Dale Ahlquist, President of the Political Thinker and Director of American Chesterton Society the British Think-Tank Respublica Dr

Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 $5.50 Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news. —G.K. chesterton, The End of the Armistice

An original, never- before-published portrait of G.K. Chesterton, about age 3.

The artist is Nathan Branwhite (1813–1894), whose father, Nathan Cooper Branwhite (1775– 1857) was a famous portrait artist, engraver, and miniaturist whose work is in the National Gallery in London. 15 years Anniversary Issue A Solution for Our Social and Economic Crisis ACS Books, a division of the American Distributism is a political economy The Hound of Distributism is a collection Chesterton Society, announced today championing the sustainability of local of essays written by leading Distributist the release of its groundbreaking book economies with the aim of ensuring the authors from around the world. Given on Distributism, the thought-provoking widest ownership of the means of pro- our social and economic crises, this timely idea that what is good for politics and duction. In a world obsessed with growth and rich volume challenges the sterility business is not always good for society, and globalization, Distributism is a so- of our age by recovering the values of the but what is good for the family makes lution to our present socio-economic socio-economic theory of Distributism. good politics and good business. malaise. The Hound of Contributing Authors Include Richard Aleman, president Joseph Pearce, acclaimed Distributism of The Society for Distributism biographer and editor-in-chief of and managing editor of St. Austin Review Member Price: $ .00 11 The Distributist Review Phillip Blond, Retail Price: $13.95 leading English • Dale Ahlquist, president of the political thinker and director of American Chesterton Society the British think-tank ResPublica Dr. William E. Fahey, president of Thomas More College Hon. Dr. Race Mathews, former Australian MP and cabinet minister Philippe Maxence, editor-in- chief of L’Homme Nouveau, the French Catholic newspaper John Médaille, author of the bestseller, Toward a Truly Free •Get the KindleAC S Market version atBOOKS amazon.com Thomas Storck, celebrated author serving on the editorial board for The Chesterton Review

ACS Order online at BOOKS www.chesterton.org or mail to: 4117 Pebblebrook Circle Minneapolis, MN 55437 ACS BOOKS Or call TOLL FREE 800-343-2425 Table of Contents

Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012

2 | Tremendous Trifles 24 | Tales of the Short Bow 38 | The Detection Club

3 | Lunacy & Letters Putting Out the Trash In the Mail by James G. Bruen Jr. by james G. Bruen Jr. 5 | EDITORIAL Dragon’s Gold Three Cases at Once Fifteen Years of Gilbert by Kelsey McIntyre by Chris Chan Magazine 27 | All is Grist Death Stalks the Countryside 6 | Straws in the Wind by Chris Chan It’s Not Funny A Sermon on Cheapness by Joe Campbell 44 | Book Reviews by G.K. Chesterton When the Spirit Moves The Ballad of the White Horse 8 | Schall on Chesterton by Pat Colwell Reviewed by Dale Ahlquist “The Light of a Strange Star” By james V. Schall, S.J. Why Chesterton Is—and Should Things Seen and Unseen: A Be—Banned From Universities Theologian’s Notebook 10 | Alarms and Discursions by Peter Maurice Reviewed by David Paul Deavel

An Interview with Ralph Wood 30 | Varied Types 47 | Fear of Film by Dale Ahlquist Aliens R Us Hugo 13 | The Everlasting Chesterton by Victoria Darkey Reviewed by Art Livingston

The Gift of a Dandelion 32 | The Flying Inn 48 | Ballade of Gilbert by Stratford Caldecott My Grandfather Ballade of An Anti-Puritan 14 | Conference Report by David Beresford by G.K. Chesterton

Alive in the Desert 33 | The Flying Stars 49 | Shorter History of England by Joseph Grabowski The Roller Coaster Conference Chesterton and the Case A Roundup of Talks by Nancy Carpentier Brown of King Richard III by Grettelyn Nypaver by Jeanne Carr 34 | Jogging with G.K. Clerihew Winners As Part of the Family 50 | News With Views 20 | Rolling Road by Robert Moore-Jumonville 52 | The Distributist Mars 35 | All I Survey by Dale Ahlquist Sheen’s Fraternity The Land of Mooreeffoc by Richard Aleman 21 | Ethics of Elfland by David Fagerberg 55 | Chesterton’s Mail Bag by Reese Parquette 36 | The Signature of Man Contraception, Capitalism, 22 | Miscellany of Men The Pre-Raphaelites and Science by G.K. Chesterton Two Hundred Years Early 56 | Letter to America by David Paul Deavel 37 | Chesterton University Dictatorships by G.K. Chesterton Godless by Dale Ahlquist

Publisher: Dale Ahlquist, President, ACS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sean P. Dailey aRT DIRECTOR: Ted Schluenderfritz liteRARY EDITOR: Therese Warmus copy EDITOR: Susan Meister

Senior Writer: Art Livingston contributing Editors: Richard Aleman, David Beresford, James G. Bruen Jr., Nancy Carpentier Brown, Joe Campbell, John C. Chalberg, Christopher Chan, David Paul Deavel, David W. Fagerberg, Kyro Lantsberger, Art Livingston, Robert Moore-Jumonville, James V. Schall SJ “News with Views” Editors: Nathan Allen, Mark Pilon, Larry Pavlicek, Joseph Grabowski, Leo Schwartz Subscriptions: (See Coupon Page 4) Credit Card Orders: call 1-800-343-2425 or fax 1-270-325-3091 letters and Articles: Gilbert Magazine, American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437 [email protected] www.gilbertmagazine.com Letters to the editor may be edited for length or clarity.

Gilbert Magazine is published every six weeks by The American Chesterton Society, a non-profit corporation established under Paragraph 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code. Donations to the American Chesterton Society are tax-deductible in the United States. Your contributions help support the publication of Gilbert Magazine. Please send your donations to: The American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437. The views expressed by Gilbert Magazine contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher, the editors, or the American Chesterton Society. opyright ©2012 by The American Chesterton Society.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 1 I • • • • Ahlquist shotane-mailtoCrescent The American Chesterton Society thanks you,Society Chesterton The American ourfaith- We appreciate your deeply help. 2 - yearofopera injustourfifth Catholichighschools fifty Conference are now available. thead on page See 9, orcheck Chesterton Academyyour and asksfor Chesterton continuing assis- Cincinnati Chesterton Society.Cincinnati Chesterton Darren Christy andhiswife City andreceivedCity apolitebutterse AuctionCity Web Gallery’s site. Two Chanspottedanadabust for Chris your inadvance. tickets was inapreviousauction (May 2011) totheirmothers, ofthetrip would makeagift whohave tion isagreat honor,” saidHeadmaster John Niemann. the Chesterton Challenge,the Chesterton over $48,000. raising your Send tance. Donor generosityhelpedtheACS reach itsgoal in two tickets toRome isDarrentwo tickets Szwajkowski, the whoruns the bearer ofbad news. time.” don’t they Maybe wanttobe therefore we can’t changethein- the nineteenthcentury, anditdoesn’t promised won eachotherthatifthey thedrawing, they poned untilMarch, 2013. raffle and The winnerofthe postor on hismantelpiece. Intrepid editor GMcontributing information logoninformation towww.provisiontheater.org. GMfilm look a thing like Our Man.look athinglikeOur Dale beentoRome.never Bravo! from Saturday, Sept. 8, through Sunday, Oct. 28. For more ful donors, projects likethe exemplary supporting for formation thatwasprovidedformation atthat cussion each Sunday after thematinéeperformance. after cussion eachSunday Get inanonstage dis- Livingstonbetakingpart will Art critic chesterton.org for details. for chesterton.org check to the American Chesterton Society ordonate online. Society Chesterton totheAmerican check education, stressing academicexcellence, Catholicidentity, reply. bust you’re“The to referring difficulties presented themselves: the originally scheduled for November for scheduled 12–20,originally hasbeenpost- of G.K. on theCrescent Chesterton and civiceducation. “To among beranked thenation’s top sculpture created wasapparently in season vs. withShaw Chesterton: The Debate, run thatwill An art collector inNewOrleans, collector An art Louisiana, hasanim- The American Chesterton Society Rome Pilgrimage, Rome Society Chesterton The American Talks Society from Chesterton the31stAnnual American Chicago’s Provision Theatre Co. beginsits2012-13 Volume 16Number 1-2, 2012 September/October Catholic High School Honor Roll.Catholic HighSchool The Honor Roll, nizes and encourages excellence in Catholic secondary andencouragesexcellenceinCatholicsecondary nizes Academy wasnamedone theChesterton n September of America’s Catholicschools by the National topfifty sponsored by theCardinal NewmanSociety, recog- Tremendous Trifles by SeanP. Dailey • • • David Beresford, editorof new Robert Benson.Robert Wanting astatueto Beresford remarked inTheCatholic Register. previous “The Milwaukee sculptorDavid Milwaukee Wanner Chesterton authentic right down authenticright Chesterton years on agoDistributism. withanewsletter way astheapostles.” Hebeganhiscareerinpublishingmany wealthy Duke to view amagicshowsoincom withatwist - toview wealthy Duke tions editor toGMcontributing tion of Catholics gets the opportunity tobeapostolic,”tion ofCatholicsgets theopportunity Dr. Catholicthe Canadian Insight.genera - monthly “Every the real thing. milesnorth Justfifty to his disheveled hair and mashed hairandmashed to hisdisheveled tacted DaleAhlquist, whointurn productions around theU.S., inastaged mostrecently generation doesn’teven half-do - handusthejobfinishedor prehensible change theirlives itwill forever.” ne. We atground again, get zero tostart todoitinthesame hat. The bronzelikenesscreated by home toamassive statueofG.K. for thePerformingfor Arts. The press Magic release described introduced himto Wanner. establishment on Theatre Row. The- August27thperfor reading atManhattan’s Acorn Theatre, anoff-Broadway mance was produced by Max McLean andtheFellowshipmance wasproduced by MaxMcLean complete theproject, Benson con- centerbuiltin2008byevent Dr. of New Orleans isPonchatoula,of NewOrleans a motley crew of intellectuals thatgatherattheestateofa crewofintellectuals a motley humorous,as a “highly intelligent, and romantic play, about stands in Chesterton Square,stands inChesterton an the faintestlogicshowthattheyallmustbewrong.” that mostoftheviewsmustbewrong.Itdoesnotby right andtheothersarewrong.Diversitydoesshow and theotherswrong.’Probablyoneofcreedsis is notruecreed;foreachcreedbelievesitselfright the rulesofcontroversy, suchas:“Don’t say, ‘There Angry uthorwhotellshowtoengageproperlyin the Mummer, thedetectiveandfool.Andalso the journalist,miser, thebureaucrat,Sultan, You don’t have totravel fartosee Chesterton’s Magiccontinues todelightaudiencesin congratula- heartiest Our years ago 100 100 Daily News.Herewefindthegardener, essays gatheredfromhiscolumnsforthe A Miscellanyofen,acollection G.K. Chesterton publishedhis28thbook,

Photo by Derick Hingle (The Advocate) Lunacy & Letters

from Gilbert Magazine Readers

o Dale Ahlquist: In your edito- Capt. Renault “discovering gambling” rial, “Why I Won’t Vote for Mitt in Rick’s place in Casablanca. T Romney” (GM, May/June 2012) Gimme a break! Sadly, money, you end by saying, “I will not play this money, money makes the world go game anymore.” round. So it goes in the political world, I agree that in many respects, the too. I don’t like the huge amounts presidential contest is a game; however, spent by all sides. But we have the the winner of the game has tremen- As Chesterton has stated, freedom system that we have. If even a small dous power. President Obama is doing and goodness are found within the number of supporters of decency and what he said he would do before he boundaries of reasonableness, and goodness (this time around it is the won the previous contest—he is trans- some of these statements went out of Romney-Ryan Express) fail to vote forming our country. bounds into human devaluation. It out of some “high-mindedness” about Obama has always been for killing does however demonstrate a universal moolah, we risk getting four more unborn babies. Now, during his term truth—that we are all sinners. years of abortion-on-demand, ster- of President of the United States, his John Colozzi ilization (perhaps mandatory), and position regarding homosexual unions Cranston, Rhode Island heaven-knows-what-else from the has evolved into accepting homosexual Democrats in Washington, D.C. marriages. For the first time in our Go to the polls on Nov. 6th and country’s history, we are being told that vote for a couple of decent men—Mitt we must buy a product, Obamacare. was greatly bothered by Dale Romney and Paul Ryan—who will join By not voting, one is indirectly Ahlquist’s editorial “explaining” why with other good people come January, voting for abortion, homosexuality and I he was not going to vote for Mr. 2013, and try to get our great coun- Big Government. Please reconsider. Romney, nor Mr. Obama either, come try sailing in the right direction once I don’t like this game either, but if I Nov. 6 (GM May/June and GM July/ again! Lastly, Dale, take a deep breath don’t play, our country is the big loser. August, 2012). and pull that GOP lever, too. We need Joel Fago There is a stark and obvious choice every vote we can muster. To assist you Hereford, Arizona between the GOP challengers and the back to the path of “Common Sense,” I incumbents. Mitt Romney and Paul submit—respectfully—a short editorial Ryan will strive to restrain abortion, to appear in large letters in a box on and they will support traditional mar- the editorial page in the next edition Chesterton has keenly ob- riage, that is, marriage between one man of the magazine, with clean, open mar- served that human beings and one woman. Gilbert Chesterton gins to signify God. To wit: GK can’t seem to do anything supported “orthodoxy” and Gilbert On Nov. 6th, Vote for the Romney- without overdoing it. Some of his com- Magazine’s editors should do the same. Ryan Pro-Life Express! Say NO to King ments about Mormonism on page President Obama and Vice Obama! 25 of the July/August, 2012, issue President Biden are an odd couple. are apt examples of this folly. While One is a sort-of Christian, and the Two sentences that will help our debate about religion can be useful, “to other is a bizarro Roman Catholic. country and help Gilbert Magazine ask what are its tenets and what are Both are now advocates of “gay regain the high ground on which their consequences,” and state that marriage,” and both support abor- GKC himself resides. If Romney/ “to think of one woman being mar- tion, sterilization, and whatever else Ryan are elected we may look for- ried to a Mormon is quite sufficient comes down the pike from their ward to a competent HHS Secretary, tragedy,” crosses the line into parochi- “psuedo-progresssive” friends. Anyone perhaps Rick Santorum. Sterilization alism. Anthropology has proven that for euthanasia, eugenics, or arrest- and potent contraceptive pills will not different cultures, with their unique ing priests and bishops wholesale for be forced on everyone. The left-wing strengths and weaknesses, give rise to defending religious liberty? Mark my Democrat plan to push abortion, and a world that is better because of these words, that is part of their program if push abortion, and push abortion, will differences, not despite them. Many re-elected. be stymied. Mormons are good people because As for Dale’s “argument” about why P.S. Savvy readers of Gilbert of Mormonism. Absolutists may be he is not voting for either candidate: Magazine will probably pick up on the uncomfortable with the implications of he complained that there is now “too Obama/Herod connection. this ambiguity, but to deny its truth is much money” in politics. Too much John J. Sweeney to devolve into groupthink and cultism. money in politics? That is rather like Bronx, New York

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 3 Lunacy & Letters

9. He’s a Mormon. We need to be very afraid ou may have already seen this Obamacare wouldn’t have made it of that very strange religion that teaches its piece going around the Web: had Toomey won. Santorum was not members to be clean-living, patriotic, fis- Y always right. And Romney is proving Top Ten Reasons To Dislike Mitt cally conservative, charitable, self-reliant, and to be a much better choice. Here’s the Romney: honest. facts. Not voting for Romney is a vote 1. Drop-dead, collar-ad handsome with 10. Pundits say because of his wealth, he can’t for Obama, the man who voted more gracious, statesman-like aura. Looks relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that’s than once that a baby born alive in like every central casting’s #1 choice for because he made that money himself, as op- a “botched” abortion should be left to Commander-in-Chief. posed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad. die. Mitt Romney is pro-life. Even if he 2. Been married to one woman his entire life, Apparently, he didn’t understand that actually was not always or doesn’t have a perfect and has been faithful to her, including through working at a job and earning your own money record of it, he is now. We know for her bouts with breast cancer and MS. made you un-relatable to Americans. sure that Obama is pro-death. 3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. How Dale, the nation needs your bat. We Mike Rafferty boring is that? don’t have to win this one for the Gipper, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 4. Can’t speak in a fake, southern, “black but we have to win this one. We have to preacher voice” when necessary. stay and play for another day. Tom Doyle 5. Highly intelligent. Graduated cum laude El Paso, Texas ill no one face the fact that our from both Harvard Law School and Harvard electoral system has been com- Business School. His academic records are not Wpromised? Latest proof of the sealed. rigging was the 2008 presidential 6. Doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol and has ale, your story that “goes back a few election of a man nobody knew, who never done drugs, not even in the counter-cul- years” at a bar in Washington D.C. rose from relative obscurity, rapidly ture age when he went to college. Too square D(GM, May/June 2012) has noth- overwhelmed a popular Democratic op- for today’s America? ing to do with Mitt Romney now. This ponent with more political experience, 7. Represents an America of “yesterday,” where is the reality now. We have a choice and went on to win with a platform of people believed in God, went to Church, of two people. One is better than the little substance beyond “change.” Well, didn’t screw around, worked hard, and became other. Much better. Who would you things have changed. successful. rather have, Rick Santorum? He is the Until we clean house and remove 8. Has a family of five great sons. None of Catholic candidate many Catholics, the power brokers who run our elec- whom have police records or are in drug rehab. including myself, would have liked. tions, we’ll continue to get more of the But of course, they were raised by a stay-at- But even I remember Santorum sup- same and worse. home mom. ported Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey, Therese Warmus the pro life Catholic a few years back. Sherack, Minnesota

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4 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 EDITORIAL

Fifteen Years of Gilbert Magazine ave you ever listened to Gregorian chant? Its His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the sonorous, melodic music lifts you out of the solutions of man. world, transcending space and time. Nothing quite like the Catholic Church’s ancient liturgi- Or a young girl, dead to faith because she’s been bat- H cal music exists elsewhere. And the unexpected tered with cheap relativism her whole life, might open thing is, it is surprisingly easy to learn and sing. Properly The Everlasting Man, and read: done, Gregorian chant evokes a deep, aching longing. The Church contains what the world does not contain. But it is not unfulfilled longing. It is longing mixed with Life itself does not provide as she does for all sides of life. unfathomable joy, in expectation of immanent fulfillment. That every other single system is narrow and insufficient com- Especially when alternating male and female voices take pared to this one; that is not a rhetorical boast; it is a real fact turns singing each stanza, chant evokes lovers serenad- and a real dilemma. Where is the Holy Child amid the Stoics ing each other, as a bride and groom might serenade each and the ancestor-worshippers? Where is Our Lady of the other as they approach the marriage bed, knowing that Moslems, a woman made for no man and set above all angels? their fulfillment is at hand. Where is St. Michael of the monks of Buddha, rider and This is what it is like for people who have come to master of the trumpets, guarding for every soldier the honour know G.K. Chesterton. of the sword? What could St. Thomas Aquinas do with the What is it about him that attracts so many different mythology of Brahminism, he who set forth all the science people from so many different backgrounds? What is it and rationality and even rationalism of Christianity? about his gift with language, his personality, the seemingly endless sea of his published works, that makes people Do these examples not make your hearts sing? Do struggle with his archaic style until they master it? We they not awaken a yearning that points to God? do not pretend to speak for everyone, but maybe we can Chesterton is often called a genius. And he was. But hazard a guess as to why love for Chesterton continues to genius alone cannot account for Chesterton’s insight, his flower, even as Western civilization continues its head- almost prophetic wisdom, and the unbridled joy that long lurch into darkness. permeates all his works. The only thing that can ac- Chesterton’s gift is this: he articulates what people have count for these qualities is holiness, and something more: known in their hearts their whole lives but were never able Chesterton was a mystic. Of his personal prayer life, we to express. He gives voice to their longing and shows how know few details, but on the other hand his whole life that longing can be fulfilled. A fan of dime store detective was a prayer, a ceaseless act of thanksgiving for the gift stories may despair that he lacks the refined literary tastes of life and the goodness of creation. Dale Ahlquist writes, of his more sophisticated friends, until he reads this in “In “It is clear, from the testimony of those who knew him, Defense of Penny Dreadfuls”: that he was always in prayer because he was always thinking about God.” On love, Chesterton once wrote that the The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle inevitable result of love is incarnation, and the inevitable books and idle words, have never doubted and never will result of incarnation is crucifixion. It was not in some doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that theological treatise that Chesterton wrote this, but in an distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies essay on Peter Pan. He was a mystic. spared...The average man or boy writes daily in these great It has been our privilege these past fifteen years to gaudy diaries of his soul, which we call Penny Dreadfuls, publish Gilbert Magazine. Our purpose has always been a plainer and better gospel than any of those iridescent to introduce Chesterton to the newcomer. But we’re also ethical paradoxes that the fashionable change as often as here to dispel the false “Toby Jug” image of Chesterton, their bonnets. a caricature of a beer-swilling, cigar-chomping, absent- Or someone struggling with belief in the face of evil minded journalist who at best was good with a quote and in the world might come across the “Introduction to the had a knack for paradox. G.K. Chesterton was so much Book of Job,” and read this: more than that. Just ask the hundreds of people who have entered the Catholic Church because of Chesterton. He Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and awoke the deepest longings of their hearts. more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfort- God bless you all. Thank you for reading, and here’s to less before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He another fifteen years of Gilbert Magazine. has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The —Sean P. Dailey for the editorial refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of board of Gilbert Magazine

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 5 Straws in the Wind virtue and dull when it is a vice. But in truth there is no quality so truly ro- An Essay by G.K. Chesterton mantic as economy. Economy is essentially imaginative because it is a realization of the value of everything. The real objection to murder, aesthetically speaking, is that it is uneconomical. It is a failure in efficiency (I want to write that word down A Sermon on Cheapness and look at it) to waste a whole man in by G.K. Chesterton order to procure a momentary emotion which is often disappointing. And the real objection to waste is that all waste t is really time that the absurd forth some exquisite epigram which it is a kind of murder, a merely negative pretence of the vices to be romantic would make life worth living to hear, and destructive thing, the obliteration were given up. Ever since the time or even, by some spasm of internal of something which we can neither of Byron there has been a vague clockwork, produce a cheque. To kill value nor understand. We slay an uncle I and foolish conception clinging to him is clearly prosaic. Alive, he is a because we do not realise the strange all men’s minds that there is some con- miracle; dead, he is merely a debris, a dumb poetry of an uncle; we fling away nection between lawlessness and poetry, debris of unpleasant gore and quite in- a penny because we cannot realise the between orderly images and disorderly appropriate and old-fashioned clothes. gorgeous possibilities of a penny. I acts. A thousand instances might be Objection is sometimes brought have murdered many pennies, many given to show the shallowness of this against the absolute legal and medi- trusting half-crowns, in my life. For idea. For instance, blasphemy has cal doctrine that life should under all let it be clearly understood that I do been regarded as something bold and circumstances and at all costs be kept not maintain for a moment that this splendid, as if the very essence of blas- burning. It may or may not be moral poetry of economy is an easy thing for phemy were not the commonplace. It and humane, but there can be no doubt any of us to keep up. We tend to forget is the very definition of profanity that of its impressiveness the poetry of pen- it thinks and speaks of certain things as a purely poetical nies just as we tend prosaically, which other men think and ideal. It is the desire, to forget the poetry speak of poetically. It is thus a defeat of so natural in an We slay an uncle because of skies and woods the imagination, and a volume full of imaginative man of we do not realise the and great buildings, the wildest pictures and most impious science, to preserve because we see them jests remains in its essential character the only thing that strange dumb poetry of so often. a piece of poor literalism, a hum- can really be of any an uncle; we fling away a In practice it is drum affair. The same general truth interest to anyone. most difficult to be might be pursued through all the Ten I have taken penny because we cannot the Economic Man. Commandments. Murder, for instance, these two instances, realise the gorgeous We have all heard of is quite overrated, aesthetically. I am as the first that the clergyman who assured by persons on whose judg- come to hand, of the possibilities of a penny. spoke in defence of ment I rely, and whose experience has, general fact of the teetotalism, saying presumably, been wide, that the feel- mean and matter- that for twenty years ings of a murderer are of a quite futile of-fact character of the vices, the he had tried to teach drunkards to character. What could be stupider wild and thrilling character of the drink moderately, and had never once than kicking to pieces, like a child, a virtues. Many other examples might succeeded. The reporters, with unin- machine you know nothing about, the be taken of the raptures and roses of tentional kindness, described him as variety and ingenuity of which should virtue, the lilies and languors of vice. having said that for twenty years he keep any imaginative person watching But an example, stronger both in its had tried to drink moderately and had it delightedly day and night? Say we truth and in its unfamiliarity than any never once succeeded. So it is with this are acquainted with such a human ma- other, chiefly occupies my mind. Of all great question of economy. For a long chine; let us say, a rich uncle. A human the conventional virtues there is none period (perhaps more than sixty years) engine is inexhaustible in its possibili- that is so completely despised by the the writer of the present article has ties; however long and unrewarding aesthetic and Bohemian philosophers tried to be economical and has never has been our knowledge of the avun- as economy. It is represented as the once succeeded. But I impute this en- cular machine, we never know that the very meanest of human standards, a tirely to a lack of true poetry in myself. very moment that we lift the assassin’s merit for cowards and greasy burgesses, I do not for a moment dream of shield- knife the machine is not about to grind a thing that is even base when it is a ing myself behind so transparent and

