G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study Part 8

The contradiction comes of an inveterate nominalism. To G.K.C. all good politics are summed up in the words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. But n.o.body, not even a Frenchman, can explain what they mean. Chesterton used to believe that they mean Liberalism, being led astray by the sound of the first word, but he soon realized his error. Let a man say "I believe in Liberty" and only the vagueness of the statement preserves it from the funniness of a Higher Thinker's affirmation, "I believe in Beauty." A man has to _feel_ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, for they are not in the nature of facts. And one suspects horribly that what Chesterton really feels is merely the masculine liberty, equality and fraternity of the public-house, where men meet together but never do anything. For Chesterton has not yet asked us to do anything, he only requests Parliament to refrain. He supports no political programme. He is opposed to Party Government, which is government by the Government.

He is in favour of Home Rule, it may be inferred; and of making things nasty for the Jews, it may be supposed. But he does not poach on the leader-writers' preserves, and his political programme is left hazy.

His opposition to Liberal proposals brings him near the Tories. If the Liberals continue in power for a few years longer, and Home Rule drops out of the things opposed by Tories, the latter may well find Chesterton among their doubtful a.s.sets. He will probably continue to call himself a Liberal and a "child of the French Revolution," but that will be only his fun. For the interesting abortions to which the French Revolution gave birth--well, they are quite another story.

Chesterton is a warm supporter of the queerly mixed proposals that are known as the "rights of small nationalities," and the smaller the nationality, the more warmly he supports (so he would have us believe) its demand for self-government. Big fleas have little fleas, alas, and that is the difficulty he does not confront. For Home Rule carried to its final sub-division is simply home rule; the independence of homes.

Political Home Rule is only a.s.sented to on general principles; apparently on the ground that on the day when an Englishman's home really does become his castle he will not, so to speak, mind much whether he is an Englishman or an Irishman.

And here we may bid farewell to the politician who is Chesterton. His politics are like his perverse definitions of the meaning of such words as progress and reform. He is like a child who plays about with the hands of a clock, and makes the surprising discovery that some clocks may be made to tell a time that does not exist--with the small hand at twelve and the large at six, for example. Also that if a clock goes fast, it comes to register an hour behind the true time, and the other way round. And so Chesterton goes on playing with the times, until at last a horrid suspicion grips us. What if he cannot tell the time himself?

VIII

A DECADENT OF SORTS

AN idea, if treated gently, may be brought up to perform many useful tasks. It is, however, apt to pine in solitude, and should be allowed to enjoy the company of others of its own kind. It is much easier to overwork an idea than a man, and of the two, the wearied idea presents an infinitely more pathetic appearance. Those of us who, for our sins, have to review the novels of other people, are accustomed to the saddening spectacle of a poor little idea, beautiful and fresh in its youth, come wearily to its tombstone on page 300 (where or whereabouts novels end), trailing after it an immense load of stiff and heavy puppets, taken down from the common property-cupboards of the nation's fiction, and not even dusted for the occasion. _Ma.n.a.live_, as we have seen, suffered from its devotion to one single idea, but the poor little thing was kept going to the bitter end by the flow of humorous encouragement given it by the author. The later works of Chesterton, however, are symbolized by a performing flea, dragging behind it a little cartload of pa.s.sengers. But it sometimes happens that the humour of _Ma.n.a.live_ is not there, that one weary idea has to support an intolerable deal of prose.

In _An Essay on Two Cities_[3] there is a long pa.s.sage ill.u.s.trating the adventures of a man who tried to find people in London by the names of the places. He might go into Buckingham Palace in search of the Duke of Buckingham, into Marlborough House in quest of the Duke of Marlborough.

He might even look for the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo.

I wonder that no one has written a wild romance about the adventures of such an alien, seeking the great English aristocrats, and only guided by the names; looking for the Duke of Bedford in the town of that name, seeking for some trace of the Duke of Norfolk in Norfolk. He might sail for Wellington in New Zealand to find the ancient seat of the Wellingtons. The last scene might show him trying to learn Welsh in order to converse with the Prince of Wales.

Here is an idea that is distinctly amusing when made to fill one short paragraph, and might be deadly tedious if extended into a wild romance.

Perhaps the best way of summarizing the peculiar decadence into which Chesterton seemed at one time to be falling is by the statement that up to the present he has not found time to write the book, but has done others like it. And yet the decadence has never showed signs of that _fin de siecle_ rustiness that marked the decadent movement (if it was really a movement and not just an obsession) of the generation that preceded Chesterton. He cursed it in the dedication to Mr. E. C. Bentley of _The Man who was Thursday_, and he remained true to the point of view expressed in that curse for ever afterwards.

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul, when we were boys together.

Science announced nonent.i.ty, and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay.

Round us in antic order their crippled vices came-- l.u.s.t that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.

Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.

Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.

They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.

The Chestertonian decadence was not even an all-round falling-off.

If anybody were to make the statement that in the year nineteen-hundred-and-something Chesterton produced his worst work it would be open to anybody else to declare, with equal truth, that in the same year Chesterton produced his best work. And the year in which these extremes met would be either 1913 or 1914, the years of _Father Brown_ and _The Flying Inn_ on one hand, and of _Father Brown_ and some of the songs of _The Flying Inn_ on the other. It was not a technical decline, but the period of certain intellectual wearinesses, when Chesterton's mental resilience failed him for a time, and he welcomed with too much enthusiasm the nasty ideas from which no man is wholly free.

The main feature indeed of this period of decadence is the brandishing about of a whole ma.s.s of antipathies. A man is perfectly ent.i.tled to hate what he will, but it is generally a.s.sumed that the hater has some ideas on the subject of the reform of the hatee. But Chesterton is as devoid of suggestions as a goat is of modesty. A man may have a violent objection against women earning their own livings, and yet be regarded as a reasonable being if he has any alternative proposals for the well-being of the unendowed and temporarily or permanently unmarriageable woman, with no relatives able to support her--and there are two or three millions of such women in the United Kingdom. But a mere "You shouldn't" is neither here nor there.

Take this verse. It was written two or three years ago and is from a poem ent.i.tled _To a Turk_.

With us too rage against the rood Your devils and your swine; A colder scorn of womanhood, A baser fear of wine, And l.u.s.t without the harem, And Doom without the G.o.d, Go. It is not this rabble Sayeth to you "Ichabod."

A previous stanza talks about "the creedless chapel." Here is a whole ma.s.s of prejudices collected into a large splutter at the expense of England. If the verse means anything at all, it means that the English are nearer the beasts than the Turks.

Another of Chesterton's intellectual aberrations is his anti-Semitism.

He continually denied in the columns of The Daily Herald that he was an anti-Semite, but his references to the Jews are innumerable and always on the same side. If one admits what appears to be Chesterton's contention that Judaism is largely just an exclusive form of contemporary atheism, then one is ent.i.tled to ask, Why is a wicked Gentile atheist merely an atheist, while a Jewish atheist remains a Jew? Surely the morals of both are on the same level, and the atheism, and not the race, is the offensive feature. The Jews have their sinners and their saints, including the greatest Saint of all.

They and they only, amongst all mankind, Received the transcript of the eternal mind; Were trusted with His own engraven laws, And const.i.tuted guardians of His cause: Their's were the prophets, their's the priestly call, And their's, by birth, the Saviour of us all.

Even if Chesterton cannot work himself up to Cowper's enthusiasm (and few of us can), he cannot deny that the race he is continually blackguarding was preparing his religion, and discovering the way to health at a time when his own Gentile ancestors were probably performing human sacrifices and eating worms. Unquestionably what is the matter with the modern Jew, especially of the educated cla.s.ses, is that he refuses to be impressed by the Christian Church. But the Christian Church cannot fairly be said to have made herself attractive in the past; her methods of Inquisition, for example. . . .

It is difficult to write apathetically on this extreme instance of a great writer's intolerance. One single example will suffice. A year or two ago, a Jew called Beilis was put on his trial (after an imprisonment of nearly three years) for the murder of a small Christian boy named Yushinsky, in order that his blood might be used for ritual purposes. Yushinsky, who was found dead under peculiar circ.u.mstances, was probably a Jew himself, but that does not affect the point at issue.

Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., tried to arouse an agitation in order to secure the freedom of Beilis, because it was perfectly evident from the behaviour of certain parties that the prisoner's conviction would be the signal for the outbreak of a series of ma.s.sacres of the Jews, and because a case which had taken nearly three years to prepare was obviously a very thin case. Chesterton wrote a ribald article in The Daily Herald on Mr. Henderson's attempt at intervention, saying in effect, How do you know that Beilis isn't guilty? Now it is impossible to hold the belief that Beilis might be guilty and at the same time disbelieve that the Jews are capable of committing human sacrifice. When a leading Russian critic named Rosanov, also an anti-Semite, issued a pamphlet proclaiming that the Jews did, in fact, commit this loathsome crime, he was ignominiously ejected from a prominent Russian literary society. The comparison should appeal to Chesterton.

The nadir of these antipathies is reached in _The Flying Inn_, a novel published a few months before the Great War broke out, and before we all made the discovery that, hold what prejudices we will, we are all immensely dependent on one another. In this book we are given a picture of England of the future, conquered by the Turk. As a concession to Islam, all intoxicating drink is prohibited in England. It is amusing to note that a few months after the publication of this silly prognostication, the greatest Empire in Christendom prohibited drink within its frontiers in order to conquer the Turk--and his Allies. A Patrick Dalroy, an Irishman (with red hair), and of course a giant, has been performing Homeric feats against the conquering Turks. A Lord Ivywood, an abstraction bloodless to the point of albinism, is at the head of affairs in England. The Jews dominate everything. Dalroy and Humphrey Pump, an evicted innkeeper, discovering that drinks may still be sold where an inn-sign may be found, start journeying around England loaded only with the sign-board of "The Green Man," a large cheese, and a keg of rum. They are, in fact, a peripatetic public-house, and the only democratic inst.i.tution of its kind left in England. Every other chapter the new innkeepers run into Ivywood and his hangers-on. As the story wriggles its inconsequent length, the author curses through the mouths of his heroes. He anathematizes teetotallers, brewers, vegetarians, temperance drinks, model villages, aesthetic poets, Oriental art, Parliament, politicians, Jews, Turks, and infidels in general, futurist painting, and other things. In the end, Dalroy and Pump lead a vast insurrection, and thousands of dumb, long-suffering Englishmen attack Ivywood in his Hall, and so free their country from the Turk.

Only the songs already described in Chapter V preserve this book from extreme dullness. Technically it is poor. The action is as scattered as the parts of a futurist picture. A whole chapter is devoted to a picture of a newspaper editor at work, inventing the phraseology of indefiniteness. Epigrams are few and are very much overworked. Once a catchword is sprung, it is run to death. The Turk who by means of silly puns attempts to prove that Islamic civilization is better than European, never ceases in his efforts. The heartlessness of Ivywood is continuous, and ends in insanity.

Parts of _The Flying Inn_ convey the impression that Chesterton was tired of his own style and his own manner of controversy, and had taken to parodying himself. The arguments of the already-mentioned Turk, for example, might well pa.s.s for a really good parody of the theological dispute in the first chapter of _The Ball and the Cross_. There, it may be remembered, two men (more or less) discussed the symbolism of b.a.l.l.s and crosses. In _The Flying Inn_ people discuss the symbolism of crescents and crosses, and the Turk, Misysra Ammon, explains, "When the English see an English youth, they cry out 'He is crescent!' But when they see an English aged man, they cry out 'He is cross!'" On these lines a great deal of _The Flying Inn_ is written.

We now come to Chesterton's political decadence, traceable, like many features in his history, to Mr. Hilaire Belloc. The friendship between G.K.C. and the ex-Liberal M.P. for Rochdale bore a number of interesting fruits. There were the amusing ill.u.s.trations to The Great Enquiry, an amusing skit on the Tariff Reform League, to Emmanuel Burden and The Green Overcoat. But curious artificialities sprang into existence, like so many funguses, under the lengthening shadow of Mr. Belloc. To him is due the far-fetchedness of some of Chesterton's pleading in support of the miraculous element in religion. To him also is due the growing antipathy against the Liberal Party and the party system in general.

