Prejudice is probably an unconscious obeying of instinct; it may even
be a warning. Yet it can be and often is entirely unreasonable.
Browning's prejudice was, Chesterton thinks, the type that hated a thing
it knew nothing about, a state of mind that is comparatively harmless.
What is dangerous is disliking a thing when we know what it is. The
prejudice of Browning was synonymous with his profound contempt for
certain things of which he can only speak 'in pothouse words.'
About this period Browning produced 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangu, Saviour
of Society.' This is 'one of the most picturesque of Browning's
apologetic monologues.' It is Browning's courageous attempt to allow
Napoleon III to speak for himself. Yet again Browning 'took in those
sinners whom even sinners cast out.'
Two years later, we are told, Browning produced one of his most
characteristic works, 'Night-cap Country.' It is an elegant poem of the
sicklier side of the French Revolution and the more sensual side of the
French temperament.
This is the period in Browning's life when he produced his most
characteristic work. It was that time when he was nearly middle aged,
when the lamp of youth was just flickering, and when the lamp of old age
was about to be lighted.
Chesterton treats the whole of this period with a calm
straightforwardness that we are not accustomed to in his writings. There
is no doubt, I think, of all our critic's books, that his work on
Browning is the least Chestertonian, which is not in any way to
disparage it, but rather to state that the book might have been written
by any biographer who knew Browning's works and had the sense to see
that his characteristics were such that many of his critics were unfair
to him. Chesterton will never allow for an instant that Browning
suffered from anything but an evident 'naturalness,' which expressed
itself in a rugged style, concealing charity in an original
grotesqueness of manner.
It is now convenient to turn to Browning's greatest work, 'The Ring and
the Book,' and see what Chesterton has to say about it.
Rumour is really distorted truth, or rather very often originates from a
different standpoint being taken of the same thing. Thus a man may say
that another man is a good fellow but borrows money too often; another
may say of the same man he is a good fellow but talks too much; a third
that he is a good fellow but would be better without a moustache. The
essential man is the same, but his three critics make really a different
person, or, at least, each sees him from a different angle.
As Chesterton so finely points out, the conception of 'The Ring and the
Book' is the studying of a single matter from nine different
standpoints. In successive monologues Browning is endeavouring to depict
the various strange ways a fact gets itself presented to the world.
Further, the work indicates the extraordinary lack of logic used by
those who would be ashamed to be denied the name of dialectician.
Probably, thinks Chesterton, very many people do harm in their cause,
not by want of propaganda, but by the fallaciousness of their arguments
for it.
There have been critics who have denied to this work the right of
immortality. Chesterton is not one of these; rather he contends such a
criticism is a gross misunderstanding of the work. For our critic the
greatness of this poem is the very point upon which it is attacked, that
of environment. For once and all Browning has demonstrated that there
are riches and depths in small things that are often denied to what we
think is greater.
'It is an epic round a sordid police court case.' 'The essence of "The
Ring and the Book" is that it is the great epic of the nineteenth
century, because it is the great epic of the importance of small
things.' Browning says, 'I will show you the relation of man to heaven
by telling you a story out of a dirty Italian book of criminal trials,
from which I select one of the meanest and most completely forgotten.'
It is then that Chesterton sees that this poem is more than a mere poem;
it is a natural acknowledgment of the monarchy of small things, the same
idea that made Dickens believe that common men could be kings--that is,
in the same category as the Divine care of the hairs of the head. It
gives the lie to the rather popular fallacy that events are important by
their size. It is once more a position that the stone on the hillside is
as mighty as the mountain of which it is only a small part.
Again, 'The Ring and the Book' is an embodiment of the spiritual in the
material, the good that can be contained in a sordid story; it is the
typical epic of our age, 'because it expresses the richness of life by
taking as a text a poor story. It pays to existence the highest of all
possible compliments, the great compliment of selecting from it almost
at random.'
There is a second respect, he feels, which makes this poem the epic of
the age. It is that every man has a point of view. And, what is more,
every man probably has a different point of view at least in something.
