G. K. Chesterton:A Biography

by Ian Ker

  Reflecting later on these bizarre events, Chesterton wondered whether there was not another sense, ‘darker than my own fancy’, in which ‘the secret put in Barrie’s pipe had ended in smoke’. After all, there really had been a ‘sort of unearthly unreality in all the levity of those last hours; like something high and shrill that might crack; and it did crack’. Certainly, Barrie’s fantastic farce could hardly help but appear ‘incongruous with something that happened some days later. For what happened then was that a certain Ultimatum went out from the Austrian government against Serbia.’ And then on 4 August 1914 Germany rejected the British ultimatum to withdraw its forces from Belgium, which it had promised not to invade. The First World War had begun. Chesterton later heard, ‘in a remote and roundabout way certain vague suggestions’ that Barrie had had ‘some symbolical notion of our vanishing from real life and being captured or caught up into the film world of romance’, and then spending the rest of the film ‘struggling to fight our way back to reality’. In the event, if the cowboys, ‘the Original Four’, were ‘indeed struggling to find the road back to Reality they found it all right’.53

  When Chesterton looked back years later at the causes of the First World War, he had no doubt who was responsible. He did not think the Kaiser was to blame, that simplified bogey figure of the British popular imagination—‘though I am quite certain the evil originally arose with the power of Prussia’. And it certainly was not the Serbian fanatic who assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Chesterton was convinced of the paradoxical truth that the ‘fire-eater’ who precipitated a war that could have been prevented, and that everyone wanted to prevent, was none other than a Quaker pacifist ‘of the type of old Mr Cadbury, whom I knew and served in my youth’. For, if the Liberal government had made it absolutely clear early on that Britain would certainly intervene if France was threatened by Germany, ‘Germany would never have challenged the power of such an alliance’. And millions would still be alive. Why had not Asquith’s government done so? Not because they disagreed with the Tory opposition on foreign policy but because they were afraid of alienating the pacifist Quaker millionaires who were the main contributors to Liberal Party funds. This failure for Chesterton proved both the unreality of party politics, as his brother and Belloc had argued in The Party System, but also the fact that the country was ruled not by a democracy but by a plutocracy.54

  A couple of weeks after the outbreak of war, on 20 August, Pope Pius X, the scourge of the Modernists, died. Writing in the Illustrated London News under the title ‘The Peasant who became a Pope’, Chesterton agreed with all those ‘numberless liberal and large-minded journals’ that ‘pointed out, with subtle power and all proper delicacy’, that the late pope had ‘had all the prejudices of the peasant’. Indeed he had: ‘He had a prejudice to the effect that the mystical word “Yes” should be distinguished from the equally unfathomable expression “No”.’55

  On 2 September Chesterton’s old friend Charles Masterman, who had been appointed head of a new War Propaganda Bureau the previous month, invited twenty-five leading writers, including Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, Hardy, Kipling, Wells, and Chesterton, to discuss how they could contribute to the war effort. At the outbreak of war Chesterton’s ‘first thought’ had been, ‘what could he do for his country’. Hugh Rivière remembered the Sunday after war had broken out when he was staying a few miles from Beaconsfield and walked over to see the Chestertons. Like everyone else, they shared ‘the very national state of excitement and emotion’. ‘I couldn’t wield a sword,’ Chesterton remarked ruefully, ‘as I can’t lift my right arm above my shoulder. I should be no use in cavalry, no horse could carry me.’ Then he added hopefully: ‘I might possibly form part of a barricade.’56 However, Chesterton’s contribution to the war effort would be in the field of propaganda, above all in The Barbarism of Berlin, published in November 1914, a collection of articles published during October and November in the Daily Mail. It was published the following year in America under the title The Appetite of Tyranny and included Letters to an Old Garibaldian, published in January 1915, a propaganda booklet aimed at an Italian audience. This, to the great glee of Masterman, was to go ‘from Patagonia to Sweden, to the joy and conversion of many to the true faith’. According to ‘many of our correspondents’, he told Frances Chesterton in October 1915, ‘it was the most effective piece of writing of all our work’.57

