The Flying Inn and Walt Whitman

Every yer I set various reading goals. One of my goals this year was to read a G.K. Chesterton novel I had not read before.

I met that goal yesterday by finishing The Flying Inn.

The book is typical Chesterton fiction, a mixture of fancy and fantasy with a social subtext. In the case of this book, he is celebrating the victory of the common man and common pleasures over government control and elitist hypocrisy.

Oh, and he is also celebrating rum and cheese.

As I read the book and its praise of the common man, I thought of some recent comments I'd seen about Chesterton and Walt Whitman. Indeed, I had seen some suggestions that Chesterton praised Whitman.

On the surface Chesterton would seem to have little in common with Whitman. Indeed, Whitman's religious and lifestyle would appear to be in conflict with Chesterton's. But they shared a common love of the common man and common things, and a celebration of life.

This particularly hit home in the section on Crooke's shop where a plasterer, a clock mender, a clerk, and assorted others came in seeking a drink. Common men seeking a common thing. And I thought of Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" with its mechanics, carpenter, mason, and more all singing their strong melodious songs. And, of course, Chesterton's book is full of songs.

This Chesterton/Whitman connection - and their differences - are explored in an interesting 2017 article by Scott Hubbard in Transpositions, "The Orthodoxy Of Leaves Of Grass: The Imaginative Visions Of G.K. Chesterton And Walt Whitman In Dialogue."

The article begins: 

"Walt Whitman is not likely to appear on anyone’s list of great Christian poets. And with reason. From the first publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855, to his death in 1892, the good gray poet had cosied with Emersonian Neoplatonism, drafted plans for ‘The Great Construction of the New Bible’ and even accorded the figure of Satan a place within the Holy Quaternity of God. He is large and contains multitudes, but Chalcedonian orthodoxy is not one of them. The problem is that Whitman’s personal heterodoxies may keep his name from appearing on any list of great poets written by a Christian. However, one Christian who in his own lifetime offered hearty dissent to this rule was none other than renowned essayist G.K. Chesterton.

When Chesterton compiled his 1905 essay series Heretics to expose the philosophical inadequacies of the literati of the past half-century, not only did he spare Whitman from his critical scythe, but the American poet received accolade as a type of noble pagan. Indeed, for a pre-conversion Chesterton, Whitman was ’one of the greatest men of the nineteenth century’. And while this is certainly a tendentious claim from England’s Catholic Colossus, it is not one that his later work shows any trace of recanting. In fact, the English apologist and the American bard had imaginative visions that greatly overlap in scope and focus. ..."

The essay is well worth a read - as was The Flying Inn.