Once in awhile I am reminded that the writings of G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) are so incalculably valuable that every serious reader must imbibe at least some of his books. Since the latest reminder came across urgently from an articulate young man who said that he was of the Reformed faith, I durst not shake the admonition off. Not wanting to remain a dunce for having never drunk deeply from at least a couple of Chesterton’s wells, I procured two of his books. These I acquired in handsome secondhand form.
Literary criticism being one of my cherished pursuits, the Chesterton book that seemed the most approachable and interesting to me, is called, A Handful of Authors. I was made even happier when I saw that the first essay in this book was on a writer about whom I had some knowledge, Robert Louis Stevenson, the genius author of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. My knowledge of the subject would make judging the essay an easy thing, I thought, and might help me to judge the merits of the author of said essay.
The first paragraph of the first essay is, I’m pretty sure, the first paragraph by Chesterton that I have ever read. It is not long; but my concern about it is enormous. After telling an anecdote from the childhood of his subject, Chesterton remarks that the Scottish religion of Stevenson’s day was so ‘over-formalised’ that the soul of a man was thought of as a kind of ‘younger brother’ who had to be saved ‘at all costs.’ It makes no difference that this composite essay was written in 1901 and 1907, over a decade before Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922. It doesn’t matter because the Church of England that he converted from calls itself Christian too, albeit not as zealously as does the Roman Catholic Church. Both churches maintain the biblical fact that sinners need salvation. Is it over-formulaic to think of a soul as needing to be saved? No Christian would belittle the important matter of the salvation of souls, especially in writing. It is plain that Chesterton did not believe that souls need saving; he was not a Christian when he wrote this essay. This is the first thing that I learned from A Handful of Authors. And he certainly became no Christian in 1922. A sinner does not become saved by converting to Roman Catholicism, but by converting from it. Roman Catholicism does not draw sinners to faith in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross, but to works, the Mass, prayers to Mary, and superstition.
In paragraph two the absurd claim is made that ‘no one can know what Stevenson’s life was’ but that Stevenson must have had ‘glimmerings’ of what it was. I suspected by this remark that I was being set up to receive a rewriting of Stevenson’s life. I didn’t expect the rewrite to be so noticeable, though. To note down some of Stevenson’s ‘actions’ would be like ‘zoology,’ says Chesterton. It would be akin to treating the subject like an animal. Who says this but a critic who wants to conceal the sins of the man he is writing about? He gives us permission to be angry for Stevenson’s honor if Stevenson were to be referred to as a ‘faddling hedonist,’ as if that is the worst thing he should be called. Why should we be rallied to Stevenson’s defense in the first place? Chesterton prefers to call Stevenson’s lifestyle ‘gaiety,’ which he stupidly terms ‘the most difficult of all virtues.’ Is ‘gaiety’ included in the list of virtues marked down in Galatians 5? No, but ‘temperance’ is. The only time ‘gay’ is mentioned in the Bible, it has to do with clothing (James 2.3.) ‘Gaiety’ is not a virtue; or if it is, it is not a biblical one. Here are some biblical virtues to consider—four of them: humility, faithfulness, generosity, and temperance. So it is more difficult to be gay, by which Chesterton means ‘merry,’ than to be humble, faithful, generous, or temperate? Are drunkards not commonly gay? Which is the harder thing to do? Is it harder to drink too many rounds of rum with your buddies and to be made gay in the process? Or is it harder to abstain from drinking too many rounds of rum with your buddies and to be humbled by the abstinence, not to mention the scorn? It is more difficult to be humble in your actions, faithful to your wife, generous with your money, and temperate with the bottle than getting gay with the boys in a bar, where humility is not exhibited, where generosity is practiced to induce drunkenness, and where faithfulness is likely to fail and fall more than anywhere else. Chesterton warns that only the ‘sevenfold critical spirit’ might not see that ‘gaiety’ is the most difficult of all virtues. If the reader does not go along with Chesterton’s praise of Stevenson’s ‘gaiety,’ then, which really means, in plain, honest words, Stevenson’s lifestyle of ‘sin,’—if he does not want to go along with calling evil good and good evil—he must be a hyper-critical fellow! Styling Stevenson a ‘faddling hedonist’ or a man who exhibited ‘gaiety,’ moreover, is to slap Stevenson with the velvet glove that his sins do not deserve. Stevenson was not ‘a Puritan in fancy dress,’ like we are told. He wore gay clothing; but he was not a Puritan in any sense. Notwithstanding the high moral value of some of his stories, especially his Misadventures of John Nicholson, he was an unprincipled, contemptible fellow who was as far from being a Puritan as a cow pie is from a piece of cake. His was not the ‘gaiety of the mystic.’ Calling his gaiety the ‘gaiety of a mystic’ is not merely misleading; it is a lie. Stevenson was a rebellious son who, as an adult, took advantage of his enabling father. He was still taking an allowance in his mid-thirties. And it was a lavish one—enough for a person to drink to excess and to whoop it up on, which Stevenson lazily did year after miserable year.
