Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton

by Michael Coren

  After New York came Boston, that very Catholic and lovely city. He had formed an opinion of the American people by now, and believed that “there is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.” Such comments, as part of his larger reputation, went before him. He spoke about Ireland, and was cheered. In Nashville and Oklahoma, Omaha and Albany he experienced the wide difference in American culture, the different identities that each state, each city, cloaks itself in. He thought that the cheering Americans took him “absolutely too seriously, though they make the best audience to lecture to in the world.” In Canada the reception he gained was little short of magnificent. It was a triumphant tour, and when he returned to Britain he was full of praise for his foreign hosts. He wrote his opinions down for publication in book form in What I Saw In America.

  Travel not only widened his knowledge of other countries, but also his own convictions. He had written to Father O’Connor at the time, informing him that Frances was unwell, and also that, “I feel it is only right to consult with my Anglo-Catholic friends; but I have at present a feeling it will be something like a farewell.” He was writing regularly to Belloc and Baring, both Catholics, and searching for affirmation, for support. They gave the latter, but knew that Gilbert had to make up his own mind.

  His letters reveal a commitment to convert to the Roman Catholic Church, surrounded by fears that such an act would hurt his friends, and Frances, and that the new home he desired so much might be a little foreign, “alien.” He was reassured by friends that the Catholic Church was as foreign, and as English, as he wished to make it; it was universal, and only the British prejudice towards the faith gave it a European feel and flavour. His wife’s views on the subject were of more importance. He discussed the matter with her, sensitive to her feelings but conscious that he needed conversion as a thirsty man needs water. Father Ronald Knox, that great and good priest, advised him, and began to instruct him. Would Frances tolerate his conversion? Finally, it must not matter.

  He was still nominally an Anglo-Catholic, within the body of the Church of England. As such he was asked to talk to a Congress at the Albert Hall, and felt very uncomfortable so doing. He wrote to Maurice Baring, explaining how he felt at the gathering

  To those to whom I cannot give my spiritual biography, I can say that the insecurity I felt in Anglicanism was typified in the Lambeth Conference. I am at least sure that much turns on that Conference, if not for me, for large numbers of those people at the Albert Hall. A young Anglo-Catholic curate has just told me that the crowd there cheered all references to the Pope, and laughed at every mention of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s a queer state of things. I am concerned most however, about somebody I value more than the Archbishop of Canterbury; Frances, to whom I owe much of my own faith, and to whom therefore (as far as I can see my way) I also owe every decent chance for the controversial defence of her faith. If her side can convince me, they have a right to do so; if not, I shall go hot and strong to convince her. I put it clumsily, but there is a point in my mind …

  Frances was becoming more reticent on the subject, knowing her husband’s ways, and his determination. She knew that he would journey into the Catholic Church, and she could do nothing about it; his discussions with her were as much to satisfy his own feelings as hers. Before any conversion could take place came a loss. Gilbert’s father became seriously ill. Ada Chesterton described the sudden attack as an “obstinate cold,” but there was evidently more to it than that. He would not get out of bed, became nervous and sullen. His death came before anybody in the family could prepare themselves for it, if that is indeed possible. Gilbert’s grief was tempered by the fact that he had to cope with the business affairs left outstanding by his father. Nevertheless, he was heartbroken. Edward Chesterton was buried at Brompton, the Chesterton grave; he had been extremely proud of both of his sons.

  The death almost coincided with Gilbert and Frances’s move to Top Meadow, their long awaited home. The house was not completed, but enough had been achieved for the couple to live there quite happily. Frances was ill again, and had to be carried straight to her bed in the new house. Ada Chesterton went to see them shortly after the move, and was shocked by what she saw at Top Meadow

  … the stage, on which amateur talent used to shine, some feet above the auditorium — or should I say floor level? — had been made into a dining-room. It was reached from the small front hall by a narrow passage and you entered, so to speak, by the doorless wings direct on to the dining-table, almost flush with the proscenium curtains. The place was heated by an anthracite stove backstage, which could not be kept at a pressure sufficient to warm the whole, as those with their backs almost against it would have been slowly roasted …

  Beyond the stage, and at the lower level, the auditorium stretched through a hinterland to Gilbert’s cubbyhole. In the front of the hinterland there was an open brick fireplace with space for a small low chair on either side, where Frances would sit for hours, watching the logs crumble into fiery particles …

  Gilbert seemed distracted during the move, surprising since he had been anxious to settle down for months. There were other things on his mind; at least one other thing on his mind. He wrote to Father O’Connor

  … I write with a more personal motive; do you happen to have a holiday about the end of next week or thereabouts and would it be possible for you to come south and see our new house — or old studio? This sounds a very abrupt invitation; but I write in great haste, and am troubled about many things. I want to talk to you about them; especially the most serious ones, religious and concerned with my own rather difficult position. Most of the difficulty has been my own fault, but not all; some of my difficulties would commonly be called duties; though I ought perhaps to have learned sooner to regard them as lesser duties. I mean that a Pagan or Protestant or Agnostic might even have excused me; but I have grown less and less of a Pagan or Protestant, and can no longer excuse myself. There are lots of things for which I never did excuse myself; but I am thinking now of particular points that might really be casuistical. Anyhow, you are the person that Frances and I think of with most affection, of all who could help in such a matter. Could you let me know if any time such as I name, or after, could give us the joy of seeing you?

