Profile of G.K. Chesterton on Famous Like Me

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (May 29, 1874 – June 14, 1936) was an English writer of the early 20th century. Chesterton was known as the "prince of paradox" because he communicated his conservative, often countercultural, ideas in an off-hand, whimsical prose studded with startling formulations. For example: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." Most of Chesterton's works remain in print, including collections of his Father Brown detective stories, and Ignatius Press is presently undertaking the monumental task of republishing his complete works.

Life and career

Born in Campden Hill, Kensington, London, Chesterton was educated at St Paul's School, and later went to the Slade School of Art in order to become an illustrator. In 1900, Chesterton was asked to write a few magazine articles on art criticism, which sparked his interest in writing. He went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. Chesterton's writings displayed a remarkable wit and sense of humour while often making extremely serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics.

Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, 200 short stories, 4000 essays and a few plays. He was a columnist for the Daily News, Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G.K's Weekly. In the United States, his writings on distributism were popularized through The American Review, published by Seward Collins in New York. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic Christian theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. His most well-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared only in short stories, while The Man Who Was Thursday is arguably his best-known novel. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922. Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing, and he often presented himself in the role of the Church's champion.

The British writer Hilaire Belloc is often associated with his friend Chesterton. Although very different men, they had in common their Catholic faith and a critical attitude to both capitalism and socialism. Both are figures likely to outlast many of their more celebrated literary contemporaries. Both, however, have also been accused of anti-Semitism in their work. (For Belloc's case see discussion in that article.) Bernard Levin (The Case for Chesterton, 26 May 1974 in The Observer) brought up some of his light verse, and said The best one can say of Chesterton's anti-semitism is that it was less vile than Belloc's; let us leave it at that. The point is still contested . Against Chesterton are also cited remarks in The New Jerusalem (1920), comments about Jews being responsible for both the USSR's communism and the USA's unbridled capitalism (1929), and editorial policy in the latter days of G. K.'s Weekly, when distributism was moving to a right-wing position. On the last of these, attitude to Mussolini (whom he interviewed, see the Maisie Ward biography) in the 1930s is closer to the point; Chesterton made somewhat favourable remarks about contemporary Italy in his Autobiography (1935), and right at the end of his life G. K.'s Weekly in editorial comment on the invasion of Abyssinia seemed to go further (but the evidence is that this was not Chesterton writing, and that he was upset by the incident).

Chesterton was a large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and weighing around 21 stones (134 kg or 294 lb). Chesterton had a unique look, usually wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, with a swordstick in hand, and usually a cigar hanging out of his mouth. Chesterton rarely remembered where he was supposed to be going and would even miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It was not uncommon for Chesterton to send a telegram to his wife, Frances Blogg, whom he married in 1901, from some distant (and incorrect) location writing such things as, "Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home."

Chesterton loved to debate, often publicly debating with friends such as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and Clarence Darrow. Chesterton was usually considered the winner. According to his autobiography, he and George Bernard Shaw played cowboys in a silent movie that was never released.

The homily at Chesterton's Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral, London, was delivered by Ronald Knox. Chesterton is buried in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in the Roman Catholic Cemetery.

On October 1, 1936, Chesterton's estate was probated at 28,389 pounds sterling.

Influence

• Chesterton's The Everlasting Man contributed to a young atheist named C. S. Lewis being converted to Christianity.
• Chesterton's biography of Charles Dickens was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens' work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars. Considered by T.S. Eliot, Peter Ackroyd, and others, to be the best book on Dickens ever written.
• Chesterton's Orthodoxy has become a religious classic.
• Chesterton's novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill was a favorite of Michael Collins who would later go on to lead the movement for Irish independence. It has also been suggested that same book influenced George Orwell in the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four (The Napoleon of Notting Hill being partially set in 1984), however Orwell himself gave no indication that this was the case.
• Chesterton's work has inspired lyricists like Daniel Amos's Terry Scott Taylor from the 1970s to the 2000s. Daniel Amos mentioned Chesterton by name in the title track from 2001's Mr. Buechner's Dream.
• His physical appearance and apparently some of his mannerisms were a direct inspiration for the character of Dr. Gideon Fell, a well-known fictional detective created in the early 1930s by the Anglo-American mystery writer John Dickson Carr.
• The author Neil Gaiman has stated that The Napoleon of Notting Hill was an important influence on his own book Neverwhere. Gaiman also based the character Gilbert, from the comic book The Sandman, on Chesterton.
• Ingmar Bergman considered Chesterton's little known play Magic to be one of his favourites and even staged a production in Swedish. Later he reworked Magic into his movie The Magician in 1958. Also known as Ansiktet the movie and the play are both roughly similar although the two should not be compared. Both are essentially the work of two authors with widely different world views.

Some conservatives today have been influenced by his support for distributism. A. K. Chesterton, the right-wing journalist and the first chairman of the National Front, was a cousin.

Quotations

• "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up."
• "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."
• "The rich are the scum of the earth in every country."
• "It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything — even pride."
• "How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it."
• "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
• "I am the man who, with the utmost daring, discovered what had already been discovered."
• "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."
• "Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten."
• "Tea, although an Oriental, Is a gentleman at least; Cocoa is a cad and coward, Cocoa is a vulgar beast."
• "The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age."
• "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."
• "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."
• "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."
• "Though John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators."
• "Are they clinging to their crosses, F. E. Smith?" (see Welsh Church Act 1914)
• "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can't see things as they are." (The Oracle of the Dog, 1923)

(Although often attributed to Chesterton, the quotation "When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything" is to be found nowhere in the writer's works, as such. The phrase "When men stop..." most likely comes roughly from a sketch written about Chesterton by another writer. However, this could be an annecdotal quotation, such as Chesterton's reply, when a reporter asked him "What's wrong with the World?" said, "Me".)

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