On June 6, 1901, the great Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc (1870 – 1953) went on a walking pilgrimage to Rome. His resulting travelogue The Path to Rome, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, was published in 1902. In this, his most acclaimed work, Belloc mentions dancing as something everyone should do. In fact, he joked that people should be compelled to do it.
I didn’t know dancing had such a defender in G.K. Chesterton’s good friend until I happened to notice a message from the Hilaire Belloc Society Substack page, which said in response to the headline Why Catholics Should Learn to Dance, “Because Hilaire Belloc said we should in his book The Path to Rome when writing on the traditions of Man.”
As it happened, Mr McLean is an admirer of Mr Belloc and collects hardback editions of his works. He has loaned out his copy of The Path of Rome, so I turned to the invaluable Project Gutenberg and found an online version there.
To save you the work of clicking, here (below) is what Belloc says. And I’m pleased that he begins by mentioning St Louis, for my new friend Anna Kalinowska is devoted to the canonised king. I’m also pleased that Belloc writes about dancing in a discussion of Daily Mass. Dancing, he argues, is like divine worship in that it is “buried right into our blood from immemorial habit.”
Of all the things I have read about St Louis which make me wish I had known him to speak to, nothing seems to me more delightful than his habit of getting Mass daily whenever he marched down south, but why this should be so delightful I cannot tell.
Of course there is a grace and influence belonging to such a custom, but it is not of that I am speaking but of the pleasing sensation of order and accomplishment which attaches to a day one has opened by Mass; a purely temporal, and, for all I know, what the monks back at the ironworks would have called a carnal feeling, but a source of continual comfort to me. Let them go their way and let me go mine.
This comfort I ascribe to four causes (just above you will find it written that I could not tell why this should be so, but what of that?), and these causes are:
1. That for half-an-hour just at the opening of the day you are silent and recollected, and have to put off cares, interests, and passions in the repetition of a familiar action. This must certainly be a great benefit to the body and give it tone.
2. That the Mass is a careful and rapid ritual. Now it is the function of all ritual (as we see in games, social arrangements and so forth) to relieve the mind by so much of responsibility and initiative and to catch you up (as it were) into itself, leading your life for you during the time it lasts. In this way you experience a singular repose, after which fallowness I am sure one is fitter for action and judgement.
3. That the surroundings incline you to good and reasonable thoughts, and for the moment deaden the rasp and jar of that busy wickedness which both working in one’s self and received from others is the true source of all human miseries. Thus the time spent at Mass is like a short repose in a deep and well-built library, into which no sounds come and where you feel yourself secure against the outer world.
4. And the most important cause of this feeling of satisfaction is that you are doing what the human race has done for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. This is a matter of such moment that I am astonished people hear of it so little. Whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long–but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls. Thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one’s food–and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and one should sing in chorus. For all these things man has done since God put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul. Similarly some teacher or ranter or other, whose name I forget, said lately one very wise thing at least, which was that every man should do a little work with his hands.
Oh! what good philosophy this is, and how much better it would be if rich people, instead of raining the influence of their rank and spending their money on leagues for this or that exceptional thing, were to spend it in converting the middle-class to ordinary living and to the tradition of the race. Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig; and those that would not should be compelled by force.
Of course, he is joking. But even if he were not, I am not a fan of compelling adults by force. Having to pay taxes and take off our shoes in the airport is bad enough.
Children, on the other hand, should be taught the traditional customs of the country in which they live whether they like it or not, just as babies are made to eat strained carrots and pureed chicken, and for the same reasons.
Scottish schools already teach children how to dance, and some fortunate children learn to play the bagpipes, too. I hope they are also learning Scottish folk songs, be that in English, Scots or Gaelic. It would be brilliant if they were taught deer stalking, too. For one thing, it is necessary to cull the deer in Scotland, and for another humans are natural hunters, an instinct we so often waste on bargains and Google. Messing about with boats (and therefore being taught to swim) strikes me as an activity sound and traditional for an island nation. And as for digging, gardening is a very important part of Scottish culture, indeed.
Meanwhile, even though alcohol seems to be loosening its grip on the young—sadly, I think this is because the current young prefer the dopamine hit of their devices—it would be salutary for children to be taught, from the age of fourteen or so, to love and respect beer, wine, whisky, and gin for the art forms they are. At any rate, they certainly should be taken around a brewery, a distillery and a vineyard. And naturally, the first place they should ever drink any of the above is at home with their families.
Of course, some families keep a “dry hoose,” as did my great-grandfather. And apparently the first Temperance Society in Britain was set up in Glasgow in 1829. Therefore, I would argue that abstaining from drink is also very Scottish—and taking a pledge to do so is also very Catholic. At the same time, Belloc’s most famous poem among Catholics must certainly be as follows:
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!
And this, I think, is the distillation of the traditional joy in God’s good gifts that Belloc and Chesterton so celebrated. It can be used as a shorthand for all the lovely traditions of Christian Europe and her children.