Gilbert Keith Chesterton

is G

wise for the war. Only a tiny minority remained in opposition, most of whom were pacifists or cranks of one kind or another. To the sane minority of this minority Gilbert found himself belonging. It is something of a tribute to the national feeling at such a momen

, by Cyril Cl

iot is one who sees the faults of his fatherland with an eye which is clearer and more merciless than any eye of hatred, th

. The tie between the two brothers was very close. As the "Innocent Child" developed into the combative companion, there is no doubt that he proportionately affected Gilbert. All their friends talk of the endless amicable arguments through which both grew. Conrad Noel remembers parties at Warwick Gardens during the Boer War at

Gilbert. I shal

y her, but now she must miss many trains

r away breakfast, leaving the brothers arguing, come to set lunch and later set dinn

, "O Cecil, do send Gilbert to bed." A brief silence followed, and then the remark, in a rather abashed voice, "There's no one here." Cecil had been arguing with himself. Gilbert too argued with himself for the stand he was taking was a hard on

the group for a short while, but he soon told one of them that he feared close association with the Speaker might injure his career. F. Y. Eccles was in charge of the review department. He is able to date the start of what was known as the "new" Speaker with great exactitude,

strates the problem of human testimony and the limits of that problem. For I imagine

. Belloc remembers the introduction as made in the year 1900 by Lucian Oldershaw, who was living at the time with Hammond. Mr. Oldershaw usually has the accuracy of the hero-worshipper and upon this matter he adds several amusing details. For some time he had be

'Chesterton, you wr-r-ite very well.'" Chesterton was then 26, Belloc four years older. It was at the Mon

self is at once earlier and more vivid tha

ody else's high spirits. He talked into the night, and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. When I have said that I mean things that are good, and certainly

ts were stuffed with French Nationalist and French Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw h

ur of us who held strong but unfashionable views about the South African War, whi

into our dream was t

n in action, and when

with him the s

ilaire Belloc: The Ma

nd E. Sha

in the Autobiography, "that there emerged the quadruped, th

hing. My mother and brother both counted it as one of the great experiences of their lives to have dined with Belloc in a small Paris Restaurant (Aux Vendanges de Bourgogne) and then to have walked with him the streets of that glo

erton in obituary notices and also in a brief study of his position in English literature. None of these documents give much notio

d writings. In pure literature, in philosophy and theology he remains untouched by the faintest change. Pages from the Notebook could be woven into Orthodoxy, essays from The Debater introduced into The Victorian Age in Literature, and it would loo

eality-Chesterton had been unusually young for his twenty-six years and unusually simple in regard to the political scene. He was in fact the young man he himself was later to describe as knowing all about politics and no

before he met Belloc; it may be that by his consideration of the nature of man he would later have reached the positions so individually set out in What's Wrong with the World-but this can only remain a theoretical question. For Belloc did actually at this

c to be towards the Servile State, and in the book with this title and a second book The Restoration of Property he later developed his sociology. After this first meeting, two powerful and very different minds would reciprocally influence one another. An admirer of both told me that he thought Chesterton got the idea of small property from Belloc but gave Belloc a

ry had been written with all the stress on the Protestant period. Lingard had written earlier but had not been popularized and certainly would not be used at St. Paul's School. And even Lingard had laid little str

of Macaulay or of Green had, like Mr. Mantalini's dowager, either no outline or a "demned outl

said them. It is rather a question of emphasis, of how things loom in the mind when judgments have to be made. In that sense he does tend to narrow the Faith to Europe: in exactly the same sense he does tend to narrow Europe to France. Born in France of a French father, educated in England, Belloc chose his mother's nationality, chose to be English; but his Creator had chosen differently, and there is not much a man can do in

that never h

sely, nor your

rightful gard

e you no

alics

he example of "someone entirely English who should none the less have come in." When criticising his country his voice has the note of pain that

note reflecting a judgment of Belloc's-on the Dreyfus case which Belloc saw as all French Cath

he Right were all for his guilt; atheists, anti-clericals and believers in the Republic were for his innocence. Passions were roused to fury on both sides. English opinion was almost entirely for his innocence. I was a small girl at the time and I remember that my brother and I amused ourselves by crying Vive Dreyfus, on all possible and impossible occasions, for the annoyance of our pious French governess. I remember also that our parents were startled by th

any other English Liberal, had assumed Dreyfus' innocence and in the poem "To a Certain Natio

ew thee once, we ha

uilt and concludes: "There may have been a fog of injustice in the French

rican alliance with the enthusiasm of a young Republican who took for granted the links of la

, eclipse

whole worl

nd death a

n peace

ur fruit b

ur race t

ea be a S

through Sa

to the second

s our hopes of brotherhood with any other of the great independent nations of Christendom. And a very small study of history was su

ted Poems

reams, like all boyhood dreams especially, it omitted too much; yet it contai

st his power and hold on to her own view. It must be realised that Chesterton actually preferred the attitude of a disciple. A mutual friend has told me that Chesterton listen

iberals on the Speaker were not pacifists. They hated the war because they thought it would harm England-harm her morally-to be fighting for an unjust cause, and even materially to be shedding the blood of her sons and pouring out her wealth at the bidding of a handful of alien financiers. Thus far Gilbert was among one group with whom

y group. To Gilbert it seemed that this mattered nothing so long as that little group held to their great ideas, so long as the paper represented not merely a group or a party

ill excuse it because it is about the paper and I know there is not another pa

assumption of the Speaker having an aim and standard higher than other papers. If the Speaker were a mere party rag like "Judy" or "The Times," it would be only remarkable for moderation, but to us who have built hopes on it as the pioneer of a younger and larger political spirit it is difficult to be silent

st to unite our army and then to use it) a considerable portion was devoted, first to

to is sneering at "The Westminster" as a supporter of Chamberlain when everyone knows that it hardly lets a day pass without an ugly caricature of him. What I object to in this is that it

ptrap, but by great command of temper and the persistent exposition of persuasive and unanswerable truths. It is while we are in the desert that we have the vision: we being a minority, must be all philosophers: we must think for both parties in the State. It is no good our devoting ourselves to the flowers of mob oratory with no mob to address them to. We must, l

dwritten letter

ps of this world. It certainl

society and by the rather less usual society of cranks and enthusiasts so plentiful at the end of the nineteenth century. He has written in the Autobiography of the artistic and dilettante groups where everyone discussed religion and no one practi

r; he was comparatively thin, however, in those days, nearly forty years ago. We had been much intrigued by the weekly contribution of an unknown writer to "The Speaker"

same series in a week or so; it was thus we first became acquainted, and the acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship with us both. He and his brother Ce

when would there be enough money fo

he thinks of Omar Khayyam. He repl

if I had paused I might make an essay of it. (Commercial Pig!) Never mind, sweet

e have seen, felt profound certitude. That his outlook was one that held him back from many fields of

cle keeps his last night in England in a sort of family party

n, or words to that effect. The idea is full of humour. He remarks, as a matter of fact that there is just a remote chance of his getting the Stage

. . . . . . . . .

er . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

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ral one is than one imagines. At school I never minded getting into a row if it were really not my fault. Similarly, I have never cared a rap for rejections or c

this whole age is starving for. Something to suffer for and go mad and miserable over-that is the only luxury of the mind. I wish I w

had finally taken his stand (it has no dating postmark), or perhaps it merely means that his convictions on the cosmos are more absolute than on the war. As to The Wild Knight: it was never acted and its publication was made

has a more immediate bea

rwick

riday.

bulated your questio

ly endeavour to answe

mere specks showing up the general blaze of salubrity. I am getting steadily better and I don't mind how slowly. As for my spirits a cold

nly reply that I had banished the matter from my mind, a vague problem of the remote future unti

uesday evening though hell itself

ther a review on Criv

am going

are good excuses, but they are not the re

hat fugitive perfection which has moved you to enthusiasm. Three minutes after this perfection, I understand, a horrible degeneration sets in: the hair beco

ds and laces, I glitter fr

eneral engagement. When this comes off, you shall have new

have precisely 73 theories about Ruskin it will be brilliant and condensed. I am also review

nced is just round the corner: if one could be only cert

I have been making some money calculations with the kind assistance of Rex, and as far as I

t the last

was writing a poem.

e and he was not making much yet by the journalism which was now his only source of income. The repeated promise to "write to Nutt" is very charact

to be published, is a curiosity. It is made up of three incredibly witty satirical poems-"The Oneness of the Philosopher with Nature," "The Dangers Attending Altruism on the High Seas" and "The Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes." The il

ion of that person: for I am Editor of the Speaker for one day. Hammond is unwell and Hirst has gone to dine with John Morley, so the latter ask

ing things, however, that

e last Richard le Gallienne-all very interesting. See if I don't do some whacking articles, all about the stars and the moon and the creat

Schofield. Ha! Ha! Ha! It's about the Formation of Character, or some of those low and beastl

es "The genius Oldershaw." This may be a trifle Gallic, but Hammond has shown me more than one letter from Cambridge dons and such people demanding the identity of G.K.C. in a q

me, no longer about French Jacobins and Mediaeval Saints, but entirely about the cheapest flats and furniture, on which, as on the others,

e pages have come up to be s

hed a great deal more importance to The Wild Knight and Other Poems. It was a volume of some fifty poems, many of which had already appeared in The Outlook and Th

s." Another spoke of the "curious intensity" of the volume. Among those who were less pleased was John Davidson, on whom the book had been fathered by one rev

es, Gilb

nd essayist, who is enthusiastic about the Wi

admitted that it was quite fair and simple. It consisted of wearing on the lapel of my dress coat the following letters. U.U.N.S.I.J. Perhaps

) of her own work only by reading his essays. But he once wrote an introduction for a book of hers and her admiration of him would break out frequently in amusing excl

Meynell

id., p

ply is amusing and also touching, for Mr. Johnson was clearly pouring out, in interest in Gilbert's career and

s, Rott

. 2

MR. J

new some of the poems before, notably The Donk

will be curious to see how he'll develop in a few years. We all begin with arrainging [sic] and elaborating all the Heave

after loss. It's apt to be a weary while coming but one goes the right way to get it if one interests onese

sinc

RD KI

"aureoles." They are spotted all over the book. I think every one is bound

d cling." He is too good not to be jolted out of that. What do you say

e other serious thinkers, Chesterton understood his fellow men; the woes of a jockey were as familiar to him as the worries of a judge.") Perhaps some slight echoes of Swinburne did

tricken by the death

come to know Gilbert t

t he wept when he hea

rd in a lette

g alone in his back bedroom? But I think that reverence is better expressed by one man than a million. There is something unnatural and impossible, even grotesque, in the idea of a vast crowd of human beings all assuming an air of delicacy. All the same, my dear, this is a great and serious hour and it is felt so completely by all England that I cannot deny the enduring wish I have, quite

e one I really like so far is Belloc's in the "Speaker." I had, as I said, many things to say, but ow

aid that I would be delighted to give him such assistance as I honestly thought valuable enough for him to split his profits for, that I thought I could give him such assistance in the matter of picturesqueness and plan of idea, more especia

ver written nor eve

e and entirely without rancour, he realised the inevitable competition in the world of journalism. The struggle for success meant men fighting one another. Other jo

ens, W. (postmar

doing a lot of my very best, but on my thinking about it, keeping wide awake to the turn of the market, being ready to do things not in half a week, but in half an hour; getting the feelings and tendencies of other men and generally living in work. I am going to see Lehmann tomorrow and many things may come of it. I cannot express t

to find a beauty in making money (in moderation) as in making stat

esolution, your su

urse of Adam when you

E

like angels, with ha

lves and a woman, fo

ens, W. (postmar

raised it to ￡10 a month, which makes ￡120 a year. Moreover they encourage me to write as much as I like in the paper, so that assuming that I do something extra (poem, note, leader) twice a month or every other number, which I can easily do, that brings us to nearly ￡150 a year. So much for "The Speaker." Now for the "Daily News," both certainties and probabilities. Hammond

items) ￡288, close on ￡300. This again may be reinforced by all sorts of miscellaneous work which I shall get now my name is getting known, magazine articles, helping editors or publishers, reading Mss. and so on. In all these calculations I have kept deliberately under the figures, not over them: so that I don't think I have failed altogether to bring my promise within reasonable distance of fact already. Belloc suggested that I should write for the "Pilot" and as he is on it, he will probably get me some work. Hammond has become leader-w

u knowest, O

earth was hi

a little thing

in mine than the

n and distribution of them in rent, furniture, etc. When I have done thinking about that you will get another dull letter. I can keep ten poems and twenty theories in my head at once. But I can only think of one practical thing at a time. The only conclusion of this l

etter to her has no postmark but the ￡300 a year has g

. B

Orch

ey.

REST M

(I shall return on Thursday night: I find I work here very well) would you mind

eeking to do the right thing. I have just had information that my screw from "The Speaker" will be yet further increased from ￡120 a year to ￡150, or, if I do the full amount I can, ￡190 a year. I have also had a request from the "D

am not considering this affair wildly or ignorantly: I have been doing nothing but sums in my head for the last months. This is how matters stand. The Speaker editor says they will take as much as I like to write. If I write my maximum I get ￡192 a year from them. From the Daily News, even if I do not get the post on the staff which was half promised me, I shall get at least ￡100 a year with a good deal over for reviews outside "The Wars of Literature." That makes nearly ￡300. With the Manchester Sunday Chronicle I have just made a bargain by which I shall get ￡72 a year. This makes ￡370 a year altogether. The matter now, I think, largely depends on Reynolds' Newspaper. If I do, as is contemplated, weekly articles and thumbnail sketches, they cannot give me less than ￡ 100 a year. This would bring the whole to ￡470 a year, or within ￡30 of your standard. Of course I know quite well that this is not like talking of an income

ll have to start in a very serious and economical spirit. I have worked it out and

ment and that you dispelled it with a directness and generosity that I shall not forget. I think, my dear Mother, that we have always understood each other really. We are neither of us very demonstrative: we come of some queer stock that can always say least when it means most. But I do think you can trust me when I say that I think a thing really right, and equally honestly

rude's

not think I have done it very successfully. However, with you it does not matter and it never w

your lo

LB