Gilbert Keith Chesterton | Page 3

he did--not
through family pressure. That pressure, I still feel,* was exerted, though
possibly not until the trial was over."
[* Italics mine.]
It was, then, the lady's feelings and not facts that had been offered to
me as evidence, and it was the merest luck that my book had not
appeared before Cecil's solicitors had spoken.
The account given in Lord Birkenhead's Famous Trials is the Speech
for the Prosecution. Mrs. Cecil Chesterton's chapter is an impressionist
sketch of the court scene by a friend of the defendant. What was
wanted was an impartial account, but I tried in vain to write it. The
chronology of events, the connection between the Government
Commission and the Libel Case, the connection between the English

and American Marconi companies--it was all too complex for the lay
mind, so I turned the chapter over to my husband who has had a legal
training and asked him to write it for me.
The Chestertons is concerned with Gilbert and Frances as well as with
Cecil; and the confusion between memory and imagination--to say
nothing of reliance on feelings unsupported by facts--pervades the book.
It can only be called a Legend, so long growing in Mrs. Cecil's mind
that I am convinced that when she came to write her book she firmly
believed in it herself. The starting-point was so ardent a dislike for
Frances that every incident poured fuel on the flame and was seen only
by its light. When I saw her, the Legend was beginning to shape. She
told me various stories showing her dislike: facts offered by me were
either denied or twisted to fit into the pattern. I do not propose to
discuss here the details of a thoroughly unreliable book. Most of them I
think answer themselves in the course of this biography. With one or
two points I deal in Appendix C. But I will set down here one further
incident that serves to show just how little help this particular witness
could ever be.
For, like Cecil's solicitors, I spoilt one telling detail for her. She told me
with great enthusiasm that Cecil had said that Gilbert was really in love
not with Frances but with her sister Gertrude, and that Gertrude's red
hair accounted for the number of red-headed heroines in his stories. I
told her, however, on the word of their brother-in-law, that Gertrude's
hair was not red. Mr. Oldershaw in fact seemed a good deal amused: he
said that Gilbert never looked at either of the other sisters, who were
"not his sort," and had eyes only for Frances. Mrs. Cecil however
would not relinquish this dream of red hair and another love. In her
book she wishes "red-gold" hair on to Annie Firmin, because in the
Autobiography Gilbert had described her golden plaits. But unluckily
for this new theory Annie's hair was yellow,* which is quite a different
colour. And Annie, who is still alive, is also amused at the idea that
Gilbert had any thought of romance in her connection.
[* See G.K.'s letter to her daughter, p. 633 [Chapter XXXI].]
When Frances Chesterton gave me the letters and other documents, she

said: "I don't want the book to appear in a hurry: not for at least five
years. There will be lots of little books written about Gilbert; let them
all come out first. I want your book to be the final and definitive
Biography."
The first part of this injunction I have certainly obeyed, for it will be
just seven years after his death that this book appears. For the second
half, I can say only that I have done the best that in me lies to obey it
also. And I am very grateful to those who have preceded me with books
depicting one aspect or another of my subject. I have tried to make use
of them all as part of my material, and some are "little" merely in the
number of their pages. I am especially grateful to Hilaire Belloc, Emile
Cammaerts, Cyril Clemens and "Father Brown" (who have allowed me
to quote with great freedom). I want to thank Mr. Seward Collins, Mr.
Cyril Clemens and the University of Notre Dame for the loan of books;
Mrs. Bambridge for the use of a letter from Kipling and a poem from
The Years Between.
Even greater has been the kindness of those friends of my own and of
Gilbert Chesterton's who have read this book in manuscript and made
very valuable criticisms and suggestions: May Chesterton, Dorothy
Collins, Edward Connor, Ross Hoffman, Mrs. Robert Kidd, Arnold
Lunn, Mgr. Knox, Father Murtagh, Father Vincent McNabb, Lucian
Oldershaw, Beatrice Warde, Douglas Woodruff, Monsignor O'Connor.
Most of the criticisms were visibly right, while even those with which I
could not concur showed