Fancies Versus FadsChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
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Fancies Versus Fads
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
English essays -- 20th century
All this was but the beginning of a process which has two great points
of interest. The first is the way in which the mediæval movement did
rebuild the old Roman civilization; the other was the way in which it
did not. A strange interest attaches to the things which had never
existed in the pagan culture and did appear in the Christian culture. I
think it is true of most of them that they had a quality that can very
approximately be described as popular, or perhaps as vulgar, as indeed
we still talk of the languages which at that time liberated themselves
from Latin as the vulgar tongues. And to many Classicists these things
would appear to be vulgar in a more vulgar sense. They were vulgar in
the sense of being vivid almost to excess, of making a very direct and
unsophisticated appeal to the emotions. The first law of heraldry was to
wear the heart upon the sleeve. Such mediævalism was the reverse of mere
mysticism, in the sense of mere mystery; it might more truly be
described as sensationalism. One of these things, for instance, was a
hot and even an impatient love of colour. It learned to paint before it
could draw, and could afford the twopence coloured long before it could
manage the penny plain. It culminated at last, of course, in the energy
and gaiety of the Gothic; but even the richness of Gothic rested on a
certain psychological simplicity. We can contrast it with the classic by
noting its popular passion for telling a story in stone. We may admit
that a Doric portico is a poem, but no one would describe it as an
anecdote. The time was to come when much of the imagery of the
cathedrals was to be lost; but it would have mattered the less that it
was defaced by its enemies if it had not been already neglected by its
friends. It would have mattered less if the whole tide of taste among
the rich had not turned against the old popular masterpieces. The
Puritans defaced them, but the Cavaliers did not truly defend them. The
Cavaliers were also aristocrats of the new classical culture, and used
the word Gothic in the sense of barbaric. For the benefit of the
Teutonists we may note in parenthesis that, if this phrase meant that
Gothic was despised, it also meant that the Goths were despised. But
when the Cavaliers came back, after the Puritan interregnum, they
restored not in the style of Pugin but in the style of Wren. The very
thing we call the Restoration, which was the restoration of King
Charles, was also the restoration of St. Paul’s. And it was a very
modern restoration.
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