“At the Sign of the Lion”- A Grizzlebeard Fairy Tale

Belloc leads us into the Numinous...

 John Moriarty once said that Divine Ground is only seed-deep, and the sooner humanity came to realize that, the better would be the lot of the planet and humanity together.

Hilaire Belloc insisted on a grounded reality with the world, rather than theorizing.  “Read less, sail more,” was one of his aphorisms.  The Thomistic scholar Frederick Wilhelmsen once wrote, regarding Belloc, that 

Only when life is lived close to the senses, when the intelligence is engaged immediately on what is yielded to man through the body, is the paradox of sadness in created beauty brought home in all its delicacy and inexorableness. Page after page of Belloc’s writing is troubled by a deep and troubled gravity, heightened by his profound communion with the things of his world.

The combination of “gravity” and “enchantment” anchor his work and worldview.  And the need for such a combination in our 21st Century society gains every more intensity each passing year.  This is Grizzlebeard territory. 

Belloc strikes the balance- recognizing at once man at home in the world, but at home in a world passing and fleeting.  Things fade and disappear, and rest is temporary.  In this realism man is both home and yet pilgrim and traveler- this is concordant both with the scope of history, the journey of Faith, and the feel of earth under man’s feet. 

This cannot be explained, but illustrated and experienced.  Such is the case with most fairy tales- the ordinary person enters a world of wonder, usually by a journey through the forest, comes across a rustic dwelling place,  beholds a magic and a people beyond his understanding, gains wisdom and guidance, and is set upon a quest.   

Enter Belloc’s essay “At the Sign of the Lion,” found in his collection Hills and the Sea, which conveys in its brief pages the numinous, the real, and the longing of man.  It is a Grizzlebeard fairy tale for Modern Man.

Belloc opens with the familiar- he and his horse have traveled far that day, and as they reach the summit of a hill and view the whole of that part of England before them, evening comes.

In that particular moment of dusk, Belloc senses the numinous: “That landscape was transfigured, because many influences had met to make it, for the moment, an enchanted land.”  The time of year (autumn), the colors of sunset, an incoming storm, the outline of the landscape all conspire to showcase the commonplace, “and yet was pervaded by a general quality of the uplifted and strange.”  For a small while “the county did not seem to me a thing well known, but rather adored.”

Note the contrast.  That which hitherto had been well known to Belloc, becomes not “unknown” or “impenetrable” but rather “adored.”  Here is some significance- a thing adored is not devoid of familiarity but rather charged with it, as the poet Hopkins might write.  Belloc acknowledges this numinous quality is fleeting, lasting for but “one hour.”  

This entry into the numinous does not require a step into another realm, plane, or otherwise liminal space.  As with most Belloc reflections it is the here and now, the actual ground of actual being to which he refers.

Frederick Wilhelmsen explains Belloc’s approach to essays thusly:

“First there is a bathing from the spring of something in being, which is soaked into the author’s substance through his senses.  Then he brings his intellect to bear on whatever it is that has engaged his whole personality, and some judgement is passed.”

This “soaking of the senses” is evident in the depth of Belloc’s pondering.  These ponderings are not fleeting passions, as the philosopher Rosseau lamented about his life chasing inconsequential pleasures.  Still less are they moments of postmodern escapism, jeering at tradition and wallowing in irony and the illusionary.  They are rather acknowledgements of reality’s common gifts, should we have eyes to see.  

Neither is this reality devoid of human habitation.  In fact, at the heart of this numinous landscape is an inn.  This inn is owned by “an old man and his wife” who “live easily” and “remain peasants, drawing from the earth they have always known as much sustenance for the soul as even their religion can afford them.”  Belloc explains that the old couple’s adherence and practice of the Faith, and its interweaving  with their work on the land, would constitute the establishment of a “shrine about the place to sanctify it.”  

Man, Land, Religion- earthly components of the Heavenly.  Belloc remains “earth-bound.”  Much as I admire and appreciate the works of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, gaining from them echoes of the Good, True, and Beautiful, there’s something remarkable in Belloc’s tenacious territoriality of his local sphere.  One can imagine him answering the question “Would you rather live in Narnia or Middle-Earth?’ with the abrupt reply “I already live in Sussex.”  There are those of us who need the journey into the fantastical to recognize its kinship to the Real in our own lives.  Heck, even CS Lewis felt this when he read George MacDonald’s Phantastes that it “transported him to a new frontier,” and cast a “bright shadow” on the world around him.  

Rather than the “Fantastical Real,” Belloc was content and edified by the “Actual Real.”  However, even this “Actual Real” had an element of whimsy and ethereality to it.  Belloc recognized all things were fleeting and mutable, a harsh reality which renders Man always dealing with a sense of sadness and loss.  Even Belloc’s horse Monster, in a moment of anthropomorphism, states “There is a tradition among us that, of all creatures that creep upon the earth, man is the fullest of sorrow."  

After settling Monster in the stables, Belloc enters the house, which “received [him] like a friend.”  Here follows two paragraphs of sensuality and hope, rivaling the best of Dickens.  Belloc describes an “open chimney…filled with beech logs burning,” candles “set in brass,” and a low ceiling “as are the ceilings of Heaven.”  Oak is the primary wood, making up the “beams and shelves and mighty table.”  As he eats and drinks, he sees “hops in the tankard, and one could taste the barley.”  In this environment, his thoughts turn to the ravages made by city life, and he dares hope one day “England will be built again.”  

Belloc immerses the reader in an environment of peace and contemplation, but doesn’t want the reader or himself to get too comfortable.  He notes his reverie as a “tenuous fantasy,” which is prolonged only by conversation with another like-minded individual.  This is a man of “fifty or more; his hair was crisp and grey, his face brown, as though he had been much upon the sea.”  

What follows is an almost Book of Ecclesiastes meditation on the Nature of Change, the Illusion of Permanence, and the fundamental reality of the Divine Thirst for which the heart of Man aches.  In the language of fairy-tales, how is this the beginnings of wisdom, guidance, and a quest?

A quest is defined as a pursuit or search.  A person is seeking something.  It is quite appropriate, therefore, that Belloc evokes a series of questions to his companion.

These questions formulate the very basis of our search for the divine in our place in the world.

Are things destined to change and fade away?  If so, what is the use of our attachment to them?  If they echo Heaven, what of this Divine Thirst?  How shall it be quenched?  Is it really so different in Heaven that our senses simply cannot comprehend- or, Lord willing, is there a taste of Heaven already?  How long must we wait?  Must it always be after Death?

Finally, in conclusion, if conclusion it can be called, there is this exchange:

"You think, then," said I, "that some immortal part in us is concerned not only with our knowledge, but with our every feeling, and that our final satisfaction will include a sensual pleasure: fragrance, and landscape, and a visible home that shall be dearer even than these dear hills?"

"Something of the sort," he said, and slightly shrugged his shoulders. They were broad, as he sat beside me staring at the fire. They conveyed in their attitude that effect of mingled strength and weariness which is common to all who have travelled far and with great purpose, perpetually seeking some worthy thing which they could never find.

Is Belloc acting the Realist when he thus leaves himself and his companion staring into the embers of the fire?  There is no clear answer in “something of the sort,” and yet the essay ends with quiet meditation of low flames.  

Dare we call Belloc a Grizzlebeard Mystic, not merely as one prone to give himself over to mystical experience, but he who recognizes the mystical in the real?  I think we can.  And in doing so, well, whither now, reader?  Whither now, modern man?

Seek the worthy thing.  Travel far and wide.  Be with purpose and integrity.  Drink in the natural and the peasant.  Skyscrapers are nothing to low oak beams slowly charred by innumerable embers.  For in those embers we stare and dream and reflect and come to awareness of the numinous all around us.