The Chestertons

The composition of The Chestertons is not without interest for the student of legendary literature. By a curious paradox the book had to be strikingly untrue to be accepted as true, since the jokes about sisters-in-law are legion, so that mere commonplace shafts of what is called "feminine spite" would have gained little credence. Yet on the other hand, Mrs. Cecil Chesterton was able (to quote The Mikado) to get from her husband a good deal of "corroborative detail designed to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." Of these details some are true, some false, all arranged to support the main untruth of Frances and Gilbert's relation to one another. The thesis of the book is that Gilbert was an unhappy and frustrated man (a) because Frances shrank from consummating their marriage, and (b) because she dragged him away from his London life and friends to bury him in a middle class suburb.

I confess that I am Victorian enough heartily to dislike writing this appendix. Yet it is necessary, for many who read The Chestertons have supposed that a story told by so near a connection must be true.

The ground was laid for the introduction of the Legend by the tale of the Red Haired Phantom, if I may describe it in the terms of a ghost story. That ghost was easy to lay (see Introduction). Next comes the odd account of Gilbert and Frances' honeymoon and of the years that followed. It is of course possible that the first night of their marriage was not happy—especially in the Victorian days of reticence which left wife and even possibly husband unprepared for life together: (though this did not normally prevent a happy marriage and a pack of children afterwards). But I find it impossible to imagine Cecil Chesterton, like the bridesmaid on the honeymoon, receiving and passing on such a story as that of Gilbert "quivering with self-reproach" so that after the first night he "dared not even contemplate a repetition. . . . Gilbert, young and vital, was condemned to a pseudo-monastic life, in which he lived with a woman but never enjoyed one." (p. 282)

There is a psychological reason for thinking this story especially improbable and a physical reason for dismissing it as actually impossible.

A white horse had from his childhood been for Gilbert the supreme sign of romance, and he had chosen to spend the first night of his honeymoon at the White Horse Inn. From his honeymoon he wrote home that he had "a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife. What more can any man want?" Ten years later he wrote The Ballad of the White Horse and dedicated it to Frances, saying,

"O go you onward, where you are
Shall honour and laughter be.
Past purpled forest and pearled foam,
God's winged pavilion free to roam,
Your face, that is a wandering home,
A flying home for me."

And over thirty years later he wrote again of beginning his honeymoon under the shadow of the White Horse, and compared it to a trip to fairyland.

Can any human being read the record of this recurrent motif and reconcile it with Mrs. Cecil's picture?

Let me refer again to The Ballad of The White Horse. Is it conceivable that any man should write after ten years of frustration and unhappiness:

Up through an empty house of stars
Being what heart you are,
Up the inhuman steeps of space
As on a staircase go in grace
Carrying the firelight on your face
Beyond the loneliest star.

This is not the way a man writes to a neurotic cold-hearted woman who has made a hermit of him!

Mrs. Cecil was of course never in the intimacy of the family. She only married Cecil in 1917—by which date Gilbert and Frances had been married sixteen years—and before that she was merely an acquaintance. But Frances's intimates could have told her how absurd her story was, for by a rare good fortune the operation Frances underwent to enable her to bear children is itself evidence one could hardly have hoped for in a matter which civilized people are not much given to discussing. Frances talked of the operation to Monsignor O'Connor, to Dorothy Collins and to Annie Firmin, and I have quoted the doctor's letter about it (see above, [Chapter XV]). It was an abiding tragedy for both husband and wife that it was unsuccessful. Frances would have shrunk from no suffering in her passionate wish for a child.

There is another curiosity in the Legend: Gilbert, despite this story, was apparently perfectly happy in London during the first eight years of marriage: it was only after the removal to Beaconsfield and in almost middle life that he began to be "frustrated."

Poor Frances: what a picture of her had been proposed for posterity: so powerful she could waft Gilbert away from London and from his friends, could force him to make her his banker and reduce him to a "bounty" strictly limited to half-a-crown, yet so powerless that "she had to sign" the cheques for G.K.'s Weekly, much as she hated it. Her poetry (described as "quite charming") is spoken of as appearing in "little Parish Magazines"—the only papers she cared to read owing to her implacable hatred for Fleet Street. It is hard to picture Frances with an implacable hatred for anything, and it will be remembered that she actually begged Father O'Connor to leave Gilbert to be "a jolly journalist." The periodicals in which her poems appeared were The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Daily Chronicle, the Westminster Gazette and The New Witness. Personally I have never much admired Frances's verse, but a professional journalist might have been quite pleased at "making" all these papers. Not one poem ever appeared in a Parish Magazine so far as either Dorothy or I have been able to ascertain. The point is not a very important one but the sneer is symptomatic.

