A Chestertonian Celebration!

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian.
- Autobiography, 1936

Yes, today is indeed the birthday of Gilbert Keith Chesterton - were he still alive, he would be one hundred and thirty-two years old.

And what a life was his! Few men have done so very much while simultaneously doing so very little. Gilbert never fought in any wars, invented any machines, or made any scientific or medical breakthroughs. He was not a bullfighter or a riverboat captain. He was a man - plump, genial and eccentric, but a man of great character and imagination. A man, you might say, who knew what being a man really meant even if circumstances often conspired against him living up to that glorious template. He knew the value of Fatherhood with a comprehensiveness rivalled only by that of God Himself, and yet was sadly denied children of his own. He knew the value of chivalry with that awful clarity that can only come to the Knight on the walls of Jerusalem, or on the fields of Agincourt, and yet was never called upon for that last, heroic defence; never drew his sword except in merriment or passion; never fired his revolver except in sport.

And yet, here we are, paying homage to him. Gilbert Chesterton was the avatar of successful theory, and that theory has been both expansive and plentiful. I once heard it said of Hilaire Belloc that we no longer remember how right he was about everything because we simply can not bear to consider how tragic has been our ignorance of his wisdom. There is in his warnings all of the power of "I told you so," with none of the spite. I would argue that the same is true of Gilbert, who made it his business to be right when everyone else was wrong, and who can only be properly appreciated in retrospect. For a man so utterly devoted to history and tradition, such a description is, perhaps, accurate.

He was born to honest and caring parents. His father - Edward - was the sort of attentive polymath that one would hope all men might be - an avid record-keeper who took great interest in philosophical and political matters. Better still, he was of the sort who delighted in becoming sufficiently accomplished at numerous small crafts that he would have the means of enteraining even the most mixed of company. One such outpouring of this talent was the production of a small puppet theater that would, obliquely, inform much of Gilbert's view of the world. The young man crossing a bridge to a tower. The man with the golden key. His play, The Surprise.

His mother was of the sturdy sort that belies some Scotch heritage, and of course this was the case. It is to his mother's side of the family that Gilbert claims he owes all of the infamy and intrigue that attended his early days, with that mighty ancestral name of Keith echoing across the centuries like the fall of the axe. Mrs. Chesterton was of the type who would work herself ragged for the comfort of others, though she had no compunctions about sometimes being imperious in her own home. She is remembered by contemporaries as a witty and pleasant woman, albeit one who would brook no nonsense. Gilbert's relationship with his mother was complex and - on the whole - quite positive.

Gilbert was himself an unusually serious child, but also an unusually happy one. There was in him a delight in all the world, merely as it had been presented to him, that would endure in the man even unto his dying day. He had well-developed romantic and intellectual streaks that were fostered at every turn by the learned discussion that his parents constantly brought into their home. Art was his calling, even from the beginning; as he was himself made in the image of his Creator, so too would he become a Father of Craft.

He was not without his problems. An early infatuation with the works of Walt Whitman and a burgeoning interest in the field of mysticism produced results that he has himself described as alternately morbid and embarassing, though his respect for both Whitman and the mystic would abide forever. His accomplishments at school were never what we might call astounding, during his early years, coming frequently under the censure of his masters for his slovenly inattentiveness to most everything to which one might potentially attend. Nonetheless, they saw in him the raw literary brilliance that would become his greatest gift to the world in later years, though they despaired of him ever accomplishing anything.

And so, it is those very accomplishments that I and the other contributors of this blog intend to discuss and celebrate in the coming days. Gilbert was born on May 29, and died on June 14. Between now and the anniversary of his death, you can look forward to daily articles covering various epochs and areas of Gilbert's life, ranging from a treatment of his life with Frances Blogg to his work on Father Brown to his travels around the world. These little articles - some involved, some concise - will be presented topically rather than strictly chronologically, and aim to serve as introductions to the life and work of a man who was as broad as the Earth itself.

What is more, this is an opportunity for reflection and action on the part of you, the reader. Though his political and social views were necessarily varied, Chesterton stood above all for faith, sense and family. The Internet, though wonderful in various ways, is not in and of itself highly complementary to any of those of things.

On the two Saturdays that fall within this extended festival, you will find articles about exactly these issues. The first will be an approach to the Chestertonian Life. Socrates famously opined that the unexamined life is not worth living, but we know that this is only half of the truth; the corollary to this is that the unlived life is not worth examining. Life should be a romance, even if it is a necessarily tragic romance; it should be an adventure, even if it is a dangerous one. This danger and this tragedy are both acceptable - and even necessary - because the prize at the end of the quest and the kiss at the end of the courtship are far too precious and sweet for anything mundane.

So I say to you, then, during this microcosmic treatment of Gilbert Chesterton's life, bring your family together and be. Embrace your sense, and know. Strengthen your faith, and love. This night is a night for celebration, so celebrate. The evening of Wednesday, June 14 will be a night for valediction, so celebrate all the more.

Let's get serious about life. It's what Gilbert would have wanted.

Cornerstone of Secularism

One of the Cornerstones of secularism seems to be the idea that religion is responsible for all of the conflicts in the world. Fanatical adherants to the different belief systems wage holy wars of extermination upon designated infidels.

I have thought a great deal about this and find it disturbing. If one makes such a claim, one should be able to bring up examples as proofs. This is done by brining up Crusades, Jihads, Inquisitions, etc., etc. However, looking more deeply at the issue, these items are false hits and selective information. If one examines history critically we find: The Hundred Years War - Fought by 2 Catholic nations, the numerous internal wars of Islam(Turk vs Arab vs Persian). The conflicts of the 19th century were based on enlightenment nationalism. We also find more blood spilled in less time than anywhere else in history by anti-religious forces in the 20th Century. Carl Sagan, hardly a believer, came up with a "baloney detection kit" for uncovering hucksterism and pseudoscience. Even his methology would invalidate this enshrined dogma of the Enlightement.

I dont have my copy of Orthodoxy handy, but GKC had an excellent line which summarizes a point : It is more likely that religion stopped the first war, rather than causing it. It is far more likely that ancient peoples arrived at peace through the idea of "we must not fight, for we are on holy ground," than through any other means.

I dont mean to make light of war and conflict. But these are parts of fallen human nature, and again it would seem that only the "orthodox" believer has the tools and equipment to fully understand the full truth.

Have a great holiday.

St. Francis and GKC, brother poets

In his biography of St. Francis - St. Francis of Assisi - Chesterton argued that in order to look at Francis properly, we must assume that he was “a poet and can only be understood as a poet.”

In so describing St. Francis, Chesterton was describing himself. Indeed, it has become almost a cliché to say that no matter what Chesterton was writing about in his essays, biographies and criticism, there was often as much of Chesterton as there was of the subject. (And sometimes more.)

Chesterton was clearly a poet. The first two books he published were of poetry, and he ultimately published seven volumes of verse. Poems are scattered through his works, as are characters who are poets (such as Gabriel Syme of The Man Who Was Thursday and Gabriel Gale of The Poet and the Lunatics).

The quality of Chesterton’s poetry is mixed. Yet he persisted, and I believe it essential to understanding him as it is, he contends, to understanding St. Francis.

Chesterton here is using the word “poet” to mean not so much a published poet in the common sense, but rather a person with a particular way of viewing the world.

Chesterton noted that St. Francis was able to call all creation his brother and sister not because of some “sentimental pantheism” typical of romantic poets who used nature as an idealized background, but because he viewed each part of creation individually.

“Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background,” he wrote. “We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every coloured creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could stop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush.

“In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man.”

As for the human race, Chesterton noted, “It is even more true that (St. Francis) deliberately did not see the mob for the men. … He only saw the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. To him a man was always a man and did not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honoured all men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all.”

This comes from a man who could write about a donkey or a cabman or St. Joseph and use them as a means to reflect on the universe, all the while respecting their individualism and reality.

The donkey of his famous poem was not some idealized donkey; he was a donkey with feelings and pride. The extraordinary cabman comes alive in Chesterton’s essay because he is not some abstract creation intended just to symbolize the demonic, but rather a real man who was either a thief or simply confused, or perhaps a bit of both with a touch of the demonic. And St., Joseph in yet another poem is not simply the plaster saint, but a man who feels desire and loss even as he accepts what God has asked.

St. Joseph becomes real, as do the donkey and cabman.

St. Francis saw the image of God in all creation – sun, wolf flame and all his other “brothers” and “sister” – in a personal and individual way, likewise, every person and thing had meaning to Chesterton. “It is impossible for something to signify nothing,” he wrote in A Handful of Authors.

St. Francis was full of a sense of wonder at creation. Chesterton also viewed the world with wonder, and lamented the fact that others often failed to see them

“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder,” he declared in Tremendous Trifles.

St. Francis celebrated the small and seemingly insignificant. Chesterton presented us again and again with what we would consider insignificant and pointed out their significance. Think only of his Father Brown mysteries to get a glimpse of his method.

Getting back to St. Francis the poet. Chesterton said, “But he had one poetic privilege denied to most poets. In that respect indeed he might be called the one happy poet among all the unhappy poets of the world. He was a poet whose whole life was a poem.”

I think the title of “happy poet” aptly describes both Chesterton and St. Francis.

And while Chesterton’s life is not often described as a poem, I think it is. But, of course, it would have to be an epic, complete with drama, humor, battles, romance, and a quest – a quest that, as his poet protagonist Gabriel Syme shows us, ultimately leads us to God.

Chesterton and St. Francis, those brother poets, are prodding us all to join in this quest.

For, as he notes in Come to Think of It, “What are poets for except to go about asking everyone whether they wake or sleep?”

Oxford Matter

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Chesterton in Today's World

If God did not exist, there would be no atheists.

It's one of my favorite Chesterton sayings, and this story out of Massachusetts supports it. A woman and her unborn baby are killed in a car accident. Mourners place memorials, including a cross and booties, at the site. The property owner waits two weeks, then takes the cross and booties and buries them in his backyard. Why? Because he's an atheist:

"I removed them because I'm an atheist and I do not want any Catholic symbols on my property," Bill Brodmerkle told the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.

Brodmerkle, who owns the property the memorial was on, said he buried the cross in his backyard. He said he didn't mean to bury any booties, but the weather was bad and he might not have noticed.

He couldn't just throw away the cross with a shrug. He had to bury it, an act of defiance.

Being an atheist is awfully visceral, for all the reasons Chesterton summarized in one sentence.

Gilbert and George

I must admit, I'm one of those Chestertonians who was duped. I always thought the quote was authentic:

In the September 1923 issue of The Adelphi, the biographer Hesketh Pearson published what appeared to be a verbatim report of a private quarrel between Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. (Shaw: "Have you any adequate excuse for not being drunk?") In fact it was entirely Pearson's invention. Chesterton was delighted and told Pearson that he ought to write his next book for him. However, the transcript was thought to be authentic by most readers, and to this day it is accepted and often quoted by Chesterton scholars. [Ian Hunter, Nothing to Repent, London: 1987, p. 94]

New Gilbert is Here

The new issue of Gilbert Magazine should be hitting mailboxes this week. It looks like a great issue. I especially liked the cover story by Dale Ahlquist: A Visit to Clear Creek Monastery. With the theme "Whenever monks come back, marriages will come back" (a GKC quote), Dale discusses the rise of a new monastery in the foothills of the Ozarks in eastern Oklahoma. It's one of those new-fangled monasteries: old fashioned in the best sense of the term. Families are now moving into the area to be near the holy men.

The thing I found most fascinating: These men are progeny of John Senior's humanities program at the University of Kansas back in the 1970s (and 1980s?). Senior advanced an intelligent, radical, and Catholic view of civilization. And he did so convincingly, so much so that his students starting converting and some entered convents and monasteries. I remember reading elsewhere that parents started complaining to the University of Kansas about the alleged brainwashing (read: "brain cleaning," cleaning off the ugliness that is pop modernity). The program was subsequently terminated. . . But not before Senior laid down some seeds. And the seeds have sprouted a strong plant in eastern Oklahoma.

If you want to read Senior's vision, get The Restoration of Christian Culture. In my opinion, it's a modern classic.

The True Romance

Today we have a rare Chesterton essay, from the Daily News in 1911, that can only otherwise be found in the lightly-available A Handful of Authors. The essay itself is delightful for any number of reasons, being an excellent exhibition of Chesterton's linguistic and aesthetic prowess, and ending with a wonderful little kick.

The True Romance
By G.K. Chesterton

This is a perfectly true story; but there is in it a certain noble irony, not very easy to analyse, which goes down to the very roots of Christianity.

Some hundreds of years ago there was born in one of the southern peninsulas of Europe a man whose life was very like the life of a boy in one of Mr. Henty's books. He did everything that could possibly be expected of a boy's hero; he ran away to sea; he was trusted by admirals with important documents; he was captured by pirates; he was sold as a slave. Even then he did not forget the duties of a Henty hero. He made several picturesque and desperate attempts at escape, scaling Moorish walls and clambering through Moorish windows. He confronted the considerable probability of torture, and defied it. But he was not like the unscrupulous prison-breakers, like Cellini or Casanova, ready to break the world as well as the wall, or his promise as well as his prison. He remembered that he was the hero of an honest boy's storybook, and behaved accordingly.

Long afterwards his country collected the depositions of the other Christian captives, and they were an astonishing chorus. They spoke of this man as if he were a sort of saint, of the almost unearthly unselfishness with which he divided their distresses and defied their tormentors. As one reads the coldest biographical account one can feel the alien air, that enormous outside world of Asia and Africa that has always felt slavery to be a natural and even monotonous thing. One feels the sunny silence of great open courts, with fountains in the midst, guarded here and there by mute, white-clad, unnatural men; dim and secret divans smelling of smoke and sweet stuff; grass burnt out of the bare ground, and palm trees prised like parasols. And in all this still horror of heat and sleep, the one unconquered European still leaping at every outlet of adventure or escape; climbing a wall as he might a Christian apple tree, or calling for his rights as he might in a Christian inn.

Nor did our hero miss that other great essential of the schoolboy protagonist; which is accidental and even improbable presence on a tremendous historical occasion. All who love boys' books as they should be loved know that Harry Harkaway, as well as crossing cutlasses with an individual smuggler or slaver, must also manage to be present at the Battle of Trafalgar. The young musketeer from Gascony, however engrossed in duels with masked bravos or love-letters to Marguerite de Valois, must not forget to put in an appearance at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Here also my hero in real life equalled any of the heroes of juvenile fiction; for he was present and took an active part in one of the most enormous and earth-changing events in history.

Europe, in the age in which he lived, was, as it is now, in one of its recurring periods of division an disease. The Northern nations were full of sombre fanaticisms; the Southern nations of equally sombre statecraft and secrecy. The country of the man I describe was indeed rich in territory; but its King was morbid, mean, and lethargic; a man of stagnant mysteries, as he looks in those fishy, pasty-faced portraits which still endure. His strong but sinister Imperial armies were engaged in wars, more or less unjust on both sides, with the sinister enthusiasms of the North; the whole civilization was bitter and trivial, and apparently tumbling to pieces. And at this moment appeared upon its Eastern borders its ancient and awful enemy, the Turk.

Like genii summoned out of that Eastern sea by the seal of Solomon, robed in the purple of the twilight or the green of the deep, rose the tall, strange, silent sails of the admirals of Islam. The very shapes of the ships on the horizon were unfamiliar and fearful; and when they came close to the Greek islands, prow and stern showed the featureless ornament of the foes of idolatry; the featureless ornament in which one seems to see a hundred faces, as one does in a Turkey carpet. The ships came silently and ceaselessly, in numbers that, it seemed, had never been seen since Xerxes seemed stronger than the gods. And every hermit on a Greek headland, or little garrison of knights upon an islet in the mediterranean, looked at them and saw the sunset of Christendom.

They encircled and besieged a stronghold in that central sea, whose fall would have been the fall of Europe. In the general paralysis the Pope, with one exception, was the only man who moved promptly; he put out the Papal galleys and addressed a public prayer for help to all the Christian princes. The cold and sluggish King doubted and hung back, just as he would have done in the historical novel. But he had a half-brother - as he would have had in the novel. The half-brother was every bit as brave, handsome, brilliant, and generous here as he would have been in the novel. The King was as jealous of him as he would have been in the novel. This quite genuine hero rushed to the rescue, and in such crises it is popularity that tells, even in empires.

The young Prince had already won romantic victories in Africa, but he could bring only a few ships in time for the attack. Then was waged on that blue and tideless sea what must have been one of the most splendid and appalling battles that ever stained the sea or smoked to the sun. The Turks slew eight thousand Christian soldiers, and the sea drank galley after galley of the Christian fleet. But the fight was sustained with that terrible and intolerant patience that only comes in a collision of strong creeds, when one whole cosmos really crashes into the other. before night the tide of that river of blood began to turn. Thirty thousand of the Turks were killed or taken prisoners, and out of the Turkish ports and galleys came into light and liberty twelve thousand European slaves.

This was the great battle of Lepanto, and of course our hero was there, sword in hand; of course he was wounded there. I can fancy him standing on the deck, with his arm in a sling and looking at the slender escape of Europe and the purple wreck of Asia with a sad, crooked smile on his face. For he was a person whose face was capable of expressing both pity and amusement. His name was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, commonly called Cervantes. And having another arm left, he went home and wrote a book called Don Quixote, in which he ridiculed romance and pointed out the grave improbability of people having any adventures.

Most of the people I know have never heard of the battle of Lepanto, much less of its deadly importance. When told that Cervantes was there, they usually give a little start of surprise, but that's as far as it goes, they generally not having read Don Quixote either.

Most of the people I know are hopelessly lame.

Some idle Sunday reading

If any of you are sufficiently interested in Nietzsche, Chesterton, or the differences between them, you can feel free to read a lengthy and rambling essay on the subject that I produced under the influence of divine fervor and beer. You can find it here.

In the grand tradition of both Chesterton and Nietzsche, I have managed (if I say so myself) to make uniformly beautiful generalisations about both of them without necessarily being specifically correct about anything.

An excerpt follows, that you might make up your mind before committing:

Nietzsche's avatar, one might say, was one of intense physical energy; of the will unbound in lust, movement, and violence. His preoccupation with dance is notable in this regard. By contrast, we see in Chesterton - both in a broad literary sense and an unfortunate literal sense - the sacrifice of such exquisite dynamism in favour of the mind, and of the soul. A reading of Maisie Ward's excellent biography of Chesterton paints a picture of the man as being a creature wrought almost entirely out of brain. Indeed, there was in him no physical vanity, or even care. We read of weeks on end spent doing nothing but writing; of years that see the release of five or six books in addition to the articles he was writing without end for various newspapers and magazines. We see, in the more pathetic (here I use the word in its proper, non-pejorative sense) passages, a man who can scarcely even move, though his brain is a liquid diamond.

You will forgive me, I hope, if this seems an awful lot like self-promotion. Content is content, however, and the article is large enough for two blogs. Good luck with it.

Hemingway on Chesterton

At the May 18 meeting of the Rochester Chesterton Society, Father Leo Hetzler amused us all by reading a passage from a Hemingway story that praises Chesterton.

The passage comes from the Nick Adams story, "The Three-Day Blow." Nick and his friend Bill are drinking and discussing books and writers they like:

"I'd like to meet Chesterton," Bill said.

"I wish he was here now," Nick said. "We'd take him fishing to the `Voix tomorrow."

"I wonder if he'd like to go fishing," Bill said.

"Sure," said Nick. "He must be about the best guy there is. Do you remember `Flying Inn'?"

If an angel out of heaven
Gives you something else to drink,
Thank him for his kind intentions;
Go and pour them down the sink.

"That's right," said Nick. "I guess he's a better guy that Walpole."

"Oh, he's a better guy, all right," Bill said.

"But Walpole's a better writer."

"I don't know," Nick said. "Chesterton's a classic."

"Walpole's a classic, too," Bill insisted.

"I wish we had them both here," Nick said. "We'd take they both fishing to the `Voix tomorrow."

"Let's get drunk, Bill said.

"All right," Nick agreed.

The Walpole mentioned is Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), a contemporary of Chesterton. Before Chesterton's name appears in the story, the Nick and Bill had been talking about two of Walpole's books, Fortitude, and The Dark Forest.

"Flying Inn," is, of course, The Flying Inn. The cited verses is part of song recited while the characters are drinking water. (The edition I have renders "Gives" as "Brings.")

It's hard to imagine two writers with such different writing styles and world views as Chesterton and Hemingway. But that wouldn't have prevented them from appreciating the each other's skills. Indeed, a number of brief biographies of Chesterton mention that Hemingway praised Chesterton. (Other than this passage, however, I haven't found any other praises. Perhaps someone has a quotation to share?)

I suspect Hemingway is in part playing around here. Chesterton was still alive at the time he was writing the Nick Adams stories, so he was familiar with him, as would his readers have been.

Hemingway would have known that Chesterton was not a sportsman of the "manly" sort Hemingway portrayed himself as being. But I can imagine them enjoying a drink together.

Of course, two boys like Nick and Bill would likely not have been aware of all of this. Yet the subtext of this story is Nick trying to figure out what kind of person he is going to be. A man's man? A married man (he's just broken up with his girlfriend)?

Is Chesterton introduced to help suggest Nick's spiritual quest?

As for the boys' idea of getting Chesterton to join them for a day on the `Voix, it's hard to imagine Chesterton fishing - or even getting into a small fishing boat.

And putting Walpole and Chesterton in a boat together?

Only if the boat had been converted into a bookshelf!

Chesterton, Doyle, Holmes, and Fr. Brown......

I really dont think enough attention is paid by contemporary Chestertonians to the contributions that GKC made to the genre of detective fiction. The Illustrated London News essays contain several gems of insight into AC Doyle, Holmes, and the modern detective novel itself.

One of the first books I ever bought as a kid, which I still own, was a collection of facsimilie reprints of the original Sherlock Holmes stories from The Strand. I can still remember picking that book up and paging through those wonderful Sidney Paget illustrations, knowing that I had indeed found something special. I still pick up Holmes pastiches here and there, Larry Millet writes some excellent ones, placing Sherlock Holmes in turn of the century Mpls-St. Paul. Ive bought a couple of Sherlockian collections/criticisms which include reprints of some of the GKC essays, or at least make reference to GKC as a literary figure of the time

There are a couple points I believe we should keep in mind from this. First, Chesterton is not "just" an essayist and journalist, but is a figure of great stature in mystery and detective fiction. A great deal of Chesterton's appeal to me is that as a man of deep faith and conviction, he was also a fabulous writer discussed in the same circles as AC Doyle and Agatha Christie. I think Chesterton is an example par excellance of what a believer in the world should be. Instead of writing saccharine literature, or Left Behind types of Christian pulp, Chesterton's fiction writing wasnt Catholic literature.........but solid, high quality literature written by a Catholic.

Second, even in his day, Chesterton paid the price for his conversion. I never heard of Chesterton in school, yet I now realize that one really cannot properly study Sherlock Holmes, George Bernard Shaw, or even modern English literature without him. Chesterton's career and legacy suffered due to his conversion. Going back over these books now is incredible. As a lifelong Sherlock Holmes fan, I have to say that knowledge of Chesterton is elementary to understanding the Holmsian canon.

Cheers!

The man who is Thursday

When I agreed to join the Chesterton and Friends team, I was told I would be responsible for a day.

The day turned out to be Thursday.

I laughed when I received the e-mail telling me this.

I am the man who is Thursday.

There’s a certain irony in this.

The Man Who Was Thursday was the first of Chesterton’s novels that I read.

The novel resonated with me when I read it some 30 years ago, and particularly the main character, Gabriel Syme. He is a poet working as a detective posing as a poet pretending to be an anarchist. He is given the name Thursday on a council of anarchists whose names are the days of the week and whose leader is Sunday.

If that seems convoluted, remember that Chesterton’s subtitle is, “A Nightmare.”

But this is a Chestertonian nightmare, so we are treated to a merry quest complete with twists and turns, philosophizing, battles, revelations, and verbal sparks. As we are swept along, Chesterton reveals the truth beneath the characters’ disguises, and then ultimately reveals who Sunday is.

God, of course.

(Sorry if I reveal too much. But then, when we read a fairy tale, we often already know the end - though we may be unclear on some of the details. The pleasure comes from discovering how we get to that end, the wonders we encounter along the way, and the satisfaction of discovering that what we sensed would happen does indeed happen. The pleasure of Chesterton often comes from the simple act of reading how he gets where we know he is going.)

In her biography of Chesterton, Maisie Ward quotes a Chesterton interview about the novel.

“In an ordinary detective tale the investigator discovers that some amiable-looking fellow who subscribes to all the charities, and is fond of animals, has murdered his grandmother, or is a trigamist. I thought it would be fun to make the tearing away of menacing masks reveal benevolence.

“Associated with that merely fantastic notion was the one that there is actually a lot of good to be discovered in unlikely places, and that we who are fighting each other may be all fighting on the right side. …

“There is a phrase at the end, spoke by Sunday. `Can ye drink from the cup that I drink of?’ which seems to mean that Sunday is God. That is the only serious note in the book, the face of Sunday changes, you tear off the mask of Nature and you find God.”

My first encounter with this book was during the time of social chaos in the mid 1970s. The Vietnam War had ended in a debacle. Nixon’s Presidency had ended in disgrace. Assassins still targeted Presidents and Presidential candidates. The economy was unstable. The Catholic Church was stumbling along as it continued to try to implement Vatican II.

Anarchists – under the more contemporary names of radicals and revolutionaries - were more than just fictional characters at that time.

Then, as now, I thought of myself as a poet (I let others judge how good a one!) and a journalist, a profession I ultimately pursued professionally. A journalist is in many ways a detective. The honest journalist is, of course, engaged in a quest to discover the truth.

Like Syme, while I played at being a rebel, I was really more in “rebellion against rebellion.” Even as I took part in many of the social/political movements of the time, I found that while they had ideas, they lacked soul. Consequently, I was always on the edge, watching and critiquing, aware that there should be something more.

I found the ultimate way to rebel against rebellion was to become more active in the most revolutionary movement in the world: Christianity (and, for me, The Catholic Church).

At the time that he wrote the novel, Chesterton was himself on the road to Rome.

And, in line with Chesterton’s comment above, I often find God through Nature. Indeed, at the time I first read this book, most of my discernable experiences of God came through Nature.

So Thursday is an apt day for me.

The book was not the first of Chesterton’s that I read – his biography of St. Francis takes that honor – but it was a major step in developing my devotion to his writings, and those writings played a vital role in helping me to rediscover and strengthen my faith.

This blog enables me to share that devotion, and to offer a little payback for lessons learned, which, I hope I will offer “with the great unconscious gravity” of a child of God “in possession of some impossible good news.”

Launching Lawrence

In the spring of 1908, the unpublished D.H. Lawrence sent Chesterton one of his essays, asking for an appraisal. After a number of weeks, and much to Lawrence's displeasure, Mrs. Chesterton returned the manuscript, with apologies, saying that her husband's workload prevented him from evaluating the work as Lawrence had requested. [John Worthen, D.H. Lawrence, Cambridge, 1991, p. 190]

In 1909 Ford Maddox Ford attended a Dutch-Treat dinner for writers and publishers presided over by the poet Herbert Trench. At his table of five, Ford was joined by H.G. Wells, Hilaire Belloc, Maurice Baring and G.K. Chesterton. When Belloc began to insult a novelist at the next table, an embarrassed Wells changed the subject by loudly asking Ford to tell everyone about a new writer he had just discovered. Thus did Belloc help launch the career of D.H. Lawrence after Chesterton had taken a pass. [Edward Nehls, D. H. Lawrence, Madison, 1957, v. I, p. 202]

Five Friends

It would appear we now have five contributors to this blog. Readers can count on posts every day. We're still working out assignments, but I'm so excited (valley girl accent) at the prospects of a jumping GKC blog. We'll see how it goes.

High School Friend

GKC still read by high schoolers? It'd appear so, at least from this blogger, who whips out a rather arcane quote from The Man Who Was Thursday. Most impressive.

Ok, cool Chesterton quote from The Man Who Was Thursday (which fits in well with God telling Moses he can only see His back): "…

"Listen to me," cried Syme with extraordinary emphasis. "Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front..."

The Mystery of G.K.'s Weekly

[Reprinted from G.K.'s Weekly the week ending April 4, 1925]

From Notes and Queries of the later twentieth century.

The question of the meaning of the letters "G.K." on this rare and quaint old broadsheet have been much disputed. "Curious" will find the question discussed at length in Pillington's "The Alphabet of Industrial England." The view that the two initials stood for the "German Kaiser" is now generally abandoned; though Higgs points out that the German sovereign in question was an amateur in many of the arts, and was quite likely to have edited a literary paper all by himself; and that the contents of the paper show traces of the mental disturbance or weakness that is said to have been heriditary in his house.

It is now generally agreed that the monogram probably stands for the statement "God Knows," which was a ritual or religious reply common in the England of that time to a variety of questions affecting public life and private welfare. It can be ascertained from contemporary documents that questions such as "What will happen next?"--"What is the Protocol?"--"Where shall we get a house?"--"Why was Jinks knighted?"--"Who is playing with the bank rate?"--"What has become of the Navy?"--"What does this picture mean?"--"Who are the Slovenes?"--"Where will the income tax stop?"--"What on earth is to become of us?" and even "Is there a God?" were answered by this devout and dignified reply of "God Knows."

It is itself a sufficient proof of the passionate devotion to dogmatic theology that was the mark of the time, and a refutation of the idea that it was infected with scepticism. Various other theories, as that G.K. stood for Getting Kicked, Golfing Knickers, Going to the Kinema, General Kissing and Gratuitous Killing may be dismissed as most improbable. But a case may perhaps be made out for the theory recently advanced by Professor Pooter, that the Gin King, the celebrated bootlegger who became the richest man in the world by providing all the Prohibitionist countries with their chief article of consumption, conducted this organ in the interests of his immense business.

This, as the learned scholar truly remarks, would account both for the formal concealment of a formally illegal thing under initials, and for the actual ostentation and even vulgarity with which the initials are displayed. It has all the character of a brazen and accepted legal fiction. As to the notion that the personal initials of some obscure individual journalist, now forgotten, could ever have been counted sufficiently important for such a place, it is too absurd for discussion.

New contributor

Greetings Friends of Chesterton, Kyro Lantsberger here. It looks like I am going to be a new "face" around here. Eric was looking for some other people to contribute, and found me. Ive written for Gilbert and a couple other Catholic publications here and there. I have the following words to say in introduction......My dad traveled the world with the Red Cross, picked out my name in Greece, and decided to make it my problem ever since. I grew up on a family farm in South Dakota, and have ambled about the face of the Earth ever after. Im a US Army veteran of Bosnia (2000) and Iraq (2003). My branch was PSYOP, psychological operations, which is the propaganda/information warfare branch of the Army. I feel honored to have served with the people I did, and am humbled by some of the mentoring extended to me as I developed into an NCO. Some of my other interests include history, weapons, martial arts, and fitness.

on the other hand........I am really not a militaristic person at all.

I love fine wine and dark beer. I listen to classical music and study classical paintings-- want to start a pre-raphaelite collection. I strum my never quite in tune guitar whenever I get a chance. Im married with 2 children, boy -5, girl -2. I also have a lifelong love of books and reading.

All of these things seem to have led me to discovering Chesterton. I grew up in a Catholic home, and was fairly well versed in apologetics, but for the most part, I swallowed the worldview that my college education (indoctrination) promoted. Looking back, I see it as an issue of pressure and authority. The worldview promoted on campus, essentially leftist, is presented as the only view which could possibly be held by educated, enlightened people. It was during my deployment to Bosnia that I really could no longer justify my professor's teachings with what I saw with my own two eyes. Their expanations and aphorisms proved only to be ridiculous when faced with a real world situation of this magnitude. This led me to deeply questioning EVERYTHING, and essentially starting over intellectually, discovering Plato and the classical philosophers, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and the scholastics. I discovered modern thinkers whom I had never encountered before; Dietrich von Hildebrant, Josef Pieper, Jacques Maritan and......G. K. Chesterton. I extend that sense of humility, awe, and gratitude which I mentioned before regarding my unit members to these great thinkers. I am truly both baffled and angered when I think that all of these great thinkers must be sought out. The educational process in both secular and religious institutions has expunged all of these names.

Chesterton's thoughts were the keys to many locks which I had been looking for through many years without knowing it. I often had the feeling in certain situations that something didnt sound quite right, that there was something lacking in an idea, whether in politics, art, or religion. Chesteron's lively insight, and wonderous freshness put words to that funny feeling for me.

I hope you appreciate my thoughts here. I will try to find interesting and original things to share.

Over at Ignatius Insight

The Life and Theme of G.K. Chesterton Randall Paine An Introduction to "The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton"

Friends Needed

Chesterton and Friends is a collaborative blog among Eric Scheske, Nick Milne, and Joe Tremblay. Unfortunately, we lost Smokin' Joe, leaving Eric and Nick to carry the weight. Problem is, Chesterton is heavy. We've been plugging away for the past six weeks by ourselves, but we could use another blogger or two. If you're interested, let us know (email link on right). It's not a heavy-duty arrangement. You can post pretty much anything you want, within reason, whenever you want. We'd typically ask you to be accountable for one day during the week. If you post on other days as well, that's great.

Let us know. GKC blogs come and go quickly. This one has been chugging away for a year now. That's 45 in blog years.

Note: If anyone knows how I can get in touch with Kyro Lantsberger, please let me know. I had his email at one point, but I appear to have lost it.

Lewis Friends

When I started this blog, I couldn't find any blogs dedicated to GKC Friends. There were GKC blogs, but none (that I could find) dedicated to friends, disciples, famous pupils, etc.

Well, it appears that C.S. Lewis blogs are popping up. It's not surprising, of course, given the success of the Narnia movie. I found an intriguing one last night: The Window in the Garden. Like most of the 40 million blogs in blogdom, it might be defunct (if a blog hasn't been updated in over a month, I consider it a defunct candidate; more than three months, I declare it dead). But it consists of a lot of original C.S. Lewis script, which the blogger either keyed or scanned in. There are also some pretty good pictures, like the one above from Voyage of the Dawn Treader. You might want to check it out.

GKC Sighting

The folks at the Albuquerque Journal invoked the big man's name last week:

"Zacharias Moussaoui -- the so-called 20th hijacker from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States -- eludes the death penalty for his part in the deadliest mass murder in American history.

"Hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets demanding rights that don't exist, or at the very least don't apply. (For a brilliant, witty but almost despairing take on the "immigration madness, " read Tony Blankley's op-ed piece in Wednesday's Washington Times.)

"What's the common denominator? A disconnect between the law and common sense.

English essayist/novelist/poet G.K. Chesterton wrote nearly 100 years ago, "We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table."

"Well, we are well along that road -- and to apply to the law what poet Robert Frost said about free verse, for quite some time we've been playing tennis without a net."

Aside: GKC would've also liked Frost's analogy.

GKC and Orson

In 1981, according to a local Australian Radio Guide, a radio adaptation of The Man Who Was Thursday was broadcast on April 18, 7:30 P.M., on ABC Radio 2's "World Theatre." Chesterton's novel was dramatized by Tony Evans and featured Edgar Metcalfe as Gabriel Syme and Ray Long as President Sunday. [The Chesterton Review, November, 1981, pp. 360-61.] As some Chesterton fans may recall, an earlier radio dramatization of The Man Who Was Thursday was broadcast on Orson Welles' Mercury Theater, September 5, 1938 (just a few weeks before Welles' famous radio recreation of The War of the Worlds). Frank Brady's 1989 biography, Citizen Welles, offers some interesting sidelights on this broadcast. Chesterton's novel was the last production of the Mercury Radio Theatre's inaugural season. Brady credits Welles' "splendid adaptation" of Thursday ("one of the finest shows of the season") with the last minute decision by CBS to renew the Mercury Theatre series. Furthermore, according to Brady, "Welles had great affinity for the works of Chesterton and decided to write the adaptation himself, allowing no assistance." [New York, p. 144]

Reuters echoes Chestertonian conceit

A recent story from that venerable news agency fauns over scientism's latest triumph: conclusively proving that kicking the ball towards the top corner of the net on a penalty kick in Soccer (or Football, for you ancient traditionalists) is the best way to score.

[Quantum Physicist Ken] Bray has analyzed memorable games over the past 50 years and applied research in physics, biology, computing and psychology to the beautiful game.

Using biomechanics to calculate the absolute reach of a goalkeeper diving to try to save a penalty, Bray has identified an area near the posts and in the top corners where the goalkeeper cannot reach as the "unsaveable zone."

"If a player were to place the ball in those regions, which are 28-30 percent of the goal area, there is not a sniff that the goalkeeper can do to get across to them," explained Bray, from the University of Bath in England.

He advised goalkeepers to move before the kick is taken because if they wait, the ball will be halfway to the goal before they can react.

He said that where the striker places and points his standing foot is a good clue to where the ball will go.

"It's been shown that in about 85 percent of cases the direction in which that foot points is the direction of the shot," he told a news conference in London.

Which is all very well and good, of course. Marvelous time to be alive, etc.

We are reminded, however, of a truly inspiring selection from Chesterton's "On the Pursuit of Success" (from All Things Considered), which I shall reproduce here:

It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books) there are only two ways (in any special sense) of succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating. Both are much too simple to require any literary explanation. If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so. If you want to succeed at whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with marked cards. You may want a book about jumping; you may want a book about whist; you may want a book about cheating at whist. But you cannot want a book about Success. Especially you cannot want a book about Success such as those which you can now find scattered by the hundred about the book-market. You may want to jump or to play cards; but you do not want to read wandering statements to the effect that jumping is jumping, or that games are won by winners.

If these writers, for instance, said anything about success in jumping it would be something like this: "The jumper must have a clear aim before him. He must desire definitely to jump higher than the other men who are in for the same competition. He must let no feeble feelings of mercy (sneaked from the sickening Little Englanders and Pro-Boers) prevent him from trying to do his best. He must remember that a competition in jumping is distinctly competitive, and that, as Darwin has gloriously demonstrated, THE WEAKEST GO TO THE WALL." That is the kind of thing the book would say, and very useful it would be, no doubt, if read out in a low and tense voice to a young man just about to take the high jump.

Or suppose that in the course of his intellectual rambles the philosopher of Success dropped upon our other case, that of playing cards, his bracing advice would run—"In playing cards it is very necessary to avoid the mistake (commonly made by maudlin humanitarians and Free Traders) of permitting your opponent to win the game. You must have grit and snap and go in to win. The days of idealism and superstition are over. We live in a time of science and hard common sense, and it has now been definitely proved that in any game where two are playing IF ONE DOES NOT WIN THE OTHER WILL." It is all very stirring, of course; but I confess that if I were playing cards I would rather have some decent little book which told me the rules of the game. Beyond the rules of the game it is all a question either of talent or dishonesty; and I will undertake to provide either one or the other—which, it is not for me to say.

Belloc Prophecies

Part 2.

Belloc Prophecies

The Belloc Prophecies, by Rod Bennett.

Chesterton predicts the Internet

A brief excerpt from his short story, "A Real Discovery:"

[The story is set in] the period in which the new application of physics and electricity had reached their widest and wildest triumphs. Invisible wires linked together the remotest continents and islands: a tangled and tingling net of vibration and sound. [...] Every house, it need hardly be said, was fitted up with receptacles for the new signalling; and woven about with a viewless veil of voices from all the ends of the earth. American interviewers were saved the trouble of crossing the Atlantic; their flying ghosts or spirits could besiege the house and make the householder happy with their ceaseless and artless queries about all the details of the household. The less reputable member of the Smith family, who had been paid a considerable sum of money on the condition of his becoming an empire-builder in the more remote parts of Canada, was enabled to revisit his home at all hours of the day; and his flowing and continuous demands for more money filled the house with the sense of something uninterrupted and familiar. The rich uncle, who was so much respected by reason of his living in Australia, was enabled to lend his somewhat loud and hearty voice to the most intimate conversation of the tea-table, as if the intervening seas and continents had been swallowed up in his large and roaring mouth, as in the mouth of Gargantua. In short, the family enjoyed all the latest comforts and conveniences that science could provide.

The story is based along the familiar Chestertonian lines of men going halfway around the world to avoid simply speaking to their neighbour, and is broadly concerned with a man who has managed to invent a means of manufacturing empty space. It is not one of his most compelling stories.

CMQ: A GKC Friend Today

I’ve started reading a new publication, and I’m recommending it to readers: Catholic Men’s Quarterly. I received sample issues in the mail two weeks ago, and I was impressed. Drink, humor, history, travel, theology. Each issue is 44 pages, and subscriptions are only $20 a year.

Readers will find a lot of Chesterton, Belloc, and other writers in that vein. The current issue, for instance, contains a piece about the "new Distributism." There is also a new column that drips with wine-loving Catholicism of GKC and his friends: Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," which contains this lesser-known anecdote:

The "love of such as Chesterton and Belloc of both smoking and drinking are very well known; it was even said by their contemporaries that the Chesterbelloc had misheard the Creed, and thought it demanded belief in 'One, Holy, Catholic, and Alcoholic Church.'"

A glimpse into the far future, courtesy of the distant past

Continuing with our coverage of oddities from back issues of G.K's Weekly, Chesterton's wonderful magazine, we come upon a column which is much like the one posted most recently, except that it is from a hundred years in the future, rather than the past. Behold:

FROM G.K.'S WEEKLY A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE

March 28, 2025.--
. . . Professor Chew is already famous among the Higher Critics for his reconstruction of the history of St. Joan or Joanna, to whom he has assigned a date much later than that of orthodox tradition; such documents as have survived the Great Change indicating that canonisation following on her rehabilitation can definitely be fixed in the twentieth century. Moreover it is clear that the most enlightened classes knew nothing of her until her cause was championed by Bernhardi Shaw, the famous German propagandist. Her surname seems to have been Southcott, though she was sometimes called "of the Ark" in reference to the sacred box that contained her scriptures. The Church is much criticised for still stubbornly refusing to accept these results of research; especially since Professor Chew's final discovery about the oil-fields of Chapagne. He points out that the affair obviously happened under the dynasty of the Oil Kings, which preceded our present royal house of Rubber Kings; since there is definite reference to Joanna making a king at Rheims through the power of oil.

His new work is concerned with the old thesis that our present system is much older than is commonly supposed; and that the alleged period of anarchy, in which economic and sexual activities were left to the caprice of individuals, was altogether legendary. He points out that there is no official record of the alleged "love-making" and personal proposals of marriage in any of the State papers or government reports; and that these individual adventures are only recorded in the "novels" or narratives of the period, which are full of improbable events. "To ask us to believe," he concludes, "that a man felt a personal attraction to a woman at the same time as the woman to the man, and that this occurred continually throughout society, is to ask us to believe that society was founded on a coincidence." He points out, moreover, that as men are not equal in attractive power, any more than in money making, all the attractive men would have had enormous harems and all the unattractive have remained celibate. In this there is probably some exaggeration: the professor hardly allows for a readiness for such reciprocation in normal psychology. We suspect that in the Victorian time polygamy in a legalised sense was the exception rather than the rule . . .

Although some of the specifics are off, the general sentiment is horrifically accurate.

An even deeper glimpse into the past

Well, it doesn't look like Eric is around today, so I guess I may as well throw up another gem from the hallowed pages of G.K.'s Weekly. What follows appeared in the very first issue, from the week ending Saturday, March 21, 1925.

FROM G.K.'s WEEKLY A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

[So many papers have printed with legitimate pride an extract from their issue of the previous century that we cannot consent to begin publication without equipping ourselves with so normal a feature of journalism; and our first issue seems the most appropriate moment for this slightly sentimental retrospect. After all, everybody seems to have a centenary these days without any particular difficulty. We are all centenarians now.]

March 21, 1825. -- Nearly ten years have passed since that glorious afternoon in summer, when Wellington and Blucher met and cemented an eternal peace between Prussia and England. Hopes of such a permanent peace, held out by the Holy Alliance, have not been contradicted by any great convulsion; and it seems probable that the conflict that ended at Waterloo may prove to be, in the witty phrase of an aged Russian diplomatist at the Council of Vienna, "the war that will end war." The anxious considerations that now weigh down a patriotic heart relate to the conditions of the country itself, so often forgotten in the glow of patriotism. That ingenious person, Mr. Bentham, delights to demonstrate that men only pursue their own interest in supporting an ordered society; in which case there would seem to be something highly and dangerously disinterested about the conduct of the landlords who set man-traps and tenants who burn hay-ricks. We have never joined in the universal invective against Mr. Cobbett, many of whose strictures seem to us to reflect credit in his head as well as in his heart; but we cannot but think him guilty of an exaggeration sometimes degenerating into enthusiasm (like that of the Methodists whom he loves to castigate) when he attributes so much of the evil to the prevalence of paper money. We allow for his rhetorical figures and highly coloured style; but there are conceits that appear incredible even when treated as tropes; and sometimes, in reading Mr. Cobbett, one would really imagine that a hundred years hence such a thing as a gold piece would never be seen in England; and that anyone dealing in some modest sum like ten shillings would solemnly present his neighbour with a piece of paper! The best students of political economy assure us that free competition, unhampered by any State interference, will soon find for every man the work for which he is most suited. But even the assurance of the whole population, in the year 1925, being in regular employment under merchants whose businesses will show a continually increasing security and prosperity, does not altogether reconcile us to the disappearance of the English yeoman and the systematic destruction of commons and rights of way. We are sorry to have nothing to oppose to predictions so solid and authoritative, except these sentimental regrets and these formless forebodings.

Oh, Gilbert. You do so love to have us on.

An ancient treat, and hopefully the first of many

So, the library here has back issues of G.K.'s Weekly. Awesome.

Those issues have advertisements.

Like this one:

You can click to enlarge it, of course, but I'll transcribe the relevant text for you here:

HILAIRE BELLOC on his Fountain Pen: I am writing with a Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen. The nib is of pure gold, as was the throne of Charlemagne, in the "Song of Roland." . . . Well, then, the pen is of pure gold, a pen that runs straight away like a willing horse, or a jolly little ship; indeed, it is a pen so excellent that it reminds me of my subject - the pleasure of taking up one's pen.

I am geeking out here.

There are so many more things I should like to put up, but I'm going to save them for later. Keep coming back, obviously, for more.

Future Friend?

A budding teenage writer cites ten examples she wants to follow in her writing. It's quite ambitious, especially number 2:

"1) For plots, I want to write stories that sound like something out of a Bob Dylan ballad circa Blood on the Tracks. Old-timey feeling, semi-tragic, and driven towards some inevitable, unknowable wisdom. I want them to have a sanctity in the highest moment and a despair in the lowest, with a bit of both and an extra taste of notalgia in the end.

"2) For theory and sunsets, I'd like G. K. Chesterton, rollicking haphazard paradoxes and ravenous orthodoxy, crimson slashed through with vermillion and drenched in liquid gold."

Hollywood Friend

Saw this at Open Book:

Legendary Pictures is developing a live-action film version of Paradise Lost, John Milton’s epic poem, with Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) attached to direct, Variety reported. Vincent Newman (A Man Apart) will produce along with Legendary.

I mention it because the current issue of Gilbert Magazine has an interview with Derrickson. He’s a huge Chesterton fan, and he says many flattering things about the big guy. I don’t have the magazine in front of me right now, but he says GKC has the most astute mind of the 20th century.

Derrickson, though, also mentions that he doesn’t agree with Chesterton’s politics or religion. It’s gotta be tough to think someone is one of the greatest thinkers of all time, but then reject that thinker’s conclusions in two huge areas. But no matter. It’s good to see a Hollywood-type in the GKC camp.

Post Below

I posted a picture this morning, but the date stamp said it went up last night, with the result that it's a little bit buried. Go to the second post below to see it. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm sure there's a way to fix this dating problem, but if I knew how, I wouldn't be walking in the shoes of GKC, a man who couldn't have figured out date-stamp configurations if his wine depended on it.

Something brief, because I've been away for a bit

Thanks to Eric for his little cover today.

I don't have much to say, unfortunately, being as I am in the very endgame of the school year and mired in weird extra-curriculars like finding out about every edition of Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer that has ever been published and writing an opera about the assault on Dieppe in 1942. It's a heck of a time to be alive. The sandwiches are enormous.

So anyhow, I was browsing the ACS site's bibliography today, searching out information about the unfortunate (or so some critics were saying) Resurrection of Rome, and stumbled across a brief passage offered up as a sample of GK's work in As I Was Saying. I couldn't tell you what essay it's from, or what the essay was about, but I can tell you that a clearer summing-up of the dangers of things like The Da Vinci Code I have not seen:

"It is especially the educational film that threatens to darken and weaken the human intelligence. . . A false film might be refuted in a hundred books, without much affecting the million dupes who had never read the books but only seen the film." (Emphasis mine)

Golly.

The modern perception of scholarship is like that of a horse that is blind, but wears blinkers anyway. For the average member of the chattering classes, for a claim to gain currency it is merely enough that the claim be made in the first place. Some chump in tweed suggests that Jesus married the Magdelene, and that's the end of it. He did, obviously, and nobody has ever said otherwise. You can author books and articles about why this is lame until you're blue in the wrist, but you may as well be writing sestinas about economic policy for all the attention you'll get.

Of course, this isn't always true. Sometimes critical responses receive notice from the public. And why shouldn't they? The public is too smart to be taken in by these fruitless attempts by panicking powermongers to retain their hold on a crumbling orthodoxy, and it does them no harm to laugh such attempts to scorn. They know what's really going on. They have the secret knowledge. They've bucked the mainstream, torn the woolen scales from their eyes, and are now their own men, dammit, and nobody can say otherwise.

That is the state of pop history. Orthodoxy is a conspiracy, and anyone who says otherwise is biased, and trying to Cover Up The Truth. So tiring. So very, very tiring.

I respect G.K. more and more as I grow in myself and come into contact with those who disagree with me, often violently. The amount of effort it takes to deal with them is considerable, and these are only unformed students at an undergraduate level. Gilbert had to deal with the noted voices of his age. Somehow, however, deal with them he did, and managed even to take the likes of H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw as good friends.

This is the sort of lesson that I need to learn. A lot of us do.

GKC in my Basement Study

An assortment of GK biographies and a few other neat GKC books, chosen mostly at random from my GKC collection. The wine bottles are there for the effect. I haven't drank them yet, but plan to shortly.

Not the greatest shot, I know, but I'm still working on this digital camera thing. The black blob, by the way, is Coren's biography of the great man.

The two books standing upright are somewhat valuable editions of The Poet and the Lunatic and The Coloured Lands.

(I posted this, incidentally, on 4/25/2006, but I can't get the doggone date stamp to change.)

Friend on Friend

Fr. James Schall deserves to be included in a list of "GKC" friends. In this recent essay about Spain, he invokes another friend, Hilaire Belloc, to make his point. Enjoyable read.

St. George's Day

I guess St. George's Day is making a comeback. I provided some coverage, along with a GKC poem, over at the Eudemon.

GKC: Holy Humor

GK is Everywhere (to steal a phrase from Gilbert Magazine):

"Everyone who attended church on Holy Humor Sunday at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in Norwood, N.J., was given a button with a quote from G.K. Chesterton: "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." The cover of the church bulletin featured a print of "The Risen Christ by the Sea," a painting of a joyful, smiling, risen Jesus surprising his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias."

Link.

White Horse Friend

It's not often you see the White Horse in the blogosphere, so I thought this post deserved a mention:

"I was reminded, unexpectedly, of Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse last night, and in order to convince all of you that that man could write, I will give you a sample of that work, which I believe to be among the greatest rallying speeches in English literature, right up there with the St. Crispin's Day soliloquy."

Throwing the Union a Bone

Viagra, Cialis and other erectile dysfunction drugs are costing General Motors Corp. a hefty sum. The company spends $17-million (U.S.) annually on such drugs, said GM spokeswoman Sharon Baldwin.

I wonder if Belloc would get a chuckle out of this: the corporate father providing penises to their workers. Chesterton wrote of Hudge and Grudge (big business and big government), but this kind of absurdity is more of a case of Hudge and Gudge and Won’t Budge: big business, big government, and big union.

Belloc Makes NYT

It's not every day that Hilaire Belloc makes it into a New York Times headline, but he did it this morning:

The Future of Journalism as Told by Hilaire Belloc in 1918.

Excerpt:

"The Free Press" is still worth reading, for it describes, with some important adjustments, the evolving relationship between political bloggers and the mainstream media.

The free press that Belloc describes was a horde of small, highly opinionated, sometimes propagandistic papers that arose in reaction to "the official Press of Capitalism." What characterized the free press, Belloc wrote, was "disparate particularism."

As he says, "the Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections, for it is disparate and it is particularist." (For "particularism," Belloc offers the synonym "crankiness.") To get at the truth by reading the organs of the free press, you have to "add it all up and cancel out one exaggerated statement against another." But his point is that you can get at the truth.

There are whole paragraphs in Belloc's essay where, if you substitute "blogs" for "the Free Press," you will be struck by the parallels. He notes that the journals of the free press seldom pay their way and that they often suffer from the impediment of "imperfect information," simply because it is not in the politicians' interests to speak to them. They tend to preach to the converted. And they are limited by the founder's vision. "It is difficult," Belloc writes, "to see how any of the papers I have named would long survive a loss of their present editorship."

Belloc's point is not to expose the limitations of bloggers — excuse me, the Free Press. It is to show how, imperfect as they are, they can contribute enormously to our ability to learn what's going on. Anyone who spends much time reading political blogs will hear a familiar note — in far greater prose — among Belloc's certainties. He writes, in short, as a blogger of his own time.

Renaissance Man

Chesterton's contemporary, the English poet Alfred Noyes, reminisced in his autobiography about his 1902 weekends at R.C. Lehmann's home. There he remembered meeting G.K. Chesterton, who was standing in the library quoting William Morris. Later, at lunch, Chesterton "suddenly produced from his pocket and arranged on the table before him a number of little brass figures, Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Micawber, Sam Weller, and other characters from Dickens, giving one an almost uncanny sense that Gulliver held them alive in his hands." [Two Worlds for Memory, New York: Lippincott, 1953, pp. 27-28]

Thing about GKC is, he seemed to have a talent for a lot of "little" things: conversation, drawing, tomfoolery, playing with children, whatever. He's kind of the anti-Da Vinci. Whereas Da Vinci was a proud man who excelled in many major arts to support his lavish lifestyle, GKC was a humble man who excelled in many minor ones. I suspect he could've excelled in major ones, if he cared to try, but instead, he just worked at his writing so he could support his wife and simple lifestyle.

Chesterton Conference

It's that time of year again!

The 25th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference is gearing up for its June 15th start date. The three-day event will play host to lectures, seminars, feasting and and the making of extravagant toasts, and is this year centered around Charles Dickens, coming as it does during the 100th anniversary of the publication of Chesterton's Charles Dickens.

The Conference runs from June 15th to June 17th at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.,, and attendance is free! Of course, you will have to register and pay for your lodging and food, unless you feel like making your own plans about that. But who would want to miss a grand banquet with other Chestertonians?

Of note on the agenda this year are the following...

• "Chesterton and Marshall McLuhan," with John Peterson, founder of Gilbert Magazine
• "Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin: The Two Who Never Met," with Stanley Jaki, acclaimed author
• "Chesterton and C.S. Lewis," with Joseph Pearce, a most excellent gentleman and biographer of Chesterton, Belloc and Tolkien
  
• "Chesterton and The Da Vinci Code," with Carl Olson, famed editor of IgnatiusInsight, the online magazine of the Ignatius Press
• As a special treat, there is to be a performance of Chesterton's play, The Surprise

All in all, it looks very promising.

Further information (all relevant information, in fact) can be found here. Be sure to get moving on this soon, for June cometh right quick.

Easter, 1916

Chesterton mentioned his interest in W.B. Yeats at several points in his Autobiography, and there exists a photograph of the two together with some other writers at someone's country house (though I'm afraid I can't find this picture).

What follows is Yeats' "Easter, 1916," a dreadfully beautiful poem that is awash in varied meaning. See what you can get out of it:

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

It gets me every time, particularly the refrain ("A terrible beauty is born"). I have a little poster that says that tacked up above my door. Simply wonderful.

Have a most excellent Triduum!

GKC Friend at The New Yorker

Caitlin Flanagan writes for The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. She also writes as if she's read a lot of Chesterton on the issue of working mothers. But then again, she's probably just writing common sense, which is a Chestertonian way of writing. From a post at The Daily Eudemon today:

Fine stylist Caitlin Flanagan has waded further into the feminist wars with a book on working mothers. The LA Times has a pretty a good piece about it. Excerpt:

"These are the women who seem to be a natural audience for the 44-year old Flanagan, who lives in Hancock Park with her husband and two young sons. She socializes in liberal circles, and she writes about working mothers’ struggles: to keep households humming, to cope with ego-gratifying yet demanding careers, and to live with the nagging specter of the Perfect Mother. But because Flanagan writes cloaked as a (mostly) happy housewife, she’s raised the ire of her peers. In their view, the only thing more maddening than a happy housewife is a happy housewife who writes for the New Yorker."

I appreciate the LA Times’ honesty in this piece. It admits: liberal feminists hate Caitlin because she thinks mothers should stay home. They don’t just hate the idea. They hate her because of her opinion.

Why the hatred? I loathe pop psychology, but could the hatred come from guilt? Caitlin doesn’t pull many punches, and the overall gist of her message is so simple it cuts: you can’t have it all. Based on the LA Times piece, all she is saying is, “Something is lost. You can’t do it all. You can’t have it all.” That shouldn’t be incendiary. It should just be common sense. The full-time (not just eight hours a day) job of motherhood can’t be fully accomplished part-time.

Many sane working mothers acknowledge it and have chosen the trade off. That’s their choice. It’s only the ideologues that fly into rages when confronted with the common-sense notion that a person can’t work 36+ hours a day.

Aside: The best passage from the story:
A profile in this month’s Elle is a case in point of the impasse between Flanagan and her critics. In writer Laurie Abraham’s telling of their interview, Abraham arrived at Flanagan’s house flustered; back home, her daughter’s pet gerbil had just died. Flanagan at first sympathized. Then after their chat turned heated over the question of what’s lost when a mother works, she reminded Abraham: “The gerbil’s dead and you’re here.” “You could hear me gasp on the tape,” Abraham said in an interview.

GKC and Wells

Michael Coren relates a priceless anecdote about Chesterton in his biography of H. G. Wells:

"Wells was disarmed by Chesterton's good nature, disturbed by his inability to pigeon-hole the man. On a summers day in 1907, for example, Wells and Chesterton went to Oxford to attend a lecture. Walking together after the address Wells began to harangue his friend about the "bloody hand of Christianity." The diatribe lasted for over 35 minutes, without Chesterton making the slightest objection. At the end of it he turned to Wells, smiled and said, 'Yes, you do have a point.'"

Coren's book is rewarding both for the real low-down on Wells and for the insertion of Chesterton from time to time in the story. [The Invisible Man, New York: Athenaeum, 1993, p. 80]

I'm Back

Thanks, Nick, for holding down the Chestertonian fort while I was gone. I'm back from my southern swing: Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. I didn't glean a lot of Chestertonian insight, but I did gain GKC-like pounds around the stomach.

GKC and Blair

This blogger mentions Tony Blair and GKC in the same post. Both are famous Catholic converts. Or at least Blair appears to be heading that way.

"Anyways, Mr. Blair would join a long list of British luminaries to convert to Catholicism which includes G.K. Chesterton, Sir Alec Guinness, Graham Leonard (former Anglican Bishop of London), John Henry Newman, and J.R.R. Tolkein just to name a few."

Grasping at straws, here

Content!

What follows is one of my favourite installments from one of my favourite comic strips. The comic is the Perry Bible Fellowship, and the installment is called "Suicide Train." Observe:

Now why, you may ask, am I posting this here?

I'm posting it for a couple of reasons, though the one I'm most ready to give is that it is, in a way, a Chestertonian story. The gloomy pessimist resolves to go out in one final act of disdain for a world too mundane to be worthy of his notice, only to be shocked by the mystery and magic that really does lurk behind every corner. His frustration is apt, too, for so bitter is he that he does not want to be proven wrong. He is characterised by spite rather than hope. He loudly demands, "where's all this wonder, then?" but not because he actually wants someone to show it to him, or even thinks anybody could.

So, there's that.

On a more basic level, however, I'm posting it because it's good for a laugh and I'm running low on ideas. I don't have Eric's mysterious web of connections that allows him to glean Chestertonian trivia from every inch of the world, and I certainly don't whatever it is that Joe has that enables him to do stuff so regular. I'm only one man.

Welcome to my Friday.

Milton, GKC and Cheese

In 1912 Robert Frost rented a five-room house in Beaconsfield, noting its location "within a mile or two of where Milton finished Paradise Lost and a mile or two of where Grey lies buried and within as many rods as furlongs of the house where Chesterton tries truth to see if it won't prove as true upside down, as it does right side up." [Lawrence Thompson, Robert Frost, New York, 1966, p. 394]

One of the excellent things about England's smallness is that you're always somewhere no matter where you are. Chesterton describes in his Autobiography, for example, how he once lived next door to Henry James.

But our connection for today is Milton, and we can have a little poem from The Coloured Lands for old times' sake. It's illustrated (minutely), but I do not have access to a scanner at the moment. I shall try to put it up later. Perhaps tomorrow, if Joe and Eric are still away.

Anyhow:

Stilton and Milton
or Literature in the 17th and 20th Centuries
By G.K. Chesterton

Pardon, dear Lady, if this Christmas time,
The Convalescent Bard in halting rhyme
Thanks you for that great thought that still entwines
The Wicked Grocer with more wicked lines;
These straggling Crayon lines -- who cares for these,
Who knows the difference between Chalk and Cheese?

Not wholly sound the saw, accounted sure,
That weak things perish and strong things endure:
Milton, six volumes on my groaning shelves,
May groan till Judgement Day and please themselves
As, harsh with leaden type and leathery pride,
Puritan Bards must groan on Christmas tide:

My table groans with Stilton -- for a while:
Paradise Found not Lost, in Milton's style
Green as his Eden; as his Michael strong:
But O, my friend, it will not groan there long.

Chesterton, Father Brown, and Film

The first Father Brown motion picture, a 67 minute feature starring Walter Connolly as the priest, Paul Lukas as Flambeau, and Robert Loraine as Valentin, was released by Paramount in 1935 with the title Father Brown, Detective. Chesterton saw the film himself and said he liked it.

Several inadvertent flaws in the film's presentation of clergymen suggested to Chesterton the basic idea for a new Father Brown story, "The Vampire of the Village."

[The Motion Picture Guide: 1927-1983, vol. E-G, Chicago: Cinebooks, 1986, 823; Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, New York 1943, 597]

And of course, as readers of Chesterton's Autobiography will know, Chesterton himself was no stranger to film. He appeared in a short feature directed by J.M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame), and co-starring George Bernard Shaw:

I was destined to see some of [George Bernard Shaw's] skylarking on one occasion at least; and to be privileged to play the fool with him far from the political platform, if not so very far from the theatrical stage. It began by Bernard Shaw coming down to my house in Beaconsfield, in the heartiest spirits and proposing that we should appear together, disguised as Cowboys, in a film of some sort projected by Sir James Barrie. I will not describe the purpose or character of the performance; because nobody ever discovered it; presumably with the exception of Sir James Barrie. But throughout the proceedings, even Barrie had rather the appearance of concealing his secret from himself. All I could gather was that two other well-known persons, Lord Howard de Walden and Mr. William Archer, the grave Scottish critic and translator of Ibsen, had also consented to be Cowboys. "Well," I said, after a somewhat blank pause of reflection, "God forbid that anyone should say I did not see a joke, if William Archer could see it." Then after a pause I asked, "But what is the joke?" Shaw replied with hilarious vagueness that nobody knew what the joke was. That was the joke.

I found that the mysterious proceeding practically divided itself into two parts. Both were pleasantly conspiratorial in the manner of Mr. Oppenheim or Mr. Edgar Wallace. One consisted of an appointment in a sort of abandoned brickfield somewhere in the wilds of Essex; in which spot, it was alleged, our cowpunching costumes were already concealed. The other consisted of an invitation to supper at the Savoy, to "talk things over" with Barrie and Granville Barker. I kept both these melodramatic assignations; and though neither of them threw any light upon what we were supposed to be doing, they were both very amusing in their way and rather different from what might have been expected. We went down to the waste land in Essex and found our Wild West equipment. But considerable indignation was felt against William Archer; who, with true Scottish foresight, arrived there first and put on the best pair of trousers. They were indeed a magnificent pair of fur trousers; while the other three riders of the prairie had to be content with canvas trousers. A running commentary upon this piece of individualism continued throughout the afternoon; while we were being rolled in barrels, roped over faked precipices and eventually turned loose in a field to lasso wild ponies, which were so tame that they ran after us instead of our running after them, and nosed in our pockets for pieces of sugar. Whatever may be the strain on credulity, it is also a fact that we all got onto the same motor-bicycle; the wheels of which were spun round under us to produce the illusion of hurtling like a thunderbolt down the mountain-pass. When the rest finally vanished over the cliffs clinging to the rope, they left me behind as a necessary weight to secure it; and Granville Barker kept on calling out to me to Register Self-Sacrifice and Register Resignation, which I did with such wild and sweeping gestures as occurred to me; not, I am proud to say, without general applause. And all this time Barrie, with his little figure behind his large pipe, was standing about in an impenetrable manner; and nothing could extract from him the faintest indication of why we were being put through these ordeals. Never had the silencing effects of the Arcadia Mixture appeared to me more powerful or more unscrupulous. It was as if the smoke that rose from that pipe was a vapour not only of magic, but of black magic.

But the other half of the mystery was, if possible, more mysterious. It was all the more mysterious because it was public, not to say crowded. I went to the Savoy supper under the impression that Barrie and Barker would explain to a small party some small part of the scheme. Instead of that I found the stage of the Savoy Theatre thronged with nearly everybody in London, as the Society papers say when they mean everybody in Society. From the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith to the yellowest and most cryptic Oriental attache, they were all there, dining at little tables and talking about everything but the matter in hand. At least they were all there except Sir James Barrie; who on this occasion made himself almost completely invisible. Towards the end of the meal. Sir Edward Elgar casually remarked to my wife, "I suppose you know you're being filmed all this time."

From what I know of the lady, it is unlikely that she was brandishing a champagne-bottle or otherwise attracting social attention; but some of them were throwing bread about and showing marked relaxation from the cares of State. Then the Original Four, whom destiny had selected for a wild western life, were approached with private instructions, which worked out in public as follows. The stage was cleared and the company adjourned to the auditorium, where Bernard Shaw harangued them in a furious speech, with savage gesticulations denouncing Barker and Barrie and finally drawing an enormous sword. The other three of us rose at this signal, also brandishing swords, and stormed the stage, going out through the back scenery. And there We (whoever We were) disappear for ever from the record and reasonable understanding of mankind; for never from that day to this has the faintest light been thrown on the reasons of our remarkable behaviour. I have since heard in a remote and roundabout way certain vague suggestions, to the effect that there was some symbolical notion of our vanishing from real life and being captured or caught up into the film world of romance; being engaged through all the rest of the play in struggling to fight our way back to reality. Whether this was the idea I have never known for certain; I only know that I received immediately afterwards a friendly and apologetic note from Sir James Barrie, saying that the whole scheme was going to be dropped.

I do not know; but I have often wondered. And I have sometimes fancied that there was another sense, darker than my own fancy, in which the secret put in Barrie's pipe had ended in smoke. There had really been a sort of unearthly unreality in all the levity of those last hours; like something high and shrill that might crack; and it did crack. I have sometimes wondered whether it was felt that this fantasy of fashionable London would appear incongruous with something that happened some days later. For what happened then was that a certain Ultimatum went out from the Austrian Government against Serbia. I rang up Maurice Baring at a further stage of that rapidly developing business; and I can remember the tones of his voice when he said, "We've got to fight. They've all got to fight. I don't see how anybody can help it."

If the Cowboys were indeed struggling to find the road back to Reality, they found it all right.

Whether this film is the same one as Rosy Rapture, in which he and Shaw appeared, under the direction of one Percy Nash (the film having merely been written by J.M. Barrie), I could not say. However, the 1914 release date seems to make it quite likely.

New Chestertonian Blog

Sorry for the lull lately, everyone. Eric is on holiday, Joe is swamped with work, and I'm in the middle of the End Of School Year period wherein everything comes due at once and stuff has to be applied for and jobs and on and on and on. So, there's that.

Anyway, I'm happy to announce that Rod Bennett has a new blog, which he has delightfully called Tremendous Trifles! He says that he is a covert to Catholicism by way of C.S. Lewis, and then G.K. Chesterton, and plans to offer commentary on all of the varied things that would concern people likely to read this blog, or Eric's, or mine.

Mark Shea has already recommended him, and what he has up so far is quite promising. Give a look, why don't you?