At the same time I think that the lower
orders are seen unfavorably when enjoying themselves. In labour and
trouble they are more dignified and less noisy. Your suggestion as to
a series of soliloquies is very flattering and has taken hold of me
to the extent of writing a similar ballad on Simon de Montfort. The
order in which they come is rather incongruous, particularly if I
include the list I have in mind for the future thus--Danton, William
III, Simon de Montfort, Rousseau, David and Russell. . . . I rejoice
to say that this is a sequestered spot into which Hi tiddly hi ti,
etc. and all the ills in its train have not penetrated.
In these last two letters there are sentences of a kind not to be
found anywhere else in Chesterton. The disparagement of Lucian
Oldershaw's excessive enthusiasm for the Junior Debating Club, the
solemn reprobation of the "imbecile screams and yells and stamping"
of the last day at school before the summer holidays, the antipathy
expressed for the rowdy enjoyments of the lower orders--these things
are not in the least like either the Chesterton that was to be or the
Chesterton that then was.
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