“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.”
Prof. Norbert Engels of the College of Arts and Sciences recalls that
“at every lecture knowledge poured forth. 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.”
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.
“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, 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.
“‘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?’”
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 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.
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.
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,
“The University of Notre Dame, in this special convocation of the
Faculty, confers the degree of Doctor of Law, =honoris causa=, 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, 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.”
After receiving the Degree from Notre Dame’s President, the Rev.
Charles L. O’Donnell, Doctor Chesterton replied,
“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 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.
“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 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 =more= 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.”
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.
When Manion asked whether liquor in England produced immorality,
G. K. C. replied,
“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.
“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?...”
When O’Grady said he had heard that 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,
“And both about equally obnoxious!”
When the discussion turned to some well known Englishmen, Chesterton
said,
“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.”
“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.”
When reference was made to Rebecca West’s resigning from the “Bookman”
because the editorial policy favored the New Humanists, Chesterton
remarked,
“How extremely foolish that is--as though that affected your
contributions!”
Asked about Lord Beaverbrook who had but recently died, Chesterton
reflected,
“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.”
A comparison being made between certain types of Russian and English
characters, Chesterton went on to say,
“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.”
Asked if he found the Americans all very mad in the pursuit of money,
he shook his head with a smile,
“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.”
During a discussion of the Church and State, Chesterton remarked,
“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.”
In autographing a book just before the party broke up, Chesterton threw
a lot of ink on the floor, but merely remarked,
“I’m always cluttering up people’s carpets.”
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.
As he put on his Inverness cape and black sombrero-like hat he shouted
out in merry tones,
“If anyone ever tries to tell me Catholicism is inconsistent with fun
and play, I’ll say did you ever hear of the University of Notre Dame?”
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,
“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.”
“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.”
On being asked if he thought the world (and especially, the United
States) possessed any great thinkers, he replied humorously,
“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.”
After confessing that he read very few novels, but mentioning the works
of Sheila Kaye-Smith with approbation, he went on to say,
“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!”
Of the winner of the Nobel prize for literature, he said,
“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 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.”
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,
“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.”
[Illustration: FACSIMILE WRITING
of
MR. AND MRS. G. K. CHESTERTON]
CHAPTER TEN
CHESTERTON AND AMERICAN AUTHORS.
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.
“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.”
“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 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 =profoundly=. 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 =very= effective as an acted play.”
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 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.
“The play ‘Magic’ is immortal and weighs more to me than all Shaw!”
“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.”
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 superiority
over his antagonist, and by his charm as a man.”
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 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.
“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.”
Hamlin Garland met him at the Savage Club in London, and several times
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.”
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.”
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.