Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

by Michael Coren

  Most of the mythology about Gilbert had its origins in Fleet Street. His brother wrote as to how he would begin a conversation with anyone who happened to be about, in bar or pub. The stranger might be flattered by the attentions, or quite put out. “He talks,” said Cecil, “especially in argument, with powerful voice and gesture. He laughs at his own jokes loudly and with quite unaffected enjoyment … He will take a cab halfway up a street, keep it waiting an hour or so, and then drive halfway down the street again.” He was in love with the cab as a means of transport, and was aware that its future had been darkened by engines and the modern need for as much speed as possible. The horse-drawn hansom was an elegant way to move around London, and with its two-seat capacity was admirably fitted to Gilbert’s frame. He was a legend in the esoteric community of the cabbie, and they tolerated his keeping them waiting and not knowing where he wanted to go, certain that the tip would be generous and the conversation, when possible, vibrant.

  Fleet Street was his domain, and he was as much a part of it as the El Vino and Cheshire Cheese watering holes which he frequented. Kenneth Baker, now a cabinet minister, remembers a family story concerning a relative walking up Fleet Street on a beautiful summer’s day. She passed an alleyway and saw a man sitting on the ground begging. A side door opened and Gilbert Chesterton came out. He saw the man, looked for a moment, and then turned his pockets completely inside out, emptying the contents into the lap of the amazed beggar.

  Ada Chesterton was often present at the Fleet Street marathons of Gilbert and his friends and wrote

  He revelled in the movement, the humour, the humanity of Fleet Street, the infinite variety of companionship, the sharp-edged brains and debating ability. It was a masculine period of hard thinking and hard drinking, a recrudescence of the Old Grub Street, with G.K. as the presiding figure … The Fleet Street El Vino was one of Gilbert’s favourite haunts, with the George and the Bodega. It was a jolly place, and in those days sported many and noble barrels. Under the shelter of a vast cask of sherry, on the corner of an old mahogany table, G.K. would reel off hundreds of words and talk in a glowing flow of epigram and paradox. It became a custom to look in round about six in the hope of finding him. Those who arrived early sat at G.K.’s table, the others pushed in where they could … Belloc might rush in like a nor’easter, and expound the universe, insisting that some particular manifestation, political, social or psychological, could only happen at three places in the world, all of them widely and wildly apart … Maurice Baring, the most modest and distinguished of special correspondents, exquisite poet, famous for his Russian studies, would drift along … Sometimes the tavern party broke up early, but often we stayed on until closing time, which in that Arcadian era was twelve midnight, or midway in the evening we would adjourn to the other side of the Street, to Peel’s or the Cheshire Cheese for sandwiches. G.K. generally walked on such occasions. When alone, however, he always took a hansom, even if it were only from the Daily News office to the Telegraph, a hundred yards across the road … This was his method also of settling the score of his own drinks and those of his friends. The barman had to help himself. If, as might happen, his pockets were found empty, it would not matter, every pub within the radius of Fleet Street knew the big figure, recognised the chuckling laugh and would have given credit for so long as it was wanted.

  His public speaking was always of the highest quality, and he was one of the best platform speakers of the age. Those who witnessed his oratory remembered a genial approach, with a great deal of swaying, humming and laughing. He would sometimes drawl, and his digression was legendary. The rate of his demand caused problems. Again, Ada Chesterton wrote of an evening in the El Vino, when he suddenly exclaimed, “I’m supposed to be speaking to the Literary Society at Bletchley — I should be speaking now …” He mused a moment on the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven, ordered another glass of port and then with an effort heaved himself up … His absent-mindedness on the platform also had a following. One follower and acquaintance recalls Gilbert turning to face the audience with his fly buttons undone, and his size making the lapse in memory completely obvious. He turned around as though nothing had happened, there was a moment of silence, and then he faced the meeting once again and proceeded to give his lecture, buttons done up, as if nothing had happened.

  One anecdote of his dressing habits has been told and retold so often by Chestertonians down the years that there are now a dozen varieties of the theme. It occurred when he was staying with Conrad Noel at Paddington Green. He was to speak at a Literary Society, and was required to wear formal dress. He went into the bedroom to get ready, and came out wearing a dress coat which was so ill-fitting that it showed his braces, the arms being so short that his wrists were uncovered. When Conrad Noel went into the same room to put on his suit of clothes, he found a suit which could have covered him twice over. The explanation was fairly straightforward — they had picked up the wrong suits from the bed — but while Conrad Noel simply changed his costume and went out, Gilbert insisted that some sort of miracle had happened, the tiny suit was his own, and went out in it.

  At home his style of entertaining was of the most generous kind. The Chesterton flat was opened up to guests, though they would often find that their host was late in getting home, and that Frances had to make do; explanations were entirely unnecessary. “Our Fleet Street contingent behaved with great propriety,” wrote Ada Chesterton, “remaining in the drawingroom until, late in the evening, catching G.K.’s beckoning eye we followed him into the cosy little kitchen where mounds of sausages were eaten and pints of beer consumed and the talk grew better and better. Gilbert’s symbol of hospitality was always sausages and beer.” She may well have written “drunker and drunker,” as the evenings at the Chesterton flat were invariably alcoholically supported. It became a point of pride amongst the Chesterton-Belloc set to drink heavily, and sometimes become drunk. It was both a sign of membership and friendship, and a defiant gesture aimed at the puritanical young things who were so influential at the time in politics and literature, calling for a renaissance in muscular Christian abstention. Gilbert could, and would, write under the influence of alcohol, with no visible difficulties or impairments to his thought and clarity.

  There also began the habit of costume parties, with Gilbert favouring the dress of Dr Johnson. He enjoyed being photographed in eighteenth-century garb, and would express his preference for the Age of Enlightenment. During one such dinner Cecil came dressed as Liberty Wilkes, a character he resembled both physically — Wilkes was often parodied because of his ugly looks — and in character; critics would describe them both as trouble-makers and egoists. Gilbert’s other fancy dress for parties was as a character out of The Pickwick Papers, and on such evenings stories and drinking were, of course, demanded. His life was more full, more developed and more satisfying than ever before. He was still searching, for a cause and for a belief, to love and to write about. They would come.

  VI - A Little Suffolk Priest and a Little London Suburb

  England and the English were always Gilbert’s most special loves, and he preferred a holiday in the British Isles to the most exotic trip abroad. The climate suited his bulk, and the eccentric ways of the people matched his own peculiarities. The north was a regular vacation spot, with Yorkshire and its magnificent moors occupying a place of particular fondness for the Chesterton couple. The clean air and bracing winds of the area helped Frances’s vulnerable physical state, or at least made her feel stronger and more able to cope. He wrote

  When I brought Frances away here, she was hit so heavily with a sort of wasting fatigue, that I really wanted to find out whether the doctors were right in thinking it only fatigue or whether (by one hellish chance out of a hundred) it might be the beginning of some real illness. I am pretty well convinced now, thank God, that the doctors are right and it is only nervous exhaustion. But — I would not write this to anyone else, but you combine so unusually in your own single personality
the characters of (1) priest (2) human being (3) man of science (4) man of the world (5) man of the other world (6) old friend (7) new friend, not to mention Irishman and picture dealer, that I don’t mind suggesting the truth to you. Frances has just come out of what looked bad enough to be an illness and is just going to plunge into one of her recurrent problems of pain and depressions. The two may be just a bit too much for her and I want to be with her every night for a few days — there’s an Irish bull for you! One of the mysteries of Marriage (which must be a Sacrament and an extraordinary one) is that a man evidently useless like me can yet become at certain instants indispensable. And the further oddity (which I invite you to explain on mystical grounds) is that he never feels so small as when he really knows that he is necessary. You may understand this scrawl; I doubt if anyone else would.

  The man he was writing to was Father John O’Connor, Parish Priest, later a Privy Chamberlain to Pope Pius XI, and the model and inspiration for a fictional detective named Father Brown. Their initial meeting was in some ways inevitable: Gilbert was often in Yorkshire, O’Connor was based at St Anne’s Church in Keighley and knew of and admired Gilbert’s work; they had much in common. Nature abhors a vacuum, faith and friendship cannot tolerate two kindred spirits not joining in friendship. In 1903 and 1904 the Chestertons spent some time in West Yorkshire, Gilbert lectured and they enjoyed a holiday. They were based near to Ilkley, a spa town of some beauty on the River Wharfe, with a population then of over 13,000. They frequently lodged with the Steinthal family, and through them made the acquaintance of O’Connor. As with Max Beerbohm, Gilbert was approached with a view to friendship. In February 1903 Father O’Connor wrote to him that he was a “Catholic priest, and though I may not find you quite orthodox in details, I first wish to thank you very heartily, or shall I say, to thank God for having gifted you with the spirituality which alone makes literature immortal, as I think.”

  As to their first meeting, there are differences of opinion. In his book Father Brown on Chesterton, O’Connor writes: “… We met at Keighley in the spring of 1904, at the house of Mr Herbert Hugill, who was a much older Chesterton fan than I was … There we agreed to walk over the moor to Ilkley, where Chesterton was spending a short holiday, and I was his willing guide. The actual conditions for both of us were as near the ideal as makes no difference: he was on holiday, having delivered his lecture to the Keighley intelligentsia, and I was in possession of the heart’s desire, which was to talk with him. March was awaking and blowing the hair out of her eyes, and our bit of moorland is among the finest in Yorkshire, especially when white clouds race across the blue …”

  He went on to explain that he had been introduced to Gilbert’s work through The Defendant, and that as they marched over the northern English countryside both O’Connor and Gilbert recounted anecdotes and opinions. They reached the subject of confession “… If everyone frequented the Sacrament of penance as much as mere pious authors urge, it would soon kill off all the confessors, but the modern practice keeps the track smooth, open, and safe. If people went to confess only great crimes, the C.I.D. might begin to haunt our churches after a murder or a burglary, and this would lead to heavier complications.”

  The conversation became smothered in digression, occasionally reaching points of mutual concern and remaining on a single point just long enough for a dialogue to take place. “We even got on to the burning of heretics,” O’Connor recalls. “Neither of us could bear to look on it as practical politics; neither of us could bear to apply a hot flat-iron to the soles of their feet, as I once in a hospital, pretending to be the visiting doctor, recommended very loudly for a woman who was shamming epilepsy; but Chesterton was already convinced that something drastic was necessary for bad cases which could and did occur …” They shouted to make themselves heard in the wind, sang songs together and gorged on each other’s company. O’Connor’s recollection of the beginnings of friendship are as authentic as any, and Gilbert agreed with most of the account in his Autobiography

  Father John O’Connor of Bradford … is not shabby, but rather neat … he is not clumsy, but very delicate and dexterous; he not only is but looks amusing and amused. He is a sensitive and quick-witted Irishman, with the profound irony and some of the potential irritability of his race. My Father Brown was deliberately described as a Suffolk dumpling from East Anglia. That, and the rest of his description, was a deliberate disguise for the purpose of detective fiction … But for all that, there is a very real sense in which Father O’Connor was the intellectual inspiration of these stories; and of much more important things as well … I had gone to give a lecture at Keighley on the high moors of the West Riding, and stayed the night with a leading citizen of that little industrial town; who had assembled a group of local friends such as could be conceived, I suppose, as likely to be patient with lecturers; including the curate of the Roman Catholic Church; a small man with a smooth face and a demure but elvish expression. I was struck by the tact and humour with which he mingled with his very Yorkshire and very Protestant company; and I soon found out that they had, in their bluff way, already learned to appreciate him as something of a character. Somebody gave me a very amusing account of how two gigantic Yorkshire farmers, of that district, had been deputed to go the rounds of various religious centres, and how they wavered, with nameless terrors, before entering the little presbytery of the little priest. With many sinkings of heart, they seem to have come finally to the conclusion that he would hardly do them any serious harm; and that if he did, they could send for the police. They really thought, I suppose, that he had his house fitted up with all the torture engines of the Spanish Inquisition. But even these farmers, I was told, had since accepted him as a neighbour, and as the evening wore on his neighbours decidedly encouraged his considerable powers of entertainment. He expanded, and was soon in the middle of reciting that great and heart-searching dramatic lyric which is entitled “My Boots are Tight.” I liked him very much …

