· · CHESTERTON
Å. T C ' STUDY-BY
ULIUS · WEST
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U...VIFORj"l WITH THIS VOLUME:
"V. B. YEATS
By FORREST REID
J. 1\1. SYNGE
By P. P. HOWE
HENRY JAMES
By FORD MADOX HVEFFER
HENRIK IBSEN
By R. ELLIS ROBERTS
THOMAS HARDY
By L.A.SCELLES ABERCRm\IBIE
BERNARD SHA ,r
By P. P. HOWE
"r ALTER PATER
By EDWARD THOMAS
WALT 'VHITl\1 AN
By BASIL DE SELINCOUR'l
SAMUEL BUTLER
By GILBERT CANNAN
A. C. S'VINBURNE
By EDWARD THOl'rJAS
GEORGE GISSING
By FRANK SWINNERTON
R. L. STEVENSON
By FRANK SWINNERTON
RUDY ARD KIPLING
By CYRIL FALLS
"rILLIAM MORRIS
By JOHN DRINKWATER
ROBERT BRIDGES
By F. E. BRETT YOUNG
:FYODOR DOSTOIEVSKY
By J. MIDDLETON M VRRY
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
By UNA TAYLOR
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G. K. CHESTERTON
A CRITICAL STUDY
BY
JULIUS WEST
LONDON
MARt'rIN SECKER
NUMBER FI
E JOHN STREET
ADELPHI
lCMXV
I HAVE to express my gratitude to Messrs. Bums and Oates,
Messrs. Methuen and Co., and Mr. Martin Seeker for their
kind permission to quote from works by Mr. G. K. Chesterton
published by them. I have also to express my qualified
thanks to Mr. John Lane for his conditional permission to
quote from books by the same author published by him.
My thanks are further due, for a similar reason, to Mr.
Chesterton himself.
- roo 2 c
TO
J. C. SQUIRE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 11
II. THE ROMANCER 23
III. THE MAKER OF MAGIC 59
IV. THE CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS 76
V. THE HUMORIST AND THE POET 91
VI. THE RELIGION OF A DEBATER 109
VII. THE POLITICIAN 'YHO COULD NOT
TELL THE TIME 136
VIII. A DECADENT OF SORTS 163
BIBLIOGRAPHY 185
I
INTRODUCTORY
THE habit, to which we are so much addicted,
of \vriting books about other people who have
written books, will probably be a source of
intense discomfort to its practitioners in the
t\venty-first century. Like the rest of their
kind, they will pin their ambition to the pos-
sibility of indulging in epigram at the expense
of their contemporaries. In order to lead up
to the achievement of this desire they will
have to work in the nineteenth century and
the twentieth. Between the two they will
find an obstacle of some terror. The eighteen
nineties will lie in their path, blocking the
way like an unhealthy moat, ,vhich some
myopes might almost mistake for an aquarium.
All manner of queer fish may be discerned in
these unclear waters.
To drop the metaphor, our historians will
find themselves confronted by a startling
change. The great Victorians write no longer,
but are succeeded by eccentrics. There is
11
G. K. CHESTERTON
Kipling, undoubtedly the most gifted of them
all, but not everybody's darling for all that.
There is that prolific trio of best-sellers,
Mrs. Humphry 'Yard, Miss Marie Corelli, and
Mr. Hall Caine. There is Oscar Wilde, who
has a vast reputation on the Continent, but
never succeeded in convincing the British that
he was much more than a compromise between
a joke and a smell. There is the whole Yellow
Book team, who ncver succeeded in convincing
anybody. The economic basis of authorship
had becn shaken by the abolition of the three-
volume novel. The intellectual basis had been
lulled to sleep by that hotchpotch of convcn-
tion and largeness that we call the Victorian
Era. Literature began to be an effort to ex-
press the inexpressible, resulting in outraged
grammar and many dots. . . .
English literature at the end of the last
century stood in sore need of some of the
elementary virtues. If obviousness and sim-
plicity are liable to be overdone, they are not
so deadly in their after-effects as the bizarre
and the extravagant. The literary movement
of the eighteen nineties was like a strong
stimulant given to a patient dying of old age.
Its results were energetic, but the energy was
convulsive. \tVe should laugh if we saw a man
apparently dancing in mid-air-until we noticed
12
INTRODUCTORY
the rope about his neck. It is impossible to
account for the success of the Yellow Book
school and its congeners save on the assump-
tion that the rope was, generally speaking,
invisible.
In this Year of Grace, 1915, \ve are still too
close to the eighteen nineties, still too liable
to be influenced by their ways, to be able to
speak for posterity and to pronounce the final
judgment upon those evil years. It is possible
that the critics of the twenty-first century, as
they turn over the musty pages of the Yellow
Book, will ejaculate with feeling: "Good God,
what a dull time these people must have had! "
On the whole it is probable that this will be
their verdict. They will detect the dullness
behind the mechanical brilliancy of Oscar
\Vilde, and recognize the strange hues of the
whole Æsthetic l\'lovement as the garments of
men who could not, or \vould not see. There
is really no rational alternative before our
critics of the next century; if the men of the
eighteen nineties, and the queer things they
gave us, \vere not the products of an intense
boredom, if, in strict point of fact, 'Vilde,
Beardsley, Davidson, Hankin, Dowson, and
Lionel Johnson were men who rollicked in the
warm sunshine of the late Victorian period,
then the suicide, drunkenness and vice with
13
G. K. CHESTERTON
which they were afflicted is surely the strangest
phenomenon in the history of human nature.
To many people, those years actually were
dull.
The years from 1885 to 1898 were like the hours of
afternoon in a rich house with large rooms; the
hours before teatime. They believed in nothing
except good manners; and the essence of good -
manners is to conceal a yawn. A yawn may be
defined as a silent yell.
So says Chesterton, yawning prodigiously.
One may even go farther, and declare that
in those dark days a yawn was the true sign
of intelligence. It is no mere coincidence that
the two cleverest literary debutants of that
last decade, Mr. Max Beerbohm and the sub-
ject of this essay, both stepped on the stage
making a pretty exhibition of boredom. "Then
the first of these published, in 1896, being
then twenty-four years old, his 'Vorks of Max
Beerbohm he murmured in the preface, "I
shall write no more. Already I begin to feel
myself a trifle outmoded. . . . Younger men,
with months of activity before them. . . have
pressed forward. . . Cedo junioribus."
So too, when Chesterton produced his first
book, four years later, he called it Greybeards
at Play: Literature and Art for Old Gentle'l1
en,
and the dedication contained this verse :
14
INTRODUCTORY
Now we are old and wise and grey,
And shaky at the knees ;
Now is the true time to delight
In picture books like these.
The joke would have been pointless in any
other age. In 1900, directed against the
crapulous exoticism of contemporary litera-
ture, it was an antidote, childhood was being
used as a medicine against an assumed attack
of second childhood. The attack began \vith
nonsense rhymes and pictures. It was a com-
plete success from the very first. There is this
important difference between the ,vriter of
nonsense verses and their illustrator; the
former must let himself go as much as he can,
the latter must hold himself in. In Greybeards
at Play, Chesterton took the bit between his
teeth, and bolted faster than Ed,vard Lear had
ever done. The antitheses of such verses as
the following are irresistible:
For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
Decreasing his cigars.
Or
The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
Declined to open shops-
And cooks recorded frames of mind,
In sad and subtle chops.
The drawings which accompanied these gems,
it may be added, were such as the verses
15
G. K. CHESTERTON
deserved. They exhibit a joyous inconsistency,
the disproportion which is the essence of
parody combined with the accuracy which is
the sine qua non of sa.tire.
About a month after Chesterton had pro-
duced his statement of his extreme senility
(the actual \vords of the affidavit are
I am, I think I have remarked, [he had not],
Terrifically old.)
he published another little book, The Wild
Knight and Other Poems, as evidence of his
youth. For some years past he had occasion-
ally written more or less topical verses which
appeared in The Outlook and the defunct
Speaker. Greybeards at Play was, after all,
merely an elaborate sneer at the boredom of
a decade; the second book was a more definite
attack upon some points of its creeds and an
assertion of the principles which mattered
most.
There is one sin: to call a green leaf grey,
Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.
There is one blasphemy: for death to pray,
For God alone knoweth the praise of death.
Or again (The World's Lover)
I stood and spoke a blasphemy-
" Behold the summer leaves are green."
It was a defence of reality, crying for ven-
geance upon the realists. The word realism
16
INTRODUCTORY
had come to be the trade-mark of Zola and
his followers, especially of l\lr. George Moore,
who made a sacrifice of nine obvious, clean
and unsinkable aspects of life so as to concen-
trate upon the submersible tenth. Chesterton
came out with his defence of the common man,
of the streets
'Vhere shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God,
the grass, and all the little things of life,
" things" in general, for our subject, alone
among modern poets, is not afraid to use the
word. If on one occasion he can merely
. . . feel vaguely thankful to the vast
Stupidity of things,
on another he will speak of
The whole divine democracy of things,
a line which is a challenge to the unbeliever,
a statement of a political creed which is the
outgro"vth of a religious faith.
The same year Chesterton formally stepped
into the ranks of journalism and joined the
staff of The Daily News. He had scribbled
poems since he had been a boy at St. Paul's
School. In the years follo,ving he had watched
other people working at the Slade, while he
had gone on scribbling. Then he had begun
to do little odd jobs of art criticism and
B 17
G. K. CHESTERTON
revie\ving for The Bookman and put in occa-
sional appearances in the statelier columns of
The Speaker. Then came the Boer 'Yar, ,vhich
made G. K. Chesterton lose his temper but
find his soul. In 1900 The Daily News passed
into new hands-the hands of G.K.C.'s friends.
And until 1913, when the causes he had come
to uphold were just diametrically opposed to
the causes the victorious Liberal Party had
adopted, every Saturday morning's issue of
that paper contained an article by him, while
often enough there appeared signed reviews
and poems. The situation was absurd enough.
The Daily News was the organ of Noncon-
formists, and G.K.C. preached orthodoxy to
them. It advocated temperance, and G.K.C.
advocated beer. At first this was sufficiently
amusing, and nobody minded much. But
before Chesterton severed his connection with
the paper, its readers had come to expect a
weekly article that almost invariably con-
tained an attack upon one of their pet beliefs,
and often enough had to be corrected by a
. leader on the same page. But the Chesterton
of 1900 was a spokesman of the Liberalism of
his day, independent, nQt the intractable
monster .who scoffed, a few years later, at all
the parties in the State.
At this point one is reminded of'Vatts-Dun-
18
INTRODUCTORY
ton's definition of the two kinds of humour in
The Renascence of \IV onder: "\Vhile in the
case of relative humour that which amuses the
humorist is the incongruity of some departure
from the laws of convention, in the case of
absolute humour it is the incongruity of some
departure from the normal as fixed by nature
herself. H \Ve have our doubts as to the
general application of this definition: but it
applies so well to Chesterton that it might
almost have come off his study walls. 'Vhat
made a series of more than six hundred articles
by him acceptable to The Daily News was just
the skilful handling of "the laws of conven-
tion, Hand "the normal as fixed by nature
herself. H On the theory enunciated by 'Vatts-
Dunton, everything except the perfect average
is absolutely funny, and the perfect average,
of course, is generally an incommensurable
quantity. Chesterton carefully made it his
business to present the eccentricity-I use the
word in its literal sense-of most things, and
the humour followed in accordance with the
above definition. The method \vas simple.
Chesterton invented some grotesque situation,
some hypothesis which was glaringly absurd.
He then placed it in an abrupt juxtaposition
\vith the normal, instead of working from the
normal to the actual, in the usual manner.
19
G. K. CHESTERTON
Just as the reader was beginning to protest
against the reversal of his accustomed values,
G.R.C. would strip the grotesque of a few
inessentials, and, lo! a parable. A fe,v strokes
of irony and wit, an epigram or two infallibly
placed \vhere it would distract attention from
a weak point in the argument, and the thing
\vas complete. By such means Chesterton
developed the use of a veritable Excalibur of
controversy, a tool of great might in political
journalism. These methods, pursued a few
years longer, taught him a craftsmanship he
could employ for purely romantic ends. How
he employed it, and the opinions which he
sought to uphold by its means will be the
subjects of the following chapters. Chesterton
sallied forth like a Crusader against the politi-
cal and literary Turks who had unjustly come
into possession of a part of the heritage of a
Christian people. 'Ye must not forget that
the leading characteristic of a Crusader is his
po\ver of invigorating, which he applies im-
partially to virtues and to vices. There is a
great difference between a Crusader and a
Christian, which is not commonly realized.
The latter attempts to show his love for his
enemy by abolishing his unchristianness, the
former by abolishing him altogether. Although
the two methods are apt to give curiously
20
INTRODUCTORY
similar results, the distinction between a
Crusader and a Christian is radical and will be
considered in greater detail in the course of
this study. This study does not profess to be
biographical, and only the essential facts of
Chesterton's life need be given here. These
are, that he ,vas born in London in 1873, is the
son of a 'Vest London estate agent who is also
an artist and a children's poet in a small but
charming way, is married and has children.
Perhaps it is more necessary to record the fact
that he is greatly read by the youth of his
day, that he comes in for much amused toler-
ance, that, generally speaking, he is not recog-
nized as a great or courageous thinker, even
by those people who understand his vicws
well enough to dissent from them entirely, and
that he is regarded less as a stylist, than as the
owner of a trick of style. These are the false
beliefs that I seek to combat. The last may
be disposed of summarily. 'Vhen an author's
style is completely sincere, and completely
part of him, it has this characteristic; it is
almost impossible to imitate. Nobody has
ever successfully parodied Shakespeare, for
example; there are not even any good paro-
dies of l\fr. Shaw. And Chesterton remains
unparodied; even Mr. Max Beerbohm's effort
in A Christmas Garland rings false. His style
21
G. K. CHESTERTON
is individual. He has not" played the sedulous
ape. "
But, on the other hand, it is not proposed
to acquit Chesterton of all the charges brought
against him. The average human being is
partly a prig and partly a saint; and some-
times men are so glad to get rid of a prig that
they are ready to call him a saint-Simon
Stylites, for example. And it is not suggested
that the author of the remark, "There are
only three things that women do not under-
stand. They are Liberty, Equality, Frater-
nity," is not a prig, for a demonstration that
he is a complete gentleman ,vould obviously
leave other matters of importance incon-
veniently cro,vded out. \Ve are confronted
with a figure of some significance in these
times. He represents what has been called
in other spheres than his "the anti-intellec-
tualist reaction." 'Ve must answer the ques-
tions; to what extent does he represent mere
unqualified reaction? \Vhat are his qualifi-
cations as a craftsman? \Vhat, after all, has
he done ?
And \ve begin ,vith his romances.
22
II
TI-IE ROMANCER
IN spite of Chesterton's liberal production of
books, it is not altogether simple to classify
them into "periods," in the manner bcloved
of the critic, nor even to sort them out accord-
ing to subjects. G.K.C. can (and generally
does) inscribe an Essay on the Nature of
Religion into his novels, together with other
confusing ingredients to such an extent that
most readers ,vould consider it pure pedantry
on the part of anybody to insist that a Ches-
tertonian romance need differ appreciably from
a Chestertonian essay, poem, or criticism. That
a book by G.K.C. should describe itself as a
novel means little more than that its original
purchasing price was four shillings and six-
pence. It might also contain passages of love,
hate, and other human emotions, but then again,
it might not. But one thing it \vould contain,
and that is war. G.K.C. would be pugnacious,
even when there \vas nothing to fight. His
characters would wage their wars, even when
23
G. K. CHESTERTON
the bone of contention mattered as little as
the handle of an old toothbrush. That, we
should say, is the first factor in the formula
of the Chestertonian romance-and all the rest
are the inventor's secret. Imprimis, a body
of men and an idea, and the rest must follow,
if only the idea be big enough for a man to
fight about, or if need be, even to make him-
self ridiculous about.
In The Napoleon of Notting Hill we have this
view of romance stated in a manner entirely
typical of its author. King Auberon and the
Provost of N otting Hill, Adam \Vayne, are
speaking. The latter says:
" I know of a magic wand, but it is a wand that
only one or two nlay rightly use, and only seldom.
It is a fairy wand of great fear, stronger than those
who use it-often frightful, often wicked to use. But
whatever is touched with it is never again wholly
common; whatever is touched with it takes a magic
from outside the world. If I touch, with this fairy
wand, the railways and the roads of Notting Hill,
men will love them, and be afraid of them for ever."
" What the devil are you talking about ? " asked
the King.
"It has made mean landscapes magnificent, and
hovels outlast cathedrals," went on the madman.
"Why should it not make lamp-posts fairer than
Greek lamps, and an omnibus-ride like a painted
ship? The touch of it is the finger of a strange
perfection. "
24
TIlE ROMANCER
"What is your wand?" cried the King, im-
patiently.
"There it is," said Wayne; and pointed to the
floor, where his sword lay flat and shining.
If all the dragons of old romance were loo
ed
upon the fiction of our day, the result, one
would imagine, would be something like that
of a Chestertonian novel. But the dragons
are dead and converted into poor fossil ich-
thyosauruses, incapable of biting the timidest
damsel or the most corpulent knight that ever
came out of the Stock Exchange. That is the
tragedy of G.K.C.'s ideas, but it is also his
opportunity. "Man is a creature who lives
not upon bread alone, but principally by
catch-words," says Stevenson. "Give me my
dragons," says G.K.C. in effect, "and I will
give you your catch-\vords. You may have
them in anyone of a hundred different ways.
I will drop them on you when you least expect
them, and their disguises will outrange all
those known to Scotland Yard and to Drury
Lane combined. You may have catastrophes
and comets and camels, if you \viII, but you
will certainly have your catch-\vords."
The first of Chesterton's novels, in order of
their publication, is The Napoleon of N otting
Hill (1904). This is extravagance itself;
fiction in the sense only that the events never
25
G. !{. CIIESTERTON
happened and never could have happened.
The scene is placed in London, the time, about
A.D. 1984. "This 'ere progress, it keeps on
goin' on," somebody remarks in one of the
novels of Mr. H. G. 'VeIls. But it never goes
on as the prophets said it would, and conse-
quently England in those days does not greatly
differ from the England of to-day. There have
been changes, of course. Kings are now chosen
in alphabetical rotation, and the choice falls
upon a civil servant, Auberon Quin by name.
Now Quin has a sense of humour, of absolute
humour, as the 'Vatts-Dunton definition already
cited would have it called. lIe has two bosom
friends who are also civil servants and whose
humour is of the official variety, and whose
outlook upon life is that of a Times leader.
Quin's first official act is the publication of a
proclamation ordering every London borough
to build itself city walls, with gates to be closed
at sunset, and to become possessed of Provosts
in mediæval attire, with guards of halberdiers.
From his throne he attends to some of the
picturesque details of the scheme, and enjoys
the joke in silence. But after a few years of
this a young man named Adam \Vayne be-
comes Provost of N otting IEll, and to him his
borough, and more especially the little street
in which he has spent his life, are things of
26
THE ROM
NCER
immQnse importance. Rather than allo\v that
street to make way for a new thoroughfare,
"Vayne rallies his halberdiers to the defence
of their borough. The Provosts of North
Kensington and South Kensington, of 'Vest
Kensington and Bayswater, rally their guards
too, and attack Notting Hill, purposing to
clear Wayne out of the way and to break do,vn
the offending street. 'Vayne is surrounded at
night but converts defeat into victory by
seizing the offices of a Gas Company and turn-
ing off the street lights. The next day he is
besieged in his o\vn street. By a sudden sortie
he and his army escape to Campden Hill.
Here a great battle rages for many hours, \vhile
onc of the opposing Provosts gathers a large
army for a final attack. At last 'Vayne and
the remnants of his men are hopelessly out-
numbered, but once more he turns defeat into
victory. He threatens, unless the opposing
forces instantly surrender, to open the great
reservoir and flood the \vhole of N otting Hill.
The allied generals surrender, and the Empire
of Notting Hill comes into being. Twenty
years later the spirit of Adam Wayne has gone
beyond his own city walls. London is a wild
romance, a mass of cities filled with citizens
of great pride. But the Empire, \vhich has
been the Nazareth of the new idea, has \vaxed
27
G. K. C H EST E R TON
fat and kicked. In righteous anger the other
boroughs attack it, and win, because their
cause is just. King Auberon, a recruit in
'Vayne's army, falls .with his leader in the
great battle of Kensington Gardens. But they
recover in the morning.
"It was all a joke," says the IGng in apology.
"No," says \Vayne; "we are two lobes of the SaIne
brain . . . you, the humorist . . . I, the fanatic.
. . . You have a halberd and I have a sword, let us
start our wanderings over the world. For we are its
two essentials."
So ends the story.
Consider the prep os terous elements of the
book. A London with blue horse-'buses.
Bloodthirsty battles chiefly fought with hal-
berds. A King who acts as a war correspon-
dent and parodies G. 'v. Stevens. It is pre-
posterous because it is romantic and we are
not used to romance. But to Chaucer let us
say it would have appeared preposterous
because he could not have realized the initial
premises. Before such a book the average
reader is helpless. His scale of values is
knocked out of working order by the very first
page, almost by the very first sentence.
(" The human race, to which so many of my
readers belong, has been playing at children's
games from the beginning, and will probably
28
THE ROMANCER
do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the
few people who gro,v up.") The absence of a
love affair \vill deprive him of the only" human
interest " he can be really sure of. The Ches-
tertonian idiom, above all, will soon lead him
to expect nothing, because he can never get
any idea of ,vhat he is to receive, and will
bring him to a proper submissiveness. The
later stages are simple. The reader ,vill wonder
,vhy it never before occurred to him that area-
railings are very like spears, and that a distant
tramcar may at night distinctly resemble a
dragon. He may travel far, once his imagina-
tion has been started on these lines. 'Vhen
romantic possibilities have once shed a glo\v
on the offices of the Gas Light and Coke Com-
pany and on the erections of the
Ietropolitan
'Vater Board, the rest of life may ,veIl seem
filled with wonder and wild desires.
Chesterton may be held to have invented a
new species of detective story-the sort that
has no crime, no criminal, and a detective
whose processes are transcendental. The Club
of Queer Trades is the first batch of such stories.
The JJlan who was Thursday is another specimen
of some length.
Iore recently, Chesterton has
repeated the type in some of the Father Brown
stories. In The Club of Queer Trades, the trans-
cendental detective is Basil Grant, to describe
29
G. K. CHESTERTON
whom with accuracy is difficult, because of
his author's inconsistencies. Basil Grant, for
instance, is "a man who scarcely stirred out
of his attic," yet it would appear elsewhere
that he walked abroad often enough. The
essentials of this unprecedented detective are,
however, sufficiently tangible. He had been a
I{.C. and a judge. He had left the Bench
because it annoyed him, and because he held
the very human but not legitimate belief that
some criminals ,vould be better off .with a trip
to the seaside than \vith a sentence of imprison-
ment. After his retirement from public life
he stuck to his old trade as the judge of a
Voluntary Criminal Court. "l\Iy criminals
were tried for the faults which really make
social life impossible. They were tried before
me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity,
or for scandal-mongering, or for stinginess to
guests or dependents." It is regrettable that
Chesterton does not grant us a glimpse of this
fascinating tribunal at ,vork. Ho,vever, it is
Grant's job, on the strength of which he becomes
the president and founder of the C.Q.T.-Club
of Queer Trades. Among the members of this
Club are a gentleman who runs an Adventure
and Romance Agency for supplying thrills to
the bourgeois, two Professional Detainers, and
an Agent for Arboreal Villas, who lets off a
30
THE ROl\IANCER
variety of birds' nest. The way in which these
people go about their curious tasks invariably
suggests a crime to Rupert Grant, Basil's
amateur detective brother, whereupon Basil
has to intervene to put matters right. The
author does not appear to have been struck
by the inconsistency of setting Basil to work
to ferret out the doings of his fellow club-
members. The book is, in fact, full of joyous
inconsistencies. The Agent for Arboreal Villas
is clearly unqualified for the membership of
the Club. Professor Chadd has no business
there either. He is elected on the strength of
having invented a language expressed by
dancing, but it appears that he is really an
employee in the Asiatic 1\155. Department
of the British Museum. Things are extremely
absurd in The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old
Lady. At the instigation of Rupert, who has
heard sighs of pain coming out of a South
Kensington basement, Basil, Rupert, and the
man who tells the story, break into the house
and violently assault those ,vhom they meet.
Basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three
blows like battering-rams knocked the footman into
a cocked hat. Then he sprang on top of Burrows,
with one antimacassar in his hand and another in his
teeth, and bound him hand and foot almost before he
knew clearly that his head had struck the floor. Then
Basil sprang at Greenwood. . . etc. etc.
31
G. K. CHESTERTON
There is a good deal more like this. Having
taken the citadel and captured the defenders
(as Cæsar might say), Basil and company reach
the sighing lady of the basement. - But she
refuses to be released. 'Yhereupon Basil
explains his o\vn queer trade, and that the
lady is voluntarily undergoing a sentence for
backbiting. No explanation is vouchsafed of
the strange behaviour of Basil Grant in attack-
ing men \vho, as he knew, were doing nothing
they should not. Presumably it was due to
a Chestertonian theory that there should be
at least one good physical fight in each book.
It will be seen that The Club of Queer Trades
tends to curl up somewhat (quite literally, in
the sense that the end comes almost \vhere the
beginning ought to be) when it receives heavy
and serious treahnent. I should therefore
explain that this serious treatment has been
given under protest, and that its primary
intention has been to deal with those well-
meaning critics \vho believe that Chesterton
can write fiction, in the ordinary sense of the
word. His o\vn excellent definition of ficti-
tious narrative (in The Victorian Age in Litera-
ture) is that essentially" the story is told . . .
for the sake of some study of the difference
between human beings." This alone is enough
to exculpate him of the charge of writing
32
THE ROl\iANCER
novels. The Chestertonian short story is also
in its \vay unique. If we applied the methods
of the Higher Criticism to the story just
described, we might base all manner of odd
theories upon the defeat (inter alios) of
Burro,vs, a big and burly youth, by Basil
Grant, aged sixty at the very least, and armed
.with antimacassars. But there is no necessity.
If Chesterton invents a fantastic.. .world, full of
fantastic people \vho speak Chestertonese,
then he is quite entitled to waive any trifling
conventions \vhich hinder the liberty of his
subjects. As already pointed out, such is his
humour. The only disadvantage, as some-
body once complained of the Arabian Nights,
is that one is apt to lose one's interest in a
hero \vho is liable at any moment to turn into
a camel. None of Chesterton's heroes do, as a
matter of fact, become camels, but I .would
nevertheless strongly advise any young woman
about to marry one of them to take out an
insurance policy against unforeseen trans-
formations.
Although it appears that a few reviewers
went to the length of reading the whole of
The lJ;lan who was Thursday (1908), it is obvious
by their subsequent guesswork that they did
not notice the second part of the title, which
is, very simply, A Nightmare. The story takes
c 33
G. K. CHESTERTON
its name from the Supreme Council of Anar-
chists, ,vhich has seven members, named after
the days of the week. Sunday is the Chairman.
The others, one after the other, turn out to be
detectives. Syn1e, the nearest approach to the
what might be called the hero, is a poet ,vhom
mysterious hands thrust into an Anarchists'
meeting, at which he is elected to fill the
vacancy caused by the death of last Thursday.
A little earlier other mysterious hands had
taken him into a dark room in Scotland Yard
where the voice of an unseen man had told him
that henceforth he was a member of the anti-
anarchist corps, a ne\v body \vhich was to
deal with the new anarchists-not the com-
paratively harmless people \vho thre,v bombs,
but the intellectual anarchist. "'V e say that
the most dangerous criminal no\v is the en-
tirely lawless modern philosopher," somebody
explains to him. The be,vildered Syme walks
straight into further bewilderments, as, one
after the other, the week-days of the committee
are revealed. But who is Sunday? Chesterton
makes no reply. It was he who in a darkened
room of Scotland Yard had enrolled the
detectives. He is the Nightmare of the story.
The first few chapters are perfectly straight-
forward, and lifelike to the extent of describing
personal details in a somewhat exceptional
34
THE ROMANCER
manner for Chesterton. But, gradually, wilder
and wilder things begin to happen-until, at
last, Syme wakes up.
