Chapter XXXVIII: Appendix: C

The Chestertons

The composition of _The Chestertons_ is not without interest for the student of legendary literature. By a curious paradox the book had to be strikingly untrue to be accepted as true, since the jokes about sisters-in-law are legion, so that mere commonplace shafts of what is called "feminine spite" would have gained little credence. Yet on the other hand, Mrs. Cecil Chesterton was able (to quote _The Mikado_) to get from her husband a good deal of "corroborative detail designed to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." Of these details some are true, some false, all arranged to support the main untruth of Frances and Gilbert's relation to one another. The thesis of the book is that Gilbert was an unhappy and frustrated man (a) because Frances shrank from consummating their marriage, and (b) because she dragged him away from his London life and friends to bury him in a middle class suburb.

I confess that I am Victorian enough heartily to dislike writing this appendix. Yet it is necessary, for many who read _The Chestertons_ have supposed that a story told by so near a connection must be true.

The ground was laid for the introduction of the Legend by the tale of the Red Haired Phantom, if I may describe it in the terms of a ghost story. That ghost was easy to lay (see Introduction). Next comes the odd account of Gilbert and Frances' honeymoon and of the years that followed. It is of course possible that the first night of their marriage was not happy--especially in the Victorian days of reticence which left wife and even possibly husband unprepared for life together: (though this did not normally prevent a happy marriage and a pack of children afterwards). But I find it impossible to imagine Cecil Chesterton, like the bridesmaid on the honeymoon, receiving and passing on such a story as that of Gilbert "quivering with self-reproach" so that after the first night he "dared not even contemplate a repetition. . . . Gilbert, young and vital, was condemned to a pseudo-monastic life, in which he lived with a woman but never enjoyed one." (p. 282)

There is a psychological reason for thinking this story especially improbable and a physical reason for dismissing it as actually impossible.

A white horse had from his childhood been for Gilbert the supreme sign of romance, and he had chosen to spend the first night of his honeymoon at the White Horse Inn. From his honeymoon he wrote home that he had "a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife. What more can any man want?" Ten years later he wrote _The Ballad of the White Horse_ and dedicated it to Frances, saying,

"O go you onward, where you are Shall honour and laughter be. Past purpled forest and pearled foam, God's winged pavilion free to roam, Your face, that is a wandering home, A flying home for me."

And over thirty years later he wrote again of beginning his honeymoon under the shadow of the White Horse, and compared it to a trip to fairyland.

Can any human being read the record of this recurrent motif and reconcile it with Mrs. Cecil's picture?

Let me refer again to _The Ballad of The White Horse_. Is it conceivable that any man should write after ten years of frustration and unhappiness:

Up through an empty house of stars
Being what heart you are,
Up the inhuman steeps of space
As on a staircase go in grace
Carrying the firelight on your face
Beyond the loneliest star.

This is not the way a man writes to a neurotic cold-hearted woman who has made a hermit of him!

Mrs. Cecil was of course never in the intimacy of the family. She only married Cecil in 1917--by which date Gilbert and Frances had been married sixteen years--and before that she was merely an acquaintance. But Frances's intimates could have told her how absurd her story was, for by a rare good fortune the operation Frances underwent to enable her to bear children is itself evidence one could hardly have hoped for in a matter which civilized people are not much given to discussing. Frances talked of the operation to Monsignor O'Connor, to Dorothy Collins and to Annie Firmin, and I have quoted the doctor's letter about it (see above, [Chapter XV]). It was an abiding tragedy for both husband and wife that it was unsuccessful. Frances would have shrunk from no suffering in her passionate wish for a child.

There is another curiosity in the Legend: Gilbert, despite this story, was apparently perfectly happy in London during the _first eight years of marriage:_ it was only after the removal to Beaconsfield and in almost middle life that he began to be "frustrated."

