Married Life in London
_The suburbs are commonly referred to as prosaic. That is a matter of
taste. Personally I find them intoxicating_.
Introduction to _Literary London_.
THE WEDDING DAY drew near and the presents were pouring in.
"I feel like the young man in the Gospel," said Gilbert to Annie
Firmin, "sorrowful, because I have great possessions."
Conrad Noel married Gilbert and Frances at Kensington Parish Church
on June 28, 1901. As Gilbert knelt down the price ticket on the sole
of one of his new shoes became plainly visible. Annie caught Mrs.
Chesterton's eye and they began to laugh helplessly. Annie thinks,
too, that for once in their lives Gilbert and Cecil did not argue at
the Reception.
Lucian Oldershaw drove ahead to the station with the heavy luggage,
put it on the train and waited feverishly. That train went off (with
the luggage), then another, and at last the happy couple appeared.
Gilbert had felt it necessary to stop on the way "in order to drink a
glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in
another." The milk he drank because in childhood his mother used to
give him a glass in that shop. The revolver was for the defense of
his bride against possible dangers. They followed the luggage by a
slow train.
This love of weapons, his revolver, his favourite sword-stick,
remained with him all his life. It suggested the adventures that he
always bestowed on the heroes of his stories and would himself have
loved to experience. He noted in _Twelve Types_ Scott's love of armour
and of weapons for their own sakes--the texture, the power, the
beauty of a sword-hilt or a jewelled dagger. As a child would play
with these things Gilbert played with them, but they stood also in
his mind for freedom, adventure, personal responsibility, and much
else that the modern world had lost.
The honeymoon was spent on the Norfolk Broads. On the way they
stopped at Ipswich "and it was like meeting a friend in a fairy-tale
to find myself under the sign of the White Horse on the first day of
my honeymoon." Annie Firmin was staying in Warwick Gardens for the
wedding and afterwards. Gilbert's first letter, from the Norfolk
Broads, began "I have a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a
knife: what more can any man want on a honeymoon."
Asked on his return what wallpapers he would prefer in the house they
had chosen, he asked for brown paper so that he could draw pictures
everywhere. He had by no means abandoned this old habit, and Annie
remembers an illness during which he asked for a long enough pencil
to draw on the ceiling. Their quaint little house in Edwardes Square,
Kensington, lent to them by Mr. Boore, an old friend of Frances, was
close to Warwick Gardens. "I remember the house well," wrote E. C.
Bentley later, "with its garden of old trees and its general air of
Georgian peace. I remember too the splendid flaming frescoes, done in
vivid crayons, of knights and heroes and divinities with which G.K.C.
embellished the outside wall at the back, beneath a sheltering
portico. I have often wondered whether the landlord charged for them
as dilapidations at the end of the tenancy."
They were only in Edwardes Square for a few months and then moved to
Overstrand Mansions, Battersea, where the rest of their London life
was spent. It was here I came to know them a few years later. As soon
as they could afford it they threw drawing-room and dining-room
together to make one big room. At one end hung an Engagement board
with what Father O'Connor has described as a _"loud_ inscription"--
LEST WE FORGET. Beside the engagements was pinned a poem by Hilaire
Belloc:
Frances and Gilbert have a little flat
At eighty pounds a year and cheap at that
Where Frances who is Gilbert's only wife
Leads an unhappy and complaining life:
while Gilbert who is Frances' only man
Puts up with it as gamely as he can.
The Bellocs chose life in the country much earlier than the
Chestertons, and an undated letter to Battersea threatens due
reprisals in an exclusion from their country home, if the Chestertons
are not prepared to receive him in town at a late hour.
Kings Land, Shipley, Horsham
It will annoy you a good deal to hear that I am in town tomorrow
Wednesday evening and that I shall appear at your Apartment at 10.45
or 10.30 at earliest. P.M.! You are only just returned. You are
hardly settled down. It is an intolerable nuisance. You heartily wish
I had not mentioned it.
Well, you see that [arrow pointing to "Telegrams, Coolham,
Sussex"], if you wire there before _One_ you can put me off, but if
you do I shall melt your keys, both the exterior one which forms the
body or form of the matter and the interior one which is the mystical
content thereof.
Also if you put me off I shall not have you down here ever to see
the _Oak Room_, the _Tapestry Room_, the _Green Room_ etc.
Yrs,
H.B.
Early in his Battersea life Gilbert received a note from Max
Beerbohm, the great humourist, introducing himself and suggesting a
luncheon together.
I am quite different from my writings (and so, I daresay, are you
from yours)--so that we should not necessarily fail to hit it off.
I, in the flesh, am modest, full of commonsense, very genial, and
rather dull.
What you are remains to be seen--or not to be seen--by me, according
to your decision.
Gilbert's decision was for the meeting and an instant liking grew
into a warm friendship. As in J.D.C. days Gilbert had written verse
about his friends, so now did he try to sum up an impression, perhaps
after some special talk:
And Max's queer crystalline sense
Lit, like a sea beneath a sea,
Shines through a shameless impudence
As shameless a humility.
Or Belloc somewhat rudely roared
But all above him when he spoke
The immortal battle trumpets broke
And Europe was a single sword.*
[* Unpublished fragment.]
Somewhere about this time must have occurred the incident
mentioned by George Bernard Shaw in a note which appeared
in the _Mark Twain Quarterly_ (Spring, 1937):
I cannot remember when I first met Chesterton. I was so much struck
by a review of Scott's _Ivanhoe_ which he wrote for the _Daily News_
in the course of his earliest notable job as feuilletonist to that
paper that I wrote to him asking who he was and where he came from,
as he was evidently a new star in literature. He was either too shy
or too lazy to answer. The next thing I remember is his lunching with
us on quite intimate terms, accompanied by Belloc.
The actual first meeting, forgotten by Shaw, is remembered by
Gilbert's brother-in-law, Lucian Oldershaw. He and Gilbert had gone
together to Paris where they visited Rodin, then making a bust of
Bernard Shaw. Mr. Oldershaw introduced Gilbert to G.B.S., who,
Rodin's secretary told them, had been endeavouring to explain at some
length the nature of the Salvation Army, leading up (one imagines) to
an account of Major Barbara. At the end of the explanation, Rodin's
secretary remarked--to a rather apologetic Shaw--"The Master says you
have not much French but you impose yourself."
"Shaw talked Gilbert down," Mr. Oldershaw complained. That the famous
man should talk more than the beginner is hardly surprising, but all
through Gilbert's life the complaint recurs on the lips of his
admirers, just as a similar complaint is made by Lockhart about Sir
Walter Scott. Chesterton, like Scott, abounded in cordial admiration
of other men and women and had a simple enjoyment in meeting them.
And Chesterton was one of the few great conversationalists--perhaps
the only one--who would really rather listen than talk.
In 1901 appeared his first book of collected essays, _The Defendant_.
The essays in it had already appeared in _The Speaker_. Like all his
later work it had the mixed reception of enthusiasts who saw what he
meant, and puzzled reviewers who took refuge in that blessed word
"paradox." "Paradox ought to be used," said one of these, "like
onions to season the salad. Mr. Chesterton's salad is all onions.
Paradox has been defined as 'truth standing on her head to attract
attention.' Mr. Chesterton makes truth cut her throat to attract
attention."
Without denying that his love of a joke led him into indefensible
puns and suchlike fooleries (though Mgr. Ronald Knox tells me he is
prepared to defend all of G.K.'s puns), I think nearly all his
paradoxes were either the startling expression of an entirely
neglected truth, or the startling re-emphasis of the neglected side
of a truth. Once, he said: "It is a paradox, but it is God, and not
I, who should have the credit of it." He proved his case a few years
later in the chapter of _Orthodoxy_ called "The Paradoxes of
Christianity." What it amounted to was roughly this: paradox must be
of the nature of things because of God's infinity and the limitations
of the world and of man's mind. To us limited beings God can express
His idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent
contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is
suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner we startle
the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do
it we shall miss a great deal of truth.
Chesterton also saw many proverbs and old sayings as containing a
truth which the people who constantly repeated them had forgotten.
The world was asleep and must be awakened. The world had gone
placidly mad and must be violently restored to sanity. That the
methods he used annoyed some is undeniable, but he did force people
to think, even if they raged at him as the unaccustomed muscles came
into play.
"I believe," he said in a speech at this date, "in getting into
hot water. I think it keeps you clean." And he believed intensely
in keeping out of a narrow stream of merely literary life. To
those who exalted the poet above the journalist he gave this
answer:
The poet writing his name upon a score of little pages in the
silence of his study, may or may not have an intellectual right to
despise the journalist: but I greatly doubt whether he would not
morally be the better if he saw the great lights burning on through
darkness into dawn, and heard the roar of the printing wheels
weaving the destinies of another day. Here at least is a school of
labour and of some rough humility, the largest work ever published
anonymously since the great Christian cathedrals.*
[* "A Word for the Mere Journalist." _Darlington North Star:_
February 3, 1902.]
He plunged then into the life of Fleet Street and held it his
proudest boast to be a journalist. But he had his own way of being a
journalist:
On the whole, I think I owe my success (as the millionaires say) to
having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best
advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best
sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the
exact opposite. For what they all told me was that the secret of
success in journalism was to study the particular journal and write
what was suitable to it. And, partly by accident and ignorance and
partly through the real rabid certainties of youth, I cannot remember
that I ever wrote any article that was at all suitable to any
paper. . . . I wrote on a Nonconformist organ like the old _Daily
News_ and told them all about French cafés and Catholic cathedrals;
and they loved it, because they had never heard of them before. I
wrote on a robust Labour organ like the old _Clarion_ and defended
mediaeval theology and all the things their readers had never heard
of; and their readers did not mind me a bit.*
[* _Autobiography_, pp. 185-6.]
Mr. Titterton, who worked also on the _Daily News_ and came at this
time to know G.K. in the Pharos Club, says that at first he was
rather shy of the other men on the staff but after a dinner at which
he was asked to speak he came to know and like them and to be at home
in Fleet Street. He liked to work amid human contact and would write
his articles in a public-house or in the club or even in the street,
resting the paper against a wall.
Frank Swinnerton records* a description given him by Charles
Masterman of
how Chesterton used to sit writing his articles in a Fleet St.
café, sampling and mixing a terrible conjunction of drinks, while
many waiters hovered about him, partly in awe, and partly in case he
should leave the restaurant without paying for what he had had. One
day . . . the headwaiter approached Masterman. "Your friend," he
whispered, admiringly, "he very clever man. He sit and laugh. And
then he write. And then he laugh at what he write."
[* _Georgian Scene_, p. 94.]
He loved Fleet Street and did a good deal of drinking there. But not
only there. When (in the _Autobiography_) he writes of wine and song
it is not Fleet Street and its taverns that come back to his mind but
"the moonstruck banquets given by Mr. Maurice Baring," the garden in
Westminster where he fenced with real swords against one more
intoxicated than himself, songs shouted in Auberon Herbert's rooms
near Buckingham Palace.
After marriage Frances seems to have given up the struggle, so
ardently pursued during their engagement, to make him tidy. By a
stroke of genius she decided instead to make him picturesque. The
conventional frock-coat worn so unconventionally, the silk hat
crowning a mat of hair, disappeared, and a wide-brimmed slouch hat
and flowing cloak more appropriately garbed him. This was especially
good as he got fatter. He was a tall man, six foot two. As a boy he
had been thin, but now he was rapidly putting on weight. Neither he
nor Cecil played games (the tennis did not last!) but they used to go
for long walks, sometimes going off together for a couple of days at
a time. Gilbert still liked to do this with Frances, but the
sedentary Daily life and the consumption of a good deal of beer did
not help towards a graceful figure. By 1903 G.K. was called a fat
humourist and he was fast getting ready to be Dr. Johnson in various
pageants. By 1906--he was then thirty-two--he had become famous
enough to be one of the celebrities painted or photographed for
exhibitions; and Bernard Shaw described a photo of him by Coburn:
Chesterton is "our Quinbus Flestrin," the young Man Mountain, a
large abounding gigantically cherubic person who is not only large in
body and mind beyond all decency, but seems to be growing larger as
you look at him--"swellin' wisibly," as Tony Weller puts it. Mr.
Coburn has represented him as flowing off the plate in the very act
of being photographed and blurring his own outlines in the process.
Also he has caught the Chestertonian resemblance to Balzac and
unconsciously handled his subject as Rodin handled Balzac. You may
call the placing of the head on the plate wrong, the focussing wrong,
the exposure wrong if you like, but Chesterton is right and a right
impression of Chesterton is what Mr. Coburn was driving at.
The change in his appearance G.K. celebrated in a stanza of his
"Ballade of the Grotesque":
I was light as a penny to spend,
I was thin as an arrow to cleave,
I could stand on a fishing-rod's end
With composure, though on the _qui vive_;
But from Time, all a-flying to thieve,
The suns and the moons of the year,
A different shape I receive;
The shape is decidedly queer.
"London," said a recently arrived American, "is the most marvellously
fulfilling experience. I went to see Fleet Street this morning, and
met G. K. Chesterton face to face. Wrapped in a cloak and standing in
the doorway of a pie-shop, he was composing a poem reciting it aloud
as he wrote. The most striking thing about the incident was that no
one took the slightest notice."
I doubt if any writer, except Dickens, has so quickly become an
institution as Chesterton. Nor, of course, would his picturesqueness
in Fleet Street or his swift success as a journalist have
accomplished this but for the vast output of books on every
conceivable subject.
But before I come to the books written during those years at
Battersea, a word must be said of another element besides his
journalistic contacts that was linking G.K. with a wider world than
the solely literary. We have seen that even when his religion was at
its lowest point, in the difficult Art School days, he never lost it
entirely--"I hung on to religion by one thin thread of thanks." In
the years of the Notebook, he advanced very far in his pondering on
and acceptance of the great religious truths. But this did not as yet
mean attachment to a Church. Then he met Frances. "She actually
practised a religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both
to me and to the whole fussy culture in which she lived." Now that
they were married, Frances, as a convinced Anglo-Catholic, was
bringing more clergy and other Anglican friends into Gilbert's
circle. Moreover, he was lecturing all over England, and this brought
him into contact with all sorts of strange religious beliefs. "Amid
all this scattered thinking . . . I began to piece together fragments
of the old religious scheme; mainly by the various gaps that denoted
its disappearance. And the more I saw of real human nature, the more
I came to suspect that it was really rather bad for all these people
that it had disappeared."*
[* _Autobiography_, p. 177.]
In 1903-04 he had a tremendous battle (the detail of which will be
treated in the next chapter) in the _Clarion_ with Robert Blatchford.
In it he adumbrated many of the ideas that were later developed in
_Orthodoxy_. Of the arguments used by Blatchford and his atheist
friends, G.K. wrote that the effect on his own mind was: "Almost thou
persuadest me to be a Christian." In a diary kept by Frances
spasmodically during the years 1904-05, she notes that Gilbert has
been asked to preach as the first of a series of lay preachers in a
city church. She writes:
_March 16th_. One of the proudest days of my life. Gilbert preached
at St. Paul's, Covent Garden for the C.S.U. [Christian Social Union]
_Vox populi vox Dei_. A crammed church--he was very eloquent and
restrained. Sermons will be published afterwards.
Published they were: under the title, _Preachers from the Pew_.
_March 30th_. The second sermon: "The Citizen, the Gentleman and the
Savage." Even better than last week. "Where there is no vision the
people perisheth."
When it is remembered that the _Browning_, the _Watts_, _Twelve
Types_ and the _Napoleon of Notting Hill_ had all been published and
received with acclaim, it is touching that Frances should speak thus
of the "proudest day" of her life. That Gilbert should himself have
vision and show it to others remained her strongest aspiration. Not
thus felt all his admirers. The Blatchford controversy on matters
religious became more than many of them could bear.
A plaintive correspondent (says the _Daily News_), who seems to have
had enough of the eternal verities and the eternal other things,
sends us the following "lines written on reading Mr. G. K.
Chesterton's forty-seventh reply to a secularist opponent":
What ails our wondrous "G.K.C."
Who late, on youth's glad wings,
Flew fairylike, and gossip'd free
Of translunary things,
That thus, in dull didactic mood,
He quits the realms of dream,
And like some pulpit-preacher rude,
Drones on one dreary theme?
Stern Blatchford, _thou_ hast dashed the glee
Of our Omniscient Babe;
Thy name alone now murmurs he,
Or that of dark McCabe.
All vain his cloudy fancies swell,
His paradox all vain,
Obsessed by that malignant spell
Of Blatchford on the brain.
H.S.S.*
[* _Daily News_, 12 January, 1904.]
Mr. Noel has a livelier memory of Gilbert's religious and social
activities. On one occasion he went to the Battersea flat for a
meeting at which he was to speak and Gilbert take the chair, to
establish a local branch of the Christian Social Union. The two men
got into talk over their wine in the dining-room (then still a
separate room) and Frances came in much agitated. "Gilbert you must
dress. The people will be arriving any moment.
