Gilbert Keith Chesterton

ool

r's, from the name of the Headmaster. Though it is not technically the preparatory school for St. Paul's, large numbers of Paulines do pass through it. It stands oppo

d left before Chesterton entered the school." In an early life of Sir Thomas More we learn of the keen rivalry existing in his day between his own school of St. Anthony and St. Paul's, of scholastic "disputations" between the two, put an end to by Dean Colet because they led to brawling among the boys, when the Paulines would call those of St. Anthony "pigs" and the

, would find it a little difficult to say at what moment the transformation occurred. G.K. seems to put it at the beginning of school life, but the fact that St. Paul's was a day-school meant that the transition from home to school, usual in English public-school education,* was never in his case completely made. No doubt he is right in speaking in the Autobiography of "the sort of prickly protection like

rofits there may be are put back into the school. Mostly they are run by a Board of Governors and very many of them hold the succession to the old monastic schools of England (e.g., Charterhouse, Westminster, St. Paul's). They are usually, t

e chief defect of Oxford that it consisted almost entirely of people educated at boarding-

continual reference to home life, nor can a boy possibly have a friend long without making the acquaintance and feeling the influence of his parents and his surroundings. . . . The boys' own amusements and institutions, the school sports, the school clubs, the school magazine, are patronised by the masters, but they are originated and managed by the boys.

of J.D.C. writt

were frustrated; and that I was not entirely successful even in escaping the contamination of the language of Aristotle and Demosthenes," he still contrasts childhood as a time when one "wants to kno

ilbert's own description of his school life that it was as near a pose as Gilbert ever managed to get. He wanted desperately to be the ordinary schoolboy, but he never managed to fulfil this ambition. Tall, untidy, incredibly clumsy and absent-minded, he was marked out from his fellows both physically and intellectually. When in the later part of his school

apparently muttering poetry, breaking into inane laughter." The kind of thing he was muttering we learn from a sentence in the Autobiography: "I was one day wandering about the streets in that

etimes scowling as he talked to himself, apparently oblivious of everything he passed; but in reality a far closer observer t

When class reassembled, the snow began to melt and pools to appear on the floor. A small boy raised his hand: "Please

- and ask him with my compliments to see that the trouble with the sink is put right immediately." Gilbert, with water stil

plied, "I'm sorry to hear it." "We watched our talk," one of them said to me, "when he was with us." His home and upbringing were felt by some of his schoolfellows to have definitely a Puritan tinge about them, although on the other hand the more Conservative elements regarded them as politically dangerous. Mr. Oldershaw relates that h

en tried to see what everyone else saw. All the time he was seeing qualities in his friends, ideas in literature and possibilities in life. And all this world of imagination had, on his own theory, to be carefully concealed from his masters. In the Autobiography he describes himself walking to school fervently reciting verses which he afterwards repeated in class with a determined lack of expression and woodenness of voice; but when he assumes that this is how all boys behave, he surely attributes his own literary enthusiasms far too widely. One would rather gather that he supposed the whole

dun plains of Hades are thickened with the shades of Kings, so round this lovely giddy French princess, fall one by one the haughty Dauphin, the princely Darnley, the accomplished Rizzio, the terrible Bothwell,

he vision of the dimly-lighted state-bedroom of Whitehall. Elizabeth, haggard and wild-eyed has flung herself prone upon the floor and refuses to take meat or drink, but lies there, surrounded by ceremonious courtiers, but seeing with that terrible insight that was her curse, that she was alone, that their homage was a mockery, that they were waiting eagerly for her death to crown their intrigues with her successor, that there was not in the whole world a single being who cared for her: se

could do work of this quality. Here are the half-yearly reports made by his Form Masters from

hortest notice, is consequently always in trouble, though some of his work is well done, when he does remember to

ks for two consecutive moments to judge by his work: plen

g in neatness. Has a very fai

t blunderer with

Would do better to give his

up any work, but

rest in his English work, bu

ary aptitude, but does not troubl

891. Repor

ut will translate well and appreciate what he reads. Not a quick brain, but

ing and absorbing knowledge were going on simultaneously. At school he was, he says, asleep but dreaming in his sleep; at home he was still learning literature from his father

