Gilbert Keith Chesterton

g Eng

s a week! Frances herself, Lucian Oldershaw, and the rest of his friends believed he was a genius with a great future and this belief they tried to communicate to Frances's family. But even if they succeeded, faith in the future did not pay dividends in a p

freshing thought that I sha

its queer little moods that even those calamities can never overshadow or wipe out: its brusqueness that always pleases and its over-tactfulness that sometimes wounds: its terrific intensity of feeling, that sometimes paralyses the outsider with conversational responsibility: its untranslatable humour of courage and poverty and its unfathomed epics of past tragedy and triumph-all this glorious confusion of family tra

can imagine how much he must have disliked the commission! Anyhow, he decided it would be better to do it away from home and he suggested to Gilbert a trip to the seaside. Arrived there he broached the subject. Gilbert, he says, was not the least angry, but answered quite seriously

ow each other with a close intimacy: they were comrades as well as lovers and carried both these relationships into married life. For the biographer the advantage has been immense, since every separation between the pair meant a batch of letters. The discerning will have noted that there are in these letters considerable excisions: parts

a sister since babyhood and he enjoyed it. The happiness of the engagement was terribly broken into by the sudden death of Gertrude in a street accident. Frances was absolutely shattered. The next group of letters belongs to the months after Gertrude's death, when G

dated but most of them h

uildings (postmar

I write: and shall be glad of any advice and assistance. . . . I have been reading Lewis Carroll's remains, mostly Logic, and have much pleasure in enlivening you with the following hilarious query: "Ca

things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, th

t I would begin again at once with a heavy heart at times, as to other duties, to the duty of being perfectly silly, perfectly extravagant, perfectly trivial, and as far as possible, amusing. I have sworn that Gertrude should not feel, wherever she is, that the comedy has gone out of our theatre

s the bubble of love, does not annoy me: the old round of stories, laughter, family ceremonies, see

n abortive attempts to make him brush his hair, tie his tie straight and avoid made-up ones, attend to the buttons on his coat, and all

ens (Postmarked

that I am wearing a bow-tie: but on careful research I find that these were constantly worn by Vikings. A distinct allusion to th

at Fold

n Ha

ie Bu

ed f

s. CCCLXIX lin

, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. As for my straw hat, I put it on eighteen times consecutively, taking a run and a jump to each try, till at last I hit the right angle. I have not taken it off for three days and nights lest I sh

ight. To say that it is hot would be as feeble a platitude as t

of Purgatory under it, and that soon I shall have the satisfaction of seeing such a thing as boiled mountains, boiled cities, and a boiled moon and stars. A tremendous picture. Yet I am perfectly happ

he vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life-other things superficially, but this always in our depths. "It is good for us to be here-it is good for us to be here," repeating itself eternally. And if, after many joys and festivals

*

ens (postmarked

taurant, succeeded in plucking the secret of my private employment from my bosom, and made me promise to send him some chapters of it. I certainly cannot complain of not being sympathetically treated by the l

I saw it between two cups of black coffee in a Gallic re

ll most surely sunder. That is what I am feeling . . . now every hour of the day. All good things are one thing. Sunsets, schools of philosophy, babies, constellations, cathedrals, operas, mountains, horses, poems-all these are merely disguises. One thing is always walking among us in fancy-dress, in the grey cloak of a church or the green cloak of a meadow. He is always behind, His form makes the folds fall so superbly. And that is what the savag

uildings (postmar

they have all suddenly come to life and they dress me by force every morning. My frockcoat leaps upon me like a lion and hangs on, dragging me down. As I struggle my boot

ical development are superb. Really the clothes must know best. Stil

ng to music. But a man in love with a woman feels a nerve move suddenly that Dante groped for and Shakespeare hardly touched. What made me think of Burns, however, was that one of his simple and sudden things, hitting the right nail so that it rings, occurs in the song of "O a' the airts the w

towe (

at I have found further existence in London impossible. Public opinion is too strong for me. . . . There are many other reasons I could give for being pleased to come: such as that I ha

e epigrams of the Bible. I remember when Bentley had a burning boyish admiration for Professor Huxley, and when that scientist died some foolish friend asked him quite flippantly in a letter what he felt about it. Bentley replied with the chapter and verse reference to one of the Psalms, alone on a pos

ovidential or sweet or even perhaps good. But it is something. "

a ruby, it is this sense of preciousness that is really awakened by the death of His saints. Somehow we feel that even their death is a thing of incalculable value and mysterio

later chapter I quote the lines in which Gilbert writes of his own tone-deafness, and of how he saw what music meant as he watched his wife's face. Something of the

sorrow sm

alls twixt k

forth awhi

tell me w

ag

sat: and thr

lady, pale

ose clearnes

his wholly g

oubts-no pa

this mirror

own. But when he wrote verse and spoke as it were to himself or to God, the refl

from any theory, cheerfulness was constantly "breaking in." For Gilbert was a very happy man. Across the top of one of his letters is writte

ingling of the comic and the f

ildings (postmarke

e to think in, I always think of the Kosmos first and the Ego afterwards. I admit, however, that you are not engaged to the Kosmos: dear me! what a time the Kosmos would have! All its Comets would have their hair brushed every morning. The Whirlwind would b

t Microcosm: a biped inheriting some of the traits of his mother, the Kosmos, its untidiness, its largeness, i

x," I shall know that you did it in a manner, blindingly, staggeringly, crazily beautiful. It is quite true, as you say, that I am a person wearing certain clo

ds on which way you want it narrated: wha

d a MS called "The Lepers" (light comedy reading) and another called "The Preparation of Ryerson Embury"-you know the style-till 2 o'clock. Go out to lunch, have-(but here perhaps it would be safer to become vague), come back, work till six, take my hat and

stories twisted into new and amazing shapes, human beings whom it knew long ago, sitting at the windows by dark sunsets, or talking in dim meadows. But the awful invading Light grows stronger in the dreams, till the soul in one last struggle, plunges into a body,

se of clothing, a tower of wool and flax; that he shall put on this foolish armour solemnly, one piece after another and each in its right place. The things c

ho can give him the charm that rules the horse of water and fire. He finds an opening and descends into the bowels of the earth. Down, among the roots of the Eternal hills, he finds a sunless temple wherein he prays. And in the centre of it he finds a lighted temple in which he enters. The

ssness and the one virtue of the unconquered adoration of goodness, that dark virtue that every man has, and hides deeper than all his vices-he writes all this down as he is writing it now. And he knows that if he sticks it down and puts a stamp on it and drops it into the mouth of a little red goblin at the corner of the street-he knows that all this wild soliloquy will be poured into the soul of one wise and beautiful lady sitting far away beyond seas and rivers and cities, under the shadow of an alien Cathedral. . . . This is not all so irrelevant as you may think. It was this line of feeling that taught me, an utter Rationalist as far as dogma goes, the lesson of the entire Spirituality of things-an opinion that nothing has ever shattered since. I can't express myself on the point, nobody can. But it is only the sp

ebook he w

eart within

more than tre

trange and wea

vel here; that

ries of that

ever touched

e J.D.C. than about his future fame and fortune. In the second he mentions almos

s, W. Tuesday Nig

ngaged in the crucial correspondence with Fisher Unwin, at least it has begun by T.F.U. stating his proposed terms-a rise of 5/-from October, another rise possible but undefined in January, 10 per cent royalty for the Paris book and expenses for a fortnight in Paris. These, as I got my father to heartily agree, are vitiated to the bone as terms by the absence of any assurance that I shall not have to write "Paris," for which I am really paid nothing, outside the hours of work

Secretary, Mr. L.R.F. Oldershaw, will select a restaurant, make arrangements and issue the proclamations, or, to use the venerable old Club phrase "the writs." When this gorgeous function is over, you must expect a colossal letter. Everyone of the old Brotherhood, scattered over many cities and callings, has hailed the invitation, and is coming, with the e

more in this old affair of ours than possibly meets the eye. It is a thing that has left its roots deep in the hearts of twelve strangely different men.

wick Ga

exactly whether I did or did not post a letter I wrote to you on Saturday. If I did not, I apologise for missing the day. If I did, you will know by t

e experienced being both a schoolmaster, a diner out and a clever man, told me he had never in his life heard eleven better speeches. I quite agree with him, merely adding his own. Everyone was amusing and what is much better, singularly characteristic. Will you forgive me, dearest, if I reel off t

d. Then I proposed the toast of the Queen. I merely said that nothing could ever be alleged against the Queen, except the fact that she is not a member of the J.D.C. and that I thought it spoke well for the chivalry of Englishmen that with this fact

outsider for it largely consisted of an ingenious dove-tailing of the sentences in the Latin and Greek Arnold. I shall never forget the lucid and precise enunciation with which he delivered the id

He said a great deal that was very amusing, mostly a commentary on Solomon's remarks about the Latin Arnold. One remark he made was that he possessed one particular Latin Arnold, formerly the property of the President, which he had withdrawn from him "with eve

inspiration, successful, popular, married-a man to discharge all the normal functions of life well. But his most entertaining gift which he displayed truly sumptuously on this occasion is a wonderful gift of burlesque and stereotyped rhetoric. With melodramatic gestures he drew attention to the torrents of the President's blood pouring "from the wound of the tiny god." Amid sympathetic demonstration he protested against the patho

ied but very restrained words in which Bertram responded to the toas

bating Club, he was one of the most frivolous young men I ever knew. . . . But knowing that he was a good speaker in a light style, and had been President of the

t was, I thought, the best speech of the evening: but I am sure it was the m

the history of the Club. And here, my dearest lady, I am pained to have to report that he launched suddenly and dramatically into a most extraordinary, and apparently quite sincere eulogium upon myself and the influence I had on my schoolfellows. I will not re

s illness, another had had a very good story in the Strand Magazine: but I thought that a debating club of 12 members that had given three presidents to the University Unions, had not done badly. The rest was sentimental. Then began a most extraordinary game of battledore and shuttlecock. Vernède proposed the Secretary, Mr. Oldershaw. Mr. Oldershaw, instead of replying properly, proposed Mr. Bentley and the absent members. Waldo responded for these or rather instead of responding

ey, the awful being of whose classic taste in Greek iambics I once stood in awe, sang with great fe

oral-i-choor

ral-i-cho

Chooral-i-cho

g-chooral-i-c

ed an Ode which I had written for the occasion and Lucian recited one of Bentley's poems that came out in an Oxford magazine. Then we sang the Anth

to the tune o

other's arms and legs in an inextricable tang

et it has been every word of it about you really. I like to make my past vivid to you, especially this past, not only because it was on the whole, a fine, healthy, foolish, manly, enthus

thday, the guests threw the ball to one another in just this same fashion. Chesterton had by then so far forgotten this ea

n that, never having left home for a boarding school or University, he passed from the care of his mother to the care of his wife. I think too that the degree of his physical helplessness

d do for me. I told him I hadn't the least idea, but people thought my cold had been going on long enough. He said, "I've no doubt it has." He then, to afford some relief to the idiotic futility of the

expect I didn't-so I wrote to her giving both our thanks and explaining the state of affairs. "All is over," I said, "between that lady and myself. Do not name her to me, lest

oom. My necktie is on the wrong way up: my bootlaces trail half-way down Fleet St. Why not? When one's attempt

It is not, I believe, considered complimentary, in a common way, to approach an attractive lady and say pleasantly, "You are thousands of years old." Or, "You seem to me as old as the mountains." Therefore I d

xisted always: they bear the mark of the elemental things: the things tha