Cyril Clemens

“ As I say, I admired Gilbert Chesterton throughout his life, and after reading his ‘Autobiography’ I admire him still more. My attitude is rather that of a hero-worshipper than a critic, but I believe that no impartial critic could read this book and fail to see that here was a genius, and better, a brave and an honest man, a man who loved life7 and loved his friends, loved laughter and hated oppression; in short a very great man. ”

“ When Galsworthy became the topic of conversation, Chesterton remarked,
“Galsworthy always reminds me of the solicitor of an old English family. I cannot altogether feel that he reflects modern England. He lays too much stress upon a college education. He believes that a man not blessed with a college education might at any time murder his mother. Galsworthy also lacks the sweet balance of humor, only a rather limited amount of humor breathes forth from his works. Like Darrow he, too, holds to the belief that the underdog is always mad if he causes the slightest trouble. ”

“ Myles Connolly feels that Chesterton “will not, try as I will, come under the head of remembrance. He seems vividly contemporary, vitally alive. It’s a worn-out form of tribute, I know, but there’s none greater and I will say it: he lives. The stuff of immortality was so strong in him that beside his memory as the world calls it, it is we who are dead.
“Napoleon said that no man became a writer unless he were a defeatist. When life was too tall and strong for a man, he quit, and in his pen he found corroboration and consolation. ”

“ Even his faults are beloved: his weight, his tardiness, his absentmindedness, his slovenly manner of dressing, his sometimes careless way of eating and drinking. In short he can almost be described as Falstaff without his moral grossness.
Chesterton lived for many years in a flat overlooking the beautiful Battersea Park, where Mrs. Lillian Curt would often see him strolling in deep thought. His wife Frances—a dainty little lady, clever and level-headed and most devoted to her husband—would sometimes get anxious when he was long overdue for meals. ”

“ Though Kipling, in reality, was only slightly below average size, and if a giant, Chesterton at least conveyed the impression of an amiable, gentle, likable giant.
“You will be much puzzled at my occupying any space—so much space—in this august assembly,” he began, “and why any word of mine could possibly add to what this great literary genius, Mr. Kipling, has said. I cannot pose as a newspaper man; one reads of newspaper men slipping in through half-closed doors. ”

“ No matter what the subject of his lecture was, whether in the field of literature or of history, he invariably found a way at the end to relate all he had said to some profound religious truth. That people should praise him as a learned man was a source of genuine embarrassment to him. It amused him to be addressed as “professor,” and he invariably referred to himself as a “mere journalist.”
Father Patrick J. Carroll looked upon Chesterton, master of antithesis “as himself the antithesis. A large lumbering hulk of a man, you would expect from him a deep, thundering speech. ”

“ Norbert Engels of the College of Arts and Sciences recalls that “at every lecture knowledge poured forth.101 He never used a paper, a note, or a reference of any kind. He would quote extremely long passages of poetry or prose with utmost ease. I did not tire of his use of paradox as he used it with such consummate art. Those are inadequate judges of his genius who pronounce upon him from his writings only. To know Chesterton fully, besides his works, one should have heard him lecture, in order to catch the spirit of the man.” ”

“ Asked about Lord Beaverbrook who had but recently died, Chesterton reflected,
“Birkenhead has always been a puzzle to me because he was cynical and worldly ambitious, and yet, it must be confessed, overfond of his liquor. One expects such a weakness only from a poet or one who has the poetical imagination.” ”

“ Chesterton had been lecturing to a typical Yale audience of the early ’20’s—four or five consciously literary undergraduates who made a grim duty of never missing such a talk, and about ninety percent of the membership of the local women’s clubs. The Speaker spilled over, like a wine keg broached, into the Middle Ages. ”

“ When he spoke to me about my work he used to say:—
“‘What I admire about your idealism, as shown in your writings, is the fact that I know it to be genuine. For writers who merely pay lip-service to ideals, because they think it safest to do so, I have no use whatever. But I know that what you say, you mean.’
“Chesterton, like most artistic persons,57 had a dislike for officialdom and bureaucracy. It seems so often to lead to a dull and spurious uniformity and standardization. The natural love of the artist is for variety, reaching out to a fullness of life and experience. ”

“ There are countless things that he could not and would not tell of himself but that should not be forgotten. ‘Belloc,’ he writes, ‘still awaits a Boswell.’ It is equally true that Chesterton awaits one. Is it legitimate to hope that his Boswell may be Belloc? There is a grand harvest to be gathered by his Boswell, whoever that may prove to be. ”

“ The true originality does not consist in inventing ideas that have no relation to truth and no roots in reality, but in the discovery and unveiling of something that has always been there, though we may hitherto have lacked the eyes to see it, or the power to express and interpret it. Chesterton had an expert gift for making one see things in all their original miscellaneousness, as things that really are, and yet—cannot be, or give any rational account of themselves. ”

“ When he arrived in Washington, D. C. to lecture at Trinity College, Chesterton gave Miss Syd Walsh an interesting and picturesque description of Notre Dame,
“I think the faculty and students awfully jolly people and the campus itself a bit of medievalism with its constant stream of youths in bright colors pouring in and out of old stone buildings with gilded domes. As long as I live I will never forget their way of letting off fireworks before a big game and generally playing the goat in a cheery way.” ”

“ Thomas Caldecot Chubb met Chesterton at the Elizabethan Club in New Haven almost twenty years ago, and his initial impression still persists that he was a large man in every way, “Physically, of course, he was the size of Falstaff, but that is not all I am talking about. Perhaps the best way of saying what I mean, is to point out that he had this further in common with the huge knight who is, in a sense, truly Shakespeare’s most tragic figure: that beneath surface-wit and brilliance there was something one must label deep and profound.” ”

“ Chesterton, securus judicat orbis terrarum. You have become a Roman Catholic, and I do not doubt that you have gained the whole world, but may I suggest that one may gain the whole world and lose one’s soul, and I think you have lost the soul of Chestertonianism, for after all, when you were an Anglican you were both a Protestant and a Catholic, and that was a delightfully Chestertonian position. ”

“ I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression.122 Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?’
“To Chesterton such words as ‘tremendous’ and ‘splendid’ and ‘enormous’ and ‘shattering’ were of common use. ”

“ In the course of his life, Chesterton accomplished much lecturing and public speaking as did most of the English writers of his generation such as Shaw, Wells, and to a lesser extent Galsworthy and Bennett. Like many Englishmen his success as a speaker was variable and subject to his health and feelings even more than most men. Yet no matter how indifferently Chesterton might have done in the formal part of his address, he always more than redeemed himself in the question-and-answer period that followed. ”

“ To him, it was life as ordinarily lived that seemed ‘paradoxical’—it was amazing to him that men could think the things they did, especially as doing so issued into so uncomfortable as well as, too often, so wicked a life. ”

“ Gilbert Frankau is “afraid that I only met G. K. Chesterton once. This was at a debate. He took the chair and was, I remember, a little sarcastic about my own contribution. But the sarcasm was so beautifully done that it became almost a compliment. He really had a rare charm of manner. And he really was a character. Characters being only too rare in this modern world where all tend to become stereotyped. I was, of course, a Father Brown fan. But which really made the deepest impression on my young mind was Chesterton’s poetry. ”

“ On the whole, I think Sinclair Lewis is the scourge of God—a calamity in some respects like the Great Fire of London. I do not believe that Mr. Lewis has enough sympathy with the Middle West people of whom he writes, nor has he the right slant on the people of Main Street—as I have observed them during my sojourn in America. I think it about time somebody made fun of the greasy optimism prevalent113 in recent novels. Lewis has a good deal of righteous indignation, but what he lacks is the positive moral idea which should be found in the representative literature of every nation. ”

“ A comparison being made between certain types of Russian and English characters, Chesterton went on to say,
“The Russians in their writings are always brooding over fate or some silly thing. For the most part the English gentry are fine, sensible fellows, although, of course, there are some bounders amongst them. You will now find not a few Catholics among them, although for many years the only Catholics were either English aristocrats or Irish paupers.” ”

“ Your country used not to pay much attention to culture. When Matthew Arnold began his lecture series in America, he was worried about what the American papers would say of him for his criticism of certain phases of American culture which he had handled rather severely, but was relieved to find that the papers had large headlines reading,
“‘Matthew Arnold has side whiskers.’ But today you have a very high regard for culture in your country.”
“What literary people did you meet in America, Mr. Chesterton?”
“Among others I met Robert Cortes Holliday, and Sinclair Lewis,” he replied. ”

“ I feel that Bertrand Russell is a disgrace to English literature, not only on account of his writings, but also because of his way of life.”
“Masefield’s a fine fellow and a good writer,” said Chesterton in reply to another question, “but Ramsay MacDonald had to choose Masefield as Poet Laureate, there being no other poet so sympathetic to Labor. However, Yeats was by far our best poet. Yet hardly ever has the best poet been made laureate. There is too much politics in the appointment, just as is the case with the appointment of the Anglican bishops. ”

“ Bishop George Craig Stewart of Chicago, presided at Orchestra Hall when Chesterton debated in that city with Dr. Horace J. Bridges of the Ethical Cultural Society on the subject, “Is Psychology a Curse?” In his closing remarks Chesterton devastatingly sideswiped his opponent and wound up the occasion in a storm of laughter and applause,
“It is clear that I have won the debate, and we are all prepared to acknowledge that psychology is a curse. ”

“ His many-sided genius is well known: political and social economist; poet, historian, novelist, short-story writer, artist and cartoonist, playwright—hardly any field in art and literature can be mentioned—without his having touched it in some manner and left his mark, too. ”

“ Megroz got the impression that Chesterton was “certainly a romanticist, often escaping from reality. By fantasies, among which may be included81 his medievalism; but always one comes back to his great sanity, his poetic insight, his sweetness which redeemed all his propaganda, illuminated his poetry, and could fill even the detective story with a wisdom akin to mysticism.” ”