Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

by Michael Coren

  And

  What have we done, and where have we wandered, we that have produced sages who could have spoken with Socrates and poets who could walk with Dante, that we should talk as if we have never done anything more intelligent than found colonies and kick niggers? We are the children of light, and it is we that sit in darkness. If we are judged, it will not be for the merely intellectual transgression of failing to appreciate other nations, but for the supreme spiritual transgression of failing to appreciate ourselves.

  Reputation founded, financial security assured and his mother at least partly satisfied, Gilbert and Frances set a date for their wedding, 28th June 1901 at the Kensington parish church, St Mary Abbots, and a mutual friend, Conrad Noel, would marry them. Between them the couple had a multitude of friends and acquaintances, all of whom seemed to be sending wedding gifts. “I feel like the young man in the Gospel,” said Gilbert, “sorrowful, because I have great possessions.” Lucian Oldershaw, the best man, was surprised at how calm the groom appeared to be. It was not so much calmness as Gilbert’s ability to ignore the bustle and panic of affairs around him and simply switch off; a valuable attribute on occasion, disastrously irresponsible at other times. Gilbert managed to arrive on time at his wedding — something which surprised most of those present who knew him well — but found that he was not wearing a tie. Rhoda Bastable, a bridesmaid, sent her brother running into the High Street to purchase one; he arrived back at the church, tie in hand, only moments before Frances entered. When Gilbert knelt down during the ceremony the price tag on the sole of one of his new shoes became clearly visible; there was nothing to be done, so his mother and friends simply giggled to themselves, accepting the ludicrously inevitable. Other than this all went smoothly, though it was noted that the tall, large Gilbert and his petite wife did not quite fit into the category of perfect couple, at least in the physical context. Emotionally they seemed to combine as well as young man and wife could, accepting each other’s faults, praising each other’s qualities. It was sincere love, and sincere commitment.

  Oldershaw drove off to Liverpool Street station with the newlyweds’ luggage to place it on the train to Ipswich; they were to spend one night there, on their journey eastwards to the Norfolk Broads. Gilbert once said that the only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it. He did not, however, put this self-advice into practice on his wedding day, and the Ipswich train, containing almost all of his and his wife’s luggage, went off without the Chestertons. The reasons for their delay were not logical, or even reasonable; but then Gilbert always distrusted the conventional understanding of logic and reason. He felt obliged to halt his progress to Liverpool Street to take his new wife to a dairy bar in Kensington High Street. “I had always drunk a glass of milk there when walking with my mother in my infancy. And it seemed to me a fitting ceremonial to unite the two great relations of a man’s life,” he was later to say in his defence. The couple could still have made their destination on time, but for his insistence that they then stop off at a firearms shop to enable him to purchase a revolver and some bullets; “with the general notion of protecting my wife from the pirates doubtless infesting the Norfolk Broads, to which we were bound; where, after all, there are still a suspiciously large number of families with Danish names.”

  They were forced to take the slow train to Ipswich, a vapid trek to a city of limited charm. Once there they were taken to the White Horse Inn, and seeing that his wife was tired and pale Gilbert sat down with her and poured his love a glass of wine. He then recommended that she lie down for a time, the day had been exhausting; he would go for a walk. He became lost. After aimless wanderings he asked for directions from a passer-by — not a marauding Dane — and strolled back to the Inn. There he found Frances, nervous and timid, as would be expected from a new bride of her day. The moment of their first time alone, in a bedroom, with God and society’s blessing, had been a long time in coming; Gilbert had certainly procrastinated during the last twelve hours. He was nervous, unsure, and prepared for difficulties.

  What happened next is, of course, a matter of speculation. What has been passed on is an account from Ada Chesterton, Gilbert’s sister-in-law, which she claimed to have been given by her husband, Cecil. As has been said earlier, she is a hostile witness.

  He was fathoms deep in love, and in that first transcendent moment of their honeymoon when far beyond time and space they found themselves utterly, incomparably alone, he must have heard the sun and the moon and the stars singing together. And then the whole went crash. The woman he worshipped shrank from his touch and screamed when he embraced her. A less sensitive or more experienced man would have regarded the whole affair as distressing but by no means irremediable, but he was haunted by the fear that his brutality and lust had frightened the woman he would have died to protect. He dared not even contemplate a repetition. He went to Cecil, quivering with self reproach and condemnation. His young brother took a completely rationalistic view of the contretemps, and suggested that some citadels must be taken by storm while others yield only to a long siege. Anyway he insisted that nothing had happened that couldn’t be put right. They could both be happy and have lots of children. But the mischief had been done. Gilbert hated himself for what had happened and Frances couldn’t resign herself to the physical realities of marriage. Temperamentally ascetic, physically sick from spinal disease, the experience must have shocked her profoundly. Her tragedy was that desiring children she shrank from sex. The final adjustment between them seems never to have been made, and Gilbert in a vital hour was condemned to a pseudo-monastic life in which he lived with a woman but never enjoyed one. For there was that about the Chestertons which would not let them be unfaithful. It was a family idiosyncrasy — apart from religion, belief or social tradition. Once married, they were dedicate for life. The story of the wedding night was ancient history when I heard it from Cecil, but the effect still survived. Even fidelity exacts its price, and as the years went on, physically speaking, Gilbert ran to seed …

  It is a disturbing, unsavoury report, and contains elements of truth. For Ada Chesterton to describe fidelity as an “idiosyncrasy” implies that it is not the norm; yet in the early 1900s, the pre-permissive decades, faithfulness within the marriage bed, even if that bed was used only for sleeping upon, was considered standard. As to Gilbert putting on weight and declining in physical health, he was clearly heading towards gross obesity before he met Frances — the trends were apparent by his twenty-first birthday — and it was not his wife but his massive appetite, which his wife gently tried to reduce through words of wisdom and diet, which was the cause.