The trouble about The Alan who was Thurs-
day is not its incomprehensibility, but its
author's gradual decline of interest in the
book as it lengthened out. It begins excel-
lently. There is real humour and a good deal
of it in the earlier stages of Syme. And there
are passages like this one on the "lawless
modern philosopher" :
Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are
essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them.
. . . Thieves respect property. They merely wish
the property to become their property that they may
more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike
property as property; they wish to destroy the very
idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect
marriage, or they would not go through the highly
ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy.
But philosophers despise marriage as marriage.
But his amiable flow of paradox soon runs out.
The end of the book is just a wild whirl, a
nightmare with a touch of the cinematograph.
People chase onc another, in one instance they
quite literally chase themselves. And the end-
ing has all the effect of a damaged film that
cannot be stopped, on the large blank spaces
of which some idiot has been drawing absurd
35
G. K. CHESTERTON
pictures which appear on the screen, to the
confusion of the story. One remembers the
immense and dominating figure of Sunday,
only because the description of him reads very
n1uch like a description of Chesterton himself.
But if the person. is recognizable, the person-
ality remains deliberately incomprehensible.
lIe is just an outline in space, who rode do\vn
Albany Street on an elephant abducted from
the Zoological Gardens, and who spoke sadly
to his guests \vhen they had run their last race
against him.
Until recent years the \vord mysticism ,vas
sufficiently true to its derivation to imply
mystery, the relation of God to man. But
since the cheaper sort of journalist seized hold
of the unhappy ,vord, its demoralization has
been complete. It no\v indicates, generally
speaking, an intellectual defect which ex-
presses itself in a literary quality one can only
call \voolliness. There is a genuine mysticism,
expressed in Blake's lines:
To see the world in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
IIoid Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
And there is a spurious mysticism, meaning-
less rubbish of which Rossetti's Sister Helen
36
THE RO
IANCER
is a specimen. 'Vhat could be more idiotic
than the verse :
" He has made a sign and called Halloo !
Sister Helen,
And he says that he would speak with you."
"Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
Little brother."
(0 lJlother, JUary ]}lothcr,
TVhy laughs she thus between II ell and Heaven?)
The trouble about the latter variety is its
extreme simplicity. Anybody \vith the gift of
being able to make lines scan and rhyme can
produce similar effects in a similar \vay. Hence
the enormous temptation exercised by this
form of mysticism gonc wrong. There is a
naughty little story of a little girl, relating to
her mother the mishaps of the family coal
merchant, as seen from the dining-room ,,
in-
clow. He slipped on a piece of orange-peel,
the child had explained. "And what happened
then?" "'Vhy, mummy, he sat do,vn on the
pavement and talked about God." Chesterton
(and he is not alone in this respect) behaves
exactly like this coal-heaver. 'Vhen he is at
a loss, he talks about God. In each case one
is given to suspect that the invocation is due
to a temporarily over\vorked imagination.
This leads us to The Ball and the Cross (1906).
In The J1 an who was Thursday, \vhen the
37
G. K. CHESTERTON
author had tired of his story, he brought in
the universe at large. But its successor is
dominated by God, and discussions on him by
beings celestial, terrestrial, and merely infernal.
And yet The Ball and the Cross is in many
respects Chesterton's greatest novel. The first
few chapters are things of joy. There is much
said in them about religion, but it is all sincere
and bracing. The first chapter consists, in
the main, of a dialogue on religion, between
Professor Lucifer, the inventor and the driver
of an eccentric airship, and Father l\lichael, a
theologian acquired by the Professor in 'Vestern
Bulgaria. As the airship dives into the ball
and the cross of Saint Paul's Cathedral, its
passengers naturally find themselves taking a
deep interest in the cross, considered as symbol
and anchor. Lucifer plumps for the ball, the
symbol of all that is rational and united. The
cross
" is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable
direction. . . . The very shape of it is a contradiction
in terms." :l\Iichael replies, "But we like contra-
dictions in ternlS. l\lan is a contradiction in terms ;
he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists
in having fallen."
Defeated on points, Lucifer leaves the Father
clinging literally to the cross and flies away.
Michael meets 3, policeman on the upper gallery
38
THE ROMANCER
and is conducted do"\vn\vards. The scene
changes to Ludgate Circus, but Michael is no
longer in the centre of it. A Scot named Turn-
bull keeps a shop here, apparently in the
endeavour to counterbalance the influence of
St. Paul's across the way. He is an atheist,
selling atheist literature, editing an atheist
paper. Another Scot arrives, young Evan
l\IacIan, straight from the Highlands. Unlike
the habitual Londoner, l\lacIan takes the little
shop seriously. In its window he sees a copy
of The Atheist, the leading article of which
contains an insult to the Virgin Mary. l\lacIan
thereupon puts his stick through the "\vindow.
Turnbull comes out, there is a scuffle, and
both are arrested and taken before a Dicken-
sian magistrate. The sketch of l\lr. Cumber-
land Vane is very pleasing: it is clear that the
author knew ,vhat he was copying. Lord
IVlelbourne is alleged to have said, "N 0 one
has more respect for the Christian religion
than I have; but really, when it comes to in-
truding it into private life. .." l\Ir. Vane
felt much the same \vay when he heard
lacIan's simple explanation: "He is my
enemy. lIe is the encmy of God." He said,
"It is most undesirable that things of that
sort should be spoken about-a-in public,
and in an ordinary Court of Justice. Religion
39
G. K. CHESTERTON
is-a-too personal a matter to be mentioned
in such a place." However, MacIan is fined.
After which he and Turnbull, as men of honour,
buy themselves swords and proceed to fight
the matter out. 'Vith interruptions due to
argument and the police, the fight lasts several
weeks. Turnbull and l\'IacIan fight in the back
garden of the man from whom they bought
the swords, 1 until the police intervene. They
escape the police and gain the Northern
Heights of London, and fight once more, with
a madness renewed and stimulated by the
peace-making efforts of a stray and silly
Tolstoyan. Then the police come again, and
are once more outdistanced. This time mortal
combat is postponed on account of the san-
guinolence of a casual lunatic who worshipped
blood to such a nauseating extent that the
duellists deferred operations in order to chase
him into a pond. Then follo\vs an intermin-
able dialogue, paradoxical, thoroughly Shavian,
while the only two men in England to \vhom
God literally is a matter of life and death find
that they begin to regard the slaughter of one
by the other as an unpleasant duty. Again
1 Chesterton jeers at this man's" Scottish" ancestry because his
surname was Gordon and he was obviously a Jew. The author is
probably unaware that there are large numbers of Jews bearing-
that name in Russia. If he had made his Jew call himself
Macpherson, the case would have been different.
40
THE ROl\IANCER
they fight and are separated. They are motored
by a lady to the Hampshire coast, and there
they fight on the sands until the rising tide
cuts them off. An empty boat turns up to
rescue them from drowning; in it they reach
one of the Channel Islands. Again they fight,
and again the police come. They escape from
them, but remain on the island in disguise,
and make themselves an opportunity to pick
a quarrel and so fight a duel upon a matter
in keeping \vith local prejudice. But Turn-
bull has fallen in love. His irritatingly
calm and beautiful devotee argues 'with him
on religion until he is driven to cast off his
disguise. Thcn the police are on his tracks
again. A lunatic lends Turnbull and Mac Ian
his yacht and so the chase continues. But by
this time Chesterton is getting just a trifle
bored. He realizes that no matter how many
adventures his heroes get into, or ho\v many
paradoxes they fling down each other's throats,
the end of the story, the final inevitable end
\vhich alone makes a series of rapid adventures
\vorth ,vhile, is not even on the horizon. An
element of that spurious mysticism already
described invades the book. It begins to be
clear that Chesterton is trying to drag in a
moral someho\v, if need be, by the hair of its
head. The two yachters spend two ,veeks of
41
G. K. CHESTERTON
geographical perplexity and come to a desert
island. They land, but think it wiser, on the
whole, to postpone fighting until they have
finished the champagne and cigars with which
their vessel is liberally stored. This takes a
week. Just as they are about to begin the
definitive duel they discover that they are not
upon a desert island at all, they are near
Margate. And thc police are there, too. So
once more they are chased. They land in a
large garden in front of an old gentleman \vho
assures them that he is God. He turns out to
be a lunatic, and the place an asylum. There
follows a characteristic piece of that abuse of
science for which Chesterton has never at-
tempted to suggest a substitute. lVIaclan and
Turnbull find themselves prisoners, unable to
get out. Then they dream dreams. Each sees
himself in an aeroplane flying over Fleet Street
and Ludgate Hill, where a battle is raging.
But the \voolly element is very pronounced by
this time, and \ve can make neither head nor
tail of these dreams and the conversations
which accompany them. The duellists are
imprisoned for a month in horrible cells. They
find their ,yay into the garden, and are told
that all England is no\v in the hands of the
alienists, by a ne\v Act of Parliament: this
has been the only possible manner of putting
42
THE ROMANCER
a stop to the revolution started by l\facIan
and Turnbull. These two find all the persons
they had met with during their odyssey,
packed away in the asylum, which is a won-
derful place worked by petroleum machinery.
But the matter-of-fact grocer from the Channel
Island, regarding the whole affair as an in-
fringement of the Rights of Man, sets the
petroleum alight. l\lichael, the celestial being
who had appeared in the first chapter and
disappeared at the end of it, is dragged out
of a cell in an imbecile condition. Lucifer
comes down in his airship to collect the doctors,
\vhose bodies he drops out, a little later on.
The buildings vanish in the flames, the keepers
bolt, the inmates talk about their souls.
l\lacIan is reunited to the lady of the Channel
Island, and the story ends.
'Vhen a stone has been tossed into a pond,
the ripples gradually and symmetrically grow
smaller. A Chesterton novel is like an adven-
turous voyage of discovery, which begins on
smooth water and is made with the object of
finding the causes of the ripples. As ripple
succeeds ripple-or chapter follows chapter-
so we have to keep a tighter hold on such
tangible things as are within our reach. Finally
we reach the centre of the excitement and are
either sucked into a whirlpool, or hit on the
43
G. K. CHESTERTON
head with a stone. 'Vhen we recover conscious-
ness we feebly remember \ve have had a thrill-
ing journey and that we had started out with
a misapprehension of the quality of Chester-
tonian fiction. A man \vhose memory is
normal should be able to give an accurate
synopsis of a novel six months after he has
read it. But I should be greatly surprised if
any reader of The Ball and the Cross could tell
exactly what it was all about, \vithin a month
or two of reading it. The discontinuity of it
makes one difficulty; the substitution of
paradox for incident makes 3nother . Yet it
is difficult to avoid the conviction that this
novel will survive its day and the generation
that begot it. If it was Chesterton's endeavour
(as one is bound to suspect) to show that the
triumph of atheism \vould lead to the triumph
of a callous and inhuman body of scientists,
then he has failed miserably. But if he was
attempting to prove that the uncertainties of
religion were trivial things \vhen compared
\vith the uncertainties of atheism, then the
verdict must be reversed. The dialogues on
religion contained in The Ball and the Cross
are alone enough and more than enough to
place it among the few books on religion which
could be safely placed in the hands of an
atheist or an agnostic \vith an intelligence.
44
THE ROMANCER
If \ve consider lJlanalive (1912) no\v we shall
be depart.ing from st.rict chronological order,
as it was preceded by The Innocence of Father
Brown. It \viIl, ho\vever, be more sat.isfactory
t.o take the t,vo Father Brown books together.
In the first of these and lJl analive, a change
can be distinctly felt. It is not a simple
weakening of the po,ver of employing instru-
ments, such as befcll Ibsen \vhen, after writing
The Lady from the Sea, he could no longer keep
his symbols and his characters apart. It is a
more subtle change, a combination of several
small changes, \vhich cannot be studied fairly
in relation only to one side of Chesterton's
,york. In the last chapter an attempt will be
made to analyze these, for the present I can
only indicate some of the faIlings-off noticeable
in JJlanalive, and leave it at that. Chesterton's
previous romances were not constructed, the
reader may have gathered, ,vith that minute
attention to detail which makes some modern
novels read like the report of a newly promoted
detective. But a man may do such things and
yet be considered spotless. Shakespeare, after
all, ,vent astray on several points of history
and geography. The authors of the Old
Testamcnt talked about "the hare that cheweth
the cud." And, if any reader should fail to
see the application of these instances to
45
G. K. CHESTERTON
modern fiction, I can only recommend him to
read Vanity Fair and find out how many
children had the Rev. Bute Crawley, and \vhat
were their names. No, the trouble with
JJlanali'L'c is not in its casual, happy-go-lucky
construction. It is rather in a certain lack of
ease, a tcndency to exaggerate effects, a con-
tinual stirring up of inconsiderable points.
But let us come to the story.
There is a boarding-house situated on one
of the summits of the Northern Heights. A
great \vind happens, and a large man, quite
literally, blows in. His name is Innocent
Smith and he is naturally considered insane.
But he is really almost excessively sanc. His
presence makcs life at the house a sort of
holiday for the inmates, male and female.
Smith is about to run for a special licence in
order to marry onc of the .women in the house,
and the other boarders have just paired off
when a telegram posted by one of the ladics
in a misapprehension brings two lunacy experts
around in a cab. Smith adds to the excite-
ment of the momcnt by putting a couple of
bullets through a doctor's hat.
Now Smith is \vhat somebody calls "an
allegorical practical joker." But Chesterton
gives a better description of him than
that.
46
THE ROMANCER
He's comic just because he's so startlingly common-
place. Don't you know what it is to be in all one
family circle, with aunts and uncles, when a school-
boy comes home for the holidays? That bag there
on the cab is only a schoolboy's hanlper. This tree
here in the garden is only the sort of tree that any
schoolboy would have climbed. Yes, that's the sort
of thing that has haunted us all about him, the thing
we could never fit a word to. \tVhethcr he is myoid
schoolfellow or no, at least he is all myoid school-
fellows. lIe is the endless bun-eating, ball-throwing
animal that. we have all been.
Innocent has an idea about every few
minutes, but so far as the book is concerned
\ve need mention only one of them. That one
is-local autonomy for Beacon House. This
may be recommended as a game to be played
en famille. Establish a lligh Court, call in a
legal lnember, and get a constitution. The
rest will be very hilarious. The legal member
of the Beacon I10use ménage is an Irish ex-
barrister, one l\lichael Moon, who plans as
follows :
The High Court of Beacon, he declared, was a
splendid example of our free and sensible constitu-
tion. It had been founded by King John in defiance
of :Magna Carta, and now held absolute power over
windmills, wine and spirit licences, ladies travelling
in Turkey, revision of sentences for dog-stealing and
parricide, as well as anything whatever that hap.
pened in the town of Market Bosworth. The whole
47
G. K. CHESTERTON
hundred and nine seneschals of the High Court of
Beacon nlet about once in every four centuries; but
in the intervals (as l\Ir. l\loon eXplained) the whole
powers of the institution were vested in l\1rs. Duke
[the landlady]. Tossed about among the rest of the
cOlnpany, however, the High Court did not retain its
historical and legal seriousness, but was used some-
what unscrupulously in a riot of domestic detail. If
somebody spilt the \V Ol'cester Sauce on the table-
cloth, he was quite sure it was a rite without which
the sittings and findings of the Court would be
invalid; and if somebody wanted a windGw to
remain shut, he would suddenly relnember that none
but the third son of the lord of the lnanor of Penge
had the right to open it. They even went the length
of making arrests and conducting crin1Ïnal inquiries.
Before this tribunal Innocent Smith is
brought. One alienist is an American, who is
quite prepared to acknowledge its jurisdiction,
being by reason of his nationality not easily
daunted by mere constitutional queerness.
The other doctor, being the prosecutor and a
boarder, has no choice in the matter. The
doctors, it should be added, have brought with
them a mass of documentary evidence, incrimi-
nating Smith.
How the defence has time to collect this
evidence is not explained, but this is just one
of the all-important details \vhich do not
matter in the Chestertonian plane. Smith is
48
THE ROMANCER
tried for attempted murder. The prosecution
fails because the evidence shows Smith to be
a first-class shot, who has on occasion fired life
into people by frightening them. Then he is
tried for burglary on the basis of a clergyman's
letter fron1 which it is gathered that Smith
tried one night to induce him and another
cleric to enter a house burglariously in the
dark. This charge breaks do\vn because a
letter is produced from the other clergyman
who did actually accompany Smith over house-
tops and down through trap-doors-into his own
house! Smith, it is explained, is in the habit
of keeping himself a .wake to the romance and
wonder of everyday existence by such courses.
From the second letter, however, it appears
that there is a Mrs. Smith, so the next charge
is one of desertion and attempted bigamy. A
series of documents is produced, from persons
in France, Russia, China, and California re-
counting conversations with Smith, a man
with a garden-rake, who left his house so that
he might find it, and at the end leapt over the
hcdge into the garden where Mrs. Smith was
having tea. In the words of the servant "he
looked round at the garden and said, very loud
and strong: 'Oh, what a lovely place you've
got,' just as if he'd never seen it before.
' After
\vhich the court proceeds to try Smith on
D 49
G. K. CHESTERTON
a polygamy charge. Documentary evidence
shows that Smith has at one time or another
married a l\1iss Green, a Miss Brown, a Miss
Black, just as he is now about to marry a l\liss
Gray, 1\loon points out that these are all the
same lady. Innocent Smith has merely broken
the conventions, he has religiously kept the
comn1andments. He has burgled his own
house, and married his O"wn wife. He has been
perfectly innocent, and therefore he has been
perfectly merry. Innocent is acquitted, and
the book ends.
In the course of IJlanalive, somebody says,
" Going right round the world is the shortest
way to where you are already." These are the
words of an overworked epigrammatist, and
upon them hangs the whole story. If IJlanalive
is amusing, it is because Chesterton has a style
which could make even a debilitated paradox
of great length seem amusing. The book has
a few gorgeous passages. Among the docu-
ments read at the trial of Innocent Smith, for
exalnple, is a statement made by a Trans-
Siberian station-master, .which is a perfectly
exquisite burlesque at the expense of the
Russian intelligenzia. The whole series of
documents, in fact, are delightful bits of self-
expression on the part of a very varied team
of selves. 'Yllile Chesterton is able to turn out
50
THE ROl\1:ANCER
such things we must be content to take the
page, and not the story, as his unit of work.
lJ,lanalive, by the \vay, is the first of the
author's stories in \vhich ,vomen are repre-
sented as talking to one another. Chesterton
seems extraordinarily shy with his feminine
characters. He is a little afraid of ,voman.
" The average ,voman is a despot, the average
man is a serf."1 l\Irs. Innocent Smith's vie\v
of men is in keeping with this peculiar notion.
" At certain curious times they're just fit to
take care of us, and they're never fit to take
care of themselves." Smith is the Chester-
tonian Parsifal, just as Prince l\luishkin is
Dostoievsky's.
The transcendental type of detective, first
sketched out in The Club of Queer Trades, is
developed more fully in the t\VO Father Brown
books. In the little Roman priest \vho has
such a wonderful instinct for placing the
diseased spots in people's souls, \ve have
Chesterton's completest and most human crea-
tion. Yet, \vith all their cleverness, and in
spite of the fact that from internal evidence it
is almost blatantly obvious that the author
enjoyed \vriting these stories, they bear marks
'which put the books on a lo\ver plane than
either The Napoleon of Nolting Hill or The Ball
1 All TltillgS Considered, p. 106.
51
G. K. CHESTERTON
and the Cross. In the latter book Chesterton
spoke of "the mere healthy and heathen horror
of the unclean; the mere inhuman hatred of
the inhuman state of madness." His o\vn
critical work had been a long protest against
the introduction of artificial horrors, a plea for
sanity and the exercise of sanity. But in The
Innocence of Father Brown these principles,
almost the fundamental ones of literary decency,
were put on the shelf. Chesterton's criminals
are lunatics, perhaps it is his belief that crime
and insanity are inseparable. But even if this
last supposition is correct, its approval would
not necessarily license the introduction of some
of the characters. There is Israel Gow, who
suffers from a peculiar mania which drives him
to collect gold from places seemly and un-
seemly, even to the point of digging up a
corpse in order to extract the gold filling from
its teeth. There is the insane French Chief of
Police, \vho commits a murder and attempts
to disguise the body, and the nature of the
crime, by substituting the head of a guillotined
criminal for that of the victim. In another
story we have the picture of a cheerful teeto-
taller who suffers from drink and suicidal
mania. There is also a doctor \vho kills a mad
poet, and a mad priest who drops a hammer
from the top of his church-tower upon his
52
THE ROl\IANCER
brother. Another story is about the loathsome
treachery of an English general. It is, of course,
difficult to write about crime without touching
on features \vhich revolt the squeamish reader,
but it can be done, and it has been done, as in
the Sherlock Holmes stories. There are sub-
jects about which one instinctively feels it is
not good to know too much. Sex, for example,
is one of them. Strindberg, \Veininger, l\lau-
passant, Jules de Goncourt, knew too much
about sex, and they all ,vent mad, although it
is usual to disguise the fact in the less familiar
terms of medical science.
ladness itself is
another such subject. There are writers ,vho
dwell on madness because they cannot help
themselves-Strindberg, Edgar Allan Poe,
Gogol, and many others-but they scarcely
produce the same nauseating sensation as the
sudden introduction of the note of insanity
into a hitherto normal setting. The harnessing
of the horror into ,vhich the discovery of in-
sanity reacts is a favourite device of the feeble
craftsman, but it is illegitimate. It is abso-
lutely opposed to those elementary canons of
good taste which decree that we may not jest
at the expense of certain things, either because
they are too sacred or not sacred enough. The
opposite of a decadent author is not neces-
sarily a writer \vho attacks decadents. l\tIany
53
G. 1(. C HE S T E R TON
decadents have attacked themselves, by com-
mitting suicide, for example. The opposite of
a decadent author is one to whom decadent
ideas and imagery are alien, \vhich is a very
different thing. For example, the whole story
The JV rong Shape is filled \vith decadent ideas ;
one is sure that Baudelaire would have en-
tirely approved of it. It includes a decadent
poet, living in wildly Oriental surroundings,
attended by a Hindoo servant. Even the air
of the place is decadent; Father Bro-wn on
entering the house learns instinctively from it
that a crime is to be committed.
Considered purely as detective stories, these
cannot be granted a very good mark. There
is scarcely a story that has not a serious flaw
in it. A man-Flambeau, of .whom more later
-gains admittance to a small and select dinner
party and almost succeeds in stealing the silver,
by the device of turning up and pretending to
be a guest when among the waiters, and a
waiter when among the guests. But it is not
explained what he did during the first two
courses of that dinner, when he obviously had
to be either a waiter or a guest, and could not
keep up both parts, as when the guests were
arriving. Another man, a "Priest of Apollo,"
is worshipping the sun on the top of a " sky-
scraping" block of offices in 'Vestminster, while
54
THE ROl\lANCER
a ,voman falls do,vn a lift-shaft and is killed.
Father Bro\vn immediately concludes that the
priest is guilty of the murder because, had he
been unprepared, he would have started and
looked round at the scream and the crash of
the victim falling. But a man absorbed in
prayer on, let us say, a tenth floor, is, in point
of fact, quite unlikely to hear a crash in the
basement, or a screaln even nearer to him.
But the most astonishing thing about The Eye
of Apollo is the staging. In order to provide
the essentials, l\Ir. Chesterton has to place " the
heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as
great wealth," who is blind, in a typist's
office! The collocation is somewhat too singu-
lar. One might go right through the Father
Brown stories in this lnanner. But, if the
reader \vishes to draw the maxÏ1nuln of enjoy-
ll1ent out of them, he will do nothing of the
sort. He ,vill believe, as fervently as Alfred
de Vigny, that L'Idée C' est Tout, and lay down
all petty regard for detail at the feet of Father
Brown. This little Roman cleric has listened
to so many confessions (he calls himself" a man
who does next to nothing but hear men's real
sins," but this seems to be excessive, even for
a Roman Catholic) that he is really well
acquainted with the human soul. He is also
extremely observant. And his greatest friend
55
G. K. CHESTERTON
is Flambeau, whom he once brings to judg-
ment, twice hinders in crime, and thence-
forward accompanies on detective expeditions.
The lnnocence of Father Brown had a sequel,
The Wisdom of Father Brown, distinctly less
effective, as sequels always are, than the pre-
decessor. But the underlying ideas are the
same. In the first place there is a deep detes-
tation of "Science" (whatever that is) and
the maintenance of the theory incarnate in
Father Brown, that he who can read the human
soul knows all things. The detestation of
science (of which, one gathers, Chesterton
knows nothing) is carried to the same absurd
length as in The Ball and the Cross. In the
very first story, Father Bro\vn calls on a
criminologist ostensibly in order to consult
him, actually in order to sho,v the unfortunate
man, who had retired from business fourteen
years ago, what an extraordinary fool he was.
The Father Brown of these stories-moon-
faced little man-is a peculiar creation. No
other author would have taken the trouble to
excogitate him, and then treat him so badly.
As a detective he never gets a fair chance. He
is always on the spot \vhen a murder is due to
be committed, generally speaking he is there
before time. \i\Then an absconding banker
commits suicide under peculiar circumstances
56
THE ROIHANCER
in Italian mountains, when a French publicist
advertises himself by fighting duels \vith him-
self (very nearly), when a murder is committed
in the dressing-room corridor of a theatre,
when a miser and blackmailer kills himself,
when a lunatic admiral attempts murder and
then commits suicide, when amid much in-
coherence a Voodoo murder takes place, when
somebody tries to kill a colonel by playing on
his superstitions (and by other methods), and
\vhen a gentleman commits suicide from envy,
Father Bro,vn is always there. One might
almost interpret the Father Brown stories by
suggesting that their author had written them
in order to illustrate the sudden impetus given
to murder and suicide by the appearance of
a Roman priest.
Here we may suspcnd our revic,vs of Ches-
tcrtonian romance. There remains yet The
J!-'Zying Inn, \vhich shall be duly considered
along with the other débris of its author. In
summing up, it may be said of Chesterton that
at his best he invented new possibilities of
romance and a new and hearty laugh. It may
be said of the decadents of thc eighteen
nineties, that if their motto \vasn't " Let's all
go bad," it should have been. So one may
say of Chesterton that if he has not selected
" Let's all go mad" as a text, he should have
57
G. K. CHESTERTON
done. l\ladness, in the Chestertonian, what-
ever it is in the pathological sense, is a defiance
of convention, a loosening of visible bonds in
order to show the strength of the invisible
ones; perhaps, as savages are said to regard
lunatics with great respect, holding them to be
nearer the Deity than most, so Chesterton
believes of his o\vn madmen. Innocent Smith,
of course, the simple fool, the blithering idiot,
is a truly wise man.
58
III
THE l\IAKER OF l\IAGIC
CHESTERTON'S only play, 1I1agic, was \vritten
at the suggestion of Mr. Kenelm Foss and
produced by him in November, 1913, at the
Little Theatre, where it enjoyed a run of more
than one hundred performances. This charm-
ing thing does not make one \vish that Ches-
terton \vas an habitual play\vright, for one feels
that lJ-l agic was a sort of tank into which its
author's dramatic talents had been draining
for many years-although, in actual fact,
Chesterton allowed ne\vspaper interviewers to
learn that the play had been written in a very
short space of time. His religious ideas were
expressed in 1Jlagic with great neatness. l\Iost
perhaps of all his ,yorks this is a quotable
production.
Patricia Carleon, a niece of the Duke, her
guardian, is in the habit of wandering about
his grounds seeing fairies. On the night when
her brother Morris is expected to return from
America she is having a solitary moonlight
59
G. K. CHESTERTON
stroll \vhen she sees a Stranger, "a cloaked
figure with a pointed hood," which last almost
covers his face. She naturally asks him what
he is doing there. He replies, mapping out the
ground \vith his staff:
I have a hat, but not to wear;
I have a sword, but not to slay;
And ever in my bag I bear
A pack of cards, but not to play.
