Courtesy and the Grace of God

The World of Books

by the Books Editor

Any one of my generation who was taught from an early age by the good nuns will have somewhere tucked away in the back attic of their memories Hilaire Belloc’s poem Courtesy.

Those ineffable lines:

Of Courtesy it is much less

Than Courage of Heart or Holiness.

Yet in my Walks it seems to me

That the Grace of God is in Courtesy. 

Later, a Jesuit in an early English class enlarged on the true nature of Christian courtesy and chivalry.

The particular walk that inspired this poem took the poet into the little Sussex village of Storrington, where the Priory of Our Lady of England had recently been consecrated. This was on a day in Our Lady’s month, May 17, 1908.

The priory was a new institution built on land donated by the Duke of Norfolk. The place also played a role in the tormented life of the poet Francis Thompson, and provided a refuge for priests exiled under the anti-clerical laws of the II French Republic (1848-51).

I mention the Duke of Norfolk, for when we first learnt the poem I was puzzled by the fact the duke the – primary Catholic peer in England; also in his role as Earl Marshall, had played an important role in the recent coronation of Elizabeth II (1953).

But that was a point. He had two roles, which were played well. He was conscious of the courtesy he owed his sovereign.

Poem

This poem has been going through my head for the last month, culminating in the attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.

Now Mr Belloc was not always a kindly-spoken critic. But in those famous debates he and G.K. Chesterton would argue with George Bernard Shaw with commendable courtesy.

Over those last weeks the outgoing president of the United States of American, a person in whom so many were accustomed to see ‘the leader of the free world’, forgot he was the president of all Americans and not just an angry minority, he forgot the acts of courtesy which his state role called for.

On January 6, in the halls of the American republic it seemed courtesy was not always present. (There was an echo of ancient Rome that day: for it was on the Capitoline Hill of Rome that the senate and people of Rome retreated to find refuge from the marauding barbarian Gauls, our Celtic cousins.)

But over these last weeks, seeing the havoc being played in the traditions of the United State have led me to wonder where had courtesy gone. The petty snubs of the Mr and Mrs Trump in those last days: firing the White House butler, arranging that there was no one, so to speak, to open the door of the White House to Joe Biden and his wife, the refusal of Mrs Trump to invite Mrs Biden to customary afternoon tea and walk round the residence which would be her new home, the refusals of Mr Trump to concede…One could go on: the lies, the bitter and brutal language, and all of this supported raucously by so many Catholics and fervent Christians, saddened one.

But the decline overall of courtesy is sadder still. Where has the ‘Grace of God’ that is in courtesy gone? We all need to look to our own consciences to see that we too have lost what those quiet nuns of mine would have called “custody of speech” and have let this happen here too.