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.
“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.
“A little later we had our symposium 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!
“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.
“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 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.”
Mrs. Lillian Curt heard a lecture in London,
“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 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.”
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,
“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.”
CHAPTER SIX
ON THE AMERICAN PLATFORM
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,
“At the outset I want to reassure you I am not this size, really; dear
no, I’m being amplified by the thing.”
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.” 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.
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.
“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 anger) as for that weak, sniveling, dirty, pacifistic
Enrique Maria Remarque, I have nothing but contempt.”
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.
“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’.”
G. K. C.’s pink face, framed by a white mane of hair, isolated by a
rumpled dinner jacket, shining beautifully at the audience, caused
Kern’s companion, a singular personality, to remark wistfully,
“Chesterton’s just a saint, just a saint.”
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.
“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
the modern world looking for its way with the stranger lost in the
labyrinths of the subway.”
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.
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. Darrow alone, but taken relatively, when that relativity is to
Chesterton, he appears positively muddle-headed.”
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!
Clarence Darrow wrote the author shortly before his death,
“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.”
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,
“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.”
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. C. to G. C. S.” It now hangs framed with one of
G. K.’s photographs in the episcopal drawingroom.
At luncheon Bishop Stewart remarked, “Mr. Chesterton, =securus judicat
orbis terrarum=. 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.”
Chesterton’s only response to this Anglican leg pulling was a beaming
and chuckling acknowledgment of the charge.
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.”
In introducing Chesterton for the debate, Bishop Stewart had quoted
Oliver Hereford’s delightful verse,
“When plain folks such as you and I
See the sun sinking in the sky,
We think it is the setting sun:
But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
Is not so easily misled;
He calmly stands upon his head,
And upside down obtains a new
And Chestertonian point of view ...
Observing thus how from his nose
The sun creeps closer to his toes
He cries in wonder and delight,
How fine the sunrise is tonight!”
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.
“Mr. Chesterton,” she demanded, “might I ask when did you become
famous?”
“I became famous, if you can call it that,” the great author chuckled,
“at a time when there were no famous men in England.”
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 period that he
became famous for his disloyalty, and for refusing to run with the
crowd.
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.”
Dr. Horace J. Bridges has kindly given his impressions,
“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 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.
“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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
Mrs. Katharine Darst says that when there was a call for questions,
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!
A group of St. Louis women also heard Chesterton deliver a lecture
paradoxically entitled,
“The New Enslavement of Women.”
This gave a compelling portrayal of how women exchanged the freedom of
home for the slavery of office,
“Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry, ‘WE
WILL NOT BE DICTATED TO!’ And immediately proceeded to become
stenographers!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF G. K. C.
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.
“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.
“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 treatment of me. Our controversies were exhibition spars, in which
nothing could have induced either of us to hurt the other.”
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.
“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.
“Now, no one could possibly think of me as slipping through a
half-closed door! (Laughter).
“I do not know Canada as Mr. Kipling 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.
“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 things he does not
understand, such as Canada.”
“Are you coming with us to Downing Street, Mr. Chesterton?” asked Miss
Carter as the authors all left the hotel.
“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!”
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.
“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.”
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, 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.”
Mr. Rodolphe L. Megroz made a pilgrimage in 1922, to Chesterton’s home.
“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’.”