Essay Club: A Defence of Heraldry by G. K. Chesterton

"Democracy must have a heraldry..."

Welcome to the 11th instalment of Essay Club!

For those who don’t know, Essay Club is a book club for essay enthusiasts. Each month I choose one great essay, summarise and respond to it, and then open the comments for discussion. Last month we discussed Carl Jung’s controversial essay Wotan (1936), an attempt to understand Nazi Germany through the lens of Jungian psychology. This month we’ll be discussing A Defence of Heraldry (1901) by G. K. Chesterton, an essay that is (at least on the surface) an impassioned plea for a renewal of the forgotten art of heraldry.

A Defence of Heraldry is quite short, with a read time of just over five minutes. Don’t let the length fool you—Chesterton manages to say quite a lot in so few words, and does so with his characteristic style and wit. Give it a read and a re-read, and then share your thoughts in the comments below.

Gilbert K. Chesterton.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English author, philosopher, journalist, and Christian apologist. He was an incredibly prolific writer; he wrote novels and short stories, poetry, art and literary criticism, philosophy, and various other works of non-fiction, including essays on virtually every imaginable topic. He is perhaps most well known to us as a writer of fiction (Father Brown) and Christian apologetics (Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man).

Chesterton was in many ways larger than life. He was physically imposing, standing 6 foot 4 inches and weighing 130 kilograms, but he was also intelligent, well-read, and witty. Much of what we know of Chesterton’s personality comes from various anecdotes shared by his contemporaries; during World War I, for example, when asked by a woman why he wasn’t “out at the Front”, Chesterton simply responded, “if you go round to the side, you will see that I am.”

A Defence of Heraldry is an essay taken from Chesterton’s 1901 collection The Defendant. The whole book can be read online, so if you enjoy this essay, consider reading some of the others, too. Chesterton can always be relied upon to delight, amuse, and make you think.

---

A Defence of Heraldry (1901)

Heraldry refers to the study and use of heraldic symbols, the various patterns and designs used by European nobility to distinguish themselves and their families. Chesterton begins his essay by noting that, while heraldry was traditionally an aristocratic pursuit, there has also always been a kind of “plebeian heraldry”:

“…every shop was, like every castle, distinguished not by a name, but a sign. The whole system dates from a time when picture-writing still really ruled the world. In those days few could read or write; they signed their names with a pictorial symbol…”

Chesterton suggests that the pictorial nature of heraldry (both aristocratic and plebeian) imbues these designs with the ability to generate certain feelings in those who view them. He offers the red lion of Scotland as an example:

The Lion Rampant, the Royal Flag of Scotland.

Lions are a classic symbol of royalty. Lions are powerful, fierce, regal, and proud. The colour red, too, has often been associated with royalty—it is the colour of fire and blood, and stands out amongst cooler colours. Even if we have never seen a real-life lion, we all know of them, we’ve all heard stories about them, and so the image of a red lion in particular strikes us with all of these associations. The choice of a red lion by the Scottish kings was surely no accident, and Chesterton jokes that “it is impossible to believe that the Kings of Scotland would have cheerfully accepted the substitute of a pig or a frog”. The reason is simple: “there is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.” The kings of Scotland wanted a symbol that would impress even the most illiterate and uneducated, and for this, only something with the ferocity of a lion would do. In a similar way, plebeian heraldry such as that used by pubs across Britain has a poetic, “dreamlike” attraction, and Chesterton suggests that this may be the reason for its enduring popularity.

Unfortunately, heraldry of both the aristocratic and plebeian types is dying out. Chesterton dates this to the early 19th century, when a wave of democratic fervour swept across Europe. He writes:

“When the great trumpet of equality was blown, almost immediately afterwards was made one of the greatest blunders in the history of mankind. For all this pride and vivacity, all these towering symbols and flamboyant colours, should have been extended to mankind. The tobacconist should have had a crest, and the cheesemonger a war-cry…

“Instead of doing this, the democrats made the appalling mistake—a mistake at the root of the whole modern malady—of decreasing the human magnificence of the past instead of increasing it. They did not say, as they should have done, to the common citizen, 'You are as good as the Duke of Norfolk,' but used that meaner democratic formula, 'The Duke of Norfolk is no better than you are.'”

Here we get to the heart of the essay. Chesterton argues that, in our attempt to level the playing field, we tore the whole beautiful stadium down. Gone were the evocative symbols, the colourful garments, and the tendency to use “bold and heroic” speech. In dismissing the old aristocracy, we came to see humanity as incapable of greatness and dignity, instead viewing ourselves as universally “mean and commonplace”. Beauty, once valued by the high and low alike, is now considered to be a foolish extravagance.

Chesterton continues:

“There were in the French Revolution a class of people at whom everybody laughed, and at whom it was probably difficult, as a practical matter, to refrain from laughing. They attempted to erect, by means of huge wooden statues and brand-new festivals, the most extraordinary new religions [the Cult of Reason, the Cult of the Supreme Being]…

“But these capering maniacs, disowned alike by the old world and the new, were men who had seen a great truth unknown alike to the new world and the old… They realized that democracy must have a heraldry, that it must have a proud and high-coloured pageantry, if it is to keep always before its own mind its own sublime mission.”

We might have expected Chesterton—a devout Catholic and ardent traditionalist—to be more dismissive of the so-called Cult of Reason. But he recognises that these cultists, foolish though they were, had stumbled upon an important insight. Democracy must have a heraldry. Part of the enduring appeal of older systems like the British monarchy or the Roman Empire is their magnificence, which is most clearly expressed through their aesthetics. Fancy hats and coats-of-arms may seem silly to the rational mind, but the emotional mind is drawn to this visual splendour. We yearn for it.

With all of this said, Chesterton concludes:

“The moment we really believe in democracy, it will begin to blossom, as aristocracy blossomed, into symbolic colours and shapes. We shall never make anything of democracy until we make fools of ourselves. For if a man really cannot make a fool of himself, we may be quite certain that the effort is superfluous.”

Chesterton makes an interesting point in this essay. It fits alongside a broader topic that I’ve become interested in, the death of Beauty and the disenchantment of the world, which I think is the result of an over-emphasis on rational and scientistic thinking. To this Chesterton adds an extra dimension—the egalitarian instinct to drag us all down to the same level. In Australia this is a well known phenomenon (it even has a name: Tall Poppy Syndrome), and I believe it is a big part of why, despite our European roots, we lack our own ‘high culture’. Chesterton clearly saw a similar trend emerging in Britain and wider Europe. The political developments of the century that followed are a testament to his prescience.

I am not as optimistic as Chesterton about the possibility of democratic peoples elevating themselves to the level of aristocrats. Reading this essay over a century after it was published, knowing what we now know, I’m inclined to believe that what he saw as a changeable element of democratic psychology—the leveling instinct—is, in fact, innate. It’s possible that a renewed interest in Beauty could change things, but this renewal would require an acknowledgement of a natural hierarchy (beauty > ugliness). Such an acknowledgement risks undermining the egalitarian foundations of democracy, so is, I suspect, unlikely to occur.

---

Questions and Housekeeping

Chesterton is often overlooked by modern readers, so I hope reading this has stirred in you a desire to read more. Whether you enjoyed it or not, I’d love to hear what you think—please share your thoughts in the comments below. Here a few questions to get things started:

• What did you think of A Defence of Heraldry?

• Do you agree that the loss of heraldry and other ‘pointless’ aesthetic practices is due to the democratic leveling instinct? Why or why not?

• Should these practices be recovered? If so, how would we do it?

• What is your personal favourite heraldic symbol (either aristocratic or plebeian)?

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, please consider liking the post, sharing it with your friends, and subscribing if you haven’t already done so.

The next Essay Club will be on the 13th of July. I’ve been thinking a lot about social and extended cognition as I work on the next chapter of The Stories We Tell, so next month I’d like to discuss a seminal work in this area: The Extended Mind (1998) (PDF) by Andy Clark and David Chalmers.

See you in the comments!