ABSTRACT
G. K. Chesterton and E. C. Bentley each emphasised the importance of nonsense literature in binding their friendship. As the lunar appellation suggests, Michael Moon represents Bentley’s simultaneous capacity for cool detachment and a more creative lunacy. Fortunately, much of the detail of the pair’s early relationship has been preserved in their correspondence and in Bentley’s contemporaneous diaries. When carefully examined, the archival records suggest that the Chesterbentley may be a more significant composite creature than Shaw’s famous portmanteau creation, the ‘Chesterbelloc’, in pursuing a proper understanding of the maturation of Chesterton’s thought. His introductory dedication to Bentley is immediately followed by a satire of Decadence—‘On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes’—which employs apocalyptic terms to articulate an anxiety over the proliferation of pessimistic detachment and sceptical derangement in British fin-de-siecle culture. In Chesterton’s fiction, monocles are invariably worn by characters that represent aloofness, worldly success, and social conformity.
