Chesterton Gilbert Keith - The Well and the Shallows-1935, Chesterton Gilbert Keith

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The Well and the Shallows
By
G.K. Chesterton
The Well and the Shallows
By
G.K. Chesterton
(1935)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
AN APOLOGY FOR BUFFOONS
MY SIX CONVERSIONS
I. THE RELIGION OF FOSSILS
II. WHEN THE WORLD TURNED BACK
III. THE SURRENDER UPON SEX
IV. THE PRAYER-BOOK PROBLEM
V. THE COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM
VI. THE CASE OF SPAIN
VII. THE WELL AND THE SHALLOWS
THE RETURN TO RELIGION
THE REACTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS
LEVITY--OR LEVITATION
THE CASE FOR HERMITS
KILLING THE NERVE
THE CASE OF CLAUDEL
THE HIGHER NlHILISM
THE ASCETIC AT LARGE
THE BACKWARD BOLSHIE
THE LAST TURN
THE NEW LUTHER
BABIES AND DlSTRIBUTISM
THREE FOES OF THE FAMILY
THE DON AND THE CAVALIER
THE CHURCH AND AGORAPHOBIA
BACK IN THE FOG
THE HISTORIC MOMENT
MARY AND THE CONVERT
A CENTURY OF EMANCIPATION
TRADE TERMS
FROZEN FREE THOUGHT
SHOCKING THE MODERNISTS
A GRAMMAR OF KNIGHTHOOD
REFLECTIONS ON A ROTTEN APPLE
SEX AND PROPERTY
ST. THOMAS MORE
THE RETURN OF CAESAR
AUSTRIA
THE SCRIPTURE READER
AN EXPLANATION
WHY PROTESTANTS PROHIBIT
WHERE IS THE PARADOX?
-/-
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
I WAS monstrously attracted by a suggestion that these
essays should bear the general title of "Joking Apart."
It seemed to me a simple and sensible way of saying that the reader
of these pages must not look for many jokes, certainly not
merely for jokes, because these are controversial essays,
covering all subjects on which a controversialist is challenged,
and not particular subjects chosen as they are chosen by an essayist.
It is an awful revelation of the world of unreason into
which we have wandered, that people more practical than I
are convinced that if I say that this is apart from joking,
everyone will think it is a joke. To my simple mind it seems
very much as if I wanted to call a book, "Away from Jericho,"
and everybody assumed that I had accepted a very general
recommendation to go to Jericho. Many essays could be written
on this strange modern sensibility to mere verbal allusion,
or the introduction of certain words, even to repudiate them.
But the only point here involved is that these essays are all
under the conditions of controversy, which involve the absolute
necessity of disgusting those with whom we disagree on any subject,
and boring those who are indifferent to that subject.
I have had, if I may say so, a very happy and lucky literary life;
and have often felt rather the indulgence than the impatience
of critics; and it is in a perfectly amiable spirit that I
note that it has involved a certain transition or change.
Up to a certain point, I was charitably chaffed for saying
what I could not possibly mean; and I was then rather
more sharply criticised, when it was discovered that I did
really mean it. Now anybody driven to the defence of what
he does really mean must cover all the strategic field
of the fight, and must fight at many points which he would
not have chosen in fancy, but only in relation to fact.
He cannot hope to deal only with heresies that amuse him;
he must, in common fairness, deal seriously with heresies
that bore him. He must settle down to stating his real
reasons for contradicting real statements, which are not made
by him as statements, and not chosen by him as subjects.
All this seems to me, with my mild rationalistic mind,
excellently summarised in the words, "Joking Apart."
Anyhow, this is why I have opened this series with an essay
called "An Apology for Buffoons," because it is in some sense,
I will not say a swan-song (that ornithological metaphor
would not occur to me in relation to myself), but at least
a sort of summary of my more frivolous mode of writing,
and all that I still think may be fairly advanced for it.
Unfortunately, a man fighting what he honestly believes to be
false can hardly preserve the glorious immunity of a buffoon.
He is forced to be serious, and even those who despise
him most are driven desperately to take him seriously.
But there is one other reason for adding this preliminary note,
in connection with the preliminary essay. Since I wrote it,
I have come to appreciate much more warmly the admirable work
of Mr. T. S. Eliot; and I should like to offer an apology to him
for some errors that occurred accidentally in the article itself.
It was not he, but another critic, with whom I confused him,
who made the particular point against alliteration; and the quotation
from him was made from memory; and I have not been able to trace
it so as to reproduce the exact order of words, the inaccuracy,
if any, does not affect the argument; but the article which I
had already planned to put in the same magazine, called "Apology
to T S Eliot" would have gone far beyond any such verbal point.
It would be adding impudence to injury to dedicate a book
to an author merely on the claim of having misquoted him;
but I should be proud to dedicate this book to T. S. Eliot,
and the return of true logic and a luminous tradition
to the world.
-/-
AN APOLOGY FOR BUFFOONS
THERE was a time when I appeared in the Mercury, covered with blushes,
to acknowledge a friendly criticism which asked if my journalism held
enough of autobiography; and I attempted with great embarrassment to give
thanks for the criticism--and the compliment. My blush has faded; my
sense of decency has departed; and I appear now with the shameless purpose
of being, not merely autobiographical, but grotesquely egotistical.
In a spirit of brazen contradiction, I even propose to be egotistical
in disproving the charge of egotism. Nay, in a yet wilder illogicality,
I claim to be egotistical in the interests of other people.
It is a contradiction in terms; but as the higher mathematics,
the higher morality, the higher religion and the rest now entirely
consist of contradictions in terms, I go on with a ghastly calm.
And I do it because I cannot think of any other way of drawing attention
to a real problem of literature, and especially of popular literature
(if I may dare to dream of that contradiction also) except this particular
line of argument, which inevitably involves the mention of my own case--
let us hope along with more amusing ones.
It is commonly alleged of writers that they resent mild
criticisms as infamous personal imputations, taking them
as seriously as slanders. Without affectation, I fancy my own
case to be rather different and even opposite. Most of the
adverse criticisms written about me strike me as quite true.
Where I am in invincible ignorance, I suppose, is in a proper
sense of the importance of the things thus rightly reproved.
For instance, a very sympathetic reviewer said that I used
too much alliteration; and quoted Mr. T. S. Eliot (see apology
in Introduction) as saying that such a style maddened him to the point
of unendurance; and a similar criticism of my English was made,
I think, by another American writer, Mr. Cuthbert Wright.
Now I think, on fair consideration, that it is perfectly
true that I do use a great deal too much alliteration.
The only question on which these gentlemen and I would
probably differ is a question of degree; a question of
the exact importance or necessity of avoiding alliteration.
For I do strongly maintain that it is a question of
avoiding alliteration--and even that phrase does not avoid it!
If an English writer does not avoid it, he is perpetually
dragged into it when speaking rapidly or writing a great deal,
by the whole trend and current of the English speech;
perhaps that is why the Anglo-Saxon poetry even down to Piers Plowman
(which I enjoy hugely) was all alliteration. Anyhow, the tendency
in popular and unconscious speech is quite obvious, in phrases
and proverbs and rhymes and catchwords and a thousand things.
Time and tide, wind and water, fire and flood, waste not,
want not, bag and baggage, spick and span, black and blue,
deaf and dumb, the devil and the deep sea, when the wine
is in the wit is out, in for a penny, in for a pound,
a pig in a poke, a bee in a bonnet, a bat in a belfry,
and so on through a myriad fantastic changes of popular imagery.
What elaborate art, what sleepless cunning even, must these more
refined writers employ to dodge this rush of coincidences;
and run between the drops of this deluge! It must be a terrible
strain on the presence of mind to be always ready with a synonym.
I can imagine Mr. T. S. Eliot just stopping himself in time,
and saying with a refined cough, "Waste not, require not."
I like to think of Mr. Cuthbert Wright, in some headlong
moment of American hustle, still having the self-control
to cry, "Time and Fluctuation wait for no man!"
I can imagine his delicate accent when speaking of a pig
in a receptacle or of bats in the campanile. It is a little
difficult perhaps to image the latter critic apparently confining
himself to the isolated statement, "Mr. Smith is spick,"
while his mind hovered in momentary hesitation about how to vary
the corresponding truth that Mr. Smith is span. But it is quite
easy to conceive an advanced modern artist of this school,
looking for some sharp and graphic variation in the old colour
scheme of black and blue. Indeed, we might almost invent a sort
of colour test, like that which somebody suggested about red
grass and green sky as a test of different schools of painting.
We might suggest that Decadents beat people black and yellow,
Futurists beat them black and orange, Neo-Victorians beat them
black and magenta; but all recoil from the vulgar alliteration
of beating them black and blue. Nor indeed is the reference
to these new and varied styles irrelevant. Some of the more
bizarre modern methods seem to me to make it rather difficult
to have any fixed criticism at all, either of their style or mine.
Take, for instance, the case of Mr. T. S. Eliot himself.
I recently saw a poem of his praised very highly and doubtless
very rightly; though to some extent (it seemed) because it
was a poem of profound "disillusionment and melancholy."
But the passage specially quoted for commendation ran,
if I remember right:
"the smell of steak in passages."
That quotation is enough to indicate the difficulty I mean.
For even style of this severe and classic sort is after all
to some extent a matter of taste. It is not a subject for
these extreme controversial passions. If I were to say that
the style of that line maddened me to the point of unendurance,
I should be greatly exaggerating its effect on the emotions.
I should not like everything to be written in that style;
I should not like to wander for ever in passages stuffy with steak
(there we go again!) but I cannot think these questions of
style are quite so important as these pure stylists suppose.
We must be moderate in our reactions; as in that verse
specially headed "The Author's Moderation" in the Bab Ballad
about Pasha Bailey Ben--another great poem written in a tone
of melancholy and disillusion.
To say that Bailey oped his eyes
Would feebly paint his great surprise;
To say it almost made him die
Would be to paint it much too high.
I may be allowed to open my eyes for a moment at some of the
literary models thus commended to me; but I shall soon close them
again in healthful slumber. And when the more refined critic
implies that my own manner of writing almost makes him die,
I think he over-estimates my power over life and death.
But I have begun with this personal example of alliteration;
because a question like that of alliteration is not so
simple as it looks; and the answer to it applies to much
more important things than my own journalistic habits.
Alliteration is an example of a thing much easier to condemn
in theory than in practice. There are, of course, many famous
examples in which an exaggerated alliteration seems quite wrong.
And yet those are exactly the examples which it would be
most difficult for anybody to put right. Byron (a splendid
example of the sort of writer who does not bother much about
avoiding anything) did not hesitate to say of his hero at Quatre Bras
that he "rushed into the field and foremost fighting fell."
That is so extreme that we might well suppose it described
the end of the life and adventures of Peter Piper.
But I will trouble anybody to alter one word in the line
so as to make it better; or even so as to make it sense.
Byron used those words because they were the right words;
and you cannot alter them without deliberately choosing
the wrong words. This is more often the case in
connection with alliteration than many people imagine.
I do not mean to claim any such exalted company when I say that,
on this particular point of conduct, I agree with Byron.
But Byron does not stand alone; Coleridge, a person of some culture,
could burst out boisterously and without stopping for breath:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free.
and I do not see that he could have done anything else.
I do not think anybody could interfere with that foaming spate
of Fs, if the verse that followed was really "to follow free."
There is a problem behind all this which is also illustrated in
other ways. It is illustrated in the other much controverted question
of puns. I know all about the judgments regularly cited as if from
dusty law-books in the matter. I know all about the story that
Dr. Johnson said, "The man who would make a pun would pick a pocket."
How unlucky that the lexicographer and guardian of our language,
in the very act of purging himself of puns, should have plunged
so shamelessly deep into the mire of alliteration! His example,
in that very instance, would alone be enough to prove the first part
of my case, even when it is brought forward against the second.
Johnson spluttered out all those p's because he was an Englishman
with a sense of the spirit and vigour of the English language;
and not a timid prig who had to mind his p's and q's by using
them in exact alternation with a pattern. But if it came
to the old joke of invoking authorities, it would be equally
easy to invoke even greater authorities on the side of the pun.
Also there is something that is more important to my purpose here.
It would not only be easy to quote the puns of the poets;
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Chesterton Gilbert Keith - The Well and the Shallows-1935, Chesterton Gilbert Keith

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