by Ian Ker
Following Bell’s first letter, Maisie Ward, who of course was a ‘cradle’ Roman Catholic and hardly conversant with Anglo-Catholicism, wrote to Dorothy Collins, saying: ‘Of course, this may be true, but I have the very strongest impression to the contrary … I suppose he did go to Communion?’ Her feeling was that, unlike Frances, ‘he was not in the Anglo-Catholic movement in the sense that he was later in the Church, but attached to its fingers!’25 Dorothy Collins wrote back in agreement:
From all I have heard of his church-going activities in Beaconsfield, he was not an Anglo-Catholic, but a very rare worshipper at the Parish Church, which is definitely Protestant. He used to speak on Anglo-Catholic platforms and Father Waggett was a friend, whom I believe they met in Palestine. To call him a professing Anglo-Catholic would be far in advance of the truth. If he ever went to confession I am sure it would have been a very isolated event, because Frances did not go when she was an Anglican, and I am sure he would not have thought of doing so without her example. He only went about twice a year in the Catholic Church. He may have gone to Communion in the Anglican Church, but it would only have been at Easter and Christmas.26
But Dorothy Collins’s testimony also needs to be treated with caution. She became Chesterton’s secretary after Frances had been received into the Catholic Church, and, consequently, never knew either her or Chesterton as an Anglican. His absence from the ‘definitely Protestant’ parish church in Beaconsfield is quite unremarkable, given that Anglo-Catholics are accustomed to travelling distances to find an Anglo-Catholic church. Her testimony that Frances never went to confession as an Anglican is stronger given her closeness to Frances and the likelihood that she would have discussed confession with her when Dorothy herself converted. The safest conclusion probably is that Chesterton, like many Anglicans, was not punctiliously regular in his Sunday church attendance, as he had to be on becoming a Roman Catholic, and that no doubt it was ‘a very isolated event’ if he went to confession as an Anglican.
It was at Top Meadow that Maisie Ward always remembered the Chestertons. The original studio, onto which was built the rest of the house, formed one huge room. At one end there was a stage that became the dining room; at the other end was Chesterton’s tiny study. There was a high ceiling with huge beams, and at the study end there was a musicians’ gallery. There was a large open fireplace with two rush-bottomed seats, where Frances would sit in the winter. There was no room for Chesterton in this one snug corner of the room, but being well protected by flesh he did not feel the cold. Opposite the fire was a long low window looking into the garden, where a statue of St Francis could be seen. There too could be seen a pool full of water lilies. These and the surrounding flowers provided the plentiful flower displays set against the book shelves that Frances liked to have in the large studio room. As books accumulated, new shelves had to be added, and eventually, because there was no more wall space, a protruding bookcase was made to extend from the wall near the fireplace into the middle of the room, as in a public library. But at least it provided a shelter from the worst draughts in that most draughty of rooms. Compared with it, the rest of the house looked distinctly small. There was a kitchen, servants’ quarters, two medium-sized and one very small bedroom. In addition, Frances had a tiny sitting room where she kept her collection of tiny toys and ornaments—she had not, Chesterton remarked, exercised the same taste in choosing her husband.27
Cyril Clemens, an American, who compiled a collection of memories and appreciations, Chesterton as Seen by his Contemporaries (1939), which he somewhat unfortunately dedicated by ‘kind permission’ to Mussolini as ‘a warm admirer of Chesterton and his work’, left his own recollection of a visit to Top Meadow. He was struck by the way Chesterton
would make a joke with true Twainian seriousness upon his face, but unlike the great American such feigned seriousness becomes too much for him, and he bursts out in peals of Gargantuan laughter that often renders him speechless for a few seconds. At other times the idea of something funny will cause him to laugh most heartily before he has had a chance to express it in words.
Having been introduced to his ‘charming’ wife in a little hallway, he was taken into
the living room, a tremendous chamber fully a hundred feet long, low-ceilinged and surrounded on all sides by shelves bulging and overflowing with books of every description, a massive fire-place built of large stones that must have come from the bed of a nearby brook, and a number of what proved to be exceedingly comfortable chairs grouped round the empty fire-place; for it was midsummer.
