Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

On society: “It has been left to the very latest modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility… the next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality. And it is coming not from a few socialists… The madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow, much more in Manhattan.” (He was writing this in 1926.)

And this — which is ominously apposite to our present situation (I do not believe for instance that it is a mere coincidence that we are witnessing simultaneously the development of a movement supporting euthanasia and the development of a movement in favour of homosexual marriage):

There are destructive forces in our society, that are nothing but destructive, since they are not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them, basing themselves on an inner anarchy that denies all the moral distinctions on which mere rebels base themselves. The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. The enemy arises not from among the people, but from the educated and well-off, those who unite intellectualism and ignorance, and who are helped on their way by a weak worship of force. More specifically it is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the family and the State.

In the early 1930s, T.E. Lawrence wrote in a letter to a friend, “I have not met Chesterton, but Bernard Shaw always tells me that he is a man of colossal genius.” This small example, picked at random, is characteristic of the sort of prestige which Chesterton commanded amongst the most brilliant minds of his time.

By contrast, it is puzzling to observe that today he has become virtually invisible on our intellectual horizon. Just go into any bookshop and look for his works: most of them are unavailable and have been out of print for many years already. And when a new anthology of his wisdom came out in England a couple of months ago, the few reviews that appeared in the press were typically patronising, treating Chesterton as a sort of colourful dinosaur — mildly amusing, and utterly irrelevant. The fact is, the fashionable intelligentsia of the English-speaking world now largely ignores him. (Note, however, that among the French and the Latins, the situation is quite different; the two subtlest literary minds of our time, Paulhan and Borges, literally worshipped him — but that is another story.)[1]

It may be interesting to ponder for a moment the various reasons that have contributed to this odd neglect (which at times is even tinged with scorn and hostility). One factor may well be his Catholicism. In a way, Catholicism has done to Chesterton’s reputation what the British empire did to Kipling’s: in the eyes of a shallow and ignorant public, it became a liability — an occasion for both partisans and detractors to indulge in schematisations and distortions, a sectarian pretext for support or for rejection. In this reductionist perspective, Chesterton’s Catholicism eventually came to obscure his catholicity. I just mentioned a newly published anthology of his writing: the unfortunate title of this book, Prophet of Orthodoxy , precisely illustrates the sort of simplification into which his admirers seem sometimes to fall all too easily. To be turned into a prophet was precisely a fate of which Chesterton felt most wary. He himself identified it as a temptation that had to be resisted absolutely. He realised it was a status he could easily have achieved, had he agreed to pay the usual price — which is to isolate and emphasise only one side of the truth. This is always an easy recipe for achieving popularity and for gathering crowds of disciples; but to secure this sort of demagogic success one must mutilate a complex reality.

A second factor that may explain the relative neglect which has befallen him was shrewdly identified by Evelyn Waugh in a rather ambivalent critical assessment:

Chesterton was a lovable and much loved man, abounding in charity and humility. But humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice — all the odious qualities which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work, until he has made something that gratifies his pride, and envy and greed. And in doing so, he enriches the world more than the generous and the good, though he may lose his own soul in the process. That is the paradox of artistic achievement.

Indeed, Chesterton never attached much importance to his own writing. In this respect, he was the exact opposite of a “man of letters”—and this is one of the most endearing and admirable aspects of his personality. Generally speaking, literary people are exceedingly self-centred and vain — on the whole they are not a very attractive breed — but Chesterton did not belong to that species. For all his formidable wit, he had no urge to shine; among brilliant conversationalists, he was the strange exception: a man who truly enjoyed listening to others. He could say truthfully, “I have never taken my books seriously; but I take my opinions quite seriously.” This is a very important distinction. His brother, who knew him intimately, grasped it well: “He is merely a man expressing his opinions because he enjoys expressing them. But he would express them as readily, and as well, to a man he met on a bus.”

Unlike most literary men, he never endeavoured to husband carefully his ideas and intellectual resources, or to manage his career, or to plan his moves and design publishing strategies. He simply could not care less.

He wrote with the reckless generosity of genius. Mozart, who enjoyed (or suffered from?) a similar facility and composed with the same effortless flow, once said, “I write music like a cow pisses.”

Chesterton’s fecundity was prodigious. His secretary described how, on some occasions, he would produce two articles at the same time: he dictated one, while simultaneously writing another.

Did he write too much? It would be imprudent to discard lightly the enormous bulk of his journalistic output, for the problem is that, again, with lavish carelessness, he scattered gems everywhere, and many of these are to be found among trifling and whimsical little essays.

He had spent his secondary-school years mostly sleeping and dreaming — to the perplexity and despair of his teachers. He never entered any university; he merely attended an art school in desultory fashion. But he managed to accumulate an immense culture — literary, historical and philosophical — solely through his extensive reading. (Again, the approach of the amateur.)

Once, a woman told him with naïve admiration that he seemed to know a great many things. He replied, “Madam, I know nothing: I am a journalist.”

All his life, Chesterton claimed no other title for himself but that of journalist. He gloried in being a journalist, he relished the atmosphere and romance of Fleet Street. As a perceptive critic observed, “He was a journalist because he was a democrat. Newspapers were what the ordinary people (the man on the bus!) like to read. There could therefore be no higher privilege than to write for the newspapers — whatever he might think of their proprietors.”

And he had all the qualities of a superb journalist: intelligence, clarity, liveliness, speed, brevity and wit. But these are the very qualities that always damn a writer in the eyes of pretentious critics and pompous mediocrities. To impress the fools, you must be obscure. (“What I understand at once never seems true to me,” confessed a female admirer to a modern French novelist). And for these people, it is inconceivable that anything expressed with imagination and humour could also have an earnest purpose. How could you possibly say something important if you are not self-important? Chesterton constantly battled against this prejudice. He explained: