Chapter Eight

THE INN AT THE END OF THE WORLD (1929–1936)

I am organizing a campaign for the emancipation of the wives of famous men.

In early 1929, Fr. O’Connor wrote to Dorothy Collins, advising her on the Chestertons’ upcoming trip to Rome. His letter is full of useful instructions, including which cardinal they should approach to help them gain an audience with the pope (the answer was the cardinal most familiar with Gilbert’s writing). Unfortunately, the trip, already repeatedly postponed, would be delayed once again. Just when they had their bags packed, Frances fell ill. The doctors diagnosed appendicitis and scheduled an operation for the day before they were scheduled to leave. She recovered well, staying at St. Joseph’s Nursing Home in Beaconsfield.

Illness and physical discomfort for both Chestertons were the presiding influences on the first half of the year. In April of 1929, while Dorothy Collins was on vacation, Frances wrote to her, sadly noting another delay:

Dearest,

Your letter has just come.

There is no doubt we must put off the start to Italy till next week anyhow.

G refuses to start for Paris, and that being the case, we will wait and go all together. Of course, I’m dreadfully disappointed about the Joan of Arc—I had rather set my heart on it. I hope Kathleen Chesshire can get rid of the tickets.

Let me hear how you go on—and don’t attempt to do anything before you are quite fit. I am awfully, awfully sorry you’ve had such a bad time.

Dr. Bakewell has been in today and decided on a diet regime which will I hope do good and the dentist managed to get out two bits of teeth without any anesthetic and he seems better.

This year marked the five hundredth anniversary of Joan of Arc’s famous march of 1429. There were celebrations and reenactments in France that year, and perhaps Frances had planned to attend something of the sort.

This long-awaited trip to the continent, and especially to Rome, was momentous to the couple. They had been to Rome once before, a decade earlier, but then it had just been to pass through. Even more significantly, neither Gilbert nor Frances was Roman Catholic at that time. When the trip finally came to pass, they remained in Rome for three months, October to December. They rented a hotel room overlooking the Spanish Steps. The trip brought many delights, with several personal and professional highlights. It was on this trip that Gilbert met Mussolini. He also had a private audience with Pope Pius XI at which the Pope stated his admiration for Gilbert’s St. Francis of Assisi. Near the end of the visit, Gilbert was a guest at the North American College. The Chestertons returned home to England on December 20, just in time for Christmas.

The following year marked an important moment in one of Frances’s closest relationships: for the first time, she signed a letter to O’Connor simply “Frances”. They had now known each other for twenty-six years. The letter itself was not momentous: it simply carried on the friendship that they had so long and so gradually cultivated. They were discussing Frances’s niece and grandniece, and Frances sadly related that her niece’s husband could not leave an allowance for the family when he left for China on a two-year stint of work on the Navy ship, the Caradoc. Always attentive to the interests of her friends, Frances also advised O’Connor on a publishing contract for a book he had translated. She concluded by noting that there were some difficulties at her local parish. She looked forward to an upcoming trip to the United States so she could go to Notre Dame, where there would be many spiritual opportunities.

Once again, this was a trip long scheduled but more than once delayed. Frances’s repeated illnesses always intervened. When asked why she did not just stay home, she said, “Gilbert gets so lonely without me.”

Fr. Charles O’Donnell, president of Notre Dame, arranged this second trip to America, through a friend of Gilbert’s, Robert Sencourt. Chesterton was scheduled to give two series of lectures in the spring of 1930. He would be paid $5,000, in addition to the fact that the university would cover all of his travel expenses. Gilbert agreed to the terms, with the exception that his wife and secretary were to accompany him. The initial plan backfired, though, when Gilbert became ill in early 1930. Dorothy Collins wrote to the priest informing him of the illness, and the lecture series was rescheduled for the fall. Such was the recurring pattern; Frances once said that her illnesses upset all their plans, but it was more of a combined effort at disruption. A considerable portion of their married life involved one nursing the other.

Eventually their good health aligned. Their England boat left on September 19, and they arrived in Canada on October 4, 1930. Visits and a series of well-attended lectures in Montreal and Toronto preceded their travel down to the United States. Many news agencies filmed Gilbert during this trip, and the film was probably shown in theaters on the newsreel.¹

Crossing the border on their way to Notre Dame was a nerve-racking experience for Frances since they were carrying what she called “contraband”. She was relieved when the border police failed to notice the flask of brandy hidden in her suitcase.

The two lecture series at Notre Dame were a great success, and students and faculty would long remember the visit. Gilbert, Frances, and Dorothy stayed in the home of a young family named Bixler; Frances befriended the children, as usual, and Gilbert got on well with the grandfather in the house. Gilbert lectured Monday through Friday evenings, and took side trips on the weekends to Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit. The University bestowed an honorary doctorate upon Gilbert on November 5, 1930.

They became “Domers” during this visit, and were present when the stadium opened for the first time. They attended a football game with head coach Knute Rockne. As Frances later wrote to Father O’Donnell (with whom she kept up a correspondence after their visit): “We often think and talk of Notre Dame and never forget the weeks we passed there.”

After leaving Notre Dame, Gilbert lectured throughout America. Reports of his visit can be found in the archives of numerous newspapers. It was a time of some suffering for Frances, who felt hounded by the press:

Since we arrived in New York our life has been a nightmare. Publicity men, reporters, interviewers, photographers even film producers dog our uneasy footsteps.²

Despite this frustration, Frances maintained her sense of humor. “While my husband is going on a lecture tour,” she told one reporter, “I am organizing a campaign for the emancipation of the wives of famous men.”

It is an interesting note that, among these crowds of eager media representatives, Frances lists “film producers”—alas, few film records of the trip exist. Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts offers one, where the students adopted Gilbert into the ranks of the “Holy Cross Crusaders.” In the film, one can see Frances Chesterton standing on Gilbert’s right, and Dorothy Collins standing on his left.³

In early December 1930, the Albany Evening News published a story specifically about Frances. “Mrs. Gilbert K. Chesterton Important Help to Husband, Making His Tour of Lectures; Couple Share Same Views” was the lengthy headline. The article described Frances as a quiet woman who was charming, small, and unassuming. She was marked with the same simplicity, the same sincerity, and the same kindness and earnestness as her husband. The reporter stated that as he listened to Gilbert and Frances talk to each other, he was impressed by what a tremendous influence they had on each other, and how inseparable they were.

The reporter went on to ask questions about current events in contemporary literature. Sinclair Lewis had recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, so the reporter asked Frances what she thought about it. She said she believed others were more deserving of the award, and that she personally admired the works of Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and Thornton Wilder.

The Chestertons continued their travels, touring the northeastern United States—New York City and Worcester—before heading south. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, on January 6, 1931, Frances fell ill once more. Gilbert was obligated to fulfill his lecture regime, so he left Dorothy to take care of Frances, and continued on his tour. Frances’s temperature then rose to 103 degrees, and a doctor was called. He immediately recommended she be admitted to a hospital. As her condition worsened, Dorothy became worried that Frances would not recover. She wrote to Gilbert, and he hurried back to his wife’s side, canceling many lectures on short notice. Frances soon turned the corner on her illness, however, and as soon as she was even a little bit better she insisted that Dorothy accompany Gilbert on the remainder of the tour. Gilbert and Dorothy obediently traveled to the West Coast, and Gilbert delivered his scheduled lectures.

Frances slowly recovered, and took one of her nurses on the train to rendezvous with her husband and secretary. On February 17, she arrived in California, and a hotel was found where she would remain to convalesce, under the supervision of the nurse. Gilbert and Dorothy continued on the lecture tour to San Francisco, California; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. Gilbert told a friend that Frances’s illnesses usually came on very rapidly, but that her recovery was always very slow.

It was an anxious time for Gilbert, and he (and Frances) found great relief in being reunited. The Chestertons left California together on March 23, dropping off the nurse in Kansas City before traveling on to New York again. Gilbert had several more lectures scheduled in the northeast before they could return home.

At the end of March, they received word that Knute Rockne had died in a plane accident. Frances wrote O’Donnell to express her condolences to the president and the school. Then she continued:

I feel somehow we have never thanked you properly for all your goodness to us at Notre Dame. It must have been a bit of a nuisance to you to think for a man’s wife and his secretary—but you will have realized how impossible it would have been for him without us. No man was ever so dependent on his belongings—no man was ever more compelled to carry his home with him wherever he might go. But we all had a very happy time and for us there are nothing but loving memories of Notre Dame and all she stands for.⁴

Upon their return home, Frances would keep informed of Notre Dame’s football games. She knew, having attended the stadium dedication during the first week of their trip, the importance of the football team to Notre Dame, and refers to it in her letters to O’Donnell. Nearly a year later, for instance, Frances sent a letter to O’Donnell when the team was defeated in an important game:

We do not imagine that the defeat of the Notre Dame Football Team has depressed you unduly—though we felt quite sad when we saw the note in the “New York Times.”⁵

The trip to America illustrates two important elements of the life of Frances Chesterton: her repeated illnesses and the overarching focus on Gilbert’s popular public image and performance. Nevertheless, her own individual work quietly continued to have an effect. Indeed, while she was still in America, Frances received a letter from the English poet Walter de la Mare regarding the publication of one of her poems in a collection:

20^th April 1931

Dear Mrs. Chesterton,

I am so very sorry to hear that you have been ill, and particularly in Tennessee. I do hope now indeed that all is well. … Thank you very much indeed for letting me use the poem in the Collins collection. The title is “Children’s Song of the Nativity,” and it begins, “How far is it to Bethlehem?” The collections will probably also be published in America, so if I don’t hear from you I will ask a similar fee from the publishers there as you have suggested for England, though I think it is far too little. So please let me know what you think when you re-consider this.

We shall look forward very much indeed to seeing you both when you are safe in England again. I saw in the Daily Telegraph this morning that you are on your way.

Yours Sincerely,

W.J. de la Mare

Her literary work, though she happily set it as secondary to her larger task of keeping Gilbert alive, happy, and effective, had yet life.

Later that year, Dorothy Collins went on vacation. While she was away, Frances wrote to her, revealing a development that would give joy to both the Chestertons—the conversion of their secretary:

My very dear,

I had your lovely letter this morning-time when I have seen Ella [Church] and heard about you and all your doings. Of course I am more happy than I can say that you are going to be of the Faith. I have prayed for you and longed for it. I can hardly believe it—it is going to come true. I will help you all I can over the difficult road you’ve got to tread. But I believe you will think any sacrifice worth while. You will make a better Catholic than I ever could be, because you have come to it by such a process of hacking your way through the jungle to the clear light. God bless you, Christ fill you, the Holy Spirit guide you, and Our Lady hold your dear hands.

Gilbert has been really ill, dull on the liver, but is ever so much better, but is still in bed. The rest is doing him good, and he is his most poetical and loving self. I am having a quiet time now I am no longer anxious and anyhow I got Nurse Clancy to stay the nights here. I look after him, and Pamela is here to spend the evenings with me. So far, I’ve not had any secretarial help as he is not working it has not been necessary. I’ve chucked everything except what had to be answered into your basket. You’ll find heaps when you come back.

Darling, don’t hurry back, please take an extra week anyhow—we shall not get away for another week, perhaps later.

Catherine is waiting to post the letters for me, so I wind up rather hurriedly. All my love, all my sympathy, all my thoughts are with you.

The battle against illness continued for both Chestertons, but the triumph of the Faith remained ever more wondrous to them than physical health could be. Upon Dorothy’s conversion in 1932, Gilbert and Frances stood as godparents.

At Christmas in 1931, Gilbert began a successful career as a radio personality with the BBC. His approach and his method were distinctly personal; he would prepare a talk, then press Frances, Dorothy, or both of them into service as his audience. They would sit across from the microphone so that Gilbert would have someone to whom he would speak. This method produced a radio show that sounded like Chesterton was chatting to the listener in a normal voice. Prior to that, radio announcers used an affected “announcer” voice. Sales of radios improved as so many people wanted to be addressed so personally and accessibly by the great man.

These stories, as well as the interviews frequently granted by Gilbert, give an entertaining insight into the life of the Chestertons. In 1932, when a reporter came to interview Gilbert at Top Meadow, the reporter was introduced to the dog Quoodle. Gilbert explained that he had named the dog after a character in an earlier novel just so that he could always explain the name and thus advertise his forgotten work. Later, he was asked about a costume party given by a literary club where Gilbert had dressed as Doctor Samuel Johnson. The reporter asked if Mrs. Chesterton had likewise dressed as a character.

“My wife went dressed as one of the characters in a novel that I am going to write in the near future,” Chesterton replied. “You see that I devise ways and means to advertise both my old novels and my new ones!”⁶

Gilbert, ever busy, that year wrote The Surprise for Patricia “Patsey” Burke,⁷ an actress friend in Beaconsfield. The script was laid aside and never produced during Gilbert’s lifetime.

In April, the seesaw of sickness took a new angle—Dorothy fell ill. Frances wrote to her, full of sympathy and tenderness:

Dearest,

I was glad to get your letter this morning, and to feel you are on the mend and our plans will really [?] at last.

I am having a very worrying time, and shall be thankful when it is over and I’ve fled the country!

I didn’t realize, my very dear, how terribly I depend on you. I don’t mean only for ordinary help, but for understanding and sympathy. I am always afraid though, of involving you in too much, and making life harder for you. But when I know you are there, and I can call on you, I am thankful indeed.

I have lots to tell you. I am just off to town, but I’ve been kept hanging about all the morning, and now I shan’t have time to do what I want there.

God bless you. …

Dorothy would not long be ill; that burden would quickly return to the Chestertons. When Dorothy traveled to Europe on vacation, it was Gilbert’s turn. One of Dorothy’s letters at the time contains this illuminative passage: “It seems almost inevitable that he should have these attacks at stated intervals. I suppose it is nature’s warning to him that he is not made of cast iron and that he must be careful. … Is he fairly cheerful or has he got one of his bad fits of depression?” Such a suggestion, while illustrating the very humanity of the great man (whose energy and vigor might easily lend itself to occasional bouts of depression), shows something even more vital regarding the character of his wife: Frances never recorded or alluded to any such tendency in her husband.

Through the next year, Gilbert battled sickness almost continually—it was the beginning of his decline years. 1933 would be challenging because of this, with the additional distress of the death of both of their mothers. Frances had continued to visit her mother every day that she could. Blanche was in St. Joseph nursing home, within walking distance of Top Meadow, and died of old age that year. She was buried next to her husband and three daughters at Highgate. Marie Louise’s death brought one benefit—Gilbert’s inheritance from her took away all financial pressures.⁸

At around this time, the women’s poetry circle of which Frances was a member decided to collect poems and publish their own book. Titled The Writer’s Club Anthology, it was edited by Margaret Woods and included three poems written by Frances.⁹

Even repeated illness could never stifle the ambition and drive of the Chestertons. As Frances wrote to O’Donnell in December 1933: “If it is anyway possible we hope to go to Rome after Christmas—to get there before the Holy Year ends—and then our dream is to go on to Palestine.”¹⁰

It was an important trip for Gilbert; Pope Pius XI granted both he and Hilaire Belloc the Knighthood of the Order of St. Gregory.¹¹ The Knighthood would be officially conferred upon them by Cardinal Bourne in 1934. Gilbert was now officially allowed physically to carry the sword he so loved and had so long wielded metaphysically. Their trip to Rome for this honor took place during the summer of 1934. Their ambition to continue on to the Holy Land was sadly dashed, by the same heartless culprit: illness. Gilbert’s poor condition required a five-week layover in Rome. They returned home after visiting Malta.

Probably because of illness, the only books that came out in 1934 were compilations: a selection of Illustrated London News columns titled Avowals and Denials and an anthology to celebrate the 10^th year and 500^th issue of Chesterton’s newspaper: GK’s: A Miscellany of the First 500 Issues of G.K.’s Weekly (published by Rich & Cowan).

In December of 1934, a year and a half before his death, Chesterton may have had a heightened sense (brought about by his continued illness) of his own mortality. In any case, he wrote as if he knew he was coming to the end of his career, if not his life. In G.K.’s Weekly he wrote at length about his view of life, how he believed in the beginning in the miracle of all existence, and the wonder of all experience, and continued to believe it “at the end.”

Meanwhile, his legacy, already well-established, received a new and special honor. In February of 1935, Frances received a letter from R.N. Green-Armytage, who was putting on an exhibition of some sort, and had asked her for one of Gilbert’s handwritten manuscripts to display. Frances wrote back and said she doubted she could find anything, as Gilbert now dictated directly to a secretary who was typing, and even his corrections were typewritten. However, Green-Armytage pressed her for something, so in April, Frances searched the house and found two manuscripts: one was a section from The Ballad of the White Horse, and the second was a Father Brown story. (Frances warned Green-Armytage that the manuscripts were worn and had probably been in Gilbert’s pockets for ages. She asked Green-Armytage to return the manuscripts, but not until the couple returned from their travels, and mentioned Gilbert would be lecturing in Florence.)

In March 1935, Gilbert satisfied his detective fiction fans by releasing another collection of Father Brown stories, The Scandal of Father Brown. Frances was preparing the home, garden, and pets so that they could be away for several months. She scheduled home maintenance and a spring cleaning for while they traveled.

Dorothy Collins drove Gilbert and Frances to Spain via France. The trip was a working vacation, not a lecture tour; Gilbert dictated and Dorothy typed. Additionally, they were able to enjoy themselves. Gilbert and Frances were especially delighted in Barcelona, where Gilbert purchased a cardboard toy theater with electric lights and cherished the souvenir.¹²

They arrived in Florence in time for Gilbert to deliver a lecture on English literature at the International Festival. This lecture was in honor of Luigi Pirandello, who had recently received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Afterward, they traveled back through Switzerland and Belgium. They had traveled over two thousand seven hundred miles—an exhausting ordeal, but a welcome respite from winter in cold, damp England.

Upon their return, Gilbert resumed the work of the Weekly, and debated Bertrand Russell on the BBC. In June of 1935, Gilbert was asked by the BBC to contribute to a series of radio shows on the subject of liberty. Gilbert’s talk prompted a huge stack of mail—some positive, some critical.

The following month, Green-Armytage’s exhibition concluded. Frances wrote and said he could keep the Father Brown manuscript if he liked. She informed him they were back from Florence, adding that she wished she and Gilbert could get away to a desert island to be far from proofs, telephones, and Americans.

In addition to the public efforts for the Church of which they were now members, the Chestertons continued to influence many regarding the faith. On All Saints’ Day in 1935, Hugh Paynter—the serviceman Gilbert and Frances had first met when they visited him in the hospital back in 1916, with whom they had kept up a friendship—became Catholic, along with his wife; Gilbert and Frances were their godparents.

Their joy in the Paynter conversion helped bring the year to a happy ending. Christmas, however, was overshadowed. It would be Gilbert’s last, and he was already visibly unwell. They celebrated the feast with the Nicholl family at Christmas Cottage, down the road from Top Meadow. The girls had become very close to Auntlet and Unclet over the last years, and also noticed Gilbert’s decline.

In early 1936, Dr. George G. Coulton,¹³ a fierce anti-Catholic who had debated both Belloc and Knox, chose Chesterton as his new opponent. The Coulton controversy was not unlike the Blatchford controversies, the long debate which began Chesterton’s career.¹⁴ Gilbert was not up to the challenge, though he tried; his health was too uncertain for him to have the energy for the combat. It was a grief to him and thus to his wife, as is shown in a February 1936 letter to O’Connor:

I wish you were here that we might talk. Poor Gilbert gets so overwhelmed with all the questions and letters he is supposed to answer and (though I think it useless) immersed in controversy with Coulton. I never feel he has a chance to do his own job properly. … We’ve kept fairly well in spite of cold G. had his usual bronchial catarrh but seems better and I’ve got to have teeth out and be made generally uncomfortable before the doctor thinks me fit.

