Hilaire Belloc

“ From Walter Pater, that exquisite of letters, to the robust Hilaire Belloc may seem a long journey. But there is, I insist, this similarity between these contrasting writers, both are poets, and both are known to fame by their prose.
For proof that Walter Pater was a poet, it is necessary only to read his Renaissance Studies or his interpretations—unsound but fascinating—of the soul of ancient Greece. Often his essays, too delicately accurate in phrasing or too heavily laden with golden rhetoric, seem almost to cry aloud for the relief of rhyme and rhythm. ”

“ Now, Hilaire Belloc suggests in many of his prose sketches that he is not using his true medium. I remember a brief essay on sleep which appeared in The New Witness—or, as it was then called, The Eye Witness—several years ago, which was not so much a complete work in itself as it was a draft for a poem. It had the economy of phrase, [xv] the concentration of idea, which is proper to poetry.
But it is not necessary in the case of Hilaire Belloc, as it is in that of Walter Pater, to search pages of prose for proof that their author is a poet. ”

“ He turned to a very portly man, quite bald, who kept his eyes so close shut that one might have thought him blind; but Professor Higginson knew at that word that he was standing in the presence of Lord Biggleton, and he suffered that mixture of pleasure and apprehension which Dons suffer in the presence of the great.
He wondered who the first speaker might be. If this bald-headed man with eyes shut fast like a pig was Lord Biggleton, why then the well-groomed man with iron-grey hair and the single eye-glass, who was so familiar, might be the greatest in the land. ”

“ The rolling landscape of the Midlands was to his left and right. The lane ran along a ridge that commanded some little view upon either side. It led him northwards, and he could see in the clear air, for the moment smokeless, the tall chimneys of Ormeston. They were perhaps five miles away, and the Professor prepared to cover that distance. His heart was shot with a varied emotion, of exultation at his morning freedom, of terror that his evil deeds might have gone before him. But he was determined upon his duty under that cold dawn. ”

“ Professor Higginson was not a little astonished to see the same smile suddenly appearing and disappearing on the face three or four times about nothing in particular, and directed towards no one. A little more experience of the world would have enabled him to label the features and the man, for that smile goes with the Ministry of the Fine Arts, and no less a one than Sir John Hooker stood before him. But Mr. Higginson had got no further than Lord Biggleton, that was enough for him! ”

“ There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.”
Who having read these four lines, can forget them? And who but a poet could write them? But Hilaire Belloc has not forced himself into this high mood, nor does he bother to maintain it. He gaily passes on to another verse of drollery, [xix] and then, not because he wishes to bring the poem to an effective climax, but merely because it happens to be his mood, he ends the escapade he calls an Ode with eight or ten stanzas of nobly beautiful poetry. ”

“ I tapped him on the shoulder (whereat he started) and spoke the great word of that valley, _'molinar'_. It opened all the gates of his soul. He smiled at me like a man grown young again, and, beckoning me to follow, led radiantly up the sluice to where it drew from the river.
Here three men were at work digging a better entry for the water. One was an old, happy man in spectacles, the second a young man with stilts in his hands, the third was very tall and narrow; his face was sad, and he was of the kind that endure all things and conquer. ”

“ The Professor assented through his gag with a voice like the distant lowing of a cow. The strong grip that held his wrists pulled his arms behind him, the taxi door was opened, and he was thrust out, still held by the hands. He poised himself upon his bound feet, and whoever it was that had spoken—he had a strong, young voice, and looked broad and powerful in the half-light behind the lamps—began unfastening the handkerchief at his ankles. Professor Higginson was not a soldier. ”

“ He does not delve into mediæval tradition in quest of picturesque incidents, he merely writes what he knows to be true. His Faith furnishes him with the theme for those of his poems which are most likely to endure; his Faith gives him the “rapture of an inspiration.” His Faith enables him, as it has enabled many another poet, to see “in the lamp that is beauty, the light that is God.”
And therein is Hilaire Belloc most thoroughly and consistently a democrat. For in this twentieth century it happens that there is on earth only one genuine democratic institution. ”

“ But there is something more democratic than [xxvii] wine or love or war. That thing is Faith. And Hilaire Belloc’s part in increasing the sum of the world’s beauty would not be the considerable thing that it is were it not for his Faith. It is not that (like Dante Gabriel Rossetti) he is attracted by the Church’s pageantry and wealth of legend. To Hilaire Belloc the pageantry is only incidental, the essential thing is his Catholic Faith. ”

“ It isn't in this town at all. It isn't in England. It 's a place my firm looks after in the Hebrides—wonderful old place, you know—deserted. A Manse it was. Now the history of that house——" he was continuing volubly, when the Professor checked him.
"Not at all! Not at all!" he said angrily, "I tell you it is somewhere close by here! In Ormeston!"
"My dear sir!" said Mr. Kirby, opening wide eyes, "how can you know that a duplicate of the house I am thinking of——?"
"I 've told you already," snapped Higginson. "In these visions one has connotations of atmosphere, and so on." ”

“ He seemed, for the moment, not so much the Merchant as the Senator, the Free Bridgeite of the great old days, and his nephews could not but admire the lofty air, the direct glance, the eloquent vibration of voice which accompanied this mood.
“I for my part,” continued the old gentleman, now transformed by the recollection of his part in public life, “did not fear to speak openly in the Council and (such was my love for my fellow-citizens) even in the market-place. I was untiring in explaining the simple economic principles underlying the policy of The Free Bridge. ”

“ The rain still fell. The wet street still stretched out before them.
"It has been given to many men," began the Reverend Charles again in a totally different tone, this time the intellectual interrogative, "to see the hidden places, but your chance?"
Professor Higginson said nothing, he was beginning to feel uncomfortable again. He was not a materialist—what man of his great attainments could be? But on the other hand there was such a thing as going too far in the other direction. Then he reasoned with himself. The Reverend Charles had no weapon. ”

“ He slipped off his greasy lizard-skin of a dressing-gown as though he were preparing deliberately for some evil deed. He tore and struggled himself out of that maleficent green, fur-lined cloth; he spat on it; then he rubbed clean the place where he had spat, and cursed it lengthily and with a nasty voice in a language that is not ours. Now and then his talons of hands made as though to tear the fabric. He snarled at it and clawed at it twice—but he would not damage it; it would fetch twenty pounds.
The two Englishmen and the Crusader drank together. ”

“ Outside, the crowd still denser but silent as ever, the berline passed, and the sections saluted—a reversed salute, on either side; it was within a furlong of its goal when, from a platform outside the Parliament building, a young member of the Royalist right, drawing himself well up that he might be observed, lifted his hat and very gravely and pronouncedly made obeisance to the Crown.
The spell was broken. There was a scuffle, a hubbub, a general war; the slowly-moving crowd crested into weapons as a deep swell at sea will crest into foam. The postillions of the berline urged their horses ”

“ The wise man who really wants to see things as they are and to understand them, does not say: “Here I am on the burning soil of Africa.” He says: “Here I am stuck in a snowdrift and the train twelve hours late”—as it was (with me in it) near Sétif in January, 1905. He does not say as he looks on the peasant at his plough outside Batna: “Observe yon Semite!” He says: “That man’s face is exactly like the face of a dark Sussex peasant, only a little leaner.” He does not say: “See those wild sons of the desert! How they must hate the new artificial world around them!” ”

“ Her eyes were sunken, and of these one dully watched her foes, one had lost its function in the damp half-darkness of the cells: it turned blank and blind upon the rabble that still followed the walking jolt of the two cart-horses and the broad wheels. At the head of those so following, an actor-fellow pranced upon a horse, thrusting at her by way of index a sword, and shouting to the 399people that they held the tigress here, the Austrian. In the midst of those so following, an American eager to see elbowed his way and would not lose his vantage. ”

“ The Arab boy, who was dark, erect, and strong, said, ‘God sends you these. They are five francs.’ She answered, ‘God be with you. I cannot pay.’ When, however, he made to go away silently, without bargaining, she said, ‘God forgive me, but I will buy them’; for she thought to herself, ‘perhaps I can sell them again for more,’ for Lions are rare and wonderful beasts. So she took her five-franc piece from beneath a leaden statue of St. Anthony in the window, and she paid the Arab boy from beyond Aurès, from the Sahara, and she said, ‘God save you, the lioness will follow the scent’ ”

“ He opened it. Two men were outside whom he knew. Each was burly and strong. Each carried upon a well-fed body a large, sufficient, beefy face. Each had the bearing of a trained, drilled man. The one who stood somewhat forward as the superior had something approaching to kindness in his intelligent eyes, and both had the eyes of brave men—though not of loyal ones.
"Well, Sammy?" said the one in command.
"Oh, Mr. Ferguson! Mr. Ferguson!" came in Mr. Montague's half-voice.
"Well, Sammy," said Mr. Ferguson again, "you nearly lost some of your paint that time! ”

“ This merchant was reputed among the people of the place to be of a singularly cunning and secretive temperament, a character which (you may think it strange!) they admired as though it were the summit of human wisdom. I confess that I found him, in the matter of Kzaran carpets at least, very different from his reputation. A more garrulous old gentleman never trod this earth. He was in a perpetual stammer of excitement, and though I was careful to lead him by the most roundabout roads that he might have time to cool his ardour, the delay did but seem to increase it. ”

“ Then with infinitely greater force, with a thud like a battering ram, came the consideration that he was by way of meeting a sum the like of which was fantastic beyond the powers of any but one man in millions. Under the deadening blow of that fairly obvious discovery he reeled back into the consolation which he had already found on that day, not so long past, when he had ordered with perfect simplicity in the corner of Berkeley Square the purchase of fifty-thousand barbarous things called Touaregs of which he knew not anything at all. ”

“ Can any songs of the sort receive higher praise than that? Children, too, appreciate The Birds and Our Lord and Our Lady. Nor is that wonderful prayer rather flatly called In a Boat beyond the reach of their intelligence.
Naturally enough, Hilaire Belloc is strongly drawn to the almost violent simplicity of the ballad. Bishop Percy would not have enjoyed the theological and political atmosphere of The Little [xxvi] Serving Maid, but he would have acknowledged its irresistible charm. There is that wholly delightful poem The Death and Last Confession of Wandering Peter—a most Bellocian vagabond. ”

“ It hates being. Hilaire Belloc has said that the modern soul hates proportion and limitation. They are both affirming the same truth, because the condition of all being save God is limitation. Integrated Christian humanism accepts the finite goodness that constitutes the nature of man. Out of this affirmation the soul can build of itself a work of art; without this affirmation, man gives himself over to the darkness in the suicide of self-alienation. ”

“ I'll put no man under a cloud till I've made certain that it's not lost and hiding of its own. If it's not found, why then it'll be time to begin."
It was Marjorie who found the decision to break off the battle. She got up suddenly.
"Good night, Mr. Collop," she said. "I understand all about it now. We leave it to you."
"Thanks, Miss," said Mr. Collop. "That's the right spirit! You leave it to the perfessional man, and you'll never regret it! Is it good night to you, sir?" he added in a voice as loud as ever, stretching out a firm hand and seizing that of the Home Secretary. ”

“ What is the meaning of that?'
'Sire!' cried St Michael, in a voice that shook the architraves of heaven, 'they are worshipping You!'
'Oh! they are worshipping me! Well, that is the most sensible thing I have heard of them yet, and I altogether commend them. 'Continuez,' said the Padre Eterno, 'continuez!'
And since then all has been well with the world; at least where Us continuent.
And so, carissimi, multitudes, all of you good-bye; the day has long dawned on the Via Cassia, this dense mist has risen, the city is before me, and I am on the threshold of a great experience ”