A curious magic pervades The Chestertons: succulent sausages appear in the kitchen at Overstrand Mansions, and flowing torrents of beer, so that Gilbert can steal away from an unsympathetic wife to consume them with his Fleet Street friends. A studio materialises in a meadow at Beaconsfield. Can we imagine Gilbert cooking or even ordering sausages, getting beer to the flat, designing or discovering the studio? Anyone thinking about what really happened would realise that Frances ordered the beer and sausages, Frances built the studio. But that is not the sort of thought we are to think about Frances.

About her we are told: that she always wore the wrong colors: that she gave Gilbert insufficient and indigestible food: that she did not know what work meant: that Mrs. Belloc thought Gilbert ought to beat her: that she kept the journalists away when Gilbert was dying (in point of fact both telephone and door bell were so near the sick room that the use of both had to be avoided): that she did not give her guests enough to eat at his funeral: that she actually sought the quiet of her own room instead of staying downstairs to receive condolences when her husband's coffin had just been lowered into the grave.

With all this spate of detail, we are not told that Frances left £1000 to Mrs. Cecil plus £500 for her Cecil Houses.

Even if I could have ignored the attack on Frances, I should be obliged as his biographer to deal with the attack on Gilbert—more subtly but no less certainly made. The story of the marriage affects Gilbert as much as Frances, and the book culminates in the final assertion that his drinking killed him. Here are the comments (sent to me by Dorothy) of the doctor who attended Gilbert and Frances from 1919 until they died:

"Today Dr. Bakewell came in and answered the questions about the book which we asked him.

"(1) He says that the idea that G.K. was better when drinking in Fleet Street because the stimulus of conversation would eat up effects of the alcohol is absolute nonsense. It would have just as bad an effect under any conditions. Dr. Bakewell said that G.K. was his patient for nearly twenty years and during that time he never treated him for alcoholism or saw any trace of it, though in an absentminded way he was always liable to drink too much of anything if it were there—even water.

"Without the 'understanding, loving, tactful care' of Frances he would have died twenty years before. Certainly if he had racketted around Fleet Street any longer.

"Dr. Bakewell said Gilbert was 'perfectly happy in Beaconsfield and not in any way frustrated. There was no frustration of any kind and no longing for London life or friends.' He was very intimate with Gilbert and would have known if there had been.

"(2) The doctor says that Gilbert died of a failing heart owing to fatty degeneration, leading to dropsy.

"(3) Frances had arthritis of the spine. (Not curvature as stated by Mrs. Cecil.)

"The doctor said that he put him on the water wagon several times and when this was done Gilbert observed the rule most meticulously. Dr. Bakewell said that he did not do it very often because he did not consider that drink was in any way affecting Gilbert's health during the greater part of the time he knew him."

In a later conversation he added that when he did forbid alcohol at certain periods it was simply to make liquid less attractive, as too much of even water was bad for Gilbert.

The statement made by Mrs. Cecil that drinking in London was not so serious because the talk and excitement among friends would carry off the effects, is thought by doctors almost comic. Dr. Bakewell denies it absolutely: Dr. Pocock who, it will be remembered, attended Gilbert during his illness of 1914-15 says, "Absolute nonsense: would probably have been worse in London." He adds also, "I cannot understand why such an attack was made upon G.K. From my personal observation he owed a very great deal to Mrs. G.K. who greatly helped his restoration to health."

One can get one's pen'orth of fun out of the chapter on the Exile of Beaconsfield when one remembers the true story of those years: Rome, Jerusalem, U.S.A., Poland, France, Spain, Malta, lectures all over England, lively contests for the Lord Rectorship of three universities, London again and again—for editing, mock trials, debates and Distributist Beanos—and frequently in furnished flats which Frances would take for the winter months. One can only suppose that Mrs. Cecil was so little intimate with them that she did not realise all this.

