Chesterton was at once the easiest and the most difficult of the Late Victorian writers - as approachable in style as he was impassable by sheer volume. Over a span of 34 years, he penned around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, a handful of plays and over 4,000 essays and articles.

As even the most curious and earnest readers will find hardship in getting past his more popular works, I have decided to post a few excerpts from his lesser-known works. Should they be of any value to the casual reader, I shall post more. These first offerings are a few gems pulled from 'Magic', his first indulgence as a playwright.

It was a short 'Fantastic Comedy' that reads as a cross between Oscar Wilde & JM Barrie. The play's subject of fairy-tales and childhood dreams was often a subject of his, as in his own words: "Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten."

The full text of the play is available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files.../19094-h/19094-h.htm

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Doctor: I consider a family superstition is better for the health than a family quarrel. [He walks casually across to Patricia.] Well, it must be nice to be young and still see all those stars and sunsets. We old buffers won't be too strict with you if your view of things sometimes gets a bit—mixed up, shall we say? If the stars get loose about the grass by mistake; or if, once or twice, the sunset gets into the east. We should only say, "Dream as much as you like. Dream for all mankind. Dream for us who can dream no longer. But do not quite forget the difference."

Patricia: What difference?

Doctor: The difference between the things that are beautiful and the things that are there. That red lamp over my door isn't beautiful; but it's there. You might even come to be glad it is there, when the stars of gold and silver have faded. I am an old man now, but some men are still glad to find my red star. I do not say they are the wise men.


- Act 1

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Stranger: [Bowing.] Yes. I am the Conjurer.

[There is general laughter, except from Patricia. As the others mingle in talk, the Stranger goes up to her.]

Stranger: [Very sadly.] I am very sorry I am not a wizard.

Patricia: I wish you were a thief instead.

Stranger: Have I committed a worse crime than thieving?

Patricia: You have committed the cruellest crime, I think, that there is.

Stranger: And what is the cruellest crime?

Patricia: Stealing a child's toy.

Stranger: And what have I stolen?

Patricia: A fairy tale.


- Act 1

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Patricia: [Thinking.] Yes, you did tell me a great deal of the truth. You told me hundreds and thousands of truths. But you never told me the truth that one wants to know.

Conjurer: And what is that?

Patricia: [Turning back into the room.] You never told me the truth about yourself. You never told me you were only the Conjurer.

Conjurer: I did not tell you that because I do not even know it. I do not know whether I am only the Conjurer....


- Act 2

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Patricia: Morris, you mustn't talk like that.

Morris: Well, I don't believe in religion....

Doctor: [Aside.] Hush, hush. Nobody but women believe in religion.

Patricia: [Humorously.] I think this is a fitting opportunity to show you another ancient conjuring trick.

Doctor: Which one is that?

Patricia: The Vanishing Lady!

[Exit Patricia]


- Act 2

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Smith: There is one part of their {conjurer's} old apparatus I regret especially being lost.

Morris: [Still excited.] Yes!

Smith: The apparatus for writing the Book of Job.

Morris: Well, well, they didn't know everything in those old times.

Smith: No, and in those old times they knew they didn't. [Dreamily.] Where shall wisdom be found, and what is the place of understanding?

Conjurer: Somewhere in America, I believe.

Smith: [Still dreamily.] Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The deep sayeth it is not in me, the sea sayeth it is not with me. Death and destruction say we have heard tell of it. God understandeth the way thereof and He knoweth the place thereof. For He looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole Heaven. But to man He hath said: Behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding. [Turns suddenly to the Doctor.] How's that for Agnosticism, Dr. Grimthorpe? What a pity that apparatus is lost.


- Act 2

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Conjurer: Oh, it's nonsense, it's nonsense. How can a man marry an archangel, let alone a lady. My mother was a lady and she married a dying fiddler who tramped the roads; and the mixture plays the cat and banjo with my body and soul. I can see my mother now cooking food in dirtier and dirtier lodgings, darning socks with weaker and weaker eyes when she might have worn pearls by consenting to be a rational person.

Patricia: And she might have grown pearls, by consenting to be an oyster.

Conjurer: [Seriously.] There was little pleasure in her life.

Patricia: There is little, a very little, in everybody's. The question is, what kind? We can't turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls. Your mother chose and I have chosen.


- Act 3

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Doctor: Where are you going?

