AUTOBIOGRAPHY-Chesterton

informed me on her own doorstep that she was a Liberal and I could not see
her husband, because he was still a Tory. She then informed me that she had
been twice married before, and both her husbands had been Tories when they
married her, but had become Liberals afterwards. She jerked her thumb over
her shoulder towards the invisible Conservative within and said, “I’ll have him
ready by the ‘lection.” I was not permitted to penetrate further into this cavern
of witchcraft, where she manufactured Liberals out of the most unpromising
materials; and (it would appear) destroyed them afterwards. But she was only
one of a number of such quaint and forcible rustics whom I encountered in my
political travels. Nor indeed were they the only things that I encountered. For
all this funny little fuss of politics was in this case spread out like a sprawling
sham fight, or the manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, over that enormous area of
noble hills and valleys which had seen so many vaster struggles in the past,
reaching back to that aboriginal struggle of the Pagans and the Christians
which is the genesis of all our history. And such primitive things were
probably already working their way to the surface of my own mind; things that
I afterwards attempted to throw into very inadequate but at least more
elemental and universal literary form. For I remember the faint and hazy
inspiration that troubled me one evening on the road, as I looked beyond the
little hamlet, patched so incongruously with a few election posters, and saw
hung upon the hills, as if it were hung upon the heavens, remote as a pale
cloud and archaic as a gigantic hieroglyph; the White Horse.
I only mention it here because there will be some misunderstanding even
of my accidental and amateurish intervention in politics, if it is not understood
that our political idealism, unpopular as it was, was felt inwardly as national
and not as international. It was that which was a permanent source of irritation
and misunderstanding, both within and without the political party. To us it
seemed obvious that Patriotism and Imperialism were not only not the same
thing, but very nearly opposite things. But it did not seem obvious, but very
puzzling, to the great majority of healthy patriots and innocent Imperialists. It
seemed equally puzzling to a great many anti-patriots and anti-Imperialists.
Towards the end of this period, we published a book intended to explain our
rather peculiar position; it was called England a Nation; it was edited by
Oldershaw and had contributions by Masterman and myself and others. One of
the contributions came from an Irish Nationalist member, my friend Hugh
Law; and it was about this time, naturally enough, that I began to see
something of the Irish Nationalists and to feel a strong and special sympathy
with Irish Nationalism. Of this I may say more in another place; it is sufficient
to remark here that it is to me a considerable satisfaction to think that I have
always felt it the first duty of a real English patriot to sympathise with the
passionate patriotism of Ireland; that I expressed it through the worst times of
her tragedy and have not lost it in her triumph.