Alfred the Great / Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The celebrations in connection with the millenary of King Alfred struck

a note of sympathy in the midst of much that was unsympathetic, because,

altogether apart from any peculiar historical opinions, all men feel the

sanctifying character of that which is at once strong and remote; the

ancient thing is always the most homely, and the distant thing the most

near. The only possible peacemaker is a dead man, ever since by the

sublime religious story a dead man only could reconcile heaven and

earth. In a certain sense we always feel the past ages as human, and our

own age as strangely and even weirdly dehumanised. In our own time the

details overpower us; men's badges and buttons seem to grow larger and

larger as in a horrible dream. To study humanity in the present is like

studying a mountain with a magnifying glass; to study it in the past is

like studying it through a telescope.

For this reason England, like every other great and historic nation, has

sought its typical hero in remote and ill-recorded times. The personal

and moral greatness of Alfred is, indeed, beyond question. It does not

depend any more than the greatness of any other human hero upon the

accuracy of any or all of the stories that are told about him. Alfred

may not have done one of the things which are reported of him, but it is

immeasurably easier to do every one of those things than to be the man

of whom such things are reported falsely. Fable is, generally speaking,

far more accurate than fact, for fable describes a man as he was to his

own age, fact describes him as he is to a handful of inconsiderable

antiquarians many centuries after. Whether Alfred watched the cakes for

the neat-herd's wife, whether he sang songs in the Danish camp, is of no

interest to anyone except those who set out to prove under considerable

disadvantages that they are genealogically descended from him. But the

man is better pictured in these stories than in any number of modern

realistic trivialities about his favourite breakfast and his favourite

musical composer. Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells

us about one man and fable tells us about a million men. If we read of a

man who could make green grass red and turn the sun into the moon, we

may not believe these particular details about him, but we learn

something infinitely more important than such trivialities, the fact

that men could look into his face and believe it possible. The glory and

greatness of Alfred, therefore, is like that of all the heroes of the

morning of the world, set far beyond the chance of that strange and

sudden dethronement which may arise from the unsealing of a manuscript

or the turning over of a stone. Men may have told lies when they said

that he first entrapped the Danes with his song and then overcame them

with his armies, but we know very well that it is not of us that such

lies are told. There may be myths clustering about each of our

personalities; local saga-men and chroniclers have very likely

circulated the story that we are addicted to drink, or that we

ferociously ill-use our wives. But they do not commonly lie to the

effect that we have shed our blood to save all the inhabitants of the

street. A story grows easily, but a heroic story is not a very easy

thing to evoke. Wherever that exists we may be pretty certain that we

are in the presence of a dark but powerful historic personality. We are

in the presence of a thousand lies all pointing with their fantastic

fingers to one undiscovered truth.

Upon this ground alone every encouragement is due to the cult of Alfred.

Every nation requires to have behind it some historic personality, the

validity of which is proved, as the validity of a gun is proved, by its

long range. It is wonderful and splendid that we treasure, not the

truth, but the very gossip about a man who died a thousand years ago. We

may say to him, as M. Rostand says to the Austrian Prince:

"Dors, ce n'est pas toujours la Légende qui ment:

Une rêve est parfois moins trompeur qu'un document."

To have a man so simple and so honourable to represent us in the

darkness of primeval history, binds all the intervening centuries

together, and mollifies all their monstrosities. It makes all history

more comforting and intelligible; it makes the desolate temple of the

ages as human as an inn parlour.

But whether it come through reliable facts or through more reliable

falsehoods the personality of Alfred has its own unmistakable colour and

stature. Lord Rosebery uttered a profound truth when he said that that

personality was peculiarly English. The great magnificence of the

English character is expressed in the word "service." There is, perhaps,

no nation so vitally theocratical as the English; no nation in which the

strong men have so consistently preferred the instrumental to the

despotic attitude, the pleasures of the loyal to the pleasures of the

royal position. We have had tyrants like Edward I. and Queen Elizabeth,

but even our tyrants have had the worried and responsible air of

stewards of a great estate. Our typical hero is such a man as the Duke

of Wellington, who had every kind of traditional and external arrogance,

but at the back of all that the strange humility which made it

physically possible for him without a gleam of humour or discomfort to

go on his knees to a preposterous bounder like George IV. Across the

infinite wastes of time and through all the mists of legend we still

feel the presence in Alfred of this strange and unconscious

self-effacement. After the fullest estimate of our misdeeds we can still

say that our very despots have been less self-assertive than many

popular patriots. As we consider these things we grow more and more

impatient of any modern tendencies towards the enthronement of a more

self-conscious and theatrical ideal. Lord Rosebery called up before our

imaginations the picture of what Alfred would have thought of the vast

modern developments of his nation, its immense fleet, its widespread

Empire, its enormous contribution to the mechanical civilisation of the

world. It cannot be anything but profitable to conceive Alfred as full

of astonishment and admiration at these things; it cannot be anything

but good for us that we should realise that to the childlike eyes of a

great man of old time our inventions and appliances have not the

vulgarity and ugliness that we see in them. To Alfred a steamboat would

be a new and sensational sea-dragon, and the penny postage a miracle

achieved by the despotism of a demi-god.

But when we have realised all this there is something more to be said in

connection with Lord Rosebery's vision. What would King Alfred have said

if he had been asked to expend the money which he devoted to the health

and education of his people upon a struggle with some race of Visigoths

or Parthians inhabiting a small section of a distant continent? What

would he have said if he had known that that science of letters which he

taught to England would eventually be used not to spread truth, but to

drug the people with political assurances as imbecile in themselves as

the assurance that fire does not burn and water does not drown? What

would he have said if the same people who, in obedience to that ideal of

service and sanity of which he was the example, had borne every

privation in order to defeat Napoleon, should come at last to find no

better compliment to one of their heroes than to call him the Napoleon

of South Africa? What would he have said if that nation for which he had

inaugurated a long line of incomparable men of principle should forget

all its traditions and coquette with the immoral mysticism of the man of

destiny?

Let us follow these things by all means if we find them good, and can

see nothing better. But to pretend that Alfred would have admired them

is like pretending that St. Dominic would have seen eye to eye with Mr.

Bradlaugh, or that Fra Angelico would have revelled in the posters of

Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. Let us follow them if we will, but let us take

honestly all the disadvantages of our change; in the wildest moment of

triumph let us feel the shadow upon our glories of the shame of the

great king.