When life was too tall and strong for a man, he quit, and in his pen
he found corroboration and consolation. That is not, we are aware,
altogether so. Although it is true most men who write are running away.
But with Chesterton writing was not running away; it was running
to--running to reality, to truth. Writing was life with him: it was
his breathing, his talk, his laughter, his self. It might be said that
those who don’t like Chesterton don’t like the truth. It might ever
more accurately be said that those who don’t like Chesterton, don’t
like life. That superabundance of his, that hugeness of his, is too
much for them. They crawl; he dances (albeit like the mountains of
Scripture). They pick-peck; he waves that tremendous sword. They count
those corroded little pennies; he empties that fabulous purse of his
on the world. He was an extravagant man; extravagant of his riches,
his light, his life. It is this shining extravagance that blinds the
crawlers and pick-peckers and misers. It is a glory too much for them.
A few words of ‘Thoreau’ are, I think, to the point. ‘I fear,’ writes
the Concord ascetic, ‘lest my expression may not be =extra-vagrant=
enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily
experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been
convinced ... I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man
in a waking moment to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced
I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true
expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he
should speak extravagantly any more forever?’
“To Chesterton such words as ‘tremendous’ and ‘splendid’ and ‘enormous’
and ‘shattering’ were of common use. (In fact, it was he who made such
words popular.) These words came naturally to him because (and he would
be the last to admit it) he himself lived these words; such words only
could express his vitality and significance. He was a giant. There is
no other way of saying it. Except, perhaps, to say he still is.”
James Branch Cabell “enjoyed all the work of Chesterton’s early and
middle period. I admit that of his publications during, let us say
vaguely, more recent years, I prefer to say nothing, out of loyalty
to a person that has given me a vast amount of pleasure. I write this
after verifying the fact that his earlier books when I re-read them,
can still do this.”
“Indeed I am a warm admirer of Chesterton,” affirms Rabbi Stephen S.
Wise. “Apart from his delightful wit and his genius in many directions,
he was a great religionist. He as a Catholic, I as a Jew, could see eye
to eye with each other, and he might have added, ‘particularly seeing
that you are cross-eyed;’ but I deeply respected him. When Hitlerism
came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and
frankness of a great and unabashed spirit.”
Dr. Alexis Carrel well remembers that “Heretics” was the first
Chesterton book that he read almost a quarter of a century ago,
“The extreme clarity and brilliance of his style impressed me greatly.
The train of his thought appeared to me as strong, flexible, and
shining as a steel blade, and as merciless.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN[B]
THE AUTHOR VISITS TOP MEADOW
In a delightful villa, called Top Meadow, in Beaconsfield, a small
town of Buckinghamshire, about forty minutes on the train from London,
lives, and has lived for some ten years, Gilbert Keith Chesterton with
his charming wife. Chesterton, a huge man, possesses the frankness and
enthusiasm of a boy, with unkept curly blond hair, blue eyes, shaggy
reddish brown moustache, an exceedingly pleasant and attractive smile,
wearing clothes in a somewhat careless and negligent manner. Although
clear and resonant, his voice is not as powerful as one would be led
to expect for a man of his size. He possesses the little mannerism of
twirling the ends of his moustache every now and then. He would make
a joke with true Twainian seriousness upon his face, but unlike the
great American such feigned seriousness becomes too much for him, and
he bursts out in peals of Gargantuan laughter that often renders him
speechless for a few seconds. At other times the idea of something
funny will cause him to laugh most heartily before he has had a chance
to express it in words.
[B] This entire chapter was read, corrected, and approved in
its present shape, by Chesterton himself a short time
before his death.
In a little hallway, Chesterton introduced me to his wife, and then led
the way into the living room, a tremendous chamber fully a hundred feet
long, low-ceilinged and surrounded on all sides by shelves bulging and
overflowing with books of every description, a massive fire-place built
of large stones that must have come from the bed of a nearby brook, and
a number of what proved to be exceedingly comfortable chairs grouped
around the empty fire-place; for it was midsummer.
As we sat down before the fire-place, Chesterton said he was vastly
amused over a delegation from America that had called on him the day
before.
