BOOKS
Hilaire Belloc
BY D. W. BROGAN HILAIRE BELLOC was the first practising author that I took physical notice of. Here was a man who wrote books, who knew so much and, above all, so many things that no one else semed to know or tell. Here was one of the stars of the New Witness (and of the New States- man, that is now forgotten, even by Mr. Speaight). I thought, Danton was wonderful and 'Mr. George' a scoundrel. I thought Britain was ruled by knaves instead of by fools; I learned a lot that I had later to discard. But some of it stuck and sticks still (as it does, for example, in the mind of the head of an Oxford college whom I know well). There is a disbelief in the Whig theory of history, combined with, in my case, a deep admiration for the Whigs. I have come to admire even the Russells. But Belloc has passed into the background of the English mind. Many of his paradoxes are now common form; it takes courage to admire the Whigs or the Glorious Revolution or to prefer William III to James II. Fashions change again, but the old, innocent Whig tradition will never return in its old form. And in its destruction, Belloc played a part that he underestimated and the dons underestimated, dons who know so little of what forms the public mind or the minds of their brightest and so most irreverent pupils. To devote a long book,* nearly 500 pages, to Belloc may well seem a matter of mere piety, Catholic and private. But Mr. Speaight has justified, more than justified, his devotion. He has written a book that is wise, warm, full of literary felicities and that brings to life a far more interesting character than the noisy, bullying, roistering, beer-swilling dealer- out of 'apostolic blows and knocks' of a shallow tradition. As a work of literary art, this life seems to me quite first-class.
But was Belloc first-class? To this question Mr. Speaight does not give a totally clear or convincing answer. He is candid; there is no mere hero-worshipping here. He is, at times, too severe, possibly too candid. He makes plain how much Belloc grumbled, complained, talked of his unhappiness, and although I seldom find anything worth while in 'Alain,' I agree with him that it is better to talk of happiness than of unhappiness and that few themes of conversation arc more boring in the not-very-long run than the injustice of the world. On one of Belloc's grievances Mr. Speaight is candid. Like many less illustrious people, Belloc was not elected a fellow of All Souls. He never forgave that illustrious company. Thus (a story not told by Mr. Speaight) meeting Tout for the first time, he greeted one of the few dons whose work he admired with 'What fool * THE LIFE OF HILAIRE BEI-LOC. By Robert Speaight. (Hollis and Carter, 30s.) did they elect to All Souls in your year?' I think this obsession was connected with another early disaster whose importance Mr. Speaight plays down. Belloc's mother lost the small but serious fortune she had inherited and Belloc, like his sister, had to fight harder for his living than he expected. The same fate befell Macaulay, but then Trinity, wiser than All Souls, gave Macaulay the lifebelt of a fellowship. But it was not only All Souls; Oxford, even his beloved Balliol, refused him. Would Belloc have been happy as a don in any event? He developed what would now be called 'a thing' about dons. Much of what he said was just; some of them were and are comically limited; some (though far fewer than Belloc came to believe) know not very much about their subject with which, after their studi- ous youth, they have become bored. But I find it much easier to think of Belloc as an 'X,' passing from the Ecole Polytechnique to the French artillery, than as a don. There was a boldness in his academic approach that is breath- taking even today. Asked what he wanted to lecture on in London, he said 'Descartes,' and was annoyed that this offer was not taken seriously. He became a candidate for the chair of History at Glasgow and was convinced that his religion was the only bar. But even a first plus Danton was not quite enough. Here Mr. Speaight, by a slip, makes Belloc's attitude a little less comprehensible. John Phillimore, Belloc's great friend, was not 'Lecturer in Greek at Glasgow.' He had succeeded Gilbert Murray in the chair of Greek. This may well have given Belloc a wrong idea of the weight of his own claims. But Phillimore was a fort en theme of the highest order. The Ireland, Craven, Gaisford, Westminster and Christ Church, a youthful polish that dazzled and intimidated pupils like the young George Gordon; no, this was not a rough, half-French, Balliol, Papist with one rhetorical, but not profound, book to his credit.
Perhaps it was a pity, for Belloc kept on sneer- ing when he would have been better employed learning. He was not above pillaging, as a critic pointed out in reviewing his Wolsey. What began as a genuine and often justified contempt for don- nish limitations became mere crankiness. Mr. Speaight refers to his sudden engottement for the philological theories of Professor Wiener. I have heard Phillimore regret ever mentioning this ingenious crank to Belloc, who found any stick good enough to beat the 'Teutonists.'
But the very qualities that made him a great man made him unclassifiable as an historian. He was what his disastrous teacher, Charles Maurras, called a `meteque.' This was obvious, yet when some reasonably irritated Jew made this com- meat, Belloc retorted, irrelevantly, with the listing of his artistic and military ancestors. But he gained from his mixed origin probably more than he lost. Mr. Speaight is extremely good on Belloc's Frenchness. He points out that Belloc had few French friends, knew little of modern French literature, was not at all a cultured Francophile like his great friend Duff Cooper. I would go further; Belloc was often absurdly ill-informed, even on those aspects of French life on which he claimed to be an expert. His knowledge of the French army, hard-earned as it was by a tough year as a driver in the artillery, kept him from learning what, at its higher levels, the French army was like. He was comically wrong about it and devoted far less intelligent thought to mili- tary problems than did his bite noire H. G. Wells.
As an historian he suffered one embittering handicap. He never had leisure to read a lot 'profitlessly.' He had to read for a purpose for the book he had in hand. His notions of research were those of an antiquarian. He went to history, not to discover 'the truth' but to prove it and illustrate it. Without falling back on the naive positivism that M. Marrou has recently been casti- gating, it is permissible to suggest that history of the highest order is not written that way, that the historian, whatever his parti pris (and he is all the better for knowing he has it), must be ready to let his hand be forced by the evidence, accept the role of Balaam's ass. Belloc never was so ready. Yet his historical writing is not only often admirable as writing, it was useful and original.
Mr. Speaight dwells enough on Belloc's anti-Semitism. He protested against the malignant lengths that Cecil Chesterton permitted to this bias in The New Witness, but it was one of the unfortunate results of the influence of that unending ass Paul Deroulede, and later of that malignant man of genius Charles Maurras. The parallel between Belloc-Chesterton and Maurras- Daudet !As more than once been made. But there was one great difference, Belloc and Chesterton were good men. It is an important difference. (One of the weaknesses of Marxism is that its prophet was such a nasty type.) Belloc's last years were sad. He had foolishly, but characteristically, invested his savings in French securities. He thus failed to escape the constant pressure of need. One of his most deep-felt poems opens, *Would that I had £300,000.' No doubt he talked and wrote too much of unholy poverty. (You might have thought he had had a life like George Gissing's.) No doubt he acted too much on the motto: caritas non conturbat me. But he sowed a few useful doubts. He wrote some immortal children's verses and how many people in the last week or two have quoted 'Lord Lundy'! His last years, if sad, were not devastated like those of H. G. Wells, and the basic reason is that he, unlike Wells, could say : 'Ave crux spes unica.' He wrote too much, on too many things; he talked too arrogantly; he lectured down. But he was a poet.
Lady, when your lovely head Droops to sink among the Dead. know that this is not fashionable poetry in the eyes of any of the rival establishments, but one blessing of being brought up on Belloc is that you are free from, or, at any rate, can loosen, the links of fashion. Here is shown a great character and, at moments, a great man.
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