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GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
By the Same Author
ODDMENTS
SUGGESTIVE FRAGMENTS
[Illustration: _G. K. CHESTERTON_
_Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Speaight Ltd.,
London_]
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
by
PATRICK BRAYBROOKE
With an Introduction by Arthur F. Thorn
London, MCMXXII
The Chelsea Publishing Company
16 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea
Printed at
The Curwen Press
Plaistow, E. 13
_Preface_
It is certain that up to a point in the evolution of Self most people
find life quite exciting and thrilling. But when middle age arrives,
often prematurely, they forget the thrill and excitements; they become
obsessed by certain other lesser things that are deficient in any kind
of Cosmic Vitality. The thrill goes out of life: a light dies down and
flickers fitfully; existence goes on at a low ebb--something has been
lost. From this numbed condition is born much of the blind anguish of
life.
It is one of the tragedies of human existence that the divine sense of
wonder is eventually destroyed by inexcusable routine and more or less
mechanical living. Mental abandon, the exercise of fancy and
imagination, the function of creative thought--all these things are
squeezed out of the consciousness of man until his primitive enjoyment
of the mystical part of life is affected in a very serious way.
Nothing could be more useful, therefore, than to write a book about a
man who has done more than any other living writer to stimulate and
preserve the primitive sense of wonder and joy in human life. Gilbert
Keith Chesterton has never lost mental contact with the cosmic
simplicity of human existence. He knows, as well as anybody has ever
known, that the life of man goes wrong simply because we are too lazy to
be pleased with simple, fundamental things.
We grow up in our feverish, artificial civilization, believing that the
real, satisfying things are complex and difficult to obtain. Our lives
become unnaturally stressed and tormented by the pitiless and incessant
struggle for social conditions which are, at best, second-rate and
ultimately disappointing.
G. K. Chesterton would restore the primitive joys of wonder and
childlike delight in simple things. His ideal is the _real_, not the
merely impossible. Unlike most would-be saviours of the race, he seeks
not to merge a new humanity into a brand new glittering civilization. He
would have us awaken once more to the ancient mysteries and eternal
truths. He would have us turn back in order to progress.
Science makes us proud, but it does not make us happy. Efficiency makes
us slaves--we have forgotten the truth about freedom. Success is our
narcotic deity, and weans more men into despair than failure; for, as
G.K.C. has said, 'Nothing fails like Success.' We have yet to rediscover
the spiritual health that comes with a clear recognition of the part
that life cannot be great until it is lived madly and wildly. We have to
learn all over again that grass really is green, and the sky, at times,
very blue indeed.
ARTHUR F. THORN
(_Author of 'Richard Jefferies'_),
_Assistant-Director of Studies,
London School of Journalism._
_Author's Note_
This book is the outcome of many and repeated requests to the author to
write it. While realizing the difficulties involved, he feels that the
opportunities he has enjoyed give him at least some qualifications for
the task, for not only is he a kinsman of Mr. Chesterton, but also has
spent much time in his company.
The book aims to be a popular study of the Writer and the Man. It is
dedicated to lovers of the works of G.K.C. and to the wider public who
wish to know about one of the most brilliant minds of the day.
PATRICK BRAYBROOKE.
_46 Russell Square, W.C. 1_
1922.
_Contents_
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE ESSAYIST 1
II DICKENS 15
III THACKERAY 29
IV BROWNING 42
V CHESTERTON AS HISTORIAN 57
VI THE POET 67
VII THE PLAYWRIGHT 76
VIII THE NOVELIST 79
IX CHESTERTON ON DIVORCE 90
X 'THE NEW JERUSALEM' 96
XI MR. CHESTERTON AT HOME 99
XII HIS PLACE IN LITERATURE 105
XIII G.K.C. AND G.B.S. 113
XIV CONCLUSION 119
_Chapter One_
THE ESSAYIST
It is extremely difficult in the somewhat limited space of a chapter to
give the full attention that should be given to such a brilliant and
original essayist (which is not always an _ipso facto_ of brilliant
essayists) as Chesterton. Essayists are of all men extremely elastic.
Occasionally they are dull and prosy, very often they are obscure, quite
often they are wearisome. The only criticism which applies adversely to
Chesterton as an essayist is that he is very often--and I rather fear he
likes being so--obscure. He is brilliant in an original manner, he is
original in a brilliant way; scarcely any thought of his is not
expressed in paradox. What is orthodox to him is heresy to other people;
what is heresy to him is orthodox to other people; and the surprising
fact is that he is usually right when he is orthodox, and equally right
when he is heretical. An essayist naturally has points of view which he
expresses in a different way to a novelist. A novelist, if he adheres to
what a novel should be--that is, I think, a simple tale--does not
necessarily have a particular point of view when he starts his book. An
essayist, on the other hand, starts with an idea and clothes it. Of
course, Chesterton is not an essayist in the really accepted manner of
an essayist. He is really more a brilliant exponent of an original point
of view. In other words, he essays to knock down opinions held by other
essayists, whether writers or politicians. It would be manifestly absurd
to praise Chesterton as being equal to Hazlitt, or condemn him as being
inferior to J.S. Mill. Comparisons are usually odious, which is
precisely the reason so much use is made of them. In this case any
comparison is not only odious; it is worse, it is merely futile, for
the very simple fact that there has been no essayist ever quite like
Chesterton, which is a compliment to him, because it proves what every
one who knows is assured, that he is unique.
