Here is a meme I created earlier today. :-)

While reading through the Bible the other day, I came across a verse that seems to me to perfectly describe Chesterton, What I mean is that Chesterton's humility and charity was such that so many people who were his greatest enemies on an intellectual level (such as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, for instance, whom he often debated), nevertheless greatly loved Chesterton and were close friends with him on a personal level. And such seems to me to be an example of this proverb:

"When a man's ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him." (Proverbs 16:7)

St. Therse of Lisieux and the grandmother of Hilaire Belloc

This is an unusual post for this blog, insofar as it does not deal directly with Chesterton. However, it *does* deal with the other half of the "Chesterbelloc", and therefore for that reason still seems appropriate for this blog....

In any case, I don't know if this is something that is common knowledge (and I was just ignorant of it), or if perhaps I am making a mistake in my reasoning, but it appears that St. Therese of Lisieux was greatly affected by a story in a book put together by the grandmother of Hilaire Belloc

____

While reading through The Letters of St. Therese the other night, I came across a letter that her sister Pauline wrote to her when St. Therese was 12 years old (LC 41), in which in one part she wrote "If you see again the luminous trail on the waves of the sea, think of times past, of your old teacher, of Grandmother's Tirelire.." A footnote at this point in my volume states:

La Tirelire aux histoires by S.W. Belloc. One of the stories, entitled "The Golden Trail," was filled with memories for Pauline and Therese; see MS. A, pp. 48-49 [...]

There is one part in St. Therese's Story of a Soul  where Therese writes:

In the evening at that moment when the sun seems to bathe itself in the immensity of the waves, leaving a luminous trail behind, I went and sat down on the huge rock with Pauline. Then I recalled the touching story of the “Golden Trail.” I contemplated this luminous trail for a long time. It was to me the image of God’s grace shedding its light across the path the little white-sailed vessel had to travel. And near Pauline, I made the resolution never to wander far away from the glance of Jesus in order to travel peacefully toward the eternal shore!

http://bit.ly/2nTBvVr

Anyway, as you can imagine, the name "Belloc" in the footnote above caught my attention. So I did some Googling, and came across a footnote in an edition of The Story of a Soul on Google Books concerning this passage stating:

This story appears in a collection of readings called La Tirelire aux histoires by Madame Louise Belloc [...]

http://bit.ly/2nBimeY

Doing some more Googling, I also came across this page:

http://bit.ly/2mK9bF2

Now, I don't know French, but...:

Titre La tirelire aux histoires. Lectures choisies / par Mme Louise Sw-Belloc...
Type document Livre
Auteur principal Belloc , Louise Swanton

It appears to me that "Mme Louise Sw-Belloc" is the same as "Louise Swanton Belloc".

And, of course, Louise Swanton Belloc, was the grandmother of Hilaire Belloc.

http://bit.ly/2npQyJY

So the story that had such memories for St. Therese of Lisieux was from a book by Hilaire Belloc's grandmother!

Either that, or I made some mistake in my reasoning above (which is quite possible, I realize! lol.)

From the Chesterton and Friends blog:

As some Chesterton fans may recall, an earlier radio dramatization of The Man Who Was Thursday was broadcast on Orson Welles' Mercury Theater, September 5, 1938 (just a few weeks before Welles' famous radio recreation of The War of the Worlds). Frank Brady's 1989 biography, Citizen Welles, offers some interesting sidelights on this broadcast. Chesterton's novel was the last production of the Mercury Radio Theatre's inaugural season. Brady credits Welles' "splendid adaptation" of Thursday ("one of the finest shows of the season") with the last minute decision by CBS to renew the Mercury Theatre series. Furthermore, according to Brady, "Welles had great affinity for the works of Chesterton and decided to write the adaptation himself, allowing no assistance." [New York, p. 144]

Jane Austen and GKC

Admittedly, I am not exactly someone who has read a lot of Jane Austen, to put it mildly (a shock, I know. lol. :-). But I have some friends who love her writings, and so I was curious to see if I could find any connection between her and GKC. I discovered that indeed there was.