'The Ring and the Book,' to sum up briefly why Chesterton thinks so
highly of it, is an epic; it is a national expression of a
characteristic love of small things, the germination of great truths; it
pays a compliment to humanity by asserting the value of every opinion,
it demonstrates that even in so sordid a thing as a police court there
is a spiritual spark; in a word, it is an attempt to see God, not on the
hill-tops or in the valleys, but in the back streets teeming with common
men.
It is now time to turn to two qualities of Browning that are full of the
deepest interest, and which are dealt with by Chesterton with the
greatest skill and judgment. These two qualities may be described as
Browning as a literary artist and Browning as a philosopher. For our
purpose it will be useful to take Browning as a literary artist first
and see what was his position. Philosophy is usually in the nature of a
summing up. The philosophy of a poet is best looked at when the poet has
been studied; therefore it is best to follow Chesterton's order and
take Browning's philosophical position at the end of this chapter.
He feels that in some ways the critics want Browning to be poet and
logician, and are rather cross when he is either. They want him to be a
poet and are annoyed that he is a logician; they want him to be a
logician and are annoyed that he is a poet. The fact of the matter is he
was probably a poet!
Chesterton is convinced that Browning was a literary artist--that is to
say, he was a symbolist. The wealth of Browning's poetry depends on
arrangement of language. It is so with all great literature: it is not
so much what is said as how it is said, in what way the sentences are
formed so that the climax comes in the right place.
For all practical purposes Browning was, our critic thinks, a deliberate
artist. The suggestion that Browning cared nothing for form is for
Chesterton a monstrous assertion. It is as absurd as saying that
Napoleon cared nothing for feminine love or that Nero hated mushrooms.
What Browning did was always to fall into a different kind of form,
which is a totally different thing to saying he disregarded it.
There is rather an assumption among a certain class of critics that the
artistic form is a quality that is finite. As a matter of fact, it is
infinite; it cannot be bound up with any particular mode of expression;
it is elastic, and so elastic that certain critics cannot adjust their
minds to such lucidity.
There is, our critic feels, another suggestion--that if Browning had a
form, it was a bad one. This really does not matter very much. Whether
form in an artistic sense is good or bad can only be determined by
setting up a criterion; this is not possible in the case of Browning,
because, though he has many forms, they are original ones, which render
them impervious to values of good and bad.
Chesterton is naturally aware that Browning wrote a great deal of bad
poetry--every poet does. The way to take with Browning's bad poetry is
not to condemn him for it, but to say quite frankly this poem or that
poem was a failure. It is by his masterpieces that Browning must be
judged.
Perhaps, as he points out, the peculiar characteristic of Browning's art
lay in his use of the grotesque, which, as I said at the beginning of
this chapter, is a totally different thing from the abnormal.
In other words, Browning was rugged. It was as natural for him to be
rugged as for Ruskin to be polished, for Swift to be cynical (in an
optimistic sense), for Chesterton to be paradoxical. Ruggedness is a
form of beauty, but it is a beauty that is quite different from the
commonly accepted grounds. A mountain is rugged and it is beautiful, a
woman is beautiful; but the two features of the aesthetic are quite
different. It is the same with poetry. There is (and Browning proved it)
a 'beautifulness' in the rugged; it is a sense of being 'beautifully'
rugged.
Enough has been said to make it quite clear that Browning was a literary
artist; but, as Chesterton contends, an original one. He did not confine
himself to any one form: his beauty lay in the placing of the 'rugged'
before his readers, the method he used of employing the grotesque.
* * * * *
It is now an excellent time in which to look at Browning's philosophy
and Chesterton's interpretation of it.
As it is perfectly true to say that every man has a point of view, a
position so admirably brought out by Browning in his 'Ring and the
Book,' so it is also, I think, a truism that every man has (not always
consciously) a philosophy. A philosophy is, after all, a point of view;
it is not necessarily an abstract academic position; nor is it always a
well-defined attempt to discover the ultimate purpose of things. It can
be, and very often is, a point of view really acquired by experience.