“They were making a tour of Europe for the express purpose of
unearthing everything they could about Browning. They called on me
because I have once written a book on the poet. It was a grave mistake
on their part to think that because a man has written a book on a
particular subject in the dim and distant past, he therefore knows
everything about that subject. At the time of writing the book, I
probably was a little more up on Robert Browning than the average
person, but all my superior knowledge has slipped from me long ago.”
The question of modern youth came up for discussion.
“Young people today have the idea that old timers are landmarks. I
hope I do not fill as much space as Saint Paul’s, but at least I am a
Victorian ruin dating from the year 1874. The last time I was in New
York I noticed that the landscape was always changing. When a baby is
born he just has time to look at the skyscrapers a week or so before
they are pulled down. Pulling down New York seems to be the local
industry. A baby goes out in his perambulator and his home is pulled
down before he gets back.”
“What do you think of the young people today, Mr. Chesterton?”
“Well,” he replied, “their chief trouble is they don’t want to admit
that old people really do know the modern movement because we are
able to compare it with movements of the past. But the young people
know nothing else but the present. The result is that they do not
give modern conditions much thought. For instance, if we had moving
sidewalks today, the young people would take it for granted, the old
ones alone could compare them with the stationary sidewalks.”
“Do you think that much change has taken place in the last fifty
years,” I asked.
“We cannot grasp the tremendous change that has taken place since 1874,
my birth year. Your country used not to pay much attention to culture.
When Matthew Arnold began his lecture series in America, he was worried
about what the American papers would say of him for his criticism
of certain phases of American culture which he had handled rather
severely, but was relieved to find that the papers had large headlines
reading,
“‘Matthew Arnold has side whiskers.’ But today you have a very high
regard for culture in your country.”
“What literary people did you meet in America, Mr. Chesterton?”
“Among others I met Robert Cortes Holliday, and Sinclair Lewis,” he
replied. “I found Lewis a pleasant fellow. He was anxious to learn
about the conditions in England. That man, I think, has considerable
genius. I met ‘A. E.’ George Russell, also when I was at Yale. He was
completely wrapped up in giving his lectures on agriculture to you
Americans.”
“What does he think of our country?”
“He has a semi-humorous, rather critical, attitude towards you.
He won’t write anything much in praise or anything particularly
hostile.”[C]
[C] This prophesy of Chesterton’s proved to be correct.
“What American cities especially appealed to you?”
“Baltimore I found exceedingly charming,” answered Chesterton. “There
is a quaint atmosphere about the place that is hard to describe. Saint
Louis I also liked, a most pleasant cultured city.”
“I once heard you lecture in Saint Louis, Mr. Chesterton,” I remarked,
“and I agree with what you said about the underdog:
“‘When the very poor man gets angry and ‘bites,’ everyone, even the
social workers, treat him as though he were a mad dog. Has he not
the right to get deliberately angry, the same as anybody else? Once
I debated with Clarence Darrow, and when I talked to him after the
lecture, he seemed to have sympathy for the poor man, the underdog,
who was goaded on to do things, by saying that he was mad. Why cannot
people give the underdog credit for biting when he wants to, instead of
contending that he is just the same as a mad dog on a rampage?’”
When Galsworthy became the topic of conversation, Chesterton remarked,
“Galsworthy always reminds me of the solicitor of an old English
family. I cannot altogether feel that he reflects modern England. He
lays too much stress upon a college education. He believes that a man
not blessed with a college education might at any time murder his
mother. Galsworthy also lacks the sweet balance of humor, only a rather
limited amount of humor breathes forth from his works. Like Darrow he,
too, holds to the belief that the underdog is always mad if he causes
the slightest trouble.
“Again Galsworthy never seems to write with set purpose, while I am one
of those people who believe that you’ve got to be dominated by your
moral slant. I’m no ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ man. I am quite incapable of
talking or writing about Dutch gardens or the game of chess, but if
I did, I have no doubt that what I say or write about them would be
colored by my view of the cosmos.”
When the question of pessimism came up, I mentioned that the week
before I had had the pleasure of dining with A. E. Housman at
Cambridge[D] who facetiously told me that he was often compared to
Hardy because both their names began with an “H”.
[D] See “An Evening with A. E. Housman,” by Cyril Clemens, 1937.
“That is all the basis critics often have for forming comparisons,”
replied Chesterton with a smile, “but in this case there is a measure
of truth in the comparison. Both undoubtedly have a certain amount of
pessimism. Poet Housman’s, however, has the tang of the fresh air about
it, whereas Hardy’s seems somewhat unpleasant.”
And to illustrate his point, Chesterton quoted from “A Shropshire Lad,”
“Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.”
A little later we went to the small dining room which was a few steps
higher than, and was separated by a heavy silk curtain from, the living
room. At a massive oaken table we sat down to a delicious tea.
When I asked Mrs. Chesterton what was the national dish of England, she
promptly replied,
“Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, undoubtedly.”
“Fried eggs and bacon is my favorite dish,” spoke up Chesterton.
I then asked the author what would be his choice if he had to go on a
desert island and could take but one book along.
“It would depend upon the circumstances,” he replied. “If I were a
politician who wanted to impress his constituents, I would take Plato
or Aristotle. But the real test would be with people who had no chance
to show off before their friends or their constituents. In that case
I feel certain that everyone would take Thomas’ ‘Guide to Practical
Shipbuilding’ so that they could get away from the island as quickly as
possible. And then if they should be allowed to take a second book it
would be the most exciting detective story within reach. But if I could
only take one book to a desert isle and was not in a particular hurry
to get off, I would without the slightest hesitation put ‘Pickwick
Papers’ in my handbag.”
The talk switched to the Russian situation. Chesterton thinks that
Lenin was of the mad Russian type, just such a type as Tolstoy,
“But Trotsky is at once both more commercial and cunning; he is the
typical Russian or German Jew.”
The Chestertons own a pert little Scotch terrier named Quoodle. “I
named him Quoodle,” explained Chesterton, “after the hero of one of my
early, but alas forgotten, novels, in the hope that unwary visitors
like you would ask about the origin of the name and I would have a good
excuse to talk about my novel! But when only the family is present we
shorten the name to Quo: a handy name and one that can be yelled to the
top of the lungs.”
Among the other delectable viands that Mrs. Chesterton’s bounty
provided were some cakes made out of the white of eggs, that caused me
to say,
“These cakes put me in mind of some period of English Literature.”
“They remind me, rather,” responded Chesterton with a hearty laugh, “of
icebergs and I wish that I was sitting on a large one just now. (It was
an extremely hot August afternoon.) But if we must compare them to some
period of English literature they remind me of the rococo period, the
age of Horace Walpole, in particular of some of the decorations of his
home ‘Strawberry Hill’.”
Tea over, Chesterton suggested going to see his garden. After putting
on an enormous sombrero, and taking in his hand something like a small
axe, but which proved to be a walking stick which his Polish friend,
Roman Dyboski, had given him, he led the way through a French window
out into a tidy little garden. We sat on camp chairs in a pleasant
spot. Chesterton’s one seemed somewhat frail, shaking a little, and to
make matters worse, the cat Stanley Baldwin came along and fell sound
asleep right under his master’s chair! If anything had happened to the
chair, Baldwin would have awakened in cat heaven!
The conversation turned on the rather whimsical subject of chairs.
“H. G. Wells in one of his books,” remarked Chesterton, “has written
several pages on the subject of chairs. Some non-materialists might
very well contend there is no such a thing as a chair. They would argue
that since there are all kinds and varieties of chairs, when you use
the word ‘chair’ you cannot have any particular one in mind: therefore
the word is only abstract and hence has no equivalent in actuality!”
When I wondered if anything had ever been written on the subject of
shoes, Chesterton answered that his friend Hilaire Belloc had done an
exceedingly entertaining essay on the subject, “Belloc makes the point
that the kind of shoes a man wears and how he keeps them, is a better
indication of his character, than any other piece of apparel.”
Chesterton told of a literary club which had lately given a fancy
dressed ball for its members, and that he went as Doctor Samuel
Johnson. When I asked who Mrs. Chesterton went as, he replied with a
merry twinkle in his eye,
“My wife went dressed as one of the characters in a novel that I am
going to write in the near future! You see that I devise ways and means
to advertise both my old novels and my new ones!”
The subject of Rome and Mussolini came up, and when I expressed
admiration for “The Resurrection of Rome,” he snapped,
“I think it was a pretty bad book.”
At my disagreement, a look of mild surprise appeared on Chesterton’s
face,
“Well,” explained he, “it was written just after a stay in Rome, and I
think that I made the fatal mistake of reading the book too soon after
it was written. That should never be done by any author. The longer
after the writing that I wait to read one of my books, the better it
seems.”
When I mentioned that Mussolini had told me how much he had enjoyed
reading “The Man Who Was Thursday,” and had found it exceedingly funny,
Chesterton answered,
“Does anyone find my books funny? It pleases me to hear that, for at
times I fear that my humorous works are taken seriously and my serious
ones humorously. I also had an audience with Mussolini. He did not
act in a high and mighty manner at all, but showed a genuine interest
in England and asked me numerous questions about the country. He was
indeed a jolly card.”
“In what language did you carry on your conversation,” I asked.
“We spoke in French,” replied Chesterton, “and when leaving I said, ‘I
hope you excused my poor French, Your Excellency.’ To which Mussolini
answered, ‘That’s all right; you speak French about as well as I speak
English’.”
After a moment’s pause Chesterton reflected, “I don’t suppose that was
much of a compliment for my French, because at that time Mussolini knew
practically no English.”
“When do you do most of your writing, Mr. Chesterton?”
“Whenever I get a chance, I do not care much for the typewriter and I
find pen or pencil much too tedious, for I am a rather slow writer. At
present I do a considerable amount of dictating. I can compose just as
readily this way.”
One of the last questions I asked my host was his opinion of Mark Twain,
“I have always admired the genius of Mark Twain which may truly
be called gigantic. Mark Twain dealt so much with the gigantic
exaggeration of imagination; the skyscrapers of literature. He was the
greatest master of the tall story who has ever lived and was also, what
is more important, a thoroughly sincere man.”
As the cab to take me to my London train was announced, Chesterton
graciously inscribed his “History of England” in the following fashion,
“Greetings to the Mark Twain Society
from an Innocent at Home
G. K. Chesterton
Known as the Unjumping Frog of
Bucks County.”
and Mrs. Chesterton added,
“And from Frances Chesterton
Wife of the Innocent.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
FATHER BROWN.
Once in telling his creator what delight Father Brown had given him,
the author asked if the spiritual detective was a real person.
“Indeed he is,” answered Chesterton. “His name is Father John O’Connor
and he lives in Bradford, Yorkshire.”
“‘Trent’s Last Case’ had recently appeared,” Father O’Connor himself
writes the author, “and Chesterton full of admiration for E. C.
Bentley, was humbly envious, longing to add to the small (as it was
then) crop of detective stories. He also was bitten with costume drama
and would without provocation ‘lurk’ by the jamb of a doorway with
cloak-and-sword (he had a sword-stick) as it were in wait for the Duke
of Guise. He had a column the next week in ‘The Daily News,’ relating
how the forest-keepers of Ilkley apprehended him for making passes at
the local trees, but released him on learning that he was a guest of a
Justice of the Peace.
“Many a glorious day we had together under that hospitable roof of
Francis Steinthal and his ever gracious wife. Chesterton himself tells
how two young men that first evening, after I had gone home, wondered
how a sheltered existence like mine could ever take part in the rude,
naughty world as it stood, and how this gave the first push off to the
Father Brown series. Disguise is mingled with description--I did carry
a specially large and cheap umbrella--had quite a habit of brown-paper
parcels--and the episode of the sapphire cross--(in America, a diamond
cross, of course) has this relation to sordid fact, that I was still
vain in having bought five sapphires for five shillings in an obscure
pawnshop in Bradford. Many years later, in Bradford again, some duffer
introduced me as Father Brown to two international crooks who were
playing themselves into the book-trade, and they both disappeared,
leaving no trace, within twenty-four hours!”
Father O’Connor never forgot the day that he spent with the two
Chesterton brothers at St. John’s, Ilkley, and has often wondered since
if anyone ever had a better chance to observe their mental difference
and their deep attachment at such close quarters as he did that day.
Cecil was a Church of England Conservative Fabian Socialist, Gilbert
was almost an official Liberal, and at that time writing for “The Daily
News.” Cecil had already, in “The Fabian Review,” battered daylight
through the Liberal Party in many a large hole. This can be seen in his
“Gladstonian Ghosts.” From lunch till tea and from tea till dinner,
Cecil stood his ground, and Gilbert must have walked many miles around
the large dining table trying to reply to his brother’s arguments.
Chesterton gave the author his own version of how he first conceived
the idea for the famous character,
“While at tea with Father O’Connor the conversation turned to
philosophical and moral channels, and I mentioned with considerable
timidity, a certain rather sordid question of vice and crime, which
I intended to discuss in a future essay. I was vastly astonished to
find that the priest not only had a thorough working knowledge of the
subject but was able to furnish me with further facts of an almost
sensational nature.
“Some days later Father O’Connor and I took dinner with two Cambridge
undergraduates. When the priest left the room, the young men remarked
on what a thoroughly charming and cultivated person he was despite the
fact that in his cloistered existence he knew so little of the world.
One of them remarked, ‘It’s a very beautiful thing to be innocent
and ignorant, but I think it’s a much finer thing not to be afraid of
knowledge.’
“The complete and crushing irony of the remark so touched my
imagination that there was born in my mind the idea of a priest who
should appear to know nothing, but as a matter of fact, knows more
about crime than the criminals themselves. The point of him (Father
Brown) was to appear pointless; and one might say that his conspicuous
quality was in NOT being conspicuous. I have always thought that the
most appropriate compliment ever paid my famous detective priest came
from the lips of a charming Catholic lady who remarked, ‘I am very fond
of that ‘officious little loafer’.”
The prototype of one of the Father Brown characters, Hesketh Pearson,
writes the author,
“I greatly enjoyed the Father Brown stories, and remember his telling
me that he had described me in one of them, though I cannot remember
which. My last meeting with him was not altogether a pleasant one
because he started it by asking,
“‘Why, are you not a Catholic? All the best writers of today are
Catholics and you are much too clever to be anything else!’
“I was forced to explain my view of God, which was not his,
and this disagreement cast a slight shade over the subsequent
conversation--though I am sure he was much too kindly a soul to let it
affect his feelings towards me, which were always most cordial. He was
extremely generous to me at two crucial moments in my life, and I shall
always remember him with gratitude, admiration and affection.”
Rafael Sabatini’s first acquaintance with Chesterton’s work “was made
through Father Brown, and I don’t know that I cared more for any of
his creations. He was, we all know, one of three contemporaries to
whom allusion was commonly made by their triple initials: G. K. C. in
his case. The other two, G. B. S. (George Bernard Shaw and Clement K.
Shorter). One day that perverse genius, T. W. H. Crossland (of whom
little may have been known in the States) was in my study chatting
with me in his usual disgruntled fashion. The conversation turned on
Shorter. Whilst he talked he scribbled on a British Museum reading
room ticket, which he left carelessly on my table. After he had gone I
looked at the ticket and found on it scribbled the following quatrain,
which has remained hitherto unpublished,
‘G. K. S.
G. K. C.
G. B. S.
N. B. G.’”
G. B. Stern has “received intense pleasure from a good deal of G. K. C.
One of my most treasured books is a first edition of ‘The Napoleon
of Notting Hill’ which excited me wildly when I first read it, some
time in my teens. I was born in Holland Park, and used to be sent as
a child for daily walks all over Campden Hill and up and down through
‘Napoleon’ kingdom, so that it had a strong local interest as well as
its romantic appeal. I think, therefore, this remains the favorite of
his works, together with ‘Lepanto,’ ‘The Secret People,’ and two or
three of the other poems; but I also greatly enjoy and have re-read
several times the Father Brown stories and ‘The Flying Inn.’ Also I was
present at the very first performance in London of the play, ‘Magic,’
which seemed to me even then inspired with those queer colored bursts
of truth which were so peculiarly Chesterton.”
The late Mr. S. S. Van Dine, author of “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” and
“The Philo Vance Murder Case,” wrote the author, “I am very glad to
be included as one of America’s admirers of G. K. C.’s Father Brown
series. Father Brown has long been a favorite with me.”
And Mary Roberts Rinehart, “Of course I was a great admirer of the
Father Brown stories, and was naturally pleased that Mr. Chesterton
liked my own work. In a way we formed a sort of mutual admiration
society.”
“Chesterton and I wrote a detective story together,” recalls Sir Max
Pemberton. “I opened the mystery--he closed it, most ably, of course. I
can’t remember what it was about, but I am sure he brought the villain
to justice.
“He was a truly great figure--a worthy successor to the immortal Doctor
Johnson. Both had rare gifts, of literature and Faith.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SOME APPRAISALS.