And then Beaconsfield itself—parties in the Studio; people down from London, visitors from Poland, France, America, Italy, Holland and other countries; the Eric Gills, the Bernard Shaws, the Garvins, the Emile Cammaerts and others living in the neighborhood; the guest room always occupied by some intimate. Meanwhile the books poured out of the little study. Mrs. Cecil thinks Gilbert hardly ever again wrote a masterpiece after leaving Battersea, yet in support of this idea she lists as masterpieces The Ball and the Cross (written at Beaconsfield), Lepanto (written at Beaconsfield), Magic (written at Beaconsfield), Stevenson (written at Beaconsfield) and The Ballad of the White Horse(mainly written at Beaconsfield). Of all the books she mentions in this connection only three were written in London! And she admits that the world at large did not share her view of the sterilizing effect of Beaconsfield, for she writes, "Meanwhile his fame grew wider, his sales greater. In exile he ruled a literary world."*

[* P. 83.]

Gilbert left to Mrs. Cecil Chesterton sums equal to those later left to her by Frances—£1000 for herself and £500 for Cecil Houses.

The ingratitude that omitted all mention of these benefactions struck the imagination of several of the Chesterton family as the worst feature in the book. But to Gilbert and Frances the giving of money even in their own lifetime was a slight matter. They had given something far greater.

Why is the memory of Cecil Chesterton alive today? Because of his brother's labors. Why is it possible for Mrs. Cecil to declare that he was the greater editor, to imply that he was the greater man? Because Gilbert kept saying so. Never has such devotion been shown by one brother to the memory of another: never has the greater man exalted the lesser to such a pedestal.

We are told in The Chestertons that Frances sacrificed both Gilbert and herself on the altar of her family. Truly there was much self-sacrifice in the lives of both to family, friends and causes. They did not feel it as self-sacrifice to enrich the lives of others even at cost to themselves.

But the heaviest cost they paid lay in the years of a toil that was literally killing Gilbert while Frances watched him growing old too soon and straining his heart with work crushingly heavy: and if there was a single altar for that supreme sacrifice it was no other than the altar of Cecil's memory.

Acknowledgments

I am exceedingly grateful to the following publishers for permission to quote from these books:

DODD, MEAD & CO.:
The Man Who Was Thursday; Orthodoxy; The Napoleon of Notting Hill;
Heretics; George Bernard Shaw; The Ball and the Cross; The Poet and
the Lunatic; Alarms and Discursions; The Ballad of the White Horse;
What's Wrong with the World; Manalive; Sidelights on New London and
Newer York; The Uses of Diversity; The History of England; Irish
Impressions; Collected Poems; The Queen of Seven Swords; The
Everlasting Man; Cobbett; Outline of Sanity; Tales of the Long Bow;
What I Saw in America; The Thing; The Defendant; The Barbarism of
Berlin: or The Appetite of Tyranny; Eugenics and Other Evils;
Collected Poems; G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism (by Cecil Chesterton).

DOUBLEDAY DORAN: St. Francis of Assisi; The Years Between.

E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.: Criticisms and Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens.

FARRAR & RINEHART: Chaucer.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: Robert Browning; The Catholic Church and Conversion.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: The Victorian Age in Literature.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS: Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading.

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME: The Arena.

"Gehazi," by Rudyard Kipling, from The Years Between, copyright
1914, 1919 by Rudyard Kipling, is reprinted by permission of Mrs.
Bambridge and Doubleday Doran and Co., Inc., of New York, and The
Macmillan Company, of Canada, publishers.

Bibliography

In this list I have given dates of earliest publication. In some cases publication in England preceded that in the United States.

1900. Greybeards at Play. R. B. Johnson. Reprinted 1930.
The Wild Knight and Other Poems. Included in Collected
Poems.

1901. The Defendant.

1902. G. F. Watts. Twelve Types.

1903. Robert Browning.

1904. The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

1905. The Club of Queer Trades. Heretics.

1906. Charles Dickens.

1907. The Man Who Was Thursday.

1908. Orthodoxy. All Things Considered.

1909. George Bernard Shaw.
The Ball and the Cross.
Tremendous Trifles.
Defence of Nonsense.

1910. What's Wrong with the World?
William Blake.
Alarms and Discursions.
Five Types.

1911. The Innocence of Father Brown. Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens. The Ballad of the White Horse.

