Gilbert Keith Chesterton

by Maisie Ward

DEAR MAURICE,

Thank you ever so much for your interesting letter. I think you are right every time about Gosse and Claudel; or rather about Claudel and Gosse. For though I think Gosse a very valuable old Victorian in his way, I do not think he is on the same scale as the things that have lately been happening in the world; and Claudel is one of them. He has happened like a great gun going off; and I think I saw a line of his on the subject of such a discharge of artillery in the war. It ran, "And that which goes forth is France; terrible as the Holy Ghost." I doubt if Gosse has ever seen that France even in a flash and a bang; I don't see how he could. Remember the religion in which he grew up, by his own very graphic account of it; a man is not entirely emancipated from such very positive Puritanism by anything so negative as Agnosticism. Nothing but a religion can cast out a religion. Being so sensitive on behalf of Renan is simply not understanding the great historical passions about a heresiarch. It means that famous intellectuals must not hate each other; because they all belong to the Saville Club. Please do not think I mean merely that Gosse is a snob; I think he is a jolly old gentleman and a good critic of French poetry; but not of Gesta Dei per Francos. Your points against him are quite logical; I suppose the controversy will not be conducted in public, or I should feel inclined to join in it. Anyhow, I wish it could be continued between us as a conversation in private, for I have long wanted to talk to you about serious things.

Meanwhile, as not wholly unconnected with the serious things, could you possibly do me a great favour? It is very far from being the first great favour you have done me; and I should fear that anyone less magnanimous would fancy I only wrote to you about such things. But the situation is this. An excellent offer has been made to me to write a book about Jerusalem, not political but romantic and religious, so to speak; I conceive it as mostly about pilgrimages and crusades, in poetical prose, and working up to Allenby's great entrance. The offer includes money to go to Jerusalem but cannot include all the political or military permissions necessary to go there. I have another motive for wanting to go there, which is much stronger than the desire to write the book though I do think I could do it in the right way and, what matters more, on the right side. Frances is to come with me, and all the doctors in creation tell her she can only get rid of her neuritis if she goes to some such place and misses part of an English winter. I would do anything to bring it off, for that reason alone. You are a man who knows everybody; do you know anybody on Allenby's staff; or know anybody who knows anybody on Allenby's staff; or know anybody who would know anybody who would know anything about it? I am told that it cannot be done as yet in the ordinary way by Cook's; and that the oracle must be worked in some such fashion. If you should be so kind as to refer to any worried soldier or official, I should like it understood that I am not nosing about touching any diplomatic or military matter; France in Syria, or any copy for the New Witness. I only want to write semi-historical rhetoric on the spot. If you could possibly help in this matter, I really think you would be helping things you yourself care about; and one person, not myself, who deserves it. I will not say it would be killing two birds with one stone, which might seem a tragic metaphor; but bringing one bird at least to life; and allowing the other bird, who is a goose, to go on a wild goose-chase.

Yours always,

G. K. CHESTERTON.

It was much needed change and refreshment for both Gilbert and Frances. Her Diary shows a vivid enjoyment of all the scenes and happenings: going into the Church of the Nativity with a door "so low you can hardly get in—this done to prevent the cattle from straying in"; seeing camels on the roof of a convent; standing godmother to an Armenian carpenter's baby:

The officiator in a cape of white silk embroidered in gold and a wonderful crown supposed to represent the temple. The godfather (a young man) was in a red velvet gown. After a good many prayers and much chanting the babe, beautifully dressed, was taken to the font (which was in the side of the wall) and there were more prayers and chanting. Then cushions were laid on the floor and the child undressed, all of us assisting. At this point I was asked to stand Godmother and gladly consented. The baby, by this time quite naked, was handed to the priest who immersed him completely under the water three times—giving him the name of Pedros (Peter). Before being re-clothed he was anointed with oil—the forebead, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, heart, hands and feet all being signed with the Cross. The child was by this time crying lustily and it was some business to get him dressed, especially as he was swaddled in bands very completely. When ready he was handed to me and he lay stiff in my arms whilst I held two large lighted candles. I followed the priest from the font to the little altar, where a chain and a little gold cross were bound round his head (signifying that he was now a Christian). Then the priest touched his lips with the sacramental wafer, and touched his nose with myrrh. After the Blessing, we left the church in a procession, the godfather carrying the baby. At the threshold of the house the priest took it and delivered it to the mother who sat waiting for it, also holding the two candles. Again the priests muttered a few prayers and blessed mother, child and godparents. The father is an Armenian carpenter by trade—very nice people. Mother very pretty. The parents insisted that we should stay for refreshments and we were handed a very nice liquor in lovely little glasses and a very beautiful sort of pastry. Afterwards cups of weak tea and cakes.

The various rites and ceremonies in Jerusalem interested Frances deeply but the Diary shows no awareness of the differences that separated the various kinds of Christians. The Diary ends with the return through Rome where she and I met, to the surprise of both of us, in the street, while a friend travelling with them met my mother. "Both meetings were miraculous," Frances comments. Since the letters to my mother during Gilbert's illness in 1915 we had heard no more about his spiritual pilgrimage. There was much eager talk at this meeting but no opportunity occurred and certainly none was sought for any confidences. As we waved goodbye after their departing train my mother said thoughtfully: "Frances did rather play off Jerusalem against Rome, didn't she?"

In fact, as we learned later, this visit to Jerusalem had been a determining factor in Gilbert's conversion. Many people both in and outside the Church had been wondering what had so long delayed him. The mental progress from the vague Liberalism of the Wild Knight to the splendid edifice of Orthodoxy had been a swift one. For the book was written in 1908 and already several years earlier in Heretics and in his newspaper contests with Blatchford, Gilbert Chesterton had shown his firm belief in the Godhead of Our Lord, in Sacraments, in Priesthood and in the Authority of the Church. But it was not yet the Catholic and Roman Church. There is a revealing passage in the Autobiography: "And then I happened to meet Lord Hugh Cecil. I met him at the house of Wilfrid Ward, that great clearing house of philosophies and theologies. . . . I listened to Lord Hugh's very lucid statements of his position. . . . The strongest impression I received was that he was a Protestant. I was myself still a thousand miles from being a Catholic; but I think it was the perfect and solid Protestantism of Lord Hugh that fully revealed to me that I was no longer a Protestant."

The time that thousand miles took is a real problem—the years before the illness during which he talked of joining the Church, the seven further years before he joined it. Cecil Chesterton had been received before the war—just at the beginning of the Marconi Case, in fact—and the entire outlook of both brothers had seemed to make this inevitable, not only theologically but sociologically and historically. Alike in their outlook on Europe today or on the great ages of the past, it was a Catholic civilisation based on Catholic theology that seemed to them the only true one for a full and rich human development.