About Belloc's The Four Men: A Farrago
In his introduction to the ACS Books edition of The Four Men: A Farrago, Belloc biographer and scholar Joseph Pearce identifies the 1912 novel as one of three "hauntingly personal pilgrimages of the soul," along with The Path to Rome (1902) and The Cruise of the "Nona" (1925), in which, Pearce continues, "the author waxes wistful and whimsical on the first things, the permanent things, and in general on the things (and the Thing) that give meaning to, and make sense of, anything and everything else."
This is perhaps the best short description for The Four Men, capturing why the book remains so compelling and engaging 105 years (as of this writing) after its first publication.
In my own assessment of the book, I've assigned four main (alliterative) thematic spheres to the novel:
This is perhaps the best short description for The Four Men, capturing why the book remains so compelling and engaging 105 years (as of this writing) after its first publication.
In my own assessment of the book, I've assigned four main (alliterative) thematic spheres to the novel:
Mortality, Morals, and Masculinity
Mortality
The chief theme of the book, arguably, is mortality: the action of the story takes place between 29th October and 2nd November 1902, each of these days comprising a chapter of the book. Thus, the majority of the action takes place on All Hallows' Eve (Halloween), All Hallows' (The Solemnity of All Saints -Festivitas omnium Sanctorum), and All Souls' (The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed - Commemoratio omnium Fidelium Defunctorum) - what in olden times was called Allhallowtide. In the Middle Ages, this period was celebrated with an octave, which has carried into the modern Church custom of dedicating the entire month of November to the remembrance of the faithful departed, especially the souls in Purgatory.
The timing of Belloc's story is not the only thing that establishes the theme of mortality, however: his "Preface" telegraphs this theme as well in its closing: "For I know very well in my mind that a day will come when the holy place shall perish and all the people of it and never more be what they were. But before that day comes, Sussex, may your earth cover me, and may some loud-voiced priest from Arundel, or Grinstead, or Crawley, or Storrington, but best of all from home, have sung Do Mi Fa Sol above my bones." As is explained on the Music page of this site, the phrase "Do Mi Fa Sol" indicates the notation beginning the hymn In Paradisum, a traditional hymn for All Souls' Day and often used in funerals or requiems.
Finally, death constitutes a continual theme of the discussion between the titular four men, and is particularly a focus in the character and the words of the old man, Grizzlebeard. His final speech contains perhaps the most poignant statement of how death figures in the ultimate meaning and purpose of the novel:
The chief theme of the book, arguably, is mortality: the action of the story takes place between 29th October and 2nd November 1902, each of these days comprising a chapter of the book. Thus, the majority of the action takes place on All Hallows' Eve (Halloween), All Hallows' (The Solemnity of All Saints -Festivitas omnium Sanctorum), and All Souls' (The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed - Commemoratio omnium Fidelium Defunctorum) - what in olden times was called Allhallowtide. In the Middle Ages, this period was celebrated with an octave, which has carried into the modern Church custom of dedicating the entire month of November to the remembrance of the faithful departed, especially the souls in Purgatory.
The timing of Belloc's story is not the only thing that establishes the theme of mortality, however: his "Preface" telegraphs this theme as well in its closing: "For I know very well in my mind that a day will come when the holy place shall perish and all the people of it and never more be what they were. But before that day comes, Sussex, may your earth cover me, and may some loud-voiced priest from Arundel, or Grinstead, or Crawley, or Storrington, but best of all from home, have sung Do Mi Fa Sol above my bones." As is explained on the Music page of this site, the phrase "Do Mi Fa Sol" indicates the notation beginning the hymn In Paradisum, a traditional hymn for All Souls' Day and often used in funerals or requiems.
Finally, death constitutes a continual theme of the discussion between the titular four men, and is particularly a focus in the character and the words of the old man, Grizzlebeard. His final speech contains perhaps the most poignant statement of how death figures in the ultimate meaning and purpose of the novel:
'There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this — to consider chiefly from now onward those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea.'
When he had said this (by which he meant Death), the other two, looking sadly at me, stood silent also for about the time in which a man can say good-bye with reverence. Then they all three turned about and went rapidly and with a purpose up the village street.
Morals
At first reading, it doesn't seem that morality is a primary concern in this book. This is perhaps because we tend to think of morality in terms of casuistic morality: that is, case-by-case evaluation of actions, or the kind of morality imbricated in a traditional examination of conscience, where the penitent goes through each of the Ten Commandments and evaluates his behaviors or actions accordingly. There are, however, other ways of studying and understanding morality, not necessarily as a replacement of or alternative to casuistry - which still has its purposes - but as a supplement to this method. One could, for example, look at the habits of a person's life and their general dispositions (e.g., whether or not they typically strive to be a good person, or whether they are lackadaisical about their moral life). Note that such a moral methodology is never meant to supercede questions of particular decisions or the objective nature of actions such that the general "goodness" of a person and his intentions ameliorate or nullify the evil of an action - this was part of the unfortunate error made by 20th-century Jesuit theologian Rev. Josef Fuchs, S.J. Nevertheless, general tendencies, habits, and dispositions do matter in morals, and it in that respect that morals are thematic in Belloc's novel.
Belloc's book gives frequent evidence of concern with virtues: those in our normal taxonomies, such as courage or prudence; but also very particular ones like gregariousness, generosity, cunning, wit, and other such traits. As to general dispositions, Belloc - like Chesterton in so much of his writing - seems always on the lookout against pusillanimity and devoted to promoting its opposite, magnanimity. These terms are difficult to define, but fortunately Belloc chooses rather the indicate and illustrate these virtues rather than wrap them up neatly in a verbal bow. His moral insights come primarily, therefore, as it were through "stealth" statements, rather than outright exhortations: such as, for example, in the Sailor's story about Peter the Politician trying to sell his soul, which ends with the unexpectedly deep insight: "It is not easy to sell one's soul, though it is exceedingly easy to lose it or to give it away;" or, in the earlier conversation about "the best and worst things in the world" when the Sailor opines:
At first reading, it doesn't seem that morality is a primary concern in this book. This is perhaps because we tend to think of morality in terms of casuistic morality: that is, case-by-case evaluation of actions, or the kind of morality imbricated in a traditional examination of conscience, where the penitent goes through each of the Ten Commandments and evaluates his behaviors or actions accordingly. There are, however, other ways of studying and understanding morality, not necessarily as a replacement of or alternative to casuistry - which still has its purposes - but as a supplement to this method. One could, for example, look at the habits of a person's life and their general dispositions (e.g., whether or not they typically strive to be a good person, or whether they are lackadaisical about their moral life). Note that such a moral methodology is never meant to supercede questions of particular decisions or the objective nature of actions such that the general "goodness" of a person and his intentions ameliorate or nullify the evil of an action - this was part of the unfortunate error made by 20th-century Jesuit theologian Rev. Josef Fuchs, S.J. Nevertheless, general tendencies, habits, and dispositions do matter in morals, and it in that respect that morals are thematic in Belloc's novel.
Belloc's book gives frequent evidence of concern with virtues: those in our normal taxonomies, such as courage or prudence; but also very particular ones like gregariousness, generosity, cunning, wit, and other such traits. As to general dispositions, Belloc - like Chesterton in so much of his writing - seems always on the lookout against pusillanimity and devoted to promoting its opposite, magnanimity. These terms are difficult to define, but fortunately Belloc chooses rather the indicate and illustrate these virtues rather than wrap them up neatly in a verbal bow. His moral insights come primarily, therefore, as it were through "stealth" statements, rather than outright exhortations: such as, for example, in the Sailor's story about Peter the Politician trying to sell his soul, which ends with the unexpectedly deep insight: "It is not easy to sell one's soul, though it is exceedingly easy to lose it or to give it away;" or, in the earlier conversation about "the best and worst things in the world" when the Sailor opines:
Why... I cannot tell. [...] But certainly as I have watched men it seems to me that they regard being hunted as the best thing in the world. For one man having as much as would enable him (if he were so inclined) to see the world of God, and to eat all kinds of fruit and flesh, and to drink the best of beer, will none the less start a race with a Money- Devil: a fleet, strong Money -Devil with a goad. And when this Money-Devil has given him some five years start, say until he is nearly thirty years of age, then will that man start racing and careering and bounding and flying with the Money-Devil after him, over hill and valley, field and fen, and wood and waste, and the high heaths and the wolds, until at last (somewhere about sixty as a rule or a little later) he gives a great cry and throws up his hands and falls down. Then does the Money-Devil come and eat him up. Many millions love such a course.
... all of which is, of course, a kind of restatement of the Biblical axiom that the love of money is the root of all evils, and meant to contrast with the "permanent things" to which Belloc throughout the book is encouraging his readers to give their deeper devotion and interest.
Masculinity
The final of this first set of themes is masculinity. This theme is closely tied to the themes or mortality and morals, and is, similarly, laid out not expressly but as it were incidentally in the narrative, woven unseen into the very fabric of the book: it is, after all, about four men, whom many readers have seen as "types" of various facets of Belloc's own personality. Manliness, as Belloc elucidates it, involves some things that modern readers will recognize as typical to the category, such as courage (even impetuous courage), a competitive nature, a love of combat and feasting, and the like. It also involves, however, aspects that have become less typically prized in the ideal man: a love of song and poetry, for instance; or a fondness toward argument for argument's sake which even sometimes includes strong-headed advocacy for the wrong point simply in order to keep an argument going, often helped along by a bit of what is called 'Irish bull.' Notably, both of these qualities have become more associated with effeminacy in our day. But both were in Belloc's day part of well-rounded manhood. Consider the latter case, for example: that of interminable conversation or argument. In our popular culture, we might envision sitting around talking or chatting to be more the province of women, men being more inclined by nature to be 'doers' and engaged in activity rather than idleness. But Belloc and Chesterton described the opposite in their writings: they said that women didn't understand how men could sit in pubs for hours on end and talk bosh at one another.
