Gilbert's pen lay on the table beside his bed and Father Vincent picked it up and kissed it.
It was June 14, 1936, the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, the same Feast as his reception into the Church fourteen years earlier. The Introit for that day's Mass was printed on his Memorial card, so that, as Father Ignatius Rice noted with a smile, even his Memorial card had a joke about his size:
The Lord became my protector and he brought me forth into a large place. He saved me because he was well pleased with me. I will love thee O Lord my strength. The Lord is my firmament and my refuge and my deliverer.
To these words from the Mass, Frances added Walter de la Mare's tribute:
Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way
Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;
The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,
Pity and innocence his heart at rest.
The day of the funeral was one of blazing sunshine. "One of your days," Gilbert would have said to Frances. Grey days were his, when nature's colours he said were brightest against her more sombre background, sunny days were hers for she loved a blue blazing sky. The little church near the railway was filled to overflowing by his friends from London, from all over England, from France even and from America. All Beaconsfield wanted to honour him, so the funeral procession instead of taking the direct route passed through the old town where he had so often sat in the barber's shop and chatted with his fellow citizens. At Top Meadow we gathered to talk. Frances a few of us saw for a little while in her own room. With that utter self-forgetfulness that was hers she said to her sister-in-law, "It was so much worse for you. You had Cecil for such a short time."
Later Mgr. Knox preached in Westminster Cathedral to a crowd far vaster. Both Frances and Cardinal Hinsley received telegrams from Cardinal Pacelli (now Pope Pius XII). To Cardinal Hinsley he cabled "Holy Father deeply grieved death Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton devoted son Holy Church gifted Defender of the Catholic Faith. His Holiness offers paternal sympathy people of England assures prayers dear departed, bestows Apostolic Benediction." This telegram was read to the vast crowd in the Cathedral and found an echo in the hearts of his fellow countrymen.
Hugh Kingsmill wrote to Cyril Clemens: "My friend Hesketh Pearson was staying with me when I read of Chesterton's death. I told him of it through the bathroom door, and he sent up a hollow groan which must have echoed that morning all over England." It was with reason that the Pope offered his sympathy not to Catholics alone, but to all the people of England. To the policeman who said at the funeral, "We'd all have been here if we could have got off duty. He was a grand man." To the man at the Times office who broke in on the announcement of his death, "Good God. That isn't our Chesterton, is it?" To the barber who had to leave his customer unshaved that he might talk to Edward Macdonald. To all of us, his friends, on whom the loss lay almost unbearably heavy. To those for whom his presence would have pierced and lightened even the dark shadow of the war. To all the people of England.
Once more a Pope had bestowed upon an Englishman the title Defender of the Faith. The first man to receive it had been Henry VIII and the words are still engraved on the coins of England. The secular press would not print the telegram in full because it bestowed upon a subject a royal title.
After Gilbert's death Frances tried to take up life again. She
visited her cousins in Germany, a university professor and his
English wife, who were undergoing the persecution of the Swastika.
She was deeply moved by their suffering and the peril they stood in.