CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHESTERTON THE MAN

Chesterton possessed one of the most likeable characters of contemporary literary men. There is usually something or other that mars the characters of most, but who would have Chesterton different? Even his faults are beloved: his weight, his tardiness, his absentmindedness, his slovenly manner of dressing, his sometimes careless way of eating and drinking. In short he can almost be described as Falstaff without his moral grossness.

Chesterton lived for many years in a flat overlooking the beautiful Battersea Park, where Mrs. Lillian Curt would often see him strolling in deep thought. His wife Frances--a dainty little lady, clever and level-headed and most devoted to her husband--would sometimes get anxious when he was long overdue for meals. Then quickly donning her outdoor garments she would anxiously start off to find him, remarking, “I am off to seek my Mighty Atom.” The reference being to Marie Corelli’s “The Mighty Atom” which had but recently appeared.

“I knew G. K. C.,” writes A. Hamilton Gibbs, “when I was in process of becoming an undergraduate at Oxford. Being so grotesquely fat that he couldn’t dress himself he used to appear in socks at breakfast, eat hugely, and then go out into the garden with a pad of paper and a packet of cigarettes. In the course of a couple of hours there would be a ring of cigarettes on the grass around him and when the wind blew away his pages, he would scream for help with a series of epigrams which I am sure found their way into his later pages. Whenever he went from the country to London there was always a little black bag in his hand. In the bag was a bottle of wine, and in the station refreshment room he would order a cup of tea and a wine glass. Many times I’ve seen him taking alternate sips of tea and wine between mouths of a penny bun!”

Whenever he visited Glasgow, Chesterton stayed with Professor Phillimore who occupied the Greek chair at Glasgow University. Phillimore entertained many literary people in Glasgow, Hilaire Belloc, Thomas Hardy, Galsworthy, and so forth. Usually disengaged in the mornings, the visitors were often brought to the Annam Gallery to be entertained by looking at paintings and etchings. Mr. Annam had the opportunity of making photographic portraits of Chesterton in 1912, when the latter was at his bulkiest. He seemed much interested in his striking appearance and in his likeness to Dr. Johnson. He wore a dark grey highland cloak and a tiny Homburg hat. As he was leaving the studio a small boy stopped and stared at the great man. G. K. noticed the youngster’s interest and puffed himself out to his very biggest for his benefit. Nothing was said, of course, but the pose was obvious. In the course of conversation he made various references to his appearance.

Mrs. Hugh C. Riviere remembers Chesterton as a school boy at St. Paul’s, a tall slim youth who even then had the feeling of the romance of weapons that runs through so much of his work. He went to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Riviere after his marriage when his wife was ill in bed and unable to see to his packing. The result was that he arrived =with nothing= but an old revolver bought on the way, and his favorite sword-stick with an ivory-handle!

The Sunday after the Great War had commenced Riviere was staying the week-end at a house a few miles from Beaconsfield, and walked over to see the Chestertons. They were in a very national state of excitement and emotion, as all were on such a day. His first thought was, what could he do to help his country,

“I couldn’t wield a sword as I can’t lift my right arm above my shoulder. I should be no use in cavalry, no horse could carry me.” Then with a sudden hopefulness and that humor that was so often directed against himself, “I might possibly form part of a barricade.”

The Chestertons, his brother Cecil, and his friend W. C. Worsdell, all belonged to a debating society known as “I. D. K.” (I Don’t Know). In the earlier period G. K. C. attended the meetings pretty regularly but later on rarely, being, as his wife declared, “too busy.” One of the earliest meetings was at the Chiswick house, of his wife’s family, the Bloggs. At the end of the discussion Chesterton remarked in his usual jocular style,

“We’re in a complete fog!”

But more than once he declared that the speeches of the I Don’t Knows were much cleverer than those heard in the House of Commons. At one meeting Chesterton could not find a chair, so he was obliged to squat on the floor, and he dropped down with a thud that shook the whole house!

One year the Chestertons were coming back from Bromley after a delightful afternoon spent at E. W. Fordham’s house where the guests had produced some plays written by their host--one of them an exceedingly clever and amusing take-off of G. K. C. himself which the original had greeted with continuous chuckles and gurgles of laughter. Having returned with them year after year from this show and knowing his habit, Riviere remarked,

“Aren’t you going to have the usual cigar, Gilbert?”

“I was not going to have a cigar and I =don’t= want a cigar, but if it’s a case of a holy ritual here goes,” he answered characteristically with a chuckle as he took out a cigar and commenced smoking.

While visiting Columbus, Ohio, to lecture, Chesterton had a friendly discussion with Professor Joseph Alexander Leighton and Dr. T. C. Mendenhall, the noted physicist--on the question whether veridical communications from the dead were received by living persons. Dr. Mendenhall contended that some at least of these communications were genuine, and therefore established the reality of life after death. Leighton took the role of skeptic, contending that when, as in some undoubted cases, bits of information, quotations, etcetera, had been received through mediums, they probably were due to subconscious memories, and that in other cases their apparent supernormal character was probably the result of coincidence. Chesterton agreed to the genuineness of the communications, but took the view that they were transmitted by bad spirits and that it was spiritually unhealthy for living persons to have any kind of traffic with them.

No one could condemn a thing in fewer words than Chesterton. Speaking about that much discussed book of other days, Renan’s “Life of Christ,” he said to his friends Desmond Gleeson and George Boyle,

“I remember reading it while I was standing in the queque waiting to see ‘Charlie’s Aunt.’ But it is so obvious which is the better farce, for ‘Charlie’s Aunt’ is still running.”

The old English advertisement of “Charlie’s Aunt” always had a picture of the old woman getting along at top speed, with the words, “still running.”

Father Cyril Martindale did not meet Chesterton very often, but he felt that he knew him well all the same, “this was because despite his shyness, or I should say modesty, he =let= you know him, and intercepted no barriers. This modesty was again seen in his dealings with young men. It never occurred to him that they could have nothing interesting or useful to say, or that he was called upon to act the oracle.

“And this simplicity could again, I think, be seen in what people called his paradoxes. He always insisted that that was not what they were, but sheer statements of the obvious. To him, it was life as ordinarily lived that seemed ‘paradoxical’--it was amazing to him that men could think the things they did, especially as doing so issued into so uncomfortable as well as, too often, so wicked a life.

“Sometimes the constant appearance of the word ‘wild’ in his writings irritated me. He had a vivid and active imagination, so that he saw all sorts of connections and illustrations that others did not: but his mind in reality worked in a very orderly way. I think the explanation may be this--he constantly described himself as ‘lazy’ and I expect that by temperament he was. He always put down the rapidity of his brother’s conversion with the tardiness of his own, at sheer laziness on his part. Now had he let himself go to laziness, he would have been letting his mind, too, go ‘wild.’ But he did neither. Very likely he used the word in a slightly different sense from the one in which I used it: he felt it as the opposite of ‘smug’ and so forth. It remains that I think he had to conquer a real tendency to laziness, and so, to letting his mind just hop about in a (to me) ‘wild’ and disorderly way.

“I think he died in some ways a broken-hearted man. There were no signs of the world having learnt anything that was good, even from its sufferings: all the more noticeable was his peace and serenity in God; and this is why I do not hesitate to say that I think there was to be discerned in him =real holiness=.”

Father (now Monsignor) John O’Connor known to fame as Father Brown, recollects that on Sunday, July 30th, 1922, he had “the immense happiness of receiving Chesterton into the Church. Mrs. Chesterton was present, profoundly moved, and Dom Ignatius Rice, O. S. B., in the chapel of the Railway Hotel at Beaconsfield, the first public church in town. I remembered his lines written years before,

‘Prince: Bayard would have smashed his sword To see the sort of Knights you dub. Will someone take me to a pub? Is =that= the last of them? O Lord! Will someone take me to a pub?’

“In 1925 Mrs. Chesterton followed him into the Church on the Feast of All Saints. They almost at once began to sponsor the erection of a permanent church near the railway station. And now it is being enlarged as a memorial to him.

“Gilbert Chesterton and I were wont to call down Mark Twain’s name in benediction and to wish there were more like him, whether in his own States or any others. I recall many of our delighted exchanges on Mark the deathless. I was once thrilled to give him a patiche out of something he had not read,

‘Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral.’

“That he had not read it was to me a miracle. He had read everything I ever heard of that Mark Twain had written.”

Patrick Braybrooke saw his cousin Chesterton for the last time at Beaconsfield. “It was a hot afternoon in summer and in the sweet garden at his home he recited poetry, made up verses, discussed American hotels, and came to the conclusion that Stevenson was the bravest man who ever wrote.”

