Acorn takedown mastermind a Chestertonian

According to this article, the man behind the coup to take down ACORN was non other than a Chesterton fan who considers Chesterton his intellectual backbone.

He's also a good friend of a reader of this blog, David, who tipped me off to the article adding that when O'Keefe mentioned G.K. Chesterton's name, the reporter was apparently silenced, dumbfounded. The reporter had never heard anyone say something like that before.

I like the subversive, Man Who Was Thursday with a spy camera aspect to the story.

Thanks, David M.

Newsweek Chesterton Mention

By David Gates | NEWSWEEK

Published Jun 27, 2009

[Excerpt]

In W. H. Auden's essay "The Guilty Vicarage"—collected in The Dyer's Hand, which I've kept on my night table for years—he analyzes his self-confessed "addiction" to whodunits: "I suspect that the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin." I share Auden's fondness for Sherlock Holmes and G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, but his reading habits could hardly be more different from mine. "I forget the story as soon as I have finished it, and have no wish to read it again. If, as sometimes happens, I start reading one and find after a few pages that I have read it before, I cannot go on." I've reread all the Sherlock Holmes stories, and many of the Father Browns, more times than I could count, and I seldom have fewer than a half dozen of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries there on the night table next to The Dyer's Hand. In fact, I never travel overnight without one or two in my bag. And, as far as I can tell, without a sense of sin.

H/T: Gramps

Listen to an Interview with Dale Ahlquist on The American View

INTERVIEW: Dale Ahlquist, President, “American Chesterton Society” On, Among Other Things, The Question: Why Was GKC So Anti-Calvinist, Anti-Predestination

Miriam Marston: Innocent Smith Song

Miriam Marston, who has a lovely voice and plays piano well too, has written a song about Innocent Smith. Click here, and click on her playlist till you find the title "Innocent Smith".

I wonder if the Manalive movie people have a credits song to play yet? (Hint....)

H/T: Bob C.

Check Out Chestertoons

The audio, although it sounds old, is really Chuck Chalberg from the ACS tv show on EWTN (by permission), but I do think it adds to the presentation to have the graphics, and is another clever way to present Chesterton to the waiting world. Check out Chestertoons.

H/T: Bob C.

Check out Chesterton Square

Follow up of our report from almost a year ago, the statue and square are now complete in Louisiana, I love the motto:A Place to Celebrate Life. Check out the larger-than-life statue of our man, G.K. Chesterton.

A Descendant of G.K. Chesterton's brother Cecil's wife Ada Writes to Us

In response to "Gramps"'s advice on the blog of the American Chesterton Society, on how to pronounce Cecil in Dec 2006, I wrote:

Yes, or even Cess-all. I'm two years late, I know, but Ada Elizabeth Jones Chesterton was my great-aunt. When her brother died in 1926, his wife and three daughters went to live with her at 3 Fleet Street. They were my aunts and my mother, who died in 2002. The other day, at my father's house, looking through some old photos, I found one of her grandfather, Charles Frederick Jones. I'd never seen one of him before. It is posted here. My mother was a writer...
... both her parents were too, and a lot of us have Sheridan as a middle name (I do -- but I'm no writer at all). Any idea why? I haven't. Incidentally, Ada Elizabeth was always known (to me from my mother, grandmother and aunts, as 'Keith' -- no idea why, though that's what K in GK stands for.

(On the back is the photographer's name and address, AYLING, 493 OXFORD STREET, and if you google that, you can find a picture of a lady in an enormous skirt posing for her portrait, with the same dado behind her.)

I was idly surfing to see what there was out there re my great grandfather and great aunt (who I never met, though my Nana lived with us at the end of her life, the late 50s). My mother wrote poems, plays and a fictionalised autobiography which included idolisation of 'Keith' and her years there (1926-8, I think). She had one play put on, but mostly earned money as a local journalist. My grandfather, the one who died in 1926, Charles Sheridan Jones, was a journalist and pamphleteer of not much note, and my grandmother wrote pot-boilers. She and her sister-in-law were campaigners, she for nursery school provision, and 'Keith' for homeless people.

I know almost nothing about this man, my great grandfather. I didn't even know his name before two days ago! My father admits never even seeing the picture. Sadly, my mother had Alzheimer's Disease for the last few years of her life, and her papers became very muddled. So did her middle sister. She said her parents should NEVER have married: "she was quite wrong for him". Isn't that a funny thought, that I might never have been here!

