DEATH OF MR G. K. CHESTERTON

Southland Times, Issue 22917, 16 June 1936, Page 7

DEATH OF MR G. K. CHESTERTON

ENGLISH AUTHOR ESSAYIST, POET AND NOVELIST CREATOR OF “FATHER BROWN” (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) London, June 14. The death is announced of Mr G. K. Chesterton, the essayist, novelist and poet. He was 52 years of age. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, essayist, novelist, and poet, was born in London in May, 1874, and came of a family of estate agents. He was educated at St. Paul’s School, which he left in 1891 to study art at the Slade School. But his real bent was literary and he devoted himself mainly to experimenting in prose and verse. For a time he was in the publishing office of T. Fisher Unwin and also reviewed art books. Having already published a volume of clever poems. “The Wild Knight." he entered journalism in 1900 as a pro-Boer and one of a little group that included Hilaire Belloc and was profoundly suspicious of the commercial and cosmopolitan element in imperialism. Chesterton became a regular contributor to the Liberal journals, The Speaker and The Daily News and also the Pall Mali Magazine, Fortnightly, Independent Review, English Illustrated Magazine and the Illustrated London News. He established himself from the first as a writer with a distinct personality, combative to a swashbuckling degree, humorous, unconventional and dogmatic with a gift for acute criticism. The republication of many of his articles in book form enhanced his reputation. In 1915 Chesterton published a book of Catholic religious poems and in a speech delivered in London declared that after the war the future would belong to the Roman Catholic Church. Tills was the prelude to his formal entry into that community in 1922—a step which excited much interest and which had been taken in 1912 by his Brother Cecii who fell in the war He then preached his new faith with great enthusiasm, asserting that only for the gullible and credulous was it possible to be sceptics. At the same time, however, he denounced asceticism and mortification of the flesh and proclaimed the joy of life. One of his earliest books of essays. “Twelve Types" was planned out in pencil after lie had spent his last penny at a restaurant. He then went round the corner and sold the idea to a publisher for cash down. In addition to his many other collections of essays he produced several travel books such as “Irish Impressions.” “The New Jerusalem,” “What I Saw in America,” a successful “Short History of England.” “The Superstition of Divorce," "Evils of Eugenics,” "What’s Wrong With the World?" (1910), “The Victorian Age in Literature," "The Crimes of England." "St. Francis of Assisi,” “William Cobbett” the fantastic play "Magic” • and another drama "The Judgment of Dr Johnson." He also collaborated with Hilaire Belloc in a novel “The Haunted House.” In September, 1926, they attempted to found a new political party whose motto was "distributivism.”

As a poet Chesterton did admirable work in “The Ballad of the White Horse,” “Lepanto" and "The Queen of Seven Swords,” and some critics regard his best poems as the finest fruits of his genius. Chesterton, who travelled in Palestine in 1920 and made a long lecture tour of the United States in 1921, visited Poland in 1927. Edinburgh gave him the honorary degree of LL.D, in 1925. Immensely fat, he was a favourite subject with caricaturists.