The humility of wisdom

Can you get a sense of a man by stringing together excerpts from disparate writings? That’s the goal of Dale Ahlquist’s I Also Had My Hour: An Alternative Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton (Ignatius Press, 480 pp.). Compiled with painstaking labor, the quotes range in length from a single sentence to three pages. Strung together into a more-or-less continuous narrative, sentences written decades apart live harmoniously in the same paragraph.

The person whose soul emerges from the patchwork shares humble wisdom. He’s the kind of man who says, “I should never dream of defending my books,” but also says, “I shall always take every opportunity of defending my opinions.” Consider the testimony of Dorothy L. Sayers, who heard him speak in 1914: “His books ought to be read as he speaks—rather slowly, and delivering the paradoxical statements tentatively. His speaking has none of that aggressive and dogmatic quality which his writings are apt to assume when read aloud.”

He’s also the kind of man who fought “for certain civilized certitudes.” The family is one of those certitudes: “I believe in monogamy as the one complete adventure of man.” “I believe that one of the most vital, one of the most honourable and let me add, one of the most difficult callings on earth is that of playing with children.”

Non-journalists may be surprised by Chesterton’s diagnosis of the worst sin of journalists: “Not saying one’s own opinions is the temptation, and therefore the treason, of my trade.” The worst kind of journalist is the kind who won’t tell you what he really thinks.

For readers who already know GKC’s books, the most fascinating part of Ahlquist’s work will be the selection of testimonials from Chesterton’s contemporaries. Take this one, from Maurice Reckitt, who served on a magazine board with him: “Chesterton was in everything a little more than you had hoped he could be, and those who had hoped the most were perhaps the least disappointed.” David Magee, rare-book dealer: “He resembled nothing so much as a vast unmade bed.”

This book is fabulous as only Chesterton can be. Every word from his pen is soaked in the fear of the Lord. He comments, “Big newspapers do not ask for theology from theologians who possess it, but from popular novelists who have none.” But here is a newspaper columnist and popular novelist who possesses theology—and preaches it with unhindered boldness.