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. Reprinted 1930. _The Wild Knight and Other Poems_. Included in _Collected Poems_.

1901. _The Defendant_.

1902. _G. F. Watts_. _Twelve Types_.

1903. _Robert Browning_.

1904. _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_.

1905. _The Club of Queer Trades_. _Heretics_.

1906. _Charles Dickens_.

1907. _The Man Who Was Thursday_.

1908. _Orthodoxy_. _All Things Considered_.

1909. _George Bernard Shaw_. _The Ball and the Cross_. _Tremendous Trifles_. _Defence of Nonsense_.

1910. _What's Wrong with the World?_ _William Blake_. _Alarms and Discursions_. _Five Types_.

1911. _The Innocence of Father Brown_. _Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens_. _The Ballad of the White Horse_.

1912. _Manalive_. _A Miscellany of Men_. _Simplicity of Tolstoy_. _The Victorian Age in Literature_.

1913. _Magic_. A Play.

1914. _The Wisdom of Father Brown_. _The Flying Inn_. _The Barbarism of Berlin_.

1915. _Poems_. _Wine, Water, and Song_. Reprint of poems from _The Flying Inn_. _The Crimes of England_. _Letters to an Old Garibaldian_.

1916. _A Shilling for My Thoughts_.

1917. _A Short History of England_. _Utopia of Usurers_.

1919. _Irish Impressions_.

1920. _The Uses of Diversity_. _The New Jerusalem_. _The Superstition of Divorce_.

1922. _Eugenics and Other Evils_. _The Man who Knew Too Much_. _What I Saw in America_. _The Ballad of St. Barbara_. In _Collected Poems_.

1923. _Fancies versus Fads_. _St. Francis of Assisi_.

1924. _The End of The Roman Road_. Preface by St. John Adcock.

1925. _The Everlasting Man_. _Tales of the Long Bow_. _William Cobbett_. _The Superstitions of the Sceptic_.

1926. _The Incredulity of Father Brown_. _The Outline of Sanity_. _A Gleaming Cohort_. _The Queen of Seven Swords_. Poems. Not included in _Collected Poems_. _The Catholic Church and Conversion_. _Culture and the Coming Peril_. University of London Publication. _Social Reform and Birth Control_. Pamphlet--Simpkin Kent & Co., League of National Life.

1927. _Collected Poems_. _The Return of Don Quixote_. _Robert Louis Stevenson_. _The Secret of Father Brown_. _The Judgment of Dr. Johnson_. A Play. _Gloria in Profundis_. Short Poem.

1928. _Generally Speaking_. _Essays of To-day and Yesterday Series_. _Short Stories of To-day and Yesterday Series_. Reprinted from other volumes. _The Sword of Wood_. Short Story. Edition de Luxe, Signed. Reprinted in Everyman Edition.

1929. _The Poet and the Lunatics_. _Omnibus Volume--Father Brown Stories_. _Ubi Ecclesia_. Short Poem. _The Thing_. Catholic Essays. _G.K.C. as M.C_. Collection of Introductions. _The Turkey and the Turk_. Christmas Play. Ill. by Thomas Derrick.

1930. _The Grave of Arthur_. Short Poem. Ariel Poem Series. _Come to Think of It_. Essays. Edited by E. V. Lucas. _The Resurrection of Rome_.

1931. _All is Grist_. Essays edited by E. V. Lucas.

1932. _Chaucer_. A Study. _Sidelights on New London and Newer York_. Essays. _Christendom in Dublin_. Essays on Eucharistic Congress, Dublin.

1933. _All I Survey_. Essays. Edited by E. V. Lucas. _St. Thomas Aquinas_. _Collected Poems_. Republished _Collected Prefaces to Charles Dickens's Works_. Reprinted. _Methuen's Library of Humour_. 1 vol.

1934. _Avowals and Denials_. Essays.

1935. _The Scandal of Father Brown_. _George Bernard Shaw_. New edition with additional chapter. The Later Phases. _The Well and the Shadows_.

1936. _As I Was Saying_. Essays. Edited by E. V. Lucas.

POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS

1936. _Autobiography_.

1937. _The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond_.

1938. _The Colored Lands_.

1940. _The End of the Armistice_.

PREFACES TO OTHER AUTHORS' BOOKS

1902. 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