Thus too with Gilbert. The first eight years of his married life saw in swift succession the publication of ten books comprising literary and art criticism and biography, poetry, fiction (or rather fantasy), light essays and religious philosophy. All these were so full at once of the profound seriousness of youth, and of the bubbling wine of its high spirits, as to recall another thing Gilbert said: that Dickens was "accused of superficiality by those who cannot grasp that there is foam upon deep seas." That was the matter in dispute about himself, and very furiously disputed it was during these years. Was G.K. serious or merely posing, was he a great man or a mountebank, was he clear or obscure, was he a genius or a charlatan? "Audacious reconciliation," he pleaded—or rather asserted, for his tone could seldom be called a plea, "is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme seriousness."
A man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels, or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it passes. But a man who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus must have some serious view of the universe. The man who should write a dialogue between two early Christians might be a mere writer of dialogues. But a man who should write a dialogue between an early Christian and the Missing Link would have to be a philosopher. The more widely different the types talked of, the more serious and universal must be the philosophy which talks of them. The mark of the light and thoughtless writer is the harmony of his subject matter; the mark of the thoughtful writer is its apparent diversity. The most flippant lyric poet might write a pretty poem about lambs; but it requires something bolder and graver than a poet, it requires an ecstatic prophet, to talk about the lion lylng down with the lamb.*
* G. K. Chesterton. Criticisms and Appreciations of the World of
Charles Dickens. Dent. 1933 pp. 68-9.
A man starting to write a thesis on Chesterton's sociology once complained bitterly that almost none of his books were indexed, so he had to submit to the disgusting necessity of reading them all through, for some striking view on sociology might well be embedded in a volume of art criticism or be the very centre of a fantastic romance. Chesterton's was a philosophy universal and unified and it was at this time growing fast and finding exceedingly varied techniques of expression. But the whole of it was in a sense in each of them—in each book, almost in each poem. As he himself says of the universe of Charles Dickens, "there was something in it—there is in all great creative writers—like the account in Genesis of the light being created before the sun, moon and stars, the idea before the machinery that made it manifest. Pickwick is in Dickens's career the mere mass of light before the creation of sun or moon. It is the splendid, shapeless substance of which all his stars are ultimately made." And again, "He said what he had to say and yet not all he had to say. Wild pictures, possible stories, tantalising and attractive trains of thought, perspectives of adventure, crowded so continually upon his mind that at the end there was a vast mass of them left over, ideas that he literally had not the opportunity to develop, tales that he literally had not the time to tell."
CHAPTER XII
Clearing the Ground for Orthodoxy
G. K. CHESTERTON: A CRITICISM (published anonymously in 1908) was a challenge thrown to the world of letters, for it demanded the recognition of Chesterton as a force to be reckoned with in the modern world. As its title implied, the book was by no means a tribute of sheer admiration and agreement. Gilbert was rebuked for that love of a pun or an effective phrase that sometimes led him into indefensible positions. It was hotly asked of him that he should abandon his unjust attitude toward Ibsen. He was accused of calling himself a Liberal and being in fact a Tory. But even in differing from him the book showed him as of real importance, not least in the sketch given of his life and of the influences that had contributed to the formation of his mind. It did too another thing: it clarified his philosophical position for the world at large. For some time now many had been demanding such a clarification. When G.K. attacked the Utopia of Wells and of Shaw, both Wells and Shaw had been urgent in their demands that he should play fair by setting forth his own Utopia. When he attacked the fundamental philosophy of G. S. Street, Mr. Street retorted that it would be time for him to worry about his philosophy when G.K.'s had been unfolded. (G.K.'s retort to this was Orthodoxy!)
G. K. Chesterton: a Criticism—far the best book that has ever been written about Chesterton—showed at last a mind that had really grasped his philosophy and could even have outlined his Utopia. Perhaps this was the less surprising as it ultimately turned out to have been written by his brother Cecil.
I do not know at what stage Cecil revealed his authorship, but I remember that at first Frances told me only that they suspected Cecil because it was from the angle of his opinions that the book criticised many of Gilbert's. However, I was at that date only an acquaintance and the truth may still have been a family secret. At any rate Cecil it was, and it is small wonder if after all those years of arguing he understood something of the man with whom he had been measuring forces. But he did better than that—for he explained him to others without ever having resort to these arguments, which after all were more or less private property. He explained G.K.'s general philosophy from the Napoleon, his ideas of cosmic good from The Wild Knight and The Man Who Was Thursday, which had just been published that same year, 1908.
In this last fantastic story the group of anarchists (distinguished by being called after the days of the week) turn out, through a series of incredible adventures to be, all save one, detectives in disguise. The gigantic figure of Sunday before whom they all tremble turns from the chief of the anarchists, chief of the destructive forces, into—what? The sub-title, "A Nightmare," is needed, for Sunday would seem to be some wild vision, seen in dreams, not merely of forces of good, of sanity, of creation, but even of God Himself.