Perhaps you do not know where Ethandune is. Nor do I; nor does anybody.
That is where the somewhat sombre fun begins. I cannot even tell you for
certain whether it is the name of a forest or a town or a hill. I can
only say that in any case it is of the kind that floats and is unfixed.
If it is a forest, it is one of those forests that march with a million
legs, like the walking trees that were the doom of Macbeth. If it is a
town, it is one of those towns that vanish, like a city of tents. If it
is a hill, it is a flying hill, like the mountain to which faith lends
wings. Over a vast dim region of England this dark name of Ethandune
floats like an eagle doubtful where to swoop and strike, and, indeed,
there were birds of prey enough over Ethandune, wherever it was. But now
Ethandune itself has grown as dark and drifting as the black drifts of
the birds.
And yet without this word that you cannot fit with a meaning and hardly
with a memory, you would be sitting in a very different chair at this
moment and looking at a very different tablecloth. As a practical modern
phrase I do not commend it; if my private critics and correspondents
in whom I delight should happen to address me “G. K. Chesterton, Poste
Restante, Ethandune,” I fear their letters would not come to hand. If
two hurried commercial travellers should agree to discuss a business
matter at Ethandune from 5 to 5.15, I am afraid they would grow old in
the district as white-haired wanderers. To put it plainly, Ethandune is
anywhere and nowhere in the western hills; it is an English mirage. And
yet but for this doubtful thing you would have probably no Daily News on
Saturday and certainly no church on Sunday. I do not say that either of
these two things is a benefit; but I do say that they are customs, and
that you would not possess them except through this mystery. You would
not have Christmas puddings, nor (probably) any puddings; you would
not have Easter eggs, probably not poached eggs, I strongly suspect not
scrambled eggs, and the best historians are decidedly doubtful about
curried eggs. To cut a long story short (the longest of all
stories), you would not have any civilization, far less any Christian
civilization. And if in some moment of gentle curiosity you wish to know
why you are the polished sparkling, rounded, and wholly satisfactory
citizen which you obviously are, then I can give you no more definite
answer geographical or historical; but only toll in your ears the tone
of the uncaptured name--Ethandune.
I will try to state quite sensibly why it is as important as it is. And
yet even that is not easy. If I were to state the mere fact from the
history books, numbers of people would think it equally trivial and
remote, like some war of the Picts and Scots. The points perhaps might
be put in this way. There is a certain spirit in the world which breaks
everything off short. There may be magnificence in the smashing; but the
thing is smashed. There may be a certain splendour; but the splendour is
sterile: it abolishes all future splendours. I mean (to take a working
example), York Minster covered with flames might happen to be quite
as beautiful as York Minster covered with carvings. But the carvings
produce more carvings. The flames produce nothing but a little black
heap. When any act has this cul-de-sac quality it matters little whether
it is done by a book or a sword, by a clumsy battle-axe or a chemical
bomb. The case is the same with ideas. The pessimist may be a proud
figure when he curses all the stars; the optimist may be an even prouder
figure when he blesses them all. But the real test is not in the
energy, but in the effect. When the optimist has said, “All things
are interesting,” we are left free; we can be interested as much or
as little as we please. But when the pessimist says, “No things are
interesting,” it may be a very witty remark: but it is the last witty
remark that can be made on the subject. He has burnt his cathedral; he
has had his blaze and the rest is ashes. The sceptics, like bees, give
their one sting and die. The pessimist must be wrong, because he says
the last word.
Now, this spirit that denies and that destroys had at one period of
history a dreadful epoch of military superiority. They did burn York
Minster, or at least, places of the same kind. Roughly speaking, from
the seventh century to the tenth, a dense tide of darkness, of chaos and
brainless cruelty, poured on these islands and on the western coasts
of the Continent, which well-nigh cut them off from all the white man's
culture for ever. And this is the final human test; that the varied
chiefs of that vague age were remembered or forgotten according to how
they had resisted this almost cosmic raid. Nobody thought of the modern
nonsense about races; everybody thought of the human race and its
highest achievements. Arthur was a Celt, and may have been a fabulous
Celt; but he was a fable on the right side. Charlemagne may have been a
Gaul or a Goth, but he was not a barbarian; he fought for the tradition
against the barbarians, the nihilists. And for this reason also, for
this reason, in the last resort, only, we call the saddest and in some
ways the least successful of the Wessex kings by the title of Alfred
the Great. Alfred was defeated by the barbarians again and again, he
defeated the barbarians again and again; but his victories were almost
as vain as his defeats. Fortunately he did not believe in the Time
Spirit or the Trend of Things or any such modern rubbish, and therefore
kept pegging away. But while his failures and his fruitless successes
have names still in use (such as Wilton, Basing, and Ashdown), that
last epic battle which really broke the barbarian has remained without
a modern place or name. Except that it was near Chippenham, where
the Danes gave up their swords and were baptized, no one can pick out
certainly the place where you and I were saved from being savages for
ever.
But the other day under a wild sunset and moonrise I passed the place
which is best reputed as Ethandune, a high, grim upland, partly bare
and partly shaggy; like that savage and sacred spot in those great
imaginative lines about the demon lover and the waning moon. The
darkness, the red wreck of sunset, the yellow and lurid moon, the long
fantastic shadows, actually created that sense of monstrous incident
which is the dramatic side of landscape. The bare grey slopes seemed to
rush downhill like routed hosts; the dark clouds drove across like riven
banners; and the moon was like a golden dragon, like the Golden Dragon
of Wessex.
As we crossed a tilt of the torn heath I saw suddenly between myself and
the moon a black shapeless pile higher than a house. The atmosphere
was so intense that I really thought of a pile of dead Danes, with some
phantom conqueror on the top of it. Fortunately I was crossing these
wastes with a friend who knew more history than I; and he told me
that this was a barrow older than Alfred, older than the Romans, older
perhaps than the Britons; and no man knew whether it was a wall or a
trophy or a tomb. Ethandune is still a drifting name; but it gave me a
queer emotion to think that, sword in hand, as the Danes poured with
the torrents of their blood down to Chippenham, the great king may have
lifted up his head and looked at that oppressive shape, suggestive of
something and yet suggestive of nothing; may have looked at it as we
did, and understood it as little as we.