"to frances"

"Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman." -G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy

I went to a talk last night at the Newman center called "The Polish Pope and the Prince of Paradox (aka JPII and G.K. Chesterton) discuss Sex, Marriage, Men & Women."

Many beautiful things were shared at the talk, but I couldn't let the opportunity pass to share the letter that Chesterton wrote to Frances Blogg shortly before they were married.

The art of a good letter is something I am learning to appreciate, and this one is one of the finest I have ever read as he looks to the future with her with gratitude and wonder. I love the whole letter, but here are two of my favorite excerpts...

I have sometimes thought it would be very fine to take an ordinary house, a very poor, commonplace house in West Kensington, say, and make it symbolic. Not artistic - Heaven - O Heaven forbid... No: my idea (which is much cheaper) is to make a house... really explain its own essential meaning. Mystical or ancient sayings should be inscribed on every object, the more prosaic the object the better; and the more coarsely and rudely the inscription was traced the better. 'Hast thou sent the Rain upon the Earth?' should be inscribed on the Umbrella-Stand: perhaps on the Umbrella. 'Even the Hairs of your Head are all numbered' would give a tremendous significance to one's hairbrushes: the words about 'living water' would reveal the music and sanctity of the sink: while 'Our God is a consuming Fire' might be written over the kitchen-grate, to assist the mystic musings of the cook - Shall we ever try that experiment, dearest. Perhaps not, for no words would be golden enough for the tools you had to touch: you would be beauty enough for one house..."

And this is at the very end of the letter when (writing in third person) he describes to her the moment he met her~

Once in the course of conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as plainly as if he had read it in a book: 'If I had anything to do with this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me: if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget me. I may never see her again. Goodbye.' It was all said in a flash: but it was all said....

Two years, as they say in the playbills, is supposed to elapse. And here is the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he is called upon to be. Let him now declare it and hereafter for ever hold his peace.

But there are four lamps of thanksgiving always before him. The first is for his creation out of the same earth with such a woman as you. The second is that he has not, with all his faults, 'gone after strange women.' You cannot think how a man's self restraint is rewarded in this. The third is that he has tried to love everything alive: a dim preparation for loving you. And the fourth is--but no words can express that. Here ends my previous existence. Take it: it led me to you.

(Chesterton Day By Day is a great site for reading more of his thoughts too. The quote at the top of the page was my favorite quote from the talk last night, and is also the excerpt for my b-day. I liked the coincidence.)