6 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Straws in the Wind canting a plea as the notion that there terrible power that may be found in of the “Arabian Nights,” in the cush- is anything artistic or romantic in small things. ions and cigars of Ouida. The newer being extravagant. The man who does The French, the most poetical of all and truer romance will be the romance not look at his change is no true poet. peoples, are also the most economi- of cheapness. It will address itself to To give away a penny deliberately is cal. The English working man, with his the truly imaginative task of realis- indeed one of the highest triumphs of sterling, solid common sense, throws ing what is the real worth (a worth imagination: it means that the giver away every rag and bone that does not running into millions) of the penny can realise the meaning of the exis- appear to him useful at the first glance; cup of coffee to the tired pedestrian tence of some ragged family herded in the French cottager turns those rags at midnight or the pennyworth of to- the lairs of East London. But to throw and bones into exquisite and civilised bacco to the poor man in his half-hour away a penny is sheer lack of imagina- dishes. Economy is only another name holiday. It will celebrate the cheapness tion; it means that the giver cannot for universalism; the true poet regards of ecstasy. realise even the meaning of a penny. every earthly object as having some My bosom friend the Pessimist It means that he forgets the first and value and secret utility—with the pos- and I were standing outside a small most thrilling of all the lessons of the sible exception of a dust-cart. The old toy shop, glueing our noses to the universe, the lessons of every seed and romance of life was held to consist in glass, when the long silence was germ, the lesson of the infinite and expense—in the jewels and perfumes broken by my remarking on the beauty of a solid stick of blue chalk, Chesterton for Today which was offered for sale (in some tempest of generosity) for a halfpenny. ✦ (Illustrated “Have you considered,” I asked, “all ✦ They who show such heroic hardi- defences that are indefensible. London News, Nov. 27, 1915) that this stick of blue chalk means? hood in wars against the foreigner For a halfpenny I am possessed of it. threatening to invade from without are ✦ ✦ Real vulgarity is not in democracy, I go home at night under the stars, curiously supine when an enemy can (G.K.’s Weekly, April but rather in the loss of democracy. between dark walls and through invade from within. (Illustrated London News, Jan. 13, 1917) 23, 1927) mazy streets. I shall be free to write upon those walls beautiful or stern ✦ ✦ ✦ The idea that the State should ignore ✦ I believe that patriotism rests on a sentiments, arraigning the powers creeds has got mixed up with the idea psychological truth; a social sympathy of the earth, and write them in the that the State should distrust creeds—a with those of our own sort whereby we very colour of heaven. At home I may totally different notion.( Daily News, Nov. see our own potential acts in them and beguile the evening in a thousand 28, 1908) understand their history from within. innocent sports, designing barbaric ✦ But…that truth is a two-edged sword patterns upon the new table-cloth, ✦ The recent mistakes of our rulers and we must let it cut both ways…If we drawing dreamy and ideal landscapes have been mainly excusable; it is their accept this mystical corporate being, this upon the note-paper, decorating larger self, we must accept it for good my own person in the manner of and ill. If we boast of our best, we must our British predecessors, sketch- repent of our worst. Otherwise, patrio- ing strange and ideal adventures for tism will be a very poor thing indeed. strange and ideal characters. And all (New York American, Sept. 3, 1932) this blue river of dreams is loosened by a half-penny.” ✦ ✦ Every economic thesis has...been ac- The Pessimist replied, in his sad, cepted; but always when the wealthy at stern way, “You do not buy the streets that moment found it acceptable. (G.K.’s for a halfpenny; you do not buy your Weekly, Aug. 13, 1927) dreams or your love of drawing or your tastes and imaginations for a ✦ ✦ Most people have a moral sense, and halfpenny.” therefore wish to be on the right side. “True,” I replied. “The stars and the (Illustrated London News, Nov. 26, 1921) dreams and myself are cheaper than chalk: for I bought them for nothing.” ✦ ✦ At the back of all modern history He burst into tears and became is that war with the barbarians which immediately convinced of the basis filled the Dark Ages and has returned of true religion. For our very word for in our own. (Illustrated London News, Apr. God means Economy: is not improvi- 21, 1917) dence the opposite of Providence? (From The Speaker, March 29, 1902)

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 7 Schall on Chesterton But in the course of his analy- sis, Fulop-Miller acknowledged the Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes validity of Cardinal Bellarmine’s warning “to Galileo’s pupils to regard the Copernican doctrine only as hy- pothetical, and not as the sole truth.” Chesterton has great fun drawing out the logic of this comment of Fulop- “The Light of a Strange Star” Miller, namely that “Galileo was as by James V. Schall S.J. wrong as he was right.” “I only say,” Chesterton adds, that “the sun must be a very strange star, and n these days when we are trying to better appreciate what the sun really is, must stand in a very strange relation to figure out whether “earth-warm- something created to be what it is. a very strange planet or satellite, if any ing” has anything at all to do with “One reason for reconciling our- sane sceptic can really say that it is just the sun or only with ourselves, I selves cheerfully to regard the sun as as true that the sun goes around the I was pleased to come across G.K. a strange star is that it seems likely, earth as that the earth goes round the Chesterton’s essay, “On the Solar in the light of the latest science, that sun.” What was behind Fulop-Miller’s System,” in All I Survey (1933). In we shall find it illuminating a very curious statement was probably some the England of his time, the sun was strange world.” Notice that Chesterton “mathematical relation,” Chesterton a topic of much discussion, as indeed remarks that we are to see this strange thought. it has been throughout history. The star “cheerfully,” as if it is good to be. Thus, perhaps, the older myths Egyptian Pharaohs, among others, Our sun illuminates an earth in the about the sun, in their own way, built pyramids reflecting the angles of light of which mankind plays out the made as much sense as science does. the sun. The sun symbolized the Good drama of its own existence. Many Chesterton adds: “And because I love in Plato. We hear of American Indians would like to think that we are here everything that adds at least to the and their “sun dances.” The big issue by accident, that we happened as an wonder of the world, and because I in early modern times was what went odd offshoot of hate familiar- around what, the Earth around the evolution. That is ity as I hate Sun, or the Sun around the Earth, or perhaps an even We take it for granted that contempt, I am both around each other? stranger view glad that the Chesterton wrote, “I prefer to than the one that the sun rises every morning, strange god regard the sun merely in the light of suggests that the so much so that we do in the garden a strange star that has startled me by reason why the grows stranger visiting my garden in the middle of earth and the not pay much attention every day. For summer.” Without this visit, our gar- sun exists is that to it, as Chesterton said we need mystery dens could not be. Be it at dawn, at our kind might to console and sunset, or at noon on Midsummer’s exist to carry out in Orthodoxy when he encourage us.” Day, this event of seeing the sun in its own choices was discussing gratitude. After we have one’s garden is indeed “catastrophic about what solved all the and unearthly,” much more so than human beings Really, he thought, we scientific facts of “any strictly scientific or newly ratio- really are. should rather look upon the sidereal enti- nalistic explanation of it.” Thus, it is In the mean- ties that support quite possible to know all the scien- time, Chesterton the sun as a daily gift. us, they become tific facts about the sun and still, if came across two more, not less, we be dull of heart, not startled by its books by Rene mysterious to very existence. Fulop-Miller, one on Marxism and one us. We know something of their size, We take it for granted that the sun on the Jesuits. Fulop-Miller was an shape, speed, age, and density. We look rises every morning, so much so that “ordinary modern rationalist very em- at them. They do not look at us. We we do not pay much attention to it, as phatic upon the need to keep abreast ask: “Why do we exist?” They do not Chesterton said in Orthodoxy when of modern science.” In this capacity, ask anything. They are only there to be he was discussing gratitude. Really, he Fulop-Miller brought up the Jesuits, what they are. It is we who ask what thought, we should rather look upon Bellarmine, and the “victory of Galileo they are. And in asking what the mys- the sun as a daily gift. It is something and the Copernican astronomy, with terious sun is, we cannot but wonder that need not exist, need not come its earth going round the sun over the who we are, in the gardens of the world, up every morning or go down every old Ptolemaic astronomy with its sun looking at the sun rising and setting evening. Looked upon this way, we can going round the earth.” each day.

8 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Relive or experience for the first time the 31st Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference with audio CDs of conference talks. This conference was held at the Silver Legacy Resort and Casino in Reno, August 2-4, 2012, and celebrated the 100th anniversary of Chesterton’s novel Manalive with the world premiere of the movie Manalive—the first full- length feature film based on a novel by G.K. Chesterton. The conference theme was Break the Conventions, Keep the Commandments, a pivotal line from Manalive.

Qty. The Failures of Innocent Smith Qty. Chesterton and Shakespeare Cameron Moore, PhD, Baylor Uni- Kevin O’Brien, President & Artistic versity and Chesterton scholar Director, Theater of the Word Incorporated Qty. The Nightmare Goodness of God Qty. The Plays and Poetry Ralph Wood, Professor of Theology of Frances Chesterton Qty. The Adventures and Literature, Baylor University Nancy Carpentier Brown, author of Wisdom Smith and Frances Chesterton expert Dale Ahlquist, President of the Qty. Chesterton’s Great American Chesterton Society Campaign to Save a Century Qty. Chesterton and Aliens Jason Jones, President and Julian Ahlquist, Chesterton Qty. The Humor and Founder of Whole Life America; Academy Faculty Member Humility of Chesterton Co-Executive Producer of Bella Joseph Pearce, Visiting Fellow and Qty. Chesterton and Writer-in-Residence, Thomas More Qty. On Scandal H.G. Wells: A Comparison College, New Hampshire; Co-Editor Mark Shea, Popular Catholic writer Andrew Tadie, Professor of Eng- of the Saint Austin Review (StAR) and speaker lish, Seattle University

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Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 9 Alarms and Discursions dissertations on Chesterton. Tell us about some of your students and what they have written about. RW I have thus far directed two An Interview with Ralph Wood doctoral dissertations on Chesterton. by Dale Ahlquist Don Shipley devoted his study to the enormous intellectual discernment and moral bravery that enabled Chesterton GM Tell us a little about your young professor when I began to move to oppose Eugenics, especially at a background. in Catholic circles, especially through time when nearly every “right-think- academic journals and at literary ing” person (from Churchill to Shaw RW I am from Linden, a county-seat conferences, did I discover the huge and Wells and Margaret Sanger) was town located deep in the piney woods importance of Chesterton. convinced that we can breed a higher of northeastern Texas. My parents GM grade of human beings just as we can were both public school teachers in What were the first Chesterton breed superior horses and cows—by an era when teachers were regarded as books you read? eliminating the “weak” and “use- leaders and exemplars for the whole RW Like almost all other GKC con- less,” while favoring the “strong” and community. I was brought up as a verts, I began with Orthodoxy, though “productive.” I am pleased to report Baptist and remain one, albeit with I now regard this as a mistaken way to that Cameron Moore, my second deep strain of philo-Catholicism. My approach the great man’s work. I intro- Chestertonian doctoral student, is love of things Catholic, especially the duce my own students to Chesterton teaching me many new things about work of its great literary artists, was in- by way of The Ball and the Cross, the the place of memory, perception, and spired by my Roman Catholic teacher, fine little novel that fictionally embod- imagination in Chesterton’s work. He Paul Barrus, at a small college called ies nearly all of his primary concerns: is demonstrating the art of defamiliar- East Texas State. He directed my mas- the sacramental life of the imagination, ization, the making of familiar things ter’s thesis on Flannery O’Connor and the use of the fantastic to agitate the strange. For Chesterton the analogical prompted me to undertake doctoral largest ideas, the power of romantic and sacramental imagination ought study in theology and literature at love to affect the intel- the University of Chicago. I was then lectual no less than the fortunate enough to land a position at moral life, the central- a fine liberal arts school, Wake Forest ity of the Church as the University in Winston-Salem, North one all-encompassing Carolina. After twenty-six years there, Community, the desire of I taught briefly at Samford University the modern state to con- in Birmingham, and then in 1998, I fine religious questions joined the Baylor faculty as a univer- to the private sphere, the sity professor of theology and literature. vacuousness of mere My wife Suzanne has faithfully accom- tolerance over against the panied me on virtually the whole of my richness of real argument, life journey. We have been blessed with the necessity of both a forty-one-year-old son, Kenneth, as Christians and secular- well as a thirty-eight-year-old daughter, ists to confront their own Harriet, plus a splendid son-in-law and limits, but also the rise two grandsons. of the thought police GM How did you first get interested in who would commandeer G.K. Chesterton? everyone into an urbane totalitarian state of RW Chesterton did not appear on “sanity” and “niceness.” the agenda of either my collegiate or post-graduate studies. My reading of GM You are one of the the Oxford Inklings together with great exceptions in the their progenitors George MacDonald academic world, not only and G.K. Chesterton did not begin in being knowledgeable until later. I confined myself largely about Chesterton, but to C.S. Lewis, though I did encoun- in actually serving as an ter Tolkien when he became all the advisor to graduate stu- rage in the mid-1960s. Not until as a dents who want to write

10 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Alarms and Discursions always to be disrupting our habitual perception of things so as to remind us Our Mr. Chesterton afresh of the “unnaturalness of every- Calling him “A Man of Cheerful Yesterdays,” an anonymous reviewer in the thing,” not only so that we can wonder Glasgow Herald in 1924 said of Chesterton: at it but so that we can begin to par- ticipate in it ever more deeply. I love him for his beauty, but not for that alone. The magnet that draws GM As is always the case, students me to him is his heart’s gladness, the joy that ripples in his voice and teach teachers. What are some of the trips with gay abandon from his pen and flows flashingly and foam- new things you have learned about ingly all round him, until, in the midst of a naughty and perverse Chesterton from your students? generation, he remains gloriously stranded on an island of delight. RW If my metaphors seem extravagant, please ascribe them, not to the One of the great delights of being senseless sin of idolatry, but to the charitable urge that compels me to a teacher is that one becomes a student remind a weary and sophisticated old world of one’s own students. I never teach a that it is worth while being on nodding Chesterton work without discovering terms with a man who believes—as something fresh from undergraduates Chesterton, I am sure, believes—that as well as doctoral candidates. They God is really glad to be glad, and that prompted me to question, for example, joy cometh in the morning because it whether Chesterton’s argument against is meant to bide with us all day. human evolution in The Everlasting Man is convincing. They persuaded me that he grossly overstates his case. And so I devote an entire section of my Chesterton book to a careful critique of GKC’s assumption that, because we are largely unlike the other animals, we must therefore be totally unlike them. Alistair MacIntyre, the eminent Catholic philosopher, has taught me that in recognizing our deep kinship with the animal realm (especially in perceptions constituted a coherent flattening every possible objection to our contingency and dependence) we whole—or whether they might be, Christian faith with a superb quip or give due honor to God as “maker of instead, mere one-off intuitions that witty put-down. They thus give those heaven and earth.” For Christians to constituted only a clever jumble. And who detest Chesterton an easy excuse deny the truth of evolution is to make so I determined to find out the truth for dismissing him. the Gospel a rearguard action in ways of the matter, first by reading many To my immense surprise, I dis- that Chesterton taught us not to do. more of Chesterton’s books but also by covered that “nightmare” is the most He rightly saw Christianity as always teaching him, first at Samford, then in often-recurring trope in the whole of the freshest and most invigorating a two-week seminar at Regent College Chesterton’s work. Hence what I hope of all realities—not only the largest in Vancouver, and now every year in my to be my basic breakthrough: there is thing in the cosmos but, as he also said, classes here at Baylor. a deeper and darker Chesterton than larger than the cosmos itself. What I discovered is that most either the mockers or the votaries have GM Along the same lines, what were of Chesterton’s interpreters lined up encountered. His enormous jollity and some of the revelations you had about on one of two sides: the worshipful joyfulness are not blithely asserted but Chesterton when you were writing your acolytes and the cultured despisers. profoundly earned. His affirmations book The Nightmare Goodness of God? The latter were greatly outnumbered, are often made by way of courageous of course, with Adam Gopnik and and deliberate engagement with the RW As I have noted, my reading of Christopher Hitchens sounding like world’s worst horrors. Far from being a Orthodoxy marked my first encounter buzzing insects over against the great reactionary throwback to an earlier and with Chesterton. I immediately rec- sea-roar of Chestertonian enthusiasts. allegedly easier “age of belief,” I thus ognized that he had overwhelmingly Yet majorities, even overwhelming conclude, Chesterton is a thoroughly important insights into many important majorities, are not always right—as modern writer who is ever more perti- matters, often voiced in memorable Chesterton himself repeatedly taught. nent for our late bad time. paradoxes; for instance, that paradox In his case, I found that the idola- itself is truth standing on its head and ters and the scoffers had both got GM Please tell us about the interesting waving its legs to get our attention. Yet him wrong. The hagiographers regard dynamic between the Catholics and I could not discern how these individual Chesterton as the pluperfect apologist, the Evangelicals at Baylor University.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 11 Alarms and Discursions

RW In my initial interview with GM What’s next for Ralph Wood? reshaped previously published essays— Baylor’s visionary president, Robert I wrote the Chesterton book virtually RW The much neglected comic nov- Sloan, in March of 1998, I told him from scratch. It was an enormous labor elist, Peter De Vries, once remarked that I was interested in coming here that, at least for now, I have no desire that, if love is what makes the world on one condition: that he was deter- to repeat. go ’round, then it’s no wonder that the mined to lead Baylor toward becoming earth wobbles on its axis. Now that I also want gradually to cut back a Christian university in the Baptist I have completed my seventieth year on my teaching responsibilities, tradition, and that the order of the aboard this wobbling planet, I hope though the classroom remains the pronouns could not be reversed! He to take life at a somewhat slower and first love of my academic life. Baylor assured me of what has proved indeed more enjoyable pace. I want to watch has many excellent younger faculty to be true, even now that Sloan is my grandsons grow in grace and who need to be given their chance to no longer president—namely, that stature. I also want to help younger teach graduate seminars and direct Baylor would not become narrowly scholars with their own early efforts in doctoral dissertations. And so when denominational in its outlook, but research and writing by recommend- I get my current crop of doctoral ecumenically Christian instead. Nor ing books, discussing ideas, reading students through their dissertations, I would Baylor’s Christian vision be manuscripts, etc. Though I have several will probably begin teaching under- based on a lowest common denomina- essay projects that are overdue and graduates alone. There is nothing tor sort of faith, so that our religion many speaking engagements to fulfill, quite like the thrill of seeing them would serve little other purpose than I suspect that I have written my last discern the implications of great texts window-dressing. On the contrary, major treatise. Whereas my earlier and doctrines and moral practices, Sloan assured me that Baylor would books were the result of three decades not only for their intellectual fulfill- use its freedom from fundamentalist of teaching and writing about the fig- ment, but also for the transformation control not to secularize its mission, as ures who appear in them—as I often of their (and my) life. so many formerly Christian schools have done, but to serve as a welcom- ing place for all sorts and conditions of Christians. Though the struggle In Praise of Phrases has been hard, and while we have lost ”Half our speech consists of similes that remind us of no similarity; pictorial many battles, Baylor’s determination phrases that call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of which we to become a tier-one Christian re- have forgotten.” —G.K. Chesterton search university remains intact. Our student body is twelve per- “The buck stops here.” Harry Truman (1884–1972) cent Roman Catholic, and there is a campus Catholic parish with a Truman became the forty-third president of the United States in 1945, fulltime resident priest. Not only do succeeding to the office from the vice presidency following the death of we enroll more than 2,000 Catholic students annually, we also have a President Franklin D. Roosevelt. very strong cadre of Catholic fac- Today’s seniors will remember the plaque, displayed on Truman’s desk, with ulty spread across all the disciplines, its pledge that as president he did not have the luxury of passing the buck. including the founding dean of our Honors College, Tom Hibbs. But what is this “buck”? Our sizable number of Catholics on campus—teachers and students It is not the slang word for “dollar.” This “buck” comes from the game of alike—are not treated as honored poker as played throughout America in the nineteenth century. After each guests but as fully-fledged citizens of hand, in friendly games at least, the deal was passed from player to player; our community. We are all joined in and the next player in line was given a marker—often a knife with a buck- a common Baylor project to inte- skin handle. To pass the buck, then, meant to pass along the responsibility grate rigorous academic scholarship for dealing the next hand. with thoughtful Christian faith. The results have been wondrous. Having “I’m from Missouri” was inscribed on the reverse of Truman’s plaque to visited and taught at other several remind him of the celebrated skepticism of his fellow Missourians. Their schools, I can attest that Baylor is, motto: “I’m from Missouri. Show me.” for me, the liveliest and most chal- lenging venue for my life as a teacher The other colorful phrase forever to be associated with Truman’s memory is, and believer. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

12 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 The Everlasting Chesterton said about the dandelion is exactly what I should say about the sunflower or the sun, or the glory which (as the poet said) is brighter than the sun. The only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy The Gift of a Dandelion even of a weed. by Stratford Caldecott He goes on, this mystic knight, defender of the downtrodden, to “And at this I cursed them and kicked defend his whole philosophy of life by at them and made an exhibition of is still being sought. Potential donors means of a dandelion. And we want to myself; having made myself the champi- should visit our Web site to find links preserve his precious words, as dense on of the Lion’s Tooth, with a dandelion both to the Library PayPal account and and prolific as the petals of a dande- rampant on my crest.” —“The God with to the Oratory Appeal. lion. Others choose more noble flowers the Golden Key,” Autobiography You’ll see there a famous picture as their emblem—the rose or the lily. of Chesterton graciously accepting But Chesterton’s emblem is a golden he great G.K. Chesterton ar- the gift of a dandelion from a young flower that no one values, the seeds chive and museum compiled by admirer next to an ugly brick wall. of which were handed him by a little Mr. Aidan Mackey over many The Web page itself has a dandelion child. His enemy includes all those years has found a home at last. motif at the top, along with a picture who would say: For the moment it still resides of Oxford’s dreaming spires. But why T “You can get much better dandelions under my care in Oxford, but in 2013 dandelions? Dandelions are a pest, and at Selfridge’s,” or “You can get much it will move into splendid new premis- a weed. They are the gardener’s bane— cheaper dandelions at Woolworth’s.” es at the Oxford Oratory, where a new constantly spreading, rooting deeply, Another way is to observe with a casual library is being constructed in the very hard to kill. Their little golden faces drawl, “Of course nobody but Gamboli heart of the city. are so lurid they could almost be called in Vienna really understands dandeli- The collection itself has long been ugly. Looking unkempt, they creep ons,” or saying that nobody would put up a place of pilgrimage for researchers into places deprived of human care and with the old-fashioned dandelion since and admirers who have managed to attention. I have seen whole landscapes the super-dandelion has been grown in gain access to it—and thanks are due spoilt by unchecked dandelions (my the Frankfurt Palm Garden; or merely to the G.K. Chesterton Institute for own garden, for example). sneering at the stinginess of providing Faith & Culture at Seton Hall and to Yet everything that lives is holy, dandelions, when all the best hostesses the Thomas More College of Liberal and Chesterton is a great inspiration give you an orchid for your buttonhole Arts in New Hampshire for keeping to us precisely because he would love and a bouquet of rare exotics to take this material together over the years and cherish and defend everything, no away with you. and making it accessible, even before a matter how trivial, as a direct gift of the permanent home could be found for it. Creator and an expression of his wisdom “These are all methods of undervalu- Not just the books, of course, but the and beauty. In his first book of essays, ing the thing by comparison,” he says; toy theatres, the drawings, the margi- The Defendant, he defended, among “for it is not familiarity but comparison nalia, the typewriter, the walking sticks other things, skeletons, cheap thrillers, that breeds contempt.” that make Gilbert himself so vividly china shepherdesses, slang, planets, and Chesterton is worth preserving present to the visitor. ugly things in general. He defended for many reasons, as readers of this The new support of the Oratory defending them in the Introduction. Yet magazine will be well aware. But one Fathers is highly significant, because he left it to his last book, to the last reason is this: he is the heresy hunter Chesterton will now find a place pages of his Autobiography, to mount of our age. And one of the heresies he alongside Bl. John Henry Newman in a proper defense of dandelions. He detects, as so many others do not, is, a study center devoted to the Catholic mentions wondering in his juvenile “the strange and staggering heresy that and Christian literary revival that poems, “through what incarnations or a human being has a right to dandeli- flowed from the Oxford Movement prenatal purgatories I must have passed, ons; that in some extraordinary fashion in the nineteenth century, of which to earn the reward of looking at a dan- we can demand the very pick of all the he was in many ways the chief flower delion,” adding, dandelions in the garden of Paradise; and fruit. that we owe no thanks for them at all I do not believe in Reincarnation, if The Trustees of the Library still need and need feel no wonder at them at indeed I ever did; and since I have owned help in promoting interest in one of all; and above all no wonder at being a garden (for I cannot say since I have England’s greatest men of letters and thought worthy to receive them.” been a gardener) I have realized better Christian apologists. Most urgently, the than I did that there really is a case The G.K. Chesterton Library can be found at building work is only just begun, and the against weeds. But in substance what I chestertonlibrary.blogspot.co.uk. —Ed. money to shelve the Library adequately

