An unlikely trio of birthdays today: Patrick Henry (b. 1736), G.K. Chesterton (b. 1874), and John Fitzgerald Kennedy (b. 1917).

Brown Bear Daughter memorized the last part of Patrick Henry’s famous speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses this year for school. I wish you could hear her stirring rendition. However, you can go here to hear Richard Schumann give the speech.
Did you know that Patrick Henry’s first wife, Sarah Shelton, was mentally ill and in danger of harming herself and that he made a room for her in his basement since there were no appropriate facilities in the colonies for the confinement of the mentally ill? Sarah died in the same year, 1775, that her husband gave his Liberty or Death speech. However, she and Patrick had six children, and Patrick Henry later married Dorothy Dandridge who was twenty- one years younger than he. The couple had nine children. (Total: 15 children. Talk about a full quiver!) He served four terms as governor of Virginia, and he turned down appointments as Washington’s Secretary of State, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Adams’ envoy to France.

“Gentlemen may cry ‘Peace! Peace!’ but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was nothing if not quotable. He wrote detective stories, other short stories, poetry, rather odd novels and 1000’s of essays, apologetics and literary criticism. He was a large man with a large personality. In contrast to Patrick Henry, he and his wife had no children. Chesterton was a Catholic Christian, and he was somewhat prophetic, as you can see from these timely quotations.

“Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like.” – Babies and Distributism, GK’s Weekly, 11/12/32

“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” – Autobiography, 1937

“The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into the Law Courts. We are trying to stop the leak at the other end.” – ILN, 3/24/23

If you are old enough to remember, where were you when you heard about the assassination of JFK? FYI, not only was John F. Kennedy born on the same day of the year as Patrick Henry and G.K. Chesterton, he also died on the very same date, November 22, 1963, as two other famous men, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. Peter Kreeft’s book, Between Heaven and Hell, imagines a post-mortem philosophical discussion between these three men as to the realtive merits of humanistic modernism (Kennedy), Eastern mysicism (Huxley) and Christianity (Lewis). I highly recommend the book.

Oh, I was in my second grade classroom, and I remember my teacher, Mrs. Bouska, crying. The only problem with that memory is that, as best I can figure out, I was in the first grade in November 1963. I don’t get it either.

Frederic WIlliam Maitland, b. 1850. English lawyer, historian, lecturer, and jurist. I always go for the personal: one site noted that Maitland was a great friend of Virginia Woolf’s father.

Ian Fleming, b. 1908. Creator of James Bond, the famous fictional spy, but I prefer Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Walker Percy, b. 1916. American Southern novelist and essayist. He was Catholic, died in 1990. I read one book by Percy because I kept hearing what a great novelist. I can’t remember the title even when I look at a list of his books. I only remember that someone in the book was sitting in a tree for a very long time (maybe trying to break some kind of record?), and someone else was putting stuff (drugs?) into the water supply. Oh, and the setting was southern Louisiana or Mississippi or somewhere similar. Obviously, I didn’t get much out of it. The people in the novel seemed to me to all be crazy. Maybe I was too young when I read it. Or maybe not.

Rudolph Giuliani, b. 1944. Good mayor for NYC, bad presidential candidate for Republicans.

Margery Allingham (b. 1904) wrote mystery novels featuring detective Albert Campion and his manservant Lugg. She was another one of those “British lady mystery writers of the 1920’s through the 40’s” like Dame Agatha, Dorothy Sayers, and Josephine Tey. I read one of her books a long time ago, The Fashion in Shrouds, but I remember being very puzzled as to what exactly was happening in the novel. I think I’ll try another and see if I remain confused or become a fan. Official website of the Margery Allingham Society.

Sigrid Undset (b. 1882) wrote Kristin Lavransdotter, a trilogy of novels set in the Middle Ages in Norway about a woman’s life, mariage, and death and her relationship to God and to the church. A good friend recommended this set of novels to me long ago, but I have never gotten around to reading them. They’re on my list. Undset “wove religious themes into most of her works” and believed that “motherhood is the highest duty to which a woman can aspire.” She sounds like my kind of gal. Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. She also joined the resistance when Norway was occupied by the Nazis and was eventually forced to flee to the United States where she lived in exile until the war was over.

Omar Khayyam, b. 1048. Last year’s post on the Persian poet.

Dame Margot Fonteyn, b. 1919, d. 1991. Celebrated British ballerina, her most famous role was Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. (For Dancer Daughter–and anyone else who might be interested in The Dance.)

Pope John Paul II, b 1920, d. 2005. Karol Wojtyla was born in Wadowice, Poland. He was the first Polish pope. I like this papal quote: “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.” And this one should be posted above my door because we all have much work to do in this regard: “To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others.”

Lillian Hoban, b. 1925. Last year’s post on Lillian Hoban.