As is often the case with many “great men,” the spouses are often forgotten. This is a tragedy for a variety of reasons. Not only does it help prop up the falsehood of the “self-made-man” (which is rarely historical, and more importantly, un-Christian), but leaves out much of the story for those who care about, well, the whole story. Nancy Carpentier Brown is one of those gifted writers who has taken it upon herself – and she has done it brilliantly – to make the world aware of the more complete G.K. Chesterton. As she shows, the Chesterton we know and love was greatly influenced – shaped, even – by his wife, Frances.
Nancy is an expert on both Chestertons. Along with her work on Frances, she is the author of numerous Chestertonian titles, and is actively involved with The Society of G.K. Chesterton. What follows is her sharing some thoughts that can be found in her book, The Woman Who Was Chesterton.
Radix: I am so happy to be talking about Frances Chesterton. I have been a G.K. Chesterton fan for a good long while, so knowing more about how Frances influenced and shaped Gilbert is really grand. And the title of your book, The Woman Who Was Chesterton, is so apt because what we think of when Chesterton comes to mind is really a combination of both Gilbert and Frances.
Can you tell us how you were first introduced to Gilbert?
NCB: Well, I originally was forced to read Orthodoxy as a freshman in college and that didn’t go over very well because I wasn’t ready to read it. Partly because it was different than what I thought it would be, and partly because I couldn’t get the thread of the story; I wasn’t sure where he was going. I just got frustrated. So I kind of wrote off the name Chesterton. Then about twenty years later I was challenged by a friend who was talking about philosophy. And what I was hearing didn’t sound right. At first I didn’t know exactly where to go, but then another friend suggested that I read Orthodoxy. When I read it this time, it actually blew my mind. I thought it was the greatest book that I’d ever read and that this author was a hidden gem. It took me by surprise, actually, especially because of my first experience.
I assumed that Chesterton might have been a priest because he knew theology and philosophy so well. And after finding Joseph Pearce’s book, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton, I got to the chapter that talked about Gilbert’s wife. And I was, like, oh he was married! That’s a surprise. And then I read about his absent-mindedness and his need for secretaries, and how he was almost oblivious to the world – well, except for the world of the mind where he shines greatly. So I began to wonder about who his wife could have been, and how she coped with him? He was obviously joyful and childlike, but also so in need of help.
Actually, too, as I read Pierce’s biography, I thought that my husband, who is an artist as well, was kind of like Chesterton in a way. As an artist he isn’t thinking about what’s going on immediately around him: he is thinking about art, and what piece is he going to make next, and he is thinking about how to do that. And I thought to myself, “Well, Frances had to deal with that too, in Gilbert. I wonder if she has anything to teach me about how to be the wife of a person like that?” That’s initially what called at me to find out more about Frances.
Radix: Was there anything else that stood out to you before you had a chance to do more research on her?
NCB: Well, I figured that she must have had a special quality to have so much patience. Maybe she was artistic like him, in a way, in order to understand him, you know? I also thought, even though she is really only in the background here, she must have been incredibly important to Gilbert. Because he doesn’t do anything by half measures. He goes all the way. So if he was in love with Frances, he was really in love with Frances. If this brilliant guy fell in love with her, there has got to be something more to her that we haven’t been told about. And whatever it is, somebody should figure it out.
Radix: In your biography of Frances, you say that “up until this biography, acquaintance with Gilbert has been hampered by the lack of knowledge of his wife.” I think it’s the case that many wives of influential writers and thinkers don’t get mentioned nearly enough so it’s lucky for them both that there was a Nancy Carpentier Brown. Are there any reasons that Frances hasn’t been written about more?
NCB: One reason in particular was that she was a shy Victorian lady. Also, she did ask Gilbert not to write about her in his autobiography. Now, he still did write about her a bit, but maybe he kept more of her out of it because she requested that. I don’t know exactly why it was, but I think there was some shyness about her: she wanted to stay in the background and let Gilbert shine. And, you know, good spouses will do that for a spouse who is famous. Plus, along with them not being able to have children, she did have a number of health problems of her own. Maybe she didn’t want the story repeated.
