March 2025
I only discovered G. K. Chesterton a few years ago, through his essays which are generally excellent, and some which I would call brilliant. More recently I’ve dipped into his fiction. The Man Who was Thursday was superb, both surreal and funny, and laden with the striking descriptions — of landscapes, settings, people — of which Chesterton is a master. After that, just last month, I tried a second piece of fiction, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. I wrote a brief review of that, and, as I said, I did not care for that at all — it was clearly produced by the same author, but there the surreal became simply absurd, and the humor farce. Suspension of disbelief failed.
Still, having liked so much of his writing, and having found so little recent fiction satisfying, I wanted to try again, and so turned to his Father Brown stories about a Priest-Detective. The friend who had initially brought GKC to my attention recommended the story, The Blue Cross, as his favorite, and sent me a link to this volume on Project Guttenberg. The Blue Cross was indeed excellent, and so I proceeded through the rest of the volume.
As a whole, it was a much more mixed bag, in part because after a while, various motifs become evident. Father Brown is portrayed as a humble, and rather odd and awkward figure, often initiallly dismissed or at least underestimated. There is always a set of bizarre events or clues that seem inexplicable in their incongruity. Other detectives are always present, and though portrayed as competent, they are always at a loss. However, Father Brown is not, and rapidly makes sense of the incongruities, though what he understands is generally revealed more gradually than he apprehends it. The characters are often associated with particular religious affiliations — Catholics and Anglicans being seen positively, whereas atheists, pagans, and often Calvinists, portrayed negatively, often being the criminals or the suicides. The stories are often set pieces — there is rarely much in the way of action or movement from place to place — rather, Father Brown looks at the scene and arrives at his conclusions. Finally, when Father Brown solves a crime, if the criminal is alive he is not turned over to the police, but instead encouraged to repent. In particular, this is the case of Flambeau, who is featured as a master criminal in the first few stories, but is ‘saved’ by Father Brown, and is later featured as an amateur detective and FB’s only friend.
In what follows, I touch on each story in the book, primarily offering quotes which capturing the aspects of GKC’s writing that I most admire. Favorites are noted with a *.
* The Blue Cross
This is my favorite (and a favorite of CT); it is unusual because it involves a lot of travel, and the sequence of bizarre events are performed by Father Brown, rather than being clues to a crime.
“Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous—nor wished to be.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Blue Cross.
* The Secret Garden
This is the story in which Flambeau is featured as the master criminal, and which ends with Flambeau being encouraged to repent.
“…he stood for a few seconds at the open door looking out upon the garden. A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm…”
[…]
“The moon with her scimitar had now ripped up and rolled away all the storm-wrack. The argent light lit up all four corners of the garden. A tall figure in blue was striding across the lawn towards the study door; a glint of moonlit silver on his facings picked him out as Commandant O’Brien.”— G. K. Chesterton, The Secret Garden *
The Queer Feet
This story did not grab me. However, interesting to see that FB parodies plutocrats and their upper class behavior.
“Did you catch this man?” asked the colonel, frowning. Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face. “Yes,” he said, “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Queer Feet
* The Flying Stars
Flambaue’s last crime, after which FB convinces him to repent. To wit: “xxxxxx” Lots of lovely description.
“She had a pretty face, with brave brown eyes; but her figure was beyond conjecture, for she was so wrapped up in brown furs that it was hard to say which was hair and which was fur. But for the attractive face she might have been a small toddling bear.“
— G. K. Chesterton, The Flying Stars
“The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already a ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Flying Stars
“There were hollows and bowers at the extreme end of that leafy garden, in which the laurels and other immortal shrubs showed against sapphire sky and silver moon, even in that midwinter, warm colours as of the south. The green gaiety of the waving laurels, the rich purple indigo of the night, the moon like a monstrous crystal, make an almost irresponsible romantic picture; and among the top branches of the garden trees a strange figure is climbing, who looks not so much romantic as impossible. He sparkles from head to heel, as if clad in ten million moons; the real moon catches him at every movement and sets a new inch of him on fire.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Flying Stars
The Invisible Man
I didn’t care for this story as much. Flambeau has now been transformed into a detective, but no one but Father Brown appears to be sharp enough to notice “ordinary persons” like postmen.
