by Ian Ker
It was decided that the children should call Chesterton by the diminutive ‘Unclet’ in view of his size and Frances ‘Auntlet’. Apart from the three girls who were at Lyme Regis that summer, there were two other girls and a boy; the mother, Mrs Nicholl, was widowed. So close did this large family of children come to the childless Chestertons that eventually they moved to Beaconsfield, to a house called Christmas Cottage in the same road as Top Meadow. One or other of the Nicholl children would call almost every day at Top Meadow, and Chesterton, sometimes accompanied by Frances, would regularly go to supper on Saturday or Sunday evening at Christmas Cottage. These suppers were likely to be extremely lengthy, as the task of combining talking with eating was beyond Chesterton. If it was macaroni cheese, a favourite of his, he would pick up a forkful but the fork would not reach his mouth as he suddenly remembered something else he wanted to say. Down would come the fork, and when he had finished saying what he wanted to say, again the fork would gather another mouthful of macaroni cheese—and again the same process would be repeated. The family soon learned not to wait but simply to carry on with supper without his noticing, so that coffee would be served while Chesterton was still only halfway through his first course. Mrs Nicholl’s strategy of pointing out that his plate must have got cold and needed replenishing had no effect: the hint was lost on Chesterton, who would simply agree with alacrity to another helping while the first remained half-eaten. Getting him out of the dining room so that the table could be cleared was a major problem. At home Frances would resort to a bell to get him out of his study to bed; but at Christmas Cottage, if Frances was not there, he was liable to stay on into the early hours. But Frances was not a late night person, and Mrs Nicholl would worry about her waiting for her husband to return. As had been his London practice, Chesterton would sometimes actually take a taxi to carry him barely fifty yards to Christmas Cottage! Fully intending an early departure, he would ask the taxi to wait—but then gave as little thought to the taxi as he did to the time. While he did not monopolize the conversation, he would easily launch into a lengthy monologue, especially if he were asked a question. However, that did not preclude his great ability to enter into somebody else’s mind and find more there than the person ever suspected. In the last months of his life, it was noticeable that he listened more to others and would even interrupt his monologue if he thought someone wanted to ask a question or make a point. The Nicholl family, in fact, were great arguers—just like Chesterton himself and his brother had been.102
Unlike Frances, who loved children but felt ill at ease with adolescents, especially confused adolescents, her husband was able to relate to both. When Barbara Nicholl had measles as a child and he was suffering from jaundice, he wrote to apologize to her for failing to complete ‘a long letter full of love, devotion and affectionate counsel, including advice on the Correct Deportment of a Young Lady when entertaining a Measle (to a German Measle the etiquette is more formal)’. He had begun it, when ‘in an evil hour’ he was ‘tempted by a Devil assuming his favourite disguise of a Duty’, having been told that he had fifteen articles to write in five days. ‘The remnant left by Jaundice, the wretched scribe writing this in bed—he is now commonly known as the Yellow Dwarf—offers this as a Warning. Never, never, do your Duty first and put off your pleasure till after. I have never done it before myself. When I did this Doom fell upon me.’ Now he knew it was too late:
Never will you regard me as a friend and Measle Adviser. You will forget the Jaundiced Journalist: and dance your own way to fame and glory, amid crowds of applauding critics—till you dance before all the Crowned Heads of Europe and King George offers you the half of his Kingdom: and you will ask for the Head of Dean Inge on a soup-plate.
Coming from a Catholic family, Barbara Nicholl would have enjoyed the thought of asking for the head of the ‘gloomy’, anti-Catholic Dean of St Paul’s—just as King Herod’s daughter had asked for the head of the less than convivial John the Baptist.103
The key, of course, to Chesterton’s rapport with not only children and adolescents but also young adults was an enormous sense of fun and humour that guaranteed instant empathy. But apart from that he had a natural sympathy with the young and their difficulties in growing up, making them, in the words of Clare Nicholl, ‘not only feel at their ease but somehow comforted and made much of’. He advised a self-absorbed Rhoda Bastable ‘to think actively and vividly’ about things other than herself: ‘Especially about people who are quite comically different from ourselves … One sees even oneself more plainly in other things—especially in things one has done. Every one of us has done some good; and it is a monument, as if we were already dead.’ When, he, Chesterton, had had ‘morbid nightmares’, when he had doubted if he believed in anything, he had found an antidote in asking himself whether, if he had not ‘really’ believed, he would ever have ‘done this work, or resisted that temptation—or even tried to resist it’. As for himself, who had entertained every possible doubt, the more he saw of ‘human experience’ the more he believed in Christianity.104
Even when he was being serious, he could not resist humour—not, of course, that he saw humour and seriousness as being in any way opposed. To Felicity Walpole, who was engaged to be married and wanted help in finding a job for her fiancé, he wrote: ‘I am already exploring cracks and crannies in the rather blank wall which I know is presented to intelligent young men looking for a job today. I think there is a crack or two in the wall opposite me in which I might get the blade of a pen-knife …’. When the 21-year-old Clare Nicholl sent some of her verses to Chesterton, who unfortunately mislaid them, he wrote: ‘I simply could not clear a large enough space in which to grovel. When I grovel it is a huge and horrid sight and there are geological disturbances miles away. But, really and truly, I do want to grovel. I wish I could feel confident that, even when the local earthquakes were over, you would really forgive me.’ His advice to an enthusiastic young lady contemplating a religious vocation was deadly serious despite being amusing, while its humour disarmed any resentment at the warning expressed:
If you are really For It (I use, not without justice, the jovial phrase commonly used about people going to be jailed or flogged or hanged)—If you are For IT, it is the grandest and most glorious and deific thing that any human being can be for. It is far beyond my imagination. But never, for one instant, among all my sins, have I doubted that it was above my imagination.’
