In Memoriam

Vincent McNabb, O.P.

The following obituary of G. K. Chesterton was published four days after

Chesterton’s death in the June 18, 1936 edition of G. K.’s Weekly.

GILBERT CHESTERTON IS DEAD.

I keep on moaning this to myself. If I did not believe the things he

believed, his death would be almost the death of hope. I should despair
of everyone; and of myself most of all.

For how could I again trust my judgment when it once misled me

into hailing as one of the great men and major prophets of her country
a man whose death has been announced amidst a thousand trivialities,
with the banalities of praise? Yet in this hour of temptation to despair I
reenkindle hope by recalling how often I have said that sometimes even
greater than the gift of prophecy is the gift of recognising the prophet!
In the night-hour of Chesterton’s death despair seems treason for me
as for all the group who knew the time of their visitation because they
knew that in giving him to them God had visited His people.

I looked upon this child of London Town as one of the greatest

sons born to England for four centuries. Londoners at their best like
More and Chesterton do not look down on England; they look round
on England and see its central place in Europe and the world. Their
London River (as the seamen call it) after its long quiet sauntering

Dunluce Castle, Antrim, Northern Ireland

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through England’s smiling meadow-land welcomes with a smile all

nations of the earth.

Londoner of Londoners. English of the English Gilbert Chesterton

towered shoulder high above his contemporaries. His massive body,
crowned with a massive head, struck me as being only the well-
proportioned outward visible sign of the massive intellectual, spiritual
reality within. And this inward reality was in the sphere of memory,
mind and heart.

His memory was not just beyond the average, but far beyond the
average. Had it not been balanced by equal powers of mind it would
have been, as in lesser minds, a danger or even a disease. But Gilbert
Chesterton’s memory was a storehouse of such ordered facts that from it,
almost at will and always at need, he could bring forth things old and new.

In control of this vast, densely filled memory was a mind of more

than average power. It was not just a power of reason—though a few
could reason better;—it was an unusual power of instant intuition;
which, the philosophers say, is to be found only in a few men; and, as
the theologians say, is found in all the angels.

One of his books he called An Outline of Sanity. The title was the
man. His was the sane healthy mind that recognises in the outline the
first necessary line of thought received or thought expressed.

His thought about things was always the deep philosophical

recognition not of resemblance but of differences. Unconsciously he
acted on the principle that “a philosopher is one who knows how to
divide.”

His rapidly moving intelligence recognised in one principle a

hundred conclusions; and in one phenomenon of nature or one fact
of history recognised a hundred principles. This made him the best of
listeners. But whilst he listened even to something he had already heard
and perhaps knew better than the speaker knew, his giant mind was
tracing within the accurate outline of the subject an elaborate diaper of
thought.

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The myriad epigrams of his style were not carefully designed effects.
But they were the irrepressible and spontaneous results of a clear mind
always set with philosophic instinct on discerning differences.

It is terrifying to think what this extraordinary gift of memory and

intelligence might have been and done had it been the supreme quality
of his soul. Lesser intelligences amongst his contemporaries have risen
from wealth to wealth or from power to power to a wealth and power that
meant the impoverishment or enslavement of their fellow men. But God’s
greatest gift to Gilbert Chesterton was a heart that could seek neither
wealth nor power, so deeply did he love the people. Even those who knew
him least—say, by the books he wrote and they read—were conscious that
his heart was not a little part of his manifest greatness. But those who
knew him best and marveled at his gifts of mind, knew that his still great-
er gifts of heart were needed and used to keep the balance of his soul.

His was a richly furnished memory controlled by a brilliantly clear

mind; but above all a noble chivalrous heroic heart in full control of
memory and mind.

I remember that once his instant chuckle of laughter showed how

he understood the humour in the Preface of the Mass when the Priest
says to the people: “Lift up your hearts,” and the people reply almost
testily: “We have lifted them up.”

Gilbert Chesterton’s heart was never otherwise than “lifted up.” He

sought only the highest aims for himself, and for the England that he
loved, and for his fellow men whom he loved, if that were possible, more
than his England.

A long life of battling came to an end last Sunday at Top Meadow,

Beaconsfield. We might well ask was his aim ever lower than towards
the topmost? And in this knighty quest of the highest at all costs except
the cost of honour, was his life and work ever less than a great beacon
of light to England and the world?

Here and there in the heavy harvest of his writings his pen becomes
one of the angriest, sharpest swords in Europe. But you will search

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this angry sword-battling without finding that the swordsman was ever
defending himself. A laugh was usually self-defence enough for him.
But behind his angry swordsmanship you will find some of the most
defenceless or destitute beings of the world—the poor, the persecuted,
the unfit—or some of the greatest principles, like loyalty or wedded love
or the homestead or liberty.

Once upon a time I called a book of his poems “Bugle-Music.” Now

I know there is in truth no Bugle-music, but only Bugle-calls. Every
word that came from Gilbert Chesterton’s pen-hand (which I kissed
in his unconsciousness last Saturday) was like a Bugle-call to some of
those tops of human aim to which from boyhood he had never been
disloyal. But

GILBERT CHESTERTON IS DEAD.

His great heart gave way. Our Beacon is burned out. And what was left of
this great Beacon we have buried in God’s field. But in our memory there
is something of him that will never burn out, till our ashes are as his.

Cliff, County Clare, Ireland

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