In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework, for the light was of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats.
— G. K. Chesterton, The Invisible Man
* The Honor of Israel Gow
This is what I am coming to recognize as a typical father brown mystery. There is a strange or exotic setting — in this case a remote and Erie Scottish Castle — and a mystery which presents one or more conventional investigators — in this case Flambeau and inspector Craven of Scotland Yard — who are confronted with a mystery accompanied by a series of bizarre events or artifacts — in this case piles of snuff, loose diamonds, wax candles, and loose clockwork — that mystifies everyone except for Father Brown, who quickly figures out the connection that makes sense of everything. If there is a criminal, FB will try to lead him to repent, rather than supporting his arrest and imprisonment. In this case there is no criminal, but a peculiarity honest man who, promised all the gold of an estate, took it — gold leaf, gold jewelry strings, gold watch cases, etc. —but left behind all that was not gold.
“Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens. This note of a dreamy, almost a sleepy devilry, was no mere fancy from the landscape. For there did rest on the place one of those clouds of pride and madness and mysterious sorrow which lie more heavily on the noble houses of Scotland than on any other of the children of men.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Honor of Israel Gow
“He took one of the candles, lit it carefully, came back and stuck it in the neck of the whisky bottle. The unrestful night air, blowing through the crazy window, waved the long flame like a banner. And on every side of the castle they could hear the miles and miles of black pine wood seething like a black sea around a rock.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Honor of Israel Gow
“Far as the eye could see, farther and farther as they mounted the slope, were seas beyond seas of pines, now all aslope one way under the wind. And that universal gesture seemed as vain as it was vast, as vain as if that wind were whistling about some unpeopled and purposeless planet. Through all that infinite growth of grey-blue forests sang, shrill and high, that ancient sorrow that is in the heart of all heathen things. One could fancy that the voices from the under world of unfathomable foliage were cries of the lost and wandering pagan gods: gods who had gone roaming in that irrational forest, and who will never find their way back to heaven.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Honor of Israel Gow
The Wrong Shape
Not a favorite. Another one where the non-believer lacks morals and commits murder, only to find he has a remnant of a conscience. But lush, atmospheric description as usual:
“The sunlight was still a reality, but it was the red light of evening, and the bulk of the garden trees and bushes grew blacker and blacker against it.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Wrong Shape
The Sins of Prince Saradine
I’m ambivalent about this one. I like the setting and the boat trip, though those are pretty incidental to the story.
“They had moored their boat one night under a bank veiled in high grasses and short pollarded trees. Sleep, after heavy sculling, had come to them early, and by a corresponding accident they awoke before it was light. To speak more strictly, they awoke before it was daylight; for a large lemon moon was only just setting in the forest of high grass above their heads, and the sky was of a vivid violet-blue, nocturnal but bright.”
— G. K. Chesterton, The Sins of Prince Sardine
The Hammer of God
Coincidentally, we saw a movie version of this last night. I didn’t care for the movie, and I didn’t care for the written version either. It’s hard to say why. There were some good descriptions in it, but not much else. It’s interesting that GKC always seems to identify the religious affiliations of main characters, particularly atheists, though in this case he refers to a Presbyterian as a non-Christian.
The Eye of Apollo
I didn’t care for this one. A little difficult to suspend disbelief about a priest of Apollo setting himself up in London, and didn’t really like the depiction of a sort of suffragette.
The Sign of the Broken Sword
I didn’t care for this one. Perhaps my least favorite. A long convoluted story with little in the way of action.
The Three Tools of Death
Father Brown shows that what was thought to be a murder was a suicide. (See, that’s what comes of being an atheist.) But better than the last few; perhaps if I were not already accustomed to the motifs of Father Brown stories it might have gotten starred as a favorite.
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