Over the
past many months we have been reading quite a bit of that brilliant author, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, (1874 – 1936),
creator of the delightful Father Brown
detective stories. Though
little-remembered today, Chesterton was one of the outstanding critics and
thinkers of his age. There are many
reasons to admire GKC, but perhaps the most sensible is that he had never lost
his childlike sense of wonder. It was
his innocence and clarity, mixed with a prodigious erudition, that resulted in
his gargantuan influence as a writer and thinker. He is simply the finest critic of Dickens and Stevenson I have ever read, and his take on Shakespeare is enthralling. To
read Chesterton is to see these writers anew, as if some profound truth were
staring us in the face and it took a little boy to point it out.
The
Falstaffian figure of GKC was familiar to all literate people in the US and UK
for decades. Tall and fat, he wore a
broad-brimmed slouch hat and cape, and often carried a sword cane. Of such figures legends are made, and
Chesterton, the man himself, influenced writers who converted the easily
recognizable figure into a string of fictional characters. (His influence on detective fiction is vast –
and the man himself served as the model for the fictional Dr. Gideon Fell, who appeared in mysteries by John Dickson Carr.) The most
contemporary figure similar to GKC would be Orson Welles; but though brilliant, Welles did not have his deep
and profound depth of learning, his purity of soul, nor his sense of fun. Welles was old before his time; GKC was
forever young.
Chesterton
earned his bread and cheese as a journalist, writing for the London Daily News. His 1910 book Alarms and Discursions features dozens of columns on a variety of
different subjects. Paging through this
book, the reader would learn his thoughts on everything from democracy, to
cheese to the failure of the English upper classes. Anyone interested in learning more about
this fascinating man should look at his newspaper columns while also reading
his many novels and books of sustained criticism.
Here are
some quotes: When a man says that democracy is false because most people are stupid,
there are several courses which the philosopher may pursue. The most obvious is
to hit him smartly and with precision on the exact tip of the nose. But if you
have scruples (moral or physical) about this course, you may proceed to employ
Reason, which in this case has all the savage solidity of a blow with the fist.
It is stupid to say that "most people" are stupid. It is like saying
"most people are tall," when it is obvious that "tall" can
only mean taller than most people. It is absurd to denounce the majority of
mankind as below the average of mankind.
Isn’t
that grand? And here is GKC writing in
1910 something that is even more pertinent to 2014: In a
popular magazine there is one of the usual articles about criminology; about
whether wicked men could be made good if their heads were taken to pieces. As
by far the wickedest men I know of are much too rich and powerful ever to
submit to the process, the speculation leaves me cold. I always notice with
pain, however, a curious absence of the portraits of living millionaires from
such galleries of awful examples; most of the portraits in which we are called
upon to remark the line of the nose or the curve of the forehead appear to be
the portraits of ordinary sad men, who stole because they were hungry or killed
because they were in a rage. The physical peculiarity seems to vary infinitely;
sometimes it is the remarkable square head, sometimes it is the unmistakable
round head; sometimes the learned draw attention to the abnormal development,
sometimes to the striking deficiency of the back of the head. I have tried to
discover what is the invariable factor, the one permanent mark of the
scientific criminal type; after exhaustive classification I have to come to the
conclusion that it consists in being poor.
GKC had
a remarkably Christian point of view – and by that, I don’t necessarily mean he
wore his Catholicism on his sleeve. He
was a Christian humanist – someone who, seemingly against all odds, genuinely
loved people. This is a rare quality among
those who live in the mind, but GKC was a rare man.
The charm
of a book like Alarms and Discursions is that it can be read through in one
sitting, or can be dipped into almost indiscriminately. There is not a page without gold of some
kind, and, in addition, even his most interesting observations are presented
with a puckish insouciance. Read this,
and savor, especially, the last line: Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of
people in this world. The first kind of people are People; they are the largest
and probably the most valuable class. We owe to this class the chairs we sit
down on, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in; and, indeed (when we come
to think of it), we probably belong to this class ourselves. The second class
may be called for convenience the Poets; they are often a nuisance to their
families, but, generally speaking, a blessing to mankind. The third class is
that of the Professors or Intellectuals; sometimes described as the thoughtful
people; and these are a blight and a desolation both to their families and also
to mankind. Of course, the classification sometimes overlaps, like all
classification. Some good people are almost poets and some bad poets are almost
professors. But the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage. I do
not offer it lightly. It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes of
earnest reflection and research.
Alarms
and Discursions is available at Project Gutenberg, and the invaluable www.manybooks.net. It makes for wonderful reading.
