Even the hardened controversialist Coulton wrote in the course of one of their arguments:
If I speak very plainly of your historical methods, it is not that I do not fully respect your conversion. I have more sympathy with your Catholicity than (partly no doubt by my own fault) you may be inclined to think; I believe you to have made a sacrifice of the sort that is never altogether vain; it is therefore part of my faith that you are near to that which I also am trying to approach; and, if this belief does little or nothing to colour my criticisms in this particular discussion, that is because I believe true Catholicism, like true Protestantism, can only gain by the explosion of historical falsehoods, if indeed they be false, with the least possible delay. If (on the other hand) they are truths then you may be trusted to make out the best possible case for them, and my words will recoil upon myself.
The dispute was about Puritanism and Catholicism. It was republished as a pamphlet. It is the only case I have found in which Chesterton wrote several versions of one letter (to the Cambridge Review). In its final form he omitted one illuminating illustration. Coulton had maintained that the mediaevals condemned dancing as much as the Puritans and had dug up various mouldy theologians who classed it as a mortal sin. Father Lopez retorted by a quotation from St. Thomas saying it was quite right to dance at weddings and on such like occasions, provided the dancing was of a decent kind.
Chesterton comments:
We have already travelled very far from the first vision of Mr. Coulton, of Dark Ages full of one monotonous wail over the mortal sin of dancing. To class it seriously as a mortal sin is to class it with adultery or theft or murder. It is interesting to imagine St. Thomas and the moderate moralists saying: "You may murder at weddings; you may commit adultery to celebrate your release from prison; you may steal if you do not do it with immodest gestures," and so on. The calm tone of St. Thomas about the whole thing is alone evidence of a social atmosphere different from that described.
The rest of his analysis of Coulton's method of dealing with a historical document and distorting it is in the published version. A valuable part of Chesterton's line is also interesting as a comment on his own historical work. The expert he says is so occupied with detail that he overlooks the broad facts that anyone could see. On this point the review of Coulton's Mediaeval History in the Church Times is illuminating. The reviewer noted that in the index under the word "Church" occurred such notes as: "soldiers sleeping in," "horses stabled in," and other allusions to extraordinary happenings. But nowhere, he said, could he find any mention of the normal use of a church—that men prayed in it.
With H. G. Wells several interchanges of letters have shown in earlier chapters how the soft answer turned aside a wrath easily aroused, but also easily dissipated. Another exchange of letters only three years before Gilbert's death must be given. The third letter is undated and I am not sure if it belongs here or refers to another of Gilbert's reviews of a book of Wells.
47 Chiltern Court, N.W.I. Dec. 10, 1933
DEAR OLD G.K.C.
An Illustrated London News Xmas cutting comes like the season's
greetings. If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your
Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if
I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you.