Naturally a man of the intellect of Browning would have a philosophy,
and he had, as our critic points out, a very definite one.
In his quaint way Chesterton tells us 'Browning had opinions as he had
a dress suit or a vote for Parliament.' And he had no hesitation in
expressing these opinions. There was no reason why he should; at least
part of his philosophy, as I have indicated, lay in his knowledge of the
value of men's opinions--yet again brought out in 'The Ring and the
Book.'
He had, so we are told, two great theories of the universe: the first,
the hope that lies in man, imperfect as he is; the second, a bold
position that has offended many people but is nevertheless at least a
reasonable one, that God is in some way imperfect; that is, in some
obscure way He could be made jealous.
This is, no doubt, a highly unorthodox position. Yet it is a position
that thousands have felt does make it plainer (as it did to
Browning)--the necessity of the Crucifixion; it was a pandering to
Divine jealousy.
These are, as Chesterton admits, great thoughts, and, as such, are
liable to be disliked by those Christians and others who will not think
and dislike any one else doing so.
This strange theological position of Browning is, I think, indicated in
'Saul.'
Chesterton usually does not agree with the other critics about most
things, but he does at least agree in regard to the fact that Browning
was an optimist. His theory of the use of men, though imperfect, is as
good an argument for optimism as could well be found. Browning's
optimism was, as our critic says, founded on experience, it was not a
mere theory that had nothing practical behind it.
As I have said, Browning disliked Spiritualists; but that is not, our
critic thinks, the reason he wrote 'Sludge the Medium.' What this poem
showed was that Spiritualism could be of use in spite of insincere
mediums. It was in no way an attack on the tenets of Spiritualism.
The understanding of this poem gives the key to other poems of
Browning's, as 'Bishop Blougram's Apology,' and some of the monologues
in 'The Ring and the Book'; which is, that 'a man cannot help telling
some truth, even when he sets out to tell lies.'
This may be the right interpretation of these poems, but I think
Browning really meant that there is an end somewhere to lying; in other
words, lying is negative and temporary; truth is positive and eternal.
The summing up of Browning's knaves cannot be better expressed than by
Chesterton. 'They are real somewhere. We are talking to a garrulous and
peevish sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry features, his
evasive eyes and babbling lips. And suddenly the face begins to change
and harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of
clay becomes a common mouthpiece, and the voice that comes forth is the
voice of God uttering his everlasting soliloquy.'
It is the essence of Browning; it is the certainty that however far
distant there is the face of God behind the human features.
* * * * *
If there is one characteristic about this study of Browning it lies in
the fact that it is a very clear exposition of a remarkable poet. A man
might take up the book knowing Browning only as a name; he might well
lay it down knowing what Browning was, what he achieved, what his
essence was. The book is a masterly study--it lays claim to our
sympathies; and never more so than when our critic describes that moment
when Browning, alone in the room, saw his wife die.
_Chapter Five_
CHESTERTON AS HISTORIAN
The reason that Chesterton has written a history of England is that he
says no member of the public has ever done so before. This is a thing to
be supremely thankful for if true; but it is entirely untrue, for the
very obvious fact that history has never been written by any one who is
not a member of the public. Every historian is a member of the public.
Let him imagine he is not, let him carry this imagination out to a
logical conclusion, and he will have a good chance of landing in a
prison for failing to pay the king's taxes.
The very best people to write histories are historians, but they will
never deal with history in a popular way. This Chesterton laments. He
wants a history that shall be about the things that never ordinarily get
into history. If he is told about the charters of the barons, he wishes
to hear of the charters of the carpenters. This, he thinks, would make
history popular, that word which is always used to denote something
rather slight and superficial. He exclaims that the people are ignored,
whereas the historian really would not be one at all if he was guilty of
this charge.
