Twelve Types

Born in London, Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s and studied for a time at both University College and the Slade School. A fellow-student whose family controlled the publishing firm of Hodder & Stoughton gave him some art books to review in the firm’s monthly, The Bookman. During this period Chesterton formed friendships (that were to last a lifetime) with the future writer Edmund C. Bentley and with Lucian Oldershaw, which latter individual introduced, in 1900, the twenty-six-year old Gilbert to the thirty-year-old Belloc. The reciprocal influence and friendship of Belloc and G.K.C. lasted a lifetime.

In 1899 Gilbert began writing for The Speaker, a Liberal weekly. His first book, a volume of comic verse which he also illustrated, Greybeards at Play, was successfully published in 1900; later that year, his father financed publication of his second book, The Wild Knight and Other Poems. But it was his brilliant though unpopular pro-Boer stand on the Boer War which first brought him to public attention, and by 1901 he also was writing regularly for The Daily News. From this time on there was an almost constant stream of lecture engagements far and wide and to almost every type of organization – religious, literary, social, and even political. (Later of these engagements included speaking tours to Palestine – which became a determining factor in his conversion – in 1919, to Italy in 1920, which included an interview with Mussolini and an audience with the Holy Father, and to the United States in 1921–22 and again in 1930–31.) And from this beginning he went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to two hundred others, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. At one time he had thirty books contracted for with various publishers. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years worth of weekly columns for the Daily News.

Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared, even though much of it was published in throwaway papers.

This man who composed such profound and perfect lines as “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried,” stood 6’4” and weighed about 300 pounds, usually had a cigar in his mouth, and walked around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his moustache. And he usually had no idea where or when his next appointment was.

This absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. This was the man who, when commissioned to write a book on St. Thomas Aquinas, had his secretary check out a stack of books on the Saint from the library, opened the top book on the stack, thumbed through it, closed it, and proceeded to dictate a book on St. Thomas. But not just any book. The renowned Thomistic scholar, Ettienne Gilson, had this to say about it: “I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement.” And the Master General of the Dominican Order, Pere Gillet, O.P., lectured on and from it to large meetings of Dominicans.

His interest in politics, which he had had from boyhood, grew over time. He began by fighting the sale of peerages as a means of secretly raising party funds, and continued blasting every other form of political corruption. Of necessity this interest included social reform, public education, a free press, etc. He resigned from the Liberal-owned Daily News (a property of the Cadbury of Cadbury’s Chocolate) to write for the Daily Herald.

With his brother Cecil and Belloc, reacting against what they believed wrong with the English social-economic condition, they formulated their own program: Distributism. One of their principal points of controversy was over private ownership, chiefly ownership of the land, which was tragically curtailed by the English law of enclosure by which some five million acres ceased in effect to be the common property of the poor and became the private property of the rich. In books and articles they carried on their fight for the liberty of Englishmen against increasing enslavement to a plutocracy, and to expose and combat corruption in public life. In support of this cause Chesterton contributed to the paper which was for many years, though under different names, effectively their common patrimony: The Eye Witness (1911–12), The New Witness (1912–23), which Chesterton edited from 1916 on, and G.K.’s Weekly (1925–36), which he edited until his death.

The time between the death of The New Witness in 1923 – a year after his conversion to Catholicism – and the birth of G.K.’s Weekly in 1925, gave him sufficient leisure to write two of his most important books: St. Francis of Assisi and The Everlasting Man. But to the paper which he took over following his brother Cecil’s enlistment and untimely death, and which enshrined Cecil’s memory though it now bore his own initials, Chesterton devoted a tremendous amount of his time as editor from 1925 to 1930. Most of those who knew him regarded it as a sacrifice. Besides Belloc and himself, a steady contributor was Eric Gill; out of friendship for Gilbert, Shaw and Wells contributed occasionally.

In 1926 the social and economic program of the paper became incarnate in the Distributist League, of which Gilbert was elected president, and the “simple idea” of which, according to G.K.C., ‘‘was to restore possession.” Branches were soon established throughout England and the circulation of its organ, G.K.’s Weekly, rose from 4,650 to 8,000 copies. The influence of the movement far exceeded its numbers; men like Father McNabb, O.P., in England (who was instrumental in helping to formulate its doctrine), Msgr. Ligutti in the United States, Dr. Coady and Dr. Tompkins in Canada, as well as others in Australia and New Zealand, acknowledged its influence upon their labors.

From 1932 until his death, Chesterton engaged increasingly in radio lectures, delivering as many as forty a year over the B.B.C. These talks were so well received that a B.B.C. official remarked after his death that “G.K.C. in another year or so would have become the dominating voice from Broadcasting House.”

Chesterton debated many of the celebrated intellectuals of his time: George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. According to contemporary accounts, Chesterton usually emerged as the winner of these contests, though the world has immortalized his opponents and forgotten Chesterton, and now we hear only one side of the argument, as we endure the legacies of socialism, relativism, materialism, and skepticism. Ironically, all of his opponents regarded Chesterton with the greatest affection, with George Bernard Shaw saying: “The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton.”

His writing has been praised by an incredible number of well-known figures, including Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Karel Capek, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Claudel, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Sigrid Undset, Ronald Knox, Kingsley Amis, W.H. Auden, Anthony Burgess, E. F. Schumacher, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Welles.

In 1934 he was elected, honoris causa, to the Athenaeum Club. He was invested as Papal Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory with Star.

At his death in 1936 the Holy See cabled Cardinal Hinsley: “Holy Father deeply grieved death Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton devoted son of Holy Church gifted Defender of the Catholic Faith. His Holiness offers paternal sympathy people of England, assures prayers dear departed, bestows Apostolic Benediction.”

His monument was designed by Eric Gill, and he was buried at Beaconsfield. T.S. Eliot said that Chesterton “deserves a permanent claim on our loyalty.”

Malcolm Brennan is Professor Emeritus of English at The Citadel in South Carolina and is the author of numerous works, including a collection of essays on the history of the English martyrs entitled Martyrs of the English Reformation.