Gilbert

by Michael Coren

  There is throughout the anecdotes of Gilbert’s childhood, both from himself and others, an overwhelming flavour of comfort and warmth; of fire-side relief after a busy day of playing and running, always rejoicing in the knowledge that all would be well. Annie Firmin, Mrs Kidd as she would become, remembered that the authority in the Chesterton home would always come from Mrs Chesterton, or Aunt Marie as she called her. She would call the children in from the garden, or admonish a stray arrow or cracked window. Her stern character was felt by others as well. “Aunt Marie was a bit of a tyrant in her own family! I have been many times at dinner, when there might be a joint, say, and a chicken — and she would say positively to Mr Ed, ‘Which will you have Edward?’ Edward: ‘I think I’d like a bit of chicken!’ Aunt M, fiercely: ‘No, you won’t, you’ll have mutton!’ That happened so often …”

  Marie Chesterton was not a mother who avoided favouritism. Her choice was clearly Cecil, who reciprocated the special treatment by his adoration. Gilbert was his father’s child, which is reflected in the book which so transformed his early days, a gift from his father entitled The Princess and the Goblin. It is a timeless volume by George MacDonald, a sadly neglected author today. MacDonald was a major influence on C.S. Lewis, who also included Gilbert Chesterton amongst his philosophical and theological mentors, and the three writers are spoken of as having striking similarities. The book made “a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start.” It is a tale of goblins in the hidden corners and rooms of a house, fairy allies in others. Writing an introduction to Greville MacDonald’s biography entitled “George MacDonald and His Wife,” Gilbert wrote: “… a house that is our home, that is rightly loved as our home, but of which we hardly know the best or the worst, and must always wait for the one and watch against the other … Since I first read that story some five alternative philosophies of the universe have come to our colleges out of Germany, blowing through the world like the east wind. But for me that castle is still standing in the mountains, its light is not put out.”

  For all Edward Chesterton’s modernity in matters spiritual he took his children to church, albeit an institution which Gilbert would vehemently attack in the years to come. They attended Bedford Chapel, where a Unitarian minister named Stopford Brooke preached. He was an Irishman of some charisma and wit who had at one time been a royal chaplain in the Church of England. He left the Anglican church because of, amongst other obstacles, his lack of belief in miracles. In 1880 he declared his commitment to Unitarianism and socialism, and began to put forward his own brand of New Theology, something Cecil described as “The Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the non-eternity of evil, the final salvation of souls.” Gilbert was to dedicate one of his first clerihews to the bewildering theologian who pointed the young man in all the correct directions; that is, diametrically away from what the minister was preaching

  The Rev. Stopford Brooke

  The Church forsook.

  He preached about an apple

  In Bedford Chapel.

  One cannot escape the comparison between the man Brooke and another Anglican clergyman, the Bishop of Durham, who one century later would cause outrage and uproar as he lectured about his own apples in his own Bedford Chapel.

  Religion did, however, break through the cloud of unknowing apathy. Gilbert’s parents read him the story of St Francis, a journey of magic and child-like love with universal appeal. His own biography of St Francis was published shortly after he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, with heavy doses of gratitude for the example and strength which Le Jongleur de Dieu had set. Did the Franciscan road begin as early as those fire-side stories told by parents who discerned little more than a humble man of spirit who cared for the weak? Gilbert always put an emphasis on the indirect conversion of his sceptical family. A certain reason for his joining the Church was that only that body could have produced a St Francis

  … we find [the counsels of perfection] produced by the same religious system which claims continuity and authority from the scenes in which they first appeared. Any number of philosophies will repeat the platitudes of Christianity. But it is the ancient Church that can again startle the world with the paradoxes of Christianity.

  While Gilbert drank in the goodness of Francis he swallowed hardily at the symbolism and mystery of Christmas. His early Christmas experiences were Dickensian in the richest sense, with that strange and inexplicable mixture of atheistic [the doing of good once a year for the sake of goodness and human goodwill] and religious [good for the sake of a higher order and command] which has perplexed the most hardened of cynics. The magic of the time was obvious; for Gilbert the magic had a more noble origin, he “believed in the spirit of Christmas before I believed in Christ … and from my earliest years I had an affection for the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Family [for] Bethlehem and the story of Nazareth.” The spirit of the Christmas season was to stay with Gilbert until the last. The Reverend Stopford Brooke’s views on miracles were no match for the miraculous.

  Gilbert’s childhood was touched with the institutional for the first time when he was prepared for senior school by his parents. They decided to send their son to St Paul’s, as was the case with several Chesterton cousins and nephews, and chose as a prep school Colet House. Gilbert says nothing about the establishment in any of his writings, and the precise date of his first term is unknown. The school opened its doors in 1881, which could have been when Gilbert arrived; but we also know that he did not begin to read with any understanding until two years later. Colet House was a direct prep school for St Paul’s — today it is known as Colet Court and is the junior department of the well-known public school — and was headed and inspired by Samuel Bewsher. It was situated in Edith Road, West Kensington, until enrolment figures necessitated an expansion. The new development was built adjacent to St Paul’s, and was staffed with a set of teachers who were mostly Oxford and Cambridge scholars with what seems to have been a distinct flair for their vocation. Stafford Aston remembered Gilbert at the time

  When I was about seven years old, I went to St Paul’s Preparatory School (Head Master, Mr S. Bewsher), and at this school I met G.K.C. who, no doubt, would be about seven years old too. His home was in Warwick Gardens, mine in Pembroke Gardens, and we used to walk to school along the Hammersmith Road together.

  The master of our class (I think a Mr Alexander) once said to G.K.C., “You know, Chesterton, if we could open up your head, we should not find any brain, but only a lump of white fat!”

  On our way to and from school, we passed a very entrancing toy shop in the Hammersmith Road, but I had very little money. Chesterton once said to me, “I have ten shillings at home, I will give it to you — I do not want it.” Of course, my people would never have let me take it.

  When I was at University College, G.K.C. once came up to me and asked me if my name was Aston. I told him “Yes,” and he said that he thought he recognised “the twilight of past years” — we were both about eighteen-years-old then, I should think.

  One cannot help recalling the passage from As You Like It, which Gilbert was always so fond of quoting in his adult years: “And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel/And shining morning face, creeping like snail/Unwillingly to school.” At “Bewsher’s” there may have been some reason for a lackadaisical journey to school, for though the education was in most respects first class the discipline was harsh and the amount of corporal punishment would be unacceptable today to even the sternest of teachers. E.C. Bentley noted that a fondness for the cane “still lingered in the mind of Samuel Bewsher … I used to see him going the round of the classes with a cane, picking out a boy here and there for questions about the work in hand, and dealing him a few hearty whacks if the replies were unsatisfactory.” Such a method would never have achieved any lasting results in Gilbert.

  It is now quite clear that a lot of the suffering which Gilbert experienced as a young schoolboy was due t
o his shortsightedness. Gilbert was not perceived as being myopic and hence was beaten or scolded for his educational failures when a simple pair of glasses would have raised his marks immediately. There are no photographs of, or references to, Gilbert actually wearing spectacles until he was into his teens. He did not read until he was nine, but he was drawing well-crafted and considered illustrations over anything and everything he could get his hands on from a much earlier age. The drawings show understanding and intelligence, and a keen sense of wit; so why the apparent dullness at school and such concern on the part of teachers and parents alike?

  Gilbert’s eye-sight problems were a major cause; he frequently wore a “brooding expression” as a child and it was only when a relative or friend came within recognition distance that his face transformed itself into a glow of affection. The poor child was not brooding, he could not see and was squinting. It was at this stage that his mother took him to a doctor, worried that his apparent lust for learning at home became an inept failure at school. The boy had an unusually large brain she was told, and would either be an idiot or a genius. Nor was he a physically indifferent child, he enjoyed long, sometimes lonely, walks where he would take in miles of London streets, thinking to himself and relishing hours of contemplation. Yet at Colet House he frequently came last or at the bottom of the list in any organised game or sport. The contrast between home and school was a painful one for Gilbert. He was not a conscious rebel, and respected the teachers and masters, but he was a misfit. The tone of authority which he would seek throughout his life was not to be found at Colet House, at least not in the form for which Gilbert was searching. His docility at the school is at times so humble and accepting as to be quite moving. He was not bullied, but he was teased and laughed at. When it snowed, it would certainly be Gilbert who was pelted with snowballs and have snow put into his pockets. At gym class the rest of the boys would break from their frenzied activities to watch Gilbert fail to jump over the exercise horse, or make no headway on the climbing frame. In his Autobiography he was to write

  The change from childhood to boyhood, and the mysterious transformation that produces that monster the schoolboy, might be very well summed-up in one small fact. To me the ancient capital letters of the Greek alphabet, the great Theta, a sphere barred across the midst like Saturn, or the great Upsilon, standing up like a tall curved chalice, have still a quite unaccountable charm and mystery, as if they were the characters traced in wide welcome over Eden of the dawn. The ordinary small Greek letters, though I am now much more familiar with them, seem to me quite nasty little things like a swarm of gnats … I say this merely to show that I was a much wiser and wider-minded person at the age of six than at the age of sixteen.

  Many of the problems which he encountered at Colet House were to follow him to St Paul’s, to which he moved in January 1887, aged a vulnerable and not altogether happy twelve. St Paul’s was a school with a noble past and an honourable future. It was founded in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. It was wealthy and prestigious, noted for its scholarship as well as standing in the class-obsessed world of late-Victorian England. The Reverend A.M. Mead, present Chaplain and Librarian at the school, describes St Paul’s at the time of Gilbert’s entry as “still a Christian and a classical school, not necessarily in that order. There was no chapel and the chaplain’s designation had been secularised into ‘Third Master,’ though he, like many of the other masters, was in holy orders. However, the whole school still attended Latin prayers, some of which had been composed by Colet and his circle. Most of the boys were members of the Church of England, although Jewish boys were not uncommon. The High Master, F. W. Walker, a layman who was himself an Old Pauline, was probably, if a believer at all, a very free-thinking one. There were compulsory divinity lessons, which included reading the Greek Testament. Though it was no longer true that ‘at St Paul’s we teach only Latin and Greek,’ the emphasis on the classics was still very strong and to specialise in them was considered the normal path of the abler Pauline …” Gilbert’s first year at St Paul’s was not a happy one. Apart from the problem of his sight he was also at a disadvantage in terms of size. Obesity was not yet a problem, but he was an extremely tall boy for his age, with none of the strength or athleticism which so often accompany height. He was quite simply growing too quickly. And his voice, always to be rather high for a man of his imposing stature, was high pitched and at times out of control in its tones and sounds. He was first-class schoolboy tease material. His clothes were often untidy and dusty; if there was any possibility of leaning against a chalk-covered wall or a dirty table Gilbert would certainly exploit the opportunity. He was also a dreamer, which at such an age gave the appearance of absent-mindedness. He was seen as being vacant, a boy who was to be spoken about rather than spoken with. Matters were not helped by the fact that Gilbert had not been able to maintain the pace of his contemporaries; most of his companions were two or even three years younger than himself: the humiliation was apparent and obvious to all. Edward Fordham, a friend and school-mate, remembered that “He sat at the back of the room and never distinguished himself. We thought him the most curious thing that ever was. I can see him now very tall and lanky, striding untidily along Kensington High Street, smiling and sometimes scowling as he talked to himself, apparently oblivious of everything he passed; but in reality a far closer observer than most, and one who had not only observed but remembered what he had seen.” Lucian Oldershaw, later to become Gilbert’s brother-in-law, looked on one day when Gilbert’s pockets, not for the first or last time, were filled with snow. When the class left the playground the heat melted the content of Gilbert’s pockets and his jacket began to soak through. “Please, Sir,” shouted a horribly observant boy from the side of the room, “I think the laboratory sink must be leaking again. The water is coming through and falling all over Chesterton.” The teacher believed the story and sent Gilbert outside to inform the powers that be that the sink was broken. It is sad that the master was so deceived; it is pathetic that Gilbert was throughout the escapade totally believing and never aware that most of the class were laughing at his trusting misfortune.

  He became something of a school mascot, accepted as the archetypal eccentric and tolerated as such. If his homework was not given in on time, or not at all, the most absurd of explanations would be given and taken; “It’s only Chesterton.” On one occasion he was seen by boys and masters wandering aimlessly around the school playground when he should have been attending classes. He justified the action by explaining that he was under the misapprehension that it was a Saturday. No punishment was given, it just might have been true.

  Gilbert’s 1887 form master had an affectionate but critical opinion of the young dreamer: “Too much for me: means well by me, I believe, but has an inconceivable knack of forgetting at the shortest notice, is consequently always in trouble, though some of his work is well done, when he does remember to do it. He ought to be in a studio not at school. Never troublesome, but for his lack of memory and absence of mind.” It is difficult not to judge this period with the iniquitous benefit of hindsight and to pour scorn on the teachers and other boys who failed to perceive Gilbert’s budding genius. Only those closest to him, and not always they, were aware that his exercise books and volumes of fiction and non-fiction were covered with scribbled passages revealing insight and intellect, and delicate illustrations of all things from Christ on the Cross to railway engines. Here was a mind bursting to learn and comment. He was now reading with a burning passion. He drove himself through the great classical works of English literature in a remarkably short space of time, and devoured them with such an interest that he could recite by heart long passages of Dickens and Shakespeare. When a nineteenth-century novel was not at hand he would turn to the Chambers Encyclopaedia or at one juncture A History of English Trade which was in the house. Sir Walter Scott was another particular favourite, and Gilbert revealed in his Autobiography an early tendency which was to shape his future wri
ting. “I was one day wandering about the streets in that part of North Kensington, telling myself stories of feudal sallies and sieges, in the manner of Walter Scott, and vaguely trying to apply them to the wilderness of bricks and mortar around me.” Not lazy wanderings and vacuous dreams. His grasp of the main Latin works increased with a weekly intake of volumes with which most boys of his age had no intention of coming to grips. Still the master discerned no spark. In July 1888 his report claimed that he was “Wildly inaccurate about everything; never thinks for two consecutive moments to judge by his work: plenty of ability, perhaps in other directions than classics.”

  By the December of the following year progress was described as “Fair. Improving in neatness. Has a very fair stock of general knowledge.” More praise but harsher criticism in July 1889 with “A great blunderer with much intelligence.” Blunderer he may have been, but his memory was sufficiently acute for him to remember and appreciate the Book of Job, Lays of Ancient Rome and several of the more esoteric of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. This was a period of nonrecognition for Gilbert, an immensely frustrating time of upset and barely any encouragement. Here was a young, developing man with an intellectual tendency superior to that of anybody in the school; yet he was considered a poor scholar, something of a buffoon. For any budding novelist, of course, the enforced loneliness and sense of failure was an inimitable learning process. Gilbert’s grasp of isolation was to serve him well when he built layer on layer over his fictional characters, creating haunting degrees of individualism. For a schoolboy, however, being alone simply meant being alone. The result was a great amount of pain.