Yours sincerely
Nick Barnett

Notes from Nancy: I reminded Nick that Ada chose the name JK Prothero, or John Keith Prothero, as her pen name for her journalist career. She preferred people to call her Keith all her life, and as we see here, she preferred her relatives to call her that as well.

I've written to our British correspondant, Aidan Mackey, to ask about the name Sheridan, as he was a friend of Ada's and knew her.

A Seriously New Picture of Chesterton

Never saw this before, have you? Thanks to McNamara's Blog.

I spend a LOT of time perusing image databases looking for new pictures of GKC, and this is a first for me.

Also note: cigar in hand.

Happy Birthday GKC!

He would be 135 today. May his works be read and understood; that indeed would be a good birthday gift.

What Color Were G.K. Chesterton's Eyes?

Today, working on a project, I happened to wonder, what color were his eyes? My immediate guess was blue, he being of that heritage that produces blue eye color quite a bit. But I asked an expert, who found this quote:

"I found, with Mrs. Chesterton at the Biltmore, this big, gentle leonine man of letters six feet of him and 200 odd lbs. There is a delightful story of how an American, driving with him through London, remarked, "Everyone seems to know you, Mr. Chesterton."
"Yes," mournfully responded the gargantuan author, "and if they don't they ask."
He really doesn't look anything like as fat as his caricatures make him, however, and he has a head big enough to go with his massive tallness. His eyes are brilliant English blue behind the big rimmed eyeglasses: his wavy hair, steel grey; his heavy mustache, bright yellow. Physically he is the crackling electric spark of the heaven-home-and-mother party, the only man who can give the cleverest radical debaters a Roland for their Oliver."
(so MW quotes a reporter in GKC pg.564-5

So there is a good description for you of the man, including those brilliant English blue eyes.

Save the Three Cups Hotel!

This place has important historical Chestertonian (and more) significance. If only we lived in England! We could go to the meeting June 5th.

Dale Fights Back Against Literary, er, I mean, Personal Criticisms of Chesterton

Dale will be reviewing William Oddie’s new biography of Chesterton in the March issue of Gilbert.
Dale adds:

“A. N. Wilson has reviewed the book for the Times Literary Supplement. Apparently William Oddie has written reviews of Wilson’s books in the past and panned them thoroughly. So Wilson returned the favor. However, he did no favors to the reading public. His review indicates that all of Oddie’s points could be lost on the very audience that might most benefit from this book. After Oddie has methodically and thoroughly smashed much of the conventional (and wrong) wisdom about Chesterton, the reviewer simply repeats the conventional wisdom, as if it were some sort of rebuttal. Certainly the most egregious suggestion of Wilson’s is that Chesterton was a repressed homosexual. His information is third-hand. Otherwise There isn't a shred of evidence. But if he had bothered to give Oddie’s book a fair reading, he would not have even raised such a ridiculous charge. It is abundantly clear that this was not one of Chesterton’s temptations. It looks like this is the next battle brewing, now that we have dealt with the anti-Semitism charge. The most aggravating thing about having to swat all these gnats, is the distraction they cause. But the battle goes on.”

Chestertonian Music

An interesting find: a very young music group with an album based on The Everlasting Man, the band's name A Hope for Home is Chestertonian, as well.

The band's description is interesting, too: Oregon-based post-hardcore band, this is the first I've heard the term "post-hardcore".

The music is hard for this oldster to listen to, but I like the effort and the idea.

There is an old saying that claims time brings change. No one would know this better than A HOPE FOR HOME, which has seen drastic change and growth since the band's inception in early 2006. What began as an emotional outlet for a group of friends during a season of loss has blossomed into a dedicated project that finds them on the road supporting their newest album. A concept record based on G.K. Chesterton's novel of the same name, "The Everlasting Man" tells the story of mankind's fall and awaiting redemption. It is A HOPE FOR HOME's second album, following 2007's "Here, The End"...

ALERT! Auditions Today for Manalive!

If you live near Atlanta, looks like you could be in a Chesterton movie.

UPDATE FROM DALE AHLQUIST:

I attended those auditions for “Manalive” today in Savannah, Georgia. We had a great turnout. We finished casting the whole movie. Fascinating experience. And a lot of fun, too.

Free Daily Chesterton Quote in your Email Box!

Eternal Revolution is offering:

The wit and wisdom of G.K. Chesterton, the journalist, author, poet and philosopher, can now be delivered right to your inbox each day for free! A daily Chesterton quote service is being now being offered by Eternal Revolution.

You can sign up for the the free daily Chesterton quote emails at http://eternal-revolution.com/heroes/gk-chesterton-quotes/.

Don’t forget to also take a look at our Chesterton Apparel!

Father Brown

I'm working on a project that involves Father Brown, and it has taken about three or four readings of the same story each time for me to be truly amazed at Chesterton's depth of knowledge about everything.

Right now, I'm working on the Perishing of the Pendragons, and there is an amazing amount of nautical information in there. Did Chesterton have to look things up to write that? I doubt it.

And his vocabulary! Yesterday, I was making french toast with my girls, and we were sprinkling the pieces with cinnamon, and I was reminded that Chesterton used a word in the book mentioned above that I had to look up. This word

cop·pice (kŏp'ĭs) n. A thicket or grove of small trees or shrubs, especially one maintained by periodic cutting or pruning to encourage suckering, as in the cultivation of cinnamon trees for their bark.

coppice, which I was unfamiliar with. Since the definition mentioned cinnamon, I remembered it when we were making french toast.

Chesterton's vocabulary was HUGE. Enormous. WAY bigger than mine. I'm looking up words at least twice per page. And every time, my amazement at him grows.

Here is just a short list of words I've looked up. See how many you know:

mousquetaire
osiers
prow
funnel (in a ship sense)
piebald
fissiparous
paling (in terms of a fence)
spud (not in terms of a potato)

Gandhi Reference

I was recently sent an inquiry into the Chesterton/Gandhi connection, and the evidence proving what Chestertonians often say, that is, that Chesterton had some direct influence on Mahatma Gandhi, which caused Gandhi to begin his movement to free India from English control.

There is direct evidence of this, and since the question is not a new one, nor infrequent to those doing scholarly work, research or thesis papers, I think the evidence should be put forth here for all future inquiries.

So, this will be a long post, but if you aren't interested in Chesterton's influence on Gandhi, you can skip this by not clicking here.

In his Illustrated London News column on September 18, 1909 (Oct. 2 – American edition), Chesterton wrote the following:

It is this lack of atmosphere that always embarrasses me when my friends come and tell me about the movement of Indian Nationalism. I do not doubt for a moment that the young idealists who ask for Indian independence are very fine fellows; most young idealists are fine fellows. I do not doubt for an instant that many of our Imperial officials are stupid and oppressive; most Imperial officials are stupid and oppressive. But when I am confronted with the actual papers and statements of the Indian Nationalists I feel much more dubious, and, to tell the truth, a little bored. The principal weakness of Indian Nationalism seems to be that it is not very Indian and not very national. It is all about Herbert Spencer and Heaven knows what. What is the good of the Indian national spirit if it cannot protect its people from Herbert Spencer? I am not fond of the philosophy of Buddhism; but it is not so shallow as Spencer's philosophy; it has real ideas of its own. One of the papers, I understand, is called the Indian Sociologist. What are the young men of India doing that they allow such an animal as a sociologist to pollute their ancient villages and poison their kindly homes?

When all is said, there is a national distinction between a people asking for its own ancient life and a people asking for things that have been wholly invented by somebody else. There is a difference between a conquered people demanding its own institutions and the same people demanding the institutions of the conqueror. Suppose an Indian said: "I heartily wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Every system has its sins: and we prefer our own. There would have been dynastic wars; but I prefer dying in battle to dying in hospital. There would have been despotism; but I prefer one king whom I hardly ever see to a hundred kings regulating my diet and my children. There would have been pestilence; but I would sooner die of the plague than die of toil and vexation in order to avoid the plague. There would have been religious differences dangerous to public peace; but I think religion more important than peace. Life is very short; a man must live somehow and die somewhere; the amount of bodily comfort a peasant gets under your best Republic is not so much more than mine. If you do not like our sort of spiritual comfort, we never asked you to. Go, and leave us with it." Suppose an Indian said that, I should call him an Indian Nationalist, or, at least, an authentic Indian, and I think it would be very hard to answer him. But the Indian Nationalists whose works I have read simply say with ever-increasing excitability, "Give me a ballot-box. Provide me with a Ministerial dispatch-box. Hand me over the Lord Chancellor's wig. I have a natural right to be Prime Minister. I have a heaven-born claim to introduce a Budget. My soul is starved if I am excluded from the Editorship of the Daily Mail," or words to that effect.

