G. K. Chesterton:A Biography

by Ian Ker

  The cross, however, which turned out to be a crucifix, revealed the inconsistency of English Protestantism:

  The sort of Evangelical who demands what he calls a Living Christ must surely find it difficult to reconcile with his religion an indifference to a Dying Christ; but anyhow one would think he would prefer it to a Dead Cross. To salute the Cross in that sense is literally to bow down to wood and stone; since it is only an image in stone of something that was made of wood.…If a man were ready to wreck every statue of Julius Caesar, but also ready to kiss the sword that killed him, he would be liable to be misunderstood as an ardent admirer of Caesar. If a man hated to have a portrait of Charles the First, but rubbed his hands with joy at the sight of the axe that beheaded him, he would have himself to blame if he were regarded rather as a Roundhead than a Royalist. And to permit a picture of the engine of execution, while forbidding a picture of the victim, is just as strange and sinister in the case of Christ as in that of Caesar.

  But, although it was ‘naturally a source of intense and somewhat ironic joy’ to Chesterton that a carved crucifix now stood in the heart of Beaconsfield, the whole episode threw light on the fundamental question that was bothering him ‘and initiated the next step in my life’. For there was something about the way in which it came to be erected and then tolerated that was not ‘entirely acceptable’ to him:

  I do not want to be in a religion in which I am allowed to have a crucifix. I feel the same about the much more controversial question of the honour paid to the Blessed Virgin. If people do not like that cult, they are quite right not to be Catholics. But in people who are Catholics, or call themselves Catholics, I want the idea not only liked but loved and loved ardently, and above all loudly proclaimed. I want it to be what the Protestants are perfectly right in calling it; the badge and sign of a papist. I want to be allowed to be enthusiastic about the existence of the enthusiasm; not to have my chief enthusiasm coldly tolerated as an eccentricity of myself.

  Still, at least there was a war memorial now ‘to commemorate the fact that something had been saved out of the Great War’—Beaconsfield and Britain. True, Chesterton did not like ‘the English landed system, with its absence of peasants and its predominance of squires’; nor did he like ‘the formless religious compromise of Puritanism turning into Paganism’—but still he did not ‘want it discredited and flattened out by Prussianism’. England had been right to enter the war to prevent ‘Prussian militarism and materialism’ from dominating Europe.77

  7

  In the summer of 1919, Chesterton wrote to Maurice Baring asking ‘a great favour’. He had been commissioned by a publisher to write a book about Jerusalem, ‘not political but romantic and religious, so to speak; I conceive it as mostly about pilgrimages and crusades, in poetical prose…’. His travel expenses were being paid, but he still needed ‘the political or military permissions to go there’. He had another motive (his chief one, he told Belloc78) for going to Jerusalem apart from ‘the desire to write the book; though I do think I could do it in the right way and, what matters more, on the right side’. Frances had been told by doctors that the only way she could ‘get rid of her neuritis’ would be if she went abroad and missed ‘part of an English winter’. As ‘a man who knows everybody’, did Baring ‘know anybody on Allenby’s staff; or know anybody who knows anybody on Allenby’s staff; or know anybody who would know anybody who would know anything about it’? Field Marshall Allenby, who had captured Jerusalem in December 1917 from the Turks, whose forces he defeated decisively in September 1918, was High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan. Chesterton understood that arrangements could not ‘be done as yet in the ordinary way by Cook’s [the travel agents]; and that the oracle must be worked in some such fashion’. If Baring were to ‘be so kind as to refer to any worried soldier or official’, Chesterton would ‘like it understood’ that he was ‘not nosing about touching any diplomatic or military matter’ or for ‘any copy for the New Witness’: ‘I only want to write semi-historical rhetoric on the spot.’ Baring would be ‘helping things you yourself care about; and one person, not myself, who deserves it’: ‘I will not say it would be killing two birds with one stone; which might seem a tragic metaphor; but bringing one bird at least to life; and allowing the other bird, who is a goose, to go on a wild goose-chase.’ 79 In fact, when Chesterton’s publishers suggested he should go to the Holy Land, ‘it sounded to me like going to the moon’. They would have to travel through ‘a country still imperilled and under arms; it involved crossing the desert at night in something like a cattle-truck; and parts even of the Promised Land had some of the qualities of a lunar landscape’.80

  It was almost certainly Chesterton’s old friend E. C. Bentley, who was on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, who had suggested that he be commissioned to write a series of articles on the Holy Land that would become the book. Allenby’s victory over the Turks and his capture of Jerusalem were being hailed as a successful modern Crusade. Baring had, as Chesterton expected, a contact on Allenby’s staff, and the general himself replied that he would be delighted to welcome the Chestertons in Jerusalem and afford them every facility in Palestine.81

  On 29 December 1919 the Chestertons set off for France. From Paris they took a sleeper to Rome, where they arrived late in the evening on New Year’s Eve. Next day they visited the Forum and the Colosseum, before leaving by train that night for Brindisi via Bari. There they had to wait a day for a boat to Alexandria. There was no hotel room available, so they stayed the night in a private house, in ‘a good Christian room with a statue of Our Lady and a crucifix and holy water’, Frances recorded in the diary she kept on this trip to the Holy Land.82 They sailed in the late afternoon of 3 January. By the evening Frances was feeling ‘very seasick’. They reached Taranto next day, sailing on in the late afternoon. On the 5th Frances still felt ‘rather sick’ but stayed on deck all day. After passing the coasts of Greece and Crete, they saw no land before Alexandria, where they arrived early in the morning of the 7th. A ‘dignified Egyptian gentleman’ took them under his ‘protection’, seating them in the shade while he secured their luggage, changed their money, ‘settled the customs and put us into a carriage’, which took them to the Grand Hotel in the centre of the city. And there on the verandah was the first chance of seeing the East: ‘It is quite wonderful—arabs—Egyptians, Jordanese, black niggers, all sorts of Europeans passing every moment…’. They visited the Catholic cathedral, where Frances was impressed by the ‘lovely crib—one of the most beautiful I have ever seen’. Next day they took the midday train. ‘Ismail (of the hotel) vowed eternal fealty for the time being and took us to the station and saw us off with oriental hand kissing and salaams.’ The journey to Cairo was ‘most marvellous of all’:

  Across the Nile Delta, flat as flat, with fields of cotton, or beans, or sugar cane—little Arab mud huts all along the way—here and there a small mosque—and by the road that runs beside the railway an unending procession of camels, mules, donkeys, goats, sheep, oxen, buffaloes, men, women[,] children[.] Every scene like some picture familiar from childhood from some illustrated Bible. The palm trees and date trees are the only things that rise any height above the ground. Then we saw the Nile and to our surprise in the distance the Pyramids!83

  They arrived in Cairo at three o’clock on the afternoon of the 8th. ‘It looks like any other great cosmopolitan centre,’ Frances wrote in her diary; ‘though these are Eastern houses—and the vegetation is quite strange—everyone talks a little English or French’. Frances had a headache and stayed in their hotel room till dinner. Still not feeling very well next morning, she stayed in bed till eleven, as she did too the next day. On 11 January her diary records: ‘Went to church at St Mary’s (the chapel of the English Bishop of Jerusalem) who was there—Choral Eucharist.’ After lunch they went for a drive on the road leading to the Pyramids. They ‘saw all sorts of things—shepherds bringing in droves of Sudanese sheep—Mahomedans at prayers—sellers of sugar cane
—water sellers, booths all along the route’. The boats on the Nile were ‘quite lovely, so is the view of the city from this further side. The city stands out very majestically against the background of the desert.’ On the 13th they went for ‘a prowl’ in the morning, and in the afternoon ‘for a drive into the bazaars’. Europeans were ‘not allowed into the inmost heart of the native quarter nor into the mosques but accompanied by our faithful guide we had a marvellous view of the Eastern part of this remarkable city. It is impossible to describe the sights, the smells, the noise[,] the colour-movement in the narrowest and darkest of alleys—Every craftsman at his art…’. Next day they drove to the Pyramids, which were ‘really impressive though in a sense ugly’: ‘What is truly wonderful is coming on the Sphinx which you approach from behind. It is gigantic and weird—the face all hacked away…’. They drove home ‘in the glow of a real Egyptian sunset. The desert is unlike anything else being hilly and almost mountainous.’84

  On the evening of 16 January Chesterton lectured at general headquarters to the military stationed there on ‘Sightseeing for the Blind’. Frances was the only lady present. Next day they drove in the afternoon to the Citadel, ‘the fortress on the heights above the town built by the great Saladin (the enemy of our Richard Cœur de Lion)’. From its wall they could see ‘a splendid panorama of the whole country for miles—Pyramids—Nile—a hundred mosques with their minarets’. They visited two of the mosques, one modern, one ancient. The former was ‘like a very palatial dancing…hall…hung with glass chandeliers—built of alabaster and very magnificent’. On the 18th Chesterton donned a cassock and surplice and gave what Frances considered a ‘very good’ address after evensong in the Anglican bishop’s chapel. Next day he again lectured at a military barracks.85 He had been given an official post as lecturer ‘in order to facilitate our means of getting to Jerusalem’.86

  Setting off for Jerusalem on 20 January, they arrived at Ismailia, ‘a perfectly beautiful little place’, in the afternoon. Chesterton gave a lecture to the English Club. Next day he spoke again to a military audience. In the afternoon the commanding general arranged for a motor launch to take them up the Suez Canal to Kantara, where Chesterton spoke in the theatre of the military camp (‘nine miles of tents they say’). They then left by train for Port Said, where they arrived at 11.30 at night. There was another lecture in the evening next day. On the 23rd they took a train for Suez, where Chesterton again lectured in the evening to a mostly military audience. Next day they took the late afternoon train back to Ismailia, from where they took a train after dinner back to Kantara. From there they took ‘a kind of cattle truck train’ which was ‘not so terrible as had been made out’, sleeping somehow by ‘fits and starts’. From Ludd, where they arrived at 6.30 in the morning, they were sent on by car to Jaffa, where Chesterton lectured in ‘the great camp outside the city’. They drove back to Ludd on the 26th. From there they took the train to Jerusalem—‘a wonderful journey up the most perilous heights’—where they arrived at 4.30 in the afternoon. Next day Father Waggett ‘called’ on them.87

  There they stayed in a suite in the Grand Hotel. It was pouring with rain. Next day it was bitterly cold, with heavy rain again. On 28 January they walked to ‘the Zion gate near the house of Caiaphas and the scene of the Last Supper’. The day after they visited the Holy Sepulchre and the Christian quarter. It was a ‘hopeless’ city to find one’s way around—‘no names or numbers anywhere’. On the 31st Frances went out by herself and found the Via Dolorosa. On 2 February the weather was like a ‘glorious’ June day in England, and they walked to where they could see the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane. Four days later they drove up into the mountains and had their ‘first glimpse of the Dead Sea’. Next day they went to the Holy Sepulchre, where they had ‘rather a nice’ guide, a Catholic, who talked to them as though they were ‘small heathen children’.88

