More Housekeeping

Four weeks ago I looked at the Blogs to which this blog linked. I found that many of them are no longer active.

Today I checked the other linked pages. Some of them are still active, but some have ceased to exist. 

All the Wikipedia Pages links still work: 

Muggeridge @ Wikipedia
H.G. Wells @ Wikipedia
Owen Barfield @ Wikipedia
Hilaire Belloc @ Wikipedia
Maurice Baring @ Wikipedia

Of the Chesterton Friendly links, only the American Chesterton Society is still active, though it is now The Society of G. K. Chesterton. If you want Gilbert Magazine,  you need to go there (and join the Society - if you haven't, why not?!). The Chesterton Quote of the Day link also no longer works.

The link to the Malcolm Muggeridge Society is no longer active. Ditto for the Dawson Collection at St. Thomas University, The Vision of Christopher Dawson, James V. Schall @ Ignatius Insight, and Joseph Pearce @ Ignatius Insight.

The Oscar Wilde Homepage still works. The same holds true for the Ronald Knox Society of North America, the Ronald Knox Bio, The Bernard Shaw Society, The Tolkien Society, and the Into the Wardrobe: Lewis Site.

The link to What About Charles Williams? does work, but it's a Touchstone and you need a subscription to gain access to the online content. It's aa great magazine, but I'm only a print subscriber to it, so I can't get to the articles. Sigh.   

Since I'm the most junior member of this blog's team - though apparently I'm the only still-active one - I have hesitated to make changes beyond my weekly posts. But I may do some cleaning up of the links, eliminating the ones where the links no longer work, and perhaps adding some new ones. 

I've started by changing American Chesterton Society to The Society of G. K. Chesterton. 

Peter Maurin, G. K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc

Peter Maurin was a social activist and theologian, and a co-founder (with Dorothy Day) of the Catholic Worker movement. In his thinking he was influenced by Chesterton and Belloc, particularly when it came to economics. He specifically cited the distributism espoused by Chesterton and Belloc as part of the antidote to communism. 

Maurin, who was born in France and moved to the United States, summed up his thinking in poems called "Easy Essays." In those essays he cited Chesterton multiple times, and especially Chesterton's observation, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” He sometimes quoted this observation directly, but more often paraphrased it. 

Over the years the Easy Essays were printed in the Catholic Worker newspaper. He used many of the essays repeatedly, changing them slightly, or adding or removing portions of them. Here is a version of one known as "Not Practical." 

1. Chesterton says

     "The Christian ideal 

     has not been tried 

     and found wanting. 

2. It has been found difficult 

     and left untried." 

3. Christianity has not been tried 

     because people thought 

     it was impractical. 

4. And men have tried everything 

     except Christianity. 

5. And everything 

     that men have tried 

     has failed.
6. And to fail
     in everything
     that one tries
     is not to be practical
7. Men will be practical
     when they try to practice
     the Christianity
     they profess
     to believe in.

When he recommended books to read he included two by Chesterton: The Outline of Sanity and St. Francis of Assisi.

He cited Belloc less often, but he is there. He also liked his book The Servile State. 

One Easy Essay where Belloc appears is called "The Trouble Has Been."

Hilaire Belloc says:

1. The modern proletarian

     works less hours

     and does far less

     than his father.

2. He is not even

     primarily in revolt

     against insecurity.

3. The trouble has been 

     that the masses

     of our town

     lived under

     unbearable conditions.

4. The contracts

     they were asked to fulfill

     were not contracts

     that were suitable

     to the dignity of man.

5. There was no personal relation

     between the man

     who  was exploited

     and the man

     who exploited him.

6. Wealth has lost

     its sense of responsibility.

Given his appreciation of Chesterton and Belloc, and of distributism, I think it's safe to say Maurin could be counted as a "Friend."

Joining Some Inklings Fan Groups

I was continuing my look at some of the blogs and pages to which this blog is linked when I came across ones about C. S. Lewis and the Inklings (Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Christopher Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, Warren Lewis, etc.). That led me in turn to Lewis and Inkling Facebook groups.

Yes, not only do I blog, I am on Facebook. I guess I am old!

Anyway, being easily distracted, I joined a few of them. One of them required that I list first some of the Inkling books I have read and/or taught.

So I compiled a list of ones I'd read in the five years since I retired.

Tolkien related:

Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography by Holly Ordway

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

The Father Christmas Letters by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Two Towers by J. R. R Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

C. S. Lewis related:

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

Perelandra by C. S, Lewis

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis

The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters (with Screwtape Proposes a Toast) by C. S. Lewis

And one by Charles Williams:

Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams

I have not read the works of some of the other Inklings. To be honest, I looked, but they are hard to find in our local libraries, or even for purchase (plus I'm trying to downsize anyway, so I don't want to buy more books at this time).

I was accepted by the Facebook pages, by the way.

Since this is a Chesterton blog, I also compiled a list of works that are Chesterton-related, or written by his circle of friends, that I've read in the last five years.

The Poet and the Lunatics by G. K. Chesterton
The Surprise by G. K. Chesterton
The Judgement of Dr. Johnson by G. K. Chesterton

Heretics by G. K. Chesterton

The Flying Inn by G. K. Chesterton

The Ball and the Cross by G. K. Chesterton

Saint Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton

The Secret of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton

The Incredulity of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton

The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K, Chesterton

“The Donnington Affair” by G. K. Chesterton

“The Vampire of the Village” by G. K. Chesterton

The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton 

Lepanto: With Explanatory Notes and Commentary by G. K. Chesterton

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

Knight of the Holy Ghost by Dale Ahlquist

The Path to Rome by Hilaire Belloc

The Children’s Crusade by Frances Chesterton

Sir Cleges by Frances Chesterton

Piers Plowman’s Pilgrimage by Frances Chesterton

The Golden Key and Other Fairy Tales by George MacDonald

Phantastes by George MacDonald

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

Trent’s Last Case by E. C. Bentley

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers

Okay, enough of that. Back to looking at the linked pages.

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.