G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English Christian apologist writer. Chesterton's wit, paradoxical style, and defence of tradition made him a dominant figure in early 20th-century literature.

Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and wrote on apologetics, such as his works Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an orthodox Christian and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting from high church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin.

Chesterton has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, Time magazine observed: "Whenever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."

Biography

Early life

thumb|left|upright=0.8|Chesterton at age 17

Chesterton was born in Campden Hill in Kensington, London, on 29 May 1874. His father was Edward Chesterton, an estate agent, and his mother was Marie Louise, Grosjean, of Swiss-French origin. Chesterton was baptised at the age of one month into the Church of England, though his family were irregularly practising Unitarians. According to his autobiography, as a young man he became fascinated with the occult and, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards. In Orthodoxy, Chesterton stated that he was a pagan when he was twelve and, by the time he was sixteen, he was completely agnostic. He was educated at St Paul's School, then attended the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator. The Slade is a department of University College London, where Chesterton also took classes in literature, but he did not complete a degree in either subject. He married Frances Blogg in 1901; the marriage lasted the rest of his life. Chesterton credited Frances with leading him back to Anglicanism, though he later considered Anglicanism to be a "pale imitation". He entered in full communion with the Catholic Church in 1922. The couple were unable to have children.

A friend from schooldays was Edmund Clerihew Bentley, inventor of the clerihew, a whimsical four-line biographical poem. Chesterton wrote clerihews and illustrated his friend's first published collection of poetry, Biography for Beginners (1905), which popularised the clerihew form. He became godfather to Bentley's son Nicolas and opened his novel The Man Who Was Thursday with a poem written to Bentley.

Career

In September 1895, Chesterton began working for the London publisher George Redway, where he remained for just over a year. In October 1896, he moved to the publishing house T. Fisher Unwin, where he remained until 1902. During this period he undertook his first journalistic work as a freelance art and literary critic. In 1902, The Daily News gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in The Illustrated London News, for which he continued to write for the next 30 years.

Early on Chesterton showed a great interest in and talent for art. He had planned to become an artist, and his writing shows a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images. Father Brown is perpetually correcting the incorrect vision of the bewildered folk at the scene of the crime and wandering off at the end with the criminal to exercise his priestly role of recognition, repentance and reconciliation. For example, in the story "The Flying Stars", Father Brown entreats the character Flambeau to give up his life of crime: "There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime."

thumb|upright|[[Caricature by Max Beerbohm]]

Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow. According to his autobiography, he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent film that was never released. On 7 January 1914 Chesterton (along with his brother Cecil and future sister-in-law Ada) took part in the mock-trial of John Jasper for the murder of Edwin Drood. Chesterton was Judge, and Shaw played the role of foreman of the jury. That autumn, Chesterton was struck with a serious illness from which he barely recovered, bedridden for months and unconscious for a significant portion of it.

During the First World War, Chesterton was editing New Witness writing editorials and publishing letters from writers and thinkers, such as Thomas Maynard— English poet and historian of the Catholic Church whose thinking was influenced by Chesterton's (1908) Orthodoxy—and Hilaire Belloc. In 1917, issues of New Witness shed light on these writers' moral concerns about the way the war was being fought on the home front, by commentary on "the 'Gordon Scandal'", the undercover agent alias "Alex Gordon". This scandal was the refusal of the Attorney-General F.E. Smith to produce 'Gordon', the 'vanishing spy', for examination in court but on whose 'evidence' three defendants to conspiracy to murder (David Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson) were convicted and imprisoned (R v Alice Wheeldon & Ors, 1917).

Chesterton was a large man, standing tall and weighing around . His girth gave rise to an anecdote during the First World War, when a lady in London asked why he was not "out at the Front"; he replied, "If you go round to the side, you will see that I am." On another occasion he remarked to Shaw, "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England." Shaw retorted, "To look at you, anyone would think you had caused it." P. G. Wodehouse once described a very loud crash as "a sound like G. K. Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin". Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a swordstick in hand and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. He had a tendency to forget where he was supposed to be going and miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife Frances from an incorrect location, writing such things as "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home". Chesterton told this story but omitting his wife's alleged reply, in his autobiography.

