Did He, Or Didn't He?

 

A page on Facebook posted the following meme:

Being a trusting sort, I reposted it. Yikes. I got jumped on by multiple people claiming he never said that, that Billy Sunday said it.

Knowing that there are all sorts of memes out there falsely attributing quotations to various people, I went off into the interuniverse searching for the source of the quotation.

I found multiple attributions to Chesterton, but also multiple attributions (or variations of it) to Billy Sunday. So then I tried digging deeper to see if indeed Chesterton said it where he said it. Alas, he was regularly quoted as saying it, but no documentation was offered where he supposedly said it. 

So, any Chesterton experts out there know if he did indeed say this, and where he said it?

Blogging Buddies Go Bye-Bye

 

Back when I started contributing to this blog there was a team that posted multiple times a week. There were also a number of other blogs about Chesterton and his compatriots.

Blogging has declined as people have turned to other outlets.

The team behind this blog faded away, so I am the only member still posting here. I suspect the other members of the team found more meaningful things to do!

As for the other blogs, I noted that their posts became sporadic, or basically ceased. Here's a look at few of them.

Discover the Wit & Wisdom of Gilbert Keith Chesterton - one post in 2024, one in 2012, and 16 back in 2020.

Old World Swine - Says the last post was seven years ago, but it seems to have moved to a new platform as well. I was not allowed to enter!

GKC's Favourite - Last entry ten years ago

THE BLOG OF THE AMERICAN CHESTERTON SOCIETY - there was one post in 2017, but then you have to go back to 2010 to find another one.

The New Distributist League - They announced back in 2010 they were moving. The last entries in the new site were from 2018.

The ChesterBelloc Mandate - The same crew as the Distributist League, same results.

The Distributist Review - Ditto!

The Flying-Ins (i.e. The Chesterteens) - Last entry in 2010.

The Blue Boar - Is now only open to invited people. I was not invited. I don't know if they still continue.

That's it for those listed as blogs. There are links to other sites related to Chesterton and his compatriots, but I have not checked them yet.

So - seems this is the only still active Chesterton-related blog of the ones we knew in the good old days. Maybe there are others out there, but I do not know them.

Meanwhile, I continue posting. This one is the 27th post of 2025. 

Three Clerihews

Three of my clerihews made it in to the latest issue of Gilbert:

T. S. Eliot
was not appreciated by the proletariat.
"Those new-fangled poems kinda bore us.
He writes like he's sittin' with an open thesaurus."

St. Paul,
by modern standards wasn’t tall,
but he did go from guarding the coats
to being one of the Church’s GOATs.

Alfred Hitchcock
developed a bad case of writer's block
despite his use of a bran muffin
as the MacGuffin.

Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa - and Tolkien

A tidbit gleaned from Holly Ordway's Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography. 

In 1960, Tolkien was contacted about about writing out a version of Hilaire Belloc's poem, "Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa". Belloc had written the poem long before World War II and had made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa where a framed copy of the poem was hung on the chapel wall. But during the war, the framed copy disappeared. "Known for his beautiful calligraphy," Tolkien was asked to make a copy to replace the missing one. Although, according to Ordway, he "had misgivings about the literary merit of Belloc's poem," he approved the devotional act and did produce a calligraphic copy. It was hung in the chapel in 1961.

Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa

By Hilaire Belloc

I

Lady and Queen and Mystery manifold
And very Regent of the untroubled sky,
Whom in a dream St. Hilda did behold
And heard a woodland music passing by:
You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

II

Steep are the seas and savaging and cold
In broken waters terrible to try;
And vast against the winter night the wold,
And harbourless for any sail to lie.
But you shall lead me to the lights, and I
Shall hymn you in a harbour story told.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

III

Help of the half-defeated, House of gold,
Shrine of the Sword, and Tower of Ivory;
Splendour apart, supreme and aureoled,
The Battler's vision and the World's reply.
You shall restore me, O my last Ally,
To vengence and the glories of the bold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

Envoi

Prince of the degradations, bought and sold,
These verses, written in your crumbling sty,
Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold
And publish that in which I mean to die.