Now this, I think, is not so difficult to answer. The most sympathetic person is tempted to cry plaintively, "But, hang it all, my excellent Oriental (may your shadow never grow less), we invented all these things. If they are so very good as you make out, you owe it to us that you have ever heard of them. If they are indeed natural rights, you would never even have thought of your natural rights but for us. If voting is so very absolute and divine (which I am inclined rather to doubt myself), then certainly we have some of the authority that belongs to the founders of a true religion, the bringers of salvation." When the Hindu takes this very haughty tone and demands a vote on the spot as a sacred necessity of man, I can only express my feelings by supposing the situation reversed. It seems to me very much as if I were to go into Tibet and find the Grand Lama or some great spiritual authority, and were to demand to be treated as a Mahatma or something of that kind. The Grand Lama would very reasonably reply: "Our religion is either true or false; it is either worth having or not worth having. If you know better than we do, you do not want our religion. But if you do want our religion, please remember that it is our religion; we discovered it, we studied it, and we know whether a man is a Mahatma or not. If you want one of our peculiar privileges, you must accept our peculiar discipline and pass our peculiar standards, to get it."

Perhaps you think I am opposing Indian Nationalism. That is just where you make a mistake; I am letting my mind play round the subject. This is especially desirable when we are dealing with the deep conflict between two complete civilisations. Nor do I deny the existence of natural rights. The right of a people to express itself, to be itself in arts and action, seems to me a genuine right. If there is such a thing as India, it has a right to be Indian. But Herbert Spencer is not Indian; "Sociology" is not Indian; all this pedantic clatter about culture and science is not Indian. I often wish it were not English either. But this is our first abstract difficulty, that we cannot feel certain that the Indian Nationalist is national.

According to P.N. Furbank (“Chesterton the Edwardian,” G.K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal. John Sullivan, ed., Harper and Row, 1974)ISBN 13: 9780236176281 & ISBN 10: 0236176285, Gandhi was “thunderstruck” when he read this article.

He immediately translated it into Gujarati, and on the basis of it he wrote his book Hind Swaraj, his own first formulation of a specifically “Indian “ solution to his country’s problems. Thus you might argue, not quite absurdly, that India owed its independence, or at least the manner in which it came, to an article thrown off by Chesterton in half-an-hour in a Fleet Street pub.

This account was first described in Gandhi by Geoffrey Ashe (Stein & Day, NY, 1968) p. 137-138, and is repeated in his new book, The Offbeat Radicals (London, Metheun, 2007).

I also have a fascinating interview with GKC that was published in the NY Times in 1916. It is with an Indian journalist, and Chesterton repeats his point that India should be for Indians. Use a library's article research function, and look up:
"India for Indians, Says Gilbert K. Chesterton", by Harendranath Maitra, New York Times, May 21, 1916 subtitled: Noted English Author Declares That She Must Be Nationalistic and be Represented as a Nation in Councils of British Empire. Indian author Maitra interviews GK Chesterton in this fascinating piece.
***
Here is something you can look up in the Chesterton Review.
Feb 1993 Vol XIX No 1 pp 88-93 of Chesterton Review which quotes some of Gandhi's actual writing about GKC.

Wish I Lived in Greensboro--Don't You?

Fascinating article about a Chestertonian Christmas event in Greensboro, NC.

Chesterton in the Newspapers

Thursday's Crossword Puzzle in the Philadelphia Inquirer (page D-7, written by Alan P. Olschwang) has a 5 part clue for a "Chesterton Quip."

The "quip" (mis)-quoted reads "If a thing is not worth doing, it's worth doing badly." That is, unless I did the puzzle completely wrong.

Fitting that he would be misquoted, I suppose. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. Perhaps the reference will pique some interest at any rate.

H/T: Joey G.

A New Picture of the Big Guy

This is one I hadn't seen before. He really was big.