The Life and Words of GK Chesterton (4 page)

Frances was in a frail state and Gilbert was still having some trouble with his health, but that did not stop the Chestertons from going on tour to Poland in 1927. To Gilbert’s great surprise, and the surprise of his publisher, he was quite well known in Poland. It was a particularly busy year, and Gilbert’s ambitions were sky high. Even strangers who had never met Gilbert, but enjoyed his work, sent him letters asking him to please slow down and think of his health. Faced with Frances’s and his own mortality, Gilbert was spurred on to get everything out of his head and down on paper as soon as possible. He was so wrapped up in his work that he would have guests over and often have to excuse himself from the table to step into his study and add a few more paragraphs to his latest work in progress.

For each new work that he published, reviewers and commentators noted the lapses into Catholic apologetics. When his books failed to be as well received as he had hoped, after all of his intense work, he fell into bouts of deep depression. To combat his moods, he spent a great deal of time at Westminster Cathedral with other Catholic worshipers.

In 1928 Gilbert still looked young for his 54 years, but his weight and bad habits were starting to truly get the better of him. The stresses of his intense years of work probably did not help. His breathing was strained, and giving speeches became difficult; walking could leave him tired for days, and long periods of work were impossible. Even long conversations, which he had always reveled in, became downright painful. The decline was acutely traumatic for a man who had done little else in life but debate. He was forced to slow down and published only one book in 1928, a collection of essays called Generally Speaking, previously published in the Illustrated London News. Likewise, in 1929 no original writing appeared on the market, only a volume of previously published short stories called The Poet and the Lunatics.

At the end of 1929 Gilbert and Frances decided to combine their need for rest and refreshment with a spiritual journey. They pilgrimaged to Rome, where they stayed for three months at the Hotel Hessler, looking down at the Spanish Steps. Gilbert even managed to arrange a private audience with Pope Pius XI. He also met Mussolini, who at the time had yet to begin his anti-church campaign and was still very popular amongst Catholics both in Italy and beyond. Gilbert was very careful never to write about his audience with the Pope, but he did write of his meeting with Mussolini and the events of his pilgrimage in The Resurrection of Rome. While he was in Rome, his new apologist book was published. It was called The Thing: Why I Am Catholic and consisted of a collection of previously published essays. It was very well received by Catholics but largely overlooked by the Anglican and secular parts of Britain.

The Chestertons continued their travels in 1930, when they embarked for Canada. The voyage over to North America did Gilbert good. He recovered some of his zest for life. He got up and had breakfast early each day and walked around the deck, occasionally engaging in games and conversations with his fellow passengers.

While in Canada, Gilbert was also persuaded to make a second U.S. tour. He had recovered much of his health, so he once again threw himself into work. While on the road, he would write and rehearse his lectures during the day, sometimes writing an essay or a book while simultaneously dictating a second and preparing notes for a third. After tea, around four o’clock, he would go to dinner with Catholic or literary celebrities, local or visiting, and then finally deliver his lecture in the evening. So Gilbert’s life continued into and through most of 1931.

On Christmas Day 1931 Chesterton took on a new kind of project. The new national radio corporation, the BBC, asked him to make a holiday broadcast to the United States—like the King did to the empire—about Christmas and Charles Dickens. It was incredibly well received.

In 1932 Marie Chesterton, Gilbert’s mother fell ill and died. The estate was to be divided up amongst the living relatives, but before the belongings could be divided, Gilbert gathered a great deal of the family history from his father’s study, along with his father’s newspaper clippings pertaining to the lives of Gilbert and Cecil, and had them burned. The act threw him into something of a longstanding argument with his sister-in-law, Ada, who wished to write a biography about the brothers. Gilbert felt justified in destroying reminders of the pain of losing Cecil, but Ada, Cecil’s wife, felt that as his spouse, it was her domain to care for the memory of Cecil and hers alone.

In April of 1932 Chesterton’s biography about Chaucer was published. For this, he received the biggest advance that he had ever gotten. It was fifty times the advance that Gilbert got for writing The Napoleon of Notting Hill 29 years earlier. Despite the publisher’s confidence in Gilbert, the book was not a critical success. There were many who felt that the mere fact that Chesterton had decided to write about Chaucer was symptomatic of what an antique he really was, hopelessly focused on what many deemed medievalisms, amongst them Catholicism.

Sidelights on New London and New York, Chesterton’s second book on his travels in America, was published the following month, and in October the BBC offered him a regular radio spot reviewing books. Despite his incredible experience of giving talks, speaking on the radio continued to terrify Gilbert. Frances had to come with him to every broadcast and sit there so that he had someone physically present to direct his speech towards. It was a successful method not only against radio fright, for people loved his intimate and personal way of speaking. Gilbert was becoming increasingly busy again. As his level of commitments increased, his health declined again. He suffered in particular from bronchitis, which made his regular radio appearances difficult, although he carried on doing them.

