 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pearce and this is The Authority. Hello I'm Joseph Pearce and welcome to this episode of The Authority and the authority we're going to be looking at this time is Hilaire Belloc, a great favorite of mine and one who is very very important upon my own journey to Christian conversion, my own journey to the Catholic Church. So in many ways it's a joy for me to be able to pay my tribute and homage to this great Catholic writer and I wrote a biography of Belloc and again as with my biography of Chesterton who was another major influence in my conversion it was an act of thanksgiving. I had to thanksgiving to God for giving me Belloc but also an act of thanksgiving to Belloc for giving me God or at least playing a significant role in my coming to Christ but apart from that act of thanksgiving the act of homage there were other reasons why I chose to write a biography of Belloc and so I want to maybe just talk about why that was before we move into who he was because obviously I'm going to then draw on what I learned in the researching and writing of that biography. First was that the existing biographies of Belloc were all unsatisfactory. Robert Spates was good but unfulfilling not comprehensive I didn't think and was also written shortly after Belloc's death so it was a long time in the past but at least it was sympathetic and Spates did no Belloc but it was out of print as well so not available and then A.N. Wilson's more recent biography was written when Wilson was on his path from Christianity to atheism so he's moving in the wrong direction and there's this element of the sort of the jaded almost cynical view of Belloc's philosophy and theology his faith that sort of animated that although Wilson is a great writer and I enjoyed the biography and learned a lot from it it was clearly not the definitive biography of Belloc it still needed to be written so both of those major biographies of Belloc being out of print and not entirely satisfactory I thought time was ripe for writing writing a new biography of Belloc and I also thought that Belloc needed to emerge from the shadow of Chesterton so that George Bernard Shaw who was a friend of both both men he dubbed Chesterton and Belloc collectively as as the Chester Belloc in other words the two men were seen so synonymously that you couldn't tell them apart you couldn't tell about what their beliefs were one believed the same thing as another as the other and although there's an element of truth to that they were certainly great comrades in arms allies in a common struggle against the enemies of the church good faithful defenders and warriors of the church militant even Chesterton was a warrior of the church militant before he even joined the church militant largely because of Belloc's influence but we'll get to that but I just thought it was time for he'll ever lock because it would be fine if the two men as as is evident or suggested by by George Bernard Shaw's dubbing of them as the Chester Belloc and what he said is they're like two halves of a rather amusing pantomime elephant and for those of you that don't know what a pantomime is because it's a singularly British thing a pantomime horse so pantomime in general is sort of like a lampoon rambunctious festive musical stage presentation usually at Christmas then based loosely normally on some fairy story it's great fun certainly not deep art but but but but just jolly rambunctious and jolly and one of the one of the set characters stock characters in the pantomime is the pantomime horse and it's the front part of the horse is a man standing up upright with the horses wearing the horse's head and the back part of the horse is the man who's obviously leaning forward around the waist of the man in front with his hind legs being the hind legs of the horse making one outfit and they walk around as the pantomime horse because Belloc and Chester to him a little bit on the large side and Shaw was very thin and extremely health conscious and vegetarian and frowned upon obesity that that he made Chesterton and Belloc the rather using pantomime eddy front but the point is it's implicit that he saw them as equals and he saw them as being seen as being equal in the eyes of their contemporaries but in the years in the decades since the death of both both men Chesterton has enjoyed a significant revival and I rejoice at the Chesterton revival that we've seen in the last 30 years or so but Belloc really has sort of been left behind lagging in Chesterton's shadow and one of the reasons I want to write the biography was to bring Belloc out of Chesterton's shadow so that he could stand in the light of his own right as a significant author of the 20th century in his own right so what I want to do for the remainder of this episode is to maybe outline why Belloc deserves to be taken seriously and in some cases I want to compare him with with Chesterton so as a poet for me Belloc is a superior poet to Chesterton Chesterton wrote a handful of extremely good poems more than a handful to be fair more than a handful but Belloc was more took more care of this poetry it's more of a craftsman so we see for instance the use of poetry in Chesterton's novel The Flying Inn which is sort of especially drinking songs we see something similar in Belloc's book The Four Men which would be a significant influence on the war poet Rupert Brooke but that's another question we then see Belloc's poem Lines to Adon this humorous invective Belloc could humorously lack charity is that a contradiction no I think it's a paradox that he vents his spleen against this Oxford professor who'd attacked Chesterton but it's meant to be rampunct rambunctious and funny and if we read it with the sense of humor that's required I think that it either removes any lack of charity or at least softens it considerably in either way it's a rambunctious romp and a very very entertaining poem which if we have much more time I would read but by all means take some up take up some homework and make a note Lines to Adon by Hilaire Belloc his defense of Chesterton he's attack upon the dawn that they'd attack my Chesterton in fact then we have a poem like Tarantella this sort of first of all masterful control of meter so the poem Tarantella's a dance Tarantella is a Spanish for spider or is it Italian for spider one or the other it's it means spider you want to tell this language I think the Tarantella might be an Italian dance but anyway the poem is set in the the French Spanish Pyrenees up in the Pyrenees Mountains because do you remember an inn Miranda do you remember an inn and it's a melancholy lament of the abyss that separates the reality of a moment so this particular evening when they were dancing the Tarantella and drinking wine the color of the tar this beautiful memory of an evening up in the mountains and no more Miranda no more the second part of the poem because it was years ago and that that moment can never ever be brought back so this melancholy I say masterful control of meter because the first part of the poem is set to the sort of to to the rhythm of the dance the Tarantella you could actually dance the Tarantella to the meter of the poem and the second part is very much this is not the meter for dancing this is the meter for lamenting and then the end of the road by Bellock was was the poem that ended his wonderful book the path to Rome which we should say more about what we could do that now in fact as introduction to the poem I'm talking about Bellock as a poet still that Bellock is in Tall in northern France which is the garrison town where he spent his time doing service in the French army and Bellock by the way as regards biographical details is an Anglo-Frenchman his father's French his mother was English he was born in France but they had to evacuate their home because within months of Bellock's birth the Franco-Prussian war broke out and the Prussian army the German army invaded France and in actual fact that when they returned when the Bellock's returned to their home they found that the house had been trashed their family portraits used as target practice by the troops the advancing Prussian troops and Bellock's family escaped on the last train so it said to the north to the Normandy coast to get to England had they not caught that train Bellock would not have survived almost certainly would not have survived his first year because what happened immediately after that was the siege of Paris and during the siege of Paris almost every child under 12 months old died as a victim of the famine it was a consequence of the siege so he escaped by the skin of his teeth except he didn't because he didn't have any teeth yet he was a baby so Bellock's French father dies when he's young and so he's raised then in England in the county of Sussex which is his Shire he writes many wonderful poems about Sussex but he felt very intensely to be a Frenchman so he didn't feel English he felt as if he's a man of the Shire man of Sussex his own particular Shire his own particular county south of London on the south coast Sussex the land of the south Saxons but as a nation he identified as a Frenchman with his father's side and that's what he volunteered because he lived in England his mother was English he didn't he wasn't going to be conscripted into the French army but he volunteered for his national service so anyway he returns to Toul where he spent this time and was delighted to see the parish church had been renovated and this sort of Bellock saw this as a metaphor for the church herself so this individual church being a metaphor for the universal church and he decides an act of thanksgiving that he's going to walk from Toul in northern France by a straight line to Rome which is going right over the the high mountains of the Alps he furthest and he's going to arrive by in time for the feast for Mass to hear Mass on the feast of St. Peter and Paul in the end of June of course and he's not going to use any wheeled thing so he's going to walk the whole way he's not going to sleep in a bed and he's going to go to Mass every day and this is a very deep but this is one of the greatest books in the English language and may you to change my judgment because it's a profound meditation upon the pilgrimage of life man as homo viator man as a pilgrim man man on a journey man on the quest for heaven and the pilgrimage of life is sort of is the world's here Bellock's journey is a metaphor for the journey of his life and by extension he's an everyman figure it's an extension of all of our lives so what he's done he set out good intentions but making lots of rash vows so by the time he gets to Rome he has used a wheel thing he has slept in the bed he well the other thing is he was not going to do he hasn't gone to Mass every day they say that was a silly thing to do because if you're walking you can't guarantee you got to be somewhere to hear Mass every day but the one thing he does do is he does arrive in Rome in time to hear Mass the feast of St. Peter and Paul he does arrive at his destination having broken many of his vows and of course this is really that if the rash vows in a Dante in in in in the divine comedy there's a warning against rash vows taking vows recklessly these reckless vows were all broken but the one good vow the one the vow to actually get to the eternal city itself a metaphor for heaven at the end of life he did succeed in doing so at the end of it a part appropriately enough there's a poem called the end of the road we just discussed that the path to Rome this is a poem about that path that trudge that trek pilgrimage to Rome the end of the road by Hiller Bellock in these boots and with this staff 200 leaguers and a half walk tie when tie paste I tripped I marched I held I scalped I slipped I pushed I panted swung and dashed I picked I forwarded swam and splashed I strolled I climbed I crawled and scrambled dropped and dipped I ranged and rambled plodded I hobbled I trudged and tramped I add in lonely