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HILAIRE BELLOC
WORKS BY HILAIRE BELLOC.
PARIS
MARIE ANTOINETTE
EMMANUEL BURDEN, MERCHANT
HILLS AND THE SEA
ON NOTHING
ON EVERYTHING
ON SOMETHING
FIRST AND LAST
THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER
A PICKED COMPANY
[Illustration: HILAIRE BELLOC]
HILAIRE BELLOC
THE MAN AND HIS WORK
BY
C. CREIGHTON MANDELL
and
EDWARD SHANKS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1916_
TO
H. L. HUTTON
OF MERCHANT TAYLORS' SCHOOL
INTRODUCTION
BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us that
he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more uproarious
and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked into the
night; and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. When I have
said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not merely _bons
mots,_ I have said all that can be said in the most serious aspect about
the man who has made the greatest fight for good things of all the men
of my time.
We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho restaurant;
his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist and French
Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes, which are like
a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin. He was talking about
King John, who, he positively assured me, was _not_ (as was often
asserted) the best king that ever reigned in England. Still, there were
allowances to be made for him; I mean King John, not Belloc. "He had
been Regent," said Belloc with forbearance, "and in all the Middle Ages
there is no example of a successful Regent." I, for one, had not come
provided with any successful Regents with whom to counter this
generalization; and when I came to think of it, it was quite true. I
have noticed the same thing about many other sweeping remarks coming
from the same source.
The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt for
three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about the
South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most of us
were writing on the _Speaker_, edited by Mr. J. L. Hammond with an
independence of idealism to which I shall always think that we owe much
of the cleaner political criticism of to-day; and Belloc himself was
writing in it studies of what proved to be the most baffling irony. To
understand how his Latin mastery, especially of historic and foreign
things, made him a leader, it is necessary to appreciate something of
the peculiar position of that isolated group of "Pro-Boers." We were a
minority in a minority. Those who honestly disapproved of the Transvaal
adventure were few in England; but even of these few a great number,
probably the majority, opposed it for reasons not only different but
almost contrary to ours. Many were Pacifists, most were Cobdenites; the
wisest were healthy but hazy Liberals who rightly felt the tradition of
Gladstone to be a safer thing than the opportunism of the Liberal
Imperialist. But we might, in one very real sense, be more strictly
described as Pro-Boers. That is, we were much more insistent that the
Boers were right in fighting than that the English were wrong in
fighting. We disliked cosmopolitan peace almost as much as cosmopolitan
war; and it was hard to say whether we more despised those who praised
war for the gain of money, or those who blamed war for the loss of it.
Not a few men then young were already predisposed to this attitude; Mr.
F. Y. Eccles, a French scholar and critic of an authority perhaps too
fine for fame, was in possession of the whole classical case against
such piratical Prussianism; Mr. Hammond himself, with a careful
magnanimity, always attacked Imperialism as a false religion and not
merely as a conscious fraud; and I myself had my own hobby of the
romance of small things, including small commonwealths. But to all these
Belloc entered like a man armed, and as with a clang of iron. He brought
with him news from the fronts of history; that French arts could again
be rescued by French arms; that cynical Imperialism not only should be
fought, but could be fought and was being fought; that the street
fighting which was for me a fairytale of the future was for him a fact
of the past. There were many other uses of his genius, but I am speaking
of this first effect of it upon our instinctive and sometimes groping
ideals. What he brought into our dream was this Roman appetite for
reality and for reason in action, and when he came into the door there
entered with him the smell of danger.
There was in him another element of importance which clarified itself in
this crisis. It was no small part of the irony in the man that different
things strove against each other in him; and these not merely in the
common human sense of good against evil, but one good thing against
another. The unique attitude of the little group was summed up in him
supremely in this; that he did and does humanly and heartily love
England, not as a duty but as a pleasure and almost an indulgence; but
that he hated as heartily what England seemed trying to become. Out of
this appeared in his poetry a sort of fierce doubt or double-mindedness
which cannot exist in vague and homogeneous Englishmen; something that
occasionally amounted to a mixture of loving and loathing. It is marked,
for instance, in the fine break in the middle of the happy song of
_cameraderie_ called "To the Balliol Men Still in South Africa."
"I have said it before, and I say it again,
There was treason done and a false word spoken,
And England under the dregs of men,
And bribes about and a treaty broken."
It is supremely characteristic of the time that a weighty and
respectable weekly gravely offered to publish the poem if that central
verse was omitted. This conflict of emotions has an even higher
embodiment in that grand and mysterious poem called "The Leader," in
which the ghost of the nobler militarism passes by to rebuke the baser--
"And where had been the rout obscene
Was an army straight with pride,
A hundred thousand marching men,
Of squadrons twenty score,
And after them all the guns, the guns,
But She went on before."
Since that small riot of ours he may be said without exaggeration to
have worked three revolutions: the first in all that was represented by
the _Eyewitness_, now the _New Witness_, the repudiation of both
Parliamentary parties for common and detailed corrupt practices;
second, the alarum against the huge and silent approach of the Servile
State, using Socialists and Anti-Socialists alike as its tools; and
third, his recent campaign of public education in military affairs. In
all these he played the part which he had played for our little party of
patriotic Pro-Boers. He was a man of action in abstract things. There
was supporting his audacity a great sobriety. It is in this sobriety,
and perhaps in this only, that he is essentially French; that he belongs
to the most individually prudent and the most collectively reckless of
peoples. There is indeed a part of him that is romantic and, in the
literal sense, erratic; but that is the English part. But the French
people take care of the pence that the pounds may be careless of
themselves. And Belloc is almost materialist in his details, that he may
be what most Englishmen would call mystical, not to say monstrous, in
his aim. In this he is quite in the tradition of the only country of
quite successful revolutions. Precisely because France wishes to do wild
things, the things must not be too wild. A wild Englishman like Blake or
Shelley is content with dreaming them. How Latin is this combination
between intellectual economy and energy can be seen by comparing Belloc
with his great forerunner Cobbett, who made war on the same Whiggish
wealth and secrecy and in defence of the same human dignity and
domesticity. But Cobbett, being solely English, was extravagant in his
language even about serious public things, and was wildly romantic even
when he was merely right. But with Belloc the style is often
restrained; it is the substance that is violent. There is many a
paragraph of accusation he has written which might almost be called dull
but for the dynamite of its meaning.
It is probable that I have dealt too much with this phase of him, for it
is the one in which he appears to me as something different, and
therefore dramatic. I have not spoken of those glorious and fantastic
guide-books which are, as it were, the textbooks of a whole science of
Erratics. In these he is borne beyond the world with those poets whom
Keats conceived as supping at a celestial "Mermaid." But the "Mermaid"
was English--and so was Keats. And though Hilaire Belloc may have a
French name, I think that Peter Wanderwide is an Englishman.
I have said nothing of the most real thing about Belloc, the religion,
because it is above this purpose, and nothing of the later attacks on
him by the chief Newspaper Trust, because they are much below it. There
are, of course, many other reasons for passing such matters over here,
including the argument of space; but there is also a small reason of my
own, which if not exactly a secret is at least a very natural ground of
silence. It is that I entertain a very intimate confidence that in a
very little time humanity will be saying, "Who was this So-and-So with
whom Belloc seems to have debated?"
G. K. CHESTERTON
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I MR. BELLOC AND THE PUBLIC 1
II MR. BELLOC THE MAN 9
III PERSONALITY IN STYLE 16
IV THE POET 27
V THE STUDENT OF MILITARY AFFAIRS 35
VI MR. BELLOC AND THE WAR 50
VII MR. BELLOC THE PUBLICIST 59
VIII MR. BELLOC AND EUROPE 71
IX THE HISTORICAL WRITER 89
X MR. BELLOC AND ENGLAND 99
XI THE REFORMER 110
XII THE HUMOURIST 116
XIII THE TRAVELLER 126
XIV MR. BELLOC AND THE FUTURE 138
We have to express our thanks to the following publishers for permission
to quote from those books by Mr. Belloc which are issued by
them:--Messrs. Constable & Co., Ltd., _The Old Road_ and _On Anything_;
Messrs. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., _The Historic Thames_; Messrs. Duckworth
& Co., _Esto Perpetua_, _Avril_, _Verses_, and _The Bad Child's Book of
Beasts_; Mr. T. N. Foulis, _The Servile State_; Mr. Eveleigh Nash, _The
Eyewitness_ and _Cautionary Tales for Children_; Messrs. Thomas Nelson &
Sons, _Danton_, _The Path to Rome_, _The Four Men_, and _A General
Sketch of the European War_; Messrs. C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd., _The Two
Maps of Europe_; Messrs. Williams & Norgate, Ltd., _The French
Revolution_. The frontispiece is reproduced from _T.P.'s Weekly_ by
courtesy of the editor, Mr. Holbrook Jackson.
