Here Is the Little Door, Again

So yesterday I was on the Son Rise Morning Show talking with Matt Swaim about the Chestertons and Christmas. In my preview to the interview I mentioned that one of Frances Chesterton's poems, "Here is the Little Door" had been set to music by Herbert Howells.

Now he's not the only one. BBC Music commissions a new carol every year. This year, composer Owain Park chose to set Frances Chesterton's poem:

Here is the little door, lift up the latch, oh lift! 
We need not wander more but enter with our gift; 
Our gift of finest gold, 
Gold that was never bought nor sold; 
Myrrh to be strewn about his bed; 
Incense in clouds about his head; 
All for the child that stirs not in his sleep, 
But holy slumber holds with ass and sheep. 

Bend low about his bed, for each he has a gift; 
See how his eyes awake, lift up your hand, O lift! 
For gold, he gives a keen-edged sword 
(Defend with it thy little Lord!) 
For incense, smoke of battle red, 
Myrrh for the honoured happy dead; 
Gifts for his children, terrible and sweet, 
Touched by such tiny hands, and Oh such tiny feet.

Park comments:

One of my favourite carols [as a chorister at St Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol] was Howells’s 1918 setting of Frances Chesterton’s poem Here is the little door. Howells’s music allows the words to resonate with both choir and congregation – at St Mary’s there was always an extra few seconds of quiet after we’d finished singing it. The poem consists of two stanzas: the first is reflective and subdued while the second is more colourful and lively.

Most lines seem to end strongly after a more questioning start, and so I’ve tried to express this using tension and release in the harmony. A lot of my choral music has been in many parts and is quite difficult to sing, so I wanted to sustain a simple idea over two verses without any divided parts. My hope is that I have captured something of the wonder I felt as a young singer.

The words are key to my setting of Here is the little door. I would encourage singers to be as expressive as possible with the text, even when everyone moves together. I’ve kept one set of words throughout to keep the score as uncluttered as possible, which sometimes means that the words aren’t vertically aligned with your part. Always move with your note, and with confidence. It would be a good idea for everyone to read through the poem together, to develop a collective interpretation.

The score is available here. A preview the Christmas 2019 issue is here.

As David Faberberg said in his 2013 book's title: Chesterton is everywhere!! Both of them!

By the way: David Faberberg may not be everywhere, but he is scheduled to be here in Wichita for the 10th annual Eighth Day Institute Symposium!

Reminder: The Chestertons and Christmas

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at about 6:50 a.m. Central Time/7:50 a.m. Eastern Time. Anna Mitchell and I will talk about how Gilbert and Frances Chesterton celebrated the Nativity of Jesus and the Christmas Season with songs, plays, poems, and essays!

Listen live here; the podcast will be archived here! 

The Chestertons and Christmas on the Son Rise Morning Show

Anna Mitchell of Sacred Heart Radio asked me to contribute some Christmas material to the Son Rise Morning Show during my usual Monday morning spot for the next couple of weeks. We talked about Newman and Christmas, but since I'm anticipating the annual Advent/Christmas for our local American Chesterton Society's group, I suggested Chesterton and Christmas. Actually, we'll start with the Chestertons and Christmas, to include G.K.'s wife Frances, who also wrote many Christmas-themed works. So on Monday, December 9, we'll start by discussing how G.K. and Frances celebrated Christmas in their creative works. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show about 6:50 a.m. Central Time/7:50 a.m. Eastern; listen live here. The segment will be included in an EWTN hour of the program later in the week.

At our annual Chesterton Advent/Christmas party at Eighth Day Books in Wichita, Kansas we read excerpts from G.K. and Frances' poems, stories, plays, and essays. One of our resources is an out of print collection, The Spirit of Christmas. As Dale Ahlquist of the American Chesterton Society explains:

Each year for over thirty years, G.K. Chesterton would write at least five or six articles on Christmas, along with one or two poems and some other odd piece, that would be spread among the journals for which he was a regular contributor and Yuletide issues of other journals for which he was not. His biographer Maisie Ward once expressed the desire to collect all of Chesterton’s writings on Christmas into one volume, not only because there was such a wonderful variety of material available, but especially because this was a subject in which Chesterton’s charity seemed to shine most brightly.

It was Marie Smith who finally carried out Maisie’s idea and created a book by Chesterton on Christmas. She would go on to put together five posthumous Chesterton collections, only one fewer than Dorothy Collins. The Spirit of Christmas is probably the most successful and possibly the most satisfying.

This book could easily have been five times larger, but even though it represents only a fraction of Chesterton’s Christmas writings, it is an excellent selection, containing both familiar delights and unusual gems. Presented in mostly chronological order, Marie provides a pleasing layout of poems, essays, stories and even the very rare play, “The Turkey and the Turk.” When the book was published in 1984, most of its material was appearing between the covers of a book for the first time. The other rarity, in addition to the mummer’s play, was the previously uncollected poem Gloria in Profundis – the paradoxical “Glory to God in the Lowest.”

There is a paperback edition available on Amazon.com for $542.00!!

G.K.'s Christmas essays explore how we celebrate Christmas with feasting, caroling, giving gifts, debating about Santa Claus ("The child who doubts about Santa Claus has insomnia. The child who believes has a good night's rest"), etc. He often included Charles Dickens in his Christmas essays--but more about that in the second episode of our miniseries on December 16! His poems, like his wife Frances's, are most often focused on the Baby in the Manger:

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.

There is another book we bring to our table at Eighth Day Books: A Chesterton Christmas: Essays, Excerpts, and Eggnog, edited by Brian G. Daigle. He includes a long excerpt from The Everlasting Man from Part II, Chapter One, "The God in the Cave", which someone has to read at least part of:

Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. Here begins, it is needless to say, another mighty influence for the humanization of Christendom. If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why); the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin. When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.

Our other source is Nancy Charpentier Brown's collection of Frances Chesterton's works, How Far Is It to Bethlehem:

Frances Chesterton, wife of British journalist G.K. Chesterton, was a gentle poet and playwright. Her sweet works long lay in obscurity, except for a few Christmas lyrics, which have never gone out of print. Her plays for children were in demand when she wrote them; there is a demand for them again today. Her poems and plays reveal a woman of deep thought, a spiritual woman, a woman longing for Christ, and especially drawn to Him at the Nativity, when He was a small baby. To read these works is to understand better G.K. Chesterton’s wife and spiritual companion. And so, these works are offered back to a world that has almost forgotten them.

Included in How Far Is It to Bethlehem are six plays for children and adults, an essay, numerous poems, and the collection of Christmas Card poems Frances wrote for the family Christmas Card each year.

Among the Christmas plays Frances wrote is The Christmas Gift, intended for very young children. On Christmas Eve, a family gathers for a meager supper; the father is off at war, and the mother reminds her children:

We won't forget to keep the holy night.
Though all is dark, here is a little light.

Their parish church has been destroyed, but some carolers come to sing around the family's manger:

Welcome, welcome, little Lord,
Out of the cold dark night.
We want to give Thee all we have
Of love and warmth and light.
We have no gold, incense or myrrh
To lay at Thy dear feet,
Only our little lips and hands
That offer service meet.

The simple rhymes, the slightly archaic language ("service meet"), and the surprise at the end create an atmosphere of love and simplicity. There's wonder in how strangers meet on Christmas Eve and share with each other the wonder of that Holy Night.

Frances' other plays and poems contain common themes of dark and light, night and eternity, the Baby in the manger, the gifts of the Magi, Mary and Joseph: all focused on the mystery of the Christ Child, God Made Man, as an infant, so tiny and helpless. Her last Christmas card poem was set to music by Herbert Howells:

Here is the little door, lift up the latch, oh lift! 
We need not wander more but enter with our gift; 
Our gift of finest gold, 
Gold that was never bought nor sold; 
Myrrh to be strewn about his bed; 
Incense in clouds about his head; 
All for the child that stirs not in his sleep, 
But holy slumber holds with ass and sheep. 

Bend low about his bed, for each he has a gift; 
See how his eyes awake, lift up your hand, O lift! 
For gold, he gives a keen-edged sword 
(Defend with it thy little Lord!) 
For incense, smoke of battle red, 
Myrrh for the honoured happy dead; 
Gifts for his children, terrible and sweet, 
Touched by such tiny hands, and Oh such tiny feet.

Chesterton Christmas Party at EDB

Our Greater Wichita American Chesterton Society group will gather to celebrate a Chestertonian preparation for Christmas tonight on the second floor at Eighth Day Books around 6:30. Potluck refreshments will be available and we will read from the many poems and essays Gilbert and his wife Frances wrote about Christmas.

She wrote poems for their Christmas cards every year and several plays for godchildren, nieces, and nephews to perform during holiday celebrations.

He wrote poems for Christmas, essays for periodicals, the extended meditation on The Nativity in "The God in the Cave" chapter of The Everlasting Man, and of course, his commentaries on Dickens' Christmas stories, including A Christmas Carol.

Watch for another blog post at the National Catholic Register website under my name next week as I describe Chesterton's appreciation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol there.

Frances Chesterton @ Sisters of Sophia

We'll have a panel discussion of Frances Chesterton tonight at the monthly meeting of the Sisters of Sophia at the Ladder, the headquarters of the Eighth Day Institute. Two of my colleagues and friends, with whom I read Nancy Carpentier Brown's biography of G.K. Chesterton's wife, and I will pose questions to each other and discuss with the attendees. Dinner will be served. More info here:

If you aren't familiar with the Sisters of Sophia, we walk with women of wisdom as we learn from their lives. We meet every third Tuesday of the month. Our gathering of ladies is both challenging and refreshing, as is the camaraderie along the way!

6:15 Doors Open
6:30 Food and Fellowship
7:30 Eighth Day Convocation and Lecture* (sic) on Frances Chesterton by Jeri Holladay, Stephanie Mann & Laurie Robinson
8:15 Q&A and Closing Prayer

Please come to break bread with us, learn with us, or both! We will end promptly at 8:30, but women are welcome to chat long after that!

*We're not really going to offer a lecture at all!

Speaking of the Eighth Day Institute, its January 2017 Symposium theme has been announced:

Earlier this year, Alan Jacobs wrote a piece in the September issue of Harper's Magazine titled "The Watchmen: What Became of the Christian Intellectuals?" Jacobs notes that only half a century ago serious Christian intellectuals held a prominent place on the national stage of America. Back in the 1930s the Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim argued that these intellectuals had a "special task to provide an interpretation of the world," to "play the part of watchmen in what otherwise would be a pitch-black night."

So, for our seventh annual Eighth Day Symposium, we ask "Where are the watchmen?" And, "What is the role of theology in the public square?"

We hope you can join us as Frederica Mathewes-Green, Allan Carlson, Bishop James Massa, and others lead us in a wonderful dialogue of love and truth on January 12-14, 2017.

I'm looking forward to seeing Bishop James Massa of the Brooklyn Diocese. He was the chaplain at Newman University when I worked with at the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies during the twentieth century!

Frances Chesterton @ Aleteia

Head over to Aleteia.org to see my guest blog post on Frances Chesterton, G.K.'s wife. I used the adage "Behind every great man is a great woman" to demonstrate instead how Frances was sometimes beside her husband, sometimes ahead of him and sometimes behind him:

If Frances Chesterton had been behind her husband, we would never have seen her. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a giant of a man in stature and personality. Instead, Frances stood beside him and even sometimes in front of him and thus we seen both her and her influence on him, especially through the efforts of Nancy Carpentier Brown in her 2015 biography, The Woman Who Was Chesterton. . . .

Frances and G.K. Chesterton met in 1896 at a literary debating society. His immediate admiration and growing love for Frances meant that she led him to greater faith in Jesus Christ and attendance at Church of England services. In 1911 Chesterton dedicated his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse to her: “Therefore I bring these rhymes to you/Who brought the cross to me.” He would return the favor 26 years later when he became a Catholic in 1922 and led her to join him four years later.

They were engaged in 1898 and married on June 28, 1901. Frances stood beside Chesterton in his professional work but also led him to a healthier lifestyle as they moved away from London and the pubs to live in the country. They wanted to have a house full of children—hoping for “seven beautiful children”—but bore the crosses of infertility and ill health.

Please read the rest there! IF you like it, please share it and comment on it so the team at Aleteia might ask me to write for them again! Thank you.

Father O'Connor/Father Brown

Our G.K. Chesterton group discussed the first three chapters of Nancy Carpentier Brown's biography of Frances Chesterton Friday night and decided to assign the rest of the book for our next meeting on Friday, May 13 (the second Friday of the month instead of our usual third Friday).

