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G. K. Chesteron
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G. K. Chesterton came to Beaconsfield in 1909, and he lived
here until his death on June 14 1936.
The then Parish Priest, Monsignor Smith, gave him the last
Sacraments and as he lay dying in Top Meadow, Grove Road.
Fr Vincent McNabb, O.P., kissed the pen with which he had
written so many noble words and sang the Salve Regina, as
is the custom in the Dominican Order. Fourteen years before,
he had been received into the Catholic Church in a hall with
corrugated iron roof and wooden walls, a part of the Railway
Hotel, later known as the Earl of Beaconsfield, for there
was no Catholic Church in Beaconsfield in those days. Fr O’Connor,
the inspiration of the Father Brown stories, was there and
Father Ignatius Rice O.S.B.
The year was 1922.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born on 29 May 1874, in Campden
Hill, London. Five years later his brother Cecil was born.
"Now I shall have an audience," was his welcoming remark –
a prophecy singularly false, for they never ceased to argue
all their lives. He was educated at St Paul’s School,
London, which has sent forth so many famous men. It is worthy
of record that some of his schoolfellows said of him afterwards,
"We matched our talk. We felt that he was looking for God."
He had already begun the quest of his life.
He did not go to Oxford, where so many of his friends went,
but to Art Schools, principally the Slade School of Art. He
writes of this period of his life in his Autobiography, entitled
it, "How to be a Lunatic." Idling at his work, he fell in
with other idlers. He dabbled in spiritualism. "I hung on
to religion by one thin road of thanks." This road of thanks
to a Person for the gifts of life sent revulsion in him from
the atmosphere of evil. He loved humanity and he loved things.
He loathed pessimism. He had something of St Francis of Assisi
about him and he would speak of Sister Rain. He wrote:
If the arms of a man could be a fiery circle
Embracing the whole world
I think I should be that man.
In this spirit, he gave up his studies at the Art School.
In 1899, he launched himself into journalism with a loud bang.
His success, he would tell you, was all luck.
It was not difficult to picture him in Fleet Street, using
his walking stick like a sword, a cloak around him, a large
hat – popular with all, writing an article leaning against
a street lamp-post, or in the famous inn in Fleet Street,
the Cheshire Cheese. There on its hard seats and in it’s
Dickens atmosphere, we may see him with his fellow-journalists,
no lovers of water, but lovers of life. "I would thank God
for my creation, even if I knew I was a lost soul." A saint
once said something similar.
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A rare picture of Chesterton
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In Fleet Street and from Beaconsfield he poured out his invective
against vast volumes of materialism, scepticism, crabbed,
barren, servile and without any light of liberty or hope.
Meanwhile he was seeing a vision of negation and groping and
curiosity. He was groping towards the Catholic Church. "I
saw Israel scattered on the hills as sheep that have not a
shepherd; and I saw a large number of the sheep bleating in
whatever neighbourhood it was supposed a shepherd might be
found." He began to see the "only one religion that dared
to go down to the depths of myself." His Christian outlook
was revealed from the very beginning of his writings, in his
attacks on rationalism and defence of Christian tradition
and above all Christian liberty.
Liberty is the keynote to the understanding of The Napoleon
of Notting Hill where boroughs fight one another in the
gorgeous apparel of the past for the liberty of the past.
In 1908 he wrote Orthodoxy, the story of how one man
discovered orthodoxy as the only answer to the riddle of the
Universe and in 1911, The Innocence of Fr Brown, later
very happily filmed, and also an appreciation of Charles Dickens.
Solid arguments and wit where used against divorce, and birth
prevention, and control of population. He would cry for better
distribution of property and the goods of this world as the
answer to over-population, and a better one than simply to
prevent the population. "If there are ten people all wanting
hats and there are only eight hats, it is better to try and
find two more hats, rather than to accept the simple solution
of beheading two of the gentlemen." He wrote much in defence
of the 1914-1918 War which he believed was a holy cause. The
loss of his brother, on active service, was a grief he never
quite got over.
His conversion, therefore, in 1922 made little difference
to his writings, for the Catholic trend had never been soft-pedalled.
Three superlative works appeared after his conversion - a
life of St Francis of Assisi (1923), The Everlasting Man
(1925), and a life of St Thomas Aquinas (1933). This latter
work showed his marvellous intuition into philosophy. One
of St Thomas’s greatest commentators, Etienne Gilson,
said "I consider it as being without possible comparison the
best book ever written on St Thomas. Nothing short of genius
can account for such an achievement."
Chesterton had come to Beaconsfield in 1909. Some of his
best-know books, therefore, were written from there. His coming
to the town had been the result of chance. He took a ticket
at Paddington Station for the next train that would be leaving.
It went to Slough, a strange place even for a train to go
to, he remarked. From there, accompanied by his wife, he walked
to Beaconsfield. They both decided that that was the place
where they would like to live.
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Blessing of the Church
in 1927
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He had married Frances in 1901. She must have saved his life
by her efforts to prevent him being overworked. Indeed it
was impossible altogether to prevent this, as invitations
poured in continuously asking him to lecture and he was loath
to disappoint. He was ever in the public eye. A pro-Boer in
the South African war, he later became known in every English
home with the paper, The EyeWitness, edited by Hilaire
Belloc and Cecil Chesterton, which latter became the New
Witness which G.K.C. edited after his brother joined the
Army in 1916, and then G.K.’s Weekly, and finally
after his death the Weekly Review.
Before the first World War, he had become involved in exposing
a Government scandal, known as the Marconi Case. It seemed
as if the brothers Isaac’s and others in the Government
had made great profits in the buying and selling of stocks.
His brother Cecil was sued for libel and Gilbert suffered
much. At the end of the trial, Cecil was fined £100, really
a moral victory for the paper. He was accused of being anti-Semitic,
but this was quite untrue. He stood for small property ownership,
and for cleanness in politics.
It was probably in 1900 that Chesterton first met Hilaire
Belloc, a man four years older, with Oxford and an early marriage
and above all a French and European outlook. They became close
friends and they united together with Cecil Chesterton to
fight increasing enslavement and to combat corruption in public
life. It is not surprising that Bernard Shaw soon coined the
phrase "The Chesterbelloc". Chesterton dedicated his first
novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, published in 1904,
to Hilaire Belloc. Their friendship never flagged and was
cemented and made deeper if possible when Chesterton entered
the Catholic Church.
Twice he visited America, where he was received on both occasions
with tumultuous enthusiasm. He liked them and they liked him.
He visited Ireland and he never concealed his views. "Telling
the truth about Ireland is not very pleasant to a patriotic
Englishman, but it is very patriotic." He believed in Home
Rule, though he thought Ireland should support England, because
of Prussia.
People sometimes criticise Chesterton for too great a use
of the paradox.
O Gilbert, I know there are many who like
Your talks on the darkness of light,
The shortness of length
And the weakness of strength
And the one on the lowness of height.
was written by Edward Anthony in America. Chesterton's paradoxes,
however, are to be studied and a wealth of meaning will be
discovered. His humour is not always paradoxical. "The Ballad
of the White Horse", published in 1911, is something that
all should read. During the War, the poem was acted in dramatic
fashion in the beautiful gardens of Hedsor by children of
the Holy Child Convent. In the darkest hours of the Second
World War, The Times newspaper based its leading article
on the words:
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher … "
Many months later, The Times again quoted the Ballad:
"The high ride," King Alfred cried,
"The high tide and the turn."
Chesterton led in truth a rich and full human existence and
he looked back upon it as "indefensibly happy". Yet his end
was clouded with the shadow of the Spanish War and haunted
by the thought of the war to come. He died as Pope St Pius
X died, in the dread of war to come, heartbroken by public
events. Yet "it was his lifelong beatitude to observe and
ponder and conclude." Walter de la Mare wrote of him:
Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way,
Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;
The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,
Pity and innocence his heart at rest.
G .K. Chesterton was buried in the cemetery in Shepherd’s
Lane, Beaconsfield; the Crucifix over his grave is the work
of Eric Gill. Frances, his wife, died two years after her
husband and is buried with him. There is a memorial window
to them both in the church which is of St Francis of Assisi.
His house, Top Meadow, Grove Road, is now privately owned.
His secretary, Dorothy Collins, lived close by until her death
in 1988. In many ways she was the child they never had. She
is buried with them. Because the gravestone was crumbling it
was removed and is set in the outside wall of St. Teresa's
Church, a new stone based on a similar design is now at the
cemetery.
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G. K. Chesterton's Grave
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Original gravestone by Eric Gill
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