his work is called "unique." Radio was now added +to all his other activities during the four years he still had to +live. Dorothy kept a diary in which she noted in one year the giving +of as many as forty lectures, and entered reminders of engagements of +the most varying kinds all over England: from the King's Garden Party +to the Aylesbury Education Committee and the Oxford Union: to +Scotland for Rectorial Campaigns: dinners at the Inner Temple and the +Philosophical Society: Detection Club dinners and Mock Trials, at one +of which he was Defendant on the charge of "perversely preferring the +past to the present." + +Besides the books discussed in the last chapter, the Dickens' +_Introductions_ and the _Collected Poems_ were republished in 1933. +Other books were planned, including one on Shakespeare. + +That same year Gilbert's mother died. During her last illness Frances +was torn between London and Beaconsfield, for her own mother was +dying in a Nursing Home at Beaconsfield, her mother-in-law at Warwick +Gardens. Once I drove with her between the two and she told me how +she suffered at the difficulty of giving help to two dying Agnostics. +She told me on that drive how she knew her mother-in-law had not +liked her but had lately made her very happy by saying she realised +now that she had been the right wife for Gilbert. To a cousin, Nora +Grosjean, Frances spoke too of how she and Mrs. Edward had drawn +together in those last days and she added, "No mother ever thinks any +woman good enough for her son." Nora Grosjean also reports, "Aunt +Marie said to me more than once, 'I always respect Frances--she kept +Gilbert out of debt.'" + +Warwick Gardens had been their home so long that vast accumulations +of papers had piled up there. "Mister Ed." too had been in a sort +keeper of the family archives. Gilbert glanced at the mass and, as I +mentioned at the beginning of this book, told the dustman to carry it +off. Half had already gone when Dorothy Collins arrived and saved the +remainder. She piled it into her car and drove back to Beaconsfield, +Gilbert keeping up a running commentary all the way on "the hoarding +habits of women." + +The money that came to Gilbert and Frances after Mrs. Edward's death +made it possible for them to plan legacies not only for friends and +relatives but also for the Catholic Church in Beaconsfield with which +they had increasingly identified their lives and their interests. +Their special dream was that Top Meadow itself should be a +convent--best of all a school--and in this hope they bequeathed it to +the Church. + +A year later another family event, this time a joyful one, took +Gilbert back to his youth; Mollie Kidd, daughter of Annie Firmin, +became engaged to be married. She was a rather special young cousin +to Gilbert both because of the old affection for her mother and +because she had played hostess to him in Canada when her mother was +ill. He wrote + + Postmark. Aug. 28, 1934 + + MY DEAR MOLLIE, + + I am afraid that chronologically, or by the clock, I am relatively + late in sending you my most warm congratulations--and yet I do assure + you that I write as one still thrilled and almost throbbing with good + news. It would take pages to tell you all I feel about it: beginning + with my first memory of your mother, when she was astonishingly like + you, except that she had yellow plaits of hair down her back. I do + not absolutely insist that you should now imitate her in this: but + you would not be far wrong if you imitate her in anything. And so + on--till we come to the superb rhetorical passage about You and the + right fulfilment of Youth. It would take pages: and that is why the + pages are never written. We bad correspondents, we vile non-writers + of letters, have a sort of secret excuse, that no one will ever + listen to till the Day of Judgment, when all infinite patience will + have to listen to so much. It is often because we think so much about + our friends that we do not write to them--the letters would be too + long. Especially in the case of wretched writing men like me, who + feel in their spare time that writing is loathsome and thinking about + their friends pleasant. In the course of turning out about ten + articles, on Hitler, on Humanism, on determinism, on Distributism, on + Dollfuss and Darwin and the Devil knows what, there really are + thoughts about real people that cross my mind suddenly and make me + really happy in a real way: and one of them is the news of your + engagement. Please believe, dear Mollie, that I am writing the truth, + though I am a journalist: and give my congratulations to everyone + involved. + + Yours with love, + + G. K. CHESTERTON. + +And in that year came two bits of public recognition of rather +different kinds. He was elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule +II--Honoris causa; and he and Belloc were given by the Pope the title +of Knight Commander of St. Gregory with Star. During these years the +paper had gone steadily on "at some considerable inconvenience" +because, he said, he still felt it had a part to play. At home and +abroad the scene had been steadily darkening. In July 1930, three +years before Hitler came to the Chancellorship, we find the following +among the notes of the Week: + + When we are told that the ancient Marshal Hindenburg is now + Dictator of Germany we suspect a note of exaggeration . . . + Hindenburg never was the dictator of anything and never will be. He + is, however the man who keeps the seat warm for a Dictator to come. + Hindenburg has led us back to Frederick the Great. . . . + + Hindenburg has now given rein to the extreme Nationalists, with the + delivered provinces to support him in the flush of patriotism. And + the extreme Nationalists have only one policy: to reconstitute the + unjust frontiers of Germany, which Europe fought to amend. + + In 1931 had come the Customs Union between Germany and Austria, the + obvious impotence of the League of Nations to restrain Japan, the + "National" Government and falling sterling in England. Less than two + years later Hitler was Chancellor of Germany, and in 1934 came the + murder of Dollfuss. Chesterton wrote of the tragedy whereby the name + Germany was taken from Austria and given to Prussia. With Dollfuss + fell all that was left of the Holy Roman Empire: the barbarians had + invaded the center of our civilisation and like the Turks besieging + Vienna had struck at its heart. He regarded Hitler merely as the tool + of Prussianism. The new Paganism was the logical outcome of the old + Prussianism: it was too the apotheosis of tyranny. "In the Pagan + State, in antiquity or modernity, you cannot appeal from Tyranny to + God; because the Tyranny is the God." + +Belloc solemnly warned our country that we were making inevitable +"the death in great pain of innumerable young Englishmen now +boys. . . . It may be in two years or in five or in ten the blow will +fall." (November 8, 1934.) + +Yet even this seemed less terrible to Chesterton than the state of +mind then prevailing: the mood--nay the fever--of pacifism that +demanded the isolation of England from Europe's peril. He called it +"Mafficking for peace": a sort of Imperialism that forgot that the +Atlantic is wider than the Straits of Dover and allowed Lord +Beaverbrook to regard England as a part of Canada. "Englishmen who +have felt that fever will one day look back on it with shame." "This +most noble and generous nation," he wrote with a note of agony, +"which lost its religion in the seventeenth century has lost its +morals in the twentieth." + +The League of Nations had, G. K. held, been thought at first to be a +kind of Pentecost but had in reality "come together to rebuild the +Tower of Babel." And this because it had no common basis in religion. +"Humanitarianism does not unite humanity. For even one isolated man +is half divine." But today man had despaired of man. "Hope for the +superman is another name for despair of man." + +Reading a recent commentary in a review, I suddenly saw that politics +and economics were not what mattered most in the paper. The +commentary in question was to the effect that _G.K.'s Weekly_ was +inferior to the _New Witness_ because G.K. had "only" general +principles and ideas and no detailed inside knowledge of how the +world of finance and politics was going. Looking again through the +articles I had marked as most characteristically his, I saw that they +were not only chiefly about ideas and principles but also that they +were mostly pure poetry. Chesterton was, I believe, greatest and most +permanently effective when he was moved, not by a passing irritation +with the things that pass, but by the great emotions evoked by the +Eternal, emotions which in Eternity alone will find full fruition. + +There are in the paper articles in which, appearing to speak out of +his own knowledge, he is merely repeating information given him by +Belloc. And it was quite out of Chesterton's character to write with +certainty about what he did not know with certainty. Hence this +writing is his weakest. But the paper has, too, some of his strongest +work and his mind as he drew to the end of life lingered on thoughts +that had haunted him in its beginning. + + Before the Boer War had introduced me to politics, or worse still + to politicians [he wrote in a Christmas article in 1934], I had some + vague and groping ideas of my own about a general view or vision of + existence. It was a long time before I had anything worth calling a + religion; what I had was not even sufficiently coherent to be called + a philosophy. But it was, in a sense, a view of life; I had it in the + beginning; and I am more and more coming back to it in the end. . . . + my original and almost mystical conviction of the miracle of all + existence and the essential excitement of all experience.* + +[* December 6, 1934.] + +This he felt must be the profound philosophy by which Distributism +should succeed and whereby he tested the modern world and found it +wanting-- + + something of which Christmas is the best traditional symbol. It was + then no more than a notion about the point at which extremes meet, + and the most common thing becomes a cosmic and mystical thing. I did + not want so much to alter the place and use of things as to weight + them with a new dimension; to deepen them by going down to the + potential nothing; to lift them to infinity by measuring from zero. + + The most logical form of this is in thanks to a Creator; but at + every stage I felt that such praises could never rise too high; + because they could not even reach the height of our own thanks for + unthinkable existence, or horror of more unthinkable non-existence. + And the commonest things, as much as the most complex, could thus + leap up like fountains of praise. . . . + + We shall need a sort of Distributist psychology, as well as a + Distributist philosophy. That is partly why I am not content with + plausible solutions about credit or corporative rule. We need a new + (or old) theory and practice of pleasure. The vulgar school of panem + et circenses only gives people circuses; it does not even tell them + how to enjoy circuses. But we have not merely to tell them how to + enjoy circuses. We have to tell them how to enjoy enjoyment.* + +[* December 13, 1934.] + +In attacking a special abuse, Chesterton was most successful when he +took the thought to a deeper depth. The following Christmas (1935) he +wrote: + + We live in a terrible time, of war and rumour of war. . . . + International idealism in its effort to hold the world together . . . + is admittedly weakened and often disappointed. I should say simply + that it does not go deep enough. . . . If we really wish to make + vivid the horrors of destruction and mere disciplined murder we must + see them more simply as attacks on the hearth and the human family; + and feel about Hitler as men felt about Herod. + +The modern world tended to gild pure gold and then try to scrape the +gilt off the gingerbread, to paint the lily and then complain of its +gaudiness. Thus it had vulgarised Christmas and now demanded the +abolition of Christmas because it was vulgar. It was the truth he had +emphasised years ago in contrast with Shaw: the world had spoilt the +ideas but it was the Christian ideas the world needed, if only in +order to recover the human ideas. He went on-- + + If we want to talk about poverty, we must talk about it as the + hunger of a human being. . . . We must say first of the beggar, not + that there is insufficient housing accommodation, but that he has not + where to lay his head . . . we must talk of the human family in + language as plain and practical and positive as that in which mystics + used to talk of the Holy Family. We must learn again to use the naked + words that describe a natural thing. . . . Then we shall draw on the + driving force of many thousand years, and call up a real + humanitarianism out of the depths of humanity. + +I should like to collect all the essays and poems on Christmas; he +wrote several every year, yet each is different, each goes to the +heart of his thought. As Christopher Morley says: "One of the simple +greatnesses of G.K.C. shows in this, that we think of him +instinctively toward Christmas time."* Some men, it may be, are best +moved to reform by hate, but Chesterton was best moved by love and +nowhere does that love shine more clearly than in all he wrote about +Christmas. It will be for this philosophy, this charity, this poetry +that men will turn over the pages of _G.K.'s Weekly_ a century hence +if the world still lasts. It is for us who are his followers to see +that they are truly creative. Destruction of evil is a great work but +if it leaves only a vacuum, nature abhors that vacuum. Creation is +what matters for the future and Chesterton's writing is creative. + +[* _Mark Twain Quarterly_, Spring, 1937.] + +So too with the radio. In this new medium his mind was alert to +present his new-old ideas, his fundamental philosophy of life after +some fresh fashion. A letter from Broadcasting House (Nov. 2, 1932) +after his first talk records the delight of all who heard it: + + The building rings with your praises! I knew I was not alone in my + delight over your first talk. I think even you in your modesty will + find some pleasure in hearing what widespread interest there is in + what you are doing. You bring us something very rare to the + microphone. I am most anxious that you should be with us till after + Christmas. You will have a vast public by Christmas and it is good + that they should hear you. Would you undertake six further + fortnightly talks from January 16th onwards? + +He was asked to submit a manuscript but promised he should not be +kept to the letter of it. "We should like you to make variations as +these occur to you as you speak at the microphone. Only so can the +talk have a real show of spontaneity about it." "You will forgive +me," one official writes, "if I insist on speaking to you personally. +That is how I think of our relations." G.K. was unique and they told +him so. + +A lot of reading was necessary for these talks--each one dealing with +from four to ten books--and also a principle of selection. The +principle Gilbert chose for one series was historical: "Literature +lives by history. Otherwise it exists: like trigonometry." In the +fifth talk of the Autumn series of 1934, he gives a general idea of +what he has been attempting. + + This is the hardest job I have had in all these wireless talks; and + I confront you in a spirit of hatred because of the toils I have + endured on your behalf; but, after all, what are my sufferings + compared to yours? Incredible as it may seem to anybody who has heard + these talks, they had originally a certain consistent plan. I dealt + first with heroic and half-legendary stories, touched upon medieval + chivalry, then on the party-heroes of Elizabethan or Puritan times; + then on the eighteenth century and then the nineteenth. In this + address I had meant to face the twentieth century; but I find it + almost faceless, largely featureless; and, anyhow, very bewildering. + I had meant to take books typical of the twentieth century as a book + on Steele is typical of the eighteenth or a book on Rossetti of the + nineteenth. And I have collected a number of most interesting + twentieth century books, claiming to declare a twentieth-century + philosophy; they really have a common quality; but I rather hesitate + to define it. Suppose I said that the main mark of the twentieth + century in ethics as in economics, is bankruptcy. I fear you might + think I was a little hostile in my criticism. Suppose I said that all + these books are marked by a brilliant futility. You might almost + fancy that I was not entirely friendly to them. You would be + mistaken. All of them are good; some of them are very good indeed. + But the question does recur; what is the good of being good in that + way? . . . + + Mr. Geoffrey West's curious "Post War Credo" has one Commandment. + He does say, he does shout, we might say, he does yell, that there + must be No War . . . but he cannot impose his view because authority + has gone; and he cannot prove his view; because reason has gone. So + again it all comes back to taste. And I have enjoyed the banquet of + these excellent books; but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. + +The peculiar half-official half-private direction of Broadcasting +House is based on a theory of strict impartiality towards all +opinions and an attempt simply to give the public the programmes that +the public wants. Whether it is possible to maintain such a position +is another question: that this is the theory there is no doubt--and +one result is an abiding uncertainty of mind in most of the officials. + +Broadcasting House hangs suspended in the air of public opinion and +that fickle breath leaves them in no security as to any of their +artists. The resulting sensitiveness became soothed as the months +passed on and they got as near to trusting Chesterton as they ever +come with any one. True, letters came attacking him, but far more +enthusiastically approving of him. And the attacks he answered often +by private letters that turned the critic into a friend. + +Some of his suggestions were not acceptable. He was warned off a +proposed humorous talk about Dean Inge and Bishop Barnes in a series +called "Speeches that never happened"--("Subject too serious," "avoid +religion"). But he was later asked to talk in a series on Freedom as +a Catholic and also to debate with Bertrand Russell on "Who should +bring up our children." In this debate he was especially brilliant, +says Maurice Baring; and another friend wrote "I have just been +listening not without joy to your putting it across Mr. Bertrand +Russell. . . . + +"_Afterthought:_ What a Mincer! It struck me very much, having read +much of his writing with interest. It just shows that the spoken word +still has something that the written one can't convey. Is there a +Mincing Mind, of which a mincing voice is the outward and visible +warning?" + +It was interesting that the last few years of Gilbert's life should +have furnished this unique opportunity of contact through the spoken +word between him and the English people. His voice on the radio had +none of the defects that marred it in a hall: his material was far +better arranged, his delivery perfect. He seemed to be there beside +the listener, talking in amity and exchanging confidences. The +morning after his death Edward Macdonald passed a barber's shop off +Chancery Lane. The man was lathering a customer's face but +recognising Mr. Macdonald, left the customer and ran out brush in +hand. + +"I just want to say I was sorry to hear the news," he said. "He was a +grand man." + +Mr. Macdonald asked him if he knew Chesterton well. + +"Never read a word he wrote," the barber answered. "But I always +listened to him on the wireless. He seemed to be sitting beside me in +the room." + +"That man," Edward Macdonald comments, "emphasised what I still +think: that G.K.C. in another year or so would have become the +dominating voice from Broadcasting House." + +In 1934 Gilbert had jaundice and on his recovery he started with +Frances and Dorothy on one of those trips that were his greatest +pleasure. They went to Rome--it was Holy Year--and thence to Sicily, +intending to go on to Palestine. At Syracuse, however, Gilbert became +really ill with inflammation of the nerves of the neck and shoulders. +They stayed five weeks in Syracuse, gave up the trip to Palestine and +returned home by Malta. Gilbert and Frances were to have dined at +Admiralty House but he was too unwell to dine out and only came up +one afternoon. Lady Fisher remembers going to see them at the Osborne +Hotel. Gilbert was sitting on a rickety basket chair, obviously in +pain and talking a good deal in order to hide it. She sympathised +with him for the cold weather, his obvious physical misery, and the +discomfort of his chair. + +"You must never sympathise with me," Gilbert answered, "for I can +always turn every chair into a story." + +The next year they motored in France and Italy and Gilbert records in +the _Autobiography_ an experience in a French cafe when he felt a +rare thrill--not in talking on the radio but in listening--on a day +that "was dateless, even for my dateless life; for I had forgotten +time and had no notion of anything anywhere, when in a small French +town I strolled into a cafe noisy with French talk. Wireless songs +wailed unnoted; which is not surprising, for French talk is much +better than wireless. And then, unaccountably, I heard a voice +speaking in English; and a voice I had heard before. For I heard the +words, '. . . wherever you are, my dear people, whether in this +country or beyond the sea,' and I remembered Monarchy and an ancient +cry; for it was the King; and that is how I kept the Jubilee." + +After he got home I remember how delightedly Gilbert quoted the +captions on two banners hung in the heart of the London slums. One +read, "Down with Capitalism--God Save the King." The other read, +"Lousy but loyal." He knew that it was true and it served to increase +the passionate quality of his pity. Patient he could be for himself, +but the lot of the poor aroused in him a terrible anger--and in a +broadcast on Liberty he gave that anger vent. For worse than the +presence of lice in our slums was the absence of liberty. He would +gladly, he said, have spoken merely as an Englishman but he had been +asked to speak as a Catholic, and therefore, "I am going to point out +that Catholicism created English liberty; that the freedom has +remained exactly in so far as the faith has remained; and that where +it is true that all our Faith has gone, all our freedom is going. If +I do this, I cannot ask most of you to agree with me; if I did +anything else, I could not ask any of you to respect me." + +Other speakers in the series had dwelt on the liberty secured to +Englishmen by our Parliamentary and Juridical system, both, he noted +of Catholic origin. But in his eyes even that liberty was being +imperilled today where it was not lost, while the most important +freedom of all--freedom to handle oneself and one's daily life--had +disappeared for the mass of the people. The liberty so widely praised +that followed the Reformation + + has been a limited liberty because it was only a literary + liberty. . . . You always talked about verbal liberty; you hardly + ever talked about vital liberty . . . the faddist was free to preach + his fads; but the free man was no longer free to protect his + freedom. . . . Monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, responsible forms of + rule, have collapsed under plutocracy, which is irresponsible rule. + And this has come upon us because we departed from the old morality + in three essential points. First, we supported notions against normal + customs. Second, we made the State top-heavy with a new and secretive + tyranny of wealth. And third, we forgot that there is no faith in + freedom without faith in free will. A servile fatalism dogs the creed + of materialism; because nothing, as Dante said, less than the + generosity of God could give to Man, after all ordinary orderly + gifts, the noblest of all things, which is Liberty. + +The thoughts that had thronged and pressed on him for half a century +found final expression in these broadcasts. Most of all in two talks: +one given only three months before his death in a series entitled +"The Spice of Life," the other two years earlier in one called "Seven +Days Hard." He was haunted by the ingratitude of humanity. As in his +boyhood, he saw the wonder of the world that God has given to the +children of men and he saw them unconscious of that wonder. What did +a week mean for most of them? Seven dull days. What did it really +mean? "What has really happened during the last seven days and +nights? Seven times we have been dissolved into darkness as we shall +be dissolved into dust; our very selves, so far as we know, have been +wiped out of the world of living things; and seven times we have been +raised alive like Lazarus, and found all our limbs and senses +unaltered, with the coming of the day." + +Seven days of human life, the meaning of the phrase, "the spice of +life," both brought the same recurring motif that "a great many +people are at this moment paying rather too much attention to the +spice of life, and rather too little attention to life." Not in any +"distraction from life is the secret we are all seeking, the secret +of enjoying life. I am perfectly certain that all our world will end +in despair unless there is some way of making the mind itself, the +ordinary thoughts we have at ordinary times, more healthy and more +happy than they seem to be just now, to judge by most modern novels +and poems. . . ." A week had never been for Chesterton just seven +days hard, although he had worked hard enough. He had enjoyed the +spice of life, he had liked Beer and Skittles and the distractions of +life and its high points of achievement. + + But it is much more important to remember that I have been + intensely and imaginatively happy in the queerest because the + quietest places. I have been filled with life from within in a cold + waiting-room, in a deserted railway junction. I have been completely + alive sitting on an iron seat under an ugly lamp-post at a third rate + watering place. In short, I have experienced the mere excitement of + existence in places that would commonly be called as dull as + ditchwater. And, by the way, is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with + microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun. + +The younger generation were despairing of life in the face of life's +manifold gifts. Chesterton as a youth had revolted against the +pessimism of his elders, now he revolted as an old man against a +young generation corroded by a yet more poisonous pessimism. "The +Hollow Men" T. S. Eliot had called a poem and in it came the lines + + This is the way the world ends + This is the way the world ends + This is the way the world ends + Not with a bang but a whimper. + + Forgive me if I say in my old world fashion, that I'm damned if I + ever felt like that . . . I knew that the world was perishable and + would end, but I did not think it would end with a whimper, but, if + anything, with a trump of doom . . . I will even be so indecently + frivolous as to burst into song, and say to the young pessimists: + + Some sneer; some snigger; some simper; + In the youth where we laughed, and sang. + And they may end with a whimper + But we will end with a bang. + +His last message for this generation was the sound of a trumpet +calling us to resurrection. A dead world must find life again, must +go back to the meaning of the book of Genesis at which it had learnt +to sneer: must realise a week once more with--"the grandeur of that +conception, by which a week has become a wonderful and mystical thing +in which Man imitates God in his labour and in his rest." + +Through his call sounds a note of most solemn warning. + + Unless we can bring men back to enjoying the daily life which + moderns call a dull life, our whole civilisation will be in ruins in + about fifteen years. Whenever anybody proposes anything really + practical, to solve the economic evil today, the answer always is + that the solution would not work, because the modern town populations + would think life dull. That is because they are entirely unacquainted + with life. They know nothing but distractions from life; dreams which + may be found in the cinema; that is, brief oblivions of life. . . . + Unless we can make daybreak and Daily bread and the creative secrets + of labour interesting in themselves, there will fall on all our + civilisation a fatigue which is the one disease from which + civilisations do not recover. So died the great Pagan civilisation; + of bread and circuses and forgetfulness of the household gods.* + +[* _The Listener_, January 31, 1934.] + +This splendid world that God has given us, and the furniture of it as +the writer of Genesis saw it in his vision, has in it the material of +happiness in labour and in the true end of labour. "For the true end +of all creation is completion; and the true end of all completion is +contemplation." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +Last Days + + +DOROTHY TOLD ME one day in 1935 that Gilbert had written the +beginning of an autobiography some years before but had laid it +aside. She had, she said, a superstitious feeling about urging him to +get on with it--as though the survey of his life and the end of his +life would somehow be tied together. I urged her to get over this +feeling because of all the book would mean to the world. After this +talk she got out the manuscript and laid it on Gilbert's desk. He +read what he had written and immediately set about dictating the rest +of the book. + +Early in 1936 he told a group of friends that the book was finished. +One of them said "Nunc dimittis" and Edward Macdonald, who was +present, commented: "The words were chilling, though he seemed to be +in fairly good health. But certainly he was tired. . . ." + +The book showed no sign of fatigue. High-spirited and intensely +amusing, it seemed to promise many more--for into almost old age he +had carried the imagination and energy in which as a very young man +we saw his resemblance to the youthful Dickens. + +Reviewing his life with the thread of thanksgiving that had been his +clue throughout, he looked back on it as "indefensibly happy" and it +was in truth a rich and full human existence. Yet Father Vincent, who +knew him intimately, speaks of him in these last years as heartbroken +by public events, as suffering with the pains of creation. "He was +crucified to his thought. Like St. Thomas he was never away from his +thought. A fellow friar had to care for Thomas, to feed him 'sicut +nutrix' because of his absorption in his thought." Thus Father +Vincent saw Frances cherishing Gilbert both mind and body. + +A friend, protesting vehemently against the phrase "crucified to his +thought" says, "It was his life-long beatitude to observe and ponder +and conclude." + +Of his own so-called paradoxes Gilbert was wont to maintain that it +was God not he, who made them, and here we have surely one of the +paradoxes of human life. Intense vitality, joy in living, vigor of +creative thought bring to their owners immense happiness _and_ acute +suffering. + +Is it not a part of the most fundamental of all antinomies--the +greatness and the littleness of man? Created for eternity and +prisoned in time, we have no perfect joy in this world, and the +reaching upward and outward of the mind is at once the keenest joy +and the fiercest pain--rather as we talk of growing pains. Only +Gilbert loved to grow so much that he would not think of the pain. +"You must never pity me," he said to Lady Fisher, and all through his +life he was saying and meaning "You must never pity me." + +But while he was writing the _Autobiography_ and giving thanks for +his life, its last months were shadowed by trials especially heavy +for a man of his imagination and temperament. For now more than ever +his thought was not allowed to concentrate on those realities where +the joy of contemplation overpowers the pain of growth. + +He loved Italy--even more than France he says in one letter--yet he +could not but condemn the invasion of Abyssinia. The shadow of the +Spanish war loomed on the horizon and behind it a darker shadow. In +his political thinking Chesterton was haunted by the present war. +Then too, while public controversy did not trouble him at all, he +hated any breach of the peace within the ranks of his own small army. +The fights among the staff of the paper about Distributism had been +as nothing compared with those about Abyssiania. There are leading +articles taking one line and letters in the Cockpit in violent +opposition. Maurice Reckitt writes in _As it Happened:_ + +In the last autumn of his life I wrote to him privately in distress +at the line which the _Weekly_ was taking on Abyssinia, and saying +that I felt that I ought to leave the board, as I was so much out of +sympathy with this. I received this reply, from which I have deleted +only some personal references: + +"Top Meadow, Beaconsfield 19th September 1935. + +"MY DEAR MR. MAURICE RECKITT, + +"I do hope you will forgive me for the delay in answering your most +important letter, involving as it does tragic dooms of separation +which I hope need not be fulfilled. . . . I should like to ask you to +defer your decision at least until you have seen the next week's +number of the paper, in which I expand further the argument I have +used in the current number and bring it, I think, rather nearer to +your natural and justifiable point of view. Between ourselves, and +without prejudice to anybody, I do think myself that there ought to +have been a more definite condemnation of the attack on Abyssinia. +The whole thing happened while I was having a holiday. . . . + +"Very shortly, the mortal danger, to me, is the rehabilitation of +Capitalism, in spite of the slump, which will certainly take the form +of a hypocritical patriotism and glorification of England, at the +expense of Italy or anybody else. For the moment I only want you to +understand that this is the mountainous peril that towers in my own +mind. + +"Yours always, + +"G. K. CHESTERTON." + +Three months later in _G.K.'s Weekly_ he wrote about the whole matter +in an article in which he treated the question as largely one of +proportion. Not enough was being said in England of her own or the +League's position about Japan's attack on China: too much (in +proportion) about Italy in Abyssinia. "If the League of Nations +really were an impartial judicial authority; and if (what is about as +probable) I were one of the judges; and if the Abyssinian Case were +brought before me, I should decide instantly against Italy. I have +again and again in this place stated in the strongest words the +particular case against Italy." He was against Italy in Abyssinia as +he had been against England in South Africa. But "I should not be +bound to rejoice at the Prussians riding into Paris because it might +prevent the British riding into Pretoria." + +"Tragic dooms of separation" on public issues were not the only +trouble with _G.K.'s Weekly:_ the staff were also engaged in violent +personal quarrels about which Gilbert was asked to take sides--was +even bitterly reproached by one for supposedly favouring another. It +would be hard today to say what it was all about, but two of the +contestants have told me since that had they had the least notion how +ill he was getting they would have died rather than so distress him. +For it was a real and a very deep distress. + +It may be remembered that Miss Dunham noted how Gilbert used to make +a mysterious sign in the air as he lit his cigar. That sign, says +Dorothy, was the sign of the cross. Long ago he had written of human +life as something not grey and drab but shot through with strong and +even violent colours that took the pattern of the Cross. He saw the +Cross signed by God on the trees as their branches spread to right +and left: he saw it signed by man as he shaped a paling or a door +post. The habit grew upon him of making it constantly: in the air +with his match, as he lit his cigar, over a cup of coffee. As he +entered a room he would make on the door the sign of our Redemption. +No, we must never pity him even when his life was pressed upon by +that sign which stands for joy through pain. + +Those nearest to him grew anxious quite early in 1936. He was +overtired and working with the weary insistence that over-fatigue can +bring. The remedy so often successful of a trip to the continent was +tried. They went to Lourdes and Lisieux and he seemed better and sang +a good deal in his tuneless voice as Dorothy drove them through the +lanes of France. From Lisieux he wrote a pencilled letter, long and +almost illegible "under the shadow of the shrine"--trying to +reconcile the disputants with himself and with one another. + +The summer was cold and bleak and the tour was all too short. Home +again his mind seemed not to grip as well as usual and he began to +fall asleep during his long hours of work. The doctor was called and +thought very seriously of the state of his heart--that heart which +many years ago another doctor had called too small for his enormous +frame. The thought of a Chesterton whose heart was too small presents +a paradox in his own best manner. + +To Edward Macdonald who had missed a message that he was too ill to +be visited, Gilbert talked in his old fashion and promised a poem he +had just thought of for the paper--on St. Martin of Tours. "The point +is that he was a true Distributist. He gave _half_ his cloak to the +beggar." + +Soon after this he fell into a sort of reverie from which awaking he +said: + +"The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and +every one must choose his side." + +Frances and he had both thought his recovery in 1916 was a miracle. +"I did not dare," said Frances, "to pray for another miracle." + +Monsignor Smith anointed him and then Father Vincent arrived in +response to a message from Frances which he thought meant she wanted +him to see Gilbert for the last time. Taken to the sick room he sang +over the dying man the Salve Regina. This hymn to Our Lady is sung in +the Dominican Order over every dying friar and it was surely fitting +for the biographer of St. Thomas and the ardent suppliant of Our Lady: + +"Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, vita dulcedo et spes nostra +salve. . . . Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc +exsilium ostende. . . ." + +Gilbert's pen lay on the table beside his bed and Father Vincent +picked it up and kissed it. + +It was June 14, 1936, the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, +the same Feast as his reception into the Church fourteen years +earlier. The Introit for that day's Mass was printed on his Memorial +card, so that, as Father Ignatius Rice noted with a smile, even his +Memorial card had a joke about his size: + +The Lord became my protector and he brought me forth into a large +place. He saved me because he was well pleased with me. I will love +thee O Lord my strength. The Lord is my firmament and my refuge and +my deliverer. + +To these words from the Mass, Frances added Walter de la Mare's +tribute: + + Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way + Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest; + The mills of Satan keep his lance in play, + Pity and innocence his heart at rest. + +The day of the funeral was one of blazing sunshine. "One of your +days," Gilbert would have said to Frances. Grey days were his, when +nature's colours he said were brightest against her more sombre +background, sunny days were hers for she loved a blue blazing sky. +The little church near the railway was filled to overflowing by his +friends from London, from all over England, from France even and from +America. All Beaconsfield wanted to honour him, so the funeral +procession instead of taking the direct route passed through the old +town where he had so often sat in the barber's shop and chatted with +his fellow citizens. At Top Meadow we gathered to talk. Frances a few +of us saw for a little while in her own room. With that utter +self-forgetfulness that was hers she said to her sister-in-law, "It +was so much worse for you. You had Cecil for such a short time." + +Later Mgr. Knox preached in Westminster Cathedral to a crowd far +vaster. Both Frances and Cardinal Hinsley received telegrams from +Cardinal Pacelli (now Pope Pius XII). To Cardinal Hinsley he cabled +"Holy Father deeply grieved death Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton +devoted son Holy Church gifted Defender of the Catholic Faith. His +Holiness offers paternal sympathy people of England assures prayers +dear departed, bestows Apostolic Benediction." This telegram was read +to the vast crowd in the Cathedral and found an echo in the hearts of +his fellow countrymen. + +Hugh Kingsmill wrote to Cyril Clemens: "My friend Hesketh Pearson was +staying with me when I read of Chesterton's death. I told him of it +through the bathroom door, and he sent up a hollow groan which must +have echoed that morning all over England." It was with reason that +the Pope offered his sympathy not to Catholics alone, but to all the +people of England. To the policeman who said at the funeral, "We'd +all have been here if we could have got off duty. He was a grand +man." To the man at the _Times_ office who broke in on the +announcement of his death, "Good God. That isn't _our_ Chesterton, is +it?" To the barber who had to leave his customer unshaved that he +might talk to Edward Macdonald. To all of us, his friends, on whom +the loss lay almost unbearably heavy. To those for whom his presence +would have pierced and lightened even the dark shadow of the war. To +all the people of England. + +Once more a Pope had bestowed upon an Englishman the title Defender +of the Faith. The first man to receive it had been Henry VIII and the +words are still engraved on the coins of England. The secular press +would not print the telegram in full because it bestowed upon a +subject a royal title. + +After Gilbert's death Frances tried to take up life again. She +visited her cousins in Germany, a university professor and his +English wife, who were undergoing the persecution of the Swastika. +She was deeply moved by their suffering and the peril they stood in. + +Home again she surrounded herself more than ever with children, +taking a Catechism class and encouraging her small scholars to come +to Top Meadow where her garden also helped her towards a difficult +peace and serenity, rendered harder by the struggle with ill health. +Soon we began to realise that the physical weakness, which all her +courage could not overcome, was more than merely her old malady. +"What did Frances die of?" Bernard Shaw wrote to me. "Was it of +widowhood?" + +In fact it was a most painful cancer heroically endured. She was +cared for by Dorothy and presently by the nuns of the Bon Secours. +Her friends visited her as they were allowed. Father Vincent McNabb, +after a talk of almost an hour, noted how never once did she speak of +herself or of her suffering. + +Her concerns were for Dorothy, for the Church, and for Gilbert's +memory; Eric Gill's monument, the biography, the permanence of his +own writing. She survived him little more than two years. Near the +end, from the face of a dying woman shrunken with pain, we still +could see those "great heavenly eyes that seem to make the truth at +the heart of things almost too terribly simple and naked for the sons +of flesh."