AN idea, if treated gently, may be brought up to perform many useful
tasks. It is, however, apt to pine in solitude, and should be allowed to
enjoy the company of others of its own kind. It is much easier to
overwork an idea than a man, and of the two, the wearied idea presents
an infinitely more pathetic appearance. Those of us who, for our sins,
have to review the novels of other people, are accustomed to the
saddening spectacle of a poor little idea, beautiful and fresh in its
youth, come wearily to its tombstone on page 300 (where or whereabouts
novels end), trailing after it an immense load of stiff and heavy
puppets, taken down from the common property-cupboards of the nation's
fiction, and not even dusted for the occasion. _Manalive_, as we have
seen, suffered from its devotion to one single idea, but the poor little
thing was kept going to the bitter end by the flow of humorous
encouragement given it by the author. The later works of Chesterton,
however, are symbolized by a performing flea, dragging behind it a
little cartload of passengers. But it sometimes happens that the humour
of _Manalive_ is not there, that one weary idea has to support an
intolerable deal of prose.
In _An Essay on Two Cities_[3] there is a long passage illustrating the
adventures of a man who tried to find people in London by the names of
the places. He might go into Buckingham Palace in search of the Duke of
Buckingham, 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 short
paragraph, and might be deadly tedious if extended into a wild romance.
Perhaps the best way of summarizing the peculiar decadence into which
Chesterton seemed at one time to be falling is by the statement that up
to the present he has not found time to write the book, but has done
others like it. And yet the decadence has never showed signs of that
_fin de siecle_ rustiness that marked the decadent movement (if it was
really a movement and not just an obsession) of the generation that
preceded Chesterton. He cursed it in the dedication to Mr. E. C. Bentley
of _The Man who was Thursday_, and he remained true to the point of view
expressed 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 year
nineteen-hundred-and-something Chesterton produced his worst work it
would be open to anybody else to declare, with equal truth, that in the
same year Chesterton produced his best work. And the year in which these
extremes 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 the
songs of _The Flying Inn_ on the other. It was not a technical decline,
but the period of certain intellectual wearinesses, when Chesterton's
mental resilience failed him for a time, and he welcomed with too much
enthusiasm the nasty ideas from which no man is wholly free.
The main feature indeed of this period of decadence is the brandishing
about of a whole mass of antipathies. A man is perfectly entitled to
hate what he will, but it is generally assumed that the hater has some
ideas on the subject of the reform of the hatee. But Chesterton is as
devoid of suggestions as a goat is of modesty. A man may have a violent
objection against women earning their own livings, and yet be regarded
as a reasonable being if he has any alternative proposals for the
well-being of the unendowed and temporarily or permanently
unmarriageable woman, with no relatives able to support her--and there
are two or three millions of such women in the United Kingdom. But a
mere "You shouldn't" is neither here nor there.
Take this verse. It was written two or three years ago and is from a
poem 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 whole
mass of prejudices collected into a large splutter at the expense of
England. If the verse means anything at all, it means that the English
are 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 an
anti-Semite, but his references to the Jews are innumerable and always
on the same side. If one admits what appears to be Chesterton's
contention that Judaism is largely just an exclusive form of
contemporary atheism, then one is entitled to ask, Why is a wicked
Gentile atheist merely an atheist, while a Jewish atheist remains a
Jew? 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 sinners
and 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 (and
few of us can), he cannot deny that the race he is continually
blackguarding was preparing his religion, and discovering the way to
health at a time when his own Gentile ancestors were probably performing
human sacrifices and eating worms. Unquestionably what is the matter
with the modern Jew, especially of the educated classes, is that he
refuses to be impressed by the Christian Church. But the Christian
Church cannot fairly be said to have made herself attractive in the
past; her methods of Inquisition, for example. . . .