  Chesterton was adamant that the real aggressor was not so much Germany as Prussia, the king of which was also the German emperor. His quarrel was not with Catholic Bavarians or Rhinelanders but with the Prussians who dominated them, who were simply ‘barbarians’, ‘the enemy of civilisation by design’, whose aim was ‘to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas of rational society’—namely, ‘the idea of record and promise’ and ‘the idea of reciprocity’. For the Prussian ‘had made a new discovery in international politics: that it may often be convenient to make a promise; and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it’. Long before the scandalous spectacle of cultured, music-loving Nazis, and unlike Victorians like Matthew Arnold and George Eliot but like Newman, Chesterton saw very clearly that culture and education are no guarantee of morality: ‘the Berlin philosopher’ was actually morally inferior to uneducated savages who respected ‘obligation’ and therefore had ‘at least a seed of civilisation that these intellectual anarchists would kill’. For all his culture and education, the Prussian was ‘a spiritual barbarian, because he is not bound by his own past, any more than a man in a dream’. The Prussian felt entitled ‘to break the law’ but ‘also to appeal to the law’. Certainly, the Prussian did not feel bound by law in his dealings with the weaker sex and inferior nations. His attitude to women was well summed up in Nietzsche’s infamous dictum: ‘Thou goest with women, forget not thy whip.’ Chesterton observes the significance of the whip rather than, say, poker: for a poker ‘is a part of domesticity; and might be used by the wife as well as the husband’; whereas the whip is the weapon of ‘a privileged cast’. But, if Prussian men believed it was their natural right to lord it over their women, so too as ‘the master-race’ they believed they had the same right to lord it over other nations.58 These were the facts, but, as Chesterton was to observe, ‘the modern mind can scarcely believe that men so modern, so cultivated, and so successful can also be so immoral’.59

  5

  On 14 November 1914 the New Statesman published as a war supplement Shaw’s Common Sense about the War, a pamphlet that was widely regarded as treasonable and turned its author into a pariah. According to Shaw, no particular country was to blame for the war, which was simply the result of capitalism. Among others it shocked was Chesterton. There survive three drafts of a letter to Shaw in Frances’s hand,60 as well as a longer typed draft, undated, unfinished, and unsigned. Chesterton began: ‘I think you are a great man: and I think that your first great misfortune was that you were born in a small epoch. But I think it is your last and worst misfortune that now at last the epoch is really growing greater: but you are not.’ ‘You are wrestling with something too romantic for you to realise,’ he continued. It was ‘not nonsense’ to go to war with Germany over the invasion of Belgium, which was a ‘sin’ requiring ‘expiation’, ‘an outrage on the spirit’. The invasion had not been used by the British as a ‘pretext’. Rather, British soldiers were dying because of the ‘passion’ they felt at ‘Satan made flesh in the fields of Flanders’. This was a war ‘involving more fundamental questions’ than Shaw’s ‘modern drama has ever dared to raise and driven by more dynamic passions than ever’ Shaw’s beloved ‘modern music has sought to explore and explode’. Yes, Shaw had been ‘right in the old days to be always tilting at illusions; but this is not an illusion’: ‘You are out of your depth, my dear Shaw; for you jumped into this deep river to prove that it was shallow.’ The trouble was that he could not ‘bear to be on the democratic side’. For in this case this was a war of the British people,
who were actually and unexpectedly on the side of an aristocratic government: ‘the Government represents us.’61

  Just before trying to write this passionate and outraged letter, Chesterton had collapsed while speaking at Oxford

  to a huge packed mass of undergraduates in defence of the English Declaration of War. That night is a nightmare to me; and I remember nothing except that I spoke on the right side. Then I went home and went to bed, tried to write a reply to Bernard Shaw, of which about one paragraph may still exist, and was soon incapable of writing anything.

  He was ‘already very ill’, he remembered, when he went to Oxford—and this was the ‘last thing’ he did before completely taking to his bed. It seems from Chesterton’s own memory that he had been seriously unwell since September. He remembered that, when he ‘first recovered full consciousness, in the final turn’ of his long illness, he asked for the periodical Land and Water, in which Belloc ‘had already begun his well-known series of War articles’. He was ‘perfectly clear’ in his own mind that the last of these articles by Belloc that he had ‘read, or been able to understand’ was about ‘the news of the new hope from the Marne’. The Battle of the Marne, that finally stopped the German advance that threatened Paris itself, lasted from 6 to 12 September. And Chesterton was absolutely ‘clear’ that he had read none of Belloc’s articles ‘that had appeared since the Battle of the Marne’.62

  On his return home from Oxford, Chesterton fell so heavily on his bed that it broke.63 The chronology of the Autobiography is often confused or mistaken, but in this instance Chesterton was positive that his serious, life-threatening illness began during or just after the Battle of the Marne. According to ‘Keith’ Jones, it came as no surprise to those who knew him. Grossly obese, he had imbibed his father’s taboo against any discussion of health (he refused, for example, to go to the dentist). He led an almost entirely sedentary life, avoiding taking any exercise as far as possible. And the old social drinking in Fleet Street taverns had been replaced, according to her, by solitary drinking.64 Presumably, ‘Keith’s’ reference to solitary drinking refers to the evenings after Frances had gone to bed and Chesterton would sit up late working, sipping, according to Father O’Connor, a glass of wine.65 One glass of wine could easily become several, as ‘in an absent-minded way he was always liable to drink too much of anything if it were there—even water’. This was why Dr Bakewell, his doctor from 1919 till his death, as he later told Dorothy Collins, ‘did forbid alcohol at certain periods… simply to make liquid less attractive, as too much even of water was bad’ for him; but this ban, which was always observed ‘most meticulously’, was rarely imposed, as for ‘the greater part of the time’ he had treated Chesterton he was not aware of drink in any way affecting his patient’s health. And Dr Bakewell said that he had never treated Chesterton for alcoholism, nor did he ever see any signs of it. Similarly, Dr Bakewell’s predecessor, Dr Pocock, only occasionally advised total abstention, as he did for a few years after Chesterton’s life-threatening illness of 1914–15, and then it was only to reduce Chesterton’s liquid intake, which would be increased not only by the wine drunk but the thirst it created. The Wards’ daughter Maisie noticed how he seemed constantly thirsty, drinking several bottles of mineral water a day. She remembered the daily routine from one visit she paid to Beaconsfield when Chesterton was hard at work on one of his major books. He would be in his study by ten, working until lunch at one. After a break of an hour and a half, he would be back in his study till tea at 4.30, after which he would again work till dinner at 7.30. Frances would go to bed at 10.30, leaving Chesterton to work well past midnight.66 During those couple of hours Chesterton could easily have drunk a great deal without even noticing: apart from being absent-minded when eating or drinking, he had an exceptionally strong head.

  Dr Pocock was called, who found him ‘lying in a grotesquely awkward position, his hips higher than his head’. Asked if he was not uncomfortable lying like that, the patient acknowledged that he supposed he was. The doctor prescribed a water-bed. Before Chesterton lost consciousness, he heard Chesterton murmur, ‘I wonder if this bally ship will ever get to shore.’67 When after a week or more he momentarily recovered consciousness, Frances, hoping he knew who she was, asked, ‘Who is looking after you?’ He replied, ‘God.’68

  Frances wrote on 25 November to Father O’Connor asking for prayers. ‘He is seriously ill and I have two nurses. It is mostly heart trouble, but there are complications. The Dr is hopeful and we can only hope and trust he will pull round. He is quite his normal self, as regards head and brain, which makes it almost impossible to realise how ill he is. He even dictates and reads a great deal.’69 But on Christmas Eve he had ‘a bad relapse’ and was now ‘very desperately ill’. Faced with the prospect of her husband dying, who in his moments of consciousness was rambling on about wanting to be buried in Kensal Green, a Catholic cemetery, Frances broached the subject of conversion: ‘He is not often conscious, and is so weak—I feel he might ask for you—if so I shall wire. Dr is still hopeful, but I feel in despair.’70 She also consulted Wilfrid Ward’s wife Josephine, who wrote to Father O’Connor:

  if anyone could help him towards the Church it would be you. I have reason to believe that at one time he thought of becoming a Catholic. I want to make sure that you know how ill he is in case you should think it wise and possible, to go and see them and give him the opportunity of speaking to you.71

