The Ball and The Cross and The Edwardian Novel of Ideas John Coates

The Ball and the Cross
and the
Edwardian Novel of Ideas
John Coates
J O H N COATES, who holds degrees from Cambridge and Exeter Universi-

ties, is the author of Chesterton and the Edwardian Cultural Crisis (1984).
DK Coates lectures in English at Hull University in Yorkshire, and has re-
cently become an Associate Editor of the Review.
The Ball and the Cross (1910) belongs to a genre w h i c h has probably
never been adequately examined or assessed, a genre not generally ac-
cepted as "art" i n its o w n time and a leading casualty o f subsequent criti-
cal fashions and orthodoxies. The genre m i g h t be v a r i o u s l y labelled.
"Philosophical novel," "novel o f ideas," even "religious novel" (both i n
the wider meaning o f that term and i n the particular sense applicable to
Chesterton's w o r k ) are all appropriate terms to indicate one or more o f its
aspects. The problem f o r reviewers i n 1910, as f o r critics later, was not so
much to give a name to this type o f w r i t i n g as to accept it (at least poten-
tially) as literature. Early responses to Chesterton's book suggest that re-
viewers had a clear picture o f what constituted a serious novel and that
they d i d not see The Ball and the Cross as fitting into that picture. "Excit-
ing and v i v i d experience" ^ though it might be, the book, they believed,
was marked by "extreme and wanton carelessness." It is indeed, as Robert
L y n d put it i n The Daily News, "not so much a novel as a phantasmago-
ria." However, he added, a "philosophical romance is almost critically i m -
pregnable." Such "literary orderor disorder"^ is outside the rules. " I t is
silly to test this book by the canons o f the novel," ^ says James Douglas
w r i t i n g f o r The Star. It is, according to another reviewer, a "debate f o r a
Portree, Scotland
49
The Chesterton Review
novel" as Shaw's most recent w o r k Misalliance is a "debate f o r a play.'"^

Such comments and others such as calling it "incoherent,"^ and comment-
ing, "For the last quarter I had to confess I was lost,"^ or " M r . Chesterton
has a theory o f f i c t i o n peculiar to himself"^ are almost unanimous on one
point. Chesterton has broken recognised aesthetic rules. I t is this "infrac-
t i o n " w h i c h underlies complaints o f "disorder" and "carelessness."
Such complaints are otherwise hard to explain. I t is impossible to i g -

nore the way i n w h i c h its key image focusses the w o r k and is explored
w i t h i n it. Oddly, James Douglas, the contemporary reviewer w h o called
the book a "gale" and a "literary hurricane"^ and Chesterton "a law unto
h i m s e l f also remarked that the symbolism o f The Ball and the Cross is
"worked out to the bitter end"^ and that, i f i t "had any fauh, i t is symme-
try." Symmetry, whatever its significance, is indeed an obvious feature
o f the novel's narrative structure. I t is explicit i n the opposition o f t w o
characters, Michael and Lucifer, and then o f a second pair, T u m b u l l and
Maclan. The second pair, opposed i n temperament as w e l l as i n creed, re-
spectively f a l l i n love w i t h their opposites, atheist w i t h believer, believer
w i t h a w o m a n at least doubting and deeply troubled. The t w o men meet
on their journeys w i t h opposing moral types, like the Tolstoyan and the
Nietzschean, and they experience contrasting atmospheres: England w i t h
its vagueness, reticence, and compromises and France (or what passes f o r
France) w i t h its logic and clarity. Details o f a careful architecture w i t h i n
the novel might be multiplied, even i f one were not sure o f their s i g n i f i -
cance. O n closer examination, the whole charge o f "carelessness" seems
to dissolve, leaving a more p u z z l i n g question behind. The reaction o f
James Douglas sums it up. For h i m . The Ball and the Cross was hugely
enjoyable and coherent but certainly not "art.''^^ The unavoidable prob-
lem, i n fact, is what d i d such reviewers mean b y "art" and where were
they deriving their ideas o f it f r o m ?
The subsequent treatment o f Chesterton's novels has been largely

conditioned b y expectations and attitudes w h i c h had f o r m e d , or were
f o r m i n g i n the period w h e n the first reviews were written. A popular and
often reprinted textbook supplies this standard verdict and gives a useful
clue, i f one were needed, as to its origin. We are told that "proportion is
the essence o f the serious literary a r t i s f w h o is, moreover, "interested
above a l l i n the personal relations o f his characters." Recent upheavals i n
criticism and new conceptions o f the novel-form current since the 1960s
make such a verdict as this seem curiously dated. M o r e to the purpose, re-
50
cent academic preoccupations such as those w i t h " i n t e r t e x t u a l i t y " and

reader-response, whatever their o w n intellectual limitations and i n spite o f
the pretentious jargon i n w h i c h they are frequently couched, do at least
weaken previously held and extremely limited conceptions o f the novel-
f o r m and o f art i n general. The insistence on "proportion" and "personal
relations" as the marks o f serious purpose i n a novelist reflects the doc-
trines o f Henry James, mediated through N e w Critics w i t h their " w e l l -
wrought u r n " and Leavisites w i t h their " f e h l i f e " o f the emotions. These
doctrines, w h i c h became the cliches o f university literature courses f r o m
1945 to 1965 or later, obtained their h o l d f o r many complex reasons; but,
o f all o f these, the influence and prestige o f Henry James is certainly the
most easily apprehended.
It is, therefore, w o r t h l o o k i n g at one important episode i n James's

victory and at rival views o f the novel-form, current around the date o f
The Ball and the Cross w h i c h that victory helped to erase. Chesterton's
own views about the novel, delivered largely incidentally and en passant
are obviously relevant to such a discussion, but the more theoretically de-
veloped and polemically expressed effort by H . G . Wells to define an alter-
native to the Jamesian creed also deserves attention. Some years ago, such
a suggestion w o u l d have been surprising. Wells, i t was held, had been sig-
nally defeated i n his exchange w i t h "The Master." Even Wells's recent b i -
ographer still accepts that
James's response to Wells, defending art and construction, con-

tinues to be widely quoted, o f course, and every literature major
in America and many reading English in Britain know that James
won the battle. James lives and Wells is dead, or so the received
wisdom proclaims. 13
There were important divergences between the position Wells adopted and
that w h i c h may be extrapolated f r o m Chesterton's contemporary asides
and sententiae. However, the similarities and shared priorities i n their po-
sitions are more numerous and more interesting. B o t h men were opposed
to the ideals o f "high art" and " f o r m " o f w h i c h James was the leading pro-
pagandist, although both admired aspects o f his achievement.
Wells's essay "The Contemporary N o v e l " (1914) is a shorter version

o f an address to the Times B o o k Club o f May, 1911. I n i t , he lays down a
programme f o r the novel-form based on the premise that it is inescapably
moral. The novelist cannot avoid "putting ideas into his readers' heads":
51
The novel has inseparable moral consequences. It leaves impres-

sions, not simply o f things seen, but o f acts judged and made at-
tractive or unattractive.
It is not simply a fictitious record but a "study and judgement o f conduct"

and o f "the ideas that lead to conduct." O f course, the novelist should not
"set up as a teacher" and the novel itself is not "a new sort o f pulpit."
is not a question o f delivering some overt message but rather o f o f f e r i n g a
personal vision, an entire temperament or view o f l i f e . The novelist w i l l
not teach, but he w i l l discuss, " p o i n t out, plead, display." Every novel
w h i c h has stood the test o f time is not only "saturated w i t h the personality
o f the author" 16 but it is marked, also, b y authorial intrusions into the text,
"quite unaffected personal outbreaks." There is. Wells asserts, a great d i f -
ference between the "tense illusion w h i c h is the aim o f the short story"i^
and the looser novel f o r m where changes i n manner between part and part
and "burlesque, parody, invective" are quite appropriate. Such a concep-
t i o n o f the novel is particularly necessary i n a period o f "adventurous and
insurgent t h o u g h t " a n d i n the "atmosphere and uncertainties" o f this
"seething and creative time." The granting o f liberty f o r authorial instru-
sion, and the suggestion that the f o r m o f the novel was a loose one were,
o f course, anathema to James, certain as he was that, " l i f e being all inclu-
sion and confusion and art being a l l discrimination and selection," the
artist must wash his nugget "free o f awkward accretions" and hammer it
into "a sacred hardness." (His comments on such intrusions i n Trollope's
w o r k are w e l l - k n o w n and severe).
These Jamesian doctrines had become w i d e l y disseminated since

their p o w e r f u l articulation i n The Art of Fiction (1884). Wells complained
in 1911, w i t h humorous irritation, that not only was one "continually hav-
ing one's appreciation o f f i c t i o n dashed" b y being t o l d "the story y o u like
i s n ' t a n o v e l " but that, i n 1909, a N o n c o n f o r m i s t paper. The British
Weekly, started "a quite serious discussion" about "the proper length f o r a
novel." This was a mark o f " h o w widespread among the editorial, para-
graph w r i t i n g , opinion-making sort o f people" the notion o f a "definite
f o r m " f o r the novel had become. Such were the notions w h i c h clearly
coloured the minds o f the reviewers o f The Ball and the Cross.
W h a t seems to have i r r i t a t e d James most, however, and to have

sparked the quarrel w i t h Wells w h i c h ended the t w o men's uneasy friend-
ship, was the younger writer's insistence that the novel be a "social m e d i -
ator," broaching the concems o f its readers and "acting as the initiator o f
52
knowledge." 23 Such a novelistic f u n c t i o n w o u l d involve a dialogic rela-

tionship both w i t h the reader and w i t h other writers. The novelist w o u l d
be expecting a reader-response based on discussion, on provocation, on
the exploration o f a shared experience, and one w h i c h assumed on the
reader's part a knowledge o f other relevant texts. Such a novel offered a
different range o f satisfactions different f r o m the aesthetic contemplation
and activity o f the m o r a l intelligence w i t h i n a c a r e f u l l y restricted f i e l d
w h i c h James valued. They were satisfactions, however, that Dickens or
Thackeray w o u l d have seen as legitimate, and understood as a develop-
ment o f some o f their o w n practices.
The contrast between James and Wells was not one between an up-
holder o f f o r m and a supporter o f formlessness. Where James thought i n
terms o f a "point o f v i e w " determining f o r m and style. Wells held to the
notion o f a governing conception. I f that conception was f i r m enough then
a variety o f "points o f view," styles and authorial intrusions were admissi-
ble, even praiseworthy. I t is unnecessary to f o l l o w the quarrel i n detail
into its later u n e d i f y i n g ( i f amusing) stages. James, f o r example, was to
compare Wells's turning "out his m i n d and its contents,"^4 on his readers
to the emptying o f a chamber pot f r o m a high window. Wells was to re-
spond by likening the "elaborate copious emptiness" o f James's novels to
a brightly l i t church without a congregation but " o n the altar, very rever-
ently placed, intensely there. . . a dead k i t t e n , an egg shell, a b i t o f
string." 25 The salient point is diat as literary Modernism developed after
1914, James, f o r many years, was considered to have w o n his case. O b v i -
ously, f o r m and point o f v i e w were paramount and the author d i d not " i n -
trude" into his f i c t i o n , d i d not concem h i m s e l f w i t h public issues, d i d not
initiate knowledge or act as a social mediator. N o w that Fowles's The
French Lieutenant's Woman seems as overworked i n courses on contem-
porary w r i t i n g as accounts o f "The Great Tradition" a quarter o f a century
ago, it is possible to take a more detached view o f die James-Wells con-
troversy.
The reader o f Chesterton w i l l , naturally, w i s h to determine where

