by Ian Ker
Chesterton thought that the analogy could be applied on the ‘larger’ national level:
England has really got into so wrong a state, with its plutocracy and neglected populace and materialistic and servile morality, that it must take a sharp turn that will be a sensational turn. No evolution into Catholicism will have that moral effect. Christianity is the religion of repentance; it stands against modern fatalism and pessimistic futurism mainly in saying that a man can go back. If we do decidedly go back it will show that religion is alive.
He was not particularly bothered about the question of apostolic succession and the validity of Anglican orders that usually preoccupied Anglo-Catholics. What did bother him was the Anglo-Catholic inconsistency in complaining that England was Protestant while at the same time claiming that it had always been Catholic. There had, it was true, always been a High Church party in the Church of England—but whether there had always been a specifically Anglo-Catholic party he was less sure. But then even Anglo-Catholics only confronted Protestantism on ‘particular points’, such as ritual and sacraments. Even if Anglo-Catholicism was not ‘the heresy of an age’, it was ‘only the anti-heresy of an age’. But, since becoming a Roman Catholic, Chesterton had
become conscious of being in a much vaster arsenal, full of arms against countless other potential enemies. The Church, as the Church and not merely as ordinary opinion, has something to say to philosophies which the merely High Church has never had occasion to think about. If the next movement is the very reverse of Protestantism, the Church will have something to say about it; or rather has already something to say about it.
There was another ‘power’ that Chesterton had been impressed by—‘the power of being decisive first and being proved right afterwards’.
This is exactly the quality a supernatural power would have; and I know nothing else in modern religion that has it. For instance, there was a time when I should have thought psychical enquiry the most reasonable thing in the world, and rather favourable to religion. I was afterwards convinced, by experience and not merely faith, that Spiritualism is a practical poison. Don’t people see that when that is found in experience, a prodigious prestige accrues to the authority which, long before the experiment, did not pretend to enquire but simply said, ‘Drop it.’ We feel that the authority did not discover; it knew.
There were ‘a hundred things more to say’, Chesterton was aware: ‘indeed the greatest argument for Catholicism is exactly what makes it so hard to argue for it. It is the scale and multiplicity of the forms of truth and help that it has to offer.’ But the most helpful thing that converts like him and Baring could say, as his friend had suggested, was that, as men who had ‘talked to a good many men about a good many things, and seen something of the world and the philosophies of the world’, they had ‘not the shadow of a doubt about what was the wisest act of our lives’.3
In an interview with the Toronto Daily Star, Chesterton acknowledged that ‘the chief Protestant leaders in the Church of England’ were among those who had ‘most helped’ him to realize that the Church of England was not a branch of the Catholic Church, and therefore of ‘no use’ to Chesterton, who had believed in Catholic Christianity for at least twenty years: ‘They have done me this good service, and I wish to express gratitude for it.’ It seemed perfectly plain to Chesterton that any church that claimed to be ‘authoritative’ ‘must be able to answer quite definitely when great questions of public morals are put’. There were those in the Church of England who could do so, but as a whole it did ‘not speak strongly’, it had ‘no united action’: ‘I have no use for a Church which is not a Church militant, which cannot order battle and fall in line and march in the same direction.’4
Chesterton’s conversion to the Church of Rome, unfortunately, did nothing to help the ailing New Witness. Before it finally stopped publication, Chesterton, according to ‘Keith’ Chesterton’s account, had already once determined to close the paper down. She had been summoned to Beacons-field, where the subject of the paper’s future was broached after dinner. ‘Frances sat in her fireside chair, her pale delicate face set in the curious graven expression it wore for questions of finance.’ ‘Keith’ insisted that the paper ‘must go on’. Thereupon Frances looked up, and said, with a ‘finality’ that ‘Keith’ recognized: ‘It’s impossible for Gilbert to find the money to continue.’ ‘Keith’, however, urged that additional capital could be raised, expenses cut down, and that she would work as Chesterton’s assistant without salary, while contributors would also write unpaid ‘in sheer enthusiasm’. Finally, she prevailed; but she could see that her brother-in-law was ‘not enthusiastic’. However, the circulation of the paper remained static, while advertising declined. Gradually, ‘Keith’ came to feel that the New Witness ‘minus its creator… could not flourish. The mainspring had broken.’ The idea of a new paper bearing Chesterton’s name was, ‘Keith’ claimed, her idea. He was far more famous than his brother, and a review called after him would surely raise the necessary financial support. The idea seemed to appeal to Chesterton, and ‘even Frances was not too discouraging’. But then nothing happened, and a year went by. Eventually, Chesterton came up to London and met ‘Keith’, who was full of plans for the new paper. ‘After a while Gilbert explained that even yet he was not quite sure when he was starting the paper, and, in those lovely verbal undulations which flowed so easily, conveyed the impression that he was going to run G.K.’s Weekly by himself.’ ‘Keith’ did not ‘quite take this in for a moment’, thinking only of what she had done ‘to raise the necessary capital’. And then Chesterton made his meaning clear: ‘As, fascinated, I watched him trace the curves of a French cavalier on the blotting pad before him, he murmured: “I think, do you know, that one Chesterton on the paper is enough.”’ And then, to end the matter, Chesterton gave his hurt and indignant sister-in-law ‘a fraternal pat’. Later, ‘Keith’ came to the conclusion that the reason for his lack of enthusiasm in continuing the New Witness was that he no longer wished to continue to be a kind of ‘caretaker’ for his dead brother, and that, if ‘Keith’ continued to work on the new paper, it would still be Cecil’s rather than his own paper.5 Maisie Ward thought that the reason for Chesterton’s dispensing with ‘Keith’s’ services was that she was neither (as yet) a Catholic nor a Distributist.6 It has also been suggested that another reason for Chesterton’s wanting to be rid of ‘Keith’ was that she was ‘a regular office trouble-maker’.7 But, as Chesterton’s 1919 letters to Belloc about the possibility of removing ‘Keith’ from the editorial control of the New Witness make plain, her explanation was the correct one, as indeed Chesterton himself would soon confirm in his announcement that the new paper would be his paper and his alone. But, although ‘Keith’ would not be assistant editor of G.K.’s Weekly, she would nevertheless contribute regularly to the paper, particularly as drama critic.
In the New Witness issue of 12 January 1923 Chesterton had informed readers in his weekly column, ‘At the Sign of the World’s End’, of the possibility of ‘a new New Witness’. The paper had been declining since the end of the war,
crippled by the death of the only man who could really do it. It lost the one great controversialist against corruption who was materially, mentally and morally on the spot. It passed, by the tragic extension of an interregnum, to an amateur who could only help it in one way by not helping it another, and who was so placed that he could not at once contribute and control.
The paper had also lost the financial support of two wealthy backers because of its opposition to divorce and its defence of the democratic right of workers to strike. Many of those working on the paper had had to do so without remuneration. Having just survived time and again thanks to small sums contributed by readers or staff, now there was the promise of further help from one generous benefactor that seriously raised ‘the possibilities of renewal’. It had been put to him that there was ‘now a real chance for a new paper more boldly planned to popularise the same pr
inciples’. It would be the only paper campaigning against the sale of honours and secret party funds, and championing ‘small property’ against both Socialism and Communism. The hope was that enough small subscribers would come forward to put the new paper in a position where it could pay its contributors and staff. This would enable the paper to become ‘more popular and less political’, since at the moment people who wrote for nothing would write only what they could not write elsewhere, so that the paper became ‘too narrowly concerned with corruption, or…the Distributist ideal’. Contributors naturally preferred to publish their more popular writings where they could be properly remunerated. That was true of Chesterton himself, who published his mystery stories, for example, elsewhere, if only to bring in money for the New Witness: ‘My own poor little corpses might have been concealed in THE NEW WITNESS, instead of the Story Teller.’ If that was true of writers who shared the views of the paper, it was obviously even truer of those who did not and who could not be asked to make the same financial sacrifice. That was why Shaw and Wells, for example, did not appear in its pages—although the one time they had both appeared there had been complaints about writers with views so diametrically opposed to those of the paper being allowed to appear. Chesterton, however, positively favoured debate, if only because it was ‘a test of conviction to have a taste for controversy’. The full page opposite his article contained an advertisement ‘Concerning a new “New Witness”’ to cost sixpence. The ‘business management’ was convinced that such a paper with Chesterton as editor would succeed. But £10,000 was needed ‘as working capital’. The hope was that 1,000 readers would subscribe £10 each, or less if they could not afford it, and that they would persuade friends to buy one or two £1 shares. Below was a form for buying shares at £1.8 The advertisement and form appeared in subsequent issues.
