CHAPTER FIVE

In which Mr. G. K. Chesterton reveals his Fears and his Hopes

Among the questions which will present themselves to the future literary historian, none will be more difficult to answer than ‘Was Mr. G. K. Chesterton afraid of his wife?’ There are several passages in his books which indicate that the answer will be in the affirmative, and among them one might quote that charming essay from _Tremendous Trifles_ which is called ‘On Lying in Bed.’ He confesses to an overwhelming desire, while lying in bed, to paint the ceiling with a long brush. ‘But even,’ he adds, ‘my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged--_never mind by whom_; by a person debarred from all political rights.’

The first time I ever asked myself this question was in Cornmarket Street at Oxford, on a windy night in May. G. K. Chesterton was alighting, with a certain amount of difficulty, from a taxi-cab, and as soon as he had safely emerged, he stood in the gutter, his mackintosh flapping loudly in the wind, while he assisted a charming and diminutive figure in a cloak. The diminutive figure was his wife. But even in these strange circumstances, with the wind tying her cloak into knots, and the rain-spots slashing against her veil like cold bullets, she seemed completely mistress of the situation of the moment, which was ‘When should the car come back to fetch them?’

Chesterton turned to me--(for he had come to debate with us at the Union)--‘When _shall_ we want it, do you think?’ he said, a little pathetically.

Before I could reply the diminutive figure said, in a sweet, firm voice:

‘When will the thing be over?’ (a great deal of feminine contempt in that sentence).

‘At eleven. But there’s a sort of reception afterwards.’

She immediately turned to the driver. ‘Be here at eleven.’

‘But ...’ began Chesterton.

‘And,’ said Mrs. Chesterton, ‘is this the way in? It’s raining, and my husband has a cold.’

So we meekly followed her to the debating hall.

One has so often been told that Chesterton is an enormous, elephantine creature, that the actual sight of him is really a little disappointing. He _is_ a big man, of course, but not as big as all that. If it were not for his cloak, and his longish hair, and the bow which he sometimes wears, one would not say that he was an exceptional figure in any way. It seemed to me that he took a secret joy in making himself as large as possible, like some little boy who stuffs his overcoat with cushions. G.K.C. has such a passionate love of the grotesque that if it were suddenly ordained that he should be four times his present size he would give a whoop of joy.

Yes. The more one thinks of it--the more it seems that he _did_ purposely accentuate his largeness. His mackintosh was the mackintosh of a man several sizes larger than he. The wide-brimmed Homburg hat seemed specially designed to exaggerate his face. Even his glasses could, without difficulty, have been cut in half. And I noticed that he took a sort of impish delight, as soon as he was introduced to the committee, of placing himself next to the Junior Librarian, a very diminutive young man, whom he addressed as from a pinnacle, holding himself well erect, swelling his shoulders, and even puffing his cheeks, to improve upon the already imposing body with which nature had provided him.

We all trooped into the debating hall, which was absolutely packed, for Chesterton’s paradoxes are always a draw with youth. The subject for debate was ‘That this house considers that the granting of any further facilities for divorce will be against the true interests of the nation,’ or words to that effect. I was speaking against this motion (being one of those who have never seen how the interests of the nation are served by perpetuating the union between a sane husband and a lunatic wife, or a law-abiding wife and a murderer husband), and as soon as my speech was over I went to the ‘Ayes’ side of the house where Chesterton was sitting and sat beside him.

‘You shouldn’t have referred to me as eloquent,’ he said. ‘Wait till you hear me speak. I’m not a bit eloquent. I can’t speak off the bat. I must always have notes.’

I looked down and saw that he had a sheet of paper in his hand, on which he had been scribbling in pencil. But the ‘notes’ were not words, they were little pictures. A grotesque dragon had been hastily drawn in one corner, and a tiny sketch of a very fat man in another. There were also several comic faces, among which I recognized that of the secretary, who was sitting with his profile to us. It was typical of him to call these sketches his ‘notes,’ and it was even more typical when he got up to make a very brilliant speech, that he left his notes behind him.

I forget what he said except that it struck one as irrelevant. To hear Chesterton speak is in itself an explanation of his writing. He pours out his words, suddenly says something which pleases him by its touch of fantasy, pauses, and then with a face that grows more and more smiling and eyes that grow more and more bright, proceeds to develop the idea, to chase it, to leap ponderously after it, so hurl paradoxes in its wake, to circumvent it with every ingenious conceit. For example, he said, almost in an aside, that doubtless divorce would soon be part of the regular curriculum at Oxford, and when he had said it, was so entranced by the prospect opening up before him, that he almost lost his head, and ended by drawing for us a picture of the future in which M.A. instead of meaning Master of Arts should mean ‘married again’ and should be accompanied by the B.A., three months later, which would mean ‘bachelor again.’

Perhaps his most vivid conversation came after the debate was all over. When we were standing in the hall, waiting for the car, he delivered himself of a second speech which so interested me that afterwards I went straight home to write it down.

‘Somebody said in the debate,’ he remarked, ‘that I am the slave of symbols, that I believed in magic, that in a ceremony or an institution or a faith I merely examined what was on the surface and took it all quite literally, like a peasant in the Middle Ages.

‘But it isn’t I who am the slave of symbols. It is you. I venerate the idea which lies behind the symbol, you only venerate the empty shell. Take this case of monarchy. Somebody remarked to-night that we had taken away half the duties and prerogatives of the King, and that the monarchy still remained. They went on to say that we could take away half the duties and prerogatives of marriage, and that marriage would still remain. Perhaps it will, but what will be the use of it?

‘Because I bow down to the sceptre, and because I take the words “honour and obey” quite literally, you say that I am the slave of the symbol. But I bow down to the sceptre because I believe in the power that lies behind it. I keep to the smallest details of the marriage service because I believe in marriage. If you believe neither in the sceptre nor in the service, and yet bow down to them, then you are the slave of the symbol.’

He looked away. Somebody presented him with his mackintosh. He struggled into it, got it half on, and then, with one arm still waving in the air he exclaimed:

‘A time will come--very soon--when you will find that you want this ideal of marriage. You will want it as something hard and solid to cling to in a fast dissolving society. You will want it even more than you seem to want divorce to-day. Divorce ...’ and here, with a sort of groan, he thrust his second arm through his mackintosh--‘the superstition of divorce.’

The small figure of Mrs. Chesterton appeared in the doorway. She, as usual, was quite unperturbed. The fiery words, the tangled eloquence of the evening seemed to have passed over her unnoticed.

‘The car is here,’ she said, ‘and we are already five minutes late.’

G.K.C. shook hands hurriedly, and vanished through the door. The last I saw of him was the flap of his mackintosh in the wind.