The Circus, and Other Essays and Fugitive Pieces Part 14

Walt Whitman and Gilbert K. Chesterton seem a strange combination. But Chesterton himself has acknowledged that he found in "Leaves of Gra.s.s" a great and wholesome inspiration. This seems strange to us, for the American Whitmanite or Whitmaniac is a pale long-haired creature of many 'isms, directly the opposite of a robust Christian like Chesterton. But in the eighteen-nineties when "science announced nonent.i.ty and art admired decay" Walt Whitman's "barbaric yawp sounding over the roofs of the world" seemed a healthy sound. So in his dedication to "The Man Who Was Thursday," Chesterton writes:

Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled; Some giants laboured in that crowd to lift it from the world.

I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things; And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pa.s.s, Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of gra.s.s; Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain-- Truth out of Tusitala, spoke and pleasure out of pain.

Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey, Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.

But we were young; we lived to see G.o.d break the bitter charms, G.o.d and the good Republic come riding back in arms: We have seen the city of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved-- Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

For some reason, it is difficult to think of Chesterton in love. We can readily think of him fighting or praying, but to think of him making love requires an effort of the imagination. Yet he is happily married, and while his love poems are few, they are n.o.ble in thought and beautiful in expression. One of the most personal and characteristic of them is that to which he gives the name "Confessional."

CONFESSIONAL

Now that I kneel at the throne, O Queen, Pity and pardon me.

Much have I striven to sing the same, Brother of beast and tree; Yet when the stars catch me alone Never a linnet sings-- And the blood of a man is a bitter voice And cries for foolish things.

Not for me be the vaunt of woe; Was not I from a boy Vowed with the helmet and spear and spur To the blood-red banner of joy?

A man may sing his psalms to a stone, Pour his blood for a weed, But the tears of a man are a sudden thing, And come not of his creed.

Nay, but the earth is kind to me, Though I cried for a star, Leaves and gra.s.ses, feather and flower, Cover the foolish scar, Prophets and saints and seraphim Lighten the load with song, And the heart of a man is a heavy load For a man to bear along.

Many poets are writing of war these days. But they write of war too self-consciously, they are too sophisticated, too grown-up. They are so busy getting lessons from the war, describing its moral and social significance, that they have nothing to say about the actual facts of battle. But Chesterton's war poems are splendid primitive things, full of the thunder of crashing arms, of courage and of faith. I think that his "Lepanto" is without an equal among the war poems of the century. It begins as follows:

LEPANTO

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard, It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips, For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea.

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.

The cold queen of England is looking in the gla.s.s; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Ma.s.s; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young.

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, Don John of Austria is going to the war, Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold, Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.

Don John laughing in the brave beard curles, Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world, Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.

Love-light of Spain--hurrah!

Death-light of Africa!

Don John of Austria Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star, (Don John of Austria is going to the war).

He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees, His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.

He shakes the peac.o.c.k gardens as he rises from his ease, And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees, And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.

Giants and the Genii, Multiplex of wing and eye, Whose strong obedience broke the sky When Solomon was king.

If any living poet deserves to be called the laureate of democracy, that poet is Gilbert K. Chesterton. I do not base this statement so much on his serious poems in praise of democracy, as on his light verse. In his gay ballades, full of rollicking humor, we find every now and then a bit of shrewd satire, a devastating criticism of the false leaders, of the hypocrites and tyrants who sit in high places. Better than any other writer of our day, Chesterton knows how to drive his rapier of rhyme to the very heart of hypocrisy and injustice. There is sound social and moral criticism back of the irresistible nonsense of "A Ballade of Suicide":

A BALLADE OF SUICIDE

The gallows in my garden, people say, Is new and neat and adequately tall.

I tie the noose on in a knowing way As one that knots his necktie for a ball; But just as all the neighbours--on the wall-- Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"

The strangest whim has seized me.... After all I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay-- My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall-- I see a little cloud all pink and grey-- Perhaps the rector's mother will _not_ call-- I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall That mushrooms could be cooked another way-- I never read the works of Juvenal-- I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing day; The decadents decay; the pedants pall; And H. G. Wells has found that children play, And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall; Rationalists are growing rational-- And through thick woods one finds a stream astray, So secret that the very sky seems small-- I think I will not hang myself to-day.

envoi

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall-- I think I will not hang myself to-day.

But the poems which most thoroughly justify their author's claim to the t.i.tle of poet are the religious poems, such poems as "The House of Christmas," "A Hymn for the Church Militant," "The Nativity" and "The Wise Men." In the last-named poem we find Chesterton's love of democracy and his hatred of pretentious scientific dogmatism fully expressed, and we find also the thing which is the basis of these ideas--his deep and abiding faith. He writes:

THE WISE MEN

Step softly, under snow or rain, To find the place where men can pray; The way is all so very plain That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore On tortured puzzles from our youth, We know all labyrinthine lore, We are the three wise men of yore, And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill, And lost the wood among the trees, And learnt long names for every ill, And served the mad G.o.ds, naming still The Furies the Eumenides.

The G.o.ds of violence took the veil Of vision and philosophy, The Serpent that brought all men bale, He bites his own accursed tail, And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly ... it has hailed and snowed ...

With voices low and lanterns lit; So very simple is the road, That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white, And blinding white the breaking day; We walk bewildered in the light, For something is too large for sight, And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun (... We need but walk a little way, We need but see a latch undone ...) The Child that played with moon and sun Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed, The old strange house that is our own, Where tricks of words are never said, And Mercy is as plain as bread, And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly; humble are the skies, And low and large and fierce the Star; So very near the Manger lies That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes To roar to the resounding plain, And the whole heaven shouts and shakes, For G.o.d Himself is born again, And we are little children walking Through the snow and rain.