In his weekly column ‘At the Sign of the World’s End’, in the next issue of 19 January, Chesterton expressed his astonishment and admiration at the generous response of readers. And he announced that he would publish the next week details of the kind of new paper that he had in mind. His general idea was that the paper should be ‘more popular’ than the so-called popular press but not ‘stupid’ in the way that the popular press was, a stupidity that merely reflected the stupidity of the self-made millionaires who were the newspaper proprietors and who fondly imagined that their readers were even stupider than they themselves were. He also intended, as in the past, ‘to use the natural language of indignation’, which was ‘more honourable’ as well as ‘better fun’, and which he believed too was more popular and less hypocritical than the language of ‘compromise’ and evasion.9
In the issue of 26 January, Chesterton informed readers that the new paper would ‘begin with a statement on the crisis of the moment, prominently displayed on the front page, but very short’. It would be more like a ‘proclamation’ than a ‘leading article’. To supplement it, there would be a special authoritative article on the subject. Then he wanted there to be ‘a weekly note called “A Thousand Years Hence”, not about the future but the present’, as it would be seen in retrospect. He also wanted there to be a column called simply ‘Bad News’, which would list examples of threats to liberty and small property. He hoped the new paper would publish plays and stories, including a serialized novel that he would write himself if he could not find ‘a real novelist to write it’. He proposed a new kind of book review, an article on a particular subject ‘using books as illustration’. He would like there to be an ‘Encyclopaedia of Errors’—that is, ‘fixed beliefs’ that were ‘quite false’ and that were held by the typical educated person. In addition, he had in mind a series called, for instance, ‘What They Would Have Said’, that is, ‘great reasoners of the past’ such as Dr Johnson, concerning current ideas that were threatening both ‘liberty and reason’, and written in their characteristic style. What, however, he would most like to have in the paper was ‘something called the Cockpit or Arena…which should clarify our own position by comparison and controversy’. He did not have in mind the usual correspondence column, but a column that would display more prominently the views of the paper’s opponents. He proposed ‘two parallel and contrary statements’ that would ‘appear side by side on the same page or on opposite pages’, consisting of selected letters or specially commissioned contributions from opponents and replies to them. It would be ‘fun’, an essential Chestertonian criterion. The editorial of the same issue informed readers that, in contrast to an increasingly ‘impersonal’ press, it had been proposed that the new paper should become even more ‘personal’ than the New Witness, ‘some even desiring that its name should be changed in favour of a personal name, or personal initials’. It was proposed that ‘the precedent of John O’London and Mr T. P. O’Connor’ should be followed and the paper ‘be known as G.K.C.’s Weekly’. While ‘instinctively’ regarding the suggestion ‘with a distaste amounting to dismay’, Chesterton admitted that he was ‘almost’ moved to favour it on the ground that at least it would give a character to the paper if it was ‘somebody’s weekly’, and would make it stand out against an increasingly ‘monochrome’ press.10
Although no readers’ letters had as yet been published on the proposed new paper, the 2 February issue of the New Witness carried a different advertisement for it, which stated that it was ‘suggested’ that the new paper ‘should bear the title of ‘G.K.C.’s WEEKLY” after the precedent of T.P.’s Weekly and John O’London’s Weekly as being the most compact, convenient, and popular way of stating its identification’ with the policies for which the New Witness stood. And a number of letters were now published strongly supporting the proposed new name for the paper, as well as Chesterton’s ideas for the contents of the new paper—although the new kind of review he proposed was criticized as introducing ‘propaganda’ into book reviewing. In his weekly column, Chesterton was confident about ‘the possibility of a new sort of popular paper that has never existed before. And that is because there does exist a definite public opinion that has never been appealed to before.’ The class of people he had in mind were people like small shopkeepers in provincial towns, who were ‘still very numerous, but…not very powerful’, largely because they had no organ to represent them, having ‘no economic interest in common’ with the proprietors of the so-called popular press.11 In the next issue, Chesterton acknowledged defeat:
In this day and hour I haul down my flag, I surrender my sword, I give up a fight I have maintained against odds for very long. No; I do not mean the fight to maintain the NEW WITNESS, though that was a fight against impossible odds and has gone on for years. I mean a more horrid but hidden conflict, of which the world knew nothing; the savage but secret war I have waged against a proposal to call a paper by the name of ‘G.K.C.’s Weekly’. When the title was first suggested my feeling was one of wild terror, which gradually softened into disgust.
But now he had ‘come to see the case for the proposal, and that not merely to please the crowd of friends who pressed it upon me’. It was simply a matter of ‘advertisement’:
I cannot really deny, though I should very much like to, that the name would probably be better known than any new name that could easily be taken. It is my business to think only for the paper; and I set my teeth, or grind my teeth, and do it. If I may be allowed to relieve my feelings by saying that I execrate, abominate and anathematise the new name, that I renounce and abjure it, that I blast it with lightnings and curse it with bell, book and candle, I will then admit that it is certainly the best name we can take.