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 13 Conference Report him. It was not belief in His Divinity that impelled them, but rather their having been fed and filled by the miraculous loaves. The congregants heard how Moses had prayed for Israel and earned them manna in the desert, but the fleshpots of Egypt leave a linger- ing and tempting taste in the mouths of lately freed slaves. Led into the desert, Israel received from the Lord God commandments, and found the Alive in the Desert commandments difficult to keep. Their by Joseph Grabowski life of slavery had been trying, to be sure; but at least it had afforded regular “He was led by the Spirit into the meals and stable homes. Moses had desert, to be tempted by the devil.” broken their bonds and led them into a wild place where they would face pon arrival at Reno-Tahoe temptation—but a place where they International Airport, entering might also come face to face with God. the terminal from any given As I walked through the Silver jetway, temptation is soon to Legacy hotel and casino with my travel U be found. Slot machines line companion, Leo Schwartz, I reflected the waiting areas, their alluring neon how perfectly paradoxical was this lights promising progressive jackpots. place chosen for a Chesterton confer- Reno is a place of ostentatious luxury— ence. The contrast between the external even the pavements are varnished, setting and the event itself was stark reflecting the glare of the desert sun indeed, an irony that should have been and the glow of gaudy marquees. But lost on no one. For we Chestertonians, this veneer of richness is as thin as the like Israel and Christ, had been drawn lacquer I saw casino workers mopping Sophia Kanzelberger adds some into this desert by the very same Spirit, onto the sidewalks early one morn- fiddling to the banquet menu and in the same manner, met tempta- ing; and those with eyes to see need tion there. But we were led safely by only look up from the well-lit strip is as ready to reward as it is apt to hearkening to the words of our prophet, to perceive the basic truth: this city is punish. if you’ll pardon me, a voice crying in desert still, albeit a desert of human- At Mass on Saturday evening the wilderness of the modern world: ity’s making, built over nature’s; and in the Cathedral of Saint Thomas “Break the Conventions; Keep the being desert still, it is still the site of Aquinas, the congregation—made Commandments.” ancient strife between sanctity and up mostly of attendees of the 31st First-time conference attendee Tom sin. Here the sons of man are enticed Annual American Chesterton Society said that being there was like being to turn stones into bread, to make a Conference—heard Christ criticiz- made part of a big family, an impres- hard-earned dollar into an easy-won ing the crowds from Capernaum for sion anyone might get while mingling hundredfold; but none of the machines their mistaken motive in following in the foyer of the auditorium where

14 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 the conference talks were held. Nancy Carpentier Brown and Joseph Pearce shared a table and talked as old friends, posing together for pictures and plugging one another’s books. Ralph Wood—this year’s recipient of the “Outline of Sanity” award—diligently personalized copies of his works for those making purchases, taking time to learn the names of “his new friends” and writing his autograph with affection and charm. And Dale Ahlquist rambled around ensuring that no one forgot he was there and had things to sell, too. Unlike previous conferences, meal- times meant an overabundance of choices, both of venue and of company. The Silver Legacy contained eating and drinking establishments more A Trifecta— Kevin O’Brien, Joseph than I could count, and each with its Pearce, Nancy Brown own special qualities. Most of these sat underneath the odd sculpture of a mining rig that loomed stories above I discussed Distributism with some the center of the casino, but others new-found friends from California one are tucked away and easily missed, night, and another night listened to what with all the distraction of blink- and insinuated myself in a rather heady ing lights and eight- or sixteen-bit discussion on moral theology between audio—not to mention the color- Dale Ahlquist, Mark Shea, Jason ful characters populating the place Jones, and Kevin O’Brien. But I did (let’s face it, Reno’s a great town for find myself turning in earlier than in people-watching!). other years, thanks to the cross-country We faced the same variety of choic- travel required in getting to Reno as es for food and drink each night after well as the general over-stimulation of the talks were done, and the “after- a casino atmosphere—to say noth- glows” were, at this conference, perhaps ing of the conference schedule about not what they had been in other years, which newcomer Ivan remarked, “I’m when everyone could easily gather in impressed with how packed it is, the the same space. Still, there was plenty number of speakers per day.” of socialization to be had for those not quite ready to hit the hay. Over drinks at a bar called, aptly, “Drinks,” Cady Crosby performs “Titanic Heroes”

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 15 Conference Report

Outline of Sanity Award The speakers exemplified Chestertonian joy and unconven- The 2012 winner of the Outline tionality, giving us glimpses of the of Sanity Award is Professor Chesterton philosophy not only in the Ralph Wood of Baylor University. writings of our great patron, but also In addition to having written a in the works of Shakespeare, in the major scholarly work on G.K. life of Beethoven, and in the musings Chesterton, Prof. Wood is one of of Renaissance theologians on alien a few university professors both lifeforms. But the highlight of the weekend certainly must have been the willing and able to serve as advi- premier of the movie Manalive, star- sors to graduate students writing ring Mark Shea as Innocent Smith. dissertations on Chesterton. The film, true to the spirit of the book on which it is based, unabashedly extolls that most essential kernel of Chestertonian thought: “It is good to be alive.” Kevin O’Brien, who shines Mary Ann Rickard graciously accepts the Cup of Inconvenience Award in the film as the nihilistic German philosophy professor who is the first convert by Innocent’s pistol, put it young prodigies on the piano and the simply: “This movie is an assault on fiddle, and laughed (sometimes per- the culture of death.” We hope the film plexedly) at Kaiser Johnson’s comedy will soon reach a wider audience, hold- routine in which he starred as Kermit ing a gun (as it were) to the head of the Frog, Mickey Mouse, Marlon Modern Man and bringing him to life. Brando, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The closing banquet provided an We applauded the charming couple opportune setting in which to put who struggled through chemotherapy the philosophy learned from G.K. treatments to make it to the conference, Chesterton into practice. Fittingly, meriting the “Cup of Inconvenience” the banquet hall was underneath the award, and we honored Dr. Pasquale Past winners of casino, and as the lights flashed and Accardo as the recipient of the the Outline of the alarms sounded on the gambling “Lifetime Achievement” award. We Sanity Award floor above, in the hall it was smiles toasted Chesterton, the society, and so- 1998 – Quentin Hietpas, that flashed and the sounds of clinking cieties everywhere, and we remembered University of St. Thomas glasses that signaled a bit of gambling: ourselves to be, as my new friend Tom Dale’s auction of Chesterton memo- put it, “part of a big family”—a family 1999 – Hayward Cirker, Dover rabilia. We were entertained by two like that at Beacon House in Manalive, Publications 2000 – The Rockford Institute 2001 – Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame 2002 – Race Mathews, Author and Diplomat 2003 – Joseph Pearce, Author 2004 – Robert Royal, Author 2005 – John Sharpe, IHS Press 2006 – Mark and Louise Zwick, Houston Catholic Worker 2007 – Dawn Eden, Author 2008 – William Oddie, Author 2009 – Michael Perry, Editor and Publisher 2010 – Regina Doman, Author Manalive cast and crew at the premiere: Ashley Ahlquist Johnson (Rosamund), Kevin O’Brien (Prof. Eames), Director Joey Odendahl, Kaiser Johnson (Michael Moon), Mark Shea (Innocent Smith), Executive Producer Dale Ahlquist

16 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Conference Report Clerihew Winners of the 31st Annual Chesterton Conference

Before Chesterton During Chesterton After Chesterton

✹ ✹ ✹ ✹ 1st Place ✹ 1st Place ✹ 1st Place From riches to rags went St. Francis Mark Twain The question put to Ahlquist Who shed his shirt and his pantses. Displayed his prodigious brain Was why he’d never talk “whist.” He played with the animals a lot, When, peering over his glasses, He said, “The only value in the game Though enjoy the skunk, he did not. Observed that Congress is a stud farm for Lies in its use to rhyme my name.” —Torrey Culbertson, Camano Island, Washington jack-asses. —Richard Hardy, San Jose, California —Ted Peters, Southlake, Texas ✹ ✹ ✹ 2nd Place ✹ 2nd Place ✹ ✹ 2nd Place It was put to Joan of Arc Grettelyn Adelaide Marie Nypaver Why her hatred of England was stark. I dreamt I conversed with Chesterton, G.K. That’s quite a name her parents gave her. She replied, “Oh, I don’t mind the English, In an English pub in his own day. You wouldn’t want it any shorter. it’s I woke up in hotel in Reno It’s fun to say while drinking porter. Just that I can’t stand the Brits.” Above a casino. —Sean P. Dailey, Springfield, Illinois —Richard Hardy, San Jose, California —Sylvia Barthold, Denver, Colorado ✹ ✹ 3rd Place ✹ ✹ ✹ 3rd Place ✹ 3rd Place Vice President Joe Biden There was a pioneer party called Donner None envy Solzhenitsyn When his mouth begins to widen Who didn’t take the trail they ought’r. For the gulag that he sits in. Is sure to speak soon word Here I will not repeat Yet among its redeeming marks is Which his own mind has not yet heard. What as a result they used for meat. That it’s fairly clear of Marxists. —Joe Grabowski, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania —Theresa Tucker, Fall River Mills, California —Richard Hardy, San Jose, California ✹ ✹ Honorable Mention ✹ ✹ ✹ Honorable Mention ✹ Honorable Mention Jack Bauer Ulysses S. Grant Roy Campbell Has to save the world in 24 hours. Walked with a slant. Muttered, “There goes that damn bell! If people would listen, things would Was it the lack of military rations Which means Mass will soon be said, go so well. Or an excess of amber libations? And I’ve just crawled into bed.” It wouldn’t take long, he’d be done in —Matthew Heflin, Bakersfield, California —Archie Skemp, Minneapolis, Minnesota twelve. —Kaiser Johnson, Los Angeles, California ✹ ✹ Honorable Half-Mention Grand Prize—Best of Show brought to life and light by a bulbous We all may love our Chesterton stranger who bounded into our midst But might I make a suggesterton—? Joe Grabowski and changed us forever. [That’s the only part of the poem the Flying out of Reno, I watched the Drank a brewski judges deem worth mentioning.] With Timothy Quigley town shrink and the desert expand —Thomas Cook, Honolulu, Hawaii around it. I had commented to Leo Who got all giggly. —Sean P. Dailey, Springfield, Illinois often throughout the weekend that Reno must have been a very interesting place in the Old West, and imagined how odd it must have been when it to find a flourishing and lively bunch commandments and lived. Perhaps first sprang up in such a place. But now, of Chestertonians arguing theologi- some of the casino goers or night- leaving it after a blissful three days, I cal and philosophical truths that are walkers went home rubbing their eyes knew that it wasn’t really that odd rarely discussed in our age, but so it in a kind of disbelief, and perhaps they after all. The desert may be a forbid- was. We had come into the desert, we will remember years hence and be edi- ding place, but life consistently finds had met and faced temptations and fied by what they recall: “I met some its way there. Reno might not have the conventions upon which sin and men and women with two legs. They been the first place one would look death are built—but we had kept the were alive!”

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 17 Conference Report Lifetime A Roundup of Talks Achievement Award by Grettelyn Nypaver The 2012 winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award is Dr. • Joseph Pearce. Chesterton could be the commandments. His outrageous Pasquale Accardo. Dr. Accardo humorous about himself because of his and seemingly criminal antics help him was a founding board member of humility; G.K. Chesterton was mirth- to dodge the conventional boredom the American Chesterton Society ful about his great girth. He was so of everyday life; thus forcing him to and has been a loyal supporter. grateful for every bit of God’s creation actively live out the virtues which cor- that he could break the conventions of respond to the commandments, instead A professor of pediatric medi- modern snobbishness in order to keep of merely trying not to break them. cine, he is a true renaissance the commandments of the God man, having written more than a who had given him life. • Andrew Tadie. While dozen books on all different sub- both H.G. Wells and jects, including Dante, Sherlock • Dale Ahlquist. G.K. Chesterton Holmes, and Father Brown. A Chesterton’s happi- struggled with the frequent speaker at Chesterton ness comes from his pessimism of their age, conferences, he is the only ability to synthesize each found a different person who has attended more wisdom and innocence. solution to this prob- annual conferences than Dale Manalive, and particularly the lem that fundamentally Ahlquist. character of Innocent shaped their ideas. While Smith, illustrates Chesterton found joy in Chesterton’s attempt to his gratitude for life itself, catch himself at being Wells found only nihil- happy. ism in his pursuit of the elusive earthly utopia. • Nancy Brown. Although we often think of • Julian Ahlquist. Belief Gilbert Keith when we hear about in the possibility of extraterrestrial Chesterton as an author, Frances life is completely compatible with the Chesterton also wrote plays and poetry. Christian Faith. However, aliens can Moreover, Frances’ writing provides only receive baptism if they are de- us with invaluable insight into the scended from Adam. Chestertons’ home life. • Mark Shea. A scandal is not • Kevin O’Brien. Chesterton saw something that hurts another person’s the truth about Shakespeare because, feelings; rather, a scandal encourages Past winners of while other critics tried to make the another to sin or causes another to the Lifetime Bard into a prop for their own pro- stumble away from the path of virtue. Achievement Award paganda, Chesterton let Shakespeare Therefore, it is not a scandal to break be Shakespeare. Consequently, nitpicking conventions in order to 1998 – Frank Petta Shakespeare’s plays made sense to urge others to recognize the impor- 1999 – Ian Boyd, O.S.B. Chesterton because G.K. allowed W.S. tance of the commandments. to be himself, that is, a Catholic writ- 2000 – Aidan Mackey ing from a Catholic perspective. • Jason Jones. Chesterton may have 2001 – John Peterson died feeling like a failure because 2002 – Joseph Fessio, S.J. • Ralph Wood. Chesterton’s use moderns did not heed his advice. of the grotesque reveals Truth and However, despite the seemingly over- 2003 – Peter Milward, S.J. Beauty through analogy and opposites. whelming disregard for the value of 2004 – Denis Conlon Light and goodness can only make human life and the subsequent evils sense when viewed through the lens of prevalent in modern society, the world 2005 – James Schall, S.J. nightmare and suffering. is now taking Chesterton seriously. 2006 – Geir Hasnes While he might not have saved the • Cameron Moore. Innocent Smith twentieth century, G.K. may yet save lives in continual danger of breaking the twenty-first century.

18 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 R P: $13.95

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e Return of Father Brown is 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, available at the American Chesterton Minneapolis, MN 55437 (952) 831-3096 Society Web site or by mail. [email protected] www.chesterton.org Rolling Road the edge of the famous Comstock Lode, with its silver and gold and twenty-seven cemeteries filled with dead miners. We thought it was hot until we were informed that the average temperature inside the mines was 120 degrees. The coolness of the grave Mars must have come as a relief. by Dale Ahlquist One miner who came to Virginia City was the six-foot, four-inch tall es, it was indeed an unusual we visited beautiful Lake Tahoe. All of Irishmen Paddy Manogue. He became place to have a Chesterton the superlatives to describe it have long a priest who ministered to the miners conference. On another planet. been used up, so I’ll just leave it at that. and went on to become the first bishop But you have already read the The next day we headed the op- of Sacramento. It is obvious that the Y account of the conference, so I posite direction from Reno and visited miners thought a lot about ultimate will only give an account of what hap- the historic old western mining town, things. Not silver and gold, but life and pened after it ended. My family and I Virginia City. The wooden sidewalks death. stayed a few extra days for a vacation. and the old saloons are still intact; Even the touristy elements of the The first day after the conference most of the storefronts house souvenir town had a death theme. We saw we did nothing, which was the perfect shops. We rode a steam engine train some pretend cowboys pretend to thing to do at the time. The next day across the rocky terrain overlooking shoot each other (“we used to use live

Virginia City, Nevada, as seen from a graveyard

20 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Rolling Road ammo, but we ran out of actors”). One conference, which would have boosted There are other differences which casino featured “The Suicide Table,” our numbers by 60,000.) distinguish Chestertonians from classic so-named because three of its previous We saw cars of all shapes and sizes car buffs, most notably that the women owners lost so much money on it that and colors and makes and models and who attend the Chesterton conference they killed themselves. The odds don’t vintages. All they had in common was do not have as many visible tattoos as always favor the house. And buying that they were highly polished, and none the women at Hot August Nights. a drink at the oldest saloon in town, of their mufflers seemed to work at all. When I talked to some of these the Washoe Club, entitled us to free I explained to my children that the folks, I realized that finding common admission to the “haunted” museum main difference between our confer- ground was a real challenge. Some ob- in the back, which featured the oddest ence and the car conference was that servers might conclude that there is no assortment of uninteresting junk ever when you idolize a car it ends with common ground between two different assembled in one room. But it was the car. That’s as far as it goes. But our planets. The last day I was in Reno, I not irredeemable. On the floor in one annual celebration of G.K. Chesterton saw a newscast of the first photographs corner were some flat stones with say- points to something much bigger from the recent landing on Mars. The ings painted on them. On one of the and better than Chesterton. God. Martian landscape looked exactly stones: “To have a right to do a thing Chesterton is always pointing to God. like Nevada. I suppose that explained is not at all the same as to be right in everything. doing it. —G.K. Chesterton.” There is one prominent building in town that attracts tourists, though it is not a tourist attraction per se. It Ethics of Elfland is St. Mary of the Mountains, the oldest Catholic Church in Nevada I had always felt life as a story: and if there and built by the aforementioned is a story there is a storyteller.—G.K. Chesterton Father Manogue. In the 1960s some Young G.K.C. by Reese Parquette, age 12 Cistercian monks were in charge of the church, and they tore out all the ornate wooden balconies and pews and high altar and knocked out the stained glass windows, apparently in an attempt to make the church look as austere as the surrounding terrain. Since then most of the original look of the church has been restored and the church helps pay for the mainte- nance and continued restoration by selling “Mad Monk” wine in honor of the Cistercians. This was all explained to me by the church historian who recognized me from EWTN. He took my picture to post on his wall of celebrity visitors. Right next to Chuck Norris. When we returned to Reno, we arrived at the beginning of “Hot August Nights,” the annual gathering of classic car enthusiasts. This was their Chesterton Conference, except they have it here every year, and Reno pays more attention to them than to us, closing an entire street for purpose of the evening “cruisin’.” (I noted this same preferential treatment several years ago when we had our conference in Milwaukee the same weekend Submissions to “The Ethics of Elfland” are restricted to those aged 17 and younger. as the Harley Davidson convention. Photos also are invited so long as the pose is Chestertonian and no adults are visible. I suggested that we consider a joint

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 21 Miscellany of Men him in his own rise. His mother had faithfully imbued her own belief in her son’s destiny to be in the upper class, his own Marxist egalitarianism notwith- Two Hundred Years Early standing. As Joseph Epstein once noted Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) of socialists, they never fail to have the best seats at the opera. by David Paul Deavel His mother’s other legacy was to be more tragic. In 1973 she left Eric and fled to Israel during the Yom Kippur Chesterton once political views (his support of the War with her lover, the Reverend observed of his peren- U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq Timothy Bryan. She died en route to nial sparring partner, were accompanied by a general shift- Israel in Athens, presumably murdered, George Bernard Shaw, ing from some sort of Trotskyism to but eventually it came out that she GK that he would need to something occasionally approximat- and Bryan had made a suicide pact. live for 300 years to finally be able to ing neo-conservative views) and the Hitchens discovered many years later accept Catholic faith. Might we apply origins of his Mother Teresa-hatred, the secret his mother had kept from that same rule to the late controversial- namely his “antitheism.” On nei- the whole family: she had been Jewish ist Christopher Hitchens? ther politics nor religion did I find herself. This led to various journeys of A prolific writer of twelve books and Hitchens interesting or enlightening. discovery of his mother’s family history five collections of essays, and a staple in Over the same years, however, I began in Eastern Europe. It perhaps also led such publications as The New Statesman, to read Hitchens’s more congenial to a softening of his native left-wing The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Nation, and literary work. His taste was, as David bias against the state of Israel. any magazine that wanted an elegant Pryce-Jones noted, “oddly conventional” In the 1970s, however, Hitchens display of rhetorical fireworks, Hitchens and gravitated to authors like Waugh, remained attached to Trotsky and all came across my radar screen in the Anthony Powell, Philip Larkin, and his pomps and splendors. His hip, left- late 1990s as one of those man-bites- Wodehouse. His last published essay, wing literary circle included Martin dog stories to which the only response about which more later, was an attempt Amis, Salman Rushdie, James Fenton, is to pat the man on the head and say, to engage with Chesterton. and Edward Said. The circle did not “Good boy.” A committed socialist and Hitchens was the son of Eric, an remain unbroken as Hitchens, whose left-winger, he was vociferous in his English naval commander, and Yvonne wanderlust took him to every excit- condemnation of President Clinton’s Jean Hickman, a “Wren” (member of the ing place on the globe (his physical behavior, even contributing an affidavit Women’s Royal Navy Service), who had courage while in danger, his incessant for the Republican-led impeachment of met in Scotland and soon married. The smoking, high-functioning alcohol- that President. Hitchens family moved around quite a ism, and polished rhetoric in the But “the enemy of my enemy” only bit during Christopher’s early years. His takes one so far, and the next impression younger brother, Peter, a writer in his I had was during coverage of the funeral own right who is an Anglican Christian, of Mother Teresa. I was stunned to see was born in Malta. Hitchens’s mother, Hitchens introduced to the desk by Dan twelve years younger than his father, Rather, or whichever network talk- was quoted by Hitchens in his memoir, ing head was officiating. Hitchens had Hitch-22, as saying that if there were to authored a 1995 screed, The Missionary be an English upper class, her son would Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and be in it. Hitchens was thus sent off to Practice, which put Mother Teresa in various boarding schools and eventu- the dock for her failure to do the real ally Balliol College where he studied charitable work of socialist agitation philosophy, politics, and economics. It and for her awful Catholic teachings being the late sixties, Hitchens had about contraception and abortion which the opportunity to attend numerous apparently caused Third World poverty. demonstrations of one sort or another That poor, foolish woman, Hitchens did and managed to pick up the Marxism not say, merely fed the poor, clothed the he would carry with him for another naked, and tended to the sick, dying, and thirty years. As a number of people have unwanted. noted, the fierce tribal disputes among Hitchens became increasingly well- the various minuscule left-wing groups known in the United States over the at Oxford did not keep Hitchens from next decade because of his changing mixing with anybody who might help

22 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Miscellany of Men cause of shocking all, remind one of David Bentley Hart, the author of The indifferent to God. Therefore, he was Evelyn Waugh), began to discover Atheist Delusion, observed in an essay on the brink of love and it is likely that that all that glitters in socialist eyes about what he had learned from the he could have had a deathbed conver- is not gold. He ended up siding with “new atheists” (answer: almost nothing), sion when all was still in his soul. Margaret Thatcher over the Falklands that while none of them could really Perhaps. But, humanly speaking, War. While Said defended the Iranian string together a coherent argument, this was very unlikely. We do know Revolution, Hitchens castigated the Hitchens was perhaps the worst, even that he was wrestling with some- Ayatollah and became known for his if the “most entertaining.” The famous thing in his last days as he observed free speech absolutism as well as his rage against the evils done in God’s in himself less hatred when told that opposition to Islam and every sort of name might have been more effective people were praying for him. But that religion not involving Marx. if almost all the details hadn’t been final essay on Chesterton gives more His first marriage, in the Greek wrong, but the formal irrationality of evidence that, like Shaw, he would Orthodox Church of all places, ended, Hitch’s “argument” outstripped even have needed a few hundred more and he remarried to an American the falsity of his facts. years to get there. The lengthy essay, named Carol Blue in the 1980s. He As best I can tell, Hitchens’ case a review of Ian Ker’s biography of also relocated to America, further test- against faith consisted mostly of a Chesterton, was nothing if not a con- ing the resolve of his Marxism. Well, series of anecdotal enthymemes— tinuation of Hitch’s twin inabilities to he sort of moved to America, relocat- that is to say, syllogisms of which get historical facts right and to argue ing from one small island to another one premise has been suppressed. against a strong position, rather than (Manhattan) where he again proved Unfortunately, in each case it turns out dance around it with words. In that his ability to charm his way to all the to be the major premise that is miss- essay Hitchens applauds Chesterton’s right people, most of whom happened ing, so it is hard to guess what links the nonsense verse as the greatest thing to be left-wing antitheists of one shade minor premise to the conclusion. One about him, yet ignores the very heart or another. Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, need only attempt to write out some of of Chesterton’s work as both a literary Norman Mailer—all the people (David his arguments in traditional syllogistic critic and religious philosopher. Charles Pryce-Jones again) who were “experts style to see the difficulty: Dickens? Orthodoxy? The Everlasting at undermining the privileges on Man? Never heard of ‘em. Major Premise: [omitted] which they have depended for their And while, surprisingly, Hitchens careers”—were “friends.” Yet Hitchens Minor Premise: Evelyn Waugh was judges Chesterton to be a “Christian did have a certain moral cast of mind always something of a bastard, and his Zionist” rather than an anti-semite, he that allowed him to continue his Catholic chauvinism often made him nevertheless resorts to the argumentum journey of re-discovery of the horrors even worse. ad Hitlerum and adds a healthy dollop of most of the political and military Conclusion: “Religion” is evil. of the stale “secularization thesis” that figures who claimed his own left- as modernity progresses religious belief ism. Aside from his Mother Teresian Or: will simply slip away as unneeded. ravings and his help in the Clinton Chesterton was a Catholic, the Vatican Major Premise: [omitted] impeachments, he was notable for his made a concordat with Germany, in moral stands against the ethnic cleans- Minor Premise: There are many bad men 1933; therefore, any verbal opposition ing efforts that pop up with alarming who are Buddhists. to the Nazis was belied by his support- frequency in this age of “progress.” He Conclusion: All religious claims are ing Hitler’s Pope. Or something. In hated tyranny and defended any effort false. any case, as he tells us, religion is old- against it, not always maintaining his fashioned and doesn’t even need to be sympathies with these efforts, as so Or: answered rationally. So there. many of them led to further tyranny Perhaps those clever literary essays Major Premise: [omitted] on the part of the other side. And, as will pass the test of time, much as another more thoroughly converted Minor Premise: Timothy Dwight op- Shaw’s plays have. But it’s unlikely that former leftist, Peter Collier, put it, posed smallpox vaccinations. much else of Hitchens’ writing will. “Hitch” (as he became known) never Conclusion: There is no God. What was interesting about Hitchens acknowledged that he had really done was the persona he created for him- anything more than make “a midcourse The sheer charm of Hitch, however, self, not the thin, preposterous ideas steering correction,” always making made him something of a darling of or policies he propounded. Chesterton clear that “no accounting for past com- religious believers of all stripes, many was once asked at a conference in mitments would be required of him.” of whom seemed to believe he was on Canada whether the “coming peril” was That inability to have even “a dark the verge of some sort of conversion Bernard Shaw. Chesterton responded night of the soul” was not just a politi- experience. After all, the argument that he was neither; rather, he was a cal fact; it was constantly on display in goes, indifference, not hate, is the “passing pleasure.” This, too, sums up his irritatingly incoherent antitheism. opposite of love. Hitch was never Hitchens.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 23 Tales of the Short Bow

Caitlyn reached under the double bed and pulled out a box of trash bags. “When you’re done airing out the room, remember to close the window,” directed her mother. “The curtains are Putting Out the Trash flammable. I wouldn’t want them to by James G. Bruen Jr. blow onto the space heater. Besides, it’s chilly in here with the window open.” “Maybe I wanted brothers and sis- om, there’s something I’ve “What about your abortions?” she ters,” said Caitlyn. wanted to talk about with asked, exhaling. “You had three, didn’t “Family is overrated,” replied her you for some time now,” said you? Why did you do that?” mother sharply. “It enslaves women. Caitlyn Calder. “Who told you about them?” sput- More children would have interfered M She had tidied the living tered her mother. “Even your father with my life. They would have killed area in her elderly mother’s apartment never knew. The idiot thought the my dreams. What woman wants to be before entering the bedroom. Her reason we only had one child was that limited that way? You understand that, mother, attired in a flannel night- I’d become infertile. Who told you?” don’t you?” gown, was propped up on pillows on “What does that matter? It wasn’t a Caitlyn didn’t respond. She lined the double bed opposite the door. The secret among your friends, you know.” the portable toilet with two trash bags, room held little else: a portable toilet, a Caitlyn wrapped the trash bags in an- one inside the other. Then she slid the walker, an electric space heater, an end other. She placed the human waste near box with the remaining trash bags table with a lamp on it, a small dresser, the door so she could take it outside to under the bed. and a wall mirror. A pile of soiled laun- a dumpster when she left. “I’m tired, Caitie,” said her mother. dry sat in a corner near the room’s only “I needed the freedom, besides “Time for my nap, I think. Come back window. There was no rug on the wood I’d never have been able to give you this afternoon to change me out of this floor. The stench from the portable the things I did if there were other nightgown. Then you can do the laun- toilet overwhelmed Caitlyn. children.” dry.” She turned on her side, drew her “What’s that, Caitie?” “A woman’s freedom is more impor- knees to her chest, and closed her eyes. Feeling slightly nauseous, Caitlyn tant than her family?” asked Caitlyn; Caitlyn Calder shut the bedroom pushed aside the curtains that hung “more important than her children?” window. “Got to go now, mom,” she over the window. Weak winter sun “Oh, don’t put it that way,” scolded said. Her mother snored softly. After peeked tentatively into the room, but her mother. “I’d never have been able draping the curtain over the space the table lamp provided the room’s to do what I wanted, and I’d never have heater and sliding the laundry pile primary illumination, and the space been able to give you the things I did, if closer to it, Caitlyn turned out the light, heater provided its warmth. Though the you had siblings.” grabbed the waste, and departed. temperature outside was below freez- ing, Caitlyn opened the window and breathed deeply. “You divorced dad so you could be free, right?” Dragon’s Gold “We’ve been through that before, by Kelsey McIntyre haven’t we? He was suffocating me, preventing me from reaching my full potential as a woman. And I did it for he goblin king liked the yel- The king had developed this opinion you, too. He wanted to suffocate you, lowish light that reflected from after studying his skin and daydream- too. He wanted to put you in a Catholic polished gold. He thought it ing for two hours in his bathtub one school to ensure you’d never think for improved his complexion— evening. Wiggling his toes lazily in the yourself. I couldn’t do that to you.” Twhen he was surrounded by tepid water, he had held his scrawny As she had done each morning for gold, his subjects could no longer snig- arm up to the faucet and imagined what three years, Caitlyn Calder held her ger to each other that their king was the effect would have been if the faucet breath, grasped the drawstrings on the the color of the grass inside a cow’s were made of gold instead of pewter. outer plastic trash bag of the double stomach. No, golden light gave him a By the time he retired to his clammy bags that lined her invalid mother’s toilet, more dignified shade, reminiscent of, bedchamber in the heart of his under- pulled the strings tightly, knotted the perhaps, boiled seaweed. A richer hue ground palace, he was convinced. He string, and lifted the bags from the toilet. altogether, especially considering the needed gold, a pile of it, in all shapes value of the gold itself. and textures—gold coins, gold cups,

24 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Tales of the Short Bow gold combs, gold crowns—yes, at the lingered, sinking toward the mountain- Grimoss, Splate, and Nurgle gaped very least a gold crown, so that he side, and then, with a faint steaming at him, their throats clicking as they could wear it on his throne and look noise, another spurt streamed from a tried to form a response. seaweedy in front of his attendants. crevice in the rocks. “You haven’t by any chance come According to the guard stationed “Climb!” Grimoss ordered. for my treasure?” the dragon prompted. for the first watch outside the king’s They bounded up the slope, scram- “You don’t seem to have any trea- door, his majesty had been giggling in bling over each other and slipping on sure,” Nurgle gulped, taking a step his sleep. loose pebbles. The cave was near the back, “so our apologies, we must be in So it was that ten goblin hunt- top of the mountain, and by the time the wrong cave—” ers gathered at the foot of a jagged they reached it the moon had lifted, “I’m sitting on it,” the dragon said. mountain the next evening with orders yellow and magnified, above the trees Grimoss looked at Splate. He was to find a dragon’s lair, raid it, and in the valley. considered to be one of the shrewdest return laden with golden treasures for Grimoss spread out his arms to goblins in their colony, but rarely spoke their king. Grimoss, as usual, lead the signal the others to stop, the back of unless it was absolutely clear that his expedition. His quip about “lettuth” his neck glittering with sweat in the skills were needed. Grimoss stared at after the failure of his last mission moonlight. “Now, who wanth to go him, unblinking, to make it absolutely had greatly displeased the king, but thee what we’re up againtht?” clear. then again, no other goblin had as A heaving silence, while all of them Splate crossed all five fingers on much “ecthperience” on the hunt as caught their breath and stared at their each hand in an effort to consider their Grimoss did. He had made sure to boss. options. The tone of his address could shriek that out several times as he was “I think you should go, chief,” mean the difference between getting being dragged down to the dungeon, Mudge grunted. out with gold and getting burnt alive. and finally, after the king and his at- Grimoss flicked his eyes at the cave “Give us a golden crown,” he said, tendants had laughed at his lisp until entrance. It looked peaceful enough, “and no one will get hurt.” their stomachs cramped, they agreed to but the charred, fruity scent of dragon- The dragon burst out laughing, ten- reinstate him. smoke still infused the air. “Fine,” he drils of flame escaping him and coming “Thtay low,” Grimoss breathed to muttered. “Thplate, come with me—we close enough to warm the goblins’ his team, slinking between two boul- might need your brainth—and Nurgle, faces. “Answer me a riddle, and I’ll give ders near the mountain’s base. to reach the highetht piethes of gold.” you a golden crown.” Mudge, who considered him- Splate, a spruce-green goblin with Splate twisted his hands behind his self second-in-command despite his disconcertingly neon-colored eyes, back. After his initial attempt at domi- blunder on the children-hunting slunk forward, and Nurgle tripped nation, he thought it best not to refuse episode, wedged through to join the after him. the beast’s offer. “What is the riddle?” chief. “How’re we supposed to find this “When I whithtle, the retht of you The last smoky traces of the drag- dragon’s lair?” come after uth,” Grimoss said, and moon’s mirth curled toward the ceiling, “Thmoke,” Grimoss muttered, tioned Splate and Nurgle to follow him and he leveled his gaze at the hunters slitted eyes already scanning the to the cave’s entrance. They approached again. “What did I have for dinner?” mountaintop. the opening from the side, tiptoeing in Grimoss and Nurgle swiveled to “Ah, smoke.” Mudge’s face was patches of mud or grass to avoid dis- face Splate. blunt and inscrutable, as if it had been lodging any rocks. Another smoky sigh “But that’s not a fair riddle!” Splate sculpted out of muddy gravel, but one blasted from the hole, stinging their spluttered. of the goblins in the back tittered. sinuses at such close range. “I am a dragon; I can make up “Thmoke againtht the thky,” “It’th athleep,” Grimoss whispered. whatever riddle I want,” the dragon Grimoss snapped, “from the dragon’th Splate nodded immediately, fluo- growled, stroking the floor with one of nothtrilth!” rescent eyes gleaming. Nurgle copied his claws and creating a spiral shaving The sound of the word “nostrils” him, although he hadn’t understood of rock. provoked an eruption of giggles. any of the chief ’s last comment. A Grimoss almost drooled with self- “Like that smoke?” Nurgle, the tall- thleep? What was a thleep? He hoped it congratulation for choosing Splate to est, asked, pointing toward the peak. wasn’t more dangerous than an ordi- do the talking instead of going in by “Or is that just a cloud?” He tried to nary dragon. himself. phrase the question as intelligently as Taking one last breath of smoke- “What did you have for dinner?” possible, but after dusk his vision was filled air, the three darted into the cave. Splate repeated. He made a fist and so atrocious that the hazy blot above The very awake dragon smiled steadi- pinched each of his fingertips in turn the cliffs might have been a hot air bal- ly at them, his claws and wings folded between his palm and his thumb. The loon, for all he could see. and no gold in sight. “Hello, there,” he echo of some sort of logical reason- The ten goblins froze, staring at said. “You sounded like a sandy avalanche ing wafted around in his brain, if only the smudge in the sky. For a second it making your way up here.” he could pin it down. He pinched

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 25 Tales of the Short Bow his fingers harder. The dragon might just be cruel, asking a riddle which no one could solve, but he might also be Ten Tenets of Common Sense asking it precisely because someone by Charlotte Ostermann could solve it, if only they thought to answer… If transcendent common sense you’d have, give thanks for baby’s stare, “Nothing,” Splate said, releasing his for the gravity of wonder at the universe is there. hand. “You had nothing for dinner.” In things commonplace expect to glimpse of mysteries sublime. “What?” the dragon said, and lifted God save the grateful soul! enough on his front legs that Nurgle (And poetry should rhyme.) and Grimoss glimpsed something glittering beneath him. “Answered by a Look for truth upon a middle path twixt error-filled extremes. goblin? Nothing is correct, although I Paradox lightly confounds simplistic modern thought regimes. would have accepted the word ‘goblins’ Small is greater; humor harder – you must shift your paradigm. as well, since that’s what I intend to God save the narrow way! (And poetry should rhyme.) eat.” He chuckled. “You promithed uth a crown!” All free men must be creators – the ideal of liberty; Grimoss said, stepping forward to join limiting, must frame new windows on eternal verities; Splate. carry souls on wings of beauty to the glory beyond time. “Oh, that’s right,” the dragon God save true artistry! sighed, a few sparks shooting from his (And poetry should rhyme.) mouth. “Well, unfortunately I don’t have a crown. I was just toying with As the private work is greater than the public, look inside you. I do have, let’s see…” He wrapped to the virtue and the dogma in the homes where we reside. his tail around himself to shield his Parents save, to save the child; to fact’ry schools give not one dime. horde from view and rummaged God save the happy home! (And poetry should rhyme.) around in the pile. “Ah!” Grimoss held out his hands eagerly. Have naught to do with fads and trends, but single-minded stay. The dragon tossed something small Seek not from work to be set free, but cultivate true play. and shiny in his direction. “The best I Upon tradition’s time-tried frame true common sense shall climb. can do is this gold-plated napkin ring. God save the permanent things! It should perch rather nicely on one (And poetry should rhyme.) of your lumpy little goblin heads!” He roared with laughter again, puffing A common sense democracy is self-rule, in a word. smoke and flashes of flame all around The discontent of normal, decent men must oft be heard. the cave. “Ahaha! Don’t mind the Free men’s institutions prosper in a democratic clime. chipped places where the iron shows God save the common man! (And poetry should rhyme.) through!” The three goblins stared at the From the days of the apostles comes a doctrine you may trust. napkin ring in befuddled silence. Run amok with threadbare heretics and half-truths, if you must, “Oh, you are all much too funny,” but the truth that comprehends sets free those jailed for error’s crime. the dragon said at last, calming down. God save the antique Faith! “Now get out, before I eat you after (And poetry should rhyme.) all.” They scattered at once, skidding and New faiths seem to spring up daily – youthful, impotent designs. stumbling over the mountainside until Vague old systems in the shadows likewise Christ’s church much malign. they reached their cronies again. But articulated, apostolic Faith stays in its prime. “Well?” Mudge asked, arms folded, God save the Nicene Creed! (And poetry should rhyme.) not looking at all impressed by the mere fact that they were alive. “Do you Just one living thing exists that can resist the ebbing tide. have treasure for us to carry?” ‘Gainst the spread of evil’s blackness burns the flaming color white. “Everybody hath a new athign- Seek the cover of this mantle and all heaven’s bells will chime. ment,” Grimoss panted. “Ath thoon God save the Catholic Church! ath we get back, convinth the king that (And poetry should rhyme.) wearing table thettingth ith the new thtyle.”

26 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 All is Grist were Pat and Mike, whose names grace a good many Irish jokes. But I’m no longer supposed to tell Irish jokes, even when the joke is on me. I also come under scrutiny if I wax humorous about race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or spe- cies. Maybe the hostility the chimney It’s Not Funny joke provoked wasn’t about childish- by Joe Campbell ness or silliness. Maybe it was about attempted unlawful transaction with a minor. If adult male politicians have to umor is getting dangerous. A Humor depends on reason, which watch how they joke about under-age news report out of Harlan, distinguishes us from creatures that girls, researchers may have to watch Kentucky, a few years ago con- can’t laugh. Reason makes sense. how they joke about relations between firms it. The report was about Humor makes nonsense. But you have big and little chimneys. Don’t under- H a Harlan politician who went to recognize sense before you can ap- estimate the thought police. They’re to jail after greeting a woman and her preciate nonsense, which is amusing capable of considering chimneys a two nieces with an Appalachian joke. when it unexpectedly departs from phallic symbol. When he met them in a local grocery sense. Or, maybe the blatant disclosure store, the politician proposed a trade: Research at Washington State that chimneys can’t talk is deemed the two girls for a fattening hog. University suggests that our apprecia- offensive to the speech impaired. I Instead of laughing, the woman ob- tion of nonsense is diminishing. Let’s couldn’t help noticing that the re- tained an arrest warrant for attempted hope that it’s not because our recogni- searchers avoided saying chimneys unlawful transaction with a minor, as tion of sense is impaired. smoke. If they had done so, it might her nieces were aged 11 and 13. The The research revealed that some have been deemed offensive to the reporter neglected to mention the age jokes provoke high levels of hostility. addicted. of the hog. We all know that puns can be irritat- Rather than politicians who tell Fortunately for the politician, the ing. Despite their liberal use by classic jokes, scholars who explain them and charge was dismissed. Instead of facing writers like William Shakespeare, puns aunts who don’t get them, I’d imprison ten years in prison, he was out in three tend to provoke groans and other signs elites who suppress them. days. But his ordeal was enough to of annoyance. But the Washington In the meantime, if you’re a come- shake the confidence of comedians and study wasn’t about puns. During more dian or a humorist, put in for risk pay humorists everywhere. I know it shook than 200 conversations, researchers and take out liability insurance. Even mine. introduced the following riddle: better, speak softly and carry a big An Appalachian scholar came to “What did the big chimney say to shtick. the politician’s defense. He said the the little chimney?” joke has been around for generations “Nothing, chimneys can’t talk.” and is intended as a compliment. To Responses included glares, profanity, prove it, he offered a variation: “That’s insults, and assaults. a good looking boy; I’d trade you a True, it’s a childish, even silly joke. pocket knife for him.” But that doesn’t justify answering a If it were up to me, I wouldn’t put punch line with a punch. Today, it’s politicians in jail for telling jokes. I bad jokes. Tomorrow, it could be so- might consider it if they told old jokes. phisticated humor. While I’m at it, I might consider put- In some contexts, it already is. Take ting scholars in jail for explaining jokes, ethnic humor, for instance. It used to whether old or new. circulate like currency. But that was My preference, though, would be to before the media-academic complex put aunts in jail for failing to get jokes. subjected ethnic humor to ethnic Today, it’s aunts. Tomorrow, it could be cleansing. Now, in some quarters anyone, as failing to see the humor in ethnic satire and parody are as difficult things appears to be spreading. If so, it’s to find as a two-dollar bill. not only comedians and humorists who I enjoy ethnic humor. Because of should worry. Widespread sobriety is in my Celtic heritage, I especially enjoy no one’s best interest. Why, it could be Irish humor. What’s more, my two a sign that we’re losing our reason. favorite uncles, now no longer with us,

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 27 All is Grist

eius, et in capite eius corona stellarum When the Spirit Moves duodecim.” by Pat Colwell I tugged at my long suffering wife’s sleeve excitedly, “Marty, I can read this y wife Marty and I took a and sometimes a French or English one!” A verse from the Revelation of tour of Italy for ten days last translation nearby. I’m not much good St. John, it translates into English thus: November. We spent time in at French, but it does have the virtue “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a four cities—Venice, Florence, of seeming easy compared to Latin. I woman clothed with the sun, and the M Assisi and Rome. This relates thought all this would really be great moon was under her feet, and on her to bicycling in several ways. when I got to ancient monuments and head was a crown of twelve stars.” First of all, in many Italian cities cathedrals in Italy, because so many of Months passed. In late winter I you see swarms of people commuting them have Latin inscriptions. What I made one of my early morning com- by bicycle—I recall this especially in didn’t realize till I got there is that the mutes to Allen Hospital. The sun Mestre (mainland city across the bay people who carved all those Latin in- had not risen yet when I set out, but from Venice) and in Florence. Once I scriptions often abbreviated, and not in a nearly full moon worked its way was so impressed by a crowded bicycle a way I found obvious. Needless to say, down the western sky. The moon’s light parking lot that I snapped a picture. I felt chiseled. masked the steadily brightening east, Okay, that isn’t exactly Michelangelo’s I live to make puns. so that by the time I crossed the river David, which we also saw. He looked But I did have my moment of heading north the orange ball of the like he was in good shape—probably Latin glory the morning we spent in sun was ahead of me and the still- a cyclist when he wasn’t slinging rocks Padua. The University of Padua dates bright moon shone in the darker sky at giants. I saw hundreds of cyclists of back to 1222; Galileo taught physics behind me. Right then, I saw the stee- all ages during our stay in Italy. I only there from 1592-1610. How’s that for ple of Queen of Peace, which passed saw one guy wearing what we would a pedigree? between me and the sun as I pedaled consider bicycling clothing. Everyone In Padua we toured the Basilica of across the bridge. Immediately I saw in else just wore street clothing; and very St. Anthony, which I found beautiful my mind that inscription in Padua. The few wore helmets. On the other hand I and moving. There are many side-cha- brilliant sun seemed to burst behind saw very few obese Italians, which I at- pels connected to the main sanctuary the steeple of Queen of Peace, and in tribute to the walking and cycling they in the church, and in one of these I the west still shone the full moon. A do in their daily commutes. happened to look up toward the bright woman, clothed with the sun, and the I’ve confessed before that I am morning sunlight flowing through the moon was under her feet. a total nerd and old enough to just windows far above us. There near the Stunning, the things you see from a be at peace with it. One of my hob- ceiling I saw these words: bicycle. Some moments are positively bies is Latin. I don’t exactly study it. “Et signum magnum apparuit in cælo: gratia plena. I just try to read it with a dictionary Mulier amicta sole, et luna sub pedibus See you on the trails.