1912. Manalive. A Miscellany of Men. Simplicity of Tolstoy. The Victorian Age in Literature.

1913. Magic. A Play.

1914. The Wisdom of Father Brown. The Flying Inn. The Barbarism of Berlin.

1915. Poems.
Wine, Water, and Song. Reprint of poems from The Flying
Inn.
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Letters to an Old Garibaldian.

1916. A Shilling for My Thoughts.

1917. A Short History of England. Utopia of Usurers.

1919. Irish Impressions.

1920. The Uses of Diversity. The New Jerusalem. The Superstition of Divorce.

1922. Eugenics and Other Evils. The Man who Knew Too Much. What I Saw in America. The Ballad of St. Barbara. In Collected Poems.

1923. Fancies versus Fads. St. Francis of Assisi.

1924. The End of The Roman Road. Preface by St. John Adcock.

1925. The Everlasting Man. Tales of the Long Bow. William Cobbett. The Superstitions of the Sceptic.

1926. The Incredulity of Father Brown.
The Outline of Sanity.
A Gleaming Cohort.
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Poems.
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1927. Collected Poems. The Return of Don Quixote. Robert Louis Stevenson. The Secret of Father Brown. The Judgment of Dr. Johnson. A Play. Gloria in Profundis. Short Poem.

1928. Generally Speaking.
Essays of To-day and Yesterday Series.
Short Stories of To-day and Yesterday Series. Reprinted from
other volumes.
The Sword of Wood. Short Story. Edition de Luxe, Signed.
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1929. The Poet and the Lunatics. Omnibus Volume—Father Brown Stories. Ubi Ecclesia. Short Poem. The Thing. Catholic Essays. G.K.C. as M.C. Collection of Introductions. The Turkey and the Turk. Christmas Play. Ill. by Thomas Derrick.

1930. The Grave of Arthur. Short Poem. Ariel Poem Series. Come to Think of It. Essays. Edited by E. V. Lucas. The Resurrection of Rome.

1931. All is Grist. Essays edited by E. V. Lucas.

1932. Chaucer. A Study.
Sidelights on New London and Newer York. Essays.
Christendom in Dublin. Essays on Eucharistic Congress,
Dublin.

1933. All I Survey. Essays. Edited by E. V. Lucas. St. Thomas Aquinas. Collected Poems. Republished Collected Prefaces to Charles Dickens's Works. Reprinted. Methuen's Library of Humour. 1 vol.

1934. Avowals and Denials. Essays.

1935. The Scandal of Father Brown.
George Bernard Shaw. New edition with additional chapter.
The Later Phases.
The Well and the Shadows.

1936. As I Was Saying. Essays. Edited by E. V. Lucas.

POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS

1936. Autobiography.

1937. The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond.

1938. The Colored Lands.

1940. The End of the Armistice.

PREFACES TO OTHER AUTHORS' BOOKS

1902. Carlyle, Past and Present. Nonsense Rhymes, by W. C. Monkhouse. R.L.S., in Bookman Booklets. Tolstoy, in Bookman Booklets.

1903. Boswell. Life of Johnson Extracts.

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Carlyle, Sartor Resartus. National Library.
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress. National Library.

1905. Maxim Gorky, Creatures That Once Were Men.

1906. Dickens in Everyman Library. Prefaces to all volumes. Matthew Arnold. Everyman Library. Elsie Lang. Literary London. Characteristics of R.L.S. Little Books for Bookmen. Tennyson as an Intellectual Force. Little Books for Bookmen.

1907. The Book of Job.
George Haw, From Workhouse to Westminster: Will Crooks.

1908. Ruskin, Poems. Muses Library.
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1909. Darrell Figgis. A Vision of Life.
Margaret Arndt, Meadows of Play.

1910. Thackeray, Selection. Masters of Literature Series.
Eyes of Youth, Anthology.

1911. Johnson, Extracts. Ed. Alice Meynell.
Thackeray, The Book of Snobs. Red Letter Library.

1912. Famous Paintings, Reproduced in Colour.
A. V. Baverstock, English Agricultural Labourer.
Aesop's Fables. Translated by Vernon Jones.

1913. Dickens, The Christmas Carol. Waverley Dickens.

1915. Bohemia's Claim for Freedom. London, Czech Committee.

1916. C. C. Mendell and E. Shanks, Hilaire Belloc.
Cobbett, Cottage Economy.
Harewranath Maitra, Hinduism.

1917. S. Nordentoft, Practical Pacifism and Its Adversaries.

1918. Sybil Bristowe, Provocations.
William Dyson, Australia at War.
Leonard Merrick, House of Lynch.

1919. Cecil Chesterton, History of the U. S. A.
Bernard Capes, The Skeleton Key.

1920. M. E. Jones, Life in Old Cambridge.

1921. Vivienne Dayrell, Little Wings. H. M. Bateman, A Book of Drawings.

1922. Jane Austen, Love and Friendship.

1923. Irene Hernaman, Child Mediums. 0. R. Vassall Phillips, The Mustard Tree.

1924. 0. F. Dudley, Will Men Be Like Gods. Greville Macdonald, George Macdonald and His Wife. Catholic Who's Who. P. M. Wright, Purple Hours.

1925. Fulton Sheen, God and Intelligence. Alexander Arnoux, Abishag. Trans. Joyce Davis.

1926. A. H. Godwin, Gilbert and Sullivan. Johnson, Rasselas. Catholic Who's Who. L. G. Sieveking, Bats in the Belfry. The Man Who Was Thursday, Dramatized Version. W. S. Masterman, The Wrong Letter. Royal Society of Literature, Essays, Vol. vi.

1927. E. Turner, Grandmamma's Book of Rhymes. G. C. Heseltine, The Change. Essays on the Land. H. Massis, Defence of the West. Forster's Life of Dickens. Everyman Library.

1928. Mary Webb, The Golden Arrow.

1929. H. GhÉon, The Secret of the Cure D'ars, trans. F. Sheed.
W. R. Titterton, Drinking Songs.

1930. Miss C. Noran, Book on Spanish History.
King Lear. De Luxe Edition. Illustrated Yunge.
Introduction to Vanity Fair, Thackeray. Limited Edition
Club, New York.

1931. Giotto's Frescoes at Assisi Reproduced.
John Gibbons, Through Unknown Portugal.
F. Goetel, The Messenger of the Snow.
Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven.
A. A. Thomas, The Burns We Love.
J. P. de Fonseka, Serendipitry.
Daniel O'Grady, Cosmology.

1932. Gleeson, Essays. Essays of the Year, Argonaut Press. Six Centuries of English Literature, Vol. vi. Meredith to Rupert Brooke. Mrs. Homewood, Reminiscences. Penn Country Book.

1933. Life of Sydney Smith. Hesketh Pearson. Tale of Two Cities.

1934. Peregrine Pickle. First Edition Club, U. S. A.
Pamphlet on Nazi Germany for Friends of Europe publication,
edited by Lord Tyrrell.
G.K.'s Miscellany.

1935. Fr. Dowsell, The Betrayal: A Passion Play.
Fr. Vincent McNabb, Book of Essays.
Detective Stories. Collection from Hutchinson.

1936. F. A. MacNutt, A Papal Chamberlain.

1935. Letterpress to Stations of the Cross, by F. Brangwyn.

I doubt whether the list of introductions is complete but Dorothy Collins has done her best to make it so. Of the books and essays about Chesterton there is no end. Those I have used in writing this book are

Father Brown on Chesterton, Monsignor O'Connor. G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism, Cecil Chesterton. The Place of Chesterton in English Literature, Hilaire Belloc. The Laughing Prophet, Emile Cammaerts. G. K. Chesterton, Cyril Clemens.

For the chapters on Sociology I have consulted the invaluable series
on the English Labourer by the Hammonds, C. S. Orpen's Open Fields,
Trevelyan's Social History of England, Cobbett's Rural Rides and
Cottage Economy and Haas' English Labourer.

For the Marconi Chapter I have used the Reports of the Parliamentary Commission and of the trial of Cecil Chesterton, C. F. G. Masterman's Life and that of Lord Reading, and contemporary press accounts.

Throughout I have made use of the files of The Eyewitness, The New
Witness and G.K.'s Weekly.

*******

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