Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc

Background

Hilaire Belloc was born in Saint-Cloud, France, on July 27, 1870. He was the son of Louis Belloc, a French lawyer, and Bessie Raynor Parkes, his English wife. Political disorder sent the family to England later that year.

Education

Hilaire was educated at the Oratory School in Birmingham. As a boy, he was a precocious poet, artist, and mathematician. He graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, where he had won a scholarship in history.

Career

Belloc began his literary career with Verses and sonnets (1895). In 1896 he married the American Elodie Hogan, and they had three children. That same year he published The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, which, together with Cautionary Tales and More Beasts for Worse Children, formed a collection destined to become a classic. In 1899 Belloc began a series of biographies, which included two French revolutionaries (Danton, 1899, and Robespierre, 1901) and many eminent literary and political figures of France and England. In 1902 he published Path to Rome, which is perhaps his most characteristic work in that it reveals his love of travel, gentle humor, and staunch Roman Catholicism.

During these years Belloc also became very active in political life. He became a British citizen in 1902, and in 1906 he was elected to Parliament. In 1910 he abandoned political office for journalism, which he felt was a more effective means of achieving reform. He joined with Cecil Chesterton in writing articles attacking imperialism and corruption in political life. In 1912 Belloc published The Servile State, which outlined his antisocialist and anticapitalist philosophy of distributism. His views were shared by G. K. Chesterton, and they founded the political weekly New Witness to press forward the fight for reform.

In the following years Belloc continued to publish prolifically. In 1942 he suffered a stroke, and though he wrote magazine articles occasionally, he published no more books. He died in 1953 from accidental burns.

Achievements

• Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc was a noted poet, historian, essayist, and novelist. Throughout his literary career he was concerned with the problems of social reform.

Works

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  • Characters of the Reformation

    ( In this collection of short biographies Hilaire Belloc,...)

  • Charles I

    ( A striking portrait of Charles I, this book also looks ...)

  • Cautionary Tales for Children

    ( For readers of any age, a witty and strikingly irrevere...)

  • The Great Heresies

    (Hilaire Belloc examines the five most destructive heretic...)

  • The Romance of Tristan and Iseult (Vintage Classics)

    (A tale of chivalry and doomed, transcendent love, The Rom...)

  • The Crusades: The World's Debate

    (Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)—one of the most prominent Cath...)

  • The Path to Rome

    (The Path to Rome (1902), an account of a walking pilgrima...)

  • How The Reformation Happened

    ( At last, this is an accurate explanation of how Christe...)

  • Joan of Arc

    (One of the most artful narratives ever written concerning...)

  • The Servile State

    (The Servile State is a book written by Hilaire Belloc in ...)

  • The Four Men; a Farrago

    (Format Paperback Subject History)

  • Hills and the Sea

    (Originally published in 1906. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • The Jews

    (The author was the William F. Buckley, Jr. of the early t...)

Religion

He was deeply religious and held a strong Catholic faith which was often reflected in many of his writings.

One of Belloc's most famous statements was "the faith is Europe and Europe is the faith"; this sums up his strongly held, orthodox Catholic views, and the cultural conclusions he drew from them. Those views were expressed at length in many of his works from the period 1920–40. These are still cited as exemplary of Catholic apologetics. They have also been criticised, for instance by comparison with the work of Christopher Dawson during the same period.

As a young man, Belloc lost his faith. Then came a spiritual event, which he never discussed publicly, that returned him to Catholicism for the remainder of his life. Belloc alludes to this return to the faith in a passage in The Cruise of the Nona. According to his biographer A. N. Wilson (Hilaire Belloc, Hamish Hamilton), Belloc never wholly apostatised from the Faith. The momentous event is fully described by Belloc in The Path to Rome. It took place in the French village of Undervelier at the time of Vespers. Belloc said of it, "not without tears", "I considered the nature of Belief" and "it is a good thing not to have to return to the faith".

Belloc's Catholicism was uncompromising. He believed that the Catholic Church provided hearth and home for the human spirit. More humorously, his tribute to Catholic culture can be understood from his well-known saying, "Wherever the Catholic sun does shine, there's always laughter and good red wine. " He had a disparaging view of the Church of England, and used sharp words to describe heretics, such as, "Heretics all, whoever you may be/ In Tarbes or Nimes or over the sea/ You never shall have good words from me/ Caritas non-conturbat me". Indeed, in his "Song of the Pelagian Heresy" he becomes quite strident, describing how the Bishop of Auxerre, "with his stout Episcopal staff/ So thoroughly thwacked and banged/ The heretics all, both short and tall/ They rather had been hanged".

Politics

He had a deep interest in politics and served as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South for five years. He had strong views against capitalism.

He went into politics after he became a naturalised British subject. A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship of All Souls College, 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.

From 1906 to 1910 he was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South. During one campaign speech he was asked by a heckler if he was a "papist. " Retrieving his rosary from his pocket he responded, "Sir, so far as possible I hear Mass each day and I go to my knees and tell these beads each night. If that offends you, then I pray God may spare me the indignity of representing you in Parliament. " The crowd cheered and Belloc won the election.

Views

Quotations: " There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends. "

" All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men. "

" An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight. "

" Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring. "

" Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else. "

" Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out. "

" Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language. "

" From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends. "

" I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it. "

" I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment. "

Personality

He had a stroke in 1941 and suffered from its side-effects for as long as he lived.

Connections

He met American Elodie Hogan in 1890 and fell hopelessly in love with her. The young couple braved family opposition and got married in 1896. They had a happy marriage that produced five children and lasted till Elodie’s death in 1914.

Father:

Joseph Parkes

(22 January 1796 – 11 August 1865)

Mother:

Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc

(16 June 1829 – 23 March 1925)

Spouse:

Elodie Hogan

(1896–1914)

Sister:

Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes

( 5 August 1868 – 14 November 1947)

References

• Hilaire Belloc. Writers and Their Work No. 35
• 'I, Too, have Lived in Arcadia': A Record of Love and of Childhood
• The young Hilaire Belloc
• Life of Hilaire Belloc (Biography Index Reprint Series)