I think Chesterton was a saint

I also think him deeply prophetic. But I don’t think him infallible. So, though people are sending me links to this denunciation:

A reader says that he recently picked up a 2008 reprint of Chesterton’s Everlasting Man. And our reader was surprised to find a disclaimer by the publisher on the title page:

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race have changed before allowing them to read this classic work.”

And here I’ll let our reader take over:

As my father-in-law would say, this is ludicrous! It is wrong in so many ways I don’t know where to begin. In the first place, it is an act of cowardice on the part of the publishers. If they were ashamed of the content, why did they print it in the first place? It is also an act of arrogance: How dare they presume to know how Chesterton would have written his book today? Or to apologize on his behalf? Somehow, I find it difficult to imagine that Chesterton would have been cowed by the strictures of political correctness.?.?.?.

If the publisher had included a preface that properly discussed the issues they fear may be of concern, that would be one thing. But to print a cigarette-packet-style warning so that parents can prepare their children for the “horrors” ahead is unseemly.
Very modern. Very dumb.

I don’t find myself much moved to outrage. The fact is, our views of race *have* changed since Chesterton’s time and it is not inappropriate to note it, just as some word of explanation is in order when introducing a younger readers to, say, Nigger Jim in Huck Finn, or to what the term “gay” meant to a pre-1970s reader, or to what Louis de Montfort does and does not mean when he speaks of the Glories of Mary.

So when Chesterton responds to the claim that “Britain is as Protestant as the sea is salt” by saying:

Gazing reverently at the profound Protestantism of Mr. Michael Arlen or Mr. Noel Coward, or the latest nigger dance in Mayfair, we might be tempted to ask: If the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?

I think only a fool could say that a modern reader–especially a young one–would not need some explanation in order to avoid concluding either that Chesterton was a racist (not true) or that calling black people “nigger” is really okay (also not true).

Chesterton is a man of his time, using the common parlance of the time. “Nigger dance” is common British parlance of the time for “jazz dance” (as, in fact, the Wikipedia has edited it in it “sanitized for you protection” version). He is referring to the sort of thing Bertie Wooster went in for and is pointing out that this is not exactly what Cranmer and Knox had in mind.

He has no history of American slavery and, in fact, is deeply hostile to Britain’s imperialism, being a confirmed “Little Englander”. He writes oodles of essays belittling the notion of “Nordic superiority” and such. Indeed, if there is any “race” toward which he harbors a particular hostility it is the Prussian or Teutonic race. But this is to misread him, for what matters to him are ideas, not genes. He does think that different nations have different qualities and characteristics (as does everybody). But he emphatically rejects the idea that there is such a thing as racial superiority, because he is a Catholic.

He has a complex relationship with Judaism (as I already noted here) and much of it is on display in the Everlasting Man. So a modern reader, encountering his willingness to credit the blood libel is not exactly off the beam in noting that “our views of race have changed”. But (such is Chesterton’s complexity) that does not in slightest exhaust the discussion (except here in the Land of Simplicity where the world is divided neatly into friends and enemies of Israel and you are all one or or all the other). Chesterton is, in fact, a friend of Israel according to that neat template, since he believed that a people should have a home.

Anyhow, the point is this: Chesterton’s views on race are out of step with our time and are certain to cause confusion. How do I know? Because in other ways, his views on race were out of step with his time and caused confusion. He shares just enough in common with both our time and with his to be intelligible, and just enough that is not in step with either time to baffle us. Sometimes he’s just wrong, I think. But mostly he is wise. It would be a shame if a modern reader, trained to Pavlovianly respond to acoustic stimuli like “nigger” were to fling him away with the same impoverishing ignorance that makes idiots routinely ban Huck Finn as “racist”. So I don’t think the suggestion to discuss Chesterton is a bad one, just as I have no problem with the suggestion of discussing Twain before plunging into his unsparing portrayal of antebellum Southern culture.