This is indeed the beautiful expression of a beautiful impression; it has in every line the unmistakable glow of n.o.ble poetry; it is musical, imaginative, direct, and it is pa.s.sionately Christian. It is the sort of thing which makes it easy to understand why many people, including, it is said, Mrs. Chesterton, believe that this great humorist, this formidable debater, this brilliant novelist, this sound critic, this accomplished essayist, is, before and above all other things, a poet.

LIONEL JOHNSON, ERNEST DOWSON, AUBREY BEARDSLEY

In considering that brief and tumultuous period in English literature which is sometimes called The aesthetic Renaissance, it is inevitable that three figures should stand out with particular vividness. They are Lionel Johnson, Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson--a great poet, a brilliant, but unbalanced ill.u.s.trator, and another poet, who wrote a great deal of rubbish and about four poems which are genuine and important contributions to English literature. What is the bond between these men? Why should they be grouped together?

They might be grouped together because they all three were creative artists whose careers, so far as the world knows, ended with the nineteenth century. They might be grouped together because they were animated by the same feeling, a violent reaction against the hideous scientific dogmatism, the deadly materialism of the much vaunted Victorian era. And they might be grouped together because all three were artists, seekers after that real but elusive thing called beauty, a thing which they found at last when they had made their submission to her who is the mother of all learning, all culture and all the arts, the Catholic Church.

And yet, although the fact that their conversion establishes a real and n.o.ble connection between these three men of genius, their characters and talents differ greatly. Only one of them--and that one Lionel Johnson--was directly inspired through a considerable period of years by his Catholic Faith. Ernest Dowson, the poet, and Aubrey Beardsley, the artist, became Catholics towards the end of their artistic careers, too late for the Faith to give to their work that purity and strength which are the guarantees of immortality. But Lionel Johnson found his Faith almost as soon as he found his genius, celebrated it in poems of enduring beauty, and left the world a precious heritage of song.

In his book "The Eighteen-Nineties," Mr. Holbrook Jackson has pointed out the significance of the revival of aestheticism which took place in the closing years of the nineteenth century, and has shown that it was symptomatic of a sort of idealistic revolt. The poets and artists were sick of the dogmatic materialism which dominated the mind of England.

Huxley and Darwin seemed to have dragged the angels out of Heaven, even to have torn down Heaven itself, and to have put in its place nothing save a dull rational and inhuman scientific theory. Against this scientific dogmatism in matters intellectual and spiritual, and against a sort of bleak smugness in matters moral and social, the young idealists of the eighteen-nineties rebelled. Sometimes the thing which they advocated was cheap and tawdry enough, sometimes it was base and vicious. But they were at any rate in revolt--they had found at last that the religion of science and the morality of merely human convention could not satisfy their hearts and their souls.

And there was another phase to the renaissance of the nineties--it was a romantic adventure. These men were all of them young and ardent. If there had been some brave and n.o.ble adventure at hand, they would have undertaken it with song on their lips and laughter in their hearts. They longed to be in the daring minority, to battle for lost causes. Now, this tendency by itself, this ambition lacking a worthy aim is a dangerous thing. So some of these young men fell by the wayside, but others saw before them the great and immortal adventure, forsook their trivial toys and poses and att.i.tudes, and enlisted in the shining army of a King more shamefully ill-used than Charles I, more powerful than Charlemagne.

For Aubrey Beardsley I have the greatest sympathy and admiration. That being the case, let me say that for the honor of his memory I wish that every drawing that he made, every one of those deftly-made arrangements in black and white, might be destroyed. It seems to me that he was of all the men of the eighteen-nineties the one genuine decadent. It is not only in such openly vicious things as the ill.u.s.trations to Wilde's "Salome" that we find deliberate immorality in intention and expression, there is in all his work, however simple and even n.o.ble may be the theme, as for instance his ill.u.s.trations to Malory's "Morte D'Arthur," a definite and unmistakable perversity, a sure sign of physical, mental and moral sickness.

Aubrey Beardsley's mental and moral sickness at first showed itself only in a contempt for the conventions of art and in especial for the conventions of proportion and prospective. It has sometimes been said that it is as absurd to rebel against the moral law as against the law of gravitation. The first revolt of a consumptive young architectural draughtsman with an extraordinary talent for line was against natural law--against the law of proportion. The first drawings which brought him any notoriety were extraordinary for two things--their admirable draughtsmanship and their deliberate eccentricities of proportion. He drew nothing but monsters--men eight feet tall with microscopic heads, women with arms as long as their entire bodies. The revolt against the moral law came later--the selection of hideously obscene subjects, the painful obsession with s.e.x. Then came the sick boy's discoveries that after all beauty was no more in the weird ugliness he had celebrated than it was in the smug conventions of sentimental Victorian painting. A few weeks before his death Aubrey Beardsley found the immortal abiding place of beauty. Received into the Church, Aubrey Beardsley repented bitterly his misuse of his talents, and plead with his friends to destroy all his immoral drawings, of which he was now thoroughly ashamed. "Burn all my bawdy pictures," he wrote--a dying prayer which his pagan friends utterly disregarded. He had striven to find beauty in sin, and he knew that this seeking was in vain. For now he had found beauty, now he had learned to see in the lamp which is beauty the light which is G.o.d.