Chesterton stood i n what was one o f the most cmcial clashes about w r i t -
ing i n the immediately pre-First War period. The similarities between his
position and that more f u l l y developed b y Wells are obvious. His assertion
that "there is i n all literature a sort o f purpose; quite different f r o m the
mere moralizing o f a novel w i t h a p u r p o s e , " l o o k s very like Wells's de-
mand f o r a novel w h i c h , without sermonising, shall embody the totality o f
53
din author's experience. Chesterton's position here is almost identical w i t h

that o f Wells, although Wells, o f course, w o u l d not have cared f o r the term
"religion":
A l l art is not necessarily moral i n the sense o f being practical.
But all art is religious, because religion includes both practice
and theory, both morality and art. Religion is the sense o f ulti-
mate reality, o f whatever meaning a man finds i n his own exis-
tence or the existence o f anything else.^^
Chesterton's insistence on the "plan o f the idea that is straight like a back-
bone and p o i n t i n g l i k e an a r r o w " has v e r y m u c h i n c o m m o n w i t h
Wells's n o t i o n o f a g o v e r n i n g conception. N e i t h e r p o s i t i o n resembles
James's " p o i n t o f view." B o t h a backbone and a governing conception
give coherence to a w o r k o f art, but neither involves the purification f r o m
awkward accretions involved i n the point o f view. B o t h men see literature
as i n f l u e n c i n g conduct, although Chesterton is less interested than Wells
i n an art w h i c h is the conduit o f new ideas i n a changing time. Rather, he
writes, classic and enduring literature "does its best w o r k i n reminding us
perpetually o f the w h o l e r o u n d o f truth, and balancing other and older
ideas against the ideas to w h i c h we m i g h t f o r a moment be prone." Al-
though these passages come f r o m a later stage o f Chesterton's career, they
are entirely consistent w i t h the views that he expressed at the time o f the
Wells-James controversy and earlier. I t was not a subject on w h i c h his
ideas underwent any substantial change.
Wells and Chesterton give great value to the power o f story i n itself,
the magic o f narrative. For Wells, the j u s t i f i c a t i o n o f any novel lies i n "its
success or failure to convince y o u that the thing was so^^^ For Chester-
ton, i n 1901, people "must have conversation, they must have houses and
they must have s t o r i e s . " I t is an appetite m u c h more fundamental than
the desire f o r art. Wells and Chesterton draw an identical distinction be-
tween the novel and the short story. I n Wells's view, a short story "should
go to its point as a man flies f r o m a pursuing tiger." ^2 For Chesterton, "a
w o r k o f art can hardly be too short, f o r its climax is its merit." ^3 (Hence
the contemporary educated preference f o r the short story). A story, on the
contrary, can never be too long.
Chesterton's attitude to James suggests his relative lack o f interest i n

literary polemics, the eirenic impulse that lies behind m u c h o f his appre-
ciation o f literature and the attempt that he generally makes to understand
a writer's vision and strategies i n their o w n terms. James may have written
about small things but "the p o i n t is the things were things"^4 that w e
54
should have lost i f he had not given them. Chesterton compares James to
Dickens ( w h o m he cannot have been unaware "the Master" persistently
underrated) i n the power o f generating and making v i v i d an incessant out-
put o f ideas. W i t h what, under the circumstances, seems like a hint o f mis-
chievousness, he also compares James to Wells. B o t h men had "real origi-
nality; especially i n the very shape and point o f the tale."^^ I n fact, he
remarks, James's virtues were most obvious i n the short story. I n his nov-
els, the characters treat each other w i t h what, i n l i f e , w o u l d be "an impos-
sible intellectual strain."
I n spite o f these characteristically gentle attempts to bridge the gap

between Wells and James, however, i t is clear that Chesterton's views
were much closer to those o f Wells. Perhaps the most significant o f the
similarities between them lay i n their acceptance o f and readiness to ex-
ploit the literary and cultural facts w h i c h have been explored i n recent
concems w i t h "intertextuality" and "reception theory." The first o f these
terms, i n George Steiner's pungent phrase, is simply
a characteristic piece o f current jargon which signals the obvious
tmth that, i n Western literature, most serious writing incorpo-
rates, cites, denies, refers to previous writing.^^
"Theory o f Reception" is, correspondingly, a somewhat pretentious ex-

pression f o r what are assumed to be the forces operating between texts
and their readers and the modifications that such texts undergo i n different
climates o f response. However tiresome the contemporary academic ter-
minology may be, however, i t w o u l d be hard to deny that, i n these i n -
stances at least, it does indicate (or perhaps obscure) valid critical con-
cems, and concems w h i c h are particularly useful points o f reference w i t h
regard to Chesterton. L i k e Wells, he saw literature as essentially involved
and interacting w i t h its readers m o d i f y i n g and being m o d i f i e d by them.
The w o r k o f art could never be the isolated, perfected entity James de-
sired. I n order to judge a w o r k "fairly," Chesterton pointed out i n 1907,
we must not merely look at it as i f we had never seen it. We must

also look at it as i f we had never seen any o f its effects, o f its
branching influence, o f its million imitations, o f its eulogists, o f
its critics, o f the eulogists o f its eulogists and the critics o f its
critics. As it is we approach a masterpiece like Hamlet through
the haze o f an atmosphere which the masterpiece has itself cre-
ated. . . . How can we discuss how we should have written Shake-
speare? Shakespeare has written us. A n d you and I ( I am sure
you agree) are two o f his best characters.^^
55
Chesterton insists on this l i v i n g relation between reader and writer i n his

praise o f James's work. I n commending James's inventions, he partially
but pointedly rejects the older writer's favourite image f o r the finished
w o r k o f art, the j e w e l , or the polished nugget: "Each small n o f i o n had the
serious thing called valuelike a j e w e l , or, like what is smaller and valu-
able than a j e w e l , a seed."^ Where a j e w e l exists to be admired i n isolated
perfection, a l i v i n g seed germinates, changes, produces f r u i t i n the m i n d .
Indeed, both Wells's and Chesterton's views o f the novel and o f w r i t i n g i n
general were based on an attitude to their readers. Whatever v i e w one
takes o f some o f his ideas, Wells "gave a bright glow to middle and lower-
middle class hopes" 39 o f the prototypes o f Kipps and M r Polly. Chester-
ton's care f o r the C o m m o n M a n and his almost pastoral relation w i t h his
Daily News readers needs no elaboration. B o t h m e n felt an instinctive
sympathy f o r those to w h o m things are done, b y administrators, pundits or
g o v e r n m e n t o f f i c i a l s . ( T h e i r j o i n t c l o w n i n g response to one o f the
Webbs's imposing plans f o r disciplining the lower orders is symptomatic.
Wells recalled how
in the old days o f friendly leisure we amused ourselves with a toy

theatre i n which, by breathing heavily w i t h earnest effort, we
dramatised among other subjects, the M i n o r i t y Report o f the
Poor Law).4o
It is w o r t h noting the similarities i n Wells's and Chesterton's fictional

premises, i n t h e i r v i e w s o f the n o v e l f o r m , and o f the " e f f e c t s " and
"branching influence" o f what, i n each writer, was intended to be a seed
rather than a j e w e l . Never intellectually developed enough to achieve the
(somewhat dubious) status o f a theory, their views, i n spite o f the d i f f e r -
ences between them, do hang together i n a sufficiently coherent f o r m to
suggest at least an embryonic alternative to the Jamesian orthodoxy w h i c h
was to dominate academic discussion unfit the later 1960s and w h i c h still
colours accounts o f Chesterton's w o r k i n some quarters.
The existence o f an embryonic alternative to what became the stan-

dard and o f t e n prescriptive ideal o f the novel, suggests lines along w h i c h
it m i g h t be possible to explore Chesterton's o w n w r i t i n g i n the field. A c -
counts o f Chesterton's novels have f o l l o w e d the lines adopted by the first
reviewers w i t h little significant modification. The novels, we are told, are
a succession o f extravagant or amusing incidents, offered as a bait to the
reader to accept teachings, discourses, or ideas w h i c h might easily have
been o f f e r e d i n another f o r m . {"The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
56
could have developed into an essay w i t h equal plausibility and some o f

the essays i n Tremendous Trifles (1908) could have developed quite easily
into stories")/! B y contrast w i t h this view, w h i c h is still sometimes heard,
it might be w o r t h considering the implications f o r Chesterton's novel o f
his stated preferences, the "plan o f an idea" w h i c h is like both a backbone
and an arrow, the stress on a looser f o r m , offering scope f o r variation o f
styles and tone, but one bound together by a "thing," some original insight
or piece o f knowledge w h i c h i n f o r m e d the whole, and was involved i n a
dynamic interplay w i t h the readers' minds. There is r o o m f o r an investiga-
t i o n o f h o w Chesterton's novels stand i n relation to other w o r k o f the
same time and earlier. Such an investigation needs to look not only at the
ideas that a Chesterton novel sought to rebutt, but at a far more interesting
question; the way i n w h i c h its rhetorical strategies, narrative devices and
imagery stand i n dialogic relation to its readers expectations and to the
narrative techniques, imagery, and devices o f other writers w i t h i n the
same genre.
It is not d i f f i c u l t to detect the reverberations o f H . G . Wells's narrative

myths w i t h i n the text o f The Ball and the Cross. One o f the first reviewers
comments (that " L u c i f e r is pure materialism; he reminds me o f H . G .
Wells at his worst")^^ suggests some contemporary recognition o f the con-
nection but, naturally enough makes no attempt to explore it. These rever-
berations i n Chesterton's novel are much more than echoes o f ideas. They
amount, rather, to an attempt to w o r k a counter-spell, to reverse a myth,
not merely to make a f e w sharp debating points.
The Wellsian narrative m y t h is a simple but p o w e r f u l one. As Wells

