Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

by Michael Coren

  Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

  Michael Coren

  © Michael Coren, 1990

  Michael Coren has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1989 by Jonathan Cape, Ltd.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  To my father, Philip Coren, still my best of men

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  I -The God with the Golden Key

  II - The Napoleon of Campden Hill

  III - Learning and Lunacy

  IV - In Work and In Love

  V - Gilbert Chesterton: Journalist

  VI - A Little Suffolk Priest and a Little London Suburb

  VII - The Man Who Was Orthodox

  VIII - Marconi and the Jews

  IX - Trauma and Travels

  X - Best of Enemies, Best of Friends

  XI - But We Will End with a Bang

  Bibliography

  Preface

  I first became interested in and intrigued by G.K. Chesterton when I was a schoolboy and read the Father Brown stories. They were bright, bold and brilliant. Later, after having read The Everlasting Man and The Man Who Was Thursday, I searched for a study of Chesterton’s life and discovered that few existed and those that did labeled him an anti-Semite and worse. I could not reconcile such sensitive prose with such barbaric views. My studies of Gilbert then began.

  Years later, in the summer of 1986, on a quintessentially English afternoon, I walked across an East Anglian field with a dear old friend. As we often did on our walks, we discussed Chesterton, literature, my career, still in its inchoate stages, the state of the world. I had just finished writing my second book and my friend asked what I would write next. I answered that I did not know; that Chesterton was a love of mine, but I felt a bit too young to consider such a project. He looked down an aquiline nose at me, registered a hybrid of disgust and disappointment and told me to begin at once. I did.

  The absence of notes in the book is a deliberate policy. In my jejune way I have attempted to follow in the tradition of my subject, and paint a picture as well as tell a story of a great life. For Chesterton the use of copious notes in a biography detracted from the central theme and purpose. On this project, though not for biographies in general, I concur with him. Hence sources are either quoted in the main body of the text, or referred to in the bibliography.

  The American edition of Gilbert differs from the British edition in several ways. The publisher requested that I include another chapter dealing with the relationship between Gilbert and Bernard Shaw. I have also extended the final chapter, concentrating on Gilbert’s time in the United States, and dwelling on the final months in his life. There were also, inevitably, some blemishes in the British edition which have been erased for the more discerning American reader.

  I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to the following people: Aidan Mackey, Chestertonian of Chestertonians, who provided time, sources, beer and advice; I shall forever be in his debt. I should like to record my appreciation of the trust the late Miss Dorothy Collins showed me in giving me access to photographs and papers. The following people have also played a vital role in bringing this book to be: I give thanks to Dr. Tessa Beeching, Colin Welland, Monsignor F. Miles, Rev. Henry Reed, Rt. Hon. Kenneth Baker, George Smith, The Weiner Library, Col. John Hayes, Gregory MacDonald, Paul Goodman, Paul Pinto, Professor David Regan, Sir Stephen Hayhurst, George Marlin, Father Bocard Sewell, Capt. Moshe Ben-Avi, Iain Benson, Susan Walker, Judith Lee, J.B. Priestley, my editor at Paragon House, Donald Fehr, my parents Philip and Shiela Coren, my wife Bernadette and son Daniel Avi Gilbert.

  Michael Coren

  Toronto, Canada

  August 1989

  I -The God with the Golden Key

  When the inevitable came, it came with a bitter suddenness. Gilbert had completed his Autobiography early in 1936, and his health was even then under severe strain. Friends were relieved that the book of memoirs was finally at an end; they did not expect the man to see out much more than another year. Dorothy Collins, ever aware of the problems which Gilbert was facing, took him and Frances to France, to visit the shrines of Lourdes and Lisieux. It was not a simple sight-seeing exercise. From Lisieux he wrote a letter, his handwriting by this time almost impossible to read, and said he was presently “under the shadow of the shrine”. He sang a good deal on the trip, his repertoire including selections from Gilbert and Sullivan and lines of lyrical poetry. The two ladies listened sympathetically. Lourdes appealed to his Catholicism and his love of continental Europe. He did not find it too commercial and relished its comfort and curious ordinariness.

  On returning home Gilbert found that his study was ready and he and Dorothy Collins moved in. By this time however Gilbert’s ill health was too serious to ignore; his pain and suffering was for the first time controlling his actions and dictating his way of life. On March 18th he delivered his final radio talk, entitled “We Will End With A Bang”. In a parody of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” he stated, “And they may end with a whimper/But we will end with a bang”. But work was becoming virtually impossible. He would walk to his desk, sit down, and after increasingly shorter periods of time would fall asleep. The doctors knew of Gilbert’s bronchitis and fever attacks; they also knew that the fundamental problem was the great man’s heart. Heart trouble had been diagnosed years ago, and now with age and weight and excess compounding the difficulties there was little that could be done. Frances wrote to Father O’Connor

  12th June, 1936

  My Dear Padre,

  In case you hear the news from elsewhere I write myself to tell you that G. is very seriously ill. The main trouble is heart and kidney and an amount of fluid in the body that sets up a dropsical condition. I have had a specialist to see him, who says that though he is desperately ill there is a fighting chance. I think possibly he is a little better today. He has had Extreme Unction this morning and received Holy Communion.

  Will you, as I know you will, pray for him and get others to do so and say some Masses for him.

  Frances was adamant that the press should not know of or exploit Gilbert’s illness. She personally asked editors not to publicise the fact, anxious that her husband should have peace and quiet, also quite terrified that the probability of death should become even more real and immediate through its publicity. She was a brave, terrified and loving woman. He did fight back to something like full consciousness at one point, proclaiming in his storm before the lull that, “The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side.” Frances had experienced the 1916 recovery, thought of it as a miracle and “did not dare” to hope this would be yet another. She kept vigil by his bed, and prayed.

  On June 12th Monsignor Smith, the parish priest, arrived at Top Meadow to anoint Gilbert with chrism and to give communion. Gilbert was partly conscious for the rite, as he had been for brief periods over the previous two days. Father Vincent McNabb followed soon afterwards. He sang the Salve Regina over Gilbert, the hymn which is sung over dying Dominican priests; how appropriate for the biographer of St Thomas Aquinas, the jewel of the Dominican order. He saw Gilbert’s pen lying by the side of the bed, blessed and kissed it and then returned to London.

  On the night of 13th June he seemed a little better, almost calm and clear as he struggled to cope with his breathing. In one of these fleeting moments of alertness he managed to see Frances, and said simply “Hello, my darling.” Turning to Dorothy Collins, who was also in the room, he said “Hello, my dear.” He
was to speak no more, and slipped under a blanket of painful and unnatural sleep. His condition grew worse through the night, and around 10.15 on the morning of 14th June 1936, Gilbert’s soul passed gently from this earth.

  Because of Frances’s efforts to keep the newspapers at a safe distance the news was all the more shocking. She wrote to Father O’Connor: “Our beloved Gilbert passed away this morning at 10.15. He was unconscious for some time before but had received the Last Sacraments and Extreme Unction whilst he was still in possession of his understanding …” Tributes were not long in coming. E.C. Bentley spoke of the genius of his friend on the radio, Cardinal Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) cabled “Holy Father deeply grieved death Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton devoted son Holy Church gifted Defender of the Catholic Faith. His Holiness offers paternal sympathy people of England assures prayers dear departed, bestows Apostolic Benediction.” George Bernard Shaw wrote to Frances immediately on hearing the news, asking if she was financially secure and lamenting that he, eighteen years the senior of Gilbert, should out-live his friend and foe. Maurice Baring, scribbling painfully in pencil, worked through his shaking palsy to write: “Too paralysed with neuritis and ‘agitance’ to hold pen or pencil. Saw incredible news in Times. Then your letter came. All my prayers and thought are with you. I’m not allowed to travel except once a week to see doctor, but I’ll have a mass said here.” Written messages of respect and sorrow came from J.M. Barrie, Ronald Knox, Eric Gill and a host of admirers both known and unknown to Gilbert. Writing to a companion, Hugh Kingsmill stated: “My friend Hesketh Pearson was staying with me when I read of Chesterton’s death. I told him of it through the bathroom door, and he sent up a hollow groan which must have echoed that morning all over England.” Gilbert had stridden both literary and social worlds, and both registered their shock and regret. To some the loss was agonising and confusing; a friend and ally in the most important of all conflicts. To others a gracious opponent and witty antagonist had left them, leaving a vacuum impossible to fill. To many the response on hearing of his death was to say “What will we ever do without him?”

  The sun greeted those attending Gilbert’s funeral. It was very hot, and the town of Beaconsfield bathed in the glow of fine weather. Such conditions had not always suited Gilbert’s huge frame when he was alive; and the sheer size and weight of his coffin caused logistical problems for the undertakers. Baring, Gilbert’s closest friend during the last decade, could not attend. “I wish I could come down tomorrow,” he wrote, “but I cannot go even to mass here on Sundays because directly I get into a church where there are people I have a sort of attack of palpitations and have to come out at once …” But the small church of St Teresa’s near the railway was more than full. Hilaire Belloc had left his Sussex home at dawn to be in time. He was found after the funeral at a nearby hotel, crying tears of isolation.

  Such was Gilbert’s popularity that the procession took a prolonged route, passing through the town so that last respects could be paid. William Titterton, friend and biographer, noted

  Now I am at his peaceful funeral at Beaconsfield in the great company of his friends. (I have gone down by train with some of them, arguing furiously and joyously all the way about his views on machinery.) I see the coffin that holds all that is mortal of my captain. I pass with it along the little town’s winding ways. It is a roundabout way we go. For the police of the place will have it that Gilbert Chesterton shall make his last earthly journey past the homes of the people who knew him and loved him best. And there they were, crowding the pavements, and all, like us, bereaved. Yet it was almost a gala day. There was no moping, no gush of tears. Nay, there was laughter as one of us recalled him and his heroic jollity to another’s ready remembrance. A policeman at the gate of the cemetery said to Edward Macdonald, “Most of the lads are on duty, else they would all have been here.” As Edward Macdonald says, “He was the Lord of the Manor. And he never knew it.” So we left him.

  There were some tears though. Young Harold Soref, later to become a Conservative Member of Parliament, had helped to bring back the Debater magazine at St Paul’s School, inspired by the heady days of Gilbert’s time at the institution. He attended the funeral, and was seen to weep. An elderly man approached the teenager and told him that he shouldn’t be embarrassed by his tears. Soref replied that he wasn’t, mainly because they were due to his chronic hay-fever, accentuated by the hot weather. It was the sort of humour that Gilbert would have appreciated.

  On 27th June at Westminster Cathedral a Solemn Requiem was held. The mass was sung by Father O’Connor, aided by Father McNabb, and Ronald Knox gave an eloquent and fitting eulogy. Through all of this Frances Chesterton was resolute, acting in the faith that she would have only to live out a few more years before she joined her husband. She wrote a moving, touchingly sincere note to Father O’Connor: “I find it increasingly difficult to keep going. The feeling that he needs me no longer is almost unbearable. How do lovers love without each other? We were always lovers …” She seemed to miss the children she could never have more and more, surrounding herself with other people’s offspring and spending large amounts of time with them. She was not a woman to take herself out of the living world and wait ascetically for death. She had never been an intellectual in the Chestertonian manner, nor had she been a socialiser in the Chestertonian manner. For the woman behind the man, and that is most certainly what she was, life would now be a struggle. She was present when Eric Gill designed a crucifixion headstone for Gilbert’s grave, and for the publication of Gilbert’s Autobiography in November 1936.

  In his will he left £2,000 to Dorothy Collins, £500 to the local Catholic church and priest, and the rest to his wife. She also took over Top Meadow, their beloved home, which was eventually to transfer to the Converts’ Aid Society, an organisation to take care of Anglican priests who convert to Roman Catholicism. It is also a shrine for readers of Gilbert Chesterton, and serves both purposes rather well. Gilbert’s books and papers were left to his wife and to Dorothy Collins.

  Frances died in 1938, two years after her husband. George Bernard Shaw wondered if the cause of death had been “widowhood,” and he may have been correct. The doctors said it was cancer. She suffered, like her husband, with tolerance and complete confidence in her future life. Friend and biographer Maisie Ward was told by one who saw Frances in hospital shortly before her death that “Her arms were spread out and there was a lovely expression of happiness on her face. I felt that Gilbert had come to tell her everything was all right and to welcome her.”

  II - The Napoleon of Campden Hill

  Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment of private judgement, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formalities of the Church of England in the little church of St George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominates the ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian.

  Thus begins Gilbert’s Autobiography. The specific place of the birth was 32 Sheffield Terrace, a hauntingly quiet and attractive little road between Holland Park and Kensington Palace Gardens. It was in this geographical setting that Father Brown would face many dangers and the fictional hero of one of Gilbert’s finest works would come to life.

  The Chestertons sometimes claimed to have originated in the quaint Cambridgeshire village of the same name, nowadays clearly signposted to those entering the university city by road. Gilbert was always sceptical about the claim, aware that several other small towns and villages existed under the name Chesterton and that the family clan tradition was founded on little other than imaginative reasoning and uninformed guesswork. Writing an introduction to a volume on Old Cambridge he stated: “
I have never been to Cambridge except as an admiring visitor; I have never been to Chesterton at all, either from a sense of unworthiness or from a faint superstitious feeling that I might be fulfilling a prophecy in the countryside. Anyone with a sense of the savour of the old English country rhymes and tales will share my vague alarm that the steeple might crack or the market cross fall down, for a smaller thing than the coincidence of a man named Chesterton going to Chesterton.”

  Another romantic notion which clung to the Chesterton family mentality until the early years of this century was that an ancestor was a close friend, supporter and drinking companion of the Prince Regent. The story had it that the Chesterton in question squandered his time and fortune away in the profligate company of the “fat friend” who was soon to be King of England. That a Chesterton of the period did fall foul of the debtors’ laws of the period and go to prison is in some doubt; the letters he wrote from his cell certainly existed and were read to the family well into the nineteenth century, but scholars of the Regency period have yet to discover any princely companion by the name of Chesterton. Gilbert rarely spoke about the issue with a serious demeanour.

  Captain George Laval Chesterton did exist. What we know of his life makes for fascinating reading. He served in the Peninsular War, where Wellington established his fame, and then joined the British army and its loyalist and Indian allies in the war of 1812 against the Americans. The Captain observed the intricate details of military life during the age of Waterloo, recalling hardened soldiers being “made ill by the sight of a private receiving five hundred strokes of the lash.” A professional fighting man, he was apparently unhappy with his treatment at the hands of the British authorities, offered his services as a mercenary in the South American rebellion which took place soon after and finally settled for being made governor of Cold Bath Fields Prison. It was here that he became friendly with the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and her fellow social critic Charles Dickens. Maisie Ward recorded that a relative of the family remembered the line “I cried, Dickens cried, we all cried” from a letter from Captain Chesterton; alas, the complete document no longer exists. Two books were left for posterity: an autobiography, and Revelations of Prison Life. Both are incisive views into the man and his time, neither rival or predict the literary genius of the Chesterton to come.