CHESTERTON WITHOUT G. K. C.
MR. EVANS has quite rightly given more attention to the earlier—that is, to the pre-War—work of G. K. Chesterton than to the later. First, because his most characteristic and best work was done then ; and, second, in recent years he has been too often judged by the later work, and therefore much under-rated. Of all that he wrote in the last ten years of his life, it is only the Autobiography that has the full Chestertonian vitality and savour. There, he was reanimated by recollections of the society and the ideas which had stirred him in adolescence, and by the joy in fighting over again the battles of his youth. But, for the rest, he was too often repeating the things he had said better before ; he was still challenging doctrines which were fierce bones of con- tention thirty years ago, but today have turned into truism or ancient history. It is time that someone should write a good book on the essential qualities of Chesterton, and show him in relation to the time when his force was most effective.
Mr. Evans has not written that book, but he has made within narrow limits a useful contribution. What he has done, and done ably, is to compile from Chesterton's longer treatises, his novels and his essays a considered account of his positive doctrines and beliefs. He has presented a critical statement of his creed. This he has arrived at by a minute and sympa- thetic study of his works, but apparently without an equally careful study of the period (say, 1900 to 1914). The result, thanks to the author's intuition, is better than the method might lead one to expect. He has given a satisfactory account of Chesterton's fighting response to the evolu- tionists, the scientific materialists, the agnostic realists, and the aesthetic " pagans " who were at that time attacking Christian ethics and Victorian morality. Brought up in a circle of agnostics and Positivists, his adoles- cent revolt took the form of reaction from scientific disbelief to Christian " orthodoxy," from the rationalism of the intelli- gentsia and the languor of the aesthetics to the common sense of the " common man," from the despair of the realists to romantic optimism. He was first and foremost an indi- vidualist who equally disliked the interfering officialism of Fabian Socialism and the tyranny of the big capitalist. He stood for liberty, democracy, the small State and the man of small property, and contended that if modern progress mili- tated against the old standards of value, it was modern progress that ought to be abolished. In speaking of Chester- ton's steadfast defence of Christian orthodoxy, Mr. Evans admirably says : " It is his strength that he joins the Church out of a positive and joyful belief in its doctrines, and not as a rock on which to cling in a storm-tossed generation."
Mr. Evans has given a sound and not unimaginative account of Chesterton's doctrines and of his method of pre- senting them in his writings. But, impressed by his consis- tency, he has confined himself too exclusively to what is so obviously consistent about him—namely, his religion and social creed. He neglects his " literary criticism " on the ground that he " approaches his subjects from a doctrinal point of view, generally choosing such figures as illustrate his beliefs." The result is that he completely ignores not only his study of Browning, but also his far more important book on Dickens, which is perhaps the best he ever wrote. This is a serious omission. Moreover, he says nothing about the inti- mate friends who had the most potent influence on all that he ever did, among them Hilaire Belloc and Charles Master- man. He says nothing about the development of his manner of writing resulting from his association with the Daily News, to whose columns he wrote the best essays that ever came from his pen. He says little or nothing about the persons with whom he entered into literary controversies—some famous, some obscure—Bernard Shaw for one, Mr. McCabe for another.
The real fact is that Chesterton's individuality did not spring from his doctrines, but his doctrines from his indi- viduality. He was an individual who had, first and foremost, an unshaken affection for his friends and an intense joy in the simpler pleasures of life, including talk. He was a better talker than he was a writer—or, rather, he wrote what he talked—he generally talked it all first. The process of living induced in him strong attractions and strong repulsions, which in due course crystallised in the form of convictions, never in their fundamentals to be changed. Having decided to be an orthodox Christian, he remained a Christian—a jolly, bois- terous one—and he endowed Christianity with all the virtues and all the weaknesses in which he delighted. Surrounded all his life by clever people, he detested all the shams that go with mere cleverness—pomposity, pretentiousness, snobbery, and affectation—these he attacked all his life with the same vehemence with which he attacked cruelty or tyranny. A fully adequate estimate of his work cannot be given without an account of the intellectual, moral and aesthetic char- acteristics of the period to which he temperamentally re-acted. The environment of his young manhood stimulated him to controversy; his imagination was stirred, his wit provoked. Mr. Evans has done his task as well, perhaps, as it could be done by concentrating on the doctrines, and leaving out the man and his setting—but that is to leave out the greater part.
R. A. Scan-JANIE&
Previous page