remarked to an interviewer i n 1899 o f one o f his stories:
In The Wonderful Visit I tried to suggest to people the littleness,
the narrow horizon, o f their ordinary lives by bringing into sharp
contrast w i t h typical characters a being who is free f r o m ordinary
human limitation.^^
This recurring theme involves "man breaking through the barriers" i n

w h i c h "the miracle o f escape f r o m the k n o w n w o r l d is accompanied by
poetic m o t i f s such as pain, f i r e , an appeal to the stars, and the death-
wish." Wells's narratives almost invariably begin w i t h the rendering, of-
ten very effective, o f some seedy, sterile, intellectually tenth-rate little
w o r l d f r o m whose network o f limitations the leading character is to es-
cape. For most readers, perhaps, M r . Polly's Fishboume, w i t h its faihng
small businesses, dreary back streets, tarnished values, and indigestible
57
f o o d is the most memorable and amusing o f these imprisoning environ-

ments. M o r e o f t e n , however, and especially i n his s c i e n t i f i c f i c t i o n ,
Wells's tone i n describing such worlds is not amusing, but merely one o f
contemptuous revulsion:
Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort o f pert little
soul that the old civilisation o f the early twentieth century pro-
duced by the million i n every country i n the world. He had lived
all his life i n narrow streets, between mean houses he could not
look over, and in a narrow circle o f ideas f r o m which there was
no escape.45
Wells's The War in the Air (1908), f r o m w h i c h this passage is taken has
some interesting analogues w i t h the opening o f The Ball and the Cross,
Bert "by a curious a c c i d e n f is l i f t e d out o f the "rush and confused" ap-
peals o f his w o r l d . "Floating like a thing dead and disembodied between
sea and sky"^^ i n a balloon is like nothing else i n experience. " I t is to pass
extraordinarily out o f human things." I t is "solitude without intervention"
i n w h i c h one can "see the sky."
Such appeals to the stars or the sky as an emotional alternative to hu-

man littleness and frailty, " t i l l the earth is no more than a f o o t s t o o l , " a r e
generally the prelude to acts o f destruction by fire. The apocalypses are
often accompanied by hymns o f hate, like those w h i c h f o l l o w the "great
rubbish burnings" o f the Beltane festival i n In the Days of the Comet
(1906), burnings w h i c h consume the "horrible structures," the ill-designed
and tasteless late V i c t o r i a n artifacts ( d o w n to " s t u f f e d dead b i r d s ! ) " 4 8
w h i c h Wells obviously remembered f r o m his youth. O f t e n the destruc-
tions are fantasies o f a cataclysm through war, like the ransacking o f "the
m o d e r n B a b y l o n " N e w Y o r k , "the wickedest c i t y the w o r l d has ever
seen"49 i n The War in the Air I n many cases, the texts offer the grotesque
s w i f t onset o f insatiable conflagrations as their c l i m a x , and the f o c a l
point, presumably, o f both author's and readers' emotional engagement.
Simple enough, divorced f r o m its various and changing scientific

trappings, the Wellsian narrative m y t h has a p o w e r f u l and immediate ap-
peal. I n our o w n time Larkin's poem "Toads" plays w i t h what he takes to
be a common fantasy o f breaking out o f one's irritating or unsatisfactory
life. L a r k i n obviously expects his readers to understand such a fantasy as
a passing m o o d and, no doubt, most do. Wells, however, had touched on
Fair Isle, Shetland Islands, Scotland
59
something more specific than a generalised human daydream, although

his appeal was to that as w e l l . His narrative m y t h , drawn f r o m his o w n i n -
stincts, memories and revulsions put h i m i n touch w i t h many o f his read-
ers f r o m a similar social background i n a curiously intense and intimate
fashion. He shared the dreams and articulated the repressed violence o f
those rejected and condemned as "third-rate" b y the economic system o f a
time w h i c h both he and Chesterton saw as one o f acute, perhaps terminal,
crisis.
Chesterton, i n spite o f the considerable similarities between his and
Wells's concept o f f i c t i o n , and between the k i n d o f novel that both o f
them were trying to write, differed f r o m his f r i e n d i n a fundamental re-
spect. He had the problem o f presenting and exploring a complex philoso-
p h y as opposed to simple philosophies (or fantasies) o f rejection o f the
here and now, fiery destructions and escape into, or transcendence w i t h i n ,
some undefined, i f starry future. Where Wells could appeal to unqualified
and dynamic emotions o f disgust w i t h the k n o w n and felt and to a projec-
t i o n onto the future o f everything, coherent or inchoate, that he and his
readers dreamed of, Chesterton had a far more demanding task on hand.
That he was concemed to s i m p l i f y ideas and to render them accessible,
and that he developed a style admirably calculated to do so, should never
prevent the r e c o g n i t i o n that Chesterton always insisted o n c o m p l e x i t y
where it was necessary. Possibly "The Paradoxes o f Christianity" chapter
o f Orthodoxy is his best k n o w n statement o f such a complexity, but he
stressed i t i n many other places, since it i n f o r m e d all his thought. A t the
same time, he frequently criticised the impatience that rejected complex-
i t y and that balancing o f "one emphasis against another emphasis"
w h i c h , f o r h i m , was the hallmark o f Christianity. He always repudiated
the short-term dynamism derived f r o m cmde panaceas such as the "sim-
p l i c i t y " o f Tolstoy,^! Carlyle's " g o i n g the whole hog"^^ or Luther's resolv-
i n g the S c h o o l m e n s ' subtle questions b y m a k i n g a b o n f i r e o f t h e i r
works. 53
The Ball and the Cross deals w i t h subtle and d i f f i c u l t questions. Ob-
viously, an important part o f the novel's subject is the conflict o f belief
and unbelief and the refusal o f the w o r l d to allow that conflict to come to
a head. A t a deeper level. The Ball and the Cross is " a b o u f certain as-
pects o f belief and unbelief, i n themselves and i n their relation to each
other at a particular, and c m c i a l time i n the history o f ideas. Chesterton's
staunch dislike o f the notion that t m t h lay "somewhere i n the m i d d l e " o f
synthesis, syncretism, and that vague (and very English) sense that some-
60
how everyone was equally right, was accompanied by another, somewhat

unexpected, characteristic. Opposition to views that he d i d not hold went
along w i t h an absence o f the impulse to blame an absence which, as L i o n e l
T r i l l i n g once sadly remarked "our culture peculiarly honours" and "takes
as the sign o f virtue and intellect." f j i s approach to his controversial op-
ponents was influenced by that sense ( o f w h i c h Robert Browning is one o f
the most eloquent expressions) that different and d i f f e r i n g men each had
his story to tell, that their perceptions, emotional biases, the angle f r o m
w h i c h they viewed the w o r l d , w h i l e certainly not o f equal value, were all,
i n some measure, at least potentially, glimpses o f a part o f the truth. The
mistake o f those i n error lay i n imagining their part was the whole.
I n dealing w i t h b o t h Wells and Shaw, Chesterton f e l t a w i s h not

merely, or perhaps primarily, to refute or to destroy error but also to disen-
tangle a web o f thought, some o f w h i c h , at least i n embryonic f o r m was
valuable, some destructive. H i s w a r m esteem f o r b o t h m e n was w e l l -
known. I t was an esteem based on more than Chesterton's abundant char-
ity and g o o d w i l l . He saw Shaw at his best, as "a splendid republican,"
who "cared more f o r the Public Thing than f o r any private thing." Wells
he praised i n a letter o f 1934 as a " f r i e n d o f man," whose words recalled
"the o l d A g n o s t i c i s m o f m y b o y h o o d w h e n m y brother C e c i l and m y
friend Bentley almost worshipped o l d H u x l e y as a god"^^ (Wells himself
claimed that he was the " o n l y English Republican alive" i n the 1890s,
when it had been felt to be very "freakish" and "eccentric").
Terms like republican and friend of man, and Chesterton's admiring

reference to H u x l e y are w o r t h a little thought. What Chesterton sensed
about the philosophy o f Wells (and f o r that matter, about Shaw whose
"militant l u c i d i t y " he connected w i t h that o f Huxley and Voltaire)^^ is that,
i n both cases, he was dealing w i t h an unstable compound. The best and
strongest part o f Wells's m o r a l and i n t e l l e c t u a l attitudes, as the t e r m
friend of man suggests, was drawn f r o m the eighteenth-century writers
through whose w o r k he had made his w a y i n the library o f the free-think-
ing owner o f Uppark, where his mother had been housekeeper. His read-
ing o f S w i f t , o f Voltaire and o f Tom Paine reinforced an innate wish to
bring "commonsense" to bear on the muddle o f l i f e , to dispel the stupid
and cruel "respectabilities" and deprivations that had poisoned the lives o f
his o w n parents and. Wells believed, those o f thousands o f others o f the
same class and background "under grey skies that showed no gleam o f
hope o f anything f o r them but dinginess u n t i l they died."^^ Chesterton
61
shared the passion f o r a just, rational and equal society w h i c h , like Wells,
he saw as deriving f r o m the most positive side o f the French r e f o r m i n g
movement o f the eighteenth century. Where he and Wells parted company
lay i n Chesterton's awareness o f the "quarrel w h i c h (very tragically as I
think) has f o r some hundred years cloven the Christian f r o m the Liberal
idea." 60 B o t h Chesterton and Belloc saw i n the Assembly's attempt to en-
force the C i v i l Constitution o f the Clergy i n 1790, controlling the r e l i -
gious f u n c t i o n o f the Church, the single event w h i c h made this quarrel
inevitable and w h i c h gave a tragic turn to the French Revolution. Never-
theless, Chesterton w a r m l y admired and largely shared the egalitarian re-
publican impulse o f the Enlightenment, w h i c h the French Jacobins tumed
into practical politics. He was sympathetic to English liberal refomiers
w h o had inherited much o f this tradition, even to non-believers like J.S.
M i l l and T . H . H u x l e y whose personal characters he respected. (Both are
given high praise i n The Victorian Age in Literature). What he admired i n
each o f these men was the weight that they gave to the rights and dignity
o f the individual and their insistence on the paramountcy o f moral law. I n
Chesterton's view, H u x l e y had fought a noble, i f unsuccessful, battle to
"keep Victorian rationalism r a t i o n a l , " a t t a c k i n g Social Darwinism's use
o f the argument o f Nature against the ideal o f Justice and equal law.
Huxley's Romanes Lecture, Evolution and Ethics (1893), to w h i c h
Chesterton was alluding and w h i c h he saw as the "great captain" o f na-
tionalism's effort to keep "the growing crowds o f agnostics f r o m the most
hopeless and inhuman extremes o f destmctive thought" was o f v i t a l sig-
nificance i n the l i f e o f Wells. I t broke the Social Darwinist connection, i n
w h i c h he had been tempted to believe, between natural selection and the
economic and m i l i t a r y " c o m p e t i t i o n " o f groups, nations or individuals.
Huxley's lecture was warrant that one could accept evolutionary theory
b u t r e t a i n a b e l i e f i n c o n s t r u c t i v e h u m a n a c t i o n a n d the " h u m a n
kindliness" 62 tj^^t M r . P o l l y came near to losing.
Unfortunately, however, the better part o f English rationalism existed
i n Wells's m i n d and i n his w r i t i n g , as it d i d i n those o f Shaw, i n an uneasy
and inconsistent combination w i t h other far less attractive and at times
dangerous predilections. Essentially, these grew out o f both mens' marked
elitism. Shaw's defect, i n Chesterton's view, was that "he pitied men o n l y
too m u c h like a n i m a l s . " W e l l s quarrelled w i t h the elitism o f Shaw and
the Webbs, the Fabian O l d Guard. He quarrelled w i t h them, however, only
because he preferred m l e by scientists; whereas they were attracted to m l e
by c i v i l servants.
62
A m o n g other important m o t i f s , a reader o f The Ball and the Cross

cannot a f f o r d to ignore the relationship o f the novel to those contradic-
tions w i t h i n the thought o f a writer whose popularity at this time i t w o u l d
be hard to exaggerate. Yet Wells was only the most prominent example o f
a general tendency. The acclaim w h i c h greeted his frequently reprinted
Anticipations (1901) suggests that many agnostic "progressives" felt the
appeal o f an elite o f scientists w h o w o u l d sort out muddled mankind, dis-
pose o f u n f i t specimens (humanely o f course), end wars, superstition,
pointless taboos and insanitary environments. M e a n w h i l e , o f course,
events m i g h t seem to be j u s t i f y i n g W e l l s ' s prophecies. A l t h o u g h he
claimed i n a preface (1921) to The War in the Air tiiat the book, written i n
1907 and published i n 1908, dated f r o m "before the days o f the f l y i n g ma-
chine," this is not strictly correct. W h i l e Bleriot d i d not cross the Chan-
nel until 1909, the W r i g h t brothers had made their first powered flight i n
1903 and Santos Dumont had made his i n a biplane i n 1906. B o t h The
War in the Air and The Ball and the Cross (partly serialised i n Common-
wealth 1905-1906) were conceived against a background i n w h i c h pow-
ered f l i g h t was becoming more and more o f an immediate reality. This
achievement carried w i t h it the certainty o f a revolutionary change i n m i l i -
tary strategy and the possibility o f just such a scientific elite as Wells and
his readers desired. (Two outstanding stories by K i p l i n g " W i t h the N i g h t
M a i l " (1904) and "As Easy as A . B . C . " (1907) are based on the premise o f
an elite o f scientists operating f r o m airships, although admittedly the
treatment o f the theme is a good deal more ironic and ambivalent than it is
i n Wells). Chesterton saw, i n such aspirations, the harrassing o f an evil
principle to an up-to-date technology, but he was aware that those w h o of-
fered and those who needed such dreams were not themselves evil. I t was,
rather, that their thought had wandered f r o m its o w n premises and f r o m its
o w n best level. I n The Ball and the Cross, he set h i m s e l f to explore this
inconsistency, but also to reflect on some aspects o f the "tragic quarrel" o f
Liberalism and Christianity w h i c h had taken definite f o r m i n 1790, but
w h i c h by the early twentieth century had entered a new phase subjected to
radically different conditions. I n his exploration, Chesterton was, through-
out, aware o f other "philosophical novelists," notably Wells, and o f the
needs and yearnings o f his o w n and their readers.
This suggested context throws light on t w o preliminary puzzles i n

The Ball and the Cross; first, on the relation o f the prologue " A Discus-
sion Somewhat i n the A i r , " to the body o f the text and, secondly, on the
63
atheism o f John T u m b u l l . The use o f a prologue i n religious literature has,

obviously, an ancient precedent i n the B o o k o f Job, and a m o d e m one i n
the "Prologue i n Heaven" i n Goethe's Faust. There are some similarities
between these famous instances and the prologue to The Ball and the
Cross. I n each case, the prologue emphasises an inner meaning or perma-
nent dimension underlying the events w h i c h are to follow. I t is, therefore,
w o r t h noting what Chesterton chooses to emphasise i n his prologue. He
singles out science and the l i n k between "science and evolution" which
are said to belong to one w o r l d . The ideas o f evolution and the tools o f
Professor L u c i f e r are both characterised b y a melting, merging, blending,
a loss o f origin and identity. This connection between evolution and scien-
t i f i c technology is significant. Ideas against w h i c h Chesterton had always
w a m e d and w h i c h , i n his view, were among the leading dangers o f the
time, were now linked to p o w e r f u l technological instmments. The "night-
mare" quality o f both ideas and instmments mirrors the devilish origin o f
each. The apparently paradoxical contrast between the "nameless and elu-
sive" (1) nature o f science and the w o r l d o f poetry where images and
ideas "remain themselves e t e m a l l y " is deliberate challenge to the new
fantasies o f science and technology. I t is f o l l o w e d b y another, i n the ironic
repetition o f all the things that the Professor had "invented." A l l the con-
temporary rhetoric o f new discoveries changing human nature i n incon-
ceivable ways cannot alter the fact that man h i m s e l f is a given fact. We d i d
not make ourselves. Such theories forget that men, like Professor L u -
cifer's tools, grow "into unrecognisable shapes, f o r g e t f u l o f their o r i g i n "
(2).
The prologue, under its air o f casual comedy, offers a close-knit sys-
tem o f cross-references and references to material outside the text but
k n o w n to the reader. Chesterton weaves an arabasque o f allusion and sug-
gestion around the Wellsian prophecy that
a day w i l l come . . . when beings who are now latent i n our

thoughts . . . shall stand upon this earth as on a footstool, and
shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the stars.
Subtly, a w h o l e linguistic currency is devalued and the meaning o f its

leading terms evolution, science, invention, stars, are subverted. Chester-
ton does this partly b y an irreverent tone (the l i n k i n g o f " w i l d physicist"
to " w i l d animals" (3), to choose one example o f many), partly b y changes
o f the context i n w h i c h the terms are used, and b y disturbing juxtaposition
o f them w i t h other terms or connotations.
64
The m o n k M i c h a e l ' s home, "Western B u l g a r i a " i n 1905 or 1910,

w o u l d have carried suggestions o f hopeless backwardness and incompre-
hensible wars. (Shaw's Arms and the Man o f a little earlier suggests how
easily "our Western civilisation" m i g h t be made to laugh at the preten-
sions o f the comical little Balkan countries). The picking up o f the monk
w i t h a lassoo f r o m his own garden recalls the common Wellsian motif, o f
w h i c h Bert Smallway's was the most recent instance, o f the w h i s k i n g
away o f individuals f r o m their benighted environments to new horizons.
Here, however, the Professor's stated aim, "the pure object o f i m p r o v i n g "
(3) Michael, is flatly denied: " H i m he had not very greatly improved." L u -
cifer's "inventing" things, improving i f not inaugurating himself, is con-
trasted w i t h Michael's activity making " h i m s e l f happy." The second is the
rational and perennial aim o f philosophy and humane wisdom; the first is
hubristic nonsense.
A whole paragraph deftly unsettles the confidence o f "our Western
civilisation" i n w h i c h the monk Michael's name cannot be remembered or
repeated. What does this civilisation, a local and temporary phenomenon,
know o f those whose names it finds f u n n y and unpronouncable? M o r e to
the purpose, w h a t does i t k n o w o f the w o r l d o f medieval r e l i g i o n or
philosophy "precisely 1,119 years previously" (3)? The initial amusement
at the precise figure, and the automatic reaction that the mere passing o f
time refutes beliefs or ideas are both subverted by the calm remark about
such ideas that "nobody i n the m o d e m w o r l d was intellectual enough even
to understand their argument." A t the very least, can we be sure that we
k n o w enough to wave aside w h o l e centuries o f intellectual debate, o f
heresies w h i c h i t took brilliant minds to invent and even more brilliant
minds to refute? The "wider horizons" o f technology and evolution are
themselves n a r r o w l o o k e d at f r o m another, and o b v i o u s , angle. The
rhetoric o f science is undercut by a deceptively relaxed, but thoroughly ef-
fective, commonsense. There is an art here, but it is one w h i c h conceals i t -
self The language that Chesterton is by implicafion crificising was heady,
intense and somewhat strident. His own low-key conversational tone re-
duces the emotional temperature. As i n a musical composition, this tone
then begins unobtrusively to set a key i n w h i c h the claims o f a whole
stmcture o f feeling and an intellectual frame o f reference can no longer
escape question by playing on an automatic response f r o m the reader to
certain loaded words.
Chesterton employs many other techniques i n this c m c i a l opening

section. His style is marked by referential complexity and sub-text, by
65
agility, and b y little spurts o f surprise, bathos and farce as he attacks con-
cepts and a language f r o m one angle after another He embraces the "sci-
ence f i c t i o n " potentialities o f the new inventions, the novel sights and sen-
sations w h i c h the discoveries have made, or are about to make possible
(as i n the striking description o f the f o g (8-9), but then he turns such new
sights and sensations into a means to approach not some u n k n o w n and
unimaginable future state but the familiar recognised afresh. Chesterton's
strategies are illustrated i n the episode o f the f l y i n g ships colliding w i t h
the "huge, dark orb or sphere" (6) o f St. Pauls w h i c h Professor L u c i f e r
proclaims is to be a new planet where man shall be as innocent and as
cruel as the daisies. O n one level, there is the obvious bathos o f the c o l l i -
sion w i t h a f a m i l i a r L o n d o n landmark f o l l o w i n g immediately upon the
prophecies o f a new w o r l d and a new human nature. The physical r e b u f f
to outrageous claims, an effective piece o f c l o w n i n g , at the same time
makes a serious point. M i c h a e l points out " Y o u always convey ideas o f
that k i n d . . . when your f l y i n g ship is just going to m n into something."
Such "ideas" do, i n fact, gain currency at times o f the imminent collapse
o f cultures and civihsations.
The most effective strategy i n the passage, however, is that o f parody.