HILAIRE BELLOC
THE MAN AND HIS WORK
CHAPTER I
MR. BELLOC AND THE PUBLIC
A CASE FOR LEGISLATION _AD HOC_
We stand upon the brink of a superb adventure. To rummage about in the
lumber-room of a bygone period: to wipe away the dust from
long-neglected annals: to burnish up old facts and fancies: to piece
together the life-story of some loved hero long dead: that is a work of
reverent thought to be undertaken in peace and seclusion. But to plunge
boldly into the study of a living personality: to strive to measure the
greatness of a man just entering the fullness of his powers: to attempt
to grasp the nature of that greatness: this is to go out along the road
of true adventure, the road which is hard to travel, the road which has
no end.
Naturally we cannot hope in this little study to escape those
innumerable pitfalls into which contemporary criticism always stumbles.
It is impossible to-day to view Mr. Belloc and his work in that due
perspective so beloved of the don. No doubt we shall crash headlong into
the most shocking errors of judgement, exaggerating this feature and
belittling that in a way that will horrify the critic of a decade or two
hence. Mr. Belloc himself may turn and rend us: deny our premises:
scatter our syllogisms: pulverize our theories.
This only makes our freedom the greater. Scientific analysis being
beyond attainment, we are tied down by no rules. When we have examined
Mr. Belloc's work and Mr. Belloc's personality, we are free to put
forward (provided we do not mind them being refuted) what theories we
choose. Nothing could be more alluring.
In a book about Mr. Belloc the reader may have expected to make Mr.
Belloc's acquaintance on the first page. But Mr. Belloc is a difficult
man to meet. Even if you have a definite appointment with him (as you
have in this book) you cannot be certain that you will not be obliged to
wait. Every day of Mr. Belloc's life is so full of engagements that he
is inevitably late for some of them. But his courtesy is invariable: and
he will often make himself a little later by stopping to ring you up in
order to apologize for his lateness and to assure you that he will be
with you in a quarter of an hour.
We may imagine him, then, hastening to meet us in one of those taxicabs
of which he is so bountiful a patron, and, in the interval, before we
make his personal acquaintance, try to recall what we already know of
him.
At the present time Mr. Hilaire Belloc to his largest public is quite
simply and solely the war expert. To those people, thousands in number,
who have become acquainted with Mr. Belloc through the columns of _Land
and Water_, the _Illustrated Sunday Herald_, and other journals and
periodicals, or have swelled the audiences at his lectures in London and
the various provincial centres, his name promises escape from the
bewilderment engendered by an irritated Press and an approximation, at
least, to a clear conception of the progress of the war. Those who
realize, as Mr. Belloc himself points out somewhere, that there has
never been a great public occasion in regard to which it is more
necessary that men should have a sound judgment than it is in regard to
this war, gladly turn to him for guidance. His _General Sketch of the
European War_ is read by the educated man who finds himself hampered in
forming an opinion of the progress of events by an ignorance of military
science, while the mass of public opinion, which is less well-informed
and less able to distinguish between the essential and the
non-essential, finds in the series of articles, reprinted in book-form
under the title _The Two Maps_, a rock-basis of general principles on
which it may rest secure from the hurling waves of sensationalism,
ignorance, misrepresentation and foolishness which are striving
perpetually to engulf it.
So intense and so widespread, indeed, is the vogue of Mr. Belloc to-day
as a writer on the war, that one is almost compelled into forgetfulness
of his earlier work and of the reputation he had established for himself
in many provinces of literature and thought before, in the eyes of the
world, he made this new province his own. The colossal monument of
unstinted public approbation, which records his work since the outbreak
of the great war, overshadows, as it were, the temples of less
magnitude, though of equally solid foundation and often of more precious
design, in which his former achievements in art and thought were
enshrined.
That there existed, however, before the war, a large and increasing
public, which was gradually awakening to a realization of Mr. Belloc's
importance, there can be no question.
There can be equally little question, that only a very small percentage
of his readers were in a position even to attempt an appreciation of Mr.
Belloc's full importance.
This was due, chiefly, to the diversity of Mr. Belloc's writings.
