Gilbert Keith Chesterton

ldh

ved to Warwick Gardens. As old-fashioned London houses go, 11 Warwick Gardens is small. On the ground floor, a back and front room were for the Chestertons drawing-room and dining-room with a folding door between, the only other sitting-room being a small study built out over the garden. A long, narrow, green str

a prophecy remembered by all parties because it proved so singularly false. As soon as Cecil could speak, he began to argu

he remembered a fall she had from a rocking-horse more clearly than he remembered her death,

terature. For Gilbert Chesterton most perfectly remembered the exact truth, not only about what happened to a child, but about how a child thought and felt. What is more, he sees childhood n

beginning of the life of man; and that it is man who afterwards darkens it with dreams or goes astray from it in self-dec

iography

nder in it, as if the world were as new as myself." A child in this world, like God in the moment of creation, looks upon it and sees that it is very good. It was not that he was never unhappy as a child, and he had his share

lly recall; not the things I should think most worth recalling. This is where it differs from the other great thrill of the past, all that is connected with first love and the romantic passion

ography,

often to be noted in the childhood of exceptional men: a combination of backwardness and precocity. Gilbert Ches

came to him out of the old fairy tales and made the first basis for his philosophy. And George Macdonald's story The Princess and the Goblin made, he says, "a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start." It is the story of a house where goblins were in the cellar and a kind of fairy godmother in a hidden room upstairs. This sto

one and watch against the other. . . . Since I first read that story some five alternative philosophies of the universe have come to our colleges

to George Macdon

f any story he ever read-then or later! Another recurrent image in books by the same author is that of a great white horse. A

Ibi

he care of a girl with ropes of golden hair; to whom my mother afterwards called out from the house, 'You are a

enlivening my early years than most." She has a vivid memory of Sheffield Terrace where all three Chesterton children were born and where the little sister, Beatrice, whom they called Birdie, die

such a fear of sickness or accident. If Cecil gave the slightest sign of choking at dinner, Gilbert would throw down his spoon or fork and rush from the room. I have seen him do it so

re always rudimentary human beings, sometimes a good deal more, and they are taken through lengthy adventures drawn on the backs of bits of wall paper, of insurance forms, in little books sewn together, or sometimes on long strips glued end to end by his father. These drawings can often be dated exactly, for E

notes in the Autobiography, a power of invention which "created for children the permanent anticipation of what is profoundly called a 'surprise.'" The child of today chooses his Christmas present in advance and decides between Peter Pan and the Pantomime (when he does not get both). The Chesterton children saw their first glimpses of fantasy through the framew

with the most refractory. Gilbert was never refractory, merely absent-minded; but it is doubtful whether he was sent upstairs to wash his hands or brush his hair, except in preparation for a visit or ceremonial occasion ("not even then!" interpolates Annie). And it is perfectly certain that he ought to have been so sent several times a day. No one minded if he was late for meals; h

ward?" Edward: "I think I'd like a bit of chicken!" Aunt M. fiercely: "No, you won't, you'll have mutton!" That happened so often. Sometimes Alice Grosjean, the youngest of Aunt M.'s family, familia

ation. Schoolboy contemporaries of Gilbert say that although immensely kind, she alarmed them by a rather forbidding appearance-"her clothes thrown on anyhow, and blackened and protruding teeth which g

added darling to them. I have heard her address Bentley when a young man thus; 'Bentley darling, come and sit ov

dressed her maids waiting at t

arance, and was still open to the appeal of millinery. ("She always was," says Annie.) The letter is from John Barker of High St

DA

pose of offering for your selection a Bonnet of the latest Parisian taste, of which we ha

ou may appoint, unless you would prefer to pay

n as you have made your selection he

embrance of the anniversary of what, he instructs us to say, he regards as a happ

ay we very respectfully join to them our own, and add that during many years to come we trust to be permitted to supply you with g

to be Madam Your mo

BARKE

K. himself says of another story) that Dick Swiveller really did say, "When he who adores thee has left but the name-in c

ry long and wavy. He used to sit behind her in Church. She liked pretty clothes, but lacked the vanity to buy them

able fragments written in his early twenties, he describes a family of girls who had played with him when they were very young together. It is headed

latry at one shrine is apt to lose its purely intellectual character, but a genial polytheism is always bracing and platonic. Besides, the Vivians lived in the same street or rather "gardens" as ourselve

ees to the prejudice of their white frocks, and otherwise misbehaving myself in the funny old days, before I went to school and became a son of gentlemen only. I have never been able, in fact I have never tried, to tell which of the three I really liked best. And if the severer usefulness and domesticity of the eldest girl, with her quiet art-colours, and broad, brave forehead as pale as the white roses

dash of sentiment and a strong penchant for being her own emotional pint-stoup on the traditional subjects and occas

ng how even Nina, miracle of diligence and self-effacement, remembered a new pink frock across the abyss of the years. . . . Walking with my

lished f

nty years later, Cecil was to remark with amusement that he had as a small boy heard every part of the teaching now (1908) being set out by R. J. Campbell under the title, "The New Religion." The Chesterton Liberalism en

ead, as had every good Liberal of that day. What was to be done about it? He took the Lays and rewrote them in an excellent imitation of Aytoun, but on the opposite side. In view of his own later developments such a line as "Drive the trembling Papists backward

e Great Lo

his glor

is covene

evelasti

summoned

n Cruerch

and covenen

aster wo

housand

lamore

ts tough

who for

ever

r bear t

id (his ha

f Scotland

rning shal

ay the t

arch from

back in b

here among

body of

oldiers on

oldiers

ember ye

end of fe

us draw o

aw them o

I am thre

of false

embling Papi

ay the T

l thier hous

lt the Campb

next mor

irded on

d him man

swered no

mmoned al

d them to

eid unto

die and ne

n we drove ri

ervants o

rd Archiba

alter an

t fled all

t fled all

ursed tribe

e honour and