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By Nancy Mehl Mystery Editor  E-mail: nancy@charlotteaustinreviewltd.com Web site |
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| July 9/2000 The 'Saintly' Side of Mystery: G.K. Chesterton By Nancy Mehl The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away, And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay… There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain, There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain… – From The Aristocrat - poem by G.K. Chesterton This month, let’s talk about a certain kind of detective – the kind that seems to be able to get a little 'Outside Help' when necessary. One of the first writers to engage spiritual assistance in solving crimes was G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was a prolific writer who wrote thousands of essays for the London newspapers as well as many plays and poetry. He also wrote books of literary criticism, social theory, economics, history, philosophy and religion, but he is most famous for his novels and detective stories. Chesterton was a huge character himself. He weighed close to 300 lbs. and was almost always seen wearing his cape and crumpled hat. With his tiny glasses perched on the end of his nose and his trademark swordstick in his hand, he was easily recognized – seeming bigger than life. Chesterton was one of the most beloved men of his time. He had very strong religious and political opinions yet even his opponents liked him. He was a recklessly gregarious and self-indulgent man who drank himself into a state of corpulent immobility. As a boy he was a voracious reader of detective-crime stories. This love emerged in his adult life and formed into one of the most popular detectives ever to hit the literary scene. Although still very popular in England, in America he is largely forgotten – yet he is one of the first examples of the "clerical detective." Chesterton’s best known work is a series of stories featuring a priest, Father Brown, who reminds us quite a bit of the TV detective, Columbo. His harmless, bumbling and absent-minded appearance hides a sharp mind and a talent for noticing details that others miss. Father Brown seems to be a precursor of the wonderful "Rabbi" series by author Harry Kemelman. Father Brown was also the inspiration for a movie called, "The Detective," starring Alec Guinness. Of course, one of the closest "clones" of the little priest is Father Dowling, the character featured in the novels of Ralph M. McInerny. In the very first Father Brown story, "The Blue Cross," Chesterton introduces two other characters along with his tiny parish priest with a face "as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling…eyes as empty as the North Sea." There was Valentin, head of the Paris police, the world’s greatest detective, and Flambeau, the villain. It was easy to assume that Valentin would remain the permanent foil for the "simple detective," yet in the very next story, Chesterton killed him off by having the famous detective commit a gruesome murder and then take poison. A few stories later, we see Flambeau reform and become Father Brown’s Doctor Watson instead of his original role as his Professor Moriarty. "Flambeau," Father Brown told him, "I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don’t fancy they will last in that trade… Many a man I’ve known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped with slime." The first twelve stories of the Father Brown series were collected into the first of the five Father Brown books – The Innocence of Father Brown. Ellery Queen called it "the miracle book of 1911." Chesterton’s friend, Father John O’Connor, inspired the character of Father Brown. Chesterton had believed, as did many others, that priests lived a life shielded from the evils of the world. His relationship with Father O’Connor taught him that the opposite is true. Few people are faced with the evil in men’s hearts the way the clergy is – and Father O’Connor was no exception. When presenting his views of various topics of vice and crime, Chesterton was astonished when the good Father set him straight on several facts unknown to him. Not only did the priest change his mind, but he also awakened to the idea of a "priestly detective" with an understanding of the blackness of men’s souls and the ability to interpret their hidden agendas. In 1909, Chesterton’s brother Cecil, who had been watching the development of Gilbert’s interest in the mystery/detection genre, predicted that his brother was destined to write some kind of "transcendental Sherlock Holmes." This of course, proved true when Father Brown was born. The impression made upon Chesterton by Father O’Connor is seen throughout the Father Brown stories. In one of the stories, Father Brown says; "a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil." Father Brown’s approach is not based entirely on detection by Holmesian methods, but rely heavily on his intuition and understanding of people. The journey is more important than the destination, and the reader will learn much more than simply, "whodunit." The allure of the classic detective story is based on the difference between the murderer and the detective – between the brutality of one and the humanity and gentility of the other. The classical "great detective" is untouched by the evil he or she battles, (Holmes, Poirot and Miss Marple) whereas the "hard-boiled detective" may be up to his ears in vice and human frailty. Father Brown’s profession obviously makes him a perfect example of a classical great detective. Father Brown shares a trait with other classic detectives, the ability to turn all of the small conflicting clues into a theory unseen by anyone else around him. There is a tremendous example of this in his story, "The Honour of Israel Gow," in which Scotland Yard is baffled by the only clues they have; small pieces of metal, heaps of loose diamond, piles of snuff and stacks of wax candles. However, Father Brown is able to look at these seemingly unconnected items and present three different theories. Sometimes, Father Brown is not completely forthcoming about his methods of detection. In "The Hammer of God," a man is found sprawled out under the spires of a Gothic Church, his head horribly mutilated by a mighty blow from a small hammer. Father Brown immediately deduces that the hammer was thrown from the rooftop of the church – but when he later confronts the guilty curate who asked why the priest suspected him, Father Brown credits his deduction to intuition. "I am a man and therefore I have all devils in my heart." Another example of this same kind of priestly instinct occurs when Father Brown says in another story, "I try to get inside the murderer. Indeed, it’s much more than that, don’t you see? I am inside a man. I am always inside a man, moving his arms and legs; but I wait till I know I am inside a murderer, thinking his thoughts, wrestling with his passions; till I have bent myself into the posture of his hunched and peering hatred; till I see the world with his bloodshot and squinting eyes, looking up the short and sharp perspective of a straight road to a pool of blood. Till I am really a murderer. And when I am quite sure that I feel exactly like the murderer myself, of course I know who he is." In the story, "The Mirror of the Magistrate," we see the brilliance of Father Brown, and of his creator, G.K. Chesterton, as the priest looks upon a large, shattered mirror and the broken pot of a house plant, and from these small clues, logically and accurately produces a general description of the murderer - a man he has never seen. It is one of the best examples of brilliant deduction in all of crime fiction. Chesterton never ends his stories by collecting all the suspects together to reveal the murderer. When Father Brown reveals "whodunit," he never launches into the explanation of his creative methods and uses his revelation as a chance to share his genius with an amazed cast of flummoxed characters. Father Brown simply answers the question, "How do you know all this?’ with "a shadow of a smile" and the response that he had simply "guessed." It speaks volumes for the personality of Father Brown and the respect that Chesterton had for his readers, that the clues are presented along the way, so that the reader and the priest may arrive at the same conclusion together and not have to rehearse them again at the end of the tale. The number of Father Brown stories totaled 53, including a new story entitled, "The Mask of Midas," found among the papers of Chesterton’s secretary, Dorothy Collins, who passed away in 1988. In the last stages of his life, Chesterton supported himself primarily through the Father Brown series, which enjoyed huge success on both sides of the Atlantic. However, he grew tired of the little priest from Essex, much the same way that Conan Doyle tired of his most famous shadow, Sherlock Holmes Father Brown was not Chesterton’s only foray into the world of crime. "The Club of Queer Trades" predated the Brown stories and was his first attempt at the art of writing detective fiction. The two investigators, brothers Rupert and Basil Grant, were written to display what Chesterton considered to be the best and worst in the methods of detection. The red-haired Rupert was a private investigator who followed all the standard practices. He raced around London collecting clues and drawing all the wrong conclusions, while his gray-haired brother Basil, stayed in one spot and somehow seemed to wind up with all the pertinent information. Basil was a retired English judge who became so disillusioned with the law that one day he "suddenly went mad on the bench" and fled his profession to live a life of seclusion. His method was to absorb the "atmosphere" for the answer to the crimes he elected to solve while scorning dependence on just mere data. In 1901, Chesterton published "A Defense of Detective Stories," that celebrated the genre as one that expresses "some sense of the poetry of modern life." Chesterton saw the detective as the modern version of a gallant knight, protecting the public and having the capacity to notice the invisible, bringing to light the hidden things - while astonishing the reader with his acumen. Other works of detection include "Tales of the Long Bow," published in 1925 and "The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond," published posthumously in 1937. Pond is written in a tone reminiscent of Father Brown. "He was so quiet at all normal times, so neat in shape and so shiny…and yet I know there were some monsters in Mr. Pond also – monsters in his mind which rose only for a moment to the surface and sank again." Other famous story collections and novels include, "The Man Who Was Thursday," "Manalive," "Four Faultless Felons," "The Poet and the Lunatics," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much." John C. Tibbets in his article entitled "The Case of the Forgotten Detectives: The Unknown Crime Fiction of G.K. Chesterton," published in The Armchair Detective in 1995, pointed out his genuine affection and respect for Chesterton and others who write in the crime/detective genre. He wrote, "I submit we delight in them for other reasons, the very reasons too often ignored by the scholars – precisely because they are cycles of short tales - full of enchanting prose, bizarre crimes, eccentric characters, and ingenious solutions. Their jeweled images flash in the sun and smolder in the shadows; their exaggerated, sometimes old-fashioned melodramatics strut a pose and declaim a ballad; and their profound philosophy begins in a mystery and ends with a revelation." Mystery Trivia - Last month’s Mystery Question – One famous detective’s arch rival reformed and became his "Dr. Watson." This sidekick, named Flambeau, was paired with what "spiritual" detective? Answer – The answer is Father Brown, of course! This month’s Mystery Question – What famous mystery author also wrote under the name of Mary Westmacott? Answer in next month's column. Sources - The Complete Father Brown - Dodd, Mead & Company Inc, 1951 The Case of the Forgotten Detectives: The Unknown Crime Fiction of G.K. Chesterton by John C. Tibbetts - Published in The Armchair Detective, 1995 Web sites: G.K. Chesterton and The American Chesterton Society G.K. Chesterton - GeoCities GK Chesterton, Writer - The Society of Archbishop Justus Computer Service |
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