 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 praised their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello, I'm Joseph Pierce and welcome to this episode of The Authority when we will be discussing the great G.K. Chesterton, the great favourite of mine. And we're looking at the genius of Chesterton. So who was Chesterton and what's the significance of his life and legacy? Well, we'll start with just a few biographical facts, amongst other things I wrote a biography of Chesterton called Wisdom and Innocence. Wisdom and Innocence, a life of G.K. Chesterton. And as I mentioned briefly in the episode on Belloc, but it's even more so with Chesterton, that I wrote my biography of Chesterton as an act of thanksgiving to God for giving me Chesterton and an act of thanksgiving to Chesterton for giving me God because I always say and I think it's true that undergrace and obviously undergrace to God be the glory but undergrace Chesterton was the biggest single influence upon my conversion to Christianity. So whenever I'm speaking about Chesterton, I'm aware of this sense of gratitude which should animate everything I say. So who was he? When he was born in 1874 in London, had a happy childhood, went to the Slade School of Art, which is part of the University of London, so an art school. Most of his friends went to Oxford or Cambridge, but he went to study art and Chesterton by the way is significantly a good artist. We'll say more about that presently. He drops out of art school having experienced the atmosphere of the 1890s in the art school in London. This was the height of the power of the English decadent movement. Oscar Wilde is the godfather, but decadence in general. Chesterton recoils in horror from his experience of that and also the experience of some of the very dark and decadent philosophies such as that of Schopenhauer which was certainly an influence upon him briefly before he recoiled from it. So then after dropping out of art school, he develops what he did call a first of all philosophy of optimism. So this was where as he had followed, he never practiced a decadent lifestyle he said, but he certainly entertained decadent ideas and certainly decadent philosophies and there was a period of time when he took the philosophy of someone such as Schopenhauer seriously. So perhaps we should say a little bit about that. So one of the consequences of the idealism of the philosophies of the Enlightenment when in one sense to ultimately the positivism of philosophical materialism, atheism, the belief that everything spiritual or metaphysical was an illusion or a human construct and was not real, that the only thing that was ultimately real was matter. So this is materialism. But then there was another branch of modern philosophy which was also atheistic but not in terms of materialism. Philosophers such as Schopenhauer taught that that we couldn't be sure that even matter existed. The only thing that we could be sure existed was mind. In other words, that everything could just be a figment of mind and that everything we think could be phantasmagora, right? These are things that we make up, we experience and the only real and so far as they are from our mind, they have no physical reality. So Chesterton sort of at his lowest point had sort of at least almost accepted and embraced this idea that even matter didn't matter because it didn't exist and that the only thing that existed was mind. But then he recalled in that and he said, well, even if that is true, then what exists in the mind is not a nightmare but a daydream. In other words, that I can be grateful for the things that I see, the beauty that I see irrespective of whether it has any material reality, a sunset, whether it be a phantasm or something real is nonetheless beautiful. So this was the beginning of his recoil from this reductionist idealism of Schopenhauer where there's nothing ultimately but mind to ultimately conversion to the realism as understood in the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas of Christian conversion. He said, Chesterton said, I hung on to reality by one thin thread of thanks. So this one thin thread of gratitude is what kept Chesterton from going insane. In his book Orthodoxy, there's a chapter called The Suicide of Thought and ultimately the conclusion that Chesterton comes to is the suicide of thought, which is what this reductionist philosophy is. Suicide of thought inevitably and variably ends to thoughts of suicide. The suicide of thought ends with thoughts of suicide with despair. Well, Chesterton was saved from that through one thin thread of thanks and that is rooted in his humility. You've heard me say in other episodes, if you've watched other episodes of the authority, this five-fold process of perception which we get ultimately from, which we see in Thomas Aquinas in the summa, that the virtue of humility gives the sense of gratitude. Gratitude opens your eyes in wonder. Wonder leads to contemplation. Contemplation leads to dilation of the mind and soul under the fullness of reality. That is exactly the process that Chesterton follows to conversion. It's because he has humility and refuses to bow before the demon of pride and believe that his own mind is all that there is. It's through the humility that he has that sense of gratitude, that one thin thread of thanks that leads him out of the darkness with eyes wide open in wonder to the contemplation that leads to conversion. So he meets Hiller Baloch in 1900. That friendship would be hugely influential on both men. Not enough time to say much more about it. I'll talk about it a little bit in the episode on the authority of Baloch. In 1901, a year later, he marries Francis Blogg and they are together till death do them part. Chesterton's death 35 years later in 1936. And I sometimes say about Francis's importance to Chesterton is what Chesterton said in his biography of William Cobbett, the late 18th, 30th, 19th century political commentator and reformer historian, that he said that the Cobbett's wife was the powerful silence in his life, that you don't see her, but her powerful presence is there nonetheless. And that's true of Chesterton, the GK Chesterton whom we love would not be the GK Chesterton whom we love if it wasn't for the woman whom he loved, Francis Blogg, the powerful silence in his life. So then we get from 1900 when Chesterton was first published, almost overnight, he becomes a household name as an essayist in the Daily Newspapers. People love his sense of humor, the way he employs paradox to make people think and see things from different angles, his positive view of reality. So he's very popular. When he writes a book called Heretics, attacking certain leading intellectuals a day, and someone said, I will take Chesterton's attack on contemporary heretics seriously when he tells us what his orthodoxy is. And that leads to his writing and publishing in 1980s book orthodoxy, which is his first public announcement, if you like, of his Christianity. By this time he's an Anglican following in his wife footsteps. She's a practicing Anglican. And the book I sometimes see as being similar to CS Lewis's book, mere Christianity, it's a popular defensive Christianity looking at the highest common factors that unite all Christians at all times, at least most Christians at most times. I think Lewis says something along the lines of this highest common factor of mere Christianity being that which all Christians have believed at all times or something like that, which would certainly be the Trinity and the incarnation as that bedrocks. But with Chesterton, he takes the Apostles Creed. So he takes the Creed of the Apostles and sees that as the statement of the core essence of a true and real understanding of life that he follows and expounds upon in orthodoxy. Once Chesterton becomes known as being a Christian writer, he loses friends, he's now treated with more suspicion by the secular world that he embraced him with open arms when he was writing about what I found in my pocket on running after one's hat or these or the skeleton or these things that were not, should we say, doctrinally controversial, not doctrinaire. But once he announces himself as a Christian with orthodoxy, he becomes known as a Christian writer and then then it's forward, hence forward is seen with somewhat with suspicion by the secular world, though of course loved by Christians. He loses his brother in World War One. It's a moment of absolute devastation for him actually leading to a period of anger and bitterness, which is uncharacteristic of him. In 1922, he is received into the Catholic Church. That is the the the the the consummation of a love affair that had been going on for many years. At this point, many people had already been brought to Catholicism through Chesterton's influence before Chesterton became a Catholic himself as an irony. So his post conversion writing is the most important probably are his his biographies of St Francis of Assisi and St Thomas Aquinas and probably most importantly, his book The Everlasting Man. We'll say more about that in a moment when I when I go through the different genre which he excelled. So Chesterton died in 1936 tragically young at the age of 62 and was was named by Pope Pius XI in a telegram on the occasion of his memorial service Requiem Mass at Westminster Cathedral. He was named by the Pope as Fidei Defensor Defender of the Pope, sorry Defender of the Faith Fidei Defensor and and this was ironic because the previous person to be given that title was Henry VIII 400 years more than 400 years earlier and that was because Henry VIII wrote a treatise a defense of the seven sacraments of the church against Martin Luther's teaching for which the Pope gave him the title Fidei Defensor. Ironically, of course, he would then break with the church and make himself head of his own church in England and would dissolve the monasteries and converts, put Catholic priests and laity to death for not going along with his tyranny. So, there's an irony there and the greater irony by the way is that that phrase Fidei Defensor still appears on English coins to this day and when Chesterton was awarded that title by the Pope, the English media were up in arms. How dare the Pope give Chesterton a title that belongs to the king, showing the ignorance of history when it was the Pope who gave that title to the king in the first place. But again, what an honor and says something about Chesterton's importance that he is the first Englishman for 400 years to be granted the title Fidei Defensor by the Pope and unlike the previous person who received it to actually warrant and deserve it. Okay, so there if you like the first half of this episode we've given you an overview of Chesterton and his life, his importance and his works. I want to now break it up a little bit in terms of the genre, the various types of writing that he did. I want to begin with Chesterton the essayist and we don't really have time to read from any of the essays but I want to allude to some of my favorites in an essay called On Running After One's Hat. By the way, you have to admire Bellock and Chesterton for the fact they can write essays on anything. That Bellock wrote a volume of essays which is entitled on anything and then you've got another volume entitled on something and another volume entitled on nothing and the one volume ultimately taking the whole thing to its logical, if somewhat absurd conclusion. The volume of essay is just called On but they could write on basically everything and did. So Chesterton wrote an essay entitled On Running After One's Hat and the point of it apart from having fun and there's nothing wrong with that being the point of something in itself is that the reason we find that the site of a man running off his own hat, you know, in the wind is the absurdity of it and it's because we treat the human person with dignity. There's a dignity to the human person rooted in the fact we made in the image of God and therefore to see something that's this person that has inherent dignity that's almost divine doing something ridiculous like running after his hat is something which evokes humor. He does say by the way that he can't see how running after one's hat is any less absurd than 22 men running after a ball made of leather in other words playing soccer. He's obviously not a great lover of what the English would call football and he also says there's nothing it's not anywhere near as absurd to see a man running off his hat as running after his wife. So again this great humor but in the midst of of of of that essay there's the wonderful thing the wonderful aphorism and Bellock Chesterton's essays are full of both great paradoxes and great aphorisms and many great aphorisms which are also great paradoxes. So he says that an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered he can reverse that of course and inconvenience is an adventure rightly considered. How do we cope with things that are inconvenient to us? Do we do we loathe them detest them? Is it is it is it a near occasion of sin? Do we lack charity towards our neighbor or even towards God? Do we curse or do we see it as an adventure? It's a challenge there. So in the midst of an essay on on running after one's hat we have a great a great aphorism of wisdom which challenges us. He wrote another essay called What I Found in My Pocket where he basically he says wonderfully he says that I can basically I basically know where everything is in my life as long as it doesn't find its way into my pocket. Once it finds its way into my pocket into that fathomless abyss he says I bid it a a wistful virginian farewell. It's never going to be seen again. Again this wonderful sense of humor and he talks about putting all these things out of this pocket and a piece of string and a pocket knife and and then he uses that as a way to go on a flight of fancy about about human civilization and and and each of these serving as a symbol of a metaphor for some aspect of of humanity and human history and human culture and of course right at the end of the novel he mentions the one thing he couldn't find and that was his railway ticket so why has he put his hat in his pocket because an inspector's got on the plane a train he's asking him for his ticket and he's looking rummaging through his pockets finding everything under the sun except the one thing he's looking for which is his railway ticket it's the the charm the charm i think chesterton it there's it chesterton is charming there's a chestertonian charm which animates his essays and one of the reasons he's so attractive but he can write in many different ways so there's also a much more serious absolutely humor-free essay called the called the Diabolist in other words the devil worshipper and this recounts a real-life incident when he was at the slave school of art at art school when he meets a decadent who basically is living a debauched lifestyle and getting a pleasure out of the lives of women that he ruins um and um and there's some words he says at the end uh that if i he's not to him not to chesterton they have a an argument discussion about these things but as chesterton's passing he hears this man talking to one of the least reputable of his friends so another decadent and that his friend says but no one can possibly know who can possibly know and the and the diabolist says well if i do that i will no longer know the difference between right and wrong um so there's and then chesterton wonders what was the one thing this man's already lived such a disillusioned life ruining the lives of people with his life of lechery and debauchery what was this one extra thing that even he paused that and we also learned in the course of the essay that this man died and he says we could probably call it suicide although it was delivered with what we might call tools of pleasure so whether it's a drug overdose either we don't know so a tragic figure and one who has succumbed and been seduced by the life of decadence and is killed by destroyed by it having ruined the lives of others in the process from one extreme to the other we have a chesterton turning another famous favorite essay of mine is called the shop of ghosts and this is a story a like a fairy story and chesterton it says he's got his nose to a window like a child he's an adult chesterton remains childlike another reason that chesterton is so charming is his childlikeness um and he's got his nose to the window in this toy shop looking for the various toys and he goes in and and looks around there's an old man with a white beard behind the counter and he goes up to him and tries to buy one of the toys and tries to give the man money so oh no i i never take money um i'm rather old-fashioned i i never take money and and chesterton is old-fashioned or thought it's a rather new fashion to not take money surely everybody takes money so i'll never have never have he said well you might be so chesterton says laughing that what who are you father christmas father christmas of course being the british name for santa claus and and the man replies yes i am actually i'm i am father christmas and he says well i'm dying uh i am dying i'm sick and i'm dying because none of these modern people you know believe in me in the spirit of christmas and then various characters enter the shop and they get further and further back in time so chalice dickens enters the shop for instance um and eventually the oldest person who enters the shop is robin hood so we go back to middle ages uh and uh all of them say oh father christmas you don't look a day older uh and you say well yarn i've always been always been old always been sick dying and then dickens says who else chose dickens chesterton a great lover of dickens a great admirer of dickens says now i understand you will never die and it's a bit like what colkin says that he says as a christian i see history of the long defeat with the only occasional glimpses of final victory the long defeat is never the final defeat and and this this we see epitomized here in the spirit of christmas and father christmas himself every generation he's dying but he never dies and probably my favorite of all of chaston's essays and i've spent a long time lingering on the essays but why not um is the architect of spears and this is a vision of gothic architecture and this time what sets chaston's muse flowing uh is an optical illusion so he's visiting lincoln he's looking at the towers of lincoln cathedral and all of a sudden the towers begin to move miraculously across the landscape and he realizes after a few seconds that the optical illusion is that what he thought was that the roofs of of shops in the foreground with the cathedral on the hill were actually the roofs of furniture vans and these furniture vans drive off but the optical illusion might look as if that the the cathedral in the background was one moving and then there's this whole image of gothic architecture being the church militant right the church at war with the world on the march across the landscape of europe with the towers like giant legs marching with bells clanging with the spires like spears pointing heaven heavenwood glorious essay chesterton the poet well you know chesterton described himself as a jolly journalist and he was and because he's a jolly journalist like all journalists he wrote the deadlines and he had to write in haste and he could write a brilliant and beautiful essay very quickly he could sketch beautiful caricatures and that's the that's the the clue for chesters a poet chesters an artist a visual artist was a caricaturist all of his art are caricatures that's his that's his chosen form chesterton would never take the time to paint a meticulously realistic or even impressionistic landscape or a portrait he did things quickly on the spur of the moment with spontaneity as a caricaturist well he he's a caricaturist as a poet his poetry is written also in haste and often with caricatured grotesques and we can have here i think fairly easily i can probably find this is the book that i published with tan go poems every catholic should know and know chesterton is in this book should take no time at all to read his poem the the donkey and you will get the spirit of caricature in this when ashes flew and forests walked and figs grew upon thorn some moment when the moon was blood then shoddy i was born with monstrous head and sickening cry and ears like errant wings the devil's walking parody on all four-footed things the tattered outlaw of the earth of ancient crooked will starved scourge deride me i keep my secret still fools for i also had my hour one far fierce hour and sweet there was a shout about my ears and palms before my feet because it's the exaltation of the humble christ doesn't choose an arab charger to to for his triumphal march into jesuslam on palm sunday when they're laying pies before his feet he comes on an a humble ass on a donkey the devil's walking parody and all four-footed things the exaltation of the low and the humble but it's written all the chestern's poetry is well not all the vast majority chestern's poetry is clearly written quickly they're simple poems mostly short poems and this means that his poetry is very uneven he writes some very good poetry and some some truly great poetry but he writes a lot of media mediocre poetry as well there's a line in one of his poems called the the sort of surprise give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes those terrible crystals made alive in me more more something than all the things they see give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes and a wonderful poem called by the by babe unborn which we don't have time to read but in this age of abortion is more powerful than ever the voice of the poem is the child in the womb his masterpiece in poetry is the battle of the white horse a very long epic poem about an elf with the greats saving of england from the pagan vikings he wrote another good poem called the secret people it's the history of england in a few verses perhaps his greatest poem of all is lapanto poem about the christian victory over the turks the naval battle of 1571 which probably saved europe from islamic domination and my favorite poem is a poem called the strange music which is one of the most mystical poems on the on the mystery of marital love that i've ever ever read so i'm going to say briefly about cheston's other genre in the time we have left obviously we could spend other episodes of the authority on chesterton should we wish but cheston as a novelist was also a jolly journalist so his novels also were written in haste caricaturist as a novelist the jolly journalist as a novelist but in spite of that we have some wonderful novels with great lessons for today the part of knotting hill is about localism versus empire the flying in is about big government versus local resistance to big government man alive is about the the connection between wisdom and innocence the protagonist innocent smith is truly innocent therefore the worldly who are truly guilty think he's guilty there's the paradox the ball in the cross is a parable about the difference between argue arguing and quarreling with the two protagonists the atheists and the catholic learning to love each other because of their genuine authentic love for truth as opposed to the relativists who in the in the other characters who don't think truth is worth defending or fighting for and cheston of course is a defender of orthodoxy we've mentioned his book orthodoxy and his book heretics attacking heresy and his book the everlasting man his book on uh Thomas Aquinas um and sinfaces of the cc um i think that's probably all we do have time for here that this chesterton um as an as a as an essayist as a poet as a novelist as a catholic apologist um as an historian was uh could write across all sorts of genre all sorts of forms and all sorts of topics and always have that great wisdom which is singularly chestertonian thanks be to god for gk chesterton thanks be to you for listening thanks for as always listening to the authority i'm joseph pierce thanks for joining me uh until next time 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 off your next order including books audiobooks and video courses by joseph pierce on literary giants such as Tolkien chesterton louis shakespeare and bellach 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