This, he tells her, is the language of fairies. He
tells her that fairies are not small things, but
quite the reverse. After a fe\v sentences have
been spoken the prologue comes to an end,
and the curtain rises upon the scene of the
play, the drawing-room of the Duke. I-Iere is
seated the Rev. Cyril Smith, a young clergy-
man, "an honest man and not an ass." To
him enters the Duke's Secretary, to tell him
the Duke is engaged at the moment, but ,vill
be down shortly. He is followed by Dr. Grim-
thorpe, an elderly agnostic, the red lamp of
whose house can be seen through the open
French windows. Smith is erecting a model
public- house in the village, and has come to
ask the Duke for a contribution to\vards the
cost. Grimthorpe is getting up a league for
opposing the erection of the ne,v public-house,
and has also come to the Duke for help. They
discover the nature of each other's errand.
60
THE MAKER OF MAGIC
Smith's case is, "How can the Church have a
right to make men fast if she does not allow
them to feast? "; Grimthorpe's, that alcohol
is not a food. The Duke's Secretary enters
and gives Smith a cheque for
50, then he
gives the Doctor another-also for
50. This
is the first glimpse we have of the Duke's
eccentricity, an excessive impartiality based
on the theory that everybody" does a great
deal of good in his own way," and on sheer
absence of mind-an absence which sometimes
is absolutely literal. The Doctor explains in
confidence to the Clergyman that there is some-
thing wrong about the family of Patricia and
l\lorris, \vho are of Irish origin. . . ." They sa\v
fairies and things of that sort."
Sl\UTH. And I suppose, to the medical mind, seeing
fairies means much the same as seeing snakes?
DOCTOR. [JVith a sour smile.] Well, they saw
them in Ireland. I suppose it's quite correct to see
fairies in Ireland. It's like gambling at Monte Carlo.
It's quite respectable. But I do draw the line at their
seeing fairies in England. I do object to their bring-
ing their ghosts and goblins and witches into the poor
Duke's own back garden and within a yard of my
own red lamp. It shows a lack of tact.
Patricia, moreover, wanders about the park
and thc \voods in the evenings. " Damp
evenings for choice. She calls it the Celtic
61
G. K. CHESTERTON
twilight. I've no use for the Celtic twilight
myself. It has a tendency to get on the chest."
The Duke, annoyed by this love of fairies, has
blundered, in his usual \vay, on an absurd com-
promise between the real and the ideal. A
conjuror is to come that very night. 'Vhen
explanations have gone so far, the Duke at
last makes his entry. The stage directions tell
us that "in the present state of the peerage
it is necessary to explain that the Duke,
though an ass, is a gentleman." His thoughts
are the most casual on earth. He is ahvays
being reminded of something or somebody
\vhich has nothing to do \vith the case. As for
instance, "I saw the place you're putting up
. . . Mr. Smith. Very good work. Very good
work, indeed. Art for the people, eh? I par-
ticularly liked that ,vood work over the ,vest
door-I'm glad to see you're using the new
sort of graining. . . why, it all reminds one
of the French Revolution." After one or two
dissociations of this sort, the expected l\iorris
Carleon enters through the French window;
he is rather young and excitable, and America
has overlaid the original Irishman. l\lorris
immediately asks for Patricia and is told that
she is wandering in the garden. The Duke
lets out that she sees fairies; l\lorris raves a
bit about his sister being allowed out alone
62
THE MAKER OF l\IAGIC
with anything in the nature of a man, \vhen
Patricia herself enters. She is in a slightly
exalted state; she has just seen her fairy, him
of the pointed hood. l\lorris, of course, is
furious, not to say suspicious.
DOCTOR. [Putting his hand on l\IORRIS'S shoulder.]
Come, you must allow a little more for poetry. \Ve
can't all feed on nothing but petrol.
DUKE. Quite right, quite right. And being Irish,
don't you know, Celtic, as old Buffle used tó say,
charming songs, you know, about the Irish girl who
has a plaid shawl-and a Banshee. [Sighs pro-
foundly.] Poor old Gladstone! [Silence.]
SMITH. [Speaking to DOCTOR.] I thought you
yourself considered the family superstition bad for
the health ?
DOCTOR. I consider a family superstition is better
for the health than a family quarrel.
A figure is scen to stand in front of the red
lamp, blotting it out for a moment. Patricia
calls to it, and the cloaked Stranger \vith the
pointed hood enters. l\lorris at once calls him
a fraud.
S:\UTH. [Quickly.] Pardon me, I do not fancy
that we know that . . .
l\IORRIS. I didn't know you parsons stuck up for
any fables but your own.
Sl\IITH. I stick up for the thing every man has a
right to. Perhaps the only thing every man has a
right to.
63
G. K. CHESTERTON
l\IORRIS. And what is that?
SMITH. The benefit of the doubt.
Morris returns to the attack. The Stranger
throws off his hood and reveals himself to the
Duke. He is the Conjuror, ready for the even-
ing's performance. All laugh at this dénoue-
ment, except Patricia, between ,vhom and the
Conjuror this bit of dialogue ensues:
STRANGER. [Very sadly.] I am very sorry I am
not a wizard.
PATRICIA. I wish you were a thief instead.
STRANGER. Have I committed a worse crime than
thieving ?
P ATRICIA. You have committed the cruellest
crime, I think, that there is.
STRANGER. And what is the cruellest crime?
PATRICIA. Stealing a child's toy.
STRANGER. And what have I stolen?
PATRICIA. A fairy tale.
And the curtain falls upon the First Act.
An hour later the room is being prepared
for the performance. The Conjuror is setting
out his tricks, and the Duke is entangling him
and the Secretary in his peculiar conversation.
'The following is characteristic :
THE SECRETARY. . . . The only other thing at all
urgent is the
Iilitant Vegetarians.
DUKE. Ah! The Militant Vegetarians ! You've
64
THE 1\1AKER OF MAGIC
heard of them, I'm sure. Won't obey the law [to the
CONJUROR] so long as the Government serves out meat.
CONJUROR. Let them be comforted. There are a
good many people who don't get much meat.
DUKE. Well, well, I'm bound to say they're very
enthusiastic. Advanced, too-oh, certainly advanced.
Like Joan of Arc.
[Short silence, in which the CONJUROR stares at him.]
CON JUROR. JVas Joan of Arc a Vegetarian ?
DUKE. Oh, well, it's a very high ideal, after all.
The Sacredness of Life, you know-the Sacredness of
Life. [Shakes his head.] But they carry it too far.
They killed a policeman down in Kent.
This conversation goes on for some time,
while nothing in particular happens, except
that the audience feels very happy. The Duke
asks the Conjuror several questions, receiving
thoroughly Chestertonian ans\vers. [" Are you
interested in modern progress?" " Yes. \Ve
are interested in all tricks done by illusion."]
At last the Conjuror is left alone. Patricia
enters. He attempts to excuse himself for the
theft of the fairy tale. He has had a trouble-
some life, and has never enjoyed" a holiday
in Fairyland." So, when he, with his hood up,
because of the slight rain, was surprised by
Patricia, as he was rehearsing his patter, and
taken for a fairy, he played up to her. Patricia
is inclined to forgive him, but the conversation
is interrupted by the entrance of l\lorris, in a
E 65
G. K. CHESTERTON
mood to be offensive. He examines the ap-
paratus, proclaims the ,yay it is \vorked, and
after a \vhile breaks out into a frenzy of free
thought, asking the universe in general and
the Conjuror in particular for "that old
apparatus that turned rods into snakes." The
Clergyman and the Doctor entcr, and the con-
versation turns on religion, and then goes back
to the tricks. l\lorris is still extremely quarrel-
some, and for the second time has to be quieted
do\vn. The Conjuror is dignified, but cutting.
The whole scene has been, so far, a discussion
on Do l\liracles Happen? Smith makes out
a case in the affirmative, arguing from the
false to the true. Suppose, as Morris claims,
the "modern conjuring tricks are simply the
old miracles \vhen they have once been found
out. . . . 'Vhen \ve speak of things being
sham, \ve generally mean that they are imita-
tions of things that are genuine." l\lorris gets
more and mOl'e excited, and continues to in-
sult the Conjuror. At last he shouts. . . " You'll
no more raise your Saints and Prophets from
the dead than you'll raise the Duke's great-
grandfather to dance on that wall." At \vhich
the Reynolds portrait in question sways slightly
from side to side. l\iorris turns furiously to the
Conjuror, accusing him of trickery. A chair
falls over, for no apparent cause, still further
66
THE MAKER OF l\IAGIC
exciting the youth. At last he blurts out a
challenge. The Doctor's red lalnp is the lalnp
of science. No power on earth could change
its colour. And the red light turns blue, for
a minute. Morris, absolutely puzzled, comes
literally to his wits' end, and rushes out,
follo\ved shortly after\vards by his sister and
the Doctor. The youth is put to bcd, and left
in the care of Patricia, \vhile the Doctor and
the Clergyman return to thcir argumcnt. Smith
makes out a strong casc for belief, for simple
faith, a case \vhich sounds strangely, coming
from the lips of a clergyman of the Church
of England.
DOCTOR. Weren't there as many who believed
passionately in Apollo ?
S
IITH. And what harm came of believing in
Apollo? And what a nlass of harm may have come
of not believing in A polIo? Does it never strike you
that doubt can be a madness, as well be faith? That
asking questions may be a disease, as well as pro-
claiming doctrines ? You talk of religious mania!
Is there no such thing as irreligious mania? Is there
no such thing in the house at this moment ?
DOCTOR. Then you think no one should question
at all ?
SMITH. (JVith passion, pointing to the next room.]
I think that is what comes of questioning! \Vhy can't
you leave the universe alone and let it mean what it
ltkes ? \Vhy shouldn't the thunùer be Jupiter?
67
G. K. CHESTERTON
More men have made themselves silly by wondering
what the devil it was if it wasn't Jupiter.
DOCTOR. [Looking at him.] Do you believe in your
own religion ?
S
nTH. [Returning the look equally steadily.] Sup-
pose I don't: I should still be a fool to question it.
The child who doubts about Santa Claus has in-
son1nia. The child who believes has a good night's
rest.
DOCTOR. You are a Pragmatist.
SMITH. That is what the lawyers call vulgar abuse.
But I do appeal to practice. Here is a family over
which you tell me a mental calamity hovers. Here is
the boy who questions everything and a girl who
can believe anything. Upon whom has the curse
fallen ?
At this point the curtain was made to fall
on the Second Act. The Third and last Act
takes place in the same room a few hours later.
The Conjuror has packed his bag, and is going.
The Doctor has been sitting up \vith the
patient. l\Iorris is in a more or less delirious
state, and is continually asking ho-w the trick
was done. The Doctor belicves that the ex-
planation would satisfy thc patient and would
probably help him to turn thc corner. But thc
Conjuror will not provide an explanation. He
has many reasons, the most practical of which
is that he would not bc believed. The Duke
comes in and tries to make a business matter
68
THE l\IAKER OF l\IAGIC
of the secret, even to the extent of paying
.t2000 for it. Suddenly the Conjuror changes
his mind. He will tell them how the trick was
done, it was all very simple. "It is the sim-
plest thing in the world. That is why you \vill
not laugh. . . . I did it by magic." The
Doctor and the Duke are dumbfounded. Smith
intervenes; he cannot accept the explanation.
The Conjuror lets himself go, now he is voicing
Chesterton's views. The clergyman who merely
believes in belief, as Smith does, will not do.
He n1ust believe in a fact, .which is far more
difficult.
CONJUROR. I say thesc things are supernatural.
I say this is done by a spirit. The doctor does not
believe me. He is an agnostic; and he knows every-
thing. The Duke does not believe me; he cannot
believe anything so plain as a miracle. But what the
devil are you for, if you don't believe in a miracle?
\Vhat does your coat mean if it doesn't mean that
there is such a thing as the supernatural? What
does your cursed collar mean if it doesn't meaft that
there is such a thing as a spirit? [Exasperated.] \Vhy
the devil do you dress up like that if you don't
believe in it? [With violence.] Or perhaps you don't
believe in devils ?
S!\HTH. I believe . . . [After a pause.] I wish I
could believe.
CONJUROR. Y cs. I wish I could disbelieve.
Here Patricia enters. She 'wants to speak
69
G. K. CHESTERTON
to the Conjuror, with whom she is left alone.
A little love scene takes place: rather the
result of- two slightly sentimental and rather
tired persons of diffe:rent sexes being left alone
than anything else. But they return to
realities, with an effort. Patricia, too, wants
to kno\v ho\v the trick was done, in order to
tell her brother. He tells her, but she is of
the ,vorld ,vhich cannot believe in devils, even
although it may manage to accept fairies as
an inevitable adjunct to landscape scenery by
moonlight. In order to convince her the Con-
juror tells her ho\v he fell, how after dabbJing
in spiritualism he found he had lost control
over himself. But he had resisted the temp-
tation to make the devils his servants, until
the impudence of l\Iorris had made him lose
his temper. Then he goes out into the garden
to see if he can find some explanation to give
l\iorris. The Duke, Smith, the Doctor, and
the Secretary drift into the room, which is now
tenanted by something impalpable but hor-
rible. The Conjuror returns and clears the air
with an exorcism. He has invented an ex-
planation, \vhich he goes out to give to Morris.
Patricia announces that her brother immedi-
ately took a turn for the better. The Conjuror
refuses to repeat the explanation he gave
l\lorris, because if he did, "Half an hour after
70
THE l\IAI{ER OF l\IAGIC
I have left this house you \vill all be saying
huw it was done." He turns to go.
PATRICIA. Our fairy tale has come to an end in the
only way a fairy tale can come to an end. The only
way a fairy tale can leave off being a fairy tale.
CONJUROR. I don't understand you.
PATRICIA. It has come true.
And the curtain falls for the last time.
No doubt lJlagic owed a great deal of its
success to the admirable production of l\Ir.
Kenelm Foss and the excellence of the cast.
l\liss Grace Croft \vas surely the true Patricia.
Of the Duke of 1\11'. Fred Lewis it is difficult
to speak in terms other than superlative.
Those of my readers \vho have suffered the
misfortune of not having seen him, may gain
some idea of his execution of the part from the
illustrations to 1\11'. Belloc's novels. The Duke
was an extraordinarily good likeness of the
Duke of Battersea, as portrayed by Chesterton,
with rather more than a touch of 1\11'. Asquith
superadded. 1\11'. Fred Le\vis, it may be stated,
gagged freely, introducing topical lines until
the play became a revue in little-but \vithout
injustice to the original. Several of those \vho
saw 1J] agic came for a third, a fourth, even a
tenth time.
The Editor of The Dublin Review had the
happy idea of asking Chesterton to revie\v
71
G. K. CHESTERTON
Jf;lagic. The result is too long to quote in full,
but it makes two important points which may
be extracted.
I will glide mercifully over the more glaring errors,
which the critics havc overlooked-as that no Irish-
man could become so complete a cad merely by going
to America-that no young lady would walk about in
the rain so soon before it was necessary to dress for
dinner-that no young man, however American,
could run round a Duke's grounds in the time between
one bad epigran1 and another-that Dukes never
allow the middle classes to encroach on their gardens
so as to permit a doctor's lamp to be seen there-that
no sister, however eccentric, could conduct a slightly
frivolous love-scene with a brother going mad in the
next room-that the Secretary disappears half-way
through the play without explaining himself; and
the conjuror disappears at the end, with almost equal
dignity. . . .
By the exercise of that knowledge of all human
hearts which descends on any man (however un-
worthy) the moment he is a dramatic critic, I per-
ceive that the author of Magic originally wrote it as
a short story. It is a bad play, because it was a good
short story. In a short story of mystery, as in a
Sherlock Holmes story, the author and the hero (or
villain) keep the reader out of the secret. . . . But the
drama is built on that grander secrecy which was
called the Greek irony. In the drama, the audience
must know the truth when the actors do not know it.
That is where the drama is truly democratic: not
because the audience shouts, but because it knows-
and is silent. Now I do quite seriously think it is a
72
THE l\IAKER OF l\IAGIC
weakness in a play like IJlagic that the audience is not
in the central secret from the start. l\Ir. G. S. Street
put the point with his usual unerring simplicity by
saying that he could not help feeling disappointed
with the Conjuror because he had hoped he would
turn into the Devil.
A few additions may easily be made to the
first batch of criticisms. Patricia's \velcome
to her brother is not what a long-lost brother
might expect. There is really no satisfactory
reason for the Doctor's continued presence.
Patricia and l\Iorris can only be half Irish by
blood, unless it is possible to become Irish by
residence. \Vhy should the Conjuror rehearse
his patter out in the wet? Surely the Duke's
house would contain a spare room? \Vhere
did the Conjuror go, at the end of the Third
Act, in the small hours of the morning? And
so on.
But these are little things that do not matter
in an allegory. For in IJI agic " things are not
\vhat they seem." The Duke is a modern man.
He is also the world, the flesh, and the devil.
He has no opinions, no positive religion, no
brain. He believes in his o\vn tolerance, which
is merely his fatuousness. He follows the line
of least resistance, and makes a virtue of it.
He sits on the fence, but he \vill never come
off. The Clergyman is the church of to-day,
73
G. !{. CHESTERTON
preaching the supernatural, but unwilling to
recognize its existence at close quarters. As
somebody says somewhere in The TV isdom of
Father Brown, " If a miracle happened in your
office, you'd have to hush it up, no\v so many
bishops are atheists." The Doctor is a less
typical figure. He is the inconsistencies of
science, kindly but \vith little joy of life, and
extremely Chestertonian, \vhich is to say un-
scientific. Morris is the younger generation,
obsessed \vith business and getting on, and
intellectually incapable of facing a religious
fact. Patricia is the Chestertonian good woman,
too essentially domestic to be ever fundamen-
tally disturbed. The Conjuror, if not the Devil,
is at any rate that inexplicable element in all
life which most people do not see.
Nevertheless there is a fla\v in JJlagic \vhich
really is serious. If I \vcre to see, let us say,
a sheet of newspaper flying down the road
against the \vind, and a fricnd of mine, ,vho
happened to be a gifted liar, told me that he
was directing the pa per by D1eans of spirits,
I should still be justified in believing that
another explanation could be possible. I
should say, " My dear friend, your explanation
is romantic; I believe in spirits but I do not
believe in you. I prefer to think that there
is an air-current going the wrong way." That
74
THE MAKER OF
IAGIC
is the matter \vith the Conjuror's explanation.
'Yhy should the Clergyman or the Doctor-
professional sceptics, both of them, which is
to say seekers after truth-take the word of
a professional deceiver as necessarily true?
There are t\VO \vorks which the critic of
Chesterton must take into special considera-
tion. They are JJI agic and Orthodoxy; and it
may be said that the former is a dramatized
version of the latter. The two together are
a great \vork, striking at the very roots of
disbelief. In a sense Chesterton pays the
atheist a very high compliment. He does what
the athei
t is generally too lazy to do for him-
self; he takes his substitute for religion and
systematizes it into something like a philosophy.
Then he examines it as a whole. And he finds
that atheism is dogma in its extremist form,
that it embodies a multitude of superstitions,
and that it is actually continually adding to
their number. Such are the reasons of the
greatness of ßlagic. The play, one feels, must
remain unique, for the prolegomenon cannot
be rewritten \vhile the philosophy is unchanged.
And Chesterton has deliberately chosen the
word orthodox to apply to himself, and he has
not limited its meaning.
75
IV
THE
CRITIC OF LAR.GE THINGS
THE heroes of Chesterton's romances have an
adipose diathesis, as a reviewer has been heard
to remark. In plain English they tend to,vards
largeness. Flambeau, Sunday, and Innocent
Smith are big men. Chesterton, as we have
seen, pays little attention to his women char-
acters, but whenever it comes to pass that he
must introduce a heroine, he colours her as
emphatically as the nature of things will
admit. 'Vhich is to say that the Chestertonian
heroine always has red hair.
These things are symptomatic of their author.
lIe loves robustness. If he cannot produce it,
he can at any rate affect it, or attack its enemies.
This \vorship of the robust is the fundamental
fact of all Chesterton's ,vork. For example, as
a critic of letters he confines himself almost
exclusively to the big men. \Yhen l\ir. Bernard
Shaw a few years ago con1mitted \vhat Ches-
terton imagined was an attack upon Shake-
76
CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS
speare, he almost instinctively rushed to the
defence in the columns of The Daily News.
\Yhen Chesterton wrote a little book on The
V ictorian Age in Literature he showed no
interest in the smaller pcople. The book, it
may be urged in his excuse, ,vas a little one,
but we feel that even if it \vas not, Chesterton
would have done much the same thing. Among
the writers he omitted to mention, even by
name, are Sir Edwin Arnold, Harrison Ains-
worth, 'Valter Bagehot, R.. Blackmore, A. H.
Clough, E. A. Freeman, S. R. Gardiner, George
Gissing, J. R.. Grcen, T. H. Green, Henry
Hallam, Jean lngelow, Bcnjamin Jo\vett, ,Yo
E. H. Lecky, Thomas Love Peacock, \V. 1\1.
Praed, and Mrs. Humphry 'Vard. The criti-
cisnl. \vhich feeds upon rescarch afid comparison,
\vhich considers a new date or the emendation
of a mispunctuated line of verse, worthy of
effort, kno\vs not Chesterton. He is the student
of the big men. He has \vritten books about
Dickens, Bro\vning, and Shaw, of whom only
one common quality can be noted, \vhich is
that they are each the subjects of at least
twenty other books. To write about the things
,vhich have already yielded such a huge crop
of criticism savours at first of a lack of imagin-
ation. The truth is quite other\vise. Any-
body, so to speak, can producc a book about
77
G. K. CHESTERTON
Alexander Pope because the ore is at the dis-
posal of every miner. But that larger mine
called Dickens has been diligently \vorked by
two generations of authors, and it would appear
that a new one must either plagiarize or labour
extremely in order to come upon fresh seams.
But Chesterton's taste for bigness has COlne to
his service in criticism. It has given him a
power of seeing the large, obvious things which
the critic of small things mis
es. He has the
" thinking in millions " trick of the statistician
transposed to literary ends.
Or as a poet. The robustness is omni-
present, and takes several forn1s. A grandilo-
quence that sways uneasily bet\veen rodomon-
tade and mere verbiage, a rotundity of diction,
a choice of subjects \vhich can only be described
as sanguinolent, the use of the bludgeon where
others \vould prefer a rapier.
Or as a simple user of \vords. Chesterton
has a preference for the big \vords: a\vful,
enormous, tremendous, and so on. A \vord
which occurs very often indeed is mystic: it
suggests that the noun it qualifies is laden with
undisclosable attributes, and that romance is
hidden here.
Now all these things add up, as it \vere, to
a tendency to say a thing as emphatically as
possible. Emphasis of statement from a
78
CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS
humorist giftcd with the use of words results
sometimes in epigram, sOll1etimes in fun, in all
things except the dull things (except when the
dullness is due to an unhappy succession of
scintillations which have misfired). For these
reasons Chesterton is regarded as entirely
frivolous-by persons \vithout a sense of
humour. He is, in point of fact, extremely
serious, on those frequent occasions when he
is making out a case. As he himself points out,
to be serious is not the opposite of to be funny.
The opposite of to be funny is not to be funny.
A man may be perfectly serious in a funny way.
N ow it has befallen Chesterton on more than
one occasion to have to cross s\vords \vith one
of the few truc atheists, 1\11' . Joseph l\-lacCabe,
the author of a huge nUlnber of books, mostly
attacking Christianity, and as devoid of humour
as an egg-shell is of hair. The differences and
the resemblances between Chesterton and l\Ir.
MacCabe might well be the occasion of a
parable. Chesterton has \vritten some of the
liveliest books about Christianity, Mr.1\IacCabe
has written some of the dullest. Chesterton
has \vritten the most amusing book about
1\11'. Bernard Shaw; 1\11'. l\lacCabe has written
the dullest. Chesterton and 1\11'. 1\IacCabe have
a habit of sparring at one another, but up to
the prescnt I have not noticed either make any
79
G. K. CHESTERTON
palpable hits. It is all rather like the Party
System, as 1\lr. Hilaire Belloc depicts it. The
two antagonists do not understand each other
in the least. But, to a certain degree, 1\11'.
l\lacCabe's confusion is the fault of Chesterton
and not of his own lack of humour. 'Vhen
Chesterton says, "I also mean every word I
say," he is saying something he does not mean.
He is sometimes funny, but not serious, like
1\lr. George Robey. lIe is sometimes irritating,
but not serious, like a circus clo,vn. And he
sometimes appears to be critical, but is not
serious, like the young lady from 'Val worth
in front of a Bond Street shop-window, regret-
ting that she could not possibly buy the
crockery and glass displayed because the
monogram isn't on right. Chesterton's readers
have perhaps spoiled him. He has pleaded,
so to speak, for the inalienable and mystic
right of every man to be a blithel'ing idiot in
all seriousness. So seriously, in fact, that when
he exercised this inalienable and mystic right,
the only man not in the secret was G. K.
Chesterton.
There are few tasks so ungrateful as the
criticism of a critic's criticislTIs, unless it be
the job of criticizing the criticisms of a critic's
critics. The first is part of the task of him
who \vould write a book in which all Chester-
80
CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS
ton's works are duly and fitly considered; and
the second \viII not be wholly escaped by him.
Concerned as \ve. are, ho\vever, \vith the ideas
of one ,vho ,vas far more interested in putting
the world to rights than \vith guiding men and
women around literary edifices, there is no
need for us to give any very detailed study to
Chesterton's critical work. Bacon said" dis-
tilled books are like common distilled waters,
flashy things." A second distillation, perhaps
even a third, suggests a Euclidean flatness.
The sheer management of a point of view,
however, is ahvays instructive. \Ve have seen
an author use his exceptional powers of criti-
cism upon society in general, and ideas at
large. How is he able to deal with ideas and
inventions stated in a more definite and par-
ticular manner? The latter task is the more
difficult of the t,vo. 'Ve all know perfectly
well, to take an analogous illustration, ho\v
to deal with the Prussian militarist class, the
" Junker caste," and so on. But \ve differ
hopelessly on the treatment to be meted out
to the National Service League.
The outstanding feature of Chesterton's
critical ,york is that it has no outstanding
features ,vhich differentiate it from his other
writings. He is always the journalist, \vriting
for the day only. This leads him to treat all
F 81
G. K. CHESTERTON
his subjects with special reference to his own
day. Sometimes, as in the essay on Byron in
Twelve Types, his own day is so much under
discussion that poor Byron is left out in the
cold to \varm himself before a feebly flickering
epigram. In writing of Dickens, Chesterton
says that he "can be criticized as a contem-
porary of Bernard Sha 'VOl' Anatole France or
C. F. G. 1\iasterman . . . his name comes to
the tongue \vhen \ve are talking of Christian
Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt or County Council
Steamboats or Guilds of Play." And Chester-
ton does criticize Dickens as the contemporary
of all these phenomena. In point of fact,
to G.R.C. everybody is either a contemporary
or a Victorian, and" I also \vas born a Vic-
torian." Little Dorrit sets him talking about
Gissing, Hard Times suggests Herbert Spencer,
American Notes leads to the mention of Maxilll
Gorky, and elsewhere 1\lr. George 1\ioore and
1\ir. \Yilliam Le Queux are brought in. If
Chesterton happened to be \vriting about
Dickens at a tÍlne \vhen there ,vas a certain
amount of feeling about on the subject of rich
Jews on the Rand, then the rich J e,vs on the
Rand \vould appear in print forth\vith, 'whether
or not Dickens had ever depicted a rich Jew
or the Rand, or the t\VO in conjunction.
hcst('rton's first critical \vork of itnportancc
82
CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS
was Robert Browning in the "English Men of
Letters Series." It might be imagined that
the austere editorship of Lord Morley might
have a dejournalizing effect upon the style
of the author. Far otherwise. The t's are
crossed and the i's are dotted, so to speak,
more carefully in Robert Browning than in
works less fastidiously edited, but that is all.
The book contains references to Gladstone
and Home Rule, Parnell, Pigott, and Rud-
yard Kipling, Cyrano de Bergerac, 'V. E.
Henley, and the Tivoli. But of Browning's
literary ancestors and predecessors there is
little mention.
It is conventional to shed tears of ink over
the journalistic touch, on the ground that it
must inevitably shorten the life of whatever
book bears its marks. If there is anything in
this condemnation, then Chesterton is doomed
to forgetfulness, and his critical works will be
the first to slip into oblivion, such being the
nature of critical works in general. But if
this condemnation holds true, it includes also
l\lacaulay, R. L. Stevenson, l\Iatthe\v Arnold,
and how many others! The journalistic touch,
when it is good, means the preservation of a
work. And Chesterton has that most essential
part of a critic's mental equipment-what we
call in an ina.dequately descriptive manner,
83
G. K. CHESTERTON
insight. He was no mean critic, whatever the
tricks he played, who could pen these judg-
ments :
The dominant passion of the artistic Celt, such as
Mr. W. B. Yeats or Sir Edward Burne-Jones, lies in
the word "escape"; escape into a land where
oranges grow on plum trees and men can sow what
they like and reap what they enjoy. (G. F. JVatts.)
The supreme and most practical value of poetry
is this, that in poetry, as in music, a note is struck
which expresses beyond the power of rational state-
ment a condition of mind, and all actions arise from
a condition of mind. (Robert Browning.)
This essential comedy of Johnson's character is one
which has never, oddly enough, been put upon the
stage. There was in his nature one of the unconscious
and even agreeable contradictions loved by the true
comedian. . . . I mean a strenuous and sincere
belief in convention, combined with a huge natural
inaptitude for observing it. (Samuel Johnson.)
Rossetti could, for once in a way, write poetry
about a real woman and call her" Jenny." One has a
disturbed suspicion that Morris would have called her
"Jehanne." (The Victorian Age in Literature.)
These are a few samples collected at random,
but they alone are almost sufficient to enthrone
Chesterton among the critics. He has a won-
derful intuitive gift of feeling for the right
metaphor, for the material object that best
symbolizes an impression. But one thing he
84
CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS
lacks. Put him among authors whose view
of the universe is opposed to his own, and
Chesterton instantly adopts an insecticide atti-
tude. The wit of \Vilde moves him not, but
his morals stir him profoundly; Mr. Thomas
Hardy is "a sort of village atheist brooding
and blaspheming over the village idiot." Only
occasionally has he a good \vord to say for the
technique of an author whose vie\vs he dis-
likes. His critical work very largely consists
of an attempt to describe his subjects' views
of the universe, and bring them into relation
\vith his own. His two books on Charles
Dickens are little more than such an attempt.
'Vhen, a few years ago, l\lr. Edwin Pugh, \vho
had also been studying the "aspects" of
Dickens, came to the conclusion that the
novelist was a Socialist, Chesterton \vaxed
exceeding wrath and gave the offending book
a severe wigging in The Daily News.
He loves a good fighter, ho\vever, and to
such he is ahvays just. There are few philoso-
phies so radically opposed to the whole spirit
of Chesterton's beliefs as that of John Stuart
l\lill. On religion, economic doctrine, and
woman suffrage, l\Iill held views that are
offensive to G.K.C. But l\IilI is nevertheless
invariably treated by him with a respect which
approximates to reverence. The principal
85
G. K. CHESTERTON
case in point, however, is l\{r. Bernard Shaw,
who holds all l\lill's beliefs, and waves them
about even more defiantly. G.K.C.'s admira-
tion in this case led him to write a whole book
about G.B.S. in addition to innumerable
articles and references. The book has the
following characteristic introduction :
Most people either say that they agree with
Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him.
I am the only person who understands him, and I do
not agree with him.
Chesterton, of course, could not possibly
agree ,vith such an avowed and utter Puritan
as l\lr. Sha,v. The Puritan has to be a revolu-
tionary, which means a man who pushes for-
ward the hand of the clock. Chesterton, as
near as may be, is a Catholic Tory, \vho is a
man who pushes back the hand of the clock.
Superficially, the two make the clock show the
same hour, but actually, one puts it on to a.m.,
the other back to p.m. Bet\veen the two is all
the difference that is between darkness and
day.
Chesterton's point of view is distinctly like
Samuel Johnson's in more respects than one.
Both critics made great play with dogmatic
assertions based on the literature that was
before their time, at the expense of the litera-
ture that was to come after. In the book on
86
CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS
Shaw, Chesterton strikes a blow at all inno-
vators, although he aims only at the obvious
failures.
The truth is that all feeble spirits naturaHy live in
the future, because it is featureless; it is a soft job;
you can make it what you like. The next age is blank,
and I can paint it freely with my favourite colour.
It requires real courage to face the past, because the
past is full of facts which cannot be got over; of
men certainly wiser than we and of things donc which
we cannot do. I know I cannot write a poem as good
as Lycidas. But it is always easy to say that the
particular sort of poetry I can write will be the poetry
of the future.
Sentiments such as these have nlade many
young experimentalists feel that Chesterton is
a traitor to his youth and generation. Nobody
\vill ever have the detachment necessary to
appreciate" futurist" poetry until it is very
much a thing of the past, because the near past
is so much with us, and it is part of us, \vhich
the future is not. But fidclity to the good
things of thc past does not exonerate us
fronl the task of looking for the gcrms of
the good things of the future. Thc young
poet of to-day sits at the feet of Sir
Henry Ne\vbolt, \vhose critical appreciation
is undaunted by mere dread of ne\v things,
while to the sanle youth and to his fricnds it
has simply never occurred, often enough, to
87
G. K. CHE S TER TON
think of Chesterton as a critic. It cannot be
too strongly urged that an undue admiration
of the distant past has sat like an incubus
upon the chest of European literature, and
Shakespeare's greatness is not in spite of his
" small Latin and less Greek," which probably
contributed to it indirectly. Had Shakespeare
been a classical scholar, he would almost cer-
tainly have modelled his plays on Seneca or
Aeschylus, and the results \vould have been
devastating. Addison's Cato, Johnson's Irene,
and the dramas of Racine and Corneille are
among the abysmal dullnesses mankind owes
to its excessive estimation of the past. 1\:len
have ahvays been too ready to forget that we
inherit our ancestors' bad points as ,vcIl as
their good ones. Ancestor-worship has de-
prived the Chinese of the capacity to create,
it has seriously affected Chesterton's power to
criticize. Chesterton's o\vn generation has
seen both the victory and the do\vnfall of
form in the novels of 1\11'. Gals\vorthy and
Mr. H. G. 'VeIls. It has \vitnessed fascinating
experiments in stagecraft, some of \vhich have
assuredly succeeded. It has listened to new
poets and wandered in enchanted worlds \vhere
no Victorians trod. A critic in sympathy \vith
these efforts at reform \vould have written the
last-quoted passage something like this:
88
CRITIC OF LARGE THINGS
"The truth is that all feeble spirits natur-
ally live in the past, because it has no boun-
daries; it is a soft job; you can find in it
what you like. The past ages are rank, and I
can daub myself freely \vith \vhatever colours
I extract. It requires no courage to face the
past, because the past is full of facts ,vhich
neutralize one another; of men certainly no
\viser than we, and of things done \vhich we
could not want to do. I know I cannot write
a poem as good as Lycidas. But I also know
that l\Iilton could not \vrite a poem as good as
The Hound of Heaven or l\l'Andre\v's Hymn.
And it is ahvays easy to say that the particular
kind of poetry I can write has been the poetry
of some period of the past."
But Chesterton didn't; quite the reverse.
So that one comes to the sorrowful conclu-
sion that Chesterton is at his best, as a critic,
when he is \vriting introductions, because then
he has to leave the past alone. 'Vhen he is
writing an introduction to one of the \vorks
of a great Victorian (Dickens ahvays excepted)
he makes his subject stand out like a solitary
giant, not necessarily because he is one, but
on account of the largeness of the contours,
the rough shaping, and the deliberate con-
trasts. lIe has \vritten prefaces \vithout num-
ber, and the British l\luseum has not a complete
89
G. K. CHESTERTON
set of the books introduced by him. The
Fables of Æsop, the Book of Job, l\latthew
Arnold's Critical Essays, a book of children's
poems by IVrargaret Arndt, Bos\vell's Johnson,
a novel by Gorky, selections from Thackeray,
a life of l\Ir. 'ViII Crooks, and an anthology by
young poets are but a few of the books he has
explained.
The last thing to be said on Chesterton as
a critic is by \vay of illustration. For a series
of books on artists, he \vrote t\VO, on 'Yïllian1
Blakc and G. F. 'Vatts. The first is all about
mysticism, and so is the second. They are
for the layman, not for the artist. They could
be read \vith interest and joy by the colour-
blind. And, incidentally, they are extremely
good criticisnl. Therein is the triumph of
Chesterton. Giv
hinl a subject ,vhich he can
relate with his o\vn view of the universe, and
space ,vherein to accomplish this feat, and he
\vill succeed in presenting his readers with a
vividly outlined portrait, tinted, of course,
with his o,vn personality, but indisputably
true to life, and ornanlented \vith fascinating
little gargoyles. But put him among the
bourgeoisie of literature and he \vill sulk like
an angry child.
90
v
THE
IIUl\10RIST AND THE POET
THERE are innumerable books-or let us say
twenty-on l\Ir. Bernard Sha\v. They deal
\vith him as a sociologist, a dramatist, or what
not, but never as a humorist. There is a
mass of books on Oscar 'Vilde, and they deal
\vith everything concerned \vith him, except
his humour. The great humorists-as such-
go unsung to their graves. That is because
there is nothing so obvious as a joke, and
nothing so difficult to explain. It requires a
psychologist, like 'Villian1 James, or a phil-
osopher, like Bergson, to explain \vhat a joke
is, and then most of us cannot understand the
explanation. A joke-especially another man's
joke-is a thing to be handled delicately and
reverently, for once the bloom is off, the joke
mysteriously shrivels and vanishes. Trans-
lators are the s\vorn enemies of jokes; the
exigencies of their deplorable trade cause them
to maul the poor little things about \vhile they
91
G. K. CHESTERTON
are putting them into new clothes, and the
result is death, or at the least an appearance
of vacuous senescence. But jokes are only the
crystallization of humour; it exists also in
less tangible forms, such as style and all that
collection of effects vaguely lun1ped together
and called "atn10sphere." Chesterton's pecu-
liar" atmosphere" rises like a s\veet exhala-
tion from the very ink he sheds. And it is
frankly indefinable, as all genuine style is. The
insincere stylists can be reduced to a formula,
because they work from a formula; Pater n1ay
be brought down to an arrangement of adjec-
tives and commas, Doctor Johnson to a suc-
cession of rhythms, carefully pruned of excres-
cences, and so on, but the stylist who writes
as God n1ade him defies such analysis. l\leredith
and Sha\v and Chesterton will ren1ain mysteries
even unto the latest research student of the
Universities of J ena and Chicago. Patient
students (something of the sort is already being
done) ,viII count up the number of nouns and
verbs and commas in The Napoleon of Notting
Hill and will express the result in such a form
as this-
ff- nouns 3 / sin A
Chesterton (G. 1\:.)= b 2 + V c.2Iogebn--
ver s 47
But they will fail to touch the essential Ches-
92
HUMORIST AND POET
terton, because one of the beauties of this
form of analysis is that when the formula has
been obtained, nobody is any the \viser as to
the manner of its use. \Ve know that James
Smith is composed of beef and beer and bread,
because all evidence goes to sho\v that these are
tht' only things he ever absorbs, but nobody
has ever suggested that a synthesis of food-
stuffs \vill ever give us James Smith.
N ow the difficulty of dealing with the
humour of Chesterton is that, in doing so, one
is compelled to handle it, to its detriment.
If in the chapter on his Romances any reader
thought he detected the voice and the style of
Chesterton, he is grievously mistaken. He
only saw the scaffolding, which bears the same
relation to the finished product as the skeleton
bears to the human body.
Consider these things:
If you throw one bomb you are only a murderer;
but if you keep on persistently throwing bombs, you
are in awful danger of at last becoming a prig.
If we all floated in the air like bubbles, free to drift
anywhere at any instant, the practical result would be
that no one would have the courage to begin a con-
versation.
If the public schools stuck up a notice it ought to
be inscribed, "For the Fathers of Gentlemen only."
In two generations they can do the trick.
93
G. K. CHESTERTO N
Now these propositions are not merely
snippets from a system of philosophy, pre-
sented after the manner of the admirers of
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. These are quota-
tions which display a quite exceptional power
of surprising people. The anticlimaxes of the
first two passages, the bold dip into the future
at the expense of the past in the third are
more than instances of mere verbal felicity.
They indicate a writer capable of the humour
which feeds upon daily life, and is therefore
thoroughly democratic and healthy. For there
are two sorts of humour; that which feeds upon
its possessor, Oscar \Vilde is the supreme ex-
ample of this type of humorist, and that which
draws its inspiration from its surroundings,
of \vhich the great exemplar is Dickens, and
Chesterton is his follo\ver. The first exhausts
itself sooner or later, because it feeds on its
o\vn blood, the second i
- inexhaustible. This
theory may be opposed" on the ground that
humour is both internal and external in its
origin. The supporters of this claim are
invited to take a holiday in bed, or elsewhere
away from the madding cro\vd, and then see
how humorous they can be.
Humour has an unfortunate tendency to
stale. The joke of yesteryear already shows
frays upon its sleeves. The \vit of the early
94
HUMORIST AND POET
volumes of Punch is in the last stages of
decrepitude. 'Vatch an actor struggling to
conceal from his audience the fact that he is
repeating one of Shakespeare's puns. 'Ve
tolerate the humour of Congreve, not because
it is thoroughly amusing, but because it has
survived better than most. Humorous verse
stands a slightly better chance of evoking
smiles in its old age. There is always its un-
alterable verbal neatness; tradition, too, lin-
gers more lovingly around fair shapes, and a
poem is a better instance of form than a para-
graph. 1\Iankind may grow blasé, if it will,
but as a poet of the comic, Chesterton will
live long years. Take for example that last
and worst of his novels The Flying Inn. Into
this he has pitched with a fascinating reckless-
ness a quantity of poems, garnered from The
New 'Vitness and worthy of the immortality
\vhich is granted the few really good comic
poems. There is the poem of Noah, \vith that
stimulating line with \vhich each stanza ends.
The last one goes :
But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet
we trod,
Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,
And you can't get wine at a P.S.A., or Chapel, or Eistedd-
fod;
For the Curse of 'Vater has come again because of the
wrath of God.
95
G. K. CHESTERTON
And water is on the Bishop's board, and the Higher
Thinker's shrine,
But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get
into the wine.
There is a lunatic song against grocers, who
are accused of nonconformity, and an equally
lunatic song in several instalments on being
a vegetarian :
I am silent in the Club,
I am silent in the pub,
I am silent on a bally peak in Darien ;
For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife,
Because I am at heart a vegetarian.
There is a joyous thing about a millionaire
who lived the simplc life, and a new vcrsion of
" St. George for Merry England." Tea, cocoa,
and soda-water are the subjects of another
poem. The verses about Roundabout are very
happy:
Some say that when Sir Lancelot
'Vent forth to find the Grail,
Grey Merlin wrinkled up the roads,
For hope that he should fail ;
All roads led back to Lyonnesse
And Camelot in the Vale,
I cannot yield assent to this
Extravagant hypothesis,
The plain shrewd Briton will dismiss
Such rumours (Daily lJlail).
96
HUMORIST AND POET
But in the streets of Roundabout
Are no such factions found,
Or theories to expound about
Or roll upon the ground about,
In the happy town of Roundabout,
That makes the world go round.
And there are lots more like this.
Then there are the Ballades Urbane which
appeared in the early volumes of The Eye-
'Vitness. They have refrains \vith the true
human note. Such as " But will you lend me
two-and -six ? "
EXVOI
Prince, I will not be knighted! No!
Put up your sword and stow your tricks!
Offering the Garter is no go-
BUT WILL YOU LEND ME T\VO-AND-SIX ?
In prose Chesterton is seldom the mere jester;
he \vill always have a moral or two, at the
very least, at his fingers' ends, or to be quite
exact, at the end of his article. He is never
quite irresponsible. He seldom laughs at a
man who is not a reformer.
Or let us take another set of illustrations,
this time in prose. (Once more I protest that
I shall not take the reader through all the
works of Chesterton.) I mean the articles
"Our Note Book" which he contributed to
The Illustrated London News. They are of a
G 97
G. K. CHESTERTON
familiar type; a series of paragraphs on some
topical subject, \vith little spaces between
them in order to encourage the \veary reader.
Chesterton \vrote this class of article supremely
\vell. He would seize on something apparently
trivial, and exalt it into a symptom. 'Vhen he
had given the disease a name, he ,vent for the
quack doctors who professed to remedy it.
He goes to Letchworth, in which abode of
middle-class faddery he finds a teetotal public-
house, pretending to look like the real thing,
and calling itself "The Skittles Inn." He
immediately raises the question, Can \ve dis-
sociate beer from skittles? Then he \videns
out his thesis.
Our life to-day is marked by perpetual attempts
to revive old-fashioned things while omitting the
human soul in them that made them more than
fashions.
And he concludes :
I welcome a return to the rudeness of old times;
when Luther attacked Henry VIII for being fat;
and when Milton and his Dutch opponent devoted
pages of their controversy to the discussion of which
of them was the uglier. . . . The new controversial-
ists . . . call a man a physical degenerate, instead of
calling him an ugly fellow. They say that red hair
is the mark of the Celtic stock, instead of calling him
" Carrots."
98
HUMORIST AND POET
Of this class of fun Chesterton is an easy
master. It makes him a fearsome contro-
versialist on the platform or in his favourite
lists, the columns of a newspaper. But he
uses his strength a little tyrannously. He is
an adept at begging the question. The lost
art called ignoratio elenchi has been privately
rediscovered by him, to the surprise of many
excellent and honest debaters, who have never
succeeded in scoring the most obvious points
in the face of Chesterton's power of emitting
a string of epigrams and pretending it is a
chain of argument. The case, in whatever
form it is put, is always fresh and vigorous.
Another epigrammatist, Oscar 'Vilde, in com-
parison with him may be said to have used
the midnight oil so liberally in the prepara-
tion of his \vitticisms,
hat one might almost
detect the fishy odour. But as ,vith his prose
so \vith his verses; Chesterton's productions
are so fresh that they seem to spring from his
vitality rather than his intellect. They are
generally a trifle ragged and unpolished as if,
like all their author's productions, they were
strangers to revision. And vitality demands
boisterous movement, more even than coher-
ence. Sometimes the boisterousness is ap-
parently unsupported by the sense of the
words.
99
G. K. CHESTERTON
So you have gained the golden crowns and grasped the
golden weather,
The kingdoms and the hemispheres that all men buy
and sell,
But I will lash the leaping drum and swing the flaring
feather,
For the light of seven heavens that are lost to me like
hell.
Here the stanza actually goes \vith such a
swing that the reader will in all probability
not notice that the lines have no particular
meanIng.
On the other hand, Chesterton's poetry has
exuberant moments of sheer delight. In one
of his essays he is lamenting the songlessness
of modern life and suggests one or two chanties.
Here they are :
Chorus of Bank Clerks:
Up, my lads, and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er.
Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: "Two and Two
are Four."
Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the
sophists roar,
Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two
are Four.
Chorus of Bank Clerks when there is a run on
the bank:
There's a run upon the Bank-
Stand away!
For the Manager's a crank and the Secretary drank, and
the Upper Tooting Bank
Turns to bay !
100
J)
HUl\10RIST AND POET
Stand close: there is a run
On the Bank.
Of our ship, our royal one, let the ringing legcnd run,
that she fired with every gun
Ere she sank.
The Post Office Hymn would begin as folluws :
O'er London our lctters are shaken like snow,
Our wircs o'er the world like the thunderbolts go.
The news that may marry a maiden in Sark,
Or kill an old lady in Fins bury Park.
Chorus (with a swing of joy and energy) :
Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park.
The joke becomes simply immense when \ve
picture the actual singing of the songs.
But that is not the only class of humour of
which Chesterton is capable. He can cut as
\vell as hack. It is to be doubted \vhether any
politician \vas ever addressed in lines more
sarcastic than those of Antichrist, an ode to
l\;lr. F. E. Smith. This gentleman, speaking
on the \Velsh Disestablishment Bill, remarked
that it "has shocked the conscience of every
Christian community in Europe." It begins:
Are they clinging to thcir crosses,
F. E. Smith.
'Vhere thc Breton boat-fleet tosses,
Arc they, Smith?
Do thcy, fasting, tramping, blceding,
\Vait the news from this our city?
Groaning" That's the Second Reading! "
Hissing "There is still Committee ! "
101
G. K. CHESTERTON
If the voice of Cecil falters,
If McKenna's point has pith,
Do they tremble for their altars?
Do they, Smith ?
Then in Russia, among the peasants,
Where Establishment means nothing
And they never heard of Wales,
Do they read it all in Hansard
'Vith a crib to read it with-
" Welsh Tithes: Dr. Clifford answered."
Really, Smith?
The final verse is :
It would greatly, I must own,
Soothe me, Smith,
If you left this theme alone.
Holy Smith!
For your legal cause or civil
You fight well and get your fea ;
For your God or dream or devil
You will answer, not to me.
Talk about the pews and steeples
And the Cash that goes therewith!
But the souls of Christian peoples . . .
-Chuck it, Smith I
The wilting sarcasm of this poem is a feature
which puts it with a few others apart from the
bulk of Chesterton's poems. Even as bellicosity
and orthodoxy are two of the brightest threads
which run through the whole texture of his
work, so Poems of Pugnacity (as Ella "Vheeler
Wilcox would say) and religious verses consti-
tute the )argest part of the poetic works of
102
HUlVIORIST AND POET
G.K.C. His first book of verses-after Grey-
beards at Play- The Wild Knight contained a
bloodthirsty poem about the Battle of Gibeon,
written \vith strict adhesion to the spirit of the
Old Testament. It might have been penned
by a survivor, glutted \vith blood and duly
grateful to the God of his race for the solar and
lunar eccentricities \vhich made possible the
extermination of the five kings of the Amorites.
In 1911 came The Ballad of the White Horse,
which is all about Alfred, according to the
popular traditions embodied in the elementary
history books, and, in particular, the Battle
of Ethandune. How Chesterton revels in that
Homeric slaughter! The words blood and
bloody punctuate the largest poem of G.K.C.
to the virtual obliteration in our memory of
the fine imagery, the occasional tendernesses,
and the blustering aggressiveness of some of
the metaphors and similes. Not many men
would have the nerve, let alone the skill, to
write :
And in the last eclipse the sea
Shall stand up like a tower,
Above all moons made dark and riven,
Hold up its foaming head in heaven,
And laugh, knowing its hour.
But, at the same time, this poem contains very
touching and beautiful lines. The Ballad of
103
G. K. CHESTERTON
the White Horse is an epic of the struggle
between Christian and Pagan. One of the
essentials of an epic is that its men should be
decent men, if they cannot be heroes. The
Iliad would have been impossible if it had
occurred to Homer to introduce the Govern-
ment contractors to the belligerent powers.
All the point would have gone out of Orlando
Furioso if it had been the case that the madness
of Orlando was the delirium tremens of an
habitual drunkard. Chesterton recognizing
this truth makes the pagans of the White
Horse behave like gentlemen. There is a
beautiful little song put into the mouth of one
of them, which is in its 'way a perfect expres-
sion of the inadequacy of false gods.
There is always a thing forgotten
"\'Vhen all the world goès well ;
A thing forgotten, as long ago
When the gods forgot the mistletoe,
And soundless as an arrow of snow
The arrow of anguish fell.
The thing on the blind side of the heart,
On the wrong side of the door,
The green plant groweth, menacing
Almighty lovers in the spring;
There is always a forgotten thing,
And love is not secure.
The sorro\v behind these lines is more mov-
104
HUl\iORIST AND POET
ing, because more sincere, than the lines of
that over-quoted verse of Swinburne's :
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
\Ve thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods there be-
That no life lives for ever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river
'Vinds somewhere safe to sea.
This is insincere, because a pagan (as Swin-
burne was) could have committed suicide had
he really felt these things. Swinburne, like
most modern pagans, really hated priestcraft
when he thought he was hating God. Ches-
terton's note is truer. He kno\vs that the
pagan has all the good things of life but one,
and that only an exceptionally nice pagan
knows he lacks that much.
And so one might go on mining the White
Horse, for it contains most things, as a good
epic should. Two short stanzas, however,
should be quoted, \vhatever else is omitted,
for the sake of their essential Christianity,
their claim that a man may make a fool of
himself for Christ's sake, whatever the bishops
have to say about it.
The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the Cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.
105
G. K. CHESTERTON
The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.
In his last volume of Poems (1915) Chester-
ton presents us with a varied collection of
works, written at any time during the last
twelve or so years. The pugnacious element
is present in Lepanto, through the staccato
syllables of which we hear drum-taps and men
cheering. There is a temptation to treat
Lepanto, and indeed most of Chesterton's
poems, with special reference to their tech-
nique, but we must resist this temptation, with
tears if need be, and with prayer, for to give
way to it would be to commit a form of vivi-
section. G.K.C. is not a text, praise be, and
whether he lives or dies, long may he be spared
the hands of an editor or interpreter who is
also an irrepressible authority on anapaests
and suchlike things. He is a poet, and a con-
siderable poet, not because of his strict atten-
tion to the rules of prosody, but because he
cannot help himself, and the rules in question
are for the persons who can, the poets by
deliberate intention, the ,vriters who polish
unceasingly. Chesterton has more impulse
than finish, but he has natural gifts of rhythm
and the effective use of words which more or
106
HUMORIST AND POET
less (according to the reader's taste)
ompen-
sate for his refusal or his incapacity to take
paIns.
Finally there are the religious poems. From
these we can best judge the reality of Chester-
ton's poetic impulse, for here, knowing that
affectation would be almost indecent, he has
expressed what he had to express with a care
denied to most of his other works. In one of
his essays, G.K.C. exults in that matchless
phrase of Vaughan, " high humility." He has
both adopted and adapted this quality, and
the results are wonderful. In The Wise lJ,len
occurs this stanza :
The Child that was ere worlds begun
(. . . \Ve need bu
walk a little way,
'\Ye need but see a latch undone. . .)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.
The superb antithesis leaves one struggling
against that involuntary little gasp which is
a reader's first tribute to a fine thought. He
could be a great hymn writer, if he would.
One of his poems, in fact, has found its way
into The English IIymnal, where it competes
(if one may use the \vord of a sacred song)
with Recessional for the favour of congrega-
tions. If \ve take a glance at a few of the finest
hymns, we shall find that they share certain
107
G. K. CHESTERTON
obvious qualities: bold imagery, the vocabu-
lary of conflict, an attitude of humility that
is very nearly also one of great pride, and
certain tricks of style. And when \ve look
through Chesterton's poems generally, we shall
find that these are exactly the qualities they
possess.
108
VI
TIlE
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
IN his book on 'Yilliam Blake, Chesterton says
that he is " personally quite convinced that if
every human being lived a thousand years,
every human being would end up either in
utter pessimistic scepticism or in the Catholic
creed." In course of time, in fact, everybody
\vould have to decide \vhether they preferred
to be an intellectualist or a mystic. A debauch
of intellectualism, lasting perhaps nine hun-
dred and fifty years, is a truly terrible thing
to contelnplate. Perhaps it is safest to assert
that if our lives were considerably lengthened,
therc \vould bc more mystics and more mad-
men.
To Chesterton modern thought is merely
thc polite description of a noisy cro\vd of
persons proclaiming that something or other
is \vrong. 1\11'. Bernard Shaw denounces meat
and has been understood to denouncc marriage.
Ibscn is said to have anathematizcd almost
109
G. K. CHESTERTON
everything (by those \vho have not read his
works). Mr. 1\{acCabe and 1\11'. Blatchford
think that, on the whole, there is no God, and
Tolstoy told us that nearly everything \ve did,
and quite all ,ve wanted to do, \vas opposed
to the spirit of Christ's teaching. Auberon
Herbert disapproved of law, and John David-
son disapproved of life. Herbert Spencer
objected to government, Passive Resisters to
State education, and various educational re-
formers to education of any description. There
are people who \vould abolish our spelling, our
clothing, our food and, most emphatically,
our drink. 1\11'. H. G . 'Veils adds the finishing
touch to this volume of denials, by blandly
suggesting in an appendix to his l\iodern
Utopia, headed" Scepticism of the Instrument,"
that our senses are so liable to err, that we can
never be really sure of anything at all. This
spirit of denial is extraordinarily infectious.
A man begins to suspect what he calls the
"supernatural." He joins an ethical society,
and before he kno\vs where he is, he is a vege-
tarian. The rebellious moderns have a curious
tendency to flock together in self-defence, even
when they have nothing in common. The
mere aggregation of denials rather attracts
the slovenly and the unattached. The lack
of positive dogma expressed by such a coalition
110
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
encourages the sceptic and the uneducated,
who do not realize that the deliberate suppres-
sion of dogma is itself a dogma of extreme
arrogance. 'Ve trust too much to the label,
no\vadays, and the brief descriptions \ve attach
to ourselves have a gradually increasing con-
notation. In politics for example, the con-
servative creed, \vhich originally contained
the single article that aristocracy, \vealth and
government should be in the same fe\v hands,
no\v also implies adhesion to the economic
doctrine of protection, and the political doc-
trine that unitary government is preferable to
federal. The liberal creed, based principally
upon opposition to the conservative, and to a
lesser degree upon disrespect for the Estab-
lished Church, has been enlarged concurrently
with the latter. The average liberal or con-
servative no\v feels himself in honour bound
to assert or to deny political dogmas out of
sheer loyalty to his party. This does not make
for sanity. The only political creed in \vhich
a man may reasonably expect to remain sane
is Socialism, \vhich is catholic and not the
least dependent upon other beliefs. Apart
from the inconsiderable number of Socialists,
the average politician follo\vs in the footsteps
of those gentlemen already mentioned. He is
not allowed to believe, so he contents himself
III
G. K. CHESTERTON
with a denial of the other side's promises. As-
sertion is infinitely more brain-\vearing than
denial.
Side by side with the increase in those who
deny is a gro\vth in the numbers of those who
come to regard apathy, suspended judgment,
or a lack of interest in a religious matter as a
state of positive belief. There are agnostics
quite literally all over the place. Belief peters
do\vn into acceptance, acceptance becomes a
probability, a probability declines into a reason-
able doubt, and a reasonable doubt drifts into
" it is highly conjectural and indeed extremely
unlikely," or something of that sort. Tolerance
was once an instrument for ensuring that truth
should not be suppressed; it is no\v an excuse
for refusing to bother. There is, in fact, a
gro\ving disrespect for truth. A great many
men went to the stake years ago rather than
admit the possibility that they were wrong;
they protested, so far as human endurance
allowed them to protest, that they were
orthodox and that their persecutors, and not
they, \vere the heretics. To-day a bunch of
Cambridge men calls itself "The Heretics"
and imagines it has found a clever title. At
the same time there is an apparent decline in
the po\ver to believe. The average politician
(the principal type of twentieth-century prop a-
112
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
gandist) hardly ever makes a speech which
does not contain one at least of the following
phrases:
"I may be mistaken, but it seems to me
that . . ."
" 'Ve are all subject to correction, but as
far as we know. . ."
" In this necessarily iInperfect \vorld . . ."
" So far as one is able to judge . . ."
"Appearances are notoriously deceptive,
but . . ."
"Human experience is necessarily limited
to . . . "
" 'Ve can never be really sure . . ."
" Pilate asked, '\Vhat is truth?' Ah, my
brethren, what indeed ? "
" The best minds of the country have failed
to come to an agreement on this question;
one can only surmise . . ."
" Art is long and life is short. Art to-day
is even longer than it used to be."
No\v the politician, to do hiln justice, has
retained the courage of his convictions to a
greater extent than the orthodox believer in
God. l\len are still prepared to make Home
Rule the occasion of bloodshed, or to spend
the midnight hours denouncing apparent politi-
H 113
G. K. CHESTERTON
cal heresies. But whereas the politician, like
the orthodox believer once pronounced apolo-
getics, they no\y merely utter apologies. To-
day, equipped as never before \vith the heavy
artillery of argument in the shape of Higher
Criticism, research, blue-books, statistics, cheap
publications, free libraries, accessible informa-
tion, public lectures, and goodness only kno\vs
what else, the fighting forces of the spiritual
and temporal decencies lie drowsing as in a
club-room, placarded "Religion and politics
must not be discussed here."
All this, with the exception of the political
references, is a summary of Chesterton's claim
that a return to orthodoxy is desirable and
necessary. It will be found at length in Heretics
and in the first chapters of Orthodoxy, and
sprinkled throughout all his \vritings of a later
date than 1906 or so. lIe protests on more
than one occasion against 1\11'. Sha\y's epigram,
which seems to him to contain the essence of
all that is \vrong to-day, "The golden rule
is that there is no golden rule." Chesterton
insists that there is a golden rule, that it is a
very old one, and that it is kno\vn to a great
many people, most of whom belong to the
working classes.
In his argument that, on the whole, the
masses are (or were) right about religion, and
114
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
that the intellectuals are ,vrong, Chesterton is
undoubtedly at his most bellicose and his
sincerest. His is the pugnacity that prefers to
pull do\vn another's banner rather than to
raise his own. His" defences" in The Defen-
dant, and the six hundred odd cases made out
by him in the columns of The Daily News are
largely and obviously inspired by the wish,
metaphorically speaking, to punch somebody's
head. The fact that he is not a mere bully
appears in the appeal to common decency
which Chesterton \vould be incapable of omit-
ting from an article. Neverthcless hc prefers
attack to defence. In war, the offensive is
infinitely more costly than the defensive.
But in controversy this is reversed. The
opener of a debate is in a much more difficult
position than his opponent. The latter need
only criticize the former's case; he is not
compelled to disclose his own defences. Ches-
terton used to have a grand time hoisting
people on their o\vn petards, and letting forth
strings of epigrams at the expense of those
from whom he differed, and only incidentally
revealing his own position. Then, as he tells
us in the preface to Orthodoxy, \vhen he had
published the saltatory series of indictments
entitled Heretics, a number of his critics said,
in effect, "Please, 1V[r. Chesterton, \vhat are
115
G. K. CHESTERTON
we to believe ?" Mr. G. S. Street, in particu-
lar, begged for enlightenment. G. K. C. joy-
ously accepted the invitation, and .wrote Ortho-
doxy, his most brilliant book.
There are fe\v \vorks in the English language
the brilliancy of ,vhich is so sustained. Ortlw-
doæy is a rapid torrent of epigrammatically
expressed arguments. Chesterton's method
in writing it is that of the digger \vasp. This
intelligent creature carries on the survival of
the fittest controversy by paralyzing its oppo-
nent first, and then proceeding to lay the
eggs from which future fitness will proceed in
the unresisting but still living body. Chester-
ton begins by paralyzing his reader, by
savagely attacking all the beliefs which the
latter, if he be a modern and a sceptic, prob-
ably regards as first principles. Tolerance is
dismissed, as \ve have just seen, as a mere
excuse for not caring. Reason, that a\vful
French goddess, is sho,vn to be another
apology. Nietzsche and various other authors
to whom some of us have bent the knee are
slaughtered without misery. Then Chesterton
proceeds to the argument, the reader being by
this time receptive enough to swallow a
camel, on the sole condition that G.K.C. has
previously slightly treacled the animal.
Perhaps it \vould be more accurate to asserl&
116
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
that at this point Chesterton pretends to
begin his argument. As a matter of strict fact
he only describes his adventures in Fairyland,
which is all the earth. He tells us of his
profound astonishment at the consistent re-
currence of apples on apple trees, and at the
general jolliness of the earth. He describes,
very beautifully, some of the sensations of
childhood making the all-embracing discovery
that things are what they seem, and the even
more joyful feeling of pretending that they are
not, or that they \viII cease to be at any
moment. A young kitten will watch a large
cushion, which to it is a very considerable
portion of the universe, flying at it without
indicating any very appreciable surprise. A
child, in the same way, would not be surprised
if his house suddenly developed wings and
flew away. Chesterton cultivated this attitude
of ahvays expecting to be surprised by the
most natural things in the \vorld, until it
became an obsession, and a part of his journal-
istic equipment. In a sense Chesterton is the
everlasting boy, the Undergraduate "\Vho
Would Not Grow Up. There must be few
normally imaginative town-bred children to
whom the pointed upright area-railings do not
appear an unsearchable armoury of spears or
as walls of protective flames, ten1porarily frozen
117
G. K. CHESTERTON
black so that people should be able to enter
and leave their house. Every child knows that
the old Norse story of a sleeping Brunnhilde
encircled by flames is true; to him or her,
there is a Brunnhilde in every street, and the
child knows that there it always has a chance
of being the chosen Siegfried. But because
this view of life is so much cosier than that of
the gro\vn-ups, Chesterton clings to his child-
hood's neat little universe and weeps patheti-
cally when anybody mentions Herbert Spencer,
and makes faces when he hears the \vord
Newton. He insists on a fair dole of surprises.
" Children are grateful \vhen Santa Claus puts
in their stockings gifts of toys and sweets.
Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when
he put in my stockings the gift of two miracu-
lous legs ? "
N O\v this fairyland business is frankly over-
done. Chesterton conceives of God, having
carried the Creation as far as this world, sitting
do\vn to look at the new universe in a sort of
ecstasy. "And God saw every thing that he
had made, and, behold it was very good." He
enj oyed His ne\v toy immensely, and as He
sent the earth. spinning round the sun, His
pleasure increased. So He said " Do it again "
every time the sun had completed its course,
and laughed prodigiously, and behaved like a
118
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
happy child. And so He has gone on to this
day saying" Do it again" to the sun and the
moon and the stars, to the animal creation,
and the trees, and every living thing. So
Chesterton pictures God, giving His name to
what others, including Christians, call natural
law, or the la\vs of God, or the laws of gravita-
tion, conservation of energy, and so on, but
always laws. For ,vhich reason, one is com-
pelled to assume that in his opinion God
is no,v [1915] saying to Himself, "There's
another bloody \var, do it again, sun," and
gurgling ,vith delight. It is dangerous to
wander in fairyland, as Chesterton has him-
self demonstrated, "one might meet a fairy."
It is not safe to try to look God in the face.
A prophet in Israel sa\v the glory of Jehovah,
and though He was but the God of a small
nation, the prophet's face shone, and, so great
\vas the vitality he absorbed from the great
Source that he "\vas an hundred and twenty
years old when he died: his eye \vas not dim,
nor his natural force abated." That is the
reverent Hebrew manner of conveying the
glory of God. But Chesterton, cheerfully
playing toss halfpenny among the fairies, sees
an idiot child, and calls it God.
Fortunately for the argun1ent, Chesterton
has no more to say about his excursion in
119
G. K. CHESTERTON
Fairyland after his return. He goes on to
talk about the substitutes which people have
invented for Christianity. The Inner Light
theory has vitriol sprayed upon it. Marcus
Aurelius, it is explained, acted according to
the Inner Light. "He gets up early in the
morning, just as our own aristocrats leading
the Simple Life get up early in the morning;
because such altruism is much easier than
stopping the games in the amphitheatre or
giving the English people back their land."
The present writer does not profess any
ability to handle philosophic problems philo-
sophically; it seems to him, however, that
if Chesterton had been writing a few years
later, he \vould have attempted to extinguish
the latest form of the Inner Light, that
" intuition" which has been so much asso-
ciated \vith 1\1. Bergson's teachings.
The Inner Light is finally polished off as
follows :
Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst
is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all
horrible religions the most horrible is the worship
of the god within. Anyone who knows anybody
knows how it would work; anybody who knows any
one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it
does work. That J ones should worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones
shall worship Jones. . . . Christianity came into the
120
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man
has not only to look inwards, but to look outwards,
to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine
company and a divine captain.
Continuing his spiritual autobiography,
Chesterton describes his gradual emergence
from the wonted agnosticism of sixteen through
the mediumship of agnostic literature. Once
again that remark of Bacon's sho\ved itself
to be true, "A little philosophy inclineth
man's mind to atheism, but depth in philo-
sophy bringeth men's minds about to rcligion."
A man may rcad I-Iuxley and Bradlaugh, \vho
knc\v thcir minds, and call himsclf an agnostic.
But whcn it comcs to reading thcir follo,vers,
there's anothcr story to tcll. 'Yhat cspecially
struck Chesterton was the \vholesale self-
contradictoriness of the literature of agnos-
ticism. One man would say that Christianity
\vas so harmful that extermination was the
least that could be desired for it, and another
would insist that it had reached a harmless
and doddering old age. A writer \vould assert
that Christianity was a religion of wrath and
blood, and \vould point to the Inquisition, and
to the religious wars which have at one time
or another swept over the civilized \vorld.
But by the time the reader's blood \vas up, he
,vould comc across some virile atheist's pro-
121
G. K. CHESTERTON
clamation of the feeble, mattoid character of
the religion in question, as illustrated by its
quietist saints, the Quakers, the Tolstoyans,
and non-resisters in general. 'Yhen he had
cooled down, he would run into a denunciation
of the asceticism of Christianity, the monastic
system, hair-shirts, and so on. Then he \vould
come across a sweeping condemnation of its
sensual luxuriousness, its bejewelled chalices,
its pompous rituals, the extravagance of its
archbishops, and the like. Christianity" was
abused for being too plain and for being too
coloured." And then the sudden obvious truth
burst upon Chesterton, 'Vhat if Christianity
was the happy mean ?
Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane
and all its critics that are mad-in various ways.
I tested this idea by asking myself whether there
was about any of the accusers anything morbid that
might explain the accusation. I was startled to find
that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was
certainly odd that the modern world charged Christi-
anity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic
pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the
modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury
with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern
man thought 'Becket's robes too rich and his meals
too poor. But then the modern man was really
exceptional in history. No man before ever ate such
elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern
man found the church too simple exactly where
122
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
modern life is too complex; he found the church too
gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The
man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad
on entrées. The man who disliked vestments wore
a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there
was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was
in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If
there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant
entrées, not in the bread and wine.
Nevertheless, Christianity was centrifugal
rather than centripetal; it \vas not a mere
average, but a centre of gravity; not a com-
promise, but a conflict. Christ \vas not half-
God and half-man, like Hercules, but" perfect
God and perfect man." Man \vas not only
the highest, but also the lowest. " The
Church was positive on both points. One can
hardly think too little of one's self. One can
hardly think too much of one's soul."
At this point agreement with l\lr. Chesterton
becomes difficult. Christianity, he tells us,
comes in \vith a flaming s\vord and performs
neat acts of bisection. It separates the sinner
from the sin, and tells us to love the former
and hate the latter. He also tells us that no
pagan would have thought of this. Leaving
aside the question whether or not Plato was
a Christian, it may be pointed out that whereas
Chesterton condemns Tolstoyanism whenever
he recognizes it, he here proclaims Tolstoy's
123
G. K. CHESTERTON
doctrine. On the whole, ho'wever, the mild
perverseness of the chapter on The Paradoxes
of Christianity leaves its major implications
safe. It does not matter greatly whether we
prefer to regard Christianity as a centre of
gravity, or a point of balance. \Ve need only
pause to note Chesterton personifies this
dualism. The Napoleon of N otting Hill is the
arrangement of little bits of iron-the inhabi-
tants of London, in this case-around the two
poles of a fantastic magnet, of which one is
Adam Wayne, the fanatic, and the other,
Auberon Quin, the humorist. In The Ball and
the Cross the diagranl is repeated. James
Turnbull, the atheist, and Evan l\lacIan, the
believer, are the two poles. \Ve speak in a
loose sort of way of opposite poles when we
wish to express separation. But, in point of
fact, they symbolize connection far more
exactly. They are absolutely interdependent.
The whole essence of a North and a South Pole
is that \ve, kno\ving \vhere one is, should be
able to say where the other is. Nobody has
ever suggested a universe in which the North
Pole wandered about at large. This is the
idea which Chesterton seems to have captured
and introduced into his definition of Chris-
tianity.
Democracy, to Chesterton, is the theory
124
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
that one man is as good as another; Chris-
tianity, he finds, is the virtual sanctification
by supernatural authority of democracy. He
points out the incompatibility of political
democracy, for example, .with the determinism
to which 1\11'. Blatchford's logical atheism has
brought him. If man is the creature of his
heredity and his environment, as 1\11'. Blatch-
ford asserts, and if a slum-bred heredity and
a slum environment do not make for high
intelligence, then obviously it is against the
best interests of the State to aJIow the slum
inhabitant to vote. On the other hand, it is
entirely to the best interests of the State to
entrust its affairs to the aristocracy, \vhose
breeding and environment gives it an enor-
mous amount of intelligence. Christianity, by
proclaiming that every man's body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost, insists both upon
the necessity of abolishing the slums and of
honouring the slum-dwellers as sharers with
the rest of humanity in a common sonship.
This is the casc for Socialism, it may be pointed
out parenthetically, and Chesterton has let it
slip past him. He insists that orthodoxy is
the best conccivable guardian of liberty, for
thc somewhat far- fctched reason that no
believer in miracles would have such "a
dccp and sincere faith in the incurable routine
125
G. K. CHESTERTON
of the cosmos " as to cling to the theory that
men should not have the liberty to work
changes. If a man believed in the freedom of
God, in fact, he ,would have to believe in the
freedom of man. The obvious answer to
which is that he generally doesn't. Christianity
made for eternal vigilance, Chesterton main-
tains, whereas Buddhism kept its eye on the
Inner Light-which means, in fact, kept it
shut. In proof, or at least in confirmation of
this, he points to the statues of Christian
saints and of the Buddha. The former keep
their eyes open wide, the latter keep their
eyes firmly closed. Vigilance, however, does
not always make for liberty-the vigilance
of the Inquisition, for example. Leaving out
of account this and other monstrous excep-
tions, we might say spiritual liberty, perhaps,
but not political liberty, not, at any rate, since
the days of Macchiavelli, and the divorce of
Church and State.
By insisting specially on the immanence of God
we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social
indifference-Tibet. By insisting specially on the
transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral
and political adventure, religious indignation-Chris-
tendom. Insisting that God is inside man, man
is always inside himself. By insisting that God
transcends man, man has transcended himself.
126
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
In concluding the book, Chesterton joyously
refutes a fe"w anti -Christian arguments by
means of his extraordinary knack of seeing
the large and obvious, and therefore generally
overlooked things. He believes in Christianity
because he is a rationalist, and the evidence
in its favour has convinced him. The argu-
ments ,vith \vhich he deals are these. That
men are much like beasts, and probably
related to them. Ans\ver: yes, but men
are also quite wonderfully unlike them in
many important respects. That primeval
religion arose in ignorance and fear. Ans\ver:
,ve know nothing about prehistoric man,
because he \vas prehistoric, therefore we can-
not say "where he got his religion from. But
"the whole human race has a tradition of the
Fall." And so on: the argument that Christ
"was a poor sheepish and ineffectual professor
of a quiet life is answered by the flaming
energy of His earthly mission; the suggestion
that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages
is countered by the historical fact that it
"was the one path across the Dark Ages
that was not dark." It "was the path that
led from Roman to modern civilization, and
"we are here bccausc of it. And the book
ends with a peroration that might be likened
to a torrent, were it not for the fact that
127
G. K. CHESTERTON
torrents are generally narrow and shallow.
It is a most remarkable exhibition of energy,
a case from which flippancies and irrelevancies
have been removed, and \vhere the central
conviction advances irresistibly. Elsewhere
in the book Chesterton had been inconsequent,
darting from point to point, lunging at an
opponent one moment, formulating a theory
in the next, and producing an effect ,vhich, if
judged by sample, \vould be considered bizarre
and undirected. The book contains a few
perversities, of course. The author attempts
to rebut the idea "that priests have blighted
societies with bitterness and gloom," by point-
ing out that in one or two priest-ridden
countries wine and song and dance abound.
Yes, but if people are jollier in France and
Spain and Italy than in savage Africa, it is
due not to the priests so much as to the
climate which makes wine cheap and an
open-air life possible. No amount of priests
would be able to set the inhabitants of the
Belgian Congo dancing around a maypole
singing the while glad songs handed down by
their fathers. No amount of priests would be
able to make the festive Eskimo bask in the
sun and sing in chorus \vhen there wasn't any
sun and it was altogether too cold to open
their mouths wide in the open air. In fact the
128
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
priests are not the cause of the blight where
it exists, just as they are not the cause of the
jolliness, \vhen there is any. But Orthodoxy is
Chesterton's sincerest book. It is perhaps the
only one of the whole lot in thc course of ,vhich
hc would not bc justified in repeating a ren1ark
which begins one of the T1'emendous Trifles,
" Every no\v and then I have introduced into
my essays an element of truth."
Twice upon a time there was a Samuel
Butler who wrote exhilaratingly and died and
left the paradoxical contents of his notebooks
to be published by posterity. The first (i.e. of
IIudibras, not of Erewhon) had many lively
things to say on the question of orthodoxy,
bcing the forerunncr of G.K.C. And I am
greatly tempted to treat Samuel Butlcr as an
ancestor to be dcscribed at length. Chesterton
might well have said, " It is a dangerous thing
to be too inquisitive, and search too narrowly
into a true Religion, for 50,000 Bcthshemites
werc dcstroyed only for looking into the Ark
of the Covenant, and ten times as many have
been ruincd for looking too curiously into that
Booke in \vhich that Story is recorded" -in fact
in Jlagic hc vcry ncarly did say the same thing.
lIe would have liked (as who would not ?) to
have been the author of the saying that
" Rcpentant Teares are the waters upon which
I 129
G. K. CHESTERTON
the Spirit of God moves," or that "There is
no better Argument to prove that the Scriptures
were written by Divine Inspiration, than that
excellent saying of our Savior, If any man
will go to La\v with thee for thy cloke, give
him thy Coate also." He might well have
written dozens of those puns and aphorisms of
Butler which an unkind fate has omitted from
the things we read, and even from the things
we quote. But Butler provides an answer to
Chesterton, for he was an intelligent anticipa-
tor who foresaw exactly ,vhat would happen
when orthodoxy, ,vhich is to say the injunc-
tion to shout with the larger crowd, should be
proclaimed as the easiest \vay out of religious
difficulties. Before a reader has finally made
up his mind on Orthodoxy (and it is highly
desirable that he should do so), let him con-
sider two little texts :
"They that profess Religion and believe it
consists in frequenting of Sermons, do, as if
they should say They have a great desire to
serve God, but would faine be perswaded to it.
\Vhy should any man suppose that he pleases
God by patiently hearing an Ignorant fellow
render Religion ridiculous ? "
" He [a Catholic] prefers his Church merely
for the Antiquity of it, and cares not how
130
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
sound or rotten it be, so it be but old. He takes
a liking to it as some do to old Cheese, only for
the blue Rottenness of it. If he had lived in
the primitive Times he had never been a
Christian,. for the Antiquity of the Pagan
and Jewish Religion \vould have had the same
Power over him against the Christian, as the
old Roman has against the modern Reforma-
tion.' ,
Here \ve leave Samuel Butler. The majority
stands the largest chance of being right through
the sheer operation of the la,v of averages.
But somehow one does not easily imagine
a mob passing through the gate that is narrow
and the \vay that is narrow. One prefers to
think of men going up in ones and t\VOS, perhaps
even in loneliness, and rejoicing at the strange
miracle of judgment that all their friends
should bc assembled at the journey's end.
But the final criticism of Chesterton's Ortho-
doxy is that it is not orthodox. He claims
that he is " concerned only to discuss . . . the
central Christian theology (sufficicntly sum-
marized in the Apostles' Creed)" and, "Whcn
the ,vord 'orthodoxy' is used here it means
the Apostles' Creed, as understood by every-
body calling himself Christian until a very
short time ago and the general historic con-
181
G. K. CHESTERTON
duct of those who held such a creed." In other
words he counts as orthodox Anglicans, Roman
Catholics, Orthodox Russians, Nonconformists,
Lutherans, Calvinists, and all manner of queer
fish, possibly Joanna Southcott, 1\lrs. Annie
Besant, and Mrs. l\lary Baker Eddy. He might
even, by stretching a point or two (which is
surely permissible by the rules of their game),
rope in the Ne\v Theologians. No\v this may
be evidence of extraordinary catholicity, but
not of orthodoxy. Chesterton stands by and
applauds the Homoousians scalping the Homoi-
ousians, but he is apparently \villing to leave
the Anglican and the Roman Catholic on the
same plane of orthodoxy, which is absurd. 'Ve
cannot all be right, even the Duke in IJlagic
would not be mad enough to assert that. And
the averagc Christian \vould absolutely refuse
his adherence to a statement of orthodoxy that
left the matter of supreme spiritual authority
an open question.
In the fiftecnth century practically every
Englishman would have declared \vith some
emphasis that it lay in the Pope of Rome. In
the twentieth century practically every Eng-
lishman .would declare with equal emphasis
that it did not. This change of opinion \vas
accompanied by considerable ill-feeling on
both sides, and was, as it were, illuminated by
132
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
burning martyrs. The men of both parties
burned in both an active and a passive sense.
Those charming Tudor sisters, Bloody l\lary
(as the Anglicans call her) and Bloody Bess
(as the Roman Catholics affectionately name
her) left a large smudge upon accepted ideas
of orthodoxy; charred human flesh was a
principal constituent of it. The mark remains,
the differences are far greater, but, to Chester-
ton, both Anglican and Roman Catholic are
" orthodox." Of such is the illimitable ortho-
doxy of an ethical society, or of a body of
Theosophists \vho "recognize thc essenti3:1
unity of all creeds and religions "-the liars !
Chesterton tells us that l\'Iessrs. Shaw, Kipling,
\Vells, Ibsen and others are heretics, because
of their doctrines. But he gives us no idea
\vhether the Pope of Rome, who sells indul-
gences, is a heretic. And as the Pope is likely
to outlive Messrs. Shaw, etc., by perhaps a
thousand years, it is possible that Chesterton
has been attacking the ephemeral heresies,
\vhile leaving the major ones untouched. In
effect, Chesterton tells us no more than that
,ve should shout with the largest cro,vd. But
the largest cro\vd prefers, just no\v, not to do
anything so clamorous.
The most curious feature about the present
position of Christianity is the energy with
133
G. K. CHESTERTON
which its opponents combine to keep it going.
\\Thile 1\11'. Robert Blatchford continues to
argue that man's will is not free, and Sir Oliver
Lodge continues to maintain that it is, the
Doctrine of the Resurrection is safe; it is not
even attacked. But the net result of all those
peculiar modern things called "movements"
is a state of immobility like a nicely balanced
tug-of-war. Perhaps a Rugby scrum would
make a better comparison.
The great and grave changes in our political
civilization all belong to the early nineteenth century,
not to the later. They belong to the black-and-
white epoch, when men believed fixedly in Toryism,
in Protestantism, in Calvinism, in Reform, and not
infrequently in Revolution. And whatever each man
believed in, he hammered at steadily, without
scepticism: and there was a time when the Estab-
lished Church might have fallen, and the House of
Lords nearly fell. It was because Radicals were
wise enough to be constant and consistent; it was
because Radicals were wise enough to be conservative.
. . . Let beliefs fade fast and frequently if you wish
institutions to remain the same. The more the life of
the mind is unhinged, the m
re the machinery of
matter will be left to itself. The net result of all our
political suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-
Feudalism, Comn1unism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureau-
cracy-the plain fruit of them all is that :l\'Ionarchy and
the House of Lords will remain. The net result of all
the new religions will be that the Church of England
134
RELIGION OF A DEBATER
will not (for heaven knows how long) be disestablished.
It was Karl :l\Iarx, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame
Graham, Bernard Shaw, and Auberon Herbert, who
between them, with bowed, gigantic backs, bore up
the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It is on these grounds that we must believe
that, even as the Church survives, and pre-
vails, in order to get a hearing 'when the atheist
and the Ne\v Theologian have finished shout-
ing themselves hoarse at each other, so must
political creeds be in conformity with the
doctrines of the Church. Such is the founda-
tion of democracy, according to Chesterton.
'ViII anybody revise his political views on this
basis? Probably not. Every Christian be-
lieves that his political opinions are thoroughly
Christian, and so entire is the disrepute into
which atheism has fallen as a philosophy of
life, that a great many atheists likewise protest
the entire Christianity of their politics. 'Ve
are all democrats to-day, in one sense or
another; each of us more loosely than his
neighbour. It is strange that by the criterion
of almost every living man who springs to the
mind as a representative democrat, Chesterton
is the most undemocratic of us all. This,
ho\vever, nceds a separate chapter of explana-
tion.
