Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

by Michael Coren

  The men who composed the ruling group on the board of the journal were fine examples of the reforming middle class of the period. Determined and well-informed in their ideas, they nevertheless represented a moribund political stance, that of the radical in the age of the socialist. Their belief in change from above, in a tampering with the results of capitalism rather than the causes of it, was not to last through the First World War, and was to see its own end looming as the first Labour members of Parliament were elected to the House of Commons. J.L. Hammond, Francis Hirst, F.Y. Eccles and Philip Comyns Carr made up the nucleus of the team, with Oldershaw and Bentley also playing their part. John Simon was another who worked for the Speaker, but abandoned the magazine when it began obviously to alienate the powers that be in the Liberal Party hierarchy; he was set on an ambitious political and legal career, and achieved both. The atmosphere and flavour of the Speaker and its staff appealed to Gilbert. “This group was just then enabled to achieve a very important work; which will probably be not without an ultimate effect on history,” he wrote. “It managed to buy the old … weekly paper … and run it with an admirable spirit and courage in a rather new mood of Radicalism …” “Its editor was Mr J.L. Hammond, who was afterwards, with his wife, to do so great a historical service as the author of studies on the English Labourer in the last few centuries. He certainly was the last man in the world to be accused of a smug materialism or a merely tame love of peace. No indignation could have been at once more fiery and more delicate, in the sense of discriminating. And I knew that he also understood the truth, when I heard him say the words which so many would have misunderstood: ‘Imperialism is worse than Jingoism. A Jingo is a noisy fellow, who may happen to make a noise on the right side. But the Imperialist is the direct enemy of liberty.’ That was exactly what I meant; the Boers might be making a noise (with Mauser rifles) but I thought it was a noise on the right side.”

  For all of its supposed liberalism and defence of the small against the large, the Speaker was not without the nastier prejudices of its era, and demonstrated such feelings in a ludicrous rejection of Gilbert’s work. He wrote a piece for them, and was confident that it would be accepted and published by a grateful editor — “the first of the New Speaker, is coming out soon,” he wrote Frances, “and may contain something of mine … The editor did not disagree with his sentiments or style, but his race; it was thought that Gilbert was Jewish, because his handwriting looked to be “that of a Jew.” F.Y. Eccles, a somewhat absurd man with pretensions far above his abilities, had overheard some of the infantile theories circulating concerning Jewish traits and their physical manifestations, and somehow had discerned a Semitic form in Gilbert’s writing and signature — one can only imagine that it was written from right to left in the Hebraic manner! Further, he refused to read anything more from the then unknown writer, in spite of the protestations from Oldershaw and Bentley, and would only turn away material from what he referred to as their “Jew friend.”

  The reasons for this reluctance to print anything from a Jewish writer are as clear as they are unpleasant. Anti-Semitism as a philosophy, as opposed to a gutter hatred, was taking root in Europe at this time, gaining as much credence on the political left as on the political right; sections of the former seeing a Jew in the middle of each and every capitalist undertaking, even larger parts of the latter believing that revolution world-wide was a Jewish concern. In the case of the Speaker and its obsession with the South African war the problem was one of for whom the war was being fought. In the eyes of the young anti-imperialists the might of the British Empire had been turned against a powerless breed of Dutch farmers — who were later to introduce and implement apartheid — due to the vested interests and needs of foreign bankers and businessmen, many of whom were thought to be Jewish. Some of them were Jewish, just as most of them happened to be gentiles. On this pretext Gilbert, who they continued to believe was Jewish, must be a biased commentator and must not be allowed access to their media. It was a thin covering of twisted logic disguising a larger racism, a much deeper resentment and intolerance. How ironic that Gilbert would himself later be accused of anti-Semitism.

  A hostile response from a contributor so treated would be expected, understood, by all. There is no record of any such anger from Gilbert, not even of any particular disappointment. The callous dismissal merely gave fuel to his efforts, and strengthened his determination to make both his and Frances’s living as a professional writer. The coming years were to transform him from a talented youth to a respected author; it was as though all the experience, pain and joy were a training ground for just this.

  V - Gilbert Chesterton: Journalist

  Friendship was tested to its limits when Bentley, who had been contributing on a regular basis to the Speaker, was asked by the editorial staff to join the magazine as a full-time writer. He agreed. A tremendous strain is placed upon any partnership when one of the pair achieves a position where advancement is in his gift; does he help out someone who is known to be his friend, thus risking accusations of nepotism, or possibly dissolve an important friendship out of fear of ridicule? Bentley sung Gilbert’s praises in the offices of the Speaker, and constantly pushed the case for his long-time ally. Eventually these efforts were to merit a reward, but by the time they did Gilbert was already established as a writer in demand. Bentley was a good friend; he was also an astute young man with dreams of grandeur. To his credit Gilbert never once applied any pressure, content to accept what may come by natural means, not influenced by his pleas.

  It was another and more recent friend, Ernest Hodder Williams, who opened the door for Gilbert’s writings. Their first meeting had taken place at University College, and the bonds had built up both spontaneously and quickly. Hodder Williams’s family owned the Bookman, a small circulation but highly respected magazine which took freelance work and encouraged younger writers. Gilbert described these early articles as an act of “letting me loose in the literary world,” and wrote to Frances that “… I am developing into a sort of art critic, under the persistent delusion which possesses the Editor of the Bookman. And I think an article attacking the theories that every sane man has held about classic art for a thousand years would be the sort of thing I should enjoy writing. You will come back next week probably just in time to see my first experiment in art criticism in the Bookman. The two reviews do not join on well together having been written separately. Otherwise I think they will do.”

  Frances came back to no review in the Bookman, because Gilbert’s review was held over — more disappointing and upsetting to Miss Blogg than to the author. It appeared in the next issue, unfortunately uncredited. Ironically Hodder Williams had written to him when he sent the book to be reviewed, a work on Nicolas Poussin, stating that “The next issue of the Bookman will run to some 30,000 copies so I think you will like to have your name appear in it.” He also asked for a review which would be “thoroughly critical both of the book and of Poussin’s work.” A dubious request, hardly advertising the merits of literary commentary at the end of the nineteenth century. Gilbert rarely delivered what was asked of him, but he always delivered quality and quantity.

  When paganism was re-throned at the Renaissance, it proved itself for the first time a religion by the sign that only its own worshippers could slay it. It has taken them three centuries, but they have thrashed it threadbare. Just as poets invoked Mars and Venus, for every trivial flirtation, so Poussin and his school multiplied nymphs and satyrs with the recurrence of an endless wall-paper, till a bacchanal has become as respectable as a bishop and the god of love is too vulgar for a valentine … This is the root of the strange feeling of sadness evoked by the groups and landscapes of Poussin. We are looking at one of the dead loves of the world. Never were men born so much out of the time as the modern neo-pagans. For this is the second death of the gods — a death after resurrection. And when a ghost dies, it dies eternally.

  The review was received with cries of enthusiasm by ed
itor and readers alike. This was cultivated and mature criticism of the highest form, and from a writer so young and inexperienced it made a deep impression. Letters to the Bookman enquired as to who the reviewer was, and why the piece was unsigned. Frances’s family were impressed only to a degree, Frances was proud and hopeful, Gilbert thought he could have done better.

  The Bookman did not pay very well. Gilbert, a financial infant, would not even have asked for payment if he had not been advised and persuaded. His father had experienced the demands of business in his younger days, and although a reluctant man-of-the-world he did understand the pressures of married life and monetary security. He took charge of his son’s affairs for a period. Gilbert wrote to Frances about the issue, beginning in his usual manner with affairs more weighty and pertinent to him.

  A rush of the Boers on Natal, strategically quite possibly successful, is anticipated by politicians. The rising of the sun tomorrow morning is predicted by astronomers. My father again is engaged in the critical correspondence with Fisher Unwin, at least it has begun by T.F.U. stating his proposal terms — a rise of 5/- from October, another rise possible but undefined in January, 10 per cent royalty for the Paris book and expenses for a fortnight in Paris. These, as I got my father to heartily agree, are vitiated to the bone as terms by the absence of any assurance that I shall not have to write “Paris,” for which I am really paid nothing, outside the hours of work for which I am paid 25/-. In short, the net result would be that instead of gaining more liberty to rise in the literary world, I should be selling the small liberty of rising that I have now for five more shillings. This my father is declining and asking for a better settlement. The diplomacy is worrying, yet I enjoy it: I feel like Mr Chamberlain on the eve of the war. I would stop with T.F.U. for £100 a year — but not for less. Which means, I think, that I shall not stop at all.

  The details of financial negotiation were unimportant to Gilbert when held up to the shining delights of his private and social life at the time. Debating was continuing in Bedford Park, Frances was almost out of her depression and his reputation as a writer was increasing beyond the confines of his own set. He was becoming the toast of Bedford Park amongst the intellectuals and thinkers, perceived as an orator of unique gifts; something unheard of for someone of his years. He found the admiration on display at the debates and organised discussions difficult to resist.

  As well as the I.D.K. and infrequent old boy meetings of the Junior Debating Club there was a thriving society which met elsewhere in Bedford Park, at the villa home of the artist Archie Macgregor. Macgregor was a local celebrity, the leader of a much admired little club in the area which was known for its lavish entertainments, light-hearted banter and sense of humour. Gilbert was invited to attend a debate at the sumptuous Macgregor house in April 1900, and as the meeting was expected to continue until late into the night — they usually did — the Blogg family suggested he stayed at Bath Road; Frances was away at the time, otherwise the proposition would have been out of the question. Gilbert accepted the invitation most readily, Macgregor meetings possessed a strong social cachet. The two men always got on, in spite of their differences. Macgregor, the friend of Yeats and committed atheist, was a charismatic man, graceful in defeat as well as victory. “There could be no more virile or valiant type … than my old friend Archie Macgregor …”

  They discussed the Boer War, and the evils of Imperialism. The importance of the evening was the presence in the same room of the two men who were to form the closest literary alliance of their generation. This was the first time that Gilbert saw and heard Hilaire Belloc, and Belloc heard him. They did not meet, but they listened and were conquered. He instantly wrote to Frances, unable to contain his news.

  You hate political speeches therefore you would not have hated Belloc’s. The moment he began to speak one felt lifted out of the stuffy fumes of forty-times repeated arguments into really thoughtful and noble and original reflections on history and character. When I tell you that he talked about (1) the English aristocracy (2) the effects of agricultural depression on their morality (3) his dog (4) the battle of Sadowa (5) the Puritan Revolution in England (6) the luxury of the Roman Antonines (7) a particular friend of his who had by an infamous job received a political post he was utterly unfit for (8) the comic papers of Australia (9) the mortal sins in the Roman Catholic Church — you may have some conception of the amount of his space that was left for the motion before the house. It lasted half-an-hour and I thought it was five minutes.

  Gilbert was just under twenty-six years old at this time, Belloc was almost thirty. One was looking for a mentor, a teacher to look to as a guide and guard, the other was constantly prepared to let fly with advice and stricture — often strident, sometimes ridiculous, always convincing and brilliant. The first meeting took place in a small French eating-house in Soho, where Gilbert had arranged to meet Lucian Oldershaw. The Gallic restaurants of the period in Soho were atmospheric little venues, jealously and defensively patronised by a select few, who could indulge in fine food and cheap wine in surroundings which hardly differed from the best of family-owned provincial restaurants in France; many of the proprietors’ families had emigrated from France as Huguenot refugees in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and come to cosmopolitan Soho. Here meals could not be rushed, but taken with time, discussion and alcohol. The encounter lasted for hours, and when the two men stumbled out into the dark of Gerrard Street it was not only the wine which made them feel heady and content