For example, many thinking men, who saw no reason why the common sense,
which served them so well in their business affairs, should be banished
from their consideration of matters political, felt themselves in
sympathy with his analysis and denunciation of the evils of our
parliamentary machinery, thoroughly enjoying the vigorous lucidity of
_The Party System_ and applauding the clear historical reasoning of _The
Servile State_.
Other men, repelled, perhaps, by such logical grouping of cold facts,
but attracted by the satirical delights of _Emmanuel Burden_ or _Mr.
Clutterbuck_, of _Pongo and the Bull_ or _A Change in the Cabinet_, were
led to like conclusions, and came to consider themselves adherents of
Mr. Belloc's political views.
Take another instance. Bloodless students of history, absorbing the past
for the sake of the past and not for the sake of the present, who knew
little of Mr. Belloc's attitude toward the politics of the day and
strongly disapproved of what little they did know, yet concerned
themselves with his historical method as applied in _Danton_,
_Robespierre_ or _Marie Antoinette_, and were mildly excited by _The
French Revolution_ into a discussion of what (to Mr. Belloc's horror)
they considered his _Weltanschauung_.
There are but one or two examples of cases in which men of different
types came to a partial knowledge of Mr. Belloc and his work through
their sympathy with the views he expressed. But far beyond and above the
appeal which Mr. Belloc has made on occasion to the political and
historical sense of his readers is the appeal which he has made
consistently to their literary sense in _The Path to Rome_, in _The Four
Men_, in _Avril_, in _The Bad Child's Book of Beasts_, in _Esto
Perpetua_--in his novels, his essays, his poems. If many have been
attracted by his views, how many more have been influenced by his
expression of them?
"A man desiring to influence his fellowmen," says Mr. Belloc, in
_The French Revolution_, "has two co-related instruments at his
disposal.... These two instruments are his idea and his style.
However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers' mood or
cogently provable by reference to new things may be a man's idea,
he cannot persuade his fellowmen to it if he have not words that
express it. And he will persuade them more and more in proportion
as his words are well-chosen and in the right order, such order
being determined by the genius of the language from which they are
drawn."
These words fitly emphasize the importance of style: and when a
distinction is drawn, as is done above, between the appeal which Mr.
Belloc has made to the political and historical sense of his readers and
the appeal he has made to their literary sense, it is, naturally, not
intended to suggest that an appeal to his readers' literary sense is in
any way lacking in Mr. Belloc's political and historical writings. The
appeal to our literary sense is as strong in _The Servile State_ or
_Danton_ as in _The Four Men_ or _Mr. Clutterbuck_. But in the one case,
in the case of the two last-named books, the appeal Mr. Belloc makes is
chiefly to our literary sense: in the other case, in the case of the two
first-named books, there is added to the appeal to our literary sense an
appeal to our political and historical sense.
The nature of Mr. Belloc's own style is dealt with in a later chapter:
here it is merely asserted that, before the war, at any rate, Mr.
Belloc's style was accorded more general recognition than were his
ideas. Many who decried his matter extolled his manner. Many men of
talent, some men of genius, such as the late Rupert Brooke, regarded him
as a very great writer of English prose. Literary _dilettanti_ envied
him the refrains of his _ballades_. His essays, many of which were
manner without matter, were thoroughly popular. What he said might be
nonsense, but the way he said it was irresistible.
Since the beginning of the war Mr. Belloc has had that to say which
everybody desired to hear. He has known how to say that which everybody
desired to hear in the way it might best be said. He has been in a
position to express ideas with which every one wished to become
familiar: he has known how to express those ideas so that they might be
readily grasped. And he has become famous.
To those who were acquainted with but a part of his work before the war
Mr. Belloc's sudden leap into prominence as the most noteworthy writer
on military affairs in England must have come as somewhat of a shock. To
those whose knowledge of Mr. Belloc's writings was confined to _The Path
to Rome_ or the _Cautionary Tales_, who thought of him as essayist or
poet, this must have seemed a strange metamorphosis indeed. Even those
who were conversant with his study of the military aspects of the
Revolution and had noticed the careful attention paid by Mr. Belloc to
military matters in various books could scarcely have been prepared for
such an avalanche of highly-specialized knowledge. For we are all prone
to the mistake of confusing a man with his books.
