Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 $5.50

“As man lives upon a borderland he may find himself in the spiritual or supernatural atmosphere, not only through being profoundly sad or meditative,

but by being extravagantly happy.” —G.K. Chesterton Please join us for the 29th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference at Mt. St. Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD, August 5-7, 2010

Dale Ahlquist (President of the American Chesterton Society) “In Praise of Jones”

David Zach (Futurist) “A Great Many Clever Things: The Mistake about Technology”

Geir Hasnes (Chesterton’s Bibliographer) “Scientism: The Mistake about Science”

Joseph Pearce (Author) “The Mistake About Progress”

James Woodruff (Mathematics Instructor at Worcester Academy) “GKC and Edmund Burke: The Mistake about Conservatism”

Tom Martin (Philosophy Professor at University of Nebraska-Kearney) Msgr. Stuart Swetland (Theology Professor at Mt. St. Mary’s University) “ The Mistake about the Social Sciences” “Out of the Desert: The Mistake about Islam”

(Author) James O’Keefe (Independent Video Journalist) Regina Doman “The Mistake about the Social Services” “The Evangelization of the Imagination” Fr. Ian Ker (Theology Professor from Oxford University) “Chesterton and Newman”

Fr. Peter Milward (Professor Emeritus from Sophia University, Tokyo) “Chesterton and Shakespeare and Today”

Nancy Brown (Author and ACS Blogmistress) “The Woman Who Was Chesterton”

There will also be a special presentation by The Theater of the Word, Incorporated, featuring Actor Kevin O’Brien.

Come to the Mount this summer! Take some extra time to visit nearby historic sites such as Gettysburg, the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and more Complete registration information at chesterton.org or call 952-831-3096

Great Location! Great Talks! Great Arguments! Great Fun! : Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s : Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010

4 |:Tremendous Trifles: 27 |:the Flying Inn: 42 |:Fear of Film: Firewood How Green Was My Valley (1942) 5 |:Lunacy & Letters: by David Beresford reviewed by Art Livingston

7 |:EDITORIAL: Invictus (2009) 28 |:the Flying STars: A Prophetic Look at Reviewed by Sean P. Dailey National Health Care What’s Wrong With G.K. Chesterton? By Nancy Carpentier Brown 44 |:the Distributist: 8 |:Straws in the Wind: A Local Project A Midsummer Night’s Dream 29 |:Jogging with G.K.: by Miki Tracy by G.K. Chesterton Running From God by Robert Moore-Jumonville 46 |:Chesterton’s Mail Bag: 12 |:The Ballad of Gilbert: Charity, Youth, and Minor Poets A Song of Wild Fruit 30 |:The Battle with the Dragon: by G.K. Chesterton by G.K. Chesterton Shape-shifting By Kyro R. Lantsberger 48 |:News With Views: 13 |:SCHALL on CHESTERTON: The New Belloc Book 31 |:All I Survey: 50 |:Letter to America: by James V. Schall, S.J. Being Natural Crosses and Cross Purposes by David W. Fagerberg by G.K. Chesterton 14 |:ALARMS & DISCURSIONS: ON the Cover: G.K. Chesterton Delivers Himself of 32 |: the Detection Club: More of Journalist Kate Carew’s Sayings That Stagger Kate Carew The Solution charicatures of Gilbert Keith Chesterton by John Peterson 18 |:Tales of the Short Bow: appear in our reprint of her 1912 inter- Chesterton’s Bloodthirsty Heirs Losers Are Caged: An Allegory view, beginning on page 14. by John Peterson Brief Reviews of the Contemporary Mystery Scene by Steve Miller The Decoy by James G. Bruen Jr. The Little Boy’s Casebook BY STEVE MILLER

21 |:Rolling Road: The Honor of Israel Gow Things I Cannot Account For Reviewed by Chris Chan By Dale Ahlquist 38 |:Book Reviews: 22 |:ALL IS GRIST: The Purloined Boy G.K. and The French Connection Reviewed by David Paul Deavel by Donald DeMarco It’s Way Over My Head 39 |:Chesterton University: By Joe Campbell Arrival by DALE AHLQUIST The Oracle by Paul Metzler 40 |:The Ethics of Elfland: The Sysco Kid Is Not A Friend Of Mine 26 |:The Signature of Man: by Nicholas Check The Art of Caricature by G.K. Chesterton

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: John Peterson contributing Editors: Richard Aleman, David Beresford, 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, Ted Olsen subscriptions: (See Coupon Page 6) 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.

Copyright ©2010 by The American Chesterton Society.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 3 : T r e m e n d o u s T r i f l e s : by Sean P. Dailey

s this issue of Gilbert Magazine went to press we learned of the death of Martin Gardner, who one of America’s greatest writers died. G.K. passed to his eternal reward on Saturday, May 22, 100 years ago Chesterton paid him tribute as “a master of mad 2010. Many readers will be familiar with Martin’s lucidity.” The artistic European, says Chester- lucid and entertaining annotations of many books ton, might feel that Mark Twain was perhaps too comic Aby G.K. Chesterton, such as The Man Who was Thursday and The Innocence of Father Brown. He also wrote intro- when he was comic and too serious when he was serious. ductions to more than a dozen books by Chesterton or Admiring Twain’s typically American extravagance, his about his fiction that have been collected into the recently virile virtues, hard work, and plain ideality, Chesterton published The Fantastic Fiction of G.K. Chesterton. I says, “He was radiant with a rectitude not the less noble once had the privilege of talking to Martin on the phone for being slightly naïve; he carried everywhere those and found him to be a sweet, self-effacing, and kind powerful platitudes that are like clubs of stone.” Ches- person. We will deal more comprehensively with Martin Gardner’s many contributions to Chesterton scholarship terton attended a literary dinner in Twain’s honor when in a future issue. Please pray for the repose of his soul. the famous American visited London in 1905, and so we can speculate that the two of them met and maybe even ¶¶For the first time in 30 years, the annual G.K. Ches- exchanged witticisms. A book by Chesterton was only terton Conference will be held on the East coast. Here is recently discovered in Twain’s library and Twain’s margi- a chance for all our friends in the eastern United States to nalia are presently being authenticated, so we might soon attend this great event taking place at Mt. St. Mary’s Uni- versity, in Emmitsburg, Maryland, August 5–7. Who you discover what Twain thought of Chesterton. gonna hear give a talk? American Chesterton Society Pres- ident Dale Ahlquist; Gilbert Magazine columnist Nancy Brown; fascinating futurist David Zach; noted authors com/2010/04/19/nyregion/19twain.html Meanwhile, Dale Joseph Pearce and Regina Doman; and Monsignor Stuart Ahlquist writes, “Speaking of Mark Twain, Geir Hasnes Swetland of Mt. St. Mary’s itself. But wait, there’s more: just discovered that a signed, limited edition of Twain’s remember that great talk James Woodruff gave in 2008 collected works was published, and Chesterton wrote an on Paschal? Now he’ll do his magic on Edmund Burke. introduction to one of the volumes. No one knew about Remember Tom Martin eviscerating Nietzsche the same this, of course. Geir is trying to track down a copy.” If you year? Hear what he does to the Social Sciences. Remem- go to the Chesterton Conference in August, you can ask ber what James O’Keefe did to ACORN? Hear how G.K. Geir about it. Chesterton has been his inspiration as a video journalist. Remember Geir Hasnes? Of course you do. He’ll be back. ¶¶May 29 was Chesterton’s birthday, and June 14 was There’s even more: A couple of Oxford types will also be his real birthday—the anniversary of his death. Did you joining the mix: world-renowned Newman scholar Fr. Ian observe either or both of these days? If so, how? Let us Ker will be giving a talk on Chesterton and Newman, and know! distinguished English professor Fr. Peter Milward will be giving a talk on Chesterton and Shakespeare. Fr. Milward, ¶¶Parting Trifle: The Rockford Institute Summer School who once studied under J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, 2010 presents “Arthur and Alfred: The Anglo-Saxons,” July was the 2003 recipient of the ACS Lifetime Achievement 6-11. Its theme is the indomitable spirit of the free Anglo- Award. But that’s not all: There will also Saxon farmers, who lived and died in a be a special dramatic performance by The Have a Trifle? Send it to law-abiding society that upheld the ideals of Theater of the Word Incorporated, featuring [email protected] private ownership of property, preservation actor Kevin O’Brien. (We understand that of the family, and the right to defend hearth Stanford Nutting will be making an appear- and home in battle. “For Americans today, ance). Sign up today at chesterton.org. living under a harsher regime than William the Conqueror ever dreamed of imposing, Anglo-Saxon England represents ¶¶The revolution continues: a correspondent writes: not only the political patrimony that has been taken from “One of the books (newly located) that Mark Twain owned us, but also a thrilling place of brave warriors, stirring epic and presumably read was Chesterton’s The Club of Queer poetry, and heroic missionaries and scholars who transformed Trades. He even may have written notes in the margin. a nation of wild barbarians into civilized Christians who never See Alison Leigh Cowan’s ‘Scrawled in the Margins, Signs forgot how to fight.” Texts include Beowulf and Bede’s Eccle- of Twain as a Critic’ in the New York Times Book Review, siastical History of the English People. For more information 18 April 2010. (I can’t give a page number because I read and to register, call Cindy Link at 800-383-0680 or visit http:// it online.)” The article can be found at www.nytimes. rockfordinstitute.org/events/?p=54

4 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : L u n a c y & l e tt e r s : from Gilbert Magazine Readers e are wisely warned against look- Chesterton was terrified by the ing a gift-horse in the mouth, and Satanism of a friend, and by its echoes Wauthors are no less wisely warned in the decadent world and the Art for against picking bones with their review- Art’s Sake proclamations. The Picture ers. But I do have a tiny bone to pick of Dorian Gray is a true picture. Do with Kevin O’Brien in his review of we not see it in the face-lifts of celebri- my A Poem of the New Creation (GM ties who look all the more old for the I write instead to offer a sugges- January/February, 2010). Sadly he fails effort to look young? tion to Mr. Campbell when he finds to recognize the regularity of the meter As Oddie makes clear, Chester- himself casting about for a word to throughout the book, because he reads ton did hit his peak in Orthodoxy, describe the act of throwing oneself it as prose not poetry, as something to and from then on used what he had out of a window. The word or, more be understood or spelled out. But there learned to turn his attention to other accurately, term I recommend is auto- is a four-stress rhythm running through aspects of the then-modern world. His defenestration, which suggests itself to the whole poem, which speaks as well to is like a world of fireworks. He illumi- me by the term, auto-da-fe. the heart as to the mind, enabling the nates whatever he touches. And all Marcus W. Koechig careful reader to enter into the heart of because he got his base correct. Stanford, Connecticut the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Underlying his writings is that It isn’t just a collection of poems, ; ; ; religious awareness which so frightens but a series of poetic meditations those unwittingly caught in the maw may have missed it, but it seems structured according to those Exer- of Satan, “who goes about the world, to me that not enough praise has cises, a basic point that was sadly seeking whom he may devour.” been given to William Oddie’s overlooked by the kind reviewer. I Gabriel Austin book, Chesterton and the Romance Peter Milward S.J. Los Alamos, New Mexico of Orthodoxy. He begins with the Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan unexplored notebooks and minor writ- ; ; ; ings of G.K. Chesterton’s school days. ; ; ; From them he draws an understanding recently got my first issue ofGilbert t was with some interest that I of Chesterton’s growing and grow- Magazine, and I want you to know read Joe Campbell’s essay, “Vive la ingly deep religious sense. Stopford Ithat I’ve enjoyed reading and rereading IFenetre” and was sympathetic to his Brooke’s religious socialism—denounc- it. I didn’t expect it to be such a large view on modern windows being merely ing dogmas and creeds—paradoxically magazine packed with so much wonder- glass walls. This has long been a com- drew Chesterton away from social- ful content, but that was a nice surprise! plaint of mine, along with the general ism (“a noble country of words”) to I am looking forward to future issues. uglification of architecture. However, it religion. And that from an almost Caleb Morris is not of these matters that I write. religion-less youth. Euless, Texas

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Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 5 TheT HE NIGHT IS Best of FAR SPENT Thomas Howard Thomas Howard was a renowned Professor of Eng- lish and Literature for over 30 the night is Far spent years. He is a popular author A Treasury of Thomas Howard of numerous books, and a Selections by Vivian W. Dudro regular contributor to various nown for his wit and charm, Thomas literary & spiritual journals. Howard is one of the most popular K “A collection of Howard writings Christian writers today. This is a collec- is to be ‘treasured’ and saved. tion of Howard’s best material. Liturgical Who can resist ‘things literary’ reform and sacred architecture, women’s and ‘things sacred’?” ordination and hierarchical authority, C.S. —James V. Schall, S.J., Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien—these and many Georgetown University other topics of interest to Protestants and “Would it be brash to say that Catholics alike are tackled by Howard with Howard is an American counter- his characteristic thoughtfulness in these part of C.S. Lewis? I think not.” articles and speeches that span more than NIFS-P . . . Sewn Softcover, —Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. twenty years of his prolific career. 368 pages, $16.95

ChanCe or the DanCe? most important and influen- nia, the space trilogy and veals the richness at work in A Critique of tial poet of the 20th century, Till We Have Faces, Howard every detail of Catholic life. Modern Secularism and Four Quartets to be his explores with remarkable OBC-P . . . 263 pp, Contrasting the Christian and finest poem and greatest- lit clarity the moral vision in the Sewn Softcover, $14.95 erary achievement. Dove De- secular worldviews, Howard imaginary world of the mas- evangeliCal is not scending is a journey into the refreshes our minds with the ter storyteller Lewis. enough illuminated view of Christi- beauties and depths of El- NAB-P . . . 250 pages, In this deeply moving nar- Sewn Softcover, $15.95 anity as it imbued the world iot’s masterpiece written by ritive, Howard describes his Thomas Howard, bestselling in times past—showing that on Being CatholiC pilgrimage from Evangeli- we cannot live meaningful author, professor and critic. Howard presents his refresh- calism to Catholicism. He lives without this Christian DOVD-P . . . 160 pp ing insights on the “glad tid- examines all aspects of li- Sewn Softcover, $14.95 understanding of things. An ings” of the deeper meaning turgical worship with fresh- inspiring apology for Christi- narnia anD BeyonD of Catholic piety, dogma, ness and vigor, portraying anity. COD-P . . . 150 pp, A Guide to the Fiction spirituality, vision and prac- the great beauty of liturgical Sewn Softcover, $11.95 of C.S. Lewis tice, rendered in his unique worship and prayer. Dove DesCenDing Howard presents in this style of prose for which he ENE-P . . . 170 pp, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets work brilliant new insights is well-known. The book re- Sewn Softcover, $12.95 Throughout the world, many into Lewis’ fiction. Focus- consider T.S. Eliot to be the ing on The Chronicles of Nar- www.ignatius.com

P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522 1 (800) 651-1531 : e d i T o r i a l : A Prophetic Look at National Health Care

.K. Chesterton considered himself a member of Chesterton pointed out that a compulsory Health the Liberal Party until 1912. As he would later Insurance Act was first passed in Germany. It followed say, he did not leave the Liberal Party. It left another compulsory act that was also first passed in him. He believed in something called liberty, the Germany: compulsory education. Chesterton was a idea that people should be able to make most vocal opponent of state-sponsored compulsory education, Gdecisions for themselves, especially the most basic and for the same reasons he was against a national health most important decisions, and not have such decisions insurance. It was an attack on freedom. It gave the made for them by anyone else, especially by the govern- government too much power, and it took away a basic ment. He believed, as a liberal, that the State’s role was freedom from the citizen. The liberal argument was that to preserve liberty, not take it away. What happened the State was providing a valuable service. Chesterton’s in 1912? The Liberal Party, which held power in Parlia- counter-argument was that though the State was provid- ment, passed The Health Insurance Act. Every working ing education, it was the State’s education. Though it man was required to have part of his wages withheld to was providing medicine, it was a forced medicine. With pay for a national health insurance. The funding was to a compulsory insurance, he argued, people were being be further supplemented by a tax on every employer. forced to pay to be protected against themselves. Sound familiar? People are often willing to trade freedom for security. Chesterton’s objections to the Insurance Act were But the problem is that it is usually someone else trading threefold. First, it was anti-democratic in practice. The our freedom for our security. vast majority of the English population was against it. It Although Chesterton found himself allied with the was being passed against their will, but—so the argument conservatives on the issue of health care, he might went—for their own good. Second, it was anti-democratic point out now that one of the reasons we have gotten in principle. It divided the populace into two permanent into the present mess was that health care became an castes: those who labor, and those who pay for the labor. industry, controlled by large corporations rather than Chesterton called this what it is: slavery. Third, Chester- independent practitioners, and every industry tends to ton saw the Act as paving the way to the State seizing grow till it forms an alliance with big government. When more power, more influence, more interference in every- health care started becoming too expensive, the solu- one’s daily lives. Sound familiar? tion was supposed to be health insurance. But insurance About a century later, here in America, we are quickly made health care even more expensive. On the looking at essentially the same thing that Chesterton one hand, the medical industry stopped worrying about was looking at. We watched as a National Health Care being affordable; on the other, a new layer of private program was passed in utter defiance of public support, bureaucracy and overhead was added that also needed to rammed through the legislative process by one party be paid for. rather than by any sort of consensus. We have also Is there a solution? Yes. There is one drastic solution. watched the reinforcement of a system comprised of But sometimes issues of health require drastic measures. employers and employees, of wage-earners rather than The health care system needs radical surgery. The honest independent, self-sufficient and truly “self-employed” thing to do is do away with health insurance. Doctors citizens. And we have also watched the unimaginable and hospitals and clinics should start selling a product growth of government as it has insinuated itself into that people can afford, and that they should not have to every aspect of our lives. buy unless they actually need the product. It should not One of Chesterton’s strongest objections to the cost a thousand dollars to treat an ingrown toenail. But Insurance Act was the increase in taxes to those who it does. It should not cost $30,000 to set a broken arm. could scarcely afford to have any of their income taken But it does. Ours is a system that cannot be sustained. from them, even if it was to be used for something That is why the government feels justified to step in. specific like health care. The tax prevented a man from Chesterton prophesied this very scenario. He warns paying for other needs he had that might be just as that the State cannot become a Universal Provider with- important as medical care. He was being forced to pay out becoming just another big shop. The one thing we’ve for medical care that he might not need. What other seen about big shops is that they collapse. We can avoid things that he did not need would the State decide he the big collapse if we start getting small again. We might must also pay for? even get healthy again. —Dale Ahlquist for the editorial board of Gilbert Magazine

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 7 : s T r aw s i n t h e W i n d : the Devil Is In It” was the opposite of “As You Like It,” and was a solemn invoca- An Essay by G.K. Chesterton tion of the supernatural powers to testify to the care and perfection of the literary workmanship? The one explanation is as Elizabethan as the other. Now in the reason for this modern and pedantic error lies the whole secret and difficulty of such plays asA Midsum- mer Night’s Dream. The sentiment of such A Midsummer Night’s Dream a play, so far as it can be summed up at all, can be summed up in one sentence. It he greatest of Shakespeare’s optimism of the comedy were regarded by is the mysticism of happiness. That is to comedies is also, from a certain Shakespeare merely as the characteristics say, it is the conception that as man lives point of view, the greatest of his of a more or less cynical pot-boiler, he upon a borderland he may find himself in plays. No one would maintain actually suggested that the title, “As You the spiritual or supernatural atmosphere, that it occupied this position in Like It,” was a taunting address to the not only through being profoundly sad Tthe matter of psychological study if by public in disparagement of their taste and or meditative, but by being extravagantly psychological study we mean the study the dramatist’s own work. If Mr. Bernard happy. The soul might be rapt out of the of individual characters in a play. No Shaw had conceived of Shakespeare as body in an agony of sorrow, or a trance one would maintain that Puck was a insisting that Ben Jonson should wear of ecstasy; but it might also be rapt out character in the sense that Falstaff is a Jaeger underclothing or join the Blue of the body in a paroxysm of laughter. character, or that the critic stood awed Ribbon Army, or distribute little pamphlets Sorrow we know can go beyond itself; so, before the psychology of Peaseblossom. for the non-payment of rates, he could according to Shakespeare, can pleasure go But there is a sense in which the play is scarcely have conceived anything more beyond itself and become something dan- perhaps a greater triumph of psychol- violently opposed to the whole spirit of gerous and unknown. And the reason that ogy than Hamlet itself. It may well be Elizabethan comedy than the spiteful the logical and destructive modern school, questioned whether in any other literary and priggish modernism of such a taunt. of which Mr. Bernard Shaw is an example, work in the world is so vividly rendered Shakespeare might make the fastidious does not grasp this purely exuberant nature a social and spiritual atmosphere. and cultivated Hamlet, moving in his of the comedies is simply that their logical There is an atmosphere in Hamlet, for own melancholy and purely mental world, and destructive attitudes have rendered instance, a somewhat murky and even warn players against an over-indulgence impossible the very experience of this melodramatic one, but it is subordinate towards the rabble. But the very soul and preternatural exuberance. We cannot to the great character, and morally meaning of the great comedies is that of an realise As You Like It if we are always inferior to him; the darkness is only uproarious communion between the public considering it as we understand it. We a background for the isolated star of and the play, a communion so chaotic that cannot have A Midsummer’s Night Dream intellect. But A Midsummer Night’s whole scenes of silliness and violence lead if our one object in life is to keep ourselves Dream is a psychological study, not of a us almost to think that some of the “row- awake with the black coffee of criticism. solitary man, but of a spirit that unites dies” from the pit have climbed over the The whole question which is balanced, and mankind. The six men may sit talking footlights. The title “As You Like It” is, of balanced nobly and fairly, in A Midsum- in an inn; they may not know each course, an expression of utter carelessness, mer Night’s Dream, is whether the life of other’s names or see each other’s faces but it is not the bitter carelessness which waking, or the life of the vision, is the real before or after, but night or wine or Mr. Bernard Shaw fantastically reads life, the sine quâ non of man. But it is diffi- great stories, or some rich and branch- into it; it is the god-like and inexhaust- cult to see what superiority for the purpose ing discussion may make them all at ible carelessness of a happy man. And the of judging is possessed by people whose one, if not absolutely with each other, simple proof of this is that there are scores pride it is not to live the life of vision at at least with that invisible seventh man of these genially taunting titles scattered all. At least it is questionable whether the who is the harmony of all of them. That through the whole of Elizabethan comedy. Elizabethan did not know more about both seventh man is the hero of A Midsum- Is “As You Like It “ a title demanding a worlds than the modern intellectual; it mer Night’s Dream. dark and ironic explanation in a school of is not altogether improbable that Shake- A study of the play from a literary or comedy which called its plays “What You speare would not only have had a clearer philosophical point of view must therefore Will,” “A Mad World, My Masters,” “If vision of the fairies, but would have shot be founded upon some serious realisation It Be Not Good, the Devil Is In It,” “The very much straighter at a deer and netted of what this atmosphere is. In a lecture Devil is an Ass,” “An Humorous Day’s much more money for his performances upon As You Like It, Mr. Bernard Shaw Mirth,” and “A Midsummer Night’s than a member of the Stage Society. made a suggestion which is an admirable Dream”? Every one of these titles is flung In pure poetry and the intoxication example of his amazing ingenuity and at the head of the public as a drunken lord of words, Shakespeare never rose higher of his one most interesting limitation. In might fling a purse at his footman. Would than he rises in this play. But in spite of maintaining that the light sentiment and Mr. Shaw maintain that “If It Be Not Good, this fact, the supreme literary merit of A

8 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : s T r aw s i n t h e W i n d :

Midsummer Night’s Dream is a merit modern man would feel shaken to his dream. Here is the pursuit of the man we of design. The amazing symmetry, the marrow if he had to walk home from the cannot catch, the flight from the man we amazing artistic and moral beauty of that theatre through a country lane. cannot see; here is the perpetual return- design, can be stated very briefly. The It is a trite matter, of course, though ing to the same place, here is the crazy story opens in the sane and common in a general criticism a more or less alteration in the very objects of our desire, world with the pleasant seriousness indispensable one to comment upon the substitution of one face for another of very young lovers and very young another point of artistic perfection, the face, the putting of the wrong souls in the friends. Then, as the figures advance into extraordinarily human and accurate wrong bodies, the fantastic disloyalties the tangled wood of young troubles and manner in which the play catches the of the night, all this is as obvious as it is stolen happiness, a change and bewilder- atmosphere of a dream. The chase and important. It is perhaps somewhat more ment begins to fall on them. They lose tangle and frustration of the incidents and worth remarking that there is about this their way and their wits for they are in personalities are well known to every one confusion of comedy yet another essential the heart of fairyland. Their words, their who has dreamt of perpetually falling over characteristic of dreams. A dream can hungers, their very figures grow more precipices or perpetually missing trains. commonly be described as possessing an and more dim and fantastic, like dreams While following out clearly and legally utter discordance of incident combined within dreams, in the supernatural mist the necessary narrative of the drama, the with a curious unity of mood; everything of Puck. Then the dream-fumes begin to author contrives to include every one of changes but the dreamer. It may begin with clear, and characters and spectators begin the main peculiarities of the exasperating anything and end with anything, but if the to awaken together to the noise of horns and dogs and the clean and bracing morn- ing. Theseus, the incarnation of a happy and generous rationalism, expounds in Chesterton for Today

hackneyed and superb lines the sane view ;;The Americans may go mad when of bureaucracy and business govern- of such psychic experiences, pointing they make laws; but they recover their ment all over the world. (“The Story of the out with a reverent and sympathetic reason when they disobey them. (“A New Family,” The Superstition of Divorce) scepticism that all these fairies and spells Martin Chuzzlewit,” What I Saw in America) are themselves but the emanations, the ;;We hear very much in these days of unconscious masterpieces, of man himself. ;;The materialists of the nineteenth the true essence of true Christianity— The whole company falls back into a century believed that the terror and though perhaps most often, from those splendid human laughter. There is a rush tragedy hanging over men would be who are not Christians. (“Second Thoughts on for banqueting and private theatricals, and the rise of population and the scar- Shaw,” Collected Works) city of food. In many places the real over all these things ripples one of those ;;If we believe in the sanctity of human tragedy is the decline of population; frivolous and inspired conversations in life, it must be really a sanctity; we in most places the real tragedy is the which every good saying seems to die in must make sacrifices for it.(“A Wild Recon- abundance of food. And it is all the giving birth to another. If ever the son of struction,” Lunacy and Letters) a man in his wanderings was at home and more a real tragedy because it is also a drinking by the fireside, he is at home in comedy, and almost a farce. (Illustrated the house of Theseus. All the dreams have London News, April 11, 1936)

been forgotten, as a melancholy dream ;;In medieval times there was practi- remembered throughout the morning cally no standing army at all; the whole might be forgotten in the human certainty people was a sort of feudal militia, of any other triumphant evening party; called out and controlled by a spirit of and so the play seems naturally ended. It locality. The sharp difference between began on the earth and it ends on the earth. disciplined and armed troops and Thus to round off the whole midsummer a democracy entirely disarmed is a night’s dream in an eclipse of daylight is totally modern product. (Daily News, March an effect of genius. 9, 1912) But of this comedy, as I have said, the mark is that genius goes beyond itself; ;;The social reformer of the modern and one touch is added which makes the sort is a nature-worshipper—one might play colossal. Theseus and his train retire almost say, an animal-worshipper. (Illus- with a crashing finale, full of humour and trated London News, July 27, 1912)

wisdom and things set right, and silence ;;It is the curse of our epoch that the falls on the house. Then there comes a educated are uneducated. (Illustrated faint sound of little feet, and for a moment, London News, March 22, 1919) as it were, the elves look into the house, asking which is the reality. “Suppose we ;;The ordinary weaknesses of human are the realities and they the shadows.” nature will explain all the weaknesses If that ending were acted properly any

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 9 : s T r aw s i n T h e W i n d : dreamer is sad at the end he will be sad as Weaver. He is greater and more mysteri- with idiocy if we tried for ten days to if by prescience at the beginning; if he is ous than Hamlet, because the interest of explain the meaning of the National Debt, cheerful at the beginning he will be cheer- such men as Bottom consists of a rich but who are yet great men, akin to Sigurd ful if the stars fall. A Midsummer Night’s subconsciousness, and that of Hamlet in and Hercules, heroes of the morning of the Dream has in a most singular degree the comparatively superficial matter of a earth, because their words were their own effected this difficult, this almost desper- rich consciousness. And it is especially dif- words, their memories their own memo- ate subtlety. The events in the wandering ficult in the present age which has become ries, and their vanity as large and simple wood are in themselves, and regarded as in hag-ridden with the mere intellect. We are as a great hill. We have all of us known broad daylight, not merely melancholy but the victims of a curious confusion whereby friends in our own circle, men whom the bitterly cruel and ignominious. But yet by being great is supposed to have something intellectuals might justly describe as brain- the spreading of an atmosphere as magic to do with being clever, as if there were less, but whose presence in a room was as the fog of Puck, Shakespeare contrives the smallest reason to suppose that Achil- like a fire roaring in the grate changing to make the whole matter mysteriously les was clever, as if there were not on the everything, lights and shadows and the air, hilarious while it is palpably tragic, and contrary a great deal of internal evidence whose entrances and exits were in some mysteriously charitable, while it is in itself to indicate that he was next door to a fool. strange fashion events, whose point of cynical. He contrives somehow to rob Greatness is a certain indescribable but view once expressed haunts and persuades tragedy and treachery of their full sharp- perfectly familiar and palpable quality the mind and almost intimidates it, whose ness, just as a toothache or a deadly danger of size in the personality, of steadfast- manifest absurdity clings to the fancy like from a tiger, or a precipice, is robbed of ness, of strong flavour, of easy and natural the beauty of first-love, and whose follies its sharpness in a pleasant dream. The self-expression. Such a man is as firm as are recounted like the legends of a paladin. creation of a brooding sentiment like this, a tree and as unique as a rhinoceros, and These are great men, there are millions a sentiment not merely independent of but he might quite easily be as stupid as either of them in the world, though very few actually opposed to the events, is a much of them. Fully as much as the great poet perhaps in the House of Commons. It is greater triumph of art than the creation of towers above the small poet the great fool not in the cold halls of cleverness where the character of Othello. towers above the small fool. We have celebrities seem to be important that we It is difficult to approach critically all of us known rustics like Bottom the should look for the great. An intellectual so great a figure as that of Bottom the Weaver, men whose faces would be blank salon is merely a training-ground for one faculty, and is akin to a fencing class or a rifle corps. It is in our own homes and environments, from Croydon to St. John’s Wood, in old nurses, and gentlemen with hobbies, and talkative spinsters and vast incomparable butlers, that we may feel the presence of that blood of the gods. And this creature so hard to describe, so easy to remember, the august and memorable fool, has never been so sumptuously painted as in the Bottom of A Midsummer Night’s By William Cobbett “The Apostle of Distributism” Dream. Bottom has the supreme mark of this William Cobbett, known to Chestertonians as “the Apostle of real greatness in that like the true saint or Distributism,” was a keen observer of his time. He documented the true hero he only differs from human- the economic and social shambles of an England caught in the ity in being as it were more human than throes of the Industrial Revolution and where distribution of humanity. It is not true, as the idle mate- capital ownership was becoming increasingly concentrated. In rialists of today suggest, that compared The Emigrant’s Guide, Cobbett offers his prescription: Go to to the majority of men the hero appears America. In early 19th century America, almost anyone could be- come an independent owner of capital. cold and dehumanised; it is the majority who appear cold and dehumanised in the Cobbett’s 1829 manual for new Americans describes American presence of greatness. Bottom, like Don life from a perspective that complements Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. This edition from Economic Justice Quixote. and Uncle Toby and Mr. Richard Media includes an extensive foreword adapting the principles of Swiveller and the rest of the Titans, has distributism to a modern economy. a huge and unfathomable weakness, his To Order silliness is on a great scale, and when The Emigrant’s Guide (240 pp, ISBN 978-0-944-997-01-7) is he blows his own trumpet it is like the available for $20 from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble. trumpet of the Resurrection. The other com, as well as by special order from local bookstores. For bulk/ rustics in the play accept his leadership wholesale orders (10 or more copies at a 20% discount), e-mail not merely naturally but exuberantly; they [email protected]. have to the full that primary and savage unselfishness, that uproarious abnegation

10 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : s T r aw s i n T h e W i n d :

which makes simple men take pleasure in of the farcical scenes in this play. Bottom’s ludicrous, is quite literary, the alliteration falling short of a hero, that unquestionable sensibility to literature is perfectly fiery falls like wave upon wave, and the whole element of basic human nature which has and genuine, a great deal more genuine verse, like a billow mounts higher and never been expressed, outside this play, so than that of a great many cultivated crit- higher before it crashes. perfectly as in the incomparable chapter at ics of literature—“the raging rocks, and There is nothing mean about this the beginning of Evan Harrington in which shivering shocks shall break the locks of folly; nor is there in the whole realm of the praises of The Great Mel are sung with prison gates, and Phibbus’ car shall shine literature a figure so free from vulgar- a lyric energy by the tradesmen whom he from far, and make and mar the foolish ity. The man vitally base and foolish has cheated. Twopenny sceptics write of fates,” is exceedingly good poetical diction sings “The Honeysuckle and the Bee”; the egoism of primal human nature; it is with a real throb and swell in it, and if it is he does not rant about “raging rocks” reserved for great men like Shakespeare slightly and almost imperceptibly defi- and “the car of Phibbus.” Dickens, who and Meredith to detect and make vivid cient in the matter of sense, it is certainly more perhaps than any modern man had this rude and subconscious unselfishness every bit as sensible as a good many other the mental hospitality and the thought- which is older than self. They alone with rhetorical speeches in Shakespeare put into less wisdom of Shakespeare, perceived their insatiable tolerance can perceive the mouths of kings and lovers and even and expressed admirably the same truth. all the spiritual devotion in the soul of a the spirits of the dead. If Bottom liked cant He perceived, that is to say, that quite snob. And it is this natural play between for its own sake the fact only constitutes indefensible idiots have very often a real the rich simplicity of Bottom and the another point of sympathy between him sense of, and enthusiasm for letters. Mr. simple simplicity of his comrades which and his literary creator. But the style of the Micawber loved eloquence and poetry constitutes the unapproachable excellence thing, though deliberately bombastic and with his whole immortal soul; words and

The Fantastic Fiction of Gilbert Chesterton by Martin Gardner

Foreword by John Peterson “I read Martin Gardner’s manuscript and really enjoyed doing so. It’s Introduction quintessential Gardner, which 1. The Napoleon of Notting Hill means it is gracefully written, well-argued, extremely informative, 2. The Club of Queer Trades quite convincing, already a classic. He certainly writes in an agreeable 3. The Man Who Was Thursday fashion. I knew from the first page I was reading an MG book. It is, of 4. The Ball and the Cross course, a collection of columns, chapters, essays, forewords, etc.” — 5. The Innocence of Father Brown John Robert Colombo 6. Did Sherlock Holmes “For more than half a century, Meet Father Brown? Martin Gardner has been the single brightest beacon defending rational- 7. Chesterton’s Manalive ity and good science against the its understanding of hard questions mysticism and anti-intellectualism that matter.” —Noam Chomsky 8. Chesterton’s Flying Inn that surround us.” — Stephen Jay Gould 9. The Poet and the Lunatics Quality Trade Paperback, 240 pages; “Martin Gardner is a national trea- $22.00. ISBN 978-1-55246-803-6 sure, and Did Adam and Eve Have 10. The Man Who Knew Too Much Shipping to USA and Canada $6.00 Navels? should be compulsory 11. The Trees of Pride and Other Tales reading in every high school and in Check or PayPal accepted; Congress. It will no doubt hold back no credit card orders 12. Tales of the Long Bow the current tidal wave of lunacy The Battered Silicon Dispatch about UFOs, Scientology, Creation- 13. The Return of Don Quixote Box — George A. Vanderburgh ism, and the like.” —Arth ur C. Clarke P.O. Box 204, Shelburne, 14. Four Faultless Felons Ontario, Canada LON ISO “Martin Gardner’s contribution to 15. The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond contemporary intellectual culture is website: www.batteredbox.com unique in its range, its insight, and e-mail: [email protected] Afterword by Pasquale Accardo

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 11 : s T r aw s i n T h e W i n d : visionary pictures kept him alive in the suddenly to discover that we have, after and lets us come upon his splendours by absence of food and money, as they might all, a folk-lore and a mythology, or had accident, as we come upon an old city have kept a saint fasting in a desert. Dick it at least in Shakespeare’s day. Robin church in the twist of a city street. Swiveller did not make his inimitable Goodfellow, upsetting the old women’s He is English in nothing so much as quotations from Moore and Byron merely ale, or pulling the stool from under them, in that noble cosmopolitan unconscious- as flippant digressions. He made them has nothing of the poignant Celtic beauty; ness which makes him look eastward because he loved a great school of poetry. his is the horse-play of the invisible world. with the eyes of a child towards Athens The sincere love of books has nothing to Perhaps it is some debased inheritance of or Verona. He loved to talk of the glory of do with cleverness or stupidity any more English life which makes American ghosts foreign lands, but he talked of them with than any other sincere love. It is a quality so fond of quite undignified practical jokes. the tongue and unquenchable spirit of Eng- of character, a freshness, a power of plea- But this union of mystery with farce land. It is too much the custom of a later sure, a power of faith. A silly person may is a note of the medieval English. The patriotism to reverse this method and talk delight in reading masterpieces just as a play is the last glimpse of Merrie Eng- of England from morning till night, but to silly person may delight in picking flow- land, that distant but shining and quite talk of her in a manner totally un-English. ers. A fool may be in love with a poet as indubitable country. It would be difficult Casualness, incongruities, and a certain he may be in love with a woman. And the indeed to define wherein lay the peculiar fine absence of mind are in the temper of triumph of Bottom is that he loves rhetoric truth of the phrase “merrie England”, England; the unconscious man with the and his own taste in the arts, and this is though some conception of it is quite ass’s head is no bad type of the people. all that can be achieved by Theseus, or for necessary to the comprehension of A Materialistic philosophers and mechani- the matter of that by Cosimo di Medici. Midsummer Night’s Dream. In some cases cal politicians have certainly succeeded in It is worth remarking as an extremely at least, it may be said to lie in this, that some cases in giving him a greater unity. fine touch in the picture of Bottom that the English of the Middle Ages and the The only question is, to which animal has his literary taste is almost everywhere Renaissance, unlike the England of today, he been thus successfully conformed? concerned with sound rather than sense. could conceive of the idea of a merry (from The Common Man, 1950) He begins the rehearsal with a boisterous supernaturalism. Amid all the great works readiness, “Thisby, the flowers of odious of Puritanism the damning indictment savours sweete.” “Odours, odours,” says of it consists in one fact, that there was Quince, in remonstrance, and the word one only of the fables of Christendom is accepted in accordance with the cold that it retained and renewed, and that and heavy rules which require an element was the belief in witchcraft. It cast away : T h e b a l l a d o f G i l b e r t : of meaning in a poetical passage. But the generous and wholesome supersti- “Thisby, the flowers of odious savours tion, it approved only of the morbid and sweete”, Bottom’s version, is an immea- the dangerous. In their treatment of the surably finer and more resonant line. great national fairy-tale of good and A Song of The “i” which he inserts is an inspiration evil, the Puritans killed St. George but of metricism. carefully preserved the Dragon. And this Wild Fruit There is another aspect of this great seventeenth-century tradition of dealing play which ought to be kept familiarly with the psychic life still lies like a great To D.E.C. with thanks in the mind. Extravagant as is the mas- shadow over England and America, so querade of the story, it is a very perfect that if we glance at a novel about occult- The Pineapple knows nothing aesthetic harmony down to such coup- ism we may be perfectly certain that it Of the Apple or the Pine, de-maître as the name of Bottom, or the deals with sad or evil destiny. Whatever The Grape-Fruit is a fruit: but not flower called Love in Idleness. In the else we expect we certainly should never The God’s fruit of the Vine; whole matter it may be said that there expect to find in it spirits such as those in And Grape-nuts are not even Nuts is one accidental discord; that is in the Aylwin as inspirers of a tale of tomfoolery For the Hygienic Hut name of Theseus, and the whole city of like The Wrong Box or The Londoners. Where the nut-crank with the Athens in which the events take place. That impossibility is the disappearance of nut-crackers Shakespeare’s description of Athens in “merrie England” and Robin Goodfellow. Is cracking his own nut. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the best It was a land to us incredible, the land of a description of England that he or any one jolly occultism where the peasant cracked Far in the land of Nonsense Names else ever wrote. Theseus is quite obviously jokes with his patron saint, and only These antic fruits were born, only an English squire, fond of hunting, cursed the fairies good-humouredly, as he Where men gather grapes of thistles kindly to his tenants, hospitable with a might curse a lazy servant. Shakespeare And figs grow on the thorn. certain flamboyant vanity. The mechan- is English in everything, above all in his And Ananias names the fruit ics are English mechanics, talking to weaknesses. Just as London, one of the That Frenchmen call Ananas; each other with the queer formality of the greatest cities in the world, shows more And all the Plantains are a plant, poor. Above all, the fairies are English; to slums and hides more beauties than any And...No! We have Bananas! compare them with the beautiful patri- other, so Shakespeare alone among the cian spirits of Irish legend, for instance, is four giants of poetry is a careless writer,

12 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : S C h a l l o n C h e s T e r T o n : beginnings in England. But I think Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes Belloc would have found the notion of “Earth Day” closer to the worship of pagan goddesses and the modern state than to the riches of the earth. Belloc was ever sensitive to the heresies con- tained in modern political and social movements, of which they are replete. The New Belloc Book The Essential Belloc is filled with memorable and incisive sentences. by James V. Schall, S.J. “Short of vision and revelation, his- tory is our only extension of human t. Benedict Press in Charlotte will have to find the texts themselves experience.” I suppose we might add has recently published The in one of the scores of books that “literature,” but that, too, is set in time Essential Belloc: A Prophet Belloc wrote. “The Onion Eater” is and place with actions of men and for Our Times. The book is a good example of what to expect. women who clearly belong to our kind. basically a “reading” of Belloc Expect everything, especially a sense “The Atheist is he that has forgot- Sselections, though that phrase may of home, of encounter, of the passing- ten God; his purpose is Truth, so he is be misleading. The book is really a ness of things. not to be condemned.” The atheists of survey of our mind and soul and world, When Belloc wrote of wars and our time, at least the ones we mostly how to walk on it, how to understand battles, or of harbors in England, or of hear about, seem less interested in it; this as seen through the varied mountain vistas in the Alps, we were truth. They seem more like cult lead- and almost inexhaustible writings of brought right into the presence of the ers. Oddly, the Christians are the ones Belloc. The book was edited by Scott thing itself. He was there. He walked who talk of truth. Bloch, Rev. C. John McCloskey, and the ground, or sailed in the river. “The socialist of my youth—the Brian Robertson. I wrote the introduc- Belloc was both a homo viator and a communist of (Belloc’s) today—was tory essay: “What Anglo-Saxons Call man of place. There is no scene in all and is often, and indeed usually, an a Foreword, but Gentlemen a Preface: of literature, it seems to me, quite like academic sort of fellow, using formulas ‘On Caring Too Much’: The Charm of the ending walk in The and quite out of touch Belloc.” Four Men, his walk with real life.” I know a The book has ten chapters. It is in his native Sussex, number of writers who well referenced and indexed. The edi- when he returns home have said the same thing tors know well the scope of Belloc’s to see the smoke rising of our present regime writings. The chapters cover Christen- from the chimney of within the last couple dom, Islam, travels, friendship, essays, his house. of weeks. economics, history, science, songs, and Scott Bloch, who “I think it true to say wit. Few other writers have addressed has maintained a local that Islam is the only spiri- such subjects so well as Belloc. The Belloc Society here in tual force on earth which subtitle to the book seems, in retro- the Washington area Catholicism has found spect, to be almost “prophetic.” for years, fittingly an impregnable force.” It Belloc was often doubted and includes selections of is not only Catholicism ridiculed in his time about what were Belloc’s singing and that has had that same considered his odd and outlandish of his wit. I once had experience. One won- ideas. Yet in one way or another, a student who played ders over the theological almost every one of his “extreme” the piano and who had significance of this curios- ideas, beginning most notably with a grandmother who taught him, so he ity. Here is the topic of Benedict’s Christendom and Islam, seem today said, ragtime. I asked him to play for “Regensburg Lecture.” to be uncannily perceptive and closer me the music that is found in The Path “It has never been either the claim to the truth than most were willing to Rome and The Four Men. He both or the function of the Church to to admit. played it and sang it. Bloch ends his explain the whole nature of all things, The Essential Belloc is not a tome, meetings of the Belloc Society singing but rather to save souls.” In conclu- nor is it a treatise. Most of the entries something or other of Belloc. The word sion, I might add that once there is are less than a paragraph. The largest that comes to mind is companionship. awareness that the saving of souls is is the essay from Hills and The Sea When we think of Belloc and The the true purpose of the Church, the entitled “The Onion Eater.” I have long Servile State, we think of Distributism, goal of grasping the “whole nature of considered Belloc to be the best essay- another lively movement that found all things” becomes possible to the ist in the language. To read his vast a new home with people like Wendell philosophic mind of men who would collection of other essays, the reader Berry and Allan Carlson and new consider what is.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 13 : a l a r m s & d i s C u r s i o n s : when, feeling sure that Master Cecil was not available, I asked for and about him. New York Tribune, September 15, 1912 Mr. Gilbert Chesterton lives on the top of a high hill in Beaconsfield. G.K. Chesterton Delivers There’s a lovely garden, with all sorts of flowers trying to grow primly Himself of Sayings That in quaintly cut beds and borders, and a cunning, little house with latticed win- Stagger Kate Carew dows, comfortable, heavy old furniture and gay chintzes. The Author of Orthodoxy and Many Another Notable Bit of Literary I don’t believe it’s so much that Work Serves Tea in His Home at Beaconsfield and Drinks as Much the house is little as it is that Mr. of It as His Famous “Prototype,” Dr. Samuel Johnson By Kate Carew Chesterton is so big and imposing in himself. When I first saw the cottage I can’t remember remarking upon its he House of Chesterton is a dash themselves against and cannot limited dimensions, but when my host house divided against itself. topple over. He differs from them on came out to greet me it seemed to There are two brothers who all subjects and he has their own gift shrink into a very small home for so represent it. One is big and one of language. He scintillates and caps great a man. is little, but both are decidedly their epigrams with others, and what Mr. Chesterton is very tall and Tportly. One is a red-hot Socialist, a maddens them is that he insists upon broad and thick. He has a fine head, Suffragist, and many more ‘ists. The standing for creeds, for marriage and with a mane of shaggy curls, and he other strikes out on lines of his own, the home, for the public house well has rather prominent blue eyes, which about which you will hear, but both managed, and for all sorts of estab- write, lecture and discuss in public and lished institutions that they jeer at and in private. would cast down. Two of them. Good gracious. Could He parries all their attacks with I manage to interview them ensemble? a lightness and skill amazing in so Would they talk together or singly? weighty a person. Would they wrangle over my queries “Aha, Chesterton, I have thee on and forget all about poor, little me in the hip,” chuckles Shaw, as he strikes a the joy of battle, and should I look at vital, epigrammatic blow. one as I ask a question of the other? “You err, my noble friend,” It was all very puzzling, but it responds Chesterton politely, and leaps solved itself, because when I went aside with the grace of an antelope. to the House of Chesterton, lo, only This goes on year after year, while Gilbert K. was there. Cecil had gone to Shaw gets leaner and leaner and leaner a Shavian meeting or a Fabian confer- on his vegetables and cold water, and ence or something terribly advanced. Gilbert Chesterton grows more and more ponderous on his roast beef and A Shining Mark small beer of Old England. For Shavians Personally, I think it is hard luck for G.K. to have his one confess, my dears. I was much and only little brother go over to relieved, for these twin interviews the enemy, but he doesn’t mind. aren’t easy. Then also, between I think he rather likes it. It is I ourselves, Gilbert is much the supposed that they commenced bigger brother of the two in more arguing in infancy and started ways than the one that meets the printed attacks on each other eye. He is a brilliant and a far better as soon as they learned their and more widely read writer. He is alphabets. a wit, a scholar and a speaker. He is always being attacked by George A Family Secret Divulged Bernard Shaw and his party, and he y brother is a man of the is a great thorn in their flesh, for he highest moral character holds his own remarkably well. He is and the most abominable a sort of Rock of Gibraltar that they M opinions,” said G.K. to me

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have in them the same glint of whimsi- while G.K. poured out his fourth cup understand that men cannot live just cal mischief that lurks in the orbs of of tea. Then, when the sugar and milk by fireworks. It’s not enough to slowly one Bernard Shaw. were safely doing their work, with the break windows. He’s trying now to In short, he looks something as I aid of the spoon, I asked: have a constructive policy, but he believe Rabelais may have, and a good isn’t really constructive. He hasn’t deal as I’m sure Dr. Johnson must anything to build upon, and he has have, and just as I had fairly located His Kind Of Democracy no traditions.” him as a kind of pleasant reincarnation “Exactly what are your politics?” “Surely he’s a sincere socialist,” I of the gruff, old tea-drinking doctor, he “I’m a democrat,” replied Mr. Ches- chirped, brightly. clinched the matter by saying hospita- terton firmly and with conviction. “A G.K. fairly snorted the word bly, “Won’t you have a cup of tea?” democrat in the best sense of the word. “socialism!” I declined, partly because I wanted The thing I stand for is almost isolated “Well, what of it?” I asked, plucking to get to our interview without further in England to-day. It’s certainly dead up spirit, even as Boswell did on rare preamble and partly because, though in the Liberal government. In fact, I occasions. “Don’t you believe in its I like tea, I’m not yet English enough believe there are only about four of us future? If you’re such a good democrat to feel that when four-thirty comes if I to be found in the country.” I should think you might be a bit of a don’t have it I can go no further. “Who are the three others?” socialist yourself.” “Oh, won’t you really?” he urged, G.K. paused for a moment, then Mr. Chesterton deliberately poured in the vexed tone of a small boy who answered: out his umpty-umph cup of tea and has been rebuffed. “Hilaire Belloc, Cunninghame prepared it to his liking; then he said: I took pity on him. I sensed that it Graham and Quiller-Couch.” “I don’t see that socialism necessar- was tea time in the House of Chester- “But don’t you call Bernard Shaw ily involves democracy, and as I can’t ton and that if I didn’t accept tea and democratic?” I asked with a wide-eyed, accept collectivism as a remedy for talk I might not get talk, so I changed wondering gaze, just as if the news existing ills, I am not a socialist in the my mind in graceful and womanly fash- hadn’t reached me that he wouldn’t let present sense of the word. I consider ion and assured him that the very soul G.B.S. play in his backyard. that in man there is a natural desire to of me craved tea. Mr. Chesterton had a Johnsonian own, and that socialism, since it fails We sat down at a square, sub- fit of rage at this child-like, harmless to gratify that desire, will be intolera- stantial table, with a substantial meal question. He gulped his hot tea so ble to the mass of men. Collectivism is spread out upon it, and a most sub- suddenly that I could see the result not a word to wake them up. Liberty is. stantial teapot crowning its glories. was painful. He turned quite purplish If you want the workingman to fight for Over this Mr. Chesterton presided in hue and banged his massive hand progress you must offer him the thing in a real Johnsonian manner, and cer- down on the table as he exclaimed in for which he fights best, his own honor tainly with a Johnsonian taste for the an “Are you mad, woman?” tone: and his own home. We all have the cheering beverage. “Bernard Shaw democratic? instinct for possession. It’s a birthright. When I had finished sipping the Why, of course he isn’t. Shaw a We want to own things, if for no other modest one cup to which I confine democrat? Ha, ha! Why he’s absolutely reason than to play the fool with them. myself I ventured to inquire if I might anti-democratic.” Look here,” and he pointed out of the put a few questions. Then, as if this outburst had window to a nearby plot of ground “Of course,” beamed G.K., shak- assuaged his wrath, he continued more with a long low building on it. ing back his curls and squaring his mildly. I peered at it through my googles. shoulders like a Viking, scenting “Shaw always criticizes man from “Distinctively attractive,” I mur- battle. “I love questions. I’m always the position of one not of mankind. He mured approvingly. ready to ask them and answer never takes his stand with his fellow “That isn’t the point,” exclaimed them. Anybody can drag me into creatures. He talks, acts and feels as Dr. Johnson—I mean, Mr. Chesterton. an argument, you know. I think it’s one apart. He has no more respect for “The point is that it’s mine and I’ve a weakness, but there you are! I’m the composite conscience than Henry built a studio on it. This house I live in so constituted that I can’t even read VIII had. Brilliant men like Shaw belongs to a very decent little man. We of prejudice and ignorance without ought to be honored with differential are on the best of terms, he and I. But having a passion to ask about and calmness, but I don’t think of them the place is his: nothing can change reply to it. Also, I warn you that one as democratic. Personally, I’d like to that, and across there is something of my favorite subjects is myself, and be tried by a jury of ordinary men quite mine own.” incidentally, my own opinions. than by Shaw if I wanted justice and “I know,” I nodded sympathetically. And he grinned in a nice, friendly understanding. “I’ve got the same feeling about my way, as much as to say, “I’ll enjoy it “Oh, but don’t you think he is few possessions. But will things adjust all the more, if you take me perfectly changing, growing more serious?” I themselves so we all have our own bit, seriously.” pleaded for the prisoner at the bar. and how will it come about?” “Oh, that’s all right,” I cooed. And “Only in one way,” asserted G.K. “This capitalistic system will smash I tucked my feet up under the chair remorselessly. “He’s beginning to up of itself. Hordes of people are being

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 15 : a l a r m s & d i s C u r s i o n s : crushed by the fear of starvation at was a long time before Rome gradually present, but there is a sort of pain took a back place among nations.” which becomes so intense that the Then Chesterton the reformer victim faints. When things are as bad became Chesterton the scholar, and as that, then capitalism will come to discoursed wisely of Rome and other an end.” nations which rose but to fall. Of I was getting sort of bewildered. course, we drifted round to America as Everything seemed so hopeless and a land of milk and honey and progress. far away, but I clung to the spar of the “Aren’t you thinking of coming over simple question. to see us?” I asked. “Well, Mr. Chesterton, if you don’t “I want to go very much. I’ve believe in imperialism or capitalism or met many Americans and liked them the present government or socialism, immensely, but I feel I know nothing of will you please tell me what you have them in their homes. I know nothing to offer?” of the country or its conditions and Here I had to pause and wipe my political battles except from reading. I brow, for really this reformers are very want to judge it all for myself. I believe, trying to a novice, and there are so as far as I can tell, that I am in sym- many of them here, all getting in their pathy with the old Democratic party fine work on poor old Britain! The there. I would be in agreement with a woods are full of ‘em, and they aren’t man like Bryan, for instance. Do you all men, either, as you know. ever read Walt Whitman?” G.K. smiled upon me reassuringly. “Y-yes, sometimes,” I stammered. It “Certainly I will,” he answered ami- was so sudden. ably, and taking up a teaspoon he drew “Well, I was just thinking that it a sort of scheme on the tablecloth as was to an American that I owe the they regarded G.K. as a man and a he talked. kick-off of my whole spiritual life. It brother. They merely grinned at him “I want to abolish, not property, was to Walt Whitman, a great writer and ignored me. but the wealthy and the unemployed. I and thinker.” “Your sons?” I inquired. don’t plank down a Utopia in my pro- “Really,” I said sympathetically, “No,” replied G.K. “I haven’t any gramme, because a Utopia is a thing and watched with interest the dreamy children of my own, so I always have uninteresting to a thinking man, but expression that stole into Mr. Chester- those of other people staying with me.” I do plank down these simple state- ton’s blue eyes. Then he did the stern parent act. ments, that a man will not be humanly Then Mr. Chesterton drained his “Out you go,” he shouted, with a happy unless he owns something. That last cup of tea, and tore himself away dramatic wave of the arm. this can be achieved only by setting from the table much refreshed and The three boys grinned more steadily to work to distribute property, strengthened, and we went into the than ever, but they obediently packed not to concentrate it; that history sitting room, where three small boys up their belongings and trailed away, proves that property can be so redis- were at play. They weren’t the least with nods of understanding at their tributed, and remain so distributed, disturbed by our entrance. Evidently, big friend. while history has no record of success- ful collectivism outside monasteries.” “Thank you so much,” I gushed, and stopped for breath. “Now I know where I am, or, rather, where you are. Our Mr. Chesterton Will all of this really come?” Maurice Leahy, writing in Sign two years after “I think so.” Chesterton’s death, called him one of the most “Will there be a revolution?” brilliant conversationalists he had ever known. panted I, visioning a terrible battle, He recalled: “One evening as I stood with G.K. at and, when peace was restored, Gilbert Victoria Station in London, a dear old lady who Keith Chesterton with a laurel wreath recognized his familiar figure came rushing up and on his curls, distributing chunks of said breathlessly, “Are you Chesterton?” the Duke of Devonshire’s estates and “Alas, that is my name, I fear!” replied G.K. as the Duke of Westminster’s houses and shops to various prize winners. he heaved with laughter and promptly proceeded “I haven’t much hope of a revolu- to tell all who cared to listen what he thought of tion,” replied G.K., sadly. “You know, the buses which crashed into him in London— the fall of Rome didn’t really come to “desperate encounter,” he added. pass with a great and sudden crash. It

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And we settled ourselves in chairs witches and that there are hereditary He paused, and I hesitated as to after the Great and Little Bear fashion imbeciles. If we want to avoid in the whether I should ask why or not. A in the fairy tale. Mr. Chesterton care- second case any such hell as we had in difficult position, you see. He might fully chose the largest and heaviest the first, we must insist that in regard expect me to inquire and he might piece of furniture in the room for his to the degenerate as to the witch, the resent it if I did; so I decided to dis- ample needs, and I gracefully disposed danger lies not in the strictness, but creetly sit tight and wait. And I chose myself on a small and fragile bit of the looseness of the definition. It isn’t the better course. Chippendale. that the phrase covers nothing, but “I shan’t be segregated,” continued “What do you think of the science that it covers far too much.” Mr. Chesterton, shaking his forefinger of eugenics?” I asked chattily. “Now, I wonder what you mean by at me waggishly, “because this modern My dears, I wasn’t at all prepared that.” I followed along. campaign is from the first a campaign for his answer, and perhaps you’d I was terribly interested in his against those who are weak from better skip it, for all he said was: ideas and I didn’t mean to interrupt, impoverishment. Give the people good “It stinks!” but I do hate paradoxes, and they are conditions, improve their environment, “Oh!” I gasped, and again, “Oh!” so fashionable here. You haven’t any and all will tend toward the highest type.” He didn’t take any notice of my idea how much in vogue they are. I Here again the rapt look came into shudders. know the English used to be consid- the Chesterton eyes. You see he believes and talks a ered a solid, plain-spoken race, but lot about the beauty of commonplace they aren’t any more. At least, not the Mystery To The Shavians things, and no doubt he feels the same brilliant ones. The way they describe way about the force of commonplace a thing now is to dash all around it e’s a strange mixture. Some- words. in beautiful, scintillating circles, and thing of a materialist, something “Yes,” he said with a wave of his then drop down upon it with a brilliant of a religionist, something of arms. “This whole eugenic heresy is an metaphorical swoop. Ha dreamer, a philosopher, a excuse for establishing medical tyranny, reformer, a scholar, a jester and an and we have enough of that already. A Chesterton Mental Flaw artist. No wonder the Shavians don’t Even now, the lunacy laws give danger- know how to place him, and other ous powers to the medical fraternity.” .K. took pity upon me. sects are equally puzzled. “But don’t you believe in heredity?” “I mean that, just as the old I left him feeling quite depressed “It’s not necessary to deny the woman in the cottage might have about England, for I’m fond of the science of heredity in order to resist Gbeen silent from disappointment country. But, bless you, it wasn’t the rampagings of eugenics, any more and hated children from bitterness, the first time I’ve worried about her, than it is necessary to deny the super- and yet have been marked a witch, so because all these reformers insist upon natural in order to resist an epidemic the testing of the feeble minded is too pointing out what a dreadful future is of witch burning. Any one who was loose and leaves out the many com- in store for her. And it isn’t only the morbid, any one who was unpopular, plexities of life. A lad of seventeen may reformers either. It just seems to be any one who disliked children or liked be an irresponsible moon calf. It may the fashion to say “England’s going to the blacker sort of scandal, any one of be hereditary, but it may be all sorts of the dogs!” and yet, you know, the dear this kind or any startling unusual kind, things—sometimes shyness, sometimes old lady appears to be holding her own used, in past ages, to be supposed genius, sometimes just a pose. Nearly pretty well. to be drawing not on the evil in the all of us can remember a time when Anyhow, his country’s grave condi- human heart, but on the evil beyond. parents and school teachers thought tion of broadmindedness didn’t trouble It might be devil worship; therefore, it us not only very stupid, but quite Mr. Chesterton after he had mentioned was. It would be precisely the same hopelessly so, and thought it justly; it apparently, for the last I saw of him with a case under the feeble minded and almost every one of us knows that he was playing with the three sturdy bill. It may be hereditary and, there- he is still on some point startlingly little Britons and looking like a par- fore, it will be. Public opinion gives the below the mental average. Take me, for ticularly massive Gulliver among the same general assent to the theory of instance—I have a good memory for Lilliputians. heredity as public opinion then gave form and physical proportion, so that Now that it is all safely over I can’t to the invention of the devil, but only I could draw from recollection: I have help wishing I had had the Corsican—I very cranky and cruel men went about a good eye for distance and direction, mean Chesterton—brothers closeted looking for witches, and only very but in the third sense of proportion— together talking against time. cranky and cruel men will go about the sense of the passage of time—I am I’m positive everything Gilbert segregating the feeble minded. The almost an idiot. I can describe scenes said would have disagreed violently mass of the nation would count such and incidents of my recent life accu- with Cecil and there would have been work dirtier than the hangman’s. But rately, but whether they happened a ructions as sure as fate and taxes. I in both cases the nation would agree week ago or a year ago I haven’t an imagine they would have just inter- generally with the theory on which idea. Yet I know I shan’t be segregated, viewed each other for the millionth the thing was based, that there are and I know why I shan’t be.” time and ignored me altogether.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 17 : Ta l e s o f t h e s h o r T b o w : a strong but not unpleasant taste, at least not to Martin’s palate. He was hungry, and he soon finished it. He felt no ill effects. Nor were there any ill effects as a result of a steady diet of the stuff. Twice during each day he was served his ration of soup. He Losers Are Caged: An Allegory didn’t think he was losing or gaining weight. by John Peterson Martin had nothing but time on his hands, and so, to keep fit, he devised artin was by any standard a the man wanted to fight or wrestle. a routine of calisthenics and jogging brilliant man. Aside from his The man was quick. Before Martin in place. To stave off boredom, he chosen profession, his special could react, he found himself held in fashioned a crude but adequate set of genius showed in two addi- an unbreakable grip. He was lifted chess pieces out of the claylike sub- tional areas. He had earned off his feet and carried away into the stance that served as the floor of his Mthe title of chess grandmaster just forest. His captor glided smoothly cage. Of course his “white” pieces were before his eighteenth birthday, and he across the terrain, and Martin would hardly white. He made them out of had a facility for learning languages not have felt uncomfortable if it hadn’t chunks that were a paler shade of gray. that was rare if not unique. His formal been for the fact that he was being car- He used his pocket knife—he hadn’t education, however, had been focused ried upside down. been frisked— to scratch the outlines on anthropology, and he had earned After a few minutes, Martin’s of a chessboard on the top surface of his PhD in ethnology. captor stopped before a very tall, his table. Then he began replaying his Martin disliked classroom teach- powerfully built man, also heavily tat- best games and some of the more nota- ing and research work in libraries. His tooed, and the two began to converse ble games of world champions that he special love was field studies, and he in a language of grunts and squeals. had memorized. When he grew tired was never happier than when he could These sounds were like nothing Martin of that, he started challenging himself, interact with primitive tribes or study had ever heard. If he were forced to moving white and black alternately. their possessions, dwellings, and tribal describe them, he would have placed His guards watched this activity with a customs. He preferred to leave the day- them somewhere between a dog’s grave sort of curiosity. to-day details and management of the growl and a donkey’s bray. Martin also took an interest in the institute, of which he was the director, After finishing this brief conversa- curious language spoken by his cap- in the hands of his subordinates. tion, his captor turned and glided off tors. It was obvious that the grunting Martin’s latest trek had taken him in a new direction; and after a few or braying was indeed a language; but deep into the Amazon rain forest, and more minutes, they entered a clearing at first he could not discern distinct at first the venture had not looked in which stood a number of ten-foot-by- words, and he could make nothing of it. promising. He was convinced that the ten-foot-square cages made of bamboo. Then, after some weeks had passed, he region he was exploring had never Each held a single prisoner and was began to recognize sequences of sound been visited by civilized men, whether watched by one or two guards. To that were repeated over and over. adventurers or scientists. As he saw Martin’s trained eye, after noting the After three months, Martin found it, if he should find a village here, he way these captives were dressed, it was himself in possession of a rudimentary would be the first scientist ever to find obvious that they were from several understanding of the language; and, it. Ethnologists believed there were different tribes. during the times when he was not fewer than one hundred such villages— Martin was dumped onto the under close observation, he had been and tribes—remaining in the world. bare floor of one of the cages. It was attempting to speak it. When he felt he One morning, as he was returning unfurnished except for a tall wooden was ready, he waited for the very large to his all-terrain pickup truck, he was box, and Martin had no notion of what native whose name he had translated suddenly confronted by a large and that thing’s function might be. Then, as “the Chief.” muscular native who jumped out from after several hours, one of the guards “Let me out,” Martin grunted, behind a curtain of vegetation and entered his cage and set a stone bowl when the Chief had stopped by his confronted him. The man was dressed and a large wooden ladle on the box. cage. in nothing but a short skirt of animal Martin understood that they were The Chief stood silently for some hide. He carried a spear, and his arms going to feed him and that the large time. Then he brayed out, “No. You are and chest were covered with white box would serve him as a sort of table. loser. Losers are caged.” tattoo-like symbols. There was nothing to be done but to As Martin pondered this brief The man dropped the spear and try to eat whatever it was—it was that exchange, he had a sudden brainstorm. reached out toward Martin with both or slow starvation. As soon as the Chief left him, he began, arms. It might have been a welcoming The meal turned out to be a thick painstakingly, to translate the rules gesture, but Martin’s instincts told him but ordinary vegetable soup. It had and strategies of chess into his newly

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acquired language. He formulated a man could not be persuaded to resign between himself and the villagers that lecture on the subject, which he then even when his position was worse than Martin breathed a sigh of relief. When memorized so that he could recite it hopeless. he had his cell phone sufficiently effortlessly and without fear of making After the game, a cage was erected recharged, he put in a call to the a mistake. next to Martin’s, and his defeated institute. When the Chief next appeared, opponent was imprisoned there. “What in the world have you been Martin pointed to his chess board. Losers are caged, Martin reminded doing all this time?” Bridget asked. “This is a fight. I will show you. We will himself. “I’ve been a prisoner in a cage,” have a fight. I will win.” During the following days, Martin’s Martin said. “I’ll get busy right away The Chief inclined his head numerous challengers proved no less on a written report, but I have three slightly in the direction of one of the adept at learning the rules, but they headlines for you. I’ve found a group guards. “He is loser,” he said, “Make were all equally hopeless at coordinat- of extremely backward tribes that him lose again.” The guard entered ing their moves. Martin’s task was to have never been studied before or Martin’s cage and stood by the table. play flawless chess over the course of even visited. Second, their system of As Martin finished his lecture, he found many games and hundreds of moves. morality seems to consist of goodness to his surprise that his opponent had It was an exercise in concentration defined as winning, and evil defined mastered all the moves after hear- such as he had never before faced. as losing. And third, although we all ing them described and seeing them Soon the clearing was littered with thought this was impossible, I believe demonstrated just once. During their cages. At last, and after his seven- I’ve discovered a tribe possessed of subsequent game, the man never teenth consecutive victory, the Chief language but I’m not at all sure they tried to make an illegal move. The presented himself at Martin’s cage. possess reason. At least they don’t second surprise for Martin was that Martin thought he had come to chal- seem to be capable of any kind of the guard seemed incapable of employ- lenge him. Instead, the Chief threw logic.” ing a strategy. His moves could not open the cage’s door. “Incapable of logic,” Bridget said. be distinguished from moves selected “You are winner,” he growled. “How very strange. But tell me how at random. They were always legal “Winners are not caged. Go away. Do you escaped.” moves, but never meaningful in terms not come back.” “Gamesmanship,” Martin replied. of attack or defense. Martin defeated It was not until he was safely in “They let me go after I won the local him effortlessly, but not quickly. The his truck and had put some distance chess championship.”

stairway, straining to see who was The Decoy causing the clamor. by James G. Bruen Jr. A black-hooded figure stumbled from the landing, pushed into the gathering by two escorts who had entlemen,” began Tony Under- to stand sentinel tonight. They’ll hustled him down the stairs. He wood, “I believe one of us is a catch him.” sprawled face down on the floor traitor.” “If we’re all here except Daniels next to a bug-eyed Underwood. The The dimly lit room in the and Lacovic,” asked Pete Ander, “how other men sprung on the hooded row house basement became are they going to catch him?” figure; he struggled mightily but Geerily still. No one spoke. No one “And if one of us is a traitor,” they pinned him quickly. lifted a beer mug. No one cut a piece inquired Sean O’Reilly, “why did you “Traitor!” exclaimed Underwood. of cheese or pulled a chunk of bread tell us your plan to catch him? Now he “We watched him fill in the off a loaf. knows your plan.” potholes,” explained Daniels breath- “Our potholes have been filled in Stunned, Underwood slumped to lessly. “We were behind him; we three times during the last two weeks,” the floor, mumbling, “I hadn’t thought couldn’t make out who it was. When Underwood continued. “We dig them of that.” he bent down to smooth the asphalt, out again only to have them refilled The first floor door to the base- we threw this sack over his head and the very next night. I believe one of us ment flew open and slammed against a marched him right over here.” is trying to frustrate our plan to slow kitchen table. Shouts, muffled voices, “Let’s see who it is,” said Lacovic, speeding cars. One of us wants to drive and thumps on walls resonated from loosening the tie strings securing more than he values our neighbor- the stairway leading to the basement the hood. “Voila!” he exclaimed as hood, so he’s smoothing Oak Street. where the men turned as one toward he ripped the hood off the pris- I’ve asked Joe Daniels and Ed Lacovic the landing at the bottom of the oner’s head.

