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+ page-break-after: always; + margin-left: 2%; + margin-right: 2%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + padding: .5em; +} + +.covernote {visibility: hidden; display: none;} +.x-ebookmaker .covernote {visibility: visible; display: block; text-align: justify} + +.gesperrt { + letter-spacing: 0.2em; + margin-right: -0.2em; +} + +span.locked {white-space:nowrap;} +.pagenum br {display: none; visibility: hidden;} +.bbd {border-bottom: .3em double black;} +em {font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;} + + /* ]]> */ </style> +</head> + +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75165 ***</div> + +<div class="transnote section"> +<p class="center larger">Transcriber’s Note</p> + +<p>Larger versions of the illustrations may be seen by right-clicking them +and selecting an option to view them separately, or by double-tapping and/or +stretching them.</p> + +<p class="covernote">New original cover art included with this eBook is granted +to the public domain. It includes an illustration and part of the title +page, both taken from the original book.</p> + +<p><a href="#Transcribers_Notes">Additional notes</a> will be found near the end of this ebook.</p> +<div> </div> +</div> + +<div class="section"> +<figure id="i_1" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 30em;"> + <img src="images/i_001.jpg" width="1280" height="1304" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"> + <p>G. K. C.<br> + Done especially for this book<br> + by<br> + CONRADO W. MASSAGUER + </p> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<div> </div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter section"> +<h1><i class="bbd larger">CHESTERTON</i><br><br> +<span class="smaller"> +<i>As Seen by His</i><br> +<i class="bbd">Contemporaries</i></span></h1> + +<p class="p4 center"> +CYRIL CLEMENS<br> +<span class="smaller">Author of<br> +“MY COUSIN MARK TWAIN,”<br> +Etc.</span></p> + +<p class="p4 center"> +With Introduction by<br> +<span class="large">E. C. BENTLEY</span><br> +Author of<br> +“TRENT’S LAST CASE,”<br> +Etc.</p> + +<p class="p4 center"> +1939<br> +INTERNATIONAL MARK TWAIN SOCIETY<br> +Webster Groves, Missouri +</p> +<div> </div> + +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter section center"> +<p class="p4 vspace"> +Number Eight of the Society’s<br> +Biographical Series</p> + +<p class="p2 larger">WHOLE NUMBER FOURTEEN</p> + +<p class="p2 vspace">Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill,<br> +Chairman Biographical Committee</p> + +<p class="p2 smaller">Copyright<br><br> + +INTERNATIONAL MARK TWAIN SOCIETY<br> + +All rights reserved, including the right to<br> +reproduce this book or parts thereof.</p> + +<p class="p4">Printed in the U. S. A.<br><br> + +by<br><br> +WEBSTER PRINTING & STATIONERY CO.,<br> +<span class="smaller">Webster Groves, Missouri</span> +</p> +<div> </div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter section center"> +<p class="p4 vspace"> +DEDICATED<br> +with his kind permission<br> +to<br> +BENITO MUSSOLINI<br> +a warm admirer of Chesterton<br> +and his work. +</p> +<div> </div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS">TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> +</div> + +<table id="toc"> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a></td> + <td class="tdr">by E. C. Bentley</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Chapters</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_ONE">One</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Boyhood Days</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWO">Two</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Literary Apprenticeship</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THREE">Three</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Meetings with G. K. C.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FOUR">Four</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Some Friends</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FIVE">Five</a></td> + <td class="tdr">On the English Platform</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_SIX">Six</a></td> + <td class="tdr">On the American Platform</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_SEVEN">Seven</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Some Recollections of G. K. C.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_EIGHT">Eight</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Chesterton at New Haven</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_NINE">Nine</a></td> + <td class="tdr">At Notre Dame</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TEN">Ten</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Chesterton and American Authors</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_ELEVEN">Eleven</a></td> + <td class="tdr">The Author Visits Top Meadow</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_TWELVE">Twelve</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Father Brown</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTEEN">Thirteen</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Some Appraisals</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FOURTEEN">Fourteen</a></td> + <td class="tdr">The Poet</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_FIFTEEN">Fifteen</a></td> + <td class="tdr">Chesterton the Man</td> +</tr> +</table> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">i</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION"><i class="gesperrt bold">INTRODUCTION</i><br> + +<span class="subhead1">by E. C. Bentley</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Mr. Cyril Clemens’ book about Gilbert +Chesterton is of an unusual and, to +my taste, a deeply interesting sort. +Some one has remarked that the most +satisfactory biographies were those in +which the letters and journals of the +subject bulked largest, since these, telling +their own tale, showed the man +better than any biographer could do it. +Mr. Clemens has assembled a vast +number of other people’s memories and +appreciations of G. K. C.; and it may +be said that they show the attitude of +his contemporaries towards him better +than any individual critic could describe +it.</p> + +<p>There is a remarkable note of unanimity +in these personal recollections and +judgments. There are differences of +view about the value of G. K. C.’s work; +about the relative importance of this or +that of its many aspects; about his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">ii</span> +matter or style in lecturing; about the +quality of his wit, and many points +more. But as to the nature of the man +as he was there is hardly any difference +at all. He won the hearts of those who +met him because of his manifest goodness +of heart and happiness of temper; +these things were as apparent to all +who came near him as was his physical +being.</p> + +<p>I do not imagine that Mr. Clemens +asked me to write this introduction +with the idea of my setting forth any +opinions about the place of G. K. C. in +our literature. I could offer none of +any critical value, because for me the +man and his work have always been +one, and I have been for most of my +life intensely prejudiced in favour of +the man. Mr. Clemens knew of me, I +suppose, as a boyhood friend of G. K. C.—as +I appear in his Autobiography—and +perhaps as having dedicated a book +of mine to him in terms which told +some fraction of what my feeling towards +him was. I may, then, say now +that I first met him at that time of life +when personal influence counts for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">iii</span> +most, and one’s nature is in the making +for good or evil. His friendship was +the best thing that ever happened to +me, and I have always thanked God +for it.</p> + +<p>Essential goodness, perfect sincerity, +chivalrous generosity, boundless good-temper, +a total absence of self-esteem—these +are lovable traits; and with +them, even in boyhood, were united brilliant +intellectual powers and an enormous +gift of humor. The effect of it +all on an impressionable youth of fifteen +or so can perhaps be guessed. For +years we were as near to each other as +it is possible for friends to be, I think; +but there was no one who knew him +even slightly that did not feel something +of the spiritual attraction that he +exercised—always in utter unconsciousness +of it.</p> + +<p>G. K. C. was too conspicuously unlike +the ordinary boy to be popular, in the +sense of being on the best of terms with +all and sundry. He was without any +desire to excel or take the lead in any +direction. He was unconscious of the +very existence of games. He was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">iv</span> +steeped in literature and art; and he +could, at need, be perfectly happy with +his own thoughts and the fruits of his +imagination. He was, on the other +hand, not unpopular; it was impossible +for even an ill-natured boy, I should +think, to dislike him; but his circle of +friends was small in those early days. +I have written something about this +time of our lives to Mr. Clemens who +has quoted it at the outset of this book. +What I have been saying in this place +is an attempt to express what Gilbert +Chesterton meant to me.</p> + +<p>That circle of friends which was so +small was to become as wide as any +man’s of our time, as the recognition of +his genius increased, and the magic of +his personality gained greater scope. +No death can ever have been mourned +with a deeper sincerity of personal affection +by so many, in his own country +and in others.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">1</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_ONE">CHAPTER ONE<br> + +<span class="subhead">BOYHOOD DAYS</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>One of Chesterton’s earliest and +staunchest friends, Mr. E. C. Bentley, +recalls,</p> + +<p>“Chesterton was in his schooldays +the centre of a small group of boys. +They formed a club under his chairmanship +... the Junior Debating Club, +so called to distinguish it from the +School Union Society, which was the +preserve of the senior boys. He never +did, as he states in his memoirs, any +work at school in the academic sense, +and so never rose to the position of a +star boy. The star boys did not understand +him and classed him as a freak +who was unlikely to do the school any +credit. He was so exceptionally untidy +and absent-minded, even at the age +when the ordinary boy becomes careful +of his appearance, that he did not fit +into the picture at all; and it needed +the insight of Walker, the High Master +of his day, to divine that there was the +stuff of genius in him, and to ordain +(as G. K. tells in his own modest way) +that on the strength of a remarkable +prize poem ... the only ‘regular’ thing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">2</span> +he ever did at school ... he should +‘rank with the eighth form,’ the highest, +to which he would never have attained +on his school performance. Very +few of the boys of whom he saw most +did anything in the field of letters in +after life.” The poet Edward Thomas +was not at St. Paul’s with G. K. C. as +many think. Mr. Robert Eckert, the biographer +of Thomas, states that the +latter was a schoolmate of Cecil, +G. K. C.’s younger brother.</p> + +<p>Mr. Bentley continues: “About +G. K. C.:—His spare time at school—which, +as he makes clear in his Autobiography, +was mostly spent.... I +should say entirely ... in talking, reading, +writing, and drawing pictures. He +had a wonderful decorative handwriting, +and was already a masterly +draughtsman. Apart from walking, of +which he never tired as a boy, he took +no part in any sport. His sight was +always very bad without his glasses. +He was nevertheless strong and healthy +as a boy, rather slim than otherwise; it +was not until the twenties that he began +to put on flesh. It was not ordinary +fatness; I believe some gland trouble +must have been at the root of it.</p> + +<p>“Speaking generally, Chesterton would +talk about everything when at school +that had to do with the realm of ideas. +He never took much interest in things<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span> +that are called practical. Politics in a +broad sense he would talk about, but +for the details of legislation he cared +nothing. He always was, of course, +what we know as a Liberal; in the +large sense he remained a Liberal all +his days.</p> + +<p>“Literature he would discuss by the +hour, especially poetry. He hated the +fashionable decadence of that time ... +say 1890–1900 ... as may be seen +from the dedication to ‘The Man +Who Was Thursday.’ He delighted in +pictorial art, above all in the generous +idealism of G. F. Watts.</p> + +<p>“As to books, G. K. C. never gave any +attention to those which constituted +school-work. He was passionately fond +of Scott and of course, Dickens. He +knew Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne +by heart, and had enjoyed every other +English poet in large degree. He did +not care in those days for lighter reading.</p> + +<p>“There was a school library, but it was +reserved for the use of the highest class +in the school, which G. K. C. never attained. +There was a popular fiction library +also, but he did not, I think, make +use of it. G. K. C. was too amiable to +get into fights, but he would use his +strength occasionally in standing between +a small boy and others who were +badgering him. He honored religion,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span> +but had none whatever of a doctrinal +kind until years later.”</p> + +<p>“Chesterton, as I knew him in 1889,” +writes Mr. E. W. Fordham, another old +schoolmate, “was utterly unlike the +average English schoolboy. He took no +part in games. He showed no particular +brilliance as a scholar, and yet far +from being looked down upon, he was, I +think, always regarded as one who lived +in a different mental world from the +rest of us, a world that many of us admired +from afar but would never expect, +or, it may be, ever hope to enter. +We felt, though we never alluded to, +his mental pre-eminence. Thus when +the Junior Debating Club was formed, +G. K. became Chairman without question +and without a rival. It was obvious +that he alone was fitted for the +post, and most admirably he filled it. +The teas at the houses of the various +members of the Club which preceded +the debates were often tempestuous to +the last degree, but Gilbert, although +he took no share in the more physical +aspects of our revelry, was very far +from playing the part of a wet blanket.</p> + +<p>“His laugh was the loudest and the +most infectious of all. There were +times when the boisterous manifestations +of some of us overflowed into, and +tended to overpower, the Debates. Then, +with the utmost good temper, G. K.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span> +would assert himself, and order would +be restored.</p> + +<p>“I remember once, after I myself had +been particularly noisy and troublesome, +Gilbert explained to me that the +throwing of buns and slices of cake did +not really help in the production of +good debates, and he hinted, very kindly +and seriously, that some restraining +action might have to be taken if the +rioting did not diminish. I hope, indeed, +I believe, I took the hint. This +occasion was thereafter referred to as +the day ‘when the Chairman spoke seriously +to Mr. F.’</p> + +<p>“G. K. was the mainspring of the +Junior Debating Club. He was valiantly +supported by Oldershaw, Bentley, +and others, but without him neither the +Club itself, nor that strange little magazine, +‘The Debater’ could have flourished +as each of them did. Like boy, +like man. That which he believed in +he put his whole heart into, and never +spared himself in furthering its interests. +He gave the Junior Debating +Club his eager and inspiring support +for the two very good reasons, that it +gave great enjoyment to himself and a +few of his friends, and that he thought +it a widening and humanizing influence—completely +outside the range of ordinary +school affairs. The Chairman +loved the Junior Debating Club, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span> +most certainly the J. D. C. loved the +Chairman.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Fordham pins further recollections +around the “Autobiography”:</p> + +<p>“I am a prejudiced person. Fifty +years of friendship and admiration are +an insuperable bar to impartiality.</p> + +<p>“G. K. C. and I were at school together: +we were fellow members of the +Junior Debating Club of which he was +Chairman. We both contributed to our +Club’s magazine, ‘The Debater.’ I +wrote rubbish; he wrote articles and +verses of a very different quality. In +this book he speaks almost with contempt +of his ‘juvenilia.’ They were in +fact such as very few boys of his age +could have produced. Even then, at the +age of fifteen or sixteen, he had a +sense of style and a command of language +which the High Master of St. +Paul’s and other authorities did not fail +to recognize. ‘The Dragon,’ one article +begins, ‘the Dragon is the most +cosmopolitan of impossibilities.’</p> + +<p>“As I say, I admired Gilbert Chesterton +throughout his life, and after reading +his ‘Autobiography’ I admire him +still more. My attitude is rather that of +a hero-worshipper than a critic, but I +believe that no impartial critic could +read this book and fail to see that here +was a genius, and better, a brave and +an honest man, a man who loved life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span> +and loved his friends, loved laughter +and hated oppression; in short a very +great man. Despite all the modesty +with which it is written, the book makes +all these things clear. From beginning +to end it is a magnificent <em lang="la">apologia pro +vita sua</em>; nevertheless I hope it will not +be the sole record of his life. There are +countless things that he could not and +would not tell of himself but that should +not be forgotten. ‘Belloc,’ he writes, +‘still awaits a Boswell.’ It is equally +true that Chesterton awaits one. Is it +legitimate to hope that his Boswell may +be Belloc? There is a grand harvest to +be gathered by his Boswell, whoever +that may prove to be. G. K. C. was a +brilliant talker. He banished dullness +from whatever company he was in. No +argument arose but he would drive +home his point by some arresting illustration. +We were arguing once as to +whether some policy or other were good +or bad. ‘The word ‘good,’ said G. K., +‘has many meanings. For example, if +a man were to shoot his grandmother +at a range of 500 yards I should call him +a good shot, but not necessarily a good +man.’</p> + +<p>“No one could stump him by an unexpected +question. He took part in a +debate many years ago at, I think, the +Lyceum Club, and in the course of his +speech he discussed, as did other speakers,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span> +various racial characteristics. After +the debate I was walking round with +him when an elderly lady whom he did +not know came up and said with something +of a simper, ‘Mr. Chesterton, I +wonder if you could tell what race I +belong to?’ With a characteristic adjustment +of his glasses he replied at +once, ‘I should certainly say, Madam, +one of the conquering races.’</p> + +<p>“Only a year or two ago he watched +with tolerant, and indeed highly vocal +amusement, (his was both the strangest +and the jolliest laugh man ever had) a +representation of himself in some private +theatricals. When they were over +he said to the daughter of the player +who had impersonated him—a sturdy +figure, it is true, but less generously +planned than the original—‘Do you +know I believe your father <b>is</b> Gilbert +Chesterton and I am only a padded impostor.’</p> + +<p>“Reading this book has recalled these +trifles to my mind just as it has recalled +the figure of the boy Chesterton as I +first knew him in the early nineties. I +can see him now, 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span> +what he had seen. The fascination +of this book is, in great part, +due to the fact that he retained these +powers of observation and memory +throughout his life, and that he has applied +them to himself as rigorously and +as vividly as to his fellows.</p> + +<p>“‘I should thank God for my creation,’ +said Gilbert’s grandfather, ‘if I +knew I was a lost soul.’ Gilbert would +have done the same. ‘The primary problem +for me,’ he writes, ‘was the problem +of how men could be made to realize +the wonder and splendour of being +alive,’ and it is because he himself did +realize it that he is able to say of his +later years, ‘I have grown old without +being bored. Existence is still a strange +thing to me, and as a stranger I give +it welcome.’</p> + +<p>“Chesterton begins this book with a +joke about his baptism. It is characteristic +of the man. He loved laughter as +much as he hated hypocrisy. ‘I have +never understood,’ he says, ‘why a +solid argument is any less solid because +you make the illustrations as entertaining +as you can.’ It is because, in this +autobiography the philosophy is spiced +with fun, and the fun sometimes spiced +with philosophy, that so true a picture +of the man emerges from the book. +When he looks at himself he sees not +only an intensely interesting being but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span> +also an intensely amusing one. He +speaks of his school days as the period +during which ‘I was being instructed +by somebody I did not know, about +something I did not want to know.’ He +tells how on his wedding day he stopped +to buy a glass of milk at some haunt of +his infancy, and again to buy a revolver +and cartridges ‘with a general notion +of protecting my bride from the pirates +doubtless infesting the Norfolk Broads.’</p> + +<p>“You will find the same amusement he +found if you read and re-read his chapter +on ‘Friendship and Foolery,’ his story +of the sudden invasion of Henry James’ +house at Rye by Mr. Belloc and another, +unshaven and dishevelled but vociferous +and irrepressible, his account of the +birthday dinner to Mr. Belloc at which +there were to be no speeches, and at +which everybody present spoke, and his +story of the aged negro porter in America +with a face like a walnut whom, +he says, ‘I discouraged from brushing +my hat, and who rebuked me saying, +‘Ho, young man, yo’s losing ye dignity +before yo times. Yo’s got to look nice +for the girls.’</p> + +<p>“The sketches of his friends and those +of the many public men with whom he +came in contact are of extraordinary +interest. In a few lines he paints sharp +and unforgettable portraits not only of +his intimate friends but of men and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span> +women with whom he had perhaps but +one short conversation. It is thus he +tells of his meeting with King George V +at the house of the late Lord Burnham. +He sums up his impression of ‘about as +genuine a person as I ever met’ in these +words—‘If it should ever happen that +I hear before I die among new generations +who never saw George the Fifth +that he is being praised either as a +strong silent man, or depreciated as a +stupid and empty man, I shall know +that history has got the whole portrait +wrong.’</p> + +<p>“There are brilliant little sketches of +George Wyndham, Charles Masterman +and Cunninghame Graham, among many +others; of each one it is the true thing +and the generous thing that he sets +down. No less arresting are the little +cameos of wholly unknown men and +women who said or did something that +left an impression on his receptive and +retentive mind. For example there was +the ‘huge healthy simple-faced man of +the plastering profession’ who at a +Penny Reading, being unable to endure +further recitations about to be provided +by a gentleman who had already +obliged with ‘The Charge of the Light +Brigade’ and ‘The May Queen,’ ‘arose +slowly in the middle of the room like +some vast Leviathan arising from the +ocean and observed, ‘Well, I’ve just ’ad<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span> +about enough of this. <em>Good</em> evening, +Mr. Ash. <em>Good</em> evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ +and shouldered his way out of +the Progressive Hall with an unaffected +air of complete amiability and profound +relief.’</p> + +<p>“Memorable as are all the records of +his outer life, the insight that he gives +us into his mental and spiritual development +is of deeper significance. It would +be impossible, for me at least, to summarize +the subjective side of this autobiography. +To be understood, even to +be partly understood, it must be read +in its entirety. Many readers will not +be able to accept the conclusions to +which Chesterton found himself inevitably +driven, but none can fail to see +that his steadfast faith, his sure hope, +and his abounding charity were the outcome +of no slipshod or haphazard +thought, but of mental processes to +which he gave the whole of his clear +and original mind, and that in his life-long +struggle towards the light which +he felt assured he had ultimately found +he was as completely honest with himself +as he always was in his dealings +with his fellow men.</p> + +<p>“This is a noble record of a noble +life.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWO">CHAPTER TWO<br> + +<span class="subhead">LITERARY APPRENTICESHIP</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>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,</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>Chesterton’s marriage was the beginning +of thirty-five years of happiness +with a wife who was ideally congenial.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">A</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">A</a> Frances Chesterton died December 12, 1938.</p> + +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Stephen Gwynn recalls the first book +written for Macmillan.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span> +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.”</p> + +<p>J. Lewis May writes about another +early book,</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span></p> + +<p>William Platt gave Chesterton encouragement +at the start,</p> + +<p>“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....’</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>A newspaperman once asked Chesterton +what he considered his first most +important book,</p> + +<p>“‘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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span> +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.</p> + +<p>“‘We will send it to you on Monday.’</p> + +<p>“‘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.</p> + +<p>“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.’”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span> +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.</p> + +<p>Chesterton wrote much during the +Boer War, including some excellent +skits on Chamberlain and other topics +at the General Election of 1900.</p> + +<p>F. W. Hirst has recollections about +“The Speaker”:</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THREE">CHAPTER THREE<br> + +<span class="subhead">MEETINGS WITH G. K. C.</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Miss Alice Henry of Melbourne, +Australia, has kindly pointed out to +the author that the following is something +which has never had any but +ephemeral publication in a newspaper, +and yet it is surely one of the most +striking messages he ever uttered. +Chesterton was the one British writer, +utterly unknown before, who built up a +great reputation during the South +African War, and it was gained, not +through nationalistic support, but +through determined and persistent opposition +to the British policy. After the +war ended, he ran a column in the +“London Daily News.” A correspondent +had asked him for a definition of +his anti-war attitude. This was his +reply,</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>The reader will recall that in his +“Autobiography” Chesterton states that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span> +it was in Fleet Street that he first met +Sir Philip Gibbs “who carried a curious +air of being the right man in the wrong +place.”</p> + +<p>However, in a letter to the author, +Sir Philip disagrees with this,</p> + +<p>“As regards G. K. C., he was a good +friend of mine and has placed me on +record in his ‘Autobiography’ as ‘the +right man in the wrong place’—though +as a matter of fact I claim to have been +the right man in the right place—which +was Fleet Street, where he and +I met many times as writers for the +Press. His books belong to my mental +library and he will live in English literature +as one of our great essayists, +and above all as a good poet.”</p> + +<p>Sir Oliver Lodge recalls:</p> + +<p>“G. K. C. at one time lived at the +set of flats in Artillery Mansions where +I had one of them, and I used to meet +him outside sometimes waiting for a +cab in the street and had a few words +with him. I also met him at the Synthetic +Society dinners, and once I impounded +a piece of blotting-paper on +which he had made a lot of characteristic +scribbles (clever sketches of +faces) absentmindedly during a discussion +at one of these dinners.”