Paul’s, a tall slim youth who even then had the feeling of the romance
of weapons that runs through so much of his work. He went to stay
with Mr. and Mrs. Riviere after his marriage when his wife was ill in
bed and unable to see to his packing. The result was that he arrived
=with nothing= but an old revolver bought on the way, and his favorite
sword-stick with an ivory-handle!
The Sunday after the Great War had commenced Riviere was staying the
week-end at a house a few miles from Beaconsfield, and walked over to
see the Chestertons. They were in a very national state of excitement
and emotion, as all were on such a day. His first thought was, what
could he do to help his country,
“I couldn’t wield a sword as I can’t lift my right arm above my
shoulder. I should be no use in cavalry, no horse could carry me.” Then
with a sudden hopefulness and that humor that was so often directed
against himself, “I might possibly form part of a barricade.”
The Chestertons, his brother Cecil, and his friend W. C. Worsdell, all
belonged to a debating society known as “I. D. K.” (I Don’t Know). In
the earlier period G. K. C. attended the meetings pretty regularly but
later on rarely, being, as his wife declared, “too busy.” One of the
earliest meetings was at the Chiswick house, of his wife’s family, the
Bloggs. At the end of the discussion Chesterton remarked in his usual
jocular style,
“We’re in a complete fog!”
But more than once he declared that the speeches of the I Don’t Knows
were much cleverer than those heard in the House of Commons. At one
meeting Chesterton could not find a chair, so he was obliged to squat
on the floor, and he dropped down with a thud that shook the whole
house!
One year the Chestertons were coming back from Bromley after a
delightful afternoon spent at E. W. Fordham’s house where the guests
had produced some plays written by their host--one of them an
exceedingly clever and amusing take-off of G. K. C. himself which the
original had greeted with continuous chuckles and gurgles of laughter.
Having returned with them year after year from this show and knowing
his habit, Riviere remarked,
“Aren’t you going to have the usual cigar, Gilbert?”
“I was not going to have a cigar and I =don’t= want a cigar, but if
it’s a case of a holy ritual here goes,” he answered characteristically
with a chuckle as he took out a cigar and commenced smoking.
While visiting Columbus, Ohio, to lecture, Chesterton had a friendly
discussion with Professor Joseph Alexander Leighton and Dr. T. C.
Mendenhall, the noted physicist--on the question whether veridical
communications from the dead were received by living persons. Dr.
Mendenhall contended that some at least of these communications were
genuine, and therefore established the reality of life after death.
Leighton took the role of skeptic, contending that when, as in some
undoubted cases, bits of information, quotations, etcetera, had been
received through mediums, they probably were due to subconscious
memories, and that in other cases their apparent supernormal character
was probably the result of coincidence. Chesterton agreed to the
genuineness of the communications, but took the view that they were
transmitted by bad spirits and that it was spiritually unhealthy for
living persons to have any kind of traffic with them.
No one could condemn a thing in fewer words than Chesterton. Speaking
about that much discussed book of other days, Renan’s “Life of Christ,”
he said to his friends Desmond Gleeson and George Boyle,
“I remember reading it while I was standing in the queque waiting to
see ‘Charlie’s Aunt.’ But it is so obvious which is the better farce,
for ‘Charlie’s Aunt’ is still running.”
The old English advertisement of “Charlie’s Aunt” always had a picture
of the old woman getting along at top speed, with the words, “still
running.”
Father Cyril Martindale did not meet Chesterton very often, but he
felt that he knew him well all the same, “this was because despite
his shyness, or I should say modesty, he =let= you know him, and
intercepted no barriers. This modesty was again seen in his dealings
with young men. It never occurred to him that they could have nothing
interesting or useful to say, or that he was called upon to act the
oracle.
“And this simplicity could again, I think, be seen in what people
called his paradoxes. He always insisted that that was not what they
were, but sheer statements of the obvious. To him, it was life as
ordinarily lived that seemed ‘paradoxical’--it was amazing to him that
men could think the things they did, especially as doing so issued into
so uncomfortable as well as, too often, so wicked a life.
“Sometimes the constant appearance of the word ‘wild’ in his writings
irritated me. He had a vivid and active imagination, so that he saw all
sorts of connections and illustrations that others did not: but his
mind in reality worked in a very orderly way. I think the explanation
may be this--he constantly described himself as ‘lazy’ and I expect
that by temperament he was. He always put down the rapidity of his
brother’s conversion with the tardiness of his own, at sheer laziness
on his part. Now had he let himself go to laziness, he would have been
letting his mind, too, go ‘wild.’ But he did neither. Very likely he
used the word in a slightly different sense from the one in which I
used it: he felt it as the opposite of ‘smug’ and so forth. It remains
that I think he had to conquer a real tendency to laziness, and so, to
letting his mind just hop about in a (to me) ‘wild’ and disorderly way.
“I think he died in some ways a broken-hearted man. There were no
signs of the world having learnt anything that was good, even from its
sufferings: all the more noticeable was his peace and serenity in God;
and this is why I do not hesitate to say that I think there was to be
discerned in him =real holiness=.”
Father (now Monsignor) John O’Connor known to fame as Father Brown,
recollects that on Sunday, July 30th, 1922, he had “the immense
happiness of receiving Chesterton into the Church. Mrs. Chesterton was
present, profoundly moved, and Dom Ignatius Rice, O. S. B., in the
chapel of the Railway Hotel at Beaconsfield, the first public church in
town. I remembered his lines written years before,
‘Prince: Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of Knights you dub.
Will someone take me to a pub?
Is =that= the last of them? O Lord!
Will someone take me to a pub?’
“In 1925 Mrs. Chesterton followed him into the Church on the Feast
of All Saints. They almost at once began to sponsor the erection of
a permanent church near the railway station. And now it is being
enlarged as a memorial to him.
“Gilbert Chesterton and I were wont to call down Mark Twain’s name
in benediction and to wish there were more like him, whether in his
own States or any others. I recall many of our delighted exchanges on
Mark the deathless. I was once thrilled to give him a patiche out of
something he had not read,
‘Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral.’
“That he had not read it was to me a miracle. He had read everything I
ever heard of that Mark Twain had written.”
Patrick Braybrooke saw his cousin Chesterton for the last time at
Beaconsfield. “It was a hot afternoon in summer and in the sweet garden
at his home he recited poetry, made up verses, discussed American
hotels, and came to the conclusion that Stevenson was the bravest man
who ever wrote.”
One morning not long afterwards as he was sitting in the refreshment
room of a London underground, Braybrooke picked up casually enough a
newspaper. “I saw some words and my world seemed to fall into pieces.
For I read SUDDEN DEATH OF G. K. CHESTERTON. It seemed like the end of
an era of literary greatness in every way. But I was glad he did not
have a long illness--a long drawn-out anti-climax was not for him. When
his time came he went home quickly, almost as though like one of the
Stevenson characters--hit by an arrow. He went home and the Catholic
Church which he loved so well took care of his soul and in the little
Church at Beaconsfield to the subdued mutters of the Mass we said our
last farewell.”
Chesterton died on June 14, 1936, and was buried in the graveyard
of the Beaconsfield Catholic Church. Just recently the Republic of
Ireland has given a great bell for the Chesterton Memorial Church thus
inscribed.
“Presented to the parish of Beaconsfield by friends and admirers of
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, to ring the call to faith, which he so
chivalrously answered in song, in word, and in example, to the glory of
God and of England.”
Walter de la Mare penned a memorial quatrain to his life-long friend,
“Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way,
Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;
The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,
Pity and Innocence his heart at rest.”
INDEX
Page
Adams, James Truslow, meets Chesterton 78
Adams, Karl 150
Aristotle 131
Armstrong, Prof. A. J., entertains C. 58
Arnold, Matthew 127
Autobiography 145
“Ballad of the White Horse” 94, 160, 162
Baltimore, liked by Chesterton 128
Barnes, Bishop E. W. 108
Barr, Robert 25
Barrie, James M. 37
Beaverbrook, Lord 108
Belloc, Hilaire 7, 10, 14
First meets Chesterton 24
Quoted 35, 44, 75, 133
Benet, Stephen Vincent 162–3
Benet, William R. 158
Bentley, E. C. Iff., 5, 137
Bierce, Ambrose 40
“Biography for Beginners” 85
Birkenhead, Lord 56, 109
Blackwood, Algernon 33
Blatchford, Robt. complimented by C. 21–3
Blessed Virgin 89–90
Blogg, Frances, marries C. 13
Boer War, opposed by C. 19–20
Borden, Lucille 39
Boswell 7, 28
Bourne, Francis Cardinal 148
Braybrooke, Patrick, at C.’s funeral 172–3
Bridges, Horace J., debates with C. 68 ff.
Brown, Edw. tells of C.’s Welsh lecture 49–52
Browning, Robert 3, 14, 58, 95, 125–6, 152
Cabell, James Branch 122
Carrell, R. Alexis, on C. 123
Cecil, Lord 33
Cecil, Lord David 38
Cambridge 107
Canadian Authors’ Society, toasted by C. 76
Catholic Church, C. joins 90, 102
Chamberlain, Joseph 19
Chesterton, Cecil, brother 14, 138–9, 167, 170
Chesterton, G. K.
Chubb, T. C., describes C. at Yale 92–7
Clarke, Isabel C., entertains C. in Rome 35–6
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain) 19
Praised by C. 135, 149, 172
Cobbett, William 97–8
Columbus, Ohio, C. visits 168
Connolly, Myles, impressions of C. 120
“Convert, The,” poem by C. 157
Cram, Ralph Adams 33 ff., 144 ff.
Dante 153
Darrow, C., debates with C. 66 ff., 117, 128
de la Mare, Walter, meets C. 32–3, quoted
de Castro, Adolphe, meets C. 40
Dickens, Charles, admired by C. 3, 30, 95
“Pickwick Papers,” C.’s favorite 131, 152
Distributism 14, 24
Drinkwater, John 51
Drood, Edwin 27–7
Doyle, Conan 117
Dudley, Owen F., meets C. 34
Duggan, Eileen 151 ff.
Dyboski, Roman 132, 147 ff.
Eliot, T. S. 146
“Everlasting Man” 118
Falstaff 92
Father Brown 25, 94, 144
Fletcher, James Gould 160–1
“Flying Inn, The” 85, 95, 144
Fordham, E. W., boyhood friend 4 ff.,168
France, Anatole 15
Frank, Waldo, admires C. 120
Frankau, Gilbert, meets C. 25
Galsworthy, John 24
discussed by C. 129
Garland, Hamlin, meets C. 119
George Fifth, King, meets C. 11
Gibbs, A. Hamilton, meets C. 165
Gibbs, Sir Philip, meets C. 20–1
Gill, Eric, C.’s friend 27
Gilson, L. E. 149 ff.
“G. K.’s Weekly” 14, 27
Glasgow, C. lectures in 53
visits 165–6
“Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” praised by C. 24
Gordon, Charles W., describes C. 78
Graham, Cunninghame 11
Graham, Kenneth, compared to C. 35
“Greybeards at Play,” C.’s first book 14
Guedalla, Philip, meets C. 31–2
Gwynn, S., recalls C.’s first book 14, 17, 18, 38
Hamilton, Cosmo, debates with C. 62 ff.
Hammond, J. L. 18–9
Hardy, Thomas 129
Harris, Frank 29
Hawthorne 111
Henry Eighth, King 36, 97
Hereford, Oliver, quoted 69
Hazlitt, Henry 117
Heine 41
“Heretics” 15, 30, 116
Hilton, James, writes C. as a boy 23
Hirst, F. W., edits Speaker with C. 19
“History of England” 136
Holliday, Robert Cortes, meets C. 127
Hollis, Christopher, meets C. 24
Holy Ghost 95
Housman, A. E. 107
quoted by C. 129–130
Huxley, Aldous, admired by C. 63
“History of England” 136
Jackson, Holbrook, meets C. 41–45
Jacobs, W. W., meets C. 23
James, Henry 10
Joan of Arc, C. speaks on 33
Johnson, Dr. Samuel 28, 36, 43, 88, 143, 165
Chesterton dressed as 134
Kaye-Smith, Sheila, praised by C. 112
Kernahan, Coulson, meets C. 25–6–7
Kingsmill, Hugh, meets C. 29
Kipling, Rudyard 76, 96, 153
Knox, John 105
Lane, John 15
Lenin 131
“Lepanto,” poem by C. 94, 119, 160
Lewis, Sinclair 112–3, 127
Lindsay, Vachel 161
Liverpool, C. lectures in 53
Locke, John 41
Lodge, Sir Oliver 21
Lowdnes, Mrs. Marie Belloc, meets C. 33
Mabbott, T. O., praises C. 115–6
MacDonald, George 26
MacDonald, Ramsay 26, 108
“Magic,” play by C. 116–7
“Man Who Was Thursday” 3
Praised by James Hilton 24, 32, 95
Admired by Mussolini 134, 144
Martindale, Cyril C. 167–171
Masefield, John 108
Masterman, Charles 11
May, J. Lewis 15
Megroz, Rodolphe L., visits C. 79
Miller, J. Corson 158
Moore, Tom 17, 18
More, Thomas 90
Mussolini, Benito, visited by C. 134–5
Napoleon, quoted 120
“Napoleon of Notting Hill” 15, 16–7, 79, 85, 95, 116, 144
“New Jerusalem” 87
“New Witness” 14
Notre Dame University, C. at 99–113
Noyes, Alfred 155–8
O’Connor, Father John 137–140
Receives Chesterton Into Church 171–2
Oldershaw, J. L. 5, 18, 19
“Orthodoxy” 15, 32, 116, 149–50, 160
Ould, Hermon, offers C. club presidency 86
Oxford 107
Patterson, Mrs. F. T., hears C. lecture 66 ff.
Pearson, Hesketh 31, 140–1
Pemberton, Sir Max 143
Phelps, William Lyon 98, 118
Philip the Second, misinterpreted by C. 119
Pollock, Channing 115
Poland 148 ff.
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur 51
Redfield, William C. 62
Remarque, Enrique Maria, C. dislikes 64
Rinehart, Mary Roberts 143
Ripley, Clements, admires C. 32
Riviere, Hugo C., paints C. 85–6
Roberts, R. Ellis, hears C. lecture 46
Robinson, E. A. 166, 97
Rodin 44
Rome, C. visits 90, 97, 134
Rose, Sir Holland 107
Roseberry, Lord 54
Ruskin, John 19, 107
Russell, Bertrand, C.’s opinion of 108
Russell, George 98, 127–8
Sabatini, Rafael 141–2
Saint Januarius 44
St. Louis, Missouri, C. lectures 72–4, 128
Saint Paul’s School 13
“Saint Thomas Aquinas” 150
Scott, Walter 3
“Ivanhoe” reviewed by C. 75
Shaw, Bernard, C.’s book on 15, 27, 44, 46, 55
Meets Chesterton 75–6, 95, 96, 141, 146
Shorter, Clement K. 141
Sheen, Fulton 150
Slade Art School, attended by C. 13
“Speaker,” The 18–9
Stevenson, Robert Louis, quoted 83
Stewart, Bishop G. C., at C.’s lecture 68 ff.
Stewart, Donald Ogden, admires C. 117
Strachey, Lytton, compared to C. 35
Swinburne 3
Tennyson 3, 95
Thackeray 95
Thompson, Francis 155
Thomas, Edward 2
Thoreau 111
quoted 121
Tinker, Chauncey B. 118
Titterton, W. R., C. writes 81–3
Describes C. 84
Tolstoy 131
“Trent’s Last Case,” by E. C. Bentley 137
Trevelyan, George M. 107
Trotsky 131
Van Dine, S. S., admires Father Brown 142
Van Druten, John 51
“Varied Types” 159
Velasquez 44
“Victorian Age of English Literature” 144
Walker, Headmaster, discovers C.’s genius 1
Walpole, Horace 132
Walsh, William Thomas, describes C. 118–9
Watts, G. F., admired by C. 3
“Well and the Shadows” 146
Wells, H. G. 34, 46, 64, 79–80–81, 86, 96, 133
West, Rebecca 109
Wise, Stephen S., admires C. 122
Wood, Clement 161
Wright, Cuthbert 146
Wyndham, George 11
Yealy, Francis J., hears C. lecture 47
Yeats, Elizabeth, at G. K.’s wedding 13
Yeats, William B. 108
meets C. 145–6
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them,
have been sequentially alphabetized and placed below the paragraphs
that reference them.
The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references. The entry for “Chesterton, G. K.” has no page references
(which makes sense, as the entire book is about him). Some entries that
were misalphabetized have been moved to the correct places, but the
Transcribers did not do this systematically.
Page i: “unanimity” was printed as “unanmity”; changed here.
Page 12: “just ’ad” was printed as “just ’as”; changed here.
Page 13: The footnote anchor originally was placed at the end of the
next paragraph, but was moved because the footnote refers to the person
mentioned in the earlier paragraph.
Page 14: “pledged to wage eternal against” seems to be missing a word.
Page 30: “finding reasons for his” was printed as “finding seasons for
his”; changed here.
Page 31: “with insufficient impudence” was printed that way; perhaps it
should be “sufficient”.
Page 38: “quiet chat” was printed as “quite chat”; changed here.
Page 38: “I remember how Lord David Cecil when still a boy” was printed
that way; “how” seems to be extraneous.
Page 40: “in phases as colorful” was printed that way.
Page 40: “points in phrases” was printed as “points in phases”; changed
here.
Page 41: Extraneous opening single quote removed just before “Do you
happen to write poetry”.
Page 41: Missing closing quote mark added after “It was a quasi sonnet
entitled ‘The Jewish Poet.’”
Page 44: “sombrero” was printed as “comprero”; changed here.
Page 48: “This he thought was very reasonable theory” was printed that
way.
Page 49: The second occurrence of “Debates Union” was printed as
“Debate’s Union”; changed here.
Page 51: “Liberty: the Last Phase,” was printed as “Liberty: the Last
Phrase,”; changed here.
Page 57: Extraneous closing quote removed after “of life and
experience.”
Page 62: “he never forgot” was printed as “he never forget”; changed
here.
Page 88: “Cycle Valley” was printed that way.
Page 89: “it did before” was printed as “it did befire”; changed here.
Page 90: “Thomas More” was printed as “Thomas Moore”; changed here.
Page 94: “that varnished period” was printed that way.
Page 106: “It would not have mattered” was printed as “I would not have
mattered”; changed here.
Page 107: Extraneous closing quote removed after “condition did not
prevail.”
Page 108: “no other poet” was printed as “no other post”; changed here.
Page 118: “just as fervently” was printed as “just as feverently”;
changed here.
Page 121: “It might ever more accurately” was printed that way; “ever”
may be a typo for “even.”
Page 122: “significance” was printed as “signifcance”; changed here.
Page 139: “battered daylight” was printed as “bettered daylight”;
changed here.
Page 140: “knows more about crime” was printed as “know more about
crime”; changed here.
Page 146: “was essential” was printed as “was ensential”; changed here.
Page 146: “debate develop as it likes” was printed as “debate develop
as it like”; changed here.
Page 146: “Some year ago” was printed that way.
Page 149: “Grey Beards at Play” was printed that way, but should be
“Greybeards”.
Page 150: “I consider it as being” was printed as “I consider is as
being”; changed here.
Page 158: “Gerard Manley Hopkins” was printed as “Gerald Manley
Hopkins”; changed here.
Page 162: “Booth was the first poem” was printed as “Both was the first
poem”; changed here.
Page 171: The stanza of a poem is reproduced here as it was printed in
the original book, but differs from reproductions of that stanza in
most other sources.
Page 172: “patiche” probably should be “pastiche”.
Page 175: “Benet, Stephen Vincent” was printed as “Bent, Stephen
Vincent”; changed here.
Page 177: “edits Speaker” was printed as “edits speaker”; changed here.