Arrested Pugnacity
Letters From Hilaire Belloc. Selected and edited by Robert Speaight. (Hollis and Carter, 30s.) HILAIRE BELLOC was a prolific prose-writer who found it very much easier to produce verse. So,
pt least, he often claimed : Why not write slowly in a laboured prose: Why not in subtle phrases tell my woes, Why not with Irony, the master style Praise, bless, condemn, grow warm, but always smile . . .
Why not? Because I haven't got the time My day is burdened so I take to Rhyme, As people in a hurry take a cab. . . .
and the claim is substantiated by a long series of gay and delightful verse-letters, most of them, like the questions above, addressed to his old friend Maurice Baring, who evidently had the knack of bringing out his most agreeable traits. The laborious effort of prose-composition seems to have induced a very different mood; and in the present volume of collected letters, ably edited by his biographer Mr. Robert Speaight, not only does prose predominate over verse, but Belloc the brilliant poetic satirist is less in evidence than Belloc the cross-grained and prematurely embit- tered controversialist. On the whole, it is a some- what saddening collection and, from the literary point of view, more than a little disappointing. The great letter-writers of the past are not neces- sarily heroic figures—Horace Walpole was no hero : Byron frequently exhibits a trivial or vulgar aspect—but they give freely of themselves, and the self that they reveal is perpetually changing with their subject-matter. They have a gift of immediate response. They are always prepared to welcome new experiences, of which, in the letters they write, they draw a fresh and lively picture. From year to year we watch them develop, as they feel new emotions and pass through varying scenes.
Belloc, on the other hand, was a writer who completed his development at an extremely early age. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that his development was suddenly cut short, when he was bereft of the reward he longed for —a fellowship at Balliol or All Souls. Apart from a tone of deepening depression, letters written during the first decade of the twentieth century bear a remarkable resemblance to those written in the Thirties and Forties; and the complaints he utters usually fall into the same pattern. He is overworked; he is short of money; he loathes and abominates the selfish rich. England is ruled by a stupid plutocracy, with an international Jewish background. France is almost as bad, though he adores its landscapes and its vintages; and he• looks forward to the rise of some 'young general' who will send the ridiculous parliamentarians packing. True, he writes eloquently of the places he loves, and affectionately to a number of devoted friends. True, he is incessantly on the move, lecturing, walking, sailing in the Channel, and gets as much enjoyment from his library as he does from a well-stocked Sussex cellar. But in the realms of the mind, we are conscious of far less activity, if activity implies a forward move- ment. He has adopted a position, and sticks to it. His youthful pugnacity has become a settled way of thought. We have an impression of heroic energy and courage but, under that brave surface, of a strangely inelastic and self- centred character. The world changes; Belloc cannot change; he has delivered his final mes- sage many, many years ago. Even the consolations of faith threaten to run dry: 'I get a dribbling of faith [he writes from Rome, describing his visits to a monastic community] like a man who feels, or thinks he feels, the first drops of rain upon his head.' Acedia constantly threatens him, and he takes refuge in an endless round of strenuous work and equally arduous relaxation. Thus Belloc's letters are often engaging and amusing, but sel- dom illuminating or deeply stimulating. Possibly others are still to come; for there is no doubt that he charmed and dazzled his friends, including some of the most intelligent men of the day, and that not a few of them regarded him as a man of near-genius. But, in the letters edited by Mr. Speaight, the secret of his personal fascination is somehow never quite disclosed.
PETER QUENNELL
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