  … I went to meet my friend, who entered the place followed by a sturdy man with a stiff straw hat of the period tilted over his eyes, which emphasised the peculiar length and strength of his chin. He had a high-shouldered way of wearing a coat so that it looked like a heavy overcoat, and instantly reminded me of the pictures of Napoleon; and, for some vague reason, especially of the pictures of Napoleon on horseback. But his eyes, not without anxiety, had that curious distant keenness that is seen in the eyes of sailors; and there was something about his walk that has even been compared to a sailor’s roll. Long afterwards the words found their way into verse which expressed a certain consciousness of the combination, and of the blend of nations in his blood … He sat down heavily on one of the benches and began to talk at once about some controversy or other; I gathered that the question was whether it could be reasonably maintained that King John was the best English King …

  For this was Hilaire Belloc, already famous as an orator at Oxford, where he was always pitted against another brilliant speaker, named F.E. Smith. Belloc was supposed to represent Radicalism and Smith Toryism; but the contrast between them was more vital, and would have survived the reversing of the labels. Indeed the two characters and careers might stand as a study and problem in the meaning of failure and success.

  As Belloc went on talking, he every now and then volleyed out very provocative parentheses on the subject of religion. He said that an important Californian lawyer was coming to England to call on his family, and had put up a great candle to St Christopher praying that he might be able to make the voyage. He declared that he, Belloc, was going to put up an even bigger candle in the hope that the visitor would not make the voyage. “People say what’s the good of doing that?” he observed explosively. “I don’t know what good it does. I know it’s a thing that’s done. Then they say it can’t do any good — and there you have Dogma at once.” All this amused me very much, but I was already conscious of a curious undercurrent of sympathy with him, which many of those who were equally amused did not feel. And when, on that night and many subsequent nights, we came to talking about the war, I found that the sub-conscious sympathy had something of a real significance. I have had occasion to say, somewhere or other, that I am an Anti-Vivisectionist and an Anti-Anti-Vivisectionist. Something of the same mystery united our minds; we were both Pro-Boers who hated Pro-Boers. Perhaps it would be truer to say that we hated a certain number of unimaginative, unhistorical anti-militarists who were too pedantic
to call themselves Pro-Boers. Perhaps it would be truer still to say that it was they who hated us. But anyhow that was the first link in the alliance … It was from that dingy little Soho cafe, as from a cave of witchcraft, that there emerged the quadruped, the twinformed monster Mr Shaw has nicknamed the Chesterbelloc.

  Hilaire Belloc (Gilbert always addressed him as “Hilary,” in the English fashion, which Belloc seemed to prefer from his friend. Nobody else used this form of his name, either through fear or ignorance; Gilbert maintained that his choice was the correct one) had been born in La Celle St Cloud, near to Paris, in 1870. It was a momentous and tragic year to come into the world as a Frenchman; the year Napoleon III fell, the Prussian military machine smashed the myth of French superiority and a generation of French youth was decimated by foreign and civil wars. In some ways it is difficult to imagine Belloc being born at any other time: upheaval and strife were constant courtiers to Belloc, he reciprocated by chasing them. His father was half-Irish and half-French, his mother was an English woman from the then booming industrial city of Birmingham, power-base of the Chamberlain family. His mother, Bessie Parkes, was a convert to Catholicism.

  Belloc’s father died when he was a child, and his mother moved to England to an uncle’s house in Westminster; when the uncle died the house was left to Madame Belloc, together with an inheritance sufficient to keep the family in comfortable circumstances for the foreseeable future. Bessie Belloc was a woman who did not take advice easily and was not content to live on what she had been given; she gambled the bulk of the inheritance on the London Stock Exchange, refused to withdraw her investment when matters looked bleak, and consequently lost a sum of money which would have seen her son into adulthood, and had taken her uncle a lifetime to accumulate. She still found it difficult to admit her errors in the money-making attempt, a characteristic which her son would take from his mother and develop.