G. K. Chesterton - A Criticism E-Book

Cecil Chesterton

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 210

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Cecil Edward Chesterton was the brother of G.K. Chesterton, a journalist and political commentator throughout his short life of only 39 years. His biography of his better-known brother was first published anonymously, but it did not take long to discover the real author.

Leseprobe

G. K. Chesterton

A Criticism

CECIL CHESTERTON

G .K. Chesterton – A Criticism, C. Chesterton

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849649173

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

CONTENTS:

PREFACE.. 1

CHAPTER I - ORIGINS. 3

CHAPTER II - THE FIRST PHASE.. 12

CHAPTER III - A CRITIC OF LETTERS. 25

CHAPTER IV - THE DRIFT  TOWARDS ORTHODOXY.. 35

CHAPTER V - THE ASSAULT ON THE MODERNS. 44

CHAPTER VI - G. K. C. AS ANTI-LIBERAL.. 56

CHAPTER VII - A TELLER OF TALES. 67

CHAPTER VIII - THE GLADIATOR AS ARTIST.. 75

CHAPTER IX - THE PERSONAL EQUATION.. 85

PREFACE

IT may be thought by some that this book demands an apology. Mr. G. K. Chesterton is still a young man, not much over thirty. In all reasonable probability much of his best work lies before him. His opinions may undergo a considerable change before he dies; his style may develop; he may attempt all sorts of new artistic experiments. Why, then, it may be asked, try to sum him up at a time when in the nature of things he cannot be summed up? Why not wait till he is dead, perhaps till he has been dead for some twenty years, when the world will have decided whether he is really worth writing a book about at all?

I admit the force of such arguments. But I submit that (waiving the point that if I waited till Mr. Chesterton were dead I might quite probably be dead myself) there is something to be said on the other side, especially in the case of such a writer as Mr. Chesterton.

If a writer be a pure artist and aims solely at creating beautiful things, or, not to beg the " art for art's sake " controversy, at depicting the eternal things in beautiful forms, we can hardly wait too long before we judge him. But Mr. Chesterton is not and does not profess to be such an artist. He is primarily a propagandist, the preacher of a definite message to his own time. He is using all the power which his literary capacity gives him to lead the age in a certain direction. It is surely important to consider, firstly, whether he has the power to lead it at all, and secondly, whether, if he does lead it, he is likely to lead it right or wrong. When dealing with such a man, especially when he has, as Mr. Chesterton undoubtedly has, great influence over many young and developing brains, it is as absurd to say that we ought to postpone discussing him till time has shown how far his fame will be permanent. As well might one suggest that Mr. Balfour should defer replying to a speech by Mr. Asquith till time has shown whether Mr. Asquith will be classed with Fox or with Addington. Discussing Mr. Chesterton is not a question of literary criticism; it is a question of practical politics.

I have in the book itself disclaimed any intention of speculating on the durability of Mr. Chesterton's reputation. What is quite clear is that at the present moment he is profoundly influencing a great number of people. How far he is influencing them for good and how far for evil is surely a matter well worth discussing.

Mr. Kipling was worth discussing in the 'nineties quite apart from the permanence of his position in literature (in which personally I believe profoundly), because Mr. Kipling stood for Imperialism— a force to be reckoned with. Mr. Chesterton stands for Anti-Imperialism and for much else besides, for Catholicism with its back to the wall, for the hunger of a perplexed age for the more lucid life of the Ages of Faith, for the revolt against Modernity — in a word, for what may legitimately be called " reaction." That word, which I use because it really conveys my meaning, may be used without the slightest moral bias. You cannot tell whether reaction is good or bad until you know what it is reacting against. To distinguish the good from the evil in Mr. Chesterton's violent reaction against his age is partly the object of this book.

Another object is to estimate Mr. Chesterton's value as a literary artist. This object naturally falls within the scope of the other, for Mr. Chesterton's artistic talents are simply the weapons that he uses in his war against his controversial enemies. No doubt there are great chunks of his work that can be enjoyed frankly for their own sake without reference to his teaching; but those little know G. K. C. who imagine that it was for their own sake that he enjoyed them.

I think that the time has just about arrived when it is important that the modern world should make up its mind just what it does think of G. K. Chesterton. When a man, quite obviously in earnest, planks down a view of life unlike that of most of his contemporaries, it is silly to think you can dispose of him by calling him " paradoxical." He may be right or he may be wrong, or he may be (as he probably will be) partly right and partly wrong. If he is right, let us do all we can to strengthen his hands, and let us welcome his humor and fascination, not merely because they amuse us, but also because they are weapons to be used in the fight against the evil of our world. If he is wrong, let him be denounced, let him be, if you will, burnt as a heretic. But do not let him be praised as a buffoon. If he is partly right and partly wrong, it becomes a matter of urgent importance that we rightly distinguish his truths from his errors. Otherwise the tares may grow up and choke the wheat.

Buck, in dealing with Adam Wayne in " The Napoleon of Netting Hill," was saner than most of Mr. Chesterton's readers. " He may be God. He may be the Devil. But we think it more likely as a matter of human probability that he is mad." If people said that about G. K. C. I should respect them. It would be better than calling him " paradoxical."

Another point upon which I may say an apologetic word or two is the free use which I have made of Mr. Chesterton's personal characteristics and private life to illustrate my view of his position. I do not think such action needs any excuse to sensible people. There may be men whose art work is a thing utterly separate from their personality. I do not know. I cannot conceive what they can be like; but they may exist. One thing is certain. Mr. Chesterton is not such a man. To him thought and conduct are alike expressions of human personality. Whenever, therefore, circumstances have put me in possession of facts concerning Mr. Chesterton personally which may throw light upon the origin or development of his ideas, I have used them without scruple, so long as I could do so without violation of kindliness or honor. To " good taste," the modern name for snobbery, I hope I am indifferent. Some people will probably blame me for this; but one person will not, I think, blame me, and that person is Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

CHAPTER I - ORIGINS

"IT is a great deal easier," writes Mr. Chesterton in his study of Browning, " to hunt a family from tombstone to tombstone back to the time of Henry H, than to catch and realize and put upon paper that most nameless and elusive of all things — social tone." In studying Mr. Chesterton himself in his turn, it is as well to keep this very just opinion in mind. There is but little to be learned from what can be known of his ancestry; his heredity is a mixed one, but so probably is that of most middle-class Englishmen. One strand leads back to a burgher family of Aberdeen; it gives G. K. C. his second name of " Keith," and can be traced back further than other lines, because it comes from a country where the bourgeoisie have all the family pride of a noblesse. There is also Swiss blood in his veins, and a legend of a great-great-grandfather buried while still alive in the trenches after the Battle of the Pyramids, dug out in consequence of an accidentally heard groan, and surviving to be a father and an ancestor. The Chestertons themselves seem to have been small landowners in Cambridgeshire until their fortunes were apparently dissipated by an Edward Chesterton, who flourished about the time of the Regency. Students of heredity may find in this gentleman the source of his descendant's literary turn, for his letters, still preserved in the family, and most dated from debtors' prisons, are models of polished eighteenth-century eloquence. His son, reacting to respectability, became a coal merchant, and subsequently founded an estate-agency business, which in the fourth generation still flourishes. In this business Mr. Edward Chesterton, the father of the subject of this sketch, was a partner.

But all this tells us little. It is not important to know who Gilbert Chesterton's great-grandfather was. It is important to know in what sort of a home he grew up. It is important to understand the particular kind of educated middle-class household in which he passed his most impressionable years; and you can only understand this by understanding the nineteenth century. I propose to approach G. K. C. after his own fashion, by means of a stupendous digression.

The Socialist writers and orators of the 'eighties (themselves almost exclusively drawn from the middle classes) were very fond of denouncing the middle class, or, as they generally called it, the bourgeoisie, for its stupidity, narrowness, and inaccessibility to ideas. Never was a charge more undiscerning. As a matter of fact, all the ideas, including Socialism, which were then fermenting in the minds of men came from the middle class. It was, indeed, the only section of the community in which ideas as such had any chance of taking root.

"Geist," as Matthew Arnold said long ago, "is forbidden by its nature to flourish in an aristocracy "; nor did our aristocracy, when it was vigorous and sincere, ever pretend to possess it. Of late years, it is true, an attempt has been made to defend our oligarchical system on the ground that it gives us a leisured class, able to devote itself wholly to the cultivation of the intellect. But, as a matter of fact, our European aristocracies never did so devote themselves, and, for my part, I am glad they did not. An intellectual aristocracy is the most horrible tyranny under which mankind can groan; I would rather, any day, be ruled by barons than by Brahmins. But whether it would be well to have such an aristocracy or not, it is quite certain that we have not got it and never have had it.

Our aristocrats were proud of being strong, of being brave, of being handsome, of being chivalrous, of being honorable, of being happy, but never of being clever. The idea that brains were any part of the make-up of a gentleman was never dreamed of in Europe until our rulers fell into the hands of Hebrew moneylenders, who, having brains and not being gentlemen, read into the European idea of aristocracy an intellectualism quite alien to its traditions.

Nor have ideas ever had any better chance with the working classes. Even such ideas as they have borrowed from the middle class, because they suited their immediate class interests, have been de-intellectualized in the process. Socialism is a case in point. Socialism, as preached by its middle-class inventors, was an idea. In the form in which it has been adopted by a section of the laboring classes it is half sentiment, half eye-to-business. Its popularity is due partly to the trade unionist's desire for better wages and conditions of labor, partly to that ready sympathy and compassion for suffering which is the most beautiful of all the virtues of the English poor.

In this atmosphere of free inquiry was developed a theology which was called undogmatic, because its dogmas were so simple and humane that they seemed to their exponents to be self-evident. The Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the non-eternity of evil, the final salvation of all souls — these seemed to many in that era to form a faith at once sufficient and unassailable. Since then that free method of thought which created this system has largely destroyed it, forcing some of its children back to a more orthodox creed, others onward to a completer denial. But at that time thousands found rest in a vague but noble theo-philanthropy, such as G. K. C. absorbed in his youth. He was never made to read the Bible, and therefore read it — much to the advantage of his literary style. No one in the family was ever pressed to go to church, but, when they did go, it was to Bedford Chapel to hear the sermons of the Rev. Stopford Brooke. There, more than fifteen years ago, the young Chesterton learned from the lips of a genuine poet and orator the whole of that system of religious thought which has been discovered by certain Nonconformist ministers within the last eighteen months, and is now emphatically called « The New Theology."

The politics of the family bore some resemblance to its religious atmosphere. They were not Jacobin, but they were decidedly Liberal. The childhood of G. K. C. coincided more or less with the St. Martin's Summer of Liberalism, from 1880 to 1885. Political controversy was so much in the air of the household that even as an infant he must have heard echoes of that last stand of Gladstonian Liberalism; he was certainly beginning to be politically conscious when the " flowing tide " in which Gladstone had trusted suddenly turned and overwhelmed him.

But though Mr. Chesterton must have been tolerably familiar with religious and political controversies almost before he could speak, it can hardly be supposed that he had developed ideas of his own on these subjects until well on in his schooldays. He went to St. Paul's School when he was about twelve and stayed there some five years, interesting the more intelligent masters by his mental originality, and irritating the stupider ones by his refusal to take the routine of the place seriously. The records that one has of him during this period supply a picture of a tall, thin, rather good-looking boy, incredibly absent-minded (almost all the anecdotes of his boyhood turn on this trait), passionately fond of reading, covering all his school-books with drawings till the printing was unrecognizable, delightfully indifferent to ordinary school work, and quite equally indifferent to athletics.

