In early January I’m flying to England to film a documentary on the poet Francis Thompson. With this in mind, I’ve been browsing through a new biography of the poet, Lionel Johnson, a contemporary of Thompson’s and a fellow member of the Rhymers Club. It seems that Johnson is buried only a few yards from Thompson’s grave in St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery on Harrow Road in Kensal Green, the graveyard to which Chesterton alludes in his poem “The Rolling English Road”:
 
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
 
Also within yards of Thompson’s grave is the grave of Sax Rohmer (A. H. Ward), the creator of Dr. Fu Manchu. The same graveyard contains the tombs of Cardinals Wiseman and Manning, as well as the graves of numerous Irish immigrants.
 
Wiseman wrote the novel Fabiola (1854) about the persecution of Christians under Diocletian, to which John Henry Newman was commissioned to write the prequel, Callista (1855). These novels were two of the earliest works of the Catholic Literary Revival of which Thompson is a part. Manning was hugely influential on Thompson’s life because Thompson’s father converted under Manning’s influence. Thompson’s uncle was a friend of Manning’s. Manning was hugely popular with the working class for his work amongst London’s poor in the late 1880s, at the very time that Thompson was living in post-Dickensian destitution.
 
An interesting connection between Thompson, Manning and Hilaire Belloc is that Thompson’s father and Belloc’s mother both converted under Manning’s benign personal influence, without which neither Thompson nor Belloc would have become the poets whom we know and love. Belloc and Thompson are also linked through their respective connection to Our Lady of England Priory in Storrington, Sussex. Thompson wrote his masterpiece, “The Hound of Heaven”, while staying at the Priory and Belloc wrote his poem, “Courtesy”, after visiting the Priory in 1908:
 
 Of Courtesy, it is much less
Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,
Yet in my Walks it seems to me
That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.

On Monks I did in Storrington fall,
They took me straight into their Hall;
I saw Three Pictures on a wall,
And Courtesy was in them all.

The first the Annunciation;
The second the Visitation;
The third the Consolation,
Of God that was Our Lady’s Son.

The first was of St. Gabriel;
On Wings a-flame from Heaven he fell;
And as he went upon one knee
He shone with Heavenly Courtesy.

Our Lady out of Nazareth rode –
It was Her month of heavy load;
Yet was her face both great and kind,
For Courtesy was in Her Mind.

The third it was our Little Lord,
Whom all the Kings in arms adored;
He was so small you could not see
His large intent of Courtesy.

Our Lord, that was Our Lady’s Son,
Go bless you, People, one by one;
My Rhyme is written, my work is done.