Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

by Michael Coren

  They moved to a cottage in Arundel in Sussex — cheaper and away from condemning tongues — and Hilaire began his formal education at Newman’s Oratory in Birmingham. After leaving school he drifted, unsure as to whether he was English or French, a farmer or a journalist, a radical or a conservative. And then he met an Irish-American girl by the name of Elodie Hogan. She was charming and vulnerable, had agonised for some time over whether to enter a convent or not and was under severe pressure from her mother. Belloc expressed his love. Mrs Hogan discovered the state of his finances — there weren’t any — and took her daughter back to the United States. He sold all that he had to pay for a journey to San Francisco, and implored her once again to marry him. She thought she may have a vocation for marriage, but there was also the calling to celibacy. Her mother had no such doubts. Belloc left for England, in despair.

  When in London Belloc was a countryman; when in Sussex he was a city dweller; in France he became an Englishman, and in Britain he was a French-born, French-speaking patriot of France. Belloc was never content with being “ordinary.” To satisfy his new-found status he moved to France and joined the army as an artillery recruit. Images of Bonaparte may have motivated him, but the realities were less glorious. His French was heavily accented; others in the regiment thought him a strange man, even ridiculous. He was middle class and English educated, they were mostly rural, poorly educated French labourers and unemployed Parisians. His competence as a fighting man was average at its best. He returned to England once again.

  As was the case with so many young men from good backgrounds who found themselves with time on their hands, Belloc decided to go up to Oxford and continue his studies. He had been a noted scholar at the Oratory, and gained a First in History at Balliol College. In between his reading and writing he walked — covering miles in staggeringly fast times — and drank to excess. He was known and respected at Oxford, if not always liked.

  An unhealthy note of persecution was strongly placed in Belloc’s mind from an early age, something bordering on the paranoiac; he almost certainly suffered from mental illness later in life. He saw plots and plans everywhere, from Jewish world conspiracy ideas, to Prussian influence from one end of the world to the other. It was indicative of this fantasy that when he was refused a fellowship at Oxford in 18 96 he blamed his rejection not on any lack of ability or character fault which he might have demonstrated to those dons who chose new fellows, but on an anti-Catholic bias inside the Oxford University power structure. He would continue to desire a fellowship, but would from now on harbour a loathing for any academic who did not prove himself first. It was an absurd suspicion.

  In California Elodie Hogan had left the convent, and was now seriously ill. Her mother, the most difficult obstacle to Belloc’s marriage plans, had died at almost the same time. He borrowed money for a ticket to the United States, and kept himself in food and comforts while he was there by giving lectures. He found Elodie Hogan a much easier woman to propose to this time, and they were soon married. Children followed, there were to be five, and Belloc found a peaceful lull in his life which he had never thought possible. He applied to other colleges for a fellowship, and was turned down by each one. He lectured again, both in Britain and in America; with a family to support this would not be sufficient. So he wrote, at first without notice, and then with a colossal impact. The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts sold over 4000 copies within three months of publication, and made Belloc a well-known and well-paid author. It is a book which has retained its popularity over the decades, and is read by people who would not think of looking at some of his more adult, cutting and offensive works. It consists of a collection of rhymes, all peculiarly Bellocian. Nor did he forget the villains of his story

  The Whale that wanders round the Pole

  Is not a table fish.

  You cannot bake or boil him whole

  Nor serve him in a dish;

  But you may cut his blubber up

  And melt it down for oil.

  And so replace the colza clean

  (A product of the soil).

  These facts should all be noted down

  And ruminated on,

  By every boy in Oxford town

  Who wants to be a Don.

  He was spoken of in the same breath as Edward Lear, a major writer of nonsense and humour, often disguised in marvellously horrible visions. Belloc took to the literary life of London with enthusiasm, buying a house at 104 Cheyne Walk, and contributing to magazines and newspapers. In 1899 his biography of Danton appeared, establishing him as an author of historical studies as well as light poetry. In it he outlined his theories on the French Revolution, which was “a reversion to the normal — a sudden and violent return to those conditions which are the necessary bases of health in any political community, which are clearly apparent in every primitive society, and from which Europe had been estranged by an increasing complexity and a spirit of routine,” and his concrete beliefs in the “absolute sovereignty in the case of the State, absolute ownership in the case of the individual.”

  Hence it was an experienced, older and wiser man who befriended Gilbert on that cool evening. He could and did speak as a traveller, a soldier, a man of the Church, a man of the fields, an author and a lover. Gilbert had never appeared so boyish and in awe; he would try to emulate this lion of a character, this hero as well as friend.

  On the Good Friday of 1900 Gilbert replied to a letter from Frances, in which she asked how he was, what he was doing, where was he going. He answered her in the fashion she had come to love

  As you have tabulated your questions with such alarming precision, I must really endeavour to answer them categorically.

  (1) How am I? I am in excellent health. I have an opaque cold in my head, cough tempestuously and am very deaf. But these things I count as mere specks showing up the general blaze of salubrity. I am getting steadily better and I don’t mind how slowly …

  (2) Am I going away at Easter? The sarcastic might think it a characteristic answer, but I can only reply that I had banished the matter from my mind, a vague problem of the remote future until you asked it: but since this is Easter and we are not gone away I suppose we are not going away.

  He then describes the place of their next meeting, a conference he is to have with a publisher and whether a review he wrote had appeared or not. Frances had also raised the subject of his appearance once again.

  Does my hair want cutting? My hair seems pretty happy. You are the only person who seems to have any fixed theory on this. For all I know it may be at that fugitive perfection which has moved you to enthusiasm. Three minutes after this perfection, I understand, a horrible degeneration sets in: the hair becomes too long, the figure disreputable and profligate: and the individual is unrecognised by all his friends. It is he that wants cutting then, not his hair.

  His work came as low as point no. 9 in the letter, and he had good news.

  I have got a really important job in reviewing — the Life of Ruskin for the Speaker. As I have precisely 73 theories about Ruskin it will be brilliant and condensed. I am also reviewing the Life of the Kendals, a book on the Renascence and one on Correggio for the Bookman … Really and truly I see no reason why we should not be married in April if not before. I have been making some calculations … and as far as I can see we could live in the country on quite a small amount of regular literary work …

  The reviews duly appeared in the Speaker and the Bookman, as did a poem entitled “An Election Echo.” He was now contributing regularly to both journals, reviewing books and submitting his own pieces on any subject which he chose. No amount of articles could equal Gilbert’s pleasure at the appearance of his first book, in his case books. In 1900 Greybeards At Play and The Wild Knight and Other Poems were published. The first, Greybeards, had been spoken about by Gilbert, family and friends for months now, and a publisher had seemed assured. But Mr Nutt, who appears constantly in Gilbert’s letters to Frances at the time, withdrew from the pr
oposition. Gilbert does not refer to this setback in his Autobiography, nor does he mention the book at all. He was not pleased with it, and understood the scant critical attention paid to it. Nevertheless it did strike a chord with some people, who did not agree with him that “to publish a book of my nonsense verse seems to me exactly like summoning the whole of the people of Kensington to see me smoke cigarettes.” It were as though he did not want the book to be published, ignoring the pleas of friends and admitting to Frances “Alas! I have not been to Nutt. There are good excuses, but they are not the real ones …” It was illustrated by Gilbert, with his drawings taking up more of the book than his verse; perhaps with reason. There are noticeable flavours of Bentley in Greybeards at Play, and predictions of greater things to come

  I am the tiger’s confidant,

  And never mention names:

  The lion drops the formal “Sir,”

  And lets me call him James.

  And

  I love to bask in sunny fields,

  And when that hope is vain,

  I go and bask in Baker Street,

  All in the pouring rain.

  The man who finally published the book was Rex Brimley Johnson, the fiancé of Gertrude Blogg. Through the death of Gertrude, Gilbert had been drawn closer to Brimley Johnson, and a fond, if not loving, friendship had developed. Gilbert also offered his second book, The Wild Knight, to the young publisher, but for some reason he turned this one down. He could not have so acted due to the poor response to Gilbert’s first book — they were offered almost simultaneously, and it was obvious to the most untrained eye that the second volume was far superior — but he may have come to the decision out of a desire to distance himself from the Blogg family because of his understandable grief. He would publish more of Gilbert’s work later.

  The Wild Knight was offered to Grant Richards, and was published on 20th November 1900. The financial backing for the project, however, came from Gilbert’s father. The book consisted of a series of short poems written during the past ten years, and contained at least two pieces which would always be remembered. “The Donkey,” that perennial favourite, with its poignant ending

  Fools! For I also had my hour;

  One far fierce hour and sweet;

  There was a shout about my ears,

  And palms before my feet.

  The other, “By the Babe Unborn,” was particularly liked by the critics. It is an imaginative, hopeful dream-poem of the potentials of life from the view of one not yet brought into the world

  They should not hear a word from me

  Of selfishness or scorn

  If only I could find the door,

  If only I were born.

  The book was sent to Rudyard Kipling by Rex Brimley Johnson, who had met the author through Gertrude. Kipling was an admirable correspondent and, as he had already come into contact with some of Gilbert’s work, he was prepared to offer criticism as well as praise

  Many thanks for the Wild Knight. Of course I knew some of the poems before, notably The Donkey which stuck in my mind at the time I read it.

  I agree with you that there is any amount of promise in the work — and I think marriage will teach him a good deal too. It will be curious to see how he’ll develop in a few years. We all begin with arranging and elaborating all the Heavens and Hells and stars and tragedies we can lay our poetic hands on — Later we see folk — just common people under the heavens.

  Meantime I wish him all the happiness that there can be and for yourself such comfort as men say time brings after loss. It’s apt to be a weary while coming but one goes the right way to get it if one interests oneself in the happenings of other folk. Even though the sight of this happiness is like a knife turning in a wound.

  [He added a postscript.] Merely as a matter of loathsome detail, Chesterton has a bad attack of “aureoles.” They are spotted all over the book. I think everyone is bound in each book to employ unconsciously some pet word but that was Rossetti’s.