At least there could be no ‘vanity touching this vulgar notoriety’, for which there were two reasons: a ‘joke’ about his ‘being fat’ and his notorious love of paradox—‘when’, though, ‘and where I have really written any paradoxes I do not know, and have searched my works for them in vain.…I think of writing a sombre spiritual epic about it, called “Paradox Lost.”’12 In the editorial in the next issue, Chesterton reported that of his proposals
for the new paper none had found more favour than the one about ‘the cock-pit or controversial arena’. Nothing, he thought, was more needed than controversy as opposed to the practice of always trying ‘to take a middle course’, the ‘only notion of a middle course’ being ‘to cut a thing in two’.13
According to W. R. Titterton, both he and ‘Keith’ were firmly of the view that the new paper should be called Chesterton’s Weekly. But Chesterton would have none of it; he would rather it were called Tuppeny Trash or Sixpenny Slush.14 Shaw naturally had his own very decided view. He was totally opposed to the suggestion that it should be called G.K.C.’s Weekly, although he recognized there were successful precedents such as T.P.’s Weekly and John O’London’s Weekly. He considered Chesterton’s initials not to be ‘euphonious’, although the name Chesterton he thought was ‘a noble name; but Chesterton is Weakly spoils it’. He thought it should be called simply ‘CHESTERTONS’[sic]. ‘Week’ was ‘a detestable snivelling word; nothing can redeem it, not even the Sermon on the Mount.…But Chestertons leaves no room for anything else. I am more than usually sure that I am right.’15
It seems that Chesterton asked his permission to publish the letter as part of the discussion about the new name. Shaw replied on 16 February that, of course, Chesterton could publish his letter if he wanted to—although it would do nothing for the circulation of the paper—‘nothing but a permanent feature will do that’. However, he was insistent that Chesterton should follow the advice that he gave ‘to all the people who start Labor papers (about two a week or so), which always is, “Don’t open with an article to say that your paper supplies a want; don’t blight your columns with “messages”; don’t bewilder your readers with the family jokes of your cliques; else there will be no second number’. Chesterton should ‘ponder’ this ‘sound’ advice. He thought Chesterton’s main problem was that to the rural proprietor, no longer the ‘peasant’ that Chesterton championed, ‘art, including belles letters, is immorality, and people who idealize peasants, unpractical fools’. Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church, ‘embarrassed by recruits of your type and born scoffers like Belloc, who cling to the Church because its desecration would take all the salt out of blasphemy,’ would ‘quietly’ put the paper on ‘the unofficial index’. The Irish would not support it because an English paper ‘occasionally’ waved ‘a green flag far better’ than they could ‘wave it themselves’. As for the Jews, there were not enough of them who would buy the paper ‘just to see what you say about them’ to keep it going. There was, Shaw asserted roundly, ‘absolutely no public’ for the paper’s ‘policy’; and, although there was ‘a select one’ for Chesterton himself personally, it mostly consisted of people to whom his ‘oddly assorted antipathies and pseudo-racial feuds’ were ‘uncongenial’. Besides, he had already said all he had to say about these ‘fancies’ of his ‘so many thousand times over’ that even his ‘most faithful admirers finally (and always suddenly) discover they are fed up with the New Witness and cannot go on with it’. Either Chesterton had to ‘broaden’ his ‘basis’ or else ‘have no basis at all’, like Dickens in Household Words and All the Year Round. But the trouble with the second alternative was that all the articles and stories that Dickens would have published were now ‘mopped up by the popular press, which in his day stuck to politics and news and nothing else’. As for the first option, Chesterton could broaden his basis if he had enough money to ‘try the experiment of giving ten poor but honest men in Beaconsfield and ten more in London capital enough to start for themselves as independent farmers and shopkeepers. The result would be to ruin 18 out of the twenty, and possibly to ruin the lot.’ He would then learn what Shaw could never teach him—that people needed ‘not property but honourable service’. Perhaps, when confronted by either twenty ruined men or eighteen ruined and the other two capitalists, Chesterton would join the Fabian Society. Certainly, Chesterton should ‘drop’ the ‘pseudo race feuds’, simply because he could not ‘compete with the Morning Post, which gives the real thing in its succulent savagery’, while Chesterton could only give ‘a “wouldn’t hurt a fly” affectation of it’. As for religion, people wanted ‘the real Catholic Church’ not the ‘manufactured’ or ‘Ideal’ one of Chesterton, which did not exist, as he, Shaw, an Irishman, knew. He believed that Chesterton would not have become a Catholic had he not believed that he believed in transubstantiation—which, of course, he did not. But there were worse things than transubstantiation: