SDG original: G.K. Chesterton quote cartoon mug (would you want one?)

[things that old art majors who are now teachers do during summer vacations because their kids ask them to]

“Daybreak is a never-ending glory; getting out of bed is a never-ending nuisance” is the kind of Chestertonian line that you would not be surprised to learn is either actually something G.K. Chesterton wrote or something that just became associated with him because he’s the most famous writer who sounds like that. At least, I wouldn’t be surprised either way. (I’m much better at spotting fake C.S. Lewis quotes, because I’m so much more intimate with Lewis’s style. I don’t even check anymore before authoritatively falsifying fake Lewis quote memes on Facebook. Don’t ask me who really wrote it! I just know that Lewis would never.)¹

Anyway, I’m pleased to report that I was able to verify that the line above is, in fact, an authentic Chesterton quotation, from an essay called “What is Right with the World,” a title chosen (not by Chesterton himself, though he was delighted by its felicity) presumably in counterpoint to the title of his book What’s Wrong With the World. The quotation was brought to my attention by my son James, who wanted me to design a mug with this quotation as a gift for a fellow student at college.

As soon as he proposed the idea, I saw in my head the cartoon that I would eventually create. A caricature of Chesterton is pretty straightforward: Draw a curmudgeonly face with a mustache and keep adding hair until it seems like enough. Since he’s just waking up, I didn’t give him a pince‑nez, but I tried to suggest one via the bags and squinty lines around his eyes. I worked in broad, simple strokes; I knew that it would be very small on the mug.

I had fun with the typography. I like typographical in-jokes, and it pleased me quite a bit that the font I thought worked best for the exuberance of the words “daybreak” and “glory” is called “Lovely Coffee.” (In the current Decent Films logo, designed about a decade ago for the last site redesign, I was thrilled to discover a font with exactly the art-deco feel I wanted for “Decent” that happened to be called “Righteous.”)

Anyway, James was happy (and the mug’s intended recipient seems appreciative as well), and we got an extra one for James and also a giant one for me (“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me”—C.S. Lewis, of course, although wouldn’t it be ironic if it wasn’t?²). I’m pleased with the outcome myself, and if others would like one, I might be willing to look into some service that would create on-demand mugs for a reasonable price. There are other ways it could be handled too. Anyway, having put in the work to create the image, I wanted to share it here. Someday I’ll post a rant about fake quotes on social media!

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1. For more on the Internet scourge of fake quotes and false quotation attributions, in particular of C.S. Lewis, see my more recent piece “Misquoting the pope and everyone else: Why it matters.”

2. The source of Lewis’s “cup of tea” quotation appears to be Walter Hooper, who briefly served as Lewis’s correspondence secretary and later served as a literary advisor to Lewis’s estate. (Hooper apparently writes this in one of the three volumes of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis; at least, so Harry Lee Poe reports in The Completion of C. S. Lewis (1945–1963): From War to Joy, though from the limited Google Books preview I cannot confirm whether the endnote reference is to volume 2 or volume 3. HT to my friend

Peter T Chattaway

for his suggestion in the comments that Hooper was the source of the quote. As Peter notes, Hooper may not be an entirely reliable reporter of his relationship with Lewis, but the quotation is plausible enough to credit. See note 1 above!