An Odd Couple?: A First Glance at Chesterton and Newman

I. Introduction

Why are Chesterton and Newman so linked in the minds of people who know anything about either of the two figures? On the surface, a few similarities are obvious. Both came from what might be called middle-class families. The two seemed natural leaders, even as children—Newman forming his Spy Club and Chesterton, with E. C. Bentley, the famous Junior Debating Club. They were also omnivorous readers who devoured much of the classics. Though Newman's tutors claimed Newman was only a moderately good classicist, he was later regarded as quite a skilled composer of Latin. Similarly, though Chesterton's study of Latin under the famous A. E. Housman ended at the suggestion of none other than Housman, Chesterton's friend, that wild Dominican distributist, Fr. Vincent McNabb, would compare him to Thomas More: the two men, said McNabb, were cockneys whose lack of technical knowledge of the classical languages was more than made up for by an instinctual knowledge of what the words should mean.¹ Both Chesterton and Newman were Englishmen to the core who, nevertheless, found in the Roman Catholic Church—to the dismay and horror of many an Englishman—the "pillar and foundation of the truth" spoken of by St. Paul in his first letter to Timothy. Neither were the two shy about writing controversially about religion either before or after their voyages across the Tiber. Both also excelled in a variety of fields not limited to religious controversy. Much of Newman's poetry is still well regarded, his "Dream of Gerontius" likely to live on forever, not least in the musical setting given it by Edward Elgar. His hymn "Lead kindly, light" seems similarly enshrined both in the literary canons and the hymnbooks. Chesterton's poetry, still being discovered in scribbles on the backs of envelopes or published in obscure newspapers and journals, also has its gems. In an interview late in his career, Graham Greene, upon being asked what poetry he read, responded that he still went back again and again to "The Ballad of the White Horse."² And of course, Newman and Chesterton both found only a modest success as novelists.

But any list of their similarities is nearly overwhelmed by the flood of differences that one encounters in a first look. They seem truly an odd couple. Chesterton was manifestly fat. The driver responsible for him when he lived in South Bend, Indiana, and lectured at Notre Dame in 1930 recalled later that he thought Chesterton nearer to four hundred pounds than three hundred. Newman was thin. Chesterton went to a trade school and entered the world of journalism and publishing. Newman was an Oxonian quite comfortable in the common room of Oriel College. Though neither Chesterton nor Newman had any offspring, Chesterton was a married layman while Newman was a celibate cleric. In fact, Newman recorded that from the age of seventeen he was convinced that his own particular vocation would demand freedom from the demands of a wife and family, however much they were attractive to him.³ Like that earlier Oxford reformer John Wesley, Newman encouraged many of his own friends to remain single—and sometimes showed disappointment when they did not. Chesterton, on the other hand, included in his youthful notebook lines containing his hopes for a young boy:

Sunlight in a child's hair It is like the kiss of Christ upon all children I blessed the child: and hoped the blessing         would go with him And never leave him; And turn first into a toy, and then into a game      And then into a friend. And as he grew up, into friends And then into a woman.⁴

Newman played the violin well and had a mind for music and mathematics. Chesterton loved to sing or hum, but his friends could rarely detect any actual tune in the mix. And his habits with money seem to reveal a sort of pure ignorance about mathematics. Newman was the consummate Victorian correspondent whose letters and diaries would fill thirty-one volumes. Chesterton wrote a...