Is there any particular characteristic in this record of Chesterton's visit to Jerusalem? Is it anything more than an impression of a wonderful experience, when a great writer left his home in Buckinghamshire and passed over the sea and the desert to the city that is older than history and is now new? I do not think that the book can be called more than a Chestertonian impression of Jerusalem, with an appreciation of the vexed history of that strange city which is Holy. It does not forget the problems in connection with Palestine, but it has no particular claim to having said very much that was new about the New Jerusalem. Yet it has avoided the obvious: it is not of the type of book that is read at drawing-room missionary meetings, which are more often than not written in a surprised style, that the places mentioned in the Bible are really somewhere.
I almost feel as if this book is something of a guide-book—in fact, it was inevitable that it should be so. I rather fancy that descriptive writing is for Chesterton difficult; it is a little bit too descriptive, which is to say it is not always easy to imagine the scene he is trying to describe. I am not sure that the Jews will be flattered to be told that Chesterton thinks they are worthy of being a nation; it is slightly patronizing.
Yet the New Jerusalem is a book to read, but it is not of the Holy City that St. John saw in the Revelation; it is of the New Jerusalem of the twentieth century, which is very imperfect, yet is Holy. It is a book of a city that was visited by God, Who did not deem Himself too important to walk in its streets; it is of a city teeming with difficulties; it is of a city that has felt the iron hand of the conqueror; it is finally Jerusalem made into a symbol by the hand of Mr. Chesterton.
Chapter Eleven
MR. CHESTERTON AT HOME
There is a very remarkable fascination about the home life of a great man whatever branch of activity he may adorn. If he is an archbishop, it is interesting to know what he looks like when he has exchanged his leggings for a human dress; if he is a pork millionaire, we like to see whether he enjoys Chopin; if he is a great writer, the interest of his home life is intensified. For the tens of thousands who know an author by his books, the number who know him at home may quite well be measured by the score.
There is always an idea that a great man is not as others; that he may quite conceivably eat mustard with mutton, or peas with a spoon; that his conversation will be of things the ordinary man knows nothing about; that he is unapproachable; that he is, in short, on a glorified pedestal. This love of the personal is demonstrated in the absurd wish people have to know about the private doings of Royalty, it is shown in the remarkable fact that thousands will hang about a church door to see the wedding of some one who is of no particular interest beyond the fact that they are in some way well known; it is again seen in the interest that people display in those parts of a biography that deal with the life of the public man in his private surroundings.
When I first knew Chesterton he was living in a flat in Battersea, a charming place overlooking a green park in front and a mass of black roofs behind. Here Chesterton lived in the days when he was becoming famous, when the inhabitants of that part of London began to realize that they had a great man in their midst, and grew accustomed to seeing a romantic figure in a cloak and slouch hat hail a hansom and drive off to Fleet Street.