Bellock, healer

Bellock was born in Saint-Cloud - in the suburbs of Paris . His father was French, his mother was English. Sister - Marie Bellock , also became a writer. His childhood passed in England in the village of Slyndon in West Sussex . He will miss these places very much later. This is reflected in his poems West Sussex Drinking Song, The South Country, and the even more melancholy Ha'nacker Hill.

His mother, Elizabeth Reiner Parkes (1829–1925), was also a writer and was the great-granddaughter of the English chemist Joseph Priestley . In 1867, she married solicitor Luis Bellock, son of the French artist Jean Hélère Bellock . In 1872, 5 years after the wedding, Louis died, which coincided with a stock market crash that completely ruined the family. The young widow with her son, and also with her sister Maria returned to England, where Hiler spent all his childhood and youth, with the exception of the period of military service in French artillery.

After graduating from high school at the John Henry Newman Oratorio in 1891, Bellock served as a French citizen in the artillery unit near Tula . He was athletically built, had good stamina and walked a lot around England and continental Europe. When Bellock looked after his future wife, Elodie, being a poor man, he walked most of the way from the Midwestern United States to her home in northern California , painting for a small fee owners of distant farms and ranches and moonlighting as he wrote poems.

After completing military service, Bellock entered Balliol College, Oxford, at the Department of History. There he received his first school history awards.

Hobbies

In the early 1930s, he was presented with an old boat called the Jersey. He sailed on it for several years in the England region with a team of assistants. One of the young people on his team, Dermod McCarthy, wrote a book about this period entitled “Sailing with Mr Belloc” .

Political participation

A graduate of 1895 at Balliol College, Bellock was a prominent figure at Oxford University , as president of the Oxford Union oratory. He took up politics after obtaining English citizenship. A tangible failure for him was the failure of the interview for admission to the college members 'All Souls'.

From 1906 to 1910 he was a member of parliament from the Liberal Party , running for South Salford County. However, he quickly became disillusioned with party politics.

Literary activity

Bellock was actively engaged in literature, both prose and poetry. He worked closely with G.K. Chesterton and B. Shaw . His collaboration with Chesterton gave birth to the term Chesterbellock .

Bellock's only hiring period was from 1914 to 1920, when he worked as an editor for Earth and Water , an analysis of the effects of World War I.

Family

Bellock was the brother of the novelist Maria Adelaide Bellock of London. In 1896, he married Elodie Hogan, an American by birth. In 1906, he bought a plot with a house called The Royal Land in the village of Shipley, West Sussex , in which he lived almost until his death. Elodie and Bellock had five children. In 1914, Elodie died of the flu. His son Louis died in the First World War . Bellock himself suffered a stroke in 1941, from which he could not recover until the end of his days. He died July 16, 1953 at the Catholic Hospital in Guildford, Surrey . He is buried in the old cemetery at the Catholic Altar of the Church of the Virgin Mary of the Comforter and St. Francis in the village of West Grinstead, not far from his house in Shipley. Bellock was a regular parishioner of this church.

At the memorial service, Rev. Ronald Knox noted that "not a single person of his time has fought so desperately for good deeds."

Old Thunder

His way of life and lifestyle was consistent with the nickname that he received in childhood - Old Thunder . One of Bellock's friends, Lord Sheffield , describes his defiant behavior in the preface to The Cruise of the Nona .

From time to time, I watched as I came up with some outrageous theory in order to excite the whole company, and enjoyed the argument, slowly stepping back from my irreconcilable position ... Of course, Bellock was biased, but few around him were offended by his bias, and to whom it was not a pleasure to watch him fight for them, and who would not regard him for honesty and for his enthusiasm. As soon as the verbal battle began, the whole arsenal of means went into battle one by one. Dialectics, ridicule, sophistry, epigrams, sarcasm, historical evidence, irrefutable evidence and moral teachings - all the means in the use of which he was a great master, were used, and each in its place. However, he was characterized by a courteous and courteous behavior. A deeply sensitive person, he was the kindest and most understanding nature that I knew. Despite all his recklessness and pomp, there was not a drop of cruelty in him; he was capable of the most sensitive compassion for the feelings of other people. As he himself liked to talk about others, rather quietly and briefly: “He is a good person. He will go to Paradise. ”

In debate and debate

Bellock first attracted public attention shortly after arriving at Bayliol College after completing military service. Visiting his first debate at the Oxford Union , he drew attention to how one of the parties defends itself weakly and without enthusiasm. At the conclusion of the debate, after calling for a vote, Bellock got out of his seat and impromptu delivered a decisive speech in support of the weak side. As the vote count showed, Bellock managed to win this debate and earn a reputation as a great speaker. He was later nominated for the presidency of the Union. In the debate over his adversaries, Frederick Edwin Smith and John Buchan were the last of them to be his friend. ^{[2] [3]}

His argument with Herbert Wells over Wells’ book Essays on History is very revealing. Being quite religious, Bellock criticized Wells for his overly scientific approach to evolution as a natural selection , which, according to Bellock, was completely impossible. Wells notes that "The argument with Mr. Bellock was like shouting a hailstorm." In Bellock's review of Essays on History , it was noted that Wells' book was a voluminous, well-written work, "exactly before the appearance of Man, which takes place around the seventh page." Wells responded with a book, Mr. Bellock Objects . ^[4] Bellock, in turn, responded with the book, " Mr. Bellock Still Objects ."

George Coulton , a witty and persistent opponent, wrote an article, Mr. Bellock on Medieval History . After a rather long period of hostility, Bellock responded with the pamphlet The Case of Dr. Coulton , in 1938.

Bellock was called one of the Big Four writers of the King Edward era ^[5] , along with Wells , Bernard Shaw, and Gilbert Chesterton . All of them constantly held discussions and argued among themselves until the 1930s. (It is worth mentioning that the Big Four is sometimes understood as John Galsworthy , Arnold Bennett , Herbert Wells and Bernard Shaw ) ^[6] .

One day, when Hillary Bellock was asked why he wrote so many books ^[7] , he replied: “Because my children always squealed caviar and pearls.”

Traveler Essays and Notes

From the very beginning of writing, Bellock managed to reach certain heights. His book The Path to Rome (1902) about the pilgrim 's journey that he made from central France through the Alps to Rome was constantly reprinted. Being more than just traveler’s notes, “The Way to Rome” contains descriptions of people and places that met along the way, artistic sketches made with a pen and a pencil, and this work is filled with humor, poetry and thoughts of the author about the events of that time. On the pages of the book, Bellock appears before the reader deeply admired and loving Europe , and his deep Faith inspires him to do this more and more strongly in his words.

As an essayist, he belonged to a small, dominant group of popular writers (along with Chesterton , Edward Lucas, and Robert Lind ). In general, sometimes he appears a little self-confident and inveterate champion of the Catholic Church.

In one paragraph of the book, Cruise Nona , when Bellock sits alone at the helm of his boat under a starry night sky, his attitude towards Catholicism and humanity is very well shown; he's writing:

This divine Light was sent down to earth by the flapping of the wings of Faith.

Original text

"That golden Light cast over the earth by the beating of the Wings of the Faith."

Poetry

His "moralizing tales" - humorous poems with incredible morality, beautifully illustrated by Basil Blackwood, and later by Edward Gorey - one of his most famous poems. Although written for children, they, like many of Lewis Carroll’s works , are addressed to adults: “About the girl Anna , who slammed the doors for fun and perished miserably for fun ”.

The tale of "Matilda, who was telling lies and was burned" was the basis for the play by Debbie Isitt, "Matilda the Liar." In some ways, Roald Dahl can be considered a follower of Bellock. But we can say that Bellock had a broader, but rather more creepy approach.

Bellock is also known for Sonnets and Verses, a collection that imitates the rhythm and melody of his poems for children. Bellock's poetry is often religious, often romantic. Throughout The Way to Rome, Bellock writes an endless song.