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“I don’t recognize him,” said Pete Oak? Can’t we have our own charac- Street. The city ripped them down Ander. ter? Do we all have to be alike? Maple within days.” “Me either,” added Underwood is my home, not yours; need I say “If you keep filling in our potholes perplexedly. more?” to protect Maple, we’ll end up in a Defiance shot from the prisoner’s “Well,” sniffed Underwood. “I like war between Oak and Maple,” sighed eyes. He spat an expletive at his our solution.” Underwood. captors. “It works for Oak,” rejoined Jensen, “There’s got to be another solution,” “It’s Jensen!” exclaimed Daniels. “but not for Maple.” observed Sean O’Reilly. “Jensen—from Maple Street. Jack The men had relaxed; they no “Well, tonight was probably going Jensen.” longer encircled Jensen. Someone to be the last time we filled the holes “Never seen him before,” com- handed Jensen a beer. in, anyway.” mented Lacovic. “We tried lots of things,” said Underwood was stunned. “You Jensen shook free of his captors Underwood. “Signs, lights, petitions to were going to give up?” and struggled to his feet. They encir- City Hall. Only potholes cut the traffic “Oh, no!” exclaimed Jensen. “We’re cled him; he made no move to escape. on Oak. Nothing else worked. If you getting a couple of old police cars that “Oak Street,” he snarled. “What’s won’t accept potholes, you’ll have to we’ll park at the ends of Maple Street so great about Oak Street?” live with the traffic.” beginning early next week. Some “It’s our home,” replied Sean “On Maple,” explained Jensen, “we people will slow down; others will find O’Reilly; “need we say more?” like smooth streets. Of course, we’ve another route.” “What gives Oak Street the right to tried other things, too, including “That’s ingenious,” laughed Under- tell the rest of us how to live?” seeking the city’s assistance. Nothing wood. “The city won’t solve your traffic “Huh?” said Underwood. worked other than filling in your pot- problem, so you’ll use a symbol of its “What?” added Ander. holes so the cars would return to Oak. authority to do it yourself!” “What gives you the right to tell us We even put one-way signs at both “We’ll see,” said Jensen. “It’s only how to live?” repeated Jensen. ends of Maple.” He laughed. “They a temporary solution. Word will prob- “We aren’t bossing anyone around,” pointed in opposite directions; they ably get around that the police cars insisted O’Reilly. “We’re not telling both pointed away from our neighbor- are only a decoy, then the traffic will anyone else how to live. We want to hood! If the traffic had obeyed them, resume.” control our own neighborhood, no one no cars would ever have entered Maple Next: The Alliance else’s. “Bull,” rejoined Jensen. “Life was sweet on Maple until you messed with us.” The Chesterton Ad Agency—I “What’d we ever do to you?” asked O’Reilly. ;;I do not think advertisement, or ;;“Join the No-Mustard Club!” (Illus- “Where do you think all that traf- the windy weakness of vanity, has trated London News, Feb. 21, 1931) increased either dignity of life or fic went when your potholes forced it ;;“Listen to the Lecture on `Genetics clearness of thinking. (Illustrated London off Oak? It didn’t just disappear into and Genesis’ at the Co-Educational News, February 6, 1926) thin air. Most of it’s been displaced Congress at Gum Springs, Illinois!” onto Maple, making our neighborhood ;;“Use Miggle’s Milk; It Is All (Illustrated London News, Oct. 4, 1930) miserable. There’s speeding cars every- Cream!” (Illustrated London News, June 30, 1928) where. What gives you the right to ruin our neighborhood?” ;;“Electrons for the Elect!” (“The Collapse “So you’re filling our potholes in to of Materialism,” The Well and the Shallows) get the traffic to return to Oak?” asked ;;“Only in the Billingsgate Bloater!” Ander. (Illustrated London News, Aug. 21, 1909) “Not just me,” replied Jensen. “We Maplers work together. We take turns ;;“Call yourself a decadent and filling the holes.” demand the right to rot!” (“The History of “Why don’t you let potholes a Half-Truth,” Where All Roads Lead) take over Maple Street too, instead?” ;;“Attended These Classes! Making inquired Sean O’Reilly. “Then you Big Money Now!” (Illustrated London News, won’t have a traffic problem anymore March 21, 1925) either.” “Why should we do that?” rejoined ;;“Pond’s Paradoxes Are in Every Jensen. “Is there only one right way Home! Try Them in Your Bath!” (“The to do something? If you painted all Terrible Troubadour,” The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond) your houses pink, why should we? Why should Maple have to be the same as

20 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : R o l l i n G r o a d : Then I crossed a few more streets and came to the oldest Catholic Church in New York, St. Peter’s. The first American saint was a convert, and this was where she was received into the Church. Her name was Elizabeth Ann Seton. A block away is St. Paul’s, Things I Cannot Account For an Episcopalian Church that is the only pre-Revolutionary War church By Dale Ahlquist still standing in the city. It is amaz- ing that either of these churches is once planned that I should die at another. And some of them, based still standing, since they are right without ever having to visit New on what they are wearing, seem to be across the street from the spot where York City. That hope was dashed a begging to be looked at. They win at two 110-story office buildings are no few years ago when I was invited to best a sideways glance. When I asked longer standing. A memorial is under speak at Columbia University and people on the street how to get where construction on that site, as if anyone INew York University about my favorite I was going, native New Yorkers did could ever forget what happened there. writer. I don’t turn down these invita- not seem to know where anything was, A fire truck roars by. It bears the tions no matter where they come from. but an Asian man gave me precise names and helmet numbers of those It was an interesting enough trip. I met directions, even though I couldn’t from that firehouse who perished on the great Dawn Eden, who took me to understand what he was saying. that September morning when the the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But I saw every race, every ethnic World Trade Center came crashing other than that, the city managed to group, heard almost every language down. Every fireman in this city is still live down to my expectations. imaginable. I also heard wonderfully a hero, and he can feel the eyeballs of Just recently I received another absurd conversations. “I woke up admiration and appreciation all over invitation to speak in New York City. I and realized that I was six hours late him as he steps onto the pavement. accepted, of course, and simply resolved for work.” A taxi driver complained to me to find some other way to die happy. Even more absurd was seeing that people here are crazy. He was This occasion was the conference people walking dogs or pushing stroll- from Russia. “If I could just get out on Christianity and Detective Fiction ers. This was not an environment of here, I would…” And yet he came at Pace University, a fine subject that conducive to small children or even to here and has stayed here for eighteen drew a fine gathering of folks from all dogs. For that matter, it was not really years. I don’t understand why people over the place, even a few New Yorkers. conducive to other life forms either. come here, why they stay here. Most Pace University was founded by But what struck me as most of them are miserable and yet they are a couple of accountants who thought absurd was seeing New Yorkers, proud of New York to the point where that accounting was something that legendary for their brashness, pushi- they cannot understand how anyone should be taught. While I’ve always ness, belligerence, impatience, and could live anywhere else. They are the believed that accountability was general intolerance of inconvenience, oft-defeated people. And they continue a good thing, I have some serious standing outside of bars and restau- to rise out of the rubble. doubts about accounting. In fact, I’m rants, herded and huddled compliantly not so sure it isn’t a form of Gnosti- together along the walls. What had cism and should be suppressed with reduced these once proud people to other heresies. Teaching accounting is such passive little lambs? The smok- simply initiating more people into its ing laws. The only civilized men who occult practices. Fortunately at Pace, still walked about freely with cigars in the curriculum has at least expanded their mouths were wearing hardhats: a bit to include human things like the construction workers in a city that is humanities. always under construction. My hotel was five blocks from the Another surprising discovery was university campus and one block from that the fabled Wall Street is a mere Wall Street. I walked back and forth on four blocks long. There’s really not this stretch for two days, and—apart much there except the New York Stock from a taxi ride to the New York Public Exchange and Tiffany’s. And one other Library, where I tracked down some surprise: the old Federal Building uncollected G.K. Chesterton essays—I where George Washington was sworn spent my whole time within five square in as the first President of the United blocks of Manhattan. States. “It all makes sense!” I said out On the sidewalks, half of which loud to oblivious passersby. “The Presi- are under scaffolding, no one looks dency got its start on Wall Street!”

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 21 : a l l i s G r i s T : the modern world began in the six- teenth century, nobody’s system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody’s sense of reality; to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense.” Maritain’s com- ment on the same point, though darker in tone, is this: “Philosophy in our days is like a series of episodes simply stuck G.K. and The French Connection end to end, not like a tree where each by Donald DeMarco is organically related to each and all to the roots.” This is to say, in a word, that much of modern philosophy is dead. eaders of G.K. Chesterton’s the act of knowing emanates, which It takes a lot of courage to be Saint Thomas Aquinas, The perfects it—though from itself thus steadfast in what one knows at a time Dumb Ox are familiar with becomes the other, fertilised by being, when every popular trend is moving in the high praise that Thomistic rightly subjected to the real.” The the opposite direction. It also requires scholars have heaped upon it. more playful Chesterton may have a great deal of humility. Writers rarely REtienne Gilson, in particular, hailed been having fun with the verbal simi- compliment other writers for their it as being “without possible compari- larity between being fertilised by being humility. Such is not the case with son the best book ever written on St. and by a bee. Earlier in Saint Thomas, Chesterton and Maritain. Both were Thomas.” How does one account for he plays on the assonance of ens widely and consistently praised for the fact that a journalist could out-per- (the Latin word for being) and “hens” personifying this elusive virtue. form scholars on a scholarly subject? (“Ens is ens: Eggs are eggs”). More Maritain laments that philosophers Gilson answered this question by stat- importantly, the notion of the mind have closed the mind from any contact ing that “nothing short of genius can being fertilised by being is both at the with reality, and “safely padlocked in account for such an achievement.” core of Chesterton’s book as well as its cogito, independent of all objective Chesterton’s own estimation of the at the center of Aquinas’ philosophy. measure, it can do naught save take its work is Lincolnesque in its modesty: It was Chesterton’s genius to see this pleasure in the thousand scintillations “This book, I hope (and, I am happy to with blazing clarity. of its own excellence, like a god amus- say, believe) will probably be lost and Why is the world of modern ing himself with dreams.” Far more forgotten in the flood of better books philosophy in ruins? This is not a positively, and cheerfully, Chesterton about St. Thomas Aquinas, which are reckless question. British philosopher writes: “God made man so that he was at this moment pouring from every Alfred North Whitehead in Science and capable of coming in contact with real- printing-press in Europe, and even in the Modern World complained that ity; and those whom God hath joined, England and America.” “modern philosophy has been ruined” let no man put asunder.” Lightheart- Chesterton preferred to give credit because it has oscillated miserably edly, Chesterton sees the process by to others. In Chapter VII, “The Sequel between three extremes: the dualists which we know as a kind of epistemo- to St. Thomas,” he applauds Jacques who place mind and matter on the logical marriage. Chesterton is willing Maritain for “an admirable metaphor same level, the materialists who place to be witty where Maritain chooses to in his book Theonas when he says that mind within matter, and the idealists remain solemn. the external fact fertilises the internal who place matter within mind. The G.K., no doubt, learned a great intelligence, as the bee fertilises the ruination has taken place, Chesterton deal from his French cousin, without flower.” His reference to Theonas is of and Maritain answer, precisely because importing Maritain’s heaviness and particular interest for two reasons: one, modern philosophers have failed to often dour view of things. Chesterton that this book is not one of Maritain’s begin their philosophies with the remained effervescent, always of good major or better known works; and common sense realization that when I cheer. At the same time, their common two, because it is not exactly a philo- see a hen, it is the hen that I see, and spiritual grandfather, St. Thomas, sophical disquisition but a series of not my thought that sees the hen or wrote with utmost simplicity and seren- conversations. Chesterton must have a mental construction of the hen, or ity. Concerning the natural relationship found a particularly strong affinity the idea of hen placed in my mind by between mind and object, the Angelic for this work since it is where Marit- God. What I see is nothing other than Doctor put it this way: “The human ain, known for a writing style that is the hen in its stubborn, fundamental intellect is measured by things so that unusually dense, comes closest to the act of being a hen and a fit object for man’s thought is not true on its own mode of the journalist and writes in a my intellectual apprehension. The account but is called true in virtue of language that is more accessible to the knowledge of the hen is the happy its conformity with things.” non-academic reader. consonance of the mind knowing a The mind is made for being. Ches- Maritain’s exact words are less material object. Thus Chesterton can terton possessed the genius, or the flowery: “it is truly from itself that say, with an air of mirth, that “since metaphysical acumen, to understand

22 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : a l l i s G r i s T :

the Latin word for being in this context, ens (a term that has an etymological connection with the It’s Way Over My Head word “entity”). Ens is being as object, the thing that measures the By Joe Campbell intellect, the external reality that impresses its intelligibility on the really admire sky watchers. Their lions, bears, bulls, goats, giraffes, rams, human mind. If technical philo- knowledge of the universe is incred- foxes, dogs, eagles, swans, doves, dol- sophical language can be obscure, ible. I don’t understand how they phins, lizards, crabs. They even see Chesterton translates it into every- see what they see and know what unicorns, dragons, and winged horses, day terms: “The mind has opened they know and keep it all straight. which I’m told exist nowhere else. I don’t the doors and windows, because II can’t do it. Oh, I know a little about see any of that. All I see are a million it is the natural activity of what is astronomy and a little less about astrol- points of light. Even when the sky watch- inside the house to find out what is ogy. I’m familiar with Jupiter and its ers show me photographs of the heavens outside the house.” moons, Pyramus and Thisbe. Or are and connect the dots for me, I don’t see Philosophers should be as they Troilus and Cressida? Whatever what they see. humble in their quest as they are in their names I’m familiar with them. Take Ursa Major, for example. I used their discoveries. They do not want What fascinates me about Jupiter is to think that Ursa Major was a Swed- to make either themselves or the its powerful gravity. Did you know that ish film star. I was wrong. Ursa Major mind more (or less) than they are. Jupiter is the gravest planet in the is not one star but a constellation, and Who else could phrase the paradox solar plexus? If Superman lived there it’s not Swedish but Latin. In English, it more perfectly: “If the mind is he’d never stop being Clark Kent. means the Great Bear. I’ve looked at sufficient to itself, it is insufficient I’m acquainted with the signs those stars until my eyes watered and I for itself.” The floor lamp that is of the zodiac, especially Peppercorn, haven’t been able to see even a mediocre unplugged is not sufficient unto and Vertigo. I’m told I was born bear let alone a great one. Ursa Major itself, for it was made to give light. under one of them, although I can’t contains the seven stars that make up In the final analysis, the natural remember which. the big dipper. That I can sometimes see, relationship between mind and But anything I’ve learned is noth- although it’s a mystery to me why a bear being is something that has the ing compared to what dedicated sky would swallow a dipper. Maybe the dipper quality of childlike simplicity. As watchers know. When they look up at was full from the Milky Way and the bear Chesterton states in Heretics, “To the night sky, they see a menagerie: was really thirsty. the child, the tree and the lamp-post are...both splendid and unex- plained.” That is the truly wonderful and fundamental quality of a child’s apprehension and spontaneous appreciation. The child is won- derfully struck by discovering a resplendent world that is clearly not CD OF THE MONTH CLUB of his making. And he has no incli- BY ALL YOUR FAVORITE SPEAKERS nation to spoil the sheer fun of it all by digging below common sense to JUST $5 PER MONTH discover an explanation that is no WHICH INCLUDES SHIPPING! explanation at all. Chesterton (1874–1930) and Maritain (1882–1973) were con- temporaries over a span of fifty-four years. They read and quoted each other’s works approvingly. They DR. SCOTT HAHN, ARCHBISHOP FULTON SHEEN, were of strikingly different personali- FR. CORAPI AND MANY, MANY MORE, ties. But their metaphysical grasp of the human mind’s connatural SIGN-UP ONLINE / CANCEL ANYTIME AT: affinity with being was equally http://www.lighthousecatholicmedia.com striking in its similarity. This happy JUST CLICK ON THE “FIND OUT MORE” consonance offers hope to our belea- guered world that dialogue can bring BUTTON ON RIGHT HAND SIDE AND THEN about agreement and unity. A child “JOIN ONLINE NOW”. can lead us, but so can Chesterton, Be sure to use Promotion Code 56129 Maritain, and St. Thomas.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 23 : a l l i s G r i s T :

If you look outward from the cup their daughter Andromeda and son-in- is Mars. Despite its popularity, Mars of the big dipper along the two stars law Perseus. The mythology of those will never reach stardom. A mere at the end, you’re supposed to be able constellations is better than anything planet, it’s forever destined to play to see Polaris. That’s the legendary on TV. It seems that Queen Cassiopeia bit parts in the saga of the universe. North Star. Whenever it’s pointed out boasted about being more beautiful Our enthusiasm for Mars probably to me, I let on that I see it, although than all the sea nymphs. Well, in those stems from H.G. Wells, famous for I’m never certain. It’s a good thing I days and in that society, her overween- writing science fiction, and Orson don’t have to depend on it to navigate. ing pride was a serious transgression. Welles, notable for misspelling his I’d get lost for sure. For punishment her daughter, Princess name. In the 1890s, H.G. published Polaris is on the handle of the Andromeda, was chained to a rock as The War of the Worlds, which Little Dipper, a seven-star formation a sacrifice to Cetus, the sea monster. depicted a Martian invasion of Earth. that is part of the constellation Ursa Enter Perseus, fresh from cutting off In the 1930s, Orson adapted the Minor, known in English as the Lesser the head of the gorgon Medusa, whose story for radio and panicked every- Bear. I’ve never been able to see that face was so ugly it turned anyone who one who tuned in. bear either, although I might have caught a glimpse of it to stone. Per- Both were inspired by Jules seen the dipper it swallowed. seus saved Andromeda by exposing Verne, who invented the vernal equi- I can see animal crackers in my Cetus to Medusa’s petrifying visage, nox. Or was it the Julian calendar? It soup. I can’t see animals in the sky. and the princess and her savior fell in doesn’t matter. Known as the father But animals aren’t the only creatures love and got married. Eventually, the of science fiction, Verne wrote con- determined sky watchers see. They whole family ended up in the sky. vincingly about a trip to the moon. see kings and queens, princes and It’s all written in the stars and I Because of these and other princesses, gods and well preserved can’t read it. Those fascinating char- flights of fancy, many Earthlings mortals, kites, lyres, crosses—there’s acters are playing out their mythology think that Martians really exist. I a whole society up there. And I don’t above my head and I can’t follow it. I don’t. In view of recent science, I see it. Where did I go wrong? often wonder how they live. Do they have difficulty believing in intelligent There’s a sky-dwelling family listen to the music of the spheres, take life on Mars. But I’m not discrimina- I’d dearly love to watch. It’s a royal meteor showers, drink moonshine, snort tory. In view of recent history, I also family, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, who stardust, suffer from interstellar gas? have difficulty believing in intelligent were king and queen of Ethiopia, Everybody’s favorite celestial body life on Earth.

accumulate the world’s riches. I have seen The Oracle them exuberant and depressed, and while by Paul Metzler they know they are going to the next thing, they are fog walking and never understand the landscape of their journey. Unable to ith anticipation, I waited I wasted no time on pleasantries. I see far into the fog, they live by focusing to see The Oracle. For got right to it, what I needed to know: on themselves and watching for enemies, $50,000, you get one ques- ”What is the Secret to Life?” because it keeps them busy. Life is lifting tion answered, and while Several minutes slipped by, and I the fog and sharing in the glories and maj- you swear not to reveal the wonder if he heard me. Then The Oracle esties of the landscape. Wanswer, you are promised your money came around and sat down next to me. “The secret to lifting the fog, like a back if unsatisfied. How could I lose? I know I am now breaking my vow of pebble we grab from a handful of rocks, is Each day for me started out great and secrecy, but you should know the answer. often tossed away because we don’t under- ended sour, and I had 50,000 whys, stand its importance. We are busy panning desperate for the answer. ; ; ; for gold because the gold feeds that hungry, I walked through the wooden The Oracle said in a voice both clutching demon Greed who takes up doorway, half expecting a smoky plush true and clear, “The secret to life is very residence in our hearts. The gold could be room with an ancient woman on pil- small. This does not make it any less 24k or it could be the prize of greater glory, lows, or a skinny man on a bed of nails. valuable, but just the opposite. There is a a top spot on the envy pile, the power to Instead, seated behind a desk surrounded difference between life and living, as we rattle cages and sabers of those around by books, was a young man in his 30s, all need food, water, shelter, etc., to live. you, or to ride in the chariot of respect. Our dressed in a polo shirt and slacks, sipping Next step up in living is a means to gain pride is so bright, it blinds us from truth, as on a cup of coffee. the bare necessities, so part of living is we fool ourselves in thinking that we are I immediately thought, “I’m getting responsibilities. I’ve seen people fight- better, our control is critical, or we deserve my money back.” ing for the basic staples and fighting to a better wife, life, or less strife.

24 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 “How can there be one secret? We relationship with God, we learn who we are six billion strong, yet no two people really are, and then we can understand our are exactly alike. Even identical twins, purpose in life, which is to love deeply who have the same DNA, are very dif- and be loved deeply. Only by loving ferent. Yet there is one secret to life, a deeply and being loved deeply can we reason we all want to live. Of course become happy as God is happy. God the young want to live, but why is the does nothing but love deeply. Loving answer to ‘Who wants to live to 104 years deeply allows us to do everything better, old?’ – ‘anyone who is 103!’ Why do the everything. We can only love deeply sick want to get healthy, why do the poor after we know we are first loved deeply struggle for life, why fight for survival? by someone else. It’s like the game of There is a universal answer. We are driven tag, only God touched you first. So many by more than fear; we are driven by joy people miss learning to love deeply, never and a hunger for happiness. see Jesus as the best example of loving “The problem is that we don’t know deeply, loving us deeply enough to take how to stay happy. If money was the key the torture, just to teach us. Once we to happiness, the rich ought to be laugh- feel loved, we can love, and if we feel ing their heads off, but they aren’t. Money loved deeply, we can love deeply. Then is just stored labor. Our big dilemma is each day will allow us opportunities to not being happy but becoming happy. By be happy, no matter how hard things chasing happiness we drive it away. We are. After all, what could go wrong? I’m confuse the rush of adrenaline with being deeply loved by God, and maybe even by happy. We can be momentarily joyful a few other people. but the moments are so short we don’t “So the simple small secret of life is understand them. The God in all of us is a to love deeply and be loved deeply, or in happy God, but we do not tap into Him. other words to ‘become happy’.” “To say the secret of life is to become happy is too cliché. Part of the human ; ; ; experience is that this secret of life is not the same flavor for everyone, but The Oracle then got up and we are all called to be happy...happy as walked out. God. Once we begin to understand our I didn’t ask for my money back.

I n P r a i s e o f P h r a s e s ”Half our speech consists of similes that remind us of no similarity; picto- rial phrases that call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of which we have forgotten.” —G.K. Chesterton

“Belly laugh.” Jack Conway (18??–1928)

Before turning to journalism, Jack Conway had played in major league baseball and then worked as a streetcar conductor. Today he is remembered for his colorful language during his years of writing for the show business stories by G.K. Chesterton, adapted for children by weekly Variety. In addition to “belly laugh” (a guffaw), he also coined “high Nancy Carpentier Brown hat” (snobbish), “palooka” (a third-rate boxer), “baloney” (nonsense), “push- and illustrated by over” (someone easily persuaded), and “to click” (to succeed). Ted Schluenderfritz Conway entered show business as a vaudevillian before writing for Variety in the 1920s and eventually served as the paper’s editor. He is gener- Introduce young children ally credited with initiating the showbiz insider jargon that so often made to the wit and wisdom of Chesterton with these Variety opaque to the ordinary reader. An example frequently quoted is the adaptations of four headline, “Stix Nix Hix Pix” (meaning, small town folks do not enjoy films Father Brown mysteries about small towns). www.hillsideeducation.com

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 25 : T h e s i g n at u r e o f m a n : and statesmanship are leading us; and if it is quite obviously to an Chesterton on Art enormous lunatic asylum, let us at least, by the grace of God, go there in company with a man who has a sense of humour. It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies. This is the truth, not merely of the fixed figures of our life; The Art of Caricature the wife, the husband, the fool that by G.K. Chesterton fills the sky. It is true of the whole stream and substance of our daily aricature is not merely an impor- when the caricaturists were supposed experience; every instant we reject tant form of art; it is a form of to caricature the politicians. Now the a great fool merely because he is art which is often most useful politicians are caricaturing their own foolish. Every day we are missing a for purposes of profound phi- caricatures. Hence it will probably monster whom we might easily love, losophy and powerful symbolism. be found that all our ablest artists, in and an imbecile whom we should CThe age of scepticism put caricature this manner, will grow more and more certainly admire. This is the real into ephemeral feuilletons; but the frantic and farcical, more and more gospel of Dickens; the inexhaustible ages of faith built caricature into their incredible and crazy. They are trying opportunities offered by the liberty churches of everlasting stone. One to keep pace with our statesmen and and the variety of man. Compared extraordinary idea has been constantly social philosophers. with this life, all public life, all fame, repeated, the idea that it is very easy This sense that society itself is in all wisdom, is by its nature cramped to make a mere caricature of anything. the rapids, is already of itself tending and cold and small. For on that As a matter of fact it is extraordinarily to extremes and even extravagancies, defined and lighted public stage men difficult, for it implies a knowledge of has brought a fresher, and in one sense are of necessity forced to profess one what part of a thing to caricature. To a freer element into our ancient Eng- set of accomplishments, to rise to reproduce the proportions of a face lish humour. It is a telescopic satire, one rigid standard. It is the utterly exactly as they are, is a comparatively at once logical and ludicrous, which unknown people, who can grow in safe adventure; to arrange those shoots out to the end of any process, all directions like an exuberant tree. features in an entirely new proportion, and even in exaggerating it, defines It is in our interior lives that we find and yet retain a resemblance, argues a it. The French have always possessed that people are too much themselves. very delicate instinct for what features it, for the French have always known It is in our private life that we find are really the characteristic and essen- where they were going, or at any rate people intolerably individual, that we tial ones. Caricature is only easy when where they wanted to go. And most of find them swelling into the enormous it so happens that the people depicted, our own countrymen, happier in contours, and taking on the colours like Cyrano de Bergerac, are more or some ways, had not even of caricature. Many of us live less caricatures themselves. In other got so far as knowing publicly with featureless public words caricature is only easy when it where they had got to. puppets, images of the small does not caricature very much. But But if we all know public abstractions. It is when to see an ordinary intelligent face in now, at last, we pass our own private gate, the street, and to know that, with the where we are and open our own secret nose three times as long and the head really going door, that we step into the twice as broad, it will still be a startling to, and where land of the giants. likeness, argues a profound insight into science From “Charles Dickens” (1903); truth. “Caricature,” said Sir Willoughby Illustrated London Patterne in his fatuous way, “is rough News, Dec. 16, truth.” It is not; it is subtle truth. 1911; Introduction You can make solemn things look to A Book of silly; that is the whole affair of satire. Drawings by H. But if things choose to be silly, and Bateman; “The nothing else but silly, the only answer Great Dickens is silence. It is impossible to caricature Characters,” that which caricatures itself. Charles There is a tendency for pictorial Dickens satire to grow more and more fantastic. Otherwise, it might be outstripped by the facts. There was a Victorian epoch

26 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : t h e f ly i n G i n n : always get good service from Jimmy,” Home rule at home Carl told me. So, against my wife’s advice—“I’m not sure this is a good idea”—I phoned Jimmy Mullen. “Sure, seeing as how you are a friend of Carl’s, I’ll do what I can.” “Great!” I said. One week later Fred’s wife called Firewood to say that Fred would be there the by David Beresford next day. “You are lucky to get them; Fred had to turn away other custom- ers to save these for you.” We stare at a tree in an infinite broke, and the repair man condemned And next morning at seven, Fred leisure; but we know all the time the furnace “for safety reasons.” The arrived in a large truck and trailer that the real difference is between a heat exchanger was cracked, which and unloaded 250 twelve-foot logs in stillness of mystery and an explosion of explanation. We know all the time meant that carbon monoxide had been our driveway. that the question is whether it will leaking into the house. As Fred drove away, another always continue to be a tree or turn I installed an old airtight wood truck came—Jimmy Mullen—with into something else.—G.K. Chesterton, stove I had in storage in the barn, for 250 twelve-foot logs for our driveway. “Reading the Riddle,” The Common it was winter, and 30-below at night. I fled to the house. “I’m not Man That was my first foray into heat- home, Theresa,” I shouted as I ran in here we live it is cheaper ing exclusively with a wood stove. Now the back door. She went out to pay to burn wood than to buy we have three, one in the cellar, one Jimmy while I watched through the oil or gas. I used to deliver on the main floor, and one upstairs. window. He unloaded the logs and coal, and grew to hate coal; On cold days in January or February drove away. even if we could get it I we need all of them, but normally one I went outside to join my wife on Wwould not use it. When I was on coal is sufficient. I burn about five cords the driveway. (as we called it), I would fill a burlap of wood each year, a cord being a pile “Jimmy was asking about your sack with lumps from the hopper, and of split hardwood four feet wide by logs,” said Theresa. “He said you told then load it on the back of a truck, eight feet long by four feet high. It is him we didn’t have any firewood. He twenty bags to the ton. I then drove cheaper to buy wood in twelve-cord said he had to turn customers away to various old houses, all of which had batches of logs. These I cut with my and work overtime to rush us this damp cellars and steep stairs. These I chainsaw into fourteen-inch lengths to load as a special favour. I told him would descend, with a bag of coal on be split with an axe. that you are always pulling stunts my shoulder, stooping to get into the Log suppliers market by word of like that, it’s your twisted sense of low doorway and down the stairs into mouth. I asked my neighbour Carl and humour. He started to say something darkness. he said that he uses Fred Williamson. else, then got quiet and left.” “Take off your boots!” the old fo—, “He works out of Maynooth. I always After that we stood there for a I mean, the lady of the house would get good wood from Fred,” Carl told while, looking at our pile of logs. say. me. Last summer I called Fred for “Can’t ma’am, not allowed, work- more logs. No problem; four weeks, he man’s compensation.” said. The only fun thing about deliv- The logs did not arrive. By mid- ering coal was waking up homeowners winter we used up most of our wood at 7 a.m., after that, it was all just and had begun to cut trees off the drudgery. fence rows. Still no logs. I called Fred. “You must have mixed in soft coal “Sure, I know, but logs are scarce. The with the last load. I hope this load is loggers are out of work because of the all hard coal, it seems to burn very fast. recession.” He said he would get me Not like the old days…” some by spring. “It should be fine,” I dissembled, Spring came, no logs. I called for the foreman where I worked cut Fred. “As soon as I can,” he said. the hard Anthracite with about 10 Summer began and I began to percent soft stuff. Me, not wanting to worry about next winter. I called Fred participate in the theft, would load an again, but an apologetic lady from extra bag of coal for each ton to offset the phone company told me that the the swindle my boss delighted in. number was no longer in service. Yes, I burn wood. I got into wood My neighbour Carl suggested four years ago when our oil furnace I try Jimmy Mullen in Bancroft. “I

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 27 : t h e f ly i n G s Ta r s : same ideas. For example, perhaps you have read his non-fiction such as Tre- “What do you call the man who wants to embrace the mendous Trifles. One can then pick chimney sweep?” “A saint,” said Father Brown. —G.K. Chesterton up Father Brown and be reading a new and different book. But with Chester- ton, many of his motifs are blended into different works. The reader may have read two works, but the underly- ing ideas are the same. A second helpful thing about Ches- What’s Wrong With terton is that his writings are so filled with wonderful ideas, if you do happen G.K. Chesterton? to pick up a book you’ve read before, it is easy to be fooled into thinking it is a by Nancy Carpentier Brown new book. Depending on the thoughts the reader is pondering at that moment here’s a conspiracy afoot to dis- learned to be wordy? I know that’s my in life, Chesterton’s words may mean credit Gilbert Chesterton. He’s problem. But I think he’s such a deep one thing one day, and something com- too thick. He’s too dense. He’s and wide thinker that he needs time pletely different another day. Perhaps a too fat. He’s too much. and space to get his thoughts down. reader is concerned about a theologi- In this anniversary year of He connects such diverse ideas; he cal problem; Orthodoxy might be the theT publication of his book What’s has to lay some groundwork first, set perfect book to answer the question. Wrong with the World, there are some traps, and lay out the fishing Should the same reader be concerned many in the journalism trade, of which nets. Then, after assembling numerous later about raising children and telling Chesterton was a loyal member, who foundational pieces, he can begin to fairy tales, Orthodoxy becomes a new would love to tear apart everything he construct his point. book, with a new answer. wrote because they’ve heard he’s an It takes some time to read and For the person with a completely anti-Semite. That way they can easily understand Chesterton. Because we open mind—such is heralded as a dismiss him, and his writings, and not have neglected education in the pres- necessary part of life these days—he have to think about it. ent era, we of the twenty-first century will really get that mind filled to the There are those who claim his are, for the most part, poor thinkers. brim once it gets hold of Chesterton. work is too religious, and so they close We’re poor readers, too. We like our If the mind is truly thirsty, Chesterton their eyes to everything he wrote and facts spoon-fed to us in one-hundred- provides drink. If parched, Chesterton do not ponder it. and-forty-character sound bites, is life-giving. There are those who claim his minced into baby food-like mush. If, however, the mind is dry, work is too philosophical, and so they When Chesterton gives us steak, our Chesterton can make one drunk. ignore everything he wrote and do not teeth do not even know what hit them. Unfortunately, a prohibition of sorts contemplate it. I often find that I like what Ches- remains in force in our world today. There are those who claim his terton says long before I understand We must creep around the basement, work is too political, and so they dis- what he said. His words sound right making our own stills. We must drink regard everything he wrote and do not to me. A year or so later, I can re-read or read in the privacy of our own study it. those same words and find more mean- homes, sharing thoughts, and shouting There are those who claim his ing in them than the first time I read cheers! together in our local groups. work is anti-woman, and they pay no them. A third reading reveals yet more. We form secret societies where ideas attention to his work and do not con- A fourth reading generally brings about flow freely and true free thinkers rule. sider it. the distinct feeling that the first three And like the 1920s in America, we And hey, it’s a free world. No one readings never happened. might be arrested for those home- has to read Chesterton. Many people, As lovers of G.K. Chesterton, it brewed ideas. in fact, already don’t. can be frustrating to get our friends Much the same as when parenting Some people admire Chesterton and family to read him even a little children, the best way to inspire our for his quips and quotes. Chesterton bit. How then can we convince people friends and family to read more Ches- manages to tickle our linguistic funny to read more of him, or read what terton is for us to walk the talk: Read bones, and he occasionally makes us little they’ve read again? This is our more Chesterton. You’ll discover the think, “Ah ha! Too right!” But for the challenge. most religiously secular, woman-loving most part, even those who know him One helpful thing about Chester- anti-feminist, quotably thoughtful, as a friendly reading acquaintance ton is that his prolific output creates thinly fat, theologically journalistic don’t drink too deeply of Chesterton. the opportunity to re-read him without writer you’ll ever love to read. Raise up What’s the deal with Chester- actually re-reading him: you can read your magazine now: l’Chaim! Let’s go ton? Was he paid by the word, and so two different works and still read the read Chesterton.

28 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : J o gg i n G w i t h G.K. : the yawning abyss of divinity and the darkness of his own soul. Jacob “Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. limps away from that race with a Look at the faces in the street.” —G.K. Chesterton torn ACL; he’ll never be the same. In his poem, Carrion Comfort, Gerard Manley Hopkins recalls a similar wrestling match with deity. After experiencing “that night, that year of now done darkness” where Running From God he, “wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God,” he moans, asking by Robert Moore-Jumonville why God would hound him, why “scan with darksome devouring eyes ometimes, on sunny mornings itself as a possible solution of life; my bruised bones? and fan,/ O in when I bolt out the door for a and whenever it comes to a man turns of tempest, me heaped there; run, my heart cries, with the like this it is a source of weakness. me frantic to avoid thee and flee?” Psalmist, “O, that I had wings It is not a desire to find the joys of I’d run from a God so dark like a dove! I would fly away heaven; it is a desire to escape the myself. Sand be at rest; truly I would flee far pains of earth.” What is it we are G.K. Chesterton’s season of away; I would lodge in the wilderness.” running from? In truth, we are often running from God came in his For some people, running running from God. early twenties. His Autobiography promises to free the human spirit, to In the same spirit of escapism, explains that The Man Who Was relieve the dreary emptiness that can “Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish Thursday was an attempt to purge dampen earthly existence. Sometimes from the presence of the Lord.” some of this darkness from his fleeing makes sense. Many fourth Under the glare of the divine eye own soul—to “dislodge” or “throw century Christians chose a simple but he flinches, as is said in Psalm 39: off” this “metaphysical nightmare harsh life, running into the Egyp- “Turn your gaze from me, that I of negations.” The novel depicts a tian and Syrian deserts as a way of may be glad again, before I go my dark God. Recall the scene at the “fleeing from the wrath to come,” way and am no more.” In modern end of the book where everyone as a way of avoiding the corrosive Christian parlance we might say that chases after the character Sunday. worldliness of their culture. “Soci- Jonah is running from his cross. How Sunday looms as compelling and ety,” Merton suggested in Wisdom often on my jogging route am I really terrifying, as a mystery both beauti- of The Desert, “was regarded...as a running from responsibility? How ful and dark. The Secretary finally shipwreck from which each single often am I fleeing from God himself? confronts Sunday forcefully: “If you individual man had to swim for his “Where can I go then from your were the man in the dark room, why life.” Henri Nouwen, perhaps, fled Spirit? Where can I flee from your were you also Sunday, an offense to in like fashion—to save his own presence?” The answer given by the the sunlight? If you were from the soul—when he left Yale for minis- Psalmist is: “Nowhere.” first our father and our friend why try in Central America, or when he “If I climb up to heaven you are were you also our greatest enemy? moved from Harvard to Daybreak. there; if I make the grave my bed you We wept, we fled in terror; the iron Others take up running as a way of are there also.” entered into our souls—and you are managing their addictions, though In other words, there is no place the peace of God!” ironically, running can easily morph we can go where God is not already Perhaps in the end, though, into one more obsessive idol. present. There’s no escape, as Psalm what we’re really running from is Jogging also can serve as a 139 teaches: “Even there...your ourselves: the terrifying mirror that form of escapism. We run from our right hand shall hold me fast.” Such reflects back to us the abyss of our problems. As children we threaten an announcement can appear as own darkness, sin, finitude, and our to run away from home, but mostly comforting promise or as agonizing deepest fears of rejection and aban- don’t; as adolescents we often play demand, depending on your relation- donment. Yet our fleeing represents the prodigal and really do run away ship with God at the time. Learning not only fear, but also our desire for from home; in midlife we sometimes at the start of the Psalm that God God, who in the end (we discover run from family, marriage, or other searches out and knows everything through Christ and his suffering), responsibilities. In his sermon The about us can disquiet a man’s soul. has been longing for us even more Wings of The Dove, nineteenth cen- Consider Jacob. Jacob runs than we have been yearning for him. tury Anglican divine Percy Ainsworth graspingly his whole life; until his We discover him running after us quotes Psalm 55:6-7, cited above, and way is barred at the brook side, forc- like the Father runs lovingly toward cautions, “Here the idea of fleeing ing him to wrestle with God and men the Prodigal: he throws his arms away [on wings like a dove] suggests (Genesis 32:28), confronting both around us and weeps for joy.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 29 : T h e b att l e W i t h T h e d r a g o n : as there is for Arthur. There is not even the same sort of case. Merlin is, as “The more truly we can see life as a fairytale, the more Arthur is not, a mere name blown from clearly the tale resolves itself into war with the Dragon nowhere unless from the mythological who is wasting fairyland.” —G.K. Chesterton twilight of the heathen Celts.” New Age guru Deeprak Chopra’s depiction of Merlin is that of a New Age sage. Bernard Cornwell, contempo- rary author of historical fiction, depicts him as a sometimes ally, sometimes antagonist of Arthur who desperately Shape-shifting wants to see the old gods of the Brit- ons restored. The recent film, King by Kyro R. Lantsberger Arthur, apes that same portrayal. C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength revives living tree always grows new conjured-up shape-shifting is seen in Merlin from a long slumber to emerge branches, to paraphrase G.K. the tales of the wily old shape-shifter as a sort of angelic being arriving in Chesterton. We can also say of Camelot, the wizard Merlin. mystery to save England at just the that a living story always grows Merlin is far more enigmatic than right moment. and deepens over time. When- Arthur and his knights. Always in the In the Arthurian legends of the Aever a novelist or filmmaker creates shadows, he is depicted as the royal Middle Ages, Merlin was a shape- a character or setting of lasting value necromancer by some, as the guardian shifting magician. Chesterton had a there is always a desire to draw again and sage adviser of the king by others. penchant for pointing out how the from that same well of creativity. The His character has also been portrayed Medievals were quite often correct. The fresh spring of ideas that irrigates the as comic relief, lightening and balanc- character of Merlin continues to shape- imagination can create entire worlds ing the grim fierceness of the knights shift according to the reconstructions and universes ever expanding from of the Round Table as they face danger and moldings of the fad of the day. the original big bang, caused by the and evil. Although usually cast in introduction of a new element, to the legend as a Druid magician of a forgot- c h e s t e r t o n o n … expressive legacy of human culture. ten age, in modern times Merlin is From outer space to Middle Earth, sometimes depicted as a proto-Wiccan, The Victorian writers told us that story tellers weave a deeper and more New Age man of tolerance and peace, the founders of our nation had been intricate cosmology of their crafted protecting freedom and beauty from Hengist and Horsa; and as there were worlds as they provide hungry readers the taint of the new faith insinuating obviously no popular legends about the opportunity to linger with further itself into the lands. Hengist and Horsa, we gave up look- tales and ruminations to flesh out a Chesterton noted the very ing for popular legends about anybody. particular mythos. Star Wars, Dune, malleable nature of Merlin in his It would have been very different if we and The Lord of The Rings are all September 8, 1923 essay in the Illus- had looked for popular legends about fictional universes that have grown trated London News, “The Legends of Arthur and Merlin. There, we should in depth and complexity as layers of Merlin”: “The point is that these sorts have touched a living tradition that storytelling have been added to the of skeptical reconstructions are much original sagas. too easy to invent to be at all easy lingered down to the latest times like It is always wonderful to see trees to believe. But it takes a great deal the legends of Oisin or St. Patrick. At grow branches, but to see apples turn more than that sort of ingenuity to heart England was quite as mystic as into oranges and then into prunes make a real reputation that may turn Ireland. For those who care for such or figs should raise eyebrows. It has into a real legend.” This is an elegant terms, England was quite as Celtic as often enough been noted that political way of saying that it takes greatness Ireland. For centuries there was a real correctness, or ideological campaign- to achieve legendary stature, and the tradition that Arthur would return; I ing, has been the root of many cultural petty both envy that height and fail to never heard of anybody who wanted hijackings. In an attempt to make understand it. Hengist to return. But anyhow the classical heroes and figures more Far from being a sentimentalist, moral is that there is a soul of Eng- palatable for contemporary audiences, Chesterton is realistic about the Druid of land buried somewhere in England, stories and legends are often rewritten history and the Merlin of legend. “The though its burial-place be as nameless to make them more “relevant” to the multitude of fables, much more often times. An even worse misuse of a tale than not, indicate the presence of a fact. and mysterious as the grave of King is when it is subverted to serve the It is really an indication that something Arthur at Glastonbury. —“The Legends of political and social cause of the day, is so true that it was worth telling lies Merlin,” Illustrated London News, Septem- locking it in time and undermining its about…I do not mean, of course, that ber 8, 1923 eternal value as good literature. This there is anything like the case for Merlin

30 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : A l l i s u r v e y : “It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.” —G.K. Chesterton In the case of military skirmishes in the southern tip of Africa, natural law dictated British victory. In the case of philosophical skirmishes in the newspapers of Robert Blatchford, natu- ral law dictated what we can believe. In their exchange on miracles, Chester- Being Natural ton reports: I asked Mr. Blatchford why he by David W. Fagerberg thought miracles would not occur. He replied that the Universe was governed f “natural” means “untouched by from the pharmacist over a method by laws. Obviously this answer is of human hands, not interfered with,” of family planning that is natural. no use whatever. For we cannot call a thing impossible because the world then every man without a beard The word is quicksilver, one moment is governed by laws, unless we know is unnatural, and every woman on our left and the next on our what laws. Does Mr. Blatchford know wearing spectacles has made a right, unfixed. all about all the laws in the Universe? Ispectacle of her rebellion against So it makes me wonder just how And if he does not know about the nature’s design for her to squint as useful it is in arguments about “natu- laws how can he possibly know she gets older. While I am not clean- ral rights,” or “natural destiny,” or anything about the exceptions? For, shaven, and have permitted nature to “natural law.” G.K. Chesterton had a obviously, the mere fact that a thing take its course on my chin, I do wear particular aversion to misapplications happens seldom, under odd circum- spectacles in flagrant defiance of my of that last term. In Autobiography, stances and with no explanation within natural near-sightedness. he recalls the Boer War being a very our knowledge, is no proof that it is On the one hand, we generally cheerful war, filled with confidence, against natural law. That would apply to the Siamese twins, or to a new think of nature approvingly. “Natu- optimism, assurances of victory, comet, or to radium three years ago. rally,” you might say, in agreement. because “it was regarded by many as Thus the tendency of marketers to put an almost automatic process like the As Chesterton sums up later in the word “natural” on a label to sell operation of a natural law; and I have Orthodoxy, “What a man can believe the product, from natural cereal to always hated that sort of heathen depends upon his philosophy, not natural ingredients for weight loss to notion of a natural law.” On the page upon the clock or the century. If a a pizza without artificial ingredients before, Chesterton writes that “the man believes in unalterable natural law, called “The Natural.” (I protest to my Kaiser with his moustaches never he cannot believe in any miracle in wife in that last case that I want to go became so popular a caricature as the any age.” The word “natural” is being on a natural food diet.) On the other President with his chin-beard.” Presi- used to refer to something just as it is, hand, per my mention of the razor dent Kruger grew a beard naturally, something untouched by the human and lenses, we tinker with nature, or and the war was assured a victorious hand, but does that mean that the overcome it, or improve it, or avoid outcome naturally. Chesterton hates things we find have not been touched it. I certainly do not live in a natural the heathen notion for what it does to by the divine hand? setting; I prefer a house with gas heat. free will and responsibility. Thomas Aquinas offers a different The domesticated rose has a size and In What’s Wrong with the World, perspective by starting with a different a range of colors that is superior to Chesterton comments on the ridicu- assumption. All things, says Thomas, the natural, wild rose. lousness of applying to nations the sort are subject to Divine providence, and My point is, at one moment we of natural development a person might so ruled and measured by the eternal like being natural, at the next we undergo. “This has produced, for law. That means that all things partake don’t. It holds an attraction one instance, the gaping absurdity of per- somewhat of the eternal law. It is moment, and is repellent the next. petually talking about ‘young nations’ imprinted on them. From the divine Some young couples are passion- and ‘dying nations,’ as if a nation had law all things derive their proper acts ate about going through “natural a fixed and physical span of life. Thus and ends. And among all other things child birth” instead of mother being people will say that Spain has entered that exist, the rational creature is drugged or having a C-section, yet a final senility; they might as well say unique. The rational creature has a that same young couple might have that Spain is losing all her teeth. Or share of Eternal Reason. So, Thomas been taught that there are no scruples people will say that Canada should concludes, “this participation of the in aborting the natural child devel- soon produce a literature; which is like eternal law in the rational creature is oping in the womb, and they might saying that Canada must soon grow a called the natural law.” The presence equally well prefer an unnatural stock new moustache.” Naturally. of God is in his world, naturally.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 31 : t h e D e t e ct i o n C l u b : reading detective stories that hiding “The mystery of life is the plainest part of it.” —G.K. Chesterton the corpse is the toughest part of a murder, and that solving the problem of the body is absolutely crucial to success. Many years ago her father had taught her how to field dress a deer; and she decided that butchering a man would not be more difficult, especially The Solution since Craig was not a big guy—five- by John Peterson foot seven and skinny. She would cut him into pieces in their large sunken hot tub and package him up and store hy on earth had she married which, thanks to a boom in real estate him in the deep freeze. Then she’d Craig? Mattie asked herself values, was now worth much more use the garbage disposal to gradually the question again and again. than when they had bought it. make mincemeat out of him and flush What was she thinking? All things considered, when Mattie him away. She could grind his bones Where was her common came to her final decision, it seemed to powder and sprinkle them in the Wsense? With a million eligible and obvious to her that it was the best garden. It would be great for the roses. princely fellows walking around, how possible solution, and she set about Finally, a major application of antibac- had she managed to land this loser? making her plans with grim determina- terial soap in the hot tub and garbage She imagined that Craig harbored tion. First she would have to do some disposal, followed by a massive rinse much the same kinds of thoughts serious research on poisons. It would job with bleach, would take care of about her. have to be something very deadly, yet what crime investigators on television The only things the two of them without any telltale coloring or taste call “trace evidence.” had in common were negatives. Nei- that might arouse Craig’s suspicions. Next, but only after a decent ther of them had ever gone to church. It would have to be readily available interval, she would apply for a divorce Neither of them wanted children. without a prescription. on the grounds that her husband had Neither of them believed in sending The answer, as she quickly found deserted her. Then she’d marry Barney. off their hard-earned money to some out after a bit of study on the internet, Not that she would ever confide any charity or other. Neither would ever was that there are powerful antico- part of her plan to that dear man. consider volunteering for work on agulants that are odorless, tasteless, Barney would not approve. a community project. But of posi- and colorless. She further learned These reveries were interrupted by tives—taste in music, favorite foods, TV that ingesting an overdose of the stuff the ringing of her phone. It was Craig. shows, or what to do for fun—there will quickly cause death from mas- “Listen,” he said, “if you’re cooking seemed to be nothing they agreed on. sive internal bleeding. Finally, Mattie dinner tonight just cook for yourself. It was not very long after her discovered that one of these anticoagu- I’m playing poker with some guys from wedding that Mattie decided to search lants is the common active ingredient the office.” for a solution—to find something that in readily available rat poisons. “Fine,” Mattie said. “I was going to would get her out of the predica- Then there was the matter of tell you to get something on your own. ment she was in. She first considered timing. She would make her move the I ate downtown.” divorce, but divorce lawyers are expen- night before Craig began his two-week That business settled, Mattie was sive; and her salary as a secretary and vacation from work. Mattie had sched- left alone with her thoughts. Poker? Craig’s salary as an accountant were uled her two weeks at the same time. she asked herself. It’s ten to one he’s barely adequate for day-to-day living Nobody would miss him until he didn’t playing peek-a-boo with some bimbo. expenses, let alone paying someone show up on the job after the fourteen Not that she gave a hoot about that. one-hundred and fifty bucks an hour days had passed. If any nosy neighbors She decided to go to bed and watch when “an hour” means ten or fifteen inquired, she would simply say he was television. If he came home while she minutes of work done on their behalf. on a fishing trip up north somewhere. was still at it, she’d quickly turn off Furthermore, she reasoned, there was They had no close friends—the two the set and pretend to be asleep. She a fair chance that Craig would say “No” were not what anyone would describe was quite sure that finding her asleep to a divorce just to spite her. Anyway, as good company. Everyone knew they would be a relief to Craig. Tomorrow that was what she might think about didn’t get along, and the idea that would be their last day at work before doing if Craig asked her for a divorce— she might not know how to reach her vacation. The day after that would be just to spite him. husband in an emergency would not D-day. She considered running away, be questioned. These two weeks would but that meant starting all over in a give her time to dispose of the body. ; ; ; strange place, and giving up her part She had given that last problem It was a full week before the police of the equity they shared in the house, considerable thought. She knew from entered and searched the house. A

32 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : T h e d e t e ct i o n C l u b :

neighbor had noticed that the news- an anticoagulant. He found the drug intended for a grave, and there’s bag papers were piling up on the front in Craig’s coffee cup and in Mattie’s after bag of quick lime out there. It stoop, and so she had walked around teacup. The crime-scene specialists seems like this somebody, whoever it the place to see what there was to said the jars of instant coffee and was, wanted these two dead and had see. What she saw when she peered instant tea that they found in the a plan for getting rid of the bodies. through a window was Craig slumped kitchen were loaded with it. Quick lime works fast enough.” over the kitchen table. She called the “You think it’s a double suicide, “So, why didn’t whoever dug that police, and they found Mattie also. Jim?” one of the detectives asked his trench follow through with the plan?” She had fallen down and she lay on partner. “I doubt we’ll find that out until the floor in the hallway leading from “I might have thought that,” the we catch the poisoner,” the partner the kitchen to the family room. partner said, “except that Officer said. “But don’t worry, we’ll catch The medical examiner’s report Benoit found a trench someone him.” said that the two had died of internal recently dug just behind the tool shed The detective considered this. bleeding caused by the ingestion of out back. It looks as though it was “Or her,” he said.

meditation on good and evil underly- Chesterton’s Bloodthirsty Heirs ing P.D. James’ work. The victim is an “I should enjoy nothing more than always writing detective investigative reporter recovering from stories, except always reading them.” —G.K. Chesterton plastic surgery in a private clinic in Brief Reviews of the Contemporary Mystery Scene by Steve Miller Surrey. The locale is isolated with a lim- ited universe of suspects. The question becomes less who would want to kill a people of Philadelphia step forward to journalist whose articles have destroyed assist him, Bannion may trigger the lives than who would not. While the crooks’ greatest fear—the big heat. mystery has more than a few elements This is the citizens’ uprising that for a of the macabre, it never forgets that brief moment may defeat corruption. those who die are human, too. Their To trigger it a man who still clings to a deaths touch others. The investigation philosophy of goodness must decide if will tear away layers of privacy and he will gun down an evil woman whose threaten the innocent who are in its death can expose the dark underbelly path. A too-neat solution to the crime of the city. McGivern’s book became leaves Dagliesh believing a further one of the classics of film noir, secret awaits discovery. But he learns directed by Fritz Lang with Glenn that the law is not true justice and that Ford as Bannion and Lee Marvin as a total revelation may not be possible or gangster who makes us see a hot pot William McGivern. The Big Heat even wanted. He is left with the moral of coffee in a new light. McGivern was (1953). Corruption, like a serpent, can question of whether one can justify a police reporter in Philadelphia before be easily overlooked. Do not question a crime as a way to right a wrong or writing a series of hard-boiled detec- the suspicious suicide of a police clerk. benefit a person one loves. tive fiction novels often focusing on When a witness is tortured to death, crooked or rogue cops. let another police force investigate. But Detective Dave Bannion believes the P.D. James. The Private Patient hopeful words of St. John of the Cross (2008). “With the death of rational in The Ascent of Mount Carmel. He religion and the proponents of what ignores warnings from superiors and remains sending out such confusing confronts a mob boss after a threat to and uncertain messages, all civilised his family. When a car bomb meant for people have to be ethicists. We must him kills his wife, Bannion succumbs work out our salvation with diligence to the impulse McGivern called “the based on what we believe.” This is tempting indulgence”—to take the law in response to Commander Adam in one’s his hands out of frustration Dagliesh’s claim to be neither an with a society that lets evil prosper. But ethicist nor a moral theologian. The as no man is an island, no war can be observation elevates a variation on the fought by only one man. As the decent English country house murder into the

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 33 : T h e d e t e ct i o n C l u b :

boy’s reason for wanting to do it; for The Little Boy’s Casebook his reason was that Truth demanded by Steve Miller that he should pull the thing up by the roots to see how it was growing. Still it The Roots of the World was a sleepy, thoughtless kind of house, and nobody gave him the real answer to his argument, which was that it little boy encounters Parisians, American sailors, would kill the plant, and that there is unforeseen difficulties Fleet Street journalists and no more Truth about a dead plant than and even calamities the Japanese, among others, about a live one.” when he tries to pull could voice their own reasons. up an insignificant, On the other hand, how much Asomewhat thorny plant with a great literature would exist if star-like flower by the roots. people did what they were told W h o d u n i t T h e o l o g y The Mystery. What could be the and acted wisely? (2) Chaos theory harm of pulling up a tiny little plant by tells us that even minor actions can Father Brown the roots? have far ranging and massive con- on economic revolutions: Subplot. Why not stop when the sequences. We are informed of “the “There is undoubtedly a Bolshe- first question is answered? butterfly effect,” in which an insect Other Characters. The tutors and flapping its wings in a Brazilian rain vist movement in the modern world, guardians of the little boy who give forest can trigger a typhoon in the and it must undoubtedly be resisted, him silly reasons not to pull up the Pacific Ocean. (It appears that sending though I do not believe very much plant; the unfortunate horses in the a team with butterfly nets to catch the in your way of resisting it. But what stable; the King who lost his castle; nasty bug will not solve the problem.) nobody notices is that there is a great army of strong men gathered This story seems to be an allegory of another movement equally modern by the boy when older; half of the the theory. The distressing concept and equally moving: the great inhabitants of Paris; the sailors in the that everything is connected—how, we movement towards monopoly or the American fleet; all the journalists in have no clue—was stumbled upon by turning of all trades into trusts. That Fleet Street; the population of Japan; people trying to create a computer also is a revolution. That also pro- half the civilized world; the partici- model to allow us once and for all to duces what all revolutions produce. pants in a revolution; and the pastors predict the weather. They found that Men will kill for that and against and masters of the little boy. changing one number ever so slightly Location. The little boy’s garden, created colossal variations in the cli- that, as they do for and against the house and grounds, his country, mate foreseen by the computer. (This Bolshevism. It has its ultimatums and eventually the entire world plus should not lead us even for a moment and its invasions and its executions. the moon and sun. to doubt the scientific consensus that These trust magnates have their Publishing History. “The Roots of global warming exists, no matter how courts like kings; they have their the World” was first published inThe cold it was this winter). (3) The hope bodyguard and bravos; they have Daily News in 1907. In 1986, Marie at the end of the story is that, after their spies in the enemy camp.” Smith included it in Daylight and many catastrophes, the grown-up little Nightmare: Uncollected Stories and boy finally discerns that he should not Fables by G.K. Chesterton. It appar- pull the plant up by the roots. The dis- ently has not been included in any quieting note is that after he saw the volume of The Collected Works of G.K. truth others kept attacking the weed. Chesterton published by Ignatius Press. The Opening. “Once upon a time Notable Allusions. (1) In mythol- a little boy lived in a garden in which ogy and fairy tales the best way to get he was permitted to pick the flowers something done is to forbid someone but forbidden to pull them up by the to do it, especially if the explana- roots. There was, however, one par- tion boils down to “because I said ticular plant, insignificant, somewhat so.” Pandora and her box and possibly thorny, with a small, star-like flower, Adam and Eve’s forbidden fruit are which he very much wanted to pull up suggested by the story. At the start of by the roots. His tutors and guardians, the tale Chesterton posits what might who lived in the house with him, were be considered a moral reason for worthy, formal people, and they gave the prohibition. At the end the little him reasons why he should not pull it boy himself, now grown to manhood, up. They were silly reasons as a rule. scolds his counselors with the practi- But none of the reasons against doing cal reasons for forbearance. Probably the thing was quite so silly as the little

34 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : T h e d e t e ct i o n C l u b :

Innocence of Father Brown. The little priest in the battered fedora is sum- If You Want Something moned to an isolated manor in order to explain away a deceased aristocrat, Done Right... a mysteriously silent servant, and an odd combination of seemingly The Honor of Israel Gow (2009) incapable of judging this production in random objects. Kevin O’Brien plays Directed by Stephen Beaumont a fair and impartial manner, and that I Father Brown, and he’s about as close Written by Dale Ahlquist, Kevin O’Brien, have allowed myself to be pressured or to embodying Chesterton’s great Stephen Beaumont, and Michael Mansey cajoled into writing a favorable review. creation as anyone could possibly get, Based on the short story by G.K. Chesterton Let me set the critics’ minds at ease. managing to mix absent-mindedness Reviewed by Chris Chan My work as a writer for Gilbert Maga- with kind brilliance. Julian Ahlquist zine does not bring me nearly as much is similarly enjoyable as Flambeau ver the years, the American critical acclaim, prestigious awards, (reformed and working as a detective Chesterton Society has tried and adulation from adoring women as at this point in the series). Joshua many different tactics to bring one might expect. On the other hand, Thomas (Inspector Craven) and Eric G.K. Chesterton to a wider audi- I ought to mention that when people Kaiser Johnson as the Porter round ence. Since Hollywood, the BBC, are reading my reviews of Poirot and out the speaking cast with a pair of Oand other media outlets have been Marple, they should bear in mind that quality performances. Memorable strangely reluctant to adapt Chester- the Agatha Christie estate recently non-speaking performances include ton’s works for film and television, the gave me a Ferrari. Dale Ahlquist’s turn as the misan- ACS has gamely set out to film some The Honor of Israel Gow is an thropic Earl of Glengyle and Frank C. Chesterton stories on its own. Recently, early Father Brown mystery from Turner as the scene-stealing, taciturn the Father Brown mystery The Honor Chesterton’s first collection, The title character. of Israel Gow has been made into a forty-five-minute televi- sion adaptation for EWTN as part of its Theater of the Word, Inc. series, created and hosted by Kevin O’Brien. Loyal viewers of G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense will recognize O’Brien, who ably portrays characters as diverse as a thunderingly boisterous Hilaire Belloc and the hilari- ously smarmy ex-seminarian Stanford Nutting, who lectures on religion at a junior college and proclaims, “Nothing is a sin, and everything is nothing, and nothing is everything... and that’s O.K.” I would love to see O’Brien play both roles in a sketch of a debate between them. O’Brien also appears in the forthcoming movie version of Manalive as pessimistic Professor Eames. In the interests of full disclosure and journalistic integrity, I should point out that I am reviewing a production produced, directed, scripted, and star- ring my publisher, his family, and my colleagues at the American Chesterton Society. It might be suggested that I am

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 35 : T h e d e t e ct i o n C l u b :

The production values are quite Dale observes that no previous adapta- Gow is one of the most faithful adap- good. My favorite camera angle comes tions of Father Brown mysteries have tations I have ever seen, and the love right at the beginning when Father trusted the source material to stand on for the original work and its creator Brown first appears on screen, or at its own. The Alec Guinness film The show in every scene. least his hat. (I am curious as to who Detective used only bits and pieces of The purpose of the Theater of the painted the portrait of Dale as the Earl Chesterton’s stories to fuel its plot, and Word, Inc. television series is to “evan- of Glengyle.) Absent but desirable is the Kenneth More television series felt gelize through drama.” Its depiction a DVD commentary with the cast and that it was necessary to add politically of The Honor of Israel Gow displays crew explaining additional behind-the- correct quips and change characters Father Brown’s religious commentar- scenes details about the making of and morals. Nearly all of the dialogue ies without abridgment. This story is the film. in the ACS production is taken directly notable for showcasing how Father The DVD does include a five- from the source material. About the Brown recovers from one of the minute conversation between Ahlquist only change is the Americanized spell- rare cases where he is badly shaken and O’Brien discussing this adaptation. ing in the title. The Honor of Israel emotionally, thanks to the use of logic

The Health Insurance Act

;;Compulsion is the highly modern strengthening, of the wage-system… ;;Lately there has been an alarm- mark of a great many modern things: Thus we shall have the poor, with ing air of hurry rather than delay. It compulsory education, compulsory better conditions perhaps and under appeared in the…feverish touch…of the insurance, compulsory temperance, some general social stipulations; but Insurance Act. We seem likely to go in and soon, perhaps, compulsory arbitra- bound irrevocably to particular and pri- for preventive methods in politics as tion. (Illustrated London News, June 5, 1920) vate masters. (Century Magazine, Nov. 1912) well as Eugenics. In both, preventive methods only mean arbitrary power. ;;The principle of Compulsory Insur- ;;Our social reformers to-day have…a (Illustrated London News, May 17, 1913) ance is that the rich man is forced readiness to grant favours or conve- to buy medicine, but the poor man niences to the citizen if he will give ;;We can judge of any action with some is forced to take it. This is literally up some part of his old independence confidence by whether it is heralded slavery; and begins the claim for entire or isolation as a citizen. The great by arrogance. The old philanthropist support on one side and entire obedi- instance, of course, is the Insurance of the New Testament was warned not ence on the other. Slavery is scientific, Act, by which the State professes to to sound a trumpet before him when it is workable, it is comfortable; and…it smooth and strengthen his protection he gave money to the poor. The new is intolerable. (New Days, Sept. 18, 1915) against certain evils if he will surrender philanthropist of the Insurance Act his right to use the money to protect sounds a trumpet before him when he ;;It is a good thing to have power to him from other evils. (Illustrated London takes money away from them. (Illustrated ward off sickness if it should threaten; News, April 12, 1913) London News, Aug. 22, 1914) it is a good thing also to have the power to ward off tyranny if it should be attempted. Both must be fought as well as is possible if they come; and every free man decides the question according to which of them does come. (Daily News, Aug. 31, 1912)

;;The Government thinks less and less of consulting the public. Unluck- ily, the public also thinks less and less of reforming the Government…The Insurance Act is not respected; but it is obeyed. (Everyman, November 21, 1913)

;;The Insurance Act, by which the rich contribute to the medical sup- port of their servants, on condition of obtaining a tighter hold on their service, is the first of many legislative acts which will have for their object the ordering and cleansing, but also the

36 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : T h e d e t e ct i o n C l u b :

and his investigative powers. In a way that lacks the hamfisted moralizing of Hollywood, the film stresses how faith and reason are complementary virtues rather Sonnet For Keats than opposing forces. London, 1821 In today’s twisted entertain- ment industry, a film studio can A boy who walked with muses at his side spend millions of dollars to pro- Yielding Endymion as living moon, duce a single television episode Incarnating earth to thrush’s tune, and come up with nothing more Swept his quill to stir a quiet bride. than a stinking waste of an hour. A steadfast star, still shining where he died All that money can’t stop great --That hermit born as first creator’s swoon literature from being puréed into Admitted Poesy to shield him soon-- putrid drivel. Returns a solemn hush where ships point glide. The Honor of Israel Gow is a low-budget production that Poesy, the elves so seldom skim our land manages to show the mainstream Petitioning homage heard above thy slope. entertainment industry how it’s None cerise enjoys the autumn sand; done, and left me hoping that Where dancers laughed, now warders vainly grope this is only the first in a series of To beat them down. O bright Parnassus band, Father Brown adaptations. When a With steel and fire, come now to seal our hope. cast and creative team manage to —Art Livingston get everything right, it would be a shame to stop after just one.