G.K. solemnly tells the reader of this diary to take warning by it, to beware of prolixity, and it does in fact contain many more words to many fewer ideas than any of his later writings

een Oldershaw and G.K. on Thackeray, between Oldershaw, his father and G.K. on Royal Supremacy in the Church of England. The boys, walking between their two houses, "discuss Roman Catholicism, Supremacy, Papal v. Protestant Persecutions. Your Humble Ser

ws. His parents had made him a Liberal but it seemed to him later, as he notes in the Autobiography, that their generation was insufficiently alive to the condition and

ot like. Part and parcel of Oldershaw's optimism is a desire not to believe in pictures of real misery, and a desire to find out compensating pleasures. I think there was a good deal i

uld insist on monopolising the conversation when Gilbert's friends wanted to talk to him. "An ugly little boy creeping about," Mr. Fordham calls him. "Cecil had no vanity," writes Mrs. Kidd, "and thoroughly appr

as Christy Minstrels, as editors of a new revolutionary paper, "La Guillotine," as besieged in their office by a mob headed by Lord Salisbury, the Archbishop of Canterb

ll and Gratiano as his loud and disreputable "pal" with large checks and a billy-cock hat. Portia was attired as a barrister in wig and gown and Nerissa as a cle

ime goes on until signs of dinner make their appearance. The boys only move from one hospitable dining-room to another, or adjourn

with a gravity, solemnity even, such as he never showed later for any cause, a gravity untouched by humour. It was a group of about a dozen boys, started with the idea that it should be a Sh

return of an apostate to the Christian fold. I suppose it was partly because of his early solitary life at school, partly because of the general trend of his thought, partly that at this later date he was under the influence of Walt Whitman and cast back upon his earlier years a sort of glow or haze of Whitman idealism. Anyhow, the Junior Debating Club became to him a symbol of the ideal friendship. They were Knights of

le occasionally to recognise a few words of his own contribution. Later it was printed and gives a good record of the meetings and discussions. It shows the energy and ardour of the debaters and also their serious view of themselves and thei

success of the Club, and his belief in the good effect such a literary institution might have as a protest agains

ubjects were "The Bront?s," "Macaulay as an Essayist," "Frank Buckland" (the naturalist) and "Tennyson." A pretty wide range of reading was called for from schoolboys in addition to their ordinary wor

eteenth Century: A Retrospect.' He gave a slight resumé of the principal

ms, noting the effective style of 'L'Allegro,' giving the story of the writing

fifteen-"passed on to review the chief points in the character of the Prince of Denmark, concluding with

Lang had lately made on these choice spirits." This discussion arose from a paper by the Chairman on the new school of poetry "in which, in spite o

or in a paper on Barrie's Window in Thrums Gilbert apologises to "

merely the popular view and that what I feel in it can be equally felt by the majority of fellow-creatures, this fact, such is my hardened and abandoned state, only m

ot when we find him seconding Mr. Bentley in the motion that

ubt and controversy surrounding his birth and several incidents of his history"; while "Mr. F. read a paper on Newspa

rnments of England, France, Russia, Germany and the United States, proceeded to give h

me one of the Directors of the General Electric Company is now an invalid. I read a year or so ago an interesting Times obituary of Mr. Bertram, who was Director of Civil Aviation in the Air Ministr

these pages, and Edmund Clerihew Bentley, his friend of friends. Closely united as was the whole group, Lucian Oldershaw once

w," I said "

our jealousy of Bent

ly Trent's Last Case-and as the inventor of a special form of rhyme, known from his second name as the Clerihew. He wrote the first of these while stil

ristop

ing to dine w

ybody

signing St

ossi

of Spain th

half-a-do

resented mo

people

how and where Gilbert spent his summer holidays. They are very much schoolboy letters and not worth quoting at full length, but it is interesting to compare b

ria

r S

, Isle

, probab

o your usual habitation, will reach you at some period. Ventnor, where, as you will perceive we are, is, I will not say buil

I ever could have enjoyed his eternal slave schooners and African stations. I would not give a page of "Mansfield Park" or a verse of "In Memoriam" for all the endless fighting of blacks and boarding of pir

ne in Holland where the merits of tea were first largely agitated, and fill the scene with the traditional Dutch figures such as I sketch. I find in Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature" which I consulted b

rdens, Kensing

you are I find some considerable relief in turning from the lofty correspondence of the secretary (with no disparagement of my much-esteemed friend, Oldershaw) to another friend (ifelow-mecallimso as Mr. Verdant Greene said) who can discourse on some other subjects besides the So

you dropped in our hurried interview in one of the "brilliant flashes of silence" between those imbecile scream

h Berwick, Haddington

think that the lower orders are seen unfavorably when enjoying themselves. In labour and trouble they are more dignified and less noisy. Your suggestion as to a series of soliloquies is very flattering and has taken hold of me to the extent of writing a similar ballad on Simon de Montfort. The order in which

e rowdy enjoyments of the lower orders-these things are not in the least like either the Chesterton that was to be or the Chesterton that then was. But they are very much like Bentley. He was two years younger than Chesterton, but far older than his years and seemed indeed to the other boys (and perhaps to himself) like an elderly gentleman smili

wick Haddington, Scotland.

BEN

is to be got out of the nearest haystack or hedgerow taken quietly, than in trotting over two or three counties to see "the view" or "the site" or the extraordinary cliff or the unusual tower or the unreasonable hill or any other monst

Littlehampton, S

inderella is much better than any of those babyish books. As regards one question which you asked, I may remark that the children of Israel [presumably the Solomons] have not gone unto Horeb, neither unto Sittim, but unto the land that is called Shropshire they went, and abode therein. And they came unto a city, even unto the city that is called Shrewsbury, and there they builded themselves an home, whe

Lille &

ue St.

ri

, probab

"Meess" Lavallière. I thought that concession to the British system of titles was indeed touching. I also thought, when reflecting what the present was, and where i

n de Fer, Arromanche

front of us and my pater having discovered that the book they had with them was a prize at a Paris school, some slight conversation arose. Not thinking my French altogether equal to a prolonged interview, I took out a scrap of paper and began, with a fine care

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lub received on the day of which this was the anniversary, viz., the natal day of Mr. Chesterton, proposed that a vote wishing him many happy returns of the

ssed giving great powers to the Chairman, "which that gentleman," he says of himself, "lenient by temperament a

question of order, the first of the great difficulties of this most difficult enterprise. How boys who could scarcely be got to behave quietly under the strictest schoolmasters could ever be brought to obey the rebuke of their equal and schoolfellow: how a heterogeneous pack of average schoolboys could organise themselves into a self-governing republic, these were problems of real and stupendous difficulty. The fines of a penny and of twopence, which were instituted at the first meeting, were found hopelessly incompetent to cope with the bursts of oblivious hilarity. Fordham in particular, whose constant breaches of order threatened to exhaust even the extensive treasury of that spoilt and opulent young gentleman, soon left calculation far behind, nor can the story be better or more brightly told than by himself. "Mr. F.," he wrote, "at on

t, sixteen when t

story of t

e and told him that he really must be less exuberant. This historic occasion was a

so lonely without it," one of them had remarked; and G.K. comments, "This has always appeared to the present writer one of the most important sp

all we had disposed of all our copies." Of a later issue the energetic editor sold sixty-five copies in the course of the summer holidays. Masters, too, began to read it and at last a copy was hid on the table of the High Master, Mr. Walker. Cecil Chesterton describes the High Master as a gigantic man with a booming voice. Some Paulines believed he had given Gilbert the first inspiration for the personality of "Sunday" in The Man Who Was Thursday. Another contemporary says that he was reputed to take no interest in anything except examination successes, and that the boys were amazed at the effect on him of reading The Debater. Reading in the light of his future, one sees qualities in Gilbert's work not to be found in that of the o

er most vividly the effect of reading a fanciful essay on Dragons in the first number. "The Dragon," it began, "is the most co

in Hades: "an elementary handbook of demonology" which is as amusing a thing as he ever wrote. The drawings he made for it show specimens of the evolution of various types of devil into various types of humans: the devils themselves are carefully classified-the common or garden serpent (Tentator H

he letter to Bentley, there are poems in which he is beginning to feel after his religious phil

AT REG

d wings of wrong brood

g curse of gold, the

of the weak, the m

lips the cry, "How lo

uts of toil, the de

d peaceful homes the

f every man, where'

e weariness, a

eyes has come, in s

far-off light the wo

from a dream of ea

des we cry, "How long

awn of time, men's to

y ever sought, the wo

r toiling path the gl

e struggling race, a d

clinging sin they sou

ct glory came-Lord,

garden broad from all

hall be a prayer, and

ny a starless night we

ed a weary watch, an

ght wilderness, we

arts the proof that G

f our hearts he write

hand hath wrought sha

lose upon us all bef

et is there-the go

from varied lips, in

ommon prayer, "Fathe

, Vol. I. Marc

ordsworth, "Humour in Fiction," "Boys' Literature," Sir Walter Scott, Browning, the English Dramatists, showed a range and a quality of literary criticism alike surprising. Perhaps most surprising, however, is the fact that all this does not seem to have made clear to

e the poem in Appendix A. It is not as notable as some other of his work at that time: what is interesting is that in it this schoolboy expresses with some power a view he was later to explode yet more powerfully. He might have claimed for himself what he said of earlier writers-it is not true that

rts when Mrs. Chesterton visited him in 1894 to ask his advice about her son's fut