* + +[* Letter from Gilbert, see [Chapter VIII].] + + + + +APPENDIX A + +AN EARLIER CHESTERTON + + +BOTH THE _Autobiography_ and _Prison Life_ of George Laval Chesterton +are worth reading. There is conscious humour: we feel it might be our +own Chesterton when we hear the Captain describing himself as +"laughing immoderately" because he had made a fool of himself and +others were laughing at him. There is unconscious humour, especially +in the astonishing style, full of such phrases as "I was the most +obnoxious to peril," or "something not far removed from impunity +stalked abroad." + +Captain Chesterton started life as a soldier. During the Peninsular +War his regiment was stationed at Cartagena. "It was a subject of +deep mortification to most of us to be thus supinely occupied in this +lone garrison, thereby being debarred from the Peninsular medal, and +hence a widespread disaffection on that most tender subject which no +reasoning has been equal to dispel." However, later he saw a good +deal of active service, being in the War of 1812, in the course of +which the battle of Bladensburg was fought and Washington fell to the +British arms. "The astonished slaves," he says, describing the +advance on Washington, "rested from their work in the fields +contiguous; and the awe-struck peasants and yeomen of this portion of +America beheld with perturbation the tremendous preparations to +devastate their blooming country." + +To the smaller professional armies of that day peace was a +misfortune, and in his quaint style Captain Chesterton describes the +demonstrations of joy on the part of himself and his fellow officers +at the escape of Napoleon from Elba, foreseeing, as he frankly +observes, "a scope for further adventure and hope of personal +advancement." This hope was short-lived and we next see him fighting +in the British Legion of a rebel South American army against Spain. +The general mismanagement of this expedition, and the fact that the +Republicans killed all their prisoners "was a death blow to all my +past enthusiasm in the Republican cause." Many British officers +"participating with me in the detestation for cold-blooded butchery, +conspired from that moment to elude this detested service. . . . Mark +ye who delight in transcendant Liberalism . . . the cruel exigencies +of such a warfare." + +In his acceptance of "transcendant Liberalism," yet his determination +to see truly what passed before his eyes and when needful to change +his standpoint, this earlier Chesterton was much like the later. He +had not the genius of Gilbert, he could not see so far, but he shared +his refusal to be blinded by custom, theory or even patriotism. In +his accounts of army life he had commented fearlessly on the cruelty +of the punishments and described his fellow officers as made ill by +seeing a private receive five hundred lashes. He had noted corruption +in the "Train Service" which "was consequently divested of its +genuine claim to honour." Feted by the planters of Jamaica, he had +yet spoken with horror of their slave ownership. + +Now he was appointed governor of a prison in England and here began +the great work of his life in a frontal attack on the corruptions he +discovered. The yardsmen did a secret traffic in all the goods +forbidden in the prison, there were caches of tobacco, spirits and +such things under the pavements, the weaker prisoners were robbed by +the stronger. The women's and men's quarters were so arranged that by +connivance of the jailors frequent meetings took place. On one of +these occasions Captain Chesterton himself appeared: + + My hands were seized with tender empressement, and I was addressed + as "my love," "My darling," "my dear creature:" and all the + conventional endearments of the pave were showered upon me. I had to + struggle for enlargement, and beat a hasty retreat, quite confounded + by my initiation into "prison discipline." And the consternation + occasioned by this discovery became perfectly electric.* + +[* _Revelations of Prison Life_, pp. 84-85.] + +Attempts to bribe him were followed by attempts to kill him, but he +stood firm. Mrs. Fry invoked his aid to improve the home conditions +to which the prisoners had to return. Chesterton turned to Dickens +and to Dickens's friend, Miss Coutts, in defiance of a narrow-minded +magistrate + + who perversely insisted (as was by cynical interpretation literally + too true) that Miss Coutts had no right to confer with prisoners + within those walls, nor was it "to be tolerated that Mr. Charles + Dickens should walk into the prison whenever he pleased."* + +[* Ibid., p. 186.] + +From Cold Bath Fields the reforms begun by Captain Chesterton and +warmly seconded by Dickens spread to other prisons, "Although (he +declares) I consented to forego pecuniary advantage, I cling the more +tenaciously to the credit of my past exertions; when, beset with +fraud, ferocity, and moral pollution, I achieved a triumph fraught +with civilizing influences."* + +[* Ibid., p. v.] + + + + +APPENDIX B + +Prize Poem Written at St. Paul's + + +This is the only version I have been able to find. Across the top is +written in another hand: "This is not exactly the same as given in +the prize poem." The difference is probably slight. + +ST. FRANCIS XAVIER +The Apostle of the Indies + +He left his dust, by all the myriad tread +Of yon dense millions trampled to the strand, +Or 'neath some cross forgotten lays his head +Where dark seas whiten on a lonely land: +He left his work, what all his life had planned, +A waning flame to flicker and to fall, +Mid the huge myths his toil could scarce withstand, +And the light died in temple and in hall, +And the old twilight sank and settled over all. + +He left his name, a murmur in the East, +That dies to silence amid older creeds, +With which he strove in vain: the fiery priest +Of faiths less fitted to their ruder needs: +As some lone pilgrim, with his staff and beads, +Mid forest-brutes whom ignorance makes tame, +He dwelt, and sowed an Eastern Church's seeds +He reigned a teacher and a priest of fame: +He died and dying left a murmur and a name. + +He died: and she, the Church that bade him go, +Yon dim Enchantress with her mystic claim, +Has ringed his forehead with her aureole-glow, +And monkish myths, and all the whispered fame +Of miracle, has clung about his name: +So Rome has said: but we, what answer we +Who in grim Indian gods and rites of shame +O'er all the East the teacher's failure see, +His eastern church a dream, his toil a vanity. + +This then we say: as Time's dark face at last +Moveth its lips of thunder to decree +The doom that grew through all the murmuring past +To be the canon of the times to be: +No child of truth or priest of progress he +Yet not the less a hero of his wars +Striving to quench the light he could not see, +And God, who knoweth all that makes and mars, +Judges his soul unseen which throbs among the stars. + +God only knows, man failing in his choice, +How far apparent failure may succeed, +God only knows what echo of His voice +Lives in the cant of many a fallen creed, +God only gives the labourer his meed +For all the lingering influence widely spread +Broad branching into many a word and deed +When dim oblivion veils the fountain-head; +So lives and lingers on the spirit of the dead. + +This then we say: let all things further rest +And this brave life, with many thousands more +Be gathered up in the eternal's breast +In that dim past his Love is bending o'er +Healing all shattered hopes and failure sore: +Since he had bravely looked on death and pain +For what he chose to worship and adore +Cast boldly down his life for loss or gain +In the eternal lottery: not to be in vain. + + + + +APPENDIX C + +The Chestertons + + +The composition of _The Chestertons_ is not without interest for the +student of legendary literature. By a curious paradox the book had to +be strikingly untrue to be accepted as true, since the jokes about +sisters-in-law are legion, so that mere commonplace shafts of what is +called "feminine spite" would have gained little credence. Yet on the +other hand, Mrs. Cecil Chesterton was able (to quote _The Mikado_) to +get from her husband a good deal of "corroborative detail designed to +give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." +Of these details some are true, some false, all arranged to support +the main untruth of Frances and Gilbert's relation to one another. +The thesis of the book is that Gilbert was an unhappy and frustrated +man (a) because Frances shrank from consummating their marriage, and +(b) because she dragged him away from his London life and friends to +bury him in a middle class suburb. + +I confess that I am Victorian enough heartily to dislike writing this +appendix. Yet it is necessary, for many who read _The Chestertons_ +have supposed that a story told by so near a connection must be true. + +The ground was laid for the introduction of the Legend by the tale of +the Red Haired Phantom, if I may describe it in the terms of a ghost +story. That ghost was easy to lay (see Introduction). Next comes the +odd account of Gilbert and Frances' honeymoon and of the years that +followed. It is of course possible that the first night of their +marriage was not happy--especially in the Victorian days of reticence +which left wife and even possibly husband unprepared for life +together: (though this did not normally prevent a happy marriage and +a pack of children afterwards). But I find it impossible to imagine +Cecil Chesterton, like the bridesmaid on the honeymoon, receiving and +passing on such a story as that of Gilbert "quivering with +self-reproach" so that after the first night he "dared not even +contemplate a repetition. . . . Gilbert, young and vital, was +condemned to a pseudo-monastic life, in which he lived with a woman +but never enjoyed one." (p. 282) + +There is a psychological reason for thinking this story especially +improbable and a physical reason for dismissing it as actually +impossible. + +A white horse had from his childhood been for