Chapter – 6

On Running after One's Hat

- G.K. Chesterton

I feel an almost savage envy on hearing that London has been flooded in my absence, while
I am in the mere country. My own Battersea has been, I understand, particularly favoured as a
meeting of the waters. Battersea was already, as I need hardly say, the most beautiful of human
localities. Now that it has the additional splendour of great sheets of water, there must be something
quite incomparable in the landscape (or waterscape) of my own romantic town. Battersea must be
a vision of Venice. The boat that brought the meat from the butcher’s must have shot along those
lanes of rippling silver with the strange smoothness of the gondola. The greengrocer who brought
cabbages to the corner of the Latchmere Road must have leant upon the oar with the unearthly
grace of the gondolier. There is nothing so perfectly poetical as an island; and when a district is
flooded it becomes an archipelago.

Some consider such romantic views of flood or fire slightly lacking in reality. But really
this romantic view of such inconveniences is quite as practical as the other. The true optimist who
sees in such things an opportunity for enjoyment is quite as logical and much more sensible than
the ordinary “Indignant Ratepayer” who sees in them an opportunity for grumbling. Real pain, as
in the case of being burnt at Smithfield or having a toothache, is a positive thing; it can be
supported, but scarcely enjoyed. But, after all, our toothaches are the exception, and as for being
burnt at Smithfield, it only happens to us at the very longest intervals. And most of the
inconveniences that make men swear or women cry are really sentimental or imaginative
inconveniences–things altogether of the mind. For instance, we often hear grown-up people
complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a
small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him
to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures.
Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon.
Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had
thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little
boys’ habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their
meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things. Many of the most purple hours of my life have
been passed at Clapham Junction, which is now, I suppose, under water. I have been there in many
moods so fixed and mystical that the water might well have come up to my waist before I noticed
it particularly. But in the case of all such annoyances, as I have said, everything depends upon the
emotional point of view. You can safely apply the test to almost every one of the things that are
currently talked of as the typical nuisance of daily life.

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 For instance, there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one’s
hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the well-ordered and pious mind? Not merely because it is
running, and running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The
same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting; little leather ball than they will after a
nice silk hat. There is an idea that it is humiliating to run after one’s hat; and when people say it is
humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but man is a very comic creature, and
most of the things he does are comic–eating, for instance. And the most comic things of all are
exactly the things that are most worth doing–such as making love. A man running after a hat is not
half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife.
Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour
and the most sacred joy. He might regard himself as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal, for
certainly no animal could be wilder. In fact, I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy
days will be the sport of the upper classes in the future. There will be a meet of ladies and
gentlemen on some high ground on a gusty morning. They will be told that the professional
attendants have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever be the technical term. Notice
that this employment will in the fullest degree combine sport with humanitarianism. The hunters
would feel that they were not inflicting pain. Nay, they would feel that they were inflicting
pleasure, rich, almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were looking on. When last I saw an
old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park, I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought
to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected pleasure his every gesture
and bodily attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd.

The same principle can be applied to every other typical domestic worry. A gentleman
trying to get a fly out of the milk or a piece of cork out of his glass of wine often imagines himself
to be irritated. Let him think for a moment of the patience of anglers sitting by dark pools, and let
his soul be immediately irradiated with gratification and repose. Again, I have known some people
of very modern views driven by their distress to the use of theological terms to which they attached
no doctrinal significance, merely because a drawer was jammed tight and they could not pull it
out. A friend of mine was particularly afflicted in this way. Every day his drawer was jammed,
and every day in consequence it was something else that rhymes to it. But I pointed out to him that
this sense of wrong was really subjective and relative; it rested entirely upon the assumption that
the drawer could, should, and would come out easily. “But if,” I said, “you picture to yourself that
you are pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, the struggle will become merely
exciting and not exasperating. Imagine that you are tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine
that you are roping up a fellow-creature out of an Alpine crevass. Imagine even that you are a boy
again and engaged in a tug-of-war between French and English.” Shortly after saying this I left
him; but I have no doubt at all that my words bore the best possible fruit. I have no doubt that
every day of his life he hangs on to the handle of that drawer with a flushed face and eyes bright

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with battle, uttering encouraging shouts to himself, and seeming to hear all round him the roar of
an applauding ring.

So I do not think that it is altogether fanciful or incredible to suppose that even the floods
in London may be accepted and enjoyed poetically. Nothing beyond inconvenience seems really
to have been caused by them; and inconvenience, as I have said, is only one aspect, and that the
most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a really romantic situation. An adventure is only an
inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. The
water that girdled the houses and shops of London must, if anything, have only increased their
previous witchery and wonder. For as the Roman Catholic priest in the story said: “Wine is good
with everything except water,” and on a similar principle, water is good with everything except
wine.

Note On the Author

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English essayist, philosopher, theologian,

literary critic, thinker and an apologist. He began his education at St Paul's School, and later went
on to study art at the Slade School, and literature at University College in London. Chesterton was
a prolific writer and held opinions about everything as an essayist; he wrote a great deal of poetry,
as well as works of social and literary criticism. His most notable books are The Man Who Was
Thursday, a metaphysical thriller, and The Everlasting Man, a history of humankind's spiritual
progress. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the
epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories.
However, Chesterton considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4,000 newspaper
essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years
of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly. His
work has an unmistakable wit, laden with satire, paradoxes to the extent that he was called the
'prince of paradox'.
Chesterton was part of celebrated literary intellectuals of his time like George Bernard
Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. Chesterton heavily wrote on and about the
common man. He argued on materialism, scientific determinism, moral relativism, and
agnosticism. In his works, he defended “the common man” and common sense.
Chesterton was influenced by Catholicism and converted to Catholicism in 1922. He was a
significant part of the Catholic Literary Movement and wrote on religious topics. Chesterton is
most known for creating the famous priest-detective character Father Brown, who first appeared
in The Innocence of Father Brown. Chesterton was part of the Detection Club, a society of British
mystery authors founded by Anthony Berkeley in 1928. He was elected as the first president and
served from 1930 to 1936.

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Note On the Essay

The essay from G.K. Chesterton's collection of essays On Running after One's Hat and
Other Whimsies discusses the importance of positivity in every kind of situation which may be
seemingly negative or distasteful or even embarrassing, like Chesterton says, "An inconvenience
is only an adventure wrongly considered". unbearable or an inconvenience. The essay is a
testimony of Chesterton's use of wit and satire in defending common human life.
Chesterton, as a master craftsman of wit and paradox begins the essay with a mundane
event of a situation of flood in London but with an immediate effect of converting the irritating
emotion to an attractive poetic idealism that he feels a 'savage envy' that he is not experiencing the
flood of London. This subversion of emotion, as Chesterton himself agrees may appear 'slightly
lacking in reality' for many, he progresses to say that this is 'practical' and 'logical' in the view of
a 'true optimist' since the optimist is aware that no amount of brooding over a situation would
likely turn the course of event or situation otherwise.

Glossary:
• Battersea - Battersea is in the London Borough of Wandsworth and stands on the south
bank of the River Thames, spanning from Fairfield in the west to Queenstown in the east.

• gondola - light flat-bottomed boat used on Venetian canals, with high pointed ends and
worked by one oar at the stern.

• gondolier - a person who propels and steers a gondola.

• optimist- a person who is hopeful and positive about any situation.

• humanitarianism -the promotion of human welfare.

Comprehension Questions

1. Why does Chesterton say that a small boy never complains about waiting in a station?
2. Describe the wit and satire in Chesterton's explanation of hat-hunting as a sport of upper
classes in future.
3. What 'typical domestic worry' does Chesterton talk about?
4. What does Chesterton say about his friend?
5. Describe three instances of G.K. Chesterton applying wit and satire to convey his message
in the essay On Running after One's Hat.
6. Write a short note elucidating the themes of the essay On Running after One's Hat.
7. Comment on the writing style of G. K. Chesterton with reference to On Running after One's
Hat.

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8. Critically comment on G.K. Chesterton's essay On Running after One's Hat.
9. Do you agree with the idea of G.K. Chesterton's optimism foregrounded in the essay On
Running after One's Hat.
10. Narrate all the instances G.K. Chesterton's presents in his essay On Running after One's
Hat to substantiate his idea 'An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered'.

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