One morning not long afterwards as he was sitting in the refreshment room of a London underground, Braybrooke picked up casually enough a newspaper. “I saw some words and my world seemed to fall into pieces. For I read SUDDEN DEATH OF G. K. CHESTERTON. It seemed like the end of an era of literary greatness in every way. But I was glad he did not have a long illness--a long drawn-out anti-climax was not for him. When his time came he went home quickly, almost as though like one of the Stevenson characters--hit by an arrow. He went home and the Catholic Church which he loved so well took care of his soul and in the little Church at Beaconsfield to the subdued mutters of the Mass we said our last farewell.”

Chesterton died on June 14, 1936, and was buried in the graveyard of the Beaconsfield Catholic Church. Just recently the Republic of Ireland has given a great bell for the Chesterton Memorial Church thus inscribed.

“Presented to the parish of Beaconsfield by friends and admirers of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, to ring the call to faith, which he so chivalrously answered in song, in word, and in example, to the glory of God and of England.”

Walter de la Mare penned a memorial quatrain to his life-long friend,

“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.”

INDEX

Page Adams, James Truslow, meets Chesterton 78

Adams, Karl 150

Aristotle 131

Armstrong, Prof. A. J., entertains C. 58

Arnold, Matthew 127

Autobiography 145

“Ballad of the White Horse” 94, 160, 162

Baltimore, liked by Chesterton 128

Barnes, Bishop E. W. 108

Barr, Robert 25

Barrie, James M. 37

Beaverbrook, Lord 108

Belloc, Hilaire 7, 10, 14 First meets Chesterton 24 Quoted 35, 44, 75, 133

Benet, Stephen Vincent 162–3

Benet, William R. 158

Bentley, E. C. Iff., 5, 137

Bierce, Ambrose 40

“Biography for Beginners” 85

Birkenhead, Lord 56, 109

Blackwood, Algernon 33

Blatchford, Robt. complimented by C. 21–3

Blessed Virgin 89–90

Blogg, Frances, marries C. 13

Boer War, opposed by C. 19–20

Borden, Lucille 39

Boswell 7, 28

Bourne, Francis Cardinal 148

Braybrooke, Patrick, at C.’s funeral 172–3

Bridges, Horace J., debates with C. 68 ff.

Brown, Edw. tells of C.’s Welsh lecture 49–52

Browning, Robert 3, 14, 58, 95, 125–6, 152

Cabell, James Branch 122

Carrell, R. Alexis, on C. 123

Cecil, Lord 33

Cecil, Lord David 38

Cambridge 107

Canadian Authors’ Society, toasted by C. 76

Catholic Church, C. joins 90, 102

Chamberlain, Joseph 19

Chesterton, Cecil, brother 14, 138–9, 167, 170

Chesterton, G. K.

Chubb, T. C., describes C. at Yale 92–7

Clarke, Isabel C., entertains C. in Rome 35–6

Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain) 19 Praised by C. 135, 149, 172

Cobbett, William 97–8

Columbus, Ohio, C. visits 168

Connolly, Myles, impressions of C. 120

“Convert, The,” poem by C. 157

Cram, Ralph Adams 33 ff., 144 ff.

Dante 153

Darrow, C., debates with C. 66 ff., 117, 128

de la Mare, Walter, meets C. 32–3, quoted

de Castro, Adolphe, meets C. 40

Dickens, Charles, admired by C. 3, 30, 95 “Pickwick Papers,” C.’s favorite 131, 152

Distributism 14, 24

Drinkwater, John 51

Drood, Edwin 27–7

Doyle, Conan 117

Dudley, Owen F., meets C. 34

Duggan, Eileen 151 ff.

Dyboski, Roman 132, 147 ff.

Eliot, T. S. 146

“Everlasting Man” 118

Falstaff 92

Father Brown 25, 94, 144

Fletcher, James Gould 160–1

“Flying Inn, The” 85, 95, 144

Fordham, E. W., boyhood friend 4 ff.,168

France, Anatole 15

Frank, Waldo, admires C. 120

Frankau, Gilbert, meets C. 25

Galsworthy, John 24 discussed by C. 129

Garland, Hamlin, meets C. 119

George Fifth, King, meets C. 11

Gibbs, A. Hamilton, meets C. 165

Gibbs, Sir Philip, meets C. 20–1

Gill, Eric, C.’s friend 27

Gilson, L. E. 149 ff.

“G. K.’s Weekly” 14, 27

Glasgow, C. lectures in 53 visits 165–6

“Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” praised by C. 24

Gordon, Charles W., describes C. 78

Graham, Cunninghame 11

Graham, Kenneth, compared to C. 35

“Greybeards at Play,” C.’s first book 14

Guedalla, Philip, meets C. 31–2

Gwynn, S., recalls C.’s first book 14, 17, 18, 38

Hamilton, Cosmo, debates with C. 62 ff.

Hammond, J. L. 18–9

Hardy, Thomas 129

Harris, Frank 29

Hawthorne 111

Henry Eighth, King 36, 97

Hereford, Oliver, quoted 69

Hazlitt, Henry 117

Heine 41

“Heretics” 15, 30, 116

Hilton, James, writes C. as a boy 23

Hirst, F. W., edits Speaker with C. 19

“History of England” 136

Holliday, Robert Cortes, meets C. 127

Hollis, Christopher, meets C. 24

Holy Ghost 95

Housman, A. E. 107 quoted by C. 129–130

Huxley, Aldous, admired by C. 63

“History of England” 136

Jackson, Holbrook, meets C. 41–45

Jacobs, W. W., meets C. 23

James, Henry 10

Joan of Arc, C. speaks on 33

Johnson, Dr. Samuel 28, 36, 43, 88, 143, 165 Chesterton dressed as 134

Kaye-Smith, Sheila, praised by C. 112

Kernahan, Coulson, meets C. 25–6–7

Kingsmill, Hugh, meets C. 29

Kipling, Rudyard 76, 96, 153

Knox, John 105

Lane, John 15

Lenin 131

“Lepanto,” poem by C. 94, 119, 160

Lewis, Sinclair 112–3, 127

Lindsay, Vachel 161

Liverpool, C. lectures in 53

Locke, John 41

Lodge, Sir Oliver 21

Lowdnes, Mrs. Marie Belloc, meets C. 33

Mabbott, T. O., praises C. 115–6

MacDonald, George 26

MacDonald, Ramsay 26, 108

“Magic,” play by C. 116–7

“Man Who Was Thursday” 3 Praised by James Hilton 24, 32, 95 Admired by Mussolini 134, 144

Martindale, Cyril C. 167–171

Masefield, John 108

Masterman, Charles 11

May, J. Lewis 15

Megroz, Rodolphe L., visits C. 79

Miller, J. Corson 158

Moore, Tom 17, 18

More, Thomas 90

Mussolini, Benito, visited by C. 134–5

Napoleon, quoted 120

“Napoleon of Notting Hill” 15, 16–7, 79, 85, 95, 116, 144

“New Jerusalem” 87

“New Witness” 14

Notre Dame University, C. at 99–113

Noyes, Alfred 155–8

O’Connor, Father John 137–140 Receives Chesterton Into Church 171–2

Oldershaw, J. L. 5, 18, 19

“Orthodoxy” 15, 32, 116, 149–50, 160

Ould, Hermon, offers C. club presidency 86

Oxford 107

Patterson, Mrs. F. T., hears C. lecture 66 ff.

Pearson, Hesketh 31, 140–1

Pemberton, Sir Max 143

Phelps, William Lyon 98, 118

Philip the Second, misinterpreted by C. 119

Pollock, Channing 115

Poland 148 ff.

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur 51

Redfield, William C. 62

Remarque, Enrique Maria, C. dislikes 64

Rinehart, Mary Roberts 143

Ripley, Clements, admires C. 32

Riviere, Hugo C., paints C. 85–6

Roberts, R. Ellis, hears C. lecture 46

Robinson, E. A. 166, 97

Rodin 44

Rome, C. visits 90, 97, 134

Rose, Sir Holland 107

Roseberry, Lord 54

Ruskin, John 19, 107

Russell, Bertrand, C.’s opinion of 108

Russell, George 98, 127–8

Sabatini, Rafael 141–2

Saint Januarius 44

St. Louis, Missouri, C. lectures 72–4, 128

Saint Paul’s School 13

“Saint Thomas Aquinas” 150

Scott, Walter 3 “Ivanhoe” reviewed by C. 75

Shaw, Bernard, C.’s book on 15, 27, 44, 46, 55 Meets Chesterton 75–6, 95, 96, 141, 146

Shorter, Clement K. 141

Sheen, Fulton 150

Slade Art School, attended by C. 13

“Speaker,” The 18–9

Stevenson, Robert Louis, quoted 83

Stewart, Bishop G. C., at C.’s lecture 68 ff.

Stewart, Donald Ogden, admires C. 117

Strachey, Lytton, compared to C. 35

Swinburne 3

Tennyson 3, 95

Thackeray 95

Thompson, Francis 155

Thomas, Edward 2

Thoreau 111 quoted 121

Tinker, Chauncey B. 118

Titterton, W. R., C. writes 81–3 Describes C. 84

Tolstoy 131

“Trent’s Last Case,” by E. C. Bentley 137

Trevelyan, George M. 107

Trotsky 131

Van Dine, S. S., admires Father Brown 142

Van Druten, John 51

“Varied Types” 159

Velasquez 44

“Victorian Age of English Literature” 144

Walker, Headmaster, discovers C.’s genius 1

Walpole, Horace 132

Walsh, William Thomas, describes C. 118–9

Watts, G. F., admired by C. 3

“Well and the Shadows” 146

Wells, H. G. 34, 46, 64, 79–80–81, 86, 96, 133

West, Rebecca 109

Wise, Stephen S., admires C. 122

Wood, Clement 161

Wright, Cuthbert 146

Wyndham, George 11

Yealy, Francis J., hears C. lecture 47

Yeats, Elizabeth, at G. K.’s wedding 13

Yeats, William B. 108 meets C. 145–6

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them, have been sequentially alphabetized and placed below the paragraphs that reference them.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references. The entry for “Chesterton, G. K.” has no page references (which makes sense, as the entire book is about him). Some entries that were misalphabetized have been moved to the correct places, but the Transcribers did not do this systematically.

Page i: “unanimity” was printed as “unanmity”; changed here.

Page 12: “just ’ad” was printed as “just ’as”; changed here.

Page 13: The footnote anchor originally was placed at the end of the next paragraph, but was moved because the footnote refers to the person mentioned in the earlier paragraph.

Page 14: “pledged to wage eternal against” seems to be missing a word.

Page 30: “finding reasons for his” was printed as “finding seasons for his”; changed here.

Page 31: “with insufficient impudence” was printed that way; perhaps it should be “sufficient”.

Page 38: “quiet chat” was printed as “quite chat”; changed here.

Page 38: “I remember how Lord David Cecil when still a boy” was printed that way; “how” seems to be extraneous.

Page 40: “in phases as colorful” was printed that way.

Page 40: “points in phrases” was printed as “points in phases”; changed here.

Page 41: Extraneous opening single quote removed just before “Do you happen to write poetry”.

Page 41: Missing closing quote mark added after “It was a quasi sonnet entitled ‘The Jewish Poet.’”

Page 44: “sombrero” was printed as “comprero”; changed here.

Page 48: “This he thought was very reasonable theory” was printed that way.

Page 49: The second occurrence of “Debates Union” was printed as “Debate’s Union”; changed here.

Page 51: “Liberty: the Last Phase,” was printed as “Liberty: the Last Phrase,”; changed here.

Page 57: Extraneous closing quote removed after “of life and experience.”

Page 62: “he never forgot” was printed as “he never forget”; changed here.

Page 88: “Cycle Valley” was printed that way.

Page 89: “it did before” was printed as “it did befire”; changed here.

Page 90: “Thomas More” was printed as “Thomas Moore”; changed here.

Page 94: “that varnished period” was printed that way.

Page 106: “It would not have mattered” was printed as “I would not have mattered”; changed here.

Page 107: Extraneous closing quote removed after “condition did not prevail.”

Page 108: “no other poet” was printed as “no other post”; changed here.

Page 118: “just as fervently” was printed as “just as feverently”; changed here.

Page 121: “It might ever more accurately” was printed that way; “ever” may be a typo for “even.”

Page 122: “significance” was printed as “signifcance”; changed here.

Page 139: “battered daylight” was printed as “bettered daylight”; changed here.

Page 140: “knows more about crime” was printed as “know more about crime”; changed here.

Page 146: “was essential” was printed as “was ensential”; changed here.

Page 146: “debate develop as it likes” was printed as “debate develop as it like”; changed here.

Page 146: “Some year ago” was printed that way.

Page 149: “Grey Beards at Play” was printed that way, but should be “Greybeards”.

Page 150: “I consider it as being” was printed as “I consider is as being”; changed here.

Page 158: “Gerard Manley Hopkins” was printed as “Gerald Manley Hopkins”; changed here.

Page 162: “Booth was the first poem” was printed as “Both was the first poem”; changed here.

Page 171: The stanza of a poem is reproduced here as it was printed in the original book, but differs from reproductions of that stanza in most other sources.

Page 172: “patiche” probably should be “pastiche”.

Page 175: “Benet, Stephen Vincent” was printed as “Bent, Stephen Vincent”; changed here.

Page 177: “edits Speaker” was printed as “edits speaker”; changed here.