· · 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 
