Gilbert Keith Chesterton | Page 2

called a
Boswell Collective. It is fitting that it should be so. We cannot picture
G.K. like the great lexicographer accompanied constantly by one ardent
and observant witness, pencil in hand, ready to take notes over the
teacups. (And by the way, in spite of an acquaintance who regretted in
this connection that G.K. was not latterly more often seen in taverns, it
was over the teacups, even more than over the wine glasses, that
Boswell made his notes. I have seen Boswell's signature after wine--on
the minutes of a meeting of The Club--and he was in no condition then
for the taking of notes. Even the signature is almost illegible.) But it is
fitting that Gilbert, who loved all sorts of men so much, should be kept
alive for the future by all sorts of men. From the focussing of many

views from many angles this picture has been composed, but they are
all views of one man, and the picture will show, I think, a singular
unity. When Whistler, as Gilbert himself once said, painted a portrait
he made and destroyed many sketches--how many it did not matter, for
all, even of his failures, were fruitful--but it would have mattered
frightfully if each time he looked up he found a new subject sitting
placidly for his portrait. Gilbert was fond of asking in the New Witness
of people who expressed admiration for Lloyd George: "Which George
do you mean?" for, chameleon-like, the politician has worn many
colours and the portrait painted in 1906 would have had to be torn up in
1916. But gather the Chesterton portraits: read the files when he first
grew into fame: talk to Mr. Titterton who worked with him on the
Daily News in 1906 and on G.K.'s Weekly in 1936, collect witnesses
from his boyhood to his old age, from Dublin to Vancouver:
individuals who knew him, groups who are endeavoring to work out his
ideas: all will agree on the ideas and on the man as making one pattern
throughout, one developing but integrated mind and personality.
Gathering the material for a biography bears some resemblance to
interrogating witnesses in a Court of Law. There are good witnesses
and bad: reliable and unreliable memories. I remember an old lady, a
friend of my mother's, who remarked with candour after my mother had
confided to her something of importance: "My dear, I must go and
write that down immediately before my imagination gets mixed with
my memory." One witness must be checked against another: there will
be discrepancies in detail but the main facts will in the end emerge.
Just now and again, however, a biographer, like a judge, meets a totally
unreliable witness.
One event in this biography has caused me more trouble than anything
else: the Marconi scandal and the trial of Cecil Chesterton for criminal
libel which grew out of it. As luck would have it, it was on this that I
had to interrogate my most unreliable witness. I had seen no clear and
unbiased account so I had to read the many pages of Blue Book and
Law Reports besides contemporary comment in various papers. I have
no legal training, but one point stuck out like a spike. Cecil Chesterton

had brought accusations against Godfrey Isaacs not only concerning his
own past career as a company promoter, but also concerning his
dealings with the government over the Marconi contract, in connection
with which he had also fiercely attacked Rufus Isaacs, Herbert Samuel
and other ministers of the Crown. But in the witness box he accepted
the word of the very ministers he had been attacking, and declared that
he no longer accused them of corruption: which seemed to me a
complete abandonment of his main position.
Having drafted my chapter on Marconi, I asked Mrs. Cecil Chesterton
to read it, but more particularly to explain this point. She gave me a
long and detailed account of how Cecil had been intensely reluctant to
take this course, but violent pressure had been exerted on him by his
father and by Gilbert who were both in a state of panic over the trial.
Unlikely as this seemed, especially in Gilbert's case, the account was so
circumstantial, and from so near a connection, that I felt almost obliged
to accept it. What was my amazement a few months later at receiving a
letter in which she stated that after "a great deal of close research work,
re-reading of papers, etc." (in connection with her own book The
Chestertons) and after a talk with Cecil's solicitors, she had become
convinced that Cecil had acted as he had because "the closest sleuthing
had been unable to discover any trace" of investments by Rufus Isaacs
in English Marconis. "For this reason Cecil took the course