The fact of the matter is, that the whole of the history of England has
been so misunderstood that Chesterton has come to the rescue and has
told us what really happened--in fact, all we learnt at school was waste
of time; poor Green really wrote an anti-history of this country. The
Romans are not of the remote past; the whole of present-day England is
the remains of Rome, which is merely to say that our civilization comes
down from Rome, a statement that quite able historians have hinted at
now and again. No one for an instant is so foolish as to think that the
chief remains of the Romans consist of the few broken-up baths and
villas up and down the country, when a splendid high road stares them in
the face.
* * * * *
Chesterton pays enormous attention to the Middle Ages. They have, he
thinks, been rather badly dealt with by historians. Too much attention
is, he contends, paid to the time of the Stuarts onwards. Chesterton
asks us to contemplate history as we should if we had never learnt it at
school. It is, of course, true that we do not learn the essentials of
our country in our schooldays. It is of no real importance that William
conquered Harold in 1066, but it is of vast importance to know how he
behaved as a conqueror, a fact seldom taught. But if we forgot all the
history we ever knew, we should not be able to appreciate Chesterton's
history, which aims to reconstruct all that we had believed while
pouring over Green in the fifth form.
Chesterton covers so much ground in this book, his treatment is so
intricate, his method so full of various peculiar contentions, that the
only possible method in a chapter is to take some of the more important
points he touches upon and try and discover what he feels about them. It
will be well to realize at once that however he may differ from
recognized historians, his history loses all its meaning unless the
standard historians are known fairly well.
* * * * *
There are probably two tremendous turning points in history--the one
occurred at the moment that the fatal arrow entered the eye of Harold at
Senlac, the other when Henry VIII set fire to the ecclesiastical faggots
that ended in the Reformation. That period which lay between them may
roughly be called the Middle Ages, which part of history Chesterton
thinks has been badly treated. Whether this is so is a question that
opens up a broader one: Has the history of England ever received the
attention it deserves? Has right proportion been given to the most
important events? Should history be made popular in the modern sense of
this much misinterpreted word? These are questions to which no adequate
answer can be given in the space of a chapter, nor is it within the
scope of this book.
Chesterton is very annoyed to find that to possess Norman blood is, to
many people, a hall mark of aristocracy: 'This fashionable fancy misses
what is best in the Normans.' What he contends, and I think rightly, is
that William was a conqueror until he had conquered. Then England passed
out of his hands. He had wished it to be an autocracy; instead, it
developed into a monarchy--'William the Conqueror became William the
Conquered.' This is a line that the ordinary historians do not appear to
take, though I fancy they imply it when they say that feudalism didn't
exist in the time of the Georges.
Perhaps one of the most picturesque parts of history is that time when
men looked across the sea and saw in the far distance a huge cross that
seemed to beckon as the voices later called to Joan of Arc. The Crusades
were a time when wars were holy because they were waged for a holy
thing. Six hundred years, so Chesterton tells us, had elapsed since
Christianity had arisen and covered the world like a dust-storm, when
there arose 'a copy and a contrary: the creed of the Moslems'; in a
sense Islam was 'like a Christian heresy.' Historians, so he thinks,
have not understood the Crusades. They have taken them to be
aristocratic expeditions with a Cross as the prey instead of a deer,
whereas really they were 'unanimous risings.' 'The Holy Land was much
nearer to a plain man's house than Westminster, and immeasurably nearer
than Runnymede.' But I am not sure that Chesterton has scored over the
orthodox historians who made a good deal out of the fact that Crusade
had a close affinity to _Crux_, which word meant a cross that was not
necessarily bound up with Calvary.
In dealing with the Middle Ages, he propounds the proposition that the
best way to understand history is to read it backwards--that is, if we
are to understand the Magna Charta we must be on speaking terms with
Mary. 'If we really want to know what was strongest in the twelfth
century, it is no bad way to ask what remained of it in the fourteenth.'
This is a very excellent method, as it demonstrates what were the
historical events and what were the mere local and temporary.
