Chesterton engages in broad and blunt and coarse anti-semitism, far too often and too regularly. He accused “The Jews” of being the cause of World War One.
It’s a failing of his times. I’ll actually forgive him for it, because he didn’t have any way to know better. American Robert W. Chambers suffered from the same ailment: in one of his stories, he argued that the Jews needed to be expelled from the U.S.A. for reasons of national survival. That’s harsher than anything Chesterton ever said. And Chambers is (in all other ways) such a delight to read!
I love reading Chesterton…but every so often I have to pause and hold my nose, because the poor dear emits foul flatulent farts (of a literary nature) and I need to put the book down until the air clears again.
ETA: people interested in literature of the era might find some joy in A.E.W. Mason. You might do well to try “The Four Feathers,” which has been made into movies a few times.
I know, Trinopus, and it always saddens me to read something by Chesterton when he takes potshots at any nationality. His more sympathetic admirers and biographers often attributed GKC’s dislike of Jews as the result of his brother having been swindled by a Jewish stock trader of some kind (I might have the occupation wrong,–someone in the financial services sector) over some stocks in the Marconi (i.e. radio) company. Gilbert and Cecil were close, and the latter became much more the anti-Semite than the former, who underwent a major change of heart when Hitler came to power, spoke out vigorously against the Nazis and all they stood for. Very much a product of his time, Chesterton was. He was very like Kipling in this regard. If these two weren’t so gifted they’d be half-forgotten and, when remembered at all, they’d be despised today. T.S. Eliot once wrote perceptively of Chesterton that while he had no doubt the man possessed genius he was uncertain as to precisely what it was he was a genius about (I paraphrase). In other words, massively talented and yet somewhat wanting. In modern parlance: he had the chops, didn’t know what to do with them.
Although Orwell has been quoted in volume above, I think another relevant part of his essay hasn’t been mentioned…,
To charges that Kipling was proto-fascist, I say “of course”: everyone except the communists was proto-fascist then, and as Orwell also observed
Regarding the value of Kipling, Orwell uses the word “vulgar”, but I’m afraid that says more about Orwell than it does about Kipling. To the classically traned English upper classes, the insulting word “vulgar”, [“from Latin vulgaris, volgaris of or pertaining to the common people, common, vulgar, low, mean,”] meant something very close to “popular”
I loved it.
My work here is done. By someone else, to be sure, but done.