Words Worth Noting - November 8, 2024

“When Mr. Chesterton visited Warsaw recently the papers stated that he was accompanied from the station to his quarters by a squadron of glittering Polish cavalry: a pleasing attention, only his due, and one that I am sure he heartily appreciated. But a thoroughly adequate escort for him would include not merely armed horsemen, but cohorts of magicians, clowns, princesses, priests, kings, vegetarians, Puritans, drunkards, landlords, politicians, millionaires, minstrels out of which he has made the fairy-tale world of his poems. The fairy-tales always have a point; it was long ago said that Mr. Chesterton’s value as a moralist was largely based on the fact that he made virtue amusing. Yet even when he is most vigorously jousting against slimy monsters or caitiff knights his spear usually has a few balloons tied on to it, and can be used, when he tires of the more formal tourney, as a quarterstaff or even a slapstick. His jests are mingled with his protestations of anger and love … he has one foot in fairyland and another in Fleet Street …”

The now-forgotten J.C. Squire in 1927, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 2 (Nov.-Dec. 2022)