Who is G.K.C.?
THE BOER WAR--and the whole country enthusiastically behind it. The
Liberal Party as a whole went with the Conservatives. The leading
Fabians--Bernard Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, Hubert Bland, Cecil
Chesterton and the "semi-detached Fabian" H. G. Wells--were likewise
for the war. Only a tiny minority remained in opposition, most of
whom were pacifists or cranks of one kind or another. To the sane
minority of this minority Gilbert found himself belonging. It is
something of a tribute to the national feeling at such a moment of
tension that (as an American has noted) "Chesterton was the one
British writer, utterly unknown before, who built up a great
reputation, and it was gained, not through nationalistic support, but
through determined and persistent opposition to British policy."*
[* _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, p. 20.]
In his _Daily News_ column a correspondent later asked him to define
his position. Chesterton replied, "The unreasonable patriot is one
who sees the faults of his fatherland with an eye which is clearer
and more merciless than any eye of hatred, the eye of an irrational
and irrevocable love." His attitude sprang, he claimed, not from
defect but from excess of patriotism.
It is hard to imagine anything that would clarify better the ideas of
a strong mind than finding itself in opposition. This opposition
began at home, in argument with Cecil. Later the two brothers would
agree about most main issues, but now Cecil was a Tory democrat,
Gilbert a pro-Boer, and what was known as a little Englander. The tie
between the two brothers was very close. As the "Innocent Child"
developed into the combative companion, there is no doubt that he
proportionately affected Gilbert. All their friends talk of the
endless amicable arguments through which both grew. Conrad Noel
remembers parties at Warwick Gardens during the Boer War at which the
two brothers "would walk up and down like the two pistons of an
engine" to the disorganisation of the company and the dismay of their
parents. It was at this time that Frances, engaged to a deeply
devoted Gilbert, found even that devotion insufficient to pry him and
Cecil apart when an argument had got well under way.
"I must go home, Gilbert. I shall miss my train."
Usually he would have sprung to accompany her, but now she must miss
many trains before the brothers could be separated.
Frances told me that when they were at the seaside the landlady would
sometimes clear away breakfast, leaving the brothers arguing, come to
set lunch and later set dinner while still they argued. They had come
to the seaside but they never saw the sea.
Once Frances was staying with them at a house they had taken by the
sea. Her room was next to Cecil's and she could not sleep for the
noise of the discussion that went on hour after hour. About one in
the morning she rapped on the wall and said, "O Cecil, do send
Gilbert to bed." A brief silence followed, and then the remark, in a
rather abashed voice, "There's no one here." Cecil had been arguing
with himself. Gilbert too argued with himself for the stand he was
taking was a hard one. Mr. Belloc has told me that he felt Gilbert
suffered at any word against England, that his patriotism was
passionate. And now he had himself to say that he believed his
country to be in the wrong. To admit it to himself, to state it to
others.
This autumn of 1899 G.K. began to write for the _Speaker_. The weekly
of this title had long been in a languishing condition when it was
taken over by a group of young Liberals of very marked views. Hammond
became editor and Philip Comyns Carr sub-editor. Sir John Simon was
among the group for a short while, but he soon told one of them that
he feared close association with the _Speaker_ might injure his
career. F. Y. Eccles was in charge of the review department. He is
able to date the start of what was known as the "new" _Speaker_ with
great exactitude, for when the first number was going to press the
ultimatum had been sent to Kruger and the editors hesitated as to
whether they should take the risk of announcing that it was war in
South Africa. They decided against, but before their second number
appeared war had been declared.
My difficulty in getting a picture of the first meeting of Belloc and
Chesterton illustrates the problem of human testimony and the limits
of that problem. For I imagine a scripture critic, old style, would
end by concluding that the men never met at all.
F. Y. Eccles, E. C. Bentley and Lucian Oldershaw all claim to have
made the momentous introduction, Mr. Eccles adding that it took place
at the office of the _Speaker_, while Gilbert himself has described
the meeting twice: once in the street, once in a restaurant. Belloc
remembers the introduction as made in the year 1900 by Lucian
Oldershaw, who was living at the time with Hammond. Mr. Oldershaw
usually has the accuracy of the hero-worshipper and upon this matter
he adds several amusing details. For some time he had been trying to
get the group on the _Speaker_ to read Chesterton and had in vain
taken several articles to the office. Mr. Eccles declared the
handwriting was that of a Jew and he prejudiced Belloc, says
Oldershaw, against reading "anything written by my Jew friend."
But when at last they did meet, Belloc "opened the conversation by
saying in his most pontifical manner, 'Chesterton, you wr-r-ite very
well.'" Chesterton was then 26, Belloc four years older. It was at
the Mont Blanc, a restaurant in Gerrard St., Soho, and the meeting
was celebrated with a bottle of Moulin au Vent.
The first description given by Gilbert himself is at once earlier and
more vivid than the better known one in the _Autobiography_.
When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us
that he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more
uproarious and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked
into the night, and left behind in it a glowing track of good things.
When I have said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not
merely _bons mots_, I have said all that can be said in the most
serious aspect about the man who has made the greatest fight for good
things of all the men of my time.
We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho
restaurant; his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist
and French Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes,
which are like a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin. . . .
The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt
for three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about
the South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most
of us were writing on the _Speaker_. . . .
. . . What he brought into our dream was this Roman appetite for
reality and for reason in action, and when he came into the door
there entered with him the smell of danger.*
[* Introduction to: _Hilaire Belloc: The Man and His Work_ by C. C.
Mandell and E. Shanks, 1916.]
"It was from that dingy little Soho café," Chesterton writes in the
_Autobiography_, "that there emerged the quadruped, the twiformed
monster Mr. Shaw has nicknamed the Chesterbelloc."
Listening to Belloc is intoxicating. I have heard many brilliant
talkers, but none to whom that word can so justly be applied. He goes
to your head, he takes you off your feet, he leaves you breathless,
he can convince you of anything. My mother and brother both counted
it as one of the great experiences of their lives to have dined with
Belloc in a small Paris Restaurant (Aux Vendanges de Bourgogne) and
then to have walked with him the streets of that glorious city while
he discoursed of its past. Imagination staggers before the picture of
a Belloc in his full youth and vigour in a group fitted to strike
from him his brightest fire at a moment big with issues for the
world's future.
In Chesterton's _Autobiography_ a chapter is devoted to the "Portrait
of A Friend," while Belloc in turn has said something of Chesterton
in obituary notices and also in a brief study of his position in
English literature. None of these documents give much notion of the
intellectual flame struck out by one mind against the other. It has
often been asked how much Belloc influenced Chesterton.
The best test of an influence in a writer's life is to compare what
he wrote before with what he wrote after he was first subjected to
it. It is easy to apply this test to Belloc's influence on G.K.C.
because of the mass we still have of his boyhood writings. In pure
literature, in philosophy and theology he remains untouched by the
faintest change. Pages from the Notebook could be woven into
_Orthodoxy_, essays from _The Debater_ introduced into _The Victorian
Age in Literature_, and it would look simply like buds and flowers on
the same bush. Belloc has characterized himself as ignorant of
English literature and says he learnt from Chesterton most of what he
knows of it, while there is no doubt Chesterton was by far the
greater philosopher.
With politics, sociology, and history (and the relation of religion
to all three) it is different. Belloc himself told me he thought the
chief thing he had done for Chesterton when they first met was to
open his eyes to reality--Chesterton had been unusually young for his
twenty-six years and unusually simple in regard to the political
scene. He was in fact the young man he himself was later to describe
as knowing all about politics and nothing about politicians. The four
years between the two men seemed greater than it was, partly because
of Belloc's more varied experience of life--French military training,
life at Oxford, wide travel and an early marriage.
Belloc, then, could teach Chesterton a certain realism about
politics--which meant a certain cynicism about politicians. Far more
valuable, however, was what Belloc had to give him in sociology. We
have seen that G.K. was already dissatisfied with Socialism before he
met Belloc; it may be that by his consideration of the nature of man
he would later have reached the positions so individually set out in
_What's Wrong with the World_--but this can only remain a theoretical
question. For Belloc did actually at this date answer the
sociological question that Chesterton at this date was putting:
answered it brilliantly and answered it truly. Every test that G.K.
could later apply--of profound human reality, of truth divinely
revealed--convinced him that the answer was true.
He had, he has told us, been a Socialist because it was so horrible
not to be one, but he now learned of the historical Christian
alternative--equally opposed to Socialism and to Capitalism--
well-distributed property. This had worked in the past, was still
working in many European countries, could be made to work again in
England. The present trend appeared to Belloc to be towards the
Servile State, and in the book with this title and a second book _The
Restoration of Property_ he later developed his sociology. After this
first meeting, two powerful and very different minds would
reciprocally influence one another. An admirer of both told me that
he thought Chesterton got the idea of small property from Belloc but
gave Belloc a fuller realization of the position of the family. One
difference between them is that Belloc writes sociology as a textbook
while Chesterton writes it as a human document. All the wealth of
imagination that Belloc pours into _The Path to Rome_ or _The Four
Men_ he sternly excludes from the Servile State. The poet, traveller,
essayist is one man, the sociologist another.
The third field of influence was history. Here Belloc did Chesterton
two great services--he restored the proportion of English history,
and he put England back into its context. Since the Reformation,
English history had been written with all the stress on the
Protestant period. Lingard had written earlier but had not been
popularized and certainly would not be used at St. Paul's School. And
even Lingard had laid little stress on the social effects of the
Reformation. Mr. Hammond's contemporary work on English social
history fitted into Belloc's more vivid if less documented
vision--none of this could be disregarded by later writers.
Belloc, too, restored that earlier England to the Christendom to
which it belonged. The England of Macaulay or of Green had, like Mr.
Mantalini's dowager, either no outline or a "demned outline" for it
was cut out of a larger map. And Chesterton was always seeking an
outline of history.
To get England back into the context of Christendom is a great thing:
just how great must depend upon how rightly Christendom is conceived.
One cannot always escape the feeling that Belloc conceives it too
narrowly. His famous phrase "The Faith is Europe and Europe is the
Faith" omits too much--the East out of which Christianity came; the
new worlds into which Europe has flowed. Belloc of course knows these
things and has often said them. It is rather a question of emphasis,
of how things loom in the mind when judgments have to be made. In
that sense he does tend to narrow the Faith to Europe: in exactly the
same sense he does tend to narrow Europe to France. Born in France of
a French father, educated in England, Belloc chose his mother's
nationality, chose to be English; but his Creator had chosen
differently, and there is not much a man can do in competition with
his Creator. I do not for a moment suggest that Belloc, having chosen
to be English, is conscious of anything but loyalty to the country of
his adoption. The thing lies far below the mind's conscious
movements. Belloc thinks of himself as an Englishman with a patriotic
duty to criticise his country, but his feelings are not really those
of an Englishman. Once at least he recognised this when he wrote the
verse:
England to me that never have malingered,
Nor spoken falsely, nor your flattery used,
_Nor even in my rightful garden lingered_--: *
What have you not refused?
[* Italics mine.]
And just as France was Belloc's rightful garden so England was
Chesterton's. When first they talked of the Church he told Belloc
that he wanted the example of "someone entirely English who should
none the less have come in." When criticising his country his voice
has the note of pain that only love can give. Belloc saw him as
intensely national "English of the English . . . a mirror of
England . . . he writes with an English accent."
It is of some interest that after meeting Belloc Gilbert added notes
to two early poems, each note reflecting a judgment of Belloc's--on
the Dreyfus case which Belloc saw as all French Catholics saw it: on
Anglo-American relations which Belloc saw as most Latin Europeans
would see it.
(1) The first was the poem entitled "To a Certain Nation"--addressed
to France in commentary on the Dreyfus case of 1899 which must be
briefly explained for those who are too young to remember the
excitement it caused. Captain Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French
army, had been found guilty of treachery and sent to Devil's Island.
All France was divided into two camps on the question of his guilt or
innocence. In general, Catholics and what we should call the Right
were all for his guilt; atheists, anti-clericals and believers in the
Republic were for his innocence. Passions were roused to fury on both
sides. English opinion was almost entirely for his innocence. I was a
small girl at the time and I remember that my brother and I amused
ourselves by crying _Vive Dreyfus_, on all possible and impossible
occasions, for the annoyance of our pious French governess. I
remember also that our parents were startled by the vehemence of the
French Catholic paper _La Croix_ from which our governess imbibed her
views. Ultimately the case was reopened, and Dreyfus, after years of
horror on Devil's Island, found not guilty and restored to his rank
in the army. But there are, I know, Catholic Frenchmen alive today
who refuse to believe in his innocence and hold that the whole thing
was a Jewish-Masonic plot that hampered the French espionage service
and nearly lost us the war of 1914.
In the first edition of _The Wild Knight_, written before the meeting
with Belloc, Gilbert, like any other English Liberal, had assumed
Dreyfus' innocence and in the poem "To a Certain Nation" had
reproached the France of the Revolution, the France he had loved, as
unworthy of herself.
. . . and we
Who knew thee once, we have a right to weep.
The Note in the second edition shows him as now undecided
about Dreyfus' guilt and concludes: "There may have been a fog
of injustice in the French courts; I know that there was a fog
of injustice in the English newspapers."
(2) In "An Alliance" Chesterton had gloried in "the blood of Hengist"
and hymned an Anglo-American alliance with the enthusiasm of a young
Republican who took for granted the links of language and of origin
that might draw together two great countries into something
significant:
In change, eclipse, and peril
Under the whole world's scorn,
By blood and death and darkness
The Saxon peace is sworn;
That all our fruit be gathered
And all our race take hands,
And the sea be a Saxon river
That runs through Saxon lands.
But in the Note to the second edition, he says:
In the matter of the "Anglo-American Alliance" I have come to see
that our hopes of brotherhood with America are the same in kind as
our hopes of brotherhood with any other of the great independent
nations of Christendom. And a very small study of history was
sufficient to show me that the American Nation, which is a hundred
years old, is at least fifty years older than the Anglo-Saxon race.*
[* Collected Poems, p. 318.]
The poem was of course only a boyish expression of a boyish dream;
like all dreams, like all boyhood dreams especially, it omitted too
much; yet it contained a thought that might well have borne rich
fruit in Gilbert's Catholic life.
My mother told me once that when after three years' study of Queen
Elizabeth's character she came to a different conclusion from Belloc,
she found it almost impossible to resist his power and hold on to her
own view. It must be realised that Chesterton actually preferred the
attitude of a disciple. A mutual friend has told me that Chesterton
listened to Belloc all the time and said very little himself. In
matters historical where he felt his own ignorance, Gilbert's
tendency was simply to make an act of faith in Belloc.
On nothing were the two men more healthily in accord than on the Boer
War. In an interesting study of Belloc, prefixed to a French
translation of _Contemporary England_, F. Y. Eccles explains how he
and most of the _Speaker_ group differed from the pacifist pro-Boers,
who hated the South African war because they hated all wars. The
young Liberals on the _Speaker_ were not pacifists. They hated the
war because they thought it would harm England--harm her morally--to
be fighting for an unjust cause, and even materially to be shedding
the blood of her sons and pouring out her wealth at the bidding of a
handful of alien financiers. Thus far Gilbert was among one group
with whom he was in fullest sympathy. But I think he went further.
Mr. Eccles told me that most of the _Speaker_ group had no sympathy
with the Boers. Gilbert had. He thought of them as human beings who
might well have been farmers of Sussex or of Kent, something of an
older civilization, resisting money power and imperialism and
perishing thereby.
Few, indeed, of the Liberal Party held Chesterton's ideal--an England
territorially small, spiritually great. The _Speaker_ was struggling
against odds: it was the voice of a tiny group. To Gilbert it seemed
that this mattered nothing so long as that little group held to their
great ideas, so long as the paper represented not merely a group or a
party but the Liberal Idea. In an unfinished letter to Hammond is to
be found this idea as he saw it and his dawning disappointment even
with the paper that most nearly stood for it:
I am just about to commit a serious impertinence. I believe however
that you will excuse it because it is about the paper and I know
there is not another paper dead or alive for which I would take the
trouble or run the risk of offence.
I am hearing on all sides the _Speaker_ complained of by the very
people who should be and would be (if they could) its enthusiastic
supporters and I cannot altogether deny the truth of their
objections, though I am glad to notice both in them and in myself the
fact that those objections are tacitly based on the assumption of the
_Speaker_ having an aim and standard higher than other papers. If the
_Speaker_ were a mere party rag like "Judy" or "The Times," it would be
only remarkable for moderation, but to us who have built hopes on it
as the pioneer of a younger and larger political spirit it is
difficult to be silent when we find it, as it seems to us, poisoned
with that spirit of ferocious triviality which is the spirit of
Birmingham eloquence, and with that evil instinct which has
disintegrated the Irish party, the instinct for hating the man who
differs from you slightly, more than the man who differs from you
altogether.
Of two successive numbers during the stress of the fight (a fight
in which we had first to unite our army and then to use it) a
considerable portion was devoted, first to sneering at "The Daily
News" and then to sneering at "The Westminster Gazette." . . .
There is a sentence in the Book of Proverbs which expresses the
whole of my politics. "For the liberal man deviseth liberal things
and by his liberality he shall stand." Now what I object to is
sneering at "The Westminster" as a supporter of Chamberlain when
everyone knows that it hardly lets a day pass without an ugly
caricature of him. What I object to in this is that it is talking
Brummagem--it is not "devising liberal things" but spiteful,
superficial, illiberal things. It is claptrap and temporary
deception of the "Patriotism before Politics" order. . . .
To all this you will say there is an obvious answer. The _Speaker_
is a party paper and does not profess to be otherwise. But here I am
sure we are mistaking our mission. What the _Speaker_ is (I hope and
believe) destined to do, is to renovate Liberalism, and though
Liberalism (like every other party) is often conducted by claptrap,
it has never been renovated by claptrap, but by great command of
temper and the persistent exposition of persuasive and unanswerable
truths. It is while we are in the desert that we have the vision: we
being a minority, must be all philosophers: we must think for both
parties in the State. It is no good our devoting ourselves to the
flowers of mob oratory with no mob to address them to. We must, like
the Free Traders, for instance, have discoveries, definite truths and
endless patience in explaining them. We must be more than a political
party or we shall cease to be one. Time and again in history victory
has come to a little party with big ideas: but can anyone conceive
anything with the mark of death more on its brow than a little party
with little ideas?*
[* Undated, handwritten letter in a notebook.]
Such Liberalism was not perhaps of this world. It certainly was not
of the Liberal Party!
Gilbert argued much with himself during these years. He had come out
of his time of trial with firm faith in God and in man. But his
philosophy was still in the making, and he made it largely out of the
material supplied by ordinary London suburban society and by the
rather less usual society of cranks and enthusiasts so plentiful at
the end of the nineteenth century. He has written in the
_Autobiography_ of the artistic and dilettante groups where everyone
discussed religion and no one practised it, of the Christian
Socialists and other societies into which he and Cecil found their
way, and of some of the friendships they formed. Among these one of
the closest was with Conrad Noel who wrote in answer to my request
for his recollections:
We met G.K.C. for the first time at the Stapleys' in Bloomsbury
Square, at a series of meetings of the Christo-Theosophic Society. He
was like a very big fish out of water; he was comparatively thin,
however, in those days, nearly forty years ago. We had been much
intrigued by the weekly contribution of an unknown writer to "The
Speaker" and "The Nation"--brilliant work, and my wife and I,
independently, came to the conclusion when we heard this young man
speak that it must be he. The style was unmistakable.
I thought of writing to him to congratulate him on his speech, but
before I could do so, I got a letter from him, saying that he was
coming to hear me in the same series in a week or so; it was thus we
first became acquainted, and the acquaintance ripened into a warm
friendship with us both. He and his brother Cecil were in and out of
our flat in Paddington Green, where I was assistant curate. He was
genial, bubbling over with jokes, at which he roared with laughter.
The question was becoming insistent: when would there be enough money
for Frances and Gilbert to get married?
In one letter Frances asks him what he thinks of Omar Khayyam. He
replies at great length, and concludes:
You see the result of asking me for an opinion. I have written it
very hurriedly: if I had paused I might make an essay of it.
(Commercial Pig!) Never mind, sweetheart, that Essay might be a
sauce-pan some day--or at any rate a cheap toast-rack.
Of his belief in God, in man, in goodness, as against the pessimist
outlook of the day, Gilbert, as we have seen, felt profound
certitude. That his outlook was one that held him back from many
fields of opportunity he was already partly conscious. A fragment of
a letter to Frances expresses this feeling.
. . . I find I cannot possibly come tonight as my Canadian uncle
keeps his last night in England in a sort of family party. And I
abide by my father's house--said our Lady of the Snows.
I have just had a note from Rex, asking me, with characteristic
precision, if I can produce a play in the style of Maeterlinck by
6.50 this afternoon, or words to that effect. The idea is full of
humour. He remarks, as a matter of fact that there is just a remote
chance of his getting the Stage Society to act my play of The Wild
Knight. This opens to me a vista of quite new ambition. Why only at
the Stage Society?--I see a visionary programme.
The Wild Knight . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Charles Hawtree
Captain Redfeather . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Penley
Olive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Katie Seymour
Priest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sir Henry Irving
Lord Orm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. Arthur Roberts
I am working and must get on with my work. I do not feel any
despondency about it because I know it is good and worth doing. It is
extraordinary how much more moral one is than one imagines. At school
I never minded getting into a row if it were _really_ not my fault.
Similarly, I have never cared a rap for rejections or criticisms,
since I had got a point of view to express which I was certain held
water. Some people think it holds water--on the brain. But I don't
mind. Bless them.
I am afraid, darling, that this doctrine of patience is hard on
you. But really it's a grand thing to think oneself right. It's what
this whole age is starving for. Something to suffer for and go mad
and miserable over--that is the only luxury of the mind. I wish I
were a convinced Pro-Boer and could stare down a howling mob. But I
_am_ right about the Cosmos, and Schopenhauer and Co. are wrong. . . .
Two interesting points in this letter are the remark about wishing to
be a convinced Pro-Boer--which he certainly became--and the
suggestion of a possible performance of _The Wild Knight_. Perhaps
the letter was written before he had finally taken his stand (it has
no dating postmark), or perhaps it merely means that his convictions
on the cosmos are more absolute than on the war. As to _The Wild
Knight:_ it was never acted and its publication was made possible
only by the generosity of Gilbert's father. For a volume of comic
verse, _Greybeards at Play_, which appeared earlier in the same year
(1900), he could find a publisher, but serious poetry has never been
easy to launch.
The letter that follows has a more immediate bearing on their
own future:
11, Warwick Gardens,
Good Friday. 1900.
. . . As you have tabulated your questions with such alarming
precision I must really endeavour to answer them categorically.
(1) How am I? I am in excellent health. I have an opaque cold in my
head, cough tempestuously and am very deaf. But these things I count
as mere specks showing up the general blaze of salubrity. I am
getting steadily better and I don't mind how slowly. As for my
spirits a cold never affects them: for I have plenty to do and think
about indoors. One or two little literary schemes--trifles
doubtless--claim my attention.
(2) Am I going away at Easter? The sarcastic might think it a
characteristic answer, but I can only reply that I had banished the
matter from my mind, a vague problem of the remote future until you
asked it: but since this is Easter and we are not gone away I suppose
we are not going away.
(3) I will meet you at Euston on Tuesday evening though hell itself
should gape and bid me stop at home.
(4) I am not sure whether a review on Crivelli's art is out this
week: I am going to look.
(5) Alas! I have not been to Nutt. There are good excuses, but they
are not the real ones. I will write to him now. Yes: Now.
(6) Does my hair want cutting? My hair seems pretty happy. You are
the only person who seems to have any fixed theory on this. For all I
know it may be at that fugitive perfection which has moved you to
enthusiasm. Three minutes after this perfection, I understand, a
horrible degeneration sets in: the hair becomes too long, the figure
disreputable and profligate: and the individual is unrecognised by
all his friends. It is he that wants cutting then, not his hair.
(7) As to shirt-links, studs and laces, I glitter from head to foot
with them.
(8) I have had a few skirmishes with Knollys but not the general
engagement. When this comes off, you shall have news from our
correspondent. (Knollys was Frances's brother.)
(9) I have got a really important job in reviewing--the Life of
Ruskin for the _Speaker_. As I have precisely 73 theories about Ruskin
it will be brilliant and condensed. I am also reviewing the Life of
the Kendals, a book on the Renascence and one on Correggio for "The
Bookman."
(10) How far is it to Babylon? Babylon I am firmly convinced is just
round the corner: if one could be only certain which corner. This
conviction is the salt of my life.
(11) Really and truly I see no reason why we should not be married
in April if not before. I have been making some money calculations
with the kind assistance of Rex, and as far as I can see we could
live in the country on quite a small amount of regular literary
work. . .
P.S. Forgot the last question.
(12) Oddly enough, I was writing a poem. Will send it to you.
Gilbert's engagement had given him the impetus to earn more but he
was always entirely unpractical. His salary at Fisher Unwin's had
been negligible and he was not making much yet by the journalism
which was now his only source of income. The repeated promise to
"write to Nutt" is very characteristic. For Nutt was the manager of
the solitary publisher who was at the moment prepared to put a book
of Gilbert's on the market at his own risk!
Although they did not manage to get married this year, by the end of
it he was becoming well known. The articles, in the _Speaker_
especially, were attracting attention and _Greybeards at Play_ had a
considerable success. This, the first of Gilbert's books to be
published, is a curiosity. It is made up of three incredibly witty
satirical poems--"The Oneness of the Philosopher with Nature," "The
Dangers Attending Altruism on the High Seas" and "The Disastrous
Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes." The illustrations drawn by
himself are as witty as the verses. By the beginning of 1901 his work
was being sought for by other Liberal periodicals and he was writing
regularly for the _Daily News_. The following letter to Frances bears
the postmark Feb. 8, 1901.
Somewhere in the Arabian Nights or some such place there is a story
of a man who was Emperor of the Indies for one day. I am rather in
the position of that person: for I am Editor of the _Speaker_ for one
day. Hammond is unwell and Hirst has gone to dine with John Morley,
so the latter asked me to see the paper through for this number.
Hence this notepaper and the great hurry and brevity which I fear
must characterise this letter.
There are a few minor amusing things, however, that I have a moment
to mention.
(1) The "Daily News" have sent me a huge mass of books to review,
which block up the front hall. A study of Swinburne--a book on
Kipling--the last Richard le Gallienne--all very interesting. See if
I don't do some whacking articles, all about the stars and the moon
and the creation of Adam and that sort of thing. I really think I
could work a revolution in Daily paper--writing by the introduction
of poetical prose.
(2) Among other books that I have to review came, all unsolicited,
a book by your old friend Schofield. Ha! Ha! Ha! It's about the
Formation of Character, or some of those low and beastly amusements.
I think of introducing parts of my Comic Opera of the P.N.E.U. into
the articles.
(3) Another rather funny thing is the way in which my name is being
spread about. Belloc declares that everyone says to him "Who
discovered Chesterton?" and that he always replies "The genius
Oldershaw." This may be a trifle Gallic, but Hammond has shown me
more than one letter from Cambridge dons and such people demanding
the identity of G.K.C. in a quite violent tone. They excuse
themselves by offensive phrases in which the word "brilliant" occurs,
but I shouldn't wonder if there was a thick stick somewhere at the
back of it.
Belloc, by the way, has revealed another side of his extraordinary
mind. He seems to have taken our marriage much to heart, for he talks
to me, no longer about French Jacobins and Mediaeval Saints, but
entirely about the cheapest flats and furniture, on which, as on the
others, he is a mine of information, assuring me paternally that
"it's the carpet that does you." I should think this fatherly tone
would amuse you.
Now I must leave off: for the pages have come up to be seen through
the press. . . .
_Greybeards at Play_ its author never took very seriously. It was not
included in his Collected Poems and he does not even mention it in
his _Autobiography_. He attached a great deal more importance to _The
Wild Knight and Other Poems_. It was a volume of some fifty poems,
many of which had already appeared in _The Outlook_ and _The
Speaker_. It was published late in 1900 and produced a crop of
enthusiastic reviews and more and more people began to ask one
another, "Who is G. K. Chesterton?"
One reviewer wrote: "If it were not for the haunting fear of losing a
humourist we should welcome the author of _The Wild Knight_ to a high
place among the poets." Another spoke of the "curious intensity" of
the volume. Among those who were less pleased was John Davidson, on
whom the book had been fathered by one reviewer, and who denied
responsibility for such "frantic rubbish," and also a "reverent"
reviewer who complained, "It is scattered all over with the name of
God."
To Frances, Gilbert wrote:
I have been taken to see Mrs. Meynell, poet and essayist, who is
enthusiastic about the Wild Knight and is lending it to all her
friends.
Last night I went to Mrs. Cox's Book Party. My costume was a great
success, everyone wrestled with it, only one person guessed it, and
the rest admitted that it was quite fair and simple. It consisted of
wearing on the lapel of my dress coat the following letters.
U.U.N.S.I.J. Perhaps you would like to work this out all by
yourself--But no, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. The book I
represented was "The Letters of Junius."
Mrs. Meynell never came to know Gilbert well and her daughter says in
the biography that her mother realised his "critical approval"
(admiration would be a better word) of her own work only by reading
his essays. But he once wrote an introduction for a book of hers and
her admiration of him would break out frequently in amusing
exclamations: "I hope the papers are nice to my Chesterton. He is
mine much more, really, than Belloc's."* "If I had been a man, and
large, I should have been Chesterton."**
[* _Alice Meynell_, p. 259.]
[** _Ibid._, p. 260.]
Brimley Johnson, who was to have been Gilbert's brother-in-law, sent
_The Wild Knight_ to Rudyard Kipling. His reply is amusing and also
touching, for Mr. Johnson was clearly pouring out, in interest in
Gilbert's career and in forwarding his marriage with Frances, the
affections that might merely have been frozen by Gertrude's death.
The Elms, Rottingdean,
Nov. 28th.
DEAR MR. JOHNSON,
Many thanks for _The Wild Knight_. Of course I knew some of the
poems before, notably _The Donkey_ which stuck in my mind at the
time I read it.
I agree with you that there is any amount of promise in the
work--and I think marriage will teach him a good deal too. It will be
curious to see how he'll develop in a few years. We all begin with
arrainging [sic] and elaborating all the Heavens and Hells and stars
and tragedies we can lay our poetic hands on--Later we see folk--just
common people under the heavens--
Meantime I wish him all the happiness that there can be and for
yourself such comfort as men say time brings after loss. It's apt to
be a weary while coming but one goes the right way to get it if one
interests oneself in the happiness of other folk. Even though the
sight of this happiness is like a knife turning in a wound.
Yours sincerely,
RUDYARD KIPLING.
P.S. Merely as a matter of loathsome detail, Chesterton has a bad
attack of "aureoles." They are spotted all over the book. I think
every one is bound in each book to employ unconsciously some pet word
but that was Rossetti's.
Likewise I notice "wan waste" and many "wans" and things that
"catch and cling." He is too good not to be jolted out of that. What
do you say to a severe course of Walt Whitman--or will marriage make
him see people?
Gilbert had already taken both prescriptions--Walt Whitman and "folk,
just common people under the heavens." (Many years later James Agate
wrote in _Thursdays and Fridays_: "Unlike some other serious thinkers,
Chesterton understood his fellow men; the woes of a jockey were as
familiar to him as the worries of a judge.") Perhaps some slight
echoes of Swinburne did remain in this collection. Many earlier poems
exist in the Swinburne manner, not of thought but of expression:
Gilbert left an absolute command that these should never be published.
All Englishmen were stricken by the death of Queen Victoria. Mr.
Somers Cocks, who had come to know Gilbert through his intimacy with
Belloc, remembers that he wept when he heard of it. The tears may
almost be heard in a letter to Frances.
Today the Queen was buried. I did not see the procession, first
because I had an appointment with Hammond (of which more anon) and
secondly because I think I felt the matter too genuinely. I like a
crowd when I am triumphant or excited: for a crowd is the only thing
that can cheer, as much as a cock is the only thing that can crow.
Can anything be more absurd than the idea of a man cheering alone in
his back bedroom? But I think that reverence is better expressed by
one man than a million. There is something unnatural and impossible,
even grotesque, in the idea of a vast crowd of human beings all
assuming an air of delicacy. All the same, my dear, this is a great
and serious hour and it is felt so completely by all England that I
cannot deny the enduring wish I have, quite apart from certain more
private sentiments, that the noblest Englishwoman I have ever known
was here with me to renew, as I do, private vows of a very real
character to do my best for this country of mine which I love with a
love passing the love of Jingoes. It is sometimes easy to give one's
country blood and easier to give her money. Sometimes the hardest
thing of all is to give her truth.
I am writing an article on the good friend who is dead: I hope
particularly that you will like it. The one I really like so far is
Belloc's in the "Speaker." I had, as I said, many things to say, but
owing to the hour and a certain fatigue and idiocy in myself, I have
only space for the most important.
Hammond sent for me today and asked me seriously if I would help
him in writing a book on Fox, sharing work, fame and profits. I told
him that I had no special talent for research: he replied that he had
no talent for literary form. I then said that I would be delighted to
give him such assistance as I honestly thought valuable enough for
him to split his profits for, that I thought I could give him such
assistance in the matter of picturesqueness and plan of idea, more
especially as Fox was a great hero of mine and the philosophy of his
life involves the whole philosophy of the Revolution and of the love
of mankind. We arranged that we would make a preliminary examination
of the Fox record and then decide. . . .*
[* This book was never written nor even, I think, begun.]
Three more letters, two to Frances, one to his mother, complete the
outline of this eventful period. He was now determined to get married
quickly. For the first time and entirely without rancour, he realised
the inevitable competition in the world of journalism. The struggle
for success meant men fighting one another. Other journalists were
fighting him; but truly enough, though with a rare dispassionateness,
he realised that this meant a need for Daily bread in others similar
to his own.
11, Warwick Gardens, W.
(postmark: Feb. 19, 1901)
. . . I hope that in your own beautiful kindness you will be
indulgent just at this time if I only write rough letters or
postcards. I am for the first time in my life, thoroughly _worried_,
and I find it a rather exciting and not entirely unpleasant
sensation. But everything depends just now, not only on my sticking
hard to work and doing a lot of my very best, but on my thinking
about it, keeping wide awake to the turn of the market, being ready
to do things not in half a week, but in half an hour; getting the
feelings and tendencies of other men and generally living in work. I
am going to see Lehmann tomorrow and many things may come of it. I
cannot express to you what it is to feel the grip of the great wheel
of real life on you for the first time. For the first time I know
what is meant by the word "enemies"--men who deliberately dislike you
and oppose your career--and the funny thing is that I don't dislike
them at all myself. Poor devils--very likely they want to be married
in June too.
I am a Socialist, but I love this fierce old world and am beginning
to find a beauty in making money (in moderation) as in making
statues. Always through my head one tune and words of Kipling set to
it.
"They passed one resolution, your sub-committee believe
You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse
of Eve.
And till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen
We'll work for ourselves and a woman, for ever and ever--Amen."
11, Warwick Gardens, W.
(postmark: March 4, 1901)
. . . I have delayed this letter in a scandalous manner because I
hoped I might have the arrangements with the _Daily News_ to tell
you; as that is again put off, I must tell you later. The following,
however, are grounds on which I believe everything will turn out
right this year. It is arithmetic. "The Speaker" has hitherto paid me
£70 a year, that is £6 a month. It has now raised it to £10 a month,
which makes £120 a year. Moreover they encourage me to write as much
as I like in the paper, so that assuming that I do something extra
(poem, note, leader) twice a month or every other number, which I can
easily do, that brings us to nearly £150 a year. So much for "The
Speaker." Now for the "Daily News," both certainties and
probabilities. Hammond (to whom you will favour me by being eternally
grateful) pushed me so strongly with Lehmann for the post of manager
of the literary page that it is most probable that I shall get
it. . . . If I do, Hammond thinks they couldn't give me less than
£200 a year. So that if this turns out right, we have £350, say,
without any aid from "Bookman," books, magazine articles or stories.
Let us however, put this chance entirely on one side and suppose
that they can give me nothing but regular work on the "Daily News." I
have just started a set of popular fighting articles on literature in
the "Daily News" called "The Wars of Literature." They will appear at
least twice a week, often three times. For each of these I am paid
about a guinea and a half. This makes about £3 a week which is £144 a
year. Thus with only the present certainties of "Speaker" and "Daily
News" we have £264 a year, or very likely (with extra "Speaker"
items) £288, close on £300. This again may be reinforced by all sorts
of miscellaneous work which I shall get now my name is getting known,
magazine articles, helping editors or publishers, reading Mss. and so
on. In all these calculations I have kept deliberately under the
figures, not over them: so that I don't think I have failed
altogether to bring my promise within reasonable distance of fact
already. Belloc suggested that I should write for the "Pilot" and as
he is on it, he will probably get me some work. Hammond has become
leader-writer on the "Echo" and will probably get me some reviewing
on that. And between ourselves, to turn with intense relief, from all
this egotism, Hammond and I have a little scheme on hand for getting
Oldershaw a kind of editorial place on the "Echo" where they want a
brisk but cultivated man of the world. I think we can bring it off:
it is a good place for an ambitious young man. It would give me more
happiness than I can say, while I am building my own house of peace,
to do something for the man who did so much in giving me my reason
for it.
For well Thou knowest, O God most wise
How good on earth was his gift to me
Shall this be a little thing in thine eyes
That is greater in mine than the whole great sea?
I am afraid . . . that this is a very dull letter. But you know
what I am. I can be practical, but only deliberately, by fixing my
mind on a thing. In this letter, I sum up my last month's thinking
about money resources. I haven't given a thought yet to the
application and distribution of them in rent, furniture, etc. When I
have done thinking about that you will get another dull letter. I can
keep ten poems and twenty theories in my head at once. But I can only
think of one practical thing at a time. The only conclusion of this
letter is that on any calculation whatever, we ought to have £300 a
year, and be on the road to four in a little while. With this before
you I daresay you (who are more practical than I) could speculate and
suggest a little as to the form of living and expenditure. . . .
Gilbert's mother perhaps needed more convincing. The letter to her
has no postmark but the £300 a year has grown to almost £500 and a
careful economy is promised.
Mrs. Barnes
The Orchards
Burley. Hants.
MY DEAREST MOTHER,
Thank you very much for your two letters. If you get back to
Kensington before me (I shall return on Thursday night: I find I work
here very well) would you mind sending on any letters. You might send
on the cheque: though that is not necessary.
There is a subject we have touched on once or twice that I want to
talk to you about, for I am very much worried in my mind as to
whether you will disapprove of a decision I have been coming to with
a very earnest belief that I am seeking to do the right thing. I have
just had information that my screw from "The Speaker" will be yet
further increased from £120 a year to £150, or, if I do the full
amount I can, £190 a year. I have also had a request from the "Daily
News" to do two columns a week regularly, which [is] rather over £100
a year, besides other book reviews. My other sources of income which
should bring the amount up to nearly £150 more, at any rate, I will
speak of in a moment.
There is something, as I say, that is distressing me a great deal.
I believe I said about a year ago that I hoped to get married in a
year, if I had money enough. I fancy you took it rather as a joke: I
was not so certain about it myself then. I have however been coming
very seriously to the conclusion that if I pull off one more
affair--a favourable arrangement with Reynolds' Newspaper, whose
editor wants to see me at the end of this week, I shall, unless you
disapprove, make a dash for it this year. When I mentioned the matter
a short time ago, you said (if I remember right) that you did not
think I ought to marry under £400 or £500 a year. I was moved to go
into the matter thoroughly then and there, but as it happened I knew
I had one or two bargains just coming of which would bring me nearer
to the standard you named, so I thought I would let it stand over
till I could actually quote them. Believe me, my dearest mother, I am
not considering this affair wildly or ignorantly: I have been doing
nothing but sums in my head for the last months. This is how matters
stand. The _Speaker_ editor says they will take as much as I like to
write. If I write my maximum I get £192 a year from them. From the
_Daily News_, even if I do not get the post on the staff which was half
promised me, I shall get at least £100 a year with a good deal over
for reviews outside "The Wars of Literature." That makes nearly £300.
With the Manchester Sunday Chronicle I have just made a bargain by
which I shall get £72 a year. This makes £370 a year altogether. The
matter now, I think, largely depends on Reynolds' Newspaper. If I do,
as is contemplated, weekly articles and thumbnail sketches, they
cannot give me less than £ 100 a year. This would bring the whole to
£470 a year, or within £30 of your standard. Of course I know quite
well that this is not like talking of an income from a business or a
certain investment. But we should live a long way within this income,
if we took a very cheap flat, even a workman's flat if necessary, had
a woman in to do the laborious Daily work and for the rest waited on
ourselves, as many people I know do in cheap flats. Moreover,
journalism has its ups as well as downs, and I, I can fairly say, am
on the upward wave. Without vanity and in a purely businesslike
spirit I may say that my work is talked about a great deal. It is at
least a remarkable fact that every one of the papers I write for (as
detailed above) came to me and asked me to do work for them: from the
_Daily News_ down to the Manchester Sunday Chronicle. I have, as I say,
what seems to me a sufficient income for a start. That I shall have
as good and better I am as certain as that I sit here. I know the
clockwork of these papers and among one set of them I might almost
say that I am becoming the fashion.
Do not, please, think that I am entertaining this idea without
realising that I shall have to start in a very serious and economical
spirit. I have worked it out and I am sure we could live well within
the above calculations and leave a good margin.
I make all these prosaic statements because I want you to
understand that I know the risks I think of running. But it is not
any practical question that is distressing me: on that I think I see
my way. But I am terribly worried for fear you should be angry or
sorry about all this. I am only kept in hope by the remembrance that
I had the same fear when I told you of my engagement and that you
dispelled it with a directness and generosity that I shall not
forget. I think, my dear Mother, that we have always understood each
other really. We are neither of us very demonstrative: we come of
some queer stock that can always say least when it means most. But I
do think you can trust me when I say that I think a thing really
right, and equally honestly admit that I can hardly explain why. To
explain why I know it is right would be to communicate the
incommunicable, and speak of delicate and sacred things in bald
words. The most I can say is that I know Frances like the back of my
hand and can tell without a word from her that she has never
recovered from a wound* and that there is only one kind of peace that
will heal it.
[* Gertrude's death.]
I have tried to explain myself in this letter: I can do it better
in a letter, somehow, but I do not think I have done it very
successfully. However, with you it does not matter and it never will
matter, how my thoughts come tumbling out. You at least have always
understood what I meant.
Always your loving son,
GILBERT.