G. K. Chesterton:A Biography

by Ian Ker

  It was presumably after this announcement that Lee Keedick, ‘the leading American lecture agent’, who had arranged the previous American lecture tour, travelled to Top Meadow to try and persuade Chesterton to give ‘a few lectures throughout the States before returning to England’. Both the Chestertons, in the words of Dorothy Collins, had been ‘very doubtful whether they could face the rush of American life again’, and Keedick’s proposal would involve even more travelling, press interviews, photographs, and a vast amount of hospitality and hotel’. But eventually, given the constant need to raise money for G.K.’s Weekly, Chesterton agreed on the basis of a promise that ‘everything would be very easy and that only a few lectures would be arranged’. In retrospect, Dorothy Collins was to wonder how many a lot of lectures would have meant.35 There was the usual financial arrangement: one half of the fees earned would go to Keedick, who had to pay the travelling expenses, and the other half to Chesterton, out of which he would pay 10 per cent to the London agent who had introduced him to Keedick, the expenses of his wife and secretary, as well as a substantial present to the latter.36

  Then the blow fell. On 18 February Dorothy cabled O’Donnell that Chesterton was ill and that the doctor forbad a visit to America before the autumn. She had in fact written a letter four days before, which had not yet reached America when the telegram arrived. In the letter she explained that Chesterton had been ill since Christmas, and that when he had seemed to be recovering he had had a relapse that had turned to pleurisy and he had been in bed ever since. The specialist who had seen him that day advised that he should do nothing for at least three months, as the strain on his heart would be too great, but that as things stood there was no reason why he should not be well enough in the autumn to visit America. The reason why O’Donnell had not been told earlier about the illness was that, but for the relapse, Chesterton would probably have been well enough to go to America. On 10 March O’Donnell replied that the University could ‘readily adjust’ to the change of plan, and he hoped that by the autumn Chesterton would be ‘so fully restored to health that the work he is undertaking in America will be rather a relaxation than a strain’. On 24 March Dorothy Collins confirmed that the doctor thought Chesterton would be quite well enough to visit America in the autumn’. She asked the President to confirm that the starting date for his lectures would be 6 October. On 9 April O’Donnell wrote to confirm that the lectures would begin on 6 October and end on 15 November.37

  Then there came a difficulty. On 11 June Dorothy Collins wrote again to remind the President of what he had said in the memorandum he had given Sencourt about his willingness that on certain days Chesterton could give two lectures in order to have a free day. Chesterton, she said, was ‘most grateful for this suggestion as it will enable him to fit in a few public lectures in the neighbourhood of the University for which there have been certain demands’. Accordingly, she hoped that Chesterton’s lecture agent, Lee Keedick, might approach the President concerning these public lectures. Keedick had told Chesterton that, if he could give one public lecture a week, ‘it would be a great help in working out the programme and granting the numerous requests which have been received’. They were writing to tell Keedick that it was impossible for them to make the necessary arrangements with the President, knowing nothing about the distances involved. She asked O’Donnell to let Keedick know what was ‘possible from your point of view without disorganising your University time-table of lectures’. On 27 June she wrote again to ask if the students who attended Chesterton’s lectures would be ‘working to a prescribed syllabus’ or was he ‘free to lecture on his own syllabus’? Since it was understood that the lectures were to be ‘part of the students’ degree course’, Chesterton wanted to know ‘full details of the periods’ in English history and literature that the President wanted him to lecture on. Having had no reply to her previous letter, Dorothy Collins wrote again on 30 June to say that they had had two telegrams from Lee Keedick saying that he had been unable to get an answer from the President, which was making it very difficult for him to arrange dates for the lectures Chesterton had been asked to give. On 4 July O’Donnell wrote to say that, while he was happy for Keedick to get in touch with him about the possibility of Chesterton lecturing elsewhere during Chesterton’s stay at Notre Dame, he thought it ‘only fair that the University should share in the proceeds of any lectures’, given that the University was paying Chesterton’s travelling expenses as well as ‘a rather handsome honorarium’. O’Donnell was not exaggerating: the sum of $5,000 was then equivalent to more than a full professor’s annual salary. On 7 July Chesterton himself anxiously cabled to say that he had not received a syllabus and wondered whether everything was ‘in order’. O’Donnell cabled the same day to assure him that there was no need for anxiety and he was writing. This he did two days later when he enclosed the University’s description of Chesterton’s forthcoming lectures, all of which were to be delivered in the evening apart from the Friday history lecture which would be in the afternoon. He added that he had told Lee Keedick of his stipulation regarding the external lectures Chesterton would give while at Notre Dame. And on the 11th he wrote to Keedick to confirm that he had made it ‘plain’ to Keedick’s ‘representative’, when he had called on him two or three weeks previously, that the University would expect a percentage of any fees earned from lectures arranged by Keedick. He was writing, he said, at Chesterton’s own request, since it would seem, from communications I have had from him, that your representative failed to make any report of his interview with me’. On 8 August Chesterton’s literary agent in London, A. P. Watt, wrote to O’Donnell to say that Chesterton had handed him the whole correspondence, thinking that in future it would save time and trouble if his agent handled the matter. But in the meantime, he wanted to respond to the President’s letter of 4 July, in which, for the first time as far as he could see, it had been suggested that Chesterton should give the University a share of his external lecture fees while at Notre Dame. This Chesterton was not prepared to contemplate, since, had he known of this condition at the beginning, he would not have accepted the President’s invitation. The fee Notre Dame was offering would not be sufficient remuneration for the time Chesterton would have to spend in the United States and for his journey to and from America. On 18 August O’Donnell replied that it was impossible at that late date to cancel Chesterton’s advertised lectures, and therefore he withdrew his stipulation about external lectures. However, he could not refrain from pointing out that this was the first time that he had heard that the fee he had offered was insufficient, which included travel expenses, a point Watt seemed to have overlooked. He acknowledged that there had been no ‘express understanding’ regarding external lectures, but that seemed to him implicit in their agreement’. He had after all made it clear that the lectures were to be regular lectures in course, which students will follow for credits towards their degrees. In the nature of things, a university professor can hardly follow a set program of lectures distributed over the school week and expect at the same time to lecture elsewhere.’ The University, therefore, had been ‘put in a difficult position’ but had no choice but to accept Chesterton’s understanding of their agreement.38

  On 15 September Chesterton wrote in great distress to O’Donnell to say that he had heard from his literary agent, ‘after an avoidable delay’, that there had been some kind of misunderstanding about his Notre Dame lectures. He was anxious to make it clear that he had never in any way intended to question the justice, or rather the generosity’, of the President’s original proposition. However, Sencourt had gone out of his way’ to assure him that the University would raise no objection to his giving lectures elsewhere—Chesterton was presumably referring to Sencourt’s point that arrangements could be made to leave him with some free days from his duties at Notre Dame, a consideration that had affected his decision. He assured O’Donnell that he considered his invitation to be most generous, I might almost say incautious, since you know so
little of my lecturing and I, alas, know only too much’. Nevertheless, munificent as the invitation was, he would not have accepted it had there not been a number of other things he wanted to do in North America—‘to lecture in Canada and see my relations there; to see something of the general democratic discussion in the States; to have some debate there; to promote certain ideals expressed in my own little paper and to get some support for it; for it is constantly in need of money’. It would pain him very much if anything said in his name had given the appearance of disrespect or unfriendly bargaining’, but it did seem there had been some misunderstanding. He did not wish to comment on the impression of his agents’ (Chesterton is referring to his lecture agent in America rather than his literary agent in London) that O’Donnell had been incommunicative, as he was sure there had been a misunderstanding. On 30 September the President wrote to Chesterton at the address in Ottawa that Dorothy Collins had given him in a letter of 13 September, in which she pointed out that he had not told them where they would be staying at Notre Dame. He was ‘pleased and relieved’ by Chesterton’s letter, he said: ‘Naturally we should not wish your visit to Notre Dame marred by even the slightest misunderstanding. I am satisfied that arrangements for outside lectures can be made without prejudice to the work which you are to undertake here.’ It is hard to see how O’Donnell could ever have supposed that external lecturing must necessarily interfere with Chesterton’s duties at Notre Dame. On the other hand, although free days had been mentioned, Chesterton had never specifically said that he wanted to use them to lecture elsewhere. Peace restored, O’Donnell ended by inviting Chesterton and his wife to be his guests at a football match in ‘our new Stadium’ on the afternoon of 4 October, the opening game of ‘the intercollegiate football season’, since he understood they would be arriving at Notre Dame in the first week of October. Chesterton may have wondered at the invitation, not then knowing that Notre Dame was nationally famous for its prowess at football. A day before writing, however, to Chesterton, O’Donnell had allowed himself to give vent to his feelings to Edgar J. Goodspeed, a prominent biblical scholar at the University of Chicago, who was requesting a lecture from Chesterton. Chesterton, he informed Dr Goodspeed, was ‘under the management of Mr Lee Keedick of New York’, adding: ‘I might go so far as to say, if no one else is listening, it is my experience that English lecturers do not come to the United States for a change of climate.’39

  On the same day that he wrote to Chesterton in Ottawa, O’Donnell also wrote to Dorothy Collins to say that he regretted that satisfactory arrangements for living at hotels in South Bend can hardly be made’. This somewhat evasive reply is explained by the fact that there was in fact then a hotel in South Bend, the Pick Hotel. But, presumably, O’Donnell was not prepared to pay for hotel accommodation for three people for six weeks. However, he assured Dorothy Collins that it ought to be possible to find accommodation either in a rented apartment or with a private family. Those possibilities were being investigated, but the University would be able to take care of them for a few days if there was a delay in finding lodgings for them.40

  On 5 September Frances Chesterton had written to Father O’Connor to say that she was looking forward to being at the University of Notre Dame from a spiritual point of view. Father Walker had left the parish for a new appointment on 11 July 1928 and had been succeeded by a Father Thomas Fitzgerald, who would remain at High Wycombe for the next ten years,41 although Beaconsfield fortunately would become a separate parish in 1931. ‘Things ecclesiastical here are horrible,’ Frances lamented. ‘Everyone tries to go somewhere else for Mass—and Father Fitzgerald is quite impossible to deal with. It has been a great sorrow to me—I have felt cut off and I hate going outside the parish if it can be avoided. I am almost glad to leave and go to U.S.A. where at Notre Dame Univ. I suppose we shall get all spiritual opportunities.’42

  On 19 September the English party set sail for North America from Liverpool. They travelled, Dorothy Collins recalled, on one of the smaller P.&O. boats which were able to sail up the St Lawrence to Quebec and Montreal’.43 As on the previous trip, the ship was not crowded, and the Chestertons had a suite, paid for by the University of Notre Dame. They had a twin-bedded bedroom, a bathroom, and sitting room. Dorothy’s cabin was conveniently close at hand. They were ‘fed like fighting cocks’, as was always the way on ‘these great liners’, Frances wrote to her mother-in-law in a letter that, like all the succeeding ones to her, was to be sent on to Frances’s mother, who was now in a nursing home in Beaconsfield, as well as to her sister Ethel Oldershaw.44

  On 24 September Frances wrote home again to say that they had attended Mass at 7 a.m. on Sunday but that they only had ‘the beginning’ as the priest became sea-sick, ‘a great disappointment to the nuns who are on board’. The purser, ‘a rather remarkable man very full of good animal spirits and very amusing’, had, with Chesterton, just organized a treasure-hunt, for which Chesterton had written ‘some amusing clues in rhymed verse’. (These verses, accompanied by drawings in coloured chalk on brown paper, were later found by Dorothy Collins to have all been picked up, no doubt as collectors’ items.45) Even as Frances wrote, the lounge was ‘filled by a crowd of seekers eagerly grovelling on the floor under the grand piano in search of a further clue to the mystery’. There had already been ‘games and competitions of all sorts’. That night at dinner they found the saloon ‘decorated with streamers and balloons and we were all provided with the most beautiful head dresses’, apart from the captain. There followed a ‘remarkable evening entertainment’. The purser, dressed as a bookie, had held a horse-racing course on the top deck lounge—‘wonderful were the races and the names of the horses…’. The horses were ‘wooden ones on stands with numbers and jockeys complete’, made to move by the ‘numbers thrown by dice’. Frances, who had a winning horse’ called ‘Safety Match’, found ‘the entertainment… quite thrilling’. Continuing her letter the next day, Frances reported after lunch that they had just seen the coast of Canada. There was more excitement later when they passed an iceberg, ‘like a white tower in an almost black sea’. On the night of the 26th there was a grand concert. Chesterton made an excellent Chinaman and his speech asking for subscriptions to sailors’ charities was admirable’, wrote his proud wife, ‘just right—a little serious—and humorous too’. The evening ended with the singing of national songs, and they did not get to bed till after one in the morning. There was no problem about sleeping, as the St Laurence River down which they were now sailing was as smooth as a lake’.46

  Before arriving at Quebec on 27 September,47 Chesterton was told by a fellow passenger of the obelisk on the Heights of Abraham commemorating both the victorious British General Wolfe and the vanquished French general Montcalm, ‘with a fine Latin inscription saying that fate gave to them the same death and the same honour’.48 Unfortunately, the boat stopped only briefly at Quebec, so the mother of a lady who used to live in Overroads, who had come to meet them, only had time to drive them round the city. Still, Chesterton ‘enjoyed’ seeing the obelisk for himself.49

  From Quebec the ship sailed on to Montreal, where they landed on 28 September and were met by Lee Keedick. Frances’s initial impressions of Canada were as unfavourable as her first impressions of the United Sates a decade earlier. The hotels were ‘dreadful… noisy, efficient and inhuman—and very very expensive’. The country was just ‘the same’ as America. Chesterton was ‘seized on by the press’ the evening they arrived; ‘a very nice interview’, Frances wrote home, appeared next day in the papers. She would try and keep all the newspaper cuttings together and send them home in batches’ so that eventually’ they could be ‘placed in one book and indexed and arranged’, as she had done on their ‘last tour’.50 On the evening of 29 September Chesterton gave a lecture on ‘The New Enslavement of Women’, which, Frances reported, was ‘a very great success’: ‘The hall was packed and very enthusiastic.’51

  On 30 September they left for Ottawa, where they st
ayed for a couple of nights at 300 Waverley Street with Chesterton’s uncle Walter, with whom they had stayed in 1921, and his daughter, Lilian. Uncle Walter was ‘obviously frail’, wrote Frances, and Lilian had ‘a very hard time as a general rule, and of course our visit makes a great deal of difference to her’. They were about to go out and see ‘the wonderful autumn trees in the woods around’: ‘certainly the Fall is the time of year for this country.’ They were going on to Toronto, from where they planned to go to South Bend, Indiana, and make the University of Notre Dame their pied-a-terre for 6 weeks’. Frances could not believe that it was ‘less than a fortnight’ since they had ‘left home’.52 On 1 October Chesterton cabled Father O’Donnell from Ottawa to say that they hoped to arrive in South Bend on the following Saturday at three minutes past six in the evening and to ask him to notify them of the address of the accommodation he recommended. Next day O’Donnell cabled back: ‘I recommend you remain at the University Saturday night. Shall meet your train.’ In reply, Dorothy Collins wrote a note from the hotel to say that Chesterton thanked the President for his ‘kind suggestion that we should spend Saturday night at the University’.53