"The Four Men" by Hilaire Belloc

[p.falk]

Sometimes you read a book and get why it's no longer popular. I feel bad saying this because I wanted to like this book. It's only my 2nd Belloc. The first, The Path to Rome, is a travelogue. "The Four Men" reads, at times, like a travelogue but sprinkled with stories by one of the 'four men' that at times are interesting, but almost always rambling.

A man sits in an inn and decides that he wants to walk across Sussex (east to west) to the part of it that is his home. As he makes this decision and then as he starts his journey 3 other men join in. These 3 other men are apparently parts or aspects of the narrator (who goes by Myself). These 3 men are Grizzlebeard, Poet, and the Sailor.

There are some well written and enjoyable parts on traveling away followed by a homecoming. Grizzlebeard, who is wealthy, does not see that a homecoming is anything all that special to which The Sailor informs him that that's due to his being rich and rich men travel for joy, but never find it:

Grizzlebeard. “Tell me, Sailor, when you say that thus, coming home, you will be satisfied, are you so
sure? For my part, I have travelled very widely, especially in Eastern places (which are the most different
from our own), and, one time and another—altogether forty times—I have come back to the flats of my
own countiy, eastward of the Vale of Glynde. I have seen once more the heavy clouds of home fresh before
the wind over the Level, and I have smelt, from the saltings and the innings behind Pevensey, the nearness
of the sea. Then indeed I have each time remembered my boyhood, and each time I have been glad to come
home. But I never found it to be a final gladness. After a little time I must be off again, and find new
places. And that is also why in this short journey of ours I came along with you all, westward into those
parts of the county which are not my own.”

The Sailor. “I cannot tell you, Grizzlebeard, whether a man can find completion in his home or no.
You are a rich man, and you have travelled as rich men do, for pleasure—which rich men never find.”

Grizzlebeard. “Nor poor men either ”

The Sailor. “Well, poor men do not seek it, so they are not saddened, but rich men, anyhow, travel to
find it and never find it; then if they return to find it in their homes, why of course they will not find it there
either, for a man must come back home very weary and after labour, or some journeying to which he was
compelled, if he is to taste home.

[p.falk]

There is a really good section where they speak of their first love. Grizzlebeard's story of that love is the best of the 4:

...Grizzlebeard, "for, as you know, I am not one of those belated heretics who
hold such tilings sacred, believing as I do that that only is sacred which attaches directly to the Faith. ...
Nevertheless ... to remember that great time, and how securely I was held, and in what a port lay the vessel
of my soul. I do feel upon me something that should silence a man.”

"By what moorings were you held?” said I.

"By three.” he answered. "Her eyelids, her voice, and her name.” Then after a little pause he went on
"She was past her youth. Her twenty-fifth year was upon her. Her father and her mother were dead.
She was of great wealth.

"She had one brother, who lived away in some great palace or other in the north, and one sister who
was married far off in Italy. She herself had inherited an ancient house of stone set in her own valley, which
was that of the river Brede. and most dear to her; for it was there that she had lived as a child, and there
would she pass her womanhood.

"Into this house I was received, for she was much older than I, and when I first knew her I was not yet
a man. Thither perpetually in the intervals of study I returned. Insensibly my visits grew most natural; I
passed the gates which are the beginning of a full life, and constantly I found myself, in spite of a more
active bearing and a now complete possession of my youth, alone in her companionship.
Her many servants knew me as a part of their household her grooms who first had taught me to ride, her keepers with whom I had first shot, her old nurse, a pensioner, who favoured this early friendship. The priest also called me by my name.

“We walked together in long avenues the lawns of four hundred years were a carpet for us. We paced
her woods slowly together and often watched together in the frosty season of the year the early setting of
the sun behind bare trees. At evening by her vast and regal fires we sat side by side, speaking in that light
alone to each other of dead poets and of the wars and of tilings seen and of small domestic memories grown
to be pictures clear and lovable.

“Then at last I knew what briar it was that had taken root within me.

“In her absence—during the long nights especially—there returned to me the drooping of her eyes
their slow and generous glances. Waking and far off from her. when I saw in some stranger that same rare
lowering of the lids I was troubled.

“Her voice, because it was her very self, so moved me, that whenever I heard it upon my way to her
doors, whenever I heard it speaking even in the distance no matter what things to another, I trembled.

“Her name, which was not Mary nor Catherine, but was as common and simple a name, was set above
the world and was given power over my spirit. So that to hear it attached even to another or to see it written
or printed on a page everything within me stirred, and it was as though a lamp had been lit suddenly in my
soul. Then, indeed, I understood how truly there are special words of witchcraft and how they bind and
loose material things.”

“Do not ask me whether I contemplated this or that, union or marriage, or the mere continuance of
what I knew, for I was up in a world where no such tilings are considered. There was no time. No future
threatened me, no past could be remembered. I was high above all these tilings.

"By an accident of fortune I was called away, and in a distant town over seas had alien work put before
me. and I mixed with working men. I faithfully curry-combed lean horses, and very carefully greased the
axles of heavy wheels, till, after nineteen months, I could come home, and returning I made at once for the
Valley.

He returns to find out that she has married someone else... and that moment, that feeling has passed forever.

He had other women but none that will be to him what she was:

"It was not for lack of them, great or small. There have been
hundreds . . . but let us say no more There was some foreigner who put it well when he said, ‘Things do
not come at all, or if they come, they come not at that moment when they would have given us the fullness
of delight

[Highlander]

I commend your interest and persistence in outre literature; I have similar interests. However, for me, the sentence structure and direction of the narrative is off-putting. It seems a bit archaic.

[p.falk]

I commend your interest and persistence in outre literature; I have similar interests. However, for me, the sentence structure and direction of the narrative is off-putting. It seems a bit archaic.

The sentence structure was a pain for me too... throughout the entire book, to be honest.

It was similar to my reading of "Path to Rome", Belloc's style (at least in these 2 books... the only which I've read) is very stilted at times, only to flow beautifully at other times. It's frustrating.

[Irenaeus]

Just yesterday, I purchased Belloc's The Great Heresies and The Crusades: The World's Debate, both in Kindle format so I can read them on my iPhone, iPad, or Macbook Pro using a Kindle reader app. Yesterday was the first of two 2x Kindle points days. I'm so far behind reading the books I already own that I'm trying to not buy much new until there's a 3x Kindle points day, of which there are, I think, about two annually.

I moved from Manhattan recently to Jersey City, NJ, just across the Hudson River from where I work in lower Manhattan. Jersey City is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the US and has a large population of Arabs, including many Copts. I just finished a book on the Coptic Church - Coptic Orthodox Church: A Beginner's Guide: A Journey Through the Oldest Christian Church - and now I want to read a bit about Islam and the Crusades. I've got one on the Coptic papacy I've only skimmed so far but expect to get to it before too long - The Early Coptic Papacy: The Egyptian Church and Its Leadership in Late Antiquity: The Popes of Egypt, Volume 1.

[Doom]

If you can find it, one old book by an author that has fallen out of favor is "The Third Day" by Sir Arnold Lunn. I first heard of it from a mention by CS Lewis.

He was an agnostic who got into an exchange of letters with Ronald Knox, listing his objections to Christianity, which were later published by Knox under the title "Difficulties."

When he converted, he became an apologist, and "The Third Day", published in 1945, is a defense of the historicity of the resurrection.

Lunn has fallen out of favor because, frankly, some of his arguments are stupid. For example, he believed in the legitimacy of spiritualism, and he appealed to things like ectoplasm, a substance which has never been proven to exist, and which is now widely dismissed as fraudulent, as evidence against materialism.


Nevertheless, The Third Day is worth a read if you can find it.

[Highlander]

...moved from Manhattan recently to Jersey City, NJ, just across the Hudson River from where I work in lower Manhattan. Jersey City is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the US and has a large population of Arabs, including many Copts.

Have only been to NYC about five times ... three were passing though an airport. Have several friends who live(d) there. DW visited several times when in college. And have been considering a touristy visit for several years. However, the political and safety image of the city has dissuaded us. One of my sons attended a small college up the Hudson.

In eons past, lived in a Coptic country. Was very interesting and very different. Found the Copts very secure in themselves and very tolerant.