</p> + +<p>Robert Blatchford, the well known +editor of “The Clarion” and author of +“Merrie England,” who was born away<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span> +back in 1851, tells of a long controversy +he had with Chesterton in the +press some thirty years ago about determinism: +“Some years later he wrote +in some paper, I forgot which, and paid +me the finest compliment I ever received. +He said,</p> + +<p>“‘Very few intellectual minds have +left such a mark on our time: have cut +so deep or remained so clean. His case +for Socialism, so far as it goes, is so +clear and simple that any one would +understand it when it was put properly: +his genius was that he could put it properly. +His triumphs were triumphs of +strong style, active pathos, and picturesque +metaphor: his very lucidity +was a generous sympathy with simple +minds. For the rest he had triumphed +with being honest and by not being +afraid.’</p> + +<p>“Now in paying me that compliment +he complimented himself, for only a +very warm-hearted and generous man +could have treated an opponent with +such gallantry and kindness. But you +cannot publish that tribute without giving +the impression that I am fishing +for a cheap advertisement.</p> + +<p>“Then as to his books. I liked what +he wrote about Dickens and some of his +poetry, and I recognize his brilliance: +but a good deal of his work I found<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span> +rather tiresome, and you cannot publish +such an opinion.</p> + +<p>“We met several times and got on +quite pleasantly together.”</p> + +<p>W. W. Jacobs, the author of “Many +Cargoes,” recollects,</p> + +<p>“I cannot recall my first meeting +with Chesterton: it was so very long +ago. But I do remember an occasion +when he sat next to me at dinner and +said that he had rheumatism so badly +that he did not know how he would be +able to stand up for his speech. A difficulty +which he solved by keeping my +right shoulder in a strong hand and +bearing down upon it. It was a good +speech, but it seemed to be the longest +I had ever listened to.”</p> + +<p>“I regret that I never met G. K. C. +personally,” laments James Hilton, “but +I did when quite a small boy send him +a poem I had written (a drinking song +as a matter of fact), modeled after his +own style, and received a charming letter +from his wife, I think, saying that +he had been much interested and ‘believed +that after the war there would +be a great recrudescence of drinking +songs.’ This was my first letter from +even the wife of a celebrity and I was +very proud of it. As a matter of fact, +in my entire life I have only written +anything you could call fan letters to +two authors, Chesterton on this one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span> +occasion, and again later to Galsworthy.</p> + +<p>“I wish I could give you more interesting +reminiscences of Chesterton, +whose work I admire very much, but +we were of different generations and it +happened that we never met, though +we had many mutual friends. I think +my favorite book of his is ‘The Man +Who Was Thursday,’ which I remember +reading during my school days. I am +very pleased to hear from you that he +expressed admiration for ‘Goodbye Mr. +Chips.’ I did not know of this and it is +a source of deep gratification to me.”</p> + +<p>Christopher Hollis first met G. K. C. +in company with one of Belloc’s sons:</p> + +<p>“The first time that I met Mr. Chesterton +was, when as an undergraduate +at Oxford, I was in the company of +Hilary Belloc, the son of Mr. Belloc, to +see the Association Football Cup Final—the +culminating event of the English +football season—at Wembley. We were +traveling by motor bicycle from Oxford +to Wembley and, passing through Beaconsfield +in the middle of the morning, +Hilary Belloc took me to pay a call on +Mr. Chesterton, whom we found walking +in the garden with his wife.”</p> + +<p>And Hilaire Belloc himself:</p> + +<p>“I met Mr. Chesterton first when I +was thirty, and he, I think, twenty-six. +That was at the end of the year 1900.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span> +I had already written and spoken for +some years on what later became known +as ‘Distributism.’ I do not think that +he had by that time written or spoken +upon public affairs.”</p> + +<p>Gilbert Frankau is “afraid that I +only met G. K. Chesterton once. This +was at a debate. He took the chair +and was, I remember, a little sarcastic +about my own contribution. But the +sarcasm was so beautifully done that it +became almost a compliment. He +really had a rare charm of manner. And +he really was a character. Characters +being only too rare in this modern +world where all tend to become stereotyped. +I was, of course, a Father +Brown fan. But which really made the +deepest impression on my young mind +was Chesterton’s poetry. It had, for +me, the supreme virtue of vigor.”</p> + +<p>The critic Coulson Kernahan admired +Chesterton hugely:</p> + +<p>“The first time I met him was when +he was lunching with dear old Robert +Barr at the Savage Club. Barr came +over to my table to say ‘Chesterton is +my guest and I told him who you were.’ +He said ‘Kernahan and I are two of +the rather uncommon authors, today, +who write of serious and religious subjects. +I’d like to meet him.’ ‘So come +over to my table, Kernahan, and meet +him.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span></p> + +<p>“I did. At about two o’clock Barr +had to leave to keep an editorial engagement, +and I said to G. K. C. ‘I am +a member. Won’t you stay on as my +guest now your host is going?’ He +did. He stayed till six o’clock, talking +brilliantly all the time (with an interlude +for tea—’till then he had enjoyed +the club’s excellent wine), and never +once repeated himself. Then we met +again at the Centenary Celebration of +George MacDonald. Ramsay MacDonald +was President of the Centenary +Memorial, with Chesterton and myself +as Vice-Presidents, and G. K. C. was +one of the speakers, and very happy +and interesting in what he said.</p> + +<p>“My last meeting with him was in +Hastings. My wife and I were passing +the Queen’s Hotel on the front, and I +heard myself hailed by name. It was +G. K. C. sitting outside in the sun at a +table, with a bottle of wine before him, +and he invited us to come and share it, +and as many more bottles as we felt inclined +for. Once again, he talked in +that brilliant paradoxical and ‘intriguing’ +way of his and for hours on at a +time. My wife and I came away with +his musical, but rather high voice, still +in our ears, and with new and many +beautiful, but sometimes perplexing +thoughts, born of what that man of +genius had said, in our minds.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span></p> + +<p>“That, alas, is all I can tell you of +G. K. C. But if you can get sight of +my book ‘Celebrities’ which I think +Dutton published in America, you will +find G. K. C. figuring there as Judge, +(Bernard Shaw as Foreman and myself +as one of the Jury), at the much discussed +Edwin Drood trial held in the +June before the war by the Dickens Fellowship +of which I was, and still am, +a Vice-President. Chesterton, as I say +in my book, took the part of Judge seriously +and finely, for we wished to come +to some discovery about Edwin Drood. +But Bernard Shaw ‘guyed’ the show, +and turned a serious inquiry into a +farce.”</p> + +<p>Eric Gill, the well known sculptor, +recalls,</p> + +<p>“Apart from seeing Chesterton many +times at meetings I don’t think I actually +met him in a personal way until +about 1925 on the occasion of the +founding of ‘G. K.’s Weekly,’ when I +stayed the night at his house and we +discussed the policy of his paper, especially +with reference to industrialism +and art. After we came to live here +(which is only a few miles from Beaconsfield) +we saw him more often.”</p> + +<p>A party of members of St. George’s +Rambling Society, devoted to historical +and archaeological research were visiting +Beaconsfield on a pleasant afternoon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span> +in the September of 1935. They +called upon the author at his home, +“Top Meadow.” Mrs. Chesterton received +them with much courtesy, and +while they were talking to her, he came +into the Lounge Hall of his house, which +was fitted up in the Tudor style, with +large fire-place, around which everyone +grouped. They rose when he entered, +and he soon engaged all in conversation. +He was in excellent form. His first +question, “What really did you come +here to see?” was promptly answered +by one of the members, Fred H. Postans, +“We came to see Mr. Chesterton.” +He then told an amusing anecdote +against himself. He had been much +annoyed by the noise made by the +local film studios quite close to his +home, and after sending several ineffectual +letters of protest, eventually +asked his secretary to call upon the +manager of the studios. Upon doing so, +that lady made a strong protest saying +emphatically, “The position is becoming +impossible.... Mr. Chesterton can’t +write,” to which the manager replied, +“We were well aware of that.” He +relished the telling of this story immensely. +He went on to give some +local details about Beaconsfield. It was +asked him whether he ever intended to +write a Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, +and he said he thought that had already<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span> +been done very well by Boswell. +Postans pointed out that there was a +little too much Boswell in that, in his +opinion. He seemed to agree and said +that he greatly admired the Doctor and +it was not entirely impossible that he +might undertake to write his life.</p> + +<p>“My only meeting with Chesterton,” +writes Hugh Kingsmill, “was in the autumn +of 1912, when I went to Beaconsfield +to interview him for ‘Hearth and +Home,’ which was being edited by +Frank Harris. One of his arms was in a +sling, and he found great difficulty in +pouring out drink. To my surprise he +was not quaffing ale but sipping a +liqueur. He insisted however in pouring +the drinks for both of us, out of +courtesy. He seemed to me very absent-minded +and gentle, and I formed an +extremely pleasant impression of him. +At the same time he did not strike me +as at all alive to ordinary existence. +His praise of the man in the street and +of common life has always seemed to me +a defense thrown up against his own +temperament. I think he was naturally +an artist and poet of the self-absorbed, +rather limited kind, and that he was +afraid of this tendency, and fled to +democracy, Dickens and eventually the +Roman Church, in order not to lapse +into pure aestheticism. As far as I +know, and I have met many of them,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span> +his friends were drawn from rather +cranky people, not from normal types, +and this illustrates the division between +his opinions and his temperament. He +was not a good judge of individuals, in +my opinion. Nothing could be further +from the truth than his picture of +Dickens as a roistering lover of the +poor. On the other hand, his intelligence +was very acute in the destructive +criticism of the fads and poses against +which he was always contending. If +he did not understand ordinary life, he +certainly understood the aesthetes, +faddists and millenarians of the twenty +years before the war, and made brilliant +game of them in ‘Heretics.’ Since +the war, his work seems to me to have +fallen off greatly. I have seen him +several times, wandering about the +streets or in Marylebone station, and +was touched by his melancholy look. I +think life depressed him. In his youth +he praised the poor man’s literature of +thrillers and shockers. In his later life +he denounced the cinema. What the +distinction, at any rate in mind, between +printed nonsense and visible nonsense +is, he never explained. I attribute this +change of fact that as he grew older, +he could not summon up enough energy +to continue his celebration of the +man in the street, and was more concerned +with finding reasons for his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span> +faith in his last refuge from a perplexing +world, the Roman Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>“But he did a valuable work in destructive +criticism, and he was a lovable +figure. I cannot think of any other +well-known writer of the day in England +whom one would not sooner spare +from the scene than G. K. 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 been echoed that +morning all over England.”</p> + +<p>Philip Guedalla recollects, “I first +saw Gilbert Chesterton on the occasion +of a visit of his to Oxford when I was +an undergraduate ’round about 1909 +or 1910. It was a dark vision of the +inside of a four-wheeled cab almost entirely +filled with Chesterton. From its +interior an arm and hand emerged and +proceeded to struggle wildly with the +outside handle of the vehicle. There +was a College debate the same evening +of which Chesterton was the opener; +and I was offered up to him as the only +undergraduate with insufficient impudence +to attempt this suicidal controversy. +He came back with me to my +room in College and performed two acts +which would have struck him as sacramentally +Chestertonian. First he sat +through my only arm chair to its destruction;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span> +then he finished all my +whisky. On the next morning I piously +presented for signature by its author a +copy of ‘Orthodoxy’ and was profoundly +shocked when he inscribed it ‘BOSH +BY G. K. CHESTERTON.’”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I should be delighted to go on +record as one of the admirers of G. K. +Chesterton,” writes Clements Ripley. +“He has always been an enthusiasm of +mine. The first book of his I ever read +was ‘The Man Who Was Thursday.’ I +couldn’t have been more than fourteen +when I picked this up and of course a +great deal of the symbolism and the +metaphysical quality of the book escaped +me at that age. I read it for +the story and it was a very fast moving +and fascinating story. I think even +then I appreciated the brilliancy of +Chesterton’s paradoxical style, although +at that time I certainly wouldn’t have +called it that.”</p> + +<p>“It seems hardly possible,” ponders +Walter de la Mare, “that a human being +with the least claim to a vestige of +intelligence should have forgotten his +first meeting with G. K. C. I am, however, +that unfortunate kind of man, and +cannot even remember my first observations +on entering this (at least) +exceptionally interesting world. I recall +most vividly, of course, many meetings +and these memories are not in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span> +slightest degree composite ones—even +if memories ever are composite. And +so vividly, indeed, that it all but +amounts to an hallucination—as if we +were meeting again!</p> + +<p>“Like how many, many friends of his, +I have the greatest affection for, and +admiration of, his work—and how much +his work was he himself, though not, +of course, all himself! That, I suppose, +can never be.”</p> + +<p>“There is in London a distinguished +Society,” declares Marie Belloc Lowndes, +“called The Wiseman Dining Society. +As its name implies, it is a Catholic +Society, but no distinction is made with +regard to the religion of the speakers. +A great number of outstanding men +and women have delivered addresses on +every kind of subject of interest to an +educated man and woman. The net +thrown has been large, among those +who have spoken being people as different +as Lord Cecil (of the League of +Nations), Algernon Blackwood, the famous +novelist, Liddell Hart, the most +noted military critic in the English-speaking +world, and Bernard Pares, the +great authority on Russia. Of them +all, and the Society has been in existence +now for something like ten years—by +far the most interesting, and the +most beautifully delivered address, was +that of G. K. C. on Joan of Arc. This<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span> +was the more remarkable, as to the +best of my belief, Chesterton was not +celebrated in this country as a speaker. +I myself never heard him speak in +public, but on that one occasion. No +reporters can be admitted to these dinners +because a very free discussion follows +every paper read, so I fear no record +of the speech exists.”</p> + +<p>Father Owen F. Dudley records, “I +remember still quite vividly my first +meeting with Mr. Chesterton and having +tea with him in his house in Beaconsfield, +Bucks. He was tremendously +jovial over H. G. Wells, whom we discussed, +and whom he considered a +thinker who always stopped thinking. +As I watched him, I realized that all +the jokes that were bubbling out of him, +as well as the epigrams, would in all +probability appear in some article or +book. Mrs. Chesterton and the Secretary +were at tea and it struck me as +one of the cheeriest households I had +ever been in.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FOUR">CHAPTER FOUR<br> + +<span class="subhead">SOME FRIENDS</span></h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentq">“There’s nothing worth the wear of living</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Save laughter and the love of friends.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>No one believed more in these words +of his friend Hilaire Belloc than Chesterton +himself. He delighted in thousands +of steadfast friends and acquaintances, +and they rejoiced in his +inimitable wisdom and good fellowship.</p> + +<p>The novelist, Isabel C. Clark, first met +him in 1929 when he and his wife +lunched with her at Piazza Grazioli: “I +cannot remember that he said anything +at all amusing or arresting, resembling +in this the late Lytton Strachey and +Kenneth Graham so that I imagine few +authors are as loquacious as myself. +But then I am not a man of genius!</p> + +<p>“When I saw him he was fifty-five +years of age but looked at least ten +years more, probably on account of his +enormous bulk about which he was fond<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span> +of joking; indeed I believe he was +proud of resembling Dr. Johnson in this +respect.</p> + +<p>“I heard him lecture on Henry VIII +here at the Convent of the Holy Child +when he said that Henry had no intention +of Protestantizing the Church in +England but thought he could have a +Catholic Church with himself at the +head of it, and that he was astonished +to discover how rapidly it disintegrated +into many sects. I remember his saying +on this occasion: ‘Many people are +prejudiced against Henry VIII because +he was a Large Fat Man,’ and then +going off into a chuckle of laughter, +swelling himself out to an enormous +size as he spoke. His wife told me he +always rather spoilt his own jokes by +laughing at them before he uttered +them.”</p> + +<p>Ralph Adams Cram met him first in +London a good many years ago: “Father +Wagget 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 Wagget. 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span> +Father Wagget, 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 Wagget, thin, crop-headed +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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“He and Father Wagget 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span> +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.”</p> + +<p>“Ten or fifteen years ago,” recollects +Stephen Gwynn, whom we have already +quoted, “Barrie had taken a big house +for August, and there was a large party, +including several schoolboys and the +Chestertons. It was decided to play +the game of clues, and in the evening +a dozen or more of us were each given +bits of paper containing some mystification +in verse. At the end all the +clues led us to a most amusing charcoal +portrait of Lord Beaverbrook. +Everybody went to bed, and I was settling +down to a quiet chat with G. K. C. +over whiskey and soda when three +schoolboys filed past. ‘Thank you very +much,’ they said to him, ‘for giving us +an amusing evening.’</p> + +<p>“Next morning I said to the spokesman’s +mother, ‘Your youngster said his +piece very well.’ But she knew nothing +about it. It had been the schoolboy’s +own idea. Admittedly the Chestertons +were the best guests in that gathering +of a long and very mixed list.</p> + +<p>“I remember how Lord David Cecil +when still a boy, sitting up there one +night and expounding to us two elders<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span> +the point of view of the younger generation. +Not only the easiest man in +the world to talk with, but also a very +good listener.”</p> + +<p>Lucille Borden, the novelist, found +G. K.’s personality was even more impressive +than the things he put to +paper: “I remember once on meeting +him I asked him what he thought of a +certain small English boy (who calls us +Aunt-Uncle though we are no relation) +who used to plot out London in sections, +selecting the men of prominence in +those sections, then call on them. This +between the ages of nine and thirteen. +He was very small and fragile, and by +reason of this, all flunkies and secretaries +let him pass. So he not only +gained access to the great man but +used to go and sit with him, looking for +all the world like Tiny Tim.</p> + +<p>“‘Indeed I remember that boy—he +was an extraordinary chap. He will go +far but he needs a guiding hand.’ ... +This after the boy had grown. The +thing that was so remarkable was, that +Terence had only his inquisitive personality +to recommend him. He has +gone far but without the guiding hand, +and drifted into the set pseudo-literati, +sponsored by the Sitwells. However, at +the age of eighteen or nineteen he married—a +very clever young woman over +whom the London newspapers fought<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span> +and whom the “Daily Mail” finally acquired—as +one of their top-notch women. +This gives Terry leisure to write +terrible but correct poetry—and to +carry on a most extraordinary and original +literary career.</p> + +<p>“Back to ‘nos moutons’—we’ve seen +Gilbert Chesterton start a broadcast-speech +to a club on whose Board I am—for +which he was allowed forty minutes: +He rose from the speakers’ table—put +his watch in front of him—began +one of the most stirring prose poems to +which we all ever listened—made his +introduction—points in phrases as colorful +as a rainbow—approached his conclusion—made +his logical deductions +and finished on the fortieth minute. It +was such a tour de force as was rarely +done in the earliest days of radio.”</p> + +<p>“When I was introduced to Chesterton,” +writes Adolphe de Castro, “I was +a bit abashed. He was so formidable +and such a mighty eater. But his conversation +and his wit were delightful. +I have my doubts if any one ever had +the temerity to ask Mr. Chesterton +why he had embraced Catholicism. I +asked him. Americans in those days +were forgiven much, and a friend of the +late Ambrose Bierce was a particularly +privileged character. Chesterton twirled +the end of his scraggly moustache for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span> +some time, then he said: ‘Because of its +primitivity.’</p> + +<p>“‘Then you ought to have become a +Jew,’ I said. ‘Judaism has greater +primitivity.’</p> + +<p>“To which he rejoined: ‘It has too +much primitivity and is not sufficiently +elastic for adaptability.’</p> + +<p>“‘You hold with Heine that Judaism +is not a religion but a misfortune?’ I +asked.</p> + +<p>“‘Heine was a great poet,’ returned +Chesterton. ‘And do you recall what +John Locke said, ‘A merchant lies for +gain; a poet lies for pleasure.’ Do you +happen to write poetry?’</p> + +<p>“I put my hand in my pocket and +pulled out a sheaf of papers, extracted +one and gave it to him. He read it. +‘I like this,’ he said.</p> + +<p>“It was a quasi sonnet entitled ‘The +Jewish Poet.’”</p> + +<p>“At one time I doubted the existence +of G. K. C.,” declares Holbrook Jackson. +“I listened to the stories of him as one +listens to the yarns of men who have +been in the ends of the earth. And +even now, after I have looked upon him +with my own eyes, I have to nudge +myself to realize his probability. He +has the reality of one of those dragons +or fairies in which he has such invincible +faith. I first beheld him on a Yorkshire +moor far from his natural element,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span> +which is in London. He was in +the locality on a holiday, and I had gone +over to verify his existence just as one +might go to the Arctic regions to verify +the existence of the North Pole or the +Northwest Passage.</p> + +<p>“He was staying at the house of a +Bradford merchant adjoining the moor, +and I was to meet him there. It was +April and raining. I trudged through +the damp furze and heather up to the +house only to find that the object of +my pilgrimage had disappeared without +leaving a trace behind him. No alarm +was felt, as that was one of his habits. +Sometimes he would go down to the +railway station, and taking a ticket to +any place that had a name which appealed +to him, vanish into the unknown, +making his way home on foot or wheel +as fancy or circumstances directed. On +this occasion, however, nothing so serious +had happened. Therefore I adjourned +with the lady of the house and +Mrs. Chesterton to an upper hall, where +a noble latticed window commanded a +wide vista of the moor. I peered into +the wild, half hoping that I should first +behold the great form of Gilbert Chesterton +looming over the bare brow of +the wold, silhouetted against the grey +sky like the symbol of a large new faith.</p> + +<p>“His coming was not melodramatic; +it was, on the contrary, quite simple,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span> +quite idyllic, and quite characteristic. +In fact, he did not come at all, rather +was it that our eyes, and later our +herald, went to him. For quite close to +the house we espied him, hatless and +negligently clad in a Norfolk suit of +homespun, leaning in the rain against a +budding tree, absorbed in the pages of +a little red book.</p> + +<p>“This was a most fitting vision. It +suited admirably his unaffected, careless, +and altogether childlike genius. He +came into the house shortly afterwards +and consumed tea and cake like any +mortal and talked the talk of Olympus +with the abandonment and irresistibility +of a child. I found his largeness +wonderfully proportionate, even, as is +so rarely the case with massive men, +to his head. This is amply in keeping +with the rest of his person. He wears +a tangled mass of light brown hair prematurely +streaked with grey, and a +slight moustache. His grey-blue eyes +laugh happily as his full lips unload +themselves of a constant flow of self-amused +and piquant words. Like Dr. +Johnson whom he resembles so much in +form, he is a great talker. But while +I looked at him I was not reminded of +the lexicographer, but of Balzac. And +as his monologue rolled on and we +laughed and wondered, I found myself +carried away to a studio in France,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span> +where the head of Chesterton became +one with the head of Rodin’s conception +of France’s greatest literary genius.</p> + +<p>“Since my first meeting I have seen +G. K. C. many times. I have seen him +standing upon platforms defending the +people’s pleasures against the inroads +of Puritanism. I have seen him addressing +men from a pulpit, and on one +memorable occasion at Clifford’s Inn +Hall I saw him defending the probability +of the liquefication of the blood of +St. Januarius in the teeth of a pyrotechnic +heckling from Bernard Shaw. +Again I have seen his vast person dominating +the staring throng in Fleet +Street like a superman; and I have seen +the traffic of Ludgate Circus held up +for him, as he strolled by in cloak and +sombrero like a brigand of Adelphi +drama or a Spanish hidalgo by Velasquez, +oblivious alike of critical bus-driver +and wonder-struck multitude.</p> + +<p>“But best it is to see him in his +favorite habitat of Bohemian Soho. +There in certain obscure yet excellent +French restaurants with Hilaire Belloc +and other writers and talkers, he may +be seen, sitting behind a tall tankard +of lager or a flagon of Chianti, eternally +unravelling the mysterious tangle of +living ideas; now rising mountainously +on his feet to overshadow the company +with weighty argument, anon brandishing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span> +a wine bottle as he insists upon defending +some controversial point until +‘we break the furniture’; and always +chuckling at his own wit and the sallies +of others, as he fights the battle of +ideas with indefatigable and unconquerable +good-humour.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FIVE">CHAPTER FIVE<br> + +<span class="subhead">ON THE ENGLISH PLATFORM</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>In the course of his life, Chesterton +accomplished much lecturing and public +speaking as did most of the English +writers of his generation such as Shaw, +Wells, and to a lesser extent Galsworthy +and Bennett. Like many Englishmen +his success as a speaker was +variable and subject to his health and +feelings even more than most men. Yet +no matter how indifferently Chesterton +might have done in the formal part of +his address, he always more than redeemed +himself in the question-and-answer +period that followed. The speed +with which he would answer questions +was simply incredible. As one listened +to him answering one question after +another usually of so unrelated a nature, +one marvelled at ability and nimbleness +so extraordinary.</p> + +<p>The distinguished author R. Ellis +Roberts, heard a lecture at Oxford:</p> + +<p>“I do not, alas! remember what Mr. +Chesterton lectured to us about. I remember +the manner of his lecture. It +seemed to be written on a hundred written<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span> +pieces of variously shaped paper, +written in ink and pencils (of all colors +and in chalk). All the papers were in +a splendid and startling disorder, and +I remember being at first just a little +disappointed. Then the papers were +abandoned, and G. K. C. talked, and we +got more and more interested and +pleased. I remember a passage about +cathedrals and railway stations which +aroused opposition; and with opposition +and question the real Chesterton +broke loose. He will, I am sure, if he +reads this in the next world, forgive +me for saying that to myself I whispered +‘Elephant’. All day the image +had been present with me of something +vast and weighty, incredibly simple, +incalculably wise, and unquestionably +kindly. Foolishly I mourned a certain +sluggishness. Then as I say, came opposition; +and suddenly—trunk up, roaring, +speeding, faster and faster—the +wisest of us was pursuing his trifling +opponents through quickset hedge and +over ploughed fields of argument. How +he raced! I know, because of all the +opposition none ran faster than I!”</p> + +<p>“My own acquaintance with Chesterton,” +Father Francis J. Yealy, S. J., +writes “has been gained from his books +and from one of his lectures delivered +in Cambridge, England, in 1925. Just +outside the town of Cambridge is a village<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span> +called Chesterton, the Anglican +vicar of which sat on the stage during +the lecture. Afterwards he made a short +speech, inviting G. K. to visit the village +and, I believe, suggesting that it +might have been named after his ancestors. +At any rate Chesterton responded +gracefully and played most +amusingly with this identity of names. +It was possible, he said, that the place +had been named after one of his ancestors, +but it seemed more likely that +the family had taken their name from +it. Perhaps they had lived there in the +remote past under a different name, +and one of them, who would no doubt +have been a worthless fellow, had eventually +been run out of town. The natural +place to go was of course Cambridge; +and the people there with their great +kindliness allowed him to loiter about. +In time he became a familiar figure in +Cambridge; but, as no one knew his +name, they began to refer to him as the +fellow from Chesterton and later simply +as Chesterton. This he thought was +very reasonable theory of the origin of +his name.”</p> + +<p>“One day in February, 1902,” records +Mr. Karl H. Harklander, “I happened +to notice on the announcing board of +the Leeds University that a G. K. Chesterton +would lecture about ‘Man, Great +Man, Super-man.’ I was a young textile<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span> +manufacturer on a business journey +and hungered for more than ‘bread +alone!’ That night I heard the best +and also the shortest lecture of my +life; in less than twenty minutes our +assembly was quite clear about ‘Man, +Great man, Super-man.’ I marked my +young ‘man’ who might become super-man,’ +but who chose to be ‘great man’ +in accordance with the exposition of the +1902 lecture.”</p> + +<p>A charming reminiscence comes from +Edward Brown:</p> + +<p>“In 1927 the great man accepted the +Honorary Presidency of the University +College of Wales (Aberystwyth) Debates +Union. The undergraduates resolved +that he should be conveyed from +the station to the Queen’s Hotel in a +manner worthy of his greatness and +of our reputation for hospitality. An +old fashioned vehicle of the ‘growler’ +variety was dug out from the lumber +yard of an inn and some of the dust and +signs of neglect were removed therefrom.</p> + +<p>“As Secretary of Debates Union I +demanded and won, the privilege of +driving this state coach. Our Officers +Training Corps received permission to +act as escort but were refused the privilege +of carrying arms. They accordingly +armed themselves with hoes, +rakes, spades, axes, etcetera.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span></p> + +<p>“It had been arranged that the President +of the Union should sit with +Chesterton (‘back to the engine’) and +the President of Ladies’ Hostel ... +fortunately a very small lady ... with +Mrs. Chesterton. But as soon as the +two guests had taken their seats, the +O. T. C. rushed the coach and some half +dozen of them secured a seat or footing +of some sort. A burly sergeant with +battle axe (borrowed from the Art Department) +sat beside Mrs. Chesterton +facing G. K. C. My stolid steeds were +replaced by forty undergraduates, and +we tore through the narrow streets at +a most reckless pace.”</p> + +<p>In reply to the demand for a speech, +G. K. C. stood at the top of Queen’s +Hotel steps and said,</p> + +<p>“You need never be ashamed of the +athletic prowess of this College. The +Pyramids, we are told, were built by +slave labor. But the slaves were not +expected to haul the pyramids in one +piece!”</p> + +<p>In his address that evening he commented +on the ancient custom of sending +a condemned man to his death in +the same coach as the executioner; and +described his feelings as he faced the +great axe in the coach. Later he presented +the “executioner” with an exquisite +caricature of them both with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span> +axe between them. The caricature now +hangs in the Men’s Union.</p> + +<p>An Honorary President of the Debate +Union at Aberystwyth is always elected +by the D. U. Committee (all students, +save for one Lecturer). The name is +submitted to the Senate for its approval. +The Debate Union was formed +from an amalgamation of the Literary +and Debating Society and the Political +Union in 1925 about a year before +G. K. C.’s Presidency. Chesterton was +succeeded by John Drinkwater, John +van Druten, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.</p> + +<p>G. K. C.’s speech was on “Liberty: +the Last Phase,” by which he explained +he meant the <em>latest</em> phase. Just +as barons had fought against the tyranny +of would-be despots, just as yeoman +had fought those same barons for +freedom of property and action, just as +... etc. factory-hands; electors ... so +ought men today to band in a great +crusade to defend the common man’s +freedom of the highway, a freedom +which was being denied him by the +motorist. The cause was obscured by +the common man’s desire to join the +enemy as soon as his means permitted +him to do so. Envy of our enemy inspired +a desire to emulate him. His +chariots were objects of admiration, +instead of loathing and furious hostility<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span> +... But the fact remained that our +roads, our ancient highways were being +wrested from us. “The price of liberty +is eternal vigilance.”</p> + +<p>The Senior History Lecturer and +some others were of the opinion that +the whole thesis of the address was a +gigantic leg-pull!</p> + +<p>The students that evening were a +songful crowd, and they had evolved in +G. K. C.’s honour a parody of a well-known +Salvation Army hymn that went, +“I’m H-A-P-P-PY, I know I am, I’m +sure I am, I’m H-A-P-P-Y!”</p> + +<p>They had already several parodies on +that spelling motif, such as “I’m +D-R-U-N-K!”</p> + +<p>That evening as G. K. C. entered, +they all burst into, “I’m G. K. Chester—TON,” +with terrific and increasing emphasis +on the TON, later varying it +“G. K.... Just-a TON.” The great +man was delighted and bowed, smiled, +and clapped his hands.</p> + +<p>Of Chesterton in Liverpool Mr. Clarence +Fry recalls, “I was living in Liverpool +at the time Mr. Chesterton joined +the Roman Catholic Church. Having +been charmed with his writings, I went +to see and hear him lecture. I remember +how disappointed I was with his +address (perhaps owing to Protestant +prejudices). But I had reckoned without +my host. The Chairman said all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span> +questions asked on paper would be +answered by the Speaker. And then +Mr. Chesterton rose and reading out +each question, replied in a few pregnant +words; immediately sitting down and +beaming most angelically all round the +hall on the audience, as much as to say, +‘How’s that! Beat that, if you can!’ +And in <em>no</em> one case could any answer be +ventured. I was delighted and overwhelmed +with the sense of his masterly +dealing with the issues laid before him. +The replies were electric in their concise +power. Also, as you may believe, I +was charmed with his whole personality.”</p> + +<p>The chairman was the late Roman +Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, Dr. +Keating, supported by the Catholic +Bishop of Birmingham and other dignitaries. +The occasion aroused great +interest, as not long before G. K. C. had +joined the Catholic Church. The meeting +was arranged so that this new “Defender +of the Faith” might help the +cause of Catholicism in the city. The +speech was largely devoted to an exposition +of his newly-found faith.</p> + +<p>“Chesterton seldom came to Glasgow,” +records George Mortimer, “and +the only time I heard him was on his +first visit to the city one Sunday evening +fully thirty years ago when he lectured +in the Berkeley Hall which seats<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span> +about six hundred people. His subject +was ‘Some New Dangers of Oligarchies.’ +In those days Sunday evening +lectures were not popular in Scotland, +and neither are they now. The churches +are in most cases meagrely attended in +the evening, the majority of people +either going for a walk, visiting their +friends or remaining at home and listening +to the wireless.</p> + +<p>“Evidently G. K. Chesterton, whom +I had first seen referred to years previously +as a new Carlyle, proved a powerful +magnet, for instead of going to +church I traveled from Paisley to Glasgow—seven +miles by tramcar. All I +remember about the meeting is that the +hall was well filled; that a Scottish author, +David Lowe, at present contributing +reminiscences which he calls ‘Lowe +Life’ to a Glasgow paper, was chairman; +that Chesterton, then thirty years +of age, was a large and fleshy man with +a fine head of luxuriant brown hair; +and that he made reference to the Boer +War, to Lord Rosebery, and to Mr. +Parks, a prominent lawyer, business +man, Methodist and Liberal M. P., I +have a general impression that he +showed himself a democrat.”</p> + +<p>“Chesterton was a past master of the +art known popularly as ‘pulling your +leg,’” according to Mr. William Platt. +“With him, this was not merely a manifestation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span> +of his exuberant temperament; +it was also a matter of principle, +a determination to make the other man +see that there are two sides to every +question.</p> + +<p>“I remember well his address to the +British Humanitarian League. This +body was of excellent principles, and +supported by many and able and eminent +persons; but it also contained many +who had become rabid and fanatical, +and so provided targets, for G. K. C.</p> + +<p>“‘If’ he said ‘you ask me to extend +my sympathy to the poor fox, pursued +by savage sportsmen, shall I not also +extend it to the poor sportsman, pursued +by savage humanitarians?’</p> + +<p>“And he proceeded to draw a contrast +between the typical elderly colonel, who +ought by profession to be a man of +blood, but who in point of fact was the +kindest and mildest of men, and the +typical humanitarian, who ought to be +brimming over with human kindness, +but who on the contrary was furiously +ready to assail any unfortunate who +happened in his or her opinion to transgress +the code.</p> + +<p>“Bernard Shaw was present, and during +the debate received a delicious setback +from a witty Irishman called +Connel. ‘Shaw is out to persuade us to +be vegetarians,’ he said; ‘but if we all +adopt that creed, what would happen?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span> +Rabbits would obey the Scriptural command +to increase and multiply until +they overran the whole country-side +and ate up every vegetable; and where +then would Mr. Bernard Shaw get his +daily bunch of carrots?’</p> + +<p>“Despite Chesterton’s ability to state +the other side, and to state it wittily +and well, he was no mere arguer for +argument’s sake. He would not put +forward any viewpoint unless he was +convinced that there was ground for his +support. He hated that type of politician +or publicist who from sheer intellectual +dexterity could argue in favor +of any cause that it paid him to support, +probably with his tongue in his +cheek. This is very clearly seen in his +brilliant retort to Lord Birkenhead, +ending with that overwhelming:—‘Chuck +it, Smith!’</p> + +<p>“Probably the finest instance of the +effective use of slang by a great literary +stylist!</p> + +<p>“When he spoke to me about my +work he used to <span class="locked">say:—</span></p> + +<p>“‘What I admire about your idealism, +as shown in your writings, is the fact +that I know it to be genuine. For +writers who merely pay lip-service to +ideals, because they think it safest to +do so, I have no use whatever. But I +know that what you say, you mean.’</p> + +<p>“Chesterton, like most artistic persons,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span> +had a dislike for officialdom and +bureaucracy. It seems so often to lead +to a dull and spurious uniformity and +standardization. The natural love of +the artist is for variety, reaching out +to a fullness of life and experience.</p> + +<p>“I remember hearing G. K. C. make +a very amusing point at a meeting of +educationists where he was the chief +speaker. He pictured a state of things +where the official director of education +might be a man with chronic catarrh. +Far from realizing this as a deficiency, +the official, he supposed, would attempt +to impose it on others; to require that +all pupils should be told to pronounce +English as the director pronounced it. +Or, as Chesterton amusingly put <span class="locked">it:—</span></p> + +<p>“‘He wadted theb do brodoudce Idglish +as he hibself brodoudced it, this +bad with the groddig gattarrh. Ibadgidge +it for yourselves.’</p> + +<p>“To those who never heard G. K. C. +speak in public I would say that he +stood on the platform as the very essence +of good humour. He beamed on +all and sundry. He radiated kindliness. +He smiled, he laughed, he bubbled over. +He was out to enjoy himself and to +make every one present enjoy himself. +A personification of mirth, good temper +and happy humanity.”</p> + +<p>“Prof. A. J. Armstrong, head of the +English Department of Baylor University,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span> +Waco, Texas, heard G. K. C. in +England,</p> + +<p>“He talked to the members of my +group for more than an hour on Browning. +He referred to his own life of +Browning as an immature work, although +he said it was necessary for him +to do a great deal of hack work when +he was young, about the time of this +publication.</p> + +<p>“When one of the ladies present interrupted +and said,</p> + +<p>“‘Mr. Chesterton, the Browning work +has some wonderful things in it,’ he +only laughed and went on. In his +thoughts he stayed close to the things +that he had said in his book. His general +conversation, of course, was delightful +and was filled with the paradoxes +for which he was so famous.</p> + +<p>“He took dinner with us at the Hotel +Victoria, off Trafalgar Square, and Mrs. +Chesterton was with him. I sat next +Mrs. Chesterton the whole evening and +she was a lovely woman, quiet, refined, +a poetess, with a great many experiences +which she told delightfully.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Chesterton had a delightful wit, +was a vigorous speaker, and was a man +of great power,—although—and I believe +that this is not given with what +one usually knows of him—he had a +shy way of looking under his glasses +that was charming.</p> + +<p>“A little later we had our symposium<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span> +in London where Mr. Chesterton addressed +a group of friends. I do not +know whether you ever heard of Mrs. +French-Sheldon or not. Before her +death all the “Who’s Who” carried her. +She was an American who learned her +‘A B C’s’ from Washington Irving, and +from that time until her death her life +was one long spectacle. She told me +that at one time she was the guest of +George Sand, and that Chopin came in, +and Victor Hugo later joined them. +Just imagine such a coterie!</p> + +<p>“Mrs. French-Sheldon was one who +did a great deal of exploring in Africa, +and was the first white woman to enter +one side of the African Continent and +come out on the other. Later under the +direction of J. B. Pond, she made +twenty-three addresses in America and +received $23,000 in cash for them, that +is, one thousand dollars a night.</p> + +<p>“When I was interested in getting +Mr. Chesterton to speak in Waco his fee +was one thousand dollars. So in London +when I introduced Mrs. French-Sheldon +in the charming coterie, I said +to Mr. Chesterton: ‘Probably when you +were a little boy in short trousers this +lady was touring American cities at one +thousand dollars a night, so you can +see that you are not the only one that +gets that price, and she got it twenty +years before you did.’ Mr. Chesterton<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span> +answered with a smile. But he seemed +tremendously impressed, for in the social +hour that followed the symposium, +he showed Mrs. French-Sheldon a number +of courtesies.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Lillian Curt heard a lecture in +London,</p> + +<p>“His large body was rather picturesque, +but one received a shock when a +tiny, high pitched voice emanated from +it. I well remember on one occasion +before the War that G. K. C. was asked +to speak in the large Town Hall of Battersea. +The occasion was the Annual +Soiree of the West Lambeth Association +of Teachers—a large and important +local gathering of learned folk and their +friends. G. K. C. then in his prime, +was the lion of the evening and the +lion was expected to roar when his turn +came. But no, G. K. C. stood, like a +huge cherub, emitting little squeaky +phrases. The teachers huddled closer +together and craned their necks forward. +G. K. C. went on unconcernedly +and those who could hear, heard gems +of the first (literally) water pour from +those curved lips. Not that one sentence +had much to do with the last, but each +was a superb thought complete in itself +and miraculously moulded. I was there, +so I know—and enjoyed a delightful +tete-a-tete with him and his charming +wife afterwards. He was in strange<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span> +contrast with his brother Cecil—a little +man, wee-proportioned, with a charming +literary style and good lecture-voice, +who fell in the Great European +war.”</p> + +<p>In 1928 Chesterton spoke before the +Summer Course at the Victoria and +Albert Museum. Mr. Charles A. Eva +recalls that it was a sweltering hot +July day, and when Chesterton turned +up late owing to a train delay, he began +his discourse by remarking,</p> + +<p>“This is no sort of weather for lecturing +or listening, as the lecturer on this +occasion can rely on the weather, and +not on himself, to send the audience to +sleep.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_SIX">CHAPTER SIX<br> + +<span class="subhead">ON THE AMERICAN PLATFORM</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Chesterton made two extended visits +to the United States, in 1920–1, and in +1930–1. Both times he traversed the +length and breadth of the country, delivering +innumerable lectures, making +many addresses, and participating in +not a few debates. No matter what +the occasion he never forgot his sense +of humor. At the Soldiers’ Memorial +Hall, Pittsburgh, he was introduced to +a large audience by Bishop Hugh C. +Boyle. When G. K. stood up there arose +a collective audible gasp at the enormous +size of the man making his way +to the amplifier. His opening words +were,</p> + +<p>“At the outset I want to reassure you +I am not this size, really; dear no, I’m +being amplified by the thing.”</p> + +<p>He debated with Cosmo Hamilton +at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on +November 26th, 1930. The subject of +debate was presumably unknown to +the two authors, and was announced by +the Chairman William C. Redfield, Secretary +of Commerce under Wilson, “Is +Immorality in the Novel Justified.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span> +The audience was composed chiefly of +educators, priests, college instructors, +and grade teachers; all seemed properly +pleased by the title of the evening’s +discourse, and settled back to enjoy the +action ... Chesterton annihilating +his gracious and graceful opponent. +They were not denied. Chesterton +scored decidedly when he showed that +what is moral is justified, and that the +contrary, of course, could never be +justified.</p> + +<p>This Chesterton explained in his introductory +remarks, which he took +from written notes, as Hamilton also +did when he arose. Apparently they +were formulated, and used in more than +one debate in their tour. Chesterton +charmingly denied he was there to +make a football of Hamilton, who had +protested such, but that he was rather +a football in appearance, even if on the +side of the angels, and Hamilton more +the lithe athlete. After these amenities, +Chesterton divided his argument into +three sections: immorality in the novel +violates ... first, good morals; second, +good manners; third, good taste.</p> + +<p>“You can’t discuss inflaming the passions +without doing it,” Chesterton +pointed out. In reply to a query from +Hamilton, “On the contrary, I like and +admire very much the works of Aldous +Huxley, but, (here he showed genuine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span> +anger) as for that weak, sniveling, +dirty, pacifistic Enrique Maria Remarque, +I have nothing but contempt.”</p> + +<p>Chesterton made many notes, chuckling +to himself as he scribbled something +soon to come forth as a sally, pausing +now and then to survey the audience or +his opponent, and again interrupting +his writing to place his pencil between +his teeth to applaud some remark of +Hamilton’s.</p> + +<p>“Chesterton’s voice was a fairly high +tenor,” recalls Mr. Daniel Kern who +was present, “not at all surprising. I +have observed that many Englishmen +despite bulk and great size, possess the +same type voice. For example, H. G. +Wells’ ... so high and snuffled that it +was execrable coming over the radio. +The loud-speaker system made it easy +to hear both men. Both speakers were +making use of a word which sounded +like ‘eppitet’ or ‘epithet,’ which in the +context could have had no meaning. +The people about us were confused. As +we became used to their voices, it developed +that the word was ‘appetite.’ +You can estimate the frequency of the +occurrence of this word in an ethical +discussion when it is coupled with the +modifiers ‘innate’ and ‘acquired’.”</p> + +<p>G. K. C.’s pink face, framed by a +white mane of hair, isolated by a +rumpled dinner jacket, shining beautifully<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span> +at the audience, caused Kern’s +companion, a singular personality, to +remark wistfully, “Chesterton’s just a +saint, just a saint.”</p> + +<p>The warm, human, simple childlike +nature, and the beaming benevolence of +Chesterton’s smile was so utterly +charming that Mr. W. D. Hennessy also +present, was immediately reminded of +two quite disparate characters his “favorite +uncle, now deceased and Santa +Claus. As I thought more about it, I +realized that my first instinctive impression +in its childlike simplicity, was +founded upon a correct perception. My +uncle was loved by every man, woman, +child, and dog in his town and he was +the most natural democrat I ever knew. +I am just as certain that Chesterton +was a beloved figure to his neighbors +and that he was a true democrat in +the best sense of that much abused +term.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Hamilton several times referred +to Chesterton as a cherub and a teacher. +G. K. C. expressed difficulty in reconciling +the picture of a cherub and a +teacher, but I think Cosmo Hamilton’s +appellations were apt, for was not Chesterton +an angelic teacher? And when a +casual remark about the New York +subway was made by Hamilton, I was +delighted at the way G. K. C. pounced +upon it as a perfect allegory, comparing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span> +the modern world looking for its way +with the stranger lost in the labyrinths +of the subway.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Joseph J. Reilly attended a debate +at Mecca Temple in New York +City, between Chesterton and Clarence +Darrow, which dealt with the story of +creation as presented in Genesis. It +was a Sunday afternoon and the Temple +was packed. At the conclusion of the +debate everybody was asked to express +his opinion as to the victor and slips of +paper were passed around for that purpose. +The award went directly to Chesterton. +Darrow in comparison, seemed +heavy, uninspired, slow of mind, while +G. K. C. was joyous, sparkling and +witty ... quite the Chesterton one had +come to expect from his books. The +affair was like a race between a lumbering +sailing vessel and a modern steamer.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Frances Taylor Patterson also +heard the Chesterton-Darrow debate, +but went to the meeting with some +misgivings because she was a trifle +afraid that Chesterton’s “gifts might +seem somewhat literary in comparison +with the trained scientific mind and +rapier tongue of the famous trial lawyer. +Instead, the trained scientific +mind, the clear thinking, the lightning +quickness in getting a point and hurling +back an answer, turned out to belong +to Chesterton. I have never heard Mr.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span> +Darrow alone, but taken relatively, +when that relativity is to Chesterton, +he appears positively muddle-headed.”</p> + +<p>Although the terms of the debate +were determined at the outset, Darrow +either could not or would not stick to +the definitions, but kept going off at +illogical tangents and becoming choleric +over points that were not in dispute. +He seemed to have an idea that all religion +was a matter of accepting Jonah’s +whale as a sort of luxury-liner. As +Chesterton summed it up, he felt as if +Darrow had been arguing all afternoon +with his fundamentalist aunt, and the +latter 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!” Whatever +brilliance Darrow had in his own right, +it was completely eclipsed. For all the +luster that he shed, he might have been +a remote star at high noon drowned by +the bright incandescent arc light of the +sun. 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!</p> + +<p>Clarence Darrow wrote the author +shortly before his death,</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span></p> + +<p>“I was favorably impressed by, +warmly attached to, G. K. Chesterton. +I enjoyed my debates with him, and +found him a man of culture and fine +sensibilities. If he and I had lived +where we could have become better acquainted, +eventually we would have +ceased to debate, I firmly believe.”</p> + +<p>Bishop George Craig Stewart of Chicago, +presided at Orchestra Hall when +Chesterton debated in that city with +Dr. Horace J. Bridges of the Ethical +Cultural Society on the subject, “Is +Psychology a Curse?” In his closing +remarks Chesterton devastatingly sideswiped +his opponent and wound up the +occasion in a storm of laughter and +applause,</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>During Dr. Bridges’ share of the debate +Chesterton was drawing funny pictures +on the back of a torn envelope +which he produced out of his capacious +inner pocket. At the close of the debate, +Bishop Stewart begged the torn +envelope with the funny pictures, +which the artist initialed “From G. K.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span> +C. to G. C. S.” It now hangs framed +with one of G. K.’s photographs in the +episcopal drawingroom.</p> + +<p>At luncheon Bishop Stewart remarked, +“Mr. Chesterton, <em lang="la">securus judicat orbis +terrarum</em>. You have become a Roman +Catholic, and I do not doubt that you +have gained the whole world, but may I +suggest that one may gain the whole +world and lose one’s soul, and I think +you have lost the soul of Chestertonianism, +for after all, when you were an +Anglican you were both a Protestant +and a Catholic, and that was a delightfully +Chestertonian position. Now you +have become a Romanist, you have +ceased to be a Chestertonian.”</p> + +<p>Chesterton’s only response to this +Anglican leg pulling was a beaming and +chuckling acknowledgment of the +charge.</p> + +<p>At the luncheon Chesterton talked +just as he wrote, on any subject that +came up, in a free, flowing, brilliant +manner, and everything he said might +have been taken down and published as +a part of his weekly letter to the +“Illustrated London News.”</p> + +<p>In introducing Chesterton for the debate, +Bishop Stewart had quoted Oliver +Hereford’s delightful verse,</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentq">“When plain folks such as you and I</div> + <div class="verse indent0">See the sun sinking in the sky,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We think it is the setting sun:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is not so easily misled;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He calmly stands upon his head,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And upside down obtains a new</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And Chestertonian point of view ...</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Observing thus how from his nose</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sun creeps closer to his toes</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He cries in wonder and delight,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How fine the sunrise is tonight!”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>When the lecture was over, Chesterton +strode down the aisle towards the +main entrance where Mr. Edward Cassidy +was standing with his wife who +wished to get his autograph on a +book. Suddenly a very important looking +lorgnetted dowager accompanied by +her daughter confronted the massive +man.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Chesterton,” she demanded, +“might I ask when did you become famous?”</p> + +<p>“I became famous, if you can call it +that,” the great author chuckled, “at a +time when there were no famous men +in England.”</p> + +<p>He went on to explain that there had +been no very great writers or journalists +in England during the Boer War. +His bitter opposition to the war ran so +counter to the English press of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span> +period that he became famous for his +disloyalty, and for refusing to run with +the crowd.</p> + +<p>Chesterton impressed the late Reverend +Frederic Seidenberg, S. J., who +was also present in Orchestra Hall, as +a man one could never forget, “not only +his huge size, but his striking personality +and ever present smile are things +that one would carry through life. We +had a full house, but his voice was so +thin that I immediately had the speaker’s +desk placed at the edge of the footlights. +When he began again to speak +several in the balcony called out, +‘Louder!’ After a moment’s hesitation, +Chesterton looked up and said, ‘Good +brother, don’t worry, you’re not missing +a thing.’ The audience roared.”</p> + +<p>Dr. Horace J. Bridges has kindly +given his impressions,</p> + +<p>“I had two public debates with Chesterton, +one in Chicago and one in Milwaukee. +He struck me as a curious +mixture of great personal charm, wide +reading, exquisite critical faculty +(manifested particularly in his interpretations +of Browning and of Dickens), +delightful humor, and a certain intellectual +recklessness that made him indifferent +to truth and reality. I cannot +but feel that fundamentally—perhaps +I should say subconsciously—he +was a thorough-going skeptic and acted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span> +upon the principle that, since we cannot +really be positive about anything, +we had better believe what it pleases +us to believe. I think he never did +justice to the real arguments for a case +he opposed; and he had a slap-dash way +of assuming that the weaknesses in an +opponent’s case proved not only the +falsity of that case, but—which is obviously +a very different matter—the +truth of his own case.</p> + +<p>“One may think my criticism of him +unfair. I certainly do not mean it to be +so, nor do I fail to recognize that men +much more earnest in their truth-seeking +than he was have sincerely believed +the things he said he believed. My +comment is on his mental processes, in +distinction from the question of his particular +beliefs.”</p> + +<p>Chesterton spoke in St. Louis at the +Odeon Theatre. On the stage his entire +appearance was distinctive: shaggy, +tousled dark-light hair topped a massive +head and full, ruddy face; eyes +which seemed always half-closed were +protected by thick-lensed glasses; +heavy shoulders and ponderous girth +bulked above long, slender legs. Over +evening dress he wore a black cape; +when he doffed it and stood ready +to speak, his stiff, white shirt-front became +awry and crept several degrees +out of proper position.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span></p> + +<p>“A gentle giant Chesterton seemed,” +recalls Mr. James O’Neill, “as he commenced +to address his audience. His +high-pitched voice sounded somewhat +of a plaintive and apologetic note.”</p> + +<p>Lamenting the pseudo-sophistication +of the day and the loss of appreciation +for the simple pleasures of yore, Chesterton +complained that the modern man +and woman were seeking to escape +ennui by finding new thrills, which +tendency was expressed in our entertainments +and even in our foods. +Whereas we had once been satisfied +with the taste of one palatable comestible +at a time, we now demanded a combination +of several in such an assembly +as the modern three-deck sandwich. He +regretfully observed that whereas our +esthetic sense had once been pleased +by such a dainty little figurine as the +china shepherdess, we were now regaled +by only such heroic figures as the billboard +likeness of the lady who keeps +her schoolgirl complexion by using a +certain kind of soap and proclaims her +secret to all who read. He was saddened +by these thoughts and yearned for a +return of the more simple but much +more wholesome aesthetic attitudes +currents in the days of his early manhood.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Katharine Darst says that +when there was a call for questions,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span> +they were slow coming, and dull when +finally blurted out. Then there was a +long, embarrassing pause. And finally, +“Well, we’ve heard from the educated. +Now, have the ignorant anything to +ask?” ... this from the Chairman. +Chesterton had such a vicious way of +tearing poseurs apart with his sharp +shafts that the reluctance of the audience +to place itself at his mercy was +natural. But here was too good a +chance to miss. A number who had +hesitated to make inquiries were on +their feet at once. If they asked as +the ignorant, they felt that they were +armed against Chesterton’s barbs!</p> + +<p>A group of St. Louis women also +heard Chesterton deliver a lecture paradoxically +entitled,</p> + +<p>“The New Enslavement of Women.”</p> + +<p>This gave a compelling portrayal of +how women exchanged the freedom of +home for the slavery of office,</p> + +<p>“Twenty million young women rose +to their feet with the cry, ‘WE WILL +NOT BE DICTATED TO!’ And immediately +proceeded to become stenographers!”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_SEVEN">CHAPTER SEVEN<br> + +<span class="subhead">SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF G. K. C.</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Mr. Bernard Shaw told the author +that he was so much struck by a review +of Scott’s “Ivanhoe” which appeared +in the “Daily News” while Chesterton +was holding his earliest notable +job as feuilletonist to the paper that he +wrote to him, “asking him 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.</p> + +<p>“Our actual physical contacts, however, +were few, as he never belonged to +the Fabian Society nor came to its meetings +(this being my set) whilst his +Fleet Street Bohemianism lay outside +my vegetarian, teetotal, non-smoking +tastes. Besides, he apparently liked +literary society; and it had the grace +to like him. I avoided it and it loathed +me.</p> + +<p>“But, of course, we were very conscious +of one another. I enjoyed him +and admired him keenly; and nothing +could have been more generous than his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span> +treatment of me. Our controversies +were exhibition spars, in which nothing +could have induced either of us to hurt +the other.”</p> + +<p>In July, 1933, the Canadian Authors’ +Association paying its first official visit +to England, was entertained at Claridge’s +by the Royal Society of Literature. +Miss Paty Carter recalls that at +the end of the luncheon the toast was +proposed by Rudyard Kipling and ably +seconded by Chesterton. The contrast +in appearance between the mover and +seconder of the toast, caused a ripple of +amusement: a contrast that might be +likened to the Giant and Jack in the +fairy story. Though Kipling, in reality, +was only slightly below average size, +and if a giant, Chesterton at least conveyed +the impression of an amiable, +gentle, likable giant.</p> + +<p>“You will be much puzzled at my +occupying any space—so much space—in +this august assembly,” he began, +“and why any word of mine could possibly +add to what this great literary +genius, Mr. Kipling, has said. I cannot +pose as a newspaper man; one reads of +newspaper men slipping in through +half-closed doors.</p> + +<p>“Now, no one could possibly think of +me as slipping through a half-closed +door! (Laughter).</p> + +<p>“I do not know Canada as Mr. Kipling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span> +knows it. I have traveled here and +there in the miserable capacity of one +giving lectures. I might call myself a +lecturer; but then again I fear some of +you may have attended my lectures. +The reason for my presence here today +is to return hospitality. I have been +twice to Canada. My first visit was +made twelve years ago when I crossed +to the Dominion from America—that +was in the early days of Prohibition. +The second time I went up the St. Lawrence. +Then I knew that Canada had +the foundations of all literature, because +she had indeed a country. There was +that vast natural background necessary +to the growth of literary culture, and +there was also what is necessary for +all literature—legend. On the Plains +of Abraham I was uplifted in the sense +in which poetry or great music or even +a great monument uplifts one.</p> + +<p>“The magnificent cordiality and +courtesy of the Canadian people was, +to me, amazing. The hospitality of the +Canadian Authors’ Association was +overwhelming. The Canadian Literature +Society rushed out to welcome any +stray traveler, and in the confusion I +was mistaken for a literary man. +(Laughter). I tried to explain I was +merely a lecturer, and one of the first +things for a lecturer to do is talk about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span> +things he does not understand, such as +Canada.”</p> + +<p>“Are you coming with us to Downing +Street, Mr. Chesterton?” asked Miss +Carter as the authors all left the hotel.</p> + +<p>“No—o,” he drawled, with a delicious +sort of chant. “Unfortunately, I have +to attend a wretched meeting with +three other men; all madmen, like myself!”</p> + +<p>Mr. James Truslow Adams happened +to have been one of the four or five +Americans elected to the Royal Society +of Literature, and so he found himself +in the rather odd situation of an American +who was entertaining Canadians at +an empire meeting.</p> + +<p>“Chesterton,” recalls Mr. Adams, +“was very witty, and although he took +a number of sharp cracks at American +journalism, I being the only person in +the room who was not of the British +Empire, there was nothing untrue or +unkind. I have an extremely vivid impression +of the man, not only of his +enormous physical bulk and of his constant +mopping of his forehead with his +handkerchief, but also of his intellectual +vitality.”</p> + +<p>The President of the Canadian Authors’ +Association, the late Charles W. +Gordon (Ralph Connor) was “struck +with the freshness of Chesterton’s +thought, the brilliancy of his imagination,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span> +and his warm human sympathy. I +had heard him spoken of as cold, but I +could not say that of his speech or of +his personality that day.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Rodolphe L. Megroz made a pilgrimage +in 1922, to Chesterton’s home.</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, certainly, sir,” said the +railway porter at Beaconsfield when +asked where Chesterton lived. “Turn +to your left at the bridge and along the +road to the old town. When you come +to the film studios, go across into the +side road and it’s surrounded by a field. +His house is called ‘Top Meadow’.”</p> + +<p>Mr. and Mrs. Chesterton received the +visitor in a little room with white-washed +walls and book-cases, and a +long desk below a window that ran the +length of the room. Megroz was anxious +to compare Chesterton’s ideas with +those of H. G. Wells whom he had seen +shortly before, and particularly wished +to question the former’s opinions on +patriotism and nationalism. Although +such books as the jolly “Napoleon of +Notting Hill” belonged to the pre-war +period, G. K. C.’s own journalistic writings +had shown no change in his dislike +of internationalism and the kind of +social organization favored by Wells.</p> + +<p>“The trouble is,” he said, “that terms +like patriotism and nationalism are very +often used by people who mean something +quite different from what I mean.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span> +My idea in ‘The Napoleon of Notting +Hill’ was that men have a natural loyalty +for their own home and their own +land, I do not see why, instead of progress +lying in the direction of bigger +and bigger everything, it should not be +found in the opposite direction, in local +patriotism. I say let a man go on loving +his own home, he will all the better +recognize the other fellow’s right to do +so.”</p> + +<p>“H. G. Wells,” continued Chesterton, +“talks about abstractions like the World +State, which has no root. The League +of Nations lost its grip on realities by +ignoring local patriotism.”</p> + +<p>When Megroz repeated Chesterton to +H. G. Wells the latter remarked,</p> + +<p>“Possibly the World State is an abstraction +at present, but what are not +abstractions are the flying machines +and poison gas; electricity and wireless; +the fact that the food grown in India +may be eaten in England, and the food +grown in Australia may be eaten at the +Cape. These are hard facts, and they +demand sane treatment as hard facts, +and the only possible sane treatment is +to bring them under one comprehensive +control.”</p> + +<p>Megroz got the impression that Chesterton +was “certainly a romanticist, +often escaping from reality. By fantasies, +among which may be included<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span> +his medievalism; but always one comes +back to his great sanity, his poetic insight, +his sweetness which redeemed +all his propaganda, illuminated his +poetry, and could fill even the detective +story with a wisdom akin to mysticism.”</p> + +<p>What Chesterton wrote his friend +Mr. W. R. Titterton about Wells is pertinent, +and is here published for the +first time, and with Mr. Wells’ leave,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p class="in0">My dear Titterton:</p> + +<p>I think we might drop the formal address +on both sides; especially as I +want to write to you about a personal +feeling which I don’t want you to take +too officially, or in that sense too seriously. +I ought to have written direct +to Pugh to thank him for his great +generosity in giving us his most interesting +sketch about Wells, which you +were good enough to arrange for us. +My task is made a little more delicate +now, because there is something I feel +about it, which I do hope neither he nor +you would exaggerate or misunderstand. +I was the more glad of his kind offer, +when he made it, because I thought nobody +could more ably and sincerely appreciate +Wells; and I was rather pleased +that Wells should be appreciated in a +paper where he had been so often criticized. +I do hope this work will not +turn into anything that looks like a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span> +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 honor 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 offense; and I will if necessary +write to him to do so; but I thought I +would write to you first; as you know +him and may possibly know his aims +and attitude as I do not.</p> + +<p>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 to 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span> +that goes into the paper and it would +certainly be most uncomfortable for +either of us to exercise our rights of +“cutting” stuff given to us under such +circumstances as Pugh’s: but I think I +should exercise it if Pugh went very +far in the realistic manner about some +of the weak points in Wells’ career. +There were one or two phrases about +old quarrels in the last number which +strike a note I should really regret +touching more serious things; and I +should like to consult with you about +such possibilities before they appear in +the paper. I cannot do it with most +things in the paper, as I say; and nobody +could possibly do it better than +you. On the other hand, I cannot resign, +without dropping, as you truly +say, 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 I thought he did at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span> +beginning of the business. I only write +this to confide to you what is in my +mind, which is far from an easy task; +but I think you are one to understand. +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.</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span style="margin-right: 1em;">Yours always sincerely,</span><br> +G. K. Chesterton. +</p> +</div> + +<p>Mr. Titterton wrote in a letter a few +years ago:</p> + +<p>“Edward Macdonald assists G. K. C. +in editing the ‘Rag.’ In fact he does all +the technical editing, though G. K. C. +controls the strategy. He is a splendid +fellow, very simple and humble, very +loyal, very wise. His editing of “G. K.’s +Weekly” is a labor of love. What I +know of G. K. you know already. +You must be with him day by day +to see the infinite simplicity—innocence—and +friendliness of the man. We are +fortunate to be led by a little child. +When we were starting the Distributist +League, I suggested that it should be +called ‘The League of the Little Man.’ +And G. K. C. said that, though he liked +the title, he thought that, with him as +President, it would be regarded as a +great joke. Probably it would have +been. Yet, in fact, he IS the little +Man.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span></p> + +<p>Mr. Hugo C. Riviere has pleasant recollections +of having painted Chesterton’s +portrait:</p> + +<p>“What excellent talk I heard when he +was sitting to me. It was, as I so often +saw him, in his big Inverness cape with +that massive head at that time covered +with a big mane of brown hair, his hat +on the grass and a favorite sword stick +brandished against the sky. It was just +after his ‘Napoleon of Notting Hill’ +was written. A little later I was to be +made a very proud man by receiving a +copy of ‘The Flying Inn’ and finding it +was dedicated to me. You know, of +course, what a fine large style G. K. C. +had himself as a draughtsman with a +great and free grasp of form and character. +How often when dining with us +I have seen him take out an old envelope +and rapidly cover it with extraordinary +sketches. I have one carefully +treasured in my ‘Napoleon of Notting +Hill’ an old envelope covered with every +sort and type of hand and figure, some +in medieval dress, and some modern, +two or three clever heads of G. B. Shaw +and other clerical and political and imaginary. +How delightful were the illustrations +he made for ‘The Biography +of Beginners’ that he and E. C. Bentley +did together. I also remember G. K. C., +after writing an article, over his last +glass of wine when all of us, and he too,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span> +were talking after dinner, and the boy +sent by whatever magazine it was destined +for, waiting in the hall. His favorite, +and I think, characteristic, taste +in wine was red Burgundy, but he did +not notice his food much, as he was far +too busy thinking and talking.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Hermon Ould, the Secretary-General +of the P. E. N. Club, met Chesterton +many times. When H. G. Wells +found the presidency too onerous and +was threatening to resign, Mr. Ould +offered the office to Chesterton who +replied in a characteristic letter, dated +August 2, 1935:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p class="in0">Dear Mr. Ould:</p> + +<p>You might imagine how miserable I +feel in having again delayed a reply to +your kind letters; and being again, +after a struggle, forced back on the +same dismal reply. The truth is that +I did very much wish to accept this +great distinction you have offered me; +and have been trying to think of various +ways in which it might be managed; +but have come back to the conclusion +that it really cannot be managed. +The delay was partly due to your +own persuasive powers; for I must admit +that I was a good deal shaken by +what you said about the possibilities of +using the position for many things in +which I believe. If I may say so, you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span> +must be a very good secretary; and a +good secretary is much more important +than a good president. But I am practically +certain that I should not be a +good president. I am honestly thinking +in the interests of the Club; and I feel +it would be better for me to decline the +candidature than for me to resign +rather abruptly soon afterwards, because +I found the responsibilities you +describe too incompatible with the responsibilities +I have already. As you +truly say, it would be unworthy to accept +what is merely a sinecure; and I +really cannot manage this additional +cure of souls....</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span style="margin-right: 2em;">Yours faithfully,</span><br> +G. K. Chesterton. +</p> +</div> + +<p>Father Vincent C. Donovan spent a +good part of an afternoon with Chesterton +and his wife at Boston’s Chatham +Hotel. Many things were discussed, +but Father Donovan recalls that the +visitors were particularly interested in +their impressions of America. They +found Boston very English in appearance +and atmosphere. Among other +things Chesterton said,</p> + +<p>“All the Jews have been hounding +me as a result of my ‘New Jerusalem.’ +I am not a little hurt and puzzled about +their unreasonable attitude because in +that work I have honestly tried to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span> +objective, fair, and understanding, but +they won’t see that.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Vincent de Paul Fitzpatrick first +met Chesterton at the Belvedere Hotel, +Baltimore, in February, 1921, and recalls +that he praised the persistency of +the Irish in struggling for their rights:</p> + +<p>“When you hear of an organization +in England fighting for liberty, you +must find whether or not that organization +contains much Irish blood. It +means all the difference in the world. +If you hear in this country of a strike +in the Cycle Valley, it is nothing to get +worried over. But if you hear of a +strike in Glasgow, you may expect +something exclusive and exciting. The +reason is that a mass of the Irish poor +is found in that city, and the Irish will +not submit meekly when any person +or any group tries to trample upon +them.</p> + +<p>“We see the English people grumbling +at the perpetual interference with +their rights and at the various restrictions +to which they are subjected, but +they are not organized. There are plenty +of old radicals in England, who, as individuals, +are sincere defenders of liberty, +but they are isolated. Take, for +example, old Dr. Johnson. With the +Irish Catholics things are different. +Their love for liberty seems to have +been created by the Catholic Church—their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span> +only corporate defender of liberty +today—is the Catholic Church. Liberty +means much to her—something to be +protected. She defends it with her powerful +organization. When we speak of +the English Labor party in England +fighting for its rights, we do not mean +the English labor party, at all, we mean +the Scotch-Irish Labor party.”</p> + +<p>On December 7, 1930, Mr. Fitzpatrick +had a long talk with Chesterton at the +St. Moritz, New York City. It was the +eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, +and Chesterton was thinking of +his newly found Faith,</p> + +<p>“It stands to reason that Christmas +means more to me now that I am a +Catholic than it did before I was converted +to the Faith. But Christmas has +meant much to me ever since my boyhood. +I believed in Christmas before I +believed in Christ. In the years immediately +before my conversion I naturally +thought much more seriously about +Christmas, my thoughts became more +consoling and Christmas was more +beautiful as the passing days drew me +nearer to the Church.</p> + +<p>“I believed in the spirit of Christmas +and I liked Christmas, even when I was +a boy filled with radicalistic tendencies +when I really thought I was atheistic. +In those days I wrote a poem to the +Blessed Virgin. I was quite young and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span> +the poem, God help me, must have +been a rather wretched thing, though +I imitated Swinburne, or at least, tried +to imitate him when I wrote it.</p> + +<p>“From my early years I had an affection +for the Blessed Virgin and for +the Holy Family. The story of Bethlehem +and the story of Nazareth appealed +to me deeply when I was a boy. Long +before I joined the Catholic Church the +Immaculate Conception had my allegiance. +That allegiance has been intensified +steadily.</p> + +<p>“Aside from the teaching of the +Church on the subject, a doctrine which +we as Catholics accept, the thought that +there was in all the ages one creature, +and that creature a woman, who was +preserved from the slightest taint of +sin, won my heart.”</p> + +<p>Mother Mary St. Luke recalls that +during Chesterton’s visit to Rome in +the late Autumn of 1929, he went several +times to the Convent of the Holy +Child, where he lectured one day before +a crowded audience on “Thomas More +and Humanism.” At the conclusion, +a Father Cuthbert thanked the speaker +and expressed the appreciation of the +audience, remarking on the mental resemblance +of More and Chesterton, saying +that he could quite well imagine +them sitting together making jokes,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span> +some of them VERY good, and some +of them VERY bad.</p> + +<p>The Chestertons were also present in +the Vatican at the reading of the Degree +for the Beatification of the English +Martyrs. At the conclusion of the +ceremony there was the usual rush and +confusion in the neighborhood of the +cloak-room next to the sala Clementina. +A group of Holy Child pupils having +gathered around Chesterton, and learned +of his dismay at not being able to retrieve +his famous cloak from the “Bussolanti” +on account of the milling +crowd, plunged into the melee and +brought it back to him in triumph. +They also secured a taxi for them in +the Piazza di San Pietro—no small feat +on such an occasion! G. K. expressed +his appreciation of their efforts in his +own beautiful “architectural” handwriting, +which constitutes one of the most +treasured possessions of the school,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="center"> +“For the Young Ladies Suffering<br> +Education at the Convent of the<br> +Holy Child. +</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentq">“To be a Real Prophet once</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For you alone did I desire,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Who dragged the Prophet’s Mantle down</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And brought the Chariot of Fire.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +</div> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_EIGHT">CHAPTER EIGHT<br> + +<span class="subhead">CHESTERTON AT NEW HAVEN</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Thomas Caldecot Chubb met Chesterton +at the Elizabethan Club in New +Haven almost twenty years ago, and +his initial impression still persists that +he was a large man in every way, +“Physically, of course, he was the size +of Falstaff, but that is not all I am +talking about. Perhaps the best way +of saying what I mean, is to point out +that he had this further in common +with the huge knight who is, in a sense, +truly Shakespeare’s most tragic figure: +that beneath surface-wit and brilliance +there was something one must label +deep and profound.”</p> + +<p>Chesterton had been lecturing to a +typical Yale audience of the early ’20’s—four +or five consciously literary undergraduates +who made a grim duty of +never missing such a talk, and about +ninety percent of the membership of the +local women’s clubs. The Speaker +spilled over, like a wine keg broached, +into the Middle Ages. Among other +things, he spoke, naturally, of their individual +craftsmanship. He related how +it appeared even in such matters as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span> +meat and drink. He regretted with a +nostalgic gusto those gone days when, +as he put it, every monastery, almost +every home had its own brand of liqueur +or wine. Then he was transported from +the crowded hall with its murmurs of +polite, not too comprehending, applause, +and made to stand in the dark living +room of the white building across the +street, with its comfortable shabby +leather chairs, and its stiff painting of +an acidulous and very white-faced Virgin +Queen; and as he stood there—wearing +a grey suit (so the picture, +though perhaps inaccurately after so +long a time, comes back to Chubb) and +holding a cup of tea in one hand, his +eyeglasses in the other—Chubb was introduced +to him.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Chesterton,” Chubb said, “you +have your wish.”</p> + +<p>Obviously, he wanted to know what +wish and how he had it.</p> + +<p>“Thanks to Prohibition, every house +is making, if not its own liqueur, at +least its own likker.”</p> + +<p>It cannot truthfully be related that +he was hugely diverted by Chubb’s attempt +at being facetious. Bathtub gin +was, it may be supposed, hardly just the +evocation he would have wished of the +spirit of the age of Abelard and Aquinas. +And furthermore, Prohibition was +a serious matter, not a jesting one. So<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span> +Chubb was properly covered with an +appropriate undergraduate confusion +which he tried to hide by holding out +a copy of “The Ballad of the White +Horse.” This haltingly—after his previous +boldness—he asked him to autograph +and to write a verse from it upon +the fly-leaf.</p> + +<p>“There is no need to go into details +about his courteous compliance other +than to indicate the thrill it gave me,” +recollects Chubb, “by saying that in +that varnished period the ‘Ballad’ seemed +to me a high point in English poetry. +It seemed almost incredible I was actually +talking to and facing the man who +wrote it. But a confession must be +added to this statement. It was virtually +all of Chesterton I knew by having +read. That and ‘Lepanto’ were the +only Chestertonian works I had deigned +to cast my eyes upon. Of course, I +knew the names of others. But that +anyone who could write this immortal +stuff should waste his time turning out +such poor trash as a series of fluent +novels, certain aggravating essays, a +contradicting sort of history of England, +and—horror of horrors—the +Father Brown ‘detective’ stories, was, +in a ghastly way, incredible. It was pot-boiling. +It was prostituting one’s genius. +It was selling out to Mammon and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</span> +the Philistines. And that was, of course, +the sin against the Holy Ghost.</p> + +<p>“It is now necessary to reverse that +stand—though here perhaps youth’s +headlong egotism has merely been replaced +by incipient middle age’s complacent +one. For somehow the swinging +lines which relate Alfred’s adventures +seem a little bouncy now. They +are dated, just as a brass radiator and +acetylene lamps would date even a T-model +Ford. Even the young don’t turn +to them, being engaged in writing not +quite grammatical verses to Communism +and proletarian poetry which no +member of the proletariat can make +head or tail of. And ‘Lepanto,’ which—with +‘Ivry’ and what Tennyson has +to say about the Revenge—is among the +most stirring short narrative poetry of +the language, does not set the pulses +beating quite as rapidly in 1939 as it +did in 1922. But the entertainment and +wisdom of ‘The Flying Inn,’ ‘The Man +Who Was Thursday,’ and ‘The Napoleon +of Notting Hill,’ and the cool, paradoxical +truths—well, anyway, from time to +time they are true—of the essays, of +the history, of the writing on Browning, +Thackeray and Dickens, of the controversies +with that irritating but likeable +friend-adversary G. B. S., still have +their power to stimulate. And personally +I now believe that the best of Chesterton<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">96</span> +can be found, if you delve for it, +in the Father Brown stories; that out +of them can be mined by an attentive +prospector the purest Chestertonian +gold.</p> + +<p>“All of which, if true, places the man +for us. A stimulating writer, a delightful +writer, on certain occasions even an +important writer, but was he quite a +great one? With Kipling, Wells, Shaw, +Arnold Bennett and perhaps half a dozen +others with whom I will not rashly +provoke controversy by naming, he will +be compulsory reading for every student +of the era. It is less certain that +the general public will turn to him +after a hundred or even after fifty +years.</p> + +<p>“Yet he has given a lot, and in no +way more than by his provocative way +of seeing and saying things. He loves +Meredith and he hates Hardy, yet he +nails truth to the wall by saying that +the man of the two who had a healthy +point of view had the perverse and +crabbed style, whereas the one with the +perverse and crabbed point of view had +the healthy and manly style. He stated +pungently and accurately—writing of +‘The Book of Snobs’—that ‘aristocracy +does not have snobs any more than +democracy does.’ Thackeray might +have learned something from this. He +had the insight to realize that Browning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span> +was among the finest love poets of +the world though quite to the contrary +runs the general opinion. (A similar, +though not the same, revolutionary +statement might be made of our own +E. A. Robinson, substituting perhaps +emotion for love.) He considered—a +half truth—that the whole of present +day England was the remains of Rome; +and—a whole truth—that Henry VIII +was as unlucky in his wives as they +were in him. Which statements, +plucked very haphazardly from out of +his writings, ought to indicate what I +mean.”</p> + +<p>Another who heard him at Yale was +Mr. Harold Chapman Bailey:</p> + +<p>“Chesterton’s lecture, as I recall it, +was given in the Sprague Memorial +Hall, which is part of the Yale Music +School. The entire subject matter of +the Chesterton address has escaped me, +but in the question period afterward +the first two or three questions were +so puerile that despite my youth I was +emboldened to rise with this query: +‘Will you not tell me something about +William Cobbett?’</p> + +<p>“I recall that at first Mr. Chesterton +did not understand my question, but +when I repeated it, he seemed greatly +pleased to find that in far away America +there was some interest in Cobbett. +Accordingly he spent at least five minutes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">98</span> +explaining to us who William Cobbett +was, what he stood for, and how in +a measure Cobbett was his own spiritual +ancestor. He concluded by remarking +that the Yale University Press +would do well to get out a new edition +of Cobbett’s works. I have often wondered +whether this query of mine +played any part in stimulating him +later on to write a volume on Cobbett.”</p> + +<p>Major James B. Pond also met +G. K. C. at New Haven, and had the +privilege of being present when Chesterton +and ‘A. E.’ (George Russell) met +at the William Lyon Phelps’ house in +New Haven. It was the first time these +two men ever met. Russell hardly ever +went out of Ireland and these two famous +men had to come to New Haven +to get personally acquainted. It happened +they were both lecturing the +same day.</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">99</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_NINE">CHAPTER NINE<br> + +<span class="subhead">AT NOTRE DAME.</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Chesterton was guest lecturer at +Notre Dame University for the first +semester of the 1930–1 school year, delivering +eighteen lectures on English +history, and the same number on the +Victorian age of English literature.</p> + +<p>Visiting Beaconsfield a few years ago, +Father John F. O’Hara, President of +the University, told Chesterton that he +had received “numerous letters from +former students who were just beginning +to appreciate the lectures he had +given them. Chesterton was that way. +One was forced to remember his striking +sentences, and the underlying truth +forced itself on the mind of the undergraduate +when greater experience made +understanding possible.”</p> + +<p>As Chesterton walked out on the +stage and faced his first Notre Dame +audience, he leaned upon the lectern +and said, “Until quite recently, I was +not at all certain that I would be able +to be here tonight. Had I not come, you +would now be gazing upon a great +yawning void instead of myself.”</p> + +<p>This bit of humor and the manner in +which it was expressed gave Father +Charles Morton the feeling that here +was a man of rare humility and of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">100</span> +simplicity which always accompanies +genuine culture. As the lecture series +progressed, two other qualities became +prominent,—brilliance of mind and a +profound Catholic faith. No matter +what the subject of his lecture was, +whether in the field of literature or of +history, he invariably found a way at +the end to relate all he had said to some +profound religious truth. That people +should praise him as a learned man was +a source of genuine embarrassment to +him. It amused him to be addressed +as “professor,” and he invariably referred +to himself as a “mere journalist.”</p> + +<p>Father Patrick J. Carroll looked upon +Chesterton, master of antithesis “as +himself the antithesis. A large lumbering +hulk of a man, you would expect +from him a deep, thundering speech. +You are mistaken: his language is swift, +sudden, arresting. Epigram follows +epigram, until you get tired of brilliance, +and begin to wonder if this big +man is not more concerned with his +sword play than with the serious business +of defending truth against truth’s +enemies. That is how you sometimes +think: but, of course, your thinking is +wrong.”</p> + +<p>Prof. Norbert Engels of the College +of Arts and Sciences recalls that “at +every lecture knowledge poured forth.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">101</span> +He never used a paper, a note, or a reference +of any kind. He would quote +extremely long passages of poetry or +prose with utmost ease. I did not tire +of his use of paradox as he used it with +such consummate art. Those are inadequate +judges of his genius who pronounce +upon him from his writings +only. To know Chesterton fully, besides +his works, one should have heard +him lecture, in order to catch the spirit +of the man.”</p> + +<p>All the breath and flavor of ages of +Christian culture came with Chesterton +in the opinion of Father Charles M. +Carey, “he entered our campus like +some great Catholic warrior stepping +down from the centuries that date back +to a time when England was really +‘Merrie England.’ Huge in girth and +mind and heart, he was the embodiment +of all that was good in that splendid +Catholic heritage.</p> + +<p>“As his vast physical bulk lumbered +from the wings to the rostrum, then +slouched down in his chair, he threw +a ruddy scowl across the rows of young +University men before him, and a great +feeling of awe swallowed up the idle +chatter. There was not a single heart +in that young Catholic audience that +did not somehow experience the presence +of greatness in our midst. To the +man who knew little of the great apologist,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">102</span> +it may have been a moment of +confused terror and curiosity. To anyone +who had read but a paragraph from +his pen, it was the moment which finds +one helplessly silent in the presence of +a superior being.</p> + +<p>“‘So,’ I thought to myself, as Chesterton +thundered and swayed slightly to +his place, his bushy hair in its own convenient +parting and his wrinkled and +baggy clothing left to look after itself +with a pronounced abandon, ‘can this +be the man that is so mentally nimble, +so sure footed in thought, so precise in +diction, so accurate in his thrusts, so +merciless in heaping wrath on adversaries, +and so loud in his frequent laughter +at the absurdity of those who oppose +his Christian fighting?’”</p> + +<p>Once he began to speak, Chesterton’s +eyes lit up with a joy born of that common +bond that is the Catholic faith, +thus destroying all barriers of racial +differences because, as he said, “Under +the portals of our Lady’s Shrine, all +men are at home.” That was the spirit +that characterized his stay at Notre +Dame. To his young listeners he was +an inspiration. Every word that he +uttered had a clear, certain and convincing +ring in it that made for conviction. +He was thoroughly Catholic. +For him life was full of faith and +beauty and romance. Every word that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">103</span> +he uttered had a freshness and wonder +about it. His adroit phraseology, his +accent and his inexhaustible flow of +genuine humor quickened his youthful +audience to frequent bursts of applause +and measured gaiety.</p> + +<p>Chesterton had the honorary degree +of Doctor of Law conferred upon him +Wednesday afternoon, November 5, +1930, in Washington Hall. Many honorary +degrees had been conferred by +Notre Dame, but this was the first time +in the history of the University that a +special convocation of the Faculty had +been called to participate in the conferring +of a degree.</p> + +<p>At four-thirty the academic procession +left the University parlors and +made its way to Washington Hall where +members of the Senior Class and the +guests were assembled. After an introductory +musical program had been +given by the student orchestra and Glee +Club, Father J. Leonard Carrice, Director +of Studies, announced the conferring +of the degree,</p> + +<p>“The University of Notre Dame, in +this special convocation of the Faculty, +confers the degree of Doctor of Law, +<b lang="la">honoris causa</b>, on a man of letters recognized +as the ablest and most influential +in the English-speaking world of +today, a defender of the Christian tradition, +whose keen mind, right heart,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">104</span> +and versatile literary genius have been +valiantly devoted to eternal truth, goodness +and beauty, in literature, and in +life—Gilbert Keith Chesterton, of London, +England.”</p> + +<p>After receiving the Degree from +Notre Dame’s President, the Rev. +Charles L. O’Donnell, Doctor Chesterton +replied,</p> + +<p>“I only wish it were possible for me +to say, as you have suggested, something +of what is in my heart in the way +of gratitude. Gratitude is what I feel +most deeply at present, and it is the +irony of human fate that it is perhaps +the only thing that cannot be expressed. +If I said all the things which +are usually said on these occasions, I +should only be expressing my feelings, +for in my case, they happen to be perfectly +true. It is usual to say that one +is not worthy of such an honor, and the +vividness of my own unworthiness is +so acute in my own mind that I find it +almost impossible to express it and to +thank you for the far too generous +things which have been said. I have +given a series of lectures on a subject +on which a number of you are much +better acquainted than I. If I happen +to say something about the history of +the Victorian age, the history which I +am supposed to talk about, or if I happen +to say something about the Victorian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">105</span> +age in literature, I am all too painfully +reminded that you have learned +history and have studied literature. If +I mention the Province of Canada, I am +reminded that you have studied geography. +Therefore I am afraid that I +am not only unworthy but almost in a +false position before you. I am a journalist, +and the one thing I can claim is +that I have endeavored to show that it +is possible to be an honest journalist. +Therefore, a great academic distinction +of this kind gives me a very strong +sense of gratitude. I can only thank +you from the bottom of my heart, not +only for this favor extended to me, but +also for the very great patience with +which you have listened to my lectures.</p> + +<p>“There is always a bond between us +that would make you tolerant of me, I +know. I have only once before gone +through a ceremony of this kind and +that was at the highly Protestant University +of Edinburgh, where I found +that part of the ceremony consisted of +being lightly touched on the head with +the cap of John Knox. I was very much +relieved to find that it was not part of +the ceremony on the present occasion +that I should, let us say, wear the hat +of Senator Heflin! I remember that, +when I came to America before, about +nine years ago, when I was not a +catholic, and when I had hardly realized<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">106</span> +that there were Catholics in America, +my first sensation in this country was +one of terror. I recall the first landing +and that great hotel in New York, the +Biltmore, the name of which held for +me such terrifying possibilities. (Surely +there would not be <em>more</em> of it!) It all +seemed alien, although I quickly discovered +what kind and generous people +the Americans are. I did not feel at all +like that when I came to America for +the second time. If you want to know +why I felt different, the reason is in the +name of your University. That name +was quite sufficient as far as I was +concerned. It would not have mattered +if it had been in the mountains of the +moon. Wherever She has erected Her +pillars, all men are at home, and I +knew that I should not find strangers. +And, if any of you who are young +should go to other countries, you will +find that what I have said is true.”</p> + +<p>Prof. Daniel O’Grady was invited to a +social evening with Chesterton at Notre +Dame’s Sorin Hall ... among those +present were the host Charles Philips, +Paul Fenlon, Pat Manion, John Frederick, +Lee Flateley, John Connolly, +Steve Roney, Rufus Rauch ... all either +professors or students. The affair +started at nine in the evening and lasted +until almost three in the morning.</p> + +<p>When Manion asked whether liquor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">107</span> +in England produced immorality, +G. K. C. replied,</p> + +<p>“Undoubtedly it does in certain London +districts. When I stayed at the +Royal York in Toronto on my way down +to Notre Dame I noticed something +oligarchical about the Ontario system +inasmuch as there was a dance on and +those who could afford a room left the +ballroom on occasion and went upstairs +for a nip displaying visible evidences +thereof as one met them in the hall. +Moreover in Ontario a permit was +necessary whereas in Catholic Quebec +this Protestant condition did not prevail.</p> + +<p>“I live near Oxford, and I often visit +friends there. In Cambridge too I +know and admire many men, such as +the poet A. E. Housman, and the historians +George M. Trevelyan and Holland +Rose, the great Napoleonic authority. +Speaking of the latter place +you know the old yarn about the Italian +doctor on his way to Cambridge to debate +some don there. On stopping to +inquire directions of some pedestrians +he was answered in Greek verse by +Cambridge students disguised as workmen, +whereupon he ordered the coachman +to turn around and go back because +said he, if the laborers are so learned, +what must the dons be?...”</p> + +<p>When O’Grady said he had heard that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">108</span> +the difference between the two schools +was that an Oxford man went around +as though he owned the place, while a +Cambridge man acted as though he +didn’t give a damn who did, Chesterton +retorted,</p> + +<p>“And both about equally obnoxious!”</p> + +<p>When the discussion turned to some +well known Englishmen, Chesterton +said,</p> + +<p>“If my description of Lord Beaverbrook +was based on his journalistic +methods I would have to call him a +guttersnipe. I feel that Bertrand Russell +is a disgrace to English literature, +not only on account of his writings, but +also because of his way of life.”</p> + +<p>“Masefield’s a fine fellow and a good +writer,” said Chesterton in reply to another +question, “but Ramsay MacDonald +had to choose Masefield as Poet Laureate, +there being no other poet so +sympathetic to Labor. However, Yeats +was by far our best poet. Yet hardly +ever has the best poet been made laureate. +There is too much politics in the +appointment, just as is the case with +the appointment of the Anglican bishops. +One need only consider Barnes of +Birmingham. The idea of calling York’s +archbishop ‘by divine permission’ and +Canterbury’s ‘by divine consent,’ has +always seemed to me rather far-fetched.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">109</span></p> + +<p>When reference was made to Rebecca +West’s resigning from the “Bookman” +because the editorial policy favored the +New Humanists, Chesterton remarked,</p> + +<p>“How extremely foolish that is—as +though that affected your contributions!”</p> + +<p>Asked about Lord Beaverbrook who +had but recently died, Chesterton reflected,</p> + +<p>“Birkenhead has always been a +puzzle to me because he was cynical and +worldly ambitious, and yet, it must be +confessed, overfond of his liquor. One +expects such a weakness only from a +poet or one who has the poetical imagination.”</p> + +<p>A comparison being made between +certain types of Russian and English +characters, Chesterton went on to say,</p> + +<p>“The Russians in their writings are +always brooding over fate or some silly +thing. For the most part the English +gentry are fine, sensible fellows, although, +of course, there are some +bounders amongst them. You will now +find not a few Catholics among them, +although for many years the only Catholics +were either English aristocrats or +Irish paupers.”</p> + +<p>Asked if he found the Americans all +very mad in the pursuit of money, he +shook his head with a smile,</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">110</span></p> + +<p>“Quite the contrary, I find the Americans +less worshipful of money than +my fellow English. However, I do prefer +even our English gentry although +mad about money, to some of your vulgar +and blatant millionaires.”</p> + +<p>During a discussion of the Church +and State, Chesterton remarked,</p> + +<p>“I read the other day of a western +magistrate who sentenced a woman to +go to Church for the next fifty Sundays. +I wondered at the time whether +that was consistent with the American +doctrine of the separation of Church +and State. Even though we have a +state church in England, I do not think +that an English judge would have given +such a sentence.”</p> + +<p>In autographing a book just before +the party broke up, Chesterton threw +a lot of ink on the floor, but merely remarked,</p> + +<p>“I’m always cluttering up people’s +carpets.”</p> + +<p>His hostess rather prim and proper, +kept shoving ash-trays at him which he +completely ignored and continued dropping +ashes from his cigarettes all over +the floor. But no one minded this little +thoughtlessness of genius.</p> + +<p>As he put on his Inverness cape and +black sombrero-like hat he shouted out +in merry tones,</p> + +<p>“If anyone ever tries to tell me<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">111</span> +Catholicism is inconsistent with fun and +play, I’ll say did you ever hear of the +University of Notre Dame?”</p> + +<p>Before Chesterton left the University, +Mr. William L. Piedmont had a +pleasant chat with him. Asked what +he thought of our great American +sports, G. K. C. answered,</p> + +<p>“I witnessed the Notre Dame-Navy +game, and was much impressed by the +popularity that your game of football +enjoys. In my youth I played English +football and even rounders which might +be described as an English equivalent +of baseball.”</p> + +<p>“I very gravely doubt if the nations +are becoming closer and closer together,” +declared Chesterton when the conversation +touched the League of Nations. +“Quite the contrary, I feel the +various countries are becoming more +national. An example would be in the +literary fact that in my youth Thoreau, +Hawthorne, Mark Twain and the rest +were as widely known and read in +Europe as in America, while today the +strange and awful stuff of American +writers is unknown abroad with very +few exceptions. I attribute this to the +fact that America has become so different +and in Europe the news hasn’t +gotten through yet as to what it’s all +about in America.”</p> + +<p>On being asked if he thought the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">112</span> +world (and especially, the United +States) possessed any great thinkers, +he replied humorously,</p> + +<p>“If there are any people in the world +today who do think, witness my ‘Age +of Unreason,’ I feel America can certainly +claim some of them.”</p> + +<p>After confessing that he read very +few novels, but mentioning the works +of Sheila Kaye-Smith with approbation, +he went on to say,</p> + +<p>“But I consider Rebecca West the +most interesting woman writer, if for +no other reason than because she is +gradually becoming more respectable. I +suppose (with a characteristic chuckle) +that her marrying a banker is not really +the cause of respectability, even though +marrying a banker may be a sort of +worldly parallel to being confirmed in +grace!”</p> + +<p>Of the winner of the Nobel prize for +literature, he said,</p> + +<p>“On the whole, I think Sinclair Lewis +is the scourge of God—a calamity in +some respects like the Great Fire of +London. I do not believe that Mr. +Lewis has enough sympathy with the +Middle West people of whom he writes, +nor has he the right slant on the people +of Main Street—as I have observed +them during my sojourn in America. +I think it about time somebody made +fun of the greasy optimism prevalent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">113</span> +in recent novels. Lewis has a good +deal of righteous indignation, but what +he lacks is the positive moral idea +which should be found in the representative +literature of every nation. I like +Lewis when he is simply humorous like +in “The Man Who Knew Coolidge,” but +in general the bestowal of the prize is +like giving a medal to a great scavenger.”</p> + +<p>When he arrived in Washington, D. C. +to lecture at Trinity College, Chesterton +gave Miss Syd Walsh an interesting and +picturesque description of Notre Dame,</p> + +<p>“I think the faculty and students +awfully jolly people and the campus +itself a bit of medievalism with its constant +stream of youths in bright colors +pouring in and out of old stone buildings +with gilded domes. As long as I +live I will never forget their way of +letting off fireworks before a big game +and generally playing the goat in a +cheery way.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">114</span></p> + +<div class="section"> +<figure id="i_114" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 25em;"> + <img src="images/i_114.jpg" width="2258" height="3113" alt=""> + <figcaption class="caption"> + <p>FACSIMILE WRITING</p> + <p>of</p> + <p>MR. AND MRS. G. K. CHESTERTON</p> + </figcaption> +</figure> +<div> </div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">115</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TEN">CHAPTER TEN<br> + +<span class="subhead">CHESTERTON AND AMERICAN AUTHORS.</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Recently there appeared a statement +to the effect that although Chesterton +had considerable popularity with the +average American reader, our authors +cared but little for the man and his +work. Doubting such a sweeping statement, +I wrote to various men of letters +who would serve as a good cross-section +of American literature, and their replies +proved unusually illuminating.</p> + +<p>“Of course you may put me down as +an admirer of Chesterton,” declares +Channing Pollock, “though I recall surprisingly +little of his work. I have +read so much that, after fifty-six years, +I begin to find recollections blurred. +My admiration of Chesterton is founded +on my impression of the man—of what +he was and stood for; of his sincerity, +courage, forthrightness and general +altruism.”</p> + +<p>“As a boy of ten,” records Thomas +O. Mabbott, “I read regularly copies of +the ‘London Illustrated News’ to which +G. K. C. was a regular contributor. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">116</span> +am one of those people who, while not +exactly a prodigy, developed very early +and think very much more as I did +when sixteen than most people seem to +do. I often boast how little most writers +influence my own thought but Chesterton +is one of the few who did! I +read much of his work as a very young +man, and believe he is one of the very +few authors who impressed me <em>profoundly</em>. +I saw ‘Magic’ when it was +given in New York during the war—a +mark of devotion, surely, since I rarely +went to a serious play. Incidentally I +thought it <em>very</em> effective as an acted +play.”</p> + +<p>Clement Wood first read “Heretics” +and then “Orthodoxy,” and immediately +obtained the impression that the author +was “one of the world’s most alert and +persuasively brilliant minds. He made +the persons treated of real and significant +to me for the first time. Thereafter +I read most of his work. His novels +are absolutely unique, I wouldn’t be +without one, and of all, the ‘Napoleon +of Notting Hill’ is the most precious—the +glorious effort to revive medievalism +today (which I am 100% against +intellectually) won me forever. His +Father Brown stories, in spite of the +ever-present propaganda for Catholicism—which +again I am against, but +I believe that if religion persists, it will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">117</span> +either be Roman Catholic or the Quaker +non-Christian (Religious Society of +Friends) non-evangelical faith—I regard +as by all odds the greatest detective +stories ever written. Poe and Doyle +are forerunners, and then G. K. C. +whose every word is a work of art. +I have memorized the plots of nearly +all and the wording of many of his +memorable openings. His ‘Peacock +Trees,’ ‘Club of Queen Trades,’ rank +as highly.</p> + +<p>“The play ‘Magic’ is immortal and +weighs more to me than all Shaw!”</p> + +<p>“You may certainly enroll me as one +of his admirers,” affirms Donald Ogden +Stewart. “Although I do not recall the +name of the first book of his which I +read, I do remember, however, that it +was while I was in my senior year at +Yale, and that it had such an influence +on me that I immediately proceeded to +read every one of his books that I could +lay my hands on.”</p> + +<p>Henry Hazlitt first encountered +Chesterton’s writings in 1916 and “was +quickly carried away by his stylistic +brilliance. My admiration, I must confess, +was not sustained at its original +level, but it most certainly never deserted +me. I never met him personally, +but I heard him debate with Clarence +Darrow, and was impressed by his immense<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">118</span> +superiority over his antagonist, +and by his charm as a man.”</p> + +<p>William Thomas Walsh first heard +about G. K. C. when he was a student +at Yale in 1909: “I think it was Professor +Chauncey B. Tinker who recommended +him in class that year, and I +seem to remember that William Lyon +Phelps was also a Chesterton enthusiast +at that early period. The book that +helped and influenced me most was +‘The Everlasting Man.’ I liked it so +well that I bought three copies, intending +to lend them to as many people as +possible, for I thought the whole world +should drink at that fountain of wisdom. +I soon discovered, however, that +some people loved the book and others +hated it just as fervently. This was +to be expected, perhaps, about anything +so profoundly Christian in its perceptions. +In fact, I began to entertain an +almost superstitious notion that the +book had a practical value apart from +literary considerations, in what St. Ignatius, +following St. John, called the +Discernment of Spirits. The various +agnostics and pagans to whom I lent the +book usually kept it a long while, and +finally returned it saying apologetically +that they had never found time to read +it, though I knew that every one of +them had read several other books in +the interim. Finally the three volumes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">119</span> +disappeared completely from my life. +It was partly my fault, for I have a bad +habit of lending books, and forgetting +to whom: and as the number of people +who have to be reminded to return +books is apparently very large, I have +lost the best part of my library in consequence: +for it is usually the book +that one is enthusiastic about that one +lends. But I can’t help thinking the +Devil must have had a particular grudge +against so true and so powerful a book, +and has continued to hide all three of +my volumes on the most obscure +shelves of as many sons of Belial. Still, +as good comes out of evil in the long +run, it may be that the sons of these +benighted individuals may inadvertently +come upon them on rainy days, and +in their innocence read and be enlightened.</p> + +<p>“In my biography of Philip the +Second, I have had to differ with Chesterton’s +interpretations of that most +misunderstood gentleman. But when +G. K. wrote his glorious ‘Lepanto,’ he +was still partly deceived by the tradition +that had so long dominated English +letters, so far as Spain was concerned. +It is the only mistake of importance I +have ever noted in the work of that +phenomenal man.”</p> + +<p>Hamlin Garland met him at the Savage +Club in London, and several times<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">120</span> +in America: “As a matter of fact, I +introduced him when he made his first +address in New York City. I enjoyed +his mystery stories much better than +some of his more pretentious work. +From my point of view he worked the +paradoxes altogether too hard. He was +a very singular and interesting character.”</p> + +<p>Waldo Frank remembers that when +he was “in college and out of it, the +essays of G. K. C. stimulated me, indeed. +His critique of modern society, +his destruction of its complacencies, his +suggestive references to other values +now absent, meant a good deal to me.”</p> + +<p>Myles Connolly feels that Chesterton +“will not, try as I will, come under the +head of remembrance. He seems vividly +contemporary, vitally alive. It’s a +worn-out form of tribute, I know, but +there’s none greater and I will say it: +he lives. The stuff of immortality was +so strong in him that beside his memory +as the world calls it, it is we who +are dead.</p> + +<p>“Napoleon said that no man became +a writer unless he were a defeatist. +When life was too tall and strong for a +man, he quit, and in his pen he found +corroboration and consolation. That is +not, we are aware, altogether so. Although +it is true most men who write +are running away. But with Chesterton<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">121</span> +writing was not running away; it +was running to—running to reality, to +truth. Writing was life with him: it +was his breathing, his talk, his laughter, +his self. It might be said that +those who don’t like Chesterton don’t +like the truth. It might ever more accurately +be said that those who don’t +like Chesterton, don’t like life. That +superabundance of his, that hugeness +of his, is too much for them. They +crawl; he dances (albeit like the mountains +of Scripture). They pick-peck; +he waves that tremendous sword. They +count those corroded little pennies; he +empties that fabulous purse of his on +the world. He was an extravagant man; +extravagant of his riches, his light, his +life. It is this shining extravagance +that blinds the crawlers and pick-peckers +and misers. It is a glory too much for +them. A few words of ‘Thoreau’ are, I +think, to the point. ‘I fear,’ writes the +Concord ascetic, ‘lest my expression +may not be <em>extra-vagrant</em> enough, may +not wander far enough beyond the narrow +limits of my daily experience, so as +to be adequate to the truth of which I +have been convinced ... I desire to +speak somewhere without bounds; like +a man in a waking moment to men in +their waking moments; for I am convinced +I cannot exaggerate enough even +to lay the foundation of a true expression.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">122</span> +Who that has heard a strain of +music feared then lest he should speak +extravagantly any more forever?’</p> + +<p>“To Chesterton such words as ‘tremendous’ +and ‘splendid’ and ‘enormous’ +and ‘shattering’ were of common use. +(In fact, it was he who made such +words popular.) These words came +naturally to him because (and he would +be the last to admit it) he himself lived +these words; such words only could +express his vitality and significance. +He was a giant. There is no other way +of saying it. Except, perhaps, to say +he still is.”</p> + +<p>James Branch Cabell “enjoyed all the +work of Chesterton’s early and middle +period. I admit that of his publications +during, let us say vaguely, more recent +years, I prefer to say nothing, out of +loyalty to a person that has given me a +vast amount of pleasure. I write this +after verifying the fact that his earlier +books when I re-read them, can still do +this.”</p> + +<p>“Indeed I am a warm admirer of +Chesterton,” affirms Rabbi Stephen S. +Wise. “Apart from his delightful wit +and his genius in many directions, he +was a great religionist. He as a Catholic, +I as a Jew, could see eye to eye +with each other, and he might have +added, ‘particularly seeing that you are +cross-eyed;’ but I deeply respected him.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">123</span> +When Hitlerism came, he was one of +the first to speak out with all the directness +and frankness of a great and +unabashed spirit.”</p> + +<p>Dr. Alexis Carrel well remembers +that “Heretics” was the first Chesterton +book that he read almost a quarter +of a century ago,</p> + +<p>“The extreme clarity and brilliance of +his style impressed me greatly. The +train of his thought appeared to me as +strong, flexible, and shining as a steel +blade, and as merciless.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">124</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_ELEVEN">CHAPTER ELEVEN<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">B</a><br> + +<span class="subhead">THE AUTHOR VISITS TOP MEADOW</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>In a delightful villa, called Top +Meadow, in Beaconsfield, a small town +of Buckinghamshire, about forty minutes +on the train from London, lives, +and has lived for some ten years, Gilbert +Keith Chesterton with his charming +wife. Chesterton, a huge man, +possesses the frankness and enthusiasm +of a boy, with unkept curly blond hair, +blue eyes, shaggy reddish brown moustache, +an exceedingly pleasant and attractive +smile, wearing clothes in a +somewhat careless and negligent manner. +Although clear and resonant, his +voice is not as powerful as one would +be led to expect for a man of his size. +He possesses the little mannerism of +twirling the ends of his moustache +every now and then. He would make +a joke with true Twainian seriousness +upon his face, but unlike the great +American such feigned seriousness becomes +too much for him, and he bursts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">125</span> +out in peals of Gargantuan laughter +that often renders him speechless for a +few seconds. At other times the idea of +something funny will cause him to +laugh most heartily before he has had +a chance to express it in words.</p> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">B</a> This entire chapter was read, corrected, and +approved in its present shape, by Chesterton +himself a short time before his death.</p> + +</div> + +<p>In a little hallway, Chesterton introduced +me to his wife, and then led the +way into the living room, a tremendous +chamber fully a hundred feet long, low-ceilinged +and surrounded on all sides +by shelves bulging and overflowing +with books of every description, a massive +fire-place built of large stones that +must have come from the bed of a nearby +brook, and a number of what proved +to be exceedingly comfortable chairs +grouped around the empty fire-place; +for it was midsummer.</p> + +<p>As we sat down before the fire-place, +Chesterton said he was vastly amused +over a delegation from America that +had called on him the day before.</p> + +<p>“They were making a tour of Europe +for the express purpose of unearthing +everything they could about Browning. +They called on me because I have once +written a book on the poet. It was a +grave mistake on their part to think +that because a man has written a book +on a particular subject in the dim and +distant past, he therefore knows everything +about that subject. At the time +of writing the book, I probably was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">126</span> +little more up on Robert Browning than +the average person, but all my superior +knowledge has slipped from me long +ago.”</p> + +<p>The question of modern youth came +up for discussion.</p> + +<p>“Young people today have the idea +that old timers are landmarks. I hope +I do not fill as much space as Saint +Paul’s, but at least I am a Victorian ruin +dating from the year 1874. The last +time I was in New York I noticed that +the landscape was always changing. +When a baby is born he just has time +to look at the skyscrapers a week or so +before they are pulled down. Pulling +down New York seems to be the local +industry. A baby goes out in his perambulator +and his home is pulled down +before he gets back.”</p> + +<p>“What do you think of the young +people today, Mr. Chesterton?”</p> + +<p>“Well,” he replied, “their chief trouble +is they don’t want to admit that old +people really do know the modern movement +because we are able to compare +it with movements of the past. But the +young people know nothing else but the +present. The result is that they do not +give modern conditions much thought. +For instance, if we had moving sidewalks +today, the young people would +take it for granted, the old ones alone<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">127</span> +could compare them with the stationary +sidewalks.”</p> + +<p>“Do you think that much change has +taken place in the last fifty years,” I +asked.</p> + +<p>“We cannot grasp the tremendous +change that has taken place since 1874, +my birth year. Your country used not +to pay much attention to culture. When +Matthew Arnold began his lecture +series in America, he was worried about +what the American papers would say of +him for his criticism of certain phases +of American culture which he had +handled rather severely, but was relieved +to find that the papers had large +headlines reading,</p> + +<p>“‘Matthew Arnold has side whiskers.’ +But today you have a very high regard +for culture in your country.”</p> + +<p>“What literary people did you meet +in America, Mr. Chesterton?”</p> + +<p>“Among others I met Robert Cortes +Holliday, and Sinclair Lewis,” he replied. +“I found Lewis a pleasant fellow. +He was anxious to learn about the +conditions in England. That man, I +think, has considerable genius. I met +‘A. E.’ George Russell, also when I was +at Yale. He was completely wrapped up +in giving his lectures on agriculture to +you Americans.”</p> + +<p>“What does he think of our country?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">128</span></p> + +<p>“He has a semi-humorous, rather +critical, attitude towards you. He +won’t write anything much in praise +or anything particularly hostile.”<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">C</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">C</a> This prophesy of Chesterton’s proved to be +correct.</p> + +</div> + +<p>“What American cities especially appealed +to you?”</p> + +<p>“Baltimore I found exceedingly +charming,” answered Chesterton. +“There is a quaint atmosphere about +the place that is hard to describe. Saint +Louis I also liked, a most pleasant cultured +city.”</p> + +<p>“I once heard you lecture in Saint +Louis, Mr. Chesterton,” I remarked, +“and I agree with what you said about +the underdog:</p> + +<p>“‘When the very poor man gets +angry and ‘bites,’ everyone, even the +social workers, treat him as though he +were a mad dog. Has he not the right +to get deliberately angry, the same as +anybody else? Once I debated with +Clarence Darrow, and when I talked to +him after the lecture, he seemed to +have sympathy for the poor man, the +underdog, who was goaded on to do +things, by saying that he was mad. +Why cannot people give the underdog +credit for biting when he wants to, instead +of contending that he is just the +same as a mad dog on a rampage?’”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">129</span></p> + +<p>When Galsworthy became the topic +of conversation, Chesterton remarked,</p> + +<p>“Galsworthy always reminds me of +the solicitor of an old English family. +I cannot altogether feel that he reflects +modern England. He lays too much +stress upon a college education. He +believes that a man not blessed with a +college education might at any time +murder his mother. Galsworthy also +lacks the sweet balance of humor, only +a rather limited amount of humor +breathes forth from his works. Like +Darrow he, too, holds to the belief that +the underdog is always mad if he causes +the slightest trouble.</p> + +<p>“Again Galsworthy never seems to +write with set purpose, while I am one +of those people who believe that you’ve +got to be dominated by your moral +slant. I’m no ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ man. +I am quite incapable of talking or writing +about Dutch gardens or the game +of chess, but if I did, I have no doubt +that what I say or write about them +would be colored by my view of the +cosmos.”</p> + +<p>When the question of pessimism +came up, I mentioned that the week +before I had had the pleasure of dining +with A. E. Housman at Cambridge<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">D</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">130</span> +who facetiously told me that he was +often compared to Hardy because both +their names began with an “H”.</p> + +<div class="footnote"> + +<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">D</a> See “An Evening with A. E. Housman,” by +Cyril Clemens, 1937.</p> + +</div> + +<p>“That is all the basis critics often +have for forming comparisons,” replied +Chesterton with a smile, “but in this +case there is a measure of truth in the +comparison. Both undoubtedly have a +certain amount of pessimism. Poet +Housman’s, however, has the tang of +the fresh air about it, whereas Hardy’s +seems somewhat unpleasant.”</p> + +<p>And to illustrate his point, Chesterton +quoted from “A Shropshire Lad,”</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentq">“Oh many a peer of England brews</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Livelier liquor than the Muse,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And malt does more than Milton can</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To justify God’s ways to man.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For fellows whom it hurts to think:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Look into the pewter pot</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To see the world as the world’s not.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>A little later we went to the small +dining room which was a few steps +higher than, and was separated by a +heavy silk curtain from, the living +room. At a massive oaken table we +sat down to a delicious tea.</p> + +<p>When I asked Mrs. Chesterton what +was the national dish of England, she +promptly replied,</p> + +<p>“Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, +undoubtedly.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">131</span></p> + +<p>“Fried eggs and bacon is my favorite +dish,” spoke up Chesterton.</p> + +<p>I then asked the author what would +be his choice if he had to go on a desert +island and could take but one book +along.</p> + +<p>“It would depend upon the circumstances,” +he replied. “If I were a politician +who wanted to impress his constituents, +I would take Plato or Aristotle. +But the real test would be with +people who had no chance to show off +before their friends or their constituents. +In that case I feel certain that +everyone would take Thomas’ ‘Guide to +Practical Shipbuilding’ so that they +could get away from the island as +quickly as possible. And then if they +should be allowed to take a second book +it would be the most exciting detective +story within reach. But if I could only +take one book to a desert isle and was +not in a particular hurry to get off, I +would without the slightest hesitation +put ‘Pickwick Papers’ in my handbag.”</p> + +<p>The talk switched to the Russian situation. +Chesterton thinks that Lenin +was of the mad Russian type, just such +a type as Tolstoy,</p> + +<p>“But Trotsky is at once both more +commercial and cunning; he is the typical +Russian or German Jew.”</p> + +<p>The Chestertons own a pert little +Scotch terrier named Quoodle. “I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">132</span> +named him Quoodle,” explained Chesterton, +“after the hero of one of my +early, but alas forgotten, novels, in the +hope that unwary visitors like you +would ask about the origin of the name +and I would have a good excuse to talk +about my novel! But when only the +family is present we shorten the name +to Quo: a handy name and one that can +be yelled to the top of the lungs.”</p> + +<p>Among the other delectable viands +that Mrs. Chesterton’s bounty provided +were some cakes made out of the white +of eggs, that caused me to say,</p> + +<p>“These cakes put me in mind of some +period of English Literature.”</p> + +<p>“They remind me, rather,” responded +Chesterton with a hearty laugh, “of +icebergs and I wish that I was sitting +on a large one just now. (It was an +extremely hot August afternoon.) But +if we must compare them to some +period of English literature they remind +me of the rococo period, the age of Horace +Walpole, in particular of some of +the decorations of his home ‘Strawberry +Hill’.”</p> + +<p>Tea over, Chesterton suggested going +to see his garden. After putting on an +enormous sombrero, and taking in his +hand something like a small axe, but +which proved to be a walking stick +which his Polish friend, Roman Dyboski, +had given him, he led the way<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">133</span> +through a French window out into a +tidy little garden. We sat on camp +chairs in a pleasant spot. Chesterton’s +one seemed somewhat frail, shaking a +little, and to make matters worse, the +cat Stanley Baldwin came along and +fell sound asleep right under his master’s +chair! If anything had happened +to the chair, Baldwin would have +awakened in cat heaven!</p> + +<p>The conversation turned on the rather +whimsical subject of chairs.</p> + +<p>“H. G. Wells in one of his books,” remarked +Chesterton, “has written several +pages on the subject of chairs. +Some non-materialists might very well +contend there is no such a thing as a +chair. They would argue that since +there are all kinds and varieties of +chairs, when you use the word ‘chair’ +you cannot have any particular one in +mind: therefore the word is only abstract +and hence has no equivalent in +actuality!”</p> + +<p>When I wondered if anything had +ever been written on the subject of +shoes, Chesterton answered that his +friend Hilaire Belloc had done an exceedingly +entertaining essay on the +subject, “Belloc makes the point that +the kind of shoes a man wears and how +he keeps them, is a better indication of +his character, than any other piece of +apparel.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">134</span></p> + +<p>Chesterton told of a literary club +which had lately given a fancy dressed +ball for its members, and that he went +as Doctor Samuel Johnson. When I +asked who Mrs. Chesterton went as, he +replied with a merry twinkle in his eye,</p> + +<p>“My wife went dressed as one of the +characters in a novel that I am going +to write in the near future! You see +that I devise ways and means to advertise +both my old novels and my new +ones!”</p> + +<p>The subject of Rome and Mussolini +came up, and when I expressed admiration +for “The Resurrection of Rome,” +he snapped,</p> + +<p>“I think it was a pretty bad book.”</p> + +<p>At my disagreement, a look of mild +surprise appeared on Chesterton’s face,</p> + +<p>“Well,” explained he, “it was written +just after a stay in Rome, and I think +that I made the fatal mistake of reading +the book too soon after it was written. +That should never be done by any +author. The longer after the writing +that I wait to read one of my books, the +better it seems.”</p> + +<p>When I mentioned that Mussolini had +told me how much he had enjoyed reading +“The Man Who Was Thursday,” +and had found it exceedingly funny, +Chesterton answered,</p> + +<p>“Does anyone find my books funny? +It pleases me to hear that, for at times<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">135</span> +I fear that my humorous works are +taken seriously and my serious ones humorously. +I also had an audience with +Mussolini. He did not act in a high +and mighty manner at all, but showed +a genuine interest in England and +asked me numerous questions about the +country. He was indeed a jolly card.”</p> + +<p>“In what language did you carry on +your conversation,” I asked.</p> + +<p>“We spoke in French,” replied Chesterton, +“and when leaving I said, ‘I +hope you excused my poor French, +Your Excellency.’ To which Mussolini +answered, ‘That’s all right; you speak +French about as well as I speak English’.”</p> + +<p>After a moment’s pause Chesterton +reflected, “I don’t suppose that was +much of a compliment for my French, +because at that time Mussolini knew +practically no English.”</p> + +<p>“When do you do most of your writing, +Mr. Chesterton?”</p> + +<p>“Whenever I get a chance, I do not +care much for the typewriter and I find +pen or pencil much too tedious, for I +am a rather slow writer. At present I +do a considerable amount of dictating. +I can compose just as readily this way.”</p> + +<p>One of the last questions I asked my +host was his opinion of Mark Twain,</p> + +<p>“I have always admired the genius +of Mark Twain which may truly be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">136</span> +called gigantic. Mark Twain dealt so +much with the gigantic exaggeration +of imagination; the skyscrapers of literature. +He was the greatest master of +the tall story who has ever lived and +was also, what is more important, a +thoroughly sincere man.”</p> + +<p>As the cab to take me to my London +train was announced, Chesterton graciously +inscribed his “History of England” +in the following fashion,</p> + +<p class="center"> +“Greetings to the Mark Twain Society<br> +from an Innocent at Home<br> +G. K. Chesterton<br> +Known as the Unjumping Frog of<br> +Bucks County.”<br> + +and Mrs. Chesterton added,<br> +“And from Frances Chesterton<br> +Wife of the Innocent.” +</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">137</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_TWELVE">CHAPTER TWELVE<br> + +<span class="subhead">FATHER BROWN.</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Once in telling his creator what delight +Father Brown had given him, the +author asked if the spiritual detective +was a real person.</p> + +<p>“Indeed he is,” answered Chesterton. +“His name is Father John O’Connor and +he lives in Bradford, Yorkshire.”</p> + +<p>“‘Trent’s Last Case’ had recently +appeared,” Father O’Connor himself +writes the author, “and Chesterton full +of admiration for E. C. Bentley, was +humbly envious, longing to add to the +small (as it was then) crop of detective +stories. He also was bitten with costume +drama and would without provocation +‘lurk’ by the jamb of a doorway +with cloak-and-sword (he had a sword-stick) +as it were in wait for the Duke +of Guise. He had a column the next +week in ‘The Daily News,’ relating how +the forest-keepers of Ilkley apprehended +him for making passes at the local +trees, but released him on learning that +he was a guest of a Justice of the +Peace.</p> + +<p>“Many a glorious day we had together<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">138</span> +under that hospitable roof of +Francis Steinthal and his ever gracious +wife. Chesterton himself tells how two +young men that first evening, after I +had gone home, wondered how a sheltered +existence like mine could ever +take part in the rude, naughty world as +it stood, and how this gave the first +push off to the Father Brown series. +Disguise is mingled with description—I +did carry a specially large and cheap +umbrella—had quite a habit of brown-paper +parcels—and the episode of the +sapphire cross—(in America, a diamond +cross, of course) has this relation to +sordid fact, that I was still vain in having +bought five sapphires for five shillings +in an obscure pawnshop in Bradford. +Many years later, in Bradford +again, some duffer introduced me as +Father Brown to two international +crooks who were playing themselves +into the book-trade, and they both disappeared, +leaving no trace, within +twenty-four hours!”</p> + +<p>Father O’Connor never forgot the +day that he spent with the two Chesterton +brothers at St. John’s, Ilkley, +and has often wondered since if anyone +ever had a better chance to observe +their mental difference and their deep +attachment at such close quarters as he +did that day. Cecil was a Church of +England Conservative Fabian Socialist,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">139</span> +Gilbert was almost an official Liberal, +and at that time writing for “The Daily +News.” Cecil had already, in “The +Fabian Review,” battered daylight +through the Liberal Party in many a +large hole. This can be seen in his +“Gladstonian Ghosts.” From lunch till +tea and from tea till dinner, Cecil stood +his ground, and Gilbert must have +walked many miles around the large +dining table trying to reply to his +brother’s arguments.</p> + +<p>Chesterton gave the author his own +version of how he first conceived the +idea for the famous character,</p> + +<p>“While at tea with Father O’Connor +the conversation turned to philosophical +and moral channels, and I mentioned +with considerable timidity, a certain +rather sordid question of vice and crime, +which I intended to discuss in a future +essay. I was vastly astonished to find +that the priest not only had a thorough +working knowledge of the subject but +was able to furnish me with further +facts of an almost sensational nature.</p> + +<p>“Some days later Father O’Connor +and I took dinner with two Cambridge +undergraduates. When the priest left +the room, the young men remarked on +what a thoroughly charming and cultivated +person he was despite the fact +that in his cloistered existence he knew +so little of the world. One of them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">140</span> +remarked, ‘It’s a very beautiful thing +to be innocent and ignorant, but I think +it’s a much finer thing not to be afraid +of knowledge.’</p> + +<p>“The complete and crushing irony of +the remark so touched my imagination +that there was born in my mind the +idea of a priest who should appear to +know nothing, but as a matter of fact, +knows more about crime than the criminals +themselves. The point of him +(Father Brown) was to appear pointless; +and one might say that his conspicuous +quality was in NOT being conspicuous. +I have always thought that +the most appropriate compliment ever +paid my famous detective priest came +from the lips of a charming Catholic +lady who remarked, ‘I am very fond of +that ‘officious little loafer’.”</p> + +<p>The prototype of one of the Father +Brown characters, Hesketh Pearson, +writes the author,</p> + +<p>“I greatly enjoyed the Father Brown +stories, and remember his telling me +that he had described me in one of +them, though I cannot remember which. +My last meeting with him was not altogether +a pleasant one because he +started it by asking,</p> + +<p>“‘Why, are you not a Catholic? All +the best writers of today are Catholics<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">141</span> +and you are much too clever to be anything +else!’</p> + +<p>“I was forced to explain my view of +God, which was not his, and this disagreement +cast a slight shade over the +subsequent conversation—though I am +sure he was much too kindly a soul to +let it affect his feelings towards me, +which were always most cordial. He +was extremely generous to me at two +crucial moments in my life, and I shall +always remember him with gratitude, +admiration and affection.”</p> + +<p>Rafael Sabatini’s first acquaintance +with Chesterton’s work “was made +through Father Brown, and I don’t +know that I cared more for any of his +creations. He was, we all know, one of +three contemporaries to whom allusion +was commonly made by their triple initials: +G. K. C. in his case. The other +two, G. B. S. (George Bernard Shaw +and Clement K. Shorter). One day that +perverse genius, T. W. H. Crossland (of +whom little may have been known in +the States) was in my study chatting +with me in his usual disgruntled fashion. +The conversation turned on +Shorter. Whilst he talked he scribbled +on a British Museum reading room +ticket, which he left carelessly on my +table. After he had gone I looked at +the ticket and found on it scribbled the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">142</span> +following quatrain, which has remained +hitherto unpublished,</p> + +<p> +‘G. K. S.<br> +G. K. C.<br> +G. B. S.<br> +N. B. G.’” +</p> + +<p>G. B. Stern has “received intense +pleasure from a good deal of G. K. C. +One of my most treasured books is a +first edition of ‘The Napoleon of Notting +Hill’ which excited me wildly when +I first read it, some time in my teens. +I was born in Holland Park, and used +to be sent as a child for daily walks all +over Campden Hill and up and down +through ‘Napoleon’ kingdom, so that +it had a strong local interest as well as +its romantic appeal. I think, therefore, +this remains the favorite of his works, +together with ‘Lepanto,’ ‘The Secret +People,’ and two or three of the other +poems; but I also greatly enjoy and +have re-read several times the Father +Brown stories and ‘The Flying Inn.’ +Also I was present at the very first performance +in London of the play, +‘Magic,’ which seemed to me even then +inspired with those queer colored bursts +of truth which were so peculiarly Chesterton.”</p> + +<p>The late Mr. S. S. Van Dine, author +of “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” and “The +Philo Vance Murder Case,” wrote the +author, “I am very glad to be included<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">143</span> +as one of America’s admirers of G. K. +C.’s Father Brown series. Father Brown +has long been a favorite with me.”</p> + +<p>And Mary Roberts Rinehart, “Of +course I was a great admirer of the +Father Brown stories, and was naturally +pleased that Mr. Chesterton liked +my own work. In a way we formed a +sort of mutual admiration society.”</p> + +<p>“Chesterton and I wrote a detective +story together,” recalls Sir Max Pemberton. +“I opened the mystery—he +closed it, most ably, of course. I can’t +remember what it was about, but I am +sure he brought the villain to justice.</p> + +<p>“He was a truly great figure—a +worthy successor to the immortal Doctor +Johnson. Both had rare gifts, of +literature and Faith.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">144</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN">CHAPTER THIRTEEN<br> + +<span class="subhead">SOME APPRAISALS.</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>“Chesterton was one of the great and +dynamic forces during the time he +lived,” declares Ralph Adams Cram. +“I ‘fell for him’ many years ago when +almost by accident I found and read +‘The Napoleon of Notting Hill.’ That +settled the case for me, and after that +I was, so to speak, his intellectual and +spiritual slave. Of all his books it seems +to me this, together with ‘The Man Who +Was Thursday,’ ‘The Bell and the +Cross,’ ‘The Flying Inn’ and ‘The Victorian +Age of English Literature’ are +those for which I care most. This may +seem a curious selection, but in most of +these he makes his points through indirection, +and in some ways this seems +to me a more powerful method of conveying +his ideas and inspiring the public +than the more explicit works, the +object of which is very obvious. This +is not to disparage anything he ever did—except, +perhaps, the Father Brown +Mystery stories, which seem to me +rather unworthy of him, though even +these serve to show the immense<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">145</span> +breadth of his interest, his knowledge, +and his literary ability.”</p> + +<p>The late W. B. Yeats wrote the author +that he found Chesterton “a kindly +and generous man of whom I constantly +heard from friends, but as far as I can +recollect I only met him socially twice, +once at a Club dinner and once for tea +at a country house. So much of my +life has always been spent in Ireland +that I know comparatively little of the +English celebrities. I don’t want to +write about his works: I have read +very little of it, and to write even of +that little would open up great questions +I don’t want to come to any decision +about in my present ignorance +(which is likely to endure).”</p> + +<p>In his “Autobiography,” Chesterton +states that he had some talk about +poetry and property with Yeats at the +Dublin Art Club, “a most exhilarating +evening.” Yeats asked Chesterton to +debate at the Abbey Theatre, defending +property on its more purely political +side, against an able leader of Liberty +Hall, the famous stronghold of Labor +politics in Dublin, Robert Johnson, who +was exceedingly popular with the proletarian +Irish.</p> + +<p>“That passage from G. K. C.’s ‘Autobiography’ +is correct so far as I can +remember,” wrote Yeats in a second +letter. “It was a time when the English<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">146</span> +Government was stopping discussion +and we kept discussion open at the +Abbey Theatre when it had stopped +elsewhere, by getting people to speak +on the conservative side and letting +debate develop as it likes afterwards. +Johnson who replied to Chesterton was +at that time the most important Irish +labour leader: he is still very important. +He was in the Irish Senate for +some years, Bernard Shaw lectured +either the week after or the week before +Chesterton. Both men were brilliant, +Chesterton taking the line that the +possession of small properties was essential +to liberty, Johnson putting the +Trades Union point of view that it was +more important for the workman to +spend his money on his children than +to save it.”</p> + +<p>Cuthbert Wright’s only personal connection +with Chesterton was to have +been mentioned in one of his last books, +“The Well and the Shadows”: “Some +year ago I had published a review of +G. K. C.’s ‘Catholic Church and Conversion,’ +in which I drew attention to +what I considered a stylistic defect, his +mania for alliteration. He seems to +have remembered it during the intervening +years, and doing me the honor +to couple my name with that of Mr. +T. S. Eliot wrote as follows,</p> + +<p>“‘It must be a terrible strain on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">147</span> +presence of mind to be always ready +with a synonym. I can imagine Mr. T. S. +Eliot just stopping himself in time and +saying, ‘Waste not, require not.’ I like +to think of Mr. Cuthbert Wright having +the self-control to cry, ‘Time and fluctuation +wait for no man.’ I can imagine +his delicate accent when speaking of a +pig in a receptacle or of bats in the +campanile.”</p> + +<p>Professor Roman Dyboski of Krakow, +Poland, was first drawn to Chesterton +when he read some articles in +the “Illustrated London News,” and +some passages from his historical +poem, “The Ballad of the White +Horse.” The professor suggested his +advanced students making a special +study on the author, and the result was +two Polish books on G. K. C. Soon +translations of Chesterton’s works became +fairly numerous in Poland. His +play “Magic” had several successful +runs on Polish stages, and the Polish +Radio popularized “The Man Who Was +Thursday” in a dramatic version.</p> + +<p>Shortly after his visit to Poland +early in 1927, Chesterton sent Dr. +Dyboski an introduction to a collective +volume of studies by Polish scholars +written to commemorate the Seventh +Hundred Anniversary of the death of +St. Francis of Assisi, and the services +of the Franciscans to civilization.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">148</span></p> + +<p>On July 7, 1927, Chesterton spoke +on Poland at the Essex Hall in the +Strand. Crowds of his admirers were +present; the late Cardinal Bourne himself +appeared on the platform; the +Polish Ambassador took the chair; +Hilaire Belloc moved the vote of thanks +which was seconded by Dyboski. The +first part of the address struck all present +as the most illuminating English +opinion that had ever been expressed +on Poland,</p> + +<p>“I am to speak on Poland, a country +very unfamiliar to the average English +person. In order to facilitate approach +to the subject, let me begin by saying +that Poland is Poland. This is the +kind of statement which, when I make +it, is of course called a paradox (Laughter). +Yet what I wish to express is +something quite plain and simple. +Those of you who have studied medieval +history, may remember the ancient +kingdom of Bohemia—situated, according +to Shakespeare, by the sea-side—now +you hear much of Czechoslovakia, +unknown to you before. Again, +those of you who are old enough to remember +the World War, will recall the +fervent admiration which we all felt for +the heroism of the Servian nation: now +we often hear the name of Yugoslavia, +which we never heard in those days. +As for Poland, she is now known by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">149</span> +same name which she bore through +centuries, when she was a great power +in Europe, and by which our fathers +knew her to exist in those days when +she had disappeared from the map, yet +continued to live as a nation and to +struggle for freedom. That is why I +begin by saying that Poland is Poland, +and submit that as a fundamental fact +for you to consider before we go further.”</p> + +<p>It is difficult to imagine more eloquent +and emphatic words of recognition +for the continuity of Poland’s national +tradition through eight centuries +of recorded independent existence, +through a century and more of division +and captivity, and into the dawn of reunion +and regained liberty. Chesterton, +who in these words as well as in various +poems and essays, always acknowledged +in Poland one of the corner-stones of +the historical structure of European +civilization, remained a faithful friend +of Poland to his death.</p> + +<p>“Grey Beards at Play,” a book of +poems in the Mark Twain tradition +with G. K.’s own illustrations, first impressed +the philosopher L. E. Gilson. +But the book which remains with him +as the most stimulating is “Orthodoxy,” +“When it came out I hailed it as the +best piece of apologetic the century had +produced. In a sense all his later works<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">150</span> +are a variation on the same theme. I +was interested in the biography of the +conversion of a well known American +financial expert whose conversion was +brought about by reading in succession +Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy,’ Fulton +Sheen’s ‘God and the Intelligence,’ and +Karl Adams’ ‘Spirit of Catholicism.’ I +don’t wonder they would convert the +Devil if he had a sense of humor, and +open mind, and could pray for grace!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Gilson believes that Chesterton +will not really be fully appreciated before +a century or two. The book of his +which he likes best is “St. Thomas +Aquinas:” “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 we 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">151</span> +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.”</p> + +<p>Eileen Duggan gives the opinion of a +New Zealander,</p> + +<p>“One of the innumerable society +diarists who writes for a hobby recorded +an anecdote that illustrates Chesterton’s +complete absorption in a subject. +He had been given, rather foolishly, a +little gold period chair, and as he made +his points, it slowly crashed beneath +him. He rose just in time and sinking +into another chair that someone put behind +him, began at the word he had +last spoken. It was evident to all that +he had barely noticed the incident +rather than that he had decided to +ignore it.</p> + +<p>“A New Zealander who heard him +lecture relates that his appearance after +a long delay caused the Chairman to +express relief that he had not been +knocked down by a tramcar. G. K. C. +rose calmly and thanked him for his +solicitude, ‘but,’ said he, ‘Mr. Chairman, +had I met a tramcar it would have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">152</span> +a great and, if, I may say so, an equal +encounter.’”</p> + +<p>“His journalistic training,” continues +Miss Duggan, “had taught him simplification +and the author of those penetrating +studies on Dickens and Browning +would put his points on Distributism +so that they could be understood by +the man in the street. A sacrifice +seemed worthless to Chesterton, unless +it were voluntary and not State-imposed; +in Distributism, then, he saw +the solution of the world’s problems, the +answer for soul and for body of its ills.</p> + +<p>“It has been charged that he was the +enemy of Jewry, but his hand was +against only a small and powerful +Oligarchy within it which, he claimed, +harmed the poor Jew of the ghetto +more than the Gentile and, commenting +on the anti-Jewish excesses which have +outraged the world, he said that he had +now to defend the Jews against Hitler. +It will be remembered that he struck +at all internal abuses and certain lines +of his were arrowheads in the national +flesh. These for instance, on postwar +corruption drew blood,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentdq">“‘Oh, they that fought for England,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Following a fallen star,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alas, alas for England!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They have their graves afar.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">153</span> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">But they that rule in England</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In stately conclave met,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Alas, alas for England!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They have no graves as yet.’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“He was a Little Englander; partly, +one suspects, as a reaction from Kiplingism: +but in an age of peace he was +a defender of just wars. He inveighed +against those who blamed the older +generation in 1914 when they decided +that war was the only honorable solution +and later he said that a universal +peace, founded on a universal panic, +raised the point as to whether the supreme +moral state will be found when +everybody is too frightened to fight; +and dying, but undefeated, he repeated +as a creed, ‘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 known, old customs; secondly, +we made the state top-heavy with a +new and secretive tyranny of will; and +third, we forgot that there is no faith +in freedom without faith in free-will. +Materialism brings with it a servile +fatalism—because nothing, as Dante +said, else than ‘the generosity of God +could give to man after all ordinary,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">154</span> +orderly gifts, the noblest of all things +which is——liberty.’”</p> + +<p>Chesterton examined and scrutinized +the conscience of England as he did his +own, but only a fool would deny that +from York to Cornwall he loved his +country with a Little Englander’s passion!</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">155</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FOURTEEN">CHAPTER FOURTEEN<br> + +<span class="subhead">THE POET</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>Not a few of his readers feel that +Chesterton’s chief bid to fame is his +poetry. Alfred Noyes, for instance, +writes the author,</p> + +<p>“Chesterton led one of the most +original lives of his day in Europe. It +is well to remember this when it is +suggested that men who avail themselves +of the rich experiences of the +centuries are merely echoes of the past. +The true originality does not consist in +inventing ideas that have no relation to +truth and no roots in reality, but in the +discovery and unveiling of something +that has always been there, though we +may hitherto have lacked the eyes to +see it, or the power to express and interpret +it. Chesterton had an expert +gift for making one see things in all +their original miscellaneousness, as +things that really <em>are</em>, and yet—<em>cannot</em> +be, or give any rational account of +themselves. Many years ago in a poem +on the death of Francis Thompson, I +wrote of the overwhelming mystery +that there should be a single grain of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">156</span> +dust in existence, the sheer impossibility +of it on any rational ground, and +how the smallest atom defied exploration +and ultimately asserted a superrational +origin.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentdq">“‘I am ... yet cannot be, ...!</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Chesterton tosses out his thoughts +in a glorious liberality; but I am proud +to think that this line unconsciously +found its way into two of Chesterton’s +poems afterwards—‘The House of +Christmas,’ where he speaks of ‘the +things that cannot be, and that are,’ +and the splendid lyric ‘Second Childhood,’ +where he says,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentdq">“‘And stones still shine along the roads</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That are and cannot be!’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“Like most men of genius he kept his +own immortal childhood all his life; and +it was in the matrix of it, the vision +that ‘saw’ as a manifestation of something +‘supernatural,’ ‘something that +ultimately defied reason, not because it +was merely difficult to understand, but +because it rested on an eternal and absolute +mystery (above and beyond the +range of secondary causes) it was in +this wonder at the abiding in the terrestrial +that he made me feel the power +of his faith,</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">157</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentdq">“‘When all my days are ending</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And I have no songs to sing</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I think I shall not be too old</div> + <div class="verse indent2">To stare at everything,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">As I stared once at a nursery door</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Or a tall tree and a swing—</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Strange crawling carpets of the grass</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Wide windows of the sky—’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“One of the greatest of all his poems +is the sonnet entitled ‘The Convert,’ in +which he describes how, after he had +‘bowed his head,’ he came out where +the old world shone white, and heard +‘myriads of tongues like autumn leaves,’ +‘not so loveable,’ but ‘strange and light,’ +in their whispering assumption that, +among the old riddles and new creeds, +he must now be taken as belonging to +a dead past. He sees them singing—not +harshly—‘but softly as men smile +about the dead.’ And then comes this +magnificent and soul-stirring challenge +from the ‘dead man’,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentdq">“‘The sages have a hundred maps to give</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">They rattle reason out through many a sieve</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That holds the soil, but lets the gold go free;</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">158</span> + <div class="verse indent0">And all these things are less than dust to me</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><em>Because my name is Lazarus, and I live!</em>’”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Francis B. Thornton, the authority +on Gerard Manley Hopkins, first knew +Chesterton through his drinking songs, +“An admirable introduction; they were +so much more than their title signifies, +and they transported me to the happy +age which preceded the Malvolios and +their hatred of cakes and ale. To me +Chesterton will always be the poet. He +not only saw what other men looked at, +he saw <em>through</em> as well, and it was this +faculty which gave an angelic quality +to his humor. He was like a bull in a +china shop, but it was a papal bull enunciating +principles in the midst of a +wreck of fragile half-truth.”</p> + +<p>Mr. J. Corson Miller “was introduced +to the poetry of Chesterton by Mr. +William Rose Benet who dilated on the +vigor and splendor of ‘The Ballad of the +White Horse.’ I read that magnificent +work, and thereafter read all the verse +that G. K. C. produced. I am a great +admirer of his poetical work. I admire +his flexible sonnets, with their vast +sweep of thought, and radiant vision. +His various lyrics, love, nature, and religious +lyrics, are all excellent; his religious +poetry is sublime. His well<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">159</span> +known lyric, ‘The Donkey,’ with its +superb last two lines, or couplet, is unforgettable. +His ‘Queen of the Seven +Swords’—his second last, if not his last, +published volume of verse, bears in my +humble opinion, the breadth and fire of +eternal life. His was, indeed, a great +spirit: no toadying, or cavilling; no +smirking or masking, but strong and +free, with the strength of the clean +West wind, he put his thoughts and +opinions and visions in books and papers, +and let the seeds of his ideas fall +where they would, with results be what +they might. His many-sided genius is +well known: political and social economist; +poet, historian, novelist, short-story +writer, artist and cartoonist, +playwright—hardly any field in art and +literature can be mentioned—without +his having touched it in some manner +and left his mark, too.”</p> + +<p>Prof. Joseph J. Reilly holds that +Chesterton will be best remembered for +his poetry,</p> + +<p>“The initial book I read was ‘Varied +Types.’ My first reaction was one of +delight in Chesterton’s brilliance, my +second a realization that his views were +colored so decidedly by his personality +that one could not hope to get a genuinely +objective appraisal from him. +This has always seemed to me an element +of strength and of weakness and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">160</span> +ever since I have turned to Chesterton’s +criticism most largely for the unusual +flashes of insight which he shows than +for any completely balanced judgment. +In one sense he is like a delicious dessert: +it is not the main part of a dinner +but no dinner would be satisfying without +it.</p> + +<p>“My next acquaintance was with his +‘Orthodoxy’ which I found full of wisdom, +insight, and inspiration. As I +went on, I sometimes grew a little +weary of his paradoxes but changed my +mind when I happened one day upon his +statement that to him paradox was +‘truth standing on its head.’</p> + +<p>“After reading his volume of poems +through several times and thinking him +over for many months preparatory to +writing an article on Chesterton as +poet, I came to the conclusion to which +I still cling that Chesterton’s best claim +to the attention of our great-grand-children +will be based on his poetry.”</p> + +<p>John Gould Fletcher considers “Lepanto” +is Chesterton’s finest poem, +“next to that superb ‘Ballad of the +White Horse’—too long for most people, +I fancy, but absolutely characteristic +of his great, generous, simple, and +manly nature.</p> + +<p>“I did not learn to like his poetry because +of a parent or teacher. From my +earliest years I have always read all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">161</span> +the poets I could lay my hands on; and +in later years, I have continued the +practice. I read ‘Lepanto’ and the +‘Ballad’ some time back in 1912 as I +recall, during my early years in London—read +them and liked them. As regards +the American poets, I should say +that it was particularly marked in the +case of Vachel Lindsay.”</p> + +<p>“I am on record,” declares Clement +Wood, “that he is the greatest poet of +his generation. I well remember when +‘Lepanto’ was recited to Vachel Lindsay +by Floyd Dell; but Lindsay missed +the rhythm which was ballad measure—seven +beats to the line. Lindsay was +influenced by Chesterton’s ballad measure +which he re-used in the ‘Congo’ and +other poems—but as four beats to the +line.</p> + +<p>“‘The Ballad of the White Horse’ is +the greatest of all modern ballads, possibly +the greatest of all ballads,—more +sustainedly memorable, glorious +throughout. Many of the shorter pieces, +too, have my warmest admiration.”</p> + +<p>“The story of my reading ‘The Battle +of Lepanto’ on the shore of Lake Michigan +to Vachel Lindsay is true,” declares +Floyd Dell. “Note the echo of +‘Lepanto’ in ‘General William Booth,’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">162</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentdq">“‘Dim drums throbbing in the hills half heard</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Booth enters boldly with his big brass drum.’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="in0">“Booth was the first poem in Vachel’s +new style, and followed my chanting +recitation of the poem—which (my way +of reading it) was in turn based on +Yeats’ theories of how poetry should +be read. Vachel had an unparalleled +mental possession of the folk tunes (so +to speak) of American speech—camp-meetings, +soap-box, tramp, farmer, +Negro, and so on—but they never broke +through into his own verse until after +he had heard the theory of Yeats and +the poem of Chesterton.”</p> + +<p>Thomas Caldecot Chubb feels that +Chesterton has been an important influence +in the shaping of a brilliant +American poet, “I realize that discussing +influences is dangerous and that +most people like to think of genius as +bursting into the world full grown like +Medusa from the forehead of Jove. But +quite the opposite is usually true and +most men of genius are but the latest—not +the last link—in an unending chain. +They receive, they use, they pass along. +And anyone who will compare ‘The +Ballad of the White Horse’ with ‘The +Drug Shop, or Endymion in Edmonstoun,’ +written by Stephen Vincent Benet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">163</span> +when he was less than twenty years old, +will realize that Benet obtained more +than a handful of his poetic implements +from Chesterton. This is a paradox in +itself, that the gusty panegyrist of the +days following the decline of Rome +should make an important contribution +to so native and so American a voice.”</p> + +<p>No better way to end this chapter +than with what Stephen Vincent Benet +writes the author,</p> + +<p>“Thank you for sending me your +Chapter on Chesterton’s poetry which +I have read with much interest. I have +always greatly admired both ‘Lepanto’ +and the ‘Ballad of the White Horse’ and +I still re-read them.”</p> +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">164</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_FIFTEEN">CHAPTER FIFTEEN<br> + +<span class="subhead">CHESTERTON THE MAN</span></h2> +</div> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">165</span> +Corelli’s “The Mighty Atom” which had +but recently appeared.</p> + +<p>“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!”</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">166</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <em>with nothing</em> but an old revolver +bought on the way, and his favorite +sword-stick with an ivory-handle!</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">167</span> +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,</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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,</p> + +<p>“We’re in a complete fog!”</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>One year the Chestertons were coming<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">168</span> +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,</p> + +<p>“Aren’t you going to have the usual +cigar, Gilbert?”</p> + +<p>“I was not going to have a cigar and +I <em>don’t</em> 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.</p> + +<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">169</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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,</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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 <em>let</em> 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">170</span> +or useful to say, or that he +was called upon to act the oracle.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">171</span> +a real tendency to laziness, and so, to +letting his mind just hop about in a +(to me) ‘wild’ and disorderly way.</p> + +<p>“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 +<em>real holiness</em>.”</p> + +<p>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,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentsq">‘Prince: Bayard would have smashed his sword</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To see the sort of Knights you dub.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Will someone take me to a pub?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Is <em>that</em> the last of them? O Lord!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Will someone take me to a pub?’</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>“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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">172</span> +church near the railway station. And +now it is being enlarged as a memorial +to him.</p> + +<p>“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,</p> + +<p>‘Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral.’</p> + +<p>“That he had not read it was to me +a miracle. He had read everything I +ever heard of that Mark Twain had +written.”</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">173</span> +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.”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>Walter de la Mare penned a memorial +quatrain to his life-long friend,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indentq">“Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Pity and Innocence his heart at rest.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter section index"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">175</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak gesperrt bold" id="INDEX">INDEX</h2> +</div> + +<table class="index"> +<colgroup> +<col style="width: 40%;"> +<col style="width: 25%;"> +<col style="width: 35%;"> +</colgroup> +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td></td> + <td></td> + <td class="tdr">Page</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Adams, James Truslow, meets Chesterton</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Adams, Karl</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Aristotle</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Armstrong, Prof. A. J., entertains C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Arnold, Matthew</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Autobiography</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Ballad of the White Horse”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Baltimore, liked by Chesterton</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Barnes, Bishop E. W.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Barr, Robert</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Barrie, James M.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Beaverbrook, Lord</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Belloc, Hilaire</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">First meets Chesterton</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Quoted</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Benet, Stephen Vincent</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_162">162–3</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Benet, William R.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Bentley, E. C.</td> + <td class="tdr">Iff., <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Bierce, Ambrose</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Biography for Beginners”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Birkenhead, Lord</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Blackwood, Algernon</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Blatchford, Robt. complimented by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21–3</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Blessed Virgin</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89">89–90</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Blogg, Frances, marries C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Boer War, opposed by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19–20</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Borden, Lucille</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Boswell</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Bourne, Francis Cardinal</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Braybrooke, Patrick, at C.’s funeral</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_172">172–3</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Bridges, Horace J., debates with C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_68">68</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Brown, Edw. tells of C.’s Welsh lecture</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_49">49–52</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl">Browning, Robert</td> + <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, + <a href="#Page_125">125–6</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Cabell, James Branch</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Carrell, R. Alexis, on C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Cecil, Lord</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Cecil, Lord David</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">176</span>Cambridge</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Canadian Authors’ Society, toasted by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Catholic Church, C. joins</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Chamberlain, Joseph</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Chesterton, Cecil, brother</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138–9</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Chesterton, G. K.</td> + <td></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Chubb, T. C., describes C. at Yale</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_92">92–7</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Clarke, Isabel C., entertains C. in Rome</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35–6</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain)</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Praised by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Cobbett, William</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97–8</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Columbus, Ohio, C. visits</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Connolly, Myles, impressions of C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Convert, The,” poem by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Cram, Ralph Adams</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a> ff., <a href="#Page_144">144</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Dante</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Darrow, C., debates with C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_66">66</a> ff., <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">de la Mare, Walter, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32–3</a>, quoted</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">de Castro, Adolphe, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Dickens, Charles, admired by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Pickwick Papers,” C.’s favorite</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Distributism</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Drinkwater, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Drood, Edwin</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">27–7</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Doyle, Conan</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Dudley, Owen F., meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Duggan, Eileen</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_151">151</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Dyboski, Roman</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Eliot, T. S.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Everlasting Man”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Falstaff</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Father Brown</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Fletcher, James Gould</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160">160–1</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Flying Inn, The”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Fordham, E. W., boyhood friend</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_4">4</a> ff., <a href="#Page_168">168</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">France, Anatole</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Frank, Waldo, admires C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Frankau, Gilbert, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Galsworthy, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">177</span>discussed by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Garland, Hamlin, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">George Fifth, King, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Gibbs, A. Hamilton, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Gibbs, Sir Philip, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">20–1</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Gill, Eric, C.’s friend</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Gilson, L. E.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_149">149</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“G. K.’s Weekly”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Glasgow, C. lectures in</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">visits</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_165">165–6</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” praised by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Gordon, Charles W., describes C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Graham, Cunninghame</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Graham, Kenneth, compared to C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Greybeards at Play,” C.’s first book</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Guedalla, Philip, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_31">31–2</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Gwynn, S., recalls C.’s first book</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hamilton, Cosmo, debates with C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">62</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hammond, J. L.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_18">18–9</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hardy, Thomas</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Harris, Frank</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hawthorne</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Henry Eighth, King</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hereford, Oliver, quoted</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hazlitt, Henry</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Heine</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Heretics”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hilton, James, writes C. as a boy</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hirst, F. W., edits Speaker with C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“History of England”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Holliday, Robert Cortes, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Hollis, Christopher, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Holy Ghost</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Housman, A. E.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">quoted by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_129">129–130</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Huxley, Aldous, admired by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“History of England”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Jackson, Holbrook, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41–45</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Jacobs, W. W., meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">James, Henry</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">178</span>Joan of Arc, C. speaks on</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl">Johnson, Dr. Samuel</td> + <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, + <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Chesterton dressed as</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Kaye-Smith, Sheila, praised by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Kernahan, Coulson, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25–6–7</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Kingsmill, Hugh, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Kipling, Rudyard</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Knox, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Lane, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Lenin</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Lepanto,” poem by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Lewis, Sinclair</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_112">112–3</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Lindsay, Vachel</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Liverpool, C. lectures in</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Locke, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Lodge, Sir Oliver</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Lowdnes, Mrs. Marie Belloc, meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Mabbott, T. O., praises C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115">115–6</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">MacDonald, George</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">MacDonald, Ramsay</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Magic,” play by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_116">116–7</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Man Who Was Thursday”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Praised by James Hilton</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Admired by Mussolini</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Martindale, Cyril C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_167">167–171</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Masefield, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Masterman, Charles</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">May, J. Lewis</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Megroz, Rodolphe L., visits C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Miller, J. Corson</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Moore, Tom</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">More, Thomas</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Mussolini, Benito, visited by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_134">134–5</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Napoleon, quoted</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl">“Napoleon of Notting Hill”</td> + <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16–7</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, + <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“New Jerusalem”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“New Witness”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">179</span>Notre Dame University, C. at</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_99">99–113</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Noyes, Alfred</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_155">155–8</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">O’Connor, Father John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_137">137–140</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Receives Chesterton Into Church</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_171">171–2</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Oldershaw, J. L.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl">“Orthodoxy”</td> + <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149–50</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Ould, Hermon, offers C. club presidency</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Oxford</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Patterson, Mrs. F. T., hears C. lecture</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_66">66</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Pearson, Hesketh</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140–1</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Pemberton, Sir Max</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Phelps, William Lyon</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Philip the Second, misinterpreted by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Pollock, Channing</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Poland</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_148">148</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Redfield, William C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Remarque, Enrique Maria, C. dislikes</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Rinehart, Mary Roberts</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Ripley, Clements, admires C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Riviere, Hugo C., paints C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85–6</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Roberts, R. Ellis, hears C. lecture</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Robinson, E. A.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Rodin</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Rome, C. visits</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Rose, Sir Holland</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Roseberry, Lord</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Ruskin, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Russell, Bertrand, C.’s opinion of</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Russell, George</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127–8</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Sabatini, Rafael</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_141">141–2</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Saint Januarius</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">St. Louis, Missouri, C. lectures</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72–4</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Saint Paul’s School</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Saint Thomas Aquinas”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Scott, Walter</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Ivanhoe” reviewed by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Shaw, Bernard, C.’s book on</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl">Meets Chesterton</td> + <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_75">75–6</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">180</span>Shorter, Clement K.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Sheen, Fulton</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Slade Art School, attended by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Speaker,” The</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_18">18–9</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Stevenson, Robert Louis, quoted</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Stewart, Bishop G. C., at C.’s lecture</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_68">68</a> ff.</td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Stewart, Donald Ogden, admires C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Strachey, Lytton, compared to C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Swinburne</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Tennyson</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Thackeray</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Thompson, Francis</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Thomas, Edward</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_2">2</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Thoreau</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">quoted</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Tinker, Chauncey B.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Titterton, W. R., C. writes</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_81">81–3</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Describes C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Tolstoy</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Trent’s Last Case,” by E. C. Bentley</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Trevelyan, George M.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Trotsky</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Van Dine, S. S., admires Father Brown</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Van Druten, John</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Varied Types”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Velasquez</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Victorian Age of English Literature”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Walker, Headmaster, discovers C.’s genius</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Walpole, Horace</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Walsh, William Thomas, describes C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_118">118–9</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Watts, G. F., admired by C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">“Well and the Shadows”</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl">Wells, H. G.</td> + <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79–80–81</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, + <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">West, Rebecca</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Wise, Stephen S., admires C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Wood, Clement</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Wright, Cuthbert</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Wyndham, George</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="ifrst"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Yealy, Francis J., hears C. lecture</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Yeats, Elizabeth, at G. K.’s wedding</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr class="indx"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">Yeats, William B.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> +</tr> +<tr class="isub1"> + <td class="tdl" colspan="2">meets C.</td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_145">145–6</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<div class="chapter section transnote"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> + +<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made +consistent when a predominant preference was found +in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.</p> + +<p>Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced +quotation marks were remedied when the change was +obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.</p> + +<p>Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them, +have been sequentially alphabetized and placed +below the paragraphs that reference them.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_i">Page i</a>: “unanimity” was printed as “unanmity”; +changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_12">Page 12</a>: “just ’ad” was printed as “just +’as”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_13">Page 13</a>: 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.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_14">Page 14</a>: “pledged to wage eternal against” +seems to be missing a word.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_30">Page 30</a>: “finding reasons for his” was +printed as “finding seasons for his”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_31">Page 31</a>: “with insufficient impudence” was printed that way; perhaps it +should be “sufficient”.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_38">Page 38</a>: “quiet chat” was printed as “quite +chat”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_38">Page 38</a>: “I remember how Lord David +Cecil when still a boy” was printed that way; “how” seems to be +extraneous.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_40">Page 40</a>: “in phases as colorful” was printed +that way.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_40">Page 40</a>: “points in phrases” was printed as +“points in phases”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_41">Page 41</a>: Extraneous opening single quote +removed just before “Do you happen to write poetry”.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_41">Page 41</a>: Missing closing quote mark added +after “It was a quasi sonnet entitled ‘The Jewish Poet.’”</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_44">Page 44</a>: “sombrero” was printed as +“comprero”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_48">Page 48</a>: “This he thought was very reasonable +theory” was printed that way.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_49">Page 49</a>: The second occurrence of “Debates +Union” was printed as “Debate’s Union”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_51">Page 51</a>: “Liberty: the Last Phase,” was +printed as “Liberty: the Last Phrase,”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_57">Page 57</a>: Extraneous closing quote removed +after “of life and experience.”</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_62">Page 62</a>: “he never forgot” was printed as “he +never forget”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_88">Page 88</a>: “Cycle Valley” was printed that +way.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_89">Page 89</a>: “it did before” was printed as “it +did befire”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_90">Page 90</a>: “Thomas More” was printed as “Thomas +Moore”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_94">Page 94</a>: “that varnished period” was printed +that way.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_106">Page 106</a>: “It would not have mattered” was +printed as “I would not have mattered”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_107">Page 107</a>: Extraneous closing quote removed +after “condition did not prevail.”</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_108">Page 108</a>: “no other poet” was printed as “no +other post”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_118">Page 118</a>: “just as fervently” was printed as +“just as feverently”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_121">Page 121</a>: “It might ever more accurately” +was printed that way; “ever” may be a typo for “even.”</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_122">Page 122</a>: “significance” was printed as +“signifcance”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_139">Page 139</a>: “battered daylight” was printed as +“bettered daylight”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_140">Page 140</a>: “knows more about crime” was +printed as “know more about crime”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_146">Page 146</a>: “was essential” was printed as +“was ensential”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_146">Page 146</a>: “debate develop as it likes” was +printed as “debate develop as it like”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_146">Page 146</a>: “Some year ago” was printed that +way.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_149">Page 149</a>: “Grey Beards at Play” was printed +that way, but should be “Greybeards”.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_150">Page 150</a>: “I consider it as being” was +printed as “I consider is as being”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_158">Page 158</a>: “Gerard Manley Hopkins” was +printed as “Gerald Manley Hopkins”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_162">Page 162</a>: “Booth was the first poem” was +printed as “Both was the first poem”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_171">Page 171</a>: 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. </p> + +<p><a href="#Page_172">Page 172</a>: “patiche” probably should be +“pastiche”.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_175">Page 175</a>: “Benet, Stephen Vincent” was +printed as “Bent, Stephen Vincent”; changed here.</p> + +<p><a href="#Page_177">Page 177</a>: “edits Speaker” was printed as +“edits speaker”; changed here.</p> + +</div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75165 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75165-h/images/cover.jpg b/75165-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..137ebf9 --- /dev/null +++ b/75165-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75165-h/images/i_001.jpg b/75165-h/images/i_001.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..52f8bb3 --- /dev/null +++ b/75165-h/images/i_001.jpg diff --git a/75165-h/images/i_114.jpg b/75165-h/images/i_114.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..45b273c --- /dev/null +++ b/75165-h/images/i_114.jpg |