  And on 2 January 1915 Mrs Ward wrote again to say, ‘if you could come to London… for the inside of the week you could go down to Beaconsfield for a few hours without startling them. Surely they would think it natural for you to take advantage of a short holiday in London to go and see them?’72 But the following day Frances wrote to say that she saw no point in O’Connor coming: ‘If you came he would not know you and this condition may last some time. The brain is dormant and must be kept so.’ But, if he regained consciousness sufficiently, she would ‘ask him to let you come—or will send on my own responsibility’. In the meantime, she asked him: ‘Pray for his soul and for mine.’73 However, on 7 January she was able to write that Chesterton ‘seemed decidedly clearer yesterday and though not quite so well to-day, the Doctor says he has reason to hope the mental trouble is working off. His heart is stronger and he is able to take plenty of nourishment.’ She therefore hoped that he would ‘soon be sufficiently himself to tell us what he wants done’: ‘I am dreadfully unhappy at not knowing how he would wish me to act. His parents would never forgive me if I acted only on my own authority.’ She felt that God would answer her prayer and she would know what to do, even if her husband were to die. A postcard of 9 January confirmed that there had been a ‘quite distinct improvement’.74 From a letter dated 10 January from Mrs Ward to O’Connor, it appears that the priest had in fact gone down to Beaconsfield. Mrs Ward did not suppose that he had been able to see Chesterton, but at least his talk with Frances ‘must have done much good’—adding: ‘I hope that Frances may be nearer the Church than she knows herself.’75 On 12 January Frances wrote again to O’Connor to say that she was convinced that her husband was ‘really better’ and would live: ‘Physically he is stronger and the brain is beginning to work normally, and soon I trust we shall be able to ask him his wishes with regard to the Church.’76 On 18 January she reported an improvement, although the recovery had stalled for a week: ‘He asked for me to-day, which is a great advance. He is dreadfully weak, but the brain clouds are clearing, though the doctors won’t allow him to make the slightest effort to think.’77

  In a later undated letter to Josephine Ward, Frances wrote that Chesterton had actually ‘asked’ for her and had ‘hugged’ her: ‘I feel like Elijah (wasn’t it?) and shall go on “in the strength of that hug forty days”.’ The doctors had told her that the recovery would be ‘very slow’ and that it was essential to prevent the patient using his brain at all, as far as possible’.78 It was ‘a dreadful time’, and she felt ‘so helpless’; it was difficult to ‘set
tle to ordinary occupations’, but she was reading the proofs of Chesterton’s new volume of collected poems: they keep me both sad and happy.’ She wondered whether Josephine Ward would be in London, in which case she would try and go and see her if she felt that she could leave Beaconsfield for an houror two.79 On 24 January she wrote again to Mrs Ward to say that Chestert on was ‘much the same, in a semiconscious condition—sleeping a great deal’. She felt ‘absolutely hopeless’: it seems impossible it can go on like this. The impossibility of reaching him is too terrible an experience and I don’t know how to go through with it.’80

  On 29 January Frances wrote again to O’Connor confirming that the recovery was continuing, although practically imperceptible from one day to the next. Nearly two months later on 15 March the news was the same: there was progress, but it was very slow: ‘He has to be kept very quiet, as he is easily upset and that affects his heart.’ But the patient was not only steadily regaining consciousness, but becoming aware of his situation. He asked Frances if she had thought he was going to die, and she replied that she had thought so but now she knew he would live. He then asked: ‘Does Father O’Connor know [?]’ After hearing that he did, he ‘wandered off again into something else’. She thought the priest would like to know he had and was evidently thinking of you’.81 On Easter Saturday Frances again wrote that there was still very slow progress: Chesterton’s mind was ‘gradually clearing’, although it was difficult for him ‘to distinguish between the real and the unreal’. And she was sure that he would soon be able to think and act for himself, but I dare not hurry matters at all’. She had told him that she was writing regularly to O’Connor, and he said, that is right—I’ll see him soon. I want to talk to him.’ He still wandered at times, but the clear intervals are longer’. The night before he had actually recited the Creed. She felt now she understood ‘something of the significance of the resurrection of the body’, when she saw him ‘just consciously laying hold of life again’.82