Middle Ages don’t interest me, espe- Why Chesterton Is—and Should cially when there is so much quality viewing to be had with my two hundred Be—Banned From Universities channel service. It is not my custom by Peter Maurice to pore over hate speech in print form, or attend the cult-like seances of the Chesterton Society. In the past month, y virtue of his offensively him stick out his head, the better to however, I have sampled it all. And after misnamed television pro- chop it off. But I don’t want to do what that horrid buffet a purge is in order. gram—The Apostle of Common ‘Chestertonians’ do, and be judgmental. The reader may suspect that the Sense—Dale Ahlquist leads So let’s say that Mr. Ahlquist and his evidence presented here is sifted from B the pack of those who sniff ilk are, from overexposure, truly desen- Chesterton’s colossal and indigestible out the mystery of G.K. Chesterton’s sitized to the pain an evolved modern output. It comes from a single speci- exclusion from the canon of English lit. sensibility feels upon a first encounter. men—The Everlasting Man—chosen Surely, I thought at first, this puzzle- The present writer is not so ha- by the St. Louis Chesterton Society ment is a put-on, the kind of faux bituated. I avoid regressive opinions. as a stimulant for their monthly pub- naivete assumed by Chesterton himself Television programs with views and brawl-cum-discussion. Prompted by “X” to draw an opponent—really, to have production values that reek of the who regularly attends these meetings,

28 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 All is Grist

I began reading, at first with an open perversion,” says Chesterton, “will be of comparative religion, an exegete, a mind; then with unease and incredu- right.” We now have courts, thanks to higher critic, sometimes adds a grace lity (was it a spoof?); and finally with the progress that Chesterton doesn’t note to our pluralistic symphony. One mounting horror. All but two of the believe in, that muzzle such rabid hate welcomes the nuanced, indepen- seven deadly sins of a secular society— speech. dent Catholicism of a Nancy Pelosi. homophobia, elitism, misogyny, racism, Elitism: Where to start? Western Who could object to a Jon Meacham, religious belief, smoking, and obesity— civilization is “superior”; ortho- poking delicious fun at those who still affronted the sensitive reader on every dox Christianity is “true.” The believe in a literal heaven—a “glori- page. But could The Everlasting Man Mediterranean tradition “matters”; fied Disneyland” in his witty phrase. have been a sport—atypical of G.K.’s Mongols and Aztecs don’t. (Personally, (Meacham serves Time brilliantly as oeuvre? Not so, his bibulous worshipers I don’t know any Aztecs, but they religious editor—an honor unimagined assured me; it is one of his greatest and would have to be less ethnocentric than by G.K. Chesterton.) Yes, there is room representative works! Chesterton.) Compared to “beauti- at the table for such broad-minded I said all but two. For evidence of ful” classical images, South American believers. No matter how fervent their these sins—smoking and obesity—the idols are “ugly.” Not only does he look faith, they never impose it on others. doubtful reader may view any of a down on “pagans” and “savages,” he Now contrast the ecumenical toler- dozen photos that Mr. Ahlquist features declares Christianity—his narrow or- ance of the Meachams and Pelosis with on his TV show. I don’t like to call thodox variety—superior to Buddhism, Chesterton’s stridency: “If man cannot names, but Chesterton is a smoker; and a “pool of night,” and “indistinguish- pray he is gagged; if he cannot kneel he he is obese—stuffed, no doubt, with able from despair.” Did the author of is in irons.” It’s not enough for him to trans-fats and animal protein. Not even this condescending bias ever visit an cling to his sword-cane religion—other the great billows of smoke that issue ashram, attempt transcendental medi- world-views are inferior, and “athe- from his chubby cigar can conceal his tation, or sit in the lotus position? If ism is abnormality.” Not content with bulk. What I find most offensive is the he had, perhaps his elitist hostility to beating up on contemporary dissent, unapologetic demeanor. He plainly multiculturalism would have revealed he ransacks history to search out even thinks he has the right to smoke in itself for what it is: illusion—the veil more heretics for his inquisition. His public. Today, thanks to enlightened of maya. And as for Chesterton’s lip treatment of the poor Carthaginians officials like New York City’s Mayor service to democracy and the common is but one instance where Chesterton Bloomberg, such brazen abuse—like man, would a true democrat speak of vaunts his my-religion-is-better bigotry. slavery—is being eradicated by “the urban mob...dependent on doles He can find only negative things to say proclamation. and cinema”? about their deities. He gives Moloch Before listing the remaining five sins Misogyny: Here again Chesterton and Baal—to be fair, a sort of Punic that ugly o’er nearly every page of The covers his war on women behind a Planned Parenthood—no credit for Everlasting Man I should acknowledge smokescreen of nonsensical paradoxes. having helped the Carthaginians limit my indebtedness to Piers Paul Read’s The home that imprisons women is family size and sustain the ecosystem. novel The Misogynist for the sensibly up- large while the world of meaningful I hope this explains, once and for all, dated version of the tiresome so-called work outside is regimented and narrow. why G.K. Chesterton is—and should capital sins. It was the same “X” of the Unpaid domestic service to one’s own be—banned from modern universi- Chesterton Society who recommended brood provides a world of adventure in- ties. The reason for his exclusion has The Misogynist (which he characteristi- accessible to women who teach and earn nothing to do with the PC spirit of cally misread as “satire” rather than the a decent salary. Even more incredibly, academia. The English and philoso- earnest indictment of the most serious he eulogizes the “voluntary enthusiasm phy departments are not threatened by evils of our time). Now the evidence. of virginity” as practiced by the Sisters Chesterton’s antique clarity of mind or Homophobia: Chesterton is too devi- of Mercy. Really, can anyone above the intimidated by his pre-modern buoyan- ous to simply declare his hatred for the larval stage of human development fail cy of temper; his dog-trot versification gay community. Instead he makes snide to see such unnatural abstention from may not be a good fit for tasteful poetry remarks about the poet Swinburne. He the joy of sex as a product of condition- journals where blank verse rules, but speaks of Greek “perversion” which he ing—imposed by a male hierarchy? metrics and rhyme are not automatic pronounces “unnatural” and “unmanly.” Racism: Chesterton uses the “N” disqualifiers. Even his fatiguing para- He imagines the reaction of the boy word at least twice. I refuse to cite di- doxes could be accepted—on occasion. who, on first hearing of homosexual- rectly, or to incite. However, the reader G.K. Chesterton has turned himself ity, is “shocked…sickened.” Chesterton who suspects me of calumny may find into an academic pariah by persist- is not here lamenting the backward it for himself themselves on pages 64 ing in sin—the seven deadly sins of a prejudices of an era before sex education and 91 (Doubleday Image Book edition, secular society. Anyone who reads The and bullying programs. He positively 1955). He hates. Everlasting Man with an open mind will encourages such “normal” prejudice. Religious belief: Religious belief be forced to the same conclusion. That sort of pre-modern “hatred of per se is unobjectionable. A student

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 29 Varied Types the ancient Israelites in exile, we were strangers in a strange land. “No Devil Worshipers Please” —G.K. Chesterton In the conference hall we found old and new friends, drank “Petta wine,” and listened to great talks and presen- tations. During breaks and after hours, we gathered where ever we could to share food and drinks; to discuss, challenge and ponder; to laugh and cry. Late in the day Saturday, many of us Aliens R Us trekked through sun-soaked city blocks by Victoria Darkey to attend Mass. The local cathedral, a humble outpost of peace and sanity, was where we found the Franciscan mis- t sort of looks like Mars...or the parked shopping carts bulging with sionary roots of Nevada. In the context Middle East,” she observed, stand- Hefty bags containing what remained of our Christian faith we were reminding at the huge picture window in of their earthly belongings in front ed that we are children of the Creator. our 26th floor hotel room. of McDonald’s. Then there were the We have our place in the created order, I As we gazed out upon Reno, I downright destitute, lying in the door- but as “children of light” we are not of heartily agreed with my friend’s im- ways of abandoned buildings. this world. In other words, in our jour- pression, not that either of us had ever Into this scene landed the unlikely ney on this planet we are Earthlings been to the Middle East…or Mars. group of several hundred believers and and Aliens at the same time. We could see angular concrete truth seekers somehow connected to It turns out that Chesterton noticed buildings lining the city streets com- a guy named G.K. Chesterton. We this paradoxical truth about life. In his pacted below us in the foreground. In formed into little bands of pilgrims as essay “The Riddle of the Ivy,” he wrote, the background, patch worked with arid, we shuffled from the hotel, through “The whole object of travel is not to set scruffy vegetation, the beautifully irregu- the casino, and out across the street to foot on foreign land; it is at last to set lar edges of open, uninhabited hillsides the conference hall. Occasionally as we foot on one’s own country as a foreign gave way to mountains that rose up to made this passage we heard the ques- land.” This idea takes a central place meet a cloudless sky. Sharp shadows tion whispered in the casino, “Who in the plot of his book Manalive, the cast in the amber honey colored sun- ARE these Chesterton people?” A movie adaptation of which premiered light of late afternoon gave everything few times in the street someone said, at the conference, to our great enjoy- a surrealistic sense of contrast. We were “Thank you…you’re beautiful.” Like ment. In the story the main character, miles away from our homes in the lush, green, gently rolling hills of southwestern The Freedom to Love Pennsylvania. In that moment we knew that aliens had landed in the Nevada By Fr. Emmerich Vogt, O.P. desert, and the aliens were us. The experience of the next few Contemporary American culture is full of days at the 30th Annual American temptations that can lead people not only Chesterton Society Conference was into unhappy lives but also into the throes a paradoxical mixture of foreign and of addiction. As a priest who has worked familiar. Reno presented us with a to combine traditional Catholic spiritual- caricature of life on Earth. The casinos, ity with 12 Step programs for over thirty with all the tasteless glitz and glamor years, Fr. Emmerich presents a unique ap- imaginable, offered the empty promise proach to recovery in this study of virtue of money, sex and power if you would and the seven deadly sins. The Freedom to only play their repetitive games of Love is for people of any age or profes- money, sex and power. Meanwhile, just a few steps outside the casino doors the sion who are involved with dysfunctional streets were populated with an amal- situations and are looking for a way out by gam of people. Tourists snapped photos using Christian principles in the context of and frequented tired-looking souvenir 12-step recovery. shops. Having managed to scrape up enough change for a burger and a cup To order: see www.12-step-review.org or call 800-556-6177. of coffee, the down-on-their-luck folks

30 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Varied Types

Innocent Smith, walks around the unique ability to see the extraordinary dice, or pulling the slots, were gam- world, becoming a master wanderer in in the common place. He was graced bling on finding something that would order to become a master wonderer. By with this alien vision without literally be fulfilling. In contrast to the brash going away, he gains gratitude in being circling the whole planet. He knew and gaudy—and empty—promises of at home. His ability to love the famil- that to truly have something, we must fulfillment through money, sex and iar is deepened by the ability to see it continually lose it. Down through power, the traditional Christianity through the eyes of a stranger. Through the centuries, spiritual masters have championed by Chesterton quietly and Innocent Smith, Chesterton challenges sometimes called this “detachment.” confidently offers things like poverty, us to find wonder and gratitude by Christ lived it beginning with the chastity and obedience in one’s sta- developing what I call “an alien eye” for mystery of his Incarnation. Echoing tion of life. Chesterton’s Christianity the everyday things around us. These this idea of detachment in his essay points to the graces of wonder and alien eyes give us the ability to see “The Advantages of Having One Leg,” gratitude that are made possible by things as if they are brand new and we Chesterton says, “The way to love any- the path of detachment. How amaz- are seeing them for the first time. thing is to realize that it might be lost.” ing to discover that the way home is by Through the healthy use of his The empty souls we saw in Reno way of things as foreign as Mars or the imagination, Chesterton possessed a spending hours mindlessly rolling the Middle East.

Liberals and Conservatives – II

✦ ✦ Damn all Liberals and Conservatives! coming into power; and as soon as ever one vote—in these truisms I do indeed They are all for creating isolated groups he is able to do anything he desires to do grow more conservative, or to use a better of some sort. (Act IV, Time’s Abstract and Brief nothing. (Illustrated London News, Feb. 4, 1911) word, contented. (Illustrated London News, Chronicle) Aug. 26, 1911) ✦ ✦ Most conservatives are conserving ✦ (Illustrated ✦ ✦ The old parties of our political life are the tradition of the last revolt. ✦ There are only two parties really in not only old but dead. They are dead by London News, Sept. 1, 1928) the world; those who love this strange

this decisive test; that they are dead to the ✦ beast, like Chaucer, and Dickens, and particular appeal that should and once ✦ The Conservative has exactly the same Whitman, and those who hate him, like did rouse them like a trumpet. Liberalism error as the Progressive. It consists in Swift, and Nietzsche, and the great ma- does not want to liberate anything. the fact that each of them allows truth jority of philanthropists. (Daily News, Mar. Conservatism does not want to conserve to be determined by time. That is to say, 5, 1904) anything. (G.K.’s Weekly, Mar.26, 1927) he judges a thing by whether it is of yesterday or to-day or to-morrow, and not ✦ (Illustrated London ✦ When Conservatives, Liberals, and by what it is in eternity. Socialists all agree, it is time for the News, Oct. 30, 1920)

larger and more harmless part of man- ✦ kind to look after its pockets. (Illustrated ✦ The touchstone of all social reform or London News, April 5, 1913) national rescue is the difference between the bad and the very bad. (Daily News, ✦ Sept. 8, 1906) ✦ The limitations of a liberal mind are

much more dangerous than those of a ✦ narrow one. (The Observer, Nov. 13, 1919) ✦ Man is both a creature and a creator; in so far as he is a creature, he is ✦ ✦ Before the Liberal idea is dead or a Conservative; but in so far as he is a triumphant we shall see wars and perse- creator, he is a Revolutionist. (Daily News, cutions the like of which the world has May 4, 1907) (Daily News, Feb. 18, 1905) never seen. ✦ ✦ Unlike so many of my stolid, steady- ✦ ✦ Liberty is traditional and conservative; going and conservative countrymen, I it remembers its legends and its heroes. agree with every word I said a few years But tyranny is always young and seem- ago. (G.K.’s Weekly, June 25, 1927)

ingly innocent, and asks us to forget the ✦ past. (Illustrated London News, Dec. 30, 1911) ✦ That a man should have one God, one wife, one country, so far as possible ✦ ✦ The reformer becomes conservative by one house, and certainly not more than

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 31 The Flying Inn granddad began to practice his faith, inspired, I understand, by the Home Rule at Home example of the priests he met in the trenches. It was the practice of his faith, as well as his being part of a gang of Irish political zealots, that caused my grandfather to be sent to the New World. As a result, My Grandfather all my family here are Catholic, and by David Beresford I do not have to live in Manchester. One of the lessons I learned from my father is that he sincerely “For the two things that a healthy person use the knife most effectively in close believed he was not half the man hates most between heaven and hell quarters work; how to strip and clean his own father was. I can echo that are a woman who is not dignified and a Lee-Enfield rifle, and how to hold a about my dad and myself. This a man who is.” —All Things Considered, G.K. Chesterton pistol. After the second war, he used knowledge was a great help when I to go to the hospital at Sunnybrook met various professors and teach- in Toronto each month, taking my ers in high school and university: never met my grandfather on my father, to bring cigarettes and beer a body of men that consisted of dad’s side; he died of a heart attack and chocolates to the shell-shocked effete simps, cowards, thieves, when I was two. Yet he has been a and crippled veterans who were pacifists, libertines, and communist major influence in my upbringing, hospitalized permanently. This had sex addicts. I would listen to them I as much as my other grandfa- a profound effect on my own father, spout the freedom of profligacy and ther, whom I knew in many ways. My who in turn used to visit the hospital atheism under the guise of teaching experience of my granddad is that of and old folks’ homes to see the old biology, history, and English. As hearing stories about him from my dad people whom nobody visited. they universally attempted to turn and grandmother, aunts and uncles, but When my granddad was in hospital cowardice into a virtue, and justify mostly from dad. It was my dad’s sto- with any of his several heart attacks or laziness and lack of self discipline, ries that carried weight in my mind. In strokes, my own dad used to smuggle I would compare them to my own fact, my father prayed to my granddad, in cigarettes and beer for him—the dad. They always came up short. one of those pious practices Catholics nuns who ran the hospital were rather have that probably seems so odd to ruthless about smoking in bed and non-Catholics. used to take granddad’s cigarettes from When I was very little, the list of him. In a funny way, I looked for- people who would be upset if they ward to my own chance to smuggle in saw me doing something wrong brandy for my dad, if and when he was included Our Lady, Baby Jesus, St. in hospital, but times have changed, Joseph, God the Father, my guardian and when dad was sick, he was too sick angel, the guardian angel of Canada, for brandy. and perhaps most important of all, I found an old weekly journal my grandfather Harry Beresford. (I from the Brockville camp, with brief have a reason for writing this article; biographies of all the NCOs and staff please bear with me!) officers. In it I discovered granddad The stories I have about Harry also served with the territorial army Beresford are jumbled in my mind, prior to World War I, rather excit- and I will try to put these down as ing stuff, and included was a quote of they occur to me. First, he was a his in the Lancashire dialect from his veteran of two world wars: the first as bayonet training: “Ah want to see them a staff sergeant in the British Army *** knee-deep in blude.” with some regiment from Lancashire; His own family was from the second, as RSM (Regimental Manchester, and his dad was a Sergeant Major) at the officers’ train- staunch Orangeman of the old school. ing base in Brockville, Ontario. He My grandfather’s mom was Irish and was an expert with the bayonet and became Methodist to marry, I am hand-to-hand combat. I have his old told, but had my granddad bap- lecture notes of how to prepare for a tized Catholic. After the first war mustard gas attack; when and how to with Germany, back in Manchester,

32 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 The Flying Stars psychologist who is often insane, and leads a few astray. We were reminded “What do you call the man who wants to embrace the chimney sweep?” that most of the world believes in fate “A saint,” said Father Brown. —G.K. Chesterton or luck, and not in the basic principle of free will. This is a heathen mentality which denies personal responsibility. Then Dale told us a shocking fact: the American Chesterton Society is a philosophical society. Just when we The Roller Coaster Conference thought it was a social society, or a lit- by Nancy Carpentier Brown erary society, or a religious society. Ahlquist explained the paradox of Manalive—the theme of our confer- s many of you know, my father Dale Ahlquist, arrived with his entire ence—by using the name “Wisdom died about a year ago. He was family. There were twenty people at Smith” in the title of his talk, in- a concert pianist, and loved the table and we made quite a scene stead of the name Chesterton used, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Saint- when, amongst the video poker and Innocent Smith. Chesterton was the A Saens, Rachmaninoff, and scantily-clad cocktail waitresses, we embodiment of wisdom and inno- Chopin. His request for a funeral prayer paused, bowed our heads, and gave cence, as the title of Joseph Pearce’s card was to mention these composers, thanks to God for the good food and biography attests. The world has a including his favorite pieces, and sug- great company. hard time reconciling wisdom and in- gest we listen. Two days after he died, I It was difficult, to say the least, to nocence in the same person. downloaded the lot from iTunes, and get rest. There is but one chance per Manalive was published a hundred I have my “Dad’s Music” playlist going year to meet and talk with people years ago; it was a perfect celebration whenever I miss him too much. I think whom you so enjoy. Unless you belong of that anniversary to watch the ACS about when he used to play these pieces to a great local Chesterton society, movie Manalive on Friday evening. for me, and I remember. which many do; but there you have The film was a highlight for everyone From start to finish, an Annual ten or twenty like-minded souls; here, and captured the spirit of the story, Conference of the American there were hundreds. And because mingling a good bit of humor in with Chesterton Society is a wild ride. This there are so many people to meet, the the idea that while we are alive, we year brought special joys and speed nights are long and the sleep is short. might as well go ahead and live. friendships, and the little taste of The first day of the conference, We all had a wonderful time at heaven we get when we suddenly find Mark Shea arrived with his bride Jan, the party. I wondered on occasion if ourselves temporarily at the Inn at and we had lunch. I can never forget Gilbert and Frances and my dad were the End of the World. But sometimes the fact that Mark introduced our there, and supposed they were. we do miss the ones we are separated family to the wacky movie Napoleon At the closing banquet, there were from, knowing they are at the party; Dynamite, which we still watch with the traditional lerihews and jokes, we just can’t see them, like my dad. laughter. I was amazed that Mark and then a few young people played For heaven it is when, in the midst brought up “lying” as a conversation music for us. Fifteen-year-old Adrian of chaos, lights and gambling, there starter, a hint of things to come. I Ahlquist, with dark curly hair like my is a peaceful place where people really thought we were done with that topic. dad’s used to be, sat down at the piano know how to think for themselves. But amidst the tacos and burritos at and began to play Chopin. It was a And the reason they think for them- the family-owned shop near the con- piece my father had often played for selves is, for the most part, because ference center, we again rehashed it. me, and is on my “Dad’s Music” playl- Chesterton taught them to. Thursday evening, many more ist. Tears began to roll as Chopin’s The conference began with meet- people arrived and wound their way “Fantasy Impromptu in C Sharp Opus ings and greetings. My flight into through the casino and across the 66” began. Adrian played sweet music Reno happily and coincidentally street to the convention center, where and suddenly, I knew, Gilbert and coincided with the arrival of three they were warmly welcomed and Frances and my dad were there with other women who had come to the directed toward the tables to begin us at the Inn. Next year, Worcester, conference, too. We met, hugged, got the weekend-long perusing of books, my friends. our luggage, and then got lunch at books, books. the Smokin’ Gecko. We could hardly Dale’s opening speech set the tone order food because we had so much to for the conference, reminding us again Visit www.chesterton.org/store talk about. that Chesterton was right: the mass for Chesterton books, audio, Later on, the main pack of speak- of people are sane, and keep the world and merchandise ers and the Head Patriarch of us all, sane. It is the rare philosopher or

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 33 Jogging with G.K. How ironic, then, that the conference took place in a casino hotel, the “Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. sort of atmosphere purposefully de- Look at the faces in the street.” —G.K. Chesterton signed to lull people into a mindless stupor. We should have smuggled in a few pistols! It took us at least a day and a half to realize that there were no architectural features of this building where people could step outside to As Part of the Family breathe the air: no patio or veranda with by Robert Moore-Jumonville benches for a morning cup of coffee or good after-dinner cigar. The owners wanted to keep people locked in, not his year’s annual American (Kurt, Becky, and Dave—absent with allow them the freedom to wander out. Chesterton Society conference, good reason—John from Indy, Steve That’s where jogging came in. One held in Reno, Nevada, stood from Pennsylvania, and so many of the things I’ve loved about the out as something special for more). Actually, considering that annual conferences is the opportunity T me—not because I won any Innocent Smith reminds us we must to discover surprising and inspiring money on the slots, but because so sometimes circle the globe to get running routes startling enough to many members of our family par- home, traveling to the conference is a wake me from slumber. In St. Louis ticipated. With fifteen in attendance, short distance to come. last year I had to settle for a neigh- we took up most of two tables at the Early Friday morning, Cameron in- borhood, but in Maryland I had the banquet. It wasn’t that we were com- terpreted for us the failures of Innocent privilege of running through many of peting with the Ahlquists; mostly we Smith, offering a provocative proposal the battlefield paths of Gettysburg. In came to support Cameron Moore, my that calls for further explanation. I’ve Seattle I ran a captivating trail along wife Kimberly’s nephew, who is doing taught Manalive more than any other the Puget Sound waterfront toward his doctoral work on G.K. Chesterton Chesterton text over the years and Elliot Bay; and I’ll never forget the gor- under Ralph Wood at Baylor University. confess that most readers, after they geous Summit Avenue neighborhood Cameron gave one of the early talks in adjust to the language and pace of the and Mississippi River Blvd bike trail the conference, titled “The Failures of book, quite uncritically consider Smith adjacent to St. Thomas University in St. Innocent Smith.” As we might sup- as the novel’s hero. True, while from Paul. How agreeable, then, when the pose, a Chesterton conference provided the start Smith appears at Beacon concierge described a river path stretch- a good excuse for a family reunion— House as wild and outlandish, he ing eight miles along the Truckee River something I highly recommend to nevertheless demonstrates childlike in- only four blocks from the hotel. The other G.K. fans in the future. nocence. But how then does he “fail”? casino hotel staff was not generally Chesterton described the family Without giving away too much of a promoting this free, convenient outdoor as “a little kingdom,” suggesting great talk that wasn’t mine, Cameron form of entertainment. It might wake that when we step into that realm at pointed out how Part Two of the novel a person up! One morning I ran a brisk birth we are stepping into an ad- narrates why Smith must continu- run with Cameron’s brother, Cody, venture, into a fairyland story. The ally pack his pistol to wake people up who is young and strong and punches Moore clan certainly stepped into and jog around the globe in order to a much faster pace than I do. The day a fairyland adventure this year in return to his home with appreciation. after the conference, a group of the Reno—from Dale’s opening talk, to Because Smith aims to cure the spiri- heartier Moores went tubing down the the premier of the movie Manalive, tual problem of forgetting, a problem Truckee, experiencing an adventure that to Eric “Kaiser” Johnson’s stand up all humans face daily. Our eyes grow will be recounted in family lore. comedy at the banquet, it was an heavy with custom and routine. Our What strikes me about this family amazing conference. In fact, the souls fall asleep. We forget who we adventure is how we need other people annual conference often does feel really are. And Innocent Smith is no who know us well if we are to know like a family reunion, full of com- exception. He must point the pistol at ourselves. That is why normally three munity and communion, somewhat his own head, too, and break into his days a week I run my first four miles like coming home to a place where own house to once more appreciate his with my wife, Kimberly. We have run we recognize that we are known. In wife and belongings. Smith must leave together at least twenty-five of our that respect, while I enjoyed seeing home so that he can return home, and thirty married years now. When my old friends, and making new ones in returning home discover that his soul grows dull, as it often does, when (Andrew, Mary, and Jordan, among family (those who really know him) I forget who I am, no one can wake me others), I lamented the absence of can best rouse him and remind him like she can: to truth, goodness, and many who did not make it this year who he is. beauty.

34 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 All I Survey written up in every town in this land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside “It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has through a glass door, as it was seen by been destroyed or sent into exile.” —G.K. Chesterton Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle.” Every reader of Chesterton appreciates this oblique The Land of Mooreeffoc view of the world, whether he is de- by David Fagerberg scribing courses, lamp posts, hansom cabs, or our daily apparel. Tolkien says the word Mooreeffoc may cause us t may not be well known that G.K. of us are wicked and naturally prefer suddenly to realize that England is an Chesterton exercised an influence mercy.” Tolkien thinks that fairy-tales alien land, or a strange dim future to on J.R.R. Tolkien, although our own should not end in mercy untempered be reached by a time machine, or an Nancy Brown graciously pointed by justice. The child can handle it. The amazing oddity. And Tolkien thinks Ithis out in a 2006 posting on the child demands it. that creative fantasy attempts this old American Chesterton Society blog. On the second occasion, Tolkien when it makes something new. I have recently read Tolkien’s influen- is advancing his thesis that writers of And the final reference Tolkien tial essay “On Fairy-Stories” and was fairy story and fantasy are sub-creators, makes to Chesterton is in the context surprised by the number of explicit under God who is the primary Creator. of defending the stuff of fairy-tales. references he makes to Chesterton. I We make because we are made in the Why not put in more of the mass- know the reasons why Chesterton image of a Maker. Yet, we should not produced products of the Robot Age? interests me, but why would he interest be too anxious to be original. “For Why go back to knights and horses? this great fantasy writer of The Hobbit we are older: certainly older than our Why aren’t there street lamps in fairy and The Lord of the Rings? I would like known ancestors. The days are gone, as tales? Simply because they are bad to review the four occasions, as if to Chesterton said, when red, blue, and lamps, Tolkien concludes. And Tolkien look at Chesterton through Tolkien’s yellow could be invented blindingly in calls his ally to reply to the challenge eyes to get a new glimpse. a black-and-white world. Gone also that electric lamps have come to stay. The first occasion comes as Tolkien are the days when from the blue and “Long ago Chesterton truly remarked considers the prejudice that fairy- yellow green was made, unique as a that, as soon as he heard that anything tales are for children especially, or for new color.” In the attempt to be more ‘had come to stay’, he knew that it children only. Although this prejudice original, and create an entirely new would be very soon replaced—indeed has produced some good books, “It color, the result is likely to be much regarded as pitiably obsolete and has also produced a dreadful under- more like mud. Should we despair of shabby.” Tolkien believes that “fairy- growth of stories written or adapted this? No more than we need despair stories have many more permanent to what was or is conceived to be the of painting because all lines must be and fundamental things to talk about. measure of children’s minds and needs.” either straight or curved. We cannot Lightning, for example.” Such stories, he says, can be molli- originally invent a new sort of line, and Tolkien makes explicit reference fied, bowdlerized, silly, Pigwiggenry the existing combinations we must use to Chesterton four times in forty-five without the intrigue, patronizing, or may not be infinite, but they are in- pages. And I have not even looked at sniggering. As you can tell, he does not numerable. Tolkien concludes his point the implicit presence of Chesterton’s approve. Andrew Lang had said, “He by quoting: “As Chesterton says, ‘The thought: his philosophy of Elfland, and who would enter into the Kingdom of offspring of the Missing Link and a the idea of not treating children as a Faerie should have the heart of a little mule mated with the child of a manx- different race, or the moral qualities of child”; all Tolkien wants to know is, cat and a penguin cannot out run the fairy tales that lets us answer in the af- what is in that little child’s heart? So centaur and the griffin...It would not firmative when asked whether they are he references an account by Chesterton be wilder but much tamer, not fantastic true, and so on, and so forth. Putting of having seen a production of but merely shapeless.’” on Tolkien’s spectacles and looking at Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird in the company On the third occasion, Tolkien says Chesterton, to see what he saw in him, of children. They were “dissatisfied as fairy-stories are not the only means for was very gratifying to me. it did not end with a Day of Judgment, recovering a clear view of the world. and it was not revealed to the hero and “Humility is enough. And there is (es- Please donate to the heroine that the Dog had been faithful pecially for the humble) Mooreeffoc, or American Chesterton Society. and the Cat faithless. For children are Chestertonian Fantasy. Mooreeffoc is www.chesterton.org innocent and love justice; while most a fantastic word, but it could be seen

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 35 The Signature of Man also honest like that of a mob. It was recognised that a certain real philoso- Chesterton on Art phy had found an expression, even if it had hardly found a definition. The Romantics did have a romance of love, as well as many romances of hatred; and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a brotherhood, even when the brothers quarreled like Cain and Abel. The Pre-Raphaelites (Illustrated London News, March 7, 1936) by G.K. Chesterton

he Pre-Raphaelite Group, point and beckon like runaway chil- which began with a Ruskinian dren. The queer sunsets dodge and The heavy dogmas of pre-Raphaelite version of Christian medieval- crawl behind the towers of hills. The criticism have gone, the corpse that ism, shaded off into later forms coloured windows gleam like the eyes falls from every religion at its resur- of aestheticism, not to say of dragons; the palaces are dwarfed rection. But the spirit, the unconscious T (“From Meredith to Rupert Brooke,” Paganism. with distance into the littleness of spirit of the great brotherhood, its The Common Man) nursery bricks. The whole of this ele- instinct for the effective conventional ment, an element closely connected treatment of sun and tree and river, its with certain philosophical and reli- fresh feeling for the youth of the earth, gious elements which belonged to none the less fascinated and fascinating Paganism deals with a light shining the Pre-Raphaelites, this element, for because it was touched with a youthful on things, Christianity with a light want of a better word, one may call the asceticism and fear, its mediaeval senti- shining through them. That is why the quaint. (Christian World, July 7, 1904) ment of a compact cosmos in which whole Renaissance colouring is opaque, clouds and stars were as solid as stones the whole Pre-Raphaelite colouring and mountains—all this half-mystic, transparent. The very sky of Rubens is half-grotesque realism is gathered up more solid than the rocks of Giotto.” A camera does not copy the details of into the eternal web of the world’s art. (G.F. Watts) every weed and nettle with the pious (The Speaker, May 12, 1900) patience of a Pre-Raphaelite; because a camera is not pious or even patient. (“Eric Gill and No Nonsense,” A Handful of Authors) Remember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of quick and ca- pering feet. It was the one thing that It is better to appreciate the pre- the modern Pre-Raphaelites could Raphaelite and that pious realism that not imitate in the real Pre-Raphaelites. drew all the botanical details; and (G.F. Watts) insisted that there is no rose without a thorn. (London Mercury, July 1924)

The light that never was on sea or land, or which the Pre-Raphaelite mystic The Pre-Raphaelites, the Gothicists, found a gleam in the dark forests the admirers of the Middle Ages, had of romance, or which the academic in their subtlety and sadness the spirit Anglican found in the Oxford librar- of the present day. (“Dickens and Christmas,” ies, is for this extraordinary people Charles Dickens) the light of common day; or rather of a very uncommon day. (The Listener, Nov. 14, 1934) There was a time when groups like the Romantics or the Parnassians or the Pre-Raphaelites did really move to- In the pictures of any of the Pre- gether like a mob, following an instinct Raphaelites the crooked little paths or ideal vague like that of a mob, but John Everett Millais, Mariana (1851)

36 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Chesterton University people. “If our government were really An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist a representative government it would not be a meddlesome government.” In the meantime, the real problem—sin— will be ignored. The world suffers, he says, “from a certain tail-foremost trick of thought... Godless It takes the trivial thing first and tries Illustrated London News 1923–25 to put it right, without caring wheth- Volume 33 of the Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton er it is putting the important thing wrong.” The tail wags the dog. Thus we obsess over the intermediate and will not say this is the best volume Chesterton, “secular impartiality is neglect the eternal. Efficiency and of G.K. Chesterton’s Illustrated not so easy as it looks.” It purports to progress are secondary things. So are London News columns, but I be neutral about religion, but ends by money and sex. The notion of progress, could certainly make the case if I persecuting it. Those who happen to of always going forward, is especially I wanted to. I will simply say this disagree with the secularists will be worrisome when we have come to volume epitomizes the whole collec- regarded as almost lunatic, while those the end of the precipice. Chesterton tion. First of all, most of the essays in who agree will seem perfectly simple suggests that at that point, retreat is a it are gathered here for the first time. and quite sensible. But there will be better strategy. A few went into Generally Speaking no basis for either the agreement or How did we reach this state of af- and some other books, but the bulk the disagreement. “Those who merely fairs? Through an “ignorance of the of it is fresh stuff. It is also typically denounce intolerance seem to have past combined with fatalism about the Chestertonian in that it seems to be no theory at all with which to defend future.” What we could actually learn describing the 2010s rather than the toleration.” from the past would be very useful for 1920s. But also there is a definite The secularization will creep into creating our future: thread that ties these essays together, the faith itself. We will hear the term There might be worse fates for even though their subject matter “True Christianity,” which means the us than the Decline and Fall of the varies widely from capital punish- jettisoning of any distinctive Christian Roman Empire. It would have been ment to hedonism to stage costume. doctrine and the inclusion of “every much worse for the old heathen empire The common theme is the effect of sort of heathenry.” if it had not declined and fallen, but increasing secularization in what was Men reform a thing by removing the only risen higher and grown richer in once a Christian society. reality from it, and then do not know its old heathen way. What would have As usual, Chesterton is prophetic what to do with the unreality that is left. been the good of tracing amphithe- about small things—describing the Thus they would reform religious institu- atres larger than the amphitheatre of telephone as a great scientific invention, tions by removing the religion. They do the Coliseum? What would have been but also “a horrible nuisance”—and not seem to see that to take away the the use of building baths more elabo- about big things: “There is a very real creed and leave the servants of the creed rate than the Baths of Caracalla? What, problem of religious liberty ahead of is simply to go on paying servants for relatively speaking, would have been us, though most people seem to be nothing. To keep the temple without the the advantage even of making taller aq- strangely blind to it.” The looming god is to be hag-ridden with superstitious ueducts for grander fountains or longer problem of religious liberty, he says, vigilance about a hollow temple—about roads for larger legions? This is exactly arises from the fact that “differences a mere shell made of brick or stone. To what corresponds to the modern vista are indeed fewer, but are much more support the palace and not support of scientific improvement; of quicken- fundamental.” Even more “absolute the king is simply to pay for an empty ing our quickest modes of transport, or and abysmal.” We do not notice them palace. linking up yet closer our network of because “a habit of morals remains communications; of something more after a change of faith; sometimes only It began, ironically, with rapid than racing-cars or more ubiqui- because a shell of manners remains Puritanism, which took a nega- tous than wireless telegraphy. We can after a loss of morals.” tive form of Christianity and led to see at this distance that increasing the Thus we have the new value of Prohibition. The reaction against the old heathen machinery would not have “Tolerance” to paste a veneer of good Prohibition was an outbreak of hedo- made the heathen world happy; and we behavior over the absence of a defin- nism. Yet Prohibition never goes away. know in our hearts that increasing the able philosophy, a belief that doesn’t Chesterton predicts it will come to modern machinery will not make the know what it believes, but only knows smokers next, and any minor pleasure modern world happy. what it doesn’t believe. But, says will be attacked, against the will of the

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 37 The Detection Club a law professor at Catholic University, had showed up for Mass and then “The mystery of life is the plainest part of it.”—G.K. Chesterton agreed to accompany them on the trip. The two older men tried to make small talk and enjoy the scenery during the drive, but Don nervously kept steering the conversation toward the curse. Eventually the turreted castle In the Mail came into sight as they came around James G. Bruen Jr. a wooded curve. Seated on a small hill and hovering over the river and abut- ting forest, the castle commanded a don’t believe in curses,” began the six-six, that’s what he’s called me,” said spectacular view. tall young man as Fr. Paul Petersen Don. “Not much of a moat,” said Matt as ushered him into St. Partick’s rec- “Goliath’s exact height,” observed Fr. the trio crossed a short wooden bridge; tory, “but this was creepy.” Petersen. “Your uncle knew the bibli- the water in the ditch below was shal- I “A curse?” laughed the priest. “I cal story well, but I’m not so sure your low and muddy. “A drawbridge?” he don’t get many complaints about those!” uncle was calling down evil on you.” asked rhetorically, running a hand Don Benardo didn’t laugh. “‘Grief ’s in the mail’ isn’t exactly along a chain that ran several feet up “Professor Hart thought you might be Charley Brown’s ‘good grief ’, Father. the castle’s stone exterior to the far able to help me. I’m hoping you’ll rid It’s morbid.” edge of the bridge. me of the curse.” “What is it you want me to do?” Don opened the castle’s heavy “Well, tell me about it,” said the laughed Fr. Petersen. “Check your wooden doors from the middle. He priest as they settled into chairs in the mail?” flicked a switch and electric candles rectory office. Don Bernardo didn’t laugh. “It’s simulated burning torches to illumi- “We’d gathered at my bachelor been more than a week, and I’ve nate a great hall with a high-ceilinged uncle Bradley’s house—actually it’s received nothing in the mail from interior. Wooden benches ran along a small castle—on the banks of the my uncle,” he said. “We’re going to the sides of wooden tables that togeth- South Branch of the Potomac in West try to sell the castle, but the curse’ll er formed one long table leading to Virginia. It’s got a moat and everything. put a damper on that. I want you to the far end, where on a raised platform He was in the final throes of his illness; sprinkle holy water or perform an sat another table, perpendicular to the death was imminent. There were a half exorcism on the house or do what- others. The floor was stone. Tapestries dozen of us, all relatives.” ever it is you Catholics do to get rid lined the walls. “A family gathering,” noted the of curses. I don’t believe in this stuff, “Your uncle must have been quite a priest. you understand, but it’d make me feel character,” said the priest, rapping his “He struggled to speak,” continued better, and it’ll make the house more knuckles on a suit of armor mounted Don, “telling us his last thoughts and marketable.” on a pedestal near the door. wishes. We were hoping he’d tell us “Well,” said the priest, still laughing, “Yeah, a regular joker,” said Don. where the family jewels were and who “I wouldn’t mind visiting your uncle’s “I’ll show you the upstairs room where he was leaving them to, but instead home; it sounds quite unusual.” he died.” He gestured toward a wide he teased us, kidding each person and “Can you come tomorrow? I was and winding stairway against a far wall. giving them advice. We never found planning to go there anyway to do “Maybe that’s where you should do the the jewels; the police suspect the clean- some things to prepare it for sale. I’ll exorcism?” ing service.” pick you up first thing in the morning.” The three men wound their way up “The cleaning crew?” said Fr. “I’m saying the early Mass,” said the the stairs. Crossed pikes and halberds Petersen. “Why focus on them? priest, “so come by the rectory around adorned the hallway on the upper floor. Couldn’t it have been someone else, for nine.” Don led them to a bedroom at one end example, an intruder or a gardener or “Okay.” of the passage. even a family member?” “And, Don,” joked the priest, “don’t A canopied four-poster bed stood “No one in our family would steal open your mail tonight.” in the middle of the room. Don parted them,” said Don emphatically. “When Don Bernardo, Fr. Petersen, and the curtains that hung from the frame it came to me, my uncle gasped, saying Matt Hart were on the road to West of the canopy. “This is where he died,” with his last breath, ‘For you, Goliath, Virginia by mid-morning the next Don said. my gem of a nephew, the grief ’s in the day, with Don driving, Matt in the “Shall we prepare for the exorcism?” mail’.” front, and Fr. Petersen in the rear. asked Matt. He pulled rosary beads “Goliath?” interjected the priest. Fr. Petersen had been surprised and from a pocket. “Will you need these, “Ever since I reached my full height, pleased when his old friend Matt Hart, Paul?”

38 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 The Detection Club

The priest laughed. “There’ll be no “Oh, yes, the jewels,” said the commonly, though often inaccurately, exorcism today,” he said. “That’s not priest. “I suspect they are in that suit called ‘mail’. Your uncle’s ‘curse’ was his why I came here. I wanted to see the of armor near the front door, Don. mischievous instruction to you, young castle; it’s quite unusual to find one in Unless, of course, there’s more armor Goliath, to look for the family jewels this area.” here that I haven’t seen. Probably in the greaves in the mail.” “No exorcism?” sighed Don inside a leg.” Don Bernardo chattered excitedly Bernardo, slumping. “This house will “Huh?” said Matt incredulously. and incessantly throughout the return be difficult to market: a castle with a “Greaves are shin guards,” continued drive to St. Patrick’s rectory while Matt jewel theft, a death, and a curse. Who’d the priest. “Goliath wore greaves when Hart inspected the gems. Fr. Petersen want that?” he went to battle David. And armor is napped in the rear.

Far and away the best part of Three Cases at Once this series is Issacs as Jackson, a man by Chris Chan who has been badly battered by the world but who still has a desire to see other people’s lives set right. Jackson he first season of the series Case axe murderer, and the stabbing death of is decent to the core yet still rough Histories is based on three mys- a young woman working in her father’s around his edges. Intense, determined, teries by Kate Atkinson: Case law office. One Good Turn revolves and resourceful, Jackson acts like a Histories, One Good Turn, and around the misadventures of a hap- man who could never be shocked by T When Will There Be Good News, less mystery writer, the aftereffects of the wickedness of the world and yet all featuring Jackson Brodie ( Jason a brutal assault, and the private life of is continuously amazed by the iniq- Isaacs), a former military man and ex- a dying real estate magnate. When Will uity around him. Like many fictional police officer who now ekes out a living There Be Good News starts with a hor- detectives, he is forever scarred by the as a private investigator. The premiere rific train crash, continues with a man mysterious death of a loved one— series consists of six hour-long epi- determined to track down his wayward when he was a boy, his sister was found sodes, with each novel being divided wife, and culminates in the hunt for a dead in a river and his brother suffered into two episodes. vanished mother with a tragic past. a tragedy of his own soon afterwards. One of the hallmarks of these The circumstances of his sister’s books is that each consists of three death are never fully elaborated separate mysteries that turn out to upon, but it’s clear that this is the be somehow connected. Sometimes defining moment of Jackson’s life. the connections are simply a matter Interestingly, Jackson often of two individuals meeting and seems perfectly willing to simply forming a bond after their cases discover the truth. Turning the have been resolved. Much more necessary information over to often, unfortunately, the connection the police seems not nearly as is a contrivance that defies prob- important. Getting paid for his ability and credulity. In some ways, considerable efforts also is low the series would have been more on his list of priorities, much to believable if each mini-mystery the consternation of his assistant were given its own forty-minute Deborah Arnold (Zawe Ashton), episode, since plot points such as who is happy to help Jackson’s the same character working for two office run smoothly as long as it crime victims are a bit much to be does not involve any actual work. credible; although if such a sepa- Another remarkably strong ration were enforced, some of the performance in this series is subplots and the development of that of Millie Innes, the young the main characters would be lost. actress who plays Jackson’s daugh- The first episode, Case Histories, ter Marlee. As the series opens, centers around three cases in- Jackson is divorced, and his ex-wife cluding a decades-old child Josie (Kirsty Mitchell, doing an disappearance case, the hunt for a excellent job of causing viewers to girl whose mother is a convicted side wholeheartedly with Jackson

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 39 The Detection Club regarding the breakup) is convinced the adult parties had made some very from the really interesting murders, but that she is by far the better parent. Her different decisions throughout the in Case Histories I would gladly have hostility is augmented by the fact that incident. Viewers may be intrigued seen one of the investigations dropped Jackson’s idea of quality daddy/daugh- by the minor characters and the little in order to see more of Jackson defend- ter time is to take long cross-country dilemmas that enveloped them, but it’s ing his parental rights. trips investigating cases, and to beat difficult to care about them very much. Case Histories never quite reaches violent suspects to a bloody pulp in I did care about Marlee enduring the the level of the greatest British televi- front of his admiring little girl. rupture of her family, and I cared about sion mysteries, but the series is always Midway through the series, Josie Jackson when he responded in horror worth watching thanks to Isaacs’ por- announces her desire to move to New to the realization that he might soon trayal of a man who is interested in the Zealand and take Marlee with her. I be able to be a father only through pursuit of truth for its own sake. will not reveal the resolution of this Skype. Sometimes the soapy domestic For more information on Case Histories, see situation, but I will say I wished that drama in a crime series is a distraction http://www.acornmedia.com/.

Death Stalks the Countryside Of the four episodes in this collec- by Chris Chan tion, “Blood on the Saddle” is by far my favorite. Partly this is due to the subplot involving a local county fair idsomer Murders is a long- Barnaby is married to Joyce ( Jane with a Wild West theme. The blend- running British crime series Wymark), but while there seems to ing of tweedy British country life and set in the titular fictional be genuine affection between the pair, American cowboy action is a bizarre county of Midsomer. The Barnaby often seems to take great combination, but a highly entertaining M seemingly placid and whole- pleasure in tweaking his wife at every one. The climax of the case, where the some surface of the region belies opportunity, questioning her judgment action is viewed through the eyes of a the fact that after Jessica Fletcher’s and depriving her of little things that delusional person, is a hoot. The mys- hometown of Cabot Cove, Maine, she may have been looking forward to tery itself is a little complex but fair to Midsomer is one the most dangerous enjoying. I have not seen many of the the attentive viewer, and the final twist places in the world to live. Originally earlier episodes, but the little touches requires the viewer to fill in the blanks based on a series of novels by Caroline of domestic life we see leave me won- himself, but this should not be counted Graham, since the series began in 1997 dering (and worrying) about the state as a fault. I appreciate it when shows Midsomer’s cast has changed consider- of their relationship. respect the intelligence of viewers. ably, and many of the latest plots come from original ideas. Set 19 of this series is composed of four episodes: “The Made-To-Measure Murders,” “The Sword of Guillaume,” “Blood on the Saddle,” and “The Silent Land.” John Nettles continues his longtime role as DCI Tom Barnaby, and Jason Hughes as DS Benjamin Jones. The two police officers are notable for their ordinariness, lacking the distinctive quirks or eccentricities that most television detectives have to make them unique. That does not mean that they are not entertaining to watch. Nettles and Hughes have an offbeat father/son dynamic, with the elder man content to let his subordinate take care of the dirty and difficult work that he personally would prefer not to do, as long as his protégé stays within the bounds that he personally delineates.

40 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 The Detection Club

Be warned, there are a few dis- country churches, eerie graveyards, charm of the show; you could be turbing images sprinkled throughout and overcrowded little shops. Visually, forgiven for believing that the events the series. “The Sword of Guillaume,” Midsomer Murders is an amalgam of on screen are actually occurring sixty for example, includes two decapita- relics from British history, punctuated years in the past, and were it not for tions and an impaling, all of which by much more modern locales and the cars and tweed suits, on occasion are depicted on screen in graphic surrounded by lovely countryside. I do one could swear the show was set in detail. There are also a couple scenes not know if locations like Midsomer the Middle Ages. of sensuality, but the severed heads County really exist, but I would be There is no need to watch the first and pools of blood are the most truly glad to know that there are re- eighteen sets of Midsomer Murders disturbing images in the set, and the gions in the world where one can travel before watching the four episodes of jarring nature of these shots is at odds from century to century in the space of Set 19. The recurring characters require with the tone and style of the rest of a few square miles. no introduction, and there are no spoil- the series. Midsomer Murders is decidedly not ers to previous episodes. And many The production team does an excel- a period piece, yet it is set in an era better episodes exist in previous install- lent job of taking fictional Midsomer that somehow seems simultaneously ments, so there is no reason why the County and turning it into a rich and anachronistic and utterly timeless. uninitiated viewer should not start the entertaining world. The settings are The production team underscores lengthy series at any point. Midsomer particularly well-designed and in- this seeming contradiction frequently, Murders is in the best traditions of the clude a potentially haunted castle, with striking yet oddly appropri- English murder mystery, confidently run-down country farmhouses, elabo- ate scenes such as an iPod playing assured of the fact that there is nothing rate manors filled with portraits of in a candlelit centuries-old chapel. more entertaining than a good criminal centuries-old ancestors, fancy gardens, Therein lies the most genuinely visual investigation.

Benedict Cumberbatch in the contem- Chesterton’s“I should enjoy nothing moreBloodthirsty than always writing detective stories,Heirs porary BBC version, and the upcoming except always reading them.” —G.K. Chesterton prime time pairing with a female Brief Reviews of the Contemporary Mystery Scene by Steve Miller Watson, an elderly married Holmes with an artist son by Irene Adler seems almost quaint. However the Mary Mickey Spillane and Max Allan a beautiful ceramics seller, her intense Russell novels remain perhaps the best Collins. The Big Bang (2010). In 1965, employer, the true blue bike messen- pastiche revamping of Arthur Conan facing a deadline, Mickey Spillane ger, and a benevolent physician have Doyle’s character. Here the first mys- set aside a Mike Hammer mystery of in the conflagration? Hammer‘s body tery is the disappearance of bees from drugs, flower children, and urban decay count is rivaled by none. He takes for one of Holmes’ hives. The second is in favor of a shelved manuscript which granted that all women want to sleep the vanishing of son Damian’s Chinese became The Twisted Tale. In the 1980s with him. (Possibly he is correct.) His wife and their child. With Damian’s he asked fan and fellow mystery writer relationship with secretary Velda is that own flight, the hunt changes to one Max Allan Collins to take custody of of two dangerous jungle cats, while for a murderer and the goal to prevent the draft with rights to complete it. that with police friend Pat Chambers the sacrifice of a child by The Children Spillane only required that Collins is of a death addict and his enabler. of the Stars, a cult believing that retain the disturbing conclusion. As the For Hammer the payoff is an LSD- enough blood will trigger the Viking story begins, Mike Hammer is an in- induced rampage in a drug lord’s night apocalypse of Ragnarok. Fugitives nocent bystander who witnesses three club and a chance to end the narcotics themselves, Holmes travels to Norway muggers beating up a bicycle messen- industry once and for all. But at what while Russell takes a death-defying ger. The often homicidal private eye, cost? Mike Hammer himself may be an airplane trip to the Orkneys. Are their newly recovered from a knife wound, addiction. He is a male fantasy figure deductions about the site and time of intervenes and soon one thug is in more likely to appear in video games the sinister ritual logical or is there critical condition and two are dead. A than detective novels about more a wrong assumption which will lead later murder attempt on the detective angst-ridden law enforcers. to disaster? Finally the reader is left and the execution of the incompetent with that disconcerting phrase, “To be assassin convince our hero that he is Laurie King. The Language of Bees continued,” but with all good mysteries in the middle of a drug war. But what (2009). Sherlock Holmes is con- the journey is usually more satisfying roles do a Mafia narcotics boss, an in- stantly being re-imagined. Now with than the conclusion. It is comforting to dependent dealer called the Snow Bird, Robert Downey, Jr.’s portrayal, a hyper know the game is still afoot.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 41 The Detection Club

the reason the BBC adaption makes The Father Brown Casebook clear the murderer will be punished. by Steve Miller (3) There are two crimes in the story with one criminal undoing the other. The lesser crime is more difficult for The Eye of Apollo Father Brown to solve. He identified the murderer because when Pauline ather Brown visits his friend wins. In his biography of St. Thomas Stacey fell one person was ostenta- Flambeau’s new offices and en- Aquinas, Chesterton recounts the tiously indifferent to the commotion. counters a sun worshiping cult possibility that the Angelic Doctor (4) The confrontation between Kalon led by Kalon, the New Priest of may have levitated. We should always as self-proclaimed proponent of New F Apollo. remember that outside help was in- Age enlightenment and liberation op- volved. Miracles are miraculous after posed to what he terms the darkness The Mystery. Was the fall of heiress all. (2) As Martin Gardner reveals and pessimism represented by Father Pauline Stacey down an elevator shaft in The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown is classic Chesterton. He knew accident, murder, suicide, or an attempt Brown, the story was much altered that the organized religion the priest at levitation? between the first magazine publica- represents is the real protection from tion and its appearance in book form. the black abyss while the road to hell is The Subplot. Is there more than one The changes seem to improve the tale. paved with feel-good philosophies. crime and more than one criminal? Certainly the implication that the main criminal escaped justice and progressed The Opening [as it appears in the Other Characters. Joan Stacey, to greater crimes is unsatisfactory. British first edition]. “That singular Pauline’s younger and less significant The open ending of the story may be smoky sparkle, at once a confusion sister; Kalon’s commonplace young clerk; excited witnesses to the fall of The David Brown Book Company Presents Pauline Stacey; surgeons attending her; and the late-arriving official police. G.K. Chesterton by Michael D Hurley Location. The American style office building near Westminster Abbey in A revaluation of the vast and which the offices of Kalon, Flambeau, vastly varied work of G.K. and the Staceys are located, and the Chesterton through a literary streets outside that witness Kalon’s in- reading of his philosophy, and vocation of the sun. a philosophical reading of his fiction. Publishing History. “The Eye of Michael D. Hurley is Apollo” in significantly different form a Fellow and Director of and with a different opening was first Studies in English at Robinson published in the March, 1911 issue of College, Cambridge. He has Cassell’s Magazine. That year it was col- written widely on English lected with eleven other Father Brown Literature from the 19th stories in The Innocence of Father Brown. century to the present day, Kenneth More played Father Brown in with an emphasis on poetry the BBC adaption of the story with a and poetics. He is the editor of the new Penguin Classics edition of more satisfying ending. The Complete Father Brown Stories. 136p, Paperback, 9780746312117 Notable Allusions. (1) Cults and en- (Northcote House Publishers 2012) thusiasts existed during Chesterton’s $19.95 time, advocating staring into the sun Special Offer: $16 as a means of spiritual enlightenment. Special offer is valid until February 28, 2013 The results were as deleterious as those When ordering, please quote the discount code 506-12. suffered by Pauline Stacey. So there is : no mistake, looking directly into the Convenient Ways to Order Mail: The David Brown Book Company sun is an extremely bad idea and one’s PO Box 511, Oakville CT 06779 eyesight may never recover. Levitation Phone: 800-791-9354 has been claimed to be achievable by Online: www.oxbowbooks.com Email: [email protected] New Age practitioners. Gravity usually

42 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 The Detection Club and a transparency, which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing Whodunnit Theology more and more from its grey to its glit- Father Brown on miracles tering extreme as the sun climbed to the “You call it queer, and I call it queer,” said Father Brown, “and yet we zenith over Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man mean quite opposite things. The modern mind always mixes up two differ- was very tall and the other very short; ent ideas: mystery in the sense of what is marvelous, and mystery in the they might even have been fantastically sense of what is complicated. That is half its difficulty about miracles. A compared to the arrogant clock-tower miracle is startling; but it is simple. It is simple because it is a mir- of Parliament and the humbler humped acle. It is power coming directly from God (or the devil) instead shoulders of the Abbey, for the short of indirectly through nature or human wills. Now, you mean that man was in clerical dress. The of- this business is marvelous because it is miraculous, because it is ficial description of the tall man witchcraft worked by a wicked Indian. Understand, I do not say was M. Hercule Flambeau, private that it was not spiritual or diabolic. Heaven and hell only know detective, and he was going to his new by what surrounding influences strange sins come into the offices in a new pile of flats facing the lives of men. But for the present my point is this: If it was Abbey entrance. The official description pure magic, as you think, then it is marvelous; but it is of the short man was the Rev. J. Brown, attached to St. Francis Xavier’s Church, not mysterious — that is, it is not complicated. The qual- Camberwell, and he was coming from a ity of a miracle is mysterious, but its manner is simple.” Camberwell death-bed to see the new offices of his friend.”

CREDO VII

✦ ✦ ✦ I believe in reflecting a little (by way ✦ I am not an idolater. I do not worship it because it is impossible”—he was of a change) not on what we have done a clock, or anything that is the work of touching wittily a very deep truth. (Daily with the great heritage, but on what we man’s hands. I believe it is perfectly pos- News, May 9, 1903) have neglected to do with it; not upon sible for the man who made the clock ✦ ✦ I believe that at this historic crisis how closely we have copied a master, to put back the clock, or stop the clock, property has become not only a just but on the things in which we have not or smash the clock to smithereens, if he thing, but a sacred thing. Real Property copied him; not on how faithfully we chooses to do so; and therefore I have will be all the more sacred because it have followed, but upon how far we never cared a brass farthing about these will be rather rare. It will be an island have betrayed the dead. (Daily News, Feb. measurements of moral ideas in terms of Christian culture in seas of sense- 10, 1912) of time. Some of the modern ideas are less drifting and mutable social moods. moral ideas that seem to me quite right In short, I believe we have reached the because they are moral, not because they time when the family will be called are modern. (Illustrated London News, Sept. 30, 1933) upon to play the part once played by the Monastery. That is to say, there will ✦ ✦ I believe that even rationalist his- retire into it not merely the peculiar torians will be forced, under whatever virtues that are its own, but the crafts phraseology, to use some theory of and creative habits which once belonged tremendous interruptions; of some- to all sorts of other people. (G.K.’s Weekly, thing behind life working not with an May 21, 1927) equal pressure but by cataclysms, things ✦ ✦ If ever we did touch and stir that dark which even when they become universal heart of the people and that human remain unique. Those who classify Rome under-world rose in arms, I think we with other empires, or Christianity with should see some strange judgments other religions, or the Jews with other upon our modernity. I think the priest sects, strike me as missing proportion as would be left alone; I fear the tyrants in the classification of men with beasts. (New Witness, April 6, 1916) might escape; but I believe that the gut- ters would be simply running with the ✦ (Daily News, June ✦ When the old Christian dogmatic blood of philanthropists. said “Credo quia Impossibile”—“I believe 3, 1905)

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 43 Book Reviews As mocking such rude revelry, The dim clan of the Gael Came like a bad king’s burial-end, With dismal robes that drop and rend And demon pipes that wail—

A New Edition of an In long, outlandish garments, Torn, though of antique worth, With Druid beards and Druid spears, Enduring Classic As a resurrected race appears Out of an elder earth. The Ballad of the White Horse And grey cattle and silver lowed By G.K. Chesterton Against the uplifted morn, And though the King had called them Notes by Sharon K. Higby And straw clung to the spear-shafts forth Illustrated by Ben Hatke tall. And knew them for his own, Front Royal, Va.: Seton And a boy went before them all So still each eye stood like a gem, Literary Classics (2012) Blowing a ram’s horn. 122 pages, $12.95

Reviewed by Dale Ahlquist

e will always be indebted to Sister Bernadette Sheridan for the years of research she did to annotate The W Ballad of the White Horse, an edition that is still in print thanks to Ignatius Press. But we welcome this new edition of G.K. Chesterton’s epic poem from Seton Literary Classics, and many readers may find they will prefer it. It is a beautiful book with a clean layout, and inexpensive. Originally designed for Seton Home Educators, it is a text that will work well beyond the pleasant boundaries of home school. Gilbert Magazine readers will also recognize the artwork of the talented Ben Hatke that enhances the great look of this book. Sharon Higby’s introduction and notes are extensive but not overbearing. The aim is to make the poem accessible, and this it does very well. In addition to explanatory footnotes, there is a running account of the narrative in the side margins. Students will be left without excuses. They will have to answer who Ogier is, or else answer to Ogier himself. But best of all is the poem itself, which, like any great epic (and anything by Chesterton) can be enjoyed again and again. Consider the cadence and imagery of this little-known passage from Book IV: www.househatke.com

44 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Book Reviews

The third great thunder on the wind, collection from some of his more The living walls that hedge mankind, recent notebooks, he has generously set The walking walls of Rome. out his stuff for others to take. Unlike my notebooks, Maybe you didn’t understand any Cunningham’s include not just quota- of that. The Gaelic tribe of Colan is tions and citations from other writers, about to meet the Roman tribe of but a great many short reflections on Mark. The description is stunning: his experiences and the beginnings the bagpipes (“demon pipes that of essays he might like to write. It’s wail”), the long beards, the cloth- comforting for me to read his own ing that wreaks of time, the sense of observation that many essays end up ascetic fortitude, the survival of the aborted and only a line or two from an Irish, (“a resurrected race”), men who entry survives. Of course, the sly dog look like they have been carved out is a well-known enough writer that he of stone. Those who represent the could make good on those scraps by ancient earth are about to meet those publishing them here. who represent the place that tran- Published before the new transla- scends time. And will there ever be a tion of the Roman Missal, the book’s more concise, precise and yet sugges- title is a snippet from the Nicene tive image of the Eternal City: “The Creed: “things seen and unseen” (now www.househatke.com living walls that hedge mankind,/ more accurately translated “visible The walking walls of Rome”? and invisible”) is what God Almighty So spectral hung each broidered hem, Maybe you didn’t understand is the Maker of. Namely, everything. Grey carven men he fancied them, it because you don’t know what the Thus the entries tend toward explicitly Hewn in an age of stone. whole poem is about. Well, don’t theological reflection, but all of his bits, And the two wild peoples of the north expect me to tell you. Get this book. whether about the difference between Stood fronting in the gloam, Bring a great work of literature to this Christian hope and optimism, ESPN- And heard and knew each in its mind generation and the next. broadcast hot dog-eating contests, or annoyingly cheap restaurant tippers, are presented sub specie aeternatitis. As one might guess from a Commonweal columnist, Cunningham is something of a liberal when it comes to contemporary Catholic issues. He In the Theological is somewhat lofty and slighting in his views of more self-consciously orthodox colleges than Notre Dame, despite Writer’s Workshop the fact that he admits that much Things Seen and Unseen: A of Maugham’s I began with. If Joseph mainstream Catholic higher education Theologian’s Notebook Epstein’s advice to writers to steal as is nominally Catholic. Similarly he is By Lawrence S. Cunningham much they can from others without at pains to explain why those who have Notre Dame, Ind,: Sorin Books, 2010 detection is sound, then another’s note- largely found the post-Vatican II lit- hardback, 242 pp.; $20 books—along with diaries, journals, urgy a disaster should not turn toward Review by David Paul Deavel letters, and commonplace books—are the Tridentine (or “extraordinary”) an easy mark for the writer on the form of the Mass. prowl. After all, the stuff was just lying When it comes to his theologi- otebooks, Somerset Maugham there, right? cal views themselves, however, he is observed, are the writer’s Lawrence S. Cunningham has been generally robustly orthodox. A friend workshop. I know things I teaching theology at Notre Dame for who studied at Notre Dame told me write in mine would not nec- a quarter century and elsewhere for about a regular graduate student parlor N essarily be of obvious interest longer than that. The writer of the game involving an imaginary plane to others. Sometimes some of what “Booknotes” column for Commonweal crash. If one were on the plane with I write isn’t of obvious interest to me as well as author or editor of more Cunningham, a laicized priest who either—at least when I’m looking than twenty-five books of his own, he later married and had two children, through them later. But nevertheless has obviously taken plenty from other and Fr. Richard McBrien, the dean of much of it is, including the observation writers. In Things Seen and Unseen, a American Catholic dissent, to whom

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 45 Book Reviews would one turn for absolution and last between academic, practical, and con- unmentioned. Among other things, rites? Survey says, according to my templative theology, all of which go Cunningham quotes Chesterton’s friend, a unanimous vote for Larry the toward the health of the Church. And paradox that the madman has lost Laicized. he exhibits a proper everything but his And no wonder. The touchstones sense of humility reason in connection for Cunningham’s reflections in this about his writing in with the 2007 Virginia notebook are Holy Scripture, par- itself, noting of one of Tech shootings. With ticularly the Gospel of Mark and the his published essays respect to the differ- letters of St. Paul, Saints Benedict, that “my capacity for ence between facts Augustine, and Francis of Assisi, and the banal knows no and the truth, he notes a few notable modern figures like bounds.” But if like Chesterton’s indiffer- Blessed John Henry Newman, Servant any writer he has the ence to the former and of God Dorothy Day, and Pope capacity for banality, capture of the latter in Benedict XVI, whose first two volumes some of his own origi- his biographies of St. of Jesus of Nazareth were coming out nal thoughts are quite Francis and St. Thomas. during the time of these notebooks. profound, especially And he asserts that Despite his stature as a prolific his occasional stabs though he liked Ronald and well-known theologian who has at aphoristic writing. Knox as a young man, an intellectual grasp on the above and “Rosary beads count his writing “now seems other figures, Cunningham is very clear prayers that may or part of a past that that writing well about the intricacies may not count.” “The cannot be recovered.” of doctrine is not really on the same Blessed Sacrament exposed conceals Chesterton, on the other hand, is alone level as actually living out the Gospel. Christ openly.” Or, more puck- in Knox’s generation in that he “still He cites C.S. Lewis’s warning about ishly, “Hosanna in excelsis but what in commands attention in ‘Catholic’ writ- the dangers of people thinking that profundis?” ing.” I don’t agree that Knox is a period because one is a good academic theo- His appreciation of aphoris- piece, but that Chesterton stands above logian one is also a good Christian. He tic writing fits with appreciation of him is something with which Ronnie shows appreciation for the differences one touchstone figure I have left himself would not disagree. G.K. Chesterton says: Art is the signature of man. Be a man!* *That includes you, too, ladies! Subscribe to Dappled Things!

Discover Dappled Things, the Catholic journal of fiction, poetry, essays, and art. Write to [email protected] and receive a FREE sample issue! Or subscribe for one year (4 issues, $19.99) or two (8 issues, $29.99), and we’ll send a free back issue for each year purchased. Subscribe by check or money order, payable to Dappled Things (offer valid only in the USA).

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46 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 Fear of Film the automaton work (he was designed to write something, which becomes important) is heart-shaped and of a rare kind. Plot devices involving a girl he meets result in learning that she wears that key about her neck. (She is a delightful character, the kind of young reader who calls Hugo’s home a “covert lair” and the-ten-year old Hugo An Homage to the himself a “reprobate.” Even more important to the story Father of Cinema is the girl’s uncle, who raised her. He’s a disgruntled old man who runs a toy Hugo (2011) lives inside the walls of the station. shop in the station and from whom Directed by Martin Scorsese This is one of those good old stories in Hugo has filched parts for his au- Written by John Logan, based which becoming a ward of the state is tomaton. He catches Hugo, and takes on the book by Brian Selznik thought a horrible fate, the standard his notebook. He’s genuinely shocked Rated PG (for mild thematic material, point of view from the time of Dickens when he sees drawings inside of the some action/peril, and smoking) until quite recently. metal man, but then gives Hugo a job Reviewed by Art Livingston Hugo keeps one token of his father: at the store to make restitution for the a rusted, old automaton nobody at the stolen goods. And then. local museum wished to preserve. The And then, indeed. The last half of agic. That was the title of mechanism of the little metal man is the film reveals exactly who that old G.K. Chesterton’s drama such as to fascinate anyone interested toy shop keeper is, his importance, and of illusion and reality. You in tinkering with gadgets, but Hugo his history. And here is where the love might ask what that might is a professional clock maker and of movies comes in. What they were M have to do with Martin locksmith. The lock that would make and what they can be (and in Hugo Scorsese, best known for his extremely violent movies replete with mobsters, out-of-control megalomaniacs, or both. Well, Chesterton liked film well enough to play a cowboy in one (alas, lost), while Scorsese also pursues another of his obsessions onscreen— movies themselves, especially movies as a form of prestidigitation, sheer illusion. Thus he recently gave us, almost like a present, Brian Selznik’s beautiful story about the clock winder of the Paris railway station in the 1930s, Hugo Cabret, and about the strange man who came into his world as if by magic. The first half of Hugo is well told, but quite traditional, children’s book fare, which is a positive statement; this is the kind of story intelligent adults enjoy with even more joy than the young ones. Then the tale makes a major switch in emphasis. Hugo has learned the family craft of clock making from his father, but became or- phaned. His alcoholic uncle forces him to take up duties at the central station winding the clocks before sailing off into oblivion and stupor. To remain undetected by the stationmaster, Hugo

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 47 Fear of Film what at least one is). We learn that the devoted lovers of his work will not friend’s Papa Georges was once one owner was, as in real life, none other want to watch more than about twenty of the finest artists in France. (Melies’ than Georges Melies, who unfortu- minutes at a time. Watching Melies sets, carefully reproduced in Hugo, are nately in real life had no Hugo Cabret, films is like eating a rich candy; one worth the price of admission.) For and who died a forgotten toy store should only have a small amount at a what was Melies’ world but the cre- owner, long before being rediscovered sitting. His work is no longer the main ation of the most elaborate toy theatre other than by the occasional film buff. course. But it is a real treat. Where else ever? Unless we include film itself. Who, you ask, was Georges Melies? can we enjoy watching a man blow up Someone should write an imaginary He was doubtless the earliest filmmaker his own head with bellows, I ask you? conversation on toy theatre among who deserves to be remembered for (The tricks don’t always involve his Scorsese, Melies, and Chesterton. I what he put on celluloid, thus making head, either.) would pay to see that. But watch Hugo him the real father of the movies. And don’t forget Hugo, the and rent some Melies while At the time Hugo places the action, poor orphan who learns that his we wait. roughly 1936, only one of Melies’ films was known to have survived. In the last scene of Hugo, we learn that eighty had Ballade of Gilbert been found in places all over France. Today, we have enough material for five DVDs of roughly 160 minutes each, spanning his career from 1896–1912. The average length of one of these little Ballade of An Anti-Puritan gems is about four minutes, and I have by G.K. Chesterton watched 108 in the last month. They repay a visit. The films are nearly all stage-bound They spoke of Progress spiring round, as if the audience were sitting fifth row Of Light and Mrs. Humphry Ward— center; nobody today would endorse It is not true to say I frowned, his dramatic sense. The acting, if it can Or ran about the room and roared: even be called that, is atrocious by any I might have simply sat and snored— standard and was already passe by 1903, I rose politely in the club but Melies was among the foremost And said, “I feel a little bored; magicians of France, the true succes- Will some one take me to a pub?” sor of Robert Houdin (from whom Houdini took his name). The films The new world’s wisest did surround were part of his magic act, magic when Me; and it pains me to record no one else had mastered the art of I did not think their views profound, film editing. Objects animate and inan- Or their conclusions well assured; imate appear and disappear from stage The simple life I can’t afford, most capriciously. Even today, when Besides, I do not like the grub, we see an obvious cut, the tricks reveal I want a mash and sausage, “scored”— their charm, making us wish we had no Will some one take me to a pub? idea how he did it. When Melies edits his tricks while they are in motion, the I know where men can still be found, effects can still astound. Anger and clamorous accord, Because his most famous shot is And virtues growing from the ground, that of a rocket landing in the eye of And fellowship of beer and board, the Man in the Moon, The Trip to the And song, that is a sturdy chord, Moon is the Melies film most people And hope, that is a hardy shrub, are likely to have seen, a real shame. And goodness, that is God’s last word— Moon is fourteen minutes long and pur- Will some one take me to a pub? ports to tell a story (always a bad sign). Melies is almost always at his best Envoi instead in his two- or three-minute tours de force, such as the one where he Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword throws eight versions of his head onto To see the sort of knights you dub— a music staff thereby creating what Is that the last of them?—O Lord! may be the first movie singalong. Even Will some one take me to a pub?

48 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 A Shorter History of England in his quest to usurp his rival. After garnering enough support, he arrived “About these realms upon the edge of everything there was really in England, launching a campaign something that can only be called edgy.” —G.K. Chesterton that culminated in a final battle at Bosworth Field on August 21, 1485. As Chesterton ended the tale: Chesterton and the Case When his nobles deserted him before the battle, (Richard) did not regard it as of King Richard a new political combination, but as the by Jeanne Carr III sin of false friends and faithless servants. Using his own voice like the trumpet of a herald, he challenged his rival to a fight his summer, a University of G.K. Chesterton would have loved as personal as that of two paladins of Leicester research team an- the paradox of this mystery. Charlemagne. His rival did not reply, and nounced the possible discovery Long argued as Shakespeare’s was not likely to reply. The modern world of the skeletal remains of King greatest villain, this supposed hunch- had begun. The call echoed unanswered Richard III under a parking backed, nephews-killing, murderous T down the ages for since that day no lot in Leicester, England. A fully- madman has the popular reputation of English king has fought after that fashion. articulated male skeleton, found in the being England’s vilest king, but not if Having slain many, he was himself slain ruins of Greyfriars Monastery, showed Chesterton and the Richard III Society and his diminished force destroyed. signs of being killed in ferocious fight- have anything to say about it. In A Short ing. An iron arrowhead pierced the History of England, Chesterton com- Richard was the last English upper spine, and the head received two mented on Richard III’s checkered life: king killed in battle, dead at thirty- injuries—a small penetration at the top two. Henry Tudor’s men stripped Scarcely a line of him was like the of the skull and a large slicing wound Richard’s body, slung it over a donkey, caricature with which his much meaner at the back of the head, which caused and brought it to Leicester. The body successor (Henry VII) placarded the part of the skull to be cut off. The man was buried quietly in the choir of world when he was dead...Yet his soul, if also showed signs of scoliosis, causing Greyfriars Franciscan Monastery. Fifty not his body, haunts us somehow as the the right shoulder to be higher than years later, Richard received another crooked shadow of a straight knight of the left. blow from the Tudor family when, better days. He was not an ogre shedding With this tantalizing evidence, sci- under Henry VIII’s dissolution of the rivers of blood; some of the men he ex- entists are eager to see if DNA from monasteries, Greyfriars was destroyed. ecuted deserved it as much as any men of the skeleton matches a Canadian de- At that time, it was reported that that wicked time; and even the tale of his scendant of Richard III’s sister, Anne Richard’s remains were dug up and murdered nephews is not certain, and is of York. thrown into the River Soar. told by those who also tell us he was born The Richard III Society was with tusks and was originally covered founded fifty years ago to rehabilitate with hair...Whether or not he was a good the reputation of the king destroyed man, he was apparently a good king and by Tudor propaganda. Histories and even a popular one. plays, such as Shakespeare’s, writ- Richard became king after the ten under Tudor patronage served to death of his brother Edward IV and blacken Richard’s name and validate the declared illegitimacy of his neph- the actions of Henry Tudor and secure ews in 1483. During his short reign, his family’s place on the throne. If the he appeared to be a good king. He skeletal remains are in fact Richard’s, encouraged the development of the the society members are hoping for a printing press industry and instituted proper funeral and burial. This brings many court reforms recognized today— up another interesting question. Will it the presumption of innocence, the be a Catholic funeral, or will Richard right to bail before trial, the prevention be bested again by the Tudors with an of illegal seizure of property, and the Anglican ceremony? publication of property titles. He also (For updates on the work of identifying the ordered laws to be written in English remains found at Leicester, please see the so his subjects could read them. website of the Richard III Society, www. Meanwhile, from the safety of richardiii.net, or the American branch, www. France, Henry Tudor fomented anger r3.org. –Ed.) and conspiracy against the new king

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 49 News With Views to keep a running tab at their favorite bar. Any given week, a good number Compiled by the Gilbert Magazine News-Gathering Staff of the locals sitting around the pub stalls were likely drinking on credit, or “on the cuff ” as it was sometimes called. But a homeless man in Miami Beach gave new meaning to the idea of “drinking on bar credit” when he walked into a pub, ordered a pint, and “When the real revolution happens, it tried to pay with the bartender’s stolen won’t be mentioned in the newspapers.” credit-card. The card had been taken from the bartender’s car in a nearby lot a few days’ prior to the incident, and Designated Daughter the homeless man claimed to have rulings have held that patients must simply found it lying on the street. It’s ELK GROVE, Ill.—You have to hand leave written legally binding advance a fantastic coincidence against as- it to Kenneth Grau. He knew when decisions if they wished to be eutha- tounding odds, but it looks like despite he’d imbibed too much to drive safely nized and that casual or unrecorded the odds the house won. yet he fell short in his choice of a statements to relatives did not provide designated driver, which turned out to sufficient grounds. One wonders which Another Reason to be his ten-year-old daughter. While gulag awarded Gillon his degree. Like Newspapers sitting on her dad’s lap the girl gamely attempted to pilot the family’s Toyota The Hound of Leaven SOMEWHERE IN CYBERSPACE— 4Runner back to home base, nearly G.K. Chesterton once said, “Journalism mowing down several people in the SOUTH YARRA, Australia—After largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is process. Witnesses noticed the driver being stripped of his priestly facul- Dead’ to people who never knew that seemed to be a tad under age and noti- ties, Father Greg Reynolds, formerly of Lord Jones was alive.” This quip now fied police, who stopped the vehicle the Melbourne Archdiocese, founded backs up the fact—as if any evidence and checked Grau for impairment. In Inclusive Catholics as a ministry to gay was needed—that your Facebook addition to a driving lesson, Grau also men, former priests, abuse victims, and “news” feed isn’t really news. Everyone gave his daughter a lesson in hitting women who feel disenfranchised in the has heard of Morgan Freeman, and the pavement after he tried resisting hierarchical Church. Father Greg and probably everyone with Facebook has arrest. Although the incident took his flock of about forty meet every two at one time or another seen his death place on a Sunday morning at about weeks or so at one of two Protestant falsely reported virally throughout 10:45, we doubt Grau and his daughter churches, where the priest wears a the social networking platform, the were coming home from Mass. stole over his button down sport shirt most recent case happening early this and cargo slacks and pretty much lets September. Freeman has settled into Ethicist Wants his parishioners run the show; which a routine of letting spokesmen dispel Incapacitated Patients is how Inclusive Catholics recently the rumors of his death, but not before in “Dry Dock” had their spirit of inclusivity tested. multitudes of his fans lose their breath A latecomer brought his “large and for a second or two. They shouldn’t LONDON—A recent article in the well-trained” German Shepherd into believe everything they read on the prestigious British Medical Journal a service and when the consecrated World Wide Web, and if they’re look- chastised courts for interfering with bread came around, the man broke ing for news of somebody’s death, do doctors who wished to kill incapaci- off a piece and fed it to the dog. It it the old-fashioned way—look in tated patients by dehydration. In an speaks volumes that there was only the obituaries. article headlined, “Sanctity of life one gasp from within the congregation, law has gone too far,” Ranaan Gillon, while the remainder took it in stride. The Quotable Joe emeritus professor of medical ethics Whether the archdiocese will take it in and reportedly a major voice in the stride remains to be seen. WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Weekly field, said recent court rulings against Standard reported in early October this practice were “profoundly disturb- Drinks, On the that Vice President Joe Biden took six ing” because they took the life and (Hand)cuff! days off from campaigning “at a crucial death decision-making power out time in the presidential campaign.” No of the hands of doctors—as if that’s MIAMI BEACH, Fla.—In explanation was given, though specu- where they belonged in the first place. Chesterton’s day, it would not have lation was that he was closeted with Gillon is also upset because other been uncommon for regular patrons one David Axelrod to prepare for his

50 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 News With Views

October 11 debate with vice presiden- American people when he said back mainstream African-American who tial candidate Paul Ryan. We think this in 2006, “You cannot go to a 7-11 or is articulate and bright and clean was right and proper, since Biden gives a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a and a nice-looking guy.” And in the us the impression that all you need to slight Indian accent...I’m not joking.” very moment that President Obama do is get a couple of beers into him and His concern for physical fitness is was signing his health care bill into he’ll say almost anything. For instance, well known. He told a reporter at a law, Biden exclaimed, “This is a big on August 22 he said, “Folks, I can tell campaign rally in 2008, “You need to f------deal!” you I’ve known eight presidents, three work on your pecs.” And to wheel- Despite Joe Biden’s huge flaws, of them intimately.” Isn’t that nice to chair-bound Missouri State Senator we’ll be sorry to see him go if he and know? Speaking on April 26, Mr. Biden Charles Graham, he said, also in President Obama lose the election. said, about his boss, “I promise you, the 2008, “Stand up, Chuck, let ‘em He defies what Chesterton said about president has a big stick. I promise you.” see you.” politicians: “For fear of the newspapers Thanks for sharing, Mr. Vice President. Joe once introduced the President politicians are dull, and at last they Maybe Mr. Biden was remark- as “Barack America,” and once fa- are too dull even for the newspapers.” ing on the great diversity of the mously described him as “The first Good for him.

Anarchy

✦ ✦ The modern world (intent on anarchy satirists pursued him with mockery. But silly and bewildered experimentation. in everything, even in Government) re- now that so much of social life really (Illustrated London News, Nov. 30, 1912) fuses to perceive the permanent element seems dissolving in anarchy, and intel- ✦ ✦ We live under a government of en- of tragic constancy which inheres in all ligent men feel they are walking above tangled exaggerations. It is a government passion, and which is the origin of mar- abysses, they begin to understand that that has all the practical effects of anar- riage. Marriage rests upon the fact that the policeman has a solid sort of poetry. chy. (Daily News, March 1, 1911) you cannot have your cake and eat it; that In short, with all the revolutionary dis- ✦ you cannot lose your heart and have it. tractions, what is really moving and on ✦ Madness is not an anarchy. Madness is A man is monogamous even if he is only the march in the modern mind is the a bondage: a contraction. (William Blake) (The Observer, April monogamous for a month; love is eternal Counter-Revolution. ✦ ✦ Anarchy on the right side is better even if it is only eternal for a month. 9, 1933) than order on the wrong side. (Illustrated It always leaves behind it the sense of ✦ London News, July 21, 1917) ✦ The main mark of modern gov- something broken or betrayed. (“David Copperfield,” Appreciations) ernment is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more ✦ ✦ It was a lucky thing for the Socialists than de jure. We see the politi- that people denounced them as cian and not his backer; still less Anarchists, and predicted that they the backer of the backer; or (what would tear us in pieces with their an- is most important of all) the archy. The result was that, ten years banker of the backer. We see the afterwards, we woke up to find ourselves paper without seeing the editor, bound hand and foot by their bureau- let alone seeing the proprietor, cracy. (New Witness, Jan. 13, 1922) least of all the financial group ✦ (probably foreign) which really ✦ The truth is that Americans like supplies and supports the propri- lawlessness much more than liberty. etor. Anonymity, which is so near About legal liberty there is an element to anarchy, marks this age with a of prudence and compromise that is not sort of enormous negation. Men their national temper. What they like is have speculated much about the to make a law for Utopia and treat it like name by which history will call a law for Upsidonia. There is a sort of fri- us; but I think our name will be volity both in the optimism of their rule the nameless age. (G.K.’s Weekly, and in the anarchism of the exceptions Aug. 7, 1926) that disprove the rule. (Illustrated London News, Nov. 24, 1923) ✦ ✦ The anarchy is worst in the ✦ governing classes; their leg- ✦ When the policeman really was islation has become a sort of powerful, the whole world of poets and

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 51 The Distributist Southern Agrarians as well as in the Northeast, where they boasted their Economics as if People Mattered very own chapter of the Distributist League. In the Midwest, Land and Home praised Fr. Vincent McNabb, “Thank God for the Father McNabbs [that]God raises up to help keep our compass set to sanity.” And in 1926, Sheen’s Fraternity Fr. Jeremiah C. Harrington, the Irish- by Richard Aleman born professor of Moral Theology and Ethics at the St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota, prophesied, “Catholicism “We have no particular reason to suppose Pau Romeva i Ferrer was the first and Distributism went along together that a lily was intended to be beautiful; it to translate Chesterton’s books into during the great thousand years of was intended for the far nobler purpose the Catalan language. According to Christendom. Both are coming back of producing other lilies.” —G.K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters Romeva, UDC was a political associa- and will go along together again tion made for the application of the perhaps for another and a greater social doctrine of the Church. thousand years.” It’s not surprising ilbert Magazine celebrates its Here in the States, publications that another Midwesterner, the famed fifteen years as an internation- like America Magazine regularly sought Jesuit Msgr. John A. Ryan, recollected ally renowned publication out contributions from the British Belloc’s Servile State in a debate with commemorating the wit and Distributists. Writing for Commonweal, the socialist Morris Hillquit. “Until the G wisdom of G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton chuckled, “One of the majority of the wage earners become This one-of-a-kind magazine offers the queerest jests in human history is that owners, at least in part, of the tools best introduction to the once-forgotten in which a politician once described this with which they work,” Ryan con- defensor fidei from Beaconsfield whose extraordinary condition of capitalism as cluded, “the system of private capital gift of common sense remains widely ‘normalcy’. It is almost as abnormal as an- will remain, in Hilaire Belloc’s phrase, ignored by an educational establish- archy.” Hilaire Belloc also quipped, in the ‘essentially unstable’.” ment enamored with pro-communists pages of Social Justice Weekly, “There has The way out of this wage-slavery is like George Bernard Shaw and eugeni- grown up also a control over all human to first examine the principle phi- cist H.G. Wells. The world’s ignorance activities by what we call ‘finance’—the losophies behind our reigning social is our profit, as the editor-in-chief and reign of usury and debt.” systems and acknowledge that alterna- its publisher deliver eight appetizing Distributism was attractive to the tives have been brushed aside by those issues straight to our mailboxes, “producing other lilies” like Father Brown inspired detective stories or biographies of Chesterton’s contemporaries. For this anniversary issue let us explore the past so that we may engage the A New Book by present and set a course for the future. Although Great Britain was the home of the early Distributists, the John Peterson influence of the movement was felt all over the world. In Catalonia, Spain, Chesterton’s social thought inspired the Catalan UDC party (Unió Democràtica de Catalunya). Formed prior to the start of the Spanish Civil Available from War, UDC united Carlists and other Catholics previously unaffiliated with other political parties. These partisans Amazon.com described the English author as one “who founded the Distributist social $9.99 movement, which stood for a more equitable distribution of private property and fought capitalism as much as socialism.” Among them, the journalist

52 Volume 16 Number 1-2, September/October 2012 who have accepted the status quo as sacrifices, which “the majority of capi- Government does have a pedagogi- either a sign of man’s “progress” or talists have been unprepared to make.” cal role that shapes society. Policies passed down by God. From a political point of view, when affecting the distribution of goods will In a rare two-series pamphlet titled something is proposed a genuine spirit empower or weaken the household Justice and Charity by the famed televi- of fraternity does not ask first whether economy. Fiscal decisions (high or low sion priest Fulton J. Sheen, we read: or not it limits our personal freedom, regulations, poor or excessive taxation, but whether the proposed benefits debt) or cultural ones (the definition of Capitalism believes in Possession; the common good of society. The best marriage or life itself ) have profound Communism believes in Confiscation; expression of fraternity with regards to consequences for us all. These decisions the Church believes in Distribution, economics is the vocational group or will also have an impact on the wide or the union of popular freedom and guild made up of different professions distribution of property or its consolida- economic freedom through widely dis- (miners, auto-workers, lawyers, etc.). tion, and therefore, whether the family tributed ownership. This mutual collaboration uniting men can resist or will crumble before politi- According to Sheen, three philoso- Pro-Deo, pro-bono-publico, provides the cal or economic tyranny. (Amid Spain’s phies have shaped the foundations of internal unity necessary to organize twenty-five percent unemployment our civilization. For the liberal it is production and the distribution of rate and economic crisis, the continued liberty, for the communist it’s equal- goods. As Chesterton wrote: success of the Mondragón cooperative ity, while fraternity is the fabric for the is proof that Distributism can weather Christian society. A Guild was, very broadly speaking, a economic booms and busts.) Trade Union where every man was his Thus, when reshaping the local com- Liberty. The right to choose between own employer. That is, a man could not munity we shouldn’t consider decisions goods in order to fulfill one’s respon- work at any trade unless he would join the made by our wallets as the only means sibilities is genuine liberty. Instead, league and accept the laws of that trade; to effect change. Political activism to liberty is imbibed “to do, to think, and but he worked in his own shop with his encourage local business (mom and to say whatever one pleases without any own tools, and the whole profit went to pop or worker-owned), to improve local regard for society, tradition, objective himself...A master meant something quite agriculture, or to pursue the benefits of standards, or authority.” According to other and greater than ‘boss’. what Belloc called “productive lending,” Sheen, Economic Liberalism, follow- can serve to unite town and country ing this train of thought, is built upon Distributism may be a way of and revive the worth of the common three essential pillars: a) the state must looking at the world, it may also be a good in the spirit of fraternity. “And not interfere with business, b) collective bottom-up movement, but we should what I should say about the idea of a bargaining should be eliminated, and c) hesitate to ignore the need for policy brother,” wrote Chesterton, “I should no distinction should be made between reform at all levels of government. say about the idea of a wife.” the right of property and its use.

Equality. “Under Communism the ownership of the means of production is common, that is, it belongs to the workers; but the administration of that ownership resides in the hands of the leaders.” Echoing Chesterton, Sheen points out that public ownership really means nobody owns anything. In the name of “equality” a few Commisars are enabled to control production and the distribution of goods. This revolt against human nature ignores that the uniqueness of every man, Pope Leo XIII wrote, “is far from being disad- vantageous either to individuals or to the community.”

Fraternity. Sheen’s solution to the un- necessary class struggle pitting labor and capital against each other was not to begin with either liberty or equality, but fraternity. Brotherhood demands

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4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437 • 952-831-3096 • [email protected] • www.chesterton.org Chesterton’s Mail Bag your cherished beliefs. You simply will not admit that science has forced us to Gilbert Keith Chesterton Answers His Mail modify our view of miracles and of the supernatural. Signed, Contraception, Capitalism, C.E.

and Science Dear C.E., “Science has forced us to modify Dear Mr. Chesterton, Dear Mr. Chesterton, our view of miracles and of the super- A man does not practice Birth You take a very pessimistic view natural.” This sentence is kept in a solid Control in order to indulge his pas- of Capitalism, but Capitalism is very block by the printers, and is inserted sions, but in order that his quite optimistic. It is good for trade. Even in the paper whenever space has to be natural (and therefore legitimate) if one trade should happen to achieve filled as with some ornamental tail- sexual passion may have no unforeseen a monopoly (which, of course, can piece or other decorative design. But and undesired results. happen in a free market economy), it the most extraordinary thing about this Signed, still provides opportunities for every- newspaper sentence is that it is quite Mr. Neuburg one, even the employee. The point is: true. Science has profoundly modi- let the other fellow get on with his job; fied the old Victorian view of miracles. Dear Mr. Neuburg, do your own just a bit better. Science has forced us to accept scores In other words everything that is Signed, and hundreds of miracles in the manner natural is legitimate. So far so good. It Mr. G of the miracles of the Scriptures and is natural for a man to wish to rush the saints; miracles of healing, miracles out of a burning theatre, even if he Dear Mr. G, of cursing, miracles of flying without tramples on women and children; it is But it is the very definition of mo- wings, miracles of speaking without natural and therefore it is legitimate. nopoly that the other fellow will not be speech, miracles of a dual personal- It is natural for a man called upon to content with his own job. It is the very ity like diabolic possession, miracles face death or tortures for the truth to definition of it that your own job will of thought transference identical with run away and hide; it is natural and not remain really your own. If he buys the incredible stories of one who could therefore it is legitimate. That is quite up your business, it will be quite use- read men’s thoughts. In short, it is quite understood; and so far we are all get- less for you to do your job better; first, true that science has changed our views ting along nicely. But if everything that because you will be doing it for his of the supernatural; for it has forced us is natural is right, why in the world is benefit; and second, because you will back on the supernatural. not the birth of a baby as natural as have to do it according to his notions Your friend, the growth of a passion? If it is un- of what is better. Optimism of this G.K. Chesterton natural to control appetite, why is it sort is certainly good for trade, in the (Illustrated London not unnatural to control birth? They sense that it is good for trusts. But I do News, July 7, 1923) are both obviously parts of the same not see how extinguishing a hundred natural process, which has a natural individual businesses helps each in- beginning and a natural end. A man dividual to mind his own business. who thinks all natural things legitimate, Your friend, has no possible reason for interrupting G.K. Chesterton it at one stage more than at another. (Illustrated London News, Feb. 2, 1929) As Nature is infallible, we must not question what progeny she produces. If Nature is not infallible, we have a right to question the passions that she Dear Mr. Chesterton, inspires. And then comes the joyous Even though you are a journal- culmination and collapse; of calling ist, it is apparent that you never a baby an unforeseen consequence of read the newspapers. You cling getting married. to strange medieval Your friend, beliefs in miracles G.K. Chesterton when documentary (G.K.’s Weekly, July 2, 1927) evidence is reported in numerous journals, clearly debunking

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 55 Letter to America history knows that there were many G.K. Chesterton in the New York American perilous moments, when there might have been a Declaration of the Independence of New England or a Declaration of the Independence of South Carolina. Then came the split, with some real spiritual differ- Dictatorships ences involving a League of States; but by G.K. Chesterton America was lucky again, in making a general American sentiment prevail in spite of it all. t is the nemesis of a great deal of Freedom, which is the independence of But in Europe it is not so; and nonsense, which has been talked the citizen; Independence, which is the in South America I doubt if it is so. in England as much as anywhere, freedom of the city. European citizens have rights to be that at this very curious moment of That is why the Dictator appears asserted against tyrants; but also others I history Europe is much more like intermittently in the history of those to be asserted against invaders. Where South America than North America. I small republics—the old pagan cities. those two enthusiasms co-exist, as have never joined in the jibes against When there are small States, which in Europe and South America, the South America; but I have at least rec- still believe in the life of free men, Dictator will always be possible. It ognized that whenever they happened there is a tremendous temptation to has nothing to do with decay. There to come from North America they had use the temporary tyrant in defense of is a strong permanent tradition in in part the excuse of real diplomatic liberty. Europe; and it is Roman. There is also difficulties or commercial collisions. Now the States of South America a tradition in South America; and it is When they came from Nordic believe, and nearly all the States of Spanish. Men living in London suburbs, or Europe believe, in democracy in the But where the mob counts and the Prussian universities, they had no essential sense of citizenship. They are the military peril counts, there excuse at all. They were simply part of liberal States, but they are not united Dictatorship is possible. I should say that gay and wanton stupidity, which States. The United States had a re- the last country on earth to have a is a forum of Art for Art’s Sake. That markable streak of luck. Where they Dictator would be England. It is not men should make fun of a foreigner for issued a Declaration of Independence, sufficiently democratic. wearing a sombrero, when they them- it was rather for a continent than a From New York American, May 12, 1934 selves were the first and last people in country. But any student of American human history to walk about for nearly a hundred years in a top hat, is a sufficiently epigrammatic epitaph on the nineteenth century. But the political development of Europe, good in some ways and bad in others, as we can watch it at this moment, does at least suggest one of historical parallel. The sort of man who now rules, from about half the ancient thrones of Europe, is a great deal more like Porfirio Diaz than he is like Pitt or Peel or Guizot or Henry Clay or any of the great orators and parliamentary leaders of the nineteenth century. The Dictator is no new thing; especially the Dictator arising out of a Democracy. As a fact, I think, he arises out of two things; democracy and the strong need of the defense of frontiers. In short, this apparently desperate remedy of militarism arises out of the combination of two ideals, which may be called Freedom and Independence.

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