I’ve been very occupied with family affairs. My youngest niece Catherine broke off her engagement and has dashed off to a post in Australia—I am glad she should launch forth on her own account but we had a hard time with her mother who has been so desperately ill and only now, after nearly a year, is beginning to recover.

And I have the eternal problem of my nephew Peter, who either can’t or won’t manage to make a living. Can’t I really think. …

If the weather improves, I hope to go to town tomorrow to the Lourdes service at Westminster Cathedral and incidentally if I can fit it in to Cruft’s Dog Show. I want a new dog and I had to part with Dolfuss—a heart-breaking affair. … ¹⁵

“I never feel he has a chance to do his own job properly.” This was a shared cause of distress to both Frances and O’Connor. They both believed Chesterton had great books yet to write, but sacrificed his time for the less-important enterprise of his newspaper work and letter writing with antagonists like Coulton. His articles, of course, have remained accessible and alive through reprinting. Nevertheless, many planned books—on Shakespeare, Napoleon, George Meredith, and Savonarola—were never written. O’Connor would later respond empathetically to Frances: “To hell with Coulton.”

In February and March, Gilbert brought his Autobiography to completion. By this time, he was sick constantly, as was Frances. Gilbert had a cough he could not shake, and suffered fevers repeatedly. He was weak and tired, his breathing labored.

Gilbert’s final radio lecture took place that March. In his last talk, he answered T.S. Eliot’s “This is the way the world ends …” and his voice sounds very tired.¹⁶ His last poem appeared in G.K.’s Weekly that month as well. The couple planned a trip, hopeful that it would bring about some improvement in Gilbert’s health. In May they went to Lisieux and Lourdes, driven by Dorothy. Gilbert had grown to admire the “Little Flower,” St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who had been canonized in 1925. She was geographically close to them in one way—the Catholic Church in Beaconsfield was named for her. She was born in 1873, and thus was a contemporary of both Gilbert and Frances. Gilbert was sick throughout the trip, but seemed to improve on the long drive home, singing songs to Frances and Dorothy.

Back home, his health declined, and worsened. He would lose his concentration and fall asleep at his desk. Frances was terribly worried—he’d never fallen asleep while dictating before. She called a doctor. The diagnosis was not promising; the doctor recommended Gilbert go to bed. Frightened, Frances dropped everything. She wrote to Coulton, to whom Gilbert had been in the middle of responding, and said that Gilbert would need several months to recuperate from this illness before he could answer back properly. Then she left everything—the house, business, correspondence—all to Dorothy, so that she could sit with her beloved Gilbert.

Her letter to Fr. Vincent McNabb, one day before Gilbert’s death, expresses her hope and her intense suffering at this time:

June 13, 1936

Dear Fr. Vincent,

The news will probably reach you sooner or later, that my dear “G.K.” is very seriously ill—mainly heart and kidney trouble. Will you of your charity pray for him and for me. He had Extreme Unction this morning & received Holy Communion.

Though very ill, the specialist thinks he has a fighting chance & I have the best doctors and the best nurses in the world to help.

Yours always,

Frances Chesterton.

The last thing he read & delighted in was your pamphlet of Cardinal Pole’s Address—He read it to me.¹⁷

She held onto this “fighting chance” with passionate hope. After all, he had been at death’s door before, and had returned. But this time there would be no rally.

The day before he died, Frances kept vigil.

For one moment, he regained consciousness and looked up to see her sitting, faithfully beside him.

“Hello, my darling,” he said.

Those were his last words to his loving wife. The next day, June 14, 1936, he died at ten in the morning.

Frances was bereaved, lost, shocked, and overwhelmed. At some point during the day, she wandered over to the calendar on the desk, the calendar that had kept all their appointments, and crossed out two visitors for the 14^th. Then she wrote, “The Lights went out at 10:15am.”

That evening, Edmund C. Bentley, Gilbert’s friend since boyhood, announced on the BBC that Gilbert had died. Family, friends, and fans alike grieved the news. The love and esteem of so many combined to dash Frances’s last hope for a quiet, private funeral. Gilbert was hers—her lover and friend—but he also belonged to the world. A public funeral was unavoidable.

The funeral Mass for Gilbert Keith Chesterton took place at St. Teresa’s¹⁸ in Beaconsfield on Wednesday, June 17. The church of St. Teresa was still incomplete and people overflowed into the temporary wooden narthex; the rest stood outside. Following Frances’s instructions, a cross of dark red roses adorned the casket. “Red roses full of rain—” read a note on the flowers: “for you—as you would wish.”

The local priest from St. Teresa’s, Monsignor Smith, celebrated the Mass, with Father McNabb, Father Rice, Father Fulton Sheen, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Bishop of Northampton, along with many other clergy.¹⁹ O’Connor’s absence must have been an additional sorrow to Frances; he was sick in bed that week, and was unable to attend.

The mournful crowd drove or walked slowly behind the mile-long funeral procession to the cemetery. The policemen redirected the path of the hearse to take a longer route so the procession could pass by the old center of town, where Gilbert had spent so much time with the local proprietors.

It was a day of overwhelming and shared grief. The people of Beaconsfield came flooding out to say goodbye to the great man, who had known them all personally. One policeman was found in tears. Another apologized that the constables were unable to attend the funeral because unfortunately, they had to work. Hilaire Belloc was found weeping disconsolately at the Railway Hotel, the place of Gilbert’s 1922 conversion.

After the burial, a small reception took place at Top Meadow. It was a solemn, challenging day. Gilbert’s looming, electric personality was gone, and the house felt eerily empty without him. Guests stood on tiptoe, as if expecting he might come around the corner at any moment and say hello once again.

Ada Chesterton later criticized Frances for “hiding” (adding that there wasn’t enough food). In fact, the heartbroken widow, for once overwhelmed with the task of serving as hostess to Gilbert’s friends and followers, eventually took refuge in another room.

On Saturday, June 27, two thousand people, including, of course, Frances Chesterton and Dorothy Collins, attended a requiem Mass at Westminster Cathedral, in London. Fathers John O’Connor, Vincent McNabb, and Ignatius Rice, all so instrumental in Gilbert’s conversion, assisted. Ronald Knox delivered the sermon, which was later printed in G.K.’s Weekly. Immediately after the Mass, Frances lunched with Eric Gill²⁰ and O’Connor. Afterwards, O’Connor returned with Dorothy and Frances to stay a few days at Top Meadow.

Across the Atlantic, a requiem Mass was said at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on June 20, Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle was the main celebrant. The Rann-Kennedys, the Chestertons’ old flat neighbors, as well as 1,500 others, including members of many literary societies, attended.

Letters and telegrams of condolence poured in. In response to a widespread desire to contribute money in Gilbert’s memory, Frances set up a G.K. Chesterton Memorial fund, which would help the parish church of St. Teresa retire its debt and complete the building of the English Martyrs chapel.²¹

In the wake of the death of Chesterton, as his overwhelming legacy continued to influence an admiring world, few voices remained to speak of the woman behind the man who was Chesterton. And yet, the loyal O’Connor knew well what Frances had meant to and for Gilbert:

June 18, 1936:

Dear Frances … Notices are all nice and reasonable … but no one tells the secret—must it remain secret?—of how much of him and his best might have been lost to the world only for you.²²

On December 17, 1938, an article appeared in the Tablet with a contribution from O’Connor, in which he made these thoughts public:

… it was her steady care and encouragement that kept him faithful for two years to a task [writing The Ballad of the White Horse] so often broken by alien interest. She kept him to the height of it by always taking advantage of a lull or a holiday, in just the same way, with the same happy knack, she used towards children. In another place I think I have indicated that we owe much of his best and highest work to her never-failing enthusiasm.

I expect the life of her husband will tell us more at length what the burden was of administering such an unruly inheritance as Gilbert. Yet she was so tactful, understanding, and patient not only with him, but with his besiegers, let us call them, that he was saved much waste and wear, and they were saved as to face, if not to soul.²³

O’Connor would remain a devoted Chesterton apologist. Soon after Gilbert’s death, he visited Stanbrook Abbey, the Abbess of which was Dame Laurentia McLachlan, a Scottish Benedictine nun, correspondent and sometime friend of George Bernard Shaw. O’Connor’s report of the visit shows his enthusiasm (centered on a “BIG KNIFE” which belonged to Chesterton):

July 20, 1936

Dear Frances,

I am home again this week past and only just recovering from the journey. People keep telling me to be careful! I’m careful. Wish they took half the care.

If you have any memorial cards left, send me a few. I deal them carefully to good and prayerful persons who remember the blessed dead.

There is a Lady Doc. doing locum²⁴ in Beaconsfield. But shy of calling. She is very anxious to see at least the empty husk of Gilbert’s surroundings. I received her into the Church last year. Alison Hamilton 5 Highway Court in the village.

I had several talks with the Abbess of Stanbrook and her nuns, and passed the BIG KNIFE to them through the bars of their cage. They say I made Gilbert live to them. At least for two hours. I’ve been re-reading St. Francis. Amazing. Fr. Rice at Douai has an album of Daily News and other cuttings. One letter of the Times on the Jewish question could be cut in marble. Must not be lost. Even I have a lot of Daily Newses. Her chaplain at Stanbrook is a Son of Sir William Butler, the sort of man Gilbert would love.

Mother Laurentia showed me her three relics and gave me an autograph. Shawtograph, I should have said. She says Our Lady will not let him go. He wrote her sixteen pages from Palestine, with a photograph entitled “Temptation and the Devil,” and lo it was Barney²⁵ and Dean Inge. I send two letters if you are not blind with reading such—from priests who say Mass for him. One I have mislaid came punctual from Newfoundland, from a Father Sheehan. Do not return.

Many things remain to be said if I could recall. Love to Dorothy. To hell with that Coulton.

Yours affectionately,

John O’Connor.

Gilbert had carried the knife around for twenty-four years, even taking it with him when he traveled. Frances frequently had to retrieve it from under the pillow at the hotels when he forgot it.²⁶ Frances’s response to O’Connor contains, as always, insight into her mind and heart. This is perhaps the most challenging letter for the devoted followers of her husband—and Frances herself—to accept:

July 21, 1936

Dear Padre,

I return the letters because I have so many—and eventually I suppose I shall have to destroy them.

