earlier readers their credulity and their
dreams. In the identification of Dickens
with his readers I see a greater area of
correspondence between Chesterton and
Coenen, despite all the differences. Inci
dentally, there is no evidence to suppose
that Coenen had ever read Chesterton.
At the start of this century, cheap reprints
of Dickens's work were once again availa
ble, although this revival was not accom
panied by any Chesterton-style nostalgic
musings. In his thesis of 1940 mentioned
earlier, Bogaerts reconstructs the Victorian
background, or what we would now call
the 'horizon of expectations' of the 19th
century readers, citing by way of contrast
the words of the first anti-Victorian, John
Stuart Mill, in 'On Liberty': 'They belie
ved in the fellowship of the human spirit.
Men and women must be agreed on certain
truths or they would never be worthy of
themselves, nor even hold together in this
changing deceptive materialistic life. Cert
ain convictions and observances unite them
amidst all the egoism and competition
necessitated by modern civilisation. Thus
they were often ready to conform to ritual,
traditions and conventions, which might in
themselves be inadequate. What did inade
quacy matter, since they somehow felt that
they were celebrating their common allegi
ance to the higher powers? They were
joining in an act or thought which involved
them in something more universal than
their private considerations. An idea or an
ideal was ten times more valuable if it
could be shared. So they tried to reserve
an area on which their religious and phi
losophical differences might be forgotten
in the claims of humanity and spiritual
kinship. After such mutual confirmation
they could pass on more hopefully to the
service of progress.'5
In Chesterton's vision, the years between
1830 and 1880 were the battleground
between romanticism and classicism, or
rather, between idealism and intellectua-
lism. This intellectualism resulted in a
glorification of the authority of science.
Children were imbued with respect for
authority as part of family life, linked as it
was to a yearning for 'respectability'. In
the eyes of posterity, it was primarily the
nineteenth-century belief in the sanctity of
the family and monogamistic sexual ideals
which was responsible for the later legen
dary Victorian hypocrisy. A belief in the
power of machines in the name of pro
gress, and in imperial might, belonged
equally to that period, as did a belief in
the superiority and immortality of their
social institutions.
Around 1880, changes began to take sha
pe: socialism and feminism began to emer
ge, doubts developed about progress and
Britain's ability to maintain the leading
position it had held until then; competition
from America and Germany began to
make itself felt. The country's centre of
gravity switched from agriculture to urban
development, bringing with it the unavoi
dable formation of a large and volatile
proletariat. The familiar artistic values also
came under fire: one need only mention
the names of men like Wilde, Whistler,
Shaw, George Moore and Aubrey Beard-
sley. Chesterton responded to these pessi
mistic and decadent, hedonistic trends with
highly reactionary religious ideas.
In his view, the two strongest positive
forces in Western Europe - Christianity
and the French Revolution, each with its
ideals of equality - had worn each other
out in their momentous quarrel. For Ches
terton, Dickens was the great counterba
lancing force against this downwards
spiral, the leading force of the bastion of
utilitarianism and rationalism. From an
artistic point of view, he was perhaps a
lesser writer than Thackeray, but he was
certainly the more powerful of the two, the
fighter. In all the comparisons which
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