The Belloc Siblings, Part 3 -- Marie's Brother: A Cautionary Tale

In Part One and Part Two of this short series on Marie and Hilaire Belloc, sister and brother and both writers -- we've looked at Marie's works and the various adaptations of The Lodger and The Story of Ivy. Now we turn to Hilaire's life and work. 

When researching people who lived in the late 19th century or early 20th century, I've discovered that the images of people are often odd. There was little candid photography then. Pictures were taken at historic events or as formal portraits, using cumbersome technology and long exposures and the glare of flash powder in an open pan. 

But having said that, I still feel that in their portraits the Bellocs both look a bit like members of The Addams Family --  Hilaire in particular. He had a distinctly Lurch-like look in his younger days.

Hilaire looks more human in this next photo, taken twelve years later. But which human?  This portrait looks like a cross between Anthony Hopkins and Simon Cowell.

What did Hilaire Belloc do with his life? Well, he was a poet but was  best-known in his lifetime for his fiercely argumentative nature; H. G. Wells, who Belloc once famously railed at, described debating Hilaire as like arguing with a hailstorm. 

 

Belloc was a prolific writer, but even while he was alive, his written diatribes became out-of-date pretty quickly. He was appreciated most for his often-satiric verse. A collection of poems, The Path to Rome, was well-regarded. 

 

Personally, I think the most amazing thing about Hilaire Belloc's life might be that he literally walked across most the United States in pursuit of Elodie, the woman he loved, and then when he was rebuffed, he walked back again the other way. 

 

Elodie had a mother who intended her daughter for a life in the convent. Then the mother died and things looked better for Hilaire, But Elodie still thought maybe convent life was what she really wanted for herself. A month as a novitiate showed her otherwise, and after fleeing the convent, Elodie consented to marry Hilaire. They had six children. What a love story, right?

 

Having said all that, what everybody else except me remembers of Hilaire Belloc is that he wrote a little book called Cautionary Tales for Children,  first published in 1907.

These dark comic stories were a big influence on Influence on later writers, including Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey. In particular, we see many similarities in Gorey's  The Gashlycrumb Tinies. You know, the book with children perishing alphabetically ("A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil, assaulted by bears..."), the oversize book with the alphabet blocks on the cover!  The influence is so strong that The Gashlycrumb Tinies seems more a refinement of Hilaire Belloc's1907 book than an independent effort.

Hilaire Belloc led a stormy life, in which he seemed to spend his days arguing with and opposing almost everyone. Hilaire and sister Marie's mother (Bessie Rayner Parkes) was a strong advocate for women's right to vote, so of course, young Hilaire joined an anti-suffrage league. He and his sister Marie, along with the rest of the family,  had emigrated to England from France and this culture shift was another source of struggle for Hilaire.  The poet made much effort to be both very French and very British. As a young man, he left England to enlist in the French military for a year so as to keep his citizenship. Then he came back to English for his college education, and he excelled academically and socially at Oxford.

 But it was in the matter of religion where Hilaire Belloc really unloosed the winds of his furious diatribes, Belloc was raised Catholic, then had his doubts about the faith. However, he returned to the church with a fierce devotion, convinced that Catholicism was not only best for him personally but best for all of civilization. Belloc had no use for non-believers -- this was the basis for his furious fights with H. G. Wells -- or for faiths which competed with Christianity. For instance, he thought Islam was dangerous and would destroy Europe.

When it came to Judaism, Hilaire Belloc, according to contemporary accounts, was a bad influence on author G. K. Chesterton, the writer who brought us Father Brown. Chesterton already held some anti-semitic views, but Belloc seems to have blown embers into flames. 

When talking about something like this, it's not fair to just report what somebody said about someone else. So here's a quote from Hilaire Belloc's 1922 book, simply titled The Jews: "...the continued presence of the Jewish nation intermixed with other nations alien to it presents a permanent problem of the gravest character." Those words didn't come from a hot-headed young man. Belloc was born in 1870, so he was fifty-two years old when he wrote the words quoted above.

While Belloc obviously embraced some anti-semitic viewpoints and sold them to people via both his writing and his friendships, within his lifetime the poet also fought with other people if they thought they were being anti-semites. And in a 1940 book called The Catholic and the War, Belloc wrote the Nazis were wrong to persecute the Jews. By the time those words were published, Belloc was seventy years old. Maybe he matured, finally. Or maybe the harsh reality of what was happening in Europe finally penetrated.

Hilaire Belloc lived into his early eighties, but was in poor health at the end of his life. He died as a result of falling, during a medical episode, into his lit fireplace. Almost like something out of Cautionary Tales for Children.

Speaking of which, one of the reasons Hilaire Belloc is remembered for that particular book is a recording of Peter Ustinov reading the tales aloud.

 

You can listen to the record in this video:

Next time:  Nothing involving anyone with the surname Belloc