A. Hamilton is coming to see us this evening. It will be very nice to make her acquaintance. I am sorry her locum here ends so soon. She wrote me a very charming letter.

I find it increasingly difficult to keep going. The feeling that he needs me no longer is almost unbearable.

How do lovers love without each other? We were always lovers.

I have a Mass said here for him every Tuesday—but I feel it is more for the repose of my soul than for his.

Take care of yourself,

Yours ever,

Frances

Her suffering is clear and understandable. “How do lovers love without each other?” She was devastated, grieving, and lonely. How could she not struggle, missing her Gilbert so terribly?

Nevertheless, the question remains: why would Frances eventually destroy the letters? What was the compelling need that would dictate this cruel blow to posterity? It was not uncharacteristic; Frances and her sister Ethel, like their mother Blanche before them, were pyromaniacs with regards to letters.²⁷

Perhaps they were a sore reminder of Gilbert’s absence; keeping the letters would not bring him back to her.

Perhaps they were overwhelming; indeed, Gilbert was prolific in all things, especially with the support and assistance of Frances.

Most likely, an old-fashioned sense of privacy combined with pragmatism; for all she cherished every word her husband had ever scribbled, she “could not” keep everything.

The correspondence with O’Connor continued to be a primary means of solace and guidance:

July 23, 1936

Dear Frances,

No more use expecting you not to grieve and take it hard than commanding you not to feel pain. Only time will dull the edge, and you will realize more the value of the work in which you took so good a hand. Thy Maker is thy Husband now. Widows were very early associates of the Hierarchy at least as honorary members. The husband who came back to ask for more prayers said: We cannot hold intercourse with one another, but no words of mine can describe to you the comfort we all feel when anyone on earth does any good deed on our behalf, especially having Mass but most of all receiving Holy Communion. There, that’s the first I’ve ever written down of the best and truest of all the ghost stories I have heard.²⁸ Vex not his ghost: is an old Catholic tradition. Let him comfort you by praying quietly for him. Indeed it is the repose of your soul now that is in demand, I am certain Gilbert will do all he can to help. Have you any memorial cards left?

I enclose a Carol²⁹ of yesterday’s Prize Day. Did you do it first or did he steal it??? Or is it just a lark?

Thank you on behalf of Alison. She’ll tell me all about it I’m certain.

Yours affectionately in J.C.,

John O’Connor.

Frances received many other beautiful letters of sympathy from friends and strangers after Gilbert’s death, and many of these she did not destroy. They flooded in, including from Maurice Baring:

My dear Frances,

… There is nothing to be said, is there, except that our loss, and especially yours, is his gain.

I wish I could come down to-morrow. …

O Frances! I feel as if a tower of shelter had tumbled and my crutch in life had gone.³⁰

And from Knox:

Dear Mrs. Chesterton,

This is only to assure you of my prayers, for you as well as for his soul. The world, I feel, can console itself for the loss of what he might have written, by having all that he wrote; your loss is irreplaceable—here. I won’t write you with praise of him; he has been my idol since I read Napoleon of Notting Hill as a schoolboy; I’ll only hope that you, who knew as no one else does what we have lost, will find it easy to imagine as well as believe that he is alive, and unchanged. Thank God for that faith, that I have it when so many of my friends lost it. … God comfort you.³¹

From McNabb:

Dear Frances,

I feel I must write to you.

But what to write I do not know.

I have wept—and yet Gilbert’s death is not just for tears, but for pride.

God gave him to England—and England gave him to the world—as one of God’s best gifts to England for three centuries.

His mind alone would have been gift enough for any land to make its boast.

But we who knew his heart—and you who knew it best—felt that it almost dwarfed his mind by its greatness.

To-day we are listening to our Blessed Lord telling us about His Heart—in the room of His Sacred Heart. He tells us how He could not rest until all the poor of the village and the roadside shared his “good cheer.” That was Gilbert’s heart; and also Christ’s.

Another of God’s best gifts to us was the one whom Gilbert thought God’s best gift to him. Today when God has summoned him first and left her in tears, her prayers of accustomed self-forgetfulness have been answered.

The England, the Church that feels an unpayable gratitude to Gilbert, counts you amongst its creditors.

And from G.B. Shaw:

It seems the most ridiculous thing in the world that I, eighteen years older than Gilbert, should be heartlessly surviving him. However, this is only to say that if you have any temporal bothers that I can remove, a line on a postcard (or three figures) will be sufficient. The trumpets are sounding for him; and the slightest interruption must be intolerable.

