CHAPTER XXVIII
Columbus
He wished to discover America. His gay and thoughtless friends, who could not understand him, pointed out that America had already been discovered, I think they said by Christopher Columbus, some time ago, and that there were big cities of Anglo-Saxon People there already, New York and Boston and so on. But the Admiral explained to them, kindly enough, that this had nothing to do with it. They might have discovered America, but he had not.
From A Fragment, in The Coloured Lands.
IN THE CHAPTER of his Autobiography entitled "The Incomplete Traveller" Chesterton has said "after all, the strangest country I ever visited was England." It was of the very essence of his philosophy that each one of us has to make again the discoveries of our ancestors if we are to be travellers and not trippers. "The traveller sees what he sees; the tripper sees what he has come to see." Thus Chesterton tried to discover each country that he visited and he records that the nearer countries are sometimes harder to discover than the more remote. For Poland is more akin to England than is France: Ireland more mysterious than Italy.
France, Ireland and supremely Palestine brought their contribution to that mental and spiritual development traced in earlier chapters. On Ireland, Rome, Jerusalem and the United States he wrote books. It may really be said that on the States he wrote two books, for in the volume of essays Sidelights on New London and Newer York which followed his second visit he showed a much greater understanding than in What I Saw in America. His first visit took place in 1921-22, his second in 1930.
On the first trip Frances kept clippings of almost all their interviews. Gilbert himself said that, while the headlines in American newspapers became obscure in their violent efforts to startle, what was written underneath the headlines was usually good journalism and the press cuttings of this tour bear out his remark. Interviewers report accurately and with a good deal of humour. Sketches of G.K.'s personal appearance abound, and if occasionally they contradict one another in detail they yet contrive to convey a vivid and fairly truthful impression of the "leonine" head, the bulky form, the gestures and mannerisms. That a man of letters and lecturer should choose to wear proudly not one of these titles but that of journalist, was pleasing and flattering to the brotherhood. The atmosphere of the tour is best conveyed by rather copious quotation. A crowd of journalists met him at the boat. One of them writes of
. . . his voluminous figure, quite imposing when he stands up, though not so abundantly Johnsonian as his pictures lead one to expect. He has cascades of grey hair above a pinkly beaming face, a rather straggly blond mustache, and eyes that seem frequently to be taking up infinity in a serious way.
His falsetto laugh, prominent teeth and general aspect are rather
Rooseveltian. . . .
Mr. Chesterton, who is accompanied by Mrs. Chesterton, and who will deliver a lecture soon in Boston on the Ignorance of the Educated, said he did not expect to go further west than Chicago, since "having seen both Jerusalem and Chicago, I think I shall have touched on the extremes of civilization."