With regard to some writers this error does not necessarily lead to very
evil results. There are some writers who express themselves as much in
one part of their work as in another. Take Mr. H. G. Wells as an
example. His writings, it is true, are varied in character, ranging from
phantasy to philosophy, from sociology to science. But through all his
writings there runs a thin thread which binds all of them together.
That thread is the personality of Mr. Wells finding expression. In such
a case as this personal knowledge of the man merely amplifies the idea
of him which we have been able to gather from his work.
But with Mr. Belloc the case is different. Can any full idea of Mr.
Belloc, the man, be formed by reading his books? It is to be doubted.
Were you to consult a reader of Mr. Wells' phantasies and a reader of
Mr. Wells' sociological novels with regard to the ideas of the writer
they had gleaned, you would find that the mental pictures they had
painted had many characteristics in common. Were you to make the same
experiment with a reader of Mr. Belloc's political writings and, say, a
subscriber to the _Morning Post_, who knew him by his essays alone, the
pictures would be entirely dissimilar.
And if it be admitted that this is so, the question arises: why is it
so? If, in the case of Mr. Wells, the writer is dimly visible through
the veil of his writings, why does Mr. Belloc remain hidden? This must
not be understood as meaning that Mr. Belloc's personality is not
expressed in his writings. To offer such an explanation would be merely
absurd. But it means that his personality is not expressed, as is that
of Mr. Wells, completely though cloudily, in any one book. To offer as a
reason that the one is subjective, the other objective is nonsense.
Every writer is necessarily both.
There are two answers to the question: the one partially, the other
wholly true. To attempt to find the answer which is wholly true is one
of the reasons why this book was written.
For the moment, however, let us be content with the answer which is
partially true. Let us accept the charge of a contemporary and friend of
Mr. Belloc who has long loomed large in the world of literature:--
"Mr. Hilaire Belloc
Is a case for legislation _ad hoc_:
He seems to think nobody minds
His books being all of different kinds."
That is the charge. A plea of guilty and, at the same time, a defence
based on justification might be found in Mr. Belloc's words (which occur
at the end of one of his essays): "What a wonderful world it is and how
many things there are in it!"
Thus might we bolster up the answer which is but partially true until
it seemed wholly true. We might make Mr. Belloc's diversity his
disguise. We might hoodwink the public.
But that is a dangerous game. The public has a habit of finding out. Mr.
Belloc himself is always on the watch to expose impostors (especially
the Parliamentary kind) and he has described most graphically the fate
awaiting them:--
"For every time She shouted 'Fire!'
The people answered 'Little Liar!'"
So let us view the matter squarely.
The aim of this little study, if so ambitious a phrase may be used of
what is purely a piece of self-indulgence, is to present the public with
as complete an idea as possible of Mr. Belloc and his work. Up to the
present, the relations between Mr. Belloc and the public have been, to
say the least, peculiar. If we regard the public as a mass subject to
attack and the author as the attacker, we may say that, whereas most
contemporary authors have attacked at one spot only and used their
gradually increasing strength to drive on straight into the heart of the
mass, Mr. Belloc has attacked at various points. It is obvious, however,
that these various separate attacks, if they are to achieve their
object, which is the subjection of the mass, must be thoroughly
co-ordinated and have large reserve forces upon which to draw.
Some slight outline of the nature of the various attacks on the public
made by Mr. Belloc has already been given. We stand amazed to-day by the
unqualified success which has attended the attack carried into effect by
his writings on the war. But if we are to form even an approximation to
a complete idea of Mr. Belloc, it is necessary to examine these various
attacks, not merely separately and in detail, but in their relation to
each other and as a co-ordinated plan. And before we can hope to measure
the strength of that plan, we must examine the mind which ordains its
co-ordination and the forces which render possible its execution: in
other words, the personality of Mr. Belloc.
Any rigid distinction, then, drawn between Mr. Belloc's political,
historical and other writings is ultimately arbitrary. In the ensuing
pages of this book it will be seen how essentially interwoven and
interdependent are the various aspects of Mr. Belloc's work and how they
have developed, not the one out of the other, but alongside and in
co-relation with each other. For the sake of clearness, however, some
basis of classification must be adopted, and that of _subject_, though
rough and inadequate, will be understood, perhaps, most readily.
* * * * *
With a jerk a taxicab stops in the street outside. We hear the sound of
quick footsteps along the stone-flagged passage, with a rattle of the
handle the door swings wide open and Mr. Belloc is in the middle of the
room.