From Rome came a most remarkable telegram—Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) writing to tell Frances of the Holy Father’s grief at hearing of Gilbert’s death. The message was read out loud at the memorial service in Westminster Cathedral:

HOLY FATHER DEEPLY GRIEVED DEATH MR. GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON DEVOTED SON HOLY CHURCH GIFTED DEFENDER OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH STOP HIS HOLINESS OFFERS PATERNAL SYMPATHY PEOPLE OF ENGLAND ASSURES PRAYERS DEAR DEPARTED BESTOWS APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION = CARDINAL PACELLI

From J. M. Barrie:

21 June 1936

Dear Mrs. Chesterton,

It would ill become me to intrude upon you at this time, but I hope I may just send you my deep sympathy. He was a glorious man, loveable beyond words and I think the greatest literary figure left to us. One aspect of him that I have not seen mentioned but that is clear to me is that he was such a gentleman. Chaucer’s perfect gentle knight. He was this beyond compare. I feel very, very sorry for you, left without him. A bit of yourself dies with him, and in a way that perhaps makes it less hard to bear.

With my affectionate sympathy.

Yours,

J. M. Barrie.

Each of these letters, and so many others, express the love, appreciation, and dedication of the friends, all of whom were inspired by the greatest and goodness of Gilbert Chesterton and of his wife. The sense, seemingly universally shared, was that Frances, without Gilbert, was at a loss. Her cross had altered; no longer was she the woman with a keen mother’s heart, burdened with tragic infertility. She had found a unique fulfillment in being the wife of Gilbert Chesterton. Now she was alone and bearing that cross. In that loneliness she could turn only, in faith, to God. “Thy Maker is thy Husband now.” O’Connor’s comment would be well-received; Frances, ever faithful and patient, would be faithful and patient now, in her darkest hour.

She later wrote a poem as a tribute to Gilbert, titled, “In Memory of G.K.C.,”³² and it includes these beautiful lines:

Your hand was stretched to all who knocked, “Hail, friend!”

And which of those who hungered was not fed

With wine of your warm mirth, with wisdom’s bread

The door stood wide, the hearth glowed to the end.

And the last guest entered, says Frances, and it was death. Even there, strengthened always by his own faith, the welcome had been certain.

_______________

¹ The tiny clips that exist show Gilbert and Frances standing on the boat; these are shown during the opening sequence of Eternal Word Television Network’s Apostle of Common Sense show.

² Letter to Mr. Charles Phillips, Nov. 25, 1930.

³ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4wUYTMcXBE.

⁴ FAC letter to Fr. O’Donnell, Nov. 11, 1930, Notre Dame Collection.

⁵ FAC letter to Fr. O’Donnell, Dec. 10, 1931, Notre Dame Collection.

⁶ Chesterton as Seen by His Contemporaries, 134.

⁷ Frances’s will stated that Olga Burke was Patricia’s mother, and according to Gilbert, she was an old friend from Bedford Park. The Incredulity of Fr. Brown was dedicated to Patricia. “To Patricia Burke, Who Acted,” The Collected Works Vol. 10-A, 334.

⁸ Bentley. Her estate had over £9,000, which was a lot of money back then, the equivalent of about $265,000 in today’s dollars. Marie Louise divided her estate between Gilbert and Ada, which would include the sale of her former home.

⁹ “Sonnet,” first line, “Why did you call beloved in the night?” and “Cradle of the Winds” and “Sed ex Deo Nati Sunt”.

¹⁰ FAC letter to Fr. O’Donnell, December 8th, 1933, Notre Dame Collection.

¹¹ http://www.knightsofchristsmercy.com/st_gregory.html.

¹² The Spanish toy theater is at the Oxford Oratory in the G.K. Chesterton Library.

¹³ See: http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/1st-october-1921/18/dr-g-g-coulton-andcatholics-to-the-editor-of-the- and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._G._Coulton.

¹⁴ See http://www.chesterton.org/miracles-and-modern-civilisation/ and “The Blatchford Controversies” in The Collected Works Vol. 1.

¹⁵ British Library Folder 73196.

¹⁶ Aidan Mackey recollection. Mr. Mackey has this last BBC talk recorded.

¹⁷ Wade Center folder 308. “Cardinal Pole’s Eirenikon,” Dublin Review, trans. Fr. Vincent McNabb, O.P. (1936): 149-60.

¹⁸ Although St. Thérèse’s name had the usual French spelling, when the people of Beaconsfield chose her for their patron, they used an anglicized version of her name.

¹⁹ Information provided by Canon John Udris, former parish priest at St. Teresa, Beaconsfield, see also, http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/20th-june-1936/6/gilbert-chesterton.

²⁰ Gill was an artist and friend of the Chestertons. He was commissioned to create the gravestone for Gilbert’s grave in Beaconsfield.

²¹ Catholic Herald (September 25, 1936): 1.

²² British Library Folder 73196-0278.

²³ “Requiescant: Mrs. G.K. Chesterton,” The Tablet (December 17, 1938): 26.

²⁴ Substituting for another doctor.

²⁵ Bishop Barnes.

²⁶ Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 253.

²⁷ However, this was not unusual. When George Washington died, Martha burned all of their personal correspondence, as was the custom of the time.

²⁸ O’Connor collected ghost stories.

²⁹ One wonders what carol Fr. O’Connor is referring to, which must have been a “Gilbert” but sounded like a “Frances” poem.

³⁰ Wade Center folder 17—June 16, 1936.

³¹ Wade Center folder 185—June 15, 1936.

³² How Far Is It To Bethlehem, 301.