Gilbert the supreme +sign of romance, and he had chosen to spend the first night of his +honeymoon at the White Horse Inn. From his honeymoon he wrote home +that he had "a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife. What +more can any man want?" Ten years later he wrote _The Ballad of the +White Horse_ and dedicated it to Frances, saying, + +"O go you onward, where you are +Shall honour and laughter be. +Past purpled forest and pearled foam, +God's winged pavilion free to roam, +Your face, that is a wandering home, +A flying home for me." + +And over thirty years later he wrote again of beginning his honeymoon +under the shadow of the White Horse, and compared it to a trip to +fairyland. + +Can any human being read the record of this recurrent motif and +reconcile it with Mrs. Cecil's picture? + +Let me refer again to _The Ballad of The White Horse_. Is it +conceivable that any man should write after ten years of frustration +and unhappiness: + + Up through an empty house of stars + Being what heart you are, + Up the inhuman steeps of space + As on a staircase go in grace + Carrying the firelight on your face + Beyond the loneliest star. + +This is not the way a man writes to a neurotic cold-hearted woman who +has made a hermit of him! + +Mrs. Cecil was of course never in the intimacy of the family. She +only married Cecil in 1917--by which date Gilbert and Frances had +been married sixteen years--and before that she was merely an +acquaintance. But Frances's intimates could have told her how absurd +her story was, for by a rare good fortune the operation Frances +underwent to enable her to bear children is itself evidence one could +hardly have hoped for in a matter which civilized people are not much +given to discussing. Frances talked of the operation to Monsignor +O'Connor, to Dorothy Collins and to Annie Firmin, and I have quoted +the doctor's letter about it (see above, [Chapter XV]). It was an +abiding tragedy for both husband and wife that it was unsuccessful. +Frances would have shrunk from no suffering in her passionate wish +for a child. + +There is another curiosity in the Legend: Gilbert, despite this +story, was apparently perfectly happy in London during the _first +eight years of marriage:_ it was only after the removal to +Beaconsfield and in almost middle life that he began to be +"frustrated." + +Poor Frances: what a picture of her had been proposed for posterity: +so powerful she could waft Gilbert away from London and from his +friends, could force him to make her his banker and reduce him to a +"bounty" strictly limited to half-a-crown, yet so powerless that "she +had to sign" the cheques for _G.K.'s Weekly_, much as she hated it. +Her poetry (described as "quite charming") is spoken of as appearing +in "little Parish Magazines"--the only papers she cared to read owing +to her implacable hatred for Fleet Street. It is hard to picture +Frances with an implacable hatred for anything, and it will be +remembered that she actually begged Father O'Connor to leave Gilbert +to be "a jolly journalist." The periodicals in which her poems +appeared were _The Observer_, _The Sunday Times_, _The Daily Chronicle,_ +the _Westminster Gazette_ and _The New Witness_. Personally I have +never much admired Frances's verse, but a professional journalist +might have been quite pleased at "making" all these papers. Not one +poem ever appeared in a Parish Magazine so far as either Dorothy or I +have been able to ascertain. The point is not a very important one +but the sneer is symptomatic. + +A curious magic pervades _The Chestertons:_ succulent sausages appear +in the kitchen at Overstrand Mansions, and flowing torrents of beer, +so that Gilbert can steal away from an unsympathetic wife to consume +them with his Fleet Street friends. A studio materialises in a meadow +at Beaconsfield. Can we imagine Gilbert cooking or even ordering +sausages, getting beer to the flat, designing or discovering the +studio? Anyone thinking about what really happened would realise that +Frances ordered the beer and sausages, Frances built the studio. But +that is not the sort of thought we are to think about Frances. + +About her we are told: that she always wore the wrong colors: that +she gave Gilbert insufficient and indigestible food: that she did not +know what work meant: that Mrs. Belloc thought Gilbert ought to beat +her: that she kept the journalists away when Gilbert was dying (in +point of fact both telephone and door bell were so near the sick room +that the use of both had to be avoided): that she did not give her +guests enough to eat at his funeral: that she actually sought the +quiet of her own room instead of staying downstairs to receive +condolences when her husband's coffin had just been lowered into the +grave. + +With all this spate of detail, we are not told that Frances left +L1000 to Mrs. Cecil plus L500 for her Cecil Houses. + +Even if I could have ignored the attack on Frances, I should be +obliged as his biographer to deal with the attack on Gilbert--more +subtly but no less certainly made. The story of the marriage affects +Gilbert as much as Frances, and the book culminates in the final +assertion that his drinking killed him. Here are the comments (sent +to me by Dorothy) of the doctor who attended Gilbert and Frances from +1919 until they died: + +"Today Dr. Bakewell came in and answered the questions about the book +which we asked him. + +"(1) He says that the idea that G.K. was better when drinking in Fleet +Street because the stimulus of conversation would eat up effects of +the alcohol is absolute nonsense. It would have just as bad an effect +under any conditions. Dr. Bakewell said that G.K. was his patient for +nearly twenty years and during that time he never treated him for +alcoholism or saw any trace of it, though in an absentminded way he +was always liable to drink too much of anything if it were +there--even water. + +"Without the 'understanding, loving, tactful care' of Frances he would +have died twenty years before. Certainly if he had racketted around +Fleet Street any longer. + +"Dr. Bakewell said Gilbert was 'perfectly happy in Beaconsfield and +not in any way frustrated. There was no frustration of any kind and +no longing for London life or friends.' He was very intimate with +Gilbert and would have known if there had been. + +"(2) The doctor says that Gilbert died of a failing heart owing to +fatty degeneration, leading to dropsy. + +"(3) Frances had arthritis of the spine. (Not curvature as stated by +Mrs. Cecil.) + +"The doctor said that he put him on the water wagon several times and +when this was done Gilbert observed the rule most meticulously. Dr. +Bakewell said that he did not do it very often because he did not +consider that drink was in any way affecting Gilbert's health during +the greater part of the time he knew him." + +In a later conversation he added that when he did forbid alcohol at +certain periods it was simply to make liquid less attractive, as too +much of even water was bad for Gilbert. + +The statement made by Mrs. Cecil that drinking in London was not so +serious because the talk and excitement among friends would carry off +the effects, is thought by doctors almost comic. Dr. Bakewell denies +it absolutely: Dr. Pocock who, it will be remembered, attended +Gilbert during his illness of 1914-15 says, "Absolute nonsense: would +probably have been worse in London." He adds also, "I cannot +understand why such an attack was made upon G.K. From my personal +observation he owed a very great deal to Mrs. G.K. who greatly helped +his restoration to health." + +One can get one's pen'orth of fun out of the chapter on the Exile of +Beaconsfield when one remembers the true story of those years: Rome, +Jerusalem, U.S.A., Poland, France, Spain, Malta, lectures all over +England, lively contests for the Lord Rectorship of three +universities, London again and again--for editing, mock trials, +debates and Distributist Beanos--and frequently in furnished flats +which Frances would take for the winter months. One can only suppose +that Mrs. Cecil was so little intimate with them that she did not +realise all this. + +And then Beaconsfield itself--parties in the Studio; people down from +London, visitors from Poland, France, America, Italy, Holland and +other countries; the Eric Gills, the Bernard Shaws, the Garvins, the +Emile Cammaerts and others living in the neighborhood; the guest room +always occupied by some intimate. Meanwhile the books poured out of +the little study. Mrs. Cecil thinks Gilbert hardly ever again wrote a +masterpiece after leaving Battersea, yet in support of this idea she +lists as masterpieces _The Ball and the Cross_ (written at +Beaconsfield), _Lepanto_ (written at Beaconsfield), _Magic_ (written +at Beaconsfield), _Stevenson_ (written at Beaconsfield) and _The +Ballad of the White Horse_(mainly written at Beaconsfield). Of all +the books she mentions in this connection only three were written in +London! And she admits that the world at large did not share her view +of the sterilizing effect of Beaconsfield, for she writes, "Meanwhile +his fame grew wider, his sales greater. In exile he ruled a literary +world."* + +[* P. 83.] + +Gilbert left to Mrs. Cecil Chesterton sums equal to those later left +to her by Frances--L1000 for herself and L500 for Cecil Houses. + +The ingratitude that omitted all mention of these benefactions struck +the imagination of several of the Chesterton family as the worst +feature in the book. But to Gilbert and Frances the giving of money +even in their own lifetime was a slight matter. They had given +something far greater. + +Why is the memory of Cecil Chesterton alive today? Because of his +brother's labors. Why is it possible for Mrs. Cecil to declare that +he was the greater editor, to imply that he was the greater man? +Because Gilbert kept saying so. Never has such devotion been shown by +one brother to the memory of another: never has the greater man +exalted the lesser to such a pedestal. + +We are told in _The Chestertons_ that Frances sacrificed both Gilbert +and herself on the altar of her family. Truly there was much +self-sacrifice in the lives of both to family, friends and causes. +They did not feel it as self-sacrifice to enrich the lives of others +even at cost to themselves. + +But the heaviest cost they paid lay in the years of a toil that was +literally killing Gilbert while Frances watched him growing old too +soon and straining his heart with work crushingly heavy: and if there +was a single altar for that supreme sacrifice it was no other than +the altar of Cecil's memory. + + + + +Acknowledgments + + +I am exceedingly grateful to the following publishers for permission +to quote from these books: + +DODD, MEAD & CO.: +_The Man Who Was Thursday; Orthodoxy; The Napoleon of Notting Hill; +Heretics; George Bernard Shaw; The Ball and the Cross; The Poet and +the Lunatic; Alarms and Discursions; The Ballad of the White Horse; +What's Wrong with the World; Manalive; Sidelights on New London and +Newer York; The Uses of Diversity; The History of England; Irish +Impressions; Collected Poems; The Queen of Seven Swords; The +Everlasting Man; Cobbett; Outline of Sanity; Tales of the Long Bow; +What I Saw in America; The Thing; The Defendant; The Barbarism of +Berlin: or The Appetite of Tyranny; Eugenics and Other Evils; +Collected Poems; G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism_ (by Cecil Chesterton). + +DOUBLEDAY DORAN: +_St. Francis of Assisi; The Years Between_. + +E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.: +_Criticisms and Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens_. + +FARRAR & RINEHART: +_Chaucer_. + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: +_Robert Browning; The Catholic Church and Conversion_. + +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: +_The Victorian Age in Literature_. + +G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS: +_Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading_. + +UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME: +_The Arena_. + +"Gehazi," by Rudyard Kipling, from _The Years Between_, copyright +1914, 1919 by Rudyard Kipling, is reprinted by permission of Mrs. +Bambridge and Doubleday Doran and Co., Inc., of New York, and The +Macmillan Company, of Canada, publishers. + + + + +Bibliography + + +In this list I have given dates of earliest publication. In some +cases publication in England preceded that in the United States. + +1900. _Greybeards at Play_. R. B. Johnson. 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Carlyle, _Past and Present_. + _Nonsense Rhymes_, by W. C. Monkhouse. + _R.L.S._, in Bookman Booklets. + _Tolstoy_, in Bookman Booklets. + +1903. _Boswell. Life of Johnson Extracts_. + +1904. 0. W. Holmes, _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. Red Letter + Library. + Carlyle, _Sartor Resartus_. National Library. + Bunyan, _Pilgrim's Progress_. National Library. + +1905. Maxim Gorky, _Creatures That Once Were Men_. + +1906. _Dickens_ in Everyman Library. Prefaces to all volumes. + _Matthew Arnold_. Everyman Library. + _Elsie Lang_. Literary London. + _Characteristics of R.L.S_. Little Books for Bookmen. + _Tennyson as an Intellectual Force_. Little Books for Bookmen. + +1907. _The Book of Job_. + George Haw, _From Workhouse to Westminster: Will Crooks_. + +1908. Ruskin, _Poems_. Muses Library. + W. W. Crotch, _The Cottage Homes of England_. + +1909. Darrell Figgis. _A Vision of Life_. + Margaret Arndt, _Meadows of Play_. + +1910. _Thackeray, Selection_. Masters of Literature Series. + _Eyes of Youth, Anthology_. + +1911. _Johnson, Extracts_. Ed. Alice Meynell. + Thackeray, _The Book of Snobs_. Red Letter Library. + +1912. _Famous Paintings, Reproduced in Colour_. + A. V. Baverstock, _English Agricultural Labourer_. + _Aesop's Fables_. Translated by Vernon Jones. + +1913. Dickens, _The Christmas Carol_. Waverley Dickens. + +1915. _Bohemia's Claim for Freedom_. London, Czech Committee. + +1916. C. C. Mendell and E. Shanks, _Hilaire Belloc_. + Cobbett, _Cottage Economy_. + Harewranath Maitra, _Hinduism_. + +1917. S. Nordentoft, _Practical Pacifism and Its Adversaries_. + +1918. Sybil Bristowe, _Provocations_. + William Dyson, _Australia at War_. + Leonard Merrick, _House of Lynch_. + +1919. Cecil Chesterton, _History of the U. S. A_. + Bernard Capes, _The Skeleton Key_. + +1920. M. E. Jones, _Life in Old Cambridge_. + +1921. Vivienne Dayrell, _Little Wings_. + H. M. Bateman, _A Book of Drawings_. + +1922. Jane Austen, _Love and Friendship_. + +1923. Irene Hernaman, _Child Mediums_. + 0. R. Vassall Phillips, _The Mustard Tree_. + +1924. 0. F. Dudley, _Will Men Be Like Gods_. + Greville Macdonald, _George Macdonald and His Wife_. + _Catholic Who's Who_. + P. M. Wright, _Purple Hours_. + +1925. Fulton Sheen, _God and Intelligence_. + Alexander Arnoux, _Abishag_. Trans. Joyce Davis. + +1926. A. H. Godwin, _Gilbert and Sullivan_. + Johnson, _Rasselas_. + _Catholic Who's Who_. + L. G. Sieveking, _Bats in the Belfry_. + _The Man Who Was Thursday_, Dramatized Version. + W. S. Masterman, _The Wrong Letter_. + _Royal Society of Literature, Essays_, Vol. vi. + +1927. E. Turner, _Grandmamma's Book of Rhymes_. + G. C. Heseltine, _The Change_. Essays on the Land. + H. Massis, _Defence of the West_. + _Forster's Life of Dickens_. Everyman Library. + +1928. Mary Webb, _The Golden Arrow_. + +1929. H. Gheon, _The Secret of the Cure D'ars_, trans. F. Sheed. + W. R. Titterton, _Drinking Songs_. + +1930. Miss C. Noran, _Book on Spanish History_. + _King Lear_. De Luxe Edition. Illustrated Yunge. + Introduction to _Vanity Fair_, Thackeray. Limited Edition + Club, New York. + +1931. _Giotto's Frescoes at Assisi Reproduced_. + John Gibbons, _Through Unknown Portugal_. + F. Goetel, _The Messenger of the Snow_. + Francis Thompson, _The Hound of Heaven_. + A. A. Thomas, _The Burns We Love_. + J. P. de Fonseka, _Serendipitry_. + Daniel O'Grady, _Cosmology_. + +1932. Gleeson, _Essays_. + _Essays of the Year_, Argonaut Press. + _Six Centuries of English Literature_, Vol. vi. Meredith to + Rupert Brooke. + Mrs. Homewood, _Reminiscences_. + _Penn Country Book_. + +1933. _Life of Sydney Smith_. Hesketh Pearson. + _Tale of Two Cities_. + +1934. _Peregrine Pickle_. First Edition Club, U. S. A. + Pamphlet on _Nazi Germany_ for Friends of Europe publication, + edited by Lord Tyrrell. + _G.K.'s Miscellany_. + +1935. Fr. Dowsell, _The Betrayal: A Passion Play_. + Fr. Vincent McNabb, _Book of Essays_. + _Detective Stories_. Collection from Hutchinson. + +1936. F. A. MacNutt, _A Papal Chamberlain_. + +1935. Letterpress to _Stations of the Cross_, by F. Brangwyn. + +I doubt whether the list of introductions is complete but Dorothy +Collins has done her best to make it so. Of the books and essays +about Chesterton there is no end. Those I have used in writing this +book are + +_Father Brown on Chesterton_, Monsignor O'Connor. +_G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism_, Cecil Chesterton. +_The Place of Chesterton in English Literature_, Hilaire Belloc. +_The Laughing Prophet_, Emile Cammaerts. +_G. K. Chesterton_, Cyril Clemens. + +For the chapters on Sociology I have consulted the invaluable series +on the English Labourer by the Hammonds, C. S. Orpen's _Open Fields_, +Trevelyan's _Social History of England_, Cobbett's _Rural Rides and +Cottage Economy_ and Haas' _English Labourer_. + +For the Marconi Chapter I have used the Reports of the Parliamentary +Commission and of the trial of Cecil Chesterton, C. F. G. Masterman's +_Life_ and that of Lord Reading, and contemporary press accounts. + +Throughout I have made use of the files of _The Eyewitness, The New +Witness_ and _G.K.'s Weekly_. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON*** + + +******* This file should be named 18707.txt or 18707.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/0/18707 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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