As we sat down before the fire-place, Chesterton said he was vastly amused over a delegation from America that had called on him the day before.
“They were making a tour of Europe for the express purpose of unearthing everything they could about Browning. They called on me because I have once written a book on the poet. It was a grave mistake on their part to think that because a man has written a book on a particular subject in the dim and distant past, he therefore knows everything about that subject. At the time of writing the book, I probably was a little more up on Robert Browning than the average person, but all my superior knowledge has slipped from me long ago.”
The question of modern youth came up for discussion.
“Young people today have the idea that old timers are landmarks. I hope I do not fill as much space as Saint Paul’s, but at least I am a Victorian ruin dating from the year 1874. The last time I was in New York I noticed that the landscape was always changing. When a baby is born he just has time to look at the skyscrapers a week or so before they are pulled down. Pulling down New York seems to be the local industry. A baby goes out in his perambulator and his home is pulled down before he gets back.”
“What do you think of the young people today, Mr. Chesterton?”
“Well,” he replied, “their chief trouble is they don’t want to admit that old people really do know the modern movement because we are able to compare it with movements of the past. But the young people know nothing else but the present. The result is that they do not give modern conditions much thought. For instance, if we had moving sidewalks today, the young people would take it for granted, the old ones alone could compare them with the stationary sidewalks.”
“Do you think that much change has taken place in the last fifty years,” I asked.
“We cannot grasp the tremendous change that has taken place since 1874, my birth year. Your country used not to pay much attention to culture. When Matthew Arnold began his lecture series in America, he was worried about what the American papers would say of him for his criticism of certain phases of American culture which he had handled rather severely, but was relieved to find that the papers had large headlines reading,
“‘Matthew Arnold has side whiskers.’ But today you have a very high regard for culture in your country.”
“What literary people did you meet in America, Mr. Chesterton?”