Gilbert Keith Chesterton

it Vi

lbert's occasional thoughts ab

Y IN TH

the midst

known to me

, histories, tast

ve-affairs,

y I fel

in a field with no

I have n

nd my thought

ight crown

ONN

hom I have

what sh

this sun

or playing, wor

a, or singing a

ing, or

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ng now out o

king out of

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very stu

have the least ide

nd Gilbert has told how utterly exhausted she was at the end of each day's toil-"she worked very hard as secretary of an educational society in London."* The family lived in Bedford Park, a suburb of London that went in for artistic housing and a kind of garden-city atmosphere long before this was at all general. Judging by their p

iography

MY

you very

star ap

green and go

led it wi

with kings, pe

e you, ver

ok, filled with his ro

e Not

. The liking they both had for keeping private life private made him call it "this very Victorian narrative.

dy to practise farming; and on the same perverse principle, she actually practised a religion. This was something utterly unaccountable both to me and to the whole fussy culture in which she lived. Any number of people proclaimed religions, chiefly oriental religions, analysed or argued about them; but that anybody could regard religion as a practical thing like gardening was something quite new to me and, to her neighbours, new and incomprehensible. She had been, by an accident, brought up in the school of an Anglo-Catholic convent; and to all that agnostic or mystic world, practising a religion was much more puzzling than professing it. She was a queer card. She wore a green velvet dress barred with grey fur, which I should have called artistic, but that she hated all the talk about art; and she had an attractive face, which I should have called elvish, but that she hated all the talk about elves. But what was arre

ography,

was now engaged to Waldo d'Avigdor, ma

e for the music, which he is enjoying tremendously. It reminds

rs. Blogg would probably fall among the fire-irons, Knollys would foam in convulsions on the carpet, Ethel would scream and take refuge on the

onventional-where Frances lived. She did not like her son's friendship with the Bloggs and she had chosen for him a girl who she felt would make him an ideal wife: "Very open

ie never liked Frances? Or Bentley?" Annie was the girl chosen

ght the family, or as many of it as could, used to go down to Barnes to supper, and the 'boys' and Tom Gilbert, Alice Chesterton's husband, used to sing r

ures the family absence of a Christian sense at this date. "Cecil urged me to sit at the foot of the big Crucifix in the village s

other. Indeed Cecil was definitely her favourite and she believed him the favourite of both parents also. "He

when my son was born. I value it so much." Headed "To Annie" the poem is a long one. It begins

ghts, tumu

caught in

ghter, love

joys o

hared toge

jest an

d, shut of

hat to y

ndrous Ki

power an

elder brother, who was pursuing his own romance with a hea

d Frances used to make-that he had had one or two fancies before the coming of Reality. He must then convince his mother that Reality had come: he must overcome a

at in the same room or moved about making cocoa for the family,

ebery

vill

ixs

REST M

-about Mrs. Berline. But I take this method of addressing you because it occurs to me that you mi

ightly have acted otherwise, but if I were the greatest fool in the three kingdoms and had made nothing but a mess of it, there is one person I should always turn to and trust. Mothers know more of their son's idiocies than other people

my best, and for having constantly had in mind the way in which you would

to the hypothetical young lady with whom I should fall in love and took the form of saying "If she is good, I shan't mind who she is

married, my dear mother, neither am I engaged. You are called to the council of chiefs ve

it to say however briefly (for neither of us care much for gushing: this letter is not on Mrs. Ratcliffe lines) that the first half of my time of acquaintance with the Bloggs was spent in enjoying a very intimate, but quite breezy and Platonic friendship with Frances Blogg, reading, talkin

t thing from sentiment and you will never laugh at that. I will not say that you are sure to like Frances, for all young men say that to their mothers, quite naturally, and their mothers never believe them, also, quite naturally. Besides, I am so confide

thing else, which must account for my abstraction, and that in her letter she sent the following message: "Please tel

ered from my point of view,

me a cup of co

, my deare

very affec

LB

o surmise, in view of Frances's message to her future mother-in-law. Of h

ork than Mr. Belloc's Essay on Bridges, since I find myself quoting that author once more. I think he deals in some detail, in his best topographical manner, with various historic sites on the Continent; but later relapses into a larger manner, somewhat thus: "The time has now come to talk at large about Bridges. The longest bridge in the world is the Forth Bridge, and the shortest bridge in the world is a plank over a ditc

ography,

the first of his friends to be written to was Mildred Wain, because, as he says in a later letter, he felt towards her deep gratitu

MIL

cended to breakfast, where I gaily poured the coffee on the sardines and put my hat on the fire to boil. These activities will give you some idea of my frame of

is-whom am I engaged to? I have investigated this problem with some care, and, as far as I can make out, the best authorities point to Fr

I thought you might remember my existence su

ou for his sake and your own, that I am encouraged to hope our friendship may subsist. If ever I

Firmin

en you came in and helped me to build a house with bricks. I am building ano

n the whirlwind of his happiness. For himself he stammered i

hee mighti

his hands o

star of ea

er darkness

hee mighti

ee patientl

stars he

red with

th greeting

ee mightily