"Yes, yes, I'll go."
The argument was resumed and went on with animation. Frances came
back. "Gilbert, the drawing-room is half full and people are still
arriving." At last in despair she brought Gilbert's dress-clothes
into the dining-room and made him change there, still arguing. Next
he had to be urged into the drawing-room. Established at a small
table he began to draw comic bishops, quite oblivious of the fact
that he was to take the chair at the now assembled meeting. Finally
Frances managed to attract his attention, he leaped up overthrowing
the small table and scattering the comic bishops.
"Surely this story," said a friend to whom I told it, "proves what
some people said about Chesterton's affectation. He must have been
posing."
I do not think so, and those who knew Gilbert best believed him
incapable of posing. But he was perfectly capable of wilfulness and
of sulking like a schoolboy. It amused him to argue with Mr. Noel, it
did not amuse him at all to take the chair at a meeting. So, as he
was not allowed to go on arguing, he drew comic bishops.
There was, too, more than a touch of this wilfulness in the second
shock he administered to respectable Battersea later in the evening.
An earnest young lady asked the company for counsel as to the best
way of arranging her solitary maid's evening out. "I'm so afraid,"
ended the appeal, "of her going to the Red Lion."
"Best place she could go," said Gilbert. And occasionally he would
add example to precept, for society and Fleet Street were not the
only places for human intercourse. "At present," commented a
journalist, "he is cultivating the local politics of Battersea; in
secluded ale houses he drinks with the frequenters and learns their
opinions on municipal milk and on Mr. John Burns."
"Good friends and very gay companions," Gilbert calls the Christian
Social Union group of whom, beside Conrad Noel, were Charles
Masterman, Bishop Gore, Percy Dearmer, and above all Canon Scott
Holland. Known as "Scotty" and adored by many generations of young
men, he was "a man with a natural surge of laughter within him, so
that his broad mouth seemed always to be shut down on it in a grimace
of restraint."* Like Gilbert, he suffered from the effect of urging
his most serious views with apparent flippancy and fantastic
illustrations. In the course of a speech to a respectable Nottingham
audience he remarked, "I dare say several of you here have never been
in prison."
[* _Autobiography_, p. 169.]
"A ghastly stare," says Gilbert, describing this speech, "was fixed
on all the faces of the audience; and I have ever since seen it in my
own dreams; for it has constituted a considerable part of my own
problem."
Gilbert's verses, summarizing the meeting as it must have sounded to
a worthy Nottingham tradesman, are quoted in the _Autobiography_ and
completed in _Father Brown on Chesterton_. I have put them together
here for they show how merrily these men were working to change the
world.
The Christian Social Union here
Was very much annoyed;
It seems there is some duty
Which we never should avoid,
And so they sang a lot of hymns
To help the Unemployed.
Upon a platform at the end
The speakers were displayed
And Bishop Hoskins stood in front
And hit a bell and said
That Mr. Carter was to pray,
And Mr. Carter prayed.
Then Bishop Gore of Birmingham
He stood upon one leg
And said he would be happier
If beggars didn't beg,
And that if they pinched his palace
It would take him down a peg.
He said that Unemployment
Was a horror and a blight,
He said that charities produced
Servility and spite,
And stood upon the other leg
And said it wasn't right.
And then a man named Chesterton
Got up and played with water,
He seemed to say that principles
Were nice and led to slaughter
And how we always compromised
And how we didn't orter.
Then Canon Holland fired ahead
Like fifty cannons firing,
We tried to find out what he meant
With infinite enquiring,
But the way he made the windows jump
We couldn't help admiring.
I understood him to remark
(It seemed a little odd.)
That half a dozen of his friends
had never been in quod.
He said he was a Socialist himself,
And so was God.
He said the human soul should be
Ashamed of every sham,
He said a man should constantly
Ejaculate "I am"
When he had done, I went outside
And got into a tram.
Partly perhaps to console himself for the loss of his son's Daily
company, chiefly, I imagine, out of sheer pride and joy in his
success, Edward Chesterton started after the publication of _The Wild
Knight_ pasting all Gilbert's press-cuttings into volumes. Later I
learnt that it had long been Gilbert's weekly penance to read these
cuttings on Sunday afternoon at his father's house. Traces of his
passage are visible wherever a space admits of a caricature, and
occasionally, where it does not, the caricature is superimposed on
the text.
His growing fame may be seen by the growing size of these volumes and
the increased space given to each of his books. _Twelve Types_ in
1902 had a good press for a young man's work and was taken seriously
in some important papers, but its success was as nothing compared
with that of the _Browning_ a year later. The bulk of _Twelve Types_,
as of _The Defendant_, had appeared in periodicals, but never in his
life did Gilbert prepare a volume of his essays for the press without
improving, changing and unifying. It was never merely a collection,
always a book.
Still, the _Browning_ was another matter. It was a compliment for a
comparatively new author to be given the commission for the English
Men of Letters Series. Stephen Gwynn describes the experience of the
publishers:
On my advice the Macmillans had asked him to do Browning in the
"English Men of Letters," when he was still not quite arrived. Old
Mr. Craik, the Senior Partner, sent for me and I found him in white
fury, with Chesterton's proofs corrected in pencil; or rather not
corrected; there were still thirteen errors uncorrected on one page;
mostly in quotations from Browning. A selection from a Scotch ballad
had been quoted from memory and three of the four lines were wrong, I
wrote to Chesterton saying that the firm thought the book was going
to "disgrace" them. His reply was like the trumpeting of a crushed
elephant. But the book was a huge success.*
[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, p. 14.]
In fact, it created a sensation and established G.K. in the front
rank. Not all the reviewers liked it, and one angry writer in the
_Athenaeum_ pointed out that, not content with innumerable
inaccuracies about Browning's descent and the events of his life,
G.K. had even invented a line in "Mr. Sludge the Medium." But every
important paper had not only a review but a long review, and the vast
majority were enthusiastic. Chesterton claimed Browning as a poet not
for experts but for every man. His treatment of the Browning love
affair, of the poet's obscurity, of "The Ring and the Book," all
receive this same praise of an originality which casts a true and
revealing light for his readers. As with all his literary criticism,
the most famous critics admitted that he had opened fresh windows on
the subject for themselves.
This attack on his inaccuracy and admiration for his insight
constantly recurs with Chesterton's literary work. Readers noted that
in the _Ballad of the White Horse_ he made Alfred's left wing face
Guthrum's left wing. He was amused when it was pointed out, but never
bothered to alter it. His memory was prodigious. All his friends
testify to his knowing by heart pages of his favourite authors (and
these were not few). Ten years after his time with Fisher Unwin,
Frances told Father O'Connor that he remembered all the plots and
most of the characters of the "thousands" of novels he had read for
the firm. But he trusted his memory too much and never verified.
Indeed, when it was a question merely of verbal quotation he said it
was pedantic to bother, and when latterly Dorothy Collins looked up
his references he barely tolerated it.
Again while he constantly declared that he was no scholar, he said
things illuminating even to scholars. Thus, much later, when
Chesterton's _St. Thomas Aquinas_ appeared, the Master-General of the
Dominican Order, Père Gillet, O.P., lectured on and from it to large
meetings of Dominicans. Mr. Eccles told me that talking of Virgil,
G.K. said things immensely illuminating for experts on Latin poetry.
In a very different field, Mr. Oldershaw noted after their trip to
Paris that though he could set Gilbert right on many a detail yet his
generalisations were marvellous. He had, said Mr. Eccles, an
intuitive mind. He had, too, read more than was realised, partly
because his carelessness and contempt for scholarship misled. Where
the pedant would have referred and quoted and cross-referred, he went
dashing on, throwing out ideas from his abundance and caring little
if among his wealth were a few faults of fact or interpretation.
"Abundance" was a word much used of his work just now, and in the
field of literary criticism he was placed high, and had an
enthusiastic following. We may assume that the _Browning_ had
something to do with Sir Oliver Lodge's asking him in the next year
(1904) to become a candidate for the Chair of Literature at
Birmingham University. But he had no desire to be a professor.
Frances, in her diary, notes some of their widening contacts and
engagements. The mixture of shrewdness and simplicity in her comments
will be familiar to those who knew her intimately. Meeting her for
the first time I think the main impression was that of the "single
eye." She abounded in Gilbert's sense, as my mother commented after
an early meeting, and ministered to his genius. Yet she never lost an
individual, markedly feminine point of view, which helped him
greatly, as anyone can see who will read all he wrote on marriage. He
shows an insight almost uncanny in the section called, "The Mistake
About Women" in _What's Wrong with the World_. "Some people," he said
in a speech of 1905, "when married gain each other. Some only lose
themselves." The Chestertons gained each other. And by the sort of
paradox he loved, Frances did so by throwing the stream of her own
life unreservedly into the greater river of her husband's. She writes
in her Diary, for 1904:
Gilbert and I meet all sorts of queer, well-known, attractive,
unattractive people and I expect this book will be mostly about
them. . . .
Feb. 17th. We went together to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Colvin's "At
home." It was rather jolly but too many clever people there to be
really nice. The clever people were Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Henry
James, Mr. Laurence Binyon, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, and a great many
more. Mr. and Mrs. Colvin looked so happy.
Feb. 23rd. Gilbert went as Mr. Lane's guest to a dinner of the "Odd
Volumes" at the Imperial Restaurant. The other guest was Baden
Powell. He and Gilbert made speeches. . . .
March 8th. Gilbert was to speak on "Education" at a C.S.U. meeting
at Sion College, but a debate on the Chinese Labour in South Africa
was introduced instead and went excitingly. There is to be a big
meeting of the C.S.U. to protest. Though I suppose it's all no good
now. When the meeting was over we adjourned to a tea-shop and had
immense fun. Gilbert, Percy Dearmer and Conrad Noel walked together
down Fleet Street, and never was there a funnier sight. Gilbert's
costume consisted of a frock coat, huge felt hat and walking stick
brandished in the face of the passers-by, to their exceeding great
danger. Conrad was dressed in an old lounge suit of sober grey with a
clerical hat jauntily stuck on the back of his head (which led
someone to remark, "Are you here in the capacity of a private
gentleman, poor curate, or low-class actor?"). Mr. Dearmer was clad
in wonderful clerical garments of which he alone possesses the
pattern, which made him look like a Chaucer Canterbury Pilgrim or a
figure out of a Noah's ark. They swaggered down the roadway talking
energetically. At tea we talked of many things, the future of the
"Commonwealth" chiefly . . .
March 22nd. Meeting of Christian Theosophical Society at which
Gilbert lectured on "How Theosophy appears to a Christian." He was
very good. Herbert Burrows vigorously attacked him in debate
afterwards . . . _Napoleon of Notting Hill_ was published.
April 27th. The Bellocs and the Noels came here to dinner. Hilaire
in great form recited his own poetry with great enthusiasm the whole
evening . . .
May 9th. the Literary Fund Dinner. About the greatest treat I ever
had in my life. J. M. Barrie presided. He was so splendid and so
complimentary. Mrs. J. M. Barrie is very pretty, but the most
beautiful woman there was Mrs. Anthony Hope--copper coloured hair,
masses, with a wreath of gardenias--green eyes--and a long neck, very
beautiful figure. The speakers were Barrie, Lord Tennyson, Comyns
Carr, A. E. W. Mason, Mrs. Craigie (who acquitted herself
wonderfully) and Mrs. Flora Annie Steel. After the formal dinner was
a reception at which everyone was very friendly. It is wonderful the
way in which they all accept Gilbert, and one well-known man told me
he was the biggest man present. Anyhow there was the feeling of
brotherhood and fellowship in the wielding of "the lovely and
loathely pen" (J. M. Barrie's speech).
May 12th. Went to see Max Beerbohm's caricature of Gilbert at the
Carfax Gallery. "G.K.C.--humanist--kissing the World." It's more like
Thackeray, very funny though.
June 9th. A political "at home" at Mrs. Sidney Webb's--saw Winston
Churchill and Lloyd George. Politics and nothing but politics is dull
work though, and an intriguer's life must be a pretty poor affair.
Mrs. Sidney Webb looked very handsome and moved among her guests as
one to the manner born. I like Mrs. Leonard Courtenay who is always
kind to me. Charlie Masterman and I had a long talk on the iniquities
of the "Daily News" and goodness knows they are serious enough.
June 22nd. An "at home" at Mrs. ----'s proved rather a dull affair
save for a nice little conversation with Watts Dunton. His walrusy
appearance which makes the bottom of his face look fierce, is
counteracted by the kindness of his little eyes. He told us the inner
story of Whistler's "Peacock Room" which scarcely redounds to
Whistler's credit. The Duchess of Sutherland was there and many
notabilities. Between ourselves Mr. ---- is a good-hearted snob. His
wife nice, intelligent, but affected (I suppose unconsciously). I
don't really like the "precious people." They worry me.
June 30th. Graham Robertson's "at home" was exceedingly select. I
felt rather too uncultivated to talk much. Mr. Lane tucked his arm
into mine and requested to know the news which means, "tell me all
your husband is doing, or going to do, how much is he getting, who
will publish for him, has he sold his American rights, etc." Cobden's
three daughters looked out of place, so solid and sincere are they.
It was all too grand. No man ought to have so much wealth.
July 5th. Gilbert went today to see Swinburne--I think he found it
rather hard to reconcile the idea with the man, but he was
interested, though I could not gather much about the visit. He was
amused at the compliments which Watts Dunton and Swinburne pay to
each other unceasingly.
December 8th. George Alexander has an idea that he wants Gilbert to
write a play for him, and sent for him to come and see him. He was
apparently taken with the notion of a play on the Crusades, and
although there is at present no love incident in Gilbert's mind,
Alexander introduced and acted the supposed love scene with great
spirit. It may come off some day perhaps.
December 31st. H. Belloc's been very ill but is better, thank God.
1905
Feb. 1st. Gilbert, a guest at the "Eighty Club" dinner. Rhoda and I
went to after dinner speeches. G. W. E. Russell (Chair). Augustine
Birrell guest and Sir Henry Fowler. It amused me hugely. Russell so
imprudent and reckless, Birrell so prudent and incapable of giving
himself away, Sir Henry Fowler so commonplace and trite. He looked so
wicked. I thought of Mr. Haldane's story of Fowler's fur coat and his
single remark on examining it: "skunk."
Feb. 11th. Rather an interesting lunch at Mrs. J. R. Green's. Jack
Yeats and Mrs. Thursby were there. The atmosphere is too political
and I imagine Mrs. Green to be a bit of a wire-puller, though I
believe a nice woman.
Feb. 24th. Mr. Halliwell Sutcliffe came over. He is amusing and
nice. Very puzzled at Gilbert's conduct, which on this particular
occasion was peculiarly eccentric.
March 9th. I had an amusing lunch at the Hotel Cecil with Miss
Bisland (representative of McClure). Evidently thinks a lot of
Gilbert and wants his work for McClure. O ye gods and little fishes!
The diplomatic service ought to be all conducted by women. I offered
her Margaret's poems in exchange for a short interview with Meredith
which she wishes Gilbert to undertake.
March 14th. Gilbert dined at the Buxtons, met Asquith.
March 19th. Lienie is in town and we have been with her to call on
the Duchess of Sutherland. When I had got used to the splendour it
was jolly enough. Her Grace is a pretty, sweet woman who was very
nervous, but got better under the fire of Gilbert's chaff. She made
him write in her album which he did, a most ridiculous poem of which
he should be ashamed. It must be truly awful to live in the sort of
way the Duchess does and endeavour to keep sane.
May 20th. Words fail me when I try to recall the sensation aroused
by a J.D.C. dinner. It seems so odd to think of these men as boys, to
realize what their school life was and what a powerful element the
J.D.C. was in the lives of all. And there were husbands and wives,
and the tie so strong, and the long, long thoughts of schoolboys and
schoolgirls fell on us, as if the battle were still to come instead
of raging round us.
May 24th. We went together to see George Meredith. I suppose many
people have seen him in his little Surrey Cottage; Flint Cottage,
Boxhill. He has a wonderful face and a frail old body. He talks
without stopping except to drink ginger-beer. He told us many
stories, mostly about society scandals of some time back. I remember
he asked Gilbert, "Do you like babies?" and when Gilbert said, "Yes,"
he said "So do I, especially in the comet stage."
June 5th. Granville Barker came to see Gilbert, touching the
possibility of a play.
June 29th. A garden party at the Bishop's House, Kennington. The
Bishop told me that A. J. Balfour was very impressed with "Heretics."
Guild of St. Matthew Service and rowdy supper. Gilbert made an
excellent speech.
July 5th. Gilbert dined at the Asquiths; met Rosebery. I think he
hated it.