The High Master of St. Paul's School at that time was Mr. F. W. Walker, a man who left a deep impress of his personality, not only on the school over which he presided, but also on the characters of all those who came in contact with him. He was one of those forceful characters that instinctively suggest greatness. He was, I believe, a very fine scholar; he was certainly a remarkable organizer, and the school, molded by his hands, won triumph after triumph. But it was neither scholarship nor organizing capacity that one thought of in connection with him; it was mere bigness and irresistible natural power. His head was leonine, and his voice, when raised in anger, was not unlike the roar of a lion. His geniality was scarcely less deafening than his wrath. His laughter, in particular, used to make the corridors rock, and it was currently believed that it could be heard at Hammersmith Broadway. I have sometimes wondered whether some reminiscence of his old High Master may be traced in Mr. Chesterton's description of the huge personality of the terrible " Sunday," just as old Paulines of his epoch will certainly recognize memories of one of the assistant masters in some of the humors of Auberon Quin.

Mr. Walker could be a sufficiently stern and even terrible disciplinarian when he liked, but he had in his nature vast reserves of good humor and tolerance. Also there was in him a touch of unconventionality; he lived the kind of Ufa he liked, and not the kind of life a schoolmaster was expected to live. With a little change in his circumstances he might almost have been a Bohemian. He had a shrewd sense of human character and a keen eye to types of talent alien from his own. He always liked G. K. C. and prophesied great things of him, though the latter was, I fear, by no means a model pupil.

While at school he gained what was known as the " Milton " prize for English verse. It was considered a remarkable achievement, because that prize had been regarded hitherto as a monopoly of the " eighth," and G. K. C. was still in one of the lower forms. The subject of the poem (selected, of course, by the examiners) was " St. Francis Xavier." What G. K. C. made of that singularly unpromising theme I have forgotten — if I ever knew. But it served to direct attention to him as one who might do honor to the school, in spite of his somewhat casual treatment of his official studies.

But the most important event of his school career, so far as its influence on his own future is concerned, was undoubtedly the formation of the Junior Debating Club (or J.D.C.), of which he became chairman.

This remarkable institution, which has already given three journalists to the Liberal press, one excellent short story writer to the magazines, one parliamentary candidate to the Liberal Party, one professor to University College, and another to an educational institution in the Midlands, was founded, I believe, for the purpose of reading Shakespeare, but this intention was abandoned by general consent after the first meeting. It subsequently turned itself into a general debating society, and prospered so far as to be able to produce a monthly magazine called " The Debater," in which will be found numerous essays and poems, signed with the familiar initials " a K. C."

Some of these contributions are extremely interesting. From the point of view of literary merit the verse is certainly much better and maturer than the prose. Some of the poems are quite startlingly vigorous for a boy of sixteen, the best, I think, being the first ever printed — a soliloquy of Danton on the scaffold. Others are somewhat crude, and many of them frankly imitative. When one comes across a line like

As wholly a hideous dream from the gloom of the gateway of Hell

one does not need to ask what poet the writer has just been reading. But the especial interest of these boyish verses lies in the light they throw upon their author's point of view at the time. Most of them deal with religious and moral problems with all the sumptuous responsibility of extreme youth; indeed, there is hardly a touch anywhere of the humor and fantasy of the later G. K. C. The old atmosphere of the faith of his childhood still remains, but the grip of its positive dogmas is weakening — he is leaning towards Agnosticism; while, on the other hand, a note of pugnacity personal to himself has been added to it. This note is struck with a certain force in a poem called " Ave Maria," written very obviously under the influence of Swinburne's style, and as obviously in a mood of revolt against Swinburne's teaching. It begins:

Hail Mary! Thou blest among women; generations shall rise up to greet,

After ages of wrangle and dogma, I come with a prayer to thy feet.

Where Gabriel's red plumes are a wind in the lanes of thy lilies at eve,

We pray, who have done with the churches; we worship, who may not believe!

The human origin of all religions is admitted, but the argument is turned against the Neo-Pagans effectively enough:

We know that men prayed to their image, and crowned their own passions as Powers;

We know that their Gods were as shadows, nor are shamed of this Queen, that was ours!

We know as the people the priest is, as men are, the Goddess shall be —

All harlots were worshipped in Cypris: all maidens and mothers in thee!

He left school when about seventeen. His father, whose own tastes were far more literary and artistic than commercial, and whose judgment was sane and just to a most unusual degree, wisely refrained from attempting to force him into business. During his boyhood Gilbert Chesterton had been at least as fond of scribbling drawings as of scribbling verses. Some of these were thought by good judges to show great promise, and it was decided that he should study art. The experiment was not wholly a success. That Mr. Chesterton has considerable gift as a draftsman no competent critic who studies the illustrations to Mr. Belloc's " Immanuel Burden " will be disposed to deny. But it was not in that direction that his deepest impulses led. He proved this by the fact that he shrank from the technical toils of art as he has never shrunk from the technical toils of writing.

But the years during which this experiment was being made were certainly not wasted. During the whole time he was writing incessantly and publishing practically nothing. He entered it crude and unformed; he left it almost mature. These silent years were full of reading and of thinking. He was brought face to face with the modern world, the creation of that liberal philosophy in which he had been trained, and it failed to satisfy him. The disappointment, aggravated by his loathing for the decadent school which then dominated " advanced " literature, must have set him thinking. Perhaps it touched the nerve of humor in him, for we find little humor in what he wrote before this time, while in all that he wrote after it is dominant and clamorous. The change that came over his temperament was, perhaps, mirrored in his changed appearance. The tall, slender idealist became the full-girthed giant, shaking with Gargantuan laughter.

One reminiscence of his art-school days he gave to the world not long ago in a " Daily News " article. It may be worth recalling, firstly because it gives a glimpse of his impressions of the world he was then living in, secondly because it marks the beginning of that change of view which we shall follow in future chapters, thirdly because Mr. Chesterton himself says that it was " by far the most terrible thing that ever happened to him in his life ":

" An art school is different from almost all other schools or colleges in this respect; that, being of new and crude creation and of lax discipline, it presents a specially strong contrast between the industrious and the idle. People at an art school either do an atrocious amount of work or do no work at all. I belonged, along with other charming people, to the latter class; and this threw me often into the society of men who were very different from myself, and who were idle for reasons very different from mine. I was idle because I was very much occupied; I was engaged about that time in discovering, to my own extreme and lasting astonishment, that I was not an atheist. But there were others also at loose ends who were engaged in discovering what Carlyle called (I think with needless delicacy) the fact that ginger is hot in the mouth.

" I value that time, in short, because it made me acquainted with a good representative number of blackguards. In this connection there are two very curious things which the critic of human life may observe. The first is the fact that there is one real difference between men and women; that women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes. The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In those small groups devoted to a driveling dissipation there is almost always one man who seems to have condescended to his company; one man who, while he can talk a foul triviality with his fellows, can also talk politics with a Socialist, or philosophy with a Catholic.

" It was just such a man whom I came to know well. It was strange, perhaps, that he liked his dirty, drunken society; it was stranger still, perhaps, that he liked my society. For hours of the day he would talk with me about Milton or Gothic architecture; for hours of the night he would go where I have no wish to follow him, even in speculation. He was a man with a long, ironical face, and close and red hair; he was by class a gentleman, and could walk like one, but preferred, for some reason, to walk like a groom carrying two pails. He looked like a sort of super-jockey; as if some archangel had gone on the Turf. And I shall never forget the half-hour in which he and I argued about real things for the first and the last time."

The man asked him why he was becoming more orthodox, and was met by the now familiar Chestertonian argument for religion and humility; illustrated by the symbol the spark from the fire that was burning in front of them: " Seduce a woman, and that spark will be less bright. Shed blood, and that spark will be less red ":

" He had a horrible fairness of the intellect that made me despair of his soul. A common, harmless atheist would have denied that religion produced humility or humility a simple joy; but he admitted both. He only said,

" But shall I not find in evil a life of its own? Granted that for every woman I ruin one of those red sparks will go out; will not the expanding pleasure of ruin . . ."

" '' Do you see that fire? ' I asked. ' If we had a real fighting democracy, someone would burn you in it; like the devil-worshipper that you are.'

" ' Perhaps,' he said, in his tired, fair way.

' Only what you call evil I call good.'

" He went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible, I stopped, startled; then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, ' Nobody can possibly know.' And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, ' I tell you I have done everything else. If I do that I shan't know the difference between right and wrong.' I rushed out without daring to pause; and as I passed the fire I did not know whether it was hell or the furious love of God.