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Creator / Hilaire Belloc

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Portrait of Old Thunder by E. O. Hoppé, 1915

"Man may, as Pinkerton (Sir Jonas Pinkerton) writes, be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour."
Hilaire Belloc, from The Path to Rome

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (27 July 1870 — 16 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early 20th century. Some of his works include The Path to Rome (1902), Cautionary Tales For Children (1907), The Servile State (1912), Europe and the Faith (1920), and The Great Heresies (1938), and he, alongside G. K. Chesterton, is considered one of the leading figures of the Catholic literary revival.

Belloc was born at La Celle-Saint-Cloud to a French lawyer, Louis Belloc, and Elizabeth "Bessie" Rayner Belloc (née Parkes), an English writer and feminist. His birth coincided with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, with the family fleeing to Paris en route to England and escaping the Prussian army. They returned to La Celle-Saint-Claud for several months in the summer, when Hilaire was around two years old. However, Louis died on 19 August, shortly after he and his wife travelled to the Massif Central to visit some friends. Louis' absence had a powerful impact on Hilaire's life, and it fostered in him a love for France that was at times exaggerated to the point of caricature. The widow then brought Hilaire and his younger sister Marie Belloc back to England, where they grew up.

Belloc studied at the Oratory School in Birmingham, under the guidance of Cardinal John Henry Newman, then served his term of military service, as a French citizen, and took the role of a driver in the Eighth Regiment of Artillery at Toul. After military service, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1893. There, he served as president of the Union, a debating society, and in his third year, he was Blackenbury History Scholar and an honour student in the history schools. He graduated with a first-honours degree in history in 1895.

In September 1889, Marie made the accidental acquaintance with an American Catholic widow, Ellen Hogan, who was travelling on a European tour with her two daughters: Elizabeth and Elodie. The Bellocs became very good friends later, and when the Hogans returned to London after another European trip the following year, Belloc met Elodie for the first time and fell in love. The courtship was lengthy, intercontinental, and star-crossed, and both mothers frowned on the relationship; Ellen wanted her daughter to enter the convent, and Bessie thought her son was too young to marry. This did not deter Belloc as he pursued Elodie when she returned to the United States in 1891, but on 30 April of the same year, he received a letter from Elodie, wherein she definitively rejected his advances in favour of a religious vocation; Belloc took a steamship back home in despair.

While Belloc was serving in the French Army, Ellen died, removing a significant obstacle to the courtship. Still, Elodie was unwilling to cross her mother's wishes after her untimely death, and eventually joined the Sisters of Charity as a postulant in the autumn of 1895. However, she left a month later. Belloc travelled back to America in March 1896, but when he reached Napa, California, where the Hogans lived, he found Elodie deathly ill, worn out by the stress of the previous year, much to his horror. Over the next few weeks, Elodie recovered, and she and Belloc married on 15 June 1896, concluding a tempestuous six-year courtship; the couple had five children. When Elodie died on 2 February 1914, Belloc never remarried; he wore mourning garb for the rest of his life and kept her room as she left it.

In 1902, Belloc became a naturalised British citizen while retaining his French citizenship. From 1906 to 1910, he served as a Liberal Party member of the Parliament for Salford South and was one of the few openly Catholic Parliamentarians. During a campaign speech, a heckler asked if he was a "papist", and Belloc responded: "Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative." Belloc won the election and was able to serve a second term, but he refused because, in his own words, he was "weary of the party system", and he thought he would be better at attacking politics from without than from within.

Belloc's literary career began after Balliol, achieving success as a newspaper and magazine writer and light versifier. One of his famous works is Cautionary Tales for Children (1907), a parody of cautionary tales popular in the 19th century. Another is The Path to Rome (1902), an account of a walking pilgrimage from Central France across the Alps to Rome. Belloc was also a writer for many works on history and politics, like The Servile State (1912), which chronicles the history of capitalism in Europe and proposes distribution and collectivism as alternatives; Europe and the Faith (1920), wherein he argues that the Catholic faith made Europe and, by extension, the worldwide civilization produced by Europe; and The Great Heresies (1938), which examines the histories of five prominent heresies.

Belloc was also largely responsible for Chesterton's conversion to the Catholic faith, and the two became ranked among England's greatest writers and the most brilliant lay expounders of Catholic doctrine. The two were frequent collaborators, especially in the magazine which came to be known as G.K.'s Weekly, and George Bernard Shaw, a frequent debate opponent, dubbed the pair "Chesterbelloc". Belloc was also a noted disputant and was known for bellicosity when disagreeing with others; H. G. Wells, one of his many opponents, once said that "debating Mr. Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm". Belloc once wrote A Companion to Mr. Wells's Outline of History (1926), attacking Wells' work for its secular views. When Wells wrote Mr. Belloc Objects (1926) in response to these charges, Belloc wrote his own riposte, called Mr. Belloc Still Objects (1926).

A couple of Belloc's writings reveal him to be something of an anti-semite, the extent of which is very hotly debated. Belloc tended to allude to Jews in conversation, at times in a seemingly obsessive fashion, and was critical of the influence some Jewish people had on society and the world of finance. On the other hand, he was also a staunch opponent of philosophical antisemitism. He condemned Nesta Webster, a feminist conspiracy theorist, for her accusations against "the Jews", even cutting ties with people who attacked individual Jews. He also opposed Nazi antisemitism in The Catholic and the War (1940), and he even wrote The Jews (1922), a book wherein he condemned wild accusations against the Jews. In short... it is not exactly clear-cut.

In 1941, Belloc suffered a stroke from which he never recovered, and in the same year, he was dozing before the fireplace in his daughter's home when he fell into the flames and suffered severe burns. He died on 16 July 1953 in Guildford, Surrey.

Belloc was buried at the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St. Francis at West Grinstead, where he was a regular parishioner.


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