By 1936 Chesterton was chronically worn out. He had been working for some time on his Autobiography, which in fact was not so much a biography as a collection of thematic anecdotes and philosophies, sharing very select parts of Chesterton’s life. His bronchitis kept coming back and so did the fevers. His main problem, however, was his heart. He desperately needed another relaxing holiday and a change of scenery. In the spring, he took Frances on a car trip across northern France, visiting famous shrines such as those at Lourdes and Lisieux.

The holiday may have been good for the mood and the spirit, but it did little to alleviate Gilbert’s health problems. During the summer, he began falling asleep at his desk. Finally he had to be put permanently to bed. He simply did not have the energy to move about. In a move that would have been nearly impossible in today’s media climate, Frances requested of the press to keep Gilbert’s illness a secret so that he would not be bothered too much by well-wishers. They did as she had asked them. Gilbert Keith Chesterton passed away on June 14, 1936, of congestive heart failure. His passing came as a surprise to most, including his friends, because of the press silence.

After his death, the pope proclaimed Chesterton a “defender of the faith,” but British newspapers were unable to print the writer’s new title in their eulogies. It was an incredibly awkward title to be bestowed on a Briton since it had been one of the titles of the reigning monarch ever since Henry VIII cut Britain off from the papacy of the Catholic Church. Gilbert’s Autobiography appeared posthumously in November, and his last collection of short stories, The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond, was released in the following year.

His first love and talent may have been drawing, but for forty-five years, G. K. Chesterton wrote incessantly. He created loved characters, challenging poetry, and thought-provoking essays alike, but perhaps the most beloved character that he ever created was himself. Through his own much larger than life character, his fans came to care for him nearly as deeply as his friends.

G. K. Chesterton, the “Prince of Paradox,” led a life of contradiction. He was born into an era that was forward thinking, forward dreaming even, increasingly secular, and more scientific than ever, but, as timely and even futuristic as many of his books and philosophies were, G. K. Chesterton was, according to his critics, positively medieval in his alliances.

He was a modern city man, drawn inexplicably to the folk religion of the countryside that in his own time bored him to tears. He was a lazy schoolboy and a workaholic adult whose overworking may have caused him an early death. 

He was a modest man but failed to moderate nearly every aspect of his own life, doing everything to excess.

He was happily a loner but grew to crave companionship so much that he could fall ill from loneliness. He was an incredibly serious man, who could, at the drop of a hat, build a pillow fort and play war with the neighborhood children.

At the same time, Chesterton led a life of strong convictions and principles strictly adhered to. He was a pious man and a loyal friend. He had a good nature and a reliable character. He happily gave of himself to others and honored his commitments even at great personal cost. He did not hold grudges and could argue fiercely with friends and family without harming the relationship.

Unlike Chesterton’s own prediction of his future biography, it is not at all “difficult to understand the cause of even such publicity as he obtained in his own way.” It is perhaps more difficult to understand why so much of that publicity has dissipated over the years.

A hundred years ago our affairs for good or evil were wielded triumphantly by rhetoricians. Now our affairs are hopelessly muddled by strong, silent men.

I do not say that there are no stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men stronger than those men of old who were dominated by their philosophy and steeped in their religion? Whether bondage be better than freedom may be discussed. But that their bondage came to more than our freedom it will be difficult for any one to deny.

Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end of the day in a state of some exhaustion.

In the fifteenth century men cross-examined and tormented a man because he preached some immoral attitude; in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde because he preached such an attitude, and then broke his heart in penal servitude because he carried it out. It may be a question which of the two methods was the more cruel; there can be no kind of question which was the more ludicrous. The age of the Inquisition has not at least the disgrace of having produced a society which made an idol of the very same man for preaching the very same things which it made him a convict for practicing.

This much, O heaven--if I should brood or rave,

     Pity me not; but let the world be fed,

     Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead,

Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave.

If I dare snarl between this sun and sod,

     Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own,

     In sun and rain and fruit in season shown,

The shining silence of the scorn of God.

Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,

     If I must travail in a night of wrath,

     Thank God my tears will never vex a moth,

Nor any curse of mine cut down a flower.

Men say the sun was darkened: yet I had

     Thought it beat brightly, even on--Calvary:

     And He that hung upon the Torturing Tree

Heard all the crickets singing, and was glad.

There fared a mother driven forth

Out of an inn to roam;

In the place where she was homeless

All men are at home.

The crazy stable close at hand,

With shaking timber and shifting sand,

Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,

And strangers under the sun,

And they lay their heads in a foreign land

Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,

And chance and honour and high surprise,

Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,

Where the beasts feed and foam;

Only where He was homeless

Are you and I at home;

We have hands that fashion and heads that

But our hearts we lost—how long ago!

In a place no chart nor ship can show

Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,

And strange the plain things are,

The earth is enough and the air is enough

For our wonder and our war;

But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings

And our peace is put in impossible things

Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings

Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening

Home shall men come,

To an older place than Eden

And a taller town than Rome.

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless

And all men are at home.