MY DEAR WELLS,
As you will see by the above address I have been away from home; and must apologise for delay; I am returning almost at once, however. Most certainly you have always been a good friend to me, and I have always tried to express my pride in the fact. I know enough of your good qualities in other ways to put down everything in your last letter to an emotion of loyalty to another friend. Any quarrel between us will not come from me; and I confess I am puzzled as to why it should come from you, merely because somebody else who is not I dislikes a book by somebody else who is not you, and says so in an article for which neither of us is even remotely responsible. I very often disagree with the criticisms of ——; I do not know anything about the book or the circumstances of Hueffer. I cannot help being entertained by your vision of ——, who is not a priest, but a poor journalist, and I believe a Free-Thinker. But whoever he may be (and I hardly think the problem worth a row between you and me) he has a right to justice: and you must surely see that even if it were my paper, I could not either tell a man to find a book good when he found it bad, or sack him for a point of taste which has nothing in the world to do with the principles of the paper. For the rest, Haynes represents the New Witness much more than a reviewer does, being both on the board and the staff; and he has put your view in the paper—I cannot help thinking with a more convincing logic. Don't you sometimes find it convenient, even in my case, that your friends are less touchy than you are?
By all means drop any paper you dislike, though if you do it for every book review you think unfair, I fear your admirable range of modern knowledge will be narrowed. Of the paper in question I will merely say this. My brother and in some degree the few who have worked with him have undertaken a task of public criticism for the sake of which they stand in permanent danger of imprisonment and personal ruin. We are incessantly reminded of this danger; and no one has ever dared to suggest that we have any motive but the best. If you should ever think it right to undertake such a venture, you will find that the number of those who will commit their journalistic fortunes to it is singularly small: and includes some who have more courage and honesty than acquaintance with the hierarchy of art. It is even likely that you will come to think the latter less important.
Yours, sans rancune,
G. K. CHESTERTON.
P.S. On re-reading your letter in order to be as fair as I am trying to be, I observe you specially mention ——'s letters. You will see, of course, that this does not make any difference; to stop letters would be to stop Haynes' letter and others on your side; and these could not be printed without permitting a rejoinder. I post this from Beaconsfield, where anything further will find me.
It ended as all quarrels did that anyone started with Gilbert:
DEAR G.K.C.
Also I can't quarrel with you. But the Hueffer business aroused my long dormant moral indignation and I let fly at the most sensitive part of the New Witness constellation, the only part about whose soul I care. I hate these attacks on rather miserable exceptional people like Hueffer and Masterman. I know these aren't perfect men but their defects make quite sufficient hells for them without these public peltings. I suppose I ought to have written to C.C. instead of to you. One of these days I will go and have a heart to heart talk to him. Only I always get so amiable when I meet a man. He, C.C., needs it—I mean the talking to.
Yours ever