  I mentioned to the priest in conversation that I proposed to support in print a certain proposal, it matters not what, in connection with some rather sordid social questions of vice and crime. On this particular point he thought I was in error, or rather in ignorance; as indeed I was. And, merely as a necessary duty to prevent me from falling into a mare’s nest, he told me certain facts he knew about perverted practices which I certainly shall not set down or discuss here. I have confessed on an earlier page that in my own youth I had imagined for myself any amount of iniquity; and it was a curious experience to find that this quiet and pleasant celibate had plumbed those abysses far deeper than I. I had not imagined that the world could hold such horrors. If he had been a professional novelist throwing such filth broadcast on all the bookstalls for boys and babies to pick up, of course he would have been a great creative artist and a herald of the Dawn. As he was only stating them reluctantly, in strict privacy, as a practical necessity, he was, of course, a typical Jesuit whispering poisonous secrets in my ear. When we returned to the house we found it full of visitors, and fell into special conversation with two hearty and healthy young Cambridge under-graduates … I never knew a man who could turn with more ease than he from one topic to another, or who had more unexpected stores of information, often purely technical information, upon all …

  The description of their first meeting concludes with

  Next morning he and I walked over Keighley Gate, the great wall of the moors that separates Keighley from Wharfedale, for I was visiting friends in Ilkley; and after a few hours’ talk on the moors, it was a new friend whom I introduced to my old friends at my journey’s end. He stayed to lunch, he stayed to tea; he stayed to dinner; I am not sure that, under their pressing hospitality, he did not stay the night …

  They had so much in common, as well as so much to teach and learn from each other. The relationship often seemed to be on the edge of falling into a master-pupil partnership, with Gilbert sitting at the feet of this sage-like figure, with the apparen
t quality and ability of a worldly philosopher. This never happened. Gilbert had enough to reciprocate; O’Connor was willing to listen and be informed and entertained. Father Brown would not materialise for some time, but the between the two men would strengthen, Frances would also become a follower and friend, and they would have their lives broadened and enriched by the friendship. O’Connor was not possessive of Gilbert, as some celibate priests are towards their close friends, even when it appeared that Gilbert wanted to be possessed.

  In some ways Father O’Connor acted as a safety valve for Gilbert, a channel where new ideas or half-formed theories could be tested, and if found to be dangerous or unhealthy, be promptly dismissed or challenged. The respect between them was fundamental to their friendship, as was the confidentiality which surrounded much of their dialogue; a consequence of this is that we are left with only the more bland of their letters and the most meagre records of their talks. The relationship was at its centre a journey; of discovery, faith, style and enlightenment. The journey included the appearance of Father Brown, but even without the unique fictional character it was a magnificent example of two men in platonic love.

  Gilbert was always anxious to inform Father O’Connor of his forthcoming publications, and often discussed the initial thoughts which resulted in a book or article. Such was the case with his biography of G.F. Watts, published in March 1904. Gilbert was always at his best when writing about his heroes, and the painter George Frederick Watts had been a source of hope and inspiration since the lonely, desperate days of art school and isolation. The book was not particularly well publicised or promoted by its publishers at the time, and subsequently became one of Gilbert’s more obscure achievements. Since reprinted, as a study of art, an artist and a man, it is a poignant reminder of how much can be said and explained in only a few pages. Watts was still living when the book appeared, a fact which Gilbert dealt with early on in his biography