Apparently, a collection of childhood compositions Jane Austen had written, and which had been handed down in her family, ended up being turned over for publication by Austen's great-niece, and published for the very first time in 1922. It's title page read:

Love & freindship and other early works, now first printed from the original MS by Jane Austen with a preface by G.K. Chesterton
So, as you can see, the very first edition of this work by Jane Austen appeared to the world with a preface by GKC. (Obviously, it was published posthumously- indeed, about a hundred years after her death, but, hey- it is still true that GKC wrote the preface to the first edition of a previously unpublished work written by Jane Austen.)

As Chesterton himself explains in the preface, giving the history of the work:
Jane Austen left everything she possessed to her sister Cassandra, including these and other manuscripts; and the second volume of them containing these was left by Cassandra to her brother, Admiral Sir Francis Austen. He gave it to his daughter Fanny, who left it in turn to her brother Edward, who was the Rector of Barfrestone in Kent, and the father of Mrs Sanders, to whose wise decision we owe the publication of these first fancies of her great-aunt; whom it might be misleading here to call her great great-aunt. Everyone will judge for himself; but I myself think she has added something intrinsically important to literature and to literary history; and that there are cartloads of printed matter, regularly recognised and printed with the works of all great authors, which are far less characteristic and far less significant than these few nursery jests.

Moreover, here's a little more information from the Critical Companion to Jane Austen: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work by William Baker (2008)

Love and friendship (LF) is the second of the three notebooks in Jane Austen's handwriting into which she copied her childhood compositions. The dating 1790-92, that is, when she was between 15 and 17 years of age, appears in the notebook. Following the author's death, the manuscript went to her sister, CASSANDRA, and remained in family hands. On July 6, 1977, it was sold at Sotheby's auction house in London and then purchased by the British Library.

Entitled "Love and Freindship. A novel in a series of Letters," with the inscription "Deceived in Freindship & Betrayed in Love," and completed on June 13, 1790, the work was dedicated to ELIZA DE FEULLIDE, Jane Austen's cousin. The spelling "Frendship" has been retained, as this was the author's own childhood spelling; however, she subsequently corrected this to "Friendship."

The 15 letters constituting LF were first published in 1922 in an edition containing a preface by the distinguished British man of letters G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) (emphasis mine)
And, just in case you wish to read it, including Chesterton's preface, you can do so here:

Love and Freindship and other Early Works

Examples of G.K. Chesterton's Influence

Yesterday, I finished revising my list of examples of GKC's influence (which is linked to in the info at the top of the blog, btw).

Basically, besides wishing to add some more examples (while pruning a little from what was there before), I also wished to make the presentation look better. The old list looked very cluttered, but hopefully now the new list looks only somewhat so. lol.

Anyway, here is the link

Examples of the influence of G.K. Chesterton

BTW, just to let you know, I have started another blog as well for the purpose of providing quotes by authors other than Chesterton, in case you are interested (though, of course, the name of the blog has a Chestertonian title)

http://theoutlineofsanity.blogspot.com

I apologize for not having updated this blog for a week or so...I have been in the process of moving (and still am trying to get everything set up). Once I am, I will be back to updating. :-)

LOL.Just came across this...:-)

Dale Ahlquist Syndrome

Yes, I think that applies to me!

G.F. Watts

I recently read the book G.F. Watts, which Chesterton wrote in 1904. I enjoyed it greatly (perhaps not so surprising given my love of Chesterton). But it reminded me of a couple of interesting facts I had learned before.

First, as Joseph Pearce pointed out in his biography Wisdom and Innocence:

" G.F. Watts died in the year Chesterton's biography was published, but not before he had read the book. On 5 April 1904 Frances recorded in her diary that Mrs. G.F. Watts had written Gilbert 'a charming note' saying that her husband 'is really pleased with the little book' "

So it looks like Watts himself liked GKC's book. :-)

Second, while I had known little about Watts except for GKC's book, shortly after Obama's election, I came across this article which described the influence of a painting by Watts ("Hope") on Obama. While admittedly I'm not exactly a big Obama fan, still, I thought it would be interesting to note that influence in this post.

Anyway, just to give an example of a quote from that book:

Purity is the only atmosphere for passion.

A little busy

Yes, posting has been light (comparitively speaking) lately due to being a little busy...hope to start getting back into more regularly posting soon.