Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

by Michael Coren

  The axe falls on the wood in thuds, “God, God.”

  The cry of the rook, “God,” answers it,

  The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice

  of the brook, says the same name;

  All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby,

  Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap Repeat in a thousand languages —

  “God.”

  He was beginning to embrace the outer boundaries of orthodox Christianity, not because of a cold decision when all around was contentment and satisfaction, but because he was floating in an ocean of uncertainty. Literature, writers, old friends and the control of inner feelings could only place a hold on depression; a greater bond was needed if the tranquillity was going to continue. There were no striking appearances or resounding orders — his full conversion was to come later — but there was a constant ringing in his ears.

  Whether Gilbert approached God as an end, as the goal of mankind, the inevitable conclusion to any search for trust; or as a means, a route to happiness, is impossible to judge from his actions and writings at this stage in his life. Orthodox theology would reject the latter approach as selfish; one should ask and pray to God for what one can do for Him, not what He can do for you. God is not a path to fulfilment, He is fulfilment. C.S. Lewis, a devotee of Gilbert’s, was to say that if God was seen as a road, he was not seen at all. Gilbert saw God, but he saw through the twisted vision of pain. Only when he regained his sense of equilibrium was he to explore his Christianity from a different standpoint, and embrace it wholeheartedly. Until then he would constantly philosophise

  Man is a spark flying upwards. God is everlasting.

  Who are we, to whom this cup of human life has been given, to ask for more?

  Let us love mercy and walk humbly.

  What is man, that thou regardest him?

  Man is a star unquenchable. God is in him incarnate.

  His life is planned upon a scale colossal, of which he sees glimpses.

  Let him dare all things, claim all things:

  He is the son of Man, who shall come in clouds of glory.

  I saw these two strands mingling to make the religion of man.

  In May 1895 Gilbert reached the age of twenty-one, full of the inquiring intensity so common in intellectually minded men and women of that age. He stood a little over six feet two inches, and was still a slim man with a tendency to stand with his hands in his pockets and his stomach pushed a little forward, his head slightly back from the rest of his body. With a crumpled waistcoat, badly knotted bow-tie and hair hastily combed he resembled a youthful professor of the absent-minded variety. He smiled often, but when he adopted a serious face it seemed as if all of the cares in the world rested on those young, slender shoulders.

  His mother wrote to him on his birthday, enclosing some money for expenses and any books he may wish to buy (he was staying in Oxford). “My heart is full of thanks to God for the day you were born and for the day on which you attain your manhood. Words will not express my pride and joy in your boyhood which has been without stain and a source of pleasure and good to so many — I wish you a long happy and useful life. May God grant it. Nothing I can say or give would express my love and pleasure in having such a son … Gilbert himself was delighted at his coming of age. He wrote to Bentley, describing the event as “really rather good fun.” He continued

  It is one of those occasions when you remember the existence of all sorts of miscellaneous people. A cousin of mine, Alice Chesterton, daughter of my uncle Arthur, writes me a delightfully cordial letter from Berlin, where she is a governess; and better still, my mother has received a most amusing letter from an old nurse of mine, an exceptionally nice and intelligent nurse, who writes on hearing that it is my twenty-first birthday … Yes, it is not bad being twenty-one, in a world so full of kind people.

  Gilbert’s becoming of age also marked the final stages of his years of “lunacy.” He ended his autobiographical chapter on the period with the comment, … it flatters me to think that, in this my period of lunacy, I may have been a little useful to other lunatics.” It had been an excruciating lesson.

  IV - In Work and In Love

  Gilbert was to leave University College at the end of the summer of 1895, without a degree, and without any serious respect for the English system of further education as he had experienced it. He had arrived at the far end of his tunnel of darkness, but still had no firm idea of where his future lay, or to what his career in life would lead. He knew that words rather than pictures were his foremost attraction; but more than an inclination towards the literary was required. Gilbert had no formula for beginning a journalistic life. As was so often the way in his story events came to him, and gave him no option but to follow. Such fortune occurred just as he was about to leave the Slade, in extreme need of a sign of encouragement. Bentley remembered that Gilbert’s “phase of emptiness” was short-lived, and that in that summer of leaving his studies he was asked to review a book for the Academy; the editor enthused over the article, “told me to make it longer, and published it,” Gilbert wrote to his friend, exuberant at having seen the first indications of his vocation appear in full focus

  Mr. Cotton is a little bristly, bohemian man, as fidgety as a kitten, who runs round the table while he talks to you. When he agrees with you he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head. When he means anything rather seriously he ends up with a loud nervous laugh. He talks incessantly and is mad on the history of Oxford. I sent him my review of Ruskin and he read it before me (Note. Hell) and delivered himself with astonishing rapidity to the following effect: This is very good: you’ve got something to say: Oh, yes: this is worth saying: I agree with you about Ruskin and about the Century: this is good: you’ve no idea: if you saw some stuff: some reviews I get: the fellows are practised but of all the damned fools: you’ve no idea: they know the trade in a way: but such infernal asses …

  The excited editor gave Gilbert the book, A Ruskin Reader, and then offered a second volume for review. “Here I got a word in: one of protest and thanks. But Mr Cotton insisted on my accepting the Ruskin … At one point he said, literally dancing with glee: ‘Oh, the other day I stuck some pins into Andrew Lang.’ I said, ‘Dear me, that must be a very good game.’ It was something about an edition of Scott, but I was told that Andrew took the painful operation ‘very well.’ We sat up horribly late together talking about Browning, Afghans, Notes, the Yellow Book, the French Revolution, William Morris, Norsemen and Mr Richard le Gallienne. ‘I don’t despair for anyone,’ he said suddenly. ‘Hang it all, that’s what you mean by humanity.’ This appears to be a rather good editor of the Academy. And my joy in having begun my life is very great. ‘I am tired,’ I said to Mr Brodribb (Cotton), ‘of writing only what I like.’ ‘Oh, well,’ he said heartily, ‘you’ll have no reason to make that complaint in journalism.’”

  Cotton did not remain for very long in the editor’s chair, soon being appointed to a position in India. It was not of any great importance, because first impressions of Gilbert usually opened all doors for him; he was a much-liked young man. More disappointing was that he was given no by-line in the magazine, and his review appeared anonymously. In the editions for the years 1895 and 1896 most reviews are signed or initialled, but there is no indication of authorship from Gilbert. It was rather a false start, and he would not exploit his early success as a reviewer for four years. Instead he found employment in a publishing house, working for the firm of Redway. It was a small outfit, and when he began there in September 1895 they were concentrating on books on the occult; Gilbert had all of the correct qualifications, and all of the wrong ones. He enjoyed the work, but didn’t find it fulfilling. He still wrote in the evenings, and in the odd moments which were left free for him in the working day. The disciplined structure of daily responsibility made depression — or what was remaining of it — a luxury which simply could not be afforded; he was too busy.

  He wrote to Bentley one late night, telling of his
experiences. He had been working on “a recast of that ‘Picture of Tuesday’” for a Slade magazine.

  … Like you, I am beastly busy, but there is something exciting about it. If I must be busy (as I certainly must, being an approximately honest man) I had much rather be busy in a varied, mixed up way, with half a hundred things to attend to, than with one blank day of monotonous “study” before me. To give you some idea of what I mean. I have been engaged in 3 different tiring occupations and enjoyed them all. (1) Redway says, “We’ve got too many MSS.; read through them, will you, and send back those that are too bad at once.” I go slap through a room full of MSS., criticising deuced conscientiously, with the result that I post back some years of MSS. to addresses, which I should imagine, must be private asylums. But one feels worried, somehow. (2) Redway says, “I’m going to give you entire charge of the press department, sending copies to Reviews etc.” Consequence is, one has to keep an elaborate book and make it tally with other elaborate books, and one has to remember all the magazines that exist and what sort of books they’d crack up. I used to think I hated responsibility: I am positively getting to enjoy it. (3) There is that confounded “Picture of Tuesday” which I have been scribbling at the whole evening, and have at last got it presentable. This sounds like mere amusement, but, now that I have tried other kinds of hurry and bustle, I solemnly pledge myself to the opinion that there is no work so tiring as writing, that is, not for fun, but for publication. Other work has a repetition, a machinery, a reflex action about it somewhere, but to be on the stretch inventing things, making them out of nothing, making them as good as you can for a matter of four hours leaves me more inclined to lie down and read Dickens than I ever feel after nine hours’ ramp at Redway’s. The worst of it is that you always think the thing so bad, too, when you’re in that state.

  I can’t imagine anything more idiotic than what I’ve just finished. Well, enough of work and all its works. By all means come on Monday evening, but don’t be frightened if by any chance I’m not in till about 6.30, as Monday is a busy day …

  Publishing may have held a certain appeal, but the house of Redway lost its attraction before very long. After only a few months he moved on, to the larger and far more prestigious organisation of T. Fisher Unwin, with offices at 11 Paternoster Buildings. He was to spend the next six years of his life working here, building his reputation within the publishing house, and outside in the larger world as a promising journalist and author. He claimed in later years to have read some ten thousand novels during his time at Fisher Unwin, and invited anyone to challenge his memory of the plots and characters of each book. When tested, and few had the courage to do so, he was invariably proved to be accurate. The variety of volumes which were given to him over the years was astounding, for there was at the time no strait-jacket of specialisation; a literary mind signified a literary ability no matter what the theme or author. The subsidised education which Gilbert received was unparalleled. He recorded his impressions of the day-to-day activities at his work-place in letters. He was evidently happy, if sometimes pushed to his extreme limit.

  … The book I have to deal with for Unwin is an exhaustive and I am told interesting work on “Rome and the Empire” a kind of realistic, modern account of the life of the ancient world. I have got to fix it up, choose illustrations, introductions, notes, etc., and all because I am the only person who knows a little Latin and precious little Roman history and no more archaeology than a blind cat. It is entertaining, and just like our firm’s casual way. The work ought to be done by an authority on Roman antiquities. If I hadn’t been there they would have given it to the office boy.

  However, I shall get through it all right: the more I see of the publishing world, the more I come to the conclusion that I know next to nothing, but that the vast mass of literary people know less. This is something called having “a public-school education.”

  The letter is an exaggeration and a revealing example of Gilbert’s modesty. There were others present who could have done the work; he was considered to be the most able.

  He thrived on the amount of work, as well as the content. The copious number of pages he would turn out over the next forty years had its foundation at this time. He was forced to learn self-discipline, he was usually left entirely to himself to get the work done at Fisher Unwin, and the difficult skill of pace and control; he would extend his hours of work without a break by the day, until he could write and read for up to six hours without a single interlude. Knowing his previous reluctance to indulge in work of any ordered kind, friends and relatives sometimes doubted his endeavours. He was at pains to prove them wrong. “… For fear that you should really suppose that my observations about being busy are the subterfuges of a habitual liar, I may give you briefly some idea of the irons at present in the fire. As far as I can make out there are at least seven things that I have undertaken to do and every one of them I ought to do before any of the others.” He proceeded to list them. First came the book on Ancient Rome, second was Captain Webster

  Who is Captain Webster? I will tell you. Captain Webster is a small man with a carefully waxed moustache and a very Bond Street get-up, living at the Grosvenor Hotel. Talking to him you would say: he is an ass, but an agreeable ass, a humble, transparent honourable ass. He is an innocent and idiotic butterfly. The interesting finishing touch is that he has been to New Guinea for four years or so, and had some of the most hideous and extravagant adventures that could befall a modern man. His yacht was surrounded by shoals of canoes full of myriads of cannibals of a race who file their teeth to look like the teeth of dogs, and hang weights in their ears till the ears hang like dogs’ ears, on the shoulder. He held his yacht at the point of the revolver and got away, leaving some of his men dead on the shore. All night long he heard the horrible noise of the banqueting songs and saw the huge fires that told him his friends were being eaten. Now he lives in the Grosvenor Hotel. Captain Webster finds the pen, not only mightier than the sword, but also much more difficult.

  Gilbert’s task was to improve the grammar and style of the Captain’s English, and although this proved to be at times an impossible undertaking the two men built up a respect for each other, both being without pretence of what they were not. The heroics of an English eccentric were more to Gilbert’s liking than a history of China, the third point in his list of burdens. He claimed to know no more of China than the man in the moon. “… I shall make the most of what I do know” he wrote, “and airily talk of La-o-tsee and Wu-sank-Wei, criticise Chung-tang and Fu-Tche, compare Tchieu Lung with his great successor, whose name I have forgotten, and the Napoleonic vigour of Li with the weak opportunism of Woo. Before I have done I hope people will be looking behind for my pig-tail. The name I shall adopt will be Tches-Ter-Ton.”

  Next came a manuscript to read which had been translated from Norwegian. It was a History of the Kiss, and made Gilbert extremely angry with its author; he doubted that he would even send up a report on it. His own project, his first book of poetry, occupied much of his time, as did his ideas for a novel. He ended his letter with “… and all these things, with the exception of the last one, are supposed to be really urgent, and to be done immediately … Now I hope I have sickened you forever of wanting to know the details of my dull affairs. But I hope it may give you some notion of how hard it really is to get time for writing just now. For you see they are none of them even mechanical things: they all require some thinking about. I am afraid … that if you really want to know what I do, you must forgive me for seeming egoistic. That is the tragedy of the literary person: his very existence is an assertion of his own mental vanity: he must pretend to be conceited even if he isn’t …”

  It was at Fisher Unwin that the legend of Gilbert Chesterton the character began to take root. His peculiarities at St Paul’s had been seen as amusing, sometimes a little ridiculous. At university he was beyond the bounds of eccentricity, mainly because he was not in the slightest sense fashionable. When he carried h
is eccentric behaviour into the world of publishing with its cultivated ways and niceties, his oddities became a mark of distinction, particular blemishes on an outstanding young man. His untidiness, which was always a characteristic was seen in its full absurdity by those who worked at the publisher’s and in nearby offices, who would observe this increasingly obese and idiosyncratic figure going out for lunch or leaving for home. He seemed to possess an uncanny gift of covering himself with ink. It would begin on his hands, travel upwards to his cuff and sleeve, and then be transferred by means of a careless wipe to the face, hair and neck. After a busy day at the press, where the cyclostyle skin which held the text was placed in a duplicating machine, he would be covered in thick, black ink. He was dressed, as was required for the office and demanded by the era, in a black frock-coat and matching top hat on these working days and this rendered a battle with the ink pot completely absurd. He resembled a huge schoolboy, somehow apishly copying his father. Gilbert was well aware of how he appeared to the others at the office, indulging their well-meant but too frequent jokes and parodies.

  When his costume escaped the perils of ink it was battered by Gilbert’s lack of respect for anything which was placed on his back. It looked as if he had slept in his day clothes, and periodically that was the case. Collars rarely fitted and seldom remained in place, shirt fronts transformed themselves into menus, advertising what he had eaten for a long, heavily lubricated lunch. His drinking habits were now being talked about in the office; but he always had a reputation for being a drinker, never a drunk. The difference is subtle, and vital. Considering the volume of alcohol consumed by him at this time it is staggering that he was hardly ever seen out of control, or truly inebriated.