He had no more doubt that a monk or nun was ‘walking on a crystal floor’ over his head than that Quoodle the dog had ‘a larger equipment of legs’ than he had—‘and (with all respect to his many virtues) a rather simpler intellectual plan of life’.
If this is your Way Out, then everybody must stand out of your Way, as out of the way of a Celestial Fire-Engine. If one of my friends is caught up to Heaven in a fiery chariot—you will not think me capable of being a stout and solid speed-Cop or Traffic Policeman to hold her up for enquiries. No: that is unanswerable. If that is so, nobody has a right to say anything except—‘God will love you even more than we do.’
But—there is still one little worrying thought left in the dregs of what I call my mind. You will be generous enough to forgive if the hesitation sounds personal. [My friend] I have often hailed as she rushed by: but I have met her rushing from places as well as to places. If you must rush, this is a place you must rush to and cannot rush from. I don’t mean any material nonsense of the Walled-up Nun—I mean that you yourself could not go from something greater to anything less great. Now you do have black fits, don’t you? Reactions—scruples and the rest. What I want you to be quite clear about (I expect you are and grovel again) is that if you have one of those black reactions after this, it may do you what Professor Bobsky would call psychological harm, and those who talk English would call spiritual harm. It doesn’t matter if you get tired of working for the Middlesex Mummies Exploration Fund and rush to the East Ealing Ethical Dance Movement—because we all live in that world and lau
gh at it and earn our living in it. But if you have a reaction from this greater thing—you will feel quite differently. You may be in danger of religious melancholia: for you will say I have had the Best and it did not help.’ Anyhow you may be hurt … and I hate your being hurt.
Reassure me on this one point and I am absolutely with you—if I am worthy to say so. Let me know (by a wink or any recognised ritual) that you see what I mean, and have allowed for it, and I am at once a Trappist.105
Nor could the young easily offend Chesterton. When the secretary of the St Paul’s School debating society invited Chesterton to their annual dinner, the sixth former received an invitation to Top Meadow, where he found himself, as a budding historian, holding forth on the glories of the Reformation, only suddenly to remember to his embarrassment that his host was a Roman Catholic. On his apologizing for dropping such a brick, Chesterton leant forward, tapped him on the knee, and said, “My boy, never drop bricks: always throw them.”’106
Clare Nicholl did remember two things that made Chesterton angry: unkindness or uncharitable gossip and specious cleverness. Since he hardly ever openly found fault, one would feel his disapproval in his silence and sudden lack of response’. The one fault she also remembered was an occasional flash of irritability. One night while she was having supper at Top Meadow, Chesterton asked her whether she would like red or white wine. And when she answered that she would have either if Frances was also having some, Chesterton banged the bottle he was holding on the table, glared at her, and exploded: ‘Look here, Clare, if you want wine, say so: if you don’t want wine, say so: but for goodness’ sake don’t make your having wine or not having wine dependent on what other people do.’107 His annoyance, it has to be said, was somewhat inconsistent given the fact that his own inability to make up his mind on such matters was a source of irritation to his wife. Dorothy Collins remembered how Frances would say, ‘“Will you have some more, Gilbert?” and he would either pass his plate to her in an absent-minded way, or would say, Oh, I will if you like.” To which she would reply, “Well, make up your mind.”’108 If the occasional irascibility surprised Clare, she was also struck like other people by Chesterton’s genuine modesty. One day she was visiting Top Meadow and noticed among the books that were always piled besides Frances’s flowers a copy of Chesterton’s new book The Return of Don Quixote. Asked if she might borrow it, Chesterton looked genuinely surprised and replied that if she really wanted to read it—and he was loath to thrust his books on her—she was welcome to have it.109
Once, after the Nicholl girls had grown up, when all the other members of the family were abroad, Chesterton wrote a delightful note to one of the girls who remained at home in Beaconsfield.
When you rashly showed a momentary interest in the hotel accommodation of the Three Cups … you little knew how unscrupulous and pertinacious a Sleuth you were letting loose upon your own track. How often you must have cursed the day when that vast and shapeless shadow blotted out so large a part of the landscape of Lyme. We have been so cluttered up with visitors … that I have not been able to fix up one of those conferences between us, upon which the fate of Christendom so obviously depends …110
7
In October 1927 Chesterton published The Judgement of Dr Johnson: A Comedy in Three Acts. The previous year he had mentioned the play in the interview he gave to the Observer,111 in which he had discussed The Man who was Thursday. He had confirmed that it was true that he had written a play called ‘Doctor Johnson’. ‘There are two ideas in it,’ he told the interviewer.
Doctor Johnson meets a young American revolutionary who has come to England as a half-spy, and I try to show that we sympathise with American Republicanism as something frustrated, while the old Toryism of Doctor Johnson is very much alive. The other idea is that if you want to find a man bullying a woman into subjection, you must look out for a superman with his series of love-adventures.
When asked why he had not written more plays—as was Shaw’s constant refrain—Chesterton replied that frankly he did not know: I do naturally find myself writing in dialogue form. But I have been always busy with journalism, apart from which I was put to writing novels at an early age …’. Moreover, he knew next to nothing about how to get a play on to the stage, whereas he did know ‘the good old route to the good old publisher’. One theatre manager had told him that, unless he attended the theatre and seemed to take an interest in his play, he might not produce it; he could not imagine a publisher refusing to publish a book if he failed to show up in the bookshop. However, he understood from his literary agent that Sir Barry Jackson (the founder and director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre) had agreed to stage his ‘Doctor Johnson’. In fact, the play was not performed until 20 January 1932, when it had a very short run at the Arts Theatre Club in London, ‘for 6 performances’ only, Frances told Father O’Connor—but it was ‘a lovely production—we are still hoping it may lead to a West End Show’.112
On 28 October 1927 Chesterton and Shaw debated publicly for the last time in the Kingsway Hall. W. R. Titterton had suggested to Chesterton that Shaw should be challenged to a debate after Shaw had refused to write for G.K.’s Weekly on the ground that ‘Chesterton was wasting his time … trying to establish a false antithesis between Distributism and Socialism’, when the two were really the same thing. Chesterton then wrote to Shaw to propose that they should debate on the question ‘Do we agree?’ Shaw agreed, but insisted that the fledgling BBC, which wanted to broadcast the debate, should pay Chesterton and him a substantial fee.113 Organization was left to the Distributist League—much to Shaw’s unease, who wrote to Chesterton on 20 October: ‘Will you see to it that the meeting … is properly organized? It is evident from enquiries made about tickets that your people have not the least notion of what they are up against.’ If the Distributist League was not up to it, then ‘a paid manager and staff must be hired’: ‘Nothing must be left to well-intentioned Godforsaken idiots who have no experience or organizing power, and who believe that public meetings are natural phenomena that look after themselves.’ He added that he had noticed that, without consulting him, Chesterton’s Distributists had ‘calmly’ announced that ‘part of the proceeds’ were to be given to the King Edward Hospital fund: ‘As if every successful commercial brigand were not buying Indulgences and pardons by pouring money into the hospitals, whilst your blessed league and its paper and the Fabian Society can hardly keep alive! I had rather pay Belloc’s debts with it.’114
Although there had been insufficient funds to do much advertising, the hall was ‘packed long before the debate began’.115 Because so many people had come without tickets, many with tickets had been unable to get in before the debate began. Belloc, who was presiding, predicted every prospect of a very pretty fight’, a prophecy that was fulfilled when, after Shaw had been speaking for about five minutes, there was a loud banging on the doors at the back of the hall. Shaw remarked that the audience were getting more entertainment than they had paid for as they were having a row thrown in’. The chairman appealed for quiet, pointing out that the debate was being broadcast, and a similar plea was made by Shaw. Introducing the debate, Belloc announced that he had vaguely’ gathered that Shaw and Chesterton were going to debate whether a man should be independent through the possession of private means as Shaw and Chesterton were, or whether they should be impoverished like he, Belloc. The debate, he said, would settle nothing, but it was the next best thing to a fight’.116
According to a ‘less than … verbatim report’ that was published the following year, Chesterton insisted that the whole question turned on what Shaw meant by saying that in a Socialist state the whole community would own all the means of production. If this meant simply that the state would own all the means of production, then the people themselves would not own them. What Shaw was really proposing was the distribution of wealth, whereas the Distributists were proposing the distribution of power. Shaw replied that Chesterton was assuming that the means of p
roduction meant machines, whereas he meant by means of production men and women. Chesterton admitted that in a Distributist state some things would have to be owned by the state. Shaw retorted that there were many more exceptions than the nationalization of the coal mines, which Chesterton had cited. It was all very well talking about the distribution of land, but the fact was that there was worthless land and immensely valuable land. Chesterton concluded by saying that Shaw’s objection to private property was as negative as his desire to ban alcohol because a few people drank too much. He, Chesterton, was not advocating a society that would contain only agricultural peasants, which was absurd. He had merely given the ownership of land as an obvious example of the natural human desire for property. And when Shaw said that by means of production he meant men and women, he meant that the state should own the men and women as slaves. At the end Belloc refused to sum up, predicting that the debate would soon be out of date, as either industrial civilization would break down or the masses would become content to be the slaves of a plutocracy.117