Up to the end of January, 1913, Chesterton had continued his connection with The Daily News. On January 28th there took place, at the Queen's Hall, London, a debate between Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Hilaire Belloc.

The latter moved "That if we do not re-establish the inst.i.tution of property, we shall re-establish the inst.i.tution of slavery; there is no third course." The debate was an extremely poor affair, as neither combatant dealt, except parenthetically, with his opponent's points. In the course of it Mr. Shaw, to ill.u.s.trate an argument, referred to Chesterton as "a flourishing property of Mr. Cadbury," a remark which G.K.C. appears to have taken to heart. His quarrel with official Liberalism was at the moment more bitter than ever before. Mr. Belloc had taken a very decided stand on the Marconi affair, and Mr. Cecil Chesterton, G.K.C.'s brother, was st.u.r.dily supporting him. The Daily News, on the other hand, was of course vigorously defending the Government. Chesterton suddenly severed his long connection with The Daily News and came over to The Daily Herald. This paper, which is now defunct, except in a weekly edition, was the organ of Syndicalism and rebellion in general. In a letter to the editor of The Herald, Chesterton explained with pathetic irony that The Daily News "had come to stand for almost everything I disagree with; and I thought I had better resign before the next great measure of social reform made it illegal to go on strike."

A week or so later, Chesterton started his series of Sat.u.r.day articles in The Daily Herald. His first few efforts show that he made a determined attempt to get down to the intellectual level of the Syndicalist. But anybody who sits down to read through these articles will notice that before many weeks had pa.s.sed Chesterton was beginning to feel a certain discomfort in the company he was keeping. He writes to say that he likes writing for The Daily Herald because it is the most revolutionary paper he knows, "even though I do not agree with all the revolutions it advocates," and goes on to state that, personally, he likes most of the people he meets. Having thus, as it were, cleared his conscience in advance, Chesterton let himself go. He attacked the Government for its alleged nepotism, dishonesty, and corruption. He ended one such article with, "There is nothing but a trumpet at midnight, calling for volunteers." The New Statesman then published an article, "Trumpets and How to Blow Them," suggesting, among other things, that there was little use in being merely destructive. It is typical of what I have called the decadence of Chesterton that he borrowed another writer's most offensive description of a lady prominently connected with The New Statesman in order to quote it with glee by way of answer to this article. The Syndicalist hates the Socialist for his catholicity. The Socialist wishes to see the world a comfortable place, the Syndicalist merely wishes to work in a comfortable factory. Chesterton seized the opportunity, being mildly rebuked by a Socialist paper, to declare that the Fabians "are constructing a man-trap." A little later on he writes, with reference to a controversialist's request, that he should explain why, after all, he was not a Socialist:

If he wants to know what the Marconi Scandal has saved us from, I can tell him. It has saved us from Socialism. My G.o.d! what Socialism, and run by what sort of Socialists! My G.o.d! what an escape!

If we had transferred the simplest national systems to the State (as we wanted to do in our youth) it is to these men that we should have transferred them.

There never was an example of more muddled thinking. Let us apply it to something definite, to that harmless, necessary article of diet, milk, to be precise, cow's milk. To-day milk is made expensive by a multiplicity of men who have interests in keeping milk expensive. There are too many milkmen's wages to be paid, too many milk-carts to be built, too many shop-rents paid, and too much apparatus bought, simply because we have not yet had the intelligence to let any munic.i.p.ality or county run its own milk-service and so avoid all manner of duplication.

Chesterton's answer to this is: "I used to think so, but what about Lord Murray, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. G.o.dfrey Isaacs?" It would be as relevant to say, "What about Dr. Crippen, Jack Sheppard, and Ananias,"

or, "But what about Mr. Bernard Shaw, the Grand Duke Nicolas, and my brother?" The week later Chesterton addresses the Labour Party in these words:

Comrades (I mean gentlemen), there is only one real result of anything you have done. You have justified the vulgar slander of the suburban Conservatives that men from below are men who merely want to rise. It is a lie. No one knows so well as you that it was a lie: you who drove out Grayson and deserted Lansbury. Before you went into Parliament to represent the working cla.s.ses, the working cla.s.ses were feared. Since you have represented the working cla.s.ses, they are not even respected. Just when there was a hope of Democracy, you have revived the notion that the demagogue was only the sycophant. Just when there had begun to be an English people to represent, you have been paid to misrepresent them. Get out of our path. Take your money; go.

Regarding which pa.s.sage there is only to be said that it is grossly unjust both to the Labour Party and to the working cla.s.ses. It was followed up in subsequent numbers by violent attacks on woman suffrage and the economic independence of women; a proceeding quite commendably amusing in a paper with a patron saint surnamed Pankhurst. A promise to say no more about Votes for Women was followed by several more spirited references to it, from the same point of view. After which Chesterton cooled off and wrote about detective stories, telephones, and worked himself down into an all-round fizzle of disgust at things as they are, to ill.u.s.trate which "I will not run into a paroxysm of citations again,"

as Milton said in the course of his Epistle in two books on Reformation in England.

The most unpleasant feature of The Daily Herald articles is the a.s.sumption of superiority over the British working man, expressing itself in the patronizing tone. The British working man, as Chesterton sees him, is a very different person from what he is. If the Middle Ages had been the peculiar period Chesterton appears to believe it was, then his working man would be merely a trifling anachronism of five centuries or so. But he is not even that. Five centuries would be but a trifle compared with the difference between him and his real self.

Chesterton's att.i.tude towards the working man must resemble that of a certain chivalrous knight towards the distressed damsel he thought he had rescued. He observed, "Well, little one, aren't you going to show me any grat.i.tude?" And the lady replied, "I wasn't playing Andromeda, fathead, I was looking for blackberries. Run away and play."

The att.i.tude of the middle-cla.s.s suburbanite towards the working man and his wife is not exactly graceful, but the former at any rate does not pretend to love the latter, and to find all decency of feeling and righteousness of behaviour in them. Chesterton both pretends to reverence the working cla.s.ses, and exhibits a profound contempt for them. He is never happier than when he is telling the working cla.s.ses that they are wrong. He delights in attacking the Labour Party in order to have the supreme satisfaction of demonstrating that working men are their own worst enemies.

At the beginning of August, 1914, the Great War broke out, and everything seemed changed. No man now living will be able to say definitely what effects the war will have upon literature, but one thing is certain: nothing will remain the same. We have already learned to view each other with different eyes. For better or for worse, old animosities and party cleavages have given way to unforeseen combinations. To a.s.sert that we have all grown better would be untrue.

But it might reasonably be argued that the innate generousness of the British people has been vitiated by its childlike trust in its journalists, and the men who own them. When Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote a brilliant defence of the British case for intervention in the war, his mild denigration of some of the defects of the English nation, a few trivial inaccuracies, and his perverse bellicosity of style made him the object of the attentions of a horde of panic-stricken heresy-hunters.

Those of us who had not the fortune to escape the Press by service abroad, especially those of us who derived our living from it, came to loathe its misrepresentation of the English people. There seemed no end to the nauseous vomits of undigested facts and dishonourable prejudices that came pouring out in daily streams. Then we came to realize, as never before, the value of such men as Chesterton. Christianity and the common decencies fare badly at the hands of the bishops of to-day, and the journalists threw them over as soon as the war began. But, unfortunately for us all, G.K.C. fell seriously ill in the early period of the war, and was in a critical state for many months. But not before he had published a magnificent recantation--for it is no less--of all those bitternesses which, in their sum, had very nearly caused him to hate the British. It is a poem, _Blessed are the Peacemakers_.

Of old with a divided heart I saw my people's pride expand, Since a man's soul is born apart By mother earth and fatherland.

I knew, through many a tangled tale, Glory and truth not one but two: King, Constable and Amirail Took me like trumpets: but I knew

A blacker thing than blood's own dye Weighed down great Hawkins on the sea; And Nelson turned his blindest eye On Naples and on liberty.

Therefore to you my thanks, O throne, O thousandfold and frozen folk, For whose cold frenzies all your own The Battle of the Rivers broke;

Who have no faith a man could mourn, Nor freedom any man desires; But in a new clean light of scorn Close up my quarrel with my sires;

Who bring my English heart to me, Who mend me like a broken toy; Till I can see you fight and flee, And laugh as if I were a boy.