The Benedictine, as well as the Dominican, outlook and history especially appealed to Gilbert, and the friendship with Father Ignatius Rice, which had begun almost with the century, grew steadily. He assisted, as we have seen, at Gilbert's reception into the Church: and whenever they met after that Gilbert would remind him, "We were together on the great day."
High Wycombe was the Chesterton's parish until, largely by their help, a church could be built at Beaconsfield. At first this church was served by Father Walker, parish priest of High Wycombe. It was he who had prepared Gilbert for his First Communion and he has sent me some of his recollections:
It certainly did not take long to prepare him for he evidently knew as much as I could tell him. Nevertheless, he said I was to treat him as I would any child whom I was teaching. This, knowing the man whom I was instructing, for I had at the time carefully waded through his Orthodoxy twice, was, indeed, an undertaking of magnitude. However, I went through the catechism (he was importunate that I should use it as he said all the children made use of it), very meticulously explaining all the details, to which he lent a most vigilant and unswerving attention. For instance, he wanted me to explain the reason of the drop of water being put into the wine at the preparing of the chalice for the Holy Sacrifice.
Father Walker describes Gilbert opening a bazaar and spending lavishly at every stall, afterwards being photographed in his company. Father Walker himself weighed 245 lbs., and the caption was "Giants in the Faith." On his departure, Gilbert presided at the farewell meeting and made a speech which, says Father Walker, "gave me no end of delight." Father (now Monsignor) Smith became the first rector of Beaconsfield as a separate parish. The Chestertons loved the little church there which later became Gilbert's memorial and to which, among other things, they gave a very beautiful statue of Our Lady. But when it had first been dedicated there had been for both Frances and Gilbert a deep disappointment. Curiously enough, neither of them had any devotion to the Little Flower who was chosen as Patron: they had hoped for a dedication to the English Martyrs. Later Gilbert used to tell Dorothy, who loved St. Thérèse, that he could not care for her, "with all apologies to you, Dorothy."
He did not go often to Confession, Dorothy says, but when he did go you could hear him all over the church. Getting up in the morning was always a fearful effort to him, and starting for early Mass he would say to her, "what but religion would bring us to such an evil pass!"
Meanwhile the books went on. In 1926 appeared The Outline of Sanity, The Catholic Church and Conversion, chiefly concerned with his own mental history, The Incredulity of Father Brown and The Queen of Seven Swords. In 1927 for the first time his scattered poems were brought into the volume of Collected Poems.
St. Augustine asks whether we can praise God before we know Him: Gilbert answered that question when by praise and thanksgiving he came as a boy to the discovery of God, beginning by a passionate desire to thank someone for the Universe. There is much praise in the Collected Poems. There is the note of hope in an almost hopeless fight in The Ballad of the White Horse. There are lovely poems to his wife. Since Browning none has understood the Sacrament of Marriage as well as Gilbert Chesterton.
In 1927 there also appeared, beside a couple of pamphlets:
The Return of Don Quixote
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Secret of Father Brown
The Judgment of Dr. Johnson
Robert Louis Stevenson took Gilbert back to his boyhood and is by general agreement among the best of his literary studies. But the best thing he ever said apropos of Stevenson came not in this book but in his attack on the "science" of eugenics: