An 1895 graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, Belloc was a noted figure within the University, being President of the Oxford Union, the undergraduate debating society. He went into politics after he became a naturalised British subject. A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship at All Souls College in Oxford in 1895. This failure may have been caused in part by his producing a small statue of the Virgin and placing it before him on the table during the interview for the fellowship.*Unfortunately he did have some rather, er, back-half moments on occasion, and certainly was the crankier part of the dynamic duo. But then, Chesterton had enough good humor for four men of normal size.
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Friday, June 11
Hilaire Belloc: Wild and Crazy Guy
From Wikipedia's entry on the, er, back half* of our good friend the Chesterbelloc (emphasis mine):
Belloc tended to be pretty forthright!
ReplyDeleteSimilarly (as you may well know), when he stood for election to Parliament, for the Liberal party (which had, and has a strongly "non-conformist" i.e. protestant, frequently teetoal betnt to it), at a political meeting during the campaign and pulled out his rosary and stated thae he attempted to attend mass daily, and told the audience that if they did not approve of this, then he would prefer not to represent them.
That, good sir, is made of awesome. Less so is Belloc's habit of looking moodily at his pocket-watch after Low Mass had run longer than ten minutes.
ReplyDeleteYou win some, you lose some....
ReplyDeleteCharitably, it might be that Belloc could concentrate better in short bursts, and in longer bursts had a hard time sitting still. Which I would readily believe. I mean, the guy walked large chunks of the globe.