G. K. CHESTERTON

_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME:_

 W. B. YEATS BY FORREST REID

 J. M. SYNGE BY P. P. HOWE

 HENRY JAMES BY FORD MADOX HUEFFER

 HENRIK IBSEN BY R. ELLIS ROBERTS

 THOMAS HARDY BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

 BERNARD SHAW BY P. P. HOWE

 WALTER PATER BY EDWARD THOMAS

 WALT WHITMAN BY BASIL DE SELINCOURT

 SAMUEL BUTLER BY GILBERT CANNAN

 A. C. SWINBURNE BY EDWARD THOMAS

 GEORGE GISSING BY FRANK SWINNERTON

 R. L. STEVENSON BY FRANK SWINNERTON

 RUDYARD KIPLING BY CYRIL FALLS

 WILLIAM MORRIS BY JOHN DRINKWATER

 ROBERT BRIDGES BY F. E. BRETT YOUNG

 FYODOR DOSTOIEVSKY BY J. MIDDLETON MURRY

 MAURICE MAETERLINCK BY UNA TAYLOR

[Illustration: G. K. Chesterton. 

from a photograph by Hector Murchison]

G. K. CHESTERTON

A CRITICAL STUDY

BY

JULIUS WEST

 LONDON MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXV

I HAVE to express my gratitude to Messrs. Burns and Oates, Messrs. Methuen and Co. , and Mr. Martin Seeker for their kind permission toquote from works by Mr. G. K. Chesterton published by them. I have alsoto express my qualified thanks to Mr. John Lane for his conditionalpermission to quote from books by the same author published by him. Mythanks are further due, for a similar reason, to Mr. Chestertonhimself. 

 TO J. C. SQUIRE

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 11 II. THE ROMANCER 23 III. THE MAKER OF MAGIC 59 IV. THE CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS 76 V. THE HUMORIST AND THE POET 91 VI. THE RELIGION OF A DEBATER 109 VII. THE POLITICIAN WHO COULD NOT TELL THE TIME 136 VIII. A DECADENT OF SORTS 163 BIBLIOGRAPHY 185

I

INTRODUCTORY

THE habit, to which we are so much addicted, of writing books aboutother people who have written books, will probably be a source ofintense discomfort to its practitioners in the twenty-first century. Like the rest of their kind, they will pin their ambition to thepossibility of indulging in epigram at the expense of theircontemporaries. In order to lead up to the achievement of this desirethey will have to work in the nineteenth century and the twentieth. Between the two they will find an obstacle of some terror. The eighteennineties will lie in their path, blocking the way like an unhealthymoat, which some myopes might almost mistake for an aquarium. All mannerof queer fish may be discerned in these unclear waters. 

To drop the metaphor, our historians will find themselves confronted bya startling change. The great Victorians write no longer, but aresucceeded by eccentrics. There is Kipling, undoubtedly the most giftedof them all, but not everybody's darling for all that. There is thatprolific trio of best-sellers, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Marie Corelli, and Mr. Hall Caine. There is Oscar Wilde, who has a vast reputation onthe Continent, but never succeeded in convincing the British that he wasmuch more than a compromise between a joke and a smell. There is thewhole Yellow Book team, who never succeeded in convincing anybody. Theeconomic basis of authorship had been shaken by the abolition of thethree-volume novel. The intellectual basis had been lulled to sleep bythat hotchpotch of convention and largeness that we call the VictorianEra. Literature began to be an effort to express the inexpressible, resulting in outraged grammar and many dots. . . . 

English literature at the end of the last century stood in sore need ofsome of the elementary virtues. If obviousness and simplicity are liableto be overdone, they are not so deadly in their after-effects as thebizarre and the extravagant. The literary movement of the eighteennineties was like a strong stimulant given to a patient dying of oldage. Its results were energetic, but the energy was convulsive. Weshould laugh if we saw a man apparently dancing in mid-air--until wenoticed the rope about his neck. It is impossible to account for thesuccess of the Yellow Book school and its congeners save on theassumption that the rope was, generally speaking, invisible. 

In this Year of Grace, 1915, we are still too close to the eighteennineties, still too liable to be influenced by their ways, to be able tospeak for posterity and to pronounce the final judgment upon those evilyears. It is possible that the critics of the twenty-first century, asthey turn over the musty pages of the Yellow Book, will ejaculate withfeeling: "Good God, what a dull time these people must have had!" On thewhole it is probable that this will be their verdict. They will detectthe dullness behind the mechanical brilliancy of Oscar Wilde, andrecognize the strange hues of the whole Æsthetic Movement as thegarments of men who could not, or would not see. There is really norational alternative before our critics of the next century; if the menof the eighteen nineties, and the queer things they gave us, were notthe products of an intense boredom, if, in strict point of fact, Wilde, Beardsley, Davidson, Hankin, Dowson, and Lionel Johnson were men whorollicked in the warm sunshine of the late Victorian period, then thesuicide, drunkenness and vice with which they were afflicted is surelythe strangest phenomenon in the history of human nature. To many people, those years actually were dull. 

 The years from 1885 to 1898 were like the hours of afternoon in a rich house with large rooms; the hours before teatime. They believed in nothing except good manners; and the essence of good manners is to conceal a yawn. A yawn may be defined as a silent yell. 

So says Chesterton, yawning prodigiously. 

One may even go farther, and declare that in those dark days a yawn wasthe true sign of intelligence. It is no mere coincidence that the twocleverest literary debutants of that last decade, Mr. Max Beerbohm andthe subject of this essay, both stepped on the stage making a prettyexhibition of boredom. When the first of these published, in 1896, beingthen twenty-four years old, his Works of Max Beerbohm he murmured in thepreface, "I shall write no more. Already I begin to feel myself a trifleoutmoded. . . . Younger men, with months of activity before them . . . Have pressed forward. . . . _Cedo junioribus. _"

So too, when Chesterton produced his first book, four years later, hecalled it _Greybeards at Play: Literature and Art for Old Gentlemen_, and the dedication contained this verse:

 Now we are old and wise and grey, And shaky at the knees; Now is the true time to delight In picture books like these. 

The joke would have been pointless in any other age. In 1900, directedagainst the crapulous exoticism of contemporary literature, it was anantidote, childhood was being used as a medicine against an assumedattack of second childhood. The attack began with nonsense rhymes andpictures. It was a complete success from the very first. There is thisimportant difference between the writer of nonsense verses and theirillustrator; the former must let himself go as much as he can, thelatter must hold himself in. In _Greybeards at Play_, Chesterton tookthe bit between his teeth, and bolted faster than Edward Lear had everdone. The antitheses of such verses as the following are irresistible:

 For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says, The duties shine like stars; I formed my uncle's character, Decreasing his cigars. 

Or

 The Shopmen, when their souls were still, Declined to open shops-- And cooks recorded frames of mind, In sad and subtle chops. 

The drawings which accompanied these gems, it may be added, were such asthe verses deserved. They exhibit a joyous inconsistency, thedisproportion which is the essence of parody combined with the accuracywhich is the _sine qua non_ of satire. 

About a month after Chesterton had produced his statement of his extremesenility (the actual words of the affidavit are

 I am, I think I have remarked, [he had not], Terrifically old. )

he published another little book, _The Wild Knight and Other Poems_, asevidence of his youth. For some years past he had occasionally writtenmore or less topical verses which appeared in The Outlook and thedefunct Speaker. _Greybeards at Play_ was, after all, merely anelaborate sneer at the boredom of a decade; the second book was a moredefinite attack upon some points of its creeds and an assertion of theprinciples which mattered most. 

 There is one sin: to call a green leaf grey, Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth. There is one blasphemy: for death to pray, For God alone knoweth the praise of death. 

Or again (_The World's Lover_)

 I stood and spoke a blasphemy-- "Behold the summer leaves are green. "

It was a defence of reality, crying for vengeance upon the realists. Theword realism had come to be the trade-mark of Zola and his followers, especially of Mr. George Moore, who made a sacrifice of nine obvious, clean and unsinkable aspects of life so as to concentrate upon thesubmersible tenth. Chesterton came out with his defence of the commonman, of the streets

 Where shift in strange democracy The million masks of God, the grass, and all the little things of life, "things" in general, forour subject, alone among modern poets, is not afraid to use the word. Ifon one occasion he can merely

 . . . Feel vaguely thankful to the vast Stupidity of things, on another he will speak of

 The whole divine democracy of things, a line which is a challenge to the unbeliever, a statement of apolitical creed which is the outgrowth of a religious faith. 

The same year Chesterton formally stepped into the ranks of journalismand joined the staff of The Daily News. He had scribbled poems since hehad been a boy at St. Paul's School. In the years following he hadwatched other people working at the Slade, while he had gone onscribbling. Then he had begun to do little odd jobs of art criticismand reviewing for The Bookman and put in occasional appearances in thestatelier columns of The Speaker. Then came the Boer War, which made G. K. Chesterton lose his temper but find his soul. In 1900 The Daily Newspassed into new hands--the hands of G. K. C. 's friends. And until 1913, when the causes he had come to uphold were just diametrically opposed tothe causes the victorious Liberal Party had adopted, every Saturdaymorning's issue of that paper contained an article by him, while oftenenough there appeared signed reviews and poems. The situation was absurdenough. The Daily News was the organ of Nonconformists, and G. K. C. Preached orthodoxy to them. It advocated temperance, and G. K. C. Advocated beer. At first this was sufficiently amusing, and nobodyminded much. But before Chesterton severed his connection with thepaper, its readers had come to expect a weekly article that almostinvariably contained an attack upon one of their pet beliefs, and oftenenough had to be corrected by a leader on the same page. But theChesterton of 1900 was a spokesman of the Liberalism of his day, independent, not the intractable monster who scoffed, a few years later, at all the parties in the State. 

At this point one is reminded of Watts-Dunton's definition of the twokinds of humour in The Renascence of Wonder: "While in the case ofrelative humour that which amuses the humorist is the incongruity ofsome departure from the laws of convention, in the case of absolutehumour it is the incongruity of some departure from the normal as fixedby nature herself. " We have our doubts as to the general application ofthis definition: but it applies so well to Chesterton that it mightalmost have come off his study walls. What made a series of more thansix hundred articles by him acceptable to The Daily News was just theskilful handling of "the laws of convention, " and "the normal as fixedby nature herself. " On the theory enunciated by Watts-Dunton, everythingexcept the perfect average is absolutely funny, and the perfect average, of course, is generally an incommensurable quantity. Chestertoncarefully made it his business to present the eccentricity--I use theword in its literal sense--of most things, and the humour followed inaccordance with the above definition. The method was simple. Chestertoninvented some grotesque situation, some hypothesis which was glaringlyabsurd. He then placed it in an abrupt juxtaposition with the normal, instead of working from the normal to the actual, in the usual manner. Just as the reader was beginning to protest against the reversal of hisaccustomed values, G. K. C. Would strip the grotesque of a fewinessentials, and, lo! a parable. A few strokes of irony and wit, anepigram or two infallibly placed where it would distract attention froma weak point in the argument, and the thing was complete. By such meansChesterton developed the use of a veritable Excalibur of controversy, atool of great might in political journalism. These methods, pursued afew years longer, taught him a craftsmanship he could employ for purelyromantic ends. How he employed it, and the opinions which he sought touphold by its means will be the subjects of the following chapters. Chesterton sallied forth like a Crusader against the political andliterary Turks who had unjustly come into possession of a part of theheritage of a Christian people. We must not forget that the leadingcharacteristic of a Crusader is his power of invigorating, which heapplies impartially to virtues and to vices. There is a great differencebetween a Crusader and a Christian, which is not commonly realized. Thelatter attempts to show his love for his enemy by abolishing hisunchristianness, the former by abolishing him altogether. Although thetwo methods are apt to give curiously similar results, the distinctionbetween a Crusader and a Christian is radical and will be considered ingreater detail in the course of this study. This study does not professto be biographical, and only the essential facts of Chesterton's lifeneed be given here. These are, that he was born in London in 1873, isthe son of a West London estate agent who is also an artist and achildren's poet in a small but charming way, is married and haschildren. Perhaps it is more necessary to record the fact that he isgreatly read by the youth of his day, that he comes in for much amusedtolerance, that, generally speaking, he is not recognized as a great orcourageous thinker, even by those people who understand his views wellenough to dissent from them entirely, and that he is regarded less as astylist, than as the owner of a trick of style. These are the falsebeliefs that I seek to combat. The last may be disposed of summarily. When an author's style is completely sincere, and completely part ofhim, it has this characteristic; it is almost impossible to imitate. Nobody has ever successfully parodied Shakespeare, for example; thereare not even any good parodies of Mr. Shaw. And Chesterton remainsunparodied; even Mr. Max Beerbohm's effort in A Christmas Garland ringsfalse. His style is individual. He has not "played the sedulous ape. "

But, on the other hand, it is not proposed to acquit Chesterton of allthe charges brought against him. The average human being is partly aprig and partly a saint; and sometimes men are so glad to get rid of aprig that they are ready to call him a saint--Simon Stylites, forexample. And it is not suggested that the author of the remark, "Thereare only three things that women do not understand. They are Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, " is not a prig, for a demonstration that he is acomplete gentleman would obviously leave other matters of importanceinconveniently crowded out. We are confronted with a figure of somesignificance in these times. He represents what has been called in otherspheres than his "the anti-intellectualist reaction. " We must answer thequestions; to what extent does he represent mere unqualified reaction?What are his qualifications as a craftsman? What, after all, has hedone?

And we begin with his romances. 

II

THE ROMANCER

In spite of Chesterton's liberal production of books, it is notaltogether simple to classify them into "periods, " in the manner belovedof the critic, nor even to sort them out according to subjects. G. K. C. Can (and generally does) inscribe an Essay on the Nature of Religioninto his novels, together with other confusing ingredients to such anextent that most readers would consider it pure pedantry on the part ofanybody to insist that a Chestertonian romance need differ appreciablyfrom a Chestertonian essay, poem, or criticism. That a book by G. K. C. Should describe itself as a novel means little more than that itsoriginal purchasing price was four shillings and sixpence. It might alsocontain passages of love, hate, and other human emotions, but thenagain, it might not. But one thing it would contain, and that is war. G. K. C. Would be pugnacious, even when there was nothing to fight. Hischaracters would wage their wars, even when the bone of contentionmattered as little as the handle of an old toothbrush. That, we shouldsay, is the first factor in the formula of the Chestertonianromance--and all the rest are the inventor's secret. Imprimis, a body ofmen and an idea, and the rest must follow, if only the idea be bigenough for a man to fight about, or if need be, even to make himselfridiculous about. 

In _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ we have this view of romance stated ina manner entirely typical of its author. King Auberon and the Provost ofNotting Hill, Adam Wayne, are speaking. The latter says:

 "I know of a magic wand, but it is a wand that only one or two may rightly use, and only seldom. It is a fairy wand of great fear, stronger than those who use it--often frightful, often wicked to use. But whatever is touched with it is never again wholly common; whatever is touched with it takes a magic from outside the world. If I touch, with this fairy wand, the railways and the roads of Notting Hill, men will love them, and be afraid of them for ever. "

 "What the devil are you talking about?" asked the King. 

 "It has made mean landscapes magnificent, and hovels outlast cathedrals, " went on the madman. "Why should it not make lamp-posts fairer than Greek lamps, and an omnibus-ride like a painted ship? The touch of it is the finger of a strange perfection. "

 "What is your wand?" cried the King, impatiently. 

 "There it is, " said Wayne; and pointed to the floor, where his sword lay flat and shining. 

If all the dragons of old romance were loosed upon the fiction of ourday, the result, one would imagine, would be something like that of aChestertonian novel. But the dragons are dead and converted into poorfossil ichthyosauruses, incapable of biting the timidest damsel or themost corpulent knight that ever came out of the Stock Exchange. That isthe tragedy of G. K. C. 's ideas, but it is also his opportunity. "Man is acreature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally bycatch-words, " says Stevenson. "Give me my dragons, " says G. K. C. Ineffect, "and I will give you your catch-words. You may have them in anyone of a hundred different ways. I will drop them on you when you leastexpect them, and their disguises will outrange all those known toScotland Yard and to Drury Lane combined. You may have catastrophes andcomets and camels, if you will, but you will certainly have yourcatch-words. "

The first of Chesterton's novels, in order of their publication, is _TheNapoleon of Notting Hill_ (1904). This is extravagance itself; fictionin the sense only that the events never happened and never could havehappened. The scene is placed in London, the time, about A. D. 1984. "This 'ere progress, it keeps on goin' on, " somebody remarks in one ofthe novels of Mr. H. G. Wells. But it never goes on as the prophets saidit would, and consequently England in those days does not greatly differfrom the England of to-day. There have been changes, of course. Kingsare now chosen in alphabetical rotation, and the choice falls upon acivil servant, Auberon Quin by name. Now Quin has a sense of humour, ofabsolute humour, as the Watts-Dunton definition already cited would haveit called. He has two bosom friends who are also civil servants andwhose humour is of the official variety, and whose outlook upon life isthat of a Times leader. Quin's first official act is the publication ofa proclamation ordering every London borough to build itself city walls, with gates to be closed at sunset, and to become possessed of Provostsin mediæval attire, with guards of halberdiers. From his throne heattends to some of the picturesque details of the scheme, and enjoys thejoke in silence. But after a few years of this a young man named AdamWayne becomes Provost of Notting Hill, and to him his borough, and moreespecially the little street in which he has spent his life, are thingsof immense importance. Rather than allow that street to make way for anew thoroughfare, Wayne rallies his halberdiers to the defence of theirborough. The Provosts of North Kensington and South Kensington, of WestKensington and Bayswater, rally their guards too, and attack NottingHill, purposing to clear Wayne out of the way and to break down theoffending street. Wayne is surrounded at night but converts defeat intovictory by seizing the offices of a Gas Company and turning off thestreet lights. The next day he is besieged in his own street. By asudden sortie he and his army escape to Campden Hill. Here a greatbattle rages for many hours, while one of the opposing Provosts gathersa large army for a final attack. At last Wayne and the remnants of hismen are hopelessly outnumbered, but once more he turns defeat intovictory. He threatens, unless the opposing forces instantly surrender, to open the great reservoir and flood the whole of Notting Hill. Theallied generals surrender, and the Empire of Notting Hill comes intobeing. Twenty years later the spirit of Adam Wayne has gone beyond hisown city walls. London is a wild romance, a mass of cities filled withcitizens of great pride. But the Empire, which has been the Nazareth ofthe new idea, has waxed fat and kicked. In righteous anger the otherboroughs attack it, and win, because their cause is just. King Auberon, a recruit in Wayne's army, falls with his leader in the great battle ofKensington Gardens. But they recover in the morning. 

 "It was all a joke, " says the King in apology. "No, " says Wayne; "we are two lobes of the same brain . . . You, the humorist . . . I, the fanatic. . . . You have a halberd and I have a sword, let us start our wanderings over the world. For we are its two essentials. "

So ends the story. 

Consider the preposterous elements of the book. A London with bluehorse-'buses. Bloodthirsty battles chiefly fought with halberds. A Kingwho acts as a war correspondent and parodies G. W. Stevens. It ispreposterous because it is romantic and we are not used to romance. Butto Chaucer let us say it would have appeared preposterous because hecould not have realized the initial premises. Before such a book theaverage reader is helpless. His scale of values is knocked out ofworking order by the very first page, almost by the very first sentence. ("The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has beenplaying at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do ittill the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. ") Theabsence of a love affair will deprive him of the only "human interest"he can be really sure of. The Chestertonian idiom, above all, will soonlead him to expect nothing, because he can never get any idea of what heis to receive, and will bring him to a proper submissiveness. The laterstages are simple. The reader will wonder why it never before occurredto him that area-railings are very like spears, and that a distanttramcar may at night distinctly resemble a dragon. He may travel far, once his imagination has been started on these lines. When romanticpossibilities have once shed a glow on the offices of the Gas Light andCoke Company and on the erections of the Metropolitan Water Board, therest of life may well seem filled with wonder and wild desires. 

Chesterton may be held to have invented a new species of detectivestory--the sort that has no crime, no criminal, and a detective whoseprocesses are transcendental. _The Club of Queer Trades_ is the firstbatch of such stories. _The Man who was Thursday_ is another specimen ofsome length. More recently, Chesterton has repeated the type in some ofthe _Father Brown_ stories. In _The Club of Queer Trades_, thetranscendental detective is Basil Grant, to describe whom with accuracyis difficult, because of his author's inconsistencies. Basil Grant, forinstance, is "a man who scarcely stirred out of his attic, " yet it wouldappear elsewhere that he walked abroad often enough. The essentials ofthis unprecedented detective are, however, sufficiently tangible. He hadbeen a K. C. And a judge. He had left the Bench because it annoyed him, and because he held the very human but not legitimate belief that somecriminals would be better off with a trip to the seaside than with asentence of imprisonment. After his retirement from public life he stuckto his old trade as the judge of a Voluntary Criminal Court. "Mycriminals were tried for the faults which really make social lifeimpossible. They were tried before me for selfishness, or for animpossible vanity, or for scandal-mongering, or for stinginess to guestsor dependents. " It is regrettable that Chesterton does not grant us aglimpse of this fascinating tribunal at work. However, it is Grant'sjob, on the strength of which he becomes the president and founder ofthe C. Q. T. --Club of Queer Trades. Among the members of this Club are agentleman who runs an Adventure and Romance Agency for supplying thrillsto the bourgeois, two Professional Detainers, and an Agent for ArborealVillas, who lets off a variety of birds' nest. The way in which thesepeople go about their curious tasks invariably suggests a crime toRupert Grant, Basil's amateur detective brother, whereupon Basil has tointervene to put matters right. The author does not appear to have beenstruck by the inconsistency of setting Basil to work to ferret out thedoings of his fellow club-members. The book is, in fact, full of joyousinconsistencies. The Agent for Arboreal Villas is clearly unqualifiedfor the membership of the Club. Professor Chadd has no business thereeither. He is elected on the strength of having invented a languageexpressed by dancing, but it appears that he is really an employee inthe Asiatic MSS. Department of the British Museum. Things are extremelyabsurd in _The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady_. At the instigationof Rupert, who has heard sighs of pain coming out of a South Kensingtonbasement, Basil, Rupert, and the man who tells the story, break into thehouse and violently assault those whom they meet. 

 Basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three blows like battering-rams knocked the footman into a cocked hat. Then he sprang on top of Burrows, with one antimacassar in his hand and another in his teeth, and bound him hand and foot almost before he knew clearly that his head had struck the floor. Then Basil sprang at Greenwood . . . Etc. Etc. 

There is a good deal more like this. Having taken the citadel andcaptured the defenders (as Cæsar might say), Basil and company reach thesighing lady of the basement. But she refuses to be released. WhereuponBasil explains his own queer trade, and that the lady is voluntarilyundergoing a sentence for backbiting. No explanation is vouchsafed ofthe strange behaviour of Basil Grant in attacking men who, as he knew, were doing nothing they should not. Presumably it was due to aChestertonian theory that there should be at least one good physicalfight in each book. 

It will be seen that _The Club of Queer Trades_ tends to curl upsomewhat (quite literally, in the sense that the end comes almost wherethe beginning ought to be) when it receives heavy and serious treatment. I should therefore explain that this serious treatment has been givenunder protest, and that its primary intention has been to deal withthose well-meaning critics who believe that Chesterton can writefiction, in the ordinary sense of the word. His own excellent definitionof fictitious narrative (in _The Victorian Age in Literature_) is thatessentially "the story is told . . . For the sake of some study of thedifference between human beings. " This alone is enough to exculpate himof the charge of writing novels. The Chestertonian short story is alsoin its way unique. If we applied the methods of the Higher Criticism tothe story just described, we might base all manner of odd theories uponthe defeat (_inter alios_) of Burrows, a big and burly youth, by BasilGrant, aged sixty at the very least, and armed with antimacassars. Butthere is no necessity. If Chesterton invents a fantastic world, full offantastic people who speak Chestertonese, then he is quite entitled towaive any trifling conventions which hinder the liberty of his subjects. As already pointed out, such is his humour. The only disadvantage, assomebody once complained of the Arabian Nights, is that one is apt tolose one's interest in a hero who is liable at any moment to turn into acamel. None of Chesterton's heroes do, as a matter of fact, becomecamels, but I would nevertheless strongly advise any young woman aboutto marry one of them to take out an insurance policy against unforeseentransformations. 

Although it appears that a few reviewers went to the length of readingthe whole of _The Man who was Thursday_ (1908), it is obvious by theirsubsequent guesswork that they did not notice the second part of thetitle, which is, very simply, _A Nightmare_. The story takes its namefrom the Supreme Council of Anarchists, which has seven members, namedafter the days of the week. Sunday is the Chairman. The others, oneafter the other, turn out to be detectives. Syme, the nearest approachto the what might be called the hero, is a poet whom mysterious handsthrust into an Anarchists' meeting, at which he is elected to fill thevacancy caused by the death of last Thursday. A little earlier othermysterious hands had taken him into a dark room in Scotland Yard wherethe voice of an unseen man had told him that henceforth he was a memberof the anti-anarchist corps, a new body which was to deal with the newanarchists--not the comparatively harmless people who threw bombs, butthe intellectual anarchist. "We say that the most dangerous criminal nowis the entirely lawless modern philosopher, " somebody explains to him. The bewildered Syme walks straight into further bewilderments, as, oneafter the other, the week-days of the committee are revealed. But who isSunday? Chesterton makes no reply. It was he who in a darkened room ofScotland Yard had enrolled the detectives. He is the Nightmare of thestory. The first few chapters are perfectly straightforward, andlifelike to the extent of describing personal details in a somewhatexceptional manner for Chesterton. But, gradually, wilder and wilderthings begin to happen--until, at last, Syme wakes up. 

The trouble about _The Man who was Thursday_ is not itsincomprehensibility, but its author's gradual decline of interest in thebook as it lengthened out. It begins excellently. There is real humourand a good deal of it in the earlier stages of Syme. And there arepassages like this one on the "lawless modern philosopher":

 Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. . . . Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. 

But his amiable flow of paradox soon runs out. The end of the book isjust a wild whirl, a nightmare with a touch of the cinematograph. Peoplechase one another, in one instance they quite literally chasethemselves. And the ending has all the effect of a damaged film thatcannot be stopped, on the large blank spaces of which some idiot hasbeen drawing absurd pictures which appear on the screen, to theconfusion of the story. One remembers the immense and dominating figureof Sunday, only because the description of him reads very much like adescription of Chesterton himself. But if the person is recognizable, the personality remains deliberately incomprehensible. He is just anoutline in space, who rode down Albany Street on an elephant abductedfrom the Zoological Gardens, and who spoke sadly to his guests when theyhad run their last race against him. 

Until recent years the word mysticism was sufficiently true to itsderivation to imply mystery, the relation of God to man. But since thecheaper sort of journalist seized hold of the unhappy word, itsdemoralization has been complete. It now indicates, generally speaking, an intellectual defect which expresses itself in a literary quality onecan only call woolliness. There is a genuine mysticism, expressed inBlake's lines:

 To see the world in a grain of sand And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. 

And there is a spurious mysticism, meaningless rubbish of whichRossetti's Sister Helen is a specimen. What could be more idiotic thanthe verse:

 "He has made a sign and called Halloo! Sister Helen, And he says that he would speak with you. " "Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew, Little brother. " (_O Mother, Mary Mother, _ _Why laughs she thus between Hell and Heaven?_)

The trouble about the latter variety is its extreme simplicity. Anybodywith the gift of being able to make lines scan and rhyme can producesimilar effects in a similar way. Hence the enormous temptationexercised by this form of mysticism gone wrong. There is a naughtylittle story of a little girl, relating to her mother the mishaps of thefamily coal merchant, as seen from the dining-room window. He slipped ona piece of orange-peel, the child had explained. "And what happenedthen?" "Why, mummy, he sat down on the pavement and talked about God. "Chesterton (and he is not alone in this respect) behaves exactly likethis coal-heaver. When he is at a loss, he talks about God. In each caseone is given to suspect that the invocation is due to a temporarilyoverworked imagination. 

This leads us to _The Ball and the Cross_ (1906). In _The Man who wasThursday_, when the author had tired of his story, he brought in theuniverse at large. But its successor is dominated by God, anddiscussions on him by beings celestial, terrestrial, and merelyinfernal. And yet _The Ball and the Cross_ is in many respectsChesterton's greatest novel. The first few chapters are things of joy. There is much said in them about religion, but it is all sincere andbracing. The first chapter consists, in the main, of a dialogue onreligion, between Professor Lucifer, the inventor and the driver of aneccentric airship, and Father Michael, a theologian acquired by theProfessor in Western Bulgaria. As the airship dives into the ball andthe cross of Saint Paul's Cathedral, its passengers naturally findthemselves taking a deep interest in the cross, considered as symbol andanchor. Lucifer plumps for the ball, the symbol of all that is rationaland united. The cross

 "is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction. . . . The very shape of it is a contradiction in terms. " Michael replies, "But we like contradictions in terms. Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen. "

Defeated on points, Lucifer leaves the Father clinging literally to thecross and flies away. Michael meets a policeman on the upper galleryand is conducted downwards. The scene changes to Ludgate Circus, butMichael is no longer in the centre of it. A Scot named Turnbull keeps ashop here, apparently in the endeavour to counterbalance the influenceof St. Paul's across the way. He is an atheist, selling atheistliterature, editing an atheist paper. Another Scot arrives, young EvanMacIan, straight from the Highlands. Unlike the habitual Londoner, MacIan takes the little shop seriously. In its window he sees a copy ofThe Atheist, the leading article of which contains an insult to theVirgin Mary. MacIan thereupon puts his stick through the window. Turnbull comes out, there is a scuffle, and both are arrested and takenbefore a Dickensian magistrate. The sketch of Mr. Cumberland Vane isvery pleasing: it is clear that the author knew what he was copying. Lord Melbourne is alleged to have said, "No one has more respect for theChristian religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intrudingit into private life. . . . " Mr. Vane felt much the same way when heheard MacIan's simple explanation: "He is my enemy. He is the enemy ofGod. " He said, "It is most undesirable that things of that sort shouldbe spoken about--a--in public, and in an ordinary Court of Justice. Religion is--a--too personal a matter to be mentioned in such a place. "However, MacIan is fined. After which he and Turnbull, as men of honour, buy themselves swords and proceed to fight the matter out. Withinterruptions due to argument and the police, the fight lasts severalweeks. Turnbull and MacIan fight in the back garden of the man from whomthey bought the swords, [1] until the police intervene. They escape thepolice and gain the Northern Heights of London, and fight once more, with a madness renewed and stimulated by the peace-making efforts of astray and silly Tolstoyan. Then the police come again, and are once moreoutdistanced. This time mortal combat is postponed on account of thesanguinolence of a casual lunatic who worshipped blood to such anauseating extent that the duellists deferred operations in order tochase him into a pond. Then follows an interminable dialogue, paradoxical, thoroughly Shavian, while the only two men in England towhom God literally is a matter of life and death find that they begin toregard the slaughter of one by the other as an unpleasant duty. Againthey fight and are separated. They are motored by a lady to theHampshire coast, and there they fight on the sands until the rising tidecuts them off. An empty boat turns up to rescue them from drowning; init they reach one of the Channel Islands. Again they fight, and againthe police come. They escape from them, but remain on the island indisguise, and make themselves an opportunity to pick a quarrel and sofight a duel upon a matter in keeping with local prejudice. But Turnbullhas fallen in love. His irritatingly calm and beautiful devotee argueswith him on religion until he is driven to cast off his disguise. Thenthe police are on his tracks again. A lunatic lends Turnbull and MacIanhis yacht and so the chase continues. But by this time Chesterton isgetting just a trifle bored. He realizes that no matter how manyadventures his heroes get into, or how many paradoxes they fling downeach other's throats, the end of the story, the final inevitable endwhich alone makes a series of rapid adventures worth while, is not evenon the horizon. An element of that spurious mysticism already describedinvades the book. It begins to be clear that Chesterton is trying todrag in a moral somehow, if need be, by the hair of its head. The twoyachters spend two weeks of geographical perplexity and come to adesert island. They land, but think it wiser, on the whole, to postponefighting until they have finished the champagne and cigars with whichtheir vessel is liberally stored. This takes a week. Just as they areabout to begin the definitive duel they discover that they are not upona desert island at all, they are near Margate. And the police are there, too. So once more they are chased. They land in a large garden in frontof an old gentleman who assures them that he is God. He turns out to bea lunatic, and the place an asylum. There follows a characteristic pieceof that abuse of science for which Chesterton has never attempted tosuggest a substitute. MacIan and Turnbull find themselves prisoners, unable to get out. Then they dream dreams. Each sees himself in anaeroplane flying over Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, where a battle israging. But the woolly element is very pronounced by this time, and wecan make neither head nor tail of these dreams and the conversationswhich accompany them. The duellists are imprisoned for a month inhorrible cells. They find their way into the garden, and are told thatall England is now in the hands of the alienists, by a new Act ofParliament: this has been the only possible manner of putting a stop tothe revolution started by MacIan and Turnbull. These two find all thepersons they had met with during their odyssey, packed away in theasylum, which is a wonderful place worked by petroleum machinery. Butthe matter-of-fact grocer from the Channel Island, regarding the wholeaffair as an infringement of the Rights of Man, sets the petroleumalight. Michael, the celestial being who had appeared in the firstchapter and disappeared at the end of it, is dragged out of a cell in animbecile condition. Lucifer comes down in his airship to collect thedoctors, whose bodies he drops out, a little later on. The buildingsvanish in the flames, the keepers bolt, the inmates talk about theirsouls. MacIan is reunited to the lady of the Channel Island, and thestory ends. 

When a stone has been tossed into a pond, the ripples gradually andsymmetrically grow smaller. A Chesterton novel is like an adventurousvoyage of discovery, which begins on smooth water and is made with theobject of finding the causes of the ripples. As ripple succeedsripple--or chapter follows chapter--so we have to keep a tighter hold onsuch tangible things as are within our reach. Finally we reach thecentre of the excitement and are either sucked into a whirlpool, or hiton the head with a stone. When we recover consciousness we feeblyremember we have had a thrilling journey and that we had started outwith a misapprehension of the quality of Chestertonian fiction. A manwhose memory is normal should be able to give an accurate synopsis of anovel six months after he has read it. But I should be greatly surprisedif any reader of _The Ball and the Cross_ could tell exactly what it wasall about, within a month or two of reading it. The discontinuity of itmakes one difficulty; the substitution of paradox for incident makesanother. Yet it is difficult to avoid the conviction that this novelwill survive its day and the generation that begot it. If it wasChesterton's endeavour (as one is bound to suspect) to show that thetriumph of atheism would lead to the triumph of a callous and inhumanbody of scientists, then he has failed miserably. But if he wasattempting to prove that the uncertainties of religion were trivialthings when compared with the uncertainties of atheism, then the verdictmust be reversed. The dialogues on religion contained in _The Ball andthe Cross_ are alone enough and more than enough to place it among thefew books on religion which could be safely placed in the hands of anatheist or an agnostic with an intelligence. 

If we consider _Manalive_ (1912) now we shall be departing from strictchronological order, as it was preceded by _The Innocence of FatherBrown_. It will, however, be more satisfactory to take the two FatherBrown books together. In the first of these and _Manalive_, a change canbe distinctly felt. It is not a simple weakening of the power ofemploying instruments, such as befell Ibsen when, after writing The Ladyfrom the Sea, he could no longer keep his symbols and his charactersapart. It is a more subtle change, a combination of several smallchanges, which cannot be studied fairly in relation only to one side ofChesterton's work. In the last chapter an attempt will be made toanalyze these, for the present I can only indicate some of thefallings-off noticeable in _Manalive_, and leave it at that. Chesterton's previous romances were not constructed, the reader may havegathered, with that minute attention to detail which makes some modernnovels read like the report of a newly promoted detective. But a man maydo such things and yet be considered spotless. Shakespeare, after all, went astray on several points of history and geography. The authors ofthe Old Testament talked about "the hare that cheweth the cud. " And, ifany reader should fail to see the application of these instances tomodern fiction, I can only recommend him to read Vanity Fair and findout how many children had the Rev. Bute Crawley, and what were theirnames. No, the trouble with _Manalive_ is not in its casual, happy-go-lucky construction. It is rather in a certain lack of ease, atendency to exaggerate effects, a continual stirring up ofinconsiderable points. But let us come to the story. 

There is a boarding-house situated on one of the summits of the NorthernHeights. A great wind happens, and a large man, quite literally, blowsin. His name is Innocent Smith and he is naturally considered insane. But he is really almost excessively sane. His presence makes life at thehouse a sort of holiday for the inmates, male and female. Smith is aboutto run for a special licence in order to marry one of the women in thehouse, and the other boarders have just paired off when a telegramposted by one of the ladies in a misapprehension brings two lunacyexperts around in a cab. Smith adds to the excitement of the moment byputting a couple of bullets through a doctor's hat. 

Now Smith is what somebody calls "an allegorical practical joker. " ButChesterton gives a better description of him than that. 

 He's comic just because he's so startlingly commonplace. Don't you know what it is to be in all one family circle, with aunts and uncles, when a schoolboy comes home for the holidays? That bag there on the cab is only a schoolboy's hamper. This tree here in the garden is only the sort of tree that any schoolboy would have climbed. Yes, that's the sort of thing that has haunted us all about him, the thing we could never fit a word to. Whether he is my old schoolfellow or no, at least he is all my old schoolfellows. He is the endless bun-eating, ball-throwing animal that we have all been. 

Innocent has an idea about every few minutes, but so far as the book isconcerned we need mention only one of them. That one is--local autonomyfor Beacon House. This may be recommended as a game to be played _enfamille_. Establish a High Court, call in a legal member, and get aconstitution. The rest will be very hilarious. The legal member of theBeacon House _ménage_ is an Irish ex-barrister, one Michael Moon, whoplans as follows:

 The High Court of Beacon, he declared, was a splendid example of our free and sensible constitution. It had been founded by King John in defiance of Magna Carta, and now held absolute power over windmills, wine and spirit licences, ladies travelling in Turkey, revision of sentences for dog-stealing and parricide, as well as anything whatever that happened in the town of Market Bosworth. The whole hundred and nine seneschals of the High Court of Beacon met about once in every four centuries; but in the intervals (as Mr. Moon explained) the whole powers of the institution were vested in Mrs. Duke [the landlady]. Tossed about among the rest of the company, however, the High Court did not retain its historical and legal seriousness, but was used somewhat unscrupulously in a riot of domestic detail. If somebody spilt the Worcester Sauce on the tablecloth, he was quite sure it was a rite without which the sittings and findings of the Court would be invalid; and if somebody wanted a window to remain shut, he would suddenly remember that none but the third son of the lord of the manor of Penge had the right to open it. They even went the length of making arrests and conducting criminal inquiries. 

Before this tribunal Innocent Smith is brought. One alienist is anAmerican, who is quite prepared to acknowledge its jurisdiction, beingby reason of his nationality not easily daunted by mere constitutionalqueerness. The other doctor, being the prosecutor and a boarder, has nochoice in the matter. The doctors, it should be added, have brought withthem a mass of documentary evidence, incriminating Smith. 

How the defence has time to collect this evidence is not explained, butthis is just one of the all-important details which do not matter in theChestertonian plane. Smith is tried for attempted murder. Theprosecution fails because the evidence shows Smith to be a first-classshot, who has on occasion fired life into people by frightening them. Then he is tried for burglary on the basis of a clergyman's letter fromwhich it is gathered that Smith tried one night to induce him andanother cleric to enter a house burglariously in the dark. This chargebreaks down because a letter is produced from the other clergyman whodid actually accompany Smith over housetops and down throughtrap-doors--into his own house! Smith, it is explained, is in the habitof keeping himself awake to the romance and wonder of everyday existenceby such courses. From the second letter, however, it appears that thereis a Mrs. Smith, so the next charge is one of desertion and attemptedbigamy. A series of documents is produced, from persons in France, Russia, China, and California recounting conversations with Smith, a manwith a garden-rake, who left his house so that he might find it, and atthe end leapt over the hedge into the garden where Mrs. Smith was havingtea. In the words of the servant "he looked round at the garden andsaid, very loud and strong: 'Oh, what a lovely place you've got, ' justas if he'd never seen it before. " After which the court proceeds to trySmith on a polygamy charge. Documentary evidence shows that Smith hasat one time or another married a Miss Green, a Miss Brown, a Miss Black, just as he is now about to marry a Miss Gray, Moon points out that theseare all the same lady. Innocent Smith has merely broken the conventions, he has religiously kept the commandments. He has burgled his own house, and married his own wife. He has been perfectly innocent, and thereforehe has been perfectly merry. Innocent is acquitted, and the book ends. 

In the course of _Manalive_, somebody says, "Going right round the worldis the shortest way to where you are already. " These are the words of anoverworked epigrammatist, and upon them hangs the whole story. If_Manalive_ is amusing, it is because Chesterton has a style which couldmake even a debilitated paradox of great length seem amusing. The bookhas a few gorgeous passages. Among the documents read at the trial ofInnocent Smith, for example, is a statement made by a Trans-Siberianstation-master, which is a perfectly exquisite burlesque at the expenseof the Russian _intelligenzia_. The whole series of documents, in fact, are delightful bits of self-expression on the part of a very varied teamof selves. While Chesterton is able to turn out such things we must becontent to take the page, and not the story, as his unit of work. _Manalive_, by the way, is the first of the author's stories in whichwomen are represented as talking to one another. Chesterton seemsextraordinarily shy with his feminine characters. He is a little afraidof woman. "The average woman is a despot, the average man is a serf. "[2]Mrs. Innocent Smith's view of men is in keeping with this peculiarnotion. "At certain curious times they're just fit to take care of us, and they're never fit to take care of themselves. " Smith is theChestertonian Parsifal, just as Prince Muishkin is Dostoievsky's. 

The transcendental type of detective, first sketched out in _The Club ofQueer Trades_, is developed more fully in the two Father Brown books. Inthe little Roman priest who has such a wonderful instinct for placingthe diseased spots in people's souls, we have Chesterton's completestand most human creation. Yet, with all their cleverness, and in spite ofthe fact that from internal evidence it is almost blatantly obvious thatthe author enjoyed writing these stories, they bear marks which put thebooks on a lower plane than either _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ or_The Ball and the Cross_. In the latter book Chesterton spoke of "themere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the mere inhuman hatredof the inhuman state of madness. " His own critical work had been a longprotest against the introduction of artificial horrors, a plea forsanity and the exercise of sanity. But in _The Innocence of FatherBrown_ these principles, almost the fundamental ones of literarydecency, were put on the shelf. Chesterton's criminals are lunatics, perhaps it is his belief that crime and insanity are inseparable. Buteven if this last supposition is correct, its approval would notnecessarily license the introduction of some of the characters. There isIsrael Gow, who suffers from a peculiar mania which drives him tocollect gold from places seemly and unseemly, even to the point ofdigging up a corpse in order to extract the gold filling from its teeth. There is the insane French Chief of Police, who commits a murder andattempts to disguise the body, and the nature of the crime, bysubstituting the head of a guillotined criminal for that of the victim. In another story we have the picture of a cheerful teetotaller whosuffers from drink and suicidal mania. There is also a doctor who killsa mad poet, and a mad priest who drops a hammer from the top of hischurch-tower upon his brother. Another story is about the loathsometreachery of an English general. It is, of course, difficult to writeabout crime without touching on features which revolt the squeamishreader, but it can be done, and it has been done, as in the SherlockHolmes stories. There are subjects about which one instinctively feelsit is not good to know too much. Sex, for example, is one of them. Strindberg, Weininger, Maupassant, Jules de Goncourt, knew too muchabout sex, and they all went mad, although it is usual to disguise thefact in the less familiar terms of medical science. Madness itself isanother such subject. There are writers who dwell on madness becausethey cannot help themselves--Strindberg, Edgar Allan Poe, Gogol, andmany others--but they scarcely produce the same nauseating sensation asthe sudden introduction of the note of insanity into a hitherto normalsetting. The harnessing of the horror into which the discovery ofinsanity reacts is a favourite device of the feeble craftsman, but it isillegitimate. It is absolutely opposed to those elementary canons ofgood taste which decree that we may not jest at the expense of certainthings, either because they are too sacred or not sacred enough. Theopposite of a decadent author is not necessarily a writer who attacksdecadents. Many decadents have attacked themselves, by committingsuicide, for example. The opposite of a decadent author is one to whomdecadent ideas and imagery are alien, which is a very different thing. For example, the whole story _The Wrong Shape_ is filled with decadentideas; one is sure that Baudelaire would have entirely approved of it. It includes a decadent poet, living in wildly Oriental surroundings, attended by a Hindoo servant. Even the air of the place is decadent;Father Brown on entering the house learns instinctively from it that acrime is to be committed. 

Considered purely as detective stories, these cannot be granted a verygood mark. There is scarcely a story that has not a serious flaw in it. A man--Flambeau, of whom more later--gains admittance to a small andselect dinner party and almost succeeds in stealing the silver, by thedevice of turning up and pretending to be a guest when among thewaiters, and a waiter when among the guests. But it is not explainedwhat he did during the first two courses of that dinner, when heobviously had to be either a waiter or a guest, and could not keep upboth parts, as when the guests were arriving. Another man, a "Priest ofApollo, " is worshipping the sun on the top of a "sky-scraping" block ofoffices in Westminster, while a woman falls down a lift-shaft and iskilled. Father Brown immediately concludes that the priest is guilty ofthe murder because, had he been unprepared, he would have started andlooked round at the scream and the crash of the victim falling. But aman absorbed in prayer on, let us say, a tenth floor, is, in point offact, quite unlikely to hear a crash in the basement, or a scream evennearer to him. But the most astonishing thing about _The Eye of Apollo_is the staging. In order to provide the essentials, Mr. Chesterton hasto place "the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as greatwealth, " who is blind, in a typist's office! The collocation is somewhattoo singular. One might go right through the Father Brown stories inthis manner. But, if the reader wishes to draw the maximum of enjoymentout of them, he will do nothing of the sort. He will believe, asfervently as Alfred de Vigny, that L'Idée C'est Tout, and lay down allpetty regard for detail at the feet of Father Brown. This little Romancleric has listened to so many confessions (he calls himself "a man whodoes next to nothing but hear men's real sins, " but this seems to beexcessive, even for a Roman Catholic) that he is really well acquaintedwith the human soul. He is also extremely observant. And his greatestfriend is Flambeau, whom he once brings to judgment, twice hinders incrime, and thenceforward accompanies on detective expeditions. 

_The Innocence of Father Brown_ had a _sequel_, _The Wisdom of FatherBrown_, distinctly less effective, as sequels always are, than thepredecessor. But the underlying ideas are the same. In the first placethere is a deep detestation of "Science" (whatever that is) and themaintenance of the theory incarnate in Father Brown, that he who canread the human soul knows all things. The detestation of science (ofwhich, one gathers, Chesterton knows nothing) is carried to the sameabsurd length as in _The Ball and the Cross_. In the very first story, Father Brown calls on a criminologist ostensibly in order to consulthim, actually in order to show the unfortunate man, who had retired frombusiness fourteen years ago, what an extraordinary fool he was. 

The Father Brown of these stories--moon-faced little man--is a peculiarcreation. No other author would have taken the trouble to excogitatehim, and then treat him so badly. As a detective he never gets a fairchance. He is always on the spot when a murder is due to be committed, generally speaking he is there before time. When an absconding bankercommits suicide under peculiar circumstances in Italian mountains, whena French publicist advertises himself by fighting duels with himself(very nearly), when a murder is committed in the dressing-room corridorof a theatre, when a miser and blackmailer kills himself, when a lunaticadmiral attempts murder and then commits suicide, when amid muchincoherence a Voodoo murder takes place, when somebody tries to kill acolonel by playing on his superstitions (and by other methods), and whena gentleman commits suicide from envy, Father Brown is always there. Onemight almost interpret the Father Brown stories by suggesting that theirauthor had written them in order to illustrate the sudden impetus givento murder and suicide by the appearance of a Roman priest. 

Here we may suspend our reviews of Chestertonian romance. There remainsyet _The Flying Inn_, which shall be duly considered along with theother débris of its author. In summing up, it may be said of Chestertonthat at his best he invented new possibilities of romance and a new andhearty laugh. It may be said of the decadents of the eighteen nineties, that if their motto wasn't "Let's all go bad, " it should have been. Soone may say of Chesterton that if he has not selected "Let's all go mad"as a text, he should have done. Madness, in the Chestertonian, whateverit is in the pathological sense, is a defiance of convention, aloosening of visible bonds in order to show the strength of theinvisible ones; perhaps, as savages are said to regard lunatics withgreat respect, holding them to be nearer the Deity than most, soChesterton believes of his own madmen. Innocent Smith, of course, thesimple fool, the blithering idiot, is a truly wise man. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Chesterton jeers at this man's "Scottish" ancestry because hissurname was Gordon and he was obviously a Jew. The author is probablyunaware that there are large numbers of Jews bearing that name inRussia. If he had made his Jew call himself Macpherson, the case wouldhave been different. 

[2] _All Things Considered_, p. 106. 

III

THE MAKER OF MAGIC

CHESTERTON'S only play, _Magic_, was written at the suggestion of Mr. Kenelm Foss and produced by him in November, 1913, at the LittleTheatre, where it enjoyed a run of more than one hundred performances. This charming thing does not make one wish that Chesterton was anhabitual playwright, for one feels that _Magic_ was a sort of tank intowhich its author's dramatic talents had been draining for manyyears--although, in actual fact, Chesterton allowed newspaperinterviewers to learn that the play had been written in a very shortspace of time. His religious ideas were expressed in _Magic_ with greatneatness. Most perhaps of all his works this is a quotable production. 

Patricia Carleon, a niece of the Duke, her guardian, is in the habit ofwandering about his grounds seeing fairies. On the night when herbrother Morris is expected to return from America she is having asolitary moonlight stroll when she sees a Stranger, "a cloaked figurewith a pointed hood, " which last almost covers his face. She naturallyasks him what he is doing there. He replies, mapping out the ground withhis staff:

 I have a hat, but not to wear; I have a sword, but not to slay; And ever in my bag I bear A pack of cards, but not to play. 

This, he tells her, is the language of fairies. He tells her thatfairies are not small things, but quite the reverse. After a fewsentences have been spoken the prologue comes to an end, and the curtainrises upon the scene of the play, the drawing-room of the Duke. Here isseated the Rev. Cyril Smith, a young clergyman, "an honest man and notan ass. " To him enters the Duke's Secretary, to tell him the Duke isengaged at the moment, but will be down shortly. He is followed by Dr. Grimthorpe, an elderly agnostic, the red lamp of whose house can be seenthrough the open French windows. Smith is erecting a model public-housein the village, and has come to ask the Duke for a contribution towardsthe cost. Grimthorpe is getting up a league for opposing the erection ofthe new public-house, and has also come to the Duke for help. Theydiscover the nature of each other's errand. Smith's case is, "How canthe Church have a right to make men fast if she does not allow them tofeast?"; Grimthorpe's, that alcohol is not a food. The Duke's Secretaryenters and gives Smith a cheque for £50, then he gives the Doctoranother--also for £50. This is the first glimpse we have of the Duke'seccentricity, an excessive impartiality based on the theory thateverybody "does a great deal of good in his own way, " and on sheerabsence of mind--an absence which sometimes is absolutely literal. TheDoctor explains in confidence to the Clergyman that there is somethingwrong about the family of Patricia and Morris, who are of Irishorigin. . . . "They saw fairies and things of that sort. "

 SMITH. And I suppose, to the medical mind, seeing fairies means much the same as seeing snakes?

 DOCTOR. [_With a sour smile. _] Well, they saw them in Ireland. I suppose it's quite correct to see fairies in Ireland. It's like gambling at Monte Carlo. It's quite respectable. But I do draw the line at their seeing fairies in England. I do object to their bringing their ghosts and goblins and witches into the poor Duke's own back garden and within a yard of my own red lamp. It shows a lack of tact. 

Patricia, moreover, wanders about the park and the woods in theevenings. "Damp evenings for choice. She calls it the Celtic twilight. I've no use for the Celtic twilight myself. It has a tendency to get onthe chest. " The Duke, annoyed by this love of fairies, has blundered, inhis usual way, on an absurd compromise between the real and the ideal. Aconjuror is to come that very night. When explanations have gone so far, the Duke at last makes his entry. The stage directions tell us that "inthe present state of the peerage it is necessary to explain that theDuke, though an ass, is a gentleman. " His thoughts are the most casualon earth. He is always being reminded of something or somebody which hasnothing to do with the case. As for instance, "I saw the place you'reputting up . . . Mr. Smith. Very good work. Very good work, indeed. Artfor the people, eh? I particularly liked that woodwork over the westdoor--I'm glad to see you're using the new sort of graining . . . Why, it all reminds one of the French Revolution. " After one or twodissociations of this sort, the expected Morris Carleon enters throughthe French window; he is rather young and excitable, and America hasoverlaid the original Irishman. Morris immediately asks for Patricia andis told that she is wandering in the garden. The Duke lets out that shesees fairies; Morris raves a bit about his sister being allowed outalone with anything in the nature of a man, when Patricia herselfenters. She is in a slightly exalted state; she has just seen her fairy, him of the pointed hood. Morris, of course, is furious, not to saysuspicious. 

 DOCTOR. [_Putting his hand on_ MORRIS'S _shoulder. _] Come, you must allow a little more for poetry. We can't all feed on nothing but petrol. 

 DUKE. Quite right, quite right. And being Irish, don't you know, Celtic, as old Buffle used to say, charming songs, you know, about the Irish girl who has a plaid shawl--and a Banshee. [_Sighs profoundly. _] Poor old Gladstone! [_Silence. _]

 SMITH. [_Speaking to_ DOCTOR. ] I thought you yourself considered the family superstition bad for the health?

 DOCTOR. I consider a family superstition is better for the health than a family quarrel. 

A figure is seen to stand in front of the red lamp, blotting it out fora moment. Patricia calls to it, and the cloaked Stranger with thepointed hood enters. Morris at once calls him a fraud. 

 SMITH. [_Quickly. _] Pardon me, I do not fancy that we know that. . . . 

 MORRIS. I didn't know you parsons stuck up for any fables but your own. 

 SMITH. I stick up for the thing every man has a right to. Perhaps the only thing every man has a right to. 

 MORRIS. And what is that?

 SMITH. The benefit of the doubt. 

Morris returns to the attack. The Stranger throws off his hood andreveals himself to the Duke. He is the Conjuror, ready for the evening'sperformance. All laugh at this _dénouement_, except Patricia, betweenwhom and the Conjuror this bit of dialogue ensues:

 STRANGER. [_Very sadly. _] I am very sorry I am not a wizard. 

 PATRICIA. I wish you were a thief instead. 

 STRANGER. Have I committed a worse crime than thieving?

 PATRICIA. You have committed the cruellest crime, I think, that there is. 

 STRANGER. And what is the cruellest crime?

 PATRICIA. Stealing a child's toy. 

 STRANGER. And what have I stolen?

 PATRICIA. A fairy tale. 

And the curtain falls upon the First Act. 

An hour later the room is being prepared for the performance. TheConjuror is setting out his tricks, and the Duke is entangling him andthe Secretary in his peculiar conversation. The following ischaracteristic:

 THE SECRETARY. . . . The only other thing at all urgent is the Militant Vegetarians. 

 DUKE. Ah! The Militant Vegetarians! You've heard of them, I'm sure. Won't obey the law [_to the_ CONJUROR] so long as the Government serves out meat. 

 CONJUROR. Let them be comforted. There are a good many people who don't get much meat. 

 DUKE. Well, well, I'm bound to say they're very enthusiastic. Advanced, too--oh, certainly advanced. Like Joan of Arc. 

 [_Short silence, in which the_ CONJUROR _stares at him. _]

 CONJUROR. _Was_ Joan of Arc a Vegetarian?

 DUKE. Oh, well, it's a very high ideal, after all. The Sacredness of Life, you know--the Sacredness of Life. [_Shakes his head. _] But they carry it too far. They killed a policeman down in Kent. 

This conversation goes on for some time, while nothing in particularhappens, except that the audience feels very happy. The Duke asks theConjuror several questions, receiving thoroughly Chestertonian answers. ["Are you interested in modern progress?" "Yes. We are interested in alltricks done by illusion. "] At last the Conjuror is left alone. Patriciaenters. He attempts to excuse himself for the theft of the fairy tale. He has had a troublesome life, and has never enjoyed "a holiday inFairyland. " So, when he, with his hood up, because of the slight rain, was surprised by Patricia, as he was rehearsing his patter, and takenfor a fairy, he played up to her. Patricia is inclined to forgive him, but the conversation is interrupted by the entrance of Morris, in amood to be offensive. He examines the apparatus, proclaims the way it isworked, and after a while breaks out into a frenzy of free thought, asking the universe in general and the Conjuror in particular for "thatold apparatus that turned rods into snakes. " The Clergyman and theDoctor enter, and the conversation turns on religion, and then goes backto the tricks. Morris is still extremely quarrelsome, and for the secondtime has to be quieted down. The Conjuror is dignified, but cutting. Thewhole scene has been, so far, a discussion on Do Miracles Happen? Smithmakes out a case in the affirmative, arguing from the false to the true. Suppose, as Morris claims, the "modern conjuring tricks are simply theold miracles when they have once been found out. . . . When we speak ofthings being sham, we generally mean that they are imitations of thingsthat are genuine. " Morris gets more and more excited, and continues toinsult the Conjuror. At last he shouts . . . "You'll no more raise yourSaints and Prophets from the dead than you'll raise the Duke'sgreat-grandfather to dance on that wall. " At which the Reynolds portraitin question sways slightly from side to side. Morris turns furiously tothe Conjuror, accusing him of trickery. A chair falls over, for noapparent cause, still further exciting the youth. At last he blurts outa challenge. The Doctor's red lamp is the lamp of science. No power onearth could change its colour. And the red light turns blue, for aminute. Morris, absolutely puzzled, comes literally to his wits' end, and rushes out, followed shortly afterwards by his sister and theDoctor. The youth is put to bed, and left in the care of Patricia, whilethe Doctor and the Clergyman return to their argument. Smith makes out astrong case for belief, for simple faith, a case which sounds strangely, coming from the lips of a clergyman of the Church of England. 

 DOCTOR. Weren't there as many who believed passionately in Apollo?

 SMITH. And what harm came of believing in Apollo? And what a mass of harm may have come of not believing in Apollo? Does it never strike you that doubt can be a madness, as well be faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as proclaiming doctrines? You talk of religious mania! Is there no such thing as irreligious mania? Is there no such thing in the house at this moment?

 DOCTOR. Then you think no one should question at all?

 SMITH. [_With passion, pointing to the next room. _] I think that is what comes of questioning! Why can't you leave the universe alone and let it mean what it likes? Why shouldn't the thunder be Jupiter? More men have made themselves silly by wondering what the devil it was if it wasn't Jupiter. 

 DOCTOR. [_Looking at him. _] Do you believe in your own religion?

 SMITH. [_Returning the look equally steadily. _] Suppose I don't: I should still be a fool to question it. The child who doubts about Santa Claus has insomnia. The child who believes has a good night's rest. 

 DOCTOR. You are a Pragmatist. 

 SMITH. That is what the lawyers call vulgar abuse. But I do appeal to practice. Here is a family over which you tell me a mental calamity hovers. Here is the boy who questions everything and a girl who can believe anything. Upon whom has the curse fallen?

At this point the curtain was made to fall on the Second Act. The Thirdand last Act takes place in the same room a few hours later. TheConjuror has packed his bag, and is going. The Doctor has been sittingup with the patient. Morris is in a more or less delirious state, and iscontinually asking how the trick was done. The Doctor believes that theexplanation would satisfy the patient and would probably help him toturn the corner. But the Conjuror will not provide an explanation. Hehas many reasons, the most practical of which is that he would not bebelieved. The Duke comes in and tries to make a business matter of thesecret, even to the extent of paying £2000 for it. Suddenly the Conjurorchanges his mind. He will tell them how the trick was done, it was allvery simple. "It is the simplest thing in the world. That is why youwill not laugh. . . . I did it by magic. " The Doctor and the Duke aredumbfounded. Smith intervenes; he cannot accept the explanation. TheConjuror lets himself go, now he is voicing Chesterton's views. Theclergyman who merely believes in belief, as Smith does, will not do. Hemust believe in a fact, which is far more difficult. 

 CONJUROR. I say these things are supernatural. I say this is done by a spirit. The doctor does not believe me. He is an agnostic; and he knows everything. The Duke does not believe me; he cannot believe anything so plain as a miracle. But what the devil are you for, if you don't believe in a miracle? What does your coat mean if it doesn't mean that there is such a thing as the supernatural? What does your cursed collar mean if it doesn't mean that there is such a thing as a spirit? [_Exasperated. _] Why the devil do you dress up like that if you don't believe in it? [_With violence. _] Or perhaps you don't believe in devils?

 SMITH. I believe . . . [_After a pause. _] I wish I could believe. 

 CONJUROR. Yes. I wish I could disbelieve. 

Here Patricia enters. She wants to speak to the Conjuror, with whom sheis left alone. A little love scene takes place: rather the result of twoslightly sentimental and rather tired persons of different sexes beingleft alone than anything else. But they return to realities, with aneffort. Patricia, too, wants to know how the trick was done, in order totell her brother. He tells her, but she is of the world which cannotbelieve in devils, even although it may manage to accept fairies as aninevitable adjunct to landscape scenery by moonlight. In order toconvince her the Conjuror tells her how he fell, how after dabbling inspiritualism he found he had lost control over himself. But he hadresisted the temptation to make the devils his servants, until theimpudence of Morris had made him lose his temper. Then he goes out intothe garden to see if he can find some explanation to give Morris. TheDuke, Smith, the Doctor, and the Secretary drift into the room, which isnow tenanted by something impalpable but horrible. The Conjuror returnsand clears the air with an exorcism. He has invented an explanation, which he goes out to give to Morris. Patricia announces that her brotherimmediately took a turn for the better. The Conjuror refuses to repeatthe explanation he gave Morris, because if he did, "Half an hour afterI have left this house you will all be saying how it was done. " He turnsto go. 

 PATRICIA. Our fairy tale has come to an end in the only way a fairy tale can come to an end. The only way a fairy tale can leave off being a fairy tale. 

 CONJUROR. I don't understand you. 

 PATRICIA. It has come true. 

And the curtain falls for the last time. 

No doubt _Magic_ owed a great deal of its success to the admirableproduction of Mr. Kenelm Foss and the excellence of the cast. Miss GraceCroft was surely the true Patricia. Of the Duke of Mr. Fred Lewis it isdifficult to speak in terms other than superlative. Those of my readerswho have suffered the misfortune of not having seen him, may gain someidea of his execution of the part from the illustrations to Mr. Belloc'snovels. The Duke was an extraordinarily good likeness of the Duke ofBattersea, as portrayed by Chesterton, with rather more than a touch ofMr. Asquith superadded. Mr. Fred Lewis, it may be stated, gagged freely, introducing topical lines until the play became a revue in little--butwithout injustice to the original. Several of those who saw _Magic_ camefor a third, a fourth, even a tenth time. 

The Editor of The Dublin Review had the happy idea of asking Chestertonto review _Magic_. The result is too long to quote in full, but itmakes two important points which may be extracted. 

 I will glide mercifully over the more glaring errors, which the critics have overlooked--as that no Irishman could become so complete a cad merely by going to America--that no young lady would walk about in the rain so soon before it was necessary to dress for dinner--that no young man, however American, could run round a Duke's grounds in the time between one bad epigram and another--that Dukes never allow the middle classes to encroach on their gardens so as to permit a doctor's lamp to be seen there--that no sister, however eccentric, could conduct a slightly frivolous love-scene with a brother going mad in the next room--that the Secretary disappears half-way through the play without explaining himself; and the conjuror disappears at the end, with almost equal dignity. . . . 

 By the exercise of that knowledge of all human hearts which descends on any man (however unworthy) the moment he is a dramatic critic, I perceive that the author of _Magic_ originally wrote it as a short story. It is a bad play, because it was a good short story. In a short story of mystery, as in a Sherlock Holmes story, the author and the hero (or villain) keep the reader out of the secret. . . . But the drama is built on that grander secrecy which was called the Greek irony. In the drama, the audience must know the truth when the actors do not know it. That is where the drama is truly democratic: not because the audience shouts, but because it knows--and is silent. Now I do quite seriously think it is a weakness in a play like _Magic_ that the audience is not in the central secret from the start. Mr. G. S. Street put the point with his usual unerring simplicity by saying that he could not help feeling disappointed with the Conjuror because he had hoped he would turn into the Devil. 

A few additions may easily be made to the first batch of criticisms. Patricia's welcome to her brother is not what a long-lost brother mightexpect. There is really no satisfactory reason for the Doctor'scontinued presence. Patricia and Morris can only be half Irish by blood, unless it is possible to become Irish by residence. Why should theConjuror rehearse his patter out in the wet? Surely the Duke's housewould contain a spare room? Where did the Conjuror go, at the end of theThird Act, in the small hours of the morning? And so on. 

But these are little things that do not matter in an allegory. For in_Magic_ "things are not what they seem. " The Duke is a modern man. He isalso the world, the flesh, and the devil. He has no opinions, nopositive religion, no brain. He believes in his own tolerance, which ismerely his fatuousness. He follows the line of least resistance, andmakes a virtue of it. He sits on the fence, but he will never come off. The Clergyman is the church of to-day, preaching the supernatural, butunwilling to recognize its existence at close quarters. As somebody sayssomewhere in _The Wisdom of Father Brown_, "If a miracle happened inyour office, you'd have to hush it up, now so many bishops areatheists. " The Doctor is a less typical figure. He is theinconsistencies of science, kindly but with little joy of life, andextremely Chestertonian, which is to say unscientific. Morris is theyounger generation, obsessed with business and getting on, andintellectually incapable of facing a religious fact. Patricia is theChestertonian good woman, too essentially domestic to be everfundamentally disturbed. The Conjuror, if not the Devil, is at any ratethat inexplicable element in all life which most people do not see. 

Nevertheless there is a flaw in _Magic_ which really is serious. If Iwere to see, let us say, a sheet of newspaper flying down the roadagainst the wind, and a friend of mine, who happened to be a giftedliar, told me that he was directing the paper by means of spirits, Ishould still be justified in believing that another explanation could bepossible. I should say, "My dear friend, your explanation is romantic; Ibelieve in spirits but I do not believe in you. I prefer to think thatthere is an air-current going the wrong way. " That is the matter withthe Conjuror's explanation. Why should the Clergyman or theDoctor--professional sceptics, both of them, which is to say seekersafter truth--take the word of a professional deceiver as necessarilytrue?

There are two works which the critic of Chesterton must take intospecial consideration. They are _Magic_ and _Orthodoxy_; and it may besaid that the former is a dramatized version of the latter. The twotogether are a great work, striking at the very roots of disbelief. In asense Chesterton pays the atheist a very high compliment. He does whatthe atheist is generally too lazy to do for himself; he takes hissubstitute for religion and systematizes it into something like aphilosophy. Then he examines it as a whole. And he finds that atheism isdogma in its extremist form, that it embodies a multitude ofsuperstitions, and that it is actually continually adding to theirnumber. Such are the reasons of the greatness of _Magic_. The play, onefeels, must remain unique, for the prolegomenon cannot be rewrittenwhile the philosophy is unchanged. And Chesterton has deliberatelychosen the word orthodox to apply to himself, and he has not limited itsmeaning. 

IV

THE CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS

THE heroes of Chesterton's romances have an adipose diathesis, as areviewer has been heard to remark. In plain English they tend towardslargeness. Flambeau, Sunday, and Innocent Smith are big men. Chesterton, as we have seen, pays little attention to his women characters, butwhenever it comes to pass that he must introduce a heroine, he coloursher as emphatically as the nature of things will admit. Which is to saythat the Chestertonian heroine always has red hair. 

These things are symptomatic of their author. He loves robustness. If hecannot produce it, he can at any rate affect it, or attack its enemies. This worship of the robust is the fundamental fact of all Chesterton'swork. For example, as a critic of letters he confines himself almostexclusively to the big men. When Mr. Bernard Shaw a few years agocommitted what Chesterton imagined was an attack upon Shakespeare, healmost instinctively rushed to the defence in the columns of The DailyNews. When Chesterton wrote a little book on _The Victorian Age inLiterature_ he showed no interest in the smaller people. The book, itmay be urged in his excuse, was a little one, but we feel that even ifit was not, Chesterton would have done much the same thing. Among thewriters he omitted to mention, even by name, are Sir Edwin Arnold, Harrison Ainsworth, Walter Bagehot, R. Blackmore, A. H. Clough, E. A. Freeman, S. R. Gardiner, George Gissing, J. R. Green, T. H. Green, HenryHallam, Jean Ingelow, Benjamin Jowett, W. E. H. Lecky, Thomas LovePeacock, W. M. Praed, and Mrs. Humphry Ward. The criticism which feedsupon research and comparison, which considers a new date or theemendation of a mispunctuated line of verse, worthy of effort, knows notChesterton. He is the student of the big men. He has written books aboutDickens, Browning, and Shaw, of whom only one common quality can benoted, which is that they are each the subjects of at least twenty otherbooks. To write about the things which have already yielded such a hugecrop of criticism savours at first of a lack of imagination. The truthis quite otherwise. Anybody, so to speak, can produce a book aboutAlexander Pope because the ore is at the disposal of every miner. Butthat larger mine called Dickens has been diligently worked by twogenerations of authors, and it would appear that a new one must eitherplagiarize or labour extremely in order to come upon fresh seams. ButChesterton's taste for bigness has come to his service in criticism. Ithas given him a power of seeing the large, obvious things which thecritic of small things misses. He has the "thinking in millions" trickof the statistician transposed to literary ends. 

Or as a poet. The robustness is omnipresent, and takes several forms. Agrandiloquence that sways uneasily between rodomontade and mereverbiage, a rotundity of diction, a choice of subjects which can only bedescribed as sanguinolent, the use of the bludgeon where others wouldprefer a rapier. 

Or as a simple user of words. Chesterton has a preference for the bigwords: awful, enormous, tremendous, and so on. A word which occurs veryoften indeed is mystic: it suggests that the noun it qualifies is ladenwith undisclosable attributes, and that romance is hidden here. 

Now all these things add up, as it were, to a tendency to say a thing asemphatically as possible. Emphasis of statement from a humorist giftedwith the use of words results sometimes in epigram, sometimes in fun, inall things except the dull things (except when the dullness is due to anunhappy succession of scintillations which have misfired). For thesereasons Chesterton is regarded as entirely frivolous--by persons withouta sense of humour. He is, in point of fact, extremely serious, on thosefrequent occasions when he is making out a case. As he himself pointsout, to be serious is not the opposite of to be funny. The opposite ofto be funny is not to be funny. A man may be perfectly serious in afunny way. 

Now it has befallen Chesterton on more than one occasion to have tocross swords with one of the few true atheists, Mr. Joseph MacCabe, theauthor of a huge number of books, mostly attacking Christianity, and asdevoid of humour as an egg-shell is of hair. The differences and theresemblances between Chesterton and Mr. MacCabe might well be theoccasion of a parable. Chesterton has written some of the liveliestbooks about Christianity, Mr. MacCabe has written some of the dullest. Chesterton has written the most amusing book about Mr. Bernard Shaw; Mr. MacCabe has written the dullest. Chesterton and Mr. MacCabe have a habitof sparring at one another, but up to the present I have not noticedeither make any palpable hits. It is all rather like the Party System, as Mr. Hilaire Belloc depicts it. The two antagonists do not understandeach other in the least. But, to a certain degree, Mr. MacCabe'sconfusion is the fault of Chesterton and not of his own lack of humour. When Chesterton says, "I also mean every word I say, " he is sayingsomething he does not mean. He is sometimes funny, but not serious, likeMr. George Robey. He is sometimes irritating, but not serious, like acircus clown. And he sometimes appears to be critical, but is notserious, like the young lady from Walworth in front of a Bond Streetshop-window, regretting that she could not possibly buy the crockery andglass displayed because the monogram isn't on right. Chesterton'sreaders have perhaps spoiled him. He has pleaded, so to speak, for theinalienable and mystic right of every man to be a blithering idiot inall seriousness. So seriously, in fact, that when he exercised thisinalienable and mystic right, the only man not in the secret was G. K. Chesterton. 

There are few tasks so ungrateful as the criticism of a critic'scriticisms, unless it be the job of criticizing the criticisms of acritic's critics. The first is part of the task of him who would write abook in which all Chesterton's works are duly and fitly considered; andthe second will not be wholly escaped by him. Concerned as we are, however, with the ideas of one who was far more interested in puttingthe world to rights than with guiding men and women around literaryedifices, there is no need for us to give any very detailed study toChesterton's critical work. Bacon said "distilled books are like commondistilled waters, flashy things. " A second distillation, perhaps even athird, suggests a Euclidean flatness. The sheer management of a point ofview, however, is always instructive. We have seen an author use hisexceptional powers of criticism upon society in general, and ideas atlarge. How is he able to deal with ideas and inventions stated in a moredefinite and particular manner? The latter task is the more difficult ofthe two. We all know perfectly well, to take an analogous illustration, how to deal with the Prussian militarist class, the "Junker caste, " andso on. But we differ hopelessly on the treatment to be meted out to theNational Service League. 

The outstanding feature of Chesterton's critical work is that it has nooutstanding features which differentiate it from his other writings. Heis always the journalist, writing for the day only. This leads him totreat all his subjects with special reference to his own day. Sometimes, as in the essay on Byron in _Twelve Types_, his own day is somuch under discussion that poor Byron is left out in the cold to warmhimself before a feebly flickering epigram. In writing of Dickens, Chesterton says that he "can be criticized as a contemporary of BernardShaw or Anatole France or C. F. G. Masterman . . . His name comes to thetongue when we are talking of Christian Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt orCounty Council Steamboats or Guilds of Play. " And Chesterton doescriticize Dickens as the contemporary of all these phenomena. In pointof fact, to G. K. C. Everybody is either a contemporary or a Victorian, and "I also was born a Victorian. " Little Dorrit sets him talking aboutGissing, Hard Times suggests Herbert Spencer, American Notes leads tothe mention of Maxim Gorky, and elsewhere Mr. George Moore and Mr. William Le Queux are brought in. If Chesterton happened to be writingabout Dickens at a time when there was a certain amount of feeling abouton the subject of rich Jews on the Rand, then the rich Jews on the Randwould appear in print forthwith, whether or not Dickens had everdepicted a rich Jew or the Rand, or the two in conjunction. Chesterton'sfirst critical work of importance was _Robert Browning_ in the "EnglishMen of Letters Series. " It might be imagined that the austere editorshipof Lord Morley might have a dejournalizing effect upon the style of theauthor. Far otherwise. The t's are crossed and the i's are dotted, so tospeak, more carefully in _Robert Browning_ than in works lessfastidiously edited, but that is all. The book contains references toGladstone and Home Rule, Parnell, Pigott, and Rudyard Kipling, Cyrano deBergerac, W. E. Henley, and the Tivoli. But of Browning's literaryancestors and predecessors there is little mention. 

It is conventional to shed tears of ink over the journalistic touch, onthe ground that it must inevitably shorten the life of whatever bookbears its marks. If there is anything in this condemnation, thenChesterton is doomed to forgetfulness, and his critical works will bethe first to slip into oblivion, such being the nature of critical worksin general. But if this condemnation holds true, it includes alsoMacaulay, R. L. Stevenson, Matthew Arnold, and how many others! Thejournalistic touch, when it is good, means the preservation of a work. And Chesterton has that most essential part of a critic's mentalequipment--what we call in an inadequately descriptive manner, insight. He was no mean critic, whatever the tricks he played, who could penthese judgments:

 The dominant passion of the artistic Celt, such as Mr. W. B. Yeats or Sir Edward Burne-Jones, lies in the word "escape"; escape into a land where oranges grow on plum trees and men can sow what they like and reap what they enjoy. (_G. F. Watts. _)

 The supreme and most practical value of poetry is this, that in poetry, as in music, a note is struck which expresses beyond the power of rational statement a condition of mind, and all actions arise from a condition of mind. (_Robert Browning. _)

 This essential comedy of Johnson's character is one which has never, oddly enough, been put upon the stage. There was in his nature one of the unconscious and even agreeable contradictions loved by the true comedian. . . . I mean a strenuous and sincere belief in convention, combined with a huge natural inaptitude for observing it. (_Samuel Johnson_. )

 Rossetti could, for once in a way, write poetry about a real woman and call her "Jenny. " One has a disturbed suspicion that Morris would have called her "Jehanne. " (_The Victorian Age in Literature_. )

These are a few samples collected at random, but they alone are almostsufficient to enthrone Chesterton among the critics. He has a wonderfulintuitive gift of feeling for the right metaphor, for the materialobject that best symbolizes an impression. But one thing he lacks. Puthim among authors whose view of the universe is opposed to his own, andChesterton instantly adopts an insecticide attitude. The wit of Wildemoves him not, but his morals stir him profoundly; Mr. Thomas Hardy is"a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the villageidiot. " Only occasionally has he a good word to say for the technique ofan author whose views he dislikes. His critical work very largelyconsists of an attempt to describe his subjects' views of the universe, and bring them into relation with his own. His two books on CharlesDickens are little more than such an attempt. When, a few years ago, Mr. Edwin Pugh, who had also been studying the "aspects" of Dickens, came tothe conclusion that the novelist was a Socialist, Chesterton waxedexceeding wrath and gave the offending book a severe wigging in TheDaily News. 

He loves a good fighter, however, and to such he is always just. Thereare few philosophies so radically opposed to the whole spirit ofChesterton's beliefs as that of John Stuart Mill. On religion, economicdoctrine, and woman suffrage, Mill held views that are offensive toG. K. C. But Mill is nevertheless invariably treated by him with a respectwhich approximates to reverence. The principal case in point, however, is Mr. Bernard Shaw, who holds all Mill's beliefs, and waves them abouteven more defiantly. G. K. C. 's admiration in this case led him to write awhole book about G. B. S. In addition to innumerable articles andreferences. The book has the following characteristic introduction:

 Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him. 

Chesterton, of course, could not possibly agree with such an avowed andutter Puritan as Mr. Shaw. The Puritan has to be a revolutionary, whichmeans a man who pushes forward the hand of the clock. Chesterton, asnear as may be, is a Catholic Tory, who is a man who pushes back thehand of the clock. Superficially, the two make the clock show the samehour, but actually, one puts it on to a. M. , the other back to p. M. Between the two is all the difference that is between darkness and day. 

Chesterton's point of view is distinctly like Samuel Johnson's in morerespects than one. Both critics made great play with dogmatic assertionsbased on the literature that was before their time, at the expense ofthe literature that was to come after. In the book on Shaw, Chestertonstrikes a blow at all innovators, although he aims only at the obviousfailures. 

 The truth is that all feeble spirits naturally live in the future, because it is featureless; it is a soft job; you can make it what you like. The next age is blank, and I can paint it freely with my favourite colour. It requires real courage to face the past, because the past is full of facts which cannot be got over; of men certainly wiser than we and of things done which we cannot do. I know I cannot write a poem as good as _Lycidas_. But it is always easy to say that the particular sort of poetry I can write will be the poetry of the future. 

Sentiments such as these have made many young experimentalists feel thatChesterton is a traitor to his youth and generation. Nobody will everhave the detachment necessary to appreciate "futurist" poetry until itis very much a thing of the past, because the near past is so much withus, and it is part of us, which the future is not. But fidelity to thegood things of the past does not exonerate us from the task of lookingfor the germs of the good things of the future. The young poet of to-daysits at the feet of Sir Henry Newbolt, whose critical appreciation isundaunted by mere dread of new things, while to the same youth and tohis friends it has simply never occurred, often enough, to think ofChesterton as a critic. It cannot be too strongly urged that an undueadmiration of the distant past has sat like an incubus upon the chest ofEuropean literature, and Shakespeare's greatness is not in spite of his"small Latin and less Greek, " which probably contributed to itindirectly. Had Shakespeare been a classical scholar, he would almostcertainly have modelled his plays on Seneca or Aeschylus, and theresults would have been devastating. Addison's Cato, Johnson's Irene, and the dramas of Racine and Corneille are among the abysmal dullnessesmankind owes to its excessive estimation of the past. Men have alwaysbeen too ready to forget that we inherit our ancestors' bad points aswell as their good ones. Ancestor-worship has deprived the Chinese ofthe capacity to create, it has seriously affected Chesterton's power tocriticize. Chesterton's own generation has seen both the victory and thedownfall of form in the novels of Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. H. G. Wells. Ithas witnessed fascinating experiments in stagecraft, some of which haveassuredly succeeded. It has listened to new poets and wandered inenchanted worlds where no Victorians trod. A critic in sympathy withthese efforts at reform would have written the last-quoted passagesomething like this:

"The truth is that all feeble spirits naturally live in the past, because it has no boundaries; it is a soft job; you can find in it whatyou like. The past ages are rank, and I can daub myself freely withwhatever colours I extract. It requires no courage to face the past, because the past is full of facts which neutralize one another; of mencertainly no wiser than we, and of things done which we could not wantto do. I know I cannot write a poem as good as Lycidas. But I also knowthat Milton could not write a poem as good as The Hound of Heaven orM'Andrew's Hymn. And it is always easy to say that the particular kindof poetry I can write has been the poetry of some period of the past. "

But Chesterton didn't; quite the reverse. 

So that one comes to the sorrowful conclusion that Chesterton is at hisbest, as a critic, when he is writing introductions, because then he hasto leave the past alone. When he is writing an introduction to one ofthe works of a great Victorian (Dickens always excepted) he makes hissubject stand out like a solitary giant, not necessarily because he isone, but on account of the largeness of the contours, the rough shaping, and the deliberate contrasts. He has written prefaces without number, and the British Museum has not a complete set of the books introducedby him. The Fables of Æsop, the Book of Job, Matthew Arnold's CriticalEssays, a book of children's poems by Margaret Arndt, Boswell's Johnson, a novel by Gorky, selections from Thackeray, a life of Mr. Will Crooks, and an anthology by young poets are but a few of the books he hasexplained. 

The last thing to be said on Chesterton as a critic is by way ofillustration. For a series of books on artists, he wrote two, on WilliamBlake and G. F. Watts. The first is all about mysticism, and so is thesecond. They are for the layman, not for the artist. They could be readwith interest and joy by the colourblind. And, incidentally, they areextremely good criticism. Therein is the triumph of Chesterton. Give hima subject which he can relate with his own view of the universe, andspace wherein to accomplish this feat, and he will succeed in presentinghis readers with a vividly outlined portrait, tinted, of course, withhis own personality, but indisputably true to life, and ornamented withfascinating little gargoyles. But put him among the bourgeoisie ofliterature and he will sulk like an angry child. 

V

THE HUMORIST AND THE POET

THERE are innumerable books--or let us say twenty--on Mr. Bernard Shaw. They deal with him as a sociologist, a dramatist, or what not, but neveras a humorist. There is a mass of books on Oscar Wilde, and they dealwith everything concerned with him, except his humour. The greathumorists--as such--go unsung to their graves. That is because there isnothing so obvious as a joke, and nothing so difficult to explain. Itrequires a psychologist, like William James, or a philosopher, likeBergson, to explain what a joke is, and then most of us cannotunderstand the explanation. A joke--especially another man's joke--is athing to be handled delicately and reverently, for once the bloom isoff, the joke mysteriously shrivels and vanishes. Translators are thesworn enemies of jokes; the exigencies of their deplorable trade causethem to maul the poor little things about while they are putting theminto new clothes, and the result is death, or at the least an appearanceof vacuous senescence. But jokes are only the crystallization of humour;it exists also in less tangible forms, such as style and all thatcollection of effects vaguely lumped together and called "atmosphere. "Chesterton's peculiar "atmosphere" rises like a sweet exhalation fromthe very ink he sheds. And it is frankly indefinable, as all genuinestyle is. The insincere stylists can be reduced to a formula, becausethey work from a formula; Pater may be brought down to an arrangement ofadjectives and commas, Doctor Johnson to a succession of rhythms, carefully pruned of excrescences, and so on, but the stylist who writesas God made him defies such analysis. Meredith and Shaw and Chestertonwill remain mysteries even unto the latest research student of theUniversities of Jena and Chicago. Patient students (something of thesort is already being done) will count up the number of nouns and verbsand commas in _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ and will express the resultin such a form as this--[A]

 _ _ / / nouns³ _________ sin A Chesterton (G. K. ) = | | ------ + / ·2log bn - ----- _/_/ verbs² \/ c e 47

But they will fail to touch the essential Chesterton, because one ofthe beauties of this form of analysis is that when the formula has beenobtained, nobody is any the wiser as to the manner of its use. We knowthat James Smith is composed of beef and beer and bread, because allevidence goes to show that these are the only things he ever absorbs, but nobody has ever suggested that a synthesis of foodstuffs will evergive us James Smith. 

Now the difficulty of dealing with the humour of Chesterton is that, indoing so, one is compelled to handle it, to its detriment. If in thechapter on his Romances any reader thought he detected the voice and thestyle of Chesterton, he is grievously mistaken. He only saw thescaffolding, which bears the same relation to the finished product asthe skeleton bears to the human body. 

Consider these things:

 If you throw one bomb you are only a murderer; but if you keep on persistently throwing bombs, you are in awful danger of at last becoming a prig. 

 If we all floated in the air like bubbles, free to drift anywhere at any instant, the practical result would be that no one would have the courage to begin a conversation. 

 If the public schools stuck up a notice it ought to be inscribed, "For the Fathers of Gentlemen only. " In two generations they can do the trick. 

Now these propositions are not merely snippets from a system ofphilosophy, presented after the manner of the admirers of Schopenhauerand Nietzsche. These are quotations which display a quite exceptionalpower of surprising people. The anticlimaxes of the first two passages, the bold dip into the future at the expense of the past in the third aremore than instances of mere verbal felicity. They indicate a writercapable of the humour which feeds upon daily life, and is thereforethoroughly democratic and healthy. For there are two sorts of humour;that which feeds upon its possessor, Oscar Wilde is the supreme exampleof this type of humorist, and that which draws its inspiration from itssurroundings, of which the great exemplar is Dickens, and Chesterton ishis follower. The first exhausts itself sooner or later, because itfeeds on its own blood, the second is inexhaustible. This theory may beopposed on the ground that humour is both internal and external in itsorigin. The supporters of this claim are invited to take a holiday inbed, or elsewhere away from the madding crowd, and then see how humorousthey can be. 

Humour has an unfortunate tendency to stale. The joke of yesteryearalready shows frays upon its sleeves. The wit of the early volumes ofPunch is in the last stages of decrepitude. Watch an actor struggling toconceal from his audience the fact that he is repeating one ofShakespeare's puns. We tolerate the humour of Congreve, not because itis thoroughly amusing, but because it has survived better than most. Humorous verse stands a slightly better chance of evoking smiles in itsold age. There is always its unalterable verbal neatness; tradition, too, lingers more lovingly around fair shapes, and a poem is a betterinstance of form than a paragraph. Mankind may grow blasé, if it will, but as a poet of the comic, Chesterton will live long years. Take forexample that last and worst of his novels _The Flying Inn_. Into this hehas pitched with a fascinating recklessness a quantity of poems, garnered from The New Witness and worthy of the immortality which isgranted the few really good comic poems. There is the poem of Noah, withthat stimulating line with which each stanza ends. The last one goes:

 But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod, Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod, And you can't get wine at a P. S. A. , or Chapel, or Eisteddfod; For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God. And water is on the Bishop's board, and the Higher Thinker's shrine, But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine. 

There is a lunatic song against grocers, who are accused ofnonconformity, and an equally lunatic song in several instalments onbeing a vegetarian:

 I am silent in the Club, I am silent in the pub, I am silent on a bally peak in Darien; For I stuff away for life Shoving peas in with a knife, Because I am at heart a vegetarian. 

There is a joyous thing about a millionaire who lived the simple life, and a new version of "St. George for Merry England. " Tea, cocoa, andsoda-water are the subjects of another poem. The verses about Roundaboutare very happy:

 Some say that when Sir Lancelot Went forth to find the Grail, Grey Merlin wrinkled up the roads, For hope that he should fail; All roads led back to Lyonnesse And Camelot in the Vale, I cannot yield assent to this Extravagant hypothesis, The plain shrewd Briton will dismiss Such rumours (_Daily Mail_). But in the streets of Roundabout Are no such factions found, Or theories to expound about Or roll upon the ground about, In the happy town of Roundabout, That makes the world go round. 

And there are lots more like this. 

Then there are the _Ballades Urbane_ which appeared in the early volumesof The Eye-Witness. They have refrains with the true human note. Such as"But will you lend me two-and-six?"

 ENVOI Prince, I will not be knighted! No! Put up your sword and stow your tricks! Offering the Garter is no go-- BUT WILL YOU LEND ME TWO-AND-SIX?

In prose Chesterton is seldom the mere jester; he will always have amoral or two, at the very least, at his fingers' ends, or to be quiteexact, at the end of his article. He is never quite irresponsible. Heseldom laughs at a man who is not a reformer. 

Or let us take another set of illustrations, this time in prose. (Oncemore I protest that I shall not take the reader through all the works ofChesterton. ) I mean the articles "Our Note Book" which he contributed toThe Illustrated London News. They are of a familiar type; a series ofparagraphs on some topical subject, with little spaces between them inorder to encourage the weary reader. Chesterton wrote this class ofarticle supremely well. He would seize on something apparently trivial, and exalt it into a symptom. When he had given the disease a name, hewent for the quack doctors who professed to remedy it. He goes toLetchworth, in which abode of middle-class faddery he finds a teetotalpublic-house, pretending to look like the real thing, and calling itself"The Skittles Inn. " He immediately raises the question, Can wedissociate beer from skittles? Then he widens out his thesis. 

 Our life to-day is marked by perpetual attempts to revive old-fashioned things while omitting the human soul in them that made them more than fashions. 

And he concludes:

 I welcome a return to the rudeness of old times; when Luther attacked Henry VIII for being fat; and when Milton and his Dutch opponent devoted pages of their controversy to the discussion of which of them was the uglier. . . . The new controversialists . . . Call a man a physical degenerate, instead of calling him an ugly fellow. They say that red hair is the mark of the Celtic stock, instead of calling him "Carrots. "

Of this class of fun Chesterton is an easy master. It makes him afearsome controversialist on the platform or in his favourite lists, thecolumns of a newspaper. But he uses his strength a little tyrannously. He is an adept at begging the question. The lost art called ignoratioelenchi has been privately rediscovered by him, to the surprise of manyexcellent and honest debaters, who have never succeeded in scoring themost obvious points in the face of Chesterton's power of emitting astring of epigrams and pretending it is a chain of argument. The case, in whatever form it is put, is always fresh and vigorous. Anotherepigrammatist, Oscar Wilde, in comparison with him may be said to haveused the midnight oil so liberally in the preparation of his witticisms, that one might almost detect the fishy odour. But as with his prose sowith his verses; Chesterton's productions are so fresh that they seem tospring from his vitality rather than his intellect. They are generally atrifle ragged and unpolished as if, like all their author's productions, they were strangers to revision. And vitality demands boisterousmovement, more even than coherence. Sometimes the boisterousness isapparently unsupported by the sense of the words. 

 So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the golden weather, The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy and sell, But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring feather, For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like hell. 

Here the stanza actually goes with such a swing that the reader will inall probability not notice that the lines have no particular meaning. 

On the other hand, Chesterton's poetry has exuberant moments of sheerdelight. In one of his essays he is lamenting the songlessness of modernlife and suggests one or two chanties. Here they are:

Chorus of Bank Clerks:

 Up, my lads, and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er. Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: "Two and Two are Four. " Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the sophists roar, Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four. 

Chorus of Bank Clerks when there is a run on the bank:

 There's a run upon the Bank-- Stand away! For the Manager's a crank and the Secretary drank, and the Upper Tooting Bank Turns to bay!

 Stand close: there is a run On the Bank. Of our ship, our royal one, let the ringing legend run, that she fired with every gun Ere she sank. 

The Post Office Hymn would begin as follows:

 O'er London our letters are shaken like snow, Our wires o'er the world like the thunderbolts go. The news that may marry a maiden in Sark, Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park. 

Chorus (with a swing of joy and energy):

 Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park. 

The joke becomes simply immense when we picture the actual singing ofthe songs. 

But that is not the only class of humour of which Chesterton is capable. He can cut as well as hack. It is to be doubted whether any politicianwas ever addressed in lines more sarcastic than those of _Antichrist_, an ode to Mr. F. E. Smith. This gentleman, speaking on the WelshDisestablishment Bill, remarked that it "has shocked the conscience ofevery Christian community in Europe. " It begins:

 Are they clinging to their crosses, F. E. Smith. Where the Breton boat-fleet tosses, Are they, Smith? Do they, fasting, tramping, bleeding, Wait the news from this our city? Groaning "That's the Second Reading!" Hissing "There is still Committee!" If the voice of Cecil falters, If McKenna's point has pith, Do they tremble for their altars? Do they, Smith?

Then in Russia, among the peasants, Where Establishment means nothing And they never heard of Wales, Do they read it all in Hansard With a crib to read it with-- "Welsh Tithes: Dr. Clifford answered. " Really, Smith?

The final verse is:

 It would greatly, I must own, Soothe me, Smith, If you left this theme alone, Holy Smith! For your legal cause or civil You fight well and get your fee; For your God or dream or devil You will answer, not to me. Talk about the pews and steeples And the Cash that goes therewith! But the souls of Christian peoples . . . --Chuck it, Smith!

The wilting sarcasm of this poem is a feature which puts it with a fewothers apart from the bulk of Chesterton's poems. Even as bellicosityand orthodoxy are two of the brightest threads which run through thewhole texture of his work, so Poems of Pugnacity (as Ella Wheeler Wilcoxwould say) and religious verses constitute the largest part of thepoetic works of G. K. C. His first book of verses--after _Greybeards atPlay_--_The Wild Knight_ contained a bloodthirsty poem about the Battleof Gibeon, written with strict adhesion to the spirit of the OldTestament. It might have been penned by a survivor, glutted with bloodand duly grateful to the God of his race for the solar and lunareccentricities which made possible the extermination of the five kingsof the Amorites. In 1911 came _The Ballad of the White Horse_, which isall about Alfred, according to the popular traditions embodied in theelementary history books, and, in particular, the Battle of Ethandune. How Chesterton revels in that Homeric slaughter! The words blood andbloody punctuate the largest poem of G. K. C. To the virtual obliterationin our memory of the fine imagery, the occasional tendernesses, and theblustering aggressiveness of some of the metaphors and similes. Not manymen would have the nerve, let alone the skill, to write:

 And in the last eclipse the sea Shall stand up like a tower, Above all moons made dark and riven, Hold up its foaming head in heaven, And laugh, knowing its hour. 

But, at the same time, this poem contains very touching and beautifullines. _The Ballad of the White Horse_ is an epic of the strugglebetween Christian and Pagan. One of the essentials of an epic is thatits men should be decent men, if they cannot be heroes. The Iliad wouldhave been impossible if it had occurred to Homer to introduce theGovernment contractors to the belligerent powers. All the point wouldhave gone out of Orlando Furioso if it had been the case that themadness of Orlando was the delirium tremens of an habitual drunkard. Chesterton recognizing this truth makes the pagans of the _White Horse_behave like gentlemen. There is a beautiful little song put into themouth of one of them, which is in its way a perfect expression of theinadequacy of false gods. 

 There is always a thing forgotten When all the world goes well; A thing forgotten, as long ago When the gods forgot the mistletoe, And soundless as an arrow of snow The arrow of anguish fell. 

 The thing on the blind side of the heart, On the wrong side of the door, The green plant groweth, menacing Almighty lovers in the spring; There is always a forgotten thing, And love is not secure. 

The sorrow behind these lines is more moving, because more sincere, than the lines of that over-quoted verse of Swinburne's:

 From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods there be-- That no life lives for ever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. 

This is insincere, because a pagan (as Swinburne was) could havecommitted suicide had he really felt these things. Swinburne, like mostmodern pagans, really hated priestcraft when he thought he was hatingGod. Chesterton's note is truer. He knows that the pagan has all thegood things of life but one, and that only an exceptionally nice paganknows he lacks that much. 

And so one might go on mining the _White Horse_, for it contains mostthings, as a good epic should. Two short stanzas, however, should bequoted, whatever else is omitted, for the sake of their essentialChristianity, their claim that a man may make a fool of himself forChrist's sake, whatever the bishops have to say about it. 

 The men of the East may spell the stars, And times and triumphs mark, But the men signed of the Cross of Christ Go gaily in the dark. The men of the East may search the scrolls For sure fates and fame, But the men that drink the blood of God Go singing to their shame. 

In his last volume of _Poems_ (1915) Chesterton presents us with avaried collection of works, written at any time during the last twelveor so years. The pugnacious element is present in _Lepanto_, through thestaccato syllables of which we hear drum-taps and men cheering. There isa temptation to treat _Lepanto_, and indeed most of Chesterton's poems, with special reference to their technique, but we must resist thistemptation, with tears if need be, and with prayer, for to give way toit would be to commit a form of vivisection. G. K. C. Is not a text, praise be, and whether he lives or dies, long may he be spared the handsof an editor or interpreter who is also an irrepressible authority onanapaests and suchlike things. He is a poet, and a considerable poet, not because of his strict attention to the rules of prosody, but becausehe cannot help himself, and the rules in question are for the personswho can, the poets by deliberate intention, the writers who polishunceasingly. Chesterton has more impulse than finish, but he has naturalgifts of rhythm and the effective use of words which more or less(according to the reader's taste) compensate for his refusal or hisincapacity to take pains. 

Finally there are the religious poems. From these we can best judge thereality of Chesterton's poetic impulse, for here, knowing thataffectation would be almost indecent, he has expressed what he had toexpress with a care denied to most of his other works. In one of hisessays, G. K. C. Exults in that matchless phrase of Vaughan, "highhumility. " He has both adopted and adapted this quality, and the resultsare wonderful. In _The Wise Men_ occurs this stanza:

 The Child that was ere worlds begun (. . . We need but walk a little way, We need but see a latch undone . . . ) The Child that played with moon and sun Is playing with a little hay. 

The superb antithesis leaves one struggling against that involuntarylittle gasp which is a reader's first tribute to a fine thought. Hecould be a great hymn writer, if he would. One of his poems, in fact, has found its way into The English Hymnal, where it competes (if one mayuse the word of a sacred song) with Recessional for the favour ofcongregations. If we take a glance at a few of the finest hymns, weshall find that they share certain obvious qualities: bold imagery, thevocabulary of conflict, an attitude of humility that is very nearly alsoone of great pride, and certain tricks of style. And when we lookthrough Chesterton's poems generally, we shall find that these areexactly the qualities they possess. 

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Transcriber's Note: The original equation was represented as clearlyas possible. An image of the original equation can be found in the htmlversion of this text. 

VI

THE RELIGION OF A DEBATER

IN his book on William Blake, Chesterton says that he is "personallyquite convinced that if every human being lived a thousand years, everyhuman being would end up either in utter pessimistic scepticism or inthe Catholic creed. " In course of time, in fact, everybody would have todecide whether they preferred to be an intellectualist or a mystic. Adebauch of intellectualism, lasting perhaps nine hundred and fiftyyears, is a truly terrible thing to contemplate. Perhaps it is safest toassert that if our lives were considerably lengthened, there would bemore mystics and more madmen. 

To Chesterton modern thought is merely the polite description of a noisycrowd of persons proclaiming that something or other is wrong. Mr. Bernard Shaw denounces meat and has been understood to denouncemarriage. Ibsen is said to have anathematized almost everything (bythose who have not read his works). Mr. MacCabe and Mr. Blatchford thinkthat, on the whole, there is no God, and Tolstoy told us that nearlyeverything we did, and quite all we wanted to do, was opposed to thespirit of Christ's teaching. Auberon Herbert disapproved of law, andJohn Davidson disapproved of life. Herbert Spencer objected togovernment, Passive Resisters to State education, and variouseducational reformers to education of any description. There are peoplewho would abolish our spelling, our clothing, our food and, mostemphatically, our drink. Mr. H. G. Wells adds the finishing touch tothis volume of denials, by blandly suggesting in an appendix to hisModern Utopia, headed "Scepticism of the Instrument, " that our sensesare so liable to err, that we can never be really sure of anything atall. This spirit of denial is extraordinarily infectious. A man beginsto suspect what he calls the "supernatural. " He joins an ethicalsociety, and before he knows where he is, he is a vegetarian. Therebellious moderns have a curious tendency to flock together inself-defence, even when they have nothing in common. The mereaggregation of denials rather attracts the slovenly and the unattached. The lack of positive dogma expressed by such a coalition encourages thesceptic and the uneducated, who do not realize that the deliberatesuppression of dogma is itself a dogma of extreme arrogance. We trusttoo much to the label, nowadays, and the brief descriptions we attach toourselves have a gradually increasing connotation. In politics forexample, the conservative creed, which originally contained the singlearticle that aristocracy, wealth and government should be in the samefew hands, now also implies adhesion to the economic doctrine ofprotection, and the political doctrine that unitary government ispreferable to federal. The liberal creed, based principally uponopposition to the conservative, and to a lesser degree upon disrespectfor the Established Church, has been enlarged concurrently with thelatter. The average liberal or conservative now feels himself in honourbound to assert or to deny political dogmas out of sheer loyalty to hisparty. This does not make for sanity. The only political creed in whicha man may reasonably expect to remain sane is Socialism, which iscatholic and not the least dependent upon other beliefs. Apart from theinconsiderable number of Socialists, the average politician follows inthe footsteps of those gentlemen already mentioned. He is not allowed tobelieve, so he contents himself with a denial of the other side'spromises. Assertion is infinitely more brain-wearing than denial. 

Side by side with the increase in those who deny is a growth in thenumbers of those who come to regard apathy, suspended judgment, or alack of interest in a religious matter as a state of positive belief. There are agnostics quite literally all over the place. Belief petersdown into acceptance, acceptance becomes a probability, a probabilitydeclines into a reasonable doubt, and a reasonable doubt drifts into "itis highly conjectural and indeed extremely unlikely, " or something ofthat sort. Tolerance was once an instrument for ensuring that truthshould not be suppressed; it is now an excuse for refusing to bother. There is, in fact, a growing disrespect for truth. A great many men wentto the stake years ago rather than admit the possibility that they werewrong; they protested, so far as human endurance allowed them toprotest, that they were orthodox and that their persecutors, and notthey, were the heretics. To-day a bunch of Cambridge men calls itself"The Heretics" and imagines it has found a clever title. At the sametime there is an apparent decline in the power to believe. The averagepolitician (the principal type of twentieth-century propagandist)hardly ever makes a speech which does not contain one at least of thefollowing phrases:

 "I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that . . . "

 "We are all subject to correction, but as far as we know . . . "

 "In this necessarily imperfect world . . . "

 "So far as one is able to judge . . . "

 "Appearances are notoriously deceptive, but . . . "

 "Human experience is necessarily limited to . . . "

 "We can never be really sure . . . "

 "Pilate asked, 'What is truth?' Ah, my brethren, what indeed?"

 "The best minds of the country have failed to come to an agreement on this question; one can only surmise . . . "

 "Art is long and life is short. Art to-day is even longer than it used to be. "

Now the politician, to do him justice, has retained the courage of hisconvictions to a greater extent than the orthodox believer in God. Menare still prepared to make Home Rule the occasion of bloodshed, or tospend the midnight hours denouncing apparent political heresies. Butwhereas the politician, like the orthodox believer once pronouncedapologetics, they now merely utter apologies. To-day, equipped as neverbefore with the heavy artillery of argument in the shape of HigherCriticism, research, blue-books, statistics, cheap publications, freelibraries, accessible information, public lectures, and goodness onlyknows what else, the fighting forces of the spiritual and temporaldecencies lie drowsing as in a club-room, placarded "Religion andpolitics must not be discussed here. "

All this, with the exception of the political references, is a summaryof Chesterton's claim that a return to orthodoxy is desirable andnecessary. It will be found at length in _Heretics_ and in the firstchapters of _Orthodoxy_, and sprinkled throughout all his writings of alater date than 1906 or so. He protests on more than one occasionagainst Mr. Shaw's epigram, which seems to him to contain the essence ofall that is wrong to-day, "The golden rule is that there is no goldenrule. " Chesterton insists that there is a golden rule, that it is a veryold one, and that it is known to a great many people, most of whombelong to the working classes. 

In his argument that, on the whole, the masses are (or were) right aboutreligion, and that the intellectuals are wrong, Chesterton isundoubtedly at his most bellicose and his sincerest. His is thepugnacity that prefers to pull down another's banner rather than toraise his own. His "defences" in _The Defendant_, and the six hundredodd cases made out by him in the columns of The Daily News are largelyand obviously inspired by the wish, metaphorically speaking, to punchsomebody's head. The fact that he is not a mere bully appears in theappeal to common decency which Chesterton would be incapable of omittingfrom an article. Nevertheless he prefers attack to defence. In war, theoffensive is infinitely more costly than the defensive. But incontroversy this is reversed. The opener of a debate is in a much moredifficult position than his opponent. The latter need only criticize theformer's case; he is not compelled to disclose his own defences. Chesterton used to have a grand time hoisting people on their ownpetards, and letting forth strings of epigrams at the expense of thosefrom whom he differed, and only incidentally revealing his own position. Then, as he tells us in the preface to _Orthodoxy_, when he hadpublished the saltatory series of indictments entitled _Heretics_, anumber of his critics said, in effect, "Please, Mr. Chesterton, whatare we to believe?" Mr. G. S. Street, in particular, begged forenlightenment. G. K. C. Joyously accepted the invitation, and wrote_Orthodoxy_, his most brilliant book. 

There are few works in the English language the brilliancy of which isso sustained. _Orthodoxy_ is a rapid torrent of epigrammaticallyexpressed arguments. Chesterton's method in writing it is that of thedigger wasp. This intelligent creature carries on the survival of thefittest controversy by paralyzing its opponent first, and thenproceeding to lay the eggs from which future fitness will proceed in theunresisting but still living body. Chesterton begins by paralyzing hisreader, by savagely attacking all the beliefs which the latter, if he bea modern and a sceptic, probably regards as first principles. Toleranceis dismissed, as we have just seen, as a mere excuse for not caring. Reason, that awful French goddess, is shown to be another apology. Nietzsche and various other authors to whom some of us have bent theknee are slaughtered without misery. Then Chesterton proceeds to theargument, the reader being by this time receptive enough to swallow acamel, on the sole condition that G. K. C. Has previously slightlytreacled the animal. 

Perhaps it would be more accurate to assert that at this pointChesterton pretends to begin his argument. As a matter of strict fact heonly describes his adventures in Fairyland, which is all the earth. Hetells us of his profound astonishment at the consistent recurrence ofapples on apple trees, and at the general jolliness of the earth. Hedescribes, very beautifully, some of the sensations of childhood makingthe all-embracing discovery that things are what they seem, and the evenmore joyful feeling of pretending that they are not, or that they willcease to be at any moment. A young kitten will watch a large cushion, which to it is a very considerable portion of the universe, flying at itwithout indicating any very appreciable surprise. A child, in the sameway, would not be surprised if his house suddenly developed wings andflew away. Chesterton cultivated this attitude of always expecting to besurprised by the most natural things in the world, until it became anobsession, and a part of his journalistic equipment. In a senseChesterton is the everlasting boy, the Undergraduate Who Would Not GrowUp. There must be few normally imaginative town-bred children to whomthe pointed upright area-railings do not appear an unsearchable armouryof spears or as walls of protective flames, temporarily frozen black sothat people should be able to enter and leave their house. Every childknows that the old Norse story of a sleeping Brunnhilde encircled byflames is true; to him or her, there is a Brunnhilde in every street, and the child knows that there it always has a chance of being thechosen Siegfried. But because this view of life is so much cosier thanthat of the grown-ups, Chesterton clings to his childhood's neat littleuniverse and weeps pathetically when anybody mentions Herbert Spencer, and makes faces when he hears the word Newton. He insists on a fair doleof surprises. "Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in theirstockings gifts of toys and sweets. Could I not be grateful to SantaClaus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?"

Now this fairyland business is frankly overdone. Chesterton conceives ofGod, having carried the Creation as far as this world, sitting down tolook at the new universe in a sort of ecstasy. "And God saw every thingthat he had made, and, behold it was very good. " He enjoyed His new toyimmensely, and as He sent the earth spinning round the sun, His pleasureincreased. So He said "Do it again" every time the sun had completed itscourse, and laughed prodigiously, and behaved like a happy child. Andso He has gone on to this day saying "Do it again" to the sun and themoon and the stars, to the animal creation, and the trees, and everyliving thing. So Chesterton pictures God, giving His name to whatothers, including Christians, call natural law, or the laws of God, orthe laws of gravitation, conservation of energy, and so on, but alwayslaws. For which reason, one is compelled to assume that in his opinionGod is now [1915] saying to Himself, "There's another bloody war, do itagain, sun, " and gurgling with delight. It is dangerous to wander infairyland, as Chesterton has himself demonstrated, "one might meet afairy. " It is not safe to try to look God in the face. A prophet inIsrael saw the glory of Jehovah, and though He was but the God of asmall nation, the prophet's face shone, and, so great was the vitalityhe absorbed from the great Source that he "was an hundred and twentyyears old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural forceabated. " That is the reverent Hebrew manner of conveying the glory ofGod. But Chesterton, cheerfully playing toss halfpenny among thefairies, sees an idiot child, and calls it God. 

Fortunately for the argument, Chesterton has no more to say about hisexcursion in Fairyland after his return. He goes on to talk about thesubstitutes which people have invented for Christianity. The Inner Lighttheory has vitriol sprayed upon it. Marcus Aurelius, it is explained, acted according to the Inner Light. "He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats leading the Simple Life get up early in themorning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games inthe amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. " Thepresent writer does not profess any ability to handle philosophicproblems philosophically; it seems to him, however, that if Chestertonhad been writing a few years later, he would have attempted toextinguish the latest form of the Inner Light, that "intuition" whichhas been so much associated with M. Bergson's teachings. 

The Inner Light is finally polished off as follows:

 Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows anybody knows how it would work; anybody who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones should worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. . . . Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man has not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. 

Continuing his spiritual autobiography, Chesterton describes his gradualemergence from the wonted agnosticism of sixteen through the mediumshipof agnostic literature. Once again that remark of Bacon's showed itselfto be true, "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, butdepth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. " A man mayread Huxley and Bradlaugh, who knew their minds, and call himself anagnostic. But when it comes to reading their followers, there's anotherstory to tell. What especially struck Chesterton was the wholesaleself-contradictoriness of the literature of agnosticism. One man wouldsay that Christianity was so harmful that extermination was the leastthat could be desired for it, and another would insist that it hadreached a harmless and doddering old age. A writer would assert thatChristianity was a religion of wrath and blood, and would point to theInquisition, and to the religious wars which have at one time or anotherswept over the civilized world. But by the time the reader's blood wasup, he would come across some virile atheist's proclamation of thefeeble, mattoid character of the religion in question, as illustrated byits quietist saints, the Quakers, the Tolstoyans, and non-resisters ingeneral. When he had cooled down, he would run into a denunciation ofthe asceticism of Christianity, the monastic system, hair-shirts, and soon. Then he would come across a sweeping condemnation of its sensualluxuriousness, its bejewelled chalices, its pompous rituals, theextravagance of its archbishops, and the like. Christianity "was abusedfor being too plain and for being too coloured. " And then the suddenobvious truth burst upon Chesterton, What if Christianity was the happymean?

 Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad--in various ways. I tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history. No man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on _entrées_. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant _entrées_, not in the bread and wine. 

Nevertheless, Christianity was centrifugal rather than centripetal; itwas not a mere average, but a centre of gravity; not a compromise, but aconflict. Christ was not half-God and half-man, like Hercules, but"perfect God and perfect man. " Man was not only the highest, but alsothe lowest. "The Church was positive on both points. One can hardlythink too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one'ssoul. "

At this point agreement with Mr. Chesterton becomes difficult. Christianity, he tells us, comes in with a flaming sword and performsneat acts of bisection. It separates the sinner from the sin, and tellsus to love the former and hate the latter. He also tells us that nopagan would have thought of this. Leaving aside the question whether ornot Plato was a Christian, it may be pointed out that whereas Chestertoncondemns Tolstoyanism whenever he recognizes it, he here proclaimsTolstoy's doctrine. On the whole, however, the mild perverseness of thechapter on _The Paradoxes of Christianity_ leaves its major implicationssafe. It does not matter greatly whether we prefer to regardChristianity as a centre of gravity, or a point of balance. We need onlypause to note Chesterton personifies this dualism. _The Napoleon ofNotting Hill_ is the arrangement of little bits of iron--the inhabitantsof London, in this case--around the two poles of a fantastic magnet, ofwhich one is Adam Wayne, the fanatic, and the other, Auberon Quin, thehumorist. In _The Ball and the Cross_ the diagram is repeated. JamesTurnbull, the atheist, and Evan MacIan, the believer, are the two poles. We speak in a loose sort of way of opposite poles when we wish toexpress separation. But, in point of fact, they symbolize connection farmore exactly. They are absolutely interdependent. The whole essence of aNorth and a South Pole is that we, knowing where one is, should be ableto say where the other is. Nobody has ever suggested a universe in whichthe North Pole wandered about at large. This is the idea whichChesterton seems to have captured and introduced into his definition ofChristianity. 

Democracy, to Chesterton, is the theory that one man is as good asanother; Christianity, he finds, is the virtual sanctification bysupernatural authority of democracy. He points out the incompatibilityof political democracy, for example, with the determinism to which Mr. Blatchford's logical atheism has brought him. If man is the creature ofhis heredity and his environment, as Mr. Blatchford asserts, and if aslum-bred heredity and a slum environment do not make for highintelligence, then obviously it is against the best interests of theState to allow the slum inhabitant to vote. On the other hand, it isentirely to the best interests of the State to entrust its affairs tothe aristocracy, whose breeding and environment gives it an enormousamount of intelligence. Christianity, by proclaiming that every man'sbody is the temple of the Holy Ghost, insists both upon the necessity ofabolishing the slums and of honouring the slum-dwellers as sharers withthe rest of humanity in a common sonship. This is the case forSocialism, it may be pointed out parenthetically, and Chesterton has letit slip past him. He insists that orthodoxy is the best conceivableguardian of liberty, for the somewhat far-fetched reason that nobeliever in miracles would have such "a deep and sincere faith in theincurable routine of the cosmos" as to cling to the theory that menshould not have the liberty to work changes. If a man believed in thefreedom of God, in fact, he would have to believe in the freedom of man. The obvious answer to which is that he generally doesn't. Christianitymade for eternal vigilance, Chesterton maintains, whereas Buddhism keptits eye on the Inner Light--which means, in fact, kept it shut. Inproof, or at least in confirmation of this, he points to the statues ofChristian saints and of the Buddha. The former keep their eyes openwide, the latter keep their eyes firmly closed. Vigilance, however, doesnot always make for liberty--the vigilance of the Inquisition, forexample. Leaving out of account this and other monstrous exceptions, wemight say spiritual liberty, perhaps, but not political liberty, not, atany rate, since the days of Macchiavelli, and the divorce of Church andState. 

 By insisting specially on the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference--Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, religious indignation--Christendom. Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself. By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself. 

In concluding the book, Chesterton joyously refutes a few anti-Christianarguments by means of his extraordinary knack of seeing the large andobvious, and therefore generally overlooked things. He believes inChristianity because he is a rationalist, and the evidence in its favourhas convinced him. The arguments with which he deals are these. That menare much like beasts, and probably related to them. Answer: yes, but menare also quite wonderfully unlike them in many important respects. Thatprimeval religion arose in ignorance and fear. Answer: we know nothingabout prehistoric man, because he was prehistoric, therefore we cannotsay where he got his religion from. But "the whole human race has atradition of the Fall. " And so on: the argument that Christ was a poorsheepish and ineffectual professor of a quiet life is answered by theflaming energy of His earthly mission; the suggestion that Christianitybelongs to the Dark Ages is countered by the historical fact that it"was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. " It was thepath that led from Roman to modern civilization, and we are here becauseof it. And the book ends with a peroration that might be likened to atorrent, were it not for the fact that torrents are generally narrowand shallow. It is a most remarkable exhibition of energy, a case fromwhich flippancies and irrelevancies have been removed, and where thecentral conviction advances irresistibly. Elsewhere in the bookChesterton had been inconsequent, darting from point to point, lungingat an opponent one moment, formulating a theory in the next, andproducing an effect which, if judged by sample, would be consideredbizarre and undirected. The book contains a few perversities, of course. The author attempts to rebut the idea "that priests have blightedsocieties with bitterness and gloom, " by pointing out that in one or twopriest-ridden countries wine and song and dance abound. Yes, but ifpeople are jollier in France and Spain and Italy than in savage Africa, it is due not to the priests so much as to the climate which makes winecheap and an open-air life possible. No amount of priests would be ableto set the inhabitants of the Belgian Congo dancing around a maypolesinging the while glad songs handed down by their fathers. No amount ofpriests would be able to make the festive Eskimo bask in the sun andsing in chorus when there wasn't any sun and it was altogether too coldto open their mouths wide in the open air. In fact the priests are notthe cause of the blight where it exists, just as they are not the causeof the jolliness, when there is any. But _Orthodoxy_ is Chesterton'ssincerest book. It is perhaps the only one of the whole lot in thecourse of which he would not be justified in repeating a remark whichbegins one of the _Tremendous Trifles_, "Every now and then I haveintroduced into my essays an element of truth. "

Twice upon a time there was a Samuel Butler who wrote exhilaratingly anddied and left the paradoxical contents of his notebooks to be publishedby posterity. The first (i. E. Of Hudibras, not of Erewhon) had manylively things to say on the question of orthodoxy, being the forerunnerof G. K. C. And I am greatly tempted to treat Samuel Butler as an ancestorto be described at length. Chesterton might well have said, "It is adangerous thing to be too inquisitive, and search too narrowly into atrue Religion, for 50, 000 Bethshemites were destroyed only for lookinginto the Ark of the Covenant, and ten times as many have been ruined forlooking too curiously into that Booke in which that Story isrecorded"--in fact in _Magic_ he very nearly did say the same thing. Hewould have liked (as who would not?) to have been the author of thesaying that "Repentant Teares are the waters upon which the Spirit ofGod moves, " or that "There is no better Argument to prove that theScriptures were written by Divine Inspiration, than that excellentsaying of our Savior, If any man will go to Law with thee for thy cloke, give him thy Coate also. " He might well have written dozens of thosepuns and aphorisms of Butler which an unkind fate has omitted from thethings we read, and even from the things we quote. But Butler providesan answer to Chesterton, for he was an intelligent anticipator whoforesaw exactly what would happen when orthodoxy, which is to say theinjunction to shout with the larger crowd, should be proclaimed as theeasiest way out of religious difficulties. Before a reader has finallymade up his mind on _Orthodoxy_ (and it is highly desirable that heshould do so), let him consider two little texts:

 "They that profess Religion and believe it consists in frequenting of Sermons, do, as if they should say They have a great desire to serve God, but would faine be perswaded to it. Why should any man suppose that he pleases God by patiently hearing an Ignorant fellow render Religion ridiculous?"

 "He [a Catholic] prefers his Church merely for the Antiquity of it, and cares not how sound or rotten it be, so it be but old. He takes a liking to it as some do to old Cheese, only for the blue Rottenness of it. If he had lived in the primitive Times he had never been a _Christian_; for the Antiquity of the _Pagan_ and _Jewish_ Religion would have had the same Power over him against the _Christian_, as the old _Roman_ has against the modern Reformation. "

Here we leave Samuel Butler. The majority stands the largest chance ofbeing right through the sheer operation of the law of averages. Butsomehow one does not easily imagine a mob passing through the gate thatis narrow and the way that is narrow. One prefers to think of men goingup in ones and twos, perhaps even in loneliness, and rejoicing at thestrange miracle of judgment that all their friends should be assembledat the journey's end. 

But the final criticism of Chesterton's _Orthodoxy_ is that it is notorthodox. He claims that he is "concerned only to discuss . . . Thecentral Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles'Creed)" and, "When the word 'orthodoxy' is used here it means theApostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christianuntil a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of thosewho held such a creed. " In other words he counts as orthodox Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Russians, Nonconformists, Lutherans, Calvinists, and all manner of queer fish, possibly Joanna Southcott, Mrs. Annie Besant, and Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. He might even, bystretching a point or two (which is surely permissible by the rules oftheir game), rope in the New Theologians. Now this may be evidence ofextraordinary catholicity, but not of orthodoxy. Chesterton stands byand applauds the Homoousians scalping the Homoiousians, but he isapparently willing to leave the Anglican and the Roman Catholic on thesame plane of orthodoxy, which is absurd. We cannot all be right, eventhe Duke in _Magic_ would not be mad enough to assert that. And theaverage Christian would absolutely refuse his adherence to a statementof orthodoxy that left the matter of supreme spiritual authority an openquestion. 

In the fifteenth century practically every Englishman would havedeclared with some emphasis that it lay in the Pope of Rome. In thetwentieth century practically every Englishman would declare with equalemphasis that it did not. This change of opinion was accompanied byconsiderable ill-feeling on both sides, and was, as it were, illuminatedby burning martyrs. The men of both parties burned in both an activeand a passive sense. Those charming Tudor sisters, Bloody Mary (as theAnglicans call her) and Bloody Bess (as the Roman Catholicsaffectionately name her) left a large smudge upon accepted ideas oforthodoxy; charred human flesh was a principal constituent of it. Themark remains, the differences are far greater, but, to Chesterton, bothAnglican and Roman Catholic are "orthodox. " Of such is the illimitableorthodoxy of an ethical society, or of a body of Theosophists who"recognize the essential unity of all creeds and religions"--the liars!Chesterton tells us that Messrs. Shaw, Kipling, Wells, Ibsen and othersare heretics, because of their doctrines. But he gives us no ideawhether the Pope of Rome, who sells indulgences, is a heretic. And asthe Pope is likely to outlive Messrs. Shaw, etc. , by perhaps a thousandyears, it is possible that Chesterton has been attacking the ephemeralheresies, while leaving the major ones untouched. In effect, Chestertontells us no more than that we should shout with the largest crowd. Butthe largest crowd prefers, just now, not to do anything so clamorous. 

The most curious feature about the present position of Christianity isthe energy with which its opponents combine to keep it going. While Mr. Robert Blatchford continues to argue that man's will is not free, andSir Oliver Lodge continues to maintain that it is, the Doctrine of theResurrection is safe; it is not even attacked. But the net result of allthose peculiar modern things called "movements" is a state of immobilitylike a nicely balanced tug-of-war. Perhaps a Rugby scrum would make abetter comparison. 

 The great and grave changes in our political civilization all belong to the early nineteenth century, not to the later. They belong to the black-and-white epoch, when men believed fixedly in Toryism, in Protestantism, in Calvinism, in Reform, and not infrequently in Revolution. And whatever each man believed in, he hammered at steadily, without scepticism: and there was a time when the Established Church might have fallen, and the House of Lords nearly fell. It was because Radicals were wise enough to be constant and consistent; it was because Radicals were wise enough to be conservative. . . . Let beliefs fade fast and frequently if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself. The net result of all our political suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism, Communism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureaucracy--the plain fruit of them all is that Monarchy and the House of Lords will remain. The net result of all the new religions will be that the Church of England will not (for heaven knows how long) be disestablished. It was Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame Graham, Bernard Shaw, and Auberon Herbert, who between them, with bowed, gigantic backs, bore up the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

It is on these grounds that we must believe that, even as the Churchsurvives, and prevails, in order to get a hearing when the atheist andthe New Theologian have finished shouting themselves hoarse at eachother, so must political creeds be in conformity with the doctrines ofthe Church. Such is the foundation of democracy, according toChesterton. Will anybody revise his political views on this basis?Probably not. Every Christian believes that his political opinions arethoroughly Christian, and so entire is the disrepute into which atheismhas fallen as a philosophy of life, that a great many atheists likewiseprotest the entire Christianity of their politics. We are all democratsto-day, in one sense or another; each of us more loosely than hisneighbour. It is strange that by the criterion of almost every livingman who springs to the mind as a representative democrat, Chesterton isthe most undemocratic of us all. This, however, needs a separate chapterof explanation. 

VII

THE POLITICIAN WHO COULD NOT TELL THE TIME

SOMEWHERE at the back of all Chesterton's political and religious ideaslies an ideal country, a Utopia which actually existed. Its name is theMiddle Ages. If some unemployed Higher Critic chose to undertake theappalling task of reading steadily through all the works of G. K. C. , copying out those passages in which there was any reference to theMiddle Ages, the result would be a description of a land flowing withmilk and honey. The inhabitants would be large, strong Christian men, and red-haired, womanly women. Their children would be unschooled, saveby the Church. They would all live in houses of their own, on landsbelonging to them. Their faith would be one. They would speak Latin as asort of Esperanto, and drink enormous quantities of good beer. TheChurch--but I have found the passage relating to the Church:

 Religion, the immortal maiden, has been a maid-of-all-work as well as a servant of mankind. She provided men at once with the theoretic laws of an unalterable cosmos; and also with the practical rules of the rapid and thrilling game of morality. She taught logic to the student and taught fairy tales to the children; it was her business to confront the nameless gods whose fear is on all flesh, and also to see that the streets were spotted with silver and scarlet, that there was a day for wearing ribbons or an hour for ringing bells. 

The inhabitants of this happy realm would be instinctively democratic, and no woman would demand a vote there. They would have that exaltednotion of patriotism that works outwards from the village pump to theuniverse at large. They would understand all humanity because theyunderstood themselves. They would understand themselves because theywould have no newspapers to widen their interests and so make themshallower. 

In _Magic_, as we have seen, Chesterton's mouthpiece, the Conjuror, gaveus to understand that it was better to believe in Apollo than merely todisbelieve in God. The Chestertonian Middle Ages are like Apollo; theydid not exist, but they make an admirable myth. For Chesterton, incommon with the rest of us, flourishes on myths like the green bay; we, however, happen not to know, in most cases, when our myths have afoundation. Mankind demands myths--and it has them. Some day a Historyof the World's Myths will be compiled. It will show humanity climbingperilous peaks in pursuit of somebody's misinterpretations of somebodyelse's books, or fighting bloodily because somebody asserted or deniedthat a nation was the chosen one, or invading new continents, physicalor metaphysical, because of legendary gold to be found therein, or infact committing all its follies under the inspiration of myths--as infact it has done. The Middle Ages are to Chesterton what King Alfred wasto the Chartists and early Radicals. They believed that in his daysEngland was actually governed on Chartist principles. So it happens thattwo Radical papers of the early part of last century actually calledthemselves The Alfred, and that Major Cartwright spent a considerableamount of energy in inducing the Greeks to substitute pikes for bayonetsin their struggles against the Turks, on the grounds that the pike wasused in Alfred's England. 

So there we have Chesterton believing devoutly that that servile state, stricken with plague, and afflicted with death in all its forms, is thedreamland of the saints. His political principles, roughly speaking, areEngland was decent once--let us apply the same recipe to the England ofto-day. His suggestions, therefore, are rather negative than positive. He would dam the flood of modern legislative tendencies because it istaking England farther away from his Middle Ages. But he will not say"do this" about anything, because in the Middle Ages they made few laws, not having, in point of fact, the power to enforce those offencesagainst moral and economic law which then took the place of legislation. 

It is impossible to say to what extent Chesterton has surrenderedhimself to this myth; whether he has come to accept it because he likedit, or in order to please his friend, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, from whomG. K. C. Never differs politically. Once they stood side by side anddebated against Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells, arguing from Socialism to beer, and thence to religion. 

In January, 1908, Chesterton accepted the invitation of the Editor ofThe New Age to explain why he did not call himself a Socialist, in spiteof his claim to possess "not only a faith in democracy, but a greattenderness for revolution. " The explanation is complicated, to say theleast. In the first place Chesterton does not want people to share, theyshould give and take. In the second place, as a democrat (which nobodyelse is) he has a vast respect (which nobody else has) for the workingclasses. And

 one thing I should affirm as certain, the whole smell and sentiment and general ideal of Socialism they detest and disdain. No part of the community is so specially fixed in those forms and feelings which are opposite to the tone of most Socialists; the privacy of homes, the control of one's own children, the minding of one's own business. I look out of my back windows over the black stretch of Battersea, and I believe I could make up a sort of creed, a catalogue of maxims, which I am certain are believed, and believed strongly, by the overwhelming mass of men and women as far as the eye can reach. For instance, that an Englishman's house is his castle, and that awful proprieties ought to regulate admission to it; that marriage is a real bond, making jealousy and marital revenge at the least highly pardonable; that vegetarianism and all pitting of animal against human rights is a silly fad; that on the other hand to save money to give yourself a fine funeral is not a silly fad, but a symbol of ancestral self-respect; that when giving treats to friends or children, one should give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them; that there is nothing illogical in being furious because Tommy has been coldly caned by a schoolmistress and then throwing saucepans at him yourself. All these things they believe; they are the only people who do believe them; and they are absolutely and eternally right. They are the ancient sanities of humanity; the ten commandments of man. 

A week later, Mr. H. G. Wells, who at that time had not yet broken awayfrom organized Socialism, but was actually a member of the ExecutiveCommittee of the Fabian Society, wrote a reply to the case againstSocialism which had been stated by Chesterton, and, a week earlier, byMr. Hilaire Belloc. He attempted to get Chesterton to look facts in theface. He pointed out that as things are "I do not see how Belloc andChesterton can stand for anything but a strong State as against thosewild monsters of property, the strong, big, private owners. " Supposethat Chesterton isn't a Socialist, is he more on the side of theSocialists or on that of the Free Trade Liberal capitalists andlandlords? "It isn't an adequate reply to say [of Socialism] that nobodystood treat there, and that the simple, generous people like to beattheir own wives and children on occasion in a loving and intimatemanner, and that they won't endure the spirit of Sidney Webb. "

A fortnight later, Chesterton replied. But, though many have engagedwith him in controversy, I doubt if anybody has ever pinned him down toa fact or an argument. On this occasion, G. K. C. Politely refused even torefer to the vital point of the case of Mr. H. G. Wells. On the otherhand he wrote a very jolly article about beer and "tavern hospitality. "The argument marked time for two weeks more, when Mr. Belloc once againentered the lists. The essence of his contribution is "I premise thatman, in order to be normally happy, tolerably happy, must own. "Collectivism will not let him own. The trouble about the present stateof society is that people do not own enough. The remedy proposed will beworse than the disease. Then Mr. Bernard Shaw had a look in. 

In the course of his lengthy article he gave "the Chesterbelloc"--"avery amusing pantomime elephant"--several shrewd digs in the ribs. Itclaimed, according to G. B. S. , to be the Zeitgeist. "To which we reply, bluntly, but conclusively, 'Gammon!'" The rest was mostly amiablepersonalities. Mr. Shaw owned up to musical cravings, compared withwhich the Chesterbelloc tendency to consume alcohol was as nothing. Healso jeered very pleasantly at Mr. Belloc's power to cause a stampede ofChesterton's political and religious ideas. "For Belloc's sakeChesterton says he believes literally in the Bible story of theResurrection. For Belloc's sake he says he is not a Socialist. On arecent occasion I tried to drive him to swallow the Miracle of St. Januarius for Belloc's sake; but at that he stuck. He pleaded hisbelief in the Resurrection story. He pointed out very justly that Ibelieve in lots of things just as miraculous as the Miracle of St. Januarius; but when I remorselessly pressed the fact that he did notbelieve that the blood of St. Januarius reliquefies miraculously everyyear, the Credo stuck in his throat like Amen in Macbeth's. He had gotdown at last to his irreducible minimum of dogmatic incredulity, andcould not, even with the mouth of the bottomless pit yawning beforeBelloc, utter the saving lie. "

By this time the discussion was definitely off Socialism. Chestertonproduced another article, _The Last of the Rationalists_, in reply toMr. Shaw, from which one gathered what one had been previously suspectedthat "you [namely Mr. Shaw, but in practice both the oppositioncontroversialists] have confined yourselves to charming essays on ourtwo charming personalities. " And there they stopped. 

The year following this bout of personalities saw the publication of aremarkably brilliant book by Chesterton, _George Bernard Shaw_, inwhich, one might have expected, the case against the political creedrepresented by G. B. S. Might have been carried a trifle farther. Insteadof which it was not carried anything like so far. Chesterton jeered atMr. Shaw's vegetarianism, denied his democracy, but decided that on thewhole he was a good republican, "in the literal and Latin sense; hecares more for the Public Thing than for any private thing. " He ends thechapter entitled "The Progressive" by saying the kindest things he eversaid about any body of Socialists. 

 I have in my time had my fling at the Fabian Society, at the pedantry of schemes, the arrogance of experts; nor do I regret it now. But when I remember that other world against which it reared its bourgeois banner of cleanliness and common sense, I will not end this chapter without doing it decent honour. Give me the drain pipes of the Fabians rather than the panpipes of the later poets; the drain pipes have a nicer smell. 

The reader may have grasped by this time the fact that Chesterton'sobjections to Socialism were based rather on his dislike of what theworking man calls "mucking people about" than on any economic grounds. He made himself the sworn enemy of any Bill before Parliament whichcontained any proposals to appoint inspectors. He took the line that thesacredness of the home diminishes visibly with the entrance of the gascollector, and disappears down the kitchen sink with the arrival of theschool attendance officer. In those of his writings which I have notseen I have no doubt there are pleadings for the retention of thecesspool, because it is the last moat left to the Englishman's house, which is his castle. It is difficult to believe in the completesincerity of such an attitude. The inspector is the chief enemy of thebad landlord and employer, he is a fruit of democracy. In the early daysof the factory system, when mercilessly long hours were worked bychildren and women, when legislation had failed to ameliorate theconditions of employment, because the employers were also themagistrates, and would not enforce laws against themselves, the greatReform Bill agitation, which so nearly caused a revolution in thiscountry, came to an end, having in 1832 achieved a partial success. Butthe new House of Commons did not at once realize how partial it was, andat first it regarded the interests of working men with something of theintensity of the Liberal Government of 1906, which had not yet come toappreciate the new and portentous Labour Party at its true worth. So in1833 inspectors were appointed for the first time. This very briefexcursion into history is sufficient justification for refusing to takeseriously those who would have us believe that inspectors arenecessarily the enemies of the human race. Chesterton's theory thatmiddle-class Socialists are people who want to do things to the poor inthe direction of regimenting them finds an easy refutation. When, in1910, the whole of England fell down before the eloquence of Mr. LloydGeorge, and consented to the Insurance Bill, the one body of people whostood out and fought that Bill was that middle-class Socialist body, theFabian Society. It is sometimes desirable, for purposes of controversy, to incarnate a theory or objection. Chesterton lumped together all hisviews on the alleged intentions of the Socialists to interfere in thenatural and legitimate happinesses of the working class, and called thiscurious composite Mr. Sidney Webb. So through many volumes Mr. Webb'sname is continually bobbing up, like an irrepressible Aunt Sally, andhaving to be thwacked into a temporary disappearance. But this is onlydone for literary effect. To heave a brick at a man is both simpler andmore amusing than to arraign a system or a creed. A reader enjoys thefeeling that his author is a clever dog who is making it devilishlyuncomfortable for his opponents. His appreciation would be considerablyless if the opponent in question was a mere theory. In point of fact, Chesterton is probably a warm admirer of Mr. And Mrs. Sidney Webb. Whenthey founded (in 1909) their National Committee for the Prevention ofDestitution, designed to educate the British public in the ideas of whathas been called Webbism, especially those contained in the MinorityReport of the Poor Law Commission, one of the first to join was G. K. Chesterton. 

The word Socialism covers a multitude of Socialists, some of whom arenot. The political faith of a man, therefore, must not be judged uponhis attitude towards Socialism, if we have anything more definite to goupon. Chesterton overflows, so to speak, with predilections, such asbeer (in a political sense, of course), opposition to the Jingo, on theone hand, and to middle-class faddery, such as vegetarianism, on theother, and so on. Anybody might indulge in most of his views, in fact, without incurring severe moral reprobation. But there is an exceptionwhich, unfortunately, links Chesterton pretty firmly with the sweater, and other undesirable lords of creation. He is an anti-suffragist. 

In a little essay Chesterton once wrote on Tolstoy, he argued that thething that has driven men mad was logic, from the beginning of time, whereas the thing that has kept them sane was mysticism. Tolstoy, lacking mysticism, was at the mercy of his pitiless logic, which ledhim to condemn things which are entirely natural and human. Thisattitude, one feels (and it is only to be arrived at by feeling), isabsolutely right. We all start off with certain scarce expressiblefeelings that certain things are fundamentally decent and permissible, and that others are the reverse, just as we do not take our idea ofblackness and whiteness from a text-book. If anybody proposed that allScotsmen should be compelled to eat sago with every meal, the idea, although novel to most of us, would be instantly dismissed, even, it isprobable, by those with sago interests, because it would be contrary toour instinct of what is decent. In fact, we all believe in naturalrights, or at any rate we claim the enjoyment of some. Now naturalrights have no logical basis. The late Professor D. G. Ritchie verybrilliantly examined the theory of natural rights, and by means of muchsubtle dissection and argument found that there were no natural rights;law was the only basis of privilege. It is quite easy to be convinced bythe author's delightful dialectic, but the conviction is apt to vanishsuddenly in the presence of a dog being ill-treated. 

Now on a basis of common decency--the basis of all democratic politicalthought--the case for woman suffrage is irresistible. It is not decentthat the sweated woman worker should be denied what, in the opinion ofmany competent judges, might be the instrument of her salvation. It isnot decent that women should share a disqualification with lunatics, criminals, children, and no others of their own race. It is not decentthat the sex which knows most about babies should have no opportunity toinfluence directly legislation dealing with babies. It is not decentthat a large, important and necessary section of humanity, with highlygregarious instincts, should not be allowed to exercise the onlygregarious function which concerns the whole nation at once. 

These propositions are fundamental; if a man or woman cannot acceptthem, then he is at heart an "anti, " even if he has constructed forhimself a quantity of reasons, religious, ethical, economic, politicalor what not, why women should be allowed to vote. Every suffrageargument is, or can be, based on decencies, not on emotion orstatistics. 

Chesterton bases his case on decencies, but they are not the decenciesthat matter. In _What's Wrong with the World_ he insists on theindecency of allowing women to cease to be amateurs within the home, orof allowing them to earn a living in a factory or office, or ofallowing them to share in the responsibility for taking the lives ofcondemned murderers, or of allowing them to exercise the coercion whichis government, which is a sort of pyramid, with a gallows on top, theultimate resort of coercive power. And in these alleged indecencies (theword is not altogether my own) lies Chesterton's whole case againstallowing any woman to vote. Into these propositions his whole case, asexpressed in _What's Wrong with the World_, is faithfully condensed. 

Well now, are these indecencies sincere or simulated? First, as regardsthe amateur, Chesterton's case is that the amateur is necessary, inorder to counteract the influences of the specialist. Man is nowadaysthe specialist. He is confined to making such things as the thousandthpart of a motor-car or producing the ten-thousandth part of a dailynewspaper. By being a specialist he is made narrow. Woman, with thewhole home on her hands, has a multiplicity of tasks. She is theamateur, and as such she is free. If she is put into politics orindustry she becomes a specialist, and as such becomes a slave. This isa pretty piece of reasoning, but it is absolutely hollow. There are fewwomen who do not gladly resign part at least of their sovereignty, ifthey have the chance, to a maid-servant (who may be, and, in fact, usually is an amateur, but is not free to try daring experiments) or tosuch blatant specialists as cooks and nursemaids. Nobody is the leastbit shocked by the existence of specialist women. Indeed, it is a solemnfact, that were it not for them Chesterton would be unable to procure asingle article of clothing. He would be driven to the fig-leaf, andwould stand a good chance of not getting even so much, now that so manygardeners are women. We are terribly dependent upon the specialistwoman. That is why the amateur within the home is beginning to wonderwhether, on the whole, man _is_ so very much dependent upon her. Shecomes to rely more and more upon the specialist women to help her feed, clothe, and nurse her husband. She has so much done for her that shecomes to understand the remainder left to her far better. She becomes aspecialist herself, and feels kindly towards other specialists. Then shedemands a vote and meets Chesterton, who tells her to go and mind thebaby and be as free as she likes with the domestic apparatus for makingpastry, when her baby is in point of fact being brought up by otherwomen at a Montessori school to be much more intelligent and much moreof a specialist than she herself is ever likely to be, and when sheknows that her dyspeptic husband has an absolute loathing for theamateurishness that expresses itself in dough. 

Then there is the alleged wrongness of permitting women to work infactories and offices. We are all probably prepared to admit that wehave been shocked at the commercial employment of women. But it hasprobably occurred to few of us that the shock was due simply to theircommercial employment. It was due to their low wages and to thebeastliness of their employers. When they drew decent wages and theiremployers were decent men we were not the least bit hurt. But when anemployer made use of the amateurishness of young girls to underpay them, and then make deductions from their wages on various trivial pretexts, and put them to work in overcrowded factories and offices, then we allfelt acutely that an indecency was being committed. The obviousdemocratic remedy is the duckpond, but in our great cities none remain. So one is sorrowfully brought round to the slower but surer expedient ofattacking and destroying the amateurishness of women at the point whereit is dangerous to them. Amateurishness has encircled women in the pastlike the seven rivers of Hades. Every now and again a daring excursionwas made in order that the wisdom of those imprisoned within should beadded to our store. A good deal of aboriginal amateurishness has beenevaporating as the woman doctor has been taking the place of thetime-honoured amateur dispenser of brimstone and treacle, and evenhorrider things. And will Chesterton maintain that it were better for usall if certain women had remained amateurs and had not studied andspecialized so that, in time of need, they were enabled to tend the sickand wounded at home, in Flanders and in France, and wherever the powersof evil had been at work?

Lastly, is it decent that women should share the awful responsibilitywhich is attached to the ultimate control of the State, when the Stateis compelled to use the gallows? If women vote, they are responsible forwhatever blood is shed by the State. Yes, but, Mr. Chesterton, aren'tthey just as responsible for it in any case? Don't women help to pay thehangman's wages with every ounce of tea or of sweets they buy? Ifcapital punishment is obscene, then we can do without it, and a woman'svote will not make her a sharer in the evil. If capital punishment ismorally stimulating to the nation at large, there is no reason why womenshould not be allowed to share in the stimulation. Now what has becomeof Chesterton's decencies? It is indeed saddening that a man who nevermisses an opportunity to proclaim himself a democrat should take hisstand on this matter beside Lord Curzon, and in opposition to theinstinctively and essentially democratic views proclaimed by such men asMessrs. H. W. Nevinson and Philip Snowden. 

In an article in The Illustrated London News on June 1st, 1912, Chesterton showed whose side he was on with unusual distinctness. Thesubject of the article was Earnestness; the moral, that it was a badquality, the property of Socialists and Anti-Socialists, andSuffragists, and that apathy was best of all. It concluded:

 Neither Socialists nor Suffragists will smash our politics, I fear. The worst they can do is to put a little more of the poison of earnestness into the strong, unconscious sanity of our race, and disturb that deep and just indifference on which all things rest; the quiet of the mother or the carelessness of the child. 

In remarkably similar words, the late Procurator of the Holy Synod ofthe Russian Church, C. P. Pobedonostsev, condemned democracy in hisbook, The Reflexions of a Russian Statesman, and praised _vis inertiæ_for its preservative effects. But the Russian had more consistency; hedid not merely condemn votes for women, but also votes for men; and notonly votes, but education, the jury system, the freedom of the Press, religious freedom, and many other things. 

Putting aside the question of woman suffrage, Chesterton's views ondemocracy may be further illustrated by reference to the proceedings ofthe Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House ofCommons, 1909, on Stage Plays (Censorship). He may speak for himselfhere. 

Mr. G. K. Chesterton is called in, and examined. 

 Question 6141 (_Chairman_). I understand that you appear here to give evidence on behalf of the average man?

 G. K. C. Yes, that is so. I represent the audience, in fact. I am neither a dramatist nor a dramatic critic. I do not quite know why I am here, but if anybody wants to know my views on the subject they are these: I am for the censorship, but I am against the present Censor. I am very strongly for the censorship, and I am very strongly against the present Censor. The whole question I think turns on the old democratic objection to despotism. I am an old-fashioned person and I retain the old democratic objection to despotism. I would trust 12 ordinary men, but I cannot trust one ordinary man. 

 6142. You prefer the jury to the judge?--Yes, exactly; that is the very point. It seems to me that if you have one ordinary man judging, it is not his ordinariness that appears, but it is his extraordinariness that appears. Take anybody you like--George III for instance. I suppose that George III was a pretty ordinary man in one sense. People called him Farmer George. He was very like a large number of other people, but when he was alone in his position things appeared in him that were not ordinary--that he was a German, and that he was mad, and various other facts. Therefore, my primary principle----

 6143. He gloried in the name of Briton?--I know he did. That is what showed him to be so thoroughly German. 

 LORD NEWTON. He spelt it wrongly. 

 WITNESS. Therefore, speaking broadly, I would not take George III's opinion, but I would take the opinion of 12 George III's on any question. 

The taking of the "evidence" took several hours, but it never yieldedanything more than this: The local jury is a better judge of what isright and proper than a single Censor. Juries may differ in theirjudgments; but why not? Is it not desirable that Hampstead and Highgateshould each have an opportunity of finding out independently what theylike? May they not compete in taste one against the other?

This introduction of the question of dramatic censorship invites aslight digression. Chesterton has a decided regard for a dramaticcensorship. A book need not be censored, because it need not befinished by its reader, but it may be difficult to get out of a theatrein the course of a performance. And there are performances of plays, written by "irresponsible modern philosophers, " which, to Chesterton, seem to deserve suppression. A suggestive French farce may be a dirtyjoke, but it is at least a joke; but a play which raises the question Ismarriage a failure? and answers it in the affirmative, is a perniciousphilosophy. The answer to this last contention is that, in point ofstrict fact, modern philosophers do not regard happy marriages asfailures, and opinion is divided on the others, which are generally thesubjects of their plays. But there is no doubt that a jury is betterqualified than a single Censor. A French jury decided that Madame Bovarywas not immoral. An English jury decided that a certain book by Zola wasimmoral and sent the publisher to prison. Another English jury, for allpractical purposes, decided that Dorian Gray was not immoral, and so on. The verdicts may be accepted. Twelve men, picked from an alphabeticallist, may not be judges of art, but they will not debase morality. 

Chesterton's personal contribution to the political thought of his daylies in his criticism of the humaneness of legislative proposals. Athing that is human is commonly a very different matter from a thingthat is merely humanitarian. G. K. C. Is hotly human and almost bitterlyanti-humanitarian. 

The difference between the two is illustrated by the institution of thegallows, which is human, but not humanitarian. In its essentials itconsists of a rope and a branch, which is precisely the apparatus thatan angry man might employ in order to rid himself of his captured enemy. Herbert Spencer, seeking in his old age for means whereby to increasethe happiness of mankind, invented a humanitarian apparatus for theinfliction of capital punishment. It consisted of a glorifiedroundabout, on which the victim was laid for his last journey. As itrevolved, the blood-pressure on his head gradually increased (ordecreased, I forget which) until he fell asleep and died painlessly. This is humanitarianism. The process is safe and sure (so long as themachine did not stop suddenly), highly efficient, bloodless andpainless. But just because it is so humanitarian it offends one a greatdeal more than the old-fashioned gallows. The only circumstance whichcan justify violence is anger. The only circumstance which can justifythe taking of human life is anger. And anger may be expressed by a ropeor a knife-edge, but not by a roundabout or any other morbid inventionof a cold-blooded philosopher such as the electric chair, or the lethalchamber. In the same way, if flogging is to continue as a punishment, itmust be inflicted by a man and not by a machine. 

Now this distinction (made without prejudice as to Chesterton's views oncapital or corporal punishment) holds good through his whole criticismof modern legislation. He believes that it is better that a man and hisfamily should starve in their own slum, than that they should bemoulded, by a cumbersome apparatus of laws and officials and inspectors, into a tame, mildly prosperous and mildly healthy group of individuals, whose opinions, occupations and homes should be provided for them. Onthese lines he attacks whatever in his opinion will tend to put men intoa position where their souls will be less their own. He believes thatthe man who has been costered by the Government into a mediocre state oflife will be less of a man than one who has been left unbothered byofficials, and has had to shift for himself. 

Very largely, therefore, Chesterton's political faith is an up-to-datevariety of the tenets of the Self-Help School, which was own brother tothe Manchester School. And here we come to a curious contradiction, thefirst of a series. For Chesterton loathes the Manchester School. 

The contradiction comes of an inveterate nominalism. To G. K. C. All goodpolitics are summed up in the words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Butnobody, not even a Frenchman, can explain what they mean. Chestertonused to believe that they mean Liberalism, being led astray by the soundof the first word, but he soon realized his error. Let a man say "Ibelieve in Liberty" and only the vagueness of the statement preserves itfrom the funniness of a Higher Thinker's affirmation, "I believe inBeauty. " A man has to _feel_ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, for they arenot in the nature of facts. And one suspects horribly that whatChesterton really feels is merely the masculine liberty, equality andfraternity of the public-house, where men meet together but never doanything. For Chesterton has not yet asked us to do anything, he onlyrequests Parliament to refrain. He supports no political programme. Heis opposed to Party Government, which is government by the Government. He is in favour of Home Rule, it may be inferred; and of making thingsnasty for the Jews, it may be supposed. But he does not poach on theleader-writers' preserves, and his political programme is left hazy. His opposition to Liberal proposals brings him near the Tories. If theLiberals continue in power for a few years longer, and Home Rule dropsout of the things opposed by Tories, the latter may well find Chestertonamong their doubtful assets. He will probably continue to call himself aLiberal and a "child of the French Revolution, " but that will be onlyhis fun. For the interesting abortions to which the French Revolutiongave birth--well, they are quite another story. 

Chesterton is a warm supporter of the queerly mixed proposals that areknown as the "rights of small nationalities, " and the smaller thenationality, the more warmly he supports (so he would have us believe)its demand for self-government. Big fleas have little fleas, alas, andthat is the difficulty he does not confront. For Home Rule carried toits final sub-division is simply home rule; the independence of homes. Political Home Rule is only assented to on general principles;apparently on the ground that on the day when an Englishman's homereally does become his castle he will not, so to speak, mind muchwhether he is an Englishman or an Irishman. 

And here we may bid farewell to the politician who is Chesterton. Hispolitics are like his perverse definitions of the meaning of such wordsas progress and reform. He is like a child who plays about with thehands of a clock, and makes the surprising discovery that some clocksmay be made to tell a time that does not exist--with the small hand attwelve and the large at six, for example. Also that if a clock goesfast, it comes to register an hour behind the true time, and the otherway round. And so Chesterton goes on playing with the times, until atlast a horrid suspicion grips us. What if he cannot tell the timehimself?

VIII

A DECADENT OF SORTS

AN idea, if treated gently, may be brought up to perform many usefultasks. It is, however, apt to pine in solitude, and should be allowed toenjoy the company of others of its own kind. It is much easier tooverwork an idea than a man, and of the two, the wearied idea presentsan infinitely more pathetic appearance. Those of us who, for our sins, have to review the novels of other people, are accustomed to thesaddening spectacle of a poor little idea, beautiful and fresh in itsyouth, come wearily to its tombstone on page 300 (where or whereaboutsnovels end), trailing after it an immense load of stiff and heavypuppets, taken down from the common property-cupboards of the nation'sfiction, and not even dusted for the occasion. _Manalive_, as we haveseen, suffered from its devotion to one single idea, but the poor littlething was kept going to the bitter end by the flow of humorousencouragement given it by the author. The later works of Chesterton, however, are symbolized by a performing flea, dragging behind it alittle cartload of passengers. But it sometimes happens that the humourof _Manalive_ is not there, that one weary idea has to support anintolerable deal of prose. 

In _An Essay on Two Cities_[3] there is a long passage illustrating theadventures of a man who tried to find people in London by the names ofthe places. He might go into Buckingham Palace in search of the Duke ofBuckingham, into Marlborough House in quest of the Duke of Marlborough. He might even look for the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. 

 I wonder that no one has written a wild romance about the adventures of such an alien, seeking the great English aristocrats, and only guided by the names; looking for the Duke of Bedford in the town of that name, seeking for some trace of the Duke of Norfolk in Norfolk. He might sail for Wellington in New Zealand to find the ancient seat of the Wellingtons. The last scene might show him trying to learn Welsh in order to converse with the Prince of Wales. 

Here is an idea that is distinctly amusing when made to fill one shortparagraph, and might be deadly tedious if extended into a wild romance. Perhaps the best way of summarizing the peculiar decadence into whichChesterton seemed at one time to be falling is by the statement that upto the present he has not found time to write the book, but has doneothers like it. And yet the decadence has never showed signs of that_fin de siècle_ rustiness that marked the decadent movement (if it wasreally a movement and not just an obsession) of the generation thatpreceded Chesterton. He cursed it in the dedication to Mr. E. C. Bentleyof _The Man who was Thursday_, and he remained true to the point of viewexpressed in that curse for ever afterwards. 

 A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul, when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity, and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay. Round us in antic order their crippled vices came-- Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. 

The Chestertonian decadence was not even an all-round falling-off. If anybody were to make the statement that in the yearnineteen-hundred-and-something Chesterton produced his worst work itwould be open to anybody else to declare, with equal truth, that in thesame year Chesterton produced his best work. And the year in which theseextremes met would be either 1913 or 1914, the years of _Father Brown_and _The Flying Inn_ on one hand, and of _Father Brown_ and some of thesongs of _The Flying Inn_ on the other. It was not a technical decline, but the period of certain intellectual wearinesses, when Chesterton'smental resilience failed him for a time, and he welcomed with too muchenthusiasm the nasty ideas from which no man is wholly free. 

The main feature indeed of this period of decadence is the brandishingabout of a whole mass of antipathies. A man is perfectly entitled tohate what he will, but it is generally assumed that the hater has someideas on the subject of the reform of the hatee. But Chesterton is asdevoid of suggestions as a goat is of modesty. A man may have a violentobjection against women earning their own livings, and yet be regardedas a reasonable being if he has any alternative proposals for thewell-being of the unendowed and temporarily or permanentlyunmarriageable woman, with no relatives able to support her--and thereare two or three millions of such women in the United Kingdom. But amere "You shouldn't" is neither here nor there. 

Take this verse. It was written two or three years ago and is from apoem entitled _To a Turk_. 

 With us too rage against the rood Your devils and your swine; A colder scorn of womanhood, A baser fear of wine, And lust without the harem, And Doom without the God, Go. It is not this rabble Sayeth to you "Ichabod. "

A previous stanza talks about "the creedless chapel. " Here is a wholemass of prejudices collected into a large splutter at the expense ofEngland. If the verse means anything at all, it means that the Englishare nearer the beasts than the Turks. 

Another of Chesterton's intellectual aberrations is his anti-Semitism. He continually denied in the columns of The Daily Herald that he was ananti-Semite, but his references to the Jews are innumerable and alwayson the same side. If one admits what appears to be Chesterton'scontention that Judaism is largely just an exclusive form ofcontemporary atheism, then one is entitled to ask, Why is a wickedGentile atheist merely an atheist, while a Jewish atheist remains aJew? Surely the morals of both are on the same level, and the atheism, and not the race, is the offensive feature. The Jews have their sinnersand their saints, including the greatest Saint of all. 

 They and they only, amongst all mankind, Received the transcript of the eternal mind; Were trusted with His own engraven laws, And constituted guardians of His cause: Their's were the prophets, their's the priestly call, And their's, by birth, the Saviour of us all. 

Even if Chesterton cannot work himself up to Cowper's enthusiasm (andfew of us can), he cannot deny that the race he is continuallyblackguarding was preparing his religion, and discovering the way tohealth at a time when his own Gentile ancestors were probably performinghuman sacrifices and eating worms. Unquestionably what is the matterwith the modern Jew, especially of the educated classes, is that herefuses to be impressed by the Christian Church. But the ChristianChurch cannot fairly be said to have made herself attractive in thepast; her methods of Inquisition, for example. . . . 

It is difficult to write apathetically on this extreme instance of agreat writer's intolerance. One single example will suffice. A year ortwo ago, a Jew called Beilis was put on his trial (after animprisonment of nearly three years) for the murder of a small Christianboy named Yushinsky, in order that his blood might be used for ritualpurposes. Yushinsky, who was found dead under peculiar circumstances, was probably a Jew himself, but that does not affect the point at issue. Mr. Arthur Henderson, M. P. , tried to arouse an agitation in order tosecure the freedom of Beilis, because it was perfectly evident from thebehaviour of certain parties that the prisoner's conviction would be thesignal for the outbreak of a series of massacres of the Jews, andbecause a case which had taken nearly three years to prepare wasobviously a very thin case. Chesterton wrote a ribald article in TheDaily Herald on Mr. Henderson's attempt at intervention, saying ineffect, How do you know that Beilis isn't guilty? Now it is impossibleto hold the belief that Beilis might be guilty and at the same timedisbelieve that the Jews are capable of committing human sacrifice. Whena leading Russian critic named Rosanov, also an anti-Semite, issued apamphlet proclaiming that the Jews did, in fact, commit this loathsomecrime, he was ignominiously ejected from a prominent Russian literarysociety. The comparison should appeal to Chesterton. 

The nadir of these antipathies is reached in _The Flying Inn_, a novelpublished a few months before the Great War broke out, and before we allmade the discovery that, hold what prejudices we will, we are allimmensely dependent on one another. In this book we are given a pictureof England of the future, conquered by the Turk. As a concession toIslam, all intoxicating drink is prohibited in England. It is amusing tonote that a few months after the publication of this sillyprognostication, the greatest Empire in Christendom prohibited drinkwithin its frontiers in order to conquer the Turk--and his Allies. APatrick Dalroy, an Irishman (with red hair), and of course a giant, hasbeen performing Homeric feats against the conquering Turks. A LordIvywood, an abstraction bloodless to the point of albinism, is at thehead of affairs in England. The Jews dominate everything. Dalroy andHumphrey Pump, an evicted innkeeper, discovering that drinks may stillbe sold where an inn-sign may be found, start journeying around Englandloaded only with the sign-board of "The Green Man, " a large cheese, anda keg of rum. They are, in fact, a peripatetic public-house, and theonly democratic institution of its kind left in England. Every otherchapter the new innkeepers run into Ivywood and his hangers-on. As thestory wriggles its inconsequent length, the author curses through themouths of his heroes. He anathematizes teetotallers, brewers, vegetarians, temperance drinks, model villages, æsthetic poets, Orientalart, Parliament, politicians, Jews, Turks, and infidels in general, futurist painting, and other things. In the end, Dalroy and Pump lead avast insurrection, and thousands of dumb, long-suffering Englishmenattack Ivywood in his Hall, and so free their country from the Turk. 

Only the songs already described in Chapter V preserve this book fromextreme dullness. Technically it is poor. The action is as scattered asthe parts of a futurist picture. A whole chapter is devoted to a pictureof a newspaper editor at work, inventing the phraseology ofindefiniteness. Epigrams are few and are very much overworked. Once acatchword is sprung, it is run to death. The Turk who by means of sillypuns attempts to prove that Islamic civilization is better thanEuropean, never ceases in his efforts. The heartlessness of Ivywood iscontinuous, and ends in insanity. 

Parts of _The Flying Inn_ convey the impression that Chesterton wastired of his own style and his own manner of controversy, and had takento parodying himself. The arguments of the already-mentioned Turk, forexample, might well pass for a really good parody of the theologicaldispute in the first chapter of _The Ball and the Cross_. There, it maybe remembered, two men (more or less) discussed the symbolism of ballsand crosses. In _The Flying Inn_ people discuss the symbolism ofcrescents and crosses, and the Turk, Misysra Ammon, explains, "When theEnglish see an English youth, they cry out 'He is crescent!' But whenthey see an English aged man, they cry out 'He is cross!'" On theselines a great deal of _The Flying Inn_ is written. 

We now come to Chesterton's political decadence, traceable, like manyfeatures in his history, to Mr. Hilaire Belloc. The friendship betweenG. K. C. And the ex-Liberal M. P. For Rochdale bore a number of interestingfruits. There were the amusing illustrations to The Great Enquiry, anamusing skit on the Tariff Reform League, to Emmanuel Burden and TheGreen Overcoat. But curious artificialities sprang into existence, likeso many funguses, under the lengthening shadow of Mr. Belloc. To him isdue the far-fetchedness of some of Chesterton's pleading in support ofthe miraculous element in religion. To him also is due the growingantipathy against the Liberal Party and the party system in general. 

Up to the end of January, 1913, Chesterton had continued his connectionwith The Daily News. On January 28th there took place, at the Queen'sHall, London, a debate between Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Hilaire Belloc. The latter moved "That if we do not re-establish the institution ofproperty, we shall re-establish the institution of slavery; there is nothird course. " The debate was an extremely poor affair, as neithercombatant dealt, except parenthetically, with his opponent's points. Inthe course of it Mr. Shaw, to illustrate an argument, referred toChesterton as "a flourishing property of Mr. Cadbury, " a remark whichG. K. C. Appears to have taken to heart. His quarrel with officialLiberalism was at the moment more bitter than ever before. Mr. Bellochad taken a very decided stand on the Marconi affair, and Mr. CecilChesterton, G. K. C. 's brother, was sturdily supporting him. The DailyNews, on the other hand, was of course vigorously defending theGovernment. Chesterton suddenly severed his long connection with TheDaily News and came over to The Daily Herald. This paper, which is nowdefunct, except in a weekly edition, was the organ of Syndicalism andrebellion in general. In a letter to the editor of The Herald, Chesterton explained with pathetic irony that The Daily News "had cometo stand for almost everything I disagree with; and I thought I hadbetter resign before the next great measure of social reform made itillegal to go on strike. "

A week or so later, Chesterton started his series of Saturday articlesin The Daily Herald. His first few efforts show that he made adetermined attempt to get down to the intellectual level of theSyndicalist. But anybody who sits down to read through these articleswill notice that before many weeks had passed Chesterton was beginningto feel a certain discomfort in the company he was keeping. He writes tosay that he likes writing for The Daily Herald because it is the mostrevolutionary paper he knows, "even though I do not agree with all therevolutions it advocates, " and goes on to state that, personally, helikes most of the people he meets. Having thus, as it were, cleared hisconscience in advance, Chesterton let himself go. He attacked theGovernment for its alleged nepotism, dishonesty, and corruption. Heended one such article with, "There is nothing but a trumpet atmidnight, calling for volunteers. " The New Statesman then published anarticle, "Trumpets and How to Blow Them, " suggesting, among otherthings, that there was little use in being merely destructive. It istypical of what I have called the decadence of Chesterton that heborrowed another writer's most offensive description of a ladyprominently connected with The New Statesman in order to quote it withglee by way of answer to this article. The Syndicalist hates theSocialist for his catholicity. The Socialist wishes to see the world acomfortable place, the Syndicalist merely wishes to work in acomfortable factory. Chesterton seized the opportunity, being mildlyrebuked by a Socialist paper, to declare that the Fabians "areconstructing a man-trap. " A little later on he writes, with reference toa controversialist's request, that he should explain why, after all, hewas not a Socialist:

 If he wants to know what the Marconi Scandal has saved us from, I can tell him. It has saved us from Socialism. My God! what Socialism, and run by what sort of Socialists! My God! what an escape! If we had transferred the simplest national systems to the State (as we wanted to do in our youth) it is to these men that we should have transferred them. 

There never was an example of more muddled thinking. Let us apply it tosomething definite, to that harmless, necessary article of diet, milk, to be precise, cow's milk. To-day milk is made expensive by amultiplicity of men who have interests in keeping milk expensive. Thereare too many milkmen's wages to be paid, too many milk-carts to bebuilt, too many shop-rents paid, and too much apparatus bought, simplybecause we have not yet had the intelligence to let any municipality orcounty run its own milk-service and so avoid all manner of duplication. Chesterton's answer to this is: "I used to think so, but what about LordMurray, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Godfrey Isaacs?" It would be asrelevant to say, "What about Dr. Crippen, Jack Sheppard, and Ananias, "or, "But what about Mr. Bernard Shaw, the Grand Duke Nicolas, and mybrother?" The week later Chesterton addresses the Labour Party in thesewords:

 Comrades (I mean gentlemen), there is only one real result of anything you have done. You have justified the vulgar slander of the suburban Conservatives that men from below are men who merely want to rise. It is a lie. No one knows so well as you that it was a lie: you who drove out Grayson and deserted Lansbury. Before you went into Parliament to represent the working classes, the working classes were feared. Since you have represented the working classes, they are not even respected. Just when there was a hope of Democracy, you have revived the notion that the demagogue was only the sycophant. Just when there had begun to be an English people to represent, you have been paid to misrepresent them. Get out of our path. Take your money; go. 

Regarding which passage there is only to be said that it is grosslyunjust both to the Labour Party and to the working classes. It wasfollowed up in subsequent numbers by violent attacks on woman suffrageand the economic independence of women; a proceeding quite commendablyamusing in a paper with a patron saint surnamed Pankhurst. A promise tosay no more about Votes for Women was followed by several more spiritedreferences to it, from the same point of view. After which Chestertoncooled off and wrote about detective stories, telephones, and workedhimself down into an all-round fizzle of disgust at things as they are, to illustrate which "I will not run into a paroxysm of citations again, "as Milton said in the course of his Epistle in two books on Reformationin England. 

The most unpleasant feature of The Daily Herald articles is theassumption of superiority over the British working man, expressingitself in the patronizing tone. The British working man, as Chestertonsees him, is a very different person from what he is. If the Middle Ageshad been the peculiar period Chesterton appears to believe it was, thenhis working man would be merely a trifling anachronism of fivecenturies or so. But he is not even that. Five centuries would be but atrifle compared with the difference between him and his real self. Chesterton's attitude towards the working man must resemble that of acertain chivalrous knight towards the distressed damsel he thought hehad rescued. He observed, "Well, little one, aren't you going to show meany gratitude?" And the lady replied, "I wasn't playing Andromeda, fathead, I was looking for blackberries. Run away and play. "

The attitude of the middle-class suburbanite towards the working man andhis wife is not exactly graceful, but the former at any rate does notpretend to love the latter, and to find all decency of feeling andrighteousness of behaviour in them. Chesterton both pretends toreverence the working classes, and exhibits a profound contempt forthem. He is never happier than when he is telling the working classesthat they are wrong. He delights in attacking the Labour Party in orderto have the supreme satisfaction of demonstrating that working men aretheir own worst enemies. 

At the beginning of August, 1914, the Great War broke out, andeverything seemed changed. No man now living will be able to saydefinitely what effects the war will have upon literature, but onething is certain: nothing will remain the same. We have already learnedto view each other with different eyes. For better or for worse, oldanimosities and party cleavages have given way to unforeseencombinations. To assert that we have all grown better would be untrue. But it might reasonably be argued that the innate generousness of theBritish people has been vitiated by its childlike trust in itsjournalists, and the men who own them. When Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote abrilliant defence of the British case for intervention in the war, hismild denigration of some of the defects of the English nation, a fewtrivial inaccuracies, and his perverse bellicosity of style made him theobject of the attentions of a horde of panic-stricken heresy-hunters. Those of us who had not the fortune to escape the Press by serviceabroad, especially those of us who derived our living from it, came toloathe its misrepresentation of the English people. There seemed no endto the nauseous vomits of undigested facts and dishonourable prejudicesthat came pouring out in daily streams. Then we came to realize, asnever before, the value of such men as Chesterton. Christianity and thecommon decencies fare badly at the hands of the bishops of to-day, andthe journalists threw them over as soon as the war began. But, unfortunately for us all, G. K. C. Fell seriously ill in the early periodof the war, and was in a critical state for many months. But not beforehe had published a magnificent recantation--for it is no less--of allthose bitternesses which, in their sum, had very nearly caused him tohate the British. It is a poem, _Blessed are the Peacemakers_. 

 Of old with a divided heart I saw my people's pride expand, Since a man's soul is born apart By mother earth and fatherland. 

 I knew, through many a tangled tale, Glory and truth not one but two: King, Constable and Amirail Took me like trumpets: but I knew

 A blacker thing than blood's own dye Weighed down great Hawkins on the sea; And Nelson turned his blindest eye On Naples and on liberty. 

 Therefore to you my thanks, O throne, O thousandfold and frozen folk, For whose cold frenzies all your own The Battle of the Rivers broke;

 Who have no faith a man could mourn, Nor freedom any man desires; But in a new clean light of scorn Close up my quarrel with my sires;

 Who bring my English heart to me, Who mend me like a broken toy; Till I can see you fight and flee, And laugh as if I were a boy. 

When we read this poem, with its proclamation of a faith restored, Chesterton's temporary absence from the field of letters appears evenmore lamentable. For even before his breakdown he had given other signsof a resurrection. Between the overworked descriptions of _The FlyingInn_ and the little book _The Barbarism of Berlin_ which closelyfollowed it, there is a fine difference of style, as if in the intervalChesterton had taken a tonic. Thus there is a jolly passage in which, describing German barbarism, he refers to the different ways of treatingwomen. 

 The two extremes of the treatment of women might be represented by what are called the respectable classes in America and in France. In America they choose the risk of comradeship; in France the compensation of courtesy. In America it is practically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady for what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joy-ride; but at least the man goes with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young woman is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a holy terror. By both extremes the woman gets something back out of life. France and America aim alike at equality--America by similarity; France by dissimilarity. But North Germany does actually aim at inequality. The woman stands up, with no more irritation than a butler; the man sits down, with no more embarrassment than a guest. 

And so on. It runs very easily; we recognize the old touch; the epigramsare not worked to death; and the chains of argument are not mere stringsof damped brilliancies. And before 1914 had come to its end, in anotherpamphlet, _Letters to an Old Garibaldian_, the same style, the samefreshness of thought, and the same resurgent strength were once again inevidence. Then illness overcame. 

 * * * * *

Of all futures, the future of literature and its professors is the leastpredictable. We have all, so to speak, turned a corner since August, 1914, but we have not all turned the same way. Chesterton would seem tohave felt the great change early in the war. Soon he will break hissilence, and we shall know whether we have amongst us a giant withstrength renewed or a querulous Nonconformist Crusader, agreeing with noman, while claiming to speak for every man. Early in the course of thisstudy a distinction was drawn between Christians and Crusaders. Chesterton has been throughout his career essentially a Crusader. He setout to put wrongs to rights in the same spirit; in much the same spirit, too, he incidentally chivvied about the Jews he met in his path, just asthe Crusaders had done. He fought for the Holy Sepulchre, and gained it. Like the Crusaders, he professed orthodoxy, and, like them, fellbetween several "orthodoxies. " He shared their visions and their faith, so far as they had any. But one thing is true of all Crusaders, they arenot necessarily Christians. And there is that about Chesterton whichsometimes makes me wonder whether, after all, he is not "a child of theFrench Revolution" in a sense he himself does not suspect. He has cursedthe barren fig-tree of modern religious movements. But there comes asuspicion that he denies too much; that from between those supplesentences and those too plausible arguments one may catch a glimpse ofthe features of a mocking spirit. Chesterton has given us the keenestenjoyment, and he has provoked thought, even in the silly atheist. Weall owe him gratitude, but no two readers of his works are likely toagree as to the causes of their gratitude. That, in itself, is atribute. Wherefore let it be understood that in writing this study Ihave been speaking entirely for myself, and if any man think memisguided, inappreciative, hypercritical, frivolous, or anything else, why, he is welcome. 

FOOTNOTE:

[3] _All Things Considered. _

BIBLIOGRAPHY (TO JULY, 1915)

WORKS

 1900. _Greybeards at Play. _ Brimley Johnson. Cheaper edition, 1902. 

 _The Wild Knight. _ Grant Richards. Second edition, Brimley Johnson, 1905. Enlarged edition, Dent, 1914. 

 1901. _The Defendant. _ Brimley Johnson. Second enlarged edition, 1902. Cheap edition, in Dent's Wayfarer's Library, 1914. 

 1902. _Twelve Types. _ A. L. Humphreys. Partly reprinted as _Five Types_, 1910, same publisher. Cheap edition, 1911. 

 _G. F. Watts. _ Duckworth. In Popular Library of Art. Reissued at higher price, 1914. 

 1903. _Robert Browning. _ In English Men of Letters Series. Macmillan. 

 1904. _The Patriotic Idea. _ In _England a Nation_. Edited by Lucien Oldershaw. Brimley Johnson. 

 _The Napoleon of Notting Hill. _ John Lane. With 7 full-page illustrations by W. Graham Robertson and a Map of the Seat of War. 

 1905. _The Club of Queer Trades. _ Harper. Cheap edition, Hodder and Stoughton, 1912. 

 _Heretics. _ John Lane. 

 1906. _Charles Dickens. _ Methuen. Cheaper edition, 1907. Popular edition, 1913. 

 1908. _The Man who was Thursday. _ Arrowsmith. 

 _All Things Considered. _ Methuen. 

 _Orthodoxy. _ John Lane. 

 1909. _Tremendous Trifles. _ Methuen. 

 1910. _Alarms and Discursions. _ Methuen. 

 _Five Types. _ A. L. Humphreys. Reprinted from _Twelve Types_, 1905. 

 _What's Wrong with the World?_ Cassell. Cheap edition, 1912. 

 _William Blake. _ Duckworth. In Popular Library of Art. 

 _George Bernard Shaw. _ John Lane. Cheap edition, 1914. 

 _The Ball and the Cross. _ Wells Gardner, Darton. 

 1911. _The Ballad of the White Horse. _ Methuen. 

 _Appreciations of Dickens. _ Dent. Reprinted prefaces from Everyman Series edition of Dickens. 

 _The Innocence of Father Brown. _ Cassell. 

 1912. _Simplicity and Tolstoy. _ A. L. Humphreys. Another edition, H. Siegle. In Watteau Series, 1913. 

 _A Miscellany of Men. _ Methuen. 

 _Manalive. _ Nelson. 

 1913. _Magic. _ Martin Seeker. 

 _The Victorian Age in Literature. _ Williams and Norgate. In Home University Library. 

 1914. _The Wisdom of Father Brown. _ Cassell. 

 _The Flying Inn. _ Methuen. (_The Songs of the Simple Life_ appeared originally in _The New Witness_. )

 _The Wild Knight. _ Dent. Enlarged edition, first published 1900. 

 _The Barbarism of Berlin. _ Cassell. 

 _Letters to an Old Garibaldian. _ Methuen. 

 1915. _Poems. _ Burns and Oates. 

 And articles on Tolstoy, Stevenson, Tennyson, and Dickens in a series of booklets published by _The Bookman_, 1902-1904. 

PREFACES TO THE FOLLOWING BOOKS

 1902. _Past and Present. _ By Thomas Carlyle. In World's Classics. Grant Richards. 

 1903. _Life of Johnson. _ Extracts from Boswell. Isbister. 

 1904. _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. _ By O. W. Holmes. Red Letter Library. Blackie. 

 _Sartor Resartus. _ By Thomas Carlyle. Cassell's National Library. 

 _The Pilgrim's Progress. _ By John Bunyan. Cassell's National Library. 

 1905. _Creatures That Once Were Men. _ By Maxim Gorky. Rivers. 

 1906 etc. _Works of Dickens. _ In Everyman Library. Dent. 

 1906. _Essays. _ By Matthew Arnold. In the Everyman Library. Dent. 

 _Literary London. _ By Elsie M. Lang. Werner Laurie. 

 1907. _The Book of Job. _ (Wellwood Books. )

 _From Workhouse to Westminster; the Life Story of Will Crooks, M. P. _ By George Haw. Cassell. Cheaper edition, 1908. 

 1908. _Poems. _ By John Ruskin. Muses Library. Routledge. 

 _The Cottage Homes of England. _ By W. W. Crotch. Industrial Publishing Co. 

 1909. _A Vision of Life. _ By Darrell Figgis. Lane. 

 _Meadows of Play. _ By Margaret Arndt. Elkin Mathews. 

 1910. _Selections from Thackeray. _ Bell. 

 _Eyes of Youth. _ An Anthology. Herbert and Daniel. 

 1911. _Samuel Johnson. _ Extracts from, selected by Alice Meynell. Herbert and Daniel. 

 _The Book of Snobs. _ By W. M. Thackeray. Red Letter Library. Blackie. 

 1912. _Famous Paintings Reproduced in Colour. _ Cassell. 

 _The English Agricultural Labourer. _ By A. H. Baverstock. The Vineyard Press. 

 _Fables. _ By Æsop. Translated by V. S. Vernon Jones. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Heinemann. 

 1913. _The Christmas Carol. _ In the Waverley Dickens. 

 1915. _Bohemia's Claim for Freedom. _ The London Czech Committee. 

ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING BOOKS BY OTHER WRITERS

 1901. _Nonsense Rhymes. _ By W. C. Monkhouse. Brimley Johnson. Cheaper edition, 1902. 

 1903. _The Great Enquiry. _ By H. B. (Hilaire Belloc). Duckworth. 

 1904. _Emmanuel Burden. _ By Hilaire Belloc. Methuen. 

 1905. _Biography for Beginners. _ By E. Clerihew. Cheaper edition, Werner Laurie, 1908. Cheap edition, 1910. 

 1912. _The Green Overcoat. _ By Hilaire Belloc. Arrowsmith. 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS

 _Bookman. _ From 1898 onwards, _passim_. 

 _The Speaker_ (afterwards _The Nation_). From 1898 onwards. 

 _The Daily News. _ Weekly article, 1900-1913. Also occasional poems and reviews. 

 _The Daily Herald. _ Weekly article, 1913-1914. 

 _The Illustrated London News. _ 1905-1914; 1915-

 _The Eye-Witness_ (afterwards _The New Witness_). Poems and articles, 1911 onwards. 

 Also correspondence columns of _The Tribune_ (1906-1908), _The Clarion_, and the London Press in general. 

 _The Oxford and Cambridge Review_ (afterwards _The British Review_). Articles 1911, etc. 

 _The Dublin Review. _ Occasional articles. 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS

 Evidence before the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on Stage Plays (Censorship), included in the Minutes of Evidence, 1909. 

SPEECHES

 1908. _The Press. _ Speech at Pan-Anglican Congress. Proceedings published by _The Times_. 

 1910. _What to do with the Backward Races. _ Speech at the Nationalities and Subject Races Conference, London. Proceedings published by P. S. King. 

 1914. _Do Miracles Happen?_ Report of a Discussion at the Little Theatre in January, 1914. Published as a pamphlet by The Christian Commonwealth Co. 

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_HIS COMPLETE CATALOGUE MCMXV_

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PART TWO: CLASSIFIED

INDEX OF TITLES

_General Literature_

 ART OF BALLET, THE. _By Mark E. Perugini. _ ART OF SILHOUETTE, THE. _By Desmond Coke. _ BATTLE OF THE BOYNE, THE. _By D. C. Boulger. _ BEHIND THE RANGES. _By F. G. Aflalo. _ BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR. _By F. G. Aflalo. _ CAMILLE DESMOULINS. _By Violet Methley. _ CARRIAGES AND COACHES. _By Ralph Straus. _ CHRISTMAS CARD, A. _By Filson Young. _ CUMBERLAND LETTERS, THE. _By Clementina Black. _ DRAMATIC PORTRAITS. _By P. P. Howe. _ FEMININE INFLUENCE ON THE POETS. _By E. Thomas. _ GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. _By Michael Barrington. _ HIEROGLYPHICS. _By Arthur Machen. _ HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE, THE. _By M. Sand. _ LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE. _By Joseph Clayton. _ LETTERS FROM GREECE. _By John Mavrogordato. _ LINLEYS OF BATH, THE. _By Clementina Black. _ MAHOMET. _By G. M. Draycott. _ MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. _By G. R. Stirling Taylor. _ NEW LEAVES. _By Filson Young. _ PEOPLE AND QUESTIONS. _By G. S. Street. _ PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE. _By R. A. Scott-James. _ PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREAT WAR. _By Stirling Taylor. _ REAL CAPTAIN CLEVELAND, THE. _By Allan Fea. _ REGILDING THE CRESCENT. _By F. G. Aflalo. _ ROBERT KETT. _By Joseph Clayton. _ SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING, THE. _By G. L. Apperson. _ SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN. _By Lewis Melville. _ SPECULATIVE DIALOGUES. _By Lascelles Abercrombie. _ STUPOR MUNDI. _By Lionel Allsborn. _ TENTH MUSE, THE. _By Edward Thomas. _ THOSE UNITED STATES. _By Arnold Bennett. _ VIE DE BOHÈME. _By Orlo Williams. _ WILDE MYTH, THE. _By Lord Alfred Douglas. _ WINDMILLS. _By Gilbert Cannan. _

_Verse_

 COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER. COLLECTED POEMS OF F. M. HUEFFER. CARMINA VARIA. _By C. Kennett Burrow. _ CORONAL, A. A New Anthology. _By L. M. Lamont. _ GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND, THE. _By J. E. Flecker. _ (See Collected Poems. ) KENSINGTON RHYMES. _By Compton Mackenzie. _

_Drama_

 DRAMATIC WORKS OF ST. JOHN HANKIN. _3 vols. _ DRAMATIC WORKS OF GERHART HAUPTMANN. _6 vols. _ CASSANDRA IN TROY. _By John Mavrogordato. _ MAGIC. _By G. K. Chesterton. _ MODERN DRAMA, THE. _By L. Lewisohn. _ PEER GYNT. _Translated by R. Ellis Roberts. _ REPERTORY THEATRE, THE. _By P. P. Howe. _ THOMPSON. _By St. John Hankin and G. Calderon. _

_Travel_

 AUSTRALASIAN WANDER YEAR, AN. _By H. M. Vaughan. _ EGYPTIAN ÆSTHETICS. _By René Francis. _ FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. _By Norman Douglas. _ NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. _By Allan Fea. _ OLD CALABRIA. _By Norman Douglas. _ OLD ENGLISH HOUSES. _By Allan Fea. _ PERFUMES OF ARABY. _By Harold Jacob. _

_Martin Secker's Series of Critical Studies_

 ROBERT BRIDGES. _By F. E. Brett Young. _ SAMUEL BUTLER. _By Gilbert Cannan. _ G. K. CHESTERTON. _By Julius West. _ FEODOR DOSTOEVSKY. _By J. Middleton Murry. _ GEORGE GISSING. _By Frank Swinnerton. _ THOMAS HARDY. _By Lascelles Abercrombie. _ HENRIK IBSEN. _By R. Ellis Roberts. _ HENRY JAMES. _By Ford Madox Hueffer. _ RUDYARD KIPLING. _By Cyril Falls. _ MAURICE MAETERLINCK. _By Una Taylor. _ GEORGE MEREDITH. _By Orlo Williams. _ WILLIAM MORRIS. _By John Drinkwater. _ WALTER PATER. _By Edward Thomas. _ D. G. ROSSETTI. _By John Drinkwater. _ BERNARD SHAW. _By P. P. Howe. _ R. L. STEVENSON. _By Frank Swinnerton. _ A. C. SWINBURNE. _By Edward Thomas. _ J. M. SYNGE. _By P. P. Howe. _ LEO TOLSTOI. _By R. Ellis Roberts. _ WALT WHITMAN. _By Basil de Selincourt. _ W. B. YEATS. _By Forrest Reid. _

_The Art and Craft of Letters_

 BALLAD, THE. _By Frank Sidgwick. _ COMEDY. _By John Palmer. _ CRITICISM. _By P. P. Howe. _ EPIC, THE. _By Lascelles Abercrombie. _ ESSAY, THE. _By Orlo Williams. _ HISTORY. _By R. H. Gretton. _ LYRIC, THE. _By John Drinkwater. _ PARODY. _By Christopher Stone. _ PUNCTUATION. _By Filson Young. _ SATIRE. _By Gilbert Cannan. _ SHORT STORY, THE. _By Barry Pain. _

_Fiction_

 ALTAR OF THE DEAD, THE. _By Henry James. _ ASPERN PAPERS, THE. _By Henry James. _ BANKRUPT, THE. _By Horace Horsnell. _ BANNER OF THE BULL, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini. _ BATTLES OF LIFE. _By Austin Philips. _ BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, THE. _By Henry James. _ BREAKING-POINT. _By Michael Artzibashef. _ BURNT HOUSE, THE. _By Christopher Stone. _ CARNIVAL. _By Compton Mackenzie. _ CASUALS OF THE SEA. _By William McFee. _ COLLECTED TALES: Vol. I. _By Barry Pain. _ COLLECTED TALES: Vol. II. _By Barry Pain. _ COLUMBINE. _By Viola Meynell. _ COMMON CHORD, THE. _By Phyllis Bottome. _ COXON FUND, THE. _By Henry James. _ CREATED LEGEND, THE. _By Feodor Sologub. _ DAISY MILLER. _By Henry James. _ DARK TOWER, THE. _By E. Brett Young. _ DEATH OF THE LION, THE. _By Henry James. _ DEBIT ACCOUNT, THE. _By Oliver Onions. _ DEEP SEA. _By F. Brett Young. _ DUCHESS OF WREXE, THE. _By Hugh Walpole. _ FIGURE IN THE CARPET, THE. _By Henry James. _ FOOL'S TRAGEDY, THE. _By A. Scott Craven. _ FORTITUDE. _By Hugh Walpole. _ GLASSES. _By Henry James. _ GOLIGHTLYS, THE. _By Laurence North. _ GUY AND PAULINE. _By Compton Mackenzie. _ IMPATIENT GRISELDA. _By Laurence North. _ IMPERFECT BRANCH, THE. _By Richard Lluellyn. _ IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. _By O. Onions. _ IRON AGE, THE. _By F. Brett Young. _ KING'S MEN, THE. _By John Palmer. _ L. S. D. _By Bohun Lynch. _ LESSON OF THE MASTER, THE. _By Henry James. _ LITTLE DEMON, THE. _By Feodor Sologub. _ LOT BARROW. _By Viola Meynell. _ MARRIAGE OF QUIXOTE, THE. _By Donald Armstrong. _ MAKING MONEY. _By Owen Johnson. _ MELEAGER. _By H. M. Vaughan. _ MILLIONAIRE, THE. _By Michael Artzibashef. _ MODERN LOVERS. _By Viola Meynell. _ NARCISSUS. _By Viola Meynell. _ OLD MOLE. _By Gilbert Cannan. _ OLD HOUSE, THE. _By Feodor Sologub. _ ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. _By Barry Pain. _ OUTWARD APPEARANCE, THE. _By Stanley V. Makower. _ PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT, THE. _By Compton Mackenzie. _ PETER PARAGON. _By John Palmer. _ PUPIL, THE. _By Henry James. _ QUESTING BEAST, THE. _By Ivy Low. _ RECORD OF A SILENT LIFE, THE. _By Anna Preston. _ REVERBERATOR, THE. _By Henry James. _ ROUND THE CORNER. _By Gilbert Cannan. _ SALAMANDER, THE. _By Owen Johnson. _ SANINE. _By Michael Artzibashef. _ SEA HAWK, THE. _By Rafael Sabatini. _ SECURITY. _By Ivor Brown. _ SINISTER STREET. I. _By Compton Mackenzie. _ SINISTER STREET. II. _By Compton Mackenzie. _ STORY OF LOUIE, THE. _By Oliver Onions. _ TALES OF THE REVOLUTION. _By M. Artzibashef. _ TELLING THE TRUTH. _By William Hewlett. _ TRUE DIMENSION, THE. _By Warrington Dawson. _ TURN OF THE SCREW, THE. _By Henry James. _ UNCLE'S ADVICE. _By William Hewlett. _ UNDERGROWTH. _By F. & E. Brett Young. _ UNDERMAN, THE. _By Joseph Clayton. _ UNOFFICIAL. _By Bohun Lynch. _ WIDDERSHINS. _By Oliver Onions. _ YEARS OF PLENTY. _By Ivor Brown. _ YOUNG EARNEST. _By Gilbert Cannan. _

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Page 150, a period was changed to a comma. (as regards the amateur, )