It is difficult to write apathetically on this extreme instance of a
great writer's intolerance. One single example will suffice. A year or
two ago, a Jew called Beilis was put on his trial (after an
imprisonment of nearly three years) for the murder of a small Christian
boy named Yushinsky, in order that his blood might be used for ritual
purposes. 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 to
secure the freedom of Beilis, because it was perfectly evident from the
behaviour of certain parties that the prisoner's conviction would be the
signal for the outbreak of a series of massacres of the Jews, and
because a case which had taken nearly three years to prepare was
obviously a very thin case. Chesterton wrote a ribald article in The
Daily Herald on Mr. Henderson's attempt at intervention, saying in
effect, How do you know that Beilis isn't guilty? Now it is impossible
to hold the belief that Beilis might be guilty and at the same time
disbelieve that the Jews are capable of committing human sacrifice. When
a leading Russian critic named Rosanov, also an anti-Semite, issued a
pamphlet proclaiming that the Jews did, in fact, commit this loathsome
crime, he was ignominiously ejected from a prominent Russian literary
society. The comparison should appeal to Chesterton.
The nadir of these antipathies is reached in _The Flying Inn_, a novel
published a few months before the Great War broke out, and before we all
made the discovery that, hold what prejudices we will, we are all
immensely dependent on one another. In this book we are given a picture
of England of the future, conquered by the Turk. As a concession to
Islam, all intoxicating drink is prohibited in England. It is amusing to
note that a few months after the publication of this silly
prognostication, the greatest Empire in Christendom prohibited drink
within its frontiers in order to conquer the Turk--and his Allies. A
Patrick Dalroy, an Irishman (with red hair), and of course a giant, has
been performing Homeric feats against the conquering Turks. A Lord
Ivywood, an abstraction bloodless to the point of albinism, is at the
head of affairs in England. The Jews dominate everything. Dalroy and
Humphrey Pump, an evicted innkeeper, discovering that drinks may still
be sold where an inn-sign may be found, start journeying around England
loaded only with the sign-board of "The Green Man," a large cheese, and
a keg of rum. They are, in fact, a peripatetic public-house, and the
only democratic institution of its kind left in England. Every other
chapter the new innkeepers run into Ivywood and his hangers-on. As the
story wriggles its inconsequent length, the author curses through the
mouths of his heroes. He anathematizes teetotallers, brewers,
vegetarians, temperance drinks, model villages, aesthetic poets, Oriental
art, Parliament, politicians, Jews, Turks, and infidels in general,
futurist painting, and other things. In the end, Dalroy and Pump lead a
vast insurrection, and thousands of dumb, long-suffering Englishmen
attack Ivywood in his Hall, and so free their country from the Turk.
Only the songs already described in Chapter V preserve this book from
extreme dullness. Technically it is poor. The action is as scattered as
the parts of a futurist picture. A whole chapter is devoted to a picture
of a newspaper editor at work, inventing the phraseology of
indefiniteness. Epigrams are few and are very much overworked. Once a
catchword is sprung, it is run to death. The Turk who by means of silly
puns attempts to prove that Islamic civilization is better than
European, never ceases in his efforts. The heartlessness of Ivywood is
continuous, and ends in insanity.
Parts of _The Flying Inn_ convey the impression that Chesterton was
tired of his own style and his own manner of controversy, and had taken
to parodying himself. The arguments of the already-mentioned Turk, for
example, might well pass for a really good parody of the theological
dispute in the first chapter of _The Ball and the Cross_. There, it may
be remembered, two men (more or less) discussed the symbolism of balls
and crosses. In _The Flying Inn_ people discuss the symbolism of
crescents and crosses, and the Turk, Misysra Ammon, explains, "When the
English see an English youth, they cry out 'He is crescent!' But when
they see an English aged man, they cry out 'He is cross!'" On these
lines a great deal of _The Flying Inn_ is written.
We now come to Chesterton's political decadence, traceable, like many
features in his history, to Mr. Hilaire Belloc. The friendship between
G.K.C. and the ex-Liberal M.P. for Rochdale bore a number of interesting
fruits. There were the amusing illustrations to The Great Enquiry, an
amusing skit on the Tariff Reform League, to Emmanuel Burden and The
Green Overcoat. But curious artificialities sprang into existence, like
so many funguses, under the lengthening shadow of Mr. Belloc. To him is
due the far-fetchedness of some of Chesterton's pleading in support of
the miraculous element in religion. To him also is due the growing
antipathy against the Liberal Party and the party system in general.
Up to the end of January, 1913, Chesterton had continued his connection
with The Daily News. On January 28th there took place, at the Queen's
Hall, London, a debate between Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Hilaire Belloc.
The latter moved "That if we do not re-establish the institution of
property, we shall re-establish the institution of slavery; there is no
third course." The debate was an extremely poor affair, as neither
combatant dealt, except parenthetically, with his opponent's points. In
the course of it Mr. Shaw, to illustrate an argument, referred to
Chesterton as "a flourishing property of Mr. Cadbury," a remark which
G.K.C. appears to have taken to heart. His quarrel with official
Liberalism was at the moment more bitter than ever before. Mr. Belloc
had taken a very decided stand on the Marconi affair, and Mr. Cecil
Chesterton, G.K.C.'s brother, was sturdily supporting him. The Daily
News, on the other hand, was of course vigorously defending the
Government. Chesterton suddenly severed his long connection with The
Daily News and came over to The Daily Herald. This paper, which is now
defunct, except in a weekly edition, was the organ of Syndicalism and
rebellion in general. In a letter to the editor of The Herald,
Chesterton explained with pathetic irony that The Daily News "had come
to stand for almost everything I disagree with; and I thought I had
better resign before the next great measure of social reform made it
illegal to go on strike."
A week or so later, Chesterton started his series of Saturday articles
in The Daily Herald. His first few efforts show that he made a
determined attempt to get down to the intellectual level of the
Syndicalist. But anybody who sits down to read through these articles
will notice that before many weeks had passed Chesterton was beginning
to feel a certain discomfort in the company he was keeping. He writes to
say that he likes writing for The Daily Herald because it is the most
revolutionary paper he knows, "even though I do not agree with all the
revolutions it advocates," and goes on to state that, personally, he
likes most of the people he meets. Having thus, as it were, cleared his
conscience in advance, Chesterton let himself go. He attacked the
Government for its alleged nepotism, dishonesty, and corruption. He
ended one such article with, "There is nothing but a trumpet at
midnight, calling for volunteers." The New Statesman then published an
article, "Trumpets and How to Blow Them," suggesting, among other
things, that there was little use in being merely destructive. It is
typical of what I have called the decadence of Chesterton that he
borrowed another writer's most offensive description of a lady
prominently connected with The New Statesman in order to quote it with
glee by way of answer to this article. The Syndicalist hates the
Socialist for his catholicity. The Socialist wishes to see the world a
comfortable place, the Syndicalist merely wishes to work in a
comfortable factory. Chesterton seized the opportunity, being mildly
rebuked by a Socialist paper, to declare that the Fabians "are
constructing a man-trap." A little later on he writes, with reference to
a controversialist's request, that he should explain why, after all, he
was 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 to
something definite, to that harmless, necessary article of diet, milk,
to be precise, cow's milk. To-day milk is made expensive by a
multiplicity of men who have interests in keeping milk expensive. There
are too many milkmen's wages to be paid, too many milk-carts to be
built, too many shop-rents paid, and too much apparatus bought, simply
because we have not yet had the intelligence to let any municipality or
county 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 Lord
Murray, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Godfrey Isaacs?" It would be as
relevant to say, "What about Dr. Crippen, Jack Sheppard, and Ananias,"
or, "But what about Mr. Bernard Shaw, the Grand Duke Nicolas, and my
brother?" The week later Chesterton addresses the Labour Party in these
words:
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 grossly
unjust both to the Labour Party and to the working classes. It was
followed up in subsequent numbers by violent attacks on woman suffrage
and the economic independence of women; a proceeding quite commendably
amusing in a paper with a patron saint surnamed Pankhurst. A promise to
say no more about Votes for Women was followed by several more spirited
references to it, from the same point of view. After which Chesterton
cooled off and wrote about detective stories, telephones, and worked
himself 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 Reformation
in England.
The most unpleasant feature of The Daily Herald articles is the
assumption of superiority over the British working man, expressing
itself in the patronizing tone. The British working man, as Chesterton
sees him, is a very different person from what he is. If the Middle Ages
had been the peculiar period Chesterton appears to believe it was, then
his working man would be merely a trifling anachronism of five
centuries or so. But he is not even that. Five centuries would be but a
trifle compared with the difference between him and his real self.
Chesterton's attitude towards the working man must resemble that of a
certain chivalrous knight towards the distressed damsel he thought he
had rescued. He observed, "Well, little one, aren't you going to show me
any 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 and
his wife is not exactly graceful, but the former at any rate does not
pretend to love the latter, and to find all decency of feeling and
righteousness of behaviour in them. Chesterton both pretends to
reverence the working classes, and exhibits a profound contempt for
them. He is never happier than when he is telling the working classes
that they are wrong. He delights in attacking the Labour Party in order
to have the supreme satisfaction of demonstrating that working men are
their own worst enemies.
At the beginning of August, 1914, the Great War broke out, and
everything seemed changed. No man now living will be able to say
definitely what effects the war will have upon literature, but one
thing is certain: nothing will remain the same. We have already learned
to view each other with different eyes. For better or for worse, old
animosities and party cleavages have given way to unforeseen
combinations. To assert that we have all grown better would be untrue.
But it might reasonably be argued that the innate generousness of the
British people has been vitiated by its childlike trust in its
journalists, and the men who own them. When Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote a
brilliant defence of the British case for intervention in the war, his
mild denigration of some of the defects of the English nation, a few
trivial inaccuracies, and his perverse bellicosity of style made him the
object of the attentions of a horde of panic-stricken heresy-hunters.
Those of us who had not the fortune to escape the Press by service
abroad, especially those of us who derived our living from it, came to
loathe its misrepresentation of the English people. There seemed no end
to the nauseous vomits of undigested facts and dishonourable prejudices
that came pouring out in daily streams. Then we came to realize, as
never before, the value of such men as Chesterton. Christianity and the
common decencies fare badly at the hands of the bishops of to-day, and
the journalists threw them over as soon as the war began. But,
unfortunately for us all, G.K.C. fell seriously ill in the early period
of the war, and was in a critical state for many months. But not before
he had published a magnificent recantation--for it is no less--of all
those bitternesses which, in their sum, had very nearly caused him to
hate 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 even
more lamentable. For even before his breakdown he had given other signs
of a resurrection. Between the overworked descriptions of _The Flying
Inn_ and the little book _The Barbarism of Berlin_ which closely
followed it, there is a fine difference of style, as if in the interval
Chesterton had taken a tonic. Thus there is a jolly passage in which,
describing German barbarism, he refers to the different ways of treating
women.
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 epigrams
are not worked to death; and the chains of argument are not mere strings
of damped brilliancies. And before 1914 had come to its end, in another
pamphlet, _Letters to an Old Garibaldian_, the same style, the same
freshness of thought, and the same resurgent strength were once again in
evidence. Then illness overcame.
* * * * *
Of all futures, the future of literature and its professors is the least
predictable. We have all, so to speak, turned a corner since August,
1914, but we have not all turned the same way. Chesterton would seem to
have felt the great change early in the war. Soon he will break his
silence, and we shall know whether we have amongst us a giant with
strength renewed or a querulous Nonconformist Crusader, agreeing with no
man, while claiming to speak for every man. Early in the course of this
study a distinction was drawn between Christians and Crusaders.
Chesterton has been throughout his career essentially a Crusader. He set
out 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 as
the Crusaders had done. He fought for the Holy Sepulchre, and gained it.
Like the Crusaders, he professed orthodoxy, and, like them, fell
between several "orthodoxies." He shared their visions and their faith,
so far as they had any. But one thing is true of all Crusaders, they are
not necessarily Christians. And there is that about Chesterton which
sometimes makes me wonder whether, after all, he is not "a child of the
French Revolution" in a sense he himself does not suspect. He has cursed
the barren fig-tree of modern religious movements. But there comes a
suspicion that he denies too much; that from between those supple
sentences and those too plausible arguments one may catch a glimpse of
the features of a mocking spirit. Chesterton has given us the keenest
enjoyment, and he has provoked thought, even in the silly atheist. We
all owe him gratitude, but no two readers of his works are likely to
agree as to the causes of their gratitude. That, in itself, is a
tribute. Wherefore let it be understood that in writing this study I
have been speaking entirely for myself, and if any man think me
misguided, inappreciative, hypercritical, frivolous, or anything else,
why, he is welcome.