  It is probable that the marriage night was an embarrassing and humiliating debacle. They would both have been virgins, and failures on honeymoon nights, both then and now, are not unknown. Gilbert would not have been able to go to his brother for any experienced advice — Cecil was as naïve as he — and Frances is unlikely to have received anything more than the thinnest of encouragement from her mother and sister. Ada Chesterton’s accusation that the entire marriage was without sex is impossible to prove or disprove. They were childless; a result of Frances’s physical vulnerability and weakness. When it was discovered that children would not be forthcoming Frances decided to undergo a painful, dangerous operation to remedy the problem. It failed. But would a woman who had not had intercourse with her husband go through such an operation? It seems certain that the Chestertons were a normal, if sometimes reluctant, married couple. Gilbert’s disinclination to discuss sexuality did cast a fog of rumour over his opinions, and his writings reveal a certain immaturity in this area. His faithfulness — there was and never has been any evidence that he made use of mistresses or prostitutes — only serves to enhance his character.

  The best verdict on this part of their marriage may be in Gilbert’s written opinions on women, most notably in What’s Wrong With The World, written in 1910. “In all the old flowery and pastoral love-songs,” he wrote, “you wi
ll find a perpetual reproach against woman in the matter of her coldness; ceaseless and stale similies compare her eyes to northern stars, her heart to ice, her bosom to snow … I think those old cavalier poets who wrote about the coldness of Chloe had hold of a psychological truth missed in nearly all the realistic novels of today.” He went on to describe how contemporary writers thought women to be emotional. “But in truth the old and frigid form is much nearer to the vital fact. Most men, if they spoke with any sincerity, would agree that the most terrible quality in women was not so much being emotional as being unemotional. There is an awful armour of ice which may be the legitimate protection of a more delicate physical organism; but whatever be the psychological explanation there can surely be no question of the fact. The instinctive cry of the female in anger is noli me tangere … The proper name for the thing is modesty; but as we live in an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names, we will yield to a more modern nomenclature and call it dignity. Whatever else it is, it is the thing which a thousand poets and a million lovers have called the coldness of Chloe.”

  The rest of the honeymoon was a complete success. Their love was strong enough to overcome the painful newness of intimacy. Both wished the time together to be longer, and Gilbert put his regret, and joy, on to paper

  Between the perfect wedding day

  And that fierce future proud, and furled,

  I only stole six days — six days

  Enough for God to make the world.

  They did not return to any permanent home, Gilbert had yet to find one which would suit, but to the house of a friend of the Blogg family, in beautiful Edwardes Square, very close to the Chesterton residence. The rent they paid was absurdly high for their meagre income. After three months of luxurious, but misleadingly affluent, living they moved to a smaller, more realistic, abode. Their time in Edwardes Square was happy. Bentley remembered the gatherings at the rented house, “with its garden of old trees and its general air of Georgian peace. I remember too,” he wrote, “the splendid flaming frescoes, done in vivid crayons, of knights and heroes and divinities with which G.K.C. embellished the outside wall at the back, beneath a sheltering portico. I have often wondered whether the landlord charged for them as dilapidations at the end of the tenancy.” It would seem that Gilbert’s habit of drawing on walls had not ceased with marriage; on one occasion he requested an extraordinarily long pencil to enable him to draw on the ceiling when he was in bed, and told friends that the best form of wallpaper would be brown paper, being the easiest to write upon.

  Because the house was so near to the family home in Warwick Gardens it was easy for Gilbert and his new wife to walk over for tea, and sympathy. Frances often enjoyed the trips, but would have preferred a less intense relationship with her in-laws. Food and drink were only part of the reason for Gilbert’s visits to his father’s house; the main reason was his brother Cecil. They had been virtually inseparable since boyhood, best friends and the best of enemies. It was remembered that Gilbert’s wedding reception was one of the few times when the two brothers did not argue, albeit with respect and good nature. Cecil was a tough, robust boy, capable of provoking strong feelings of like and dislike at a remarkably early age. He enjoyed dominating, and at times found it essential. If Gilbert could be the wittier debater, Cecil could provide the cutting edge, the final blow which Gilbert seldom found himself able to deliver — due to compassion rather than ineptitude.

  An early letter from Cecil to Gilbert demonstrates the precocious nature of the youth.

  I have been bathing in rather rough weather lately … It is almost impossible to stand up against a big wave when it is breaking and the sensation of being thrown violently on a pebbly beach is not pleasant. As, however, I can now swim pretty well it does not affect me as much as it did … The Imperial Parliament is getting a little livelier thanks mainly to Timothy Healey and Doctor Tanner. The former is playing a clever and rather amusing game against the Government and indirectly against his own colleagues. He is trying to make himself popular in Ireland by showing himself the most active in the House. Did you see Dr Tanner’s Bull? “Let them,” he said, “not allow a golden moment to slide. Let them reinstate the evicted tenants first and do something for the Irish labourers at the same time.” Yours, C.E. Chesterton.

  As Cecil matured his sense of righteousness increased, transforming him from a strong-willed little boy into a young man of intolerant views, completely confident that he was correct on any and every issue he decided to take up; in this he was not unlike Hilaire Belloc, with whom he would become firm friends. Cecil had his heart set on Fleet Street, and also on Ada Jones, who also often visited Warwick Gardens. She was a natural partner for Cecil, and one of the few people capable of standing up to one of his frontal attacks, and returning the fire. She was a successful journalist, and had started in the trade as a teenager. In the late 1890s and early 1900s Fleet Street was so male-dominated and structured that any woman working in or near it would find life very difficult indeed. The road had been hard and humiliating, but Ada Jones had established herself as a reporter and columnist, writing short stories and contributing superior fiction to various women’s magazines. She wrote under the pen-name of John Keith Prothero — a large circle of friends called her Keith to her face — and she was as striking a woman to look at as she was to read and hear.

  It took Cecil seventeen years of courting before he married Ada Jones, and at times he found the strain difficult to bear. Gilbert got to know her well through that time, as did his wife, and came to like her. She reciprocated the feeling, but could never comprehend the lack of drive in Frances, something she discerned as a failure in character rather than a quality of contentment. When he first met her Gilbert was impressed by the “Queen of Fleet Street … a free-lance or the Joan of Arc of free-lances.” They disagreed most of the time, and knew each other’s ways and means in thought and argument. There was a tacit intellectual regard between Ada and Gilbert, and from Gilbert a note of admiration

  She always had a hundred irons in the fire; though only one of her fires is now so big as to be a bonfire and a beacon. Everyone has heard of the Cecil Houses, in which homeless women find that real hospitality, human and humorous, which was incredibly absent from the previous priggish philanthropy; and nearly everyone has read about their origin, in her own outstanding book which records her own astounding adventure. She went out without a penny to live among the penniless; and brought back our only authoritative account of such a life … She has sympathy with Communists, as I have, and perhaps points of agreement I have not. But I know that she stands, first, for the privacy of the poor who are allowed no privacy. She fights after all, as I do, for the private property of those who have none.

  It marked a sort of sublimination of the Fleet Street spirit in my sister-in-law that, within healthy limits, she not only could do everything, but she would do anything … It was of her that the story was told that, having driven whole teams of plotters and counter-plotters successfully through a serious Scottish newspaper, she was pursuing one of the side-plots for a few chapters, when she received a telegram from the editor, “You have left your hero and heroine tied up in a cavern under the Thames for a week, and they are not married.”

  Ada Jones, Gilbert, Cecil and, often along for the ride, Frances would spend at least one evening a week at a debating meeting, searching out the worthwhile societies and arriving at their doors together. Debating was a craze which grabbed middle-class London and some of the larger provincial cities in the years leading up to the First World War, and a plethora of junior, senior and university groups were formed; alongside these were the would-be parliaments, which undergo periodic re-births every few years, which model themselves on the Westminster Assembly and debate policies and politics along party lines. Frances had lost some of her enthusiasm for these affairs, their charm and appeal had limitations for a young woman in her first year of marriage. She was the fourth member of the group, and always f
elt as much.

  The move to their own home in Battersea came as a relief. Overstrand Mansions was to be their lasting and last London home. It was not what either had been used to, being a medium-sized block of flats with a fine view but lacking any particularly attractive features. The annual rent was £80, a solid but affordable payment for a middle-class couple. Belloc immortalised the figure in a poem, which was pinned up on the wall of the new Chesterton residence

  Frances and Gilbert have a little flat

  At eighty pounds a year and cheap at that

  Where Frances who is Gilbert’s only wife

  Leads an unhappy and complaining life:

  While Gilbert who is Frances’s only man

  Puts up with it as gamely as he can.

  Belloc’s bitter-sweet sense of humour was taken with good feeling by Frances; Gilbert adored it. He was to be a regular guest at the Battersea flat, and the Chestertons enjoyed his company. He did not always give good notice of his visits

  It will annoy you a good deal to hear that I am in town tomorrow Wednesday evening and that I shall appear at your Apartment at 10.45 or 10.30 at earliest. P.M.! You are only just returned. You are hardly settled down. It is an intolerable nuisance. You heartily wish I had not mentioned it. Well, you see that (arrow pointing to “Telegrams, Coolham, Sussex”), if you wire there before One you can put me off, but if you do I shall melt your keys, both the exterior one which forms the body or form of the matter and the interior one which is the mystical content thereof. Also if you put me off I shall not have you down here ever to see the Oak Room, the Tapestry Room, the Green Room, etc.