meets Patricia, who thinks he can produce fairies. In due course the
conjurer comes into the room, where he has encounters with the various
occupants, who don't believe in his tricks; the conjurer is unlucky
enough to meet the young American cad Morris Carleon, who is really
quite rude to the conjurer and discovers (so he thinks) all the tricks
except one in which the conjurer turns the red lamp at the doctor's gate
blue. This so worries Morris that he goes up to his room with a chance
of going mad.
The others beseech the conjurer to explain the trick; he does so, and
says it is done by magic, which is the whole point of the play, that we
are left to wonder whether it was by magic or by a natural phenomenon.
The conjurer gets the better of the parson, the Rev. Cyril Smith, who
believes in a model public house and the Old Testament, and takes a good
stipend for pretending to believe in the supernatural.
The result of the whole matter is magic, by which we presume the trick
may have been done.
* * * * *
The play is in some ways a difficult one: we are left wondering whether
or not Chesterton believes in magic; if he does, then the conjurer need
not have been so upset that he had gained so much power of a psychic
nature; if he does not, then the conjurer was a clever fraud or a
brilliant hypnotist.
One thing is quite certain, Chesterton brings out the weaknesses of the
dialectic of the parson and doctor in a remarkable way; he makes us
realise that there are some things we really know nothing about; if
lamps turn blue suddenly it may quite well be a 'Something' that may be
magic and might be God or Satan; anyhow, it cannot be explained by an
American young man; it is of the things that the clergy profess to
believe in and very often do not.
It is, I think, undoubtedly a problem play, and I doubt very much if
Chesterton knows what was the agency that did the trick, but I rather
think that 'Magic' is a great play, not because of the situations, but
rather because the more the play is studied the more difficult is it to
say exactly what is the lesson of it.
Magic is called a phantastic comedy; it might well be called a
phantastic tragedy.
_Chapter Eight_
THE NOVELIST
There is perhaps no word in the English language which is more elastic
than the word novel as applied to what is commonly known as fiction. The
word novel is used to describe stories that are as far apart as the
Poles. Thus it is used to describe a classic by Thackeray or Dickens, or
a clever love tale by Miss Dell, or a brilliantly outspoken sex tale by
Miss Elinor Glyn, or a romance by Miss Corelli, or a tale of adventure
by Joseph Conrad, or a very modern type of analytical novel by very
modern writers who are a little bit young and a big bit old.
I do not think that it is an exaggeration to say that Chesterton as a
novelist carries the art yet a step farther and has added elasticity to
the word. It would, I think, be probably untrue to say that Chesterton
is a popular novelist; he is much too unlike one to be so. That he is
read by a wide public is not the same thing; he has not the following of
the millions that Charles Garvice had, for the millions who understood
him might find Chesterton difficult. Really Chesterton is read by a
select number of people who would claim to be intellectual; very
up-to-date clergymen rave about his catholicity, high-brow ladies of
smart clubs delight in his knave whimsicalities, but the girl in the
suburban train to Wimbledon passes by on the other side.
One of the characteristic features of Chesterton's novels is his clever
selection of titles that are by their very nature fit to designate his
original works. If in journalism nine-tenths of the importance of an
article depends upon its title, it is equally true that the title of a
novel is of the same import. Either a title should give some indication
of the nature of the book, or it should be of the kind that makes us
want to read it; this is the case with regard to the Chesterton novels,
their designations are so phantastic that our curiosity is aroused. Thus
'The Man who was Thursday' gives no possible explanation of what it is
about, but it does suggest that it is interesting to know about a man
who was Thursday; 'The Flying Inn' may be a forecast of prohibition or
it may be a romance of the time when inns shall fly to the ends of the
earth; 'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' leads us to suppose that perhaps
there was a hidden history of that part of London, that Notting Hill can
boast of a past that makes it worthy of having been a station on the
first London tube.
It is unsafe to prophesy any limit to the versatility of Chesterton, but
it is improbable that he could write an ordinary novel; the reason is, I
fancy, that he cannot write of the ordinary emotions with the ease that
he can construct grotesque situations. This is why I have said that, as
a novelist, Chesterton is not popular in the sense that he is read by
the masses (that word that the Church always uses to indicate those who
form the bulk of the community). As a novelist, Chesterton stands apart,
not because he is better than contemporary writers of fiction, but
because his books are unlike those of any one else.
I have taken Chesterton's most famous novels and have written a
short survey of their character. They are not always easy to
understand--sometimes they seem to indicate alternative points of view;
they teem with pungent wit and shrewd observations, they are without
doubt phantastic, they are in the true sense clever.
'THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL'
At the time of the publication of this book the critics with astounding
frankness admitted that, while this was a fine book, they had difficulty
in deciphering what it meant. One, now a well-known Fleet Street editor,
went farther, and said that possibly the author himself did not know
what he meant--a situation in which quite a number of authors have found
themselves, especially when they read the reviews of their books.
'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' is not an easy book to understand: it may
be a satire, it may be a serious book, it may be a prophecy, it may be a
joke, it may even be a novel! I think that it is a little bit of a joke,
in a degree serious--something of a satire, possibly a prophecy.
The main thing about the book is that a king is so unwise as to make a
joke, and an obscure poet is more unwise in taking this Royal joke
seriously. Many who have laughed at monarchical wit have found that
their heads had an alarming trick of falling on Tower Hill.
In 'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' we are living a hundred years on, and
we are to believe that London hasn't much changed; a certain respectable
gentleman has been made a king for no special reason--a very good way of
having a versatile monarchy and a selection of kings.
Not far off in the kingdom of Notting Hill there resides a poet who has
written poems that no one reads. He is a romantic youth, and loves
Notting Hill with the love of a Roman for Rome or of a Jew for
Whitechapel. The new king, by way of a joke, suggests that it would be
quite a good idea to take the various parts of London and restore them
to a mediaeval dignity; thus 'Clapham should have a city guard, Wimbledon
a city wall, Surbiton tolling a bell to raise its citizens.'
It so happens that the obscure poet, Adam Wayne, has always seen in
Notting Hill a glory that her citizens cannot see; he determines to make
the grocers and barbers of that neighbourhood realise their rich
inheritance. The new king, for some reason, desires to possess Pump
Street in Notting Hill, and this gives the poet's dream a chance to
mature; and he gets together a huge army, with himself as Lord High
Provost of Notting Hill. There are some frightful battles in the
adjacent states of Kensington and Bayswater, and, after varying
fortunes, the Notting Hill Army is defeated, the Napoleon becomes again
the poet of Notting Hill, while his citizens have developed from grocers
to romanticists, from barbers to fanatics.
That there might be in the future a Napoleon of Notting Hill is highly
improbable, that London will ever return to the pomp and heraldry of the
Middle Ages is not at all likely; but that in a hundred years Notting
Hill will be different is quite possible. If it is not likely that there
will be fights between Bayswater and Notting Hill, there may at least be
battles in the air unthought of; it may well be that its citizens in
times of peace will take a half-day trip, not to Kew Gardens or to
Hampton Court, but to Bombay and Cape Town.
'MANALIVE'
One of the strangest complications that man has to face is the criminal
mind. It is so complex that no society has ever understood it; very
often it has not taken the trouble to try. No method of punishment has
stamped out the criminal; no reformers, however ardent, have freed the
world from those who live by violence, kill by violence, and are
themselves killed by violence. If crime is a disease, then to treat
criminals as wrongdoers is absurd. If every murderer is insane, then
hanging is nonsense; if a murderer is sane, then sanity is capable of
being more revolting than insanity.
'Manalive' may, perhaps, be called a philosophy of the motive for crime;
it may be a pseudo philosophy--at least it is an entertaining one--which
cannot be said about all serious attempts at moulding the universe into
a tiresome system, that is uprooted generally by the next thinker. The
book opens with a very strong gale that ends with the arrival at a
boarding house of a man who can stand on his head and has the name of
Innocent Smith. He is somewhat like the person in the 'Passing of the
Third Floor Back,' in that he revolutionizes the household, who cannot
determine whether he is a lunatic or not; anyhow, he falls in love with
the girl of the house. Unfortunately, rumour--a nasty, ill-natured
thing--has it that Smith is a criminal. Evidence is collected, and a
Grand Jury inquire into the charges, which include Bigamy, Murder,
Polygamy, Burglary. It looks as if Smith is in for a very uncomfortable
time, and the wedding bells are a long way from ringing.
The second part of the book is concerned with these charges and the
conduct and motives of Smith. But Chesterton is a clever barrister, and
shows that the motives behind the 'crimes' are not only within the law,
but are extremely useful and throw a new light on criminology.
The crime of murder of which Smith is accused is one that he is supposed
to have perpetrated in his college days. It was nothing less than firing
at the Warden. The reason was not at all that Smith wanted to murder the
Warden, but, rather, to discover if his theory of 'the elimination of
life being desirable' was a sincere one. It was not. As soon as the
Professor thought he might attain the desired bliss of death, he desired
more than anything that he might live. The fact, then, that Smith
pointed a pistol at his Warden was perfectly justifiable; it had the
eminently good principle of wishing to test a theory.
If Smith was a bigamist he was so with his own wife, only that he
happened to like to live with her in various places; if he was a
burglar, he was perfectly justified, because he merely robbed his own
house--in fact, he does not wish to steal, because he can covet his own
goods. Chesterton, on these grounds, acquits the prisoner.
At the end of the book another or the same great gale springs up, and
Smith, accompanied by Mary of the boarding-house, disappears. Clever as
Chesterton's explanations of the crimes are, we shall not probably shoot
at the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in order to demonstrate
to him how desirable life really is; we shall not burgle our own
sitting-room for the mere excitement of it; we shall not flit with our
wife from Peckham to Marylebone, from Singapore to Bagdad, to imagine
that we are bigamists or polygamists; rather, we shall sit at home and
sigh that all crimes cannot be as easily settled as those Chesterton
propounds and shows are not crimes at all.
'THE BALL AND THE CROSS'
It is usually assumed that a theological argument is a dull and prosy
affair that has as its perpetrators either Professors of Theology or
Professors of Rationalism. It is, of course, true that many Professors
of Theology are dull, but they do not usually argue about theology at
all. Professors of Rationalism are equally dull and are seldom happy
when not engaged on the hopeless task of trying to understand God when
they know nothing about Man and little about Satan.
'The Ball and the Cross' is a theological novel. It is, without any
doubt, the most brilliant of Chesterton's novels; it is an argument
between a Christian ass and a very decent atheist. Atheists, if they are
sincere, are on the way to becoming good Christians; Christians, if they
are insincere, are on the way to becoming atheists.
The book opens with a theological argument in the air between a
professor and a monk. This becomes to the professor so wearisome that,
with great good sense, he leaves the monk clinging to the cross at the
top of St. Paul's Cathedral while he disappears into the clouds in his
silver airship.
Having successfully climbed into the gallery, the monk is arrested as a
wandering lunatic and taken off to an asylum. Meanwhile, a great deal of
excitement is agitating Ludgate Hill, where an atheistic editor runs a
paper that propounds (with all the usual insults at Christ, which
culminate in an attack on the method of the birth of Christ) the creed
of atheism. A particularly slanderous attack on the Virgin Mary results
in an ardent Roman Catholic throwing a stone through the blasphemer's
window.
The result is that they are both brought up before the magistrate, and
the two men decide to fight a duel.
The whole book really, then, consists of a theological argument between
the two, interspersed with attempts to settle their differences by a
duel, which is always interrupted at the crucial moment. Finally, after
queer adventures, the two arrive in a lunatic asylum, in which they are
kept until the place is burned down. It so happens that the chief doctor
of the place turns out to be Professor Lucifer, who had left the monk
clinging to the Cross at the top of the Cathedral. He is burnt to death
in an airship disaster, and the atheist and the Catholic end their
adventures.
'The Ball and the Cross' is very full of fine passages. It presents the
side of the atheist and the Catholic in a brilliant manner. The chapter
that describes the trial before the magistrate has got the atmosphere of
the police-court to perfection. Not less good is the Chestertonian
satire of the comments of the Press on the case, in which Chesterton
makes some pungent remarks about Fleet Street 'stunts.' Perhaps one of
the best things in the book is the argument between the French Catholic
girl and Turnbull the atheist on the doctrine of Transubstantiation.
This passage must be quoted; it is one of the best arguments for the
Sacrament that has been written for those people who can see that (even
in these days) bread is a symbol for the Presence of the Life Giver, and
wine a symbol for the Presence of the Life Force.
'I am sure,' cried Turnbull, 'there is no God.'
'But there is,' said Madeleine quietly; 'why, I touched His body this
morning.'
'You touched a bit of bread,' said Turnbull.
'You think it is only a bit of bread,' said the girl.
'I know it is only a bit of bread,' said Turnbull, with violence.
'Then why did you refuse to eat it?' she said.
* * * * *
If 'Orthodoxy' is the finest of Chesterton's essays, 'Browning' the best
of his critical studies, 'The Ballad of the White Horse' the best of his
poems, there is, I think, little doubt that this strange theological
exposition, 'The Ball and the Cross,' is the best of his novels. It
should be read by all rationalists, by all self-satisfied Christians, by
all heretics, by those who are orthodox, and, above all, it should be
read by those millions who pass St. Paul's Cathedral and seldom if ever
give a thought to the 'Ball and the Cross' that has made the title of
Chesterton's best novel.
'THE FLYING INN'
Chesterton is once more a laughing prophet in this book, and he has as
sad a state of things to prophesy as had Jeremiah to the Israelites,
those people who, if it were not that they find a place in the sacred
writings, would be the most silly and futile race of ancient history.
The scene of the story is England, and the last inn is there. We are to
imagine that the non-drinking wine dogma of Islam has permeated England.
It is a sorry state of things when--
'The wicked old women who feel well-bred,
Have turned to a teashop the Saracen's Head.'
The great charm of the book is the poetry that the Irish captain recites
to Pump, the innkeeper, the gallant innkeeper who, against all
opposition, keeps the flag flying and the flagon full. If the book is a
little overdrawn it is, no doubt, because the subject is slightly
farcical; the arguments of the Oriental are well put, and, if the
discussion of the merits of vegetarianism are a little wearisome, the
poetry of a vegetarian is splendid:
'For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife,
Because I am at heart a vegetarian.'
Thus, if we observe queer manners at Eustace Miles we shall know the
reason.
No doubt the adventures of the last innkeeper in England would be
wonderful; there would be half-day trips to see him; bishops would flock
to gaze upon the last relic of a pagan England; the Poet Laureate might
so forget himself as to write an 'Epic of the Last Innkeeper'; editors
would be sending lady reporters to give the feminine view of the finish
of drinking; publishers would fall over one another in their eagerness
to secure the 'Memoirs of the Last Publican'; the Salvation Army would
put the last drunkard in the British Museum as a prehistoric specimen;
on the death of this National Hero, the Dean of Westminster would
politely offer the Abbey for a memorial service, with no tickets for the
best places.
Chesterton gives other adventures to this last innkeeper. He is, we
hope, a false prophet for this once. Were there to be no beer perhaps
not even the pen of Chesterton would be able to describe the scenes that
would take place in England.
'THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY'
Anarchy is a very interesting subject and is used to denote very
different things. It may be something that puts a bullet through a king
with the insane hope of ending the monarchy; it may be an act of a
God-fearing Protestant clergyman when he attempts to harry the Catholics
by denying that the crucifix is the proper symbol of the Christian
religion; it may be the act of God when a village is destroyed by an
earthquake or an island created by a seaquake.
'The Man who was Thursday' is about an anarchist, and we are not sure
whether Chesterton is not pulling our respectable legs and laughing that
we really believed the party of desperadoes were real anarchists. The
fact is, the book starts in a highly respectable suburb that might be
anywhere near London and could not be far from it.
There are two poets strolling about under the canopy of a lovely sky;
one believes in anarchy, the other doesn't--the one who does invites the
one who does not to come with him and see what anarchy is. This he does,
and, after a good supper of lobster mayonnaise, the two get down to a
subterranean cavern where are assembled half the anarchists of the
world, precisely six; they call themselves by the names of the week,
with a leader, who is met with later, Sunday.
Syme, the visitor, is appointed as a member, and becomes, Thursday; he
has a great many adventures, including breakfast, overlooking Leicester
Square, and gradually discovers that the said anarchists, unknown at
first to each other, are really Scotland Yard detectives.
The only real anarchist is the poet who believed in it, whose name is
Gregory. He has the pious wish to destroy the world; he may be Satan, if
that person could ever pretend to be a poet.
What does Chesterton mean by this strange weird tale that is almost like
a romance of Oppenheim and is yet like an old-world allegory? Is he
laughing at anarchists that they are but policemen in disguise? Is he
saying that policemen are really only anarchists? Or does he mean that
the Devil masquerades as the spirit of the Holy Day of the week
'Sunday,' or is 'Sunday' really Christ?
Chesterton calls this novel a nightmare; a nightmare is usually a
muddled kind of thing with no connections at all; it is a dream turned
into a blasphemy. The book may mean several things; it is quite possible
that it may mean nothing; there is no need for a novel to mean anything
so long as it is readable. 'The Man who was Thursday' certainly is that,
but it leaves us with an uneasy suspicion that it is a very serious book
and at the same time it may be merely a farce.
* * * * *
Space does not permit us to more than mention Chesterton's two detective
books, 'The Innocence of Father Brown' and 'The Wisdom of Father Brown.'
They are a highly original series of detective tales. 'The Club of Queer
Trades' is a volume of quaint short stories full of Chesterton's genius.
Since Chesterton wrote these books an event has occurred to him which
may have a considerable effect on his writings. His novels have always
shown a Catholic tendency when they have touched at all on religion.
They have not, of course, the propagandist setting of the works of
Father R.H. Benson, nor do they have a contempt for other Churches
that so often blackens the writings of Roman Catholic apologists.
The event is one that has occasioned the usual mistake in the Press.
They have said with loud emphasis, 'Mr. Chesterton has joined the
Catholic Church.' He has not; there is, unfortunately, no Catholic
Church that he could have joined; what he has done is to be received
into the Roman part of the Catholic Church.
This is a matter of importance to Chesterton; it is a matter of far
greater importance to the Roman Catholics. If the Roman Church is wise
she will not put her ban on Chesterton's writings--his intellect is far
beyond the ken of the Pope; his utterances are of more import than all
the Papal Bulls. She has secured, as her ally, one of the finest
intellects of the day, one of the best Christian apologists.
If, then, we have further novels from the pen of Chesterton we shall
expect them to have a Roman bias, but we shall hope that they will not
bear any signs that Rome has dictated the policy that has made many of
her best priests mere puppets, afraid, not of the Church, but of the
Pope, who often enough in history has been a very ignorant man.
Of present-day novelists it is in no way fair to compare them to
Chesterton; 'some contemporary novelists are better than he is, some are
worse.' These are statements the writer of this book has often heard;
they are entirely unfair. Chesterton, as I have said, stands apart; his
works are for the most part symbolic. This is their difficulty: any of
his books may be the symbol for several points of view with the
exception of his religious position, which is always on the side of
Christianity, and, I think, the Roman Catholic interpretation of it; his
dialogue is worthy of Anthony Hope, his dramatic power is intense, his
satire is never ill-natured, it is always cutting, his humour is gentle,
pathos is rare in his novels, he has never described a woman, he is
undoubtedly a philosopher, but he is not one who is academic, above all
he is the genial writer of phantastic tales that are as wide as the
universe.
_Chapter Nine_
CHESTERTON ON DIVORCE
It may be somewhat arbitrary to proceed straight away to nearly the end
of Chesterton's 'Superstition of Divorce' to find an argument that shows
that he doesn't quite understand what divorce aims at; but it is well,
when taking note of a book on an alleged abuse of modern society, to
also see that the writer has got hold of the right end of the stick. It
is no doubt unfortunate that many marriages said to be made in heaven
end in hell. Divorce may be a sign that men have no reverence for
marriage, it may equally be an argument that they reverence it very
much; but there is no good reason for attributing to divorce only very
low motives and one of the lowest that can be found; consequently I have
started in the middle of this book.