CHAPTER TWO

LITERARY APPRENTICESHIP

Chesterton had a shorter apprenticeship for a writing career than most men of letters. After leaving St. Paul’s he went to the Slade Art School where he graduated in 1891 at the age of seventeen. He forthwith began reviewing books on art for the “Bookman,” the “Speaker,” and other periodicals. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg whom he had known for some time. Among those present at the wedding was Miss Elizabeth Yeats, the sister of the poet William Butler Yeats, who recalls,

“My sister and I were at the Chesterton’s wedding at St. Mary’s Abbots in Kensington. Gilbert wanted the ceremony as ceremonial as possible--but Frances, who then belonged to some new thought people in religious matters, wanted everything possible cut from the Church of England Service--except just the legal parts. Gilbert had been, of course, brought up a nonconformist.”

Chesterton’s marriage was the beginning of thirty-five years of happiness with a wife who was ideally congenial.[A]

His first book “Greybeards at Play,” consisting of jingles and sketches, had appeared in 1894. As time went on he gradually found the expression of ideas more satisfying than any kind of art work.

[A] Frances Chesterton died December 12, 1938.

From 1898 to 1901 he and his brother Cecil helped Hilaire Belloc on “The New Witness,” a weekly paper pledged to wage eternal against political corruption. Some years earlier he had severed his connections with socialism and adopted Belloc’s ideas now known as “Distributism,” the progress of which was to be ultimately chronicled by the famous “G. K.’s Weekly” founded in 1926.

Stephen Gwynn recalls the first book written for Macmillan.

“It is so long ago that I only dimly remember my first encounter with G. K. C. He was married and they let a flat--Battersea Park--a tiny flat--in 1901. I never knew two people who changed less in nearly forty years.

“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 as it deserved to be.”

J. Lewis May writes about another early book,

“A book that created something of a sensation in its day was the penetrating study of George Bernard Shaw by Chesterton. The mention of Chesterton reminds me that it was Lane who published his ‘Orthodoxy’ and his ‘Napoleon of Notting Hill,’ as well as ‘Heretics.’ Those, I think, were in the days before the royalty system came in, and I fancy Lane bought them outright. It was in regard to the first that I heard that Chesterton brought it in chapter by chapter as he wrote it, and it was written on any miscellaneous scraps of paper that came to his hand. He did not disdain, I have been told, even the paper that sugar is wrapped in, for the purpose of recording his valuable thoughts. Anatole France was accustomed to use the inside of envelopes or the backs of bills for the same object.”

William Platt gave Chesterton encouragement at the start,

“We are all aware that one of G. K. C.’s first successes was by a series of articles signed ‘The Defendant’ each one being headed ‘In Defense of....’

“I wrote immediately to the clever young ‘Defendant’ telling him of the certainty of his future as a writer. He immediately came ’round to see me. Tall, young, handsome, vivacious. At once we fraternized.

“After that our trends in life became rather diverse. We met occasionally, chiefly at public gatherings in London. At rare intervals we exchanged letters. But G. K. C. never forgot my early prediction of his inevitable rise to fame, or the many things we had in common, in his sense of knight-errantry and mine. In any hall the moment he caught sight of me he would greet me with his radiant smile, or, if free, he would at once come over to me.”

A newspaperman once asked Chesterton what he considered his first most important book,

“‘Napoleon of Notting Hill’ and I almost missed writing it. If I hadn’t written it, I would have stopped writing. I was what you Americans call ‘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 favorite 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.

“Later Chesterton 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.’”

Just before the War the Irish Lit-er-a-ry Society had a debate at which G. K. C. was the principal speaker: the Chairman being Stephen Gwynn, and among the other speakers was Jimmy Glover at that time conductor of the Drury Lane orchestra, whose father published the collected edition of Tom Moore’s melodies. In introducing Chesterton, Stephen Gwynn chipped him on his life of Browning in the “English Men of Letters Series,” and on certain mistakes he had made on it, and wondered why he had undertaken a subject, about which he apparently knew so little. Chesterton, with his usual chuckle and wiping the perspiration from his face on to the lapels of his frock coat, retorted that he had had some doubts on the undertaking, but when he had discovered in the series entitled “English Men of Letters,” a life written by an Irishman (Stephen Gwynn) on another Irishman (Tom Moore) he had no further qualms in the matter. The back-chat continued for a time, and Mr. Boyle recalls, ended by Chesterton suggesting that he should get on with the subject of the evening and then proceed with the important matter before them, which was the weighing of himself against Jimmy Glover who had had the audacity to state that he was heavier than the famous author. After the meeting George Boyle had a few words with G. K. C. and reminded him that he was in St. Paul’s School with him but that he had been in a higher class than himself. With the same good-natured chuckle G. K. C. said this was quite impossible as he had always remained in the very lowest class he could while at that school.

As known from his “Autobiography,” Chesterton wrote a great deal for “The Speaker” under J. L. Hammond’s editorship. The latter came to know him through L. R. Oldershaw (an old school friend of his who shared rooms with Hammond at that time in the Temple.) Oldershaw wrote for “The Speaker” (mainly fiction reviewing) and he brought Chesterton to see Hammond. As we can imagine he made a deep impression on Hammond, and on the other young men who worked for “The Speaker.” The first contribution he made was an article on Ruskin in the form of a review of a life by W. G. Collingwood. This appeared on April 26th, 1900. The first number of “The Speaker” after it had passed into the hands of a group of Liberals to which Hammond belonged, was published at the beginning of October, 1899.

Chesterton wrote much during the Boer War, including some excellent skits on Chamberlain and other topics at the General Election of 1900.

F. W. Hirst has recollections about “The Speaker”:

“As regards G. K. Chesterton, I was partly responsible for publishing his early contributions to ‘The Speaker’ which I helped edit from 1899 (when I first met him) until after the end of the Boer War. My political cooperation with Chesterton (and Belloc) was mainly due to our antipathy to aggressive imperialism which was shared with Mark Twain.”