There are, of course, as is to be expected, people who do not like his
essays. The reason is not far to seek, as in everything else people set
up for themselves standards which they do not like to see set aside.
Consequently people who had read Lamb, Hazlitt, Hume, and E.V. Lucas
astutely thought that no essayist could be such who did not adhere to
the style of one of these four. Therefore they were a little alarmed and
upset when there descended upon them a strange genius who not only upset
all the rules of essay writing, but was at the same time acclaimed by
all sections of the Press as one of the finest essayists of the day.
With the advent of Chesterton the essay received a shock. It had to
realize that it was a larger and wider thing than it had been before. As
it had been almost insular, so it became international; as it had been
almost theological in its orthodoxy, so it became in its catholicity
well-nigh heretical. Which is the best possible definition of a heresy?
It is the expanding of orthodoxy or the lessening of it. Thus Chesterton
was a pioneer. He gave to the essay a new impetus--almost, we might say,
a 'sketch' form; it dealt with subjects not so much in a dissertation as
in a dissection. Having dissected one way so that we are quite sure no
other method would do, he calmly dissects again in the opposite manner,
leaving us gasping, and finding that there really are two ways of
looking at every question--a thing we never realize till we think
about it. I have in this chapter taken five of Chesterton's most
characteristic books of essays, displaying the enormous depth of his
intellect, the vast range of subject, the unique use of paradox. Of
these five books I have again taken rather necessarily at random
subjects depicting the above Chestertonian attributes, with an attempt
to give some idea of what it really means when we say that he is an
essayist.
That Chesterton's book of essays, entitled 'Heretics,' should have an
introductory and a concluding chapter on the importance of orthodoxy is
exactly what we should expect to find. There is a great deal of what is
undeniably true in this book; there is also, I venture to think, a good
deal that is undeniably untrue. I do not think it is unfair to say that
in some respects Chesterton allows his cleverness to lead him to certain
errors of judgment, and a certain levity in dealing with matters that
are to a number of people so sacred that to reinterpret them is almost
to blaspheme.
I am thinking of the chapter in this book that is a reply to Mr. McCabe,
an ex-Roman Catholic, who, being a keen logician, is now a rationalist.
He accuses Chesterton of joking with the things _de profundis_.
Certain clergymen have also taken exception to Chesterton's writings on
the ground of this supposed levity. It is merely that he sees that the
Bible has humour, because it has said that 'God laughed and winked.' I
do not think he intends to offend, but for many people any idea of
humour in the Bible is repugnant, and this view is not confined to
clergymen.
In an absolutely charming chapter Chesterton writes of the literature of
the servant girl, which is really the literature of Park Lane. It is the
literature of Park Lane, for the very obvious reason that it is probably
never read there; but the literature is about Park Lane, and is read by
those who may live as near it as Balham or Surbiton. What he contends,
and rightly, is that the general reader likes to hear about an
environment outside his own. It is inherent in us that we always really
want to be somewhere else; which is fortunate, as it makes it certain
that the world will never come to an end through a universal
contentment. It has been said that contentment is the essence of
perfection. It is equally true that the essence of perfection is
discontent, a striving for something else. This, I think, Chesterton
feels when he says of the penny novelette that it is the literature to
'teach a man to govern empires or look over the map of mankind.'
Rudyard Kipling finds a warm spot in Chesterton's heart, but he is a
little too militaristic, which is exactly what he is not. Kipling loves
soldiers, which is no real reason why he should be disliked as a
militarist. Many a servant girl loves a score of soldiers, she may even
write odes to her pet sergeant, but she is not necessarily a militarist.
Rudyard Kipling likes soldiers and writes of them. He does not, as
Chesterton lays to his charge, 'worship militarism.' He accuses Kipling
of a want of patriotism, which is about as absurd as accusing Chesterton
of a love of politics. But when he says that Kipling only knows England
as a place, he is on safe ground, because England is something that is
not bound by the confines of space.
Not being exactly a champion of Kipling, Chesterton turns to a different
kind of man, George Moore, and has nothing to say for him beyond that he
writes endless personal confessions, which most people do if there are
those who will read them. But not only this, poor George Moore 'doesn't
understand the Roman Catholic Church, he doesn't understand Thackeray,
he misunderstands Stevenson, he has no understanding of Christianity.'
It is, in fact, a hopeless case, but it is also possible that Chesterton
has not troubled to understand George Moore.
Mr. Bernard Shaw is, so Chesterton contends, a really horrible eugenist,
because he wants to get a super-man who, having more than two legs, will
be a vastly superior person to a man. Chesterton loves men. He tells us
why St. Peter was used to found the Church upon. It was because he 'was
a shuffler, a coward, and a snob--in a word, a man.' Even the
Thirty-Nine Articles and the Councils of Trent have failed to find a
better reason for the founding of the Church. It is a defence of the
fallibility of the Church, the practical nature of that Body, an
organization founded by a Man who had Divine powers in a unique way and
was God.
Presumably, then, the mistake of Shaw is that instead of trying to
improve man he wishes to invent a kind of demi-god.
Chesterton has a great deal to say for Christmas; in fact, he has no
sympathy for those superior beings who find Christmas out of date. Even
Swinburne and Shelley have attacked Christianity in the grounds of its
melancholy, showing a lamentable forgetfulness that this religion was
born at a time that had always been a season of joy. Chesterton is
annoyed with them, and is sure that Swinburne did not hang up his socks
on Christmas Eve, nor did Shelley. I wonder whether Chesterton hangs up
his socks on the eve of Christmas?
'Heretics' is a book that deals with a great number of subjects
universal in their scope. The writing is at times too paradoxical,
leading to obscurity of thought. There are splendid passages in this
book, which is, when all is said, brilliantly original, even if at times
a little puzzling.
* * * * *
'Orthodoxy' is, I think, one of the most important of Chesterton's
books. The lasting importance of a book depends not so much on its
literary qualities or on its popularity, but rather on the theme
handled.
There are really two central themes handled in this book. One is of
Fairyland, the other is of the defence of Christianity; not that it is
either true or false, but that it is rational, or the most
shuffle-headed nonsense ever set to delude the human race. The method of
apology that Chesterton takes is one that would cause the average
theological student to turn white with fear.
The theological colleges, excellent as they are in endeavouring to train
efficient laymen into equally efficient priests, usually assume that the
best way to know about Christianity is to study Christian books. It is
the worst way, because these books are naturally biased in favour of it.
It is better to study any religion by seeing what the attackers have to
say against it. Then a personal judgment can be formed.
This is, I feel, the method that Chesterton adopts in his deep and
original treatise, 'Orthodoxy,' which is more than an essay and less
than a theological work.
The Chestertonian contention is that philosophers like Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche have embarked on the suicide of thought, and that a later
disciple to this self-destruction is Bernard Shaw.
In the same way these pseudo philosophers have attacked the Christian
religion, 'tearing the soul of Christ into silly strips labelled
altruism and egoism. They are alike puzzled by His insane magnificance
and His insane meekness.'
As I have said, the method to realize the worth of Christianity is to
read all the attacks on it. This is what Chesterton does. In doing so he
discovers that these attacks are the one thing that demonstrate the
strength of Christianity. Because the attackers reject it upon reasons
that are contradictory to each other. Thus some complain that it is a
gloomy religion; others go to the opposite extreme and accuse it of
pointing to a state of perpetual chocolate cream; yet again it is
attacked on grounds of effeminancy, it is upbraided as being fond of a
sickly sentimentalism.
Thus it is attacked on opposite grounds at once. It is condemned for
being pessimistic, it is blamed for being optimistic. From this position
Chesterton deduces that it is the only rational religion, because it
steers between the Scylla of pessimism and avoids the Charybdis of a
facile optimism. Regarding presumably the early Church she has also kept
from extremes. She has ignored the easy path of heresy, she has adhered
to the adventurous road of orthodoxy. She has avoided the Arian
materialism by dropping a Greek Iota; she has not succumbed to Eastern
influences, which would have made her forget she was the Church on earth
as well as in heaven. With tremendous commonsense she has remained
rational and chosen the middle course, which was one of the cardinal
virtues of the ancient Greek philosophers.
The Christian religion is, then, rational because attacked along
irrational grounds; the Church is also reasonable because she has not
been swayed by the attraction of heresy nor listened to the glib
fallacies of those who always want to make her something more or
something less.
* * * * *
The other and lesser contention of the book is the wisdom of the land of
the Fairies. This is, Chesterton feels, the land where is found the
philosophy of the nursery that is expressed in fairy tales--tales that
every grown-up should read at Christmas.
Fairyland is for Chesterton the sunny land of commonsense. It is more,
it is a place that has a very definite religion; it is, in fact, really
the child's land of Christ. Take the lesson of Cinderella, says
Chesterton; it is really the teaching of the Prayer Book that the humble
shall be exalted, because humility is worthy of exaltation.
Or the Sleeping Beauty. Is it not the significance of how love can
bridge time? The prince would have been there to wake the princess had
she slept a thousand instead of a hundred years.
Yet again the land of the Fairies is the abode of reason. If Jack is the
son of a miller, then a miller is the father of Jack. It is no good in
Fairyland trying to prove that two and two do not make four, but it is
quite possible to imagine that the witch really did turn the unlucky
prince into a pig. After all, such a procedure is not a monopoly of the
fairies. Lesser persons than princes have been turned into pigs, not by
the wand of a witch, but by the wand of good or bad fortune.
* * * * *
'Orthodoxy' is probably the sanest book that Chesterton has ever
written. It is, I venture to think, the work that will gain for him
immortality. It is a book on the greatest of themes, the reasonableness
of the Christian religion. There have been many books written to attack
the Christian religion, equally many to defend it, but Chesterton has
made his apology for the religion on original grounds--the
contradictories of the detractors of it. 'Orthodoxy' goes alone with
Christ into the mountain, and the eager multitudes receive the real
philosophy of Chesterton.
* * * * *
The child who has eaten too much jam and feels that too much of a good
thing is a truism is rather like the philosopher who, having studied
everything, comes to the sad conviction that there is something wrong
with the world. The child finds that large quantities of jam are a
delusion; the philosopher discovers that the world is even more wrong
than he thought it was.
Sitting in his study, Chesterton, looking out on the garden which is the
world, discovers that there is something wrong with it, and it is caused
by the machinations of the 1,500 odd millions of people who, like ants,
crawl about its surface. 'What's wrong with the World?' is the result,
and a very entertaining book it is. Like many other sociological
treatises it leaves us still convinced that the world is wrong, because
we don't know what we really want.
The pessimist is convinced that the world is a bad place, the optimist
is sure that it can be good. That is the point of the book. Chesterton
has his own ideas of what is wrong, and he says so with astonishing
paradox.
When this book was written, Feminism was demanding votes, and, not
getting them at once, became naughty, and tied itself to the House of
Commons or pushed policemen over. Chesterton devotes a large section of
this book to demanding what is the mistake of Feminism.
'The Feminists probably agree that womanhood is under shameful tyranny
in the shops and mills. I want to destroy this tyranny. They (the
Feminists) want to destroy womanhood.' They do this by attempting to
drive women into the world and turn them away from the home. This is
what is wrong with the woman's world: they have it that the home is
narrow, that the world is wide. The converse is the truth: woman is the
star of the home. It is a pity if she has to make chains--significant
word--at Cradley Heath.
Education is not for Chesterton an unqualified success; there is a
mistake about it somewhere. In fact, there is 'no such thing as
education.' Education is not an object, it is a 'transmission' or an
'inheritance.' It means that a certain standard of conduct is passed on
from generation to generation. The keynote of education for Chesterton
is undoubtedly dogma, and dogma is certainly the result of a narrowing
tendency.
At this present time there is a controversy about the use of our public
schools. Whenever a harassed editor in Fleet Street cannot think what to
put in those two spare columns, he works up a 'stunt' on the use or
otherwise of the public schools. This is always exciting, as the public
schools hardly ever see the controversy, being blissfully immersed in
the military strategy of Hannibal or the political intrigues of the
Caesars. Thus the controversy is conducted by those who generally think
that commerce is superior to Greek, money-grubbing to good manners.
Even Chesterton must say something about these schools that are the
backbone of England. Unfortunately he thinks that they are weakening the
country, that the headmasters 'are teaching only the narrowest of
manners.' But the public schools 'manufacture gentlemen; they are
factories for the making of aristocrats.' If he is right, the more of
these schools there are the better it is for the country.
It is well that he is not averse to Greek. In these days the classics
are looked upon as waste of time. Political economy and profiteering are
more useful. As he says, a man of the type of Carnegie would die in a
Greek city. I am not sure whether this is not unfair. The real use of
Greek is that it teaches culture. There is use in Plato's philosophy; it
is quite as useful as the knowledge acquired that results in peers made,
not born. I don't think Chesterton understands the public schools at
all well; they are both bad and good, but at least they are very
English.
He hasn't a great deal to say for Imperialism. Imperialism is a very
difficult ethic; it is not easy to say whether it is a selfish or an
unselfish policy.
Thus we may quite conceivably pat ourselves on the back and say that, as
English rule is good for natives, it is only right that we should keep
India; but we might find that an equally good and more popular reason
for doing so would be to prevent any one else having her. Thus our
Imperial policy is a little selfish and a little unselfish.
For Chesterton, Imperialism is something that is both weak and perilous.
It is really, he contends, a false idealism which tends to try and make
people locally discontented, contented with pseudo visions of distant
realms where the cities are of gold, where blue skies are never hidden
by yellow fog. But is it a false idealism? If it is, it is that
conception which has made men leave their homes in England to build up
the Imperial Empire which is the daughter of the Great Imperial Island.
The vision may not be always useful, but Imperialism has done much to
make England and Empire synonymous.
Business is, according to Chesterton, a nasty thing that will not wait.
It hates leisure, it has no use for brotherhood, it is one of the things
that is wrong in the world--not, of course, that business is wrong in
itself, but the method. Thus he disagrees that if a soap factory cannot
be run on brotherhood lines the brotherhood must be scrapped. He would
have the converse to be better.
He contends that it is better to be without soap than without society.
As a matter of fact, society without soap would be an abomination.
Society without any brotherhood would soon cease to be a society at all.
Utopia is a little soap, a little society, with a flavouring of
brotherhood in each.
Another and obviously good reason that the world is wrong is that it is
only half finished. This is a matter for extreme optimism; it is the
one great thing that makes it certain that the world will be found all
right if it comes to an end. That is, if it delays long enough for the
Irish question to be settled.
This is what Chesterton contends in this fine book, that reforms are not
reforms at all, rather the same things dressed up in other clothes.
Values are set up on false standards. Women in trying to become
emancipated are likely to become slaves; the fear of the past is given
over to a too delicate introspection of the probable vices and virtues
of generations not yet born.
Imperialism is liable to a false idealism, drawing men from Seven Dials
to find Utopia in Brixton. The public schools are weakening the country
in some respects. Education is not education at all; in fact, we really
must start the wrong world over again. I don't quite see where
Chesterton proposes we are to start, or exactly how, whether backwards
or forwards. Perhaps, as in 'Orthodoxy,' the middle course is the happy
and safe one.
* * * * *
'Tremendous Trifles' is a Chestertonian philosophy of the importance and
interest of small things. It is a remarkable thing that we never see the
things that we daily gaze upon. Chesterton finds scope for all kinds of
subjects in this book, from a 'Piece of Chalk' to 'A Dragon's
Grandmother.' Provided we believe in dragons, there is good reason to
suppose that they have grandmothers. It is not so easy to write a good
essay on the subject. Chesterton does so with great skill, and it makes
it quite certain to be so intellectual as to hate fairies is a piteous
condition.
What he brings out in this particular essay is that what modern
intellectualism has done is to make 'the hero extraordinary, the tale
ordinary,' whereas the fairy tale makes 'the hero ordinary, the tale
extraordinary.'
In this book of short essays it is only possible to take a few, but care
has been taken to attempt to show the enormous versatility of
Chesterton's mind. It has been said quite wrongly that Chesterton cannot
describe pathos. This is certainly untrue. He can so admirably describe
humour that he cannot help knowing the pathetic, which is often so akin
to humour. I am not sure that this ability to describe the melancholy is
not to be seen in one of these essays that narrates how he travelled in
a train in which there was a dead man whose end he never knew.
Perhaps there is nothing more interesting than turning out one's
pockets--all sorts of long forgotten mementoes cause a lump in the
throat or a gleam in the eye; but it is very annoying, on arriving at a
station where tickets are collected, to find everything that relates to
your past twenty years of life and be unable to find the ticket that
makes you a legitimate rider on the iron way. This is what Chesterton
describes in a delightful essay.
One day, so Chesterton tells us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened
to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly
replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to
Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore than by way of Kennington. In a
few words, it is what we mean when we say, as every traveller says at
times, 'Home, sweet home.' I fancy this is what Mr. Chesterton means. It
is a beautiful thought--a fine love of the home, a strange understanding
of the wish of the traveller who once more wishes to see the old cottage
before he journeys 'across the Bar.'
The sight of chained convicts being taken to a prison causes Chesterton
to essay on the 'filthy torture' of our prisons, the whole system of
which is a 'relic of sin.' Perhaps he is right! But is it that the
prisons are wrong, or is it that society makes criminals? After all,
convicts are chained that they shall not endure a worse penalty for
attempted escape. At present prisons are as necessary to the State as
milk is to a baby; the thing against them is that they turn criminal men
into criminal devils.
At his home in Beaconsfield, Chesterton has a wonderful toy theatre. He
writes in this book a sketch about it. This toy theatre has a certain
philosophy. 'It can produce large events in a small space; it could
represent the earthquake in Jamaica or the Day of Judgment.' We must
take Chesterton's word for it. I am not convinced that the toy theatre
of Chesterton has added to philosophy; I don't think it has made any
remarkable contribution to thought, nor is it, as he claims, more
interesting and better than a West-end theatre; but I do believe that in
having amused a few hundred children it has a place in the Book of
Life--perhaps near the name of Santa Claus.
While it is true that 'Tremendous Trifles' is not nearly as important as
some of the Chesterton books, it is true to say that it is a remarkably
pleasant book about small things that are really tremendous when we come
to study them.
* * * * *
'The Defendant' is, as the title suggests, a defence of all kinds of
things that are usually attacked by other people.
It takes a brave man to defend 'penny dreadfuls.' Chesterton assumes
this role. He defends them on their remarkable powers of imagination.
One has only to study Sexton Blake to discover the intricate psychology
of that wondrous personality who can solve the foulest murder or unravel
stories that the divorce courts would quail before.
There is something to be said for the skeleton so long as he doesn't
come out of his cupboard. Chesterton defends skeletons. 'The truth is
that man's horror of the skeleton is not horror of death at all; it is
that the skeleton reminds him that his appearance is shamelessly
grotesque.' But he sees no objection to this at all. After all, he says,
the frog and the hippopotamus are happy. Why, then, should man dislike
it that his anatomy without flesh is inelegant?
It is to be expected that Chesterton would write a defence of baby
worship, because they are so 'very serious and in consequence very
happy.' 'The humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of
all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together.' Probably we are all agreed
that the defence of baby worship is a desirable thing; possibly it is
the only point upon which there is universal agreement with Chesterton.
'The Defendant' is a series of papers that are light, but conceal a
depth of thought behind them. They demonstrate that there is something
to be said for everything which may be a slight solution of the eternal
problem that theological professors are paid to try and discover, the
problem of evil. It may be that there is really no such thing, but it
would be disastrous to these professors to discover this, so the dear
old problem goes on from year to year.
As an essayist, Chesterton is never dull: the philosophy contained in
his essays is not prosy. The only fault is that he is at times so clever
that it is a little difficult to know what he means. But this really
does not matter, as a shrewd critic of one of his books made it public
through the Press that Chesterton did not know himself what he meant.
But I wonder if he did really know?
_Chapter Two_
DICKENS
If there is fault to be found in Chesterton's masterly study of Charles
Dickens it lies in the fact that in parts of the book the meaning is not
always clear, or, rather, it is not always so at a first reading.
Whether this may be justly termed a fault depends largely upon what the
reader of a critical study demands.
If he desires that he shall read Chesterton superficially and yet
understand, he will be doomed to disappointment. Perhaps of all writers
Chesterton must be read with the head between the hands, with a fierce
determination that the meaning veiled in brilliant paradox shall be
sought out.
He is not only a keen critic, he is also a deliberate commentator. The
difference is fundamental. The commentator builds upon the foundation
the critic has erected; he does not merely state what he thinks about a
book or character, rather he explains the criticism already made.
This is the method adopted with regard to Dickens. Chesterton has
written a commentary on the soul of Dickens, he has not in any strict
sense written a biography; this was not necessary; the difficulty of
Dickens lies in the interpretation of his work; his life, though having
a great influence on his writings, has been written so often that
Chesterton has refrained from building on 'another's foundation.' In a
word, it is an intensely original work, far more than our critic's
companion book on Browning.
As was Browning born to a world in the throes of the aftermath of the
French Revolution, so was Dickens. Chesterton lays great stress on the
youth of Dickens; it is only right that he should do this; the early
life of Dickens was probably responsible for the wonderful genius of his
art. The blacking factory that nearly killed the physical Dickens gave
birth to the literary Dickens. Dickens was, in fact, born at the
psychological moment, which is not to say that we are born at the
unpsychological moment, but that Dickens was born at a time that allowed
his natural powers to be used to the best advantage.
Chesterton feels this strongly. 'The background of the Dickens era was
just that background that was eminently suitable to him'; it was a
background that needed a Dickens as much as the pagan world, with all
its Greek philosophies, had needed a Christ.
He begins his study of Dickens with a keen survey of the Dickens period.
'It was,' he says, 'a world that encouraged anybody to anything. And in
England and literature its living expression was Dickens. It is useless
for us to attempt to imagine Dickens and his life unless we are able to
imagine his confidence in common men.'
It is this supreme confidence in common men that was the keynote to the
wonderful power of Dickens in making characters from those who were in a
world sense undistinguished. On this position Chesterton lays great
stress. It was this, he thinks, that made him an optimist. It was the
same position that made Browning an optimist. It is the disbelief in the
Divine image in Man that makes the cynic and the pessimist.
Swift hated men because they were capable of better things but would not
realize it. Dickens knew men were kings, though ordinary men; the result
was that he loved humanity. It is a queer point of psychology that with
the same wish two such minds as Swift and Dickens came to the extremes
of the emotions of love and hate.
In some ways Dickens was more than a maker of books, he was a maker of
worlds; he tried to make 'not only a book but a cosmos.' This may be a
curious and obscure kind of clericalism that popularly expresses itself
as an effort to run with the hare and follow with the hounds, but is
really an heroic attempt to see both sides of the question, and is not a
cheap pandering after popularity.
Many critics have disliked Dickens because of this tendency of
universalism, a tendency liable to intrude on minds of a giant intellect
and a ready sympathy. Chesterton does not think that Dickens was right
in this attitude of universalism, and says so with, I think, a certain
amount of cheap disdain. 'He was inclined to be a literary Whiteley, a
universal provider.' Really Dickens wanted to have a say about
everything, in which he is strangely like Chesterton.
The result of this was a result that meant the greatest value: it meant
and was 'David Copperfield.' The book was for Chesterton a classic, and
it was so because it was an autobiography. It is in this work that
Dickens makes his defence of the rather exaggerated situations in some
of his books, for in this book Dickens proves that his greatest romance
is based on the experiences of his own life. 'David Copperfield is the
great answer of a romancer to the realists. David says in effect, "What!
you say that the Dickens tales are too purple really to have happened.
Why, this is what happened to me, and it seemed the most purple of all.
You say that the Dickens heroes are too handsome and triumphant! Why, no
prince or paladin in Ariosto was ever so handsome and triumphant as the
head boy seemed to me walking before me in the sun. You say the Dickens
villains are too black. Why, there was no ink in the Devil's inkstand
black enough for my own stepfather when I had to live in the same house
with him."'
This is the point that Chesterton brings out so well. The Dickens
characters are not overdrawn because, though they move between book
covers, their originals have moved on the face of the earth; they have
moved with Dickens and he has made them his own. His brilliant apology
for this alleged 'overdrawing' is one of the most effective replies ever
penned to superior Dickens detractors. It is effective because it is
true; it is true because it is obvious that Dickens created that which
lay hidden in his own mind, the misery of his factory days.
It is, I think, with this view in mind that Chesterton pays so much
attention to that period of Dickens' life which he spent in the blacking
factory, with its crude noise, its blatant vulgarity, its vile language
that left the small boy Dickens' sick, but with a sickness that
discovered his literary genius. The factory was the germ that made the
great writer. Chesterton is a true critic of Dickens because he has this
somewhat singular insight of seeing the importance of the early miseries
of Dickens' life with regard to their influence on his literary output
and his queerly favoured delineation of common folks, the sort of people
we always meet but hardly ever talk about because we are foolish enough
to think them ordinary.
* * * * *
It is from the account of the early life of Dickens that Chesterton
gently leads us to the birth of the immortal Mr. Pickwick, that supreme
Englishman who is a byword amongst even those who scarcely know Dickens.
The birth pangs of the advent of Pickwick was a sharp quarrel 'that did
no good to Dickens, and was one of those which occurred far too
frequently in his life.'
Without any hesitation for Chesterton, 'Pickwick Papers' is Dickens'
finest achievement, which is a pleasant enough problem if we happen to
remember that he also wrote 'David Copperfield.' Possibly it is really
unfair to compare them. 'Pickwick Papers' is not in the strict sense a
novel; 'David Copperfield' is a novel even if it is an autobiography. At
any rate Pickwick was a fairy, and as fairies are pretty elastic he
probably was in that category of beings, but he was even more a royal
fairy, none other than the 'fairy prince.'
In Pickwick, Dickens made a great discovery, which was that he could
write ordinary stuff like the 'Sketches by Boz,' and also could produce
Mr. Pickwick and write 'David Copperfield,' which was to say that
Dickens discovered he had a good chance of being the Shakespeare of
literature.
'It is in "Pickwick Papers" that Dickens became a mythologist rather
than a novelist; he dealt with men who were gods.' That is, no doubt,
that they became household gods; in other words, as familiar as the
characters of Shakespeare.
There is one tremendous outstanding characteristic of Dickens which
Chesterton brings out with considerable force. It is that above all
things Dickens created characters. It is almost as if the setting of his
books were on a stage where the environment changes but the essentials
of the characters remain unchanged.
The story is almost subordinated to the drawing of the principal
character; it is almost a modern idea of the psychoanalytical kind of
novel that our young novelists love to draw. But still there is the
great difference that the characters of Dickens pursue there own way
regardless of the trend of events round them.
Naturally the modern novel is inferior to some of Dickens' works, but
they do not deserve the hard things Chesterton says about them. Thus he
remarks in passing that the modern novel is 'devoted to the bewilderment
of a weak young clerk who cannot decide which woman he wants to marry or
which new religion he believes in; we still give this knock-kneed cad
the name of hero.'
This is, I think, unfair. The modern novel is very often still a good
healthy love tale; the hero is more often than not a gentleman who has
not the brains to be a cad; his trouble about marriage is that he wants
to marry the right woman to their mutual well being; he is neither a cad
nor a hero, but an ordinary Englishman whom we need not walk half a mile
to see; he usually marries a girl who can be seen in any suburb or at
any church bazaar. I have dwelt on this at some length, as Chesterton
has a tendency to despise modern novelists while being one himself.
At this period, when 'Pickwick' had once and for all brought fame to
Dickens, it will be interesting to see why Dickens attained the enormous
popularity he did. He was, our critic thinks, a 'great event not only in
literature but also in history.'
He considers that Dickens was popular in a sense that we of the
twentieth century cannot understand. In fact, he goes so far as to say
that there are no really popular authors to-day.
This is probably not entirely true. When we say an author is popular we
do not mean that necessarily, as Chesterton seems to suggest, he is a
'best seller'; rather we call him popular in the sense that a large
number of people find pleasure in reading him, even if the subject is
not a pleasant one. Dickens was popular in a different way: he was read
by a public who wished his story might never end. They not only loved
his books, they loved his characters even more. No matter that there
might be five sub-stories running alongside of the main one, the central
character retained the public affection. His characters were known
outside their particular stories, and not only that, this was by no
means confined to the principal ones.
They were known, as Chesterton points out, as Sherlock Holmes is known
to-day. But even so there is again a difference. People do not speak of
the minor characters of Conan Doyle's tales as they do, for instance, of
Smike.
* * * * *
It is now convenient to turn to the Christmas literature of Dickens. I
am convinced that Chesterton has very badly misconstrued the character
of Scrooge, that delightful person whose one virtue was consistency.
Above everything, Scrooge was consistent; he hated Christmas as we hate
anything that does not agree with our temperament. Merry Christmas was
nonsense to him because he did not know how to be merry. He was a cold,
cynical bachelor, and at that, so far, was perfectly within the law,
moral and legal.
But Chesterton, by rather an unfortunate attempt to be too original, has
turned him into a filthy hypocrite who needed no appearances of spirits
whatever; for he says of Scrooge, 'He is only a crusty old bachelor, and
had, I strongly suspect, given away turkeys secretly all his life.'
When Chesterton says that Scrooge gave away turkeys secretly all his
life it is merely saying that the whole attitude of Scrooge to life was
a silly and unmeaning pose, which makes him ridiculous, and robs the
'Christmas Carol' of all its real worth, that of the miraculous
conversion of Scrooge.
But, then, the actual story does not mean much for Chesterton: 'the
repentance of Scrooge is highly improbable.' If it is true that Scrooge
really did give away turkeys secretly, then it is quite obvious that
Scrooge never did repent; he was past it. But I fancy that Chesterton
has erred badly here; he has attempted without success to put a secret
meaning into a simple and beautiful story.
'Chimes' is, for Chesterton, an attack on cant. It was a story written
by Dickens to protest against all he hated in the nature of
oppression. Dickens hated the vulgar cant that only helps to bring
self-advertisement: the ethic that the poor must listen to the rich, not
because the rich are the best law-givers, but because society is at
present so constituted that no other method can be adopted.
Dickens loved the attitude the poor always take to Christmas; it is that
attitude which is the proof that at its bedrock humanity is extremely
lovable. Chesterton is entirely in agreement with Dickens on this
matter. 'There is nothing,' he says, 'upon which the poor are more
criticized than on the point of spending large sums on small feasts;
there is nothing in which they are more right.'
Dickens did not in any way forget that the real spirit of Christmas is
to be found in the cheery group round the blazing fire. 'The Cricket on
the Hearth' is a pleasant tale about all that we associate with
Christmas, that very thing that has made Hearth and Christmas
synonymous; yet Chesterton considers this one of the weakest of the
Dickens' stories, which is a surprising criticism for a writer who
really loves Christmas as he does.
* * * * *
In a later period of Dickens, Chesterton informs us of his brief entry
into the complex and exciting world that has its headquarters in Fleet
Street. For a short period Dickens occupied the editorship of the _Daily
News_, but the environment was not a very congenial one. Dickens was
unsettled with that strange restlessness that seizes all literary men at
some time or other. This was the time that saw the publication of
'Dombey and Son.' Chesterton thinks that the essential genius found its
most perfect expression in this work though the treatment is grotesque.
This book is almost, so our critic thinks, 'a theological one: it
attempts to distinguish between the rough pagan devotion of the father
and the gentler Christian affection of the mother.'
The grotesque manner of treatment of this work was as natural as the
employment of the grotesque by Browning. Dickens must work in his own
way, in the manner that suited his inmost soul; he could not be made to
write to order. In a brilliant paradox Chesterton says of 'Dombey and
Son': the 'story of Florence Dombey is incredible, although it is true,'
which is what many people feel about Christianity. 'Dombey and Son' was
the outlet for that curious psychology of Dickens which could get the
best out of a pathetic incident by approaching it from a grotesque
angle. It came, as Chesterton points out in his own inimitable way,
'into the inner chamber by coming down the chimney.' Which demonstrates
the ever nearness of pathos to humour, of the absurd to the pathetic.
It will not be out of place to refer at this time to some of the defects
with which people have charged Dickens. Chesterton does not agree with
the critics on these points, but admits that these charges have been
levelled against Dickens. It will be advisable to take one or two
examples of these alleged flaws.
There is that most popular thing of which Dickens is accused, that of
exaggeration. Many people are quite incredulous that there could ever
have existed such a character as Little Nell. Chesterton, however,
thinks that Dickens did know a girl of this nature, and that Little Nell
was based on her. Little Nell is not really more improbable than 'Eric,'
the famous hero of Dean Farrar, and he was certainly based on a living
boy.
People who live in these enlightened days are piously shocked at the
amount of drinking described by Dickens. Well-bred and garrulous ladies
have shuddered at the scenes described, and have declared that Dickens
was at least fond of the Bacchanalian element. So he was, but the reason
was not that he loved hard drinking, but that, as our critic brings out,
drinking was the symbol of hospitality as roast beef is the symbol of a
Sunday in a thousand English rectories. As Dickens described the social
life of England he could not leave out its most characteristic feature
and shudder in pious horror that the red wine dyed old England a merry
crimson.
* * * * *
It would be no doubt an exaggeration to call Dickens a socialist. What
he saw was that there was a mass of beings that was called humanity,
that the two ends of the political pole were indifferent to this mass.
The party to which a man gave his allegiance did not matter as long as
that party worked for man's ultimate good. Chesterton is quite sure that
Dickens was not a socialist; he was not the kind that ranted at street
corners and dined in secret at the Ritz, nor was he of the kind who said
all men are equal but I am a little better. He was a socialist in the
sense that he hated oppression of any kind.
'Hard Times' strikes a note that is a little short of being harsh. The
reason that Dickens may have exaggerated Bounderby is that he really
disliked him. The Dickensian characters undoubtedly suffered from their
delineator's likes and dislikes.