G. K. Chesterton was born in Kensington, London, May 29, 1874. There is nothing in his heredity or early training to account for his conservative and High Church tendencies, for his father was a liberal in politics and religion and attended Bedford Chapel where the Reverend Stopford Brooke was preaching what was then called "the new theology." Although educated as an artist, G. K. Chesterton soon passed from sketching through art criticism to journalism. He began by writing pro-Boer articles for The Speaker, a Liberal weekly. The originality of his thought and the vigor of his style attracted public attention, and The Daily News took him over to write a weekly article in spite of the fact that he differed in opinion from the editors and readers on certain points. As his anonymous biographer says:
"Thousands of peaceful semi-Tolstoyan non-conformists have for years been compelled to listen every Saturday morning to a fiery apostle preaching consistently the praise of three things which seem to them most obviously the sign-manuals of Hell—War, Drink, and Catholicism."
But more recently his antagonism to "cocoa"—extended symbolically to the politics as well as to the beverage of Cadbury—became so great as to break this incongruous alliance and he has found in his brother's weekly The New Witness a more congenial although a smaller audience. He has also contributed for many years a weekly page to The Illustrated London News, which is under entirely different management from The Daily News. Besides these and frequent contributions to other periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic, he manages to turn out a volume or two of stories every year as well as poetry and criticism, an amazing output considering that there is hardly a dull page in it. To keep it up so long and steadily must be a strain upon one of his easy-going temperament. Fleet Street men tell me that it is hard to get his copy on time. As press day draws near runners are sent around to his clubs and other London haunts to tell him that the editor must have his article immediately. Once caught Chesterton surrenders good-naturedly and taking any paper handy will dash off his essay, carrying on a lively conversation at the same time.
Producing under such pressure or at least under the compulsion of filling a certain number of columns every week with witty comment on current events inevitably tends to careless writing. Chesterton's work is all equally readable, but not all equally worth reading. He is an inspired writer, but he goes on writing quite as brilliantly after the inspiration has given out, just as a man writing in the dark goes on after his fountain pen has run dry and is only making meaningless scratches on the paper. His display of gems of thought is hardly to be matched by any other show window, but there are so many paste diamonds among them of equal brilliancy that the half of the world which does not like Chesterton takes it for granted that they are all paste. They may even quote Chesterton in support of their view for he says: "All is gold that glitters for the glitter is the gold."
When ex-President Roosevelt, on his return from Africa, was given a dinner by the journalists of London, he was asked by the committee on arrangements whom he would like to have placed by his side to talk with during the meal, and he promptly chose Chesterton. I was of much the same mind when I went to England, but not being in a position to summon him to my side I sought him out in his home, Overroads. This is a little way out of London, near the town of Beaconsfield from which Disraeli took his title,—uncomfortable quarters, I should say, for Chesterton, considering his antipathy for Disraeli and his race.
Arriving at Beaconsfield by the tea-time train I walked up the hill to where I saw a big man sitting on the little porch of a little house. He impressed me as Sunday impressed Symes. I do not mean Billy Sunday, but quite a different personage, the Sunday of "The Man Who Was Thursday." Great men are apt to shrink when you get too close to them. Mr. Chesterton did not. He was too big to fit his environment. The house was what we should call a bungalow; I don't know what they call it in England. It was on a little triangular lot set with trees half his height and a rustic arbor patiently awaiting vines. Afterward I saw in the paper that Mr. Chesterton broke a leg on that arbor. I suppose he must have tripped over it like a croquet wicket.
Mr. Chesterton has a big head covered with curly locks, two of them gray. He is gifted with a Taft-like smile, and talks in a deep-toned, wheezy voice, punctuating his remarks with an engaging chuckle. It is no trouble to interview him. I never met a man who talked more easily or more interestingly. "There are no uninteresting subjects," he says, "there are only uninterested persons." Start any idea you please as unexpectedly as a rabbit from its lair, and he will after it in a second and follow all its turns and windings until he runs it down. His mind is as agile as a movie actor. Epigrams, paradoxes, puns, anecdotes, characterizations, metaphors, fell from his lips in such profusion that I, who knew the market value of such verbal gems, felt as nervous as a jeweler who sees a lady break her necklace. I wanted him to stop while I got down on my knees and picked them up. But he did not mind wasting clever things on me, for there were so many more where those came from. Besides they were not so completely lost as I feared. I recognized some of them a few weeks later in his causerie page of The Illustrated London News.
But when you visit Mr. Chesterton don't make the mistake that I did and attempt to please him by telling him how much he reminds you of Doctor Johnson. He admitted to me that he had "paged a bit" in that rôle, but I judge from what he says in "The Mystery of a Pageant"[14] he does not regard his selection for the part as altogether complimentary to his personal appearance.
Perhaps he would not like it any better to be told that the resemblance was more psychical than physical. Chesterton is doubtless the most dogmatic man England has seen since Doctor Johnson died. He has equally violent prejudices, and he expresses them with equal wit. Unfortunately he has no Boswell. Chesterton has written a book about Shaw, but so far Shaw has shown no disposition to return the compliment.
Shaw, in speaking of Coburn's portrait of Chesterton says: "He is our Quinbus Flestrin, the young Man Mountain, a large abounding gigantically cherubic person."