Gilbert: The Man Who was G. K. Chesterton Read online

  The bulk of the Chesterton family archives survived, in what would seem to be good order and repair. When Gilbert’s mother died, however, he mysteriously threw out almost all of the papers and documents in his late father’s study, leaving a hiatus in Chestertonian genealogy. The modern period presents no such difficulties. Gilbert’s paternal grandfather was Arthur, who had sailed for Jamaica in 1829 on the Lune, and was to take over and run the firm of estate agents which had been started by his father, Charles, a former poulterer who had a small shop in Kensington High Street. Gilbert remembered his grandfather well

  My grandfather, my father’s father, was a fine-looking old man with white hair and beard and manners that had something of that rounded solemnity that went with the old-fashioned customs of proposing toasts and sentiments. He kept up the ancient Christian custom of singing at the dinner-table, and it did not seem incongruous when he sang “The Fine Old English Gentleman” as well as more pompous songs of the period of Waterloo and Trafalgar. [And speaking of his grandfather’s class status] For the particular sort of British bourgeoisie of which I am speaking has been so much altered or diminished, that it cannot exactly be said to exist today. Nothing quite like it at least can be found in England; nothing in the least like it, I fancy, was ever found in America. One peculiarity of this middle-class was that it really was a class and it really was in the middle. Both for good and evil, and certainly often to excess, it was separated both from the class above it and the class below. It knew far too little of the working-classes, to the grave peril of a later generation.

  Gilbert’s mother, Marie Louise Grosjean, poses more of a problem. Whereas the difficulty with Gilbert’s memories of his family is usually the staggering amount of anecdote and incident, when it comes to his mother there is scarcely any reference at all. There is no physical description of her in the Autobiography, only three petty references which depict her in relation to her husband, Gilbert’s beloved father. Gilbert noted a family legend when talking of his mother’s people “they were descended from a French private soldier of the Revolutionary Wars, who had been a prisoner in England and remained there; as some certainly did.” It would seem in fact that the family had come to Britain from the French-speaking region of Switzerland two generations earlier and were of a wealthy background. Ironically, Marie Louise’s father had been a Temperance Movement pioneer, a Wesleyan lay preacher and a man who was readily dominated by his wife. Little was inherited from this strand of the family. Her mother passed on more to Gilbert, principally a Celtic passion and flamboyance. She was of the Keith family from Aberdeen — hence Gilbert’s second name — and provided her grandson with “a certain vividness in any infusion of Scots blood or patriotism … a sort of Scottish romance in my childhood.”

  Marie Louise herself came from a very large family and inherited her mother’s tendency to dominate and organise. She was not a particularly attractive woman, often indifferent to how she appeared in dress and the least conscientious of housewives, but she was an intellectually gifted woman, erudite and powerful in conversation. Cecil Chesterton, not always a reliable witness, thought of his mother as the cleverest woman in London. Her mental strength was all the greater because of her physical weakness. She suffered from an unusual brittleness in her bones, often having to endure painful breaks which did not heal easily. She suffered, like her son, with patience and good nature. Her massive energy, penchant for serving and eating vast meals and bodily fragility were inherited by both Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton.

  Why then only the fleeting acknowledgment of his mother in Gilbert’s writings? It would be facile to read too much into this. In his book on George Bernard Shaw he wrote “A man should always be tied to his mother’s apron strings; he should always have a hold on his childhood; and be ready at intervals to start anew from a childish standpoint.” The simple fact is that in spite of what Gilbert may have said or wished he was and always would be influenced by men rather than women. His relationship with his mother would have bearing on his marriage with a woman he loved very much, but also sometimes neglected. He did not understand women particularly well, had little experience of their sexuality and motivations and treated them according to his own perceptions rather than their own sense of identity. He was a man of his age. And better his noble if archaic concepts of chivalry and childishness than the fear or downright misogyny exhibited by so many other writers of the period.

  The father of the family was Edward, one of six sons. He was put in charge of the estate agent business with his brother Sydney but was never happy as surveyor or seller. “My father might have reminded people of Mr Pickwick, except that he was always bearded and never bald; he wore spectacles and had all the Pickwickian evenness of temper and pleasure in the humours of travel,” wrote Gilbert. “I remember, to give one example of a hundred such inventions, how he gravely instructed some grave ladies in the names of flowers; dwelling especially on the rustic names given in certain localities. ‘The country people call them Sailors’ Pen-Knives,’ he would say in an off-hand manner, after affecting to provide them with the full scientific name, or, ‘They call them Bakers’ Bootlaces down in Lincolnshire, I believe;’ and it is a fine example of human simplicity to note how far he found he could safely go in such instructive discourse.”

  It was not only this evident delight in teasing which Gilbert was to rival. Edward Chesterton was a man who cared less than nought for fashion and tidiness, seemingly apathetic as to how others viewed him. He wore a pince-nez and a short, evenly cut beard. His clothes were well-worn and consistently creased, with a strong emphasis on comfort. Although he was a competent businessman, knowing when to leave matters to his brother Sydney, he was never settled or enthusiastic about the family property firm, and when ill health forced him to retire he accepted his fate with a robust resignation. Heart palpitations had bothered, pained and frightened him for some years, and he was easily susceptible to those who suggested that his heart was dangerously weak and serious work should be put aside. Early retirement left room for Edward Chesterton’s real pleasures. He would now devote time and energy to photography, model making, painting and conversation. In an early letter to E.C. Bentley, Gilbert spoke of another of his father’s great hobbies: “I went to a party at my uncle’s where my father, known in those regions as ‘Uncle Ned,’ showed a magic lantern display, most of the slides I had seen before with the exception of one beautiful series, copied and coloured by my cousin, illustrating the tragical story of Hookybeak the Raven.”

  A sense of the spiritual was not passed on, at least not directly. Gilbert would always proclaim that his life was a living example of how a nominally non-Christian family could produce Christian children. Edward was a product of that late Victorian progressive humanism which Gilbert eventually set his sword so strongly against. He was a radical, a loving man who saw a future for mankind but only a present and a past for God. It worried Gilbert greatly. Writing to Ronald Knox shortly before his father died Gilbert explained: “My father is the very best man I ever knew of that generation that never understood the new need of a spiritual authority; and lives almost perfectly by the sort of religion men had when rationalism was rational. I think he was always subconsciously prepared for the next generation having less theology than he has; and is rather puzzled at its having more.” The two men were close, friends as well as father and son. The father was an avid reader, an authority on English literature and of a gentle, open nature. He was supremely that most English of types, the amateur. Gilbert was pleased that his father had declined becoming a professional painter or craftsman. “It might,” he thought, “have spoilt his career, his private career. He could never have made a vulgar success of all the thousand things he did so successfully.”

  The delicate, sanguine, at times child-like world of Edward Chesterton received a shattering blow when his first child, a daughter named Beatrice, died at the age of eight. The family lived at Sheffield Terrace at the time, and when the poor child died her
brother Gilbert was aged only three, barely communicating in broken sentences. He did not remember her death but did recall her “falling off a rocking horse. I know from experience of bereavements only a little later, that children feel with exactitude, without a word of explanation, the emotional tone or tint of a house in mourning. But in this case, the greater catastrophe must somehow have become confused and identified with a smaller one. I always felt it as a tragic memory, as if she had been thrown by a real horse and killed.” It is a moving explanation. His father reacted in a different manner. Birdie, as the girl was known to all friends and family, was to no longer exist in memory or conversation. Death, in mid- and late-Victorian families, was so much a part of everyday life in a world where most families lost children and loved ones at an early age that its morbidity and fear, so terrifying today, was usually discussed and accepted. Not so with the Chesterton family. Edward Chesterton was transformed by the loss. The girl would not be spoken of, cried over or lamented. Her portrait was turned to the wall so it could not be seen; her name was not to be heard or spoken. The motives of the distraught father were two-fold: he loved his first child with a passion, she sharing aspects of his character and he enjoying the childish qualities which had filled the house. Her death seemed to be beyond his understanding. His heart was broken, and instead of gradually coming to terms with the pain as a natural balance and counter to the joy in his life, he let himself be drowned by his terror and sorrow. He could not cope. The second motive was not as understandable, not as noble. Edward Chesterton was a man petrified by ill health and death. The passing of his daughter was a reminder of his own mortality and a shock too great to be tolerated. The answer was to pretend it had not happened. From now on if a funeral procession passed by the house the children, sometimes the entire family, were to rush into the back room so as not to witness the dark tones of death and end. On no account would anyone actually attend a funeral. Some of this phobia was passed on to Gilbert, who was subsequently disturbed by illness and death for most of his life. His character was greater and stronger than that of his father however; he tried to overcome his weakness, and by the time of his own death he had almost done so. What a contrast there was between Gilbert’s running from the dinner-table when his brother Cecil would cough on a piece of food or choke on a morsel, and his quiet peaceful decline and death when he was accepting and in control. Gilbert inherited both faults and virtues from his parents, but his adult humanity, intellect and genius were products of his own development and will. If any person made Gilbert Keith Chesterton it was Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

  The family moved to 11 Warwick Gardens soon after the bereavement. It was here that Cecil Chesterton was born on 12th November 1879. Gilbert was five years old when his brother came into the world, and he welcomed him with “Now I shall always have an audience.” The environment into which both boys were born was stable, secure and endlessly fecund. E.C. Bentley, companion and school-mate of Gilbert’s, was to write in his memoirs “Nothing could harm us — nothing! This was the solid, well-founded conviction at the back of the British national mind in the days of my boyhood. As far as security from attack was concerned, no people had ever been in such a position … We were by far the richest people in the world. We manufactured goods for all the world … Over a quarter of the world was included in the British Empire.” Bentley was representing the attitudes of the British people of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He spoke for most of the country, he certainly spoke for Gilbert.

  If Britain and the British middle-class psyche was granite-like in its sense of stability, the Chesterton household was equally assured and reliable. The house in Warwick Gardens, nestling in a sheltered corner of Kensington, was the habitat for a consummate childhood, universally acknowledged as one of the happiest in English literature. Cecil Chesterton’s wife, Ada, sometimes hostile to Gilbert and his wife because of the attention they received in relation to Cecil and herself, wrote of the family home long after Gilbert’s childhood

  It stood out from its neighbours … [with] flowers in dark green window boxes and the sheen of paint the colour of West Country bricks, that seemed to hold the sunshine. The setting of the house never altered. The walls of the dining-room renewed their original shade of bronze-green year after year. The mantel-piece was perennially wine colour, and the tiles of the hearth [were] Edward Chesterton’s own design … Books lined as much of the wall space as was feasible and the shelves reached from floor to ceiling … The furniture was graceful … [but] there were deep chairs … On party nights wide folding doors stood open and through the vista of a warm yet delicate rose-coloured drawingroom, you saw a long and lovely garden [with] walls and tall trees … where on special occasions Edward Chesterton … would hang up fairy lamps among the flowers and trees.

  In his Autobiography Gilbert dwelt on his childhood, with love and lamentation. “What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world. What gives me this shock is almost anything. I really recall; not the things I should think most worth recalling. This is where it differs from the great thrill of the past, all that is connected with first love and the romantic passion; for that, though equally poignant, comes always to a point; and is narrow like a rapier piercing the heart, whereas the other was more like a hundred windows opened on all sides of the head.” He was conscious of what the critics, the analysts would say if they had the chance in years to come. “If some laborious reader of little books on child psychology cries out to me in glee and cunning: ‘You only like romantic things because your father showed you a toy theatre in your childhood,’ I shall reply with gentle and Christian patience: ‘Yes, fool, yes. Undoubtedly your explanation is, in that sense, the true one. But what you are saying, in your witty way, is simply that I associate these things with happiness because I was so happy.’”

  The toy theatre was a constant friend and source of amusement and delight for Gilbert. His brother, Cecil, believed in adult years that this childish fascination led Gilbert away from the hardened, political reality of journalistic life and drew him towards the ethereal. To Cecil, who always perceived the political and the treasonable even when his imagination was the only evidence, Gilbert had over-balanced in favour of the dream. Cecil, of course, never attained the literary heights which his brother so often scaled; gifted writer and thinker though he was, he lacked that generosity of mind and width of wondering which Gilbert may well have learnt first in the front stalls of his father’s miniature dramas. Gilbert remembered his first sensation of happiness when he saw a young man on a bridge

  He had a curly moustache and an attitude of confidence verging on swagger. He carried in his hand … a large key of a shining yellow metal and wore a large golden crown. The bridge he was crossing sprang on the one side from the edge of a highly perilous mountain chasm … and at the other it joined the upper part of the tower … of a castle. In the castle tower there was one window, out of which a young lady was looking.

  Castle, young man and fair lady were only a few inches tall, and made of painted board.

  At Warwick Gardens Cecil had a small den, a tiny home from home where the untidy, sometimes dirty, child kept cockroaches as pets and fed them on scraps of food, watching as the ugly creatures nibbled at bits of bread and butter. He also looked after a tom-cat which responded to the name of Faustine. Gilbert did not particularly share his brother’s partiality for animals and insects. The kitchen and servants’ lodgings were in the basement of the house and at the top were the sleeping quarters for the family. The upper floor also contained a nursery and Gilbert’s den. His room was always littered with books, which would fill up a wall of the room and then collect in piles on the floor. Gilbert took the habit of reading as he walked, or dined, into his adult life, and endearing as this was it inevitably led to the loss of books and papers. As a child he would read in the garden, underneath a tree, run in when it rained and later find all
that remained of a prized volume was a soggy mess. His books would be found in every room in the house. Paints, lumps of clay, drawings and poetic attempts would mingle delightfully with learned books and the remains of midnight feasts or hurried breakfasts in the rooms of the Chesterton brothers. Gilbert was an eclectic child, discovering jewels on his boyish travels as he adventured in the garden jungle or the basement dungeons, and taking them home to his personal castle at the top of his world.

  Gilbert was not a lonely child. He welcomed the birth of his brother with the gusto of one who wished to share, but that is nothing unusual in an only child. In fact there is a certain irony in Gilbert’s expectations that Cecil would provide him with an infant audience. It was Cecil who would become the stronger of the pair, always more determined to triumph in discussion. Cecil had strong opinions. He would become opinionated at a young age and his spirit of compromise was seldom as developed or as sensitive as that of Gilbert. They rarely argued, but they constantly debated. It was Gilbert who did most of the listening and the observing, lovingly looking on as his precocious younger brother held court. Early friends included cousins and local children, and the daughters of his mother’s close friends, Lizzie and Annie Firmin. Gilbert’s mother never hid the fact that she would have liked her elder son to marry Annie Firmin. “One of my first memories is playing in the garden under the care of a girl with ropes of golden hair,” he was to say, and “The two Firmin girls had more to do with enlivening my earlier years than most.” The band of young cowboys and Indians would fight it out to the gory end or run to a pirate king for an alliance.