  By 9 February the rain—‘when it rains in Jerusalem it does rain’—was turning to snow. Next day they woke up to ‘deep snow’, the first time it had snowed in Jerusalem for ten years. It was impossible to get out and the city was ‘quite cut off’. By the 11th the snow was 29 inches deep, a record for Jerusalem. The hotel dining room was flooded, and there was no water. Frances managed to keep warm in her fur coat. She noted that no effort was made ‘to clear the snow or make a path’. Next day the snow peaked ‘at a depth of about 33 inches on the level’, though the ‘actual snowfall was 43 inches’. But it began to thaw in the afternoon. Frances had ‘a violent headache’ and stayed in bed all day. On the 15th the weather turned and the sun came out in the late morning. It was ‘warm and sunny like a lovely May day’. Chesterton was working, so Frances went out by herself in the morning to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was ‘like a little cottage garden’, she noted, ‘at home’. There were ‘one or two olives (one called the Tree of Agony) so old they might have been there in Our Lord’s time’. That afternoon they both went to the English College, where Chesterton gave what Frances called ‘a very effective’ lecture. Speeches of thanks were made by the students in five languages. Next day it was again cold and rainy. There was again a short fall of snow on the 20th, but when the weather improved they both had ‘a lovely walk’, in Frances’s words, to the Garden of Gethsemane. Next day they ‘penetrated the interior’ of the Dome of the Rock, ‘supposed by Mahomedans to be the place where Mahomet ascended to Paradise and by the Jews where Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac’. On the 22nd the Chestertons went to a service in St George’s Anglican Cathedral. Next day they attended a party where ‘all Jerusalem must have been present. Grand Mufti, the Greek Patriarch, Armenian Patriarch, Syrian Patriarch, Coptic, Roman C, Greek Orthodox priests, Jews, Arabs, Musulmen, British officers and their wives and a good band and a good tea.’89

  Two days later they saw the Upper Room, ‘the traditional site of the Last Supper which at any rate is just the sort of place one would expect it to be’, remarked Frances. Next day after dinner Chesterton lectured to British officers and their friends on the Arthurian legend. He was ‘a little embarrassed at having Herbert Samuel sitting opposite to him’. On the 29th they again attended church at St George’s Cathedral. Father Waggett was the preacher, who after the service drove them in a ‘sort of lorry car’ to the Dead Sea. On 2 March Frances was taken by car to Bethlehem, where she ‘just peeped inside the Church of the Nativity’—she was ‘reserving it for a visit’ with her husband. That afternoon Chesterton lectured at St George’s Cathedral on Dickens’s England. On 4 March Frances went by herself to the Church and Convent of Ecce Homo. Two days later the Chestertons both walked out to the Garden of Gethsemane. After lunch they were driven by Father Waggett to Bethlehem, where they visited the Church of the Nativity and ‘the cave of the manger’. ‘As Father Waggett was responsible for our taking over the church in the war he knows all about it and we had a truly sympathetic guide,’ wrote Frances in her diary. ‘At the place of the Nativity we said our collect for Christms day.’ On 7 March they were taken for a drive and picnic. On the way, they saw Jacob’s Well, ‘the traditional spot where Our Lord spoke with the woman of Samaria’, where the priest in charge ‘let down the bucket and we drank of the water’. Two days later Frances went by herself to the garden, a ‘very beautiful and peaceful little spot’, reputed to be the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, to see the ‘perfect specimen of a Jewish tomb’ that was supposed to be the ‘tomb of Our Lord’. She then discovered the Jews’ ‘Wailing Place’: ‘Several were wailing all right and many beggars doing a brisk trade.’ 90

  On 10 March the Chestertons were driven by a leading Zionist to see ‘two of the most important of the 60 odd colonies that the Jews have founded in Judea’, about fifty miles south-west of Jerusalem. It was a ‘glorious’ drive through the mountains on to the plain, with ‘fine glimpses of the sand dunes and the Mediterranean’. Although the plain was fertile, a lot had been ‘reclaimed by sheer hard labour’. The drive was not ‘an unmixed joy for the road is quite br
oken up in many places and we had violent shakings and nerve racking scrapes’. According to their host, the chauffeur was ‘a reclaimed apache’. Still, Frances thought he was ‘a wonderful driver’. After sampling the wine at a vineyard, they partook of a ‘very nice’ lunch at a little restaurant. They then went on to visit ‘one of the chief colonies…very like an early American township’. They eventually returned to their hotel, ‘very tired but after a very wonderful day’, at about 8.30 in the evening after ‘many halts as the tyres had to be often attended to, and the headlights eventually gave out’. On the way back they had seen ‘Arab tents pitched for the night with the camels and donkeys outside’. At the entrance to the mountain pass they had passed ‘an old inn, dating from the Crusades (probably earlier) where men and beasts halt for the night’.91