Gilbert by Michael Coren

Author:Michael Coren [Coren, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-01-13T23:00:00+00:00

VI - A Little Suffolk Priest and a Little London Suburb

England and the English were always Gilbert’s most special loves, and he preferred a holiday in the British Isles to the most exotic trip abroad. The climate suited his bulk, and the eccentric ways of the people matched his own peculiarities. The north was a regular vacation spot, with Yorkshire and its magnificent moors occupying a place of particular fondness for the Chesterton couple. The clean air and bracing winds of the area helped Frances’s vulnerable physical state, or at least made her feel stronger and more able to cope. He wrote

When I brought Frances away here, she was hit so heavily with a sort of wasting fatigue, that I really wanted to find out whether the doctors were right in thinking it only fatigue or whether (by one hellish chance out of a hundred) it might be the beginning of some real illness. I am pretty well convinced now, thank God, that the doctors are right and it is only nervous exhaustion. But — I would not write this to anyone else, but you combine so unusually in your own single personality the characters of (1) priest (2) human being (3) man of science (4) man of the world (5) man of the other world (6) old friend (7) new friend, not to mention Irishman and picture dealer, that I don’t mind suggesting the truth to you. Frances has just come out of what looked bad enough to be an illness and is just going to plunge into one of her recurrent problems of pain and depressions. The two may be just a bit too much for her and I want to be with her every night for a few days — there’s an Irish bull for you! One of the mysteries of Marriage (which must be a Sacrament and an extraordinary one) is that a man evidently useless like me can yet become at certain instants indispensable. And the further oddity (which I invite you to explain on mystical grounds) is that he never feels so small as when he really knows that he is necessary. You may understand this scrawl; I doubt if anyone else would.

The man he was writing to was Father John O’Connor, Parish Priest, later a Privy Chamberlain to Pope Pius XI, and the model and inspiration for a fictional detective named Father Brown. Their initial meeting was in some ways inevitable: Gilbert was often in Yorkshire, O’Connor was based at St Anne’s Church in Keighley and knew of and admired Gilbert’s work; they had much in common. Nature abhors a vacuum, faith and friendship cannot tolerate two kindred spirits not joining in friendship. In 1903 and 1904 the Chestertons spent some time in West Yorkshire, Gilbert lectured and they enjoyed a holiday. They were based near to Ilkley, a spa town of some beauty on the River Wharfe, with a population then of over 13,000. They frequently lodged with the Steinthal family, and through them made the acquaintance of O’Connor.

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