Bellock is the author of lines about the Maxim machine gun , which is often attributed to Rudyard Kipling :

There is a clear answer to each question:

We have a "maxim", they do not have it.

Original text

Whatever happens, we have got

The Maxim gun, and they have not.

This is a quote (not very accurately translated into Russian) from the poem “The Modern Traveler” (“The Modern Traveler”): according to the text of the poem, during the revolt of the natives the hero repeats under his breath: “Whatever happens, but we have a machine gun” Maxim, "but they don’t have it." ^[8] .

History, Politics, Economics

The most famous of Bellock's journalistic works was the books of the State of Slaves ( Eng. The Servile State , 1912), Europe and Vera ( Eng. Europe and Faith , 1920) and Jews ( Eng. The Jews , 1922) (in which he stated " the threat "which the Jews pose to the" white race " ^[9] ).

From an early age, Belok was familiar with Edward Henry Manning , who converted Bellock's mother to the Catholic faith. Manning's participation in the London port strike of 1889 made a great impression on Bellock and determined his political views, according to Bellock biographer Robert Speaight . Bellock himself describes these events in Nona's Cruise Book. Bellock was a stern critic of unrestrained capitalism ^[10] and many aspects of socialism .

Together with G.K. Chesterton , S. Chesterton and Arthur Penti, Hillary Bellock was involved in the development of a socioeconomic system - distributionism . In the book The Servile State , written after Bellock's party career ended, as well as in other works, he criticizes the contemporary economic structure of society and the parliamentary system, proposing the theory of distributionism as an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. Bellock pointed out that distributionism has deep historical roots in Europe and that the transition to distributionism is rather a small step back in historical development. He called for the dissolution of parliament and its replacement by a meeting of representatives of various social groups of society (which is very reminiscent of the idea of corporatism ).

Influenced by these ideas, Bellock wrote a series of biographies of historical figures such as Oliver Cromwell , Jacob II, and Napoleon . In these books, you can see Bellock as a vocal champion of pure Catholicism and as a critic of many aspects of the modern world order.

Bellock expressed great dissatisfaction with history as a science, when it is "polished to a brilliance" and turns into an "official interpretation of events." ^[11] . Bellock’s biographer, Joseph Pearce, emphasizes Bellock’s dissatisfaction with secularism in Herbert Wells ' Essays on History .

Wells, according to Bellock, is a clear opponent of Christianity, since in his "essays" for the Persian campaign against the Greeks much more space is given than for the description of Jesus Christ.

Bellock also wrote a lot on the history of wars. In the alternative story genre, he took part in the collection “ If It Had Happened Otherwise ”, 1931, edited by Sir John Squire.

One of Bellock’s most famous sayings is “Faith in God is Europe, and living European means believing in God” ( the faith is Europe and Europe is the faith ); in this saying all his views (orthodox- Catholic ) and all his aspirations converge. This view of faith is reflected in many of Bellock's works from 1920 to 1940, many of which are considered ^{[by whom? ]} examples of apologies of the Catholic Church. At the same time, they are criticized, for example, when compared with the works of Christopher Dawson of the same time.

Bellock mentions this gaining of his faith in one of the chapters of Nona's Cruise.

Bellock believed in the superiority of Catholicism over all other religions, and the Catholic Church is the center and home for the human soul ^[12] . If you look not so seriously, then his attitude to Catholicism can be conveyed in his own words: "When the Catholic sun shines in the world, then there is laughter, love, and red-red wine all around."

At the same time, Bellock had a very dismissive attitude towards the Church of England and to various heretics in his understanding: "Heretics all, whoever you be / ... You never shall have good words from me / Caritas non conturbat me." In his Song of the Pelagian Heresy, he speaks very sharply to the Bishop of Osser : “with his stout Episcopal staff / So thoroughly thwacked and banged / The heretics all, both short and tall / They rather had been hanged."