he lived,” declares Ralph Adams Cram. “I ‘fell for him’ many years
ago when almost by accident I found and read ‘The Napoleon of Notting
Hill.’ That settled the case for me, and after that I was, so to speak,
his intellectual and spiritual slave. Of all his books it seems to
me this, together with ‘The Man Who Was Thursday,’ ‘The Bell and the
Cross,’ ‘The Flying Inn’ and ‘The Victorian Age of English Literature’
are those for which I care most. This may seem a curious selection, but
in most of these he makes his points through indirection, and in some
ways this seems to me a more powerful method of conveying his ideas and
inspiring the public than the more explicit works, the object of which
is very obvious. This is not to disparage anything he ever did--except,
perhaps, the Father Brown Mystery stories, which seem to me rather
unworthy of him, though even these serve to show the immense breadth
of his interest, his knowledge, and his literary ability.”
The late W. B. Yeats wrote the author that he found Chesterton “a
kindly and generous man of whom I constantly heard from friends, but as
far as I can recollect I only met him socially twice, once at a Club
dinner and once for tea at a country house. So much of my life has
always been spent in Ireland that I know comparatively little of the
English celebrities. I don’t want to write about his works: I have read
very little of it, and to write even of that little would open up great
questions I don’t want to come to any decision about in my present
ignorance (which is likely to endure).”
In his “Autobiography,” Chesterton states that he had some talk
about poetry and property with Yeats at the Dublin Art Club, “a most
exhilarating evening.” Yeats asked Chesterton to debate at the Abbey
Theatre, defending property on its more purely political side, against
an able leader of Liberty Hall, the famous stronghold of Labor politics
in Dublin, Robert Johnson, who was exceedingly popular with the
proletarian Irish.
“That passage from G. K. C.’s ‘Autobiography’ is correct so far as I
can remember,” wrote Yeats in a second letter. “It was a time when the
English Government was stopping discussion and we kept discussion
open at the Abbey Theatre when it had stopped elsewhere, by getting
people to speak on the conservative side and letting debate develop as
it likes afterwards. Johnson who replied to Chesterton was at that time
the most important Irish labour leader: he is still very important. He
was in the Irish Senate for some years, Bernard Shaw lectured either
the week after or the week before Chesterton. Both men were brilliant,
Chesterton taking the line that the possession of small properties was
essential to liberty, Johnson putting the Trades Union point of view
that it was more important for the workman to spend his money on his
children than to save it.”
Cuthbert Wright’s only personal connection with Chesterton was to have
been mentioned in one of his last books, “The Well and the Shadows”:
“Some year ago I had published a review of G. K. C.’s ‘Catholic Church
and Conversion,’ in which I drew attention to what I considered
a stylistic defect, his mania for alliteration. He seems to have
remembered it during the intervening years, and doing me the honor to
couple my name with that of Mr. T. S. Eliot wrote as follows,
“‘It must be a terrible strain on the presence of mind to be always
ready with a synonym. I can imagine Mr. T. S. Eliot just stopping
himself in time and saying, ‘Waste not, require not.’ I like to think
of Mr. Cuthbert Wright having the self-control to cry, ‘Time and
fluctuation wait for no man.’ I can imagine his delicate accent when
speaking of a pig in a receptacle or of bats in the campanile.”
Professor Roman Dyboski of Krakow, Poland, was first drawn to
Chesterton when he read some articles in the “Illustrated London News,”
and some passages from his historical poem, “The Ballad of the White
Horse.” The professor suggested his advanced students making a special
study on the author, and the result was two Polish books on G. K. C.
Soon translations of Chesterton’s works became fairly numerous in
Poland. His play “Magic” had several successful runs on Polish stages,
and the Polish Radio popularized “The Man Who Was Thursday” in a
dramatic version.
Shortly after his visit to Poland early in 1927, Chesterton sent Dr.
Dyboski an introduction to a collective volume of studies by Polish
scholars written to commemorate the Seventh Hundred Anniversary of the
death of St. Francis of Assisi, and the services of the Franciscans to
civilization.
On July 7, 1927, Chesterton spoke on Poland at the Essex Hall in the
Strand. Crowds of his admirers were present; the late Cardinal Bourne
himself appeared on the platform; the Polish Ambassador took the
chair; Hilaire Belloc moved the vote of thanks which was seconded by
Dyboski. The first part of the address struck all present as the most
illuminating English opinion that had ever been expressed on Poland,
“I am to speak on Poland, a country very unfamiliar to the average
English person. In order to facilitate approach to the subject, let me
begin by saying that Poland is Poland. This is the kind of statement
which, when I make it, is of course called a paradox (Laughter). Yet
what I wish to express is something quite plain and simple. Those of
you who have studied medieval history, may remember the ancient kingdom
of Bohemia--situated, according to Shakespeare, by the sea-side--now
you hear much of Czechoslovakia, unknown to you before. Again, those
of you who are old enough to remember the World War, will recall the
fervent admiration which we all felt for the heroism of the Servian
nation: now we often hear the name of Yugoslavia, which we never heard
in those days. As for Poland, she is now known by the same name which
she bore through centuries, when she was a great power in Europe,
and by which our fathers knew her to exist in those days when she
had disappeared from the map, yet continued to live as a nation and
to struggle for freedom. That is why I begin by saying that Poland
is Poland, and submit that as a fundamental fact for you to consider
before we go further.”
It is difficult to imagine more eloquent and emphatic words of
recognition for the continuity of Poland’s national tradition through
eight centuries of recorded independent existence, through a century
and more of division and captivity, and into the dawn of reunion
and regained liberty. Chesterton, who in these words as well as in
various poems and essays, always acknowledged in Poland one of the
corner-stones of the historical structure of European civilization,
remained a faithful friend of Poland to his death.
“Grey Beards at Play,” a book of poems in the Mark Twain tradition
with G. K.’s own illustrations, first impressed the philosopher L. E.
Gilson. But the book which remains with him as the most stimulating
is “Orthodoxy,” “When it came out I hailed it as the best piece of
apologetic the century had produced. In a sense all his later works
are a variation on the same theme. I was interested in the biography
of the conversion of a well known American financial expert whose
conversion was brought about by reading in succession Chesterton’s
‘Orthodoxy,’ Fulton Sheen’s ‘God and the Intelligence,’ and Karl
Adams’ ‘Spirit of Catholicism.’ I don’t wonder they would convert the
Devil if he had a sense of humor, and open mind, and could pray for
grace!”
Mr. Gilson believes that Chesterton will not really be fully
appreciated before a century or two. The book of his which he likes
best is “St. Thomas Aquinas:” “I consider it as being without possible
comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short
of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no
doubt admit that it is a ‘clever’ book, but the few readers who have
spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who,
perhaps, have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject,
cannot fail to perceive that the so-called ‘wit’ of Chesterton has put
their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried
to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less
clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was
one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he
was right; and he could not help being right; but he could not either
help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who could
understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he
apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being
witty. That is all they can see of him.”
Eileen Duggan gives the opinion of a New Zealander,
“One of the innumerable society diarists who writes for a hobby
recorded an anecdote that illustrates Chesterton’s complete absorption
in a subject. He had been given, rather foolishly, a little gold period
chair, and as he made his points, it slowly crashed beneath him. He
rose just in time and sinking into another chair that someone put
behind him, began at the word he had last spoken. It was evident to all
that he had barely noticed the incident rather than that he had decided
to ignore it.
“A New Zealander who heard him lecture relates that his appearance
after a long delay caused the Chairman to express relief that he had
not been knocked down by a tramcar. G. K. C. rose calmly and thanked
him for his solicitude, ‘but,’ said he, ‘Mr. Chairman, had I met a
tramcar it would have been a great and, if, I may say so, an equal
encounter.’”
“His journalistic training,” continues Miss Duggan, “had taught him
simplification and the author of those penetrating studies on Dickens
and Browning would put his points on Distributism so that they could
be understood by the man in the street. A sacrifice seemed worthless
to Chesterton, unless it were voluntary and not State-imposed; in
Distributism, then, he saw the solution of the world’s problems, the
answer for soul and for body of its ills.
“It has been charged that he was the enemy of Jewry, but his hand
was against only a small and powerful Oligarchy within it which, he
claimed, harmed the poor Jew of the ghetto more than the Gentile and,
commenting on the anti-Jewish excesses which have outraged the world,
he said that he had now to defend the Jews against Hitler. It will be
remembered that he struck at all internal abuses and certain lines
of his were arrowheads in the national flesh. These for instance, on
postwar corruption drew blood,
“‘Oh, they that fought for England,
Following a fallen star,
Alas, alas for England!
They have their graves afar.
But they that rule in England
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England!
They have no graves as yet.’
“He was a Little Englander; partly, one suspects, as a reaction from
Kiplingism: but in an age of peace he was a defender of just wars. He
inveighed against those who blamed the older generation in 1914 when
they decided that war was the only honorable solution and later he said
that a universal peace, founded on a universal panic, raised the point
as to whether the supreme moral state will be found when everybody
is too frightened to fight; and dying, but undefeated, he repeated
as a creed, ‘Monarchy, aristocracy, democracy--responsible forms of
rule--have collapsed under plutocracy, which is irresponsible rule.
And this has come upon us because we departed from the old morality in
three essential points. First, we supported notions against known, old
customs; secondly, we made the state top-heavy with a new and secretive
tyranny of will; and third, we forgot that there is no faith in freedom
without faith in free-will. Materialism brings with it a servile
fatalism--because nothing, as Dante said, else than ‘the generosity of
God could give to man after all ordinary, orderly gifts, the noblest
of all things which is----liberty.’”
Chesterton examined and scrutinized the conscience of England as he did
his own, but only a fool would deny that from York to Cornwall he loved
his country with a Little Englander’s passion!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE POET
Not a few of his readers feel that Chesterton’s chief bid to fame is
his poetry. Alfred Noyes, for instance, writes the author,
“Chesterton led one of the most original lives of his day in Europe.
It is well to remember this when it is suggested that men who avail
themselves of the rich experiences of the centuries are merely echoes
of the past. The true originality does not consist in inventing ideas
that have no relation to truth and no roots in reality, but in the
discovery and unveiling of something that has always been there,
though we may hitherto have lacked the eyes to see it, or the power
to express and interpret it. Chesterton had an expert gift for making
one see things in all their original miscellaneousness, as things that
really =are=, and yet--=cannot= be, or give any rational account of
themselves. Many years ago in a poem on the death of Francis Thompson,
I wrote of the overwhelming mystery that there should be a single grain
of dust in existence, the sheer impossibility of it on any rational
ground, and how the smallest atom defied exploration and ultimately
asserted a superrational origin.
“‘I am ... yet cannot be, ...!
“Chesterton tosses out his thoughts in a glorious liberality; but I
am proud to think that this line unconsciously found its way into two
of Chesterton’s poems afterwards--‘The House of Christmas,’ where he
speaks of ‘the things that cannot be, and that are,’ and the splendid
lyric ‘Second Childhood,’ where he says,
“‘And stones still shine along the roads
That are and cannot be!’
“Like most men of genius he kept his own immortal childhood all his
life; and it was in the matrix of it, the vision that ‘saw’ as a
manifestation of something ‘supernatural,’ ‘something that ultimately
defied reason, not because it was merely difficult to understand, but
because it rested on an eternal and absolute mystery (above and beyond
the range of secondary causes) it was in this wonder at the abiding in
the terrestrial that he made me feel the power of his faith,
“‘When all my days are ending
And I have no songs to sing
I think I shall not be too old
To stare at everything,
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing--
Strange crawling carpets of the grass
Wide windows of the sky--’
“One of the greatest of all his poems is the sonnet entitled ‘The
Convert,’ in which he describes how, after he had ‘bowed his head,’ he
came out where the old world shone white, and heard ‘myriads of tongues
like autumn leaves,’ ‘not so loveable,’ but ‘strange and light,’
in their whispering assumption that, among the old riddles and new
creeds, he must now be taken as belonging to a dead past. He sees them
singing--not harshly--‘but softly as men smile about the dead.’ And
then comes this magnificent and soul-stirring challenge from the ‘dead
man’,
“‘The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree.
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That holds the soil, but lets the gold go free;
And all these things are less than dust to me
=Because my name is Lazarus, and I live!=’”
Francis B. Thornton, the authority on Gerard Manley Hopkins, first knew
Chesterton through his drinking songs, “An admirable introduction; they
were so much more than their title signifies, and they transported me
to the happy age which preceded the Malvolios and their hatred of cakes
and ale. To me Chesterton will always be the poet. He not only saw what
other men looked at, he saw =through= as well, and it was this faculty
which gave an angelic quality to his humor. He was like a bull in a
china shop, but it was a papal bull enunciating principles in the midst
of a wreck of fragile half-truth.”
Mr. J. Corson Miller “was introduced to the poetry of Chesterton by Mr.
William Rose Benet who dilated on the vigor and splendor of ‘The Ballad
of the White Horse.’ I read that magnificent work, and thereafter read
all the verse that G. K. C. produced. I am a great admirer of his
poetical work. I admire his flexible sonnets, with their vast sweep
of thought, and radiant vision. His various lyrics, love, nature, and
religious lyrics, are all excellent; his religious poetry is sublime.
His well known lyric, ‘The Donkey,’ with its superb last two lines,
or couplet, is unforgettable. His ‘Queen of the Seven Swords’--his
second last, if not his last, published volume of verse, bears in my
humble opinion, the breadth and fire of eternal life. His was, indeed,
a great spirit: no toadying, or cavilling; no smirking or masking,
but strong and free, with the strength of the clean West wind, he put
his thoughts and opinions and visions in books and papers, and let
the seeds of his ideas fall where they would, with results be what
they might. His many-sided genius is well known: political and social
economist; poet, historian, novelist, short-story writer, artist and
cartoonist, playwright--hardly any field in art and literature can be
mentioned--without his having touched it in some manner and left his
mark, too.”
Prof. Joseph J. Reilly holds that Chesterton will be best remembered
for his poetry,
“The initial book I read was ‘Varied Types.’ My first reaction was one
of delight in Chesterton’s brilliance, my second a realization that his
views were colored so decidedly by his personality that one could not
hope to get a genuinely objective appraisal from him. This has always
seemed to me an element of strength and of weakness and ever since
I have turned to Chesterton’s criticism most largely for the unusual
flashes of insight which he shows than for any completely balanced
judgment. In one sense he is like a delicious dessert: it is not the
main part of a dinner but no dinner would be satisfying without it.
“My next acquaintance was with his ‘Orthodoxy’ which I found full of
wisdom, insight, and inspiration. As I went on, I sometimes grew a
little weary of his paradoxes but changed my mind when I happened one
day upon his statement that to him paradox was ‘truth standing on its
head.’
“After reading his volume of poems through several times and
thinking him over for many months preparatory to writing an
article on Chesterton as poet, I came to the conclusion to which I
still cling that Chesterton’s best claim to the attention of our
great-grand-children will be based on his poetry.”
John Gould Fletcher considers “Lepanto” is Chesterton’s finest poem,
“next to that superb ‘Ballad of the White Horse’--too long for most
people, I fancy, but absolutely characteristic of his great, generous,
simple, and manly nature.
“I did not learn to like his poetry because of a parent or teacher.
From my earliest years I have always read all the poets I could lay
my hands on; and in later years, I have continued the practice. I read
‘Lepanto’ and the ‘Ballad’ some time back in 1912 as I recall, during
my early years in London--read them and liked them. As regards the
American poets, I should say that it was particularly marked in the
case of Vachel Lindsay.”
“I am on record,” declares Clement Wood, “that he is the greatest
poet of his generation. I well remember when ‘Lepanto’ was recited to
Vachel Lindsay by Floyd Dell; but Lindsay missed the rhythm which was
ballad measure--seven beats to the line. Lindsay was influenced by
Chesterton’s ballad measure which he re-used in the ‘Congo’ and other
poems--but as four beats to the line.
“‘The Ballad of the White Horse’ is the greatest of all modern ballads,
possibly the greatest of all ballads,--more sustainedly memorable,
glorious throughout. Many of the shorter pieces, too, have my warmest
admiration.”
“The story of my reading ‘The Battle of Lepanto’ on the shore of Lake
Michigan to Vachel Lindsay is true,” declares Floyd Dell. “Note the
echo of ‘Lepanto’ in ‘General William Booth,’
“‘Dim drums throbbing in the hills half heard
Booth enters boldly with his big brass drum.’
“Booth was the first poem in Vachel’s new style, and followed my
chanting recitation of the poem--which (my way of reading it) was in
turn based on Yeats’ theories of how poetry should be read. Vachel had
an unparalleled mental possession of the folk tunes (so to speak) of
American speech--camp-meetings, soap-box, tramp, farmer, Negro, and so
on--but they never broke through into his own verse until after he had
heard the theory of Yeats and the poem of Chesterton.”
Thomas Caldecot Chubb feels that Chesterton has been an important
influence in the shaping of a brilliant American poet, “I realize that
discussing influences is dangerous and that most people like to think
of genius as bursting into the world full grown like Medusa from the
forehead of Jove. But quite the opposite is usually true and most men
of genius are but the latest--not the last link--in an unending chain.
They receive, they use, they pass along. And anyone who will compare
‘The Ballad of the White Horse’ with ‘The Drug Shop, or Endymion in
Edmonstoun,’ written by Stephen Vincent Benet when he was less than
twenty years old, will realize that Benet obtained more than a handful
of his poetic implements from Chesterton. This is a paradox in itself,
that the gusty panegyrist of the days following the decline of Rome
should make an important contribution to so native and so American a
voice.”
No better way to end this chapter than with what Stephen Vincent Benet
writes the author,
“Thank you for sending me your Chapter on Chesterton’s poetry which
I have read with much interest. I have always greatly admired both
‘Lepanto’ and the ‘Ballad of the White Horse’ and I still re-read
them.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHESTERTON THE MAN
Chesterton possessed one of the most likeable characters of
contemporary literary men. There is usually something or other
that mars the characters of most, but who would have Chesterton
different? Even his faults are beloved: his weight, his tardiness,
his absentmindedness, his slovenly manner of dressing, his sometimes
careless way of eating and drinking. In short he can almost be
described as Falstaff without his moral grossness.
Chesterton lived for many years in a flat overlooking the beautiful
Battersea Park, where Mrs. Lillian Curt would often see him strolling
in deep thought. His wife Frances--a dainty little lady, clever and
level-headed and most devoted to her husband--would sometimes get
anxious when he was long overdue for meals. Then quickly donning her
outdoor garments she would anxiously start off to find him, remarking,
“I am off to seek my Mighty Atom.” The reference being to Marie
Corelli’s “The Mighty Atom” which had but recently appeared.
“I knew G. K. C.,” writes A. Hamilton Gibbs, “when I was in process
of becoming an undergraduate at Oxford. Being so grotesquely fat that
he couldn’t dress himself he used to appear in socks at breakfast,
eat hugely, and then go out into the garden with a pad of paper and a
packet of cigarettes. In the course of a couple of hours there would
be a ring of cigarettes on the grass around him and when the wind blew
away his pages, he would scream for help with a series of epigrams
which I am sure found their way into his later pages. Whenever he went
from the country to London there was always a little black bag in his
hand. In the bag was a bottle of wine, and in the station refreshment
room he would order a cup of tea and a wine glass. Many times I’ve seen
him taking alternate sips of tea and wine between mouths of a penny
bun!”
Whenever he visited Glasgow, Chesterton stayed with Professor
Phillimore who occupied the Greek chair at Glasgow University.
Phillimore entertained many literary people in Glasgow, Hilaire Belloc,
Thomas Hardy, Galsworthy, and so forth. Usually disengaged in the
mornings, the visitors were often brought to the Annam Gallery to be
entertained by looking at paintings and etchings. Mr. Annam had the
opportunity of making photographic portraits of Chesterton in 1912,
when the latter was at his bulkiest. He seemed much interested in his
striking appearance and in his likeness to Dr. Johnson. He wore a dark
grey highland cloak and a tiny Homburg hat. As he was leaving the
studio a small boy stopped and stared at the great man. G. K. noticed
the youngster’s interest and puffed himself out to his very biggest for
his benefit. Nothing was said, of course, but the pose was obvious. In
the course of conversation he made various references to his appearance.