When Chesterton is Angry
When Chesterton Is Angry
By NEITH BOYCE
TWO recent books of Mr. Chesterton's are before us: his first play. “Magic”,[1] and “The Flying Inn”,[2] a moral burlesque.
“Magic” is very, very clever and highly amusing. This “fantastic comedy” was presented last year in London; it seems theatrically effective. Its characters are a duke, a doctor, a clergyman, a conjuror, the duke’s secretary and his nephew and niece. There is a suspicion of madness in the Duke’s family. His nephew has just returned from America, and stands for common sense. His niece walks in the park by moonlight and sees fairies. In the prelude, she meets the Conjuror there and takes him for a fairy or elemental spirit, whereas, the play proves, he is merely a master of these.
With this introduction we are quite prepared for the scene in the Duke’s drawing-room. The Doctor, who has been physician to the Duke's family in Ireland, complains to the clergyman about their eccentricities.
“I suppose it's quite correct to see fairies in Ireland. It’s like gambling at Monte Carlo. It’s quite respectable. But I do draw the line at their seeing fairies in England. I do object to their bringing their ghosts and goblins and witches into the poor Duke’s back-garden and within a yard of my own red lamp. It shows a lack of tact.”
In fact, everybody objects to fairies, except the Duke, who is so broad-minded, or absent-minded, that he subscribes to everything. The nephew from America is furious at the idea of his sister walking by night in the park and meeting a stranger and calling him a fairy. Then the stranger enters and announces himself as the Conjuror, whom the Duke has hired to divert his niece's mind from fairies. Patricia is broken-hearted at the loss of her fairy-tale. But then the Conjuror produces his magic. Bowls of goldfish appear from nowhere, pictures and furniture move about, the doctor's red lamp is changed to blue—and the young man from America is driven into a brain-fever because he can’t explain how it is done. He is only saved by the Conjuror's telling him a lie—that he did it by a trick. Whereas the truth is, of course, that the real elemental spirits, real devils, were concerned, and everybody feels them in the room, though the Duke says it must have been electricity.
The Duke is perfectly delicious, and the Conjuror is a very convincing magician; and Patricia is such a nice girl that we are very glad she doesn’t lose her fairy-tale after all, except by its “coming true”, when she goes off with the Conjuror.
We wish Mr. Chesterton would write some more plays as delightful as this one. And we hope he won’t write any more books like “The Flying Inn.”
This is an anti-prohibition tract, and Mr. Chesterton imagines a tremendous scenery for it. which is meant to be amusing—at least, we suppose so—but isn't, except in spots. We are told that the aristocracy of England, personified by Lord Ivywood, has formed an alliance with Islam, personified by a little Moslem in a green turban, to make war on the grape and to suppress English inns. Opposed to this unholy compact, and standing for the liberty of old England, and for the right of the people to get drunk as their forefathers did, is an Irish adventurer, a strong man who uproots olive-trees and inn-signs; a “bull man”, with a “bull-head”, red hair, and “great staring bull-eyes.” This is the hero, Patrick Dalroy.
Well, inn-signs have been torn down all through England by the authorities; and a law put through by Lord Ivywood that nobody can have a drink—except, of course, in clubs and private houses unless there is a sign on the premises. This blow at democracy is parried by Patrick Dalroy. He uproots the sign of the last inn and carries it throughout England, planting it wherever he chooses and thus creating the “Flying Inn”; creating also disturbance, riot and broken heads wherever he goes, discomfiting the police and driving Lord Ivywood to distraction. Now all this might be very entertaining, and we are convinced that it’s Mr. Chesterton’s fault that it isn't. He has over-burlesqued; his hand is heavy. And the reason is that he is angry. You may write a good tract when you feel fanatically, but not a good story, especially if you insist on being funny.
Somebody has called this book “Gargantuan.” Perhaps. But we leave it to any unprejudiced reader whether Gargantua isn’t, all too frequently, an awful bore.
Not that we would deny that “The Flying Inn” is, in spots, amusing. For example, the scene at the cubist picture exhibition; and Lord Ivywood's proposal to the girl. And there are things like this:
“The next best thing to really loving a fellow-creature is really hating him; especially when he is a poorer man separated from you otherwise by mere social stiffness. The desire to murder him is at least an acknowledgment that he is alive. Many a man has owed the first white gleams of the dawn of Democracy in his soul to a desire to find a stick and beat the butler.”
And there is at least one good song. Hump's song about the road and the reason why it curves about:
The road turned first toward the left
Where Pinker’s quarry made the cleft;
The path turned next toward the right
Because the mastiff used to bite;
Then left, because of Slippery Height,
And then again toward the right.
We could not take the left because
It would have been against the laws;
Squire closed it in King William’s day.
Because it was a Right of Way—
And so on, for about a page more—deliciously English.
We are not going to quote any of the dull things. The reader can find those for himself.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1951, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 72 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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