But she was a poet herself, and she could have been a little more famous than she was. Actually, in her own time she did have a tiny measure of fame. She had a couple of little poetry books published. She also had one of her plays produced in Bath, England. So that was kind of a big deal. And she did travel with Gilbert, and newspapers would interview her and people would ask her questions independently. But for the most part, after Gilbert died in 1936 she was immediately forgotten. Consequently, it was easy for people to overlook how much of a role she played in his life. But it’s also true that because Gilbert was such a huge person – and I don’t mean just physically – it would be easy for her to fall into his shadow.
Radix: You have a really strong statement in your book that I’d like to quote, and it goes along with what you were saying. “It is not an exaggeration to say that she was the person who would affect Gilbert’s life more profoundly than anyone.” And then, actually, there is one more: “Chesterton was totally dependent on her for his happiness.”
NCB: Correct. We all know couples like this, don’t we? Hopefully we have marriages like this too, but we all know of the kind of marriage where the two are inseparable; they finish each other’s sentences; they know each other’s thoughts. This is what I believe the Chestertons to have been. I mean, I don’t want to over-romanticize. They did disagree over things. For example, Frances always wanted Gilbert to write great works of literature, and Gilbert always wanted to write journalism. So that was a disagreement. But we also know that wherever they went, they were looking out for each other and clinging to each other.
There was a cute story I read about Gilbert and Frances at a party. Frances wandered off and Gilbert shortly after began asking where she was. A friend commented that they would get her if he needed her: Gilbert answered, “Oh no, I don’t need her right now, but I might need her.” This seemed to be part of his psyche: that he wanted Frances near him; that he felt normal when she was near him. When she was not near him, he didn’t feel normal, he didn’t feel right. He needs her. So that’s the kind of marriage that they had.
As far as Frances being an influence on Gilbert, I think it was even more than we could imagine. When they were first dating, and committed to get to know each other, Frances was a very committed Christian. She regularly participated in the Anglican church. She was teaching Sunday school. She was doing afternoon teas with the minister and his wife. Gilbert said that she was the first Christian that he’d met who actually practiced her faith. And we should keep in mind that Chesterton knew a lot of Christians. Her faith also intrigued him. And even after they had been married for years, they wrestled with their faith, back and forth.
As we know, Gilbert did eventually convert to the Roman Catholic Church in 1922, but he had been leaning towards Catholicism for a while before. And the reason why it took him so long to finally make the step was because he really wanted Frances to come along with him. He took her thoughts and opinions very seriously. Four years later she did convert, but she thought carefully about it.
Radix: It really did seem from what he wrote that he very much respected her views; that he expected her to make a very careful decision and not just follow him into something for the sake of following. And obviously she thought carefully about it.
NCB: That’s exactly right. In fact, I think that she was a little concerned that maybe people might think she only converted because of him. And she didn’t want people to make that assumption. She was also hesitant because her whole life was wrapped up in the Anglican church. I mean, she was deeply involved in all aspects of it. She actually called leaving it a wrench. And it would have been a real wrenching to pull up stakes and say, “I’m going into the wilderness of the unknown territory, to the Catholic Church.”
Radix: And then too, I think it’s important to keep in mind that back in their time, switching from Anglican to Catholic was a much bigger deal in terms of social ties and interconnections and even social standing – it was a big deal! It wasn’t just some private thing.
NCB: Yes, it certainly was. Even more so because they lived in the small town of Beaconsfield, which was a suburb about twenty miles outside London. Now Beaconsfield is close, but back then it was considered way out in the country. Also, most of the people there went to the Anglican church. That was the normal place to go; it was the norm. So not going there? And then too, the Catholic church they attended at the time was being held in a railway hotel, right next to the train station. Every Sunday the restaurant was converted into a church.
Radix: So, it wasn’t too fancy.
NCB: Oh, yeah, it certainly wasn’t much. So to say, I’m going to go from the Church of All Saints, which was a beautiful old stone structure with stained-glass windows, really gorgeous, to a railway hotel? This was not an easy thing.
Radix: In your book you make it clear that despite Frances being integral to his actual life, the organization, and daily stuff, which she totally was, she was also integral to his ideas and spiritual life as well. And I think this is an important thing to emphasize, especially in our culture now, because we are so prone to individualism. And it would be easy to assume that, you know, Gilbert came up with everything on his own. But he didn’t, as you point out.
NCB: I agree. Our modern sensibility is very individualistic. We have the credos, “I want to make up my own mind. I will be my own person.” But we should know that Chesterton himself had a very strong sense of family. He wouldn’t have assumed himself to be an independent individual. I mean, he grew up in a family where his mother encouraged him and his brother to constantly debate. And they did. But that meant working out your thoughts and ideas through the process of talking about them, debating them – the pros and the cons – and it wasn’t done on paper; it was done through conversation. I believe that this type of thing continued with him and Frances. Once he found Frances, he found someone he could talk to. And we should also keep in mind that Frances was known as a debater. She was very used to verbally working out her thoughts and ideas, and having someone question them and then having to defend them or even come to a different conclusion. So that was very much part of her past. Then when they got together this kind of thing would be quite natural, you know, a friendly kind of sparring. And I believe that Frances challenged Gilbert’s ideas and Gilbert challenged Frances’s ideas, and that’s how they worked out some of their ideas together.
Most people don’t know this, but before Frances got married she was the secretary for Parents National Education Union, or PNEU. Some people will recognize the name Charlotte Mason. Well, Frances was the secretary of this organization. Homeschoolers often follow the Charlotte Mason method. Anyway, for five years before Frances was married, she was the general secretary. Along with writing the minutes and keeping track of their lending library, Frances gave talks, arranged their national conference and other things. She even wrote articles for some of their publications. Interestingly, when I read some of those, I found ideas that predated Gilbert mentioning them. For example, one of her ideas was that children enjoy repetition. If a parent does something that they like, the child will say “Do it again, do it again[i].” So I think to myself, “Oh, Frances must have said that, or he must have read her essay.” And this is just a tiny little example. If you can imagine that you’re living with this woman, and every meal you’re having together, and you’re talking and you’re discussing, and as he’s dictating his essays to her, she’s saying “Oh, wait a minute. Are you sure you want to say that?” And they’re talking about it as he’s writing. These are all ways that Frances influenced Gilbert.
But then too they were constantly meeting people, having dinners, talking to people. And I mean like three to five nights a week. So you can just imagine all of this complex, you know, world of friendships and thoughts and ideas and the conversations that must have happened between the two of them.
Radix: Speaking of friendships, I especially enjoyed all the attention you gave to this aspect of their lives. It brings up this issue of interdependence. I think you help make it clearer that it was, in part anyway, all the relationships that they had that made them.
NCB: Right, exactly. You know, when you go into the archive and look at all the letters that both Gilbert and Frances wrote, it’s amazing. At one point in a diary she mentions that she’d written 103 letters that night. In general, she just wrote a ton of letters. In fact, she mentioned that it was she that kept up on most of the correspondence. If you go to the Wade Center and look at the number of entries of different individuals they are writing to, and sometimes it’s back and forth, it is a circle of thousands. It’s not tens; it’s not hundreds; it’s thousands.
The point is that both Frances and Gilbert were very friendly people, and they always had an open door of hospitality. One of the things Frances says is that their house is the house with the open door. Oh, and I love that image. You know, that idea of hospitality, where they were always welcoming to people. Almost every night their spare room had a guest. This included intellectual opponents like G.B. Shaw or H.G. Wells, too. This isn’t something that could be said of people today.
Radix: Right! I remember the story about either Shaw or Wells writing to Frances after Gilbert’s passing and earnestly offering financial assistance. Pretty sure this wouldn’t happen today with, say, Dawkins offering money to Norman Geisler’s widow, or vice versa. But I really like that image of the open door. In general, I wonder how much we are missing when we assume we know. Because there is a lot of value in dialogue and listening.
NCB: That’s true. Too many people, while arguing, aren’t listening so much as biding their time to say their own thing. But, yeah, both Frances and Gilbert were known to be good listeners, Gilbert in particular. And even to children; letting them know he was listening to them by weaving something they said into what he was saying.
Radix: If you were able to speak to some Chesterton scholars right now, what would you want them to focus more on?
NCB: I guess I was hoping that my book would be the first of many. I know that there’s more to be found on Frances. So I would love to have someone maybe focus in on a different aspect of her life, or do a book on their marriage and show why their marriage was so important to who Gilbert was. To understand who Gilbert was, I think you have to take her into consideration. You can’t really isolate Gilbert from Frances. It doesn’t work. He was dependent on her. And so we kind of have to be dependent on her too. Plus, they really did take care of each other. Both of them suffered from various illnesses and they took turns looking after each other. So, in general, I think there needs to be more about their personal lives. When we are trying to get to know a person, we need to look at the full individual, not just the intellectual or the spiritual, but the full aspects of their life, and that includes the difficulty and the pain. And let’s get beyond Hilaire Belloc and Wells and Shaw. There were other friends who influenced them. Maybe we need a book on that.
Radix: Something that has always stood out to me was Gilbert’s choice to constantly value joy and wonder. In your book you mention that Frances was actually similarly inclined. In one place you quote Gilbert as saying that Frances “has the asceticism of cheerfulness, not the easier asceticism of melancholy.”
NCB: An important lesson we can learn from both of them is to choose joy and wonder and to remain childlike. There was also a choosing of innocence, too. For us that might be the choice to enjoy the movies that our children enjoy. Chesterton teaches us that there is much to be enjoyed in the simplest of things. There is a lot of joy that can be taken out of the sun and the moon and the stars. Anyway, we can make the choice to remain joyful and innocent and to get all the wonder out of life. That’s Chesterton’s lesson. And I believe that Frances had that or learned that from Chesterton or he learned it from her. We’re not sure exactly how that happened, but between the two of them, they knew that that was the way to go through life.
Radix: Right! It tickles me that one of Chesterton’s favorite flowers was the dandelion. And he loved playing with chalk. He truly thought that we can take joy from the everyday-ness of life.
Do you have any closing comments?
NCB: A few things, but one is that there is a lot more that could be written about both of them. Even this: they had twenty-five godchildren. And while they might not have been parents, they were spiritual parents to many, many children. There are a lot of people out there who don’t have children of their own. And yet there are children in their lives. There are children who come into our lives, maybe our nieces and nephews or our neighbor’s children. And we can have a role in those lives, like Gilbert and Frances. And I think that’s kind of an important role. Sometimes it’s nice for children to have people who aren’t their parents. Who they know love them and support them and believe in them. And we can be those kinds of people for other children besides our own.
Also, the importance of building community. There are so many things that we can do within our local communities. Simple things. We can be an influence through simple things. Like by even having a block party. Our neighborhood is our community, after all. And I think that too often people are worked up about what’s happening in Washington D.C. which they don’t have as much control over. But in our local community? We can have plenty of influence over that. We need to stop wasting our energy and spend it where it will do the most good.
Radix: Oh, preach that! There are a good many sermons in that. But, yeah, I love the idea about being salty by doing a block party. We can evidence the spirit of God in so many ways.
But I want you to have the last words.
NCB: Well, you know, I would like to read one of Frances Chesterton’s poems, which is, I think, one of her most beautiful poems. And it’s one of her most famous, but a lot of people have never heard it:
How far is it to Bethlehem?
Not very far.
Shall we find the stable-room
Lit by a star?
Can we see the little Child?
Is He within?
If we lift the wooden latch,
May we go in?
May we stroke the creatures there —
Ox, ass, or sheep?
May we peep like them and see
Jesus asleep?
If we touch His tiny hand,
Will He awake?
Will He know we’ve come so far
Just for His sake?
Great kings have precious gifts,
And we have naught;
Little smiles and little tears
Are all we brought.
For all weary children
Mary must weep;
Here, on His bed of straw,
Sleep, children, sleep.
God, in His mother’s arms,
Babes in the byre,
Sleep, as they sleep who find
Their heart’s desire.
[i] In Orthodoxy, Chesterton says “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.”