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Post by Andorinha on Feb 18, 2008 11:24:48 GMT -6
Hi, thanks for the synopsis, Stormrider.
Hmm. I can't help but make comparisons with the Victorian sleuth Sherlock Holmes, highly intuitive, but always trying to make his conclusions fit the actual facts of the case, the clews! I'll read some of these GKC detective stories now, see how F. Brown stacks up against SH!
In reading further through BotWH, I'm finding some more interesting points of similarity with JRRT, probably only coincidental...
RE: "Talking Trees," though used in a metaphorical sense in GKC:
"The tall trees of Britain We worshipped and were wise, But you shall raid the whole land through And never a tree shall talk to you, Though every leaf is a tongue taught true And the forest is full of eyes.
"On one round hill to the seaward The trees grow tall and grey And the trees talk together When all men are away.
P. 39
___________
"O'er a few round hills forgotten The trees grow tall in rings, And the trees talk together Of many pagan things."
P. 40
Just as the use of a "moving forest" in Shakespere's MacBeth (see Letters) influenced JRRT to have an actual, real, living forest move across his fantasy landscape, so these passages from GKC MIGHT have influenced his Old Forest Trees, and come to a final grand conclusion with the Ents and Huorns of Fangorn wood?
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Post by fimbrethil on Feb 18, 2008 15:58:01 GMT -6
Stormrider,
Father Brown is odd. He appears to be a bumbling, clumsy, scatter-brained innocent. In reality, he has a clearer grasp on the human heart and the criminal mind than anyone else around him. He is almost an anti-Holmes. Yet in his own way he has become a type of detective - Columbo was based on him.
From Wikipedia article about Columbo: The character of Columbo was created by Richard Levinson and William Link, who claimed that Columbo was partially inspired by the Crime and Punishment character, Porfiry Petrovich, as well as G. K. Chesterton's humble clerical detective Father Brown.
I just finished wading through The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton, which is not a book I recommend. Despite its title, it is not an autobiography. It is rambling and confusing, and and contains almost no details about his life. It was written very near the end of his life, and I finally decided to approach it like sitting and listening to an older person ramble on about their life. One anecdote leads into another, with the only connection between them in the speaker's mind. Names of people, places, and incidents are spoken in a short-hand kind of way, as though they are obvious. It is a processing-out-loud of a lifetime of experience.
However, if you get your hands on the book, I do recommend the last chapter. I'll say more about it in a future post. Among other things, he talks about the origins of Father Brown in that chapter, and I'll give the details soon.
Fimbrethil
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Post by fimbrethil on Feb 18, 2008 16:18:29 GMT -6
This is a very long post. I hope that doesn't cause problems. This is exerpts from The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton, Chapter 16. It explains the origins of Father Brown. "..." means I have left out some of GKC's ramblings.
Some time ago, seated at ease upon a summer evening and taking a serene review of an indefensibly fortunate and happy life, I calculated that I must have committed at least fifty—three murders, and been concerned with hiding about half a hundred corpses for the purpose of the concealment of crimes; hanging one corpse on a hat-peg, bundling another into a postman’s bag, decapitating a third and providing it with somebody else’s head, and so on through quite a large number of innocent artifices of the kind. It is true that I have enacted most of these atrocities on paper; and I strongly recommend the young student, except in extreme cases, to give expression to his criminal impulses in this form; and not run the risk of spoiling a beautiful and well-proportioned idea by bringing it down to the plane of brute material experiment, where it too often suffers the unforseen imperfections and disappointments of this fallen world, and brings with it various unwelcome and unworthy social and legal consequences…
When a writer invents a character for the purposes of fiction, especially of light or fanciful fiction, he fits him out with all sorts of features meant to be effective in that setting and against that back ground. He may have taken, and probably has taken, a hint from a human being. But he will not hesitate to alter the human being, especially in externals, because lie is not thinking of a portrait but of a picture. In Father Brown, it was the chief feature to be featureless. The point of him was to appear pointless; and one might say that his conspicuous quality was not being conspicuous. His commonplace exterior was meant to contrast with his unsuspected vigilance and intelligence; and that being so, of course I made his appearance shabby and shapeless, his face round and expressionless, his manners clumsy, and so on. At the same time, I did take some of his inner intellectual qualities from my friend, Father John O’Connor of Bradford, who has not, as a matter of fact, any of these external qualities. He is not shabby, but rather neat; he is not clumsy, but very delicate and dexterous; he not only is but looks amusing and amused. He is a sensitive and quick witted Irishman, with the profound irony and sonic of the potential irritability of his race. My Father Brown was deliberately described as a Suffolk dumpling from East Anglia. That, and the rest of his description, was a deliberate disguise for the purpose of detective fiction. But for all that, there is a very real sense in which Father O’Connor was the intellectual inspiration of these stories; and of much more important things as well. And in order to explain these things, especially the important things, I cannot do better than tell the story of how the first notion of this detective comedy came into my mind…
I had gone to give a lecture at Keighley on the high moors of the West Riding, and stayed the night with a leading citizen of that hide industrial town; who had assembled a group of local friends such is could be conceived, I suppose, as likely to be patient with lecturers including the curate of the Roman Catholic Church; a small man with a smooth face and a demure but elfish expression. I was struck by the tact and humour with which he mingled with his very Yorkshire and very Protestant company; and I soon found out that they had, in their bluff way, already learned to appreciate him as something of a character… I liked him very much….
Next morning he and I walked over Keighley Gate, the great wall of the moors that separates Keighley from Wharfedale, for I was visiting friends in Ilkley; and after a few hours talk on the moors, it was a new friend whom I introduced to my old friends at my journey’s end. He stayed to lunch; he stayed to tea; he stayed to dinner; I am not sure that, under their pressing hospitality, he did not stay the night; and he stayed there many nights and days on later occasions; and it was there that we most often met. It was on one of these visits that the incident occurred, which led me to take the liberty of putting him, or rather part of him, into a string of sensational stories…
I mentioned to the priest in conversation that I proposed to support in print a certain proposal, it matters not what, in connection with some rather sordid social questions of vice and crime. On this particular point he thought I was in error, or rather in ignorance; as indeed I was. And, merely as a necessary duty and to prevent me from falling into a mare’s nest, he told me certain facts he knew about perverted practices which I certainly shall not set down or discuss here. I have confessed on an earlier page that in my own youth I had imagined for myself any amount of iniquity; and it was a curious experience to find that this quiet and pleasant celibate had plumbed those abysses far deeper than I. I had not imagined that the world could hold such horrors. If he had been a professional novelist throwing such filth broadcast on all the bookstalls for boys and babies to pick up, of course he would have been a great creative artist and a herald of the Dawn. As he was only stating them reluctantly, in strict privacy, as a practical necessity, he was, of course, a typical Jesuit whispering poisonous secrets in my ear. When we returned to the house, we found it was full of visitors, and fell into special conversation with two hearty and healthy young Cambridge undergraduates, who had been walking or cycling across the moors in the spirit of the stern and vigorous English holiday. They were no narrow athletes, however, but interested in various sports and in a breezy way in various arts; and they began to discuss music and landscape with my friend Father O’Connor. I never knew a man who could turn with more ease than he from one topic to another, or who had more unexpected stores of information, often purely technical information, upon all. The talk soon deepened into a discussion on matters more philosophical and moral; and when the priest had left the room, the two young men broke out into generous expressions of admiration, saying truly that he was a remarkable man, and seemed to know a great deal about Palestrina or Baroque architecture, or whatever was the point at the moment. Then there fell a curious reflective silence, at the end of which one of the under graduates suddenly burst out, “All the same, I don’t believe his sort of life is the right one. It’s all very well to like religious music and so on, when you’re all shut up in a sort of cloister and don’t know anything about the real evil in the world. But I don’t believe that’s the right ideal. I believe in a fellow coming out into the world, and facing the evil that’s in it, and knowing something about the dangers and all that. It’s a very beautiful thing to be innocent and ignorant; but I think it a much finer thing not to be afraid of knowledge.” To me, still almost shivering with the appallingly practical facts of which the priest had warned me, this comment came with such a colossal and crushing irony, that I nearly burst into a loud harsh laugh in the drawing-room. For I knew perfectly well that, as regards all the solid Satanism which the priest knew and warred against with all his life, these two Cambridge gentlemen (luckily for them) knew about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator.
And there sprang up in my mind the vague idea of making some artistic use of these comic yet tragic cross—purposes; and constructing a comedy in which a priest should appear to know nothing and in fact know more about crime than the criminals. I afterwards summed up the special idea in the story called “The Blue Cross”, otherwise very slight and improbable, and continued it through the interminable series of tales with which I have afflicted the world. In short, I permitted myself the grave liberty of taking my friend and knocking him about; beating his hat and umbrella shapeless, untidying his clothes, punching his intelligent countenance into a condition of pudding- faced fatuity, and generally disguising Father O’Connor as Father Brown. The disguise, as I have said, was a deliberate piece of fiction, meant to bring out or accentuate the contrast that was the point of the comedy. There is also in the conception, as in nearly everything I have ever written, a good deal of inconsistency and Inaccuracy on minor points; not the least of such flaws being the general suggestion of Father Brown having nothing in particular to do, except to hang about in any household where there was likely to be a murder. A very charming Catholic lady I know once paid my detective priest the appropriate compliment of saying, “I am very fond of that officious little loafer.”
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Post by Stormrider on Feb 18, 2008 20:09:13 GMT -6
Fimbrethil:
Thank you for posting Chesterton's story of how Father Brown was conceived. So far I can see some of the Columbo character in FB. Father Brown is more quiet and doesn't ask too many questions as Columbo does. FB stands back and observes and that is how he pieces the mysteries together and solves them.
This was the third FB story that I read and it is a doozy! I will get into it eventually.
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 19, 2008 21:40:25 GMT -6
I found it interesting, from A.S. Dale's biography of GKC that Chesterton helped organize a writing and debate club, (known by its initials JDC, Junior Debating Club) where a few select fellow students met to gorge on tea and cakes, and scribble short stories, poems, journalistic reports that they would read to one another, and then discuss 'em. Exactly the same sort of "clubbing" behaviour (including a group known by its initials TCBS), later exhibited by JRRT and the Barovian Tea Club group of his early school chums. I don't recall any such spontaneous clubs in U.S. schools, so this must have been an English tradition, perhaps outmoded by now? I wonder though, if the internet allows the formation of such "clubs" in our own era?
Moving into a Father Brown story now, "The Wisdom of F. B.," while reading the biography. Stormrider and Fimbrethil, Thanks for the previews!
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Post by fimbrethil on Feb 22, 2008 10:22:10 GMT -6
I found it interesting, from A.S. Dale's biography of GKC that Chesterton helped organize a writing and debate club, (known by its initials JDC, Junior Debating Club) where a few select fellow students met to gorge on tea and cakes, and scribble short stories, poems, journalistic reports that they would read to one another, and then discuss 'em. Exactly the same sort of "clubbing" behaviour (including a group known by its initials TCBS), later exhibited by JRRT and the Barovian Tea Club group of his early school chums. I don't recall any such spontaneous clubs in U.S. schools, so this must have been an English tradition, perhaps outmoded by now? I wonder though, if the internet allows the formation of such "clubs" in our own era? Andorinha, An excellent connection, and a good question! The English male of that era seemse to have thrived on "clubs" and "sets." At least that is the impression that literature has given me. Americans don't seem to have been as strongly drawn to that behavior. But more significant to me, in both cases, is that these clubs had absolutely no guidance or interference from adults. The boys created the clubs, the rules, and ran them entirely on their own - only occasionally receiving any notice from any kind of outside authority. That is something that doesn't seem to happen much with today's youth. Everything is organized and structured for them - sports, school clubs, classes, etc. (This is one of my pet peeves - I'll climb off my soap box before I get too wound up...) I don't know if such clubs were actually common, or if the existence of the JDC and the TCBS were early indications of the exceptional nature of Chesterton and Tolkien. Fimbrethil
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Post by fimbrethil on Feb 22, 2008 10:30:36 GMT -6
Here is another long quote from that same chapter 16 of The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton, on a very different topic. I’ve been pondering this since I read it some days ago, and I want to share it with you all.
Chesterton has been talking about optimism and pessimism:
This hit something deep in me, and I am still processing it. But it also feels like a very Tolkien attitude towards life – that the key to happiness is gratitude and humility. I haven’t got time to come up with good Tolkien examples – perhaps others can. Once again, I’m not saying that Tolkien got this idea from Chesterton. Rather they both come from a similar worldview.
Fimbrethil
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Post by Andorinha on Feb 22, 2008 11:53:16 GMT -6
Hmmm. This will require thought, Fimbrethil. People like Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis seem to be looking for a "state of being" that provides a grace of balance/ acceptance, an ability to always see the world through the lenses of appreciative wonder? Is this the reason why they gravitated toward a literature of "childlike" expression?
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Post by fimbrethil on Feb 24, 2008 21:44:20 GMT -6
Here is a short quote from the same chapter of the Autobiography. It follows shortly after the previous quote. He is talking about the ancient simple truth of the importance of humble gratitude:
"For this secret of antiseptic simplicity was really a secret; it was not obvious, and certainly not obvious at that time. It was a secret that had already been almost entirely left to, and locked up with, certain neglected and unpopular things. It was almost as if the dandelion-tea really were a medicine, and the only recipe or prescription belonged to one old woman, a ragged and nondescript old woman, rather reputed in our village to be a witch."
This immediately reminded me of Ioreth in the Houses of Healing. I do not mean that Tolkien consciously thought of this passage as he wrote of Ioreth. But both contain the idea that there is wisdom and truth known to the “old wives” that younger, more sophisticated and educated people easily miss.
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Post by Andorinha on Mar 1, 2008 12:41:44 GMT -6
I'm still trying to come to grips with Chesterton, trying to find a simple condensed formulaic pronouncement of his "true" essence. LOL, many of the sources I've read refer to him as a "paradox," and, apparently, most readers have trouble with "The Autobiography" and feel they need to explain it to themselves -- I do! Randall Paine, despite the complexity of G.K.C.'s writing, seems to think that there is a simple core we can grasp, a central "Theme" to the man: a concern for Reality. ____________ "In the case of The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton, we do have a book that both falls short of and carelessly oversteps the usual framework of an 'autobiography. It is with this dilemma we must begin. Here is a self that reveals by effacing. Indeed, the very depth of Chesterton's humility and the very extravagance of his intellectual hospitality join forces to lay open a landscape at once vast and various, and yet so full of the man's unmistakable presence that both author and reader promptly forget their frustrations and glue their eyes to a quite unexpected genre of self-revelation." "Whatever his immediate subject, even if it be himself, Chesterton's eye remains trained on some larger theme that seems to have a secret hold on the subject itself Many a reader will be puzzled by the resulting mental itinerary. Again and again, he turns to this larger family of ideas that seem to encompass the universe. In his book on Rome, he writes: 'I know it will be the general impression about this book that I cannot talk about anything without talking about everything. It is a risk that I must accept, because it is a method I defend. If I am asked to say seriously and honestly what I think of a thing ... I must think about [it] and not merely stare at [it].' [2] Chesterton's close friend Hilaire Belloc put it like this: 'Truth had for him the immediate attraction of an appetite. He was hungry for reality. But what is much more, he could not conceive of himself except as satisfying that hunger; it was not possible for him to hesitate in the acceptance of each new parcel of truth; it was not possible for him to hold anything worth holding that was not connected with the truth as a whole.' [3]t is only because this larger theme of Chesterton bears in a most intimate way upon any subject whatsoever that his many digressions are not really distractions at all–providing, of course, you know the theme. It is of the very nature of a digression to be off the subject and on the theme. The uniqueness of this autobiography is that the dominant theme in the work and life of G. K. Chesterton is stated just as energetically by his neglect of himself as by his ardent appreciation of everything else." "The theme to which Chesterton is forever returning is the world. Reality! Again, Belloc: 'The whole meaning of his life was the discovery, the appreciation of reality. But his work was made up of bequeathing to others the treasure of knowledge and certitude upon which he had come.' [4]" Randall Paine, "The Life and Theme of G.K. Chesterton," online at: www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/rpaine_gkcintro_may06.asp [2] G.K. Chesterton, The Resurrection of Rome (London, 1937), p. 217; The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, 21: 407. [3] Hilaire Belloc, Saturday Review of Literature, July 4, 1936, p. 4. [4] Idem, quoted in Mother Loughram, Catholics in England between 1918 and 1945 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1954), p. 168. ___________________ So, a simple concern for Reality, that's the formula that explains the what, how, and why of Chesterton? Hmm, I am skeptical here, and so far, this formula does not yet reveal much to me. Maybe, for my purposes "reality" is so all-encompassing a word that it does not yet allow me to see the man behind the theme any better? Well, back to the books...
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Post by fimbrethil on Mar 2, 2008 23:00:00 GMT -6
I have temporarily acquired the use of a copy of Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians, by Alison Milbank. This book, published in 2007, sells on Amazon for $94. As it is only 168 pages long, with lots of endnotes, I conclude that it considers itself to be an academic work, and therefore insists on being sold like a textbook. To make sure that readers get their money’s worth, the table of contents lists the titles of the two parts of the book as “Poisis” and “Praxis.” Each chapter ends with almost two full pages of end notes. Yep, this is a serious work, alright!
The index is enticing. Under “A” I find Aragorn, Aristotle, Arwen, Augustine. Now that’s my kind of book! But my eagerness to explore the index has already revealed that the scholarship is not flawless. The entry for “Iluvatar” says “see Eru.” There is no entry for Eru. Pretension without perfection. Alas.
The preface begins “In this book I aim to demonstrate that the essayist, poet, Christian apologist and writer of fantastic tales G.K. Chesterton was an important influence both on Tolkien’s fiction and his literary criticism of the fairy tale.” I’ll take notes, and share them with you here. Perhaps there will be something worth learning…
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Post by Andorinha on Mar 3, 2008 16:52:51 GMT -6
Yeah, fer 94 bucks you expect the index to be correct! LOL!
Looking forward to your notes here! Thanks Fimbrethil!
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Post by Andorinha on Mar 13, 2008 12:17:59 GMT -6
The following extended quote of Gilbert Chesterton's reaction to fairy-tales provides many points of comparison with JRRT's own experience and his eventual attempts to define the importance of the Fairy-story in modern literature.
_____________
"Among the very first books that Gilbert heard and later reread for himself were fairy tales... From them Gilbert learned the lesson that the ordinary world is a wild and exciting place where the price of enjoying it is often to obey strange commands; a world bound together by mysterious bonds of trust, so that 'even green dragons keep their promises;' a world where 'all doors fly open to courage and hope [and] nothing is wasted. ... A jewel thrown into the sea, a kindness to a stricken bird ... have some ... terrible value and are bound up with the destiny of man.' * He vividly remembered another book which taught him that in ordinary houses like his own there could be 'goblins hiding in the cellar and a fairy grandmother in the attic.' This book, of course, is George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin'.
"In homes like his, fairy tales and myths and legends had taken the place of a more orthodox Christianity, which had become one story among many. Gilbert later made the statement that 'fairy stories are spiritual explorations and hence the most life-like since they reveal human life as seen, or felt, or divined from the inside.' It is interesting to note that Dr. Bruno Beetelheim, who works with emotionally disturbed children, quoted Gilbert's statement in his writing. He also made it clear that his own clinical work has shown that these stories do have curative powers, because they introduce the child to the existential mysteries of life, the anxiety of loneliness, the need for comradeship, the quest, the struggle against odds, victory, and death itself. They tell him that nature is not innately good, that life is harsh before it can be happy, reassuring the child about his own fears and sense of self.** With his father's help Gilbert got all these things from fairy tales; the fact that he liked them all his life is probably an indication of his balance not proof that he remained a child like Peter Pan." (Alzina Stone Dale, The Outline of Sanity, a Biography, pp 14-15; *GK Chesterton, "Review of Andrew Lang's Violet Fariy Book," 1907. **Bruno Beetleheim, The Uses of Enchantment, 1976, p. 59)
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Post by Andorinha on Mar 17, 2008 23:14:56 GMT -6
I've gotten through the first 60 pages of A. Stones Dale's biography, liking the book a good deal, and, even better, liking Chesterton immensely as a person!
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 25, 2008 13:30:20 GMT -6
Ah, back to Chesterton... We know from The Letters that Tolkien had read a good deal of Chesterton's material, but exactly how it influenced JRRT seems still unclear to me. Both men were originally Church of England (Anglican), both converted to Roman Catholicism and both became (as converts often do) very conservative in their beliefs. In reading through Chesterton's "The Man Who Knew Too Much," I have come upon another point of similarity: stereotyping of Jews. I think we have already discussed here some of JRRT's use of what he perceived to be "Jewish" racial characteristics in his creation of Middle-earth's Dwarvish race. In this act, JRRT was heavily influenced by the racism that was common to his era. He could also have received re-inforcement in this belief that Jews possess certain "racial" traits of behaviour from Chesterton, who, in his short story "THE BOTTOMLESS WELL" has his protagonists deliver characteristic anti-semetic diatribes blaming Britain's imperialism on Jewish bankers: " 'I tell you everything has gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjure with, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad enough that a gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's no earthly English interest to serve, and all hell beating up against us, simply because Nosey Zimmern has lent money to half the Cabinet. It's bad enough that an old pawnbroker from Bagdad should make us fight his battles; we can't fight with our right hand cut off. Our one score was Hastings and his victory, which was really somebody else's victory. Tom Travers has to suffer, and so have you.' " (p. 55) " 'I don't believe in the Empire growing until it reaches the sky; I don't believe in the Union Jack going up and up eternally like the Tower. But if you think I am going to let the Union Jack go down and down eternally, like the bottomless well, down into the blackness of the bottomless pit, down in defeat and derision, amid the jeers of the very Jews who have sucked us dry--no I won't, and that's flat; not if the Chancellor were blackmailed by twenty millionaires with their gutter rags, not if the Prime Minister married twenty Yankee Jewesses, not if Woodville and Carstairs had shares in twenty swindling mines. If the thing is really tottering, God help it, it mustn't be we who tip it over.' " (p. 56) www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=70868&pageno=56Here we might want to consider if the character (Horne Fisher) in Chesterton's story is expressing Chesterton's own opinions, or if the character is acting "independently." From what I can glean from this tale, it certainly seems that Horne Fisher is speaking both as a fictional character AND as a proxy for Chesterton himself. If my surmise is correct, it would be no great revelation that British citizens in the 1890 - 1920 era were anti-Jewish to one extent or another. Where Chesterton, anti-imperialistic in many ways, seems to have "gone wrong" by our current standards is his singling out the Jews for special condemnation, when, in fact, many British citizens of non-Jewish descent were equally avid to expand the Empire just to reap a profit. Certainly there were many non-Jewish bankers in England whose foreign investments influenced British public policy and "caused" the various colonial ventures that the English dabbled in between 1600 and the present? So why single out just the Jewish ones? Here, I think Chesterton was simply a product of the Social Darwinism/ racism of his own era. GKC, just like JRRT -- who was brought up in this tradition as well -- would both have imbibed the basic outlines of racism, including a certain amount of anti-Jewish feeling, from this source. As JRRT read through the works of Chesterton, such passages as the quotes from Horne Fisher above, would probably have bolstered his own background racism.
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