Professor L u c i f e r ' s oscillations o f hope and despair, one moment crying
w i t h "dreadful m i r t h " (6) at his o w n prophecies, the next f l i n g i n g up his
arms like a "lost soul" at the imminent collision are a pastiche, at slapstick
or silent cinema speed o f the swings o f m o o d i n Wells's works. The hys-
terical exhilaration and promise o f incalculable human emichment o f In
the Days of the Comet and The Food of the Gods collapses into the utter
despair o f The Island of Dr Moreau and The Time Machine. Sometimes,
indeed, i n d i v i d u a l w o r k s contain b o t h moods i n a b e w i l d e r i n g , unpre-
dictable medley. I n one comic incident, Chesterton catches the instability
o f Wells's "alternating v i s i o n " o f a future inhabited b y " f m e l y l i v i n g
souls" liberated f r o m antiquated moral taboos, "beautiful and noble peo-
ple, like the people one sees i n great pictures, like the gods o f noble sculp-
ture" and one i n w h i c h civilisation is "only a foolish heaping that must
inevitably f a l l back and destroy its makers i n the end."^^
Perhaps the central m o t i f i n the prologue, however, is that o f the re-

discovery o f man. L u c i f e r ' s pitching o f Michael out o f the f l y i n g ship is a
p h y s i c a l ( f o l l o w e d b y a p s y c h o l o g i c a l ) r e v e r s i o n o f a l l the f a m i l i a r
rhetoric o f journeys out to new conditions, to new worlds, to u n k n o w n
states o f being. The initial and crucial point is that the Professor has lost
66
the argument before he truncates i t by an act o f violence. He has been

j u d g e d and condemned b y the reason he invoked. He makes a f i n a l at-
tempt to substitute physical metaphor f o r argument: " I mount! I mount! . .
. . M y path is u p w a r d " (15) w h i c h M i c h a e l patiently refutes, recalling
Chesterton's o w n steady opposition to the contemporary question-begging
language o f "higher planes" used i n intellectual discourse.
Professor L u c i f e r i n the prologue is far f r o m the formidable figure

that he appears to be i n the body o f the text. W h e n challenged, both his
language and his arguments disintegrate into loose, inconsistent, sub-ro-
mantic verbiage. His whole performance is tenth-rate. The prologue, i n
fact, re-enacts the suggestion i m p l i c i t i n the names o f " M i c h a e l " and
" L u c i f e r " and, involved i n the Christian scheme itself, that the victory has,
in a sense, already been w o n . The right way exists, i f men w i l l take it. The
pattern o f the novel, however, is built around that " i f . What forces, psy-
chological, social and spiritual, obscure or resist the truth w h i c h w o u l d
make men free? W h y do they obscure this truth?
The double perspective that the prologue offers on the body o f the
novel has another aspect even more important than that o f a p r i m a l victory
o f reason over unreason, order over disorder I t is introduced by an autho-
rial intrusion on the nature o f paradox (10), differentiating the superficial
k i n d w h i c h belongs to light journalism and to decadent comedy f r o m the
fundamental k i n d inherent i n " a l l v i v i d and practical crises o f human l i v -
ing." Such an intrusion into the text w o u l d once have been condemned as
a sign o f looseness o f f o r m , but Chesterton was not interested i n a Jame-
sian seamless web, any more than was Wells. I n its context, the intrusion
has a precise function. I t halts the f l o w o f farcical incident and debating
points, announces a change o f tone, and calls f o r an increase o f attention
f r o m the reader What follows is a low-key, measured account o f the rela-
tion o f the central paradoxes o f Christianity, "the immense contradiction
o f the cross" (12) to normative human experience. The contrast between
this account and Professor L u c i f e r ' s non sequiturs and verbal froth is de-
liberate and striking. The starting point i n the description o f Michael's
sensations is the existence o f a body o f feeling and sensation common to
other men; "he f e h as every man feels . . . . he knew the truth that is
k n o w n to a l l fighters and hunters and climbers o f c l i f f s " (16-17). The
other premise to the account is the statement, twice made, that Michael
was healthy and happy. The only assumptions required are that, even i f
one does not w i s h to speak o f human nature, men i n similar situations feel
67
i n similar ways and, secondly, that there is such a being as a man rightly
ordered, "happy" and "healthy." F r o m those t w o starting points, the novel
develops a painstaking step-by-step account o f a mysterious experience.
The stages o f this experience are clearly defined. The "spasm o f sanity or
clarity" (18) f o l l o w e d b y the "spasm o f elemental terror" ending i n " u h i -
mate resignation or certainty." The text disclaims certainties that it does
not possess ("such extreme states are dangerous things to dogmatise
about") and accepts the limits and language: " O f that ten minutes o f terror
it is not possible to speak i n human words. . . . A n d o f this ultimate resig-
nation or certainty it is even less possible to w r i t e " (18). Language here is
returning to an honest use and modest claims after the Luciferian r u i n o f
meaning and sense.
Chesterton tries to define "the last o f the secrets o f G o d " b y nega-

tives, i n the manner o f apophatic theology: " I t is not hope. . . . I t is not
faith. . . . I t is not knowledge" (19). The reference to what " m o d e m idiots"
w o u l d certainly say that it was is a caution to the reader against contem-
porary slackness o f thought and phraseology. L i k e the medieval heresies
and refutations that we are too unintellectual to appreciate, there are areas
o f psychological or spiritual experience that we are too obtuse or cliche-
ridden to grasp. I n spite o f the suspicion about the language o f mysticism
that Chesterton v o i c e d elsewhere, w h a t is touched o n here does bear
analogies to mystical experience. The "good news" o f "some balance i n
all possible contingencies" (19) inducing a vast satisfaction w h i c h soaks
through the consciousness and fills i t to the b r i m recalls descriptions i n
spiritual literature o f similar phenomena. ( I n the phrases o f one eigh-
teenth-century French classic, i t is "a certain indifference o f soul" w h i c h
"prepares us f o r all situations" beyond "contrary appearances that darken
the perceptions o f the senses").^^
F r o m this sober description o f a spiritual state, Chesterton moves into

the vision w h i c h that state obtains i n a passage (20-21) whose f u l l mean-
ing is gained when it is seen as a studied reversal o f Wellsian scientific
motifs and narrative devices. Instead o f a movement up and away beyond
the diminished earth, there is a crawling back into a w o r l d w h i c h is a star
"set i n heaven." Instead o f L u c i f e r ' s "miserable progeny o f m o r b i d apes"
(5) (recalling Prendrick's disdain f o r the ape-like savagery o f ordinary hu-
man l i f e i n The Island of Dr Moreau, to choose one instance among many
i n Wells), there is man as M a n Friday (21), n e w l y discovered, lovable,
better than saints and greater than heroes. Instead o f the stars above, used
68
to belittle human nature and achievements, there is the other heaven, not
above but below, the church-building made by man. Here the stars "were
not above but far below" (23). (This is a further critique o f the language o f
above and below, intellectual higher planes and mounting higher and so
forth). This heaven below is not one o f "shapeless clouds" (2) o f mere i n -
timidation by size or distance as i n the scientific mode o f discourse but o f
cherubim and seraphim, mysterious spiritual beings whose " a w f u l human
shapes" (23) recall that man, too, is a m y s t e r y and a spiritual being.
Michael's perception, on reaching ground level, that "the whole universe
had been destroyed and re-created" (25) and his feeling o f that "pleasure
f r o m w h i c h the proud shut themselves out" (24) are the f i n a l confirmation
o f an ahemative to the Wellsian-scientific vision. H u m i l i t y and gratitude
rather than j o u r n e y through time and space are the ways to see a new
heaven and a new earth.
It is w o r t h analysing the prologue to The Ball and the Cross f o r sev-

eral reasons. Such an examination reveals a close-knit, coherent handling
o f themes and language, s k i l f u l i n its reference to other languages and
rhetorics and i n its changes o f tone. There is certainly an art here i f the
reader is prepared to evaluate it i n terms o f its o w n context and intention.
The sudden locking up o f the "peace o f the w o r l d " i n the person o f

M i c h a e l and the outbreak o f the quarrel between M a c l a n and T u m b u l l
have no direct relation to each other. This fracture i n the narrative is delib-
erate and suggestive. I t draws attention to the history hidden below the
surface o f men's " o l d , bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels" (26).
What is o f real significance i n any age may be concealed and unheard o f
The authorities o f this w o r l d , incamated i n the slightly inane figure o f the
policeman w i t h his "prosaic sort o f u n i f o r m " (20) and his row o f buttons,
consign the happiest o f l i v i n g men to an asylum. O n one level the thought
is sad. " M e n had not seen at a l l " (26) the new and child-like w o r l d that
Michael had suddenly found. O n another level, the incident testifies to the
existence o f a vision, always there i f i t is sought, to be discovered by spe-
cific methods, and f r o m w h i c h the public institutional stmctures o f society
and the reputations o f its important people and o f its ideas, are seen as
provisional. There is always something else to w h i c h it is possible to ap-
peal.
T u m b u l l , Editor o f The Atheist, as one o f the first reviewers pointed

out is one " o f a brand now extinct.''^^ Chesterton himself stresses (28) the
antiquated intellectual apparatus o f the " B i b l e Smasher," w h i c h has not
69
advanced beyond the techniques o f the Deist T o m Paine's The Age of

Reason, published more than a century before. Tumbull's position, how-
ever, is clear, coherent, sincere, and capable o f defining and defending i t -
self. A t h e i s m o f this k i n d , unlike the velleifies, predilections, and conven-
fional reticences o f "our fashion or civilisation" (31) means something. I t
concems vital issues o f existence, the neglect o f w h i c h T u m b u l l is right to
find "bewildering" and "unaccountable" (29). His blunt revulsion f r o m re-
l i g i o n has another significance. Chesterton w o u l d have been aware that
one part o f the unstable compound that f o r m e d the philosophies o f Wells
and Shaw was just such a coarse, literal-minded, but thoroughly honest
atheism. I n his view, clearly, it was much the best part o f each man's intel-
lectual apparatus. Under all their evolutionary or scientific rhetorics and
terminologies lurked the rage o f T u m b u l l . I n later l i f e , Shaw recalled w i t h
pleasure taking out his watch and shocking f e l l o w guests at a party i n
1878 by calling on G o d to strike h i m dead i n five minutes i f He existed.^^
Wells's early reading o f Voltaire and T o m Paine f o r m e d a substratum i n
his m i n d w h i c h i n his advanced years, was to surface i n his book. Crux
Ansata (1943), an attack on the Catholic Church w h i c h , f o r its failure to
grasp religious nuance, w o u l d have deserved a prominent place i n the
front w i n d o w o f The Atheist's office.
I n creating the two characters o f L u c i f e r and T u m b u l l , Chesterton has

split apart the evolutionary, pseudo-scientific, and elitist side o f Wells's
vision f r o m its Enlightenment, republican aspect. Chesterton's strategy is
adroit since the t w o aspects are inconsistent and their inconsistency is the
weak l i n k i n Wells's narrative m y t h and i n his "philosophy." Once it is
isolated, i t is possible to examine this more sympathetic ( i f not tme) as-
pect o f the Wellsian vision. To be fair and complete, an examination o f an
atheist m i n d involves a similar scmtiny o f a variety o f religious belief.
Chesterton carefully delineates Tumbull's strengths and weaknesses

and shows how they are bound up w i t h each other. The petti-fogging l i t -
eral-mindedness about biblical texts (28-29) is the reverse side o f the "am-
ateur commonsense" ( 6 5 ) and s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d grasp o f detail w h i c h
makes h i m m u c h more practical than M a c l a n i n the pair's adventures.
T u m b u l l has a "knowledge o f the w o r l d " (160-161), a grasp o f mundane
details shown i n his giving the magistrate what the latter wants to hear, i n
his revealing o f his "unused practical talent" by choosing the right k i n d o f
Edinburgh f r o m Corstorphine H i l l
71
street to escape down or i n his planning his o w n and Maclan's f l i g h t (79

82) including the provision o f chocolate and brandy. (Tumbull's strengths
and weakness are reminiscent o f Enlightenment figures w h o are his proto-
types. One thinks of, say, B e n j a m i n Franklin's practical ability applied to
lightning conductors and stoves, his acumen as a diplomatist, and the ut-
terly l i m i t e d quality o f his v i e w o f human nature i n Poor Richard's Al-
manac) T u m b u l l ' s " p o w e r f u l and prosaic m i n d " (107) is w h o l l y unaf-
fected b y spoken or w r i t t e n poetry, but his statements o f his aims and
intentions (113, f o r example) have the eighteenth-century lucidity of, say,
Paine's Commonsense or Shaw's The Sanity of Art. U n l i k e M a c l a n , T u m -
b u l l laughs readily and heartily (125), "demolishes" (117) an early break-
fast, h u m m i n g to himself, while his companion merely looks more austere
i n the daylight than he d i d the evening before. The atheist likes the "sensi-
b l e " ( 1 2 6 ) l o o k o f G r a s s l e y - i n - t h e - H o l e , w i t h its " j o l l y " p r o m i s e o f
healthy ordinary l i f e .
Whatever its limitations, such a temperament might w e l l f m d content-

ment easier to come b y than more complicated natures do. Interestingly,
however, T u m b u l l is not happy, and his unhappiness lies at a deeper level
than his intellectual i r r i t a t i o n at the w o r l d ' s indifference to his atheist
challenge. The sight o f L o n d o n f r o m the "empty slope i n Hampstead"
(74) untaps his underlying, melancholy sense o f the failure o f the free,
secular, republican man and citizen. Our democracy is "not democratic"
(74). The achievement o f building the huge m o d e m city o f L o n d o n was
"heroic and divine" (74). Yet i t seems d o u b t f u l "whether it was w o r t h do-
ing at all." What had dawned w i t h the Enlightenment and the French Rev-
olution is waning now. I t is "the sunset o f so many hopes" (75). T u m b u l l
w a n t e d the s o l i d realities o f f r e e d o m , e q u a l i t y , and h u m a n decency
promised i n the " o l d atheist and revolutionary" Swinbume's Songs Before
Sunrise, not just the intoxication o f hope: " T u m b u l l ' s songs at their best
were songs after sunrise and sunrise had been no such great thing after
a l l " (75). The failure o f the good things o f this w o r l d to remain good w i t h -
out Christianity (a point touched on often i n Chesterton's writings) allows
M a c l a n some o f his strongest debating points (150-151), when he remarks
that the "Church is the only thing on earth that can perpetuate a type o f
virtue and make it something more than a fashion" (150). Maclan's asser-
t i o n that the "volcano o f revolutionary t m t h and valour" o f a hundred
years before has grown cold now must clearly strike an answering chord
i n Tumbull's m i n d .
72
It is at this point that the novel's awareness o f reader response is most

delicate and subtle. Neither Maclan's argument about the impermanence
o f virtue i n a secular w o r l d , nor his earher (144-147) p r o o f o f the impossi-
b i l i t y o f progress without a coherent and developing intellectual tradition
(one passage o f w h i c h is, rightly, singled out as especially striking by sev-
eral o f the first reviewers) secures Tumbull's assent. M a c l a n wins the ar-
gument but he cannot w i n T u m b u l l . The exchange ends i n an impasse
w i t h the latter's "impenetrable" comment " B u t I cannot believe i n the
t h i n g " (154).
This break i n the argument ( w h i c h is also a break i n the narrative

w i t h the entry into i t o f "The Strange L a d y " ) is a recognition o f an impor-
tant psychological fact. A n y debate, especially about religion, can go only
so far, however interesting and compelling it may be. I t reaches a point
where it may seem rationally plausible, but religious belief is obviously
more than a set o f plausible arguments. I t involves a verdict on the whole
o f one's experience, on people and things seen, heard and encountered.
A n opponent may w i n a verbal victory without touching the inner land-
scape o f the m i n d at all.
The narrative stmcture o f Chesterton's philosophical novel, as com-

pared w i t h that o f Wells, shows at its best i n handling this delicate matter.
The Wellsian stmcture ( w i t h one or t w o exceptions like that o f The His-
tory of Mr Polly) is b u i h around the idea o f a wholesale wrecking and de-
m o l i t i o n o f worthless, shabby natures and their transformation by a cata-
c l y s m i c experience, i n t o s o m e t h i n g e n t i r e l y d i f f e r e n t . Chesterton's
stmcture i n The Ball and the Cross involves the modification o f Tumbull,
and to a less extent o f M a c l a n , partly by their ordinary human effect on
each other. L i k e any men who become friends, however unwillingly, they
are bound to take note o f and to have an effect upon, each other. Some-
times this effect is i n minute particulars as i n M a c l a n ' s "unexpected"
laughter under Tumbull's influence (125). Sometimes it is i n major intel-
lectual discoveries as i n his finding out that atiieism o f Tumbull's k i n d is
not a f o r m o f amoral nature mysticism (127-128), or i n Tumbull's o w n re-
aHsation o f the significance o f progress (147) or agnosticism (142) i n
Catholic or Christian thought. A narrative stmcture built around discus-
sion, interaction, and intellectual explanation allows f o r far more nuance
i n registering emotional or intellectual change.
The self-consciousness w i t h w h i c h i t is displayed is another and

equally important feature o f Chesterton's narrative stmcture. B o t h M a c l a n
73
and T u m b u l l are aware that they are " i n a story." (Nothing about contem-
porary concems w i t h " f i c t i o n a h t y " w o u l d have surprised Chesterton, ex-
cept perhaps the language i n w h i c h they are expressed). T u m b u l l and
M a c l a n are not consciously or unconsciously seeking some compromise
w h i c h w i l l adjust their respective portions o f t m t h into a harmonious, i f
diluted, w h o l e . Chesterton d i d not f m d compromise or synthesis c o m -
pelling either imaginatively or intellectually. Rather, the t w o men are en-
gaged i n exploring their roles i n the story and i n exploring the story i t s e l f
It is obviously a narrative o f many elements, all w i t h their distinct ef-

fects on the t w o m a i n characters. These include Tumbull's and Maclan's
challenges to, and arguments w i t h , each other; their m n n i n g battle w i t h
the contemporary w o r l d whose dominant features are its organs o f social
control or manipulation, newspapers, ubiquitous policemen, and psychia-
trists; their encounters w i t h moral or intellectual types like the Tolstoyan
and the Nietzschean or, more amusingly, w i t h the o l d man o f Grassley-in-
the-Hole. The t w o would-be duellists each appeal to this aged and irrita-
ble figure, as the incamation o f the w i s d o m o f the people, only to f m d that
he detests atheists and priests equally. Chesterton, the populist, was as
ready to poke f u n at a naive populist as Chesterton, the medievalist, was to
question the excesses o f medievalism i n "The Dream o f M a c l a n " or later
i n The Return of Don Quixote.
Other elements i n the narrative have a significance i n its complex to-
tal meaning w h i c h is easy to sense but hard to quantify or explain. The
many natural descriptions do more than set a mood. Sometimes (as i n 49
50), they speak o f a beauty w h i c h can transfigure the meanest sight sug-
gesting a mystery beyond them. Sometimes (as 180), there is a suggestion
that change and decision are inherent i n the fabric o f a created universe
when, unlike nature as described i n "books on evolution," the dawn comes
suddenly and the heavens are "rolled away like a scroll." O n another level,
are the novel's many improvised meals and picnics taken b y the fugitives,
the "biscuits and the tinned meals and the m i l k (87) part o f the narrative.
These, like its physical hardships (210-211) are part o f the furniture o f
Edwardian adventure novels, as o f children's books o f the same period
such as The Wind in the Willows. They are also physical reminders that
one can break out o f a false c i v i l i s a t i o n , live o n one's w i t s and one's
tinned meat, and then, perhaps, discover some more authentic experience
or meaning. There are, too, the silences and pauses i n the text, its changes
o f key and o f direction, intended to startle the reader w i t h the promise o f
an unexpected meaning to the novel.
74
Above all, however, there is that sense o f t w o men exploring a strange

sequence o f events together, a story still further "distanced" and offered as
an artefact by being set i n the past (237 or 3 6 1 , f o r example). The H i g h -
lander, M a c l a n , is convinced early i n the novel that there is a design i n the
whole pattern o f events and is comically ready to see omens, portents, and
divine messages i n almost every slightly unusual occurrence. The T o l -
stoyan is the "angel," the "mystic" (100) M a c l a n had prayed for. For h i m
too, the Nietzschean philosopher stabbing at the door o f the hut where the
two fugitives were hiding "might be G o d " (109) and might be a sign o f
the end o f the w o r l d . M a c l a n concludes, more seriously, after pondering
the fact that whenever he and T u m b u l l have tried to fight or to be recon-
ciled "something has stopped us" (156), that G o d "means something" i n
the business, although it is hard to tell what, hiterestingly, T u m b u l l nods
"gravely" (156) i n silent assent to this suggestion o f a pattem, although at
this stage, he is not prepared to accept that i t is a pattem that G o d has
made. The atheist accepts Maclan's proposal that they take any intermp-
tion o f their duel as "a sign f r o m G o d " just as a "man o f scientific culture"
accepts "any k i n d o f experiment."
Such intimations clearly c o n f i r m the existence o f a pattem. For much

o f the book's length, however, neither T u r n b u l l nor M a c l a n k n o w its
meaning. M a c l a n may, at one point, see "the hand o f Heaven . . . still
p o i n t i n g " (191) but, we are reminded, he is "the man o f superstition."
(The notion that a religious man may, rightly, see signs o f God's purposes
i n passing events but may be u n w i l l i n g to accept those purposes or may be
quite w r o n g about their meaning is as o l d as The Book of Jonah). T u m b u l l
who "snatched at every chance o f cheap p r o f a n i t y " (159) laughs at the
idea that the woman's cry w h i c h intermpts their duel is the voice o f God.
I n his view, it is "something a j o l l y sight more important" (159), the cry o f
a human being i n distress. Yet how w o u l d the voice o f G o d speak to T u m -
bull? N o t through an omen, but through an appeal to the best part o f his
nature, his decency and "respectability."
Curiously and interestingly, the hint is not taken up at this point, since
it is M a c l a n w h o falls i n love w i t h the u n k n o w n lady, another o f the text's
many tums and surprises. The believer, M a c l a n , is confronted w i t h a par-
ticular sort o f unbelieving woman. T u m b u l l , the atheist, falls i n love w i t h
another woman, w h o is a believer o f a specific kind. Madeleine Durand
and her father, technically British subjects on one o f the Channel Islands,
are both solid and conventional i n the best sense. Pierre Durand substan-
75
t i a l l y realises the republican ideal o f the French Revolution, o f w h i c h

T u m b u l l had begun to despair. Durand is the "ordinary citizen w i t h ordi-
nary v i e w s " (213) w h o had "read all the eighteenth century" (214), those
Enlightenment authors w h o were the foundation o f what was best i n T u m -
bull's (and Wells's) intellectual framework. The difference is that Durand
has achieved " i n a little v i l l a " the decent, free, and self-respecting l i f e
w h i c h f o r T u m b u l l and Wells were u n f u l f i l l e d theories. The French con-
servative republican, however, brought up as a Catholic and f o r years an
agnostic, is "very m i l d l y retuming the Church i n his later years" (212).
The k i n d o f l i f e w h i c h T u m b u l l desired, both intellectually and tempera-
mentally, when i t does exist, exists w i t h o u t any necessary connection to
the atheism f o r w h i c h he had cmsaded. (The end o f The Ball and the
Cross buries the unnecessary quarrel o f republicanism and Christianity.
The revolt o f the lunatic asylum's falsely imprisoned inmates is started by
Pierre Durand w h o invokes Rousseau's theory o f the Social Contract and
the secular ideals o f the French Revolution. The monk, Michael, type o f
the other ideal o f religious devotion and holiness, then miraculously saves
them f r o m death by fire).
Madeleine Durand's combination o f a seeming heaviness and conven-
tionality w i t h a deep spiritual l i f e , o f "insatiable domesticity" and "insa-
tiable solitude" is as challenging as her lather's successful republicanism.
This is a w o r l d where r e l i g i o n is n o m i a l , natural, unemphatic. Interest-
ingly, when T u m b u l l , acting the part o f the commercial traveller, Camille
Bert, attends Mass, he does so w i t h a "simple exactitude that could not be
mistaken f o r a pose" (218). The episode is psychologically revealing. A l -
though still an unbeliever, T u m b u l l chooses to f o l l o w a religious practice
w h i c h is mundane, matter o f fact, avoiding anything that might seem ex-
travagant. He has been shown and adopts ( i n show) the modes o f be-
haviour characteristic o f a w o r l d where r e l i g i o n is natural and ordinary
and allied, obviously and unmistakeably, to natural and ordinary satisfac-
tions. Such a demonstration o f a climate and a way o f l i f e reach parts o f
Tumbull's m i n d untouched by Maclan's arguments.
M a c l a n ' s encounter w i t h the "strange lady," B e a t r i c e D r a k e , is
equally significant. The Highlander "had never really looked at a human
being before i n his l i f e " (166). That The Ball and the Cross unequivocally
endorses Maclan's position and shows h i m as the possessor o f t m t h does
not mean that M a c l a n h i m s e l f has nothing to leam. One m i g h t naturally,
and to some extent rightly, assume that what he teams is a respect f o r
Tumbull's republican and civic values, f o r the virtues excluded f r o m his
76
o w n " w i l d and u n w o r l d l y " (33) p o l i t i c a l creed. The truth, however, is

more complicated. I t is w o r t h comparing Maclan's habitual vision o f the
w o r l d i n his c h i l d h o o d and y o u t h (31-32) w i t h the v i s i o n that Father
Michael sees after climbing down f r o m St. Paul's. Evan M a c l a n lived on
the "borderland between this w o r l d and another" (32), t h i n k i n g o f the
daylight w o r l d as "debris, the broken remainder o f his first v i s i o n " o f a
primal supernatural w o r l d . I t is, i n some ways, a privileged state o f m i n d
f r o m w h i c h m y t h , poetry and various kinds o f religious intimations and
states o f awareness have flowed. As such, i t bears some analogy to the
mythopoeic temper, as described i n The Everlasting Man. A l t h o u g h not a
temper w r o n g i n itself, however, it might be w r o n g i n emphasis, leading
to nostalgias, yearnings, lack o f commonsense and a lack o f an awareness
o f the concrete reality o f things. I t is precisely such an awareness o f and
j o y i n the concrete that characterises Father Michael's spiritual vision:
"Everything his eye f e l l on i t feasted on, not aesthetically but w i t h a plain,
j o l l y appetite as o f a boy eating buns" (24). A s i n the case o f T u m b u l l , the
woman to w h o m M a c l a n is attracted appeals to his o w n temperamental
biases; but, like T u m b u l l too, carries h i m beyond them. Her effect on h i m
is not to change M a c l a n wholesale, but to develop what is best i n h i m .
Beatrice Drake is a romantic figure, intense, unhappy, upper-class, and i n
need o f rescue. Maclan's entering o f "another l i f e altogether, like a cos-
mos w i t h a new dimension" (170) is not simply a generalised " f a l l i n g i n
love." I t involves a new realisation, specific to M a c l a n , o f the actuality o f
mundane things " f o u r or five visible facts . . . . certain and incredible, like
sacraments" (170-171). Again, as w i t h T u m b u l l , the effects o f argument
are supplemented by experience. The Ball and the Cross is, i n fact, a strik-
ingly subtle and complex account o f spiritual, intellectual, and emotional
growth.
The perversion o f the concept o f being i n a story by a Divine Author

is the nightmare o f being manipulated by an evil puppet-master. Given the
pattem o f events unfolded i n The Ball and the Cross o f w h i c h M a c l a n and
T u m b u l l are aware, one or other possibility must be tme. Lucifer's claim
to be able to "explain everything" (389-390) has a horrible plausibility af-
ter the sight o f " a l l the faces" (386) the t w o men have seen " f o r weeks and
months p a s f i n the Professor's asylum. A manipulator, however, is not a
story-teller. A n y novelist, as many novelists have testified, must free his
characters, let them live authentically, not put his finger i n the scale. There
is a sharp difference between the "pulse and t i m e " (250) o f what T u m b u l l
calls "this story o f ours" and Lucifer's contrivances. Comic though The
11
Ball and the Cross may be, its account o f the w a y i n w h i c h the manipula-
tor works is a sombre one. Chesterton's description is prophetic o f m u c h
twentieth-century history. F r o m encouraging the blurring o f fundamental
issues and sharp differences b y means o f his u n w i t t i n g agents, the manip-
ulator proceeds through the rejection o f reason and rational argument and
o f that faculty o f moral choice on w h i c h the dignity o f the individual rests.
The next stage is the invention o f preposterous, infinitely malleable jar-
gons and intellectual schemes b y other agents (288-290 or 373-374). The
e n d is sheer f o r c e . " T h e w h o l e w o r l d " is t o b e c o m e a cell o f
psychological control i n w h i c h the "real days o f tyranny" (350) are only
just beginning. They w i l l rest on the "material threat" (385) o f the " c o l d
miracles o f m o d e m gunnery."
A l t h o u g h neither the romantic conservatism o f M a c l a n nor the egali-

tarian republicanism o f T u m b u l l is successfully manipulated, i n each case
L u c i f e r had adopted a subtle technique. The m y t h o f Restoration, the re-
covery o f right order, o f the good o l d ways and o f a lost comeliness and
fitness i n things and the m y t h o f Revolution, o f the u p l i f t i n g o f the poor
and the p u l l i n g down o f the proud, are both r i c h i n intellectual and emo-
tional appeal and i n metaphysical pathos. Chesterton suggests, besides,
that f o r M a c l a n and T u m b u l l , the myths are rooted i n childhood experi-
ences and perceptions (299 and 312). I n his presentation o f them, L u c i f e r
tricks out the myths, f o r each man, w i t h all the setting and f i i m i t u r e w h i c h
make them most appealing.
T u m b u l l and M a c l a n each reject what they are offered as a perversion

o f their vision and o f their values at exactly the same point. Each dream is
detected as a f r a u d when the fantasy w o r l d shows its contempt f o r the i n -
dividual. Each man is shown as accepting absolute m o r a l standards b y
w h i c h a l l p o l i t i c a l ideologies, visions o f the good, or plans f o r society
must be judged. The acceptance o f such a standard is the necessary safe-
guard against an otherwise inevitable perversion. Tumbull's and Maclan's
rejection o f the "dreams" w h i c h they are o f f e r e d suggests also, that i n
spite o f their incidental failures, the republicanism o f the one and the
Christianity o f the other share basic assumptions. Finally, perhaps, their
acts o f rejection suggest that each man has had his right instincts or p r i n -
ciples reinforced b y the "story" i n w h i c h each has consciously lived and
i n w h i c h both a pattem and a right o f individual choice have existed.
One gains a sharper appreciation o f Chesterton's techniques i n The

