Major James B. Pond also met G. K. C. at New Haven, and had the privilege of being present when Chesterton and ‘A. E.’ (George Russell) met at the William Lyon Phelps’ house in New Haven. It was the first time these two men ever met. Russell hardly ever went out of Ireland and these two famous men had to come to New Haven to get personally acquainted. It happened they were both lecturing the same day.
CHAPTER NINE
AT NOTRE DAME.
Chesterton was guest lecturer at Notre Dame University for the first semester of the 1930–1 school year, delivering eighteen lectures on English history, and the same number on the Victorian age of English literature.
Visiting Beaconsfield a few years ago, Father John F. O’Hara, President of the University, told Chesterton that he had received “numerous letters from former students who were just beginning to appreciate the lectures he had given them. Chesterton was that way. One was forced to remember his striking sentences, and the underlying truth forced itself on the mind of the undergraduate when greater experience made understanding possible.”
As Chesterton walked out on the stage and faced his first Notre Dame audience, he leaned upon the lectern and said, “Until quite recently, I was not at all certain that I would be able to be here tonight. Had I not come, you would now be gazing upon a great yawning void instead of myself.”
This bit of humor and the manner in which it was expressed gave Father Charles Morton the feeling that here was a man of rare humility and of the simplicity which always accompanies genuine culture. As the lecture series progressed, two other qualities became prominent,—brilliance of mind and a profound Catholic faith. 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. You are mistaken: his language is swift, sudden, arresting. Epigram follows epigram, until you get tired of brilliance, and begin to wonder if this big man is not more concerned with his sword play than with the serious business of defending truth against truth’s enemies. That is how you sometimes think: but, of course, your thinking is wrong.”
Prof. Norbert Engels of the College of Arts and Sciences recalls that “at every lecture knowledge poured forth. 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.”
All the breath and flavor of ages of Christian culture came with Chesterton in the opinion of Father Charles M. Carey, “he entered our campus like some great Catholic warrior stepping down from the centuries that date back to a time when England was really ‘Merrie England.’ Huge in girth and mind and heart, he was the embodiment of all that was good in that splendid Catholic heritage.
“As his vast physical bulk lumbered from the wings to the rostrum, then slouched down in his chair, he threw a ruddy scowl across the rows of young University men before him, and a great feeling of awe swallowed up the idle chatter. There was not a single heart in that young Catholic audience that did not somehow experience the presence of greatness in our midst. To the man who knew little of the great apologist, it may have been a moment of confused terror and curiosity. To anyone who had read but a paragraph from his pen, it was the moment which finds one helplessly silent in the presence of a superior being.