Lock Yourself In a Room with This Book!

G.K. Chesterton on the Detective Story is the first and only complete collection of Chesterton’s wide-ranging views on mystery stories, fictional detectives, and detective-story authors. It includes a wealth of previously uncollected material as well as reprints of his better-known essays from such popular books as Chesterton’s The Defendantand Tremendous Trifles. Many of the essays in this volume are being reprinted for the first time since their original appearance. The list includes selections from as yet unpub- lished Collected Works collections of his Illustrated London News columns, the almost entirely forgotten series of essays Chesterton contributed to the New York American, and his previously uncollected contributions to a host of other sources such as The New Witness and G.K.’s Weekly.

“Chesterton writing about Detective Fiction is a little like a magician giving away his tricks — except he himself remains in awe of the other magicians even if he Quality Trade Paperback, 211 pages; knows how they do it! But he not only explains how the effect is achieved, he $24.00. ISBN 978-1-555246-909-5 explains the effect of the effect: why we love to be baffled, love to be fooled, love Shipping to USA and Canada $9.00 to be surprised. And somehow he even surprises us in the process. Lock yourself Check or PayPal accepted; no credit in a room with this book.” —Dale Ahlquist, President, American Chesterton Society card orders

The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box ■ George A. Vanderburgh, Publisher ■ R.R. #4, P.O. Box 50, Eugenia, Ontario, Canada N0C 1E0 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.batteredbox.com ■ Weblog: www.batteredbox.wordpress.com

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 37 : B o o K r e v i e w s : both Poe and Plato. Poe’s presence is obvious in the darkness and sense of dread that characterize much of this book. Trevor’s escape from Superbia into the happiness of the Guild is short-lived; by volume’s end the Guild is on the run, a main sympathetic char- Plato Pottering Around acter is dead, and the dark is rising. But it is a Christianized Plato who sup- bogeys and the humans plies the method behind the magic. The Purloined Boy who work for them strive At the beginning of the book By Mortimus Clay to convince the children Trevor, like the souls in Plato’s cave, Hartford, Connecticut: that home and parents dwells in darkness—the sun is not vis- Finster Press, 2009 are mythical concepts, but ible in Superbia (the city’s name being 249 pages; softcover, $12.95 Trevor believes his dreams the Latin word for the chief sin, pride). Reviewed by David Paul Deavel are memories. His insis- But like the good Platonic soul, he tence on this fact provokes remembers his own “pre-existence” in everal books into the the assistance of human a better reality, a home with a family Harry Potter series, and magical allies who and the sun shining. Plato posited Joseph Bottum wrote help him to escape the fate that the denizens of the cave would that J.K. Rowling’s of becoming bogey food need help in escaping the cave and genius was her ability to mush and lead him to a mysterious society entering the world of reality. Christian Stogether elements in themselves of known as the Guild. The Guild is dedi- Platonists said that help had come in little worth: “A writer who puts one cated to rescuing children and pushing the form of Jesus Christ and his Body, cliché into a book manages to produce back the dark power of the bogeys and the Church. While no Christ figure is pulp fiction. A writer who uses a dozen their mysterious human lord, Lucian. evident, Trevor’s escape from Super- can produce a classic. And a writer This first book in what the author calls bia is aided by a mysterious mouse, who includes them all—well, only “The Weirdling Cycle” does an admi- the secret help of the Guild, whose Homer has ever managed that.” rable job of introducing characters and qualities resemble those of the Holy The idea was that Rowling is a back story through the excitement of Spirit. The mouse enables superhu- fairly talented writer, courageous Trevor’s discovery of the menacing man action but demands effort on enough to stand back and let the truth about the world he escapes and the parts of those he helps. Further “most standard, hackneyed old tropes the struggle between Guild and bogeys. Christian images abound; for example, and figures...perform their magic.” As you might guess, Trevor finds he is Trevor’s deliverance features a har- There was something to Bottum’s a very important player in this fight— rowing plunge into water, members assessment, of course. But by the end he may be the subject of prophecy. of the Guild who rescue children are of the Potter books readers discovered As with the Potter books, how- known as “fishers,” and the final initia- that what drove them were some fairly ever, what makes this plot with its tion into the Guild is a feast in which serious ideas about the nature of evil, “hackneyed tropes” so powerful is everyone eats the fruit of a tree whose the virtuous life, and the truest, deep- its thematic content. Looking at the power both keeps the Guild safe and est magic—common to Hogwarts and reviews available online (many are gives a temporary but real communion our world: sacrificial love. linked at the author’s Web site, www. of mind and heart. The Purloined Boy, written by mortimusclay.com), one might think Like the hackneyed tropes, the “Mortimus Clay,” certainly has the that this was just another piece of Christian and Platonic themes look a clichés necessary for a bildungsroman clever “tween” fantasy. But none bit overdone when they are listed in a fantasy classic: magical creatures and of the reviewers has discerned the short paragraph. But like the clichéd magical gadgets, a back story shrouded intellectual framework that should be elements in any classic, setting them in myth, mysterious prophecy, deus ex evident to anyone who reads the mock free in a good plot produces not a machina-escapes, budding romance. puffery on the back of the book by philosophical treatise or an evangelical But for these tropes to work they must “Charles Dickens in The Dead Author’s altar call, but something much more be embedded in an engaging plot, Review”: “Splendid! Plato Meets Poe! interesting. Something more like what which, without saying every plot point Mortimus has outdone himself.” happens in Narnia or Harry Potter: rings perfectly true, The Purloined The joke is that “Mortimus Clay” a story that anybody can appreciate Boy possesses. was a Dickens-envying professor at and indeed thrill to, but whose deeper Trevor Upjohn, a boy in the prison “Her Majesty’s Knitting College for Way- foundations can be glimpsed by those school run by bogeymen in their gray ward Girls” whose 1885 death resulted with eyes to see. industrial nightmare town of Superbia, in his writing taking “an immediate In a story like this one, glimpsing has dreams of a home and parents and turn for the better.” The serious part the foundations can mean, as Plato being kidnapped by a bogeyman. The is that this tale does show the signs of might say, participating in them.

38 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : C h e s t e r t o n u n i v e r s i t y : returned in “the family being broken in pieces by bureaucracy”; and the An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist rejection of occasional Catholic fasting returned in teetotalers and vegetarians imposing fasting on everybody all the Arrival time. For Chesterton, only the Catholic Church offers completeness, as well Where All Roads Lead as healthy complexity, as each of the simplistic heresies offer only pieces of the truth, and often pieces that have ne could argue that this was the pessimists. “The heresies that attacked been perverted. first book that G.K. Chesterton human happiness in my times have all The West offers no real alternatives wrote after his conversion. It been variations either of presumption to the Catholic Church, only reactions was originally a series of maga- or of despair.” to it. The only real alternative is found zines articles published in 1922, He is drawn to the Church’s posi- in the East. And the most refined of Ojust after Chesterton was received tive things, to its beauty, to the things all eastern philosophies is Buddhism. into the Catholic Church, but the it has that no other churches have, Chesterton notes that Western think- articles did not appear in book form rather than being propelled into it by ers, such as H.G. Wells, in running until 1961. problems from anywhere else: “I was from the Catholic Church, seem drawn It is here that Chesterton gives his converted by the positive attractions of to Buddhism. But their attraction is initial reasons for joining the Church. the things I had not yet got, and not by not quite genuine. Instead of trying But he starts by pointing out that there negative disparagements of such things to become more like Buddha, they was such a Catholic resurgence taking as I had managed to get already.” are rather trying to get Buddha to be place at the time that many people The book takes us succinctly more like them. They want to make were compelled to give their reasons through the alternatives to Catholi- Buddha a modern skeptic, “invoking for not joining the Church, which, it cism, beginning with Atheism. him against the desire of eternal life, turned out, was more difficult to do. As Chesterton finds Atheism too simplistic without invoking against the human soon as one begins to list objections to and too reactionary. “If there were no desire of life.” They are trying to do the Church, a process of kicking and God, there would be no atheists.” away with a sense of sin by doing away struggling begins. But a similar over-simplicity is seen with all desire. In the meantime, East- Since the Church was “on the in other non-Catholic philosophies. The ern wannabees in the West do whatever march,” Chesterton did not regard his pagan religions melted into panthe- they want since they figure they’ve decision to join as particularly difficult: ism or faded away entirely. There have already done away with sin. They claim “No credit, beyond that of common not been Druidic revolutions every the practical effect of Buddhism is intelligence, really belongs to anyone three hundred years. The Protestants an amiable altruism, but there is no who has joined it when it is so evi- have always backed themselves into basis for this. Buddhism, if taken to its dently the hope of the world.” narrow corners, and humanist societies logical conclusion leads to Nihilism. Even though Catholicism is attempt to explain everything in terms In other words, they suffer from both referred to as “the old religion,” it is, of the latest fads and fashions. And in the sins against hope: presumption strangely, not old. It has an “unearthly Anglicanism, Chesterton says there is and despair. Little wonder that Ches- freshness.” It refuses to grow old. The a contradiction of trying to be Catholic terton found great joy in choosing to things that grow old are the heresies. and Protestant at the same time, “an become Catholic. In fact, the heresies often come and go attempt to remedy a mistake without before the Church has fully formulated admitting it.” a response to them, since the Church Each of the elements of the studies the heresies more carefully Catholic Church that the world has than even the heresiarchs do. So, too, rejected has in turn been brought All these desparate things, says Chesterton, “the Church cannot back in an inferior form: the rejec- of which one is an imitation and change quite so fast as the charges tion of art and symbol returned in the another a doubt and another a against her do.” form of detached and decadent art; He mentions here for the first time the rejection of supernatural heal- book of ediquette, have nothing in something he would repeat elsewhere, ing returned in the form of bizarre common except that they are none including in his Autobiography: that charlatans and faith healers; the of them Churches; and that they are when he read the Penny Catechism rejection of the confessional returned all examples of the various things he was struck by the phrase that the in psychoanalysis; the rejection of two sins against hope are presumption an international Church returned in which men might be expected and despair. This exactly summed up in an entanglement of international to experiment in the absense of a the battles that he was fighting on two finance; the rejection of the influence Church. — Where All Roads Lead fronts against the optimists and the of Catholic morality on family life

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 39 : T h e e T h i c s o f e l f l a n d : was always winter when the Sysco van pulled into the lot. “There you are, you frog!” Betsy had found him. Pascal had met Betsy in Orléans. The Sysco Kid Is Not She was backpacking across Europe; he was drunk. Although reason itself A Friend Of Mine cringed whenever it contemplated the matter, the two fell in love and by Nicholas Check married. Pascal had wanted to open a restaurant in France, but Betsy’s ulling the last draw out of his from the bottom of the stairs. “You’d parents demanded that they come to hand-rolled cigarette, Pascal better not be smoking! Come help me America. Pascal agreed to do so for stared through the back window count these boxes of breaded veal pat- two years. Seventeen years ago. of his kitchen on the second ties.” After smashing what remained Pascal loved Betsy, although she floor of the Blackhawk Inn as of his cigarette into an ashtray he had had many traits he knew would drive Pthe Sysco Foods van pulled up and hidden on the outdoor windowsill, him insane. Her years of marriage to a parked at the rear entrance. Pascal Chambord, French chef, left the Frenchman rendered her no less Amer- “Oh, Christ,” he thought. “Let kitchen to unload a week’s worth of ican. His best efforts notwithstanding, Betsy deal with these Philistines.” frozen entrees. she retained not a word of French and His hopes were dashed. “Mon Dieu, c’est impossible,” he mispronounced the name of every “Paaaascal?” Betsy screeched. groaned, descending the narrow French dish, (the woman pronounced “Pascaaaa-al? The food truck is here.” stairs to the bar on the first floor. His the “t” in escargot and persisted in “Perhaps she’ll think I didn’t hear childhood nightmares could not have calling bouillabaisse, “bweelabaysee”) her,” he thought to himself as he blew prepared him for the horrors of owning and earnestly believed that french fries a stream of smoke out the window. No a third-rate restaurant in the American came from France. Worst of all, as her such luck. Midwest. But he’d never had childhood hips could testify, she adored Ameri- “PASCAL!” She called this time nightmares—and why should he have? can cuisine. He had grown up in paradise, From the back entrance of the the Loire Valley, the beautiful Blackhawk Inn, a skinny boy, whose Pays de châteaux, the land pimples were the only evidence he of the castles. Horror was bad had entered puberty, croaked, “Hey, wine. Northern Wisconsin was man, can we hurry up? I’ve been here not horror; it was Hell. It had ten minutes already, and I’m gonna be no castles, only horseflies in late to my next stop if we don’t unload the summer and snow and slush this food.” in the winter. It was “Food?” Pascal thought, wondering winter now. It if the Sysco boy genuinely believed he was delivering food. “Okay, okay, I’m coming,” he called back. “You Americans are always in a hurry.” Pascal thought back to France. His father owned a bistro in Orléans. There, Pascal learned to cook for people who would linger for hours over a meal. Every meal was prepared with care. “La cuisine, c’est un art,” his father always told him. Food was an art, and eating in the company of friends and family was a sacred thing. Although he had lived in America for almost two decades, “fast-food” made no sense. Pascal followed Betsy across the dingy barroom. He felt the dark green carpet crunch underfoot. Dark, crunchy restaurant carpet was another American anomaly that clawed at Pascal. The restaurant was hardly a clean, well-lit place.

40 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : T h e e T h i c s o f e l f l a n d :

Pascal longed to remodel the and fries for Americans in Wisconsin. of red on the white van almost made Blackhawk Inn, but money was From the van emerged two plastic him smile. short. He had opened the restaurant jugs of cooking wine. “Allez au diable!” he screamed. fifteen years ago, hoping to recre- “Vinegar and corn syrup,” Pascal “I am free.” ate the joie de vivre of his father’s grumbled picking them up and head- “Have you lost your mind?” the bistro. It hadn’t worked. Custom- ing back to his kitchen. His kitchen Sysco boy screamed as he scrambled ers complained that the food was had once been an escape back to into his van. Tires squealed as he too “strange,” the portions too small. France. There he was in Orléans, his sped away. The cargo doors, still “Don’t you have cheeseburgers?” they father beside him, admiring the beauty open, left a trail of frozen veal pat- asked. To stay profitable, Betsy, the he created. ties in the truck’s wake. Pascal heard bookkeeper, had urged Pascal to order But he had not imagined lately. Betsy rushing up the stairs. from Sysco Foods. Every time he tried, he saw the jugs of Bur he did not react. Instead he “But it’s not food,” he protested. Sysco wine and remembered, remem- rolled a cigarette and watched the Pascal hated Sysco and believed in bered the “bweelabaysee” and the Sysco van until it disappeared at the his heart that they supplied food not burgers, the horseflies and the slush, end of the street. only to every American restaurant, and the dark, crunchy carpet. His “PASCAL! Are you crazy?” but to Satan’s kitchens as well, a father would never visit a kitchen that “Elizabeth, get your backpack. conviction that compelled him more used Sysco wine. Nous allons en France.” than anything to avoid mortal sin. Pascal entered his kitchen, walked “Huh?” But Betsy had been right. Americans over to the pantry, opened the door— “We are going to France!” valued, as she explained, “deals more “No,” he growled, his fists tighten- Ethics of Elfland is reserved for contributors than meals.” And thus it came to pass ing around the neck of a Sysco wine aged seventeen and younger. Photos are that Pascal, chef from Orléans, served jug. “Not anymore!” Pascal ran to the permitted so long as no adults appear in the Sysco pre-packaged, pre-portioned, back window, opened it, and hurled picture. Please send submissions to editor@ pre-seasoned, and pre-cooked burgers the jug at the Sysco van. The splatter gilbertmagazine.com

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Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 41 : F e a r o f f i l m : to town (Walter Pidgeon) and Huw’s sister? “I can hear even now the voice of my sister Angharad.” Yes, and I can see yet the tresses of the youthful Mau- reen O’Hara lofting in the breeze. The Words Tell the Story Who can forget the patriarch and the matriarch of this profoundly strong How Green Was My Valley (1942) those daily actions that form the core family? I see the father and the five Directed by John Ford of each person’s life. Film treats sur- older brothers come from the mines, Written by Philip Dunne, based on faces, and daily life normally looks like, lining up before the mother, dropping the novel by Richard Llewellyn well, daily life, and not like something their earnings into her spread apron. evoking eternity. Donald Crisp and Sarah Allgood, like Reviewed by Art Livingston Luckily, Llewellyn’s How Green so many performers in How Green Was My Valley was given over by 20th Was My Valley, participate in what are etulant modernists Century Fox to be directed their most fondly remembered roles. with no better way by the incomparable John “Everything I ever learned as a small to spend their time Ford, the perfect story- boy came from my father, and I never will often dismiss teller for this material. found anything he ever told me to be films recalling Ford’s lightly worn Irish wrong or worthless.” And this: “My Pbetter and more decent Catholicism translates mother was always on the run—always times as “mere” nostalgia. well into depicting, with the last to start her dinner and the first As with nearly everything love, older cultures, and to finish. For if my father was the head they say, they reveal, in this is what makes him the of the house, my mother was its heart.” their premises, that what best remembered of all And who can forget the tragedies, they hate is not a work of the makers of Westerns. for these also live in our memo- art falsely remembering Rarely do those stories ries—the pitifully poor marriage of or improving the memory come from his own culture, Angharad to the mine owner, a strike of something good, but The Informer and The and its subsequent hardships, a mine a loathing for awe itself, Quiet Man being the most obvious cave-in and the resultant personal loss, the good dread that remembered exceptions. In this case Huw Morgan’s and the devastation of the family itself experience seals in the mind and the memories of his Welsh village go back wrought from the spiritual impoverish- reverence such memories can evoke. fifty years before, when he was a boy ment of industrialism, that destroyer of Some of the best twentieth century (and I almost said, “when there were all but shoddy products. literature evokes such numinous long- wolves in Wales”). Bear one more observation. I ing, even while the dramatic action is Irving Pichel’s full, melodious notice that I have communicated ostensibly realistic. Dylan Thomas and voice narrates the story of himself more from the narration than from Thomas Wolfe made their careers with as the boy Huw (played by Roddy the visual images. I could also go on such material, speaking in loving terms McDowell in one of the most striking endlessly about the visual beauty of of longed-for worlds: “O lost, and by performance ever by a child). A shy this film, especially about the painterly the wind, grieved ghost, come back sensitivity to his family lets us believe evocations that are uniquely Ford’s, again.” This is why memories become that this world can ever flood back to but look like no specific painter I can idealized: we desire eternity. one man’s mind when he grows up. remember. Thumb through the pho- Richard Llewellyn was such an These memories are episodic, as they tographs in any of the many books on author. He wrote of his childhood usually are when exceeding the length Ford; immediately the stills echo their in a Welsh mining town before the of a short tale. But Ford never permits intended worlds; and one can tell a already ubiquitous company that them to become disjointed; our focus Ford composition as surely as one can owned it turned the village into a vast is on the family and on the valley. recognize Ted Turner’s insane riot of slag heap. This kind of material is Thus we have, paradoxically, not static fake color. notoriously difficult to film well. In moments, but what feels like an end- But the narrator does summon the the wrong hands it can easily descend less wealth of activity in a small world. world of his story best with words, and into rank sentimentality—the maudlin Who can forget Huw’s mistreat- these are what you are reading now. gush of cheap emotions for their own ment by a vicious schoolmaster, which “There is no fence nor hedge round sake, the opposite of true sentiment. becomes an occasion for laughter and time that is gone. You can go back Modernists, of course, can’t tell the dif- justice when a friend of the family, also and have what you like of it, if you can ference. Because of the delicacy of the a pugilist, pays the beast a visit before remember...Green it was, and pos- attendant emotions, understatement the pedagogue’s charges? sessed of the earth. In all Wales, there of action is usually vital. Thus such Who can forget the budding was none so beautiful...How green was stories are usually about the quotidian, romance between the minister new my valley.”