Ball and the Cross b y seeing the novel as an example o f a genre, the Ed-
78
wardian novel o f ideas. Neither Chesterton nor the other leading author
w i t h i n the genre, Wells, were unselfconscious entertainers or ideas mer-
chants. They agreed i n several important ways on what the novel f o r m
might achieve and how it might work. I n Wells, these views do come near
to assuming theoretical status. I f Wells was more successful as a theorist,
or as a more accurate propagandist o f this type o f w r i t i n g , however,
Chesterton brought an infinitely greater sophistication and inventiveness
to its practice. One can only wonder how theory and w r i t i n g w o u l d have
developed but f o r the effects o f the First W o r l d War, o f the fuller onset o f
literary Modernism, and o f events i n each man's l i f e w h i c h propelled h i m
to more direct political and social polemic.
^ Unsigned review. The Times, February 24, 1910 in G.K. Chesterton: The Criti-
calJudgements, Part I : 1900-1937, ed. D.J. Conlon (Antwerp, 1976), p. 218. Hereafter
referred to simply as The Critical Judgements.
2 Robert Lynd, The Daily News, February 25, 1910, The Critical Judgements, p.
220.
3 James Douglas, The Star, February 26, 1910, The Critical Judgements, p. 222.
4 Unsigned review, The Westminster Gazette, March 5, 1910, The Critical Judge-
ments, p. 225.
^ The Critical Judgements, p. 226.
^ Unsigned review, Punch, March 9, 1910, The Critical Judgements, p. 227.
Unsigned review, The Athenaeum, March 19, 1910, The Critical Judgements, p.
233.
^ James Douglas, The Critical Judgements, p. 222.
^ The Critical Judgements, p. 223.
The CriticalJudgements, pp. 222-223.
11 R.C. Churchill, "The Comedy of Ideas: Cross-Currents in Fiction and Drama"
in The New Pelican Guide to English Literature (Harmondsworth, 1983), Vol. 7, p.
293.
12 R.C. Churchill, New Pelican Guide, p. 294.
13 David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (New Haven and London,
1986), p. 171.
1"* H. G Wells's Literary Criticism, ed. Patrick Parrinder and Robert Philmus (Sus-
sex, 1980), p. 199.
1^ H.G. Wells's Literary Criticism, p. 204.
1"^ H.G. Wells's Literary Criticism, p. 197.
1^ Henry James, Preface to The Spoils of Poynton; A London Life; The Chaperon
in Henry James The Critical Muse; Selected Literary Criticism, ed. Roger Gard (Har-
mondsworth, 1987), p. 529.
2 Henry James, The Critical Muse, p. 530.
21 H.G. Wells's Literary Criticism, p. 194.
79

24 Henry James, "The New Novel," (1914: rpt. The Criticial Muse), p. 606.
25 HG. Wells's Literary Criticism, p. 214.
26 G.K. Chesterton, "On Philosophy Versus Fiction," All Is Grist, (1931; rpt. Lon-
don, 1933), p. 82.
27 G.K. Chesterton, "On M r Epstein," Come to Think of It (London, 1930), p. 64.
28 G.K. Chesterton, All Is Grist, p. 83.
29 G.K. Chesterton, "On Reading," The Common Man (London, 1950), p. 22.
30 H.G. Wells s Literary Criticism, p. 203.
31 G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant (1901; rpt. London, 1914), p. 20.
33 G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant, p. 21.
34 G.K. Chesterton, "Henry James," The Common Man, p. 145.
35 G.K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (1913; rpt. London, 1947), p.
140.
36 George Steiner, Real Presences (London, 1989), p. 85.
37 G.K. Chesterton, "On Writing Badly," A Handful of Authors (London, 1953), p.
201.
38 G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man, pp. 145-146.
39 David C. Smith, HG. Wells, p. xiii.
40 H.G. Wells: Journalism and Prophecy 1893-1946, ed. Warren Wager (London,
1965), p. 270.
41 The Pelican Guide to English Literature, Vol. 7, p. 294.
42 The Critical Judgements, p. 223.
43 Quoted in Patrick Parrinder, H.G. Wells (Edinburgh, 1970), p. 24.
44 Patrick Parrinder, p. 23.
45 H.G. Wells, The War in the Air, (1908; rpt. in The History of Mr Polly and The
War in the Air (London, n.d.), p. 204.
46 H.G. Wells, The War in the Air, p. 205.
47 H.G. Wells, The Food of the Gods (1904); quoted by Patrick Parrinder, p. 21.
48 H.G. Wells, In the Days of the Comet (1906; rpt. London, 1925), p. 284.
49 H.G. Wells, The War in the Air, p. 262.
50 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908; rpt. London, 1961), p. 98.
51 G.K. Chesterton, Simplicity and Tolstoy (London, 1912).
52 G.K. Chesterton, "Thomas Carlyle," Essays and Poems, ed. Wilfrid Sheed (Har-
mondsworth, 1958), p. 150.
53 G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1933; rpt. New York, 1956), p. 197.
54 Lionel Trilling, "F. Scott Fitzgerald," in The Liberal Imagination (1951; rpt.
London, 1961), p. 245.
55 G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw (1909; rpt. London, 1914), p. 86.
56 Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1944; rpt. Harmondsworth, 1958), p.
371.
57 H.G. Wells, Journalism and Prophecy, p. 194.
58 G.K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature, p. 143.
59 H.G. Wells, Tono-Bungay (1909), Quoted in Patrick Parrinder, p. 4.
60 G.K. Chesterton, Letters to An Old Garibaldian (London, 1915), p. 43.
61 G.K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature, p. 127.
80
62 H.G. Wells, The History of Mr Polly (1910), quoted in Patrick Parrinder, p. 4.

63 G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, p. 86.
64 H.G. Wells, The History of Mr Polly and The War in the Air, p. 167.
65 G.K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross (London, 1910), p. 1. Subsequent ref-
erences to The Ball and the Cross refer to this edition and are included in parentheses
within the article.
66 H.G. Wells, The Discovery of the Future (1913), quoted in Patrick Parrinder, p.
11.
67 Patrick Parrinder, p. 16.
68 H.G. Wells, The Days of the Comet, pp. 303-304.
69 H.G. Wells, "The Time Machine," The Complete Short Stories of HG. Wells
(London, 1927), pp. 90-91.
''^ Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence, trans. PH.
Ramiere, S.J. (1933; rpt. London, 1972), p. 87.
71 The CriticalJudgements, p. 223.
72 G.B. Shaw, Preface to Back to Methusalah (1921) quoted in The Pelican Book
of English Prose, ed. Raymond Williams (Harmondsworth, 1969), Vol. 2, pp. 321-323.
The Grampians, Scotland
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The Ball and The Cross and The Edwardian Novel of Ideas John Coates

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The Ball and the Cross

J O H N COATES, who holds degrees from Cambridge and Exeter Universi-

novel" as Shaw's most recent w o r k Misalliance is a "debate f o r a play.'"^

Such complaints are otherwise hard to explain. I t is impossible to i g -

The subsequent treatment o f Chesterton's novels has been largely

cent academic preoccupations such as those w i t h " i n t e r t e x t u a l i t y " and

It is, therefore, w o r t h l o o k i n g at one important episode i n James's

James's response to Wells, defending art and construction, con-

Wells's essay "The Contemporary N o v e l " (1914) is a shorter version

The novel has inseparable moral consequences. It leaves impres-

It is not simply a fictitious record but a "study and judgement o f conduct"

These Jamesian doctrines had become w i d e l y disseminated since

W h a t seems to have i r r i t a t e d James most, however, and to have

knowledge." 23 Such a novelistic f u n c t i o n w o u l d involve a dialogic rela-

The reader o f Chesterton w i l l , naturally, w i s h to determine where

din author's experience. Chesterton's position here is almost identical w i t h

Chesterton's attitude to James suggests his relative lack o f interest i n

I n spite o f these characteristically gentle attempts to bridge the gap

"Theory o f Reception" is, correspondingly, a somewhat pretentious ex-

we must not merely look at it as i f we had never seen it. We must

Chesterton insists on this l i v i n g relation between reader and writer i n his

in the old days o f friendly leisure we amused ourselves with a toy

It is w o r t h noting the similarities i n Wells's and Chesterton's fictional

The existence o f an embryonic alternative to what became the stan-

could have developed into an essay w i t h equal plausibility and some o f

It is not d i f f i c u l t to detect the reverberations o f H . G . Wells's narrative

The Wellsian narrative m y t h is a simple but p o w e r f u l one. As Wells

This recurring theme involves "man breaking through the barriers" i n

f o o d is the most memorable and amusing o f these imprisoning environ-

Such appeals to the stars or the sky as an emotional alternative to hu-

Simple enough, divorced f r o m its various and changing scientific

Fair Isle, Shetland Islands, Scotland

something more specific than a generalised human daydream, although

how everyone was equally right, was accompanied by another, somewhat

I n dealing w i t h b o t h Wells and Shaw, Chesterton f e l t a w i s h not

Terms like republican and friend of man, and Chesterton's admiring

A m o n g other important m o t i f s , a reader o f The Ball and the Cross

This suggested context throws light on t w o preliminary puzzles i n

atheism o f John T u m b u l l . The use o f a prologue i n religious literature has,

a day w i l l come . . . when beings who are now latent i n our

Subtly, a w h o l e linguistic currency is devalued and the meaning o f its

The m o n k M i c h a e l ' s home, "Western B u l g a r i a " i n 1905 or 1910,

Chesterton employs many other techniques i n this c m c i a l opening

The most effective strategy i n the passage, however, is that o f parody.

Perhaps the central m o t i f i n the prologue, however, is that o f the re-

the argument before he truncates i t by an act o f violence. He has been

Professor L u c i f e r i n the prologue is far f r o m the formidable figure

Chesterton tries to define "the last o f the secrets o f G o d " b y nega-

F r o m this sober description o f a spiritual state, Chesterton moves into

It is w o r t h analysing the prologue to The Ball and the Cross f o r sev-

The sudden locking up o f the "peace o f the w o r l d " i n the person o f

T u m b u l l , Editor o f The Atheist, as one o f the first reviewers pointed

advanced beyond the techniques o f the Deist T o m Paine's The Age of

I n creating the two characters o f L u c i f e r and T u m b u l l , Chesterton has

Chesterton carefully delineates Tumbull's strengths and weaknesses

street to escape down or i n his planning his o w n and Maclan's f l i g h t (79

Whatever its limitations, such a temperament might w e l l f m d content-

It is at this point that the novel's awareness o f reader response is most

This break i n the argument ( w h i c h is also a break i n the narrative

The narrative stmcture o f Chesterton's philosophical novel, as com-

The self-consciousness w i t h w h i c h i t is displayed is another and

It is obviously a narrative o f many elements, all w i t h their distinct ef-

Above all, however, there is that sense o f t w o men exploring a strange