The Chestertons were also present in the Vatican at the reading of the Degree for the Beatification of the English Martyrs. At the conclusion of the ceremony there was the usual rush and confusion in the neighborhood of the cloak-room next to the sala Clementina. A group of Holy Child pupils having gathered around Chesterton, and learned of his dismay at not being able to retrieve his famous cloak from the “Bussolanti” on account of the milling crowd, plunged into the melee and brought it back to him in triumph. They also secured a taxi for them in the Piazza di San Pietro—no small feat on such an occasion! G. K. expressed his appreciation of their efforts in his own beautiful “architectural” handwriting, which constitutes one of the most treasured possessions of the school,
“For the Young Ladies Suffering
Education at the Convent of the
Holy Child.
“To be a Real Prophet once
For you alone did I desire,
Who dragged the Prophet’s Mantle down
And brought the Chariot of Fire.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHESTERTON AT NEW HAVEN
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 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. Among other things, he spoke, naturally, of their individual craftsmanship. He related how it appeared even in such matters as meat and drink. He regretted with a nostalgic gusto those gone days when, as he put it, every monastery, almost every home had its own brand of liqueur or wine. Then he was transported from the crowded hall with its murmurs of polite, not too comprehending, applause, and made to stand in the dark living room of the white building across the street, with its comfortable shabby leather chairs, and its stiff painting of an acidulous and very white-faced Virgin Queen; and as he stood there—wearing a grey suit (so the picture, though perhaps inaccurately after so long a time, comes back to Chubb) and holding a cup of tea in one hand, his eyeglasses in the other—Chubb was introduced to him.
“Mr. Chesterton,” Chubb said, “you have your wish.”