July 16th. Gilbert went to see Mrs. Grenfell at Taplow. He met
Balfour, Austen Chamberlain and George Wyndham. Had an amusing time,
no doubt. Says Balfour is most interesting to talk to but appears
bored. George Wyndham is delightful.
One felt always with both Frances and Gilbert that this society life
stayed on the surface--amusing, distracting, sometimes welcome,
sometimes boring--but never infringing the deeper reality of their
relationships with old friends, with their own families, with each
other. Frances wrote endless business and other letters for them
both: in just a handful, mainly to Father O'Connor, does she show her
deeper life of thought and feeling. Gilbert had little time now for
writing anything but books and articles. Never a very good
correspondent he had become an exceedingly bad one. Annie Firmin's
engagement to Robert Kidd produced one of the few letters that exist.
It is handwritten and undated.
A Restaurant somewhere.
MY DEAR ANNIE,
I have thought of you, I am quite certain, more often than I have
of any human being for a long time past--except my wife who recalls
herself continually to me by virtues, splendours, agreeable memories,
screams, pokers, brickbats and other things. And yet, though whenever
my mind was for an instant emptied of theology and journalism and
patriotism and such rot, it has been immediately filled with you, I
have never written you a line.
I am not going to explain this and for a good reason. It is a part
of the Mystery of the Male, and you will soon, even if you do not
already, get the hang of it, by the society of an individual who
while being unmistakably a much better man than I am, is nevertheless
male. I can only say that when men want a thing they act quite
differently to women. We put off everything we want to do, in the
ordinary way. If the Archangel Michael wrote me a complimentary
letter tomorrow (as perhaps he may) I should put it in my pocket,
saying, "How admirable a reply shall I write to that in a week or a
month or so." I put off writing to you because I wanted to write
something that had in it all that you have been, to me, to all of us.
And now instead I am scrawling this nonsense in a tavern after lunch.
My very dear old friend, I am of a sex that very seldom takes real
trouble, that forgets the little necessities of time, that is by
nature lazy. I never wanted really but one thing in my life and that
I got. Any person inspecting 60 Overstrand Mansions may see that
somewhat excitable thing--free of charge. In another person, whom
with maddening jealousy I suspect of being some inches taller than I
am, I believe I notice the same tendency towards monomania. He also,
being as I have so keenly pointed out, male, he also--I think has
only wanted one thing seriously in his life. He also has got it:
another male weakness which I recognize with sympathy.
All my reviewers call me frivolous. Do you think all this kind of
thing frivolous? Damn it all (excuse me) what can one be but
frivolous about serious things? Without frivolity they are simply too
tremendous. That you, who, with your hair down your back, played at
bricks with me in a house of which I have no memory except you and
the bricks, that you should be taken by someone of my miserable
sex--as you ought to be--what is one to say? I am not going to wish
you happiness, because I am quite placidly certain that your
happiness is inevitable. I know it because my wife is happy with me
and the wild, weird, extravagant, singular origin of this is a
certain enduring fact in my psychology which you will find paralleled
elsewhere.
God bless you, my dear girl.
Yours ever,
GILBERT CHESTERTON.
Married in 1903, Annie and her husband took another flat in
Overstrand Mansions.
"Gilbert never cared what he wore," she writes. "I remember one night
when my husband and I were living in the same block of flats he came
in to ask me to go and sit with Frances who wasn't very well, while
he went down to the House to dine with Hugh Law--Gilbert was very
correctly dressed except for the fact that he had on one boot and one
slipper! I pointed it out to him, and he said: 'Do you think it
matters?' I told him I was sure Frances would not like him to go out
like that--the only argument to affect him! When he was staying with
me here in Vancouver, Dorothy Collins had to give him the once-over
before he went lecturing--they had left Frances in Palos Verdes as
she wasn't well."
In 1904, were published a monograph on Watts, _The Napoleon of
Notting Hill_, and an important chapter in a composite book, _England
a Nation_.
The _Watts_ is among the results of Gilbert's art studies. Its
reviewers admired it somewhat in the degree of their admiration
for the painter. But for a young man at that date to have seen the
principles of art he lays down meant rare vision. The portrait-painter,
he says, is trying to express the reality of the man himself but
"he is not above taking hints from the book of life with its
quaint old woodcuts." G.K. makes us see all the painter could have
thought or imagined as he sets us before "Mammon" or "Jonah" or
"Hope" and bids us read their legend and note the texture and lines
of the painting. His distinction between the Irish mysticism of Yeats
and the English mysticism of Watts is especially valuable, and the
book, perhaps even more than the _Browning_ or the _Dickens_,
manifests Gilbert's insight into the mind of the last generation. The
depths and limitations of the Victorian outlook may be read in _G. F.
Watts_.
The story of the writing of _The Napoleon_ was told me in part by
Frances, while part appeared in an interview* given by Gilbert, in
which he called it his first important book:
[* Quoted in _Chesterton_, by Cyril Clemens, pp. 16-17.]
I was "broke"--only ten shillings in my pocket. Leaving my worried
wife, I went down Fleet Street, got a shave, and then ordered for
myself, at the Cheshire Cheese, an enormous luncheon of my favourite
dishes and a bottle of wine. It took my all, but I could then go to
my publishers fortified. I told them I wanted to write a book and
outlined the story of "Napoleon of Notting Hill." But I must have
twenty pounds, I said, before I begin.
"We will send it to you on Monday."
"If you want the book," I replied, "you will have to give it to me
today as I am disappearing to write it." They gave it.
Frances meanwhile sat at home thinking, as she told me, hard thoughts
of his disappearance with their only remaining coin. And then
dramatically he appeared with twenty golden sovereigns and poured
them into her lap. Referring to this incident later, Gilbert said,
"What a fool a man is, when he comes to the last ditch, not to spend
the last farthing to satisfy the inner man before he goes out to
fight a battle with wits." But it was his way to let the money
shortage become acute and then deal with it abruptly. Frank
Swinnerton relates that when, as a small boy, he was working for J.
M. Dent, Gilbert appeared after office hours with a Dickens preface
but refused to leave it because Swinnerton, the only soul left in the
place, could not give him the agreed remuneration.
The _Napoleon_ is the story of a war between the London suburbs, and
grew largely from his meditations on the Boer War. Besides being the
best of his fantastic stories, it contains the most picturesque
account of Chesterton's social philosophy that he ever gave. But it
certainly puzzled some of the critics. One American reviewer feels
that he might have understood the book if he "had an intimate
knowledge of the history of the various boroughs of London and of
their present-day characteristics." Others treat the story as a mere
joke, and many feel that it is a bad descent after the _Browning_.
"Too infernally clever for anything," says one.
Auberon Quin, King of England, chosen by lot (as are all kings and
all other officials by the date of this story, which is a romance of
the future), is one of the two heroes of this book. He is simply a
sense of humour incarnate. His little elfish face and figure was
recognised by old Paulines as suggested by a form master of their
youth; but by the entire reviewing world as Max Beerbohm. The
illustrations by Graham Robertson were held to be unmistakably Max.
Frances notes in her diary:
A delightful dinner party at the Lanes. . . . The talk was mostly
about _Napoleon_. Max took me in to dinner and was really nice. He is
a good fellow. His costume was extraordinary. Why should an evening
waistcoat have four large white pearl buttons and why should he look
that peculiar shape? He seems only pleased at the way he has been
identified with King Auberon. "All right, my dear chap," he said to
G., who was trying to apologize. "Mr. Lane and I settled it all at a
lunch." I think he was a little put out at finding no red carpet put
down for his royal feet and we had quite a discussion as to whether
he ought to precede me into the dining room. Graham Robertson was on
my left. He was jolly too, kept on producing wonderful rings and
stones out of his pockets. He said he wished he could go about
covered in the pieces of a chandelier. The other guests were lady
Seton, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Mr. W. W. Howells and his daughter (too
Burne-Jonesy to be really attractive), Mr. Taylor (police
magistrate), and Mrs. Eichholz (Mrs. Lane's mother) who is more
beautiful than anything except a wee baby. In fact, she looks exactly
like one, so dainty and small. She can never at any time have been as
pretty as she is now.
Gilbert and Max and I drove to his house (Max's), where he basely
enticed us in. He gave me fearful preserved fruits which ruined my
dress--but he made himself very entertaining. Home 1.30.
Caring for nothing in the world but a joke, King Auberon decrees that
the dull and respectable London boroughs shall be given city guards
in resplendent armour, each borough to have its own coat of arms, its
city walls, tocsin, and the like. The idea is taken seriously by the
second hero, Adam Wayne of Notting Hill, an enthusiast utterly
lacking any sense of humour, who goes to war with the other boroughs
of London to protect a small street which they have designed to pull
down in the interests of commercial development. Pimlico, Kensington
and the rest attack Notting Hill. Men bleed and die in the contest
and by the magic of the sword the old ideas of local patriotism and
beauty in civic life return to England. The conventional politician,
Barker, who begins the story in a frock-coat and irreproachable silk
hat, ends it clad in purple and gold.
When Notting Hill, become imperial minded, goes down to destruction
in a sea of blood, Auberon Quin confesses to Wayne that this whole
story, so full of human tragedy and hopes and fears, had been merely
the outcome of a joke. To him all life was a joke, to Wayne an epic;
and this antagonism between the humorist and the fanatic has created
the whole wild story. Wayne has the last word:
"I know of something that will alter that antagonism, something
that is outside us, something that you and I have all our lives
perhaps taken too little account of. The equal and eternal human
being will alter that antagonism, for the human being sees no real
antagonism between laughter and respect, the human being, the common
man, whom mere geniuses like you and me can only worship like a god.
When dark and dreary days come, you and I are necessary, the pure
fanatic, the pure satirist. We have between us remedied a great
wrong. We have lifted the modern cities into that poetry which every
one who knows mankind knows to be immeasurably more common than the
commonplace. But in healthy people there is no war between us. We are
but the two lobes of the brain of a ploughman. Laughter and love are
everywhere. The cathedrals, built in the ages that loved God, are
full of blasphemous grotesques. The mother laughs continually at the
child, the lover laughs continually at the lover, the wife at the
husband, the friend at the friend. Auberon Quin, we have been too
long separated; let us go out together. You have a halberd and I a
sword, let us start our wanderings over the world. For we are its two
essentials. Come, it is already day."
In the blank white light Auberon hesitated a moment. Then he made
the formal salute with his halberd, and they went away together into
the unknown world.
This is very important to the understanding of Chesterton. With him,
profound gravity and exuberant fooling were always intermingled and
some of his deepest thoughts are conveyed by a pun. He always claimed
to be intensely serious while hating to be solemn and it was a
mixture apt to be misunderstood. If gravity and humour are the two
lobes of the average man's brain, the average man does not bring them
into play simultaneously to anything like the extent that Chesterton
did.
Auberon Quin and Adam Wayne are the most living individuals in any of
his novels--just because they are the two lobes of his brain
individualised. All his stories abound in adventure, are admirable in
their vivid descriptions of London or the countryside of France or
England seen in fantastic visions. They are living in the portrayal
of ideas by the road of argument. But the characters are chiefly
energies through whose lips Gilbert argues with Gilbert until some
conclusion shall be reached.
In 1905 came _The Club of Queer Trades_--least good of the
fantasia--and even admirers have begun to wonder if too many fields
are being tried; in 1906, _Dickens_ and _Heretics_.
It will remain a moot point whether the _Browning_ or the _Dickens_
is Chesterton's best work of literary criticism. The _Dickens_ is the
more popular, largely because Dickens is the more popular author.
Most Dickens idolators read anything about their idol if only for the
pleasure of the quotations. And no Dickens idolator could fail to
realise that here was one even more rapt in worship than himself.
After the publication of _Charles Dickens_, Chesterton undertook a
series of prefaces to the novels. In one of them he took the trouble
to answer one only of the criticisms the book had produced: the
comment that he was reading into the work of Dickens something that
Dickens did not mean.
Criticism does not exist to say about authors the things that they
knew themselves. It exists to say the things about them which they
did not know themselves. If a critic says that the _Iliad_ has a
pagan rather than a Christian pity, or that it is full of pictures
made by one epithet, of course he does not mean that Homer could have
said that. If Homer could have said that the critic would leave Homer
to say it. The function of criticism, if it has a legitimate function
at all, can only be one function--that of dealing with the
subconscious part of the author's mind which only the critic can
express, and not with the conscious part of the author's mind, which
the author himself can express. Either criticism is no good at all (a
very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an
author the very things that would have made him jump out of his
boots.*
[* Introduction to "Old Curiosity Shop." Reprinted in _Criticisms and
Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens_, 1933 ed. pp. 51-2.]
He attended not at all to the crop of comments on his inaccuracies.
One reviewer pointed out that Chesterton had said that every postcard
Dickens wrote was a work of art; but Dickens died on June 9th, 1870
and the first British postcard was issued on October 1st, 1870. "A
wonderful instance of Dickens's never-varying propensity to keep
ahead of his age." After all, what did such things matter? Bernard
Shaw, however, felt that they did. He wrote a letter from which I
think Gilbert got an important hint, utilized later in his
introduction to _David Copperfield:_
6th September, 1906.
DEAR G.K.C.
As I am a supersaturated Dickensite, I pounced on your book and
read it, as Wegg read Gibbon and other authors, right slap through.
In view of a second edition, let me hastily note for you one or two
matters. First and chiefly, a fantastic and colossal howler in the
best manner of Mrs. Nickleby and Flora Finching.
There is an association in your mind (well founded) between the
quarrel over Dickens's determination to explain his matrimonial
difficulty to the public, and the firm of Bradbury and Evans. There
is also an association (equally well founded) between B. & E. and
Punch. They were the publishers of Punch. But to gravely tell the XX
century that Dickens wanted to publish his explanation in Punch is
gas and gaiters carried to an incredible pitch of absurdity. The
facts are: B. & E. were the publishers of Household Words. They
objected to Dickens explaining in H.W. He insisted. They said that in
that case they must take H.W. out of his hands. Dickens, like a lion
threatened with ostracism by a louse in his tail, published his
explanation, which stands to this day, and informed his readers that
they were to ask in future, not for Household Words, but for All the
Year Round. Household Words, left Dickensless, gasped for a few weeks
and died. All the Year Round, in exactly the same format, flourished
and entered largely into the diet of my youth.
* * * * *
There is a curious contrast between Dickens's sentimental
indiscretions concerning his marriage and his sorrows and quarrels,
and his impenetrable reserve about himself as displayed in his
published correspondence. He writes to his family about waiters,
about hotels, about screeching tumblers of hot brandy and water, and
about the seasick man in the next berth, but never one really
intimate word, never a real confession of his soul. David Copperfield
is a failure as an autobiography because when he comes to deal with
the grown-up David, you find that he has not the slightest intention
of telling you the truth--or indeed anything--about himself. Even the
child David is more remarkable for the reserves than for the
revelations: he falls back on fiction at every turn. Clennam and Pip
are the real autobiographies.
I find that Dickens is at his greatest after the social awakening
which produced _Hard Times_. Little Dorrit is an enormous work. The
change is partly the disillusion produced by the unveiling of
capitalist civilization, but partly also Dickens's discovery of the
gulf between himself as a man of genius and the public. That he did
not realize this early is shown by the fact that he found out his
wife _before he married her_ as much too small for the job, and yet
plumbed the difference so inadequately that he married her thinking
he could go through with it. When the situation became intolerable,
he must have faced the fact that there was something more than
"incompatibilities" between him and the average man and woman. Little
Dorrit is written, like all the later books, frankly and somewhat
sadly, _de haut en bas_. In them Dickens recognizes that quite
everyday men are as grotesque as Bunsby. Sparkler, one of the most
extravagant of all his gargoyles, is an untouched photograph almost.
Wegg and Riderhood are sinister and terrifying because they are
simply real, which Squeers and Sikes are not. And please remark that
whilst Squeers and Sikes have their speeches written with anxious
verisimilitude (comparatively) Wegg says, "Man shrouds and grapple,
Mr. Venus, or she dies," and Riderhood describes Lightwood's sherry
(when retracting his confession) as, "I will not say a hocussed wine,
but a wine as was far from 'elthy for the mind." Dickens doesn't care
what he makes Wegg or Riderhood or Sparkler or Mr. F's aunt say,
because he knows them and has got them, and knows what matters and
what doesn't. Fledgeby, Lammle, Jerry Cruncher, Trabbs's boy, Wopsle,
etc. etc. are human beings as seen by a master. Swiveller and
Mantalini are human beings as seen by Trabbs's boy. Sometimes
Trabbs's boy has the happier touch. When I am told that young John
Chivery (whose epitaphs you ignore whilst quoting Mrs. Sapsea's)
would have gone barefoot through the prison against rules for little
Dorrit had it been paved with red hot ploughshares, I am not so
affected by his chivalry as by Swiveller's exclamation when he gets
the legacy--"For she (the Marchioness) shall walk in silk attire and
siller hae to spare." Edwin Drood is no good, in spite of the stone
throwing boy, Buzzard and Honeythunder. Dickens was a dead man before
he began it. Collins corrupted him with plots. And oh! the
Philistinism; the utter detachment from the great human heritage of
art and philosophy! Why not a sermon on that?
G.B.S.
Note in the Introduction to _David Copperfield_ what G.K. says as to
the break between the two halves of the book. He calls it an instance
of weariness in Dickens--a solitary instance. Is not Shaw's
explanation at once fascinating and probable?
Kate Perugini, the daughter of Dickens, wrote two letters of immense
enthusiasm about the book saying it was the best thing written about
her father since Forster's biography. But she shatters the theory put
forth by Chesterton that Dickens thrown into intimacy with a large
family of girls fell in love with them all and happened unluckily to
marry the wrong sister. At the time of the marriage her mother, the
eldest of the sisters, was only eighteen, Mary between fourteen and
fifteen "very young and childish in appearance," Georgina eight and
Helen three! Nothing could better illustrate the clash between
enthusiasm and despair that fills a Chestertonian while reading any
of his literary biographies. For so much is built on this theory
which the slightest investigation would have shown to be baseless.
_Heretics_ aroused animosity in many minds. Dealing with Browning or
Dickens a man may encounter literary prejudices or enthusiasms, but
there is not the intensity of feeling that he finds when he gets into
the field with his own contemporaries. Reviewers who had been
extending a friendly welcome to a beginner found that beginner
attacking landmarks in the world of letters, venturing to detest
Ibsen and to ask William Archer whether he hung up his stocking on
Ibsen's birthday, accusing Kipling of lack of patriotism. It is, said
one angrily, "unbecoming to spend most of his time criticising his
contemporaries." "His sense of mental perspective is an extremely
deficient one." "The manufacture of paradoxes is really one of the
simplest processes conceivable." "Mr. Chesterton's sententious
wisdom."
In fact it was like the scene in _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ when
most people present were purple with anger but an intellectual few
were purple with laughter. And even now most of the reviewers seemed
not to understand where G.K. stood or what was his philosophy.
"Bernard Shaw," says one, "whom _as a disciple_* he naturally
exalts." This, after a series of books in which G.K. had exposed,
with perfect lucidity and a wealth of examples, a view of life
differing from Shaw's in almost every particular. One reviewer
clearly discerned the influence of Shaw in _The Napoleon of Notting
Hill_, "but without a trace of Shaw's wonderful humour and
perspicacity."
[* Italics mine.]
Belloc's approval was hearty. He wrote:
I am delighted with what I have read in the _Daily Mail_. Hit them
again. Hurt them. Continue to binge and accept my blessing. Give them
hell. It is the only book of yours I have read right through. Which
shows that I don't read anything. Which is true enough. This letter
is written in the style of Herbert Paul. Continue to bang them about.
You did wrong not to come to the South coast. Margate is a fraud.
What looks like sea in front of it is really a bank with hardly any
water over it. I stuck on it once in the year 1904 so I know all
about it. Moreover the harbour at Margate is not a real harbour.
Ramsgate round the corner has a real harbour on the true sea. In both
towns are citizens not averse to bribes. Do not fail to go out in a
boat on the last of the ebb as far as the Long Nose. There you will
see the astonishing phenomenon of the tide racing down the North
Foreland three hours before it has turned in the estuary of the
Thames, which you at Margate foolishly believe to be the sea. Item no
one in Margate can cook.
Gilbert was not really concerned in this book to bang his
contemporaries about so much as to study their mistakes and so
discover what was wrong with modern thought. Shaw, George Moore,
Ibsen, Wells, The Mildness of the Yellow Press, Omar and the Sacred
Vine, Rudyard Kipling, Smart novelists and the Smart Set, Joseph
McCabe and a Divine Frivolity--the collection was a heterogeneous
one. And in the introduction the author tells us he is not concerned
with any of these men as a brilliant artist or a vivid personality,
but "as a Heretic--that is to say a man whose view of things has the
hardihood to differ from mine . . . as a man whose philosophy is
quite solid, quite coherent and quite wrong. I revert to the
doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general
hope of getting something done."
In _England a Nation_ and even more in the study of Kipling in this
book there is one touch of inconsistency which we shall meet with
again in his later work. He hated Imperialism yet he glorified
Napoleon; himself ardently patriotic he accused Kipling of lack of
patriotism on the ground that a man could not at once love England
and love the Empire. For there was a curious note in the
anti-Imperialism of the Chesterbelloc that has not always been
recognised. The ordinary anti-Imperialist holds that England has no
right to govern an Empire and that her leadership is bad for the
other dominions. But the Chesterbelloc view was that the Dominions
were inferior and unworthy of a European England. The phrase "suburbs
of England" (quoted in a later chapter) was typical. But Kipling was
thrilled by those suburbs and Chesterton, who had as a boy admired
Kipling, attacks him in _Heretics_ for lack of patriotism. _Puck of
Pook's Hill_ was not yet written, but like Kipling's poem on Sussex
it expressed a patriotism much akin to Gilbert's own. Remember the
man who returned from the South African veldt to be the Squire's
gardener--"Me that have done what I've done, Me that have seen what
I've seen"--that man, with eyes opened to a sense of his own tragedy,
was speaking for Chesterton's people of England who "have not spoken
yet." Yes, they have spoken through the mouth of English genius: as
Langland's Piers Plowman, as Dickens's Sam Weller, but not least as
Kipling's Tommy Atkins. It was a pity Chesterton was deaf to this
last voice. With a better understanding of Kipling he might in turn
have made Kipling understand what was needed to make England "Merrie
England" once again, have given him the philosophy that should make
his genius fruitful.
For the huge distinction between Chesterton and most of his
contemporaries lay not in the wish to get something done but in the
conviction that the right philosophy alone could produce fruitful
action. A parable in the Introduction shows the point at which his
thinking had arrived.
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something,
let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull
down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is
approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of
the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value
of Light. If Light be in itself good." At this point he is somewhat
excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post,
the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about
congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as
things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled
the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some
because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness,
because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a
lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash
municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And
there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So,
gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there
comes back the conviction that the monk was Right after all, that all
depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have
discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.*
[* _Heretics_, pp. 22-3.]
Every year during this time at Battersea, the press books reveal an
increasing flood of engagements. Gilbert lectures for the New Reform
Club on "political watchwords," for the Midland Institute on "Modern
Journalism," for the Men's Meeting of the South London Central
Mission on "Brass Bands," for the London Association of Correctors of
the Press at the Trocadero, for the C.S.U. at Church Kirk,
Accrington, at the Men's Service in the Colchester Moot Hall. He
debates at the St. German's Literary Society, maintaining "that the
most justifiable wars are the religious wars"; opens the Anti-Puritan
League at the Shaftesbury Club, speaks for the Richmond and Kew
branch of the P.N.E.U. on "The Romantic Element in Morality," for the
Ilkley P.S.A., on "Christianity and Materialism," and so on without
end. All these are on a few pages of his father's collection,
interspersed with clippings recording articles in reviews
innumerable, introductions to books, interviews and controversies.
There was almost no element of choice in these engagements. G.K. was
intensely good-natured and hated saying No. He was the lion of the
moment and they all wanted him to roar for them. In spite of the
large heading, "Lest we forget," that met his eye daily in the
drawing-room, he did forget a great deal--in fact, friends say he
forgot any engagement made when Frances was not present to write it
down directly it was made. She had to do memory and all the practical
side of life for him. There might have been one slight chance of
making Gilbert responsible in these matters--that chance was given to
his parents and by them thrown away. How far it is even possible to
groom and train a genius is doubtful: anyhow no attempt was made.
Waited on hand and foot by his mother, never made to wash or brush
himself as a child, personally conducted to the tailor as he grew
older, given by his parents no money for which to feel responsible,
not made to keep hours--how could Frances take a man of twenty-seven,
and make him over again?
But there is, of course, a most genuine difficulty in all this, which
Gilbert once touched on when he denied the accusation of absence of
mind. It was, he claimed, presence of mind--on his thoughts--that
made him unaware of much else. And indeed no man can be using his
mind furiously in every direction at once. Anyone who has done even a
little creative work, anyone even who has lived with people who do
creative work, knows the sense of bewilderment with which the mind
comes out of the world of remoter but greater reality and tries to
adjust with that daily world in which meals are to be ordered,
letters answered, and engagements kept. What must this pain of
adjustment not have been to a mind almost continuously creative? For
I have never known anyone work such long hours with a mind at such
tension as Gilbert's.
