Recently there appeared a statement to the effect that although Chesterton had considerable popularity with the average American reader, our authors cared but little for the man and his work. Doubting such a sweeping statement, I wrote to various men of letters who would serve as a good cross-section of American literature, and their replies proved unusually illuminating.
“Of course you may put me down as an admirer of Chesterton,” declares Channing Pollock, “though I recall surprisingly little of his work. I have read so much that, after fifty-six years, I begin to find recollections blurred. My admiration of Chesterton is founded on my impression of the man—of what he was and stood for; of his sincerity, courage, forthrightness and general altruism.”
“As a boy of ten,” records Thomas O. Mabbott, “I read regularly copies of the ‘London Illustrated News’ to which G. K. C. was a regular contributor. I am one of those people who, while not exactly a prodigy, developed very early and think very much more as I did when sixteen than most people seem to do. I often boast how little most writers influence my own thought but Chesterton is one of the few who did! I read much of his work as a very young man, and believe he is one of the very few authors who impressed me profoundly. I saw ‘Magic’ when it was given in New York during the war—a mark of devotion, surely, since I rarely went to a serious play. Incidentally I thought it very effective as an acted play.”
Clement Wood first read “Heretics” and then “Orthodoxy,” and immediately obtained the impression that the author was “one of the world’s most alert and persuasively brilliant minds. He made the persons treated of real and significant to me for the first time. Thereafter I read most of his work. His novels are absolutely unique, I wouldn’t be without one, and of all, the ‘Napoleon of Notting Hill’ is the most precious—the glorious effort to revive medievalism today (which I am 100% against intellectually) won me forever. His Father Brown stories, in spite of the ever-present propaganda for Catholicism—which again I am against, but I believe that if religion persists, it will either be Roman Catholic or the Quaker non-Christian (Religious Society of Friends) non-evangelical faith—I regard as by all odds the greatest detective stories ever written. Poe and Doyle are forerunners, and then G. K. C. whose every word is a work of art. I have memorized the plots of nearly all and the wording of many of his memorable openings. His ‘Peacock Trees,’ ‘Club of Queen Trades,’ rank as highly.
“The play ‘Magic’ is immortal and weighs more to me than all Shaw!”
“You may certainly enroll me as one of his admirers,” affirms Donald Ogden Stewart. “Although I do not recall the name of the first book of his which I read, I do remember, however, that it was while I was in my senior year at Yale, and that it had such an influence on me that I immediately proceeded to read every one of his books that I could lay my hands on.”
Henry Hazlitt first encountered Chesterton’s writings in 1916 and “was quickly carried away by his stylistic brilliance. My admiration, I must confess, was not sustained at its original level, but it most certainly never deserted me. I never met him personally, but I heard him debate with Clarence Darrow, and was impressed by his immense superiority over his antagonist, and by his charm as a man.”
William Thomas Walsh first heard about G. K. C. when he was a student at Yale in 1909: “I think it was Professor Chauncey B. Tinker who recommended him in class that year, and I seem to remember that William Lyon Phelps was also a Chesterton enthusiast at that early period. The book that helped and influenced me most was ‘The Everlasting Man.’ I liked it so well that I bought three copies, intending to lend them to as many people as possible, for I thought the whole world should drink at that fountain of wisdom. I soon discovered, however, that some people loved the book and others hated it just as fervently. This was to be expected, perhaps, about anything so profoundly Christian in its perceptions. In fact, I began to entertain an almost superstitious notion that the book had a practical value apart from literary considerations, in what St. Ignatius, following St. John, called the Discernment of Spirits. The various agnostics and pagans to whom I lent the book usually kept it a long while, and finally returned it saying apologetically that they had never found time to read it, though I knew that every one of them had read several other books in the interim. Finally the three volumes disappeared completely from my life. It was partly my fault, for I have a bad habit of lending books, and forgetting to whom: and as the number of people who have to be reminded to return books is apparently very large, I have lost the best part of my library in consequence: for it is usually the book that one is enthusiastic about that one lends. But I can’t help thinking the Devil must have had a particular grudge against so true and so powerful a book, and has continued to hide all three of my volumes on the most obscure shelves of as many sons of Belial. Still, as good comes out of evil in the long run, it may be that the sons of these benighted individuals may inadvertently come upon them on rainy days, and in their innocence read and be enlightened.
“In my biography of Philip the Second, I have had to differ with Chesterton’s interpretations of that most misunderstood gentleman. But when G. K. wrote his glorious ‘Lepanto,’ he was still partly deceived by the tradition that had so long dominated English letters, so far as Spain was concerned. It is the only mistake of importance I have ever noted in the work of that phenomenal man.”
Hamlin Garland met him at the Savage Club in London, and several times in America: “As a matter of fact, I introduced him when he made his first address in New York City. I enjoyed his mystery stories much better than some of his more pretentious work. From my point of view he worked the paradoxes altogether too hard. He was a very singular and interesting character.”
Waldo Frank remembers that when he was “in college and out of it, the essays of G. K. C. stimulated me, indeed. His critique of modern society, his destruction of its complacencies, his suggestive references to other values now absent, meant a good deal to me.”
Myles Connolly feels that Chesterton “will not, try as I will, come under the head of remembrance. He seems vividly contemporary, vitally alive. It’s a worn-out form of tribute, I know, but there’s none greater and I will say it: he lives. The stuff of immortality was so strong in him that beside his memory as the world calls it, it is we who are dead.
“Napoleon said that no man became a writer unless he were a defeatist. When life was too tall and strong for a man, he quit, and in his pen he found corroboration and consolation. That is not, we are aware, altogether so. Although it is true most men who write are running away. But with Chesterton writing was not running away; it was running to—running to reality, to truth. Writing was life with him: it was his breathing, his talk, his laughter, his self. It might be said that those who don’t like Chesterton don’t like the truth. It might ever more accurately be said that those who don’t like Chesterton, don’t like life. That superabundance of his, that hugeness of his, is too much for them. They crawl; he dances (albeit like the mountains of Scripture). They pick-peck; he waves that tremendous sword. They count those corroded little pennies; he empties that fabulous purse of his on the world. He was an extravagant man; extravagant of his riches, his light, his life. It is this shining extravagance that blinds the crawlers and pick-peckers and misers. It is a glory too much for them. A few words of ‘Thoreau’ are, I think, to the point. ‘I fear,’ writes the Concord ascetic, ‘lest my expression may not be extra-vagrant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced ... I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?’
“To Chesterton such words as ‘tremendous’ and ‘splendid’ and ‘enormous’ and ‘shattering’ were of common use. (In fact, it was he who made such words popular.) These words came naturally to him because (and he would be the last to admit it) he himself lived these words; such words only could express his vitality and significance. He was a giant. There is no other way of saying it. Except, perhaps, to say he still is.”
James Branch Cabell “enjoyed all the work of Chesterton’s early and middle period. I admit that of his publications during, let us say vaguely, more recent years, I prefer to say nothing, out of loyalty to a person that has given me a vast amount of pleasure. I write this after verifying the fact that his earlier books when I re-read them, can still do this.”
“Indeed I am a warm admirer of Chesterton,” affirms Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. “Apart from his delightful wit and his genius in many directions, he was a great religionist. He as a Catholic, I as a Jew, could see eye to eye with each other, and he might have added, ‘particularly seeing that you are cross-eyed;’ but I deeply respected him. When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit.”
Dr. Alexis Carrel well remembers that “Heretics” was the first Chesterton book that he read almost a quarter of a century ago,
“The extreme clarity and brilliance of his style impressed me greatly. The train of his thought appeared to me as strong, flexible, and shining as a steel blade, and as merciless.”