42 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : F e a r o f f i l m :

the value of reconciliation and for- Transformation giveness like rugby players do. Mandela senses this, and pur- sues his idea. Rugby may be just a Invictus (2009) Could rugby, a game loved by the sport, but South Africa’s Afrikaners Directed by Clint Eastwood whites and hated by the blacks, be the “treasure Springbok rugby,” Mandela Written by Anthony Peckham, based thing to unite South Africa? argues to the country’s now black- on the book by John Carlin This is the premise for Invictus, dominated sports authority. “If we Rated PG-13 (for brief strong language) directed by Eastwood and starring take that away, we lose them. We Reviewed by Sean P. Dailey Morgan Freeman as Mandela. The prove that we are what they feared we hopelessness of the task before him would be. We have to be better than lint Eastwood turned 80 this is made all too plain the morning of that.” When another detractor dis- year. I hope that when I turn 80, his first day as President, with dozens misses Mandela’s efforts as “a political I am even half as active as he of white staffers packing boxes in calculation,” he shoots back, “It is a is—and as much a master at my expectation of being fired. Then, his human calculation.” The two are not craft as he is at his. Eastwood black bodyguards nearly revolt. They all that far off. The man who cheers Chas produced two masterpieces in the had asked for more men, Mandela sent his favorite team and argues sports past twelve months, Gran Torino and them members of the hated Special with friends over beer is the same Invictus, both of which are about race Branch, who under apartheid were the man who wants the trash picked up and reconciliation, but in radically dif- cops charged with busting the skulls of on time, some assemblage of public ferent ways. I’ll deal with Gran Torino ANC activists. Mandela forces them to order maintained, to be able to sup- in a later issue. Now, I want to write work together. “Reconciliation starts port his family, and justly expects that about Invictus. here. Forgiveness starts here too. It his tax dollars will not be squandered. In 1990, Nelson Mandela was liberates the soul,” he says. Somehow, So on one level, Mandela does released from prison after serving 27 the former adversaries agree to try. what he has to to attract foreign years for sabotage and other crimes. Freeman investment to bring In 1994, he was elected president of brings all the quiet down the high unem- South Africa, assuming leadership of a dignity to this role ployment. But to country that, while it had officially dis- that he brought to unite his country, he mantled apartheid, was by no means the character Red also must go for his united. To say that racial tensions in The Shawshank people’s hearts. That’s prevailed would be putting it lightly. Redemption. Matt where the World Cup The white minority hated and feared Damon, as Spring- comes in. In a key the black majority, and many blacks boks captain scene, Mandela invites were eager for revenge after decades of François Piennar, Piennar, son of racist unjust and often brutal oppression. also shines. On parents, to tea, to talk Neither side counted on Nelson the surface, rugby about leadership, and Mandela. Having abandoned violence would not seem how to inspire men and terrorism in prison, he forgave a suitable spring- to rise higher than his former enemies. He expected his board from which they think they’re countrymen, black and white, to do to tell the story of able. He does not the same. But how to do it? The solu- Nelson Mandela mention the World tion, as shown in Invictus, came when and the rebirth Cup directly, but he attended a rugby game, with South of South Africa. Piennar gets the hint. Africa’s national team, the Springboks, The game itself is called “elegant Later, Piennar and the rugby team against England. Mandela noticed that violence,” and it has a reputation for visit Robben Island, where Mandela all the blacks in the stadium cheered brutality that makes seasoned Ameri- was a prisoner for nearly thirty years, for the English, and recalled that he can football players quail. I know. I breaking big rocks into little rocks and his fellow convicts used to do the played rugby in college and afterward. and sleeping on the floor of a cell same thing in prison. An aide gloats We had no pretensions that the game that was smaller than many people’s that, with the Springboks doing so could heal—quite the opposite. That walk-in closets. Piennar, and nearly badly, it is a good time to change the said, rugby has a tradition of cama- everyone else in the film, black and team colors and emblem to something raderie and fellowship that exists in white, is transformed by his encounter more favorable to the country’s black no other sport. You tear each other with “the greatest man I ever met.” majority. Mandela scowls, and gets to pieces on the pitch and afterward, Eastwood achieves all this with quiet an idea, an idea abetted by the fact drink beer together, sing songs, and understatement, wisely preferring to that South Africa is hosting the Rugby depart in friendship. It could be let the material speak for itself. It will World Cup in one year’s time. argued that few athletes understand transform you too.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 43 : t h e d i s t r i b u t i s t : “But your bread’s not been baked Economics as if People Mattered yet!” Mary Alice protested. “I’ll come back later,” she yelled over her shoulder. Late that night Lilly came back to the house to find that Mary Alice had finished the “project.” She fell into the sofa, tired and sweaty, tore a crusty end off a loaf, and popped it in her mouth. A slow, wide smile spread across her face. “Pretty good torture for thirty-five cents and a little bit of elbow grease, huh?” Mary Alice A Local Project observed. by Miki Tracy Ecstatic nod. “This is the best bread I’ve ever ow, first we’ll warm the bowl and buy a loaf! This is so stupid.” had in my life!” under the faucet like this,” said Mary Alice ignored the litany and “And this,” Mary Alice answered, Mary Alice, “And while we’re pressed on. I sat in the next room “is precisely why you should know how doing that we’re going to bloom biting on a sofa bolster, I was laughing to bake bread.” our yeast.” so hard. Two days later, Lilly showed up N“Okay, “said Lilly, “How long is it “Okay, now Lilly, it’s time to... after school with a half-dozen girls going to take?” What are you doing?” from her class to learn how to bake I wasn’t watching this scene. I was “I’m texting Christa to tell her bread. Now she does it on her own listening to it from the other room. I what you’re doing to me. This is tor- without prompting. She’s getting pretty could hear Lilly rolling her eyes. ture! The dance started ten minutes good at it. The louder noises were her groans ago!” and growls and constant complaints. “—so, to form the loaves, this is Gilbert House French Bread Lilly was learning how to bake bread. what we’re going to do—” 2-1/2 tsp. dry yeast The local high school has what it Lilly screamed, “Are you adding 1/2 cup warm water (105-110 calls a “Current Social Issues” class in extra steps just to make me mad?” degrees F.) which seniors are required to com- “Do you want to learn this, or 1 dollop of honey or a pinch of plete a year-long “project” in order to not?” table sugar graduate. The project must have as its Some of Lilly’s friends came to 1 cup warm water (105-110 F.) focus a subject that the student has no the rescue and whisked her off to the 1 Tbsp. table sugar previous knowledge of, but would be dance. interested in learning about. Lilly was one of our “kids.” She came to Gilbert House, the Catholic Worker house where Mary Alice and I live, and she told us that the topic that she had chosen for her project was “French Cooking.” She came home after school, donned an apron, and lis- tened carefully as Mary Alice explained what they were going to do. With each progressive step, however, Lilly became more annoyed. “You know, the school dance starts in half an hour, Mary Alice.” “Maybe so, but you can’t rush yeast, you’ll kill it.” I could hear Mary Alice smiling as she spoke. More com- plaining, more whining. Finally, Lilly started to cry. And then she stamped her foot. “This is so boring! I don’t see why we need to know how to make bread anyway when I can just go to the store

44 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : t h e d i s t r i b u t i s t :

2 tsp. Kosher salt until the dough will absorb no more. about 30-45 minutes, or until nearly 3-4 (or more) cups unbleached Knead until smooth and elastic (about doubled in size. white flour 5 minutes). 10. Bake loaves at 375 degrees F. Cornmeal 6. Place dough in the greased bowl for 30–45 minutes, checking at Olive oil warming in the oven, and turn the 10 minute intervals after the first 1. Invert a small bowl in the sink under dough over a couple of times to coat 25 minutes. the faucet and run very warm water with oil on all sides. Cover with a clean over it. Use thermometer to gauge Repeat often; homemade bread dish towel, and place back into the water temperature (105-110 degrees is easier (and more fun) each time warm oven to rest. Turn the oven off F.). you make it. and leave for about 1 hour. 2. Place first three ingredients in the 7. Prepare a baking sheet or baking warmed bowl, and stir with a fork until stone by rubbing the surface with a the yeast has dissolved; set aside for The Kitchen Distributist light coat of olive oil; sprinkle a fine 5-10 minutes. layer of cornmeal over the oil. Automatic dishwasher deter- 3. Grease a large glass or ceramic bowl gent is an expensive commodity; use 8.. When the dough is about double in with olive oil and place in a slightly two tablespoons each of powdered size, turn it out gently onto the coun- warmed oven. borax and baking soda instead. Run ter and gently press the dough into 4. In a third warmed bowl, measure a thick circle. Use a knife to cut the machine as usual. No more spotting out 1 cup of warm water. To this add dough in half. and dishes sparkle—try it. sugar, salt, and 2 cups of flour. Mix 9. Shape each half into a free-form with a wooden spoon until combined. loaf no longer than the baking sheet 5. By now yeast should be frothy; add or stone. Place both loaves on the the yeast mixture to the bread dough prepared baking surface; use a knife to and stir for 30 seconds to a minute cut diagonal slits down the top of each to activate the gluten. Add more flour loaf about three inches apart. Cover to the dough about 1/2 cup at a time again, and let rise in warm oven for

GKC on GKC—VIII

;;I went to an Art School, at about the time when most ;;I once knew a man who was sincerely shocked to find of my friends went to Oxford, with the somewhat hazy me writing stories of crime, or even reading them; and and impressionist idea of learning to draw. At this stage the incident always interested me because he was the I chanced to review some art books for a literary weekly only man I ever knew personally who was afterwards and I rapidly discovered how much easier it is to criticize found to be a criminal. (“Advice to Literary Murderers,” G.K. Chesterton the drawing of anybody than to draw anything. I there- on Detective Fiction) fore slid into my present low trade. After that I sank yet ;;My mind being incurably frivolous, I find my fancies lower and became a critic of literature, which is not even straying towards lighter things like history, philology, describing a picture but only describing philosophy, metaphysics and moral a description. (New York American, May 30, 1935) theology, when my countrymen ;;I have founded many clubs and societ- are concerned with really serious ies in my time; only I never could get subjects, such as money. (New York anyone to join them. (Daily News, Aug. 4, 1906) American, Dec. 5, 1931)

;;I am a typical Englishman and ;;I fear my own tastes are for the therefore lazy and illogical. I am always tradition of Jefferson rather than of writing letters to apologize for not Franklin. (New York American, April 17, 1935) having written letters. (New York American, ;;A man once told me that in March 6, 1935) twenty years I should find married ;;I can play chess and even enjoy it life very difficult. I told him I had enormously; though it is generally the found it in twenty minutes; and was generous enjoyment of being beaten. But indeed aware of it before I began. poker is too intellectual for me. (New York (New Witness, July 15, 1915) American, Jan. 27, 1934)

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 45 : C h e s t e r t o n ’ s m a i l b a g : Gilbert Keith Chesterton Answers His Mail But if the nature of the universe be, for instance, a dream, or a drama dependent on a divine will, or merely on a diabolic caprice, it is equally obvi- ous that whether this or that apparent Charity, Youth, and Minor Poets law is occasionally broken depends upon why it is generally observed. You Dear Mr. Chesterton, a Black Mass in it. If I give a man an can never be quite certain that water While I certainly believe in charity altar (which seems improbable) he would never flow uphill until you really for the underprivileged, I must insist may use it for human sacrifice. And if understand why it generally flows that there be conditions attached to this is the logic even of those cases in downhill. And I am agnostic enough to the gifts we give. Otherwise, how can I which the gift itself is something com- confess my ignorance of the ultimate know these presents won’t be abused? monly accounted blameless or correct, cause, as distinct from the manifest Signed, the case is overwhelmingly strong as and material cause. But what I am Philanthropist regards the ordinary gifts that people pointing out here is that the modern of the world give to each other. If it is world is full of a new crop of such Dear Philanthropist, possible that money or drink can be stories, whether or no they are fan- To give any present worth calling a misused by our social inferiors, it is cies. It is not much more marvelous present is to give power; to give power quite certain that books and clothes that water should flow uphill than that is to give liberty; to give liberty is to and furniture and works of art can water should be found with a divining give potential sin. If I give the most be misused and are misused by our rod; and there are all sorts of highly decorous and pious present, it passes equals. modern people going about testifying beyond my power merely because I Your friend, to the dexterity of the dowser. But this have given it. If I give a man a Bible, G.K. Chesterton is a very mild and materialistic affair, he may read it in order to justify polyg- (Illustrated London News, Dec. 8, 1906) compared with the miracles which amy. Many men have read the Bible are now asserted in circles much (the Mormons, for instance) only to ; ; ; more materialistic. It would seem that justify polygamy. If I give a man a cup these intelligent young people have of cocoa (which I feel sure I should Dear Mr. Chesterton, abandoned all belief in the miraculous never do), he might gain from that cup What are you going to do to element in the Bible, but not in the of cocoa exactly the amount of nour- appeal more to young people? The miraculous element in the boarding- ishment and vigour which he needed great majority of the younger men house, in the college common-room, to commit a murder. Many men, I feel and women of the present time who in the Belgravian drawing-room and sure (though I have no statistics to think seriously have abandoned all the Bohemian Club. But I suspect that hand) have committed murder under belief in the miraculous element in the these young people do not do anything the immediate invigoration of cocoa. Bible. They deny the possibility of the so illogical; in point of fact, I suspect If I give a man a church he may hold dislocation in the smallest imaginable that these young people do not exist. fashion of any of the fundamental laws Anyhow, it seems rather a pity (to a of the universe. romantic mind) that such very young Signed, people should make such very old Campus Leader remarks. Dear Campus Leader, Your friend, I have some doubts about the G.K. Chesterton youth of these young men and women, (Illustrated London News, Sept. 24, 1921) but it would not be polite to press ; ; ; the point; especially about the young women. I only know I have met a Dear Mr. Chesterton, number of very aged aunts and uncles Don’t you think minor poets are who repeated the above sentence, with unfairly sneered at nowadays? all the solemnity of people reciting a Signed, very venerable creed. And when the Hugh Lunn older people of the older time said that, there was a great deal more to be Dear Hugh Lunn, said for it. I am not going to disen- Yes; and as a minor poet I feel it tangle the petitio principii about the deeply. fundamental laws of the universe. It is Your friend, obvious that nothing can violate the G.K. Chesterton fundamental nature of the universe. (Hearth and Home, Oct.17, 1912)

46 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 Two new Chesterton Audio books! The Everlasting Man Manalive Read by Dale Ahlquist Read by Kevin O’Brien Chesterton’s masterpiece on Soon to be a motion picture! 10 compact discs 8 compact discs

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❏ Visa ❏ Mc ❏ Amex ❏ Disc # (Or include your check/MO) Exp. Date Signature : N e w s W i t h v i e w s : A DISCRIMINATING EMPLOYER Compiled by the Gilbert Magazine News-Gathering Staff THETFORD, England—When Nicole Mamo needed domestic help she did the logical thing and posted an advertisement with Jobcentre Plus. In the ad she specified applicants must be “very reliable and hard-working.” Later, when she checked why her notice hadn’t run, the Jobcentre representa- tive told her they couldn’t run the “When the real revolution happens, it ad as written because the stipulation won’t be mentioned in the newspapers.” for a reliable worker could get them WORTH DOING BADLY WEARING BLACK sued for discriminating against unreli- able workers. Mamo, who regularly TRACY CITY, Tenn.—The citizens LOS ANGELES—The journal Cur- recruits reliable temporary staff for of Tracy City have elected as mayor a rent Biology is reporting a study of the National Health Service, wasn’t man they know to have died a month mourning behavior in chimpanzees. the only one who found this situa- before the election. Carl Geary was The authors cite two situations where tion absurd. A spokeswoman for the fifty-five years old and running for chimps have shown behavior that sug- Campaign Against Political Correct- mayor when he died from a heart gests emotions very much like those ness noted it was ridiculous to prohibit attack. He was known as a straight shown by humans in connection to employers from demanding reliability talker, and must have been leading in loss from death. In one observation, in potential employees. But she also the polls, if they were to conduct such officials at Blair Drummond Safari observed that deciding the word “reli- in Tracy City, at the time. A month Park allowed three other chimps to able” was discriminatory must have after he passed away, he carried the rejoin a dying elderly female, after required a great deal of time and election over the incumbent by 285 they had previously separated them in thought. Much time, perhaps. As for to 85. Some local citizens stated that connection with the female’s illness. any thought, Chesterton might have they wanted someone other than the The lead author in the article found considered the whole thing a mere incumbent. significance in the fact that the living holiday from logic. When G.K. Chesterton made chimps seemed to recognize when his famous statement about a thing the other chimp had died. “It seems TRIALS OF THE WAGE SLAVE being worth doing badly, he was refer- they are clearly able to distinguish the CHICAGO—Okay, so today’s job ring to political office. This may be difference between being alive and market is competitive and folks need an extreme case of citizens willing unresponsive,” he wrote. Afterward an edge to get or to stay employed. to accept a leader who is less than they were subdued for days and were Where does one go for the edge? Dale dynamic, but distaste for the other more demanding of attention from Carnegie, Steven Covey, the Harvard option seems to have been sufficient to their keepers. Business School? Think again. Today’s make Mr. Geary the people’s choice. In the other study, some mother corporate aspirant is more likely to chimps in the forests of Guinea carried visit Dr. Steven Dayan. No, Dr. Dayan “HOLD THAT CANVAS STILL!” infants for weeks after they had died doesn’t have a PhD in business, eco- of disease, one for two months. The QINGDAO, China—The latest nomics, or industrial relations. He is lead author in this case said either the animal to make a splash in the world a cosmetic surgeon who is currently bond between mothers and infants is of art is a beluga whale. No one knows doing a booming business re-working very strong or that they were aware how long this talent was kept pent-up facial features for CEOs, receptionists, of the death but this was their way of but when Xiao Quiang, the whale, saw school teachers, and sales representa- dealing with it. a paintbrush left within biting distance tives who are concerned that a large by a visitor at Quingdao Ocean World, A turkey is more occult and awful nose or other irregular features will he grabbed it and started to paint. than all the angels and archangels. In block their career paths. Dr. Dayan Trainers give him the brush now and so far as God has partly revealed to charges anywhere from $300 to hold the canvas as he expresses him- us an angelic world, he has partly told $10,000 for a procedure most patients self in the creation of seascapes, noted us what an angel means. But God has feel will pay off in the long run. While never told us what a turkey means. to be a particular strength. It is said Dr. Dayan observes that enhanced self- And if you go and stare at a live turkey that the people painted in his creations for an hour or two, you will find by the esteem probably has more to do with always look like seals. And, it goes end of it that the enigma has rather their performance than a nose job or without saying, his work is selling well. increased than diminished. Botox, Chesterton might have observed We think maybe the creatures in that modern wage-earners need the his paintings are seals. Maybe he’s We have a feeling the same could dignity of free guildsmen more than doing portraiture. be said for chimpanzees. wrinkle-free profiles.

48 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 : N e w s W i t h v i e w s :

GREAT MOMENTS IN and Sensus would handle an appli- totally dated Jesus. Love that beard. ETHICS EDUCATION cant that chose to define henself as a Too bad he’s dead.” beluga whale or a bowling pin. For now When some visitors to McCarthy’s CHICAGO—One might be tempted we’ll leave them to wrestle with that site pointed out Jesus rose from the to commend Northwestern University’s possibility, and merely comment that dead, she retorted, “Ok, ok my friends. ongoing efforts to promote ethical if logic is the machine of the mind, as I know Jesus is not dead. I’m saying behavior amongst its student body Chesterton said, Sensus is in need of a that the fact his body has ‘risen from by offering talks on real-world ethical serious overhaul. the dead’ makes him un-datable.” issues. For our part, we think the Uni- Not content to let those remarks versity’s choice of speakers is, not to stand as a commentary on her near- put too fine a point on it, bizarre. Wit- TWITTER AND THE TWIT total vacuity, the actress later tweeted, ness a recent offering entitled, “Ethics LONDON—There are infinite “Did they do circumcisions in Jesus’ in Politics: An evening with Former reasons for loving Jesus Christ, but for days?” In a place and time where Governor Rod Blagojevich.” For those American actress Jenny McCarthy it’s public figures like McCarthy can’t with short political memories, former all in the beard. “I’m looking at a pic- figure their way past stark ignorance, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich ture of Jesus on the wall,” she posted let us be ever more grateful for a Savior is currently awaiting trial on federal on her Twitter account. “I would have that knew the way out of a grave. corruption charges stemming from his alleged attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama. Northwestern might have been better The Imitators advised to host a talk on “The Virtue C l e r i h e w C o r n e r of Hanging Politicians,” a topic any by Matthew Accardo, Brooklyn, New York reasonable Chestertonian would have Celebrating Famous & handled with relish. Reverend William Archibald Spooner Infamous Names with Eulogized a piano tuner: E.C. Bentley’s Elusive GOVERNMENT IN ACTION “His hellodious prayers were merde; Light Verse Form For the Lord is a shoving leopard.” WASHINGTON, D.C.—Perhaps it is fitting to close out our political e.e. cummings’ commentary with a quote from Maxine, (punctuational Plumbings the loveable curmudgeon who could Are! clogged:with a hairball ;of semi-colon? be a Chestertonian for her common with commas,, His anti-poesy— is) swollen, sense and a Bellocian for her acerbic Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wit. She observes, “...back in 1990, the Theorized creation was overruled Government seized the Mustang Ranch By the evolution of the land snail. brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, Said God, “What a whale of a tale.” as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now, we are Alan Mathison Turing: trusting the economy of our country, His test gives us enduring our banking system, our auto industry Criteria judicial and…our health plans to the same nit- The Originator For intelligence artificial.1 wits who couldn’t make money running President Hoover The late author Douglas Adams a whore house and selling whiskey?!” Felt in need of a soother Had a fondness for anagrams, After his little tiff Made us laugh too hard at tales, 2 AMONG THE HEN-PICKED With Governor Al Smith. Of towels, Babelfish, and plummeting —Edmund Clerihew Bentley whales. STOCKHOLM—Sensus, a study association affiliated with the Church CLERIHEW: A humorous, unmetri- The Seven Dwarves of Snow White of Sweden, has adopted a new policy cal, biographical verse of four short Were laid off as miners. Due to their height, that allows prospective employees to lines—two closed couplets—with When they took to the wharves, classify their gender one of three ways: the first rhyme a play on the name The dockworkers called them stevedwarves. female, male, or other. In Swedish of the subject. Readers are invited (1) It is the author’s contention that this Clerihew would fail this translates to choosing from the to submit clerihews for “The the Turing test. words hon (she), han (he), or hen Clerihew Corner,” with the under- (2) “Made us laugh too hard at tales” is an anagram for “the (go figure). For Sensus representative standing that submissions cannot late author Douglas Adams.” With thanks and acknowledg- Johan Welander this is simply a ques- be acknowledged or returned, nor ment to Meyran Kraus who created the anagram, placing tion of “letting you as an individual will all be published. third in the May 2001 Anagrammy Awards. decide for yourself how you want to be defined.” Left unsaid is how Welander

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 49 : L e tt e r T o a m e r i c a : possibly take is as a compliment, as being the first letter of the Persian G.K. Chesterton in the New York American Xerxes. And Scotch Presbyterians might claim it as St. Andrew’s Cross; true sons of the Kirk being well assured that St. Andrew was a Scotsman and Presbyterian. But it does not seem to me that these four excellent persons would be any nearer to each other; so long as they contemplated these four separate meanings. It could hardly create a better understanding, being founded on a misunderstanding; and though I have every sympathy with the proponent’s good will, I think this Crosses and Cross Purposes particular expedient is an error. The chief danger just now is here was a time when we were Eastern race, as a letter of their alpha- false unity under some figure of told that all creeds and phi- bet. So Moslems would say that the speech, or feature of journalism, or losophies said the same thing, moon was their moon; Hindoos that symbol or slogan or what not. The but expressed it under differ- the moon was the circle of recurrence; politician is already only too prone ent symbols. It was merely a Parsees that the moon was probably to make a promise that may be taken Tmatter of different dumb alphabets; really the sun; and so on. Then they as two precisely opposite things by one man feeling that the gesture of would all be brothers, because each the two sections of his party. I do not sprinkling water, the other that the thought the same letter stood for a think it well for the priest and the gesture of flinging firebrands at the totally different word. prophet to be, in this very debased assembled company, best expressed This puzzles me even more than sense, all things to all men; nor shall this fine shade of meaning. The mis- the previous paradox. In a sense, I sup- we find peace in making an idol of sionary eating dates in the Sahara and pose, it could be done. We could take Janus, that double-faced deity, whose the savage eating missionary in the something like the letter X and make gates were always open because all Sandwich Islands (I dare not hope they a unity out of its ambiguity. Christians the world was at war. were named after missionaries made might understand it as the first letter into sandwiches) had each been struck in Xmas; Agnostics as the Unknown From New York American, December by the same thought; but expressed it Quantity in algebra; Zoroastrians might 12, 1931 according to a different etiquette. Per- sian priests sacrificing bulls to Mithras, Punic priests sacrificing babies to Moloch, and English curates teaching babies in Sunday School had merely varied the pantomime of expression for the same indwelling thought. I always had my doubts about it; but they do not concern me here. What interests me here is that this theory has now been reversed. Instead of saying that men may have many symbols but the same thought, somebody now suggests that they should have the same symbol and many thoughts; or any thoughts; or no thought at all. A most sincere and enthusiastic lady announced to me, among other things, that she found a symbol that all religions would accept; something, let us say, like the moon with some arrangement of lines across it; said to be recognizable by some as a church ornament and by others, of

50 Volume 13 Number 6, April/May 2010 THE CHESTERTON REVIEW The Journal of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture Seton Hall University

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