spinnies camped I and in haunted pine woods slept I lingered lighted limped and crept I clambered halted stepped and left I slowly sauntered roundly strode I and oh patron saints and angels that protect the four evangels and you prophets well mayores that enchente well minorities virgins at confessors cacophessores chief of whose peculiar glories est in our religious star a aqua or are a ex or are a a clam are a conclam are a clamantas calm clamoribus pro nobis pecker paribus let me not conceal it road I for who but critics could complain of riding in a railway train across the valleys and the highland with all the world on either hand drinking when I had a mind to singing when I felt inclined to nor ever turned my face to home till I had slaked my heart at Rome I hope you think that's a glorious I do what I love about it or my many things love about it right in the middle there in parentheses he breaks into prayer and it's a it's a prayer of contrition prayer of confession for the breaking of his vows in fact the specific one here he rode I he used a wheeled thing but nonetheless he never turned his face to home that he had slaked my heart at Rome kept his eye on the goal of heaven ultimately homo viator I've got to keep it there because I might be tempted to read some more in fact I am I don't feel like I'm not it's not in here no I'm not I'm not gonna be Tarantella because it's not in my book which is a sin of omission I'm going to have to live with so another poem if I want to mention is Hanukkah Mill and again this is a poem about the ruin of England using a mill now as a metaphor Bellot bought a house in Sussex called Kingsland and adjoining the house on the property was a windmill and he Bellot brought that back into working order and actually became a miller self a grounding flower and but Hanukkah was a different mill different part of Sussex but it the fact that it's in ruin it's a wrecked windmill is a metaphor for the wreckage of England and it ends with you know never a plowman under the Sun never a plowman never a one that basically agrarian England has been destroyed by industrialism it's a lament but I will read one more time before we move on from Bellot the poet so I want to also talk about Belloc in many of the other things he wrote he was a man of letters like Chesterton who did not stay within one genre but one of his greatest poems is Twelfth Night and I love this because it's it's sort of like it's got the melancholy of W.B. Yates also a touch of the elven talking about it we can imagine this is not in just being set in Sussex which it is the names of the places tell us that Belloc's beloved Shire but but it could be set in Middle Earth as you will see I hope as I was lifting over down a winter's night to Petworth town I came upon a company of travellers who would talk with me the riding moon was small and bright they cast no shadows in her light there was no man for miles and near I would not walk with them for fear a star in heaven by gumbag load and ox across the darkness load we're at a burning light there stood right in the heart of Gumbag wood across the rhyme their marching rang and in it and in a little while they sang they sang a song I used to know Gloria in excelsis domino the frozen way those people trod it led towards the mother of God perhaps if I had travelled with them I might have come to Bethlehem send shivers down my spine he meets a ghostly company who are they elves who knows but they're on their way to Bethlehem all right so that's Belloc the poet I could say much more he's a great poet I think one of the finest poets of the 20th century one of the poet finest poets of English literature period but if we're going to compare Belloc as a and Chesterton as regards poets I think if I were forced to choose I would say Belloc was the greater poet but as regards novelists because they both wrote several novels that Belloc is not as good a novelist in my judgment as Chesterton Chesson wrote some very good novels all in the cross comes to mind but the man who was Thursday is a masterpiece of English literature Belloc wrote nothing of that quality in fact some of his earlier novels are somewhat I think somewhat stodgy and forced but he did write right at the end of his life a lighter novel which I see a sort of a it's called Belinda I see it some of a pastiche and a gentle satire on on novels such as those of Jane Austen but it's it's it's full of melancholy and mirth that's that's a winning combination a lot of Belloc is full of that mixture of melancholy and mirth the end of the road poem we just read is full of that melancholy and mirth and he Belloc himself thought that it was the best thing he'd written except for the path to Rome which we've already spoken about I do want to return to the path to Rome briefly because Belloc also pioneered and and and is the master of a particular literary genre which I call peripatetic pharagos not easy to say especially if you had a two or three glasses of good French Claret and Belloc would approve of you if you did peripatetic pharagos what does that mean well a pharagos is something where like a miscellany hot spots are bringing various things together that might at first sight seem unrelated and peripatetic is something that you do when you're walking so this genre and the reason I called it that is he wrote three distinct books that are journeys that the the narrator and perhaps people with him on a journey and while they while they're on the journey they have conversations or thoughts or musings that lead them in all sorts of directions away from the actual path that they're on the path to Rome I've mentioned already but there's a wonderful book called the Four Men and I mentioned it briefly earlier the Four Men basically is Belloc is on his way to Europe and he's sitting at a pub in Robert's Bridge which is on the eastern edge of Sussex his Shire his beloved place and he decides it's not basically he's not going to do the business the business of the world he's going