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
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.”
“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.’
“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.
“I remember how Lord David Cecil when still a boy, sitting up there one
night and expounding to us two elders 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.”
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.
“‘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 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.
“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.”
“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
some time, then he said: ‘Because of its primitivity.’
“‘Then you ought to have become a Jew,’ I said. ‘Judaism has greater
primitivity.’
“To which he rejoined: ‘It has too much primitivity and is not
sufficiently elastic for adaptability.’
“‘You hold with Heine that Judaism is not a religion but a misfortune?’
I asked.
“‘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?’
“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.
“It was a quasi sonnet entitled ‘The Jewish Poet.’”
“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, 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.
“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.
“His coming was not melodramatic; it was, on the contrary, quite
simple, 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.
“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, where the head of Chesterton
became one with the head of Rodin’s conception of France’s greatest
literary genius.
“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.
“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 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.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ON THE ENGLISH PLATFORM
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.
The distinguished author R. Ellis Roberts, heard a lecture at Oxford:
“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 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!”
“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 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.”
“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 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.”
A charming reminiscence comes from Edward Brown:
“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.
“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.
“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.”
In reply to the demand for a speech, G. K. C. stood at the top of
Queen’s Hotel steps and said,
“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!”
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 axe between them. The caricature now
hangs in the Men’s Union.
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.
G. K. C.’s speech was on “Liberty: the Last Phase,” by which he
explained he meant the =latest= 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 ... But the fact remained that our roads, our
ancient highways were being wrested from us. “The price of liberty is
eternal vigilance.”
The Senior History Lecturer and some others were of the opinion that
the whole thesis of the address was a gigantic leg-pull!
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!”
They had already several parodies on that spelling motif, such as “I’m
D-R-U-N-K!”
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.
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 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 =no= 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.”
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.
“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 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.
“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.”
“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 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.
“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.
“‘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?’
“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.
“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? 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?’
“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!’
“Probably the finest instance of the effective use of slang by a great
literary stylist!
“When he spoke to me about my work he used to say:--
“‘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.’
“Chesterton, like most artistic persons, 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.
“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 it:--
“‘He wadted theb do brodoudce Idglish as he hibself brodoudced it, this
bad with the groddig gattarrh. Ibadgidge it for yourselves.’
“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.”
“Prof. A. J. Armstrong, head of the English Department of Baylor
University, Waco, Texas, heard G. K. C. in England,
“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.
“When one of the ladies present interrupted and said,
“‘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.