Finally, two essential elements come to the fore in Belloc's reflections on manliness. First, a preoccupation with relations and hierarchies - with respect to men and women, to be sure, but also among men themselves: superiors to inferiors, comradeship among equals, enmity between disparate men, etc. Chesterton perhaps best described this idea in his book, What's Wrong with the World, in his description of the feminine genius in the chapter "The Higher Anarchy," where this ideal of manhood that is shared by Belloc is spelled out mostly by way of implied contrast:
Masculinity
The final of this first set of themes is masculinity. This theme is closely tied to the themes or mortality and morals, and is, similarly, laid out not expressly but as it were incidentally in the narrative, woven unseen into the very fabric of the book: it is, after all, about four men, whom many readers have seen as "types" of various facets of Belloc's own personality. Manliness, as Belloc elucidates it, involves some things that modern readers will recognize as typical to the category, such as courage (even impetuous courage), a competitive nature, a love of combat and feasting, and the like. It also involves, however, aspects that have become less typically prized in the ideal man: a love of song and poetry, for instance; or a fondness toward argument for argument's sake which even sometimes includes strong-headed advocacy for the wrong point simply in order to keep an argument going, often helped along by a bit of what is called 'Irish bull.' Notably, both of these qualities have become more associated with effeminacy in our day. But both were in Belloc's day part of well-rounded manhood. Consider the latter case, for example: that of interminable conversation or argument. In our popular culture, we might envision sitting around talking or chatting to be more the province of women, men being more inclined by nature to be 'doers' and engaged in activity rather than idleness. But Belloc and Chesterton described the opposite in their writings: they said that women didn't understand how men could sit in pubs for hours on end and talk bosh at one another.
Finally, two essential elements come to the fore in Belloc's reflections on manliness. First, a preoccupation with relations and hierarchies - with respect to men and women, to be sure, but also among men themselves: superiors to inferiors, comradeship among equals, enmity between disparate men, etc. Chesterton perhaps best described this idea in his book, What's Wrong with the World, in his description of the feminine genius in the chapter "The Higher Anarchy," where this ideal of manhood that is shared by Belloc is spelled out mostly by way of implied contrast:
The woman’s wisdom stands partly, not only for a wholesome hesitation about punishment, but even for a wholesome hesitation about absolute rules. There was something feminine and perversely true in that phrase of Wilde’s, that people should not be treated as the rule, but all of them as exceptions. Made by a man the remark was a little effeminate; for Wilde did lack the masculine power of dogma and of democratic cooperation. But if a woman had said it it would have been simply true; a woman does treat each person as a peculiar person. In other words, she stands for Anarchy; a very ancient and arguable philosophy; not anarchy in the sense of having no customs in one’s life (which is inconceivable), but anarchy in the sense of having no rules for one’s mind. To her, almost certainly, are due all those working traditions that cannot be found in books, especially those of education; it was she who first gave a child a stuffed stocking for being good or stood him in the corner for being naughty. This unclassified knowledge is sometimes called rule of thumb and sometimes motherwit. The last phrase suggests the whole truth, for none ever called it fatherwit.
For Chesterton and Belloc, then, man's is the province of "dogma and democratic cooperation," of codifying relations and organizing things. Chesterton notes how men even do this in silly matter such as games and sport: the more rules and strictures they can create, the more complicatedly construed and constructed a game can be, so much the better. This kind of attitude is manifested throughout The Four Men, such as in the "feast" organized toward the end of the book. It might also be said this is reflected in the phenomenon of The Four Men Feast which the book has inspired, to which this website is devoted, and which has been developed and elaborated upon in a way that men seem primarily interested to do.
The second essential preoccupation of Belloc's ruminations on manhood has to do with legacy and history. Once again the relation to the other theme of mortality is critical here. For Belloc, man is concerned with his relation to history in a two-fold way: he is concerned with preserving and cherishing history (such as the land he loves, before it changes or is lost forever), as well as with making his own mark and leaving something lasting behind him before he departs this life. This theme of Belloc runs throughout the book, but is perhaps best captures in the poem that comes at the very end of the book, "He Does Not Die." It is reproduced in full elsewhere on this site; for our purposes here, we will quote only one stanza:
The second essential preoccupation of Belloc's ruminations on manhood has to do with legacy and history. Once again the relation to the other theme of mortality is critical here. For Belloc, man is concerned with his relation to history in a two-fold way: he is concerned with preserving and cherishing history (such as the land he loves, before it changes or is lost forever), as well as with making his own mark and leaving something lasting behind him before he departs this life. This theme of Belloc runs throughout the book, but is perhaps best captures in the poem that comes at the very end of the book, "He Does Not Die." It is reproduced in full elsewhere on this site; for our purposes here, we will quote only one stanza:
He does not die... that can bequeath
Some influence to the land he knows,
Or dares, persistent, interwreath
Love permanent with the hedgerows;
He does not die, but still remains
Substantiate with his darling plains.
Fidelity, Faith, and Friendship
Fidelity
Both Belloc and Chesterton prized devotion and dedication, in the forms especially of vows (even - or perhaps especially, for Chesterton - "rash vows") and a particular kind of patriotism that is sometimes called "small patriotism" - that is, the love of one's specific native land, such as the town (or, as in The Four Men, the County) of one's birth; as distinct from a jingoistic patriotism or nationalism, much less imperialism.
Beginning with its preface - an apostrophe addressed to the County Sussex herself - The Four Men reads like a kind of love letter to this cherished place in Belloc's life, right up until the final pages. More about this is said in the section below, on Home and Homesickness.
Fidelity to vows also figures into the narrative, beginning with the commitment the four men make to one another to keep company along their journey. There are other subtle moments of their being true to one another and to their word, as in their standing one another a drink at various times, or allowing the penurious Poet to tag along in the first place. Chesterton, along with Belloc, loved the old custom of "standing drink," which was one of the bones of contention in one of their early debates in letters with George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells which in part gave rise to Belloc and Chesterton's elucidated social theory, Distributism. As opposed to the Socialist ideal of "sharing," Belloc and Chesterton both liked the custom by which a client would be given a drink on credit either to the bartender or to another patron in a pub, with the understanding that he would pay back in time or buy his own round in turn. Chesterton particularly said that his Utopia would not be a society of sharing, but one of this continuous "give and take" - and one of the essential reasons is that this kind of custom embodied, as it were ritualistically, the values of fidelity and honor. It enabled men to pledge themselves and stay true to that pledge, which was more wholesome, it was deemed, than any kind of Utopia of universal sharing where no such pledging was needed.
Both Belloc and Chesterton prized devotion and dedication, in the forms especially of vows (even - or perhaps especially, for Chesterton - "rash vows") and a particular kind of patriotism that is sometimes called "small patriotism" - that is, the love of one's specific native land, such as the town (or, as in The Four Men, the County) of one's birth; as distinct from a jingoistic patriotism or nationalism, much less imperialism.
Beginning with its preface - an apostrophe addressed to the County Sussex herself - The Four Men reads like a kind of love letter to this cherished place in Belloc's life, right up until the final pages. More about this is said in the section below, on Home and Homesickness.
Fidelity to vows also figures into the narrative, beginning with the commitment the four men make to one another to keep company along their journey. There are other subtle moments of their being true to one another and to their word, as in their standing one another a drink at various times, or allowing the penurious Poet to tag along in the first place. Chesterton, along with Belloc, loved the old custom of "standing drink," which was one of the bones of contention in one of their early debates in letters with George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells which in part gave rise to Belloc and Chesterton's elucidated social theory, Distributism. As opposed to the Socialist ideal of "sharing," Belloc and Chesterton both liked the custom by which a client would be given a drink on credit either to the bartender or to another patron in a pub, with the understanding that he would pay back in time or buy his own round in turn. Chesterton particularly said that his Utopia would not be a society of sharing, but one of this continuous "give and take" - and one of the essential reasons is that this kind of custom embodied, as it were ritualistically, the values of fidelity and honor. It enabled men to pledge themselves and stay true to that pledge, which was more wholesome, it was deemed, than any kind of Utopia of universal sharing where no such pledging was needed.
Faith
Belloc's somewhat bombastic Catholicism is evident in the book, and in its own unexpected way The Four Men serves as an exemplar of what made him - as well as his peer, G. K. Chesterton - such an effective apologist. Belloc manifests the wisdom behind Chesterton's remark that, "it is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." There's an irreverent affection for the Faith in The Four Men, embodied perhaps most visibly in the songs, such as The Song of the Pelagian Heresy or Noel.
But irreverence does not equal impiety. While on the surface some of these elements might seem (to quote Grizzlebeard) "rank blasphemy," Belloc shrewdly provides another, deeper layer that contextualizes and gives more significant meaning to ostensible frivolities. For example, Belloc includes a retelling of the legendary story of Saint Dunstan, who pulled the devil by his nose with fire tongs. He also includes a version of the legend of the Faerie Mass (as told by Myself), which is worth quoting:
Belloc's somewhat bombastic Catholicism is evident in the book, and in its own unexpected way The Four Men serves as an exemplar of what made him - as well as his peer, G. K. Chesterton - such an effective apologist. Belloc manifests the wisdom behind Chesterton's remark that, "it is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." There's an irreverent affection for the Faith in The Four Men, embodied perhaps most visibly in the songs, such as The Song of the Pelagian Heresy or Noel.
But irreverence does not equal impiety. While on the surface some of these elements might seem (to quote Grizzlebeard) "rank blasphemy," Belloc shrewdly provides another, deeper layer that contextualizes and gives more significant meaning to ostensible frivolities. For example, Belloc includes a retelling of the legendary story of Saint Dunstan, who pulled the devil by his nose with fire tongs. He also includes a version of the legend of the Faerie Mass (as told by Myself), which is worth quoting:
I read once in a book of a man who was crossing a heath in a wild country not far from the noise of the sea. The wind and the rain beat upon him, and it was very cold, so he was glad to see a light upon the heath a long way off. He made towards it and, coming into that place, found it to be a chapel where some twenty or thirty were singing, and there was a priest at the altar saying Mass at midnight, and there was a monk serving his Mass. Now this traveler noticed how warm and brilliant was the place; the windows shone with their colours, and all the stone was carved; the altar was all alight, and the place was full of singing, for the twenty or thirty still sand, and he sang with them.... But their faces he could not see, for the priest who said the Mass and the man who served the Mass both had their faces from him, and all in that congregation were hooded, and their faces were turned away from him also, but their singing was loud, and he joined in it. He thought he was in fairyland. And so he was. For as that Mass ended he fell asleep, suffused with warmth, and his ears still full of music; but when he woke he found that the place was a ruin, the windows empty, and the wind roaring through; no glass, or rather a few broken panes, and these quite plain and colourless; dead leaves of trees blown in upon the altar steps, and over the whole of it the thin and miserable light of a winter dawn.
Myself goes on to tell of how the man continued on his journey, but felt that "he had lost something great [and] therefor the world was worth much less to him than it had been the day before." As for the man on that journey, so for Europe and the Faith, for Belloc...
To put such matters another way: Chesterton, in his poem Lepanto, speaks of the Reformation age in Europe in these stirring terms: "The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes / And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, / And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, / And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom...." For Belloc, as for Chesterton, the Faith in merry old England, though simple and even bordering on superstition - the Faith still intermixed with Faerie, myth, legend, and even the pagan gods - was healthier than the "tangled... texts" of supposedly "enlightened" modern man. Chesterton's poetic descriptors should not be overlooked: note the contrasts imbricated in considering "innocence and surprise" alongside "tangled," "aching," "narrow," "dusty," and even "new." The "new" was a newness that was nevertheless stale, staid, over-intellectualized, less earthy and raw than the faith as believed and lives simply in ages past. The contrast between these ways of believing and living is not perhaps a very conspicuous theme in The Four Men, but can be seen if one looks for it.
To put such matters another way: Chesterton, in his poem Lepanto, speaks of the Reformation age in Europe in these stirring terms: "The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes / And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, / And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, / And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom...." For Belloc, as for Chesterton, the Faith in merry old England, though simple and even bordering on superstition - the Faith still intermixed with Faerie, myth, legend, and even the pagan gods - was healthier than the "tangled... texts" of supposedly "enlightened" modern man. Chesterton's poetic descriptors should not be overlooked: note the contrasts imbricated in considering "innocence and surprise" alongside "tangled," "aching," "narrow," "dusty," and even "new." The "new" was a newness that was nevertheless stale, staid, over-intellectualized, less earthy and raw than the faith as believed and lives simply in ages past. The contrast between these ways of believing and living is not perhaps a very conspicuous theme in The Four Men, but can be seen if one looks for it.
Friendship
About this particular theme in the book, little need be said since its presence is so profoundly written onto every page: the action of the book, more than the walk across Sussex and the occasional antics that ensue, is simply the living out of the friendship. Perhaps the point most worth noting, then, about this theme is the nature and origin of the four men's friendship, and the potential significance of these. Before agreeing to Grizzlebeard's company on his journey, Myself - in a narrated aside - notes that, "all companionship is good, but chance companionship is the best of all." While a reader might easily breeze past this insight, it is worth pausing to consider, because it is striking, and not at all self-evident, intuitive, or beyond interrogation. Indeed, in may be said that to understand this seemingly incidental statement is to grasp a key and central facet of Belloc's personality. And the key has to do not just with the chance nature, but with the setting for this meeting: The George Inn at Robertsbridge. With this in mind, consider these quotations from Belloc's essay (worth reading in its entirety), "On Inns" [emphases added]:
About this particular theme in the book, little need be said since its presence is so profoundly written onto every page: the action of the book, more than the walk across Sussex and the occasional antics that ensue, is simply the living out of the friendship. Perhaps the point most worth noting, then, about this theme is the nature and origin of the four men's friendship, and the potential significance of these. Before agreeing to Grizzlebeard's company on his journey, Myself - in a narrated aside - notes that, "all companionship is good, but chance companionship is the best of all." While a reader might easily breeze past this insight, it is worth pausing to consider, because it is striking, and not at all self-evident, intuitive, or beyond interrogation. Indeed, in may be said that to understand this seemingly incidental statement is to grasp a key and central facet of Belloc's personality. And the key has to do not just with the chance nature, but with the setting for this meeting: The George Inn at Robertsbridge. With this in mind, consider these quotations from Belloc's essay (worth reading in its entirety), "On Inns" [emphases added]:
Inns are the mirror and at the same time the flower of a people. The savour of men met in kindliness and in a homely way for years and years comes to inhabit all their panels (Inns are panelled) and lends incense to their fires. (Inns have not radiators, but fires.) But this good quintessence and distillation of comradeship varies from countryside to countryside and more from province to province, and more still from race to race and from realm to realm; just as speech differs and music and all other excellent fruits of Europe.
[...]
I knew an Inn in South England, when I was a boy, that stood on the fringe of a larch wood, upon a great high road. Here when the springtime came and I went off to see the world I used to meet with carters and with travelling men, also keepers, and men who bred horses and sold them, and sometimes with sailors padding the hoof between port and port. These men would tell me a thousand things.
Belloc wrote this essay while in a certain Inn, "the noblest in South England [...;] [t]he whole place is a paradise." In another place, he spoke of Roberstbridge as "a paradise for any man" and of the Inn there as having the finest port in England. It is reasonable to assume that Belloc wrote "On Inns" in the very same Inn in which The Four Men begins.
The atmosphere of an Inn was the "good quintessence and distillation of comradeship. Belloc was always something of an itinerant - note how, in the essay, he addresses his readers as "you wanderers (that is all men, whatsoever, for none of you can rest)" - and chance meetings while traveling, especially at Inns, were a kind of encounter with the peculiarity of Man rather than with particular men. Belloc liked this kind of informal friendship that occurred through happenstance, because it was paradoxically at once less and more personal: this is why it is so significant in the book that Myself, Grizzlebeard, the Sailor, and the Poet never reveal their true names. They could be more truly themselves in part because of their anonymity. (All of this resonates as well with Chesterton's reflections on "The Common Man" and men in a crowd."
The paradox of this at once impersonal and yet deeply personal friendship is best captured by the great early line from Grizzlebeard: "A man is more himself if he is one of a number." Belloc believed this, but he also knew that sometimes intimate friends and acquaintances can cause a man to put up barriers: whereas it is less threatening sometimes for a man to be his true self with a stranger whom he knows he'll probably never see again, as any bartender can tell you.
The atmosphere of an Inn was the "good quintessence and distillation of comradeship. Belloc was always something of an itinerant - note how, in the essay, he addresses his readers as "you wanderers (that is all men, whatsoever, for none of you can rest)" - and chance meetings while traveling, especially at Inns, were a kind of encounter with the peculiarity of Man rather than with particular men. Belloc liked this kind of informal friendship that occurred through happenstance, because it was paradoxically at once less and more personal: this is why it is so significant in the book that Myself, Grizzlebeard, the Sailor, and the Poet never reveal their true names. They could be more truly themselves in part because of their anonymity. (All of this resonates as well with Chesterton's reflections on "The Common Man" and men in a crowd."
The paradox of this at once impersonal and yet deeply personal friendship is best captured by the great early line from Grizzlebeard: "A man is more himself if he is one of a number." Belloc believed this, but he also knew that sometimes intimate friends and acquaintances can cause a man to put up barriers: whereas it is less threatening sometimes for a man to be his true self with a stranger whom he knows he'll probably never see again, as any bartender can tell you.
Home and Homesickness
Ah! but if a man is part of and is rooted in one steadfast piece of earth, which has nourished him and given him his being, and if he can on his side lend it glory and do it service (I thought), it will be a friend to him for ever, and he has outflanked Death in a way.
Home
Though French-born, Belloc was an Englishman. He was a man of Sussex. And even though he made his (in)famous statement that "[t]he Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith," it is doubtful that Belloc ever would have gloried in being "a European." He did indeed celebrate how the Faith was a principle of unity for all of Christendom, and lamented the decline and breaking up of that unity, but it is important to distinguish this kind of vision from the monochromatic "cosmopolitanism" that we see around us today, an ethos that came into its own during Belloc's own lifetime and which he loathed.
At the same time, Belloc's love of home and native place needs to be distinguished from jingoistic patriotism or even "localism" per se. The joking about cheese in The Four Men - how in Sussex there is the one, true cheese, distinguished from other places - is, indeed, joking. Belloc, like Chesterton, celebrated that every place had (or should have) its own cheese. (Chesterton describes in his essay, "Cheese," how once he ate "lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties" and how "[i]n each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different.") To really believe Sussex cheese the one and only true cheese, and that Gorgonzola "is made of soup in Connecticut" would be to fall into a trap of blind loyalties and a false pride in the local. Rather, Belloc recognized that love of home was a kind of (for lack of a better term) projection, a contribution of will by the lover. This point is difficult to distinguish, but fortunately Chesterton did it precisely and inimitably, when he said that "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her." He elsewhere calls this "the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable."
Nonetheless this love of home was a virtue, for both Belloc and Chesterton. Men were called to love, and make loveable, their own land, their own county, their own country - and their own cheese.
Homesickness
The sense of homesickness in The Four Men relates somewhat to what was said about the Faith above. After the decline of Christendom and the rise of modernity and cosmopolitanism and relativism, the sharp distinctions and differences of previous times eroded away. Lost were the days of each village with its own quirky customs, its own guilds, its own Whitsunday plays and local festivals. In place of the old household gods and the hearth were now the wireless and mass-produced furniture. Belloc's book is full of the paradox that though one might think the breaking down of borders and leveling of distinctions would work to ensure one a sense of welcome and feeling-at-home wherever he went, they actually create a sense of homelessness everywhere: even at home. This is owing to the fact that the very things that make home "homey" had begun to ebb away.
This melancholic consideration is there from the very opening of the book, and attempting to recover that lost sense is a central theme (see again the section on Faith above). But this also connects with what was said above about Mortality and it is for this reason that this theme, though melancholic, is not pessimistic. Belloc knew, and instilled in his narrative the notion, that no matter how homey we might manage to be here on earth, we will always fell somewhat alien and estranged: because this valley of tears is not our final or true home. It is for this reason that the thought of mortality and the quest to return home are bound together Myself, and expressed so poignantly in the character of Grizzlebeard. Whatever homelessness we feel here below, for whatever reason, serves as a reminder to us and a spur to hope that we'll come at last to a lasting dwelling prepared for us before the foundations of the world.
Though French-born, Belloc was an Englishman. He was a man of Sussex. And even though he made his (in)famous statement that "[t]he Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith," it is doubtful that Belloc ever would have gloried in being "a European." He did indeed celebrate how the Faith was a principle of unity for all of Christendom, and lamented the decline and breaking up of that unity, but it is important to distinguish this kind of vision from the monochromatic "cosmopolitanism" that we see around us today, an ethos that came into its own during Belloc's own lifetime and which he loathed.
At the same time, Belloc's love of home and native place needs to be distinguished from jingoistic patriotism or even "localism" per se. The joking about cheese in The Four Men - how in Sussex there is the one, true cheese, distinguished from other places - is, indeed, joking. Belloc, like Chesterton, celebrated that every place had (or should have) its own cheese. (Chesterton describes in his essay, "Cheese," how once he ate "lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties" and how "[i]n each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different.") To really believe Sussex cheese the one and only true cheese, and that Gorgonzola "is made of soup in Connecticut" would be to fall into a trap of blind loyalties and a false pride in the local. Rather, Belloc recognized that love of home was a kind of (for lack of a better term) projection, a contribution of will by the lover. This point is difficult to distinguish, but fortunately Chesterton did it precisely and inimitably, when he said that "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her." He elsewhere calls this "the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable."
Nonetheless this love of home was a virtue, for both Belloc and Chesterton. Men were called to love, and make loveable, their own land, their own county, their own country - and their own cheese.
Homesickness
The sense of homesickness in The Four Men relates somewhat to what was said about the Faith above. After the decline of Christendom and the rise of modernity and cosmopolitanism and relativism, the sharp distinctions and differences of previous times eroded away. Lost were the days of each village with its own quirky customs, its own guilds, its own Whitsunday plays and local festivals. In place of the old household gods and the hearth were now the wireless and mass-produced furniture. Belloc's book is full of the paradox that though one might think the breaking down of borders and leveling of distinctions would work to ensure one a sense of welcome and feeling-at-home wherever he went, they actually create a sense of homelessness everywhere: even at home. This is owing to the fact that the very things that make home "homey" had begun to ebb away.
This melancholic consideration is there from the very opening of the book, and attempting to recover that lost sense is a central theme (see again the section on Faith above). But this also connects with what was said above about Mortality and it is for this reason that this theme, though melancholic, is not pessimistic. Belloc knew, and instilled in his narrative the notion, that no matter how homey we might manage to be here on earth, we will always fell somewhat alien and estranged: because this valley of tears is not our final or true home. It is for this reason that the thought of mortality and the quest to return home are bound together Myself, and expressed so poignantly in the character of Grizzlebeard. Whatever homelessness we feel here below, for whatever reason, serves as a reminder to us and a spur to hope that we'll come at last to a lasting dwelling prepared for us before the foundations of the world.
Ephemera and Eternity
Ephemera and Eternity
There is a lot to enjoy in The Four Men: scenes of madcap, snippets of song, adventures and balderdash, tall tales, and so forth. But for many readers, the best of the book is in the conversations between the four travelers in which they philosophize in a (relatively) more serious vein. Such as, for example, the discussion about "the worst [and best] thing in the world," as well as the exchange proposed by the Sailor for each to tell the story of his first love.
These scenes more than any resonate with the theme of the mixture of ephemera and eternity which pervades the book. It is all the more poignant for being unexpected and sudden, for instance, when Grizzlebeard disagrees with the Poet that a smoking chimney is the worst thing in the world, and with the Sailor that the worst thing in the world is Death:
There is a lot to enjoy in The Four Men: scenes of madcap, snippets of song, adventures and balderdash, tall tales, and so forth. But for many readers, the best of the book is in the conversations between the four travelers in which they philosophize in a (relatively) more serious vein. Such as, for example, the discussion about "the worst [and best] thing in the world," as well as the exchange proposed by the Sailor for each to tell the story of his first love.
These scenes more than any resonate with the theme of the mixture of ephemera and eternity which pervades the book. It is all the more poignant for being unexpected and sudden, for instance, when Grizzlebeard disagrees with the Poet that a smoking chimney is the worst thing in the world, and with the Sailor that the worst thing in the world is Death:
You are neither of you right... the worst thing in the world is the passing of human affection. No man who has lost a friend need fear death.
[...]
The thing of which I am speaking is the gradual weakening, and at last the severance, of human bonds. It has been said that no man can see God and live. Here is another saying for you, very near the same: No man can be alone and live. None, not even in old age. [...] When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside which is like the cold of space between the planets. Absolute dereliction is the death of the soul; and the end of living is a great love abandoned. [...] [E]verything else that there is in the action of the mind save loving is of its nature a growth: it goes through its phases of seed, of miraculous sprouting, of maturity, of somnolescence, and of decline. But with loving it is not so; for the comprehension by one soul of another is something borrowed from whatever lies outside time: it is not under the conditions of time. Then if it passes, it is past - it never grows again....
[...]
The passing of human affection is the worst thing in the world. When our friends die they go from us, but it is not of their own will; or if it is of their will, it is not of their own will in any contradiction to ours; or even if it be of their own will in contradiction to ours and the end of a quarrel, yet it is a violent thing and still savors of affection. But that decay of what is living in the heart, and that numbness supervening, and that last indifference - oh! these are not to be compared for unhappiness with any other ill on this unhappy earth. And all day long and in every place, if you could survey the world from a height and look down into the hearts of men, you would see that frost stealing on [emphases added].
It is remarkable that Belloc, only 42 at the time of this book's publication, writes here with the wisdom of old age. This is, of course, because the wisdom is not simply gained from experience, but from a thorough humanistic education and a deep rootedness in traditional wisdom.
This passage perhaps best exemplifies the strong sense of melancholic wonder that pervades The Four Men and arises as possibly its strongest and most lingering impression on the reader. In the opening Preface, the author speaks of "loves... human, and therefore changeable" being "attach[ed]... to things unchangeable" - how one's native land takes on this "character of enduring things." But then abruptly he speaks of "some sort of warning reach[ing] him, that even his own County is approaching its doom."
This tension between earthly and eternal loves, between the "character of enduring things" and (as Grizzlebeard puts it) "that frost stealing on" in the heart of ever man, is arguably the central question of the book. How does one cope?
Belloc doesn't give answers in The Four Men, he simply ponders and meditates upon the question. This is part of the book's power: it isn't preachy, it doesn't try to do too much. The answers, of course, Belloc had - or at least believed and hoped he had. And the willing reader can find them elsewhere: in Survivals and New Arrivals, in Europe and the Faith, in The Path to Rome, and in so much else he wrote: because the answers are the Christian answers. The answers are detachment and mortification, penance and renunciation, alongside the virtue of Hope and the Spirit-born fruit of joy. The answers are the sacramental and incarnational sense of being-in-the-world that traditional Christianity inculcates. For Belloc, one doesn't simply look beyond the ephemeral to the eternal, or "abstract" the eternal goods from passing things: he'd have sniffed at such an idea and probably called it "Idealist" or "neo-Platonist." Rather, one finds and embraces the eternal while still loving material things, while at the same time remaining detached from particular things. The challenge is to admire and love things in their instantiation and not just generally or vaguely. Chesterton talks about how this problem even relates to human affections (which concern Grizzlebeard as the place where this tension carries the greatest stakes). Remarking on what he calls a "Tolstoian" idea of general love for humanity, Chesterton writes:
This passage perhaps best exemplifies the strong sense of melancholic wonder that pervades The Four Men and arises as possibly its strongest and most lingering impression on the reader. In the opening Preface, the author speaks of "loves... human, and therefore changeable" being "attach[ed]... to things unchangeable" - how one's native land takes on this "character of enduring things." But then abruptly he speaks of "some sort of warning reach[ing] him, that even his own County is approaching its doom."
This tension between earthly and eternal loves, between the "character of enduring things" and (as Grizzlebeard puts it) "that frost stealing on" in the heart of ever man, is arguably the central question of the book. How does one cope?
Belloc doesn't give answers in The Four Men, he simply ponders and meditates upon the question. This is part of the book's power: it isn't preachy, it doesn't try to do too much. The answers, of course, Belloc had - or at least believed and hoped he had. And the willing reader can find them elsewhere: in Survivals and New Arrivals, in Europe and the Faith, in The Path to Rome, and in so much else he wrote: because the answers are the Christian answers. The answers are detachment and mortification, penance and renunciation, alongside the virtue of Hope and the Spirit-born fruit of joy. The answers are the sacramental and incarnational sense of being-in-the-world that traditional Christianity inculcates. For Belloc, one doesn't simply look beyond the ephemeral to the eternal, or "abstract" the eternal goods from passing things: he'd have sniffed at such an idea and probably called it "Idealist" or "neo-Platonist." Rather, one finds and embraces the eternal while still loving material things, while at the same time remaining detached from particular things. The challenge is to admire and love things in their instantiation and not just generally or vaguely. Chesterton talks about how this problem even relates to human affections (which concern Grizzlebeard as the place where this tension carries the greatest stakes). Remarking on what he calls a "Tolstoian" idea of general love for humanity, Chesterton writes:
I should very much like to know where in the whole of the New Testament [one] finds this violent, unnatural, and immoral proposition. Christ did not have the same kind of regard for one person as for another. We are specifically told that there were certain persons whom He especially loved. It is most improbable that He thought of other nations as He thought of His own. The sight of His national city moved Him to tears, and the highest compliment he paid was, ‘Behold an Israelite indeed.’ [...] Christ commanded us to have love for all men, but even if we had equal love for all men, to speak of having the same love for all men is merely bewildering nonsense. If we love a man at all, the impression he produces on us must be vitally different to the impression produced by another man whom we love. To speak of having the same kind of regard for both is about as sensible as asking a man whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. Christ did not love humanity; He never said He loved humanity; He loved men. Neither He nor anyone else can love humanity; it is like loving a gigantic centipede. And the reason Tolstoians can even endure to think of an equally distributed affection is that their love of humanity is a logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their own theories, a love which would be an insult to a tom-cat [emphasis added].
Each man is an instantiation of "the divine spark" and the "sacred image" and to be loved particularly if our affection for it is to be called love and all. Yet this love can and does pass away, and Grizzlebeard puts his finger on the worst way that happens: not through death, but through estrangement. But estrangement, like all decay and sadness and separation we encounter in this life, serves to remind us that ultimately we are destined for a life where things do not pass away, and where love and all good things last forever.
On this subject of detachment, we leave this essay, tying together all the themes discussed above, and giving the last word to Grizzlebeard (Belloc), who departs from his companions with this sobering and yet somehow hopeful reflection:
On this subject of detachment, we leave this essay, tying together all the themes discussed above, and giving the last word to Grizzlebeard (Belloc), who departs from his companions with this sobering and yet somehow hopeful reflection:
There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this—to consider chiefly from now onwards those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea.