Rome via Jerusalem
SHORTLY AFTER THE war Gilbert and Frances set out on their travels,
going in 1919 to Palestine, home through Italy early in 1920, and
starting out again the following year for a lecture tour in the
United States.
To his friendship with Maurice Baring Gilbert owed their being able
to make the first of these journeys as well as much else. The picture
entitled "Conversation Piece" of Chesterton, Belloc and Baring is
well known. Was it Chesterton himself who christened it "Baring,
Overbearing and Past Bearing?" Many elements united the three in a
close friendship: love of literature, love of Europe, a common view
of the philosophy of history and of life. Frances Chesterton often
said that of all her husband's friends she thought there was none he
loved better than Maurice Baring. They often wrote ballades
together--a French form which they, with Phillimore and others, had
re-popularised in English. A telegram from Gilbert refusing a
celebration runs like a refrain:
Prince, Yorkshire holds me now
By Yorkshire hams I'm fed
I can't assist your row
I send ballades instead.
These "Ballades Urbane" were a feature in the _New Witness_--but many
of those the three friends composed were strictly not for publication
but recited to friends behind closed doors. Gilbert's memory was
useful: he knew all his own and the others: Once Belloc forgot the
Envoi to one of his own ballades and Gilbert finished it for him.
Even to Maurice Baring, G.K. wrote less often than he intended and
one apologetic ballade carries the refrain:
I write no letters to the men I love.
I have always fancied that Maurice Baring gave Gilbert the idea for
his story _The Man Who Knew Too Much_. First in the diplomatic
service, then doing splendidly as an airman in the war, a member of
the great banking family, related to most of the aristocracy and
intimate with most of the rest, he is like the hero of the book in a
sort of detachment, a slight irony about a world that he has not
cared to conquer. Impossible for a mere acquaintance to say whether
he views that world with all the disillusionment of Chesterton's
hero--but anyhow such a suggestion from life is never more than a
hint for creative art. Another side is seen in the _Autobiography_--
in the stories of Maurice Baring plunging into the sea in evening
dress on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, and of the smashing
by Gilbert of a wine-glass that became in retrospect a priceless
goblet (which had "stood by Charlemagne's great chair and served St.
Peter at High Mass") and now inspired the refrain:
I like the sound of breaking glass.
A good deal of glass was broken by the stones of this group of men
whose own house was made of tolerably strong materials.
There is quite a bundle of Mr. Baring's letters to Gilbert, and, in
spite of the apologetic ballade, a fair number of answers. Two of
these last are written early in 1919, the second of which opens the
question of the Jerusalem visit:
May 23, 1919
MY DEAR MAURICE,
I am the Prince of unremembered towers destroyed before the birth
of Babylon; I am also the (writer) of unremembered letters, and to a
much greater extent the designer and imaginer of unwritten letters:
and I cannot remember whether I ever acknowledged properly your
communications about Claudel, especially your interesting remarks
about the comparative coolness of Henri de Regnier about him. It
struck me because I think it is part of something I have noticed
myself; a curious and almost premature conservatism in the older
generation of revolutionaries, particularly when they were pagan
revolutionaries. Not that I suppose de Regnier is particularly old or
in the stock sense a revolutionist; but I think you will know the
break between the generations to which I refer. I remember having
exactly the same experience the only time I ever talked to Swinburne.
I had regarded (and resisted) him in my boyhood as a sort of
Antichrist in purple, like Nero holding his lyre, and I found him
more like a very well-read Victorian old maid, almost entirely a
_laudator temporis acti_ disposed to say that none of the young men
would ever come up to Tennyson--which may be quite true for all I
know. I fancy it has something to do with the very fact that their
revolt was pagan, and being temporal was also temporary. When that
particular fashion in caps of liberty has gone out, they have nothing
to fall back on but the feeling which Swinburne himself puts into the
mouth of the pagan on the day when Constantine issued the
proclamation.
"But to me their new device is barren, the days are bare
Things long gone over suffice, and men forgotten that were."
I only tell you all this because you might find it amusing to keep
an eye on the _New Statesman_ as well as the _New Witness_, where
there is a small repetition of the same thing. Bernard Shaw has
written an article which is supposed to be about his view of me and
Socialism; but which may be said more truly to be about his blindness
to Hilary and his Servile State. It is quite startling to me to find
how wholly he misses Hilary's point; and how wildly he falls back on
a sort of elderly impatience with our juvenile paradox and
fantasticality. I shall answer him as abusively as my great personal
liking for him will allow and I think Hilary is going to do the same;
so if you ever see such papers, you might enjoy the fun.
Yours always,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
DEAR MAURICE,
Thank you ever so much for your interesting letter. I think you are
right every time about Gosse and Claudel; or rather about Claudel and
Gosse. For though I think Gosse a very valuable old Victorian in his
way, I do not think he is on the same scale as the things that have
lately been happening in the world; and Claudel is one of them. He
has happened like a great gun going off; and I think I saw a line of
his on the subject of such a discharge of artillery in the war. It
ran, "And that which goes forth is France; terrible as the Holy
Ghost." I doubt if Gosse has ever seen that France even in a flash
and a bang; I don't see how he could. Remember the religion in which
he grew up, by his own very graphic account of it; a man is not
entirely emancipated from such very positive Puritanism by anything
so negative as Agnosticism. Nothing but a religion can cast out a
religion. Being so sensitive on behalf of Renan is simply not
understanding the great historical passions about a heresiarch. It
means that famous intellectuals must not hate each other; because
they all belong to the Saville Club. Please do not think I mean
merely that Gosse is a snob; I think he is a jolly old gentleman and
a good critic of French poetry; but not of _Gesta Dei per Francos_.
Your points against him are quite logical; I suppose the controversy
will not be conducted in public, or I should feel inclined to join in
it. Anyhow, I wish it could be continued between us as a conversation
in private, for I have long wanted to talk to you about serious
things.
Meanwhile, as not wholly unconnected with the serious things, could
you possibly do me a great favour? It is very far from being the
first great favour you have done me; and I should fear that anyone
less magnanimous would fancy I only wrote to you about such things.
But the situation is this. An excellent offer has been made to me to
write a book about Jerusalem, not political but romantic and
religious, so to speak; I conceive it as mostly about pilgrimages and
crusades, in poetical prose, and working up to Allenby's great
entrance. The offer includes money to go to Jerusalem but cannot
include all the political or military permissions necessary to go
there. I have another motive for wanting to go there, which is much
stronger than the desire to write the book though I do think I could
do it in the right way and, what matters more, on the right side.
Frances is to come with me, and all the doctors in creation tell her
she can only get rid of her neuritis if she goes to some such place
and misses part of an English winter. I would do anything to bring it
off, for that reason alone. You are a man who knows everybody; do you
know anybody on Allenby's staff; or know anybody who knows anybody on
Allenby's staff; or know anybody who would know anybody who would
know anything about it? I am told that it cannot be done as yet in
the ordinary way by Cook's; and that the oracle must be worked in
some such fashion. If you should be so kind as to refer to any
worried soldier or official, I should like it understood that I am
not nosing about touching any diplomatic or military matter; France
in Syria, or any copy for the _New Witness_. I only want to write
semi-historical rhetoric on the spot. If you could possibly help in
this matter, I really think you would be helping things you yourself
care about; and one person, not myself, who deserves it. I will not
say it would be killing two birds with one stone, which might seem a
tragic metaphor; but bringing one bird at least to life; and allowing
the other bird, who is a goose, to go on a wild goose-chase.
Yours always,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
It was much needed change and refreshment for both Gilbert and
Frances. Her Diary shows a vivid enjoyment of all the scenes and
happenings: going into the Church of the Nativity with a door "so low
you can hardly get in--this done to prevent the cattle from straying
in"; seeing camels on the roof of a convent; standing godmother to an
Armenian carpenter's baby:
The officiator in a cape of white silk embroidered in gold and a
wonderful crown supposed to represent the temple. The godfather (a
young man) was in a red velvet gown. After a good many prayers and
much chanting the babe, beautifully dressed, was taken to the font
(which was in the side of the wall) and there were more prayers and
chanting. Then cushions were laid on the floor and the child
undressed, all of us assisting. At this point I was asked to stand
Godmother and gladly consented. The baby, by this time quite naked,
was handed to the priest who immersed him completely under the water
three times--giving him the name of Pedros (Peter). Before being
re-clothed he was anointed with oil--the forebead, eyes, nose, mouth,
ears, heart, hands and feet all being signed with the Cross. The
child was by this time crying lustily and it was some business to get
him dressed, especially as he was swaddled in bands very completely.
When ready he was handed to me and he lay stiff in my arms whilst I
held two large lighted candles. I followed the priest from the font
to the little altar, where a chain and a little gold cross were bound
round his head (signifying that he was now a Christian). Then the
priest touched his lips with the sacramental wafer, and touched his
nose with myrrh. After the Blessing, we left the church in a
procession, the godfather carrying the baby. At the threshold of the
house the priest took it and delivered it to the mother who sat
waiting for it, also holding the two candles. Again the priests
muttered a few prayers and blessed mother, child and godparents. The
father is an Armenian carpenter by trade--very nice people. Mother
very pretty. The parents insisted that we should stay for
refreshments and we were handed a very nice liquor in lovely little
glasses and a very beautiful sort of pastry. Afterwards cups of weak
tea and cakes.
The various rites and ceremonies in Jerusalem interested Frances
deeply but the Diary shows no awareness of the differences that
separated the various kinds of Christians. The Diary ends with the
return through Rome where she and I met, to the surprise of both of
us, in the street, while a friend travelling with them met my mother.
"Both meetings were miraculous," Frances comments. Since the letters
to my mother during Gilbert's illness in 1915 we had heard no more
about his spiritual pilgrimage. There was much eager talk at this
meeting but no opportunity occurred and certainly none was sought for
any confidences. As we waved goodbye after their departing train my
mother said thoughtfully: "Frances did rather play off Jerusalem
against Rome, didn't she?"
In fact, as we learned later, this visit to Jerusalem had been a
determining factor in Gilbert's conversion. Many people both in and
outside the Church had been wondering what had so long delayed him.
The mental progress from the vague Liberalism of the _Wild Knight_ to
the splendid edifice of _Orthodoxy_ had been a swift one. For the
book was written in 1908 and already several years earlier in
_Heretics_ and in his newspaper contests with Blatchford, Gilbert
Chesterton had shown his firm belief in the Godhead of Our Lord, in
Sacraments, in Priesthood and in the Authority of the Church. But it
was not yet the Catholic and Roman Church. There is a revealing
passage in the _Autobiography:_ "And then I happened to meet Lord
Hugh Cecil. I met him at the house of Wilfrid Ward, that great
clearing house of philosophies and theologies. . . . I listened to
Lord Hugh's very lucid statements of his position. . . . The
strongest impression I received was that he was a Protestant. I was
myself still a thousand miles from being a Catholic; but I think it
was the perfect and solid Protestantism of Lord Hugh that fully
revealed to me that I was no longer a Protestant."
The time that thousand miles took is a real problem--the years before
the illness during which he talked of joining the Church, the seven
further years before he joined it. Cecil Chesterton had been received
before the war--just at the beginning of the Marconi Case, in
fact--and the entire outlook of both brothers had seemed to make this
inevitable, not only theologically but sociologically and
historically. Alike in their outlook on Europe today or on the great
ages of the past, it was a Catholic civilisation based on Catholic
theology that seemed to them the only true one for a full and rich
human development.
I think in this matter a special quality and its defect could be seen
in Gilbert. For most people intensity of thought is much more
difficult than action. With him it was the opposite. He used his mind
unceasingly, his body as little as possible. I remember one day going
to see them when he had a sprained ankle and learning from Frances
how happy it made him because nobody could bother him to take
exercise. The whole of practical life he left to her. But joining the
Church was not only something to be thought about, it was something
really practical that had to be done, and here Frances could not help
him.
"He will need Frances," said Father O'Connor to my mother, "to take
him to church, to find his place in his prayer-book, to examine his
conscience for him when he goes to Confession. He will never take all
those hurdles unaided." Frances never lifted a finger to prevent
Gilbert from joining the Catholic Church. But obviously before she
was convinced herself she could not help him. The absence of help was
in this case a very positive hindrance.
I remember one day on a picnic Gilbert coming up to me with a very
disconsolate expression and asking where Frances was. I said, "I
don't know but I can easily find her. Do you want her?" He answered,
"I don't want her now but I may want her at any minute." Many men
depend upon their wives but very few men admit it so frankly. And if
he was unpractical to a point almost inconceivable, Frances herself
could be called practical only in comparison with him. The confused
mass of papers through which she had to hunt to find some important
document lingers in the memory.
Another element that made action lag behind conviction with
Chesterton was his perpetual state of overwork. Physically inactive,
his mind was never barren but issued in an immense output: several
books every year besides editing and articles: there were even two
years in which no fewer than six books were published. To focus his
attention on the deepest matters, it was vital to escape from the net
of work and worry.
Returning from Jerusalem, Gilbert wrote from Alexandria to Maurice
Baring:
MY DEAR MAURICE,
To quote a poet we agree in thinking ridiculously underrated by
recent fashions, my boat is on the shore and my bark is on the sea;
but before I go, Tom Moore (if I may so by a flight of fancy describe
you), I feel impelled to send you this hurried line to thank you, so
far as this atrocious hotel pen will allow me, for the wonderful time
I have had in Palestine, which is so largely owing to you. There is
also something even more important I want very much to discuss with
you; because of certain things that have been touched on between us
in former times. I will only say here that my train of thought, which
really was one of thought and not fugitive emotion, came to an
explosion in the Church of the Ecce Homo in Jerusalem; a church which
the guidebooks call new and the newspapers call Latin. I fear it may
be at least a month before we meet; for the journey takes a fortnight
and may be prolonged by a friend ill in Paris; and I must work the
moment I return to keep a contract. But if we could meet by about
then I could thank you better for many things.
Yours illegibly,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
The contract that had to be kept was in all probability the writing
of _The New Jerusalem_. It is a glorious book. Until I read them more
carefully I had always accepted G.K.'s own view that books of travel
were a weak spot in his multifarious output. He said of himself that
he always tended to see such enormous significance in every detail
that he might just as well describe railway signals near Beaconsfield
as the light of sunset over the Golden Horn. But _The New Jerusalem_
is no mere book of description. It is the book of a man seeing a
vision. To understand how this vision broke upon him we have first to
try to understand something jealously hidden by Gilbert
Chesterton--his own suffering. Even as a boy--in the days of the
toothache and still more torturing earache--he had written
Though pain be stark and bitter
And days in darkness creep
Not to that depth I sink me
That asks the world to weep.
So much did he acclaim himself enrolled under the banner of joy that
I think most people miss the companion picture to the favourite one
of the Happy Warrior. No warrior can fight untiringly through a long
lifetime without wounds, without temptations to abandon the struggle
and seek a less glorious peace. If in what are commonly called
practical matters Chesterton was weak, he was in this almost
superhumanly strong. His fame did not rest upon success in the field
of sociology and politics. He could have increased it by neglecting
the good of England for which he fought, and living in literature,
poetry and fantasy. Here all acclaimed him great, whereas most
tolerated or despised as a hobby or a weakness the work he was
pouring into the fight for England. In this time after the Armistice
it was by a naked effort of the will that he held his ground. The
loss of Cecil with his light-hearted courage, his energy and
buoyancy, was immeasurable. And I know--for we talked of it
together--that Frances had not the complete sympathy with Gilbert
over the paper that she had over his other work. It seemed to her too
great a drain on his time and energy: it made the writing of his
important books more difficult. She would not, she told me, try to
stop it as she knew how much he cared, but she would have rejoiced if
he had chosen to let it go.
And the fight that he had almost enjoyed in Cecil's company had
become a harder one, not merely because he was alone but because the
nature of the foe had changed. He was fighting now not individual
abuses but the mood of pessimism that had overtaken our civilisation.
In an article entitled _Is It Too Late?_ he defined this pessimism as
"a paralysis of the mind; an impotence intrinsically unworthy of a
free man." He stated powerfully the case of those who held that our
civilisation was dying and that it was too late to make any further
efforts:
The future belongs to those who can find a real answer to that real
case. . . . The omens and the auguries are against us. There is no
answer but one; that omens and auguries are heathen things; and that
we are not heathens. . . . We are not lost unless we lose
ourselves. . . . Great Alfred, in the darkness of the Ninth Century,
when the Danes were beating at the door, wrote down on his copy of
Boethius his denial of the doctrine of fate. We, who have been
brought up to see all the signs of the times pointing to improvement,
may live to see all the signs in heaven and earth pointing the other
way. If we go on it must be in another name than that of the Goddess
of Fortune.
It was that other Name, in which he had so long believed, that he
realised with the freshness of novelty on this journey to Jerusalem.
He made in the Holy City and in the fields of Palestine a new
discovery of Christ and of the Christian Thing. As he looked over the
Dead Sea and almost physically realised what evil meant, he heard the
voice of the divine Deliverer saying to the demons: "Go forth and
trouble him not any more." In the cave at Bethlehem he realised the
"little local infancy" whereby the creator of the world had chosen to
redeem the world. All through the book there are glimpses of what he
tells more fully in _The Everlasting Man_. Between the two books all
that he had seen and thought in Palestine lay in his mind, and grew
there, and fructified for our understanding. But he had seen it all
in that first vision.
Jerusalem first impressed Chesterton as a mediaeval city and from its
turrets he could readily picture Godfrey de Bouillon, Richard the
Lion-Hearted and Saint Louis of France. Through the Crusades he views
what was meant by Christendom and sets over against it at once the
greatness and the barrenness of Islam:
The Moslem had one thought, and that a most vital one; the
greatness of God which levels all men. But the Moslem had not one
thought to rub against another, because he really had not another. It
is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention,
or of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire. The
Creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex;
they can breed thoughts.
Today we of Christendom have fallen below ourselves but yet we have
something left of the power to create whether it be a theology or a
civilisation. Talking to an old Arab in the desert, Chesterton heard
him say that in all these years of Turkish rule the Turks had never
given to the people a cup of cold water. And as the old man spoke he
heard the clank of pipes and he knew that it was the English soldiers
who were bringing water through the desert to Jerusalem.
A chapter on Zionism discusses with sympathy to both parties the
difficulties of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. In Palestine he
found his Jewish friend and co-worker on the _New Witness_, Dr. Eder,
who had gone there ardent in the cause of Zionism; and Chesterton
himself remained convinced that some system akin to Zionism was the
only possible solution of this enormous problem--possibly a system of
Jewish cantons in various countries. But he was equally convinced
that the English government was destroying the chances of success for
Zionism by sending Jews as governors in England's name to that or any
other Eastern country.
Even in this book there is struck at times a note of the doom he
feared was overhanging us. He heard "Islam crying from the turret and
Israel wailing from the wall," and yet he seemed too to hear a voice
from all the peoples of Jerusalem "bidding us weep not for them, who
have faith and clarity and a purpose, but weep for ourselves and for
our children." In his fighting articles he had asserted the supremacy
of the human will over fate: in this book he sees how that will must
be renewed, purified and made once more mighty by the same power that
built the ancient civilisation of Christendom.
Jerusalem gave to Chesterton the fuller realisation of two great
facts. First he saw that the supernatural was needed not only to
conquer the powers of evil but even to restore the good things that
should be natural to man. As he put it in the later book, "Nature may
not have the name of Isis; Isis may not be really looking for Osiris.
But it is true that Nature is really looking for something. Nature is
always looking for the supernatural." Yet man, even strengthened by
the supernatural, cannot suffice for the fight, without a leader who
is more than man. In the land of Christ's childhood, His teaching and
His suffering, there came to Gilbert Chesterton "a vision more vivid
than a man walking unveiled upon the mountains, seen of men and
seeing; a visible God."
All visions must fade into the light of common day, and the return
home meant the resumption of hard labour.
"For the moment," wrote Gilbert to Maurice Baring, "as Balzac said, I
am labouring like a miner in a landslide. Normally I would let it
slide. But if I did in this case I should break two or three really
important contracts, which I find I have returned from Jerusalem just
in time to save."
(A few years later when Sheed and Ward started, Gilbert wanted to
write a number of books for us to publish. His secretary found that
he had then thirty books contracted for with a variety of publishers!)
He had got home in April 1920: and a lecture tour was planned for the
United States at the beginning of the following year. The eight
months between saw the completion and publication of _The Uses of
Diversity_ (collected essays), _The New Jerusalem_ and _The
Superstition of Divorce_. And still went on the _New Witness_, the
_Illustrated London News_, articles, introductions, lectures,
conferences. Two letters to Maurice Baring clearly belong to these
months:
MY DEAR MAURICE,
I am so awfully distressed to hear you are unwell again; I do not
know whether I ought even to bother you with my sentiments; beyond my
sympathy; but if it is not too late, or too early, I will call on you
early next week; probably Monday, but I will let you know for certain
before then. I would have called on you long ago, let alone written,
but for this load of belated work which really seems to bury me day
after day. I never realised before that business can really block out
much bigger things. As you may possibly guess, I want to consider my
position about the biggest thing of all, whether I am to be inside it
or outside it. I used to think one could be an Anglo-Catholic and
really inside it; but if that was (to use an excellent phrase of your
own) only a Porch, I do not think I want a Porch, and certainly not a
Porch standing some way from the building. A Porch looks so silly,
standing all by itself in a field. Since then, unfortunately, there
have sprung up round it real ties and complications and difficulties;
difficulties that seemed almost duties. But I will not bother you
with all that now; and I particularly do not want you to bother
yourself, especially to answer this unless you want to. I know I have
your sympathy; and please God, I shall get things straight. Sometimes
one suspects the real obstacles have been the weaknesses one knows to
be wrong, and not the doubts that might be relatively right, or at
least rational. I suppose all this is a common story; and I hope so;
for wanting to be uncommon is really not one of my weaknesses. They
are worse, probably, but they are not that. There are other and in
the ordinary sense more cheerful things I would like to talk of;
things I think we could both do for causes we certainly agree about.
Meanwhile, thank you for everything; and be sure I think of you very
much.
Yours always,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
MY DEAR MAURICE,
This is the shortest, hastiest and worst written letter in the
world. It only tells you three things: (1) that I thank you a
thousand times for the book; (2) that I have to leave for America for
a month or two, earlier than I expected; But I am glad, for I shall
see something of Frances, without walls of work between us; and (3)
that I have pretty well made up my mind about the thing we talked
about. Fortunately, the thing we talked about can be found all over
the world.
Yours always,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
I will not write here of the American scene but will talk of it in a
later chapter along with the second tour Gilbert made in the States.
It seems best to complete now the story of his journey of the mind. A
reserved man tells more of himself indirectly than directly. Readers
of the _Autobiography_ complain that it is concerned with everything
in the world except G. K. Chesterton. You can certainly search its
pages in vain for any account of the process of his conversion: for
that you must look elsewhere: in the poems to Our lady, in _The
Catholic Church and Conversion_, in _The Well and the Shallows_, and
in the letters here to be quoted.
In _The Catholic Church and Conversion_ he sketches the three phases
through which most converts pass, all of which he had himself
experienced. He sums them up as "patronizing the Church, discovering
the Church, and running away from the Church." In the first phase a
man is taking trouble ("and taking trouble has certainly never been a
particular weakness of mine") to find out the fallacy in most
anti-Catholic ideas. In the second stage he is gradually discovering
the great ideas enshrined in the Church and hitherto hidden from him.
"It is these numberless glimpses of great ideas, that have been
hidden from the convert by the prejudices of his provincial culture,
that constitute the adventurous and varied second stage of the
conversion. It is, broadly speaking, the stage in which the man is
unconsciously trying to be converted. And the third stage is perhaps
the truest and most terrible. It is that in which the man is trying
not to be converted. He has come too near to the truth, and has
forgotten that truth is a magnet, with the powers of attraction and
repulsion."*
[* _The Catholic Church and Conversion_, p. 61.]
To a certain extent it is a fear which attaches to all sharp and
irrevocable decisions; it is suggested in all the old jokes about the
shakiness of the bridegroom at the wedding or the recruit who takes
the shilling and gets drunk partly to celebrate, but partly also to
forget it. But it is the fear of a fuller sacrament and a mightier
army. . . . *
[* Ibid., p. 65.]
The man has exactly the same sense of having committed or
compromised himself; or having been in a sense entrapped, even if he
is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is not so
much glad as simply terrified. It may be that this real psychological
experience has been misunderstood by stupider people and is
responsible for all that remains of the legend that Rome is a mere
trap. But that legend misses the whole point of the psychology. It is
not the Pope who has set the trap or the priests who have baited it.
The whole point of the position is that the trap is simply the truth.
The whole point is that the man himself has made his way towards the
trap of truth, and not the trap that has run after the man. All steps
except the last step he has taken eagerly on his own account, out of
interest in the truth; and even the last step, or the last stage,
only alarms him because it is so very true. If I may refer once more
to a personal experience, I may say that I for one was never less
troubled by doubts than in the last phase, when I was troubled by
fears. Before that final delay I had been detached and ready to
regard all sorts of doctrines with an open mind. Since that delay has
ended in decision, I have had all sorts of changes in mere mood; and
I think I sympathise with doubts and difficulties more than I did
before. But I had no doubts or difficulties just before. I had only
fears; fears of something that had the finality and simplicity of
suicide. But the more I thrust the thing into the back of my mind,
the more certain I grew of what Thing it was. And by a paradox that
does not frighten me now in the least, it may be that I shall never
again have such absolute assurance that the thing is true as I had
when I made my last effort to deny it.*
[* Ibid., pp. 62-3.]
The whole of Catholic theology can be justified, says Gilbert, if you
are allowed to start with those two ideas that the Church is
popularly supposed to oppose: Reason and Liberty. "To become a
Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. It
is so in exactly the same sense in which to recover from palsy is not
to leave off moving but to learn how to move." The convert has learnt
long before his conversion that the Church will not force him to
abandon his will. "But he is not unreasonably dismayed at the extent
to which he may have to use his will." This was the crux for Gilbert.
"There is in the last second of time or hairbreadth of space, before
the iron leaps to the magnet, an abyss full of all the unfathomable
forces of the universe. The space between doing and not doing such a
thing is so tiny and so vast."
Father Maturin said after his conversion that for at least ten years
before it the question had never been out of his mind for ten waking
minutes. It was about ten years since Gilbert had first talked to
Father O'Connor of his intention to join the Church, but in his case
thought on the subject could not have been so continuous. Still he
had time for patronising, discovery, and running away, all in
leisurely fashion. External efforts to help him had been worse than
useless: as he indicates in _The Catholic Church and Conversion_,
they had always put him back.
"Gilbert could not be hustled," says Maurice Baring of his whole
habit of mind and body.
"You could fluster Gilbert but not hustle him," says Father O'Connor.
They were both too wise to try.
In two letters Gilbert said that the two people who helped him most
at this time were Maurice Baring and Father Ronald Knox, who had both
gone through the same experience themselves.
Besides the positive mental processes of recognition, repulsion and
attraction exercised by the Church, Gilbert was affected to some
extent both by affection for the Church of England and disappointment
with it. The profound joy of his early conversion to Christianity was
linked with Anglicanism and so too were many friendships and the
continued attachment to it of Frances. But what he said to Maurice
Baring about a Porch is representative. Like Father Maturin he felt
he owed so much to his Anglican friends: he hated to stress overmuch
the revulsion from Anglicanism in the process of conversion. But it
did at this date contribute to the converging arguments.
He wrote to Maurice Baring:
So many thanks for the sermons, which I will certainly return as
you suggest. I had the other day a trying experience, and I think a
hard case of casuistry; I am not sure that I was right; but also not
by any means sure I was wrong. Long ago, before my present crisis, I
had promised somebody to take part in what I took to be a small
debate on labour. Too late, by my own carelessness, I found to my
horror it had swelled into a huge Anglo-Catholic Congress at the
Albert Hall. I tried to get out of it, but I was held to my promise.
Then I reflected that I could only write (as I was already writing)
to my Anglo-Catholic friends on the basis that I was one of them now
in doubt about continuing such; and that their conference in some
sense served the same purpose as their letters. What affected me
most, however, was that by my own fault I had put them into a hole.
Otherwise, I would not just now speak from or for their platform,
just as I could not (as yet at any rate) speak from or for yours. So
I spoke very briefly, saying something of what I think about social
ethics. Whether or not my decision was right, my experience was
curious and suggestive, though tragic; for I felt it like a farewell.
There was no doubt about the enthusiasm of those thousands of
Anglo-Catholics. But there was also no doubt, unless I am much
mistaken, that many of them besides myself would be Roman Catholics
rather than accept things they are quite likely to be asked to
accept--for instance, by the Lambeth Conference. For though my own
distress, as in most cases I suppose, has much deeper grounds than
clerical decisions, yet if I cannot stay where I am, it will be a
sort of useful symbol that the English Church has done something
decisively Protestant or Pagan. I mean that to those to whom I cannot
give my spiritual biography, I can say that the insecurity I felt in
Anglicanism was typified in the Lambeth Conference. I am at least
sure that much turns on that Conference, if not for me, for large
numbers of those people at the Albert Hall. A young Anglo-Catholic
curate has just told me that the crowd there cheered all references
to the Pope, and laughed at every mention of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. It's a queer state of things. I am concerned most,
however, about somebody I value more than the Archbishop of
Canterbury; Frances, to whom I owe much of my own faith, and to whom
therefore (as far as I can see my way) I also owe every decent chance
for the controversial defence of her faith. If her side can convince
me, they have a right to do so; if not, I shall go hot and strong to
convince her. I put it clumsily, but there is a point in my mind.
Logically, therefore, I must await answers from Waggett and Gore as
well as Knox and McNabb; and talk the whole thing over with her, and
then act as I believe.
This is a dusty political sort of letter, with nothing in it but
what I think and nothing of what I feel. For that side of it, I can
only express myself by asking for your prayers.
The accident of his having to speak at this Congress, where he was
received with enormous enthusiasm, probably led to a fuller analysis
of this element in his thought. I put here a letter he wrote to
Maurice Baring soon after his conversion, because it sums up the
Anglican question as he finally saw it:
Feb. 14th, 1923
Please forgive me for the delay; but I have been caught in a
cataract of letters and work in connection with the new paper we are
trying to start; and am now dictating this under conditions that make
it impossible for it to resemble anything so personal and intimate as
the great unwritten epistle to which you refer. But I will note down
here very hurriedly and in a more impersonal way, some of the matters
that have affected me in relation to the great problem.
To begin with, I am shy of giving one of my deepest reasons because
it is hard to put it without offence, and I am sure it is the wrong
method to offend the wavering Anglo-Catholic. But I believe one of my
strongest motives was mixed up with the idea of honour. I feel there
is something mean about not making complete confession and
restitution after a historic error and slander. It is not the same
thing to withdraw the charges against Rome one by one, or restore the
traditions to Canterbury one by one. Suppose a young prig refuses to
live with his father or his friend or his wife, because wine is drunk
in the house or there are Greek statues in the hall. Suppose he goes
off on his own and develops broader ideas. On the day he drinks his
first glass of wine, I think it is essential to his honour that he
should go back to his father or his friend and say, "You are right
and I was wrong, and we will drink wine together." It is not
consonant with his honour that he should set up a house of his own
with wine and statues and every parallel particular, and still treat
the other as if he were in the wrong. That is mean because it is
making the best of both; it is combining the advantages of being
right with the advantages of having been wrong. Any analogy is
imperfect; but I think you see what I mean.
The larger version of this is that England has really got into so
wrong a state, with its plutocracy and neglected populace and
materialistic and Servile morality, that it must take a sharp turn
that will be a sensational turn. No _evolution_ into Catholicism will
have that moral effect. Christianity is the religion of repentance;
it stands against modern fatalism and pessimistic futurism mainly in
saying that a man can go back. If we do decidedly go back it will
show that religion is alive. For the rest, I do not say much about
the details of continuity and succession, because the truth is they
did not much affect me. What I see is that we cannot complain of
England suffering from being Protestant and at the same time claim
that she has always been Catholic. That there has always been a High
Church Party is true; that there has always been an Anglo-Catholic
Party may be true, but I am not so sure of it. But there is one
matter arising from that which I do think important. Even the High
Church Party, even the Anglo-Catholic Party only confronts a
particular heresy called Protestantism upon particular points. It
defends ritual rightly or even sacramentalism rightly, because these
are the things the Puritans attacked. If it is not the heresy of an
age, at least it is only the anti-heresy of an age. But since I have
been a Catholic, I have become conscious of being in a much vaster
arsenal, full of arms against countless other potential enemies. The
Church, as the Church and not merely as ordinary opinion, has
something to say to philosophies which the merely High Church has
never had occasion to think about. If the next movement is the very
reverse of Protestantism, the Church will have something to say about
it; or rather has already something to say about it. You might unite
all High Churchmen on the High Church quarrel, but what authority is
to unite them when the devil declares his next war on the world?
Another quality that impresses me is the power of being decisive
first and being proved right afterwards. This is exactly the quality
a supernatural power would have; and I know nothing else in modern
religion that has it. For instance, there was a time when I should
have thought psychical enquiry the most reasonable thing in the
world, and rather favourable to religion. I was afterwards convinced,
by experience and not merely faith, that spiritualism is a practical
poison. Don't people see that _when_ that is found in experience, a
prodigious prestige accrues to the authority which, long before the
experiment, did not pretend to enquire but simply said, "Drop it."
We feel that the authority did not discover; it knew. There are a
hundred other things of which that story is true, in my own
experience. But the High Churchman has a perfect right to be a
spiritualistic enquirer; only he has not a right to claim that his
authority knew beforehand the truth about spiritualistic enquiry.
Of course there are a hundred things more to say; indeed the
greatest argument for Catholicism is exactly what makes it so hard to
argue for it. It is the scale and multiplicity of the forms of truth
and help that it has to offer. And perhaps, after all, the only thing
that you and I can really say with profit is exactly what you
yourself suggested; that we are men who have talked to a good many
men about a good many things, and seen something of the world and the
philosophies of the world and that we have not the shadow of a doubt
about what was the wisest act of our lives.
This letter, as we have seen, was written afterwards. Meanwhile the
story of the last slow but by no means uncertain steps is best told
in a series of undated letters to Father Ronald Knox:
DEAR FATHER KNOX,
It is hard not to have a silly feeling that demons, in the form of
circumstances, get in the way of what concerns one most, and I have
been distracted with details for which I have to be responsible, in
connection with the _New Witness_, which is in a crisis about which
shareholders etc. have to be consulted. I can't let my brother's
paper, that stands for all he believed in, go without doing all I
can; and I am trying to get it started again, with Belloc to run it
if possible. But the matter of our meeting has got into every chink
of my thoughts, even the pauses of talk on practical things. I could
not explain myself at that meeting; and I want to try again now.
I could not explain what I mean about my wife without saying much
more. I see in principle it is not on the same level as the true
Church; for nothing can be on the same level as God. But it is on
quite a different level from social sentiments about friends and
family. I have been a rottenly irresponsible person till I began to
wear the iron ring of Catholic responsibilities. But I really have
felt a responsibility about her, more serious than affection, let
alone passion. First, because she gave me my first respect for
sacramental Christianity; second, because she is one of the good
who mysteriously suffer. . . . .
I have, however, a more practical reason for returning to this
point. So far as my own feelings go, I think I might rightly make
application to be instructed as soon as possible; but I should not
like to take so serious a step without reopening the matter with her,
which I could do by the end of a week. I have had no opportunity
before, because she has only just recovered from an illness, and is
going away for a few days. But at about the end of next week, say,
everything ought to be ready. Meanwhile I will write to you again, as
I ought to have done before, but this tangle of business ties me up
terribly just now. Perhaps you could tell me how I could arrange
matters with some priest or religious in London, whose convenience it
would suit if I came up once or twice a week, or whatever is
required; or give me the address of someone to write to, if that is
the correct way. There are priests at High Wycombe which is nearer;
but I imagine they are very busy parochial clergy.
I had meant to write to you about the convictions involved in a
more abstract way, but I fear I have filled my letter with one
personal point. But, as I say, I will write to you again about the
other matters; and as they are more intellectual and less emotional,
I hope I may be a little more coherent.
Yours very sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
P.S. This has been delayed even longer than I thought, for business
bothers of my own and the paper's, plus finishing a book and all my
journalism, are bewildering me terribly.
DEAR FATHER KNOX,
Please excuse this journalistic paper, but the letter-block seems
undiscoverable at this time of night. I ought to have written before;
but we have been in some family trouble; my father is very ill, and
as he is an old man, my feelings are with him and my mother in a way
more serious than anything except the matter of our correspondence.
Essentially, of course, it does not so much turn the current of my
thoughts as deepen it; to see a man so many million times better than
I am, in every way, and one to whom I owe everything, under such a
shadow makes me feel, on top of all my particular feelings, the
shadow that lies on us all. I can't tell you what I feel of course;
but I hope I may ask for your prayers for my people and for me. My
father is the very best man I ever knew of that generation that never
understood the new need of a spiritual authority; and lives almost
perfectly by the sort of religion men had when rationalism was
rational. I think he was always subconsciously prepared for the next
generation having less theology than he has; and is rather puzzled at
its having more. But I think he understood my brother's conversion
better than my mother did; she is more difficult, and of course I
cannot bother her just now. However, my trouble has a practical side,
for which I originally mentioned it. As this may bring me to London
more than I thought, it seems possible I might go there after all,
instead of Wycombe, if I knew to whom to go. Also I find I stupidly
destroyed your letter with the names of the priests at Wycombe to
whom you referred me. Would it bother you very much to send me the
names again, and any alternative London ones that occur to you; and I
will let you know my course of action then. Please forgive the
disorder of my writing--and feeling.
Yours sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
DEAR FATHER KNOX,
I was just settling down three days ago to write a full reply to
your last very kind letter, which I should have answered long before,
when I received the wire that called me instantly to town. My father
died on Monday; and since then I have been doing the little I can for
my mother; but even that little involves a great deal of
business--the least valuable sort of help. I will not attempt to tell
you now all that this involves in connection with my deeper feelings
and intentions; for I only send you this interim scribble as an
excuse for delaying the letter I had already begun; and which nothing
less than this catastrophe would have prevented me finishing. I hope
to finish it in a few days. I am not sure whether I shall then be
back in Beaconsfield; but if so it will be at a new address:
Top Meadow
Beaconsfield.
Yours in haste,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
DEAR FATHER KNOX,
I feel horribly guilty in not having written before, and I do most
earnestly hope you have not allowed my delay to interfere with any of
your own arrangements. I have had a serious and very moving talk with
my wife; and she is only too delighted at the idea of your visit in
itself; in fact she really wants to know you very much.
Unfortunately, it does not seem very workable at the time to which I
suppose you referred. I imagine it more or less corresponds to next
week; and we have only one spare bedroom yet, which is occupied by a
nurse who is giving my wife a treatment that seems to be doing her
good and which I don't want to stop if I can help it. I am sure you
will believe that my regret about this difficulty is really not the
conventional apology; though heaven knows all sorts of apologies are
due to you. Touching the other idea of Lady Lovat's most generous
invitation I am not so sure, as that again depends at the moment on
the treatment; but of course I shall let Lady Lovat know very soon in
any case; and make other arrangements, as you suggested. In our
conversation my wife was all that I hope you will some day know her
to be; she is incapable of wanting me to do anything but what I think
right; and admits the same possibility for herself: but it is much
more of a wrench for her, for she has been able to practise her
religion in complete good faith; which my own doubts have prevented
me from doing.
I will write again very soon.
Yours sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
P.S. I am ashamed to say this has been finished fully forty-eight
hours after I meant it to go, owing to executor business. Nobody so
unbusinesslike as I am ought to be busy.
DEAR FATHER KNOX,
This is only a wild and hasty line to show I have not forgotten,
and to ask you if it would be too late if I let you know in a day or
two, touching your generous suggestion about your vacation. I shall
know for certain, I think, at latest by the end of the week; but just
at the moment it depends on things still uncertain, about a nurse who
is staying here giving my wife a treatment of radiant heat--one would
hardly think needed in this weather; but it seems to be doing her
good, I am thankful to say. If this is pushing your great patience
too far, please do not hesitate to make other arrangements if you
wish to; and I shall no doubt be able to do the same. But I should
love to accept your suggestion if possible.
Yours sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
DEAR FATHER KNOX,
Just as I am emerging from the hurricane of business I mentioned to
you, I find myself under a promise a year old to go and lecture for a
week in Holland; and I write this almost stepping on to the boat. I
don't in the least want to go; but I suppose the great question is
there as elsewhere. Indeed, I hear it is something of a reconquered
territory; some say a third of this heroic Calvinist state is now
Catholic. I have no time to write properly; but the truth is that
even before so small a journey I have a queer and perhaps
superstitious feeling that I should like to repeat to you my
intention of following the example of the worthy Calvinists, please
God; so that you could even cite it if there were ever need in a good
cause. I will write to you again and more fully about the business of
instruction when I return, which should be in about ten days.
Yours always sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
DEAR FATHER KNOX,
I ought to have written long ago to tell you what I have done about
the most practical of business matters. I have again been torn in
pieces by the wars of the _New Witness_; but I have managed to have
another talk with my wife, after which I have written to our old
friend Father O'Connor and asked him to come here, as he probably
can, from what I hear. I doubt whether I can possibly put in words
why I feel sure this is the right thing, not so much for my sake as
for hers. We talk about misunderstandings; but I think it is possible
to understand too well for comfort; certainly too well for my powers
of psychological description. Frances is just at the point where Rome
acts both as the positive and the negative magnet; a touch would turn
her either way; almost (against her will) to hatred, but with the
right touch to a faith far beyond my reach. I know Father O'Connor's
would be the touch that does not startle, because she knows him and
is fond of him; and the only thing she asked of me was to send for
him. If he cannot come, of course I shall take other action and let
you know. I doubt if most people could make head or tail of this
hasty scrawl: but I think you will understand.
Yours sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
Father Knox wrote on July 17, 1922, "I'm awfully glad to hear that
you've sent for Father O'Connor and that you think he's likely to be
available. I must say that, in the story, Father Brown's powers of
neglecting his parish always seemed to me even more admirable than
Dr. Watson's powers of neglecting his practice; so I hope this trait
was drawn from the life."
Father O'Connor has described the two days before the reception: "On
Thursday morning, on one of our trips to the village, I told Mrs.
Chesterton: 'There is only one thing troubling Gilbert about the
great step--the effect it is going to have on you.' 'Oh! I shall be
infinitely relieved. You cannot imagine how it fidgets Gilbert to
have anything on his mind. The last three months have been
exceptionally trying. I should be only too glad to come with him, if
God in His mercy would show the way clear, but up to now He has not
made it clear enough to me to justify such a step.' So I was able to
reassure Gilbert that afternoon. We discussed at large such special
points as he wished, and then I told him to read through the Penny
Catechism to make sure there were no snags to a prosperous passage.
It was a sight for men and angels all the Friday to see him wandering
in and out of the house with his fingers in the leaves of the little
book, resting it on his forearm whilst he pondered with his head on
one side."
The ceremony took place in a kind of shed with corrugated iron roof
and wooden walls--a part of the Railway Hotel, for at this time
Beaconsfield had no Catholic Church. Father Ignatius Rice, O.S.B.,
another old and dear friend, came over from the Abbey at Douai, to
join Father O'Connor at breakfast at the Inn and they afterwards
walked up together to Top Meadow. What follows is from notes made by
my husband of a conversation with Father Rice. They found Gilbert in
an armchair reading the catechism "pulling faces and making noises as
he used to do when reading."
He got up and stuffed the catechism in his pocket. At lunch he
drank water and poured wine for everyone else. About three they set
out for the Church. Suddenly Father O'Connor asked G.K. if he had
brought the Ritual. G.K. plunged his hand in his pocket, pulled out a
threepenny shocker with complete absence of embarrassment, and went
on searching till at last he found the prayer book.
While G.K. was making his confession to Father O'Connor, Frances
and Father Rice went out of the chapel and sat on the yokels' bench
in the bar of the inn. She was weeping.
After the baptism the two priests came out and left Gilbert and
Frances inside. Father Rice went back for something he had forgotten
and he saw them coming down the aisle. She was still weeping, and
Gilbert had his arm round her comforting her. . . .
He wrote the sonnet on his conversion that day. He was in brilliant
form for the rest of the day, quoting poetry and jesting in the
highest spirits. . . .
He joined the Church "to restore his innocence." Sin was almost the
greatest reality to him. He became a Catholic because of the Church's
practical power of dealing with sin.
Immediately, he wrote to his mother and to Maurice Baring, who had
anxiously feared he had perhaps offended Gilbert, so long was it
since he had heard from him.
MY DEAREST MOTHER,
I write this (with the worst pen in South Bucks) to tell you
something before I write about it to anyone else; something about
which we shall probably be in the position of the two bosom friends
at Oxford, who "never differed except in opinion." You have always
been so wise in not judging people by their opinions, but rather the
opinions by the people. It is in one sense a long story by this time;
but I have come to the same conclusion that Cecil did about needs of
the modern world in religion and right dealing, and I am now a
Catholic in the same sense as he, having long claimed the name in its
Anglo-Catholic sense. I am not going to make a foolish fuss of
reassuring you about things I am sure you never doubted; these things
do not hurt any relations between people as fond of each other as we
are; any more than they ever made any difference to the love between
Cecil and ourselves. But there are two things I should like to tell
you, in case you do not realise them through some other impression. I
have thought about you, and all that I owe to you and my father, not
only in the way of affection, but of the ideals of honour and freedom
and charity and all other good things you always taught me: and I am
not conscious of the smallest break or difference in those ideals;
but only of a new and necessary way of fighting for them. I think, as
Cecil did, that the fight for the family and the free citizen and
everything decent must now be waged by [the] one fighting form of
Christianity. The other is that I have thought this out for myself
and not in a hurry of feeling. It is months since I saw my Catholic
friends and years since I talked to them about it. I believe it is
the truth. I must end now, you know with how much love; for the post
is going.
Always your loving son,
GILBERT.
DEAR MAURICE,
My abominable delay deserves every penalty conceivable, hanging,
burning and boiling in oil; but really not so inconceivable an idea
as that I should be offended with you at any time (let alone after
all you have done in this matter) however thoroughly you might be
justified in being offended with me. Really and truly my delay,
indefensible as it is, was due to a desire and hope of writing you a
letter quite different from all those I have had to write to other
people; a very long and intimate letter, trying to tell you all about
this wonderful business, in which you have helped me so much more
than anyone else. The only other person I meant to write to in the
same style is Father Knox; and his has been delayed in the same
topsy-turvy way. I am drowning in whirlpools of work and worry over
the _New Witness_ which nearly went bankrupt for good this week. But
worry does not worry so much as it did before . . . Unless it is
adding insult to injury, I shall send the long letter after all. This
I send off instantly on receipt of yours. Please forgive me; you see
I humiliate myself by using your stamped envelope.
Yours always,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
This sense that the Church was needed to fight for the world was
very strong in Gilbert when he hailed it to his mother as the "one
fighting form of Christianity." In the _New Witness_ he answered near
this time a newspaper suggestion that the Church ought to "move with
the times."
The Cities of the Plain might have remarked that the heavens above
them did not altogether fit in with their own high civilisation and
social habits. They would be right. Oddly enough, however, when
symmetry was eventually restored, it was not the heavens that had
been obliged to adapt themselves. . . .
The Church cannot move with the times; simply because the times are
not moving. The Church can only stick in the mud with the times, and
rot and stink with the times. In the economic and social world, as
such, there is no activity except that sort of automatic activity
that is called decay; the withering of the high Powers of freedom and
their decomposition into the aboriginal soil of slavery. In that way
the world stands much at the same stage as it did at the beginning of
the Dark Ages. And the Church has the same task as it had at the
beginning of the Dark Ages; to save all the light and liberty that
can be saved, to resist the downward drag of the world, and to wait
for better days. So much a real Church would certainly do; but a real
Church might be able to do more. It might make its Dark Ages
something more than a seed-time; it might make them the very reverse
of dark. It might present its more human ideal in such abrupt and
attractive a contrast to the inhuman trend of the time, as to inspire
men suddenly for one of the moral revolutions of history; so that men
now living shall not taste of death until they have seen justice
return.
We do not want, as the newspapers say, a Church that will move with
the world. We want a Church that will move the world. We want one
that will move it away from many of the things towards which it is
now moving; for instance, the Servile State. It is by that test that
history will really judge, of any Church, whether it is the real
Church or no.