  Likewise I notice “wan waste” and many “wans” and things that “catch and cling.” He is too good not to be jolted out of that. What do you say to a severe course of Walt Whitman — or will marriage make him see people?

  Others detected a strong influence of Whitman already in his work — hardly surprising in view of Whitman’s impression on him in earlier years — and more than a touch of Browning. There was little of this in the title poem of the book, a tired story of journeys towards God, sins and Satan and ultimate redemption. Its origins lay clearly in Gilbert’s troubled years, and it was a poem which he did not like to remember in middle age; not so much for its autobiographical revelations as for its lack of quality and stylistic faults.

  The reviews were mostly glowing, some from the most unexpected of sources. Mr Eccles of the Speaker, the self-appointed authority on Jewish handwriting, commented on The Wild Knight for his magazine

  Mr Chesterton is a poet whose sincerity is, so to speak, in the first degree; who speaks directly, from soul to soul, of the things that preoccupy all men, who applies a spontaneous and cultivated lyrical talent not to the adornment of given themes, but to the representation of the world he sees, divines and desires.

  Sales of the book were disappointing, at least from Edward Chesterton’s point of view. Gilbert was delighted with any royalties at all, still unsure as to why intelligent men and women would pay good money for a bound collection of his writings. They also paid good money for magazines and newspapers containing his pieces, which he explained to Frances in March, 1901.

  “… The following, however, are grounds on which I believe everything will turn out right this year. It is arithmetic. The Speaker has hitherto paid me £70 a year, that is £6 a month.” His success elsewhere and the promptings of Bentley and Oldershaw had finally convinced the staff of that magazine that he was too great an offer to be turned down. “It has now raised it to £10 a month, which makes £120 a year. Moreover they encourage me to write as much as I like in the paper, so that assuming that I do something extra (poem, note, leader) twice a month or every other number, which I can easily do, that brings us to nearly £150 a year. So much for the Speaker. Now for the Daily News, both certainties and probabilities.” The probabilities were that he had been strongly recommended for the post of literary editor of the paper, paying at least £200 a year; the certainties concerned a series of articles which he had been commissioned to write, earning him some £144 a year. When all of the figures were added up, with the odd payment from the Bookman supplementing his income, his annual income amounted to approximately £400. Belloc felt confident that the Pilot would ask Gilbert to write for them, and other sources suggested that the Echo would employ him as reviewer. “I can keep ten poems and twenty theories in my head at once. But I can only think of one practical thing at a time,” he wrote. In his opinion, it was time they got married. To his mother he raised his estimated earnings to something approaching £470, and then broached the subject which was dearest to his heart

  There is something … that is distressing me a great deal. I believe I said about a year ago that I hoped to get married in a year, if I had money enough. I fancy you took it rather as a joke: I was not so certain about it myself then. I have however been coming very seriously to the conclusion that if I pull off one more affair — a favourable arrangement with Reynolds’ Newspaper, whose editor wants to see me at the end of this week, I shall, unless you disapprove, make a dash for it this year … Believe me, my dearest mother, I am not considering this affair wildly or ignorantly: I have been doing nothing but sums in my head for the last months. [He discussed the details of his income, and thought that he could afford] … a very cheap flat, even a workman’s flat if necessary, have a woman in to do the laborious daily work and for the rest wait on ourselves, as many people I know do in cheap flats. Moreover, journalism has its ups as well as downs, and I, I can fairly say, am on the upward wave. Without vanity and in a purely businesslike spirit I may say that my work is tal
ked about a great deal. [And discussing the various journals which had taken him on] I know the clockwork of these papers and among one set of them I might almost say that I am becoming the fashion.

  Books, articles and speeches had turned Gilbert into “the fashion” in London, as had his blossoming character. Because of his youth, the fact that many of his articles had been uncredited and only later attributed to him, and that he adopted the habit of signing himself “G.K.C.” at the end of his letters, reviews and commentaries rather than his full name, introduced a sense of the mysterious to him. Some suggested that there was no such person behind these initials, merely a committee of writers or a well-known journalist hiding behind a nom de plume. His literary fame in the early stages of his career owed much to a pungent, precise article written for the Speaker of 26th May, entitled “A Defence of Patriotism.” It would later be published in a book of articles from the Speaker and the Daily News under the title The Defendant. The phrase on every editor’s lips after the piece appeared was as typical a product of Gilbert’s thinking as anything he wrote throughout his career: “My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”

  He denounced the extreme Imperialists as being interested in only the trivial, unimportant features of Britain and British society, and totally ignoring what it was that made the country virtuous and strong. The greatness of Britain was in front of every British subject, within seeing and feeling distance, not in far away colonies and obscure wars with settler and native peoples. He concluded the analysis thus

  We have deliberately neglected this great heritage of high national sentiments. We have made our public schools the strongest walls against a whisper of the honour of England. And we have had our punishment in this strange and perverted fact that, while a unifying vision of patriotism can ennoble bands of brutal savages or dingy burghers, and be the best thing in their lives, we who are — the world being judge — humane, honest, and serious individually, have a patriotism that is the worst thing in ours.