After Clemens had put some questions to Chesterton, they proceeded to ‘the small dining room which was a few steps higher than, and was separated by a heavy silk curtain from, the living room’. They sat down at ‘a massive oaken table … to a delicious tea’. Clemens asked Frances what the national dish of England was, and she ‘promptly replied’ that it was without doubt roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. But Chesterton ‘spoke up’ to say that his favourite dish was fried eggs and bacon. Asked what book he would take to his desert island, he replied that, if he was allowed to take only one book and he was not in a particular hurry to escape, then certainly it would be Pickwick Papers. Chesterton explained that their ‘pert little Scotch terrier’ was named Quoodle after the hero of one of his early, but sadly forgotten, novels, in the hope that unwary visitors like Clemens would ask about the origin of the name and he, Chesterton, would have a good excuse to talk about his novel! When Clemens expressed his admiration for The Resurrection of Rome (published in 1930 after the Chestertons’ visit to Rome), Chesterton ‘snapped’ that it was not at all a good book—but then explained that he had made the mistake of reading it too soon after it was written, as the longer the interval between his writing and reading one of his books the better it seemed. Hearing that Mussolini had found The Man who was Thursday ‘exceedingly funny’, Chesterton responded that it pleased him to hear that, for sometimes he was afraid that his humorous books were taken seriously and his serious books humorously.28 Asked when he did most of his writing, Chesterton answered that he wrote whenever he had the opportunity, and that he did not like the typewriter very much, while he was a slow writer with pen or pencil, but that he did a great deal of dictating and could write just as well that way.29
One striking feature of life at Top Meadow that struck visitors was the sheer difficulty of day-to-day living for Chesterton. One of the previous secretaries told Maisie Ward how she heard Frances one day telling the cook to heat the water as Chesterton needed to take a bath. ‘And “Oh, need I,” came in tones of deepest depression from the study. The thought of that vast form climbing into and out of the bathtub does make one realise how a matter of easy everyday practice to the normal person became to him almost a heroic venture.’ In spite of Chesterton’s daily morning call to Frances to fix his tie, Maisie Ward remembered one breakfast when he appeared wearing two ties and, when she noticed it, claimed ‘it proved he paid too much, not too little, attention to dress’.30
Outside in the garden Maisie Ward remembered one gardener who was paid more and worked less than any other gardener in the world, ‘an exceedingly able gardener when he chose to work’. Chesterton’s charity extended beyond the garden. She remembered one man who came weekly to collect his ten shillings, no mean sum then, but why nobody knew; he would be posted his money if he failed to show up; once he was found fighting another man on the doorstep for his temerity in seeking also to beg from Chesterton!31 But there were also more worthy causes, such as the various children that he and Frances were fond of and for whose education he was paying.32 So generous were they both with their money that, when Dorothy Collins came in 1926, she found that they had saved virtually nothing in spite of the long hours Chesterton put in every day.33
‘Keith’ Chesterton liked the approach to the house: ‘Approached from the front, through a pleasant tangle of flowers and crazy pavement, the studio with its wide windows and gracious line was most attractive.’ But she w
as less favourably impressed by the ‘confusing’ interior, the result of local talent—and, she added predictably, Frances’s ‘own ideas’. Being the former stage, the dining room was several feet above the floor, that is, the old auditorium.
It was reached from the small front hall by a narrow passage and you entered, so to speak, by the doorless wings direct on to the dining-table, almost flush with the proscenium curtains. The place was heated by an anthracite stove backstage, which could not be kept at a pressure sufficient to warm the whole, as those with their backs almost against it would have been slowly roasted.
Because one was, in effect, eating on a stage, one felt one was eating in the face of ‘a hidden audience’, and ‘Keith’ ‘always had the feeling that at any moment the curtain would go up “discovering the family at dinner”’. But if, on the other hand, you had your back to this ‘hidden audience’, ‘you had to be particularly wary for fear of moving your chair too near the edge of the stage in case you tumbled headlong into the “auditorium”.’ Whenever Chesterton said anything particularly brilliant, ‘Keith’ was disappointed there was no applause. And whenever a maid appeared from the wings, one expected her to be given ‘a telling line’ on her entrance. At the far end of the former studio was Chesterton’s ‘cubby-hole’, while Frances’s ‘warm and cosy’ nook in the vast, draughty room was the open brick fireplace ‘with space for a low small chair on either side, where Frances would sit for hours, watching the logs crumble into fiery particles’, logs that burned most of the year round. The huge space was partly filled near the stage by some small tables that at Christmas held Chesterton’s toy theatre and a nativity crib. Beyond were larger tables holding books, plants, and even a bust of Chesterton himself. ‘Oases’ of comfortable chairs and sofas ‘culminated in a desert of carpet’. When the room was full of people, with ‘the stage curtains drawn to show a table spread with good things’, it had a ‘festive’ aspect; but it was hardly homely, ‘Keith’ thought. There were no rooms above the old studio. The kitchen and garage were on the ground floor of the new wing that had been added, from which led a reasonably wide staircase to a narrow passage off which, in ‘Keith’s’ words, were ‘little monkish cells’. There was an ‘unusually tiny’ lavatory, that could hardly accommodate the master of the house, who ‘had to contort himself unbelievably to get round the narrow door which opened inwards’. ‘Keith’ could barely restrain herself from laughing at her brother-in-law’s ‘stumbling efforts and protest noises’, which were ‘audible all over the house’; she wished that ‘he could share the joke’. As for Frances, she ‘never turned a hair during these Homeric combats’. Her sister-in-law did not ‘think it ever struck her that “Top Meadow” was utterly lop-sided in design—one half being framed for a giant and the other for a gnome’. It was years before a larger bathroom and bedroom were added. ‘Keith’ was sure that Chesterton missed the ‘more comfortable if more commonplace’ Overroads, from which ‘he could always escape to the big studio’, so suitable for large entertainments and so unsuitable as a ‘home’.34
In her memoirs ‘Keith’ did have one friendly memory of Frances. In 1925, as a journalist on the Sunday Express, ‘Keith’ got permission from her editor to go out on to the streets of London for a fortnight to experience the life of a homeless woman. The articles she wrote about her experiences for the paper came out as a book in 1926 called In Darkest London. Frances, she says, surprised her by her ‘sympathy and indeed enthusiasm’ for the cause of homeless women, reviewing In Darkest London ‘very beautifully’ in G.K.’s Weekly, as well as accompanying her husband to a meeting, chaired by John Galsworthy, at Wyndham’s Theatre, where Chesterton spoke in aid of the charity Cecil Houses, named after his brother, the first of which was opened in 1927 for homeless women.
I have never heard him more effective than on that afternoon. He declared that he would love to disguise himself as an apple woman, that he might enjoy the ease and pleasantness, and above all the individual freedom, inseparable from Cecil Houses. G.K. as an apple woman was a gorgeous idea, and a sketch of him in that ample disguise promptly appeared all over the Press.35
2
On 27 April 1926 Chesterton, accompanied by Frances and Rhoda Bastable, arrived in Barcelona after visiting Madrid and Toledo. He was there at the invitation of the Catalan branch of the P.E.N.—or Poets, Essayists, and Novelists—Club, which had been founded in London in 1921 by Mrs C. A. Dawson Scott and Galsworthy to promote cooperation and friendship among writers. The Catalan poet and writer Josep M. Junoy had arranged the visit. On 5 May Chesterton lectured at Barcelona University on ‘England Seen from the Outside’. Next day the P.E.N. Club gave a dinner in his honour. One of the writers present, who was sitting opposite Chesterton, wrote down his impressions of the English writer. Compared to the Spanish guests he appeared ‘to take on monstrous proportions’, although they were the proportions of a ‘legendary and jocular giant’. He seemed to be ‘drowsy’,
waking up from moment to moment, first to take a sip of his drink, then to utter a few words. If those words happen to be in French he has to struggle hard with them because Chesterton, like a good Englishman, travels the world with the magnificent impertinence of his own language. He has a shock of whitish hair and the sort of bushy moustache useful for catching bits of food …
During his stay in Barcelona he was seen devouring English newspapers, which were full of the miners’ strike, which he supported. One day Junoy took him to Sitges, a seaside town, where Chesterton and his party stayed a week. There he was welcomed by the ‘Friends of Fine Arts’, who presented him with a bouquet of carnations, the floral symbol of Sitges. Chesterton thanked them for their ‘most charming and generous gesture of welcome. You are kind enough to refer to my deplorable habit of writing; I only wish anything I had ever written was half as beautiful as that bouquet of flowers, or likely to give anybody half as much joy and encouragement as it gave to us.’ At the dinner in his honour Chesterton was offered a basket of fruits as dessert; he loved, he said, ‘the small things; those red cherries, the children, the small nations …’. Back in Barcelona, he was seen on 2 June, the eve of the feast of Corpus Christi, walking with a bundle of newspapers under his arm and caught in the midst of a parade of folk figures made out of papier maché, trailed by a flock of children. ‘You have put Voltaire’s laughter at the service of God’ was Junoy’s tribute to him before he returned to England.36
On 28 June the Chestertons celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. Eight days earlier Frances had written to Father O’Connor to say that she had decided to become a Roman Catholic in spite of all the ‘difficulties’. She did not want to receive instruction in Beaconsfield: ‘I don’t want to be the talk of Beaconsfield and for people to say I’ve only followed Gilbert. It isn’t true and I’ve had a hard fight not to let my love for him lead me to the truth. I knew you would not accept me for such motives.’ She felt ‘very tired and very worried’. And her health made ‘strenuous attention a bit of a strain’. What should she do? It seems that O’Connor, in spite of her misgivings, advised her to approach the local parish priest, Father Walker. O’Connor must have thought that for a woman in her frail health to have to travel weekly for months to London for instruction, or possibly to Ware, where Knox was still on the staff of St Edmund’s (although he would become Catholic chaplain at Oxford in October, when he would be much nearer to Frances), let alone to Yorkshire to be instructed by him, Father O’Connor, was quite unrealistic. Besides, the shy, reserved Frances knew Father Walker, who had prepared her husband for his first Communion. Frances wrote again on 12 July to thank the priest for the gift of spoons for their wedding anniversary. She could not at the moment see her way out of various ‘responsibilities’ in which she was ‘enmeshed and to find time for instruction’. She felt she had ‘a lot to learn’ and thought that ‘after all’ she had ‘better go quietly to Father Walker and talk to him’. Her husband was ‘so involved’ with G.K.’s Weekly, which she wished he wou
ld give up, that they had not been able ‘to talk over things sensibly’. Her nephew Peter was ‘very ill’, which meant that she had ‘to spend a lot of time’ with her sister.37 On 19 July she wrote again to say that she was ‘feeling’ her ‘way into the Catholic fold’, but that it was ‘a difficult load’ for her, and she asked for the priest’s prayers. She also complained about the demands on her husband: ‘I am always trying to get out of things for him, because I feel he is dissipating his energies and his own work gets more and more thrown into the background.’38 Four days later Father Walker received a letter from Frances asking to be received into the Catholic Church.39
On 20 July Bishop Cary Elwes, who had confirmed Chesterton, laid the foundation stone of a church to be built on a plot of land behind the Railway Hotel that had been bought a year previously. The Chestertons had been present at the ceremony,40 and a few days later an article was published in the Catholic Times, in which Chesterton referred to the ‘shed at the back of the Railway Hotel’ where Mass was celebrated thanks to ‘the zeal and generosity of Mr and Mrs Borlase, the Catholics who keep the inn’. (Chesterton had attended the funeral of Mr Borlase, who was also a convert, the previous August.41) He commented on the typical ‘paradox’ that, whereas old Beaconsfield was full of ‘memories of Catholicism’, in the names of the inns, for example, it was in new Beaconsfield where the Railway Hotel was situated that the old Faith had returned to Beaconsfield.42