Several of us commented on the friendship between Frances Chesterton and Father John O'Connor, which was first demonstrated through a correspondence filled with spiritual advice and consolation. Because Brown wrote a biography of Frances and not of Gilbert, she only hints that Father O'Connor was Chesterton's model for Father Brown.

This biography, The Elusive Father Brown: The Life of Mgr John O'Connor by Julia Smith, published by Gracewing Press, may fill some of the necessary gaps left by Nancy Carpentier Brown:

G. K. Chesterton’s much-loved priest-detective, Father Brown, was based on his friend John Joseph O’Connor, born in Ireland and ordained a Catholic priest in 1895. Mgr. John O’Connor became known for possessing one of the finest intellects in early twentieth-century Europe, friend and confidante of statesmen, writers and artists, his own literary output was prolific. He collected fine works of art, the sale of which part funded the building of his first church, and through his friendship with Eric Gill he commissioned the Stations of the Cross for his Bradford church. This, the first biography, aims to introduce the shadowy figure who was involved in so many different worlds.

K.V. Turley reviewed the biography on June 13, 2015 for The Catholic World Report:

Crime fiction fans are well aware of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown and his place in the Pantheon of great detectives. Nevertheless, in contrast with the seemingly endless speculation as to the ‘real Sherlock Holmes’, there has been little such debate about the origin of the priest sleuth. However, a recent book, The Elusive Father Brown(Gracewing, 2010), by Laura [sic] Smith, goes some way to rectifying this, detailing as it does the life of the cleric who formed the basis upon which Chesterton’s characterization was based, and who played a part in at least two very public conversions. . . .

Monsignor O’Connor, as he was to become, unlike his fictional alter ego, was very much a priest with a parish and one he was to remain attached to for most of his priestly ministry. Although unmistakeably an Irish man, in accent and manner, he was to live the majority of his life in Yorkshire, more precisely Bradford. In that city he was to gain the status of a local celebrity. He seems to have known the great and the good—Catholic or not—while never neglecting his own flock to whom he was very much an old-fashioned parish priest. He was familiar with the social and political currents that played out around this West Yorkshire municipality as much as they did other British cities. Whereas, at times, Fr. Brown appears ‘other worldly’, this could never have been said of Mgr. O’Connor who was in the thick of things at all times.

In fact, his reach was well beyond the city limits of Bradford, then a place known for heavy industry rather than culture. It was through his influence that all sorts of contemporary cultural figures were to descend upon it, writers like Chesterton and Belloc, and artists such as David Jones and Eric Gill. They came hardly knowing the priest, only, in some instances, to leave as friends and, for some, more deeply Catholic. In Chesterton’s case, he began writing Fr. Brown stories as Anglican only to end those adventures as Catholic, the writer’s conversion in no small part to the influence of Mgr. O’Connor.

Read the rest there.

Francis Chesterton, Gilbert's Wife

Our G.K. Chesterton reading group will discuss the first three chapters of this biography of Frances Chesterton, G.K.'s wife, published by the American Chesterton Society:

The Woman Who Was Chesterton is a love story. But it is also a detective story. And best of all, it is a true story, told here for the the first time. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a romantic, a writer of detective tales, and a teller of the truth. His own story and the stories he told are becoming better and better known. But what has remained unknown is the story of the most important person in his life: his wife Frances Chesterton.

Nancy Carpentier Brown has done incredible detective work to uncover the mystery of Frances, tracking a figure who managed to leave very few traces of herself.

It is quite likely that as more is discovered about Frances, more biographies will be written of her, and they will be even more complete. But they will all come back to this one: The Woman Who Was Chesterton.

The title is, of course, a play on The Man Who Was Thursday, one of Chesterton's novels.

Nancy Carpentier Brown, who had previously edited a selection of Frances Chesterton's poems and plays, How Far Is It to Bethlehem, admits that she has somewhat limited resources for this biography because not many of Frances Chesterton's diaries or journals survived. She does have the letters that Frances and Father John O'Connor, Chesterton's model for Father Brown, exchanged which shed some light into their marital relationship. Brown also makes it clear that she is not writing a biography of G.K. Chesterton; she assumes the reader knows the general outline of his life.

This is not a scholarly biography; Brown is trying to describe the personality of Frances Chesterton and her marriage, partnership, and relationship to Chesterton. They were true partners in Chesterton's career: his writing, publishing, speaking; Frances was also a writer, publishing poetry that was admired and set to music. They were also partners in suffering: although they wanted children, they were infertile (Frances' gynecological history is discreetly described) and decided to help children in their extended families and friends rather than adopt (they had dozens of godchildren too). Both suffered chronic illnesses and often had to nurse one another through health crises, hospitalizations, and therapeutic travel.

Brown offered an excellent summary of this book when she wrote this about How Far Is It to Bethlehem?:

Frances Alice Blogg Chesterton spent most of her life in the shadow of her larger than life husband British author Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Subject to gossip and rumors often started by her sister-in-law, Ada Chesterton, Frances chose to keep quietly in the background, letting her husband and others take center stage. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a woman of talent and extraordinary gifts; it shows she had tremendous humility.

Her story is a love story. The love between Gilbert and Frances was romantic. She was his best fan, his most successful marketer, his biggest cheerleader. She took dictation from him; she tied his shoes. She clung to him when her life seemed out of control. She cherished the love poetry he wrote her, holding the words tenderly in her own heart, never sharing the most intimate of them with anyone. She loved him, and he loved her.

For nearly a century, Frances’ story has been hidden amongst the pages of poetry Gilbert wrote, Christmas cards sent to friends, letters to priests and friends stored in library special collections, biographies written by literary contemporaries, and in scattered periodicals and books. Rarely is it known that Frances had her own writing career. Only recently has anyone been aware that she had four books published during her lifetime.

It’s time to bring Frances out of the shadows and into the light. The story of Frances is intimately woven with the story of Gilbert. They worked as a team; they were lovers and friends, writing coaches and companions. They worked, ate, and slept together for 35 years, dependent on each other physically, emotionally and intellectually. One can hardly understand Gilbert without some understanding of Frances.

Gilbert’s story cannot be written without knowing Frances, but up till now, not enough has been known about Frances. This is the moment when that changes. Frances asked Gilbert to keep her out of his autobiography, but she isn’t here to stop us now. Frances is a woman who will come to be respected ever more, as it is discovered just who she really was, and how much she had to do with who Gilbert was.

Chesterton at Kings (Frances, That Is)

Each year I peruse the booklet for the Nine Lessons and Carols at the King's College Chapel in Cambridge to see what carols have been chosen and what the new commissioned carol is. Chesterton would approve of all that alliteration and this year Chesterton contributes to the program. Not G.K. Chesterton, but his wife, Frances Chesterton!

Here is the little door, lift up the latch, oh lift! 
We need not wander more but enter with our gift; 
Our gift of finest gold, 
Gold that was never bought nor sold; 
Myrrh to be strewn about his bed; 
Incense in clouds about his head; 
All for the child that stirs not in his sleep, 
But holy slumber holds with ass and sheep. 

Bend low about his bed, for each he has a gift; 
See how his eyes awake, lift up your hand, O lift! 
For gold, he gives a keen-edged sword 
(Defend with it thy little Lord!) 
For incense, smoke of battle red, 
Myrrh for the honoured happy dead; 
Gifts for his children, terrible and sweet, 
Touched by such tiny hands, and Oh such tiny feet.

The music is by Herbert Howells.

Our Greater Wichita chapter of the American Chesterton Society held a most festive meeting last Friday at Eighth Day Books: we read selections from collection by G.K. Chesterton called The Spirit of Christmas, of which I bought two copies last year (and gave one as a gift): it's as rare as hen's teeth now and the American Chesterton Society should reprint it as the companion volume to Frances Chesterton's collection, edited by Nancy Carpenter Brown, of poems and plays, How Far Is It to Bethlehem. You might say we had lessons without carols, but with many treats and great fun!

When my GKC group friends see this post, it may confirm us all more than ever that we should read The Woman Who Was Chesterton next, once we've finished reading and discussing The Well and the Shallows (and we can just about see the bottom of the well now).

According to the website for King's College Chapel:

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 on 24 December at 3pm (10:00 EST or 07:00 PST). The service is also broadcast at 2pm on Radio 3 on Christmas Day, and at various times on the BBC World Service.

In the United States the service is broadcast by around 300 radio stations, including American Public Media and its affiliates (Minnesota Public Radio and WNYC-New York, for example). Unfortunately there is no list of radio stations that are broadcasting the service, so it's best to contact your local stations or check their online listings.