Becket was one of those queer people of history who was half a priest
and half a statesman, and he had to deal with a king who was half a king
and half a tyrant. Every schoolboy knows about Becket, and delights to
read of the wild ride to Canterbury, which began with the spilling of
Becket's brains and ended with the spilling of the King's blood by his
tomb.
For Chesterton, Becket 'may have been too idealistic: he wished to
protect the Church as a sort of earthly paradise, of which the rules
might seem to him as paternal as those of heaven, but might well seem to
the king as capricious as those of Fairyland.' The tremendously
suggestive thing of the whole story of Becket is that Henry II submitted
to being thrashed at Becket's tomb. It was like 'Cecil Rhodes submitting
to be horsewhipped by a Boer as an apology for some indefensible death
incidental to the Jameson Raid.' Undoubtedly Chesterton has got at the
kernel of the story that made an Archbishop a saint (a rare occurrence)
and an English king a sportsman (a rarer occurrence).
But clever as Chesterton is in regard to this particular story, the
ordinary schoolboy would do better to stick to the common tale of Becket
that came on the hasty words spoken by a hasty king; he will better
understand the significance of the whipping of the king when he can read
history back to the days when kings could not only not be whipped, but
could whip whom they chose, and put men's eyes out when they used them
to shoot at the king's deer.
A great part of the Middle Ages is concerned with the French wars, those
wars that staggered the English exchequer and made the English kings
leaders of armies. The reason of these wars was, Chesterton tells us,
the fact that Christianity was a very local thing. It was more--it was a
national thing that was bound up with England. 'Men began to feel that
foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that
the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted
in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a
supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue
out at the French master.
The French wars were something more than a national hatred, they were a
national dislike of foreigners, a dislike that had its probable origin
in the Tower of Babel. But this was not the only reason of the incessant
French wars--there was a question of policy. France began to be a
nation, and 'a true patriotic applause hailed the later victory of
Agincourt.' France had become something more than a nation; it had
become a religion, because it had as its figure a simple girl who
believed in voices, and took her part in the struggles of a defeated
country.
Chesterton's chapter is a fine understanding of the French wars; it is
an amplification of the mere skeletons of ordinary history, and as such
is very valuable.
From being a reasonable national dislike, the French wars 'gradually
grew to be almost as much a scourge to England as they were to France.'
'England was despoiled by her own victories; luxury and poverty
increased at the extremes of society, and the balance of the better
mediaevalism was lost.' It resulted in the revolt connected with Wat
Tyler, a revolt that 'was not only dramatic but was domestic'; it ended
in the death of Tyler and the intervention of the boy king, who, in
swaying the multitude that was a dangerous mob, 'gives us a fleeting and
final glimpse of the crowned sacramental man of the Middle Ages.'
From this period Chesterton tells us that a rather strange thing
happened--men began to fight for the crown. The Wars of the Roses was
the result. The English rose was then the symbol of party, as ever since
it has been the symbol of an English summer.
Chesterton makes no attempt to follow the difficult path that the Wars
of the Roses travel, from the military standpoint, nor the adventures
that followed the king-maker Warwick and the warlike widow of Henry V,
one Margaret. There was, so he says, a moral difference in this conflict
that took the name of a Rose to fight for a Crown. 'Lancaster stood, as
a whole, for the new notion of a king propped by parliaments and
powerful bishops; and York, on the whole, for the remains of the older
idea of a king who permits nothing to come between him and his people.
This is everything of permanent political interest that could be traced
by counting all the bows of Barnet or all the lances of Tewkesbury.'
The time when the Middle Ages was drawing near to the Tudors is
interesting, because of the riddle of Richard III. Chesterton's
description of this strange king is full of fascination if also it is
full of truth: 'He was not an ogre shedding rivers of blood, yet a
crimson cloud cannot be dispelled from his memory. Whether or not he was
a good man, he was apparently a good king, and even a popular one. He
anticipated the Renaissance in an abnormal enthusiasm for art and music,
and he seems to have held to the old paths of religion and charity.'