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. The two were probably first introduced at some point in 1900, though the full circumstances in which they first met are somewhat obscure, including who introduced them. By 1908, their friendship was so impenetrable and their views so aligned that George Bernard Shaw described the two as one chimeric beast called the Chesterbelloc. The two debated and communed with many well-known literary authors of the period; the two were especially associated as the public intellectual opponents of Shaw and Wells.
Throughout their lives, the pair remained ideologically aligned as anti-imperialist and anti-modernist voices. Steadfast critics of capitalism and socialism, Belloc and Chesterton championed the emergent socioeconomic theory of distributism, which argues for the widespread ownership of the means of production rather than the distribution of wealth . The two are largely responsible for the development of distributism as a distinct form of political thought, which later became an important element of Catholic movements in the English-speaking world during the 20th century. Aside from their treatises, the two authored novels and political satires, typically with Belloc's prose and Chesterton's illustrations. The collaboration came to a close with the publication of The Hedge and the Horse in 1936 shortly before Chesterton's death, 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 is generally considered to have been less influential on Belloc, he has been credited with shaping Belloc's philosophical style and popularising Belloc's ideas with his softer public image. 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, especially later in his life. 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
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
Gilbert Keith 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 a mental breakdown, which he later alluded to in his work. 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 states that all three were present.
Even when the year is agreed upon, when in 1900 is also somewhat debated. Belloc's 1939 account 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 (now a part of the city's Chinatown), 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 only 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, also 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 throughout his life 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 censorship. 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, 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: