The Pimlico Principle

The Catholic Thing

By Michael Pakaluk
For us, Pimlico is a racetrack near Baltimore, which hosts the Preakness Stakes. But for G.K. Chesterton it was a district in London which, although once fashionable, had declined by the time he wrote Orthodoxy (1908) into a much despised "slum." St. Theresa of Avila once likened life in this world to a night in a bad inn. Chesterton, when wondering once whether optimism or pessimism was the best attitude for a man to cultivate, thought to liken the world to Pimlico:
Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing - say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved.
Neither pessimism ("disapproval"), nor optimism (being reconciled) was the correct attitude but, he concluded, some kind of deep love, or perhaps more properly a loyalty, which has a basis that comes from beyond - that is, if we judge an attitude as "correct" if it builds up, rescues, saves, and adorns.
In the chapter, "Flag of the World," Chesterton explains that he did not know properly how to love the world until he accepted the Christian doctrine that it was created, because then he saw that our deepest loyalty to it should be as coming from God but distinct from Him. The martyr shows the greatest loyalty to the world while apparently leaving it, because he loves it for what it should be, while the suicidal man, who superficially looks the same, "cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything."
What deserves this kind of loyalty? Holy places and things, above all, Chesterton says: "Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."
Next, one's country: "The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us."
Hence the importance of the land for patriotism: the land comes from God and therefore clearly suggests the "transcendental tie" which underlies true patriotism. Maybe you have forgotten the words of the song: "This land is my land, this land is your land," not because we've divided it up with respect to the "institution of private property," which economists celebrate, but precisely because the land was created and given: "This land was made for you and me."
As Chesterton discusses elsewhere, a wife deserves such loyalty, or a husband, and by extension the hearth and home that they together bring into existence. Marriage used to be understood in an uncomplicated way as such a super-rational loyalty. "You made your bed, and now you must sleep in it," was the practical way of putting it.
But some songs got it better:
Oh listen, sister,I love my mister man,And I can't tell yo' why,Dere ain't no reasonWhy I should love dat man.It must be sumpin' dat de angels done plan.
We're very good at the essentially negative project of tracing our social woes to false philosophies of self-interest and personal autonomy. But merely freeing ourselves from these, if that were possible on its own, from Chesterton's point of view...