GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
C. L. R. SASTRI
[“Artists appear at rare intervals; but there
is one simple test of practice of their arrival. The moment they begin to handle their material, the world
discovers what an extraordinary rich and plastic thing it is. It does not
matter very much what subject they choose; it matters not at all how often that
subject has been treated. The last Madonna may be as good as the first, and
there is always a fleet of fighting Temerairis to be
toed to their berth.” –The late H. W. Massingham.]
In my recent article on George Bernard Shaw
in Triveni I happened to mention the august name of Gilbert Keith
Chesterton. The motto of that article was from him, and I went on to suggest
that he was the fittest antagonist of Shaw, a foeman worthy of his steel. They
met on the battlefield “like two clouds over the Caspian.” It is but meet, therefore, that I should now attempt to write a
matching article on Chesterton himself, one of my literary idols, and the
first. He used to contribute a page-long literary causerie to the Illustrated
London News, the glossiest of glossy magazines then existing.
When I read the first of those causeries I
felt as stout Cortez felt when he saw the Pacific; it was a revelation to me. A
new planet had swum into my ken. Thereafter I diligently perused as many of
those causeries as I could lay hands on. It is my firm conviction that
there never have been such scintillating expositions of views by anyone as his
were. After his lamented demise his mantle fell on the eminent historian, Sir
Arthur Bryant. But the glory had departed from that magazine: only “G. K. C.”
could have succeeded “G. K. C.” “as Amurath to Amurath.”
Since then I have been the most consistent votary in his shrine.
No one, I venture to think, should write upon
an author with whom he does not find himself in sympathy. No one, in fact, stands more in need of sympathy than
Chesterton. Men have not been lacking to cry him down at the slightest
opportunity. But I have my doubts whether even the most confirmed of his
detractors has not enjoyed him thoroughly in private. There is an old saying
that all claret would be port if it could. And I have my lively
suspicion that, criticise him as they might, his
enemies would, nevertheless, like to possess a fraction of his gifts if they
could. I have remarked that even the most confirmed of his detractors must have
enjoyed him thoroughly in private.
Indeed, there is no author whose manner of
writing is more delightful, more entrancing. Chesterton on anything–even
on the Middle Ages, his most constant bugbear–is a veritable treat to the
intellect. Sir John Squire once confessed that, reservation being made for the
matter under discussion, he enjoyed reading Chesterton
on any subject. It is, I feel, a necessary reservation. Even his most
enthusiastic admirers cannot swallow him whole. He was a bold spirit and held
strong views on several subjects. It would, therefore, be surprising if he
found admirers by the hundred. Such a man must, perforce, plough a lonely
furrow.
I have stressed, in passing, the manner of
Chesterton’s writing. It is unique: it is in a class by itself. To call it
brilliant is but to state the bare truth. It is, on occasion, more than
brilliant: it is inspired. Then there is no one to equal him: as Cowley said of Pindar, he forms a
vast species alone.” The basis of his style is, of course, the short sentence:
as, indeed, the basis of all good style is, and must be. But, upon that short
sentence, he weaves patterns all his own. Phrases seem to drop from nowhere.
Words take on unusual meanings.
No doubt, the meanings had been all there
before. Only, we had never thought of them until he came along and showed them
to us. In short, he is a magician with words: with his Prospero’s wand, as it
were, he can summon them, out of the vasty deep. It
has been said that poets are born, not made. We may, with equal truth, say that
prose-writers, too, are born, not made.
Good prose can, of course, be cultivated: by taking thought, one can, in a manner of speaking, add many cubits to the stature of one’s writing. But, when all is said, the most laboriously cultivated prose can at once be distinguished from prose that is written as if by inspiration. There are writers that are “to the manner born”; Chesterton is foremost among them.
Side by side with his style goes his wit. It
is irresistible: and it is exhibited at the least expected places. Like the
gentleman mentioned by Boswell who told Dr. Johnson: “You are a philosopher,
Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but I don’t know
how cheerfulness was always breaking in”, Chesterton might say that he had
tried, too, in his time, to be serious, but he didn’t know how, wit was always
breaking in. There can be no doubt about the quality of his wit. It is genuine;
it rings true.
Once in his element, he almost revels in it:
and then every sentence of his is sparkling. Often his opinions are belittled
because of their admixture with his wit. Wit, on the other hand, is not so
common that it should be regarded with a kind of lofty disdain. Wisdom, I am
convinced, is all the better for a wee bit of wit. Wit is justified of her
children: it is next to wisdom. That is the trouble with Chesterton: his wisdom
is often masked as wit. For many people it is lost in the wit. Speaking
for myself, I prefer lively wisdom to that which is merely dismal. But
Chesterton himself appears to be wholly innocent of when he is overdoing his
wit. This is what H. W. Nevinson means when he writes
of him:
“Indeed, that man of genius (“G. K. C.”) has
often reminded me of a village pump which, on festal occasions may run wine and
ordinarily runs first-rate water, but never knows when it is running wine of
the best, or water of the best, or liquid mud, or nothing at all, but always
wears the same alluring look of
promise. “ (More Changes, More
Chances.)
Chesterton is many things: poet, essayist,
critic, novelist, dramatist, controversialist, and a sort of sociological
writer as well. But he is chiefly known as essayist and critic.
As story-teller, he has at least one creation
to his credit: Father Brown. Father Brown is a detective. He cannot, indeed, be
compared to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. But be is famous in his
own quiet, unobtrusive way. His chief weapon is not cleverness or cunning as in
the case with most detectives, real or fictional. His real weapon is
simplicity.
In fact, this is Chesterton’s master motive
in all his stories: it runs like a refrain through all of them. His hero is,
inevitably a simpleton. Take his Napoleon of Notting
Hill: take his Return of Don Quixote. Everywhere is the notion that
your simpleton, by virtue of his simplicity, gets the better, in the long run,
of the subtlest person that may be arraigned against him. It follows that his
stories are written with a purpose: they “point a moral, and adorn a tale.” His
religion, his love of the Middle Ages, his scorn of all that is connoted by the
word, “modern” – all these are evident in the least little bit
that he has ever written. His novels do not conform to any known convention. To
him the story is not the main point. The main point is the lesson that can
be deduced from it. In other words, it is a mere vehicle for his philosophy.
Chesterton has written several books of essays. One of his earliest and, to my mind, the best – is The Defendant. Here, perhaps, more than elsewhere, he comes nearest to being a great essayist. But, in my opinion, the essay is not his characteristic medium of expression. Not that I do not admire his essays: far from it. All that I mean is that he does not seem to have taken them seriously. He has a true essayist’s vein. But, oftener than not, he becomes a controversialist, starts off all kinds of intellectual hares, and forgets the main function of the essayist. He is, for one thing, too intent on proving his case: and this vitiates one’s essay. A modicum of sincerity is demanded of the essayist: as, I hope, it is demanded of everyone. But Chesterton is all sincerity: he is too fiercely sincere to be a good essayist.
With him, as I have remarked, the essay tends
to become controversial. I fancy Chesterton loves controversy for its
own sake. And I suspect that he sometimes invents imaginary opponents to
produce the correct atmosphere of division and of dissension. He has, in other
words, as everyone has who pretends to some individuality and is not content
merely to form a part of the universal flux of things, his parti
pris; only, he has far, far too much of it. He
is, however, an expert in controversy, and there are not many who can even
approach him in this particular line. Like his predecessor, Dr. Johnson, if his pistol misses fire, he has no
qualms in beating his opponent with the butt end of it. But all this is a far
cry from the essay proper.
Chesterton’s essays are regular feasts of
paradox: he is never content “to burn a candle in the pale shrine of
platitude.” Shaw and Chesterton are the greatest masters of paradox.
Chesterton, however, does not like the word “paradox”. He says in his
masterpiece, Orthodoxy;
“I know nothing as contemptible as a mere
paradox, a mere ingenious defence of the
indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived
upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his
mental activity could invent a sophistry every six hours. It is as easy as
lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is
cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is
the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I never in my life
said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course, I have had
ordinary human vanity, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It
is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature
who does not exist; it is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does
exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he did not. One
searches for truth but it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary
truths.”
I do not gainsay all this. But it is
nonetheless true that Chesterton is a writer of paradoxes. He may not
himself be aware of it: like M. Jourdain, who talked
prose all his life without knowing it, Chesterton may have, in his time,
produced paradoxes unconsciously. But it is an undisputed fact that he has
produced them. To be a writer of paradox, one must have a keen intelligence:
and one must have that rare commodity–a capacity for original thinking. A
paradox is not, as many suppose, merely an inverted platitude. If that were
all, we could be masters of it. But, then, a paradox must convince–at least for
the time being.
Without this power of convincing, it ceases
to be a paradox. I hold also that paradox is often necessary for good writing;
it is what gives “an edge” to it. But here, again, Chesterton overdoes it. He
uses paradoxes as other men use platitudes. As C. Lewis Hind justly remarked:
“Somebody should always be standing by his
side when he is writing essays, saying ‘Gilbert, be dull for a bit. Paradox
should be a souffle, not a joint’.” (Authors
and I.)
But, when Chesterton is in his stride, every
sentence becomes scintillating: it is as if one has had an electric shock. One
is not given time to think: one is carried along by the vehement breeze of the
writer’s opinions and, for the moment, one finds oneself in agreement with them:
because agreement is less taxing than disagreement. Chesterton, indeed, revels
in paradoxes to such an extent
that it is a positive relief to turn to the most worn-out platitudes–just for a refreshing contrast.
After all, the virtue of paradox is that it is rare, while platitude is too,
too common.
My whole point is that Chesterton is not
typically a writer of essays. For this we have his own authority. On the
occasion of the lamb-dinner (in commemoration of Charles Lamb’s Centenary) he
delivered himself of the following statement:
“I write articles, and a profound schism
divides those who write essays and those who write articles. The essayist
inhabits eternity, but the writer of articles is very emphatically under the
government of time.”
But there is one peculiarity. When he tries
an essay proper he often fails. When he is writing something else, however,
when, that is, he is on a different track altogether, he becomes, unconsciously,
the writer of beautiful essays. Essays fall from his pen unawares: almost, to
use the poet’s words, “in profuse strains of unpremeditated art.” For some of
his best essays one must go, not to his avowed volumes of essays, but to his
critical and other writings. There one will find the master-critic as
well as the master-essayist.
Chesterton’s Charles Dickens and Robert
Browning are unrivalled in their own spheres. Browning is justly
considered to be one of the most difficult of English poets, and many would-be
readers are discouraged at the very commencement. For all such, Chesterton’s Robert
Browning (“English Men of Letters,” Series) provides the finest
introduction.
And thus I come to the critic Chesterton. He
is one of the most discerning of literary critics, past or present. He goes to
the heart of his subject; he seizes the vital point about an author or an
epoch. This is because he has rare imagination. He can, so to speak, put
himself in the place of his author. Criticism is an art like any other. It is
not merely a sort of scientific analysis. At the present time even literature
is tending to become rigidly scientific. But when what we get is all science
and no literature, then, indeed, it is high time we drew the line. The evil of
the so-called scientific criticism is that it is invariably dull.
Literary criticism, to be absorbing, must be
artistic: as much so as the imaginative literature to which it happens to apply
itself. A distinction is usually drawn between “creation” and “criticism.” If
one is a poet, or a dramatist, or a novelist, one is credited with being a
“creative artist.” If one has written merely essays or books on the particular
poem, or drama, or novel, one is credited with being only a literary critic: as
such he must occupy a secondary
place. But I am of the opinion that a first-rate “critic” is not inferior to a
first-rate “creative artist.” As Professor Oliver Elton says in connection with
William Hazlitt:
“Taste is not merely a passive and receptive
thing–the feminine of genius –
something which creative art simply impregnates. No, the critic reacts
on the art he enjoys – reacts masculinely,
ardently, even wilfully – if he is Hazlitt; and so produces – if he be Hazlitt –
another book of art of which the
book he reviews is the subject-matter. He is inspired by it as one poet is
inspired by another. This distinguishes him from the mere scholar and expositor
who does useful work of an inferior order; and it disposes of the old sneer
against the sterility of critics.” (A Study of English Literature, Vol. II.)
Of course, first-rate critics are rare: rarer
than first-rate creative artists. But that is no reason we should fail to recognise them when they present themselves before us. A
critic of the calibre of Chesterton is a creative
artist even in his criticism – nothing
less: “He produces another book of art of which the book he reviews is the
subject-matter.”
In order to understand this it is necessary
only to read a volume of Chesterton’s criticism and a volume of the ordinary
run of criticism. The latter are in relation to the former “as moonlight unto
sunlight, or as water unto wine.” Chesterton uses, in Rossetti’s
phrase, “as much fundamental brain-work” in his criticisms as any poet or
novelist uses in his poems or novels.
His critical books are pieces of perfect art:
his Victorian Age in English Literature, his Charles Dickens, his
Robert Browning and his George Bernard Shaw. He has the root of
the matter in him. Take his explanation of the alleged obscurity of Browning:
“There is, however, another very practical
objection to the ordinary theory that Browning’s obscurity is a part of the
intoxication of fame and intellectual condescension. He was not unintelligible
because he was proud, but unintelligible because he was humble. He was not
unintelligible because his thoughts were vague, but because to him they were
obvious... A man who is intellectually vain does not make himself
incomprehensible, because he is so enormously impressed with the difference
between his readers’ intelligence and his own that he talks down to them with
elaborate repetition and lucidity. What poet was ever vainer than Byron? What
poet was ever so magnificently lucid? But a young man of genius who has genuine
humility in his heart does not elaborately explain his discoveries because he
does not think that they are discoveries He thinks that the whole street is
humming with his ideas and that the postman and the tailor are poets like
himself. Browning’s impenetrable poetry was the natural expression of this
beautiful optimism. Sordello was the most
glorious compliment that has ever been paid to the average man.” (Robert
Browning)
Or take this on Thackeray’s
so-called cynicism:
“The occasions are indeed very numerous in
which Thackeray finds this knack of half-suggestion
very convenient. How delicately he suggests the peculiar character of Helen Pendennis, a saint without a sense of humour.
With how quiet a shade, as of the coming on of twilight, does he convey the
fact that Colonel Newcome’s character was, after all,
slightly spoiled in prosperity; suggests it less by any change in the old man’s
face with the grey moustaches than by a certain
change in the faces of Clive or Laura or Ethel as
they look at it. In this connection it is specifically unjust to call Thackeray a cynic. He falls away into philosophising
not because his satire is merciless but because it is merciful; he wishes to
soften the fall of his character with a sense and suggestion of the weakness of
all flesh. He often employs an universal cynicism because it is kinder than
a personal sarcasm. He says that all men are liars rather than say directly
that Pendennis is lying. He says easily that all is
vanity so as not to say that Ethel Newcome was vain.”
(Thackeray: Masters of Literature
Series.)
I have not yet mentioned Chesterton’s
masterpiece, Orthodoxy. Our author was a deeply religious man. In these
days of irreligion he stands out as the champion of orthodoxy and religion.
Near the end of his life he turned a Roman Catholic. I have purposely avoided any
description of the book. If space permitted I could give here copious extracts
from it, especially from its earlier half. Stevenson says somewhere of one of Hazlitt’s essays that it is so good that a tax should be
levied on all those who have not read it. I should like to say the same thing
about Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.
I have referred, in passing, to Chesterton’s
love for the Middle Ages. In fact, he was infatuated with them as someone, it
has been said, was infatuated with the word, “Mesopotamia.” As was only to be
expected, he has come in for a great deal of harsh criticism. These times, it
was obvious, did not suit him. They are far too “advanced.” He ought to have
been born in his beloved Middle Ages: he was “misplaced in Illyria”,
as Charles Lamb would have said.
Arnold Bennett has somewhere recorded his
conviction that Chesterton’s could not have been a first-rate intelligence
because his mind always harped back to the Middle Ages. Now, I have a very high
opinion of Arnold Bennett. But he was grievously wrong in his estimate of
Chesterton. Chesterton, as it happened, had a first-rate intelligence.
May I go further and say that he was that rare phenomenon, a genius. Arnold
Bennett, for all his cleverness, was assuredly not a genius. His mind, such as
it was, could not comprehend anything beyond “Grand Babylon Hotels” and
“multi-million dollar yachts.” So much the worse for him.
I have remarked that Chesterton was a genius.
One test of genius is that it can do with the utmost ease things in themselves
the most difficult. Genius is not, as we have been repeatedly told, the
capacity for taking infinite pains. I have nothing but admiration for those who
have that capacity: the labourer is worthy of his
hire. Anyone can take pains: the rarer thing is to achieve your results
with the irreducible minimum of trouble. To do this is to be gifted with
genius: and Chesterton eminently fills the bill.
He has not, in the production of his hooks,
to undergo the preliminary pangs that are, alas, only too common with the rank
and file of writers. He comes with a mind that is fully adequate to his
subject. In a word, he is terribly at ease in Zion. And it is curious that
successful as he is in the most arduous tasks, he often fails in the most
trivial ones.
What Dr. Johnson said of Milton may, with
equal truth, be said of Chesterton. Miss Hannah More, it is related, expressed
a wonder that the poet who had written Paradise Lost should write such
poor sonnets. Dr. Johnson replied:
“Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut,
a Colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherrystones.”
In like manner, Chesterton can do the rare
things better than the trivial ones. No wonder he is one of my favourites: and not all the King’s horses and not “all the
King’s men” can make me revise my opinion of him. As Andrew Lang says:
“It cannot be helped. Each of us has his
author who is a favourite, a friend, an idol, whose
immaculate perfection he maintains against all comers. For example, things are
urged against Scott: I receive them in the attitude of the deaf adder of St.
Augustine who stopped one ear with his tail and pressed the other against the
dust. The same with Moliere. M. Scherer utters
complaints against Moliere! He would not convince me
even if I was convinced.” (Essays in Little)