he died hard; his blood flowed over an England that did not know what
loyalty was, a country that had nobles who would fly from their king on
the first sign of danger; the Last Post of the old kings was sounding,
and Richard answered its challenge. His description of this remarkable
king is perhaps the best thing in the book, and is certainly far better
than the ordinary history that attempts to give the character of a king
in a couple of lines.
With the end of the mediaeval kings we pass to a period that is none
other than the Renaissance, one of the most important epochs in English
history, 'that great dawn of a more rational daylight which for so many
made mediaevalism seem a mere darkness.'
The character of Henry VIII is one that is a veritable battleground. He
is attacked because he found a variety of wives pleasing; he is condoned
as a young man who promised to be a great king. There are, as Chesterton
points out, two great things that intruded into his reign: the one was
the difficulty of his marriages, the other was the question of the
monasteries. If Henry was a Bluebeard, he was such because his wives
were not a fortunate selection. 'He was almost as unlucky in his wives
as they were in their husband.' But the one thing that Chesterton feels
broke Henry's honour was the question of his divorce. In doing this he
mistook the friendship of the Pope for something that would make him go
against the position of the Church. 'Henry sought to lean upon the
cushions of Leo and found he had struck his arm upon the rock of Peter.
The result was that Henry finished with the Papacy in the pious hope
that it had done with him; Henry became head of the Church that was
national, and soon Wolsey fell, to die in a monastery at Leicester.
But this terrible king 'struck down the noblest of the Humanists, Thomas
More, who died the death of a saint, gloriously jesting.' The question
of the monasteries is one that is solved by the simple statement that
the King wanted money and the monasteries supplied it. Is there any
justification for the crimes of Henry? For Chesterton 'it is unpractical
to discuss whether Froude finds any justification for Henry's crimes in
the desire to create a strong national monarchy. For whether or not it
was desired, it was not created.'
Chesterton in an original way has given a very clear account of the
difficulties of the reign of Henry VIII, a reign that had perhaps more
influence on English history than any other, a reign that showed what
the licence of an English monarchy could do and, what is of more
importance, what it could not, a reign that showed that the fall of a
great man could be so precipitate that the significance of it could not
be felt at the time, a reign that showed that the Pope was something
more than the friend of the English throne--he was in matters of Church
discipline its checkmate. This was the time that England trembled at the
devilry of a king and rejoiced at the sun of a new learning that was
slowly dispelling the fog of the Dark Ages.
* * * * *
It is usually assumed that Mary was a bad woman because she burned
people who were so unwise as not to be at least officially Catholics.
Historians have applied the word 'bloody' to her, whereas the better
word would be fanatic. 'Her enemies were wrong about her character,'
says Chesterton. 'She was in a limited sense a good woman.' If
Chesterton means she was a good Catholic he is right, if the burning of
heretics is a good thing for a Christian Church. But the fortunate part
of the whole affair was that not even burning could restore the power of
the Papacy in England in Mary's time any more than the arrogance of the
Roman Catholics to-day can restore the Pope to London and unfrock the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Mary was a sincere fanatic, and like most
fanatics was an extremely ignorant woman; consequently she could not see
that the fire that burnt Cranmer also burnt the last hope of England
bowing to the Pope of Rome. I cannot feel that Chesterton has in the
least vindicated the character of Mary.
Historians are apt to think that the days of Queen Elizabeth were those
in which England first realized that she was great. On the other hand,
Chesterton is convinced that it is in this period that 'she first
realized that she was small.' The business of the Armada was to her what
Bannockburn was to the Scots, or Majuba to the Boers--a victory that
astonished the victors. The fact of the matter was that Spain realized
after the battle that the victory does not always go to the big
battalions, which the present Kaiser is no doubt writing in his
'Imperial' copybook to-day.
The 'magnificance of the Elizabethan times has traces in mediaeval times
and far fewer traces in modern times.' 'Her critics indeed might
reasonably say that in replacing the Virgin Mary by the Virgin Queen,
the English reformers merely exchanged a true virgin for a false one.'
If Elizabeth was crafty it was because it was good she should be so. If
she had not been so, the history of England might have found Philip of
Spain on the English throne and Mary Queen of Scots a worse menace in
England, a menace that by the skill of Elizabeth developed into a
headless corpse. Had Elizabeth had a different historical background,
she might have been a different Queen; but, as it was, she dealt with it
as only a genius could who had followed a maniacal Queen who failed in
everything she did.
From the times of Elizabeth, Chesterton moves on to the age of the
Puritans, those rather dull people who have always been the byword for
those who are more popularly known as Prigs. 'The Puritans were
primarily enthusiastic for what they thought was pure religion. Their
great and fundamental idea was that the mind of man can alone directly
deal with the mind of God. Consequently they were anti-sacramental.' Not
only in ecclesiastical matters, they were in doctrine Calvinistic--that
is, they believed 'that men were created to be lost and saved,' a
theological position that makes God a Person who wastes a lot of
valuable time. It was to a large extent this belief in Calvin that made
the Puritans dislike a sacramental principle; it was, of course, quite
unnecessary to have one. If a man was either lost or saved, the need of
any human meditators was not felt.
It is, of course, true, as Chesterton says, that 'England was never
Puritan.' Neither was it ever entirely Catholic, neither has it ever
been entirely Protestant. It is one of the things to be thankful for
that men have ever held different religious opinions. It would be the
greatest mistake if ever the Church was so misguided as to listen to the
cries that come for unity, a unity that could only be founded on the
subordinating of the opinions of the many to the opinion of the few.
I have said at the beginning of this chapter that Chesterton has said
that the Middle Ages have not had the historical attention they deserve.
Whether this is so is a question that cannot be answered here. What we
have to say is whether this book is a valuable one. There are, of
course, many opinions expressed in it that do not take the usual
historical standpoint, or they have a more original way of expression. I
cannot feel that this book is the best of Chesterton's works, not
because it has not some very sound opinions expressed in it, but rather
because to understand its import the ordinary histories must be well
known. It is perhaps a matter of an unsuitable title, 'A Short History
of England.' It would have been better to have called it a 'History of
the Histories of England, and the Mistakes therein.' It would be no use
as an historical book in the school sense, but as an original book on
some of the turning-points of English history it is valuable. Mr.
Chesterton tells us to read history backwards to understand it. This we
may well do if we have read it as fully forward as he evidently has.
_Chapter Six_
THE POET
Amongst the many outstanding qualities of Chesterton there is one that
is pre-eminent--his extraordinary versatility. It cannot be said that
this quality is always an advantage; a too ready versatility is not
always synonymous with valuable work; especially is this so in literary
matters. There are quite a number of writers who, without success,
attempt to be a little of everything. This is not the case with
Chesterton; if he is better as an essayist than as a historian, he is at
least good as the latter; if he is better at paradox than at concise
statements, he can be, if he chooses, quite free from paradox; if he
excels in satire of a light nature, he can also be the most serious of
critics if the subject needs such treatment.
It has often been said that a good prose writer seldom makes a good
poet. This may be to a certain extent a truism; the opposite is more
often the case; that a good poet is quite often a poor producer of
prose. There is a good reason for this: the mind of a poet is probably
of a different calibre to that of a prose writer; a poet must have a
poetical outlook on life and nature; the tree to him is something more
than a tree, it is probably a symbol, but to a prose writer more often
than not a tree is merely a mass of bark and leaves that adorns the
landscape.
Chesterton has written a great many poems, all of which can claim to be
poetical in the true sense, but he has only written one really important
poetical work. It is a ballad that is important for two things; firstly,
it is about a very English thing; secondly, the style of the writing is
nothing short of delightful, a statement that is not true of all good
poetry. It has been said that Chesterton might well be the Poet
Laureate; at least, it is a matter for extreme joy that he is not, not
because he is not worth that honour, but because anything that tended to
reduce his poetical output would be a serious thing in these days when
good poets are as scarce as really good novelists.
The poem that has established Chesterton for all time as a poet is the
one he has called with true poetical genius 'The Ballad of the White
Horse.' There have been many white horses, but there is The White Horse,
and he lies alone on the side of a hill down Wiltshire way, where he has
watched with a mournful gaze the centuries pass away as the horizon
passes away in a liquid blue.
The White Horse stands for something that year by year we are
forgetting, those quaint old English feasts that have done so much to
make England merry, and have made history into a beautiful legend that
bears the name of Alfred. Yet the White Horse is falling into neglect.
The author of 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' lamented the fact that people
flew past the White Horse in stuffy first class carriages; were he alive
now he would lament still more that English men and English women can
pass the White Horse without a glance up from the novel they are reading
bound in a flaring yellow cover. But there is one great Englishman who
will never do this, and that is Chesterton; rather he writes of the
White Horse, the lonely horse that is worthy of this splendid poem.
* * * * *
In connection with the Vale of White Horse there are three
traditions--one, that Alfred fought a great battle there; another, that
he played a harp in the camp of the Danes; a third, that Alfred proved
himself a very bad cook who wasted a poor woman's cake, a poor woman who
would willingly have sacrificed cakes every day to have the honour of
the king under her roof.
It is of these three traditions that Chesterton writes his poem.
Whether they may be historically accurate does not much matter; there is
no doubt that the Vale had something to do with the King of Wessex, and
popular tradition has made the name of Alfred a national legend.
When Chesterton writes of the vision of the king he is no doubt writing
of his own vision of the events that led up to the gathering of the
chiefs. The Danes had descended on England like a cloud of locusts; it
was the time that needed a National Champion, as time and again in the
past the Israelites had needed one. It is one of the strange things of
history that a champion has always appeared when he was most needed. The
name of the Danes inspired terror; Wessex was shattered--
'For earthquake following earthquake
Uprent the Wessex tree ...'
The kings of Wessex were weary and disheartened: fire and pillage had
laid the countryside bare with that horrible bareness that only lies in
the wake of conqueror:
'There was not English armour left,
Nor any English thing,
When Alfred came to Athelney
To be an English king.'
This was the vision that Alfred had, and he gathered the disheartened
chiefs to his side till, in victory, he could bear the name of king.
* * * * *
In the wake of national champions there have ever appeared popular tales
demonstrating the human qualities of these giants; if Napoleon could
conquer empires, tradition has never forgotten that he once pardoned a
sentry he found asleep at his post. If Wellington won the battle of
Waterloo by military genius, so popular hearsay has urged that he
commanded the Guards to charge 'La Grande Armee' in cockney terms.
Around the almost sacred name of Alfred many and various are the old
wives' tales, among which the story of his harp is not the least
picturesque; it is one on which Chesterton expends a good deal of poetic
energy.
From the gist of the poem it is evident that Alfred, in the course of
his wanderings, came near to the White Horse, but as though for very
sorrow--
'The great White Horse was grey.'
Down the hill the Danes came in headlong flight and carried Alfred off
to their camp; his fame as a harpist had pierced the ears of the
invaders:
'And hearing of his harp and skill,
They dragged him to their play.'
The Danes might well laugh at the song of the king, but it was a laugh
that was soon to be turned to weeping when the king had finished his
song:
'And the king with harp on shoulder
Stood up and ceased his song;
And the owls moaned from the mighty trees,
And the Danes laughed loud and long.'
There is in this poem a pleasant rhythm and a clearness of meaning that
is absent from much good poetry. Chesterton has caught the wild romantic
background of the time when the King of England could play a harp in the
camp of his enemies; when he could, by a note, bring back the
disheartened warriors to renew the fight; when he could be left to look
after the cakes and be scolded when, like the English villages, they
were burnt. One of the most popular of the legends is the one connected
with Alfred and the woman of the forest. It has made Chesterton write
some of his most charming verse.
And Alfred came to the door of a woman's cottage and there rested, with
the promise that in return he would watch the cakes that they did not
burn.
But--
'The good food fell upon the ash,
And blackened instantly.'
The woman was naturally annoyed that this unknown tramp should let her
cooking spoil:
'Screaming, the woman caught a cake
Yet burning from the bar,
And struck him suddenly on the face,
Leaving a scarlet scar.'
The scar was on the king's brow, a scar that tens of thousands should
follow to victory:
'A terrible harvest, ten by ten,
As the wrath of the last red autumn--then
When Christ reaps down the kings.'
In a preface to this poem, with regard to that part which deals with the
battle of Enthandune, Chesterton says: 'I fancy that in fact Alfred's
Wessex was of very mixed bloods; I have given a fictitious Roman, Celt,
and Saxon a part in the glory of Enthandune.'
* * * * *
The battle of Enthandune is divided into three parts. The poetry is
specially noticeable for the great harmony of the words with the subject
of the lines; it is one of the great characteristics of Chesterton's
poetry that he uses language that intimately expresses what he wants to
describe. He can, in a few lines, describe the discipline of an army:
'And when they came to the open land
They wheeled, deployed, and stood.'
It is perfect poetry concerning the machine-like movements of
highly-trained troops.
The death of an earl that occurs in a moment of battle: we can almost
see the blow, the quick change on the face from life to death; we can
almost hear the death gurgle:
'Earl Harold, as in pain,
Strove for a smile, put hand to head,
Stumbled and suddenly fell dead,
And the small white daisies all waxed red
With blood out of his brain.'
Of the tremendous power of a charge, Chesterton can give us the meaning
in two lines that might otherwise take a page of prose:
'Spears at the charge!' yelled Mark amain,
'Death to the gods of Death.'
Whether it be to victory or defeat, the last charge grips the
imagination, just as the latest words of a great man are remembered long
after he has turned to dust. The final charge of the Old Guard, the
remnant of Napoleon's ill-fated army at Waterloo, the dying words of
Nelson, these are the things that produce great poetry.
Some of the verses describing the last charge at Enthandune are the
finest lines Chesterton has so far written. It will not be out of place
to quote one or two of the best--the challenge of Alfred to his
followers to make an effort against the dreaded Danes, at whose very
name strong men would pale:
'Brothers-at-arms,' said Alfred,
'On this side lies the foe;
Are slavery and starvation flowers,
That you should pluck them so?'
Or the death of the Danish leader, who would have pierced Alfred through
and through:
'Short time had shaggy Ogier
To pull his lance in line--
He knew King Alfred's axe on high,
He heard it rushing through the sky;
He cowered beneath it with a cry--
It split him to the spine;
And Alfred sprang over him dead,
And blew the battle sign.'
The last part of the poem is that which gives an account of the scouring
of the White Horse, in the years of peace:
'When the good king sat at home.'
But through everything the White Horse remained--
'Untouched except by the hand of Nature:
The turf crawled and the fungus crept,
And the little sorrel, while all men slept,
Unwrought the work of man.'
'The Ballad of the White Horse' is in its way one of the best things
Chesterton has done: it is a fine poem about a very picturesque piece of
English legend, which may or may not be based on history. Poetry can,
and very often does, fulfil a great patriotic mission in arousing
interest in those distant times when Englishmen, with their backs to the
wall, responded to the cry of Alfred, as they did when, centuries later,
the hordes of Germans attempted to cut the knot of Haig's army.
For hundreds of years Alfred has been turned to dust, but the White
Horse remains, a perpetual monument to the great days when England was
invaded by the Danes. 'The Ballad of the White Horse' is a ballad worthy
of the immortal horse that will remain centuries after the author of the
poem has passed out of mortal sight.
* * * * *
In an early volume of light verse Chesterton wrote of the kind of games
that old men with beards would delight in. 'Greybeards at Play' is a
delightful set of satirical verses in which the ardent philosopher
confers a favour on Nature by being on intimate and patronising terms
with her.
This dear old philosopher, with grey beard and presumably long nose and
large spectacles, is full of admiration for the heavenly beings:
'I love to see the little stars
All dancing to one tune;
I think quite highly of the Sun,
And kindly of the Moon.'
Coming to earth, this same philosopher is full of friendly relations
with America, for--
'The great Niagara waterfall
Is never shy with me.'
In the same volume Chesterton writes of the spread of aestheticism, and
that the cult of the Soul had a terrible effect on trade:
'The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
Declined to open shops--
And Cooks recorded frames of mind
In sad and subtle chops.'
In a small volume of poems called 'Wine, Water, and Song,' we have some
of the poems that appear in Chesterton's novels. They have a delightful
air of brilliancy and satire, about dogs and grocers and that peculiar
king of the Jews, Nebuchadnezzar, who, when he is spoken of by scholars,
alters his name to Nebuchadrezzar. We have but room for one quotation,
and the place of honour must be given to the epic of the grocer who,
like many of other trades, makes a fortune by giving short weights:
'The Hell-Instructed Grocer
Has a Temple made of Tin,
And the Ruin of good innkeepers
Is loudly urged therein;
But now the sands are running out
From sugar of a sort,
The Grocer trembles, for his time,
Just like his weight, is short.'
* * * * *
The hymn that Mr. Chesterton has written, called 'O God of Earth and
Altar,' is unfortunately so good and so entirely sensible that the
clergy on the whole have not used it much; rather they prefer to sing of
heaven with a golden floor and a gate of pearl, ignoring a really fine
hymn that pictures God as a sensible Being and not a Lord Chief Justice
either of sickly sentimentality or of the type of a Judge Jeffreys.
It must be said that to many people who know Chesterton he is first and
foremost an essayist and lastly a poet. The reason is that he has
written comparatively little serious poetry; this is, I think, rather a
pity--not that quantity is always consistent with quality, but that in
some way it may not be too much to say that Chesterton is the best poet
of the day; and I do not forget that he has as contemporaries Alfred
Noyes and Walter de la Mare.
The strong characteristic of his poetry, as I have said, is the wealth
of language; to this must be added the exceedingly pleasant rhythm that
runs as easily as a well-oiled bicycle. If Mr. Chesterton is not known
to posterity as one of the leading poets of the twentieth century it
will be because his prose is so well known that his poetry is rather
crowded out.
_Chapter Seven_
THE PLAYWRIGHT
Nearly eight years ago all literary and dramatic London focused its eyes
on a theatre that was known as the Little Theatre. On the night of
November 7th the critics might have been seen making their way along
John Street with just the faintest suspicion of mirth in their eyes.
The reason was that the most eccentric genius of the day had written a
play, and it was to be produced that night, and had the name of MAGIC, a
title that might indicate something that turned princes into wolves, or
transported people on carpets to distant lands, or might be more simply
a play that dealt with Magic in the sense that there really was such a
thing.
The play was a success--I could see that it would be at the moment Mr.
Bernard Shaw so forgot himself as to be interested in something he had
not himself written. The Press was charmed with the play and went so far
as to say, with a gross burlesque of Chesterton, that it was 'real
phantasy and had soul.' Chesterton by his one produced play had earned
the right to call himself a dramatic author, who could make the public
shiver and think at the same time, an unusual combination.
I rather fancy that Magic is a theological argument, disguised in the
form of a play, that relies for its effects on clever conversation, the
moving of pictures, and a mysterious person who may have been a conjurer
and may have also been a magician.
When I say that the play is really a theological one, I do not mean to
say that it has anything to do with the Thirty-Nine Articles, the
Validity of the Anglican Orders, or even the truth of the Virgin Birth;
rather it is about an indefinable 'something' that is so simple that it
is misunderstood by every one.
The play turns upon five people who are thrown together in a room that
has a nasty habit of becoming ghostly at times.
The five people are a doctor who is a scientist, who does not believe in
anything not material being scientific; a vicar who is a typical
clergyman, who thoroughly believes in supernatural things until they are
proved, when he becomes an agnostic; a young American who is a cad and a
fool; a girl who believes in fairies and goes to Holy Communion, which
is the one thing that depicts she has a certain amount of sense; a duke
who ends every sentence with a quotation from Tennyson to Bernard Shaw.
These five people are influenced by a Pied Piper kind of fellow who
calls himself a conjurer, and is rather too clever for the company.