135
VII
THE POLITICIAN WHO
COULD NOT TELL THE TIME
SOMEWHERE at the back of all Chesterton's
political and religious ideas lies an ideal
country, a Utopia \vhich actually existed.
Its name is the l\Iiddle Ages. If some unem-
ployed Higher Critic chose to undertake the
appalling task of reading steadily through all
the \vorks of G.K.C., copying out those pas-
sages in .which there was any reference to the
Middle Ages, the result .would be a description
of a land flowing with milk and honey. The
inhabitants would be large, strong Christian
men, and red-haired, womanly women. Their
children \vould be unschooled, save by the
Church. They would all live in houses of their
own, on lands belonging to them. Their faith
would be one. They would speak Latin as a
sort of Esperanto, and drink enormous quan-
tities of good beer. The Church-but I have
found the passage relating to the Church :
Religion, the Ï111mortaI maiden, has been a maid-of-
all-work as well as a servant of mankind. She
136
THE POLITICIAN
provided men at once with thc theoretic laws of an
unalterable cosmos; and also with the practical rules
of the rapid and thrilling game of morality. She
taught logic to the student and taught fairy tales to
the children; it was her business to confront the
nameless gods whose fear is on all flesh, and also to
see that the streets were spotted with silver and
scarlet, that there was a day for wearing ribbons or an
hour for ringing bells.
The inhabitants of this happy realm \vould
be instinctively democratic, and no \voman
would demand a vote there. They would have
that exalted notion of patriotism that works
outwards from the village pump to the universe
at large. They \vould understand all humanity
because they understood themselves. They
would understand themselves because they
would have no newspapers to widen their
interests and so make them shallo\ver.
In lklagic, as we have seen, Chesterton's
mouthpiece, the Conjuror, gave us to under-
stand that it was better to believe in Apollo
than merely to disbelieve in God. The Ches-
tertonian IVliddle Ages are like Apollo; they
did not exist, but they make an admirable
myth. For Chesterton, in common \vith the
rest of us, flourishes on myths like the green
bay; we, however, happen not to know, in
most cases, \vhen our myths have a foundation.
137
G. K. CHESTERTON
l\lankind demands myths-and it has them.
Some day a History of the 'V orld's l\Iyths will
be compiled. It will sho\v humanity climbing
perilous peaks in pursuit of somebody's mis-
interpretations of somebody else's books, or
fighting bloodily because somebody asserted
or denied that a nation was the chosen one,
or invading new continents, physical or meta-
physical, because of legendary gold to be
found therein, or in fact committing all its
follies under the inspiration of myths-as in
fact it has done. The l\liddle Ages are to
Chesterton \vhat l{ing Alfred \vas to the
Chartists and early Radicals. They believed
that in his days England \vas actually governed
on Chartist principles. So it happens that two
Radical papers of the early part of last century
actually called themselves The Alfred, and that
IVlajor Cart\vright spent a considerable amount
of energy in inducing the Greeks to substitute
pikes for bayonets in their struggles against
the Turks, on the grounds that the pike \vas
used in Alfred's England.
So there \ve have Chesterton believing de-
voutly that that servile state, stricken with
plague, and afflicted \vith death in all its forms,
is the dreamland of the saints. His political
principles, roughly speaking, are England was
decent once-let us apply the same recipe to
138
THE POLITICIAN
the England of to-day. His suggestions, there-
fore, are rather negative than positive. He
would dam the flood of modern legislative ten-
dencies because it is taking England farther
away from his l\liddle Ages. But he \vill not
say" do this" about anything, because in the
l\Iiddle Ages they made fe\v la,vs, not having,
in point of fact, the po\ver to enforce those
offences against moral and economic law which
then took the place of legislation.
It is impossible to say to ,vhat extent
Chesterton has surrendered himself to this
myth; ,vhether he has come to accept it
because he liked it, or in order to please his
friend, 1\11'. Hilaire Belloc, from ,vhom G.K.C.
never differs politically. Once they stood side
by side and debated against Mr. Sha,v and
l\Ir. \Vells, arguing from Socialism to beer, and
thence to religion.
In January, 1908, Chesterton accepted the
invitation of the Editor of The New Age to
explain \vhy he did not call himself a Socialist,
in spite of his claim to possess "not only a
faith in democracy, but a great tenderness for
revolution." The explanation is complicated,
to say the least. In the first place Chesterton
does not want people to share, they should
give and take. In the second place, as a
democrat (which nobody else is) he has a vast
139
G. K. CHESTERTON
respect (,vhich nobody else has) for the \vork-
ing classes. And
one thing I should affirm as certain, the whole smell
and sentiment and general ideal of Socialism they
detest and disdain. No part of the community is so
specially fixed in those forms and feelings which are
opposite to the tone of most Socialists; the privacy
of homes, the control of one's own children, the
minding of one's own business. I look out of my
back windows over the black stretch of Battersea,
and I believe I could make up a sort of creed, a cata-
logue of maxims, which I am certain are believed,
and believed strongly, by the overwhelming mass of
men and women as far as the eye can reach. For
instance, that an Englishman's house is his castle,
and that awful proprieties ought to regulate admis-
sion to it; that marriage is a real bond, making
jealousy and marital revenge at the least highly
pardonable; that vegetarianism and all pitting of
animal against human rights is a silly fad; that on
the other hand to save lnoney to give yourself a fine
funeral is not a silly fad, but a symbol of ancestral
self-respect; that when giving treats to friends or
children, one should give then1 what they like,
emphatically not what is good for them; that there
is nothing illogical in being furious because Tommy
has been coldly caned by a schoohnistress and then
throwing saucepans at him yourself. All these things
they believe; they are the only people who do believe
them; and they are absolutely and eternally right.
They are the ancient sanities of humanity; the ten
commandments of man.
140
THE POLITICIAN
A week later, Mr. H. G. 'VeIls, who at that
time had not yet broken a way from organized
Socialism, but was actually a member of the
Executive Committee of the Fabian Society,
\vrote a repl y to the case against Socialism
which had been stated by Chesterton, and, a
week earlier, by Mr. Hilaire Belloc. He
attempted to get Chesterton to look facts in
the face. He pointed out that as things are
" I do not see how Belloc and Chesterton can
stand for anything but a strong State as
against those \vild monsters of property, the
strong, big, private o\vners." Suppose that
Chcsterton isn't a Socialist, is he morc on the
side of the Socialists or on that of the Free
Trade Liberal capitalists and landlords? "It
isn't an adequate reply to say [of Socialism]
that nobody stood treat there, and that the
simple, generous people like to beat thcir own
wives and children on occasion in a loving and
intimate manner, and that they won't endure
the spirit of Sidney 'V ebb."
A fortnight later, Chcsterton replied. But,
though many have engaged with him in con-
troversy, I doubt if anybody has ever pinncd
him down to a fact or an argument. On this
occasion, G.I{.C. politely refused even to refer
to thc vital point of the case of l\lr. H. G.
\ r ells. On the other hand he \vrote a very
141
G. K. CHESTERTON
jolly article about beer and "tavern hospi-
tality." The argument marked time for t\VO
\veeks more, \vhen l\lr. Belloc once again
entered the lists. The essence of his contri-
bution is " I premise that man, in order to be
normally happy, tolerably happy, must o\vn."
Collectivism \vill not let him own. The trouble
about the present state of society is that people
do not own enough. The remedy proposed
will be worse than the disease. Then l\lr.
Bernard Shaw had a look in.
In the course of his lengthy article he gave
"the Chesterbelloc "-" a very amusing pan-
tomime elephant "-several shre\vd digs in the
ribs. It claimed, according to G.B.S., to be
the Zeitgeist. "To \vhich \ve reply, bluntly,
but conclusively, , Gammon! ,,, The rest was
mostly amiable personalities. l\'Ir. Sha,v owned
up to musical cravings, compared ,vith which
the Chesterbclloc tcndency to consume alcohol
,vas as nothing. He also jeered vcry plea
antly
at Mr. Belloc's power to cause a stampede of
Chesterton's political and religious ideas. "For
Belloc's sake Chesterton says he believes liter-
ally in the Bible story of the Resurrection.
For Belloc's sake he says he is not a Socialist.
On a recent occasion I tried to drive him to
swallow the l\liracle of St. J anuarius for Belloc's
sake; but at that he stuck. lIe pleaded his
142
THE POLITICIAN
belief in the Resurrection story. He pointed
out very justly that I believe in lots of things
just as miraculous as the Miracle of St. Janu-
arius; but when I remorselessly pressed the
fact that he did not believe that the blood of
St. J anuarius reliquefies miraculously every
year, the Credo stuck in his throat like Amen
in Macbeth's. He had got down at last to his
irreducible minimum of dogmatic incredulity,
and could not, even with the mouth of the
bottomless pit ya wning before Belloc, utter
the saving lie."
By this time the discussion was definitely
off Socialism. Chesterton produced another
article, The Last of the Rationalists, in reply
to Mr. Shaw, from which one gathered \vhat
onc had been previously suspected that" you
[namely Mr. Shaw, but in practice both the
opposition controversialists] have confined
yourselves to charming essays on our two
charming personalities." And there they
stopped.
The year following this bout of pcrsonalities
saw the publication of a remarkably brilliant
book by Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, in
,vhich, one might have expected, the case
against the political creed represented by
G.B.S. might have been carried a trifle farther.
Instead of \vhich it \vas not carried anything
143
G. K. CHESTERTON
like so far. Chesterton jeered at 1\11'. Shaw's
vegetarianism, denied his democracy, but de-
cided that on the whole he \vas a good repub-
lican, " in the literal and Latin sense; he cares
n10re for thc Public Thing than for any private
thing." He cnds the chaptcr cntitled "The
Progressive " by saying the kindest things he
ever said about any body of Socialists.
I have in my time had my fling at the Fabian
Society, at the pedantry of schemes, the arrogance
of experts; nor do I regret it now. But when I
remember that other world against which it reared
its bourgeois banner of cleanliness and common sense,
I will not end this chapter without doing it decent
honour. Give me the drain pipes of the Fabians
rather than the panpipes of the later poets; the
drain pipes have a nicer smell.
The rcader may have grasped by this time
the fact that Chesterton's objections to Socialism
were based rather on his dislike of \vhat the
working man calls "mucking people about"
than on any economic grounds. He made
himself the sworn enemy of any Bill before
Parliament which contained any proposals to
appoint inspectors. He took the line that the
sacredness of the home diminishes visibly with
the entrance of the gas collector, and disappears
down the kitchen sink with the arrival of the
school attendance officer. In those of his
144
THE POLITICIAN
writings which I have not seen I have no doubt
there are pleadings for the retention of the
cesspool, because it is the last moat left to the
Englishman's house, which is his castle. It is
difficult to believe in the complete sincerity
of such an attitude. The inspector is the chief
enemy of the bad landlord and employer, he
is a fruit of democracy. In the early days of
the factory system, when mercilessly long
hours were worked by children and women,
\vhen legislation had failed to ameliorate the
conditions of employment, because the em-
ployers were also the magistrates, and would
not enforce laws against themselves, the great
Reform Bill agitation, which so nearly caused
a revolution in this country, came to an end,
having in 1832 achieved a partial success. But
the new House of Commons did not at once
realize how partial it was, and at first it
regarded the interests of working men 'with
something of the intensity of the Liberal
Government of 1906, which had not yet come
to appreciate the new and portentous Labour
Party at its true worth. So in 1833 inspectors
were appointed for the first time. This very
brief excursion into history is sufficient justi-
fication for refusing to take seriously those
who would have us believe that inspectors are
necessarily the enemies of the human race.
K 145
G. K. CHESTERTON
Chesterton's theory that middle-class Socialists
are people who want to do things to the poor
in the direction of regimenting them finds an
easy refutation. 'Vhen, in 1910, the \vhole of
England fell down before the eloquence of
Mr. Lloyd George, and consented to the Insur-
ance Bill, the one body of people who stood out
and fought that Bill was that middle-class
Socialist body, the Fabian Society. It is
sometimes desirable, for purposes of contro-
versy, to incarnate a theory or objection.
Chesterton lumped together all his views on
the alleged intentions of the Socialists to inter-
fere in the natural and legitimate happinesses of
the \vorking class, and called this curious com-
posite Mr. Sidney "\tV ebb. So through many
volumes Mr. Webb's name is continually
bobbing up, like an irrepressible Aunt Sally,
and having to be thwacked into a temporary
disappearance. But this is only done for
literary effect. To heave a brick at a man is
both simpler and more amusing than to arraign
a system or a creed. A reader enjoys the
feeling that his author is a clever dog who is
making it devilishly uncomfortable for his
opponents. His appreciation would be con-
siderably less if the opponent in question was
a mere theory. In point of fact, Chesterton is
probably a warm admirer of l\'Ir. and 1\lrs.
146
THE POLITICIAN
Sidney 'Vebb. 'Vhen they founded (in 1909)
their National Committee for the Prevention
of Destitution, designed to educate the British
public in the ideas of what has been called
'Vebbism, especially those contained in the
l\linority Report of the Poor Law Commission,
one of the first to join \vas G. K. Chesterton.
The word Socialism covers a multitude of
Socialists, some of whom are not. The political
faith of a man, therefore, must not be judged
upon his attitude towards Socialism, if we
have anything more definite to go upon. Ches-
terton overflows, so to speak, with predilec-
tions, such as beer (in a political sense, of
course), opposition to the Jingo, on the one
hand, and to middle-class faddery, such as
vegetarianism, on the other, and so on. Any-
body might indulge in most of his views, in
fact, without incurring severe moral reproba-
tion. But there is an exception which, un-
fortunately, links Chesterton pretty firmly
,vith the s\veater, and other undesirable lords
of creation. He is an anti-suffragist.
In a little essay Chesterton @nce wrote on
Tolstoy, he argued that the thing that has
driven men mad \vas logic, from the beginning
of time, whereas the thing that has kept them
sane \vas mysticism. Tolstoy, lacking mysti-
cism, was at the mercy of his pitiless logic,
147
G. K. CHESTERTON
which led him to condemn things which are
entirely natural and human. This attitude,
one feels (and it is only to be arrived at by
feeling), is absolutely right. \Ve all start off
with certain scarce expressible feelings that
certain things are fundamentally decent and
permissible, and that others are the reverse,
just as we do not take our idea of blackness
and whiteness from a text-book. If anybody
proposed that all Scotsmen should be com-
pelled to eat sago with every meal, the idea,
although novel to most of us, ,vould be in-
stantly dismissed, even, it is probable, by
those with sago interests, because it would be
contrary to our instinct of what is decent.
In fact, we all believe in natural rights, or at
any rate we claim the enjoyment of some.
Now natural rights have no logical basis. The
late Professor D. G. Ritchie very brilliantly
examined the theory of natural rights, and by
means of much subtle dissection and argument
found that there were no natural rights; la\v
was the only basis of privilege. It is quite
easy to be convinced by the author's delightful
dialectic, but the conviction is apt to vanish
suddenly in the presence of a dog being ill-
treated.
Now on a basis of common decency-the
basis of all democratic political thought-the
148
THE POúITICIAN
case for woman suffrage is irresistible. It is
not decent that the s,veated woman ,yorker
should be denied "vhat, in the opinion of many
competent judges, might be the instrument of
her salvation. It is not decent that women
should share a disqualification \vith lunatics,
criminals, children, and no others of their own
race. It is not decent that the sex \vhich knows
most about babies should have no opportunity
to influence directly legislation dealing \vith
babies. It is not decent that a large, important
and necessary section of humanity, ,vith highly
gregarious instincts, should not be allowed to
exercise the only gregarious function ,vhich
concerns the \vhole nation at once.
These propositions are fundamental; if a
man or woman cannot accept them, then he is
at heart an " anti," even if he has constructed
for himself a quantity of reasons, religious,
ethical, economic, political or what not, why
\vomen should be allowed to vote. Every
suffrage argument is, or can be, based on
decencies, not on emotion or statistics.
Chesterton bases his case on decencies, but
they are not the decencies that matter. In
What' s Wrong with the JV orld he insists on the
indecency of allowing women to cease to be
amateurs within the home, or of allo\ving them
to earn a living in a factory or office, or of
149
G. K. CHESTERTON
allowing them to share in the responsibility
for taking the lives of condemned murderers,
or of allowing them to exercise the coercion
which is government, which is a sort of pyra-
mid, with a gallows on top, the ultimate resort
of coercive po\ver. And in these alleged in-
decencies (the word is not altogether my own)
lies Chesterton's whole case against allowing
any \voman to vote. Into these propositions
his ,vhole case, as expressed in What' s Wrong
with the World, is faithfully condensed.
"'Yell now, are these indecencies sincere or
simulated? First, as regards the amateur.
Chesterton's case is that the amateur is neces-
sary, in order to counteract the influences of
the specialist. Man is no\vadays the specialist.
He is confined to making such things as the
thousandth part of a motor-car or producing
the ten-thousandth part of a daily newspaper.
By being a specialist he is made narrow.
",V oman, with the whole home on her hands,
has a multiplicity of tasks. She is the amateur,
and as such she is free. If she is put into
politics or industry she becomes a specialist,
and as such becomes a slave. This is a pretty
piece of reasoning, but it is absolutely hollow.
There are few women who do not gladly resign
part at least of their sovereignty, if they have
the chance, to a maid -servant (who may be,
150
THE POLITICIAN
and, in fact, usually is an amateur, but is not
free to try daring experiments) or to such
blatant specialists as cooks and nursemaids.
Nobody is the least bit shocked by the exist-
ence of specialist women. Indeed, it is a
solemn fact, that were it not for them Chester-
ton would be unable to procure a single article
of clothing. He \vould be driven to the fig-
leaf, and would stand a good chance of not
getting even so much, now that so many gar-
dcners are \vomen. \Ve are terribly dependent
upon the specialist woman. That is why the
amateur within the home is beginning to
wonder \vhether, on the whole, man is so very
much dependent upon her. She comes to rely
more and more upon the specialist women to
help her feed, clothe, and nurse her husband.
She has so much done for her that she comes
to understand the remainder left to her far
better. She becomes a specialist herself, and
feels kindly towards other specialists. Then
she demands a vote and meets Chesterton,
\vho tells her to go and mind the baby and be
as free as she likes with the domestic apparatus
for making pastry, when her baby is in point
of fact being brought up by other women at a
1tlontessori school to be much more intelligent
and much more of a specialist than she herself
is ever likely to be, and when she knows that
151
G. K. CHESTERTON
her dyspeptic husband has an absolute loath-
ing for the amateurishness that expresses itself
in dough.
Then there is the alleged wrongness of per-
mitting women to work in factories and offices.
We are all probably prepared to admit that
we have been shocked at the commercial em-
ployment of women. But it has probably
occurred to few of us that the shock was due
simply to their commercial employment. It
was due to their low wages and to the beastli-
ness of their employers. lVhen they drew
decent wages and their employers were decent
men we were not the least bit hurt. But when
an employer made use of the amateurishness
of young girls to underpay them, and then
make deductions from their wages on various
trivial pretexts, and put them to work in over-
crowded factories and offices, then we all felt
acutely that an indecency was being com-
mitted. The obvious democratic remedy is
the duckpond, but in our great cities none
remain. So one is sorrowfully brought round
to the slower but surer expedient of attacking
and destroying the amateurishness of women
at the point where it is dangerous to them.
Amateurishness has encircled women in the
past like the seven rivers of Hades. Every
now and again a daring excursion was made in
152
THE POLITICIAN
order that the wisdom of those imprisoned
within should be added to our store. A good
deal of aboriginal amateurishness has been
evaporating as the \voman doctor has been
taking the place of the time-honoured amateur
dispenser of brimstone and treacle, and even
horrider things. And \vill Chesterton maintain
that it were better for us all if certain \vomen
had remained amateurs and had not studied
and specialized so that, in time of need, they
were enabled to tend the sick and wounded at
home, in Flanders and in France, and wherever
the powers of evil had been at work ? '
Lastly, is it decent that 'women should share
the awful responsibility \vhich is attached to
the ultimate control of the State, when the
State is compelled to use the gallo\vs? If
women vote, they are responsible for whatever
blood is shed by the State. Yes, but, 1\'11'.
Chesterton, aren't they just as responsible for
it in any case? Don't \vomen help to pay the
hangman's \vages \vith every ounce of tea or
of sweets they buy? If capital punishment
is obscene, then we can do ,vithout it, and a
woman's vote will not make her a sharer in
the evil. If capital punishment is morally
stimulating to the nation at large, there is no
reason why women should not be allowed to
share in the stimulation. Now \vhat has
153
G. K. CHESTERTON
become of Chesterton's decencies? It is
indeed saddening that a man who never misses
an opportunity to proclaim himself a demo-
crat should take his stand on this matter
beside Lord Curzon, and in opposition to the
instinctively and essentially democratic views
proclaimed by such men as Messrs. H. \tV.
N evinson and Philip Snowden.
In an article in The Illustrated London News
on June 1st, 1912, Chesterton showed whose
side he was on with unusual distinctness. The
subject of the article was Earnestness; the
moral, that it was a bad quality, the property
of Socialists and Anti-Socialists, and Suffragists,
and that apathy was best of all. It concluded:
N either Socialists nor Suffragists will smash our
politics, I fear. The worst they can do is to put a
little more of the poison of earnestness into the
strong, unconscious sanity of our race, and disturb
that deep and just indifference on which all things
rest; the quiet of the mother or the carelessness of
the child.
In remarkably similar words, the late Pro-
curator of the Holy Synod of the Russian
Church, C. P. Pobedonostsev, condemned de-
mocracy in his book, The Reflexions of a
Russian Statesman, and praised vis inertiæ for
its preservative effects. But the Russian had
more consistency; he did not merely condemn
154
THE POLITICIAN
votes for women, but also votes for men; and
not only votes, but education, the jury system,
the freedom of the Press, religious freedom,
and many other things.
Putting aside the question of woman suf-
frage, Chesterton's views on democracy may
be further illustrated by reference to the pro-
ceedings of the Joint Select Committee of the
House of Lords and the House of Commons,
1909, on Stage Plays (Censorship). He may
speak for himself here.
l\'Ir. G. K. Chesterton is called In, and
examined.
Question 6141( Chairman). I understand that you
appear here to give evidence on behalf of the average
man?
G.K.C. Yes, that is so. I represent the audience,
in fact. I am neither a dramatist nor a dramatic
critic. I do not quite know why I am here, but if
anybody wants to know my views on the subject they
are these: I am for the censorship, but I am against
the present Censor. I am very strongly for the
censorship, and I am very strongly against the present
Censor. The whole question I think turns on the
old democratic objection to despotism. I am an old-
fashioned person and I retain the old democratic
objection to despotism. I would trust 12 ordinary
men, but I cannot trust one ordinary man.
6142. You prefer the jury to the judge?- Yes,
exactly; that is the very point. It seems to me
that if you have one ordinary man judging, it is not
155
G. K. CHESTERTON
his ordinariness that appears, but it is his extra-
ordinariness that appears. Take anybody you like-
George III for instance. I suppose that George III
was a pretty ordinary man in one sense. People
called him Farmer George. He was very like a large
number of other people, but when he was alone in
his position things appeared in him that were not
ordinary-that he was a German, and that he was
mad, and various other facts. Therefore, my primary
principle-
6143. He gloried in the name of Briton ?-I know
he did. That is what showed him to be so thoroughly
German.
LORD NEWTON. He spelt it ,vrongly.
WITNESS. Therefore, speaking broadly, I would
not take George Ill's opinion, but I would take the
opinion of 12 George Ill's on any question.
The taking of the " evidence " took several
hours, . but it never yielded anything more
than this: The local jury is a better judge of
what is right and proper than a single Censor.
Juries may differ in their judgments; but
\v hy not? Is it not desirable that Hampstead
and Highgate should each have an opportunity
of finding out independently \vhat they like ?
May they not compete in taste one against
the other ?
This introduction of the question of dramatic
censorship invites a slight digression. Chester-
ton has a decided regard for a dramatic censor-
156
THE POLITICIAN
ship. A book need not be censored, because it
need not be finished by its reader, but it may
be difficult to get out of a theatre in the course
of a performance. And there are performances
of plays, \vritten by "irresponsible modern
philosophers," which, to Chesterton, seem to
deserve suppression. A suggestive French
farce may be a dirty joke, but it is at least a
joke; but a play \vhich raises the question Is
marriage a failure? and answers it in the
affirmative, is a pernicious philosophy. The
answer to this last contention is that, in point
of strict fact, modern philosophers do not
regard happy marriages as failures, and opinion
is divided on the others, which are generally
the subjects of their plays. But there is no
doubt that a jury is better qualified than a
single Censor. A French jury decided that
Madame Bovary ,vas not immoral. An English
jury decided that a certain book by Zola was
immoral and sent the publisher to prison.
.A..nother English jury, for all practical pur-
poses, decided that Dorian Gray was not
immoral, and so on. The verdicts may be
accepted. T\velve men, picked from an
alphabetical list, may not be judges of art,
but they will not debase morality.
Chesterton's personal contribution to the
political thought of his day lies in his criticism
157
G. K. CHESTERTON
of the humaneness of legislative proposals. A
thing that is human is commonly a very
different matter from a thing that is merely
humanitarian. G.K.C. is hotly human and
almost bitterly anti-humanitarian.
The difference bet\veen the t,vo is illustrated
by the institution of the gallows, which is
human, but not humanitarian. In its essen-
tials it consists of a rope and a branch, which
is precisely the apparatus that an angry man
might employ in order to rid himself of his
captured enemy. Herbert Spencer, seeking
in his old age for means whereby to increase
the happiness of mankind, invented a humani-
tarian apparatus for the infliction of capital
punishment. It consisted of a glorified round-
about, on which the victim was laid for his
last journey. As it revolved, the blood-pres-
sure on his head gradually increased (or
decreased, I forget which) until he fell asleep
and died painlessly. This is humanitarianism.
The process is safe and sure (so long as the
machine did not stop suddenly), highly efficient,
bloodless and p
inless. But just because it is
so humanitarian it offends one a great deal
more than the old-fashioned gallo\vs. The
only circumstance which can justify violence
is anger. The only circumstance which can
justify the taking of human life is anger. And
158
THE POLITICIAN
anger may be expressed by a rope or a knife-
edge, but not by a roundabout or any other
morbid invention of a cold-blooded philosopher
such as the electric chair, or the lethal chamber.
In the same way, if flogging is to continue as
a punishment, it must be inflicted by a man
and not by a machine.
Now this distinction (made \vithout preju-
dice as to Chesterton's vie\vs on capital or
corporal punishment) holds good through his
\vhole criticism of modern legislation. He
believes that it is better that a man and his
family should starve in their own slum, than
that they should be moulded, by a cumbersome
apparatus of laws and officials and inspectors,
into a tame, mildly prosperous and mildly
healthy group of individuals, \vhose opinions,
occupations and homes should be provided for
them. On these lines he attacks ,vhatever in
his opinion \vill tend to put men into a position
where their souls will be less thcir own. He
believes that the man who has been costered
by the Government into a mediocre state of
life will be less of a man than one who has been
left unbothered by officials, and has had to
shift for himself.
Very largely, therefore, Chesterton's political
faith is an up-to-date variety of the tenets of
the Self- Hclp School, which was own brother
159
G. K. CHESTERTON
to the Manchester School. And here we come
to a curious contradiction, the first of a series.
For Chesterton loathes the Manchester School.
The contradiction comes of an inveterate
nominalism. To G.K.C. all good politics are
summed up in the words Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity. But nobody, not even a French-
man, can explain what they mean. Chesterton
used to believe that they mean Liberalism,
being led astray by the sound of the first \vord,
but he soon realized his error. Let a man say
"I believe in Liberty" and only the vague-
ness of the statement preserves it from the
funniness of a Higher Thinker's affirmation,
"I believe in Beauty." A man has to feel
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, for they are not
in the nature of facts. And one suspects
horribly that what Chesterton really feels is
merely the masculine liberty, equality and
fraternity of the public-house, where men l11eet
together but never do anything. For Chester-
ton has not yet asked us to do anything, he
only requests Parliament to refrain. He sup-
ports no political programl11e. He is opposed
to Party Government, which is government
by the Government. He is in favour of Home
Rule, it may be inferred; and of l11aking things
nasty for the Jews, it may be supposed. But
he does not poach on the leader-\vriters' pre-
160
THE POLITICIAN
serves, and his political programme is left
hazy. His opposition to Liberal proposals
brings him near the Tories. If the Liberals
continue in po,ver for a few years longer, and
Home Rule drops out of the things opposed
by Tories, the latter may well find Chesterton
among their doubtful assets. He \vill probably
continue to call himself a Liberal and a " child
of the French Revolution," but that will be
only his fun. For the interesting abortions to
which the French Revolution gave birth-
well, they are quite another story.
Chesterton is a warm supporter of the
queerly mixed proposals that are known as
the "rights of sl11all nationalities," and the
smaller the nationality, the l110re warmly he
supports (so he would have us believe) its
demand for self-government. Big fleas have
little fleas, alas, and that is the difficulty he
does not confront. For Home Rule carried to
its final sub-division is simply home rule; the
independence of homes. Political Home Rule
is only assented to on general principles;
apparently on the ground that on the day
when an Englishman's home really does be-
come his castle he will not, so to speak, mind
much \vhether he is an Englishman or an
Irishman.
And here we may bid farewell to the poli-
L 161
G. K. CHESTERTON
tician who is Chesterton. His politics are like
his perverse definitions of the meaning of such
words as progress and reform. He is like a
child who plays about with the hands of a
clock, and makes the surprising discovery that
some clocks may be made to tell a time that
does not exist-with the small hand at twelve
and the large at six, for example. Also that if
a clock goes fast, it comes to register an hour
behind the true time, and the other way round.
And so Chesterton goes on playing with the
times, until at last a horrid suspicion grips us.
\1Vhat if he cannot tell the time himself?
162
VIII
A DECADENT OF SORTS
AN idea, if treated gently, may be brought up
to perform l11any useful tasks. It is, however,
apt to pine in solitude, and should be allowed
to enjoy the cOlnpany of others of its o\vn
kind. It is much easier to overwork an idea
than a man, and of the two, the wearied idea
presents an infinitely more pathetic appearance.
Those of us who, for our sins, have to review
the novels of other people, are accustomed to
the saddening spectacle of a poor little idea,
beautiful and fresh in its youth, come wearily
to its tombstone on page 300 (where or 'where-
abouts novels end), trailing after it an immense
load of stiff and heavy puppets, taken down
from the common property-cupboards of the
nation's fiction, and not even dusted for the
occasion.
lanalive, as we have seen, suffered
from its devotion to one single idea, but the
poor little thing was kept going to the bitter
end by the flo,v of humorous encouragemcnt
given it by the author. The later works of
163
G. K. CHESTERTON
Chesterton, however, are symbolized by a
performing flea, dragging behind it a little
cartIoad of passengers. But it sometimes
happens that the humour of Manalive is not
there, that one weary idea has to support an
intolerable d
al of prose.
In 4-n Essay on Two Cities 1 there is a long
passage illustrating the adventures of a man
who tried to find people in London by the
names of the places. He might go into Buck-
ingham Palace in search of the Duke of Buck-
ingham, into Marlborough House in quest of
the Duke of Marlborough. He might even
look for the Duke of 'Vellington at 'Vaterloo.
I wonder that no one has written a wild rOlnance
about the adventures of such an alien, seeking the
great English aristocrats, and only guided by the
names; looking fOl' the Duke of Bedford in the town
of that name, seeking for some trace of the Duke
of Norfolk in Norfolk. He might sail for Wellington
in New Zealand to find the ancient seat of the Welling-
tons. The last scene might show him trying to learn
\Velsh in order to converse with the Prince of '\'Vales.
Here is an idea that is distinctly amusing when
made to fill one short paragraph, and might
be deadly tedious if extended into a wild
romance. Perhaps the best way of summariz-
ing the peculiar decadence into ,vhich Ches-
1 All Things Oonsidered.
164
A DECADENT OF SORTS
terton seemed at one tim@ to be falling is by
the statement that up to the present he has
not found time to write the book, but has done
others like it. And yet the decadence has
never showed signs of that fin de siècle rustiness
that marked the decadent movement (if it was
really a movement and not just an obsession)
of the generation that precedcd Chesterton.
He cursed it in the dedication to I\lr. E. C.
Bentley of The 1Jlan who was Thursday, and
he remained true to the point of view expressed
in that curse for ever afterwards.
A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the
weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upðn the soul, when we were boys
together.
Sciencc announced nonentity, and art admired decay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay.
Round us in antie order their crippled vices came-
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its
shame.
Like the white lock of 'Vhistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a
plume.
Life was a fiy that faded, and death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed when you and I were
young.
They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
l\Ien were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.
The Chestertonian decadence \vas not even
an all-round falling-off. If anybody \vere to
165
G. K. CHESTERTON
make the statement that in the yeal' nineteen-
hundred-and-something Chesterton produced
his worst work it would be open to anybody
else to declare, with equal truth, that in the
same year Chesterton produced his best work.
And the year in which these extremes met
,vould be either 1913 or 1914, the years of
Father Brown and The Flying Inn on one hand,
and of Father Brown and some of the songs of
The Flying Inn on the other. It was not a
technical decline, but the period of certain
intellectual ,vearinesses, when Chesterton's
mental resilience failed him for a time, and
he welcomed with too much enthusiasm the
nasty ideas from ,vhich no man is wholly free.
The main feature indeed of this period of
decadence is the brandishing about of a whole
mass of antipathies. A man is perfectly en-
titled to hate what he will, but it is generally
assumed that the hater has some ideas on the
subject of the reform of the hatee. But Ches-
terton is as devoid of suggestions as a goat is
of modesty. A man may have a violent ob-
jection against ,vomen earning their own
livings, and yet be regarded as a reasonable
being if he has any alternative proposals for the
well-being of the unendo,ved and temporarily
or permanently unmarriageable woman, with
no relatives able to support her-and there
166
A DECADENT OF SORTS
are two or three millions of such women in the
United Kingdom. But a mere " You shouldn't"
is neither here nor there.
Take this verse. It was written two or
three years ago and is from a poem entitled
To a Turk.
'Vith us too rage against the rood
Your devils and your swine;
A colder scorn of womanhood,
A baser fear of wine,
And lust without the harem,
And Doom without the God,
Go. It is not this rabble
Sayeth to you" Ichabod."
A previous stanza talks about "the creedless
chapel." Here is a whole mass of prejudices
collected into a large splutter at the expense
of England. If the verse means anything at
all, it means that the English are nearer the
beasts than the Turks.
Another of Chesterton's intellectual aber-
rations is his anti-Semitism. He continually
denied in the columns of The Daily IIerald that
he was an anti-Semite, but his references to the
Jews are innumerable and ahvays on the same
side. If one admits what appears to be Ches-
terton's contention that Judaism is largely
just an exclusive form of contemporary atheism,
then one is entitled to ask, \ Vhy is a wicked
Gentile atheist merely an atheist, while a
167
G. K. CHESTERTON
Jewish atheist remains a Jew? Surely the
morals of both are on the same level, and the
atheism, and not the race, is the offensive
feature. The Jews have their sinners and their
saints, including the greatest Saint of all.
They and they only, amongst all mankind,
Received the transcript of the eternal mind;
Were trusted with His own engraven laws,
And constituted guardians of His cause:
Their's were the prophets, their's the priestly call,
And their's, by birth, the Saviour of us all.
Even if Chesterton cannot work himself up
to Cowper's enthusiasm (and few of us can),
he cannot deny that the race he is continually
blackguarding ,vas preparing his religion, and
discovering the way to health at a time when
his own Gentile ancestors were probably per-
forming human sacrifices and eating worms.
Unquestionably what is the matter ,vith the
modern J e\v, especially of the educated classes,
is that he refuses to be impressed by the Chris-
tian Church. But the Christian Church cannot
fairly be said to have made herself attractive
in the past; her methods of Inquisition, for
example. . . .
It is difficult to write apathetically on this
extreme instance of a great writer's intolerance.
One single example will suffice. A year or
two ago, a Jew called Beilis was put on his trial
168
A DECADENT OF SORTS
(after an imprisonment of nearly three years)
for the murder of a small Christian boy named
Y ushinsky, in order that his blood might
be used for ritual purposes. Y ushinsky,
\vho was found dead under peculiar circum-
stances, was probably a J e,v himself, but
that does not affect the point at issue. 1\11'.
Arthur Henderson, l\I.P., tried to arouse an
agitation in order to secure the freedom of
Beilis, because it ,vas perfectly evident from
the behaviour of certain parties that the
prisoner's conviction would be the signal for
the out break of a series of massacres of the
Jews, and because a case which had taken
nearly three years to prepare was obviously
a very thin case. Chesterton wrote a ribald
article in The Daily Herald on 1\11'. Henderson's
attempt at intervention, saying in effect, Ho\v
do you know that Beilis isn't guilty? Now it
is impossible to hold the belief that Beilis
might be guilty and at the same time disbelieve
that the J e\vs are capable of committing
human sacrifice. 'Yhen a leading Russian
critic named Rosanov, also an anti-Semite,
issued a pamphlet proclaiming that the Jews
did, in fact, con1mit this loathsome crime, he
was ignominiously ejected from a prominent
Russian literary society. The comparison
should appeal to Chesterton.
169
G. K. CHESTERTON
The nadir of these antipathies is reached in
The Flying Inn, a novel published a few months
before the Great War broke out, and before
we all made the discovery that, hold what
prejudices we will, we are all immensely
dependent on one another. In this book we
are given a picture of England of the future,
conquered by the Turk. As a concession to
Islam, all intoxicating drink is prohibited in
England. It is amusing to note that a few
months after the publication of this silly
prognostication, the greatest Empire in Chris-
tendom prohibited drink within its frontiers
in order to conquer the Turk-and his Allies.
A Patrick Dalroy, an Irishman (with red hair),
and of course a giant, has been performing
Homeric feats against the conquering Turks.
A Lord Ivywood, an abstraction bloodless to
the point of albinism, is at the head of affairs
in England. The Jews dominate everything.
Dalroy and Humphrey Pump, an evicted inn-
keeper, discovering that drinks may still be
sold where an inn-sign may be found, start
journeying around England loaded only \vith
the sign-board of "The Green l\ian," a large
cheese, and a keg of rum. They are, in fact, a
peripatetic public-house, and the only demo-
cratic institution of its kind left in England.
Every other chapter the new innkeepers run
170
A DECADENT OF SORTS
into Ivywood and his hangers-on. As the
story wriggles its inconsequent length, the
author curses through the mouths of his
heroes. He anathematizes teetotallers, bre\vers,
vegetarians, temperance drinks, model villages,
æsthetic poets, Oriental art, Parliament, poli-
ticians, Jews, Turks, and infidels in general,
futurist painting, and other things. In the
end, Dalroy and Pump lead a vast insurrection,
and. thousands of dumb, long-suffering English-
men attack I vywood in his Hall, and so free
their country from the Turk.
Only the songs already described in Chapter
V preserve this book from extreme dullness.
Technically it is poor. The action is as scat-
tered as the parts of a futurist picture. A
whole chapter is devoted to a picture of a
newspaper editor at \vork, inventing the phrase-
ology of indefiniteness. Epigrams are few and
are very much overworked. Once a catch-
word is sprung, it is run to death. The Turk
who by lneans of silly puns attempts to prove
that Islamic civilization is better than European,
never ceases in his efforts. The heartlessness
of I vywood is continuous, and ends in insanity.
Parts of The l?lying Inn convey the impres-
sion that Chesbirton \vas tired of his o\vn style
and his own manner of controversy, and had
taken to parodying himself. The arguments
171
G. K. CHESTERTON
of the already-mentioned Turk, for example,
might well pass for a really good parody of the
theological dispute in the first chapter of The
Ball and the Cross. There, it may be remem-
bered, t\VO men (more or less) discussed the
symbolism of balls and crosses. In The Flying
Inn people discuss the symbolism of crescents
and crosses, and the Turk, l\Iisysra Ammon,
explains, "'Yhen the English see an English
youth, they cry out 'He is crescent!' But
when they see an English aged man, they cry
out 'He is cross ! ' " On these lines a great
deal of The Flying Inn is written.
\" e now come to Chesterton's political
decadence, traceable, like many features in his
history, to l\Ir. llilaire Belloc. The friendship
between G.I{.C. and the ex-Liberal l\f.P. for
Rochdale bore a number of interesting fruits.
There were the amusing illustrations to The
Great Enquiry, an amusing skit on the Tariff
Reform League, to Emmanuel Burden and
The Green Overcoat. But curious artificialities
sprang into existence, like so many funguses,
under the lengthening shadow of 1\11'. Belloc.
To him is due the far-fetchedness of some of
Chesterton's pleading in support of the miracu-
lous element in religion. To him also is due
the growing antipathy against the Liberal
Party and the party system in general.
172
A DECADENT OF SORTS
Up to the end of January, 1913, Chesterton
had continued his connection with The Daily
N e\vs. On January 28th there took place, at
the Queen's Hall, London, a debate between
Mr. Bernard Shaw and 1\11'. Hilaire Belloc.
The latter nloved "That if we do not re-
establish the institution of property, we shall
re-establish the institution of slavery; there
is no third course." The debate was an ex-
tremely poor affair, as neither combatant dealt,
except parenthetically, \vith his opponent's
points. In the course of it 1\11'. Sha,v, to illus-
trate an argument, referred to Chesterton as
"a flourishing property of Mr. Cadbury," a
remark which G.K.C. appears to have taken
to heart. His quarrel ,vith official Liberalism
was at the moment more bitter than ever
before. 1\11'. Belloc had taken a very decided
stand on the 1\larconi affair, and 1\11'. Cecil
Chesterton, G.K.C.'s brother, \vas sturdily sup-
porting him. The Daily N e\vs, on the other
hand, was of course vigorously defending the
Government. Chesterton suddenly severed
his long connection \vith The Daily N e\vs and
came over to The Daily Herald. This paper,
\vhich is now defunct, except in a weekly
edition, ,vas the organ of Syndicalism and
rebellion in general. In a letter to the editor
of The Herald, Chesterton eXplained with
173
G. K. CHESTERTON
pathetic irony that The Daily News" had come
to stand for almost everything I disagree with ;
and I thought I had better resign before the
next great measure of social reform made it
illegal to go on strike."
A week or so later, Chesterton started his
series of Saturday articles in The Daily Herald.
His first few efforts show that he made a
determined attempt to get down to the intel-
lectual level of the Syndicalist. But anybody
who sits down to read through these articles
\vill notice that before many \veeks had passed
Chesterton was beginning to feel a certain dis-
comfort in the cOlnpany he was keeping. He
writes to say that he likes writing for The
Daily Herald because it is the most revolu-
tionary paper he knows, "even though I do
not agree with all the revolutions it advocates,"
and goes on to state that, personally, he likes
most of the people he meets. Having thus,
as it were, cleared his conscience in advance,
Chesterton let himself go. He attacked the
Government for its alleged nepotism, dis-
honesty, and corruption. He ended one such
article with, "There is nothing but a trumpet
at midnight, calling for volunteers." The N e\v
Statesman then published an article, "Trum-
pets and How to Blow Them," suggesting,
among other things, that there ,vas little use
174
A DECADENT OF SORTS
in being merely destructive. It is typical of
what I have called the decadence of Chesterton
that he borrowed another writer's most offen-
sive description of a lady prominently con-
nected with The New Statesman in order to
quote it \vith glee by way of answer to this
article. The Syndicalist hates the Socialist
for his catholicity. The Socialist wishes to
see the world a comfortable place, the Syndica-
list merely wishes to work in a comfortable
factory. Chesterton seized the opportunity,
being mildly rebuked by a Socialist paper, to
declare that the Fabians "are constructing a
man-trap." A little later on he \vrites, \vith
reference to a controversialist's request, that
he should explain why, after all, he was not
a Socialist :
If he wants to know what the Marconi Scandal has
saved us from, I can tell him. It has saved us from
Socialism. l\ly God! what Socialism, and run by
what sort of Socialists!
Iy God! what an escape!
If we had transferred the simplest national systems
to the State (as we wanted to do in our youth) it is
to these men that we should have transferred them.
There never was an example of more muddled
thinking. Let us apply it to something
definite, to that harmless, necessary article of
diet, milk, to be precise, cow's milk. To-day
milk is made expensive by a multiplicity of
175
G. K. CHESTERTON
men who have interests in keeping milk expen-
sive. There are too many milkmen's wages
to be paid, too many milk-carts to be built,
too many shop-rents paid, and too much
apparatus bought, simply because we have
not yet had the intelligence to let any munici-
pality or county run its own milk -service and
so avoid all manner of duplication. Chester-
ton's answer to this is: "I used to think so,
but what about Lord Murray, 1\11'. Lloyd
George, and Mr. Godfrey Isaacs?" It would
be as relevant to say, "What about Dr.
Crippen, Jack Sheppard, and Ananias," or,
"But what about Mr. Bernard Shaw, the
Grand Duke Nicolas, and my brother?" The
week later Chesterton addresses the Labour
Party in these ,vords :
Comrades (I mean gentlemen), there is only one
real result of anything you have done. You have
justified the vulgar slander of the suburban Con-
servatives that men from below are men who merely
want to rise. It is a lie. No one knows so well as
you that it was a lie: you who drove out Grayson
and deserted Lansbury. Before you went into
Parliament to represent the working classes, the
working classes were feared. Since you have repre-
sented the working classes, they are not even respected.
Just when there was. a hope of Democracy, you have
revived the notion that the demagogue was only the
sycophant. Just when there had begun to be an
176
A DECADENT OF SORTS
English people to represent, you have been paid to
misrepresent them. Get out of our path. Take your
money; go.
Regarding which passage there is only to be
said that it is grossly unjust both to the Labour
Party and to the working classes. It was
followed up in subsequent numbers by violent
attacks on woman suffrage and the economic
independence of women; a proceeding quite
commendably amusing in a paper \vith a
patron saint surnamed Pankhurst. A promise
to say no more about Votes for 'Vomen was
followed by several more spirited references
to it, from the same point of view. Mter \vhich
Chesterton cooled off and ,vrote about detec-
tive stories, telephones, and worked himself
down into an all-round fizzle of disgust at
things as they are, to illustrate which" I win
not run into a paroxysm of citations again,"
as l\IiIton said in the course of his Epistle in
t\VO books on Reformation in England.
The most unpleasant feature of The Daily
IIerald articles is the assumption of superiority
over the British working man, expressing
itself in the patronizing tone. The British
working man, as Chesterton sees him, is a very
different person from what he is. If the l\Iiddl
Ages had been thc peculiar period Chesterton
appears to believe it ,vas, then his working
l\I 177
G. K. CHESTERTON
man would be merely a trifling anachronism
of five centuries or so. But he is not even that.
Five centuries would be but a trifle compared
with the difference between him and his real
self. Chesterton's attitude towards the work-
ing man must resemble that of a certain
chivalrous knight towards the distressed dam-
sel he thought he had rescued. He observed,
" \Vell, little one, aren't you going to show me
any gratitude?" And the lady replied, "I
wasn't playing Andromeda, fathead, I was
looking for blackberries. Run away and play."
The attitude of the middle-class suburbanite
towards the working man and his wife is not
exactly graceful, but the former at any rate
does not pretend to love the latter, and to find
all decency of feeling and righteousness of
behaviour in them. Chesterton both pretends
to reverence the working classes, and exhibits
a profound contempt for them. He is never
happier than when he is telling the working
classes that they are wrong. He delights in
attacking the Labour Party in order to have
the supreme satisfaction of demonstrating that
working men are their own worst enemies.
At the beginning of August, 1914, the Great
'" ar broke out, and everything seemed changed.
No man now living will bc able to say definitely
what effects the war \vill have upon literature,
178
A DECADENT OF SORTS
but one thing is certain: nothing ,viII remain
the same. 'Ve have already learned to view
each other with different eyes. For better or
for worse, old animosities and party cleavages
have given way to unforeseen combinations.
To assert that we have all gro\vn better would
be untrue. But it might reasonably be argued
that the innate generousness of the British
people has been vitiated by its childlike trust
in its journalists, and the men who own them.
'Vhen l\tJr. Bernard Shaw wrote a brilliant
defence of the British case for intervention in
the war, his mild denigration of some of the
defects of the English nation, a few trivial
inaccuracies, and his perverse bellicosity of
style made him the object of the attentions of
a horde of panic-stricken heresy-hunters. Those
of us who had not the fortune to escape the
Press by service abroad, especially those of us
who derived our living from it, came to loathe
its misrepresentation of the English people.
There seemed no end to the nauseous vomits
of undigested facts and dishonourablc preju-
dices that came pouring out in daily streams.
Then we came to realize, as never before, thc
valuc of such men as Chesterton. Christianity
and the common dccencics fare badly at the
hands of the bishops of to-day, and the
journalists thre\v them over as soon as thc
179
G. K. CHESTERTON
war began. But, unfortunately for us all,
G.K.C. fell seriously ill in the early period of
the war, and was in a critical state for many
months. But not before he had published a
magnificent recantation-for it is no less-of
all those bitternesses which, in their sum, had
very nearly caused him to hate the British.
It is a poem, Blessed are the Peacemakers.
Of old with a divided heart
I saw my people's pride expand,
Since a man's soul is born apart
By mother earth and fatherland.
I knew, through many a tangled tale,
Glory and truth not one but two :
King, Constable and Amirail
Took me like trumpets: but I knew
A blacker thing than blood's own dye
Weighed down great Hawkins on the sea;
And Nelson turned his blindest eye
On Naples and on liberty.
Therefore to you my thanks, 0 throne,
o thousandfold and frozen folk,
For whose cold frenzies all your own
The Battle of the Rivers broke;
Who have no faith a man could mourn,
Nor freedom any man desires;
But in a new clean light of scorn
Close up my quarrel with my sires ;
Who bring my English heart to me,
Who mend me like a broken toy;
Till I can see you fight and flee,
And laugh as if I were a boy.
180
A DECADENT OF SORTS
,\Yhen we read this poem, with its proclama-
tion of a faith restored, Chesterton's temporary
absence from the field of letters appears even
more lamentable. For even before his break-
down he had given other signs of a resurrection.
Between the overworked descriptions of The
Flying Inn and the little book The Barbarism
of Berlin which closely follo\ved it, there is a fine
difference of style, as if in the interval Chester-
ton had taken a tonic. Thus there is a jolly pas-
sage in \vhich, describing German barbarism, he
refers to the different ways of treating women.
The two extremes of the treatment of women
might be represented by what are called the respect-
able classes in America and in France, In America
they choose the risk of comradeship; in France the
compensation of courtesy. In America it is practi-
cally possible for any young gentleman to take any
young lady for what he calls (I deeply regret to say)
a joy-ride; but at least the man goes with the woman
as much as the woman with the man. In France the
young woman is protected like a nun while she is
unmarried; but when she is a mother she is really a
holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is
a holy terror. By both extremes the woman gets
something back out of life. France and America aim
alike at equality-America by similarity; France
by dissimilarity. But North Germany does actually
aim at inequality. The woman stands up, with no
more irritation than a butler; the man sits down,
with no more embarrassment than a guest.
181
G. K. CHESTERTON
And so on. It runs very easily; we recognize
the old touch; the epigrams are not worked
to death; and the chains of argument are not
mere strings of damped brilliancies. And before
1914 had come to its end, in another pamphlet,
Letters to an Old Garibaldian, the same style,
the same freshness of thought, and the same
resurgent strength were once again in evidence.
Then iHness overcame.
Of all futures, the future of literature and
its professors is the least predictable. We have
all, so to speak, turned a corner since August,
1914, but we have not all turned the same way.
Chesterton would seem to have felt the great
change early in the war. Soon he will break
his silence, and "\ve shall know whether we have
amongst us a giant with strength renewed or
a querulous Nonconformist Crusader, agreeing
with no man, while claiming to speak for
every man. Early in the course of this study
a distinction was drawn between Christians
and Crusaders. Chesterton has been through-
out his career essentially a Crusader. He set
out to put wrongs to rights in the same spirit ;
in much the same spirit, too, he incidentally
chivvied about the Jews he met in his path,
just as the Crusaders had done. He fought for
the Holy Sepulchre, and
ained it. Like the
182
A DECADENT OF SORTS
Crusaders, he professed orthodoxy, and, like
them, fell bet\veen several "orthodoxies."
He shared their visions and their faith, so far
as they had any. But one thing is true of all
Crusaders, they are not necessarily Christians.
And there is that about Chesterton ,vhich
sometimes makes me 'yonder whether, after
all, he is not" a child of the French Revolu-
tion " in a sense he himself does not suspect.
He has cursed the barren fig-tree of modern
religious movements. But there comes a sus-
picion that he denies too much; that from
between those supple sentences and those too
plausible arguments one may catch a glimpse
of the features of a mocking spirit. Chesterton
has given us the keenest enjoyment, and he
has provoked thought, even in the silly atheist.
\Ye all owe him gratitude, but no two readers
of his works are likely to agree as to the causes
of their gratitude. That, in itself, is a tribute.
'Yherefore let it be understood that in ,vriting
this study I have been speaking entirely for
myself, and if any man think me misguided,
inappreciative, hypercritical, frivolous, or any-
thing else, why, he is \velcome.
183
BIBLIOGRAPHY (To JULY, 1915)
WORKS
1900. Greybeards at Play. Brimley Johnson.
Cheaper edition, 1902.
The Wild Knight. Grant Richards. Second
edition, Brimley Johnson, 1905. Enlarged
edition, Dent, 1914.
1901. The Defendant. Brimley Johnson. Second
enlarged edition, 1902. Cheap edition,
in Dent's \Vayfarer's Library, 1914.
1902. Twelve Types. A. L. Humphreys. PartIy
reprinted as Five Types, 1910, same
publisher. Cheap edition, 1911.
G. F. Watts. Duckworth. In Popular Library
of Art. Reissued at higher price, 1914.
1903. Robert Browning. In English l\Ien of Letters
Series. l\IacmiIlan.
1904. The Patriotic Idea. In England a Nation.
Edited by Lucien Oldershaw. Brimley
Johnson.
The Napoleon of Nolting Hill. John Lane.
With 7 full-page illustrations by \V. Graham
Robertson and a Map of the Seat of War.
185
1905.
1906.
1908.
1909.
1910.
1911.
1912.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Club of Queer Trades. Harper. Cheap
edition, Hodder and Stoughton, 1912.
lIeretics. John Lane.
Charles Dickens. :Mcthuen. Cheaper edition,
1907. Popular edition, 1913.
The Man who was Thursday. Arrowsmith.
All Things Considered. 1\lethuen.
Orthodoxy. John Lane.
Tremendous Trifles. Methuen.
Alarms and Discursions. Methuen.
Five Types. A. L. Humphreys. Reprinted
from Twelve Types, 1905.
What's Wrong with the World? Cassell.
Cheap edition, 1912.
William Blake. Duckworth. In Popular
Library of Art.
George Bernard Shaw. John Lane. Cheap
edition, 1914.
The Ball and the Cross. 'Yells Gardner, Darton.
The Ballad of the JVhite I-Iorse. Methuen.
Appreciations of Dickens. Dent. Reprinted
prefaces from Everyman Series edition of
Dickens.
The Innocence of Father Brown.
Simplicity and Tolstoy. A. L.
Another edition, H. Siegle.
Series, 1913.
A Miscellany of Men. 1\lethuen.
Manalire. Nelson.
186
Cassell.
Humphreys.
In Watteau
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1913. IJfagic. :l\1artin Seeker.
The Victorian Age in Literature. '",,'ïlliams
and Norgate. In Home University Library.
1914. The Wisdom of Father Brown. Cassell.
The Flying Inn. ::\Iethuen. (The Songs of
the Simple Life appeared originally in The
New JVitness.)
The JVild Knight. Dent. Enlarged edition,
first published 1900.
The Barbm'ism of Berlin. Cas. ell.
Letters to an Old Garibaldian. :Methuen.
1915. Poems. Burns and Oates.
And articles on Tolstoy, Stevenson, Tennyson,
and Dickens in a series of booklets pub-
lished by The Bookman, 1902-1904.
PREFACES TO THE FOLLOWING BOOKS
1903.
P a
t and Present.
World's Classics.
Life of Johnson.
Is bister .
1904. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. By
O. 'V. Holmes. Red Letter Library.
Blackie.
Sartor Resartus. By Thomas Carlyle. Cas-
sell's National Library.
The Pilgrim's Progress. By John Bunyan.
Cassell's National Library.
187
By Thomas Carlyle. In
Grant Richards.
Extracts from Boswell.
1902.
G. K. C H EST E R TON
1905. Creatures That Once Were
len. By Maxim
Gorky. Rivers.
1906 etc. TVorks of Dickens. In Everyman Library.
Dent.
1906. Essays. By 1\1atthew Arnold. In the Every-
man Library. Dent.
Literary London. By Elsie 1\1. Lang. Werner
Laurie.
1907. The Book of Job. <'Vellwood Books.)
From W orklwuse to Westminster,. the Life
Story of TVill Crooks, JJl.P. By George
Haw. Cassell. Cheaper edition, 1908.
1908. Poems. By John Ruskin. l\'Iuses Library.
Routledge.
The Cottage Homes of England. By W. W.
Crotch. Industrial Publishing Co.
1909. A Vision of Life. By Darrell Figgis. Lane.
l11eadows of Play. By :Margaret Arndt. Elkin
:Mathews.
1910. Selections from Thackeray. Bell.
Eyes of Youth. An Anthology. Herbert and
Daniel.
1911. Samuel Johnson. Extracts frOln, selected by
Alice 1\leynell. Herbert and Daniel.
The Book of Snobs. By 'V. 1\1. Thackeray.
Red Letter Library. Blackie.
188
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1912. Famous Paintings Reproduced in Colour.
Cassell.
The English Agricultural Labourer. By A. H.
Baverstock. The Vineyard Press.
Fables. By Æsop. Translated by V. s.
Vernon Jones. Illustrated by Arthur Rack-
ham. Heinemann.
1913. The Christmas Carol. In the 'Vaverley
Dickens.
1915. Bohemia's Claim for Freedom. The London
Czech COlnmittee.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING BOOKS BY
OTHER \V RITERS
1901. Nonsense Rhymes. By W. C. l\1onkhouse.
Bl'imley Johnson. Cheaper edition, 1902.
1903. The Great Enquiry. By H. B. (Hilaire Belloc).
Duckworth.
1904. Emmanuel Burden.
l\let huen.
By Hilaire Belloe.
1905. Biography for Beginners. By E. Clerihew.
Cheaper edition, \Verner Laurie, 1908.
Cheap edition, 1910.
1912. The Green Overcoat. By Ililaire BeIIoe.
Arrowsmith.
189
G. K. CHESTERTON
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS
Bookman. From 1898 onwards, passim.
The Speaker (afterwardlit The Nation). From 1898
onwards.
The Daily News. Weekly article, 1900-1913. Also
occasional poems and reviews.
The Daily Herald. Weekly article, 1913-1914.
The Illustrated London News. 1905-1914; 1915-
The Eye- Witness (afterwards The New TV itness).
Poems and articles, 1911 onwards.
Also correspondence columns of The Tribune (1906-
1908), The Clarion, and the London Press in
general.
The Oxford and Cambridge Review (afterwards The
British Review). Articles 1911, etc.
The Dublin Review. Occ.'lsional article.;.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS
Evidence before the Joint Select Committee of the
House of Lords and the House of Commons on
Stage Plays (Censorship), included in the Minutes
of Evidence, 1909.
190
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SPEECHES
1908. The Press. Speech at Pan-Anglican Congress.
Proceedings published by The Times.
1910. What to do with the Backward Races. Speech
at the Nationalities and Subject Races
Conference, London. Proceedings pub1ished
by P. S. King.
1914. Do 111iracles Happen? Report of a Discussion
at the Little Theatre in January, 1914.
Published as a pamphlet by The Christian
Commonwealth Co.
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PART ONE
INDEX OF AUTHORS
ABERCROl\IBIE, LASCELLES
SPECULATIV
DIALOGUES. Cr. 8vo. ss. net.
THOMAS HARDY: A CRITICAL STUDY. Demy 8vo.
7 S . 6d. n
t.
THE EPIC (The Art and Craft of Letters). F'cap
8vo. IS. net.
AFLALO, F. G.
BEHIND THE RANGES. lPid
Demy 8vo. 10S. 6d. net.
REGILDING THE CRESCENT. Demy 8vo. 10S. 6d. net.
BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR. Crown 8vo. 3 s . 6d. nIt.
ALLSHORN, LIONEL
STUPOR I'vIUNDI. Jfedium Octavo. 16s. net.
APPERSON, G. L.
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING. Post 8vo.
6s. net.
ARl\ISTRONG, DONALD
THE 1\.IARIUAGE 01" QUIXOTE. Crown 8vo. 6s.
ARTZIBASHEF, l\lICHAEL
SANINE. Preface by Gilbert Cannan. Crown 8vo. 6s.
BREAKING-POINT. Crown 8vo. 6s.
THE MILLIONAIR
. Intro. by the Author. Cr. 8vo.6s.
TH:! REVOLUTION. Crown 8vo. 6s.
BARRINGTON, lVIICHAEL
GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. Imperial 8vo. 30s.
net. Edition de Luxe 63 s . net.
BENNETT, ARNOLD
THOSE UNITED STATl:S. Post 8vo. U. 6d. net.
BLACK, CLEl\IENTINA
THE LINLEYS 01' BATH. 111edium 8vo. 16s. net.
THE CUMBERLAND LETTERS.
fed. 8vo. 16s. net.
3
Mart;"
SeekerJ
Catalogue
Manin
Suk"' J
COlalogue
BOULGER, D. C.
THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE. Med. 8vo. 2 IS. net.
BOTTO ME, PHYLLIS
THE COMMON CHORD.
BRO\VN, IVOR
YEARS OF PLENTY.
SECURITY.
BURROW, C. KENNETT
CARMINA VARIA. F'eap 8vo. 21. 6d. nd.
CALDERON, GEORGE (\Vith St. John Hankin)
THOMPSON: A Comedy. Sq. Cr. 8[10. 21. net.
CANNAN, GILBERT
ROUND THE CORNER. Crown 8vo. 6s.
OLD MOLE. Crown 8vo. 6s.
YOUNG EARNEST. Crown 8vo. 6s.
SAMUEL BUTLER: A CRITICAL STUDY. Demy 8vo.
7s 6d. net.
WINDMILLS: A Book of Fables. Cr. 8vo. 5s. net.
SATIRE ('I he Art and Craft of Letters). F'cap 8vo.
IS. net.
CHESTERTON, G. K.
MAGIC: A Fantastic Comedy. Sq. Cr. 8vo. 21. net.
CLAYTON, JOSEPH
THE UNDERMAN. Crown 8vo. 6s.
LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE. Demy 8vo. 121. 6d. net.
ROBERT KETT. Demy 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
COKE, DESMOND
THE ART OF SILHOUETTE. Demy 8vo. 10S. 6d. net.
CRAVEN, A. SCOTT
THE FOOL'S TRAGEDY.
DAWSON, WARRINGTON
THE TRUE DIMENSION
DE SELINCOURT, BASIL
W AL T W HlTMAN: A CRITICAL STUDY. Demy 8[10.
7S. 6d. net.
RHYME ('Ihe Art and Craft of Letters). F'cap 8[10.
IS. net.
Crown 8[10. 6J.
Crown 8vo. 6J.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Crown 8vo. 6J.
4-
DOUGLAS, LORD ALFRED lv/arti"
THE WILDE MYTH. Demy 8vo. 12S. 6d. net. Seekers
DOUGLAS, NORMAN Catplogul
FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. Wide Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
OLD CALABRIA. Demy 8vo. 15s. net.
DRAYCOTT, G. M.
MAHOMET: FOUNDER OF ISLAM. Demy 8vo.
12S. 6d. net.
DRINKWATER, JOHN
WILLIAM l'vl0RRIS: A CRITICAL STUDY. Demy 8f/O.
7s. 6d. net.
D. G. ROSS
ITI: A CRITICAL STUDY. Demy 8f/0.
7s. 6d. net.
THE LYRIC (
he Art and Craft of Letters). F'cap
8[10. IS. net.
FALLS, CYRIL
RUDYARD KIPLING: A CRITICAL STUDY. Demy
8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
FE A, ALLAN
OLD ENGLISH HOUSES. Demy 8vo. 10S. 6d. net.
NOOKS AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. 5S. net.
THE REAL CAPTAIN CLEVELAND. Demy 8[10.
8s. 6d. net.
FLECKER, J. E.
COLLECTED POEMS. Including THE GOLDEN JOURNEY
TO SAMARKAND. Demy 8vo. 7S. 6d. net.
FRANCIS, RENÉ
EGYPTIAN ÆSTHETICS. Wide Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
GRETTON, R. tIe
HISTORY (
he Art and Craft of Letters). F'cap 8f/o.
IS. net.
HANKIN, ST. JOHN
THE DRAMATIC WORKS, with an Introduction by
John Drinkwater. Small 4to. Definitive Limited
Edition in
hTee Yolumes. 25s. net.
5
MIU"IÍn
Sliker J
Catawgue
HANKIN, ST. JOHN (continueá)
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. Sq. Cr. 8vo.
THE CASSILIS ENGAGEMENT. Sq. Cr. 8vo.
THE CHAR.ITY THAT BEGAl'( AT HOME.
THE CONSTANT LOVER, ETC. Sq. Cr. 8vo.
HAUPTMANN, GERHART
THE COMPLETE DRAMATIC \V OR:l:I. 6 vols. Crown
8vo. 5S. net per volumi.
HE\VLETT, WILLIAl\l
TELLING THE TRUTH. Crown 8vo. 6s.
UNCLE'S ADVICE: A NOVEL IN LETTERS. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE CHILD AT THE \VINDOW. Crown 8vo. 6s.
21. net.
u. net.
2J. net.
2S. net.
HORSNELL, HORACE
THE BANKRUPT.
Crown 8f- ' o. 6s.
HOWE, P. P.
THE REPERTORY THEATRE. Cr. 8vo. 21. 6d. nit.
DRAMATIC PORTRAITS. Crown 8vo. 5s. nit.
BERNARD SHAW: A CRITICA.L STUDY. Demy 8vo.
7s. 6d. net.
J. M. SYNGE: A CRITICAL STUDT. Demy 8fJO.
7s. 6d. net.
CRITICISM (7'he .Art and Craft oj Letters). F'&ap
8vo. IS. net.
HUEFFER, FORDMADOX
HENRY JAMES: A CRITICAL STUDY. Demy 8vo.
7J. 6d. net.
COLLECTED POEMS. Dlmy 8[10. 6s. nit.
IBSEN, HENRIK
PEER GYNT. A New Translation by R. Ellia
Roberts. If? ide Crown 8[10. 5s. net.
JACOB, HAROLD
PERFUMES OF ARABY. Wid, Dlmy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
JAMES, HENRY
THE TURN OF THE SCRiW. THE Asp ERN PAPERS.
THE LESSON OF THE MASTER. DAISY MILLER.
THE DEATH OF THE LION. Tn!!: COXON FUND.
()
JAMES, HENRY (continued)
THE REVERBERATOR. GLASSES.
THE ALTAR OF THi DEAD. THE PUPIL.
THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE.
TlIE FIGURE IN THE CARPET.
Each F'cap 8vo. 2S. 6d. net.
JOHNSON, O\VEN
THE SALAMANDER.
MAKING rvIONEY.
LAMONT, L. M.
A CORONAL: AN ANTHOLOGY.
LEWISOHN, L.
THE l\10DERN DRAMA
LLUELLYN, RICHARD
THE IMPERFECT BRANCH.
LO\V, IVY
THE QUESTING BEAST.
LYNCH, BOHUN
UNOFFICIAL.
L.S.D.
McFEE, \VILLIAM
CASUALS OF THE SEA.
MACHEN, ARTHUR
HU:ROGL YPHICS.
MACKENZIE, COMPTON
THE P ASSIONATJ: ELOPEMENT. Cr. 8vo. 6s. and 25. net.
CARNIVAL. Crown 8vo. 6s. and 25. net.
SINISTER STREET. Volume 1. Crown 8vo. 6s.
SUlIlTER STREIT. Volume II. Crou'n 8Z1O. 6s.
GUT AND PAULINE. Crown 8vo. 6s.
KEJfSINGTON RHTMIS:-" Crown 4to. 5s. net.
MAKOWER, S. V.
THE OUTWARD ApPEARANCE.
MAVROGORDATO, JOHN
LJtTTllls FROM GIlEECJ:.
CASSANDRA IN TROY.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
F'cap 8vo. 25.6d.net.
Cro-on Svo. 5s. net.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Cro:vn 8vo. 6!.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Cro':,()1
8vo. 6s.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
F'cap 8vo. 25. 6d. net.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
F' cap 8vo.
Small 4to.
2S. net.
5s. net.
7
j
laftin
Secker's
Cata:ogu".
J.Y. al'tin
Se,ktrs
CatalogUi
MELVILLE, LEWIS
SOME ECCENTRICS AND A \VOMAN. Demy 8[10.
10S. 6d. net.
METHLEY, VIOLET
CAMILLE DESMOULINS: A Biography. Dy. 8VO.I5 s . net .
MEYNELL, VIOLA
LOT BARROW. Crown 8vo. 6s.
MODERN LOVERS. Cl'own 8vo. 6s.
COLUMBINE. Cl'own 8[10. 6s.
NARCISSUS. Crown 8vo. 6s.
MURRY, J. MIDDLETON [net.
DOSTOEVSKY: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d.
NORTH, LAURENCE
IMPATIENT GRISELDA. Cl'own 8vo. 6s.
THE GOLIGHTLYS: :FATHER AND SON. CI'. 8vo. 6s.
ONIONS, OLIVER
W IDDERSHINS. Cl'own 8[10. 6s.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE DEBIT ACCOUNT. Cl'own 8vo. 6s.
THE STORY OF LOUIE. Crown 8[10. 6s.
PAIN, BARRY
ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. Crown 8vo. 6s.
COLLECTED TALES: Volume I. ]l,iedium 8vo. 6s.
COLJÆCTED TALES: Volume II. Medium 8vo. 6s.
THE SHORT STORY (7' he Art and Craft of Letters).
F' cap 8vo. IS. net.
PALl\fER, JOHN
PETER PARAGON. Crown 8[10. 6s.
THE KING'S MEN. Crown 8[10. 6s.
COMEDY (7'he Art and Craft oj LItters). F'cap 800.
IS. net.
PERUGINI, l\IARK E.
THE ART OF BALLET. Demy 8vI. IU. 6d. net.
PHILIPS, AUSTIN
BATTLES OF LIFE. Crown 8[10. 61.
PRESTON, ANNA
THE RECORD OF A SILENT LIFB. Crown 800. 6s.
8
REID, FORREST
YEATS: A CRITICAL STUDY.
Martin
D 8 6d t Seeker's
y. flOe 7s. . ne .
Catalogue
ROBERTS, R. ELLIS
IBSEN: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8f/o. 7S. 6d. net.
TOLSTOI: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy.8f/0. 7s. 6d. net.
PEER GYNT: A NEW TRANSLATION. Cr.8vo. 5s. net.
SABATINI, RAFAEL
THE SEA-HAWK.
THE BANNER OF THE BULL.
Crown 8vo. 61.
Crown 8vo. 61.
SAND, MAURICE
THE HISTORY OF THE HARLEQUINADE. 7'WD
Polumes. Med. 8f/o. 25S. net the set.
SCOTT-]A1\lES, R. A.
PERSONALITY IN LITERATURE. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
SIDG\VICK, FRANK
THE BALLAV (7'he Art and Craft of Letters). F'cap
8f/o. IS. net.
SOLOGUB, FEODOR
THE OLV HOUSE.
THE LITTLE DEMON.
THE CREATED LEGEND.
Crown 8f/o. 6s.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
STONE, CHRISTOPHER
THE BURNT HOUSE. Crown 8f/o. 6s.
PARODY (7'he Art and Craft of Letters). F'cap 8f/o.
IS. net.
STRAUS, RALPH
CARRIAGES AND COACHEi.
Med. 8f/o. 18s. net.
STREET, G. S.
PEOPLE AND QUESTIONS. Wide Cr. 8f/O. 5s. net.
SWINNERTON, FRANK
GISSING: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8f/O. 7s. 6d. net.
STEVENSON: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8f/O. 7s. 6d. net.
TAYLOR, G. R. STIRLING
MARY W OLLSTONECRAFT. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
THE PSYCHOLOGY 0.. THE GREAT WAR. %s. 6d. net.
9
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MAETERLINCK: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8vo. 7s.6d.
THOMAS, EDWARD
FEMININE INFLUENCE ON TilE POEn. Demy 8vo.
10S. 6d. net.
SWINBURNE: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy.8vo. 7S. 6d. net.
PATER: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
THE TENTH MUSE. F'cap 8vo. 2S. 6d. net.
VAUGHAN, H. M.
MELEAGER. Crown 8vo. 6s.
AN AUSTRALASIAN W ANDER- YEAR. Dy.8vo.los.6d.net.
WALPOLE, HUGH
FORTITUDE.
THE DUCHESS OF W REXE.
WEST, JULIUS
CHESTERTON: A CRITICAL STUDY.
WILLIAMS, ORLO
VIE DE BOHÈME. Demy 8vo. 15S. net.
MERI':DITH: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8vo. 7s. 6d. nit.
THE ESSAY (7'he Art and Craft of Litters). F'cap
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YOUNG, FILSON
NEW LEAVES. Wide Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
A CHRISTMAS CARD. Demy 16mo. IS. nit.
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F'tap 8vo. H. net.
YOUNG. FRANCIS BRETT
DEEP SEA.
THE DARK TOWEK..
THE IRON AGE.
YOUNG, F. & E. BRETT
UNDERGROWTH. Crown 8vo. 61.
BRIDGES: A CRITICAL STUDY. Dy. 8vo. 71. 6d. net.
10
Crown 8vo. 61.
Crown 800. 61.
[ net.
Dy. 8vo. 71.6d.
Crown 8vo. 61.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Crown 8vo. 61.
PART TWO: CLASSIFIED
INDEX OF TITLES
General Literature
ART OF BALLET, THE. By Mark E. Perugini.
ART OF SILHOUETTE, THE. By Dumond Coke.
BATTLE OF THE BOYNE, THE. By D. C. Boulger.
BEHIND THE RANGES. By F. G. Aflalo.
BIRDS IN THE CALIiNDAR. By F. G. Aflalo.
CA1ULLE D:!SMOULINS. By Piolet jl"lethll'J.
CARRIAGES AND COACHES. By Ralph Straus.
CHRISTMAS CARD, A. By Filson YOU1zg.
CUMB:!RLAND LETTERS, THE. By Clementina Black.
DRA.:MATIC PORTRAITI. By P. P. Howe.
FnUNIl'{E INFLUENCE ON THE POETS. By E. 7'homas.
GUHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. By Michael Barrington.
HIEROGLYPHICS. By Arthur JJlachen.
HISTORY 01" THE HARLEQUINADE, THE. By lYl. Sand.
L.A.DERI OF THE PEOPLE. By 10seph Clayton.
LETTI:RS FROM GREECE. By 'ohn ]1,1 avrogordato.
LUiLEYI OF BATH, THE. By Clementina Black.
MAHOMET. By G. 111. Draycott.
MAllY W OLLiTONECRAFT. By G. R. Stirling 7' aylor.
Nxw LEAVES. By Filson Young.
PEOPLX AND QUESTIONS. By G. S. Strtlt.
PERSONALITY IN LITERATUltE. By R. A. Scott-Jamls.
PSYCHOLOGY OF TilE GREAT \V AR. By Stirling 7' aylof'.
REAL CAPTAIN CLEVELAND, THE. By Allan Fta.
REOILDING THE CRESCENT. By F. G. Aflalo.
f artin
Seekers
Catalogue
II
M at'tin
Setker's
Catalogue
ROBERT KETT. By Joseph Clayton.
SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING, THE. By G. L. Apperson.
SOME ECCENTRICS AND A WOMAN. By Lewis Melville.
SPECULATIVE DIALOGUES. By Lasalles Abercrombie.
STUPOR MUNDI. By Lionel Allshorn.
TENTH MusE, THE. By Edward 'l homas.
THOSE UNITED STATES. By Arnold Bennett.
VIE DE BOHÈME. By 01'10 Williams.
\VILDE MYTH, THE. By Lord Alfred Douglas.
WINDMILLS. By Gilbert Cannan.
J7erse
COLLECTED POEMS OF J. E. FLECKER.
COLLECTED POEMS OF F. 1\1. HUEFFER.
CARMINA VARIA. By C. Kennett Burrow.
CORONAL, A. A New Anthology. By L. M. Lamont.
GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND, THE. By J. E.
Fluker. (See Collected Poems.)
KENSINGTON RHYMES. By Compton l11ackenzie.
Drama
DRAMATIC WORKS OF ST. JOHN HANKIN. 3 vols.
DRAMATIC \VORKS OF GERHART HAUPTMANN. 6 vols.
CASSANDRA IN TROY. By 'John Mavrogordato.
MAGIC. By G. K. Chesterton.
l\.tIODERN DRAMA, THE. By L. Lewisohn.
PEER GYNT. 'I ranslated by R. Ellis Roberts.
R:ePERTORY THEATRE, THE. By P. P. Howe.
THOMPSON. By St. John Hankin and G. Calderon.
u.
Martin
Seekers
C atalogUl
AUSTRALASIAN WANDER YEAR, AN. By H. 111. Faughall.
EGYPTIAN ÆSTHETICS. By René Francis.
FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND. By Norman Douglas.
NooKs AND CORNERS OF OLD ENGLAND. By Allan Fea.
OLD CALABRIA. By Norman Douglas.
OLD ENGLISH HOUSEs. By Allan Fea.
PERFUMES OF ARABY. By Harold Jacob.
Travel
Martin Seeker's Series if
Critical Studies
ROBERT BRIDGES. By F. E. Brett Young.
SAMUEL BUTLER. By Gilbert Connan.
G. K. CHESTERTON. By Julius West.
FEODOR DOSTOEVSKY. By J. Mz'ddleton JJlurry.
GEORGE GISSING. By Frank Swinnerton.
THOMAS HARDY. By Lascelles Abercrombie.
HENRIK IBSEN. By R. Ellis Roberts.
HENRY JAMES. By Ford l'vladox Hueffer.
RUDYARD KIPLING. By Cyril Falls.
MAURICE IVIAETERLINCK. By Una 'I aylor.
GEORGE MEREDITH. By Orio lf7illiams.
WILLIAM MORRIS. By John Drinkwater.
WALTER PATER. B'V Edward 'Ihomas.
D. G. ROSSETTI. By John Drinkwater_
BERNARD SHAW. B'V P. P. Howe.
R. L. STEVENSON. By Frank Swinntrton.
A. C. SWINBURNE. By Edward 'Ihomas.
J. M. SYNGE. By P. P. Howe.
LEo TOLSTOI. B'V R. Ellis Roberts.
WALT WHITMAN.' By Basil de Selincourt.
W. B. YEATS, Bv Forrest Reid.
13
}'1 at"""
Seeke1" s
C.t..Ùig'.l-e
The Art and Craft of Letters
BALLAD,THE. By Frank Sidgwick.
COMEDY. By John Palmer.
CRITICISM. By P. P. Howe.
EpIc, THE. By Lascelles Abercrombie
ESSAY, THE. By Orlo Williams.
HISTORY. By R. H. Gretton.
LYRIC, THE. By John Drinkwater.
PARODY. By Christopher Stone.
PUNCTUATION. By Filson Young.
SATIRE. By Gilbert Cannan.
SHORT STORY, THE. By Barry Pain.
F ietion
ALTAR OF THE DEAD, THE. By Henry James.
Asp ERN PAPERS, THE. By Henry James.
BANKRUPT, THE. By Horace Horsncll.
BANNER OF THE BULL, THE. By Rafael Sabatini.
BATTLES OF LIFE. By AustÏ1z Philips.
BEAST IN THE JUNGLE. THE. By Henry James.
BREAKING-POINT. By 1I1ichael Artzibashef.
BURNT HOUSE, THE. By Christopher Stone.
CARNIVAL. By Compton Mackenzie.
CASUALS OF THE SEA. By TPilliam l'vlcFee.
COLLRCTED TALES: Vol. I. By Barry Pain.
COLLECTED TALES: Vol. II. By Barry Pain.
COLUMBINE. By Fiola Me'j'nell.
COMMON ClIORD, THE. By Phyllis Bottome.
14
COXON FUND, THE. By Henry James.
CREATED LEGEND, THE. By Feodor Sologllb.
DAISY MILLER. By Henry James.
DARK TOWER, THE. By E. Brett roung.
DEATH OF THE LION, THE. By Henry James.
DEBIT ACCOUNT, THE. By Oliver Onions.
DEEP SEA. By F. Brett r oung.
DUCHESS OF WREXE, THE. By Hu&h TValpole.
FIGURE IN THE CARPET, THE. By Henry. James.
FOOL'S TRAGEDY, THE. By A. S(ott Craven.
FORTITUD:!. By Hugh TValpole.
GLASSES. By Henry James.
GOLIGHTLYS, THE. By Laurence North.
Guy AND PAULINE. By Compton !vI ackenzie.
IMPATIENT GRISELDA. By Laurence North.
IMPERFECT BRANCH, THE. By Richard Lluellyn.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE. By O. Onions.
IRON AGE, THE. By F. Brett roung.
KING'S l\IEN, THE. By John Palmer.
L.S.D. By Bohun Lynch.
LESSON OF THE l\IASTER., THE. By Henry James.
LITTLE DEMON, THE. By Feodor Sologub.
LOT BARROW. By Fiola Meynell.
l\1ARRIAGE OF QUIXOTE, THE. By Donald Armstrong.
.l\IAKING MONEY. By Owen Johnson.
l\1ELEAGER. By H. M. Faughan.
MILLIONAIRE, THE. By Michael Artzíbashef.
MODERN LOVERS. By Fiola IJleynell.
NARCISSUS. By Fiola Meynell.
OLD MOLE. By Gilbert Cannan.
OLD HOUSE, THE. By Feodor Sologub.
ONE KIND AND ANOTHER. By Bm'ry Pain.
Martin
Seeker's
Catalogue
15
Martin
Seekers
C
talogue
OUTWARD ApPEARANCE, THE. By Stanley Y. Makower.
PASSIONATE ELOPEMENT, THE. By Compton /t,lackenzie.
PETER PARAGON. By John Palmer.
PU
IL, THE. By Henry 1 ames .
QUESTING BEAST, THE. By Ivy Low.
RECORD OF A SILENT LIFE, THE. By Anna Preston.
REVERBERATOR. THE. By Henry James.
ROUND THE CORNER. By Gilbert Cannan.
SALAMANDER. THE. By Owen Johnson.
SANINE. By /t,lichael Artzibashe{.
SEA HAWK, THE. B'Y Rafael Sabatini.
SECURITY . By I vor Brown.
SINISTER STREET. I. By Compton Mackenzie.
SINISTER STREET. II. By Compton Mackenzie.
STORY OF LOUIE, THE. By Oliver Onions.
T ALES OF THE REVOLUTION. By M. Artzìbashef.
TELLING THE TRUTH. By William Hewlett.
TRUE DIMENSION
THE. By 11' arrington Dawson.
TURN OF THE SCREW, THE. By Henry 1 ames .
UNCLE'S ADVICE. By William Hewlett.
UNDERGROWTH. By F. fj' E. Brett roung.
UNDERMAN, THE. By 10seph Clayton.
UNOFFICIAL. By Bohun Lynch.
\VIDDERSHINS. By Oliver Onions.
YEARS OF PLENTY. By Ivor Brown.
YOUNG EARNEST. By Gilbert Cannan.
BALLANTYNE PRESS : LONDON AND EDINBURGH
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Open Library