In 1931, the BBC invited Chesterton to give a series of radio talks. He accepted, tentatively at first. He was allowed (and encouraged) to improvise on the scripts. This allowed his talks to maintain an intimate character, as did the decision to allow his wife and secretary to sit with him during his broadcasts. The talks were very popular. A BBC official remarked, after Chesterton's death, that "in another year or so, he would have become the dominating voice from Broadcasting House." Chesterton was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1935.

Chesterton was part of the Detection Club, a society of British mystery authors founded by Anthony Berkeley in 1928. He was elected as the first president and served from 1930 to 1936 until he was succeeded by E. C. Bentley. Chesterton was one of the dominating figures of the London literary scene in the early 20th century.

Death

thumb|Telegram sent by Cardinal [[Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII) on behalf of Pope Pius XI to the people of England following the death of Chesterton]]

Chesterton died of congestive heart failure on 14 June 1936, 16 days after his 62nd birthday, at his home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. His last words were a greeting of good morning spoken to his wife, Frances. The sermon at Chesterton's Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral, London, was delivered by Ronald Knox on 27 June 1936. Knox said, "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton." He is buried in Beaconsfield in the Catholic Cemetery. Chesterton's estate was probated at £28,389, .

Near the end of Chesterton's life, Pope Pius XI invested him as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great (KC*SG).

Writing

Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, and Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the Daily News, The Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G. K.'s Weekly; he also wrote articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica, including the entry on Charles Dickens and part of the entry on Humour in the 14th edition (1929). His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown,

Of his nonfiction, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1906) has received some of the broadest-based praise. According to Ian Ker (The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845–1961, 2003), "In Chesterton's eyes Dickens belongs to Merry, not Puritan, England"; Ker treats Chesterton's thought in chapter 4 of that book as largely growing out of his true appreciation of Dickens, a somewhat shop-soiled property in the view of other literary opinions of the time. The biography was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens's work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars.

T. S. Eliot sums up his work as follows:

The American Chesterton Society has devoted a whole issue of its magazine, Gilbert, to defending Chesterton against charges of antisemitism. Likewise, Ann Farmer, author of Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender, writes, "Public figures from Winston Churchill to Wells proposed remedies for the 'Jewish problem' – the seemingly endless cycle of anti-Jewish persecution – all shaped by their worldviews. As patriots, Churchill and Chesterton embraced Zionism; both were among the first to defend the Jews from Nazism", concluding that "A defender of Jews in his youth – a conciliator as well as a defender – GKC returned to the defence when the Jewish people needed it most."

Opposition to eugenics

In Eugenics and Other Evils, Chesterton attacked eugenics as Parliament was moving towards passage of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913. Some backing the ideas of eugenics called for the government to sterilise people deemed "mentally defective"; this view did not gain popularity but the idea of segregating them from the rest of society and thereby preventing them from reproducing did gain traction. These ideas disgusted Chesterton who wrote, "It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children." He derided such ideas as founded on nonsense, "as if one had a right to dragoon and enslave one's fellow citizens as a kind of chemical experiment".

Chesterton's fence

"Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. The quotation is from Chesterton's 1929 book, The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic, in the chapter, "The Drift from Domesticity":

Distributism

thumb|upright|Self-portrait based on the [[Distributism|distributist slogan "Three acres and a cow"]]

Inspired by Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum novarum, Chesterton's brother Cecil and his friend, Hilaire Belloc were instrumental in developing the economic philosophy of distributism, a word Belloc coined. Gilbert embraced their views and, particularly after Cecil's death in World War I, became one of the foremost distributists and the newspaper whose care he inherited from Cecil, which ultimately came to be named G. K.'s Weekly, became its most consistent advocate. Distributism stands as a third way, against both unrestrained capitalism, and socialism, advocating a wide distribution of both property and political power.

Scottish and Irish nationalism

Chesterton was not an opponent of nationalism in general and gave a degree of support to Scottish nationalism and Irish nationalism. He endorsed Cunninghame Graham and Compton Mackenzie for the post of Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1928 and 1931 respectively and praised Scottish Catholics as "patriots" in contrast to Anglophile Protestants such as John Knox. Chesterton was also a supporter of the Irish Home Rule movement and maintained friendships with members of the Irish Parliamentary Party. This was in part due to his belief that Irish Catholics had a naturally distributist outlook on property ownership.

Legacy

James Parker, in The Atlantic, gave a modern appraisal:

Possible sainthood

The Bishop Emeritus of Northampton, Peter Doyle, in 2012 had opened a preliminary investigation into possibly launching a cause for beatification and then canonization (for possible sainthood), but eventually decided not to open the cause. Doyle cited Chesterton's lack of a cult of local devotion, his lack of a "pattern of spirituality" and charges that he was antisemitic. In 2023 the next Bishop of Northampton, David Oakley, agreed to preach at a Mass during a Chesterton pilgrimage in England (the route goes through London and Beaconsfield, which are both connected to his life). If the cause had been actually opened at the diocesan level (the Vatican must also give approval, that nothing stands in the way – the "nihil obstat"), then he could be given the title "Servant of God". His life and writings and views and what he did for others would be closely examined, although it is not known if his alleged antisemitism (which would be considered a serious matter by the Church if it is true) played a role.

Literary

Chesterton's socio-economic system of Distributism affected the sculptor Eric Gill, who established a commune of Catholic artists at Ditchling in Sussex. The Ditchling group developed a journal called The Game, in which they expressed many Chestertonian principles, particularly anti-industrialism and an advocacy of religious family life. His novel The Man Who Was Thursday inspired the Irish Republican leader Michael Collins with the idea that "If you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out." Collins's favourite work of Chesterton was The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and he was "almost fanatically attached to it", according to his friend Sir William Darling. His column in The Illustrated London News on 18 September 1909 had a profound effect on Mahatma Gandhi. P. N. Furbank asserts that Gandhi was "thunderstruck" when he read it, while Martin Green notes that "Gandhi was so delighted with this that he told Indian Opinion to reprint it". Another convert was Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who said that the book What's Wrong with the World (1910) changed his life in terms of ideas and religion. The author Neil Gaiman stated that he grew up reading Chesterton in his school's library, and that The Napoleon of Notting Hill influenced his own book Neverwhere. Gaiman based the character Gilbert from the comic book The Sandman on Chesterton, and Good Omens, the novel Gaiman co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, is dedicated to Chesterton. The Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges cited Chesterton as influential on his fiction, telling interviewer Richard Burgin that "Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story".

Education

Chesterton's many references to education and human formation have inspired a variety of educators including the 69 schools of the Chesterton Schools Network, which includes the Chesterton Academy founded by Dale Ahlquist. and the Italian Scuola Libera G. K. Chesterton in San Benedetto del Tronto, Marche. The publisher and educator Christopher Perrin (who completed his doctoral work on Chesterton) makes frequent reference to Chesterton in his work with classical schools.

Namesakes

In 1974, Ian Boyd, founded The Chesterton Review, a scholarly journal devoted to Chesterton and his circle. The journal is published by the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture based in Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey.

In 1996, Dale Ahlquist founded the American Chesterton Society to explore and promote Chesterton's writings.

In 2008, a Catholic high school, Chesterton Academy, opened in the Minneapolis area. In the same year Scuola Libera Chesterton opened in San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy.

In 2012, a crater on the planet Mercury was named Chesterton after the author.

In 2014, G. K. Chesterton Academy of Chicago and Chesterton Academy of Buffalo, Catholic high schools, opened in Highland Park, Illinois and Buffalo, New York.

A fictionalised G. K. Chesterton is the central character in the G K Chesterton Mystery series, a series of detective novels by the Australian author Kel Richards.

Major works

Books

;
The Flying Inn (1914)
(detective fiction)

Short stories

"The Trees of Pride", 1922
"The Crime of the Communist", Collier's Weekly, July 1934.
"The Three Horsemen", Collier's Weekly, April 1935.
"The Ring of the Lovers", Collier's Weekly, April 1935.
"A Tall Story", Collier's Weekly, April 1935.
"The Angry Street – A Bad Dream", Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1947.

Plays

Magic, 1913.

References

Citations

Sources

Cited biographies

External links

Works by G. K. Chesterton, at HathiTrust
What's Wrong: GKC in Periodicals Articles by G. K. Chesterton in periodicals, with critical annotations.
.
G. K. Chesterton: Quotidiana
G. K. Chesterton research collection at The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College
G. K. Chesterton Archival Collection at the University of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto
Works in English with advanced search functions at CatholicLibrary.org.