Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton
The French-English polemicist Hilaire Belloc and the English author Chesterton were lifelong friends, collaborators, and intellectual allies. The two were considered inseparable and complementary forces until Chesterton's death in 1936. By 1908, their friendship was so well-known and seen as so impenetrable that George Bernard Shaw described the two as the Chesterbelloc, a chimeric beast resembling a pantomime elephant composed of the two attached at the hip with the front legs of Belloc and the hind legs of Chesterton.
The two were first introduced at the, a French restaurant then located in the London neighbourhood of Soho, probably sometime in 1900, though the full circumstances in which they first met are somewhat obscure, including who introduced them. The two lived a short distance across the Thames from each other and collaborated regularly for the first several years of the 20th century, with many of their publications at the time either coauthored together or dedicated to the other. When the two moved from London – Belloc to Sussex and Chesterton to Beaconsfield – they continued a strong relationship. During their careers they debated and communed with many well-known literary authors of the period; the two were especially associated as intellectual opponents of Shaw and Wells. The collaboration came to a close with the publication of The Hedge and the Horse in 1936 shortly before Chesterton's death the same year, marking over three decades of friendship and collaboration.
Belloc's influence on Chesterton is widely acknowledged by scholars, especially in Chesterton's political, economic, and spiritual formation. Belloc, a trenchant Catholic, was a large part of Chesterton's ultimate conversion in 1922. While Chesterton's is generally considered to have been less influential to Belloc, he has been credited with shaping Belloc's philosophical style. Their contemporaries acknowledged them largely as inseparable and enjoyable both as guests and hosts, though generally Chesterton is seen as having been much more agreeable and kindhearted, whereas Belloc is viewed as confrontational and somewhat combative. Several modern and contemporary commenters have opined that Belloc was an overall negative influence on Chesterton and accused both of antisemitism, though both strongly rejected the allegations and publicly attacked anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany.
Background
Hilaire Belloc
was born in the Paris suburb of La Celle-Saint-Cloud to an English mother and a French father of partial Irish ancestry. Following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the family retreated to England, ultimately settling in Slindon in the South Downs of Sussex. Belloc served as an artilleryman in the French Army before attending Balliol College at the University of Oxford. He was naturalised as a British citizen in 1902. Between 1906 and 1910, Belloc served as a Member of Parliament representing Salford South as a member of the Liberal Party.G. K. Chesterton
was born in Campden Hill in West London to English parents, though his mother was of Swiss-French extraction. Chesterton attended the Slade School of Art at University College London in the hopes of becoming an illustrator. While at university, he had some kind of mental breakdown, which he alluded to in his later works. In 1895, he left his schooling to pursue a career in writing while working as a publisher's reader and editorial assistant. He is well known as the author of the Father Brown series of detective novels.Meeting
Belloc and Chesterton first became acquainted with each other in early April 1900. Belloc was twenty-nine and Chesterton was nearly twenty-six. They both attended a political meeting at the art studio of Archie MacGregor in Bedford Park. The meeting was called as a protest by the opponents of the newly-declared Boer War in modern-day South Africa; Belloc and Chesterton were radically pro-Boer in the conflict. Both had been writers and important public figures for The Speaker, a liberal anti-imperialist periodical. Belloc was a friend of MacGregor's and had been invited to give a speech at the event; Chesterton wrote to his fiancée Frances Blogg about Belloc's speech in glowing terms. The two differed from their pro-Boer peers by believing the Boers were justified in their fight and that British forces should not be used to benefit the financial interests of foreigners, a stark contrast to the typical supporters who objected on pacifist grounds; Chesterton later recounted that the pair were "pro-Boers who hated other pro-Boers".Chesterton then wrote to a mutual friend of his and Belloc's, hoping to arrange a more intimate meeting. The time of the meeting and identity of the mutual friend has been the matter of some debate; even Chesterton himself gave two conflicting accounts of the first meeting. Most biographies surmise that it was Lucian Oldershaw – a childhood friend, and shortly thereafter brother-in-law, of Chesterton's – and that the two met in 1900, probably later in the year. Others have suggested it may have been Bentley. Eccles also claimed credit for the introduction, though Oldershaw claimed that Eccles tried to keep Belloc from reading Chesterton's work because he believed Chesterton had the handwriting of a Jew. Maisie Ward, however, warns her reader against taking Oldershaw's account at face value, describing him as having "the accuracy of a hero-worshipper". By contrast, the English biographer A. N. Wilson writes that all three were present.
Even when the year is agreed upon, when in 1900 is also somewhat debated. Belloc's account in a 1939 publication puts their meeting "at the end of 1900", but "soon after" a rendezvous with some companions from Oxford in the summer of 1899. The British-American biographer Joseph Pearce argues for "very early" in the year, perhaps even before the MacGregor event. Wilson and Ian Ker disagree, basing their estimates on Chesterton's description of Belloc's attire – namely his broad-brimmed straw hat – as some indication; Wilson argues for "perhaps" May, while Ker suggests sometime in the summer.
Whatever the other circumstances, sources agree that the two met at the, a French restaurant on Gerrard Street in Soho, over a bottle of Moulin-à-Vent. When Belloc arrived, he had his pockets "stuffed with French Nationalist and French Atheist newspapers", and began the interaction by loudly proclaiming: "Chesterton, you wr-r-ite very well." Chesterton later described the meeting, writing:
Early collaboration
The two met regularly for the first several years of the 20th century, spending significant time in bars on Fleet Street, particularly. At the time, Belloc and his wife Elodie lived in Chelsea, just a few yards from the Battersea Bridge. On the opposite side of the Thames, Chesterton and his wife Frances lived in Battersea. Chesterton indicated the two homes on a sketch map of London, with the centrally-located pub where they collaborated indicated with the phrase "beer excellent". The first collaboration between the two was a short book entitled The Great Inquiry. Published in 1903, the book was a political mockery of Tariff Reform and was incredibly unsuccessful, selling only thirty-five copies.In 1904, the pair were regular attendees of a series of luncheons at the hosted by Edward Garnett, where they interacted with other literary figures in London at the time, including Joseph Conrad, Edward Thomas, Ford Madox Ford, and John Galsworthy. The same year, Chesterton published The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which he dedicated to Belloc. Pearce argues that book's eponymous "Napoleon", Adam Wayne, is based largely on Belloc. Belloc's first novel Emmanuel Burden, published the same year, marked the second collaboration between the two, again written by Belloc and illustrated by Chesterton. A satire of the interrelationship between imperialism and global capitalism, the book was well-received; it went on to influence Rupert Brooke considerably and Lord Basil Blackwood, upon first reading it, referred to it as Belloc's masterpiece. Belloc himself, however, later recounted that he believed Chesterton's illustrations superior to the prose. In October, Belloc asked Chesterton to be godfather to his fifth and final child, baptised Peter Gilbert in Chesterton's honour.
When Chesterton published the essays that later became Heretics throughout 1904, Belloc was thrilled. When the book was finally published the following year, he wrote that "it is the only book of yours I have read right through".
Departure from London
Although they had spent a significant amount of time there already, in March 1906, the Bellocs bought a house in Shipley, a small hamlet in the West Sussex area of the Weald. The family bought the property, called King's Land, for £900, comprising of land, a brick house, and King's Mill, a smock mill. Three years later, Chesterton and his wife also left London, moving from their home in Battersea to a house called Overroads in Beaconsfield, about west. Later, the two bought property next to the house and built Top Meadow, the home they lived in for the rest of Chesterton's life.Chesterton's move from London made him difficult to reach. He had an aversion to using the telephone during his lifetime and even his brother had difficulty meeting with him. The only person who could "run the blockade" was Belloc, who insisted on speaking with Chesterton's wife to negotiate a call time and ensure that either the Chestertons had beer there or that he would bring some on his way. Despite the grown distance between the two, Belloc visited him more than any of his other friends from London.
The Chesterbelloc
In 1908, The New Age published a volley of controversial essays debating socialism following the publication of Arnold Bennett's essay "Why I am a Socialist"; the event is now known as the "Chesterbelloc scandal" or "Chesterbelloc controversy". The editor-in-chief, Alfred Richard Orage, invited Belloc and Chesterton to argue against Bennett's essay without any editorial removal. The previous year, the two provided the against motion on socialism during a public debate against George Bernard Shaw and Chesterton's brother, Cecil. The two agreed and published "Thoughts About Modern Thought" and "Why I am not a Socialist", respectively. Wells responded to both in the following issue and both wrote responses back.On 15 February, George Bernard Shaw, a friend and intellectual rival of the pair, published an essay entitled "Belloc and Chesterton", criticising his opponents though acknowledging their goodwill. In it, he described the two as a chimeric and elephantine beast which he called "the Chesterbelloc", an unnatural creature with "the front legs being that very exceptional and unEnglish individual Hilaire Belloc, and the hind legs that extravagant freak of nature, Chesterton". This quadrupedal monstrosity, resembling a pantomime elephant, had Belloc in charge and dragged Chesterton's hind legs in tow, but the creature was so malformed that the legs would get tangled as they moved. Thus, in order to move at all, Chesterton had to "make all the intellectual sacrifices that are demanded by Belloc". Shaw ended the piece with a challenge to Chesterton:
Chesterton answered the challenge in "The Last of the Rationalists" two weeks later in which he remarked, in a debate with the "two most brilliant Socialists alive" and the "two most brilliant writers alive", they had both levelled personal attacks at Chesterton and Belloc instead of addressing the subject of the debate. Chesterton wrote: "My article may have been vague and mystical, but it was about Socialism; Wells's article was about me. Belloc's article may have been harsh or academic, but it was about Socialism; Shaw's article was about Belloc." He similarly attacked the substance of the article, writing that it was obvious that Shaw would be terrified of the Chesterbelloc beast: "it is Humanity on the move". The next day, Shaw wrote a personal letter to Chesterton in the hopes he would rebut the "Chesterbelloc" claims in a play, as he had regularly done before.
The four continually found themselves in debates or exchanging article volleys, with Chesterton and Belloc on one side and Wells and Shaw on the other. The four found themselves together in private debate as well. One of Chesterton's godsons later recounted that, at Chesterton's house, "those four giants – Wells, Shaw, Belloc and Chesterton – were shouting, interrupting each other, arguing and laughing". For The New Age, the debate was a total success; during the Chesterbelloc controversy, the magazine sold out twice.