There was no particular reason why he should have written his article
for the _Daily News_ as the reporter writes his--at top speed at a
late hour--but he usually did. The writing of it was left till the
last minute and, if at home, he would need Frances to get it off for
him before the deadline was reached. But he often wrote by preference
in Fleet Street--at the Cheshire Cheese or some little pub where
journalists gathered--and then he would hire a cab to take the
article a hundred yards or so to the _Daily News_ office.
The cab in those days was the hansom with its two huge wheels over
which one perilously ascended, while the driver sat above, only to be
communicated with by opening a sort of trap door in the roof. Gilbert
once said that the imaginative Englishman in Paris would spend his
days in a café, the imaginative Frenchman in London would spend his
driving in a hansom. In the _Napoleon_, the thought of the cab moves
him to write:
Poet whose cunning carved this amorous cell
Where twain may dwell.
E. V. Lucas, his daughter tells us, used to say that if one were
invited to drive with Gilbert in a hansom cab it would have to be two
cabs: but this is not strictly true. For in those days I drove with
Gilbert and Frances too in a hansom--he and I side by side, she on
his knee. We must have given to the populace the impression he says
any hansom would give on first view to an ancient Roman or a simple
barbarian--that the driver riding on high and flourishing his whip
was a conqueror carrying off his helpless victims.
Like the "buffers" at the Veneering election, he spent much of his
time "taking cabs and getting about"--or not even getting about in
them, but leaving them standing at the door for hours on end. Calling
on one publisher he placed in his hands a letter that gave excellent
reasons why he could not keep the engagement! The memory so admirable
in literary quotations was not merely unreliable for engagements but
even for such matters as street numbers and addresses. Edward
Macdonald, who worked with him later, on _G.K.'s Weekly_, relates how
some months after the paper had changed its address he failed one day
to turn up at a board meeting.
Finally he appeared with an explanation. On calling a taxi at
Marylebone he realized that he could not give the address, so he told
the driver to take him to Fleet Street. There as his memory still
refused to help, he stopped the taxi outside a tea-shop, left it
there while he was inside, and ordering a cup of tea began to turn
out all his pockets in the hope of finding a letter or a proof
bearing the address. Then as no clue could be found, he told the
driver to take him to a bookstall that stocked the paper. At the
first and second he drew blanks but at the third bought a copy of his
own paper and thus discovered the address.
I am not sure at what date he began to hate writing anything by hand.
My mother treasured two handwritten letters. I have none after a
friendship of close on thirty years. But I remember on his first
visit to my parents' home in Surrey his calling Frances that he might
dictate an article to her. His writing was pictorial and rather
elaborate. "He drew his signature rather than writing it," says
Edward Macdonald, who remembers him saying as he signed a cheque:
"'With many a curve my banks I fret.' I wonder if Tennyson fretted
his." At one of our earliest meetings I asked him to write in my
Autograph Book. It was at least five years before the _Ballad of the
White Horse_ appeared, but the lines may be found almost unchanged in
the ballad:
VERSES MADE UP IN A DREAM
(which you won't believe)
People, if you have any prayers
Say prayers for me.
And bury me underneath a stone
In the stones of Battersea.
Bury me underneath a stone,
With the sword that was my own;
To wait till the holy horn is blown
And all poor men are free.
The dream went on, he said, for pages and pages. And I think Frances
was anxious, for the mind must find rest in sleep.
The little flat at Battersea was a vortex of requests and
engagements, broken promises and promises fulfilled, author's ink and
printer's ink, speeches in prospect and speeches in memory, meetings
and social occasions. A sincere admirer wrote during this period of
his fears of too great a strain on his hero--and from 1904 to 1908
the only change was an increase of pressure:
I see that Chesterton has just issued a volume on the art of G. F.
Watts. His novel was published yesterday. Soon his monograph on
Kingsley should be ready. I believe he has a book on some modern
aspects of religious belief in the press. He is part-editor of the
illustrated Booklets on great authors issued by the Bookman. He is
contributing prefaces and introductions to odd volumes in several
series of reprints. He is a constant contributor to the _Daily News_
and the _Speaker_; he is conducting a public controversy with
Blatchford of the _Clarion_ on atheism and free-thinking; he is
constantly lecturing and debating and dining out; it is almost
impossible to open a paper that does not contain either an article or
review or poem or drawing of his, and his name is better known now to
compositors than Bernard Shaw.
Now, both physically and mentally Chesterton is a Hercules, and
from what I hear of his methods of work he is capable of a great
output without much physical strain; nevertheless, it is clear, I
think to anyone that at his present rate of production he must either
wear or tear. No man born can keep so many irons in the fire and not
himself come between the hammer and the anvil. It is a pitiable thing
to have a good man spend himself so recklessly; and I repeat once
more that if he and his friends have not the will or power to
restrain him, then there should be a conspiracy of editors and
publishers in his favour. Not often is a man like Chesterton born. He
should have his full chance. And that can only come by study and
meditation, and by slow, steady accumulation of knowledge and wisdom.*
[* Shan F. Bullock in the _Chicago Evening Post_, 9th April, 1906.]
In a volume made up of Introductions written at this time to
individual novels of Dickens, we find a passage that might well be
Gilbert's summary of his own life:
The calls upon him at this time were insistent and overwhelming;
this necessarily happens at a certain stage of a successful writer's
career. He was just successful enough to invite others and not
successful enough to reject them . . . there was almost too much work
for his imagination, and yet not quite enough work for his
housekeeping. . . . And it is a curious tribute to the quite curious
greatness of Dickens that in this period of youthful strain we do not
feel the strain but feel only the youth. His own amazing wish to
write equalled or outstripped even his readers' amazing wish to read.
Working too hard did not cure him of his abstract love of work.
Unreasonable publishers asked him to write ten novels at once; but he
wanted to write twenty novels at once.
Thus too with Gilbert. The first eight years of his married life saw
in swift succession the publication of ten books comprising literary
and art criticism and biography, poetry, fiction (or rather fantasy),
light essays and religious philosophy. All these were so full at once
of the profound seriousness of youth, and of the bubbling wine of its
high spirits, as to recall another thing Gilbert said: that Dickens
was "accused of superficiality by those who cannot grasp that there
is foam upon deep seas." That was the matter in dispute about
himself, and very furiously disputed it was during these years. Was
G.K. serious or merely posing, was he a great man or a mountebank,
was he clear or obscure, was he a genius or a charlatan? "Audacious
reconciliation," he pleaded--or rather asserted, for his tone could
seldom be called a plea, "is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme
seriousness."
A man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels,
or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is
taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it
passes. But a man who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus
must have some serious view of the universe. The man who should write
a dialogue between two early Christians might be a mere writer of
dialogues. But a man who should write a dialogue between an early
Christian and the Missing Link would have to be a philosopher. The
more widely different the types talked of, the more serious and
universal must be the philosophy which talks of them. The mark of the
light and thoughtless writer is the harmony of his subject matter;
the mark of the thoughtful writer is its apparent diversity. The most
flippant lyric poet might write a pretty poem about lambs; but it
requires something bolder and graver than a poet, it requires an
ecstatic prophet, to talk about the lion lylng down with the lamb.*
* G. K. Chesterton. _Criticisms and Appreciations of the World of
Charles Dickens_. Dent. 1933 pp. 68-9.
A man starting to write a thesis on Chesterton's sociology once
complained bitterly that almost none of his books were indexed, so
he had to submit to the disgusting necessity of reading them all
through, for some striking view on sociology might well be embedded
in a volume of art criticism or be the very centre of a fantastic
romance. Chesterton's was a philosophy universal and unified and it
was at this time growing fast and finding exceedingly varied
techniques of expression. But the whole of it was in a sense in each
of them--in each book, almost in each poem. As he himself says of the
universe of Charles Dickens, "there was something in it--there is in
all great creative writers--like the account in Genesis of the light
being created before the sun, moon and stars, the idea before the
machinery that made it manifest. Pickwick is in Dickens's career the
mere mass of light before the creation of sun or moon. It is the
splendid, shapeless substance of which all his stars are ultimately
made." And again, "He said what he had to say and yet not all he had
to say. Wild pictures, possible stories, tantalising and attractive
trains of thought, perspectives of adventure, crowded so continually
upon his mind that at the end there was a vast mass of them left
over, ideas that he literally had not the opportunity to develop,
tales that he literally had not the time to tell."