G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (
May 29,
1874–
June 14,
1936) was an influential
English writer of the early 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included
journalism,
poetry,
biography and
Christian apologetics, but today he is probably best remembered for his
Father Brown short stories.
Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox."
[ J.D. Douglas. G.K. Chesterton, the Eccentric Prince of Paradox, Christianity Today. May 24, 1974.] He wrote in an off-hand, whimsical prose studded with startling formulations. For example: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."
[Man Who was Thursday, Chapter IV] He is one of the few Christian thinkers who is admired and quoted equally by liberal and conservative Christians. Chesterton's own theological and political views were far too nuanced to fit comfortably under the "liberal" or "conservative" banner.
|
Chesterton at the time of his engagement, 1898 |
Born in
Campden Hill,
Kensington,
London, Chesterton was educated at
St Paul's School, and later went to the
Slade School of Art in order to become an illustrator and also attended literature classes at
University College but did not complete a degree at either. In 1896 Chesterton began working for the London publisher Redway, and T. Fisher Unwin where he remained until 1902. During this period, he also undertook his first journalistic work as a
freelance art and literary critic. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. In 1902 he was given a weekly opinion column in the
Daily News followed by a weekly column in
The Illustrated London News in 1905, for which he would continue to write for the next thirty years.
According to Chesterton, as a young man he became fascinated with the
Occult and, along with his brother
Cecil, experimented with
Ouija boards.
[Autobiography, Chapter IV] However, as he grew older, he became an increasingly orthodox
Christian culminating in his conversion to
Roman Catholicism in 1922.
[G.K. Chesterton's Conversion Story] Chesterton was a large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and weighing around 21
stone (134 kg or 294 lb). His girth gave rise to a famous anecdote. During World War I a lady in London asked why he wasn't '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 his friend
George Bernard Shaw, 'To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England.' Shaw retorted, 'To look at you, anyone would think you caused it.'
He usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a
swordstick in hand, and had a
cigar hanging out of his mouth. Chesterton often forgot where he was supposed to be going and would miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife from some distant (and incorrect) location writing such things as, "Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home."
Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public debates 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 movie that was never released.
Chesterton died on June 14, 1936, at his home in
Beaconsfield,
Buckinghamshire. The
homily at Chesterton's
Requiem Mass in
Westminster Cathedral,
London, was delivered by
Ronald Knox. Chesterton is buried in Beaconsfield in the
Catholic Cemetery. Chesterton's estate was
probated at 28,389 pounds sterling.
Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4000
essays and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic Christian theologian and
apologist, debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the
Daily News,
Illustrated London News, and his own paper,
G. K.'s Weekly; he also wrote articles for the
Encyclopedia Britannica. His best-known character is the priest-detective
Father Brown, who appeared only in short stories, while
The Man Who Was Thursday is arguably his best-known novel. He was a convinced Christian long before he was received into the Catholic church, and Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing. In the United States, his writings on
distributism were popularized through
The American Review, published by
Seward Collins in New York.
Much of his poetry is little known, though well reflecting his beliefs and opinions. The best written is probably
Lepanto, with
The Rolling English Road the most familiar, and
The Secret People perhaps the most quoted ("we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet").
Of his non-fiction,
Charles Dickens (1903) 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" (see
Merry England); Ker treats in Chapter 4 of that book Chesterton's thought 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.
Much of Chesterton's work remains in print, including collections of the Father Brown detective stories.
Ignatius Press is presently in the process of publishing a Complete Works.
Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour. He employed
paradox, while making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics. When
The Times invited several eminent authors to write essays on the theme, "What's Wrong with the World?" Chesterton's contribution took the form of a letter:
Dear Sirs,I am.Sincerely yours,G. K. Chesterton Typically, Chesterton here combined wit with a serious point (human sinfulness) and self-deprecation. The roots of his approach have been taken to be in two earlier strands in English literature, Dickens being one. In the use of paradox, against complacent acceptance of things as they are, he is often categorised with
Oscar Wilde, and
George Bernard Shaw, whom he knew well, as Victorian satirists and social commentators in a tradition coming also from
Samuel Butler.
Chesterton's style and thinking were all his own, however, and his conclusions were often diametrically opposed to those of his predecessors and contemporaries. In his book
Heretics, Chesterton has this to say of
Oscar Wilde:
The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw.[G.K. Chesterton. Heretics, Chapter 7.]Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Although rarely in agreement, they both maintained good-will towards and respect for each other. However, in his writing, Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why. In
Heretics he writes of Shaw that:
His weakness of introspection and selfishness in all their glory cannot prevent him fighting; but they will always prevent him winning.[G.K. Chesterton. Heretics, Chapter 9.]And:
In similar style, I hold that I am dogmatic and right, while Mr. Shaw is dogmatic and wrong. ... It may be true that the thing in Mr. Shaw most interesting to me, is the fact that Mr. Shaw is wrong. But it is equally true that the thing in Mr. Shaw most interesting to himself, is the fact that Mr. Shaw is right. Mr. Shaw may have none with him but himself; but it is not for himself he cares. It is for the vast and universal church, of which he is the only member. [G.K. Chesterton. Heretics, Chapter 20.]Shaw represented the new school of thought,
humanism, which was rising at the time. Chesterton's views on the other hand, became increasingly more polarized towards the church. In
Orthodoxy he writes:
The worship of will is the negation of will. ... If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, "Will something," that is tantamount to saying, "I do not mind what you will," and that is tantamount to saying, "I have no will in the matter." You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular.[G.K. Chesterton. Heretics, Chapter 20.]This style of argumentation is what Chesterton refers to as using 'Uncommon Sense', ie, that the thinkers and popular philosophers of the day, although very clever, were saying things that appeared, to him, to be non-sensical. This is illustrated again in
Orthodoxy:
Thus when Mr. H. G. Wells says (as he did somewhere), "All chairs are quite different," he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them "all chairs."[ G.K. Chesterton. ]Orthodoxy
, Chapter 3.
Or, again from Orthodoxy
:
The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void.
Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside
Tolstoy in the land of nothing and
Nirvana. They are both helplessâ€"one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a
Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result isâ€"well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.
[ G.K. Chesterton. ]Orthodoxy
, Chapter 3.
Incisive comments and observations occurred almost impulsively in Chesterton's writing. In the middle of his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse'' he famously states:
For the great Gaels of IrelandAre the men that God made mad,For all their wars are merry,And all their songs are sad. [ G.K. Chesterton. The Ballad of the White Horse, Book 2.]See G. K.'s Weekly for a fuller treatmentChesterton is often associated with his close friend, the poet and essayist
Hilaire Belloc. Shaw coined the name
Chesterbelloc for their partnership, and this stuck. Though they were very different men, they shared many beliefs; both eventually became Catholic, and voiced criticisms towards
capitalism and
socialism. They instead espoused a third way:
distributism.
Hugh Kenner asserts that 'He and Belloc had powerful minds, which their contrived personalities hid from the periodical public and also inhibited from real use'.
[Kenner, H., A Sinking Island, p111] G. K.'s Weekly, which occupied much of Chesterton's energy in the last 15 years of his life, was the successor to Belloc's
New Witness, taken over from
Cecil Chesterton, Gilbert's brother who died in
World War I.
Both Chesterton and Belloc have been accused of
anti-Semitism, both during their lifetimes and subsequently.
[Last orders,The Guardian, April 9, 2005.] In
The New Jerusalem, Chesterton made it clear that he believed that there was a "Jewish Problem" in Europe, in the sense that he believed that Jewish culture separated itself from the nationalities of Europe.
[G.K. Chesterton. The New Jerusalem, Chapter 12.] He suggested the formation of a
Jewish homeland as a solution, and was later invited to Palestine by Jewish Zionists who saw him as an ally in their goal to achieve just that. In 1934, after the
Nazis took power in Germany he wrote that:
In our early days Hilaire Belloc and myself were accused of being uncompromising Anti-Semites. Today, although I still think there is a Jewish problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people.[Coren, M. Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton, p216]
* Chesterton's
The Everlasting Man contributed to
C. S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In a letter to Sheldon Vanauken (December 14, 1950)
[Found in A Severe Mercy] Lewis calls the book "the best popular apologetic I know," and to Rhonda Bodle he wrote (December 31, 1947)
[Found in C. S. Lewis: The Collected Letters, Vol. 2] "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesteron
The Everlasting Man." The book was also cited in a list of 10 books that "most shaped his vocational attitude and philosophy of life".
[The Christian Century June 6, 1962]* Chesterton's biography of
Charles Dickens was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens' work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars. Considered by
T.S. Eliot,
Peter Ackroyd, and others, to be the best book on Dickens ever written.
* Chesterton's novel
The Napoleon of Notting Hill was a favorite of
Michael Collins who would later go on to lead the movement for
Irish independence. Joseph Pearce's biography asserts that the novel "influenced his political outlook in its formative stages."
* Chesterton's work has inspired lyricists like
Daniel Amos's
Terry Scott Taylor from the
1970s to the
2000s. Daniel Amos mentioned Chesterton by name in the title track from
2001's
Mr. Buechner's Dream.
* His physical appearance and apparently some of his mannerisms were a direct inspiration for the character of
Dr. Gideon Fell, a well-known fictional
detective created in the early
1930s by the Anglo-American
mystery writer John Dickson Carr.
* The author
Neil Gaiman has stated that
The Napoleon of Notting Hill was an important influence on his own book
Neverwhere. Gaiman also based the character Gilbert, from the comic book
The Sandman, on Chesterton. Gaiman's novel
Good Omens, co-authored with
Terry Pratchett is dedicated "to the memory of G.K. Chesterton: A man who knew what was going on."
*
Ingmar Bergman considered Chesterton's little known play
Magic to be one of his favourites and even staged a production in Swedish. Later he reworked
Magic into his movie
The Magician in 1958. Also known as
Ansiktet the movie and the play are both roughly similar although the two should not be compared. Both are essentially the work of two authors with widely different world views.
* Some conservatives today have been influenced by his support for
distributism.
A. K. Chesterton, the right-wing journalist and the first chairman of the
National Front, was a cousin.
*The
Third Way (UK) campaigns for the widespread ownership of property,
Distributism, which he espoused.
*
The Innocence of Father Brown is cited by
Guillermo Martinez as one of the inspirations for his thriller
The Oxford Murders. Martinez explicitly quotes from Chesterton's story in Chapter 25 of
The Oxford Murders.
* Computer game
Deus Ex featured excerpts from
The Man Who Was Thursday.
* Chesterton's writings have been praised by such authors as
Ernest Hemingway,
Graham Greene,
Frederick Buechner,
Evelyn Waugh,
Jorge Luis Borges,
Gabriel GarcĂa Márquez,
Karel ÄŚapek,
Paul Claudel,
Dorothy L. Sayers,
Agatha Christie,
Sigrid Undset,
Ronald Knox,
Kingsley Amis,
W. H. Auden,
Anthony Burgess,
E. F. Schumacher,
Orson Welles,
Dorothy Day and
Franz Kafka.
*
G. K.'s Weekly*
List of books by G. K. Chesterton*
Christian apologetics (field of study concerned with the defence of Christianity)
* Cooney, A., "G.K. Chesterton, One Sword at Least", Third Way Publications, London, 1999. ISBN 0-953-50771-8
*
Coren, M., "Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton'", Paragon House, New York, 1990.
*
Kenner, H., "Paradox in Chesterton", 1947.
*
Paine, R., "The Universe and Mr. Chesterton", Sherwood Sugden, 1999. ISBN 0-89385-272-X
*
Pearce, J, "Wisdom and Innocence - A Life of G.K.Chesterton", Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1996. ISBN 0-340-67132-7
* Ward, M., "Gilbert Keith Chesterton" Sheed & Ward, 1944.
*
Marshall McLuhan wrote an article on G.K. Chesterton, titled "G.K. Chesterton: A Practical
Mystic" (
Dalhousie Review 15 (4), 1936).
*
EWTN features a television series,
G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense, that focuses on Chesterton and his works.
*
The American Chesterton Society*
Free ebook of G. K. Chesterton at
Project Gutenberg*
An extensive collection of e-text links*
Bibliography of detective fiction 1st Editions*
G. K. Chesterton in Russian*
Gilbert Magazine: a magazine about Chesterton and topics of interest
*
Chesterton House: A Center for Christian Studies at Cornell University*
The Chesterton Review: published by the
Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture at Seton Hall University
*
His Parish Church in Beaconsfield where he is buried*
Chesterton and Friends, a little blog dedicated to Chesterton
*
Domingo Portales, Some Spanish translations of essays and poems by GKC