to pay homage to his homeland his Shire and he decides to walk the length of Sussex from east to west it's about 75 miles and in the course of the journey he meets three other people hence the title the Four Men so he is myself the narrator he meets an old man called Grizzlebeard he meets a young man called the sailor and a younger man called the poet and it's the conversations of these four people and their various different outlooks on life obviously the old man Grizzlebeard with his experience ceasings differently from the youthfulness of of the poet what a rambunctiousness of the sailor with myself as the mediator shall we say and what we really see here is these are four facets of Bellach's own character his own personality he was Grizzlebeard he was someone who was trained historian he got a first-class honors degree in history from Oxford University he wrote many books of history he understood the history of the church as a Catholic he's Grizzlebeard right he's a man who is imbued with and lives in the spirit of tradition but he's also a poet and he's also a sailor he has his own boat yacht called the Nona and sails to France and sails around the coast of England and so it's the various aspects of Bellach's own personality in in discussion with himself which is the sort of thing that happens by the way if you've ever been on the long hike solo you have all these conversations in your in your mind and then I mentioned the cruise of the Nona the other one is when he's cruising around the coast of England that's not the other peripatatic ferago we need to be wrong because we're running out of time Bellach was also a distributist in other words he was a someone who wrote about Catholic social teaching and his political and economic ramifications what the Catholic church would call subsidiarity or subsidiarism what we might now in more popular parlance called localism against globalism Bellach and Chesterton both wrote books about basically Catholic social teaching which they call distributism Bellach's two most important books in this are the Servile State and an essay on the restoration of property and Chesterton's most important book is a book called The Outline of Sanity on this topic so Bellach as a historian wrote several works on English history and biographies of English historical figures aimed at correcting what he called the Tom Ford Protestant history the the bigoted Victor Whitewash's their own world in history version which is what most British people brought up with so he writes if you like what might now be called revisionist history a corrective view of history he also writes a book called well HG Wells wrote an atheistic outline of history called The Outline of History and Bellach wrote a response called Mr Bellach sorry no a companion to HG Wells' Outline of History HG Wells wrote a response a book of his own entitled Mr Bellach Objects and Hillair Bellach wrote a book of his own to that response called Mr Bellach Still Objects so four books two by Wells two by Bellach giving the two views the atheistic view of history world history and and the Christian view Chesterton joined the fray was inspired by this exchange between Wells and Bellach to write his arguably his masterpiece The Everlasting Man like Chesterton Bellach was a great defender of the faith and his two great books of apologetics defending the Catholic faith are survivals and new arrivals and the great heresies and these are books that look at the history of the church from the perspective of of the errors that have that have attacked and assailed the church and how the church emerges triumphant over these these historical errors. Survivals and new arrivals the survivors are the old heresies that remain the new arrivals the new ideas most of which are just the old heresies with new labels and the great heresies is similar on a similar theme he mentions by the way in that book that 9 11 September the 11th is a date that should be in every Christian's memory as the date on which the the the islamic onslaught of Europe was lifted at the Siege of Vienna and of course 9 11 would come back to haunt us when when islamists attacked the United States on that date in 2001 all right so we need to wrap up now because we are running out of time so I do think that Chesterton and Bellot need to be seen synonymously side by side shoulder to shoulder and Bellot needs to emerge from Chesterton's shadow that they both show that the catholic faith saves us as Chesterton said from being the from being slaves of our own time and being slaves to the zeitgeist so as the peripheral passes away only the perennial has permanence and Belloc writes about the permanent things ultimately the things of the catholic faith so writing of Belloc is really writing about the permanent things he does not die he does not die and on that note i'm going to end with that note some lines from Belloc's book the four men he does not die who can bequeath some influence on the land he knows or dares persistent into wreath love permanent with the wild hedgerows he rides his loud october sky he does not die he does not die and on that defiant and immortal note will end this discussion of the great hill there bellot please do join me next time the next episode of the authority until then goodbye god bless and good reading this has been an episode of the authority with joseph pierce brought to you by tan for updates on new episodes and to support the authority and other great free content visit the authority podcast dot com to subscribe and use coupon code authority 25 to get 25 percent off your next order including books audio books and video courses by joseph pierce on literary giants such as Tolkien chesterton lewis shakespeare and belloc as well as tans extensive catalog of content from the saints and great spiritual masters to strengthen your faith and interior life to follow joseph and support his work check out his blog and sign up for email updates and exclusive content at j pierce dot co and thanks for listening