Poor Frances: what a picture of her had been proposed for posterity: so powerful she could waft Gilbert away from London and from his friends, could force him to make her his banker and reduce him to a "bounty" strictly limited to half-a-crown, yet so powerless that "she had to sign" the cheques for _G.K.'s Weekly_, much as she hated it. Her poetry (described as "quite charming") is spoken of as appearing in "little Parish Magazines"--the only papers she cared to read owing to her implacable hatred for Fleet Street. It is hard to picture Frances with an implacable hatred for anything, and it will be remembered that she actually begged Father O'Connor to leave Gilbert to be "a jolly journalist." The periodicals in which her poems appeared were _The Observer_, _The Sunday Times_, _The Daily Chronicle,_ the _Westminster Gazette_ and _The New Witness_. Personally I have never much admired Frances's verse, but a professional journalist might have been quite pleased at "making" all these papers. Not one poem ever appeared in a Parish Magazine so far as either Dorothy or I have been able to ascertain. The point is not a very important one but the sneer is symptomatic.

A curious magic pervades _The Chestertons:_ succulent sausages appear in the kitchen at Overstrand Mansions, and flowing torrents of beer, so that Gilbert can steal away from an unsympathetic wife to consume them with his Fleet Street friends. A studio materialises in a meadow at Beaconsfield. Can we imagine Gilbert cooking or even ordering sausages, getting beer to the flat, designing or discovering the studio? Anyone thinking about what really happened would realise that Frances ordered the beer and sausages, Frances built the studio. But that is not the sort of thought we are to think about Frances.

About her we are told: that she always wore the wrong colors: that she gave Gilbert insufficient and indigestible food: that she did not know what work meant: that Mrs. Belloc thought Gilbert ought to beat her: that she kept the journalists away when Gilbert was dying (in point of fact both telephone and door bell were so near the sick room that the use of both had to be avoided): that she did not give her guests enough to eat at his funeral: that she actually sought the quiet of her own room instead of staying downstairs to receive condolences when her husband's coffin had just been lowered into the grave.

With all this spate of detail, we are not told that Frances left £1000 to Mrs. Cecil plus £500 for her Cecil Houses.

Even if I could have ignored the attack on Frances, I should be obliged as his biographer to deal with the attack on Gilbert--more subtly but no less certainly made. The story of the marriage affects Gilbert as much as Frances, and the book culminates in the final assertion that his drinking killed him. Here are the comments (sent to me by Dorothy) of the doctor who attended Gilbert and Frances from 1919 until they died:

"Today Dr. Bakewell came in and answered the questions about the book which we asked him.

"(1) He says that the idea that G.K. was better when drinking in Fleet Street because the stimulus of conversation would eat up effects of the alcohol is absolute nonsense. It would have just as bad an effect under any conditions. Dr. Bakewell said that G.K. was his patient for nearly twenty years and during that time he never treated him for alcoholism or saw any trace of it, though in an absentminded way he was always liable to drink too much of anything if it were there--even water.

"Without the 'understanding, loving, tactful care' of Frances he would have died twenty years before. Certainly if he had racketted around Fleet Street any longer.

"Dr. Bakewell said Gilbert was 'perfectly happy in Beaconsfield and not in any way frustrated. There was no frustration of any kind and no longing for London life or friends.' He was very intimate with Gilbert and would have known if there had been.

"(2) The doctor says that Gilbert died of a failing heart owing to fatty degeneration, leading to dropsy.

"(3) Frances had arthritis of the spine. (Not curvature as stated by Mrs. Cecil.)

"The doctor said that he put him on the water wagon several times and when this was done Gilbert observed the rule most meticulously. Dr. Bakewell said that he did not do it very often because he did not consider that drink was in any way affecting Gilbert's health during the greater part of the time he knew him."

In a later conversation he added that when he did forbid alcohol at certain periods it was simply to make liquid less attractive, as too much of even water was bad for Gilbert.

The statement made by Mrs. Cecil that drinking in London was not so serious because the talk and excitement among friends would carry off the effects, is thought by doctors almost comic. Dr. Bakewell denies it absolutely: Dr. Pocock who, it will be remembered, attended Gilbert during his illness of 1914-15 says, "Absolute nonsense: would probably have been worse in London." He adds also, "I cannot understand why such an attack was made upon G.K. From my personal observation he owed a very great deal to Mrs. G.K. who greatly helped his restoration to health."

One can get one's pen'orth of fun out of the chapter on the Exile of Beaconsfield when one remembers the true story of those years: Rome, Jerusalem, U.S.A., Poland, France, Spain, Malta, lectures all over England, lively contests for the Lord Rectorship of three universities, London again and again--for editing, mock trials, debates and Distributist Beanos--and frequently in furnished flats which Frances would take for the winter months. One can only suppose that Mrs. Cecil was so little intimate with them that she did not realise all this.

And then Beaconsfield itself--parties in the Studio; people down from London, visitors from Poland, France, America, Italy, Holland and other countries; the Eric Gills, the Bernard Shaws, the Garvins, the Emile Cammaerts and others living in the neighborhood; the guest room always occupied by some intimate. Meanwhile the books poured out of the little study. Mrs. Cecil thinks Gilbert hardly ever again wrote a masterpiece after leaving Battersea, yet in support of this idea she lists as masterpieces _The Ball and the Cross_ (written at Beaconsfield), _Lepanto_ (written at Beaconsfield), _Magic_ (written at Beaconsfield), _Stevenson_ (written at Beaconsfield) and _The Ballad of the White Horse_(mainly written at Beaconsfield). Of all the books she mentions in this connection only three were written in London! And she admits that the world at large did not share her view of the sterilizing effect of Beaconsfield, for she writes, "Meanwhile his fame grew wider, his sales greater. In exile he ruled a literary world."*

[* P. 83.]

Gilbert left to Mrs. Cecil Chesterton sums equal to those later left to her by Frances--£1000 for herself and £500 for Cecil Houses.

The ingratitude that omitted all mention of these benefactions struck the imagination of several of the Chesterton family as the worst feature in the book. But to Gilbert and Frances the giving of money even in their own lifetime was a slight matter. They had given something far greater.

Why is the memory of Cecil Chesterton alive today? Because of his brother's labors. Why is it possible for Mrs. Cecil to declare that he was the greater editor, to imply that he was the greater man? Because Gilbert kept saying so. Never has such devotion been shown by one brother to the memory of another: never has the greater man exalted the lesser to such a pedestal.

We are told in _The Chestertons_ that Frances sacrificed both Gilbert and herself on the altar of her family. Truly there was much self-sacrifice in the lives of both to family, friends and causes. They did not feel it as self-sacrifice to enrich the lives of others even at cost to themselves.

But the heaviest cost they paid lay in the years of a toil that was literally killing Gilbert while Frances watched him growing old too soon and straining his heart with work crushingly heavy: and if there was a single altar for that supreme sacrifice it was no other than the altar of Cecil's memory.

Acknowledgments

I am exceedingly grateful to the following publishers for permission to quote from these books:

DODD, MEAD & CO.: _The Man Who Was Thursday; Orthodoxy; The Napoleon of Notting Hill; Heretics; George Bernard Shaw; The Ball and the Cross; The Poet and the Lunatic; Alarms and Discursions; The Ballad of the White Horse; What's Wrong with the World; Manalive; Sidelights on New London and Newer York; The Uses of Diversity; The History of England; Irish Impressions; Collected Poems; The Queen of Seven Swords; The Everlasting Man; Cobbett; Outline of Sanity; Tales of the Long Bow; What I Saw in America; The Thing; The Defendant; The Barbarism of Berlin: or The Appetite of Tyranny; Eugenics and Other Evils; Collected Poems; G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism_ (by Cecil Chesterton).