  Father O’Connor arrived on 26th July, and immediately listened to Gilbert’s fears and hopes. He walked with Frances through the town, and told her that it was Gilbert’s concern for his wife that was holding him back from conversion. She was delighted to hear that Gilbert had been so forthcoming, answering that “Oh! I shall be infinitely relieved. You cannot imagine how it fidgets Gilbert to have anything on his mind. The last three months have been exceptionally trying. I should be only too glad to come with him, if God in His mercy would show the way clear enough for me to justify such a step.” Father O’Connor gave Gilbert a penny catechism, which he read avidly throughout the day. All was now set, and the location for the ceremony would be the local church, then merely an annexe to the Railway Hotel.

  Gilbert carried with him that Sunday afternoon the sword-stick given to him in the United States by the Knights of Columbus. He made his first confession to Father O’Connor, took a last look at his catechism and prepared for the service. Dom Ignatius Rice officiated. Frances began to weep. After the baptism was administered Gilbert was left inside the chapel on his own for a while; he came out, and immediately began to comfort Frances. He wrote to his mother, Belloc and Baring, informing them of what had happened. Only Baring gave his full approval, and full enthusiasm. After the news appeared in the Tablet, letters of encouragement began to arrive. Father Vincent NcNabb, that sturdy priest who wore army boots and survived many a heckler in Hyde Park, wrote to O’Connor, enthusing with “You, my beloved Father, must feel as if the birth pangs of a score of years were now nothing, the joy that a man-child is born to Jesus Christ.” Gilbert himself wrote

  When people ask
me, or indeed anybody else, “Why did you join the Church of Rome?” the first essential answer, if it is partly an elliptical answer, is “To get rid of my sins.” For there is no other religious system that does really profess to get rid of people’s sins. It is confirmed by the logic, which to many seems startling, by which the Church deduces that sin confessed and adequately repented is actually abolished; and that the sinner does really begin again as if he had never sinned …

  He was given life anew, as he expected. Friends detected a new energy in his step and in his approach to work and pleasure. A great burden, that of indecision, was removed from his shoulders, and in its place was now certainty, absolute faith and belief. All his writings would now have a concrete purpose, the road ahead was clear, if not always easy. He was confident that Frances would follow before long; she always did.

  While Gilbert was deciding his future, the New Witness was also deciding its own; it would close, financially smashed. Frances breathed a sigh of relief, and then a sigh of disbelief. Cecil’s child would not die, but would live again in another form. Gilbert stated

  In this day and hour I haul down my flag, I surrender my sword, I give up a fight I have maintained against odds for very long. No; I do not mean the fight to maintain the New Witness, though that was a fight against impossible odds and has gone on for years. I mean a more horrid but hidden conflict, of which the world knew nothing; the savage but secret war I have waged against a proposal to call a paper by the name of G.K.C.’s Weekly. When the title was first suggested my feeling was one of wild terror, which gradually softened into disgust.

  The first requirement was money, and as the New Witness had made so many enemies the raising of finances was a difficult proposition. Some of the absurdities which Cecil Chesterton and Belloc had believed about the Jewish control of City of London money began to haunt Gilbert, as both Jewish and gentile companies and individuals halted their philanthropy at the front door of “G.K.C.’s Weekly.” He was forced to ask his family lawyer to raise money on the family estate, in which he had a considerable number of shares. After this enterprise more money was still needed, and he knew that could only be achieved by writing more books. Having to write to order, for cash, obviously damaged the quality of some of his work; friends told him this, but he would not, could not, change his decision.

  The Man Who Knew Too Much was a collection of magazine stories, all concerning an aristocrat named Horne Fisher. The tales are centred on crime and politics, with Fisher solving all the problems with a cynical detachment. Some had it that the central character was modelled on Maurice Baring — class and height were certainly similar — and if so Baring would have been most upset. It is an eminently forgettable little book.

  In 1923 two books appeared; the first, Fancies Versus Fads, was a further collection of essays and articles. The second made a much larger impact: it was his biography of St Francis of Assisi. The first book actually written after his reception into the Catholic Church, it drew upon his biographical sketch of the Saint in his previous book, Twelve Types. The intention was to provide a portrait of St Francis for the “ordinary” man, and to flesh out his previous hypothesis that Francis had anticipated most of what modern liberalism cherished as being unique to its own age. Gilbert believed that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had discovered little that was spiritually or politically new, or worth knowing, and that Francis was one of the great medieval fathers of contemporary invention. In typically Chestertonian manner, he was able to speak volumes about his subject without mentioning its name

  The modern innovation which has substituted journalism for history, or for that tradition that is the gossip of history, has had at least one definite effect. It has insured that everybody should only hear the end of every story. Journalists are in the habit of printing above the very last chapters of their serial stories (when the hero and heroine are just about to embrace in the last chapter, as only an unfathomable perversity prevented them from doing in the first) the rather misleading words, “You can begin this story here.” But even this is not a complete parallel; for the journals do give some sort of a summary of the story, while they never give anything remotely resembling a summary of the history.

  Newspapers not only deal with news, but they deal with everything as if it were entirely new. Tutankamen, for instance, was entirely new. It is exactly in the same fashion that we read that Admiral Bangs has been shot, which is the first intimation we have that he has ever been born. There is something singularly significant in the use which journalism makes of its stores of biography. It never thinks of publishing the life until it is publishing the death. As it deals with individuals it deals with institutions and ideas. After the Great War our public began to be told of all sorts of nations being emancipated. It had never been told a word about their being enslaved …

  Thus it was that he prepared to explain why we could not understand St Francis, the Inquisition or earlier forms of Catholic Christianity without coming to terms with the history of all of these things. He explored the world of St Francis, the environment which he knew and experienced. The book was brief, but full and sweeping in its explanations and interpretations. Tales of the Long Bow, the volume which followed, was a book of magazine stories, each one centred on the contradiction of a proverb; pigs do fly, water can burn. It is a gentle, charming selection; but was entirely forgotten with the publication of what is perhaps Gilbert’s masterpiece, The Everlasting Man.

  As with some of his other works, this one was written as a response. H.G. Wells, who had been involved in a running debate with Gilbert for years, had brought out his Outline of History as a complete volume in 1925; it had appeared in separate sections earlier. Wells was very much the poor man’s historian, writing readable history for young men who were epitomised in books such as his Love and Mr Lewisham or Kipps. Wells was a rationalist, a believer in self-improvement and materialism. He perceived history as a process of evolution, inevitable and desirable. Man had begun as a primitive, had improved his lot over the centuries, and had in the twentieth century reached a near pinnacle, a position of scientific and political progress, and was able to at last achieve universal happiness and world peace. It was an optimistic analysis of history, and a proud one; the arrogance of modern man was once again on display, the belief that only at that point in history could problems be solved, answers found. God was not relevant, science had produced the answers, and hence done away with any need for a substitute panacea. Gilbert’s reply was not long in coming.

  The Everlasting Man has as fundamental qualities its strong flavour of humour, of taking a serious matter seriously, but also with a light heart. It was readable. Wells discussed Man’s beginnings in the caves, so Gilbert looked closely at what actually went on in the caves. In a section of the book entitled “The God In The Cave” he wrote

  This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born. But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primaeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

  Gilbert’s history of man’s story has the life of Jesus as the focal point of the world, the “crisis of history.” The development of the Roman C
atholic Church is the guiding line throughout history, a guide by which we can judge progress and advancement. Science has no place here, other than as a by-product of the spiritual centre, and man is no more near perfection in 1920 than he was in 1290. There has always been a path to heaven, and a road to somewhere else. He concluded the book as follows

  For it was the soul of Christendom that came forth from the incredible Christ; and the soul of it was common sense. Though we dared not look on His face we could look on His fruits; and by His fruits we should know Him. The fruits are solid and the fruitfulness is much more than a metaphor; and nowhere in this sad world are boys happier in apple-trees, or men in more equal chorus singing as they tread the vine, than under the fixed flash of this instant and intolerant enlightenment; the lightning made eternal as the light.

  The publication of The Everlasting Man took Gilbert away from journalism for only a short while; G.K.’s Weekly — the “G.K.C.” was abbreviated — was calling him back, loudly and clearly. Its appeal was obvious; the staff were dedicated, prepared to work for low wages and were committed to the magazine’s fortunes. W.R. Titterton recalled a visit to the offices of the paper by Gilbert

  I am sitting in the editorial chair, when the door opens, and discloses Chesterton, floppy hat in one hand, sprouting cigarillo and sword-stick in the other. Of course, his pince-nez hangs sideways on his nose. A beaming smile, half of surprise, half of joy is on his face, as if, on a long and hazardous voyage of discovery, most unexpectedly he’d found us!