by Ian Ker
Lady, you will not, when you come,
Devour us out of house and home,
Nor do I think you come, indeed,
Impelled by undiluted greed,
Or merely seek our poor abodes
To over-eat at Overroads …1
Other part-time secretaries would be employed when there was more work than the secretary could cope with. One of these was Winifred Pierpoint, who was a close neighbour. She remembered him as ‘the most courteous’ of men, ‘and that made his long hours of dictation shorter’. She never saw him lose his temper, although she was quite untrained as a secretary and must have tried his patience. Chesterton would nearly always dictate standing or walking up and down the minute study, waving some weapon in his hand, often a fierce looking African knife with which he would chip bits out of his desk.’ Rarely would he alter anything. Occasionally she would be asked to read a passage out aloud that she had typed—‘and he would give a deep-throated chuckle if he liked the sound of his own words.’ All the time he would be smoking cigars, ‘lighting one from the other, until the atmosphere was as thick as a fog’. Every week there was the last-minute rush to get the 1,500 word article off in time for the Illustrated London News: The article, when at last ready, was rushed to the station a mile away, and given to the guard of a certain train to take to Paddington, where a messenger from the periodical met it.’ A knife was not the only weapon that Chesterton wielded, and one day he shot an arrow from his bow from the window of the study that hit a passing dog in the road; fortunately, the dog was ‘more surprised than hurt’. Winifred Pierpoint’s job was generally to deal with the vast correspondence, while the regular secretary typed the articles and books. Every fan letter was answered, and a supply of signatures was kept for the autograph hunters who were ‘a pest’. At around four o’clock she remembered there was tea at the dining-room table, at which gingerbread, which was a special favourite of Chesterton, was invariably served. Evening parties were held in the studio, which often took the form of poetry readings, at which Chesterton excelled: ‘it was a joy to hear him speak some fine lyric or sonnet.’ Then there were fancy-dress dances, at one of which she danced with Chesterton and was amazed by how light-footed he was: ‘His sense of enjoyment was that of a child spontaneous and unclouded.’ Like others, she noted ‘his gift for making the other person feel intelligent and interesting’. He did not monopolize the conversation, if only because he was genuinely interested in what other people had to say. People found Frances reserved, but she would open up to you if she liked you. Winifred Pierpoint thought that her adoring devotion to Chesterton was essential to his happiness, but that it was too uncritical when it came to his writing. She seemed to think there was no one else in the world except Chesterton: ‘She revolved round him too much.’ But, to be fair to Frances, she was by no means unaware of the hostile criticism her husband attracted and thought it her duty as well as that of his friends to be as supportive as possible.2
Kathleen Chesshire was Chesterton’s secretary for four years in the 1920s. Before starting to take dictation around ten o’clock in the morning, she would ride on her bicycle into Beaconsfield, paying bills and leaving notes. One June summer’s day she returned to find Frances in the garden, who exclaimed delightedly what a lovely day it was. But Chesterton, who was ‘pacing the garden path, lost in thought’, complained, ‘Isn’t it a trifle hot? Personally I always feel some ogre or other is threatening me in a heat wave.’ Frances’s cousin Rhoda Bastable, now grown up, often stayed at Top Meadow, and Chesterton would sometimes dictate to her, so slowly that she was able to get in a good deal of reading in-between. She remembered that he hardly ever altered a word nor would he ever dictate the title of an article. When he had finished—and he had an unerring sense of word length—he would write the title in himself.3
Finally, in 1926 Dorothy Collins, the last and the first properly trained secretary arrived on the scene. She recalled a summer weekend in 1926 when she was staying with friends, Mr and Mrs Church and their daughters, who lived at Gregories Cottage next door to Top Meadow, with adjoining gardens. From staying with her friends, Dorothy Collins had got to know the Chestertons. And that weekend she heard that Chesterton was ‘not happy with his secretary who struck me as excellent in every way but perhaps she was too good and efficient’. Frances asked her if she would ‘consider working for her husband’: ‘Why not try it. You won’t be any the worse off if you come for six months and decide against it in the end.’ Although she was perfectly happy in London, Dorothy was persuaded—perhaps it was the attraction of working for a famous writer. However, the agreement was that she would come ‘not on a permanent basis’ but ‘for about six months’ to help Chesterton ‘over a difficult period. The six months extended into ten years.’4 On 29 August Frances Chesterton wrote to say that they both thought it would be ‘very nice’ if she would come at the beginning of October, ‘if you felt you would really like the work’. But on 12 October she wrote again to say that there was no need to come till after 10 November. She mentioned a room Dorothy Collins could rent where her predecessor, a Miss Stevens, had been living and recommended. A week later, she wrote again asking her to come on 15 November, and invited her to stay at Top Meadow for the first week while she looked for a room. She also wondered if the prospective secretary knew of a cook, as theirs was leaving at the end of the month: ‘I should not like you to come and find no satisfactory meals provided!’ Finally, she wrote yet again on 25 October to say that Miss Stevens was leaving them on 13 November and to invite her to stay for the weekend before she went into lodgings. ‘Miss Stevens’, she added, ‘comes to us about 10.30 every morning and I find that answers very well. We are terribly late in the mornings—my husband works so late at night it is impossible to get him down early.’ There was ‘plenty’ of work to do, even though it was ‘rather irregular’. She concluded: ‘I do hope you will be happy. I feel sure you will find what you want about room, dog and car in due course …’5 Dorothy Collins remembered arriving on a Sunday in November and finding that Frances had completely forgotten about the weekend invitation and was expecting her next day. There was no room ready for her nor was there anywhere to garage her car. However, a maid soon made a room ready, and a shed was found to house the car. By supper time she was already hard at work.6
Dorothy Collins was 32 years old and for the previous four years had been secretary and accountant at the Educational Training College in Lincoln.7 Although not in any way hyper-efficient, Dorothy Collins nevertheless brought some order out of chaos. Until then the vast correspondence simply piled up day after day on the desk ‘above or under articles written or half-written, the book of the hour and the amusement of the moment’; one former secretary would ‘always put aside the letters particularly worth answering’, these being the ones as a result that were ‘never answered’, as Chesterton groaned in apology to a correspondent whose important letter had been left unanswered and who would understand ‘if you saw the other letters, or the secretary, or me’. Frances, who only seemed practical in comparison with her husband, would search hopelessly for some important paper amidst this chaos. The new secretary put a stop to the morning errands and the late evening dictations, introducing definite working hours so that work would not continue more or less over the whole day. She knew when an article was due and made sure that Chesterton dictated it on the necessary day. It was certainly a great relief to Frances, who had had to act as a sort of informal secretary ever since their marriage. Chesterton drew pictures of Dorothy driving away unwelcome visitors and importunate publishers and repelling other demands on his time. Dorothy thought that it was because she herself was ‘naturally untidy’ that Chesterton, who hated being organized, allowed her to have her way: there was still confusion rather than the order Chesterton hated so much, but now there was a way through the confusion.8 However, tidying and putting things in order had to be done discreetly. And it was only when her employer was assured that his new secretary was
not intending to ‘revolutionise everything’ that there was perfect peace.9
What really cemented the relationship was that both Chestertons became extremely fond of Dorothy, especially Frances, who came to see in her the daughter that she had never had. Chesterton wrote amusing and grateful inscriptions in copies of books that Dorothy had worked on. In his Collected Poems, published in 1927, he wrote self-deprecatingly:
Here you watch the Bard’s Career,
Month by month and year by year,
Writing, writing, writing verse,
Worse and worse and worse and worse.
In a presentation copy of The Thing (1929), he appended the following description in parenthesis under his signature: ‘(Author of Thanks Old Thing, A Thing Like You, How to Pack Your Things, Tea Things and Night Things, Something Like a Thing, Not a Thing, Thing a Thong of Thixpence—and other things.)’ Chaucer (1932) was dedicated ‘To Dorothy Collins without whom this book would have been published upside down’. According to the dedication in Sidelights (1932), her ‘impressions of America would have more sidelights and better headlights’. Here Chesterton was referring to her driving skills, which were somewhat unusual for a woman of that time, which she brought along with her secretarial skills to the great benefit of the Chestertons, for whom she could act as chauffeur as well as secretary. The inscription in All I Survey (1933) was, rather predictably, to: ‘Dorothy Collins, who really does the surveying.’ The best of the inscriptions was in The Well and the Shadows (1935): ‘Dorothy Collins, | Who really bound these scattered papers into a | sort of book. | To one who binds, | From one who scatters, G. K. Chesterton.’10
More than thirty years after their deaths, Dorothy Collins wrote down some memories of her employer. Chesterton’s physical appearance was impressive: he had ‘a fine head’, was six foot four inches tall, and, as she tactfully put it, ‘of large proportions’. By contrast, he had ‘delicate hands’. Chesterton saw his size as his good fortune: ‘I always enjoy myself more than most. There’s such a lot of me having a good time.’ But he did not enjoy monopolizing conversations: he ‘would take the smallest contribution from the youngest and the most nervous of his listeners and toss it about, add to it, embroider it and return it with a remark that this was just what he needed to illustrate his point’. He could work anywhere, provided Dorothy could set up her typewriter, and in ‘the most unlikely places’, when he would ‘suddenly say, “I think we will do a little work, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”’ When at home he never missed a day’s work. He would go to bed late and rise late, breakfasting around ten and starting work in his study by 10.30, where he would work until dinner, stopping only briefly for lunch and tea.11 During the dictation of one book, Dorothy Collins kept a record of the number of words Chesterton dictated: generally 13,000 to 14,000 words every week, amounting to about twenty-one hours of dictation. But on top of that there were the articles for G.K.’s Weekly and the Illustrated London News that had to be typed. And then, too, there were the hours spent on editing G.K.’s Weekly and on preparing and delivering lectures.12
After dinner, he would sit at a table with his books and his cigars, either reading a detective story or making a few notes for the next day’s work in a short hand of his own invention which no one else could read. He talked about his work quite often before he started, but never when he was actually dictating, which he did straight to the machine, reading each page as it came off the typewriter. As he knew exactly what he wanted to say there was only an occasional alteration. He had a prodigious memory and could quote from readings of his youth without further reference, especially from Dickens. He would map out a book with the headings, and would dictate chapter by chapter, though not always in the final order.13
Chesterton may have hated efficiency and organization, but when it came to his own books they were ‘so carefully planned that there was very little discarded manuscript after a book was finished’. And as ‘he knew exactly what he wanted to say there was only an occasional alteration’.14 Dorothy Collins recalled how ‘as each sheet came off the machine he would read it through and make perhaps one or two alterations; but never many …’. But, while the books were planned, Chesterton was otherwise ‘very casual about his work; and after I had been with him for some time, he did not bother to read his final proofs, although he would generally read the galleys. He hated fuss and pedantic accuracy. I used to see to such details in order to avoid endless letters from pedants …’.15
Although a habitual late riser, on Sundays and weekday Holydays of Obligation Chesterton would force himself to get up early, as there was then only one early morning Mass in Beaconsfield, and on one occasion he was heard to say, ‘What but religion would bring us to such a pass,’ and on another, ‘Only the devil could have done this to me.’ But he never missed a Holyday of Obligation either at home or abroad. He always dedicated the day’s work to the glory of God, ‘by a cross on the top of the page, and even on the line below his signature, and by a sign of the cross made as he entered his study’.16 According to Dorothy Collins, he did not go often to confession, but when he did he could be heard all over the church.17 When one of the Nicholl girls ventured to say that it would be terrible to discover after death that the Catholic faith was a ‘fable’, Chesterton retorted: ‘You may be perfectly sure that if anything can get me out of bed five minutes before I need to get up, there is certainly something in it.’ Once when Frances was sick and received Holy Communion at home, He said: ‘I am a simple man and I am afraid when God comes to my house.’18
Maisie Ward was told by the Saxon Mills and the Rann Kennedys that as an Anglican Chesterton never went to church. Another informant told her that A. S. Commeline, the rector of Beaconsfield, had told him that he was ‘glad’ that Chesterton had gone over to Rome, ‘because he had always been a very bad Anglican, and presumably he would become a good Roman Catholic’. Sir Henry Slesser, the Labour politician and a leading Anglo-Catholic, told her that Chesterton had ‘a religion of his own. He never went to Mass, most certainly never to Confession. He had no apparent direct association with the Anglo-Catholic party …’.19 But this overwhelmingly negative testimony as to Chesterton’s religious practice as an Anglican needs to be treated with caution, to say the least. In the first place, we know that Chesterton definitely did have a ‘direct association with the Anglo-Catholic party’. Certainly by the middle of 1904, and probably well before, he had identified himself with leading Anglo-Catholics such as Henry Scott Holland, Conrad Noel, Percy Dearmer, and Charles Gore.20 Indeed, in 1903 in his controversy with Blatchford he had written explicitly from a ‘Catholic’ perspective.21 True, Chesterton would not have referred to himself as Anglo-Catholic, any more than his Anglo-Catholic friends would have done, but that was because Anglo-Catholics invariably refer to themselves simply as ‘Catholics’.22 Not only is the sacramental principle clearly affirmed in his writings as an Anglican, but he regularly, as we have seen, defended the idea of ritual. And we have already noted his veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary from his childhood. Secondly, Frances records in her diary going to church on a number of occasions on their trip to Palestine, on one of which Chesterton had actually donned a cassock and surplice to give an address after evensong. They also both attended the service of Benediction in a Roman Catholic church in Jerusalem, as well as Mass in a Roman Catholic church in Bari on their way home. If Chesterton never or practically never attended church as an Anglican, how does one account for all this church attendance abroad? Similarly, in the diary Frances kept during their first visit to America, there are regular references to attending church services, where it is either explicitly stated or implied that her husband went with her. We know that Frances was a practising Anglo-Catholic who had helped bring Chesterton to Christianity: is it really credible that she would have gone to church all these years of their marriage by herself, while her devoted husband stayed at home?
There is also even evidence, as one would expect if Chesterton was a ‘Cath
olic’ Anglican, that he went to sacramental confession as an Anglican. After Maisie Ward’s biography had been published, she received a letter from Bernard Iddings Bell, a well-known American Episcopal clergyman and educator, whose writings on the American way of life influenced later American conservative thinkers like Russell Kirk, to whom she had written in response to his review of her book. Both in his review and now in his letter Bell complained that she had neglected Chesterton’s ‘Anglican friendships’. Bell had met Chesterton on six occasions, he told Maisie Ward. Chesterton was interested in him because he had converted to ‘Catholicism’ (that is, Anglican Catholicism) as a result of reading Orthodoxy, which ‘had had more than anything else to do with my becoming a Catholic’. The first meeting, which was at Beaconsfield, had lasted two hours, and the second meeting, which was at Bell’s London club, for even longer. Subsequent meetings had been brief with other people present, nor had he ever corresponded with Chesterton. Bell had heard from two Anglicans, who were close to Father Waggett, that Father Waggett was Chesterton’s confessor, one of his informants alleging that he had heard it from Chesterton himself and the other that he had heard it from Father Waggett.23 The following year Bell wrote again to say that his ‘only direct testimony’ was that, on the occasion of his telling Chesterton that he had become a Catholic Anglican after reading Orthodoxy, he had mentioned that one of the greatest benefits of his conversion was being able to receive sacramental absolution. And Chesterton had responded that ‘it made all the difference in the world to him as a man of thought to know that Absolution was for lazy thinking and dishonest writing as well as for murder and adultery’. From that Bell had ‘supposed’ that Chesterton (then an Anglican) went to confession.24