DOUBLEDAY DORAN: _St. Francis of Assisi; The Years Between_.

E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.: _Criticisms and Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens_.

FARRAR & RINEHART: _Chaucer_.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY: _Robert Browning; The Catholic Church and Conversion_.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: _The Victorian Age in Literature_.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS: _Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading_.

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME: _The Arena_.

"Gehazi," by Rudyard Kipling, from _The Years Between_, copyright 1914, 1919 by Rudyard Kipling, is reprinted by permission of Mrs. Bambridge and Doubleday Doran and Co., Inc., of New York, and The Macmillan Company, of Canada, publishers.

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In this list I have given dates of earliest publication. In some cases publication in England preceded that in the United States.

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_Elsie Lang_. Literary London.
_Characteristics of R.L.S_. Little Books for Bookmen.
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George Haw, _From Workhouse to Westminster: Will Crooks_.

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W. W. Crotch, _The Cottage Homes of England_.

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1910. _Thackeray, Selection_. Masters of Literature Series.
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1911. _Johnson, Extracts_. Ed. Alice Meynell.
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1912. _Famous Paintings, Reproduced in Colour_.
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1918. Sybil Bristowe, _Provocations_.
William Dyson, _Australia at War_.
Leonard Merrick, _House of Lynch_.

1919. Cecil Chesterton, _History of the U. S. A_.
Bernard Capes, _The Skeleton Key_.

1920. M. E. Jones, _Life in Old Cambridge_.

1921. Vivienne Dayrell, _Little Wings_.
H. M. Bateman, _A Book of Drawings_.

1922. Jane Austen, _Love and Friendship_.

1923. Irene Hernaman, _Child Mediums_.
0. R. Vassall Phillips, _The Mustard Tree_.

1924. 0. F. Dudley, _Will Men Be Like Gods_.
Greville Macdonald, _George Macdonald and His Wife_.
_Catholic Who's Who_.
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1925. Fulton Sheen, _God and Intelligence_.
Alexander Arnoux, _Abishag_. Trans. Joyce Davis.

1926. A. H. Godwin, _Gilbert and Sullivan_.
Johnson, _Rasselas_.
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_The Man Who Was Thursday_, Dramatized Version.
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1928. Mary Webb, _The Golden Arrow_.

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1930. Miss C. Noran, _Book on Spanish History_.
_King Lear_. De Luxe Edition. Illustrated Yunge.
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1931. _Giotto's Frescoes at Assisi Reproduced_.
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Francis Thompson, _The Hound of Heaven_.
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1932. Gleeson, _Essays_.
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Rupert Brooke.
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1933. _Life of Sydney Smith_. Hesketh Pearson.
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_Detective Stories_. Collection from Hutchinson.

1936. F. A. MacNutt, _A Papal Chamberlain_.

1935. Letterpress to _Stations of the Cross_, by F. Brangwyn.

I doubt whether the list of introductions is complete but Dorothy Collins has done her best to make it so. Of the books and essays about Chesterton there is no end. Those I have used in writing this book are

_Father Brown on Chesterton_, Monsignor O'Connor. _G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism_, Cecil Chesterton. _The Place of Chesterton in English Literature_, Hilaire Belloc. _The Laughing Prophet_, Emile Cammaerts. _G. K. Chesterton_, Cyril Clemens.

For the chapters on Sociology I have consulted the invaluable series on the English Labourer by the Hammonds, C. S. Orpen's _Open Fields_, Trevelyan's _Social History of England_, Cobbett's _Rural Rides and Cottage Economy_ and Haas' _English Labourer_.

For the Marconi Chapter I have used the Reports of the Parliamentary Commission and of the trial of Cecil Chesterton, C. F. G. Masterman's _Life_ and that of Lord Reading, and contemporary press accounts.

Throughout I have made use of the files of _The Eyewitness, The New Witness_ and _G.K.'s Weekly_.