Conjurer: I am going to ask the God whose enemies I have served if I am still worthy to save a child.


- Act 3

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Conjurer: [Doing whatever passionate things people do on the stage.]


- Act 3

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Conjurer: Good-bye.

Patricia: I shall not say good-bye.

Conjurer: You are great as well as good. But a saint can be a temptress as well as a sinner. I put my honour in your hands ... oh, yes, I have a little left. We began with a fairy tale. Have I any right to take advantage of that fairy tale? Has not that fairy tale really and truly come to an end?

Patricia: Yes. That fairy tale has really and truly come to an end. [Looks at him a little in the old mystical manner.] It is very hard for a fairy tale to come to an end. If you leave it alone it lingers everlastingly. Our fairy tale has come to an end in the only way a fairy tale can come to an end. The only way a fairy tale can leave off being a fairy tale.

Conjurer: I don't understand you.

Patricia: It has come true.

CURTAIN

- Act 3

More;please.

Requote

'Tremendous Triffles' was a collection of loosely-connected essays published in book form, each show-casing Chesterton's insights on various every-day subjects. I have included below the book's preface in its entirety, as well as an excerpt from one of the more colorful essays. They serve as a stirring reminder to step back and take a fresh look at things once they become too familiar to be properly appreciated.



PREFACE

These fleeting sketches are all republished by kind permission of the Editor of the DAILY NEWS, in which paper they appeared. They amount to no more than a sort of sporadic diary—a diary recording one day in twenty which happened to stick in the fancy—the only kind of diary the author has ever been able to keep. Even that diary he could only keep by keeping it in public, for bread and cheese. But trivial as are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thread of motive. As the reader's eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages, it probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window blind or a wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at something that he has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not write an essay on such a post or wall: he does not know what the post or wall mean. He could not even write the synopsis of an essay; as "The Bed-Post; Its Significance—Security Essential to Idea of Sleep—Night Felt as Infinite—Need of Monumental Architecture," and so on. He could not sketch in outline his theoretic attitude towards window-blinds, even in the form of a summary. "The Window-Blind—Its Analogy to the Curtain and Veil—Is Modesty Natural?—Worship of and Avoidance of the Sun, etc., etc." None of us think enough of these things on which the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try.

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Essay IV - 'The Perfect Game'

{The Author is playing Croquet with his friend, Parkinson, and is growing eloquent on the subject of the love and end of games.}

"Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson!" I cried, patting him affectionately on the head with a mallet, "how far you really are from the pure love of the sport — you who can play. It is only we who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause; you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet. You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet. It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. If we may see the face of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish; and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I allude to the hoops), vainly essaying to enter. Our devoted balls, impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be confined within the pedantic boundaries of the mere croquet ground. Our balls seek honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the flower-beds and the conservatory; they are to be found in the front garden and the next street. No, Parkinson! The good painter has skill. It is the bad painter who loves his art. The good musician loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or tape, as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland, the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and the click of the balls is music. The four colours are to me sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or the white of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry consolation of being able to go through hoops and to hit the stick."

And I waved my mallet in the air with a graceful gaiety.

"Don't be too sorry for me," said Parkinson, with his simple sarcasm. "I shall get over it in time. But it seems to me that the more a man likes a game the better he would want to play it. Granted that the pleasure in the thing itself comes first, does not the pleasure of success come naturally and inevitably afterwards? Or, take your own simile of the Knight and his Lady-love. I admit the gentleman does first and foremost want to be in the lady's presence. But I never yet heard of a gentleman who wanted to look an utter ass when he was there."

"Perhaps not; though he generally looks it," I replied. "But the truth is that there is a fallacy in the simile, although it was my own. The happiness at which the lover is aiming is an infinite happiness, which can be extended without limit. The more he is loved, normally speaking, the jollier he will be. It is definitely true that the stronger the love of both lovers, the stronger will be the happiness. But it is not true that the stronger the play of both croquet players the stronger will be the game. It is logically possible—(follow me closely here, Parkinson!)—it is logically possible, to play croquet too well to enjoy it at all. If you could put this blue ball through that distant hoop as easily as you could pick it up with your hand, then you would not put it through that hoop any more than you pick it up with your hand; it would not be worth doing. If you could play unerringly you would not play at all. The moment the game is perfect the game disappears."

Many a true word is spoken in jest. ~ English Proverb