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.
“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. 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.”
“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.”
When Megroz repeated Chesterton to H. G. Wells the latter remarked,
“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.”
Megroz got the impression that Chesterton was “certainly a romanticist,
often escaping from reality. By fantasies, among which may be included
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.”
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,
My dear Titterton:
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 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.
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 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 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.
Yours always sincerely,
G. K. Chesterton.
Mr. Titterton wrote in a letter a few years ago:
“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.”
Mr. Hugo C. Riviere has pleasant recollections of having painted
Chesterton’s portrait:
“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, 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.”
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:
Dear Mr. Ould:
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 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....
Yours faithfully,
G. K. Chesterton.
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,
“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 objective, fair, and
understanding, but they won’t see that.”
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:
“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.
“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 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.”
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,
“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.
“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 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.
“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.
“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.”
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, some
of them VERY good, and some of them VERY bad.
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,
“For the Young Ladies Suffering
Education at the Convent of the
Holy Child.
“To be a Real Prophet once
For you alone did I desire,
Who dragged the Prophet’s Mantle down
And brought the Chariot of Fire.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHESTERTON AT NEW HAVEN
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.”
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 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.
“Mr. Chesterton,” Chubb said, “you have your wish.”
Obviously, he wanted to know what wish and how he had it.
“Thanks to Prohibition, every house is making, if not its own liqueur,
at least its own likker.”
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 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.
“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 the Philistines. And that
was, of course, the sin against the Holy Ghost.
“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 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.
“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.
“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 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.”
Another who heard him at Yale was Mr. Harold Chapman Bailey:
“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?’
“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 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.”
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.
CHAPTER NINE
AT NOTRE DAME.
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.
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.”
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.”
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 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.”