Autobiography by G. K. Chesterton

First published: 1936

Type of work: Autobiography

Time of work: The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Locale: Great Britain

Principal Personages:

• G. K. Chesterton, a British man of letters
• Father John O’Connor, the priest who converted him to Roman Catholicism

Form and Content

Autobiographyis considerably more than the simple chronology of a life. Never in his writings was Gilbert Keith Chesterton primarily concerned with mere fact and date, and so little does his Autobiography touch upon such matters that the reader new to Chesterton and his era will find much of the book confusing unless he or she first consults a secondary source, such as Dudley Barker’s G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (1973), Lawrence J. Clipper’s G. K. Chesterton (1974), or the lengthy biographical essay with which A. L. Maycock introduces The Man Who Was Orthodox: A Selection from the Uncollected Writings of G. K. Chesterton (1963). Yet, for the reader familiar with Chesterton or interested in the cultural, political, and intellectual history of London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Autobiography is a rich source of material, and it certainly offers much assistance in the interpretation of Chesterton’s fiction, including both his Father Brown detective stories and his novels—primarily, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908), and The Flying Inn (1914). What Chesterton relates in his Autobiography is the story of his spiritual journey. Here, as elsewhere in his writings, he regards that aspect of life as of overriding importance; in the face of man’s confrontation with eternal truths, facts about his physical life are mere trivia.

Autobiography consists of sixteen chapters. In a 1969 edition, briefly but excellently introduced by Anthony Burgess, the text is 343 pages, plus index. The first four chapters tell of Chesterton’s childhood within a secure Victorian middle-class family and of his education, first at St. Paul’s Preparatory School and later at the Slade Art School. The second four chapters describe his emergence into the London political and literary scene during the years when he metamorphosed from a student of art into a master of journalism. The ninth through fourteenth chapters, more rambling and digressive than the rest, are likely to be most difficult for the reader new to Chesterton and his age; in these chapters, Chesterton describes his friends as if they and their reputations were to be immortal, sketching them incompletely as if he were reminding friends of some mutual acquaintances. While some of these figures—for example, William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw—remain famous, others, unfortunately, have been obscured by time. Apart from personalities, these chapters also focus on the events that molded Chesterton’s later thought. Especially important among these was the Marconi Scandal of 1913, in which Chesterton’s younger brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, attempted to expose government corruption. Instead of being perceived as a hero, the younger Chesterton found himself fined for libel, and his brother’s disillusionment with the political process was profound. Finally, the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters bring the story to closure. In these, Chesterton introduces Father John O’Connor, the priest who was the model for Father Brown and who converted Chesterton to Roman Catholicism. The final chapter also shows how the spiritual destination of Chesterton as an adult could have been predicted from the occupations and preoccupations of his childhood.

Critical Context

Chesterton is important as a novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, editor, detective-story writer, and Catholic polemicist, but he is important also as a remarkable figure who was at the center of London life at a time when the world of modern thought was struggling to be born.

He portrays his London accurately as a city of ferment. In the arts, the aesthetic movement was faltering to its close, fatally wounded by the trial of Oscar Wilde, but the influence of Impressionism was only beginning to be felt, and in only a few years the Russian ballet would arrive with a revolutionary effect, as would American ragtime. The theatrical world was shaken by the iconoclasm of Henrik Ibsen and the revolutionary fervor of George Bernard Shaw. The Dreyfus case in France and, in England, the various scandals surrounding the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, continued to shake faith in the integrity of governing powers, while everything from the Bloody Sunday riots and killings of Jack the Ripper among London prostitutes to the expose of London poverty written by Salvation Army General William T. Booth (In Darkest England and the Way Out, 1890) pointed to the tremendous and tragic chasm that separated the lives of the rich and the poor in this, one of the greatest cities of the world.

From everywhere came individuals to debate the problem, become part of the problem, or offer solutions, and Chesterton knew them all. Among the many acquaintances and friends mentioned in Autobiography are poets Yeats and John Davidson; dramatist Shaw, with whom Chesterton held frequent and flamboyant debates; critics and scholars Sir Sidney Colvin and Sir Edmund Gosse; writer and wit Max Beerbohm; poet, scholar, and detective novelist E. C. Bentley; politicians Winston Churchill, George Wyndham, and Charles Masterman; novelists Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and H. G. Wells; theatrical figures William Archer and Harley Granville-Barker; and that character who defied all definition, Cunninghame Graham. (Unlikely as it seems, Chesterton and Shaw were once filmed as cowboys in a project apparently created by playwright Sir James Barrie, directed by Granville-Barker, and in some fashion known to composer Sir Edward Elgar.)

In short, then, Autobiography is significant for several reasons. First, within the tradition of spiritual autobiographies, it is an honest and lucid, if somewhat superficial, work. Second, Autobiography sheds light on the writings of one of the most prolific and popular writers of his age, writings that include a body of very fine fiction which continues to hold an audience despite the passing of time. Finally, Chesterton’s Autobiography offers a window through which to view a world, a world that was of critical importance in formulating the issues and generating many of the problems that would continue to haunt the late twentieth century.

Bibliography

Clemens, Cyril. Chesterton As Seen by His Contemporaries, 1939.

Lea, F. A. The Wild Knight of Battersea, 1945.

O’Connor, John. Father Brown on Chesterton, 1937.

Ward, Maisie. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1943.

Ward, Maisie. Return to Chesterton, 1952.