Belloc on. Chesterton

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24817, 17 January 1942, Page 3

Belloc on. Chesterton

This small but momentous book has been awaited by Chestertonians in this part of the world for more than a year. It sets the seal on one of the great friendships in the history of English literature, or of England itself. The “ Chesterbelloc ” was a term evolved by H. G. Wells, who comes in for his share of praise and depreciation in the course of Mr Belloc’s study. The author elaborates six points he makes at the outset. These are that Chesterton’s outlook was a natidnal one, that he was precise, that he was a master of parallelism, that the source of his inspiration is to be found in literature rather than in history, that he was a Roman Catholic, and that he was a man of charity. In the first place, he was English in a way that Kipling never was. He was a “ little Englander,” and at the same time he was a cosmic patriot. “ The Napoleon of Netting Hill ” is a study in local patriotism. In the second place, he was a precise thinker. Mr Belloc scouts the popular theory that Englishmen are slipshod thinkers. He cites the precise language used in the English courts and by some of the great English scientists. Chesterton’s precision arose from a discovery he made some little time after abandoning the pursuit of art at the Slade. , He celebrates this discovery in the dedicatory verses to his friend Bentley, which are to be found in front of that queer philosophical romance, “ The Man Who Was Thursday.” To some it may seem that he was simply a clever journalist who had hit upon a formula which he could apply to the discussion of any phenomenon from pork to pyrotechnics, as he himself writes in “The Thing.” His discovery was the Catholic Church. Mr Belloc sets himself a rule not to quote. He breaks this rule “at least once. We are bound by no such inhibition, so we may proffer one example of the Chestertonian parallelism, to be found in “ Orthodoxy “In every decision made there is an element of the mystical. One might go round and round in the Underground indefinitely if one did not perform the highly mystical act of getting out at Gower Street.” Mr Belloc is of opinion that as a master of parallelism Chesterton had no peer. In writing under his fourth heading Mr Belloc acknowledges his debt to his friend for any perception he himself may have of English literature. He cites Chesterton’s monograph on Robert Browning in the “ Englishmen of Letters ” series, and he testifies to what so many have recognised, Chesterton’s genius for informing his presentation of any writer with the Chostertonian idiom. Whether we agree with Chesterton's appraisal or not we cannot aver that it is dull.

Of Chesterton’s charity, Mr Belloc writes that his friend had no enemies. Mr Belloc himself likens the writer to a loaded donkey who cannot taste of the good things he carries. Chesterton loved controversy, but more than controversy he loved his fellow man, loved him with a comprehension that, if it lacked the physical abandon of St. Francis of Assisi, yet enabled him to present the truth as he saw it without. Pharisaism. He called Shaw, Wells, and Lowes Dickinson heretics, and yet of each he had something to say which extracted the sting from the term. Lastly, he was a Catholic. Here, of course, Mr Belloc is an advocate, and he is prepared to be regarded as such by those outside his communion. One cannot ignore a fact that dominates the entire story of Chesterton’s spiritual progress, but for the present purposes it might be better to conclude with a few reflections on Chesterton’s performance. Mr Belloc may be forgiven for reminding us that it is too early to estimate its extent. He writes that no poet has been praised in his own lifetime for the right reason. A very considerable poet himself, he allows that much of Chesterton's verse is loose. Like everything else that he wrote, it is conditioned by that great discovery of his. In "The Ballad of the White Horse” Chesterton writes of ‘‘the firm feet of humility.” As he describes himself in

On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters. ByHilaire Belloc. (Sheed and Ward.) \

a shorter poem concerned with the discovery of a daisy he was always Evangelist. He has good news to impart, and his entire literary output is a means to that end. He would be one with his great antagonist, Shaw, in decrying “Art for Art’s sake.” Yet one ventures to aver that such a poem as “The Ballad of the White Horse” may survive all present modes and manners. Its theme is eternal, and was as applicable to General de Gaulle in 1940 as it is to King Alfred in the light of English history. By this he will survive if anything is to be saved from the wreck of European culture, and if that culture is to be reinstated, then he will survive by virtue of his literary Criticism. He may even survive by virtue of Father Brown. One strange fact concerning Chesterton Mr Belloc has failed to mention—and since it is a negative fact it may not merit attention: Chesterton never wrote a novel. Any fool can write a novel, and most fools do. Mr Belloc has written one or two himself, and he is no fool.

Chesterton's work, enormous as it may appear to anyone who merely nibbles at it, is all of a piece. One may conjecture why Mr Wells wrote of “The Chesterbelloc” and not of “ The Bellochesterton.” Perhaps it was merely because for telescopic purposes it was expedient to deprive Chesterton of his last syllable. In “The Chesterbelloc ” there is no head and no tail, but nevertheless if this hybrid has a masculine and a feminine element, Belloc is associated with the former and Chesterton with the latter. It is true that Chesterton wrote “Manalive,” and was as virile as one could wish a man to be; but he had the Victorian feminine grace of domesticity. His economics were all in accord with the etymology of the term. He believed that there was a law of the house, whether that house be public or private, and that law derived from a stable whose privacy and publicity were at one and the same time so august that all men and women should feel themselves homeless in the contemplation of it. By its insistence on this ancient truth “ The Chesterbelloc ” has presented an alternative to the Imperialism of Kipling, the universalism of H. G. Wells, and the Grecianism of Lowes Dickinson. «It would be easy to magnify the significance of what may after all be an accidental coming together of two powerful minds. It will not be the first time that such a thing has happened. It is little more than a hundred years since Newman found Keble. When two or three are gathered together in goodwill there is an aspect of the truth in the midst of them. C. R. A.