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The Detective Fiction of G. K. Chesterton Class # 03: Pre-History
of Detective Fiction.
Wednesday October 22, 2003
This morning let me say a few words arranged under four headings: I. The Pre-History of the Modern Detective Story II Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) generally compared with Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
III Sherlock Holmes in "The League of Red-headed Men"
IV. Dorothy Sayers and "Lord Peter Wimsey."
+++++
I. The Pre-History
of the Modern Detective Story
[NOTE: THERE IS A FINE, BRIEF TREATMENT
OF THIS TOPIC in Martin Booth, THE DOCTOR AND THE DETECTIVE: A
BIOGRAPHY
OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, 1997, 2000, pp. 104 - 115. Highlights below.]
Edgar Alan Poe (1809-1849) invented the modern detective tale. He wrote five short detective stories of which two define the genre. They are "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." Poe published “The Gold Bug” in 1843 and in that year the concept of “detective” was formed. Also included is “The Mystery of Marie Roget.” Hero Auguste Dupin carefully examined and analyzed facts. Arthur Conan Doyle acknowledged debt to Poe as early as 1894. Both Holmes and Dupin have associates who
admire them and tell their stories. Both are controlled, self-centered,
eccentric with private incomes. Both characters break codes. Both
seemed
fascinated with the weird and the supernatural, alcoholism and opium.
But
Holmes does tell Watson in “A Study in Scarlet,” when being told he
resembles
Dupin, that Dupin was “a very inferior fellow.”
For much of the 19th centuries mysteries abounded, but not detective stories. Thus the recently created London police force influenced Charles Dickens in 1853 to create Inspector Bucket in BLEAK HOUSE. In 1886 Fergus Hulme released THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB. This was modeled on Emile Gaoriau's Monsieur Lecoq and both characters seem to be drawn on by Doyle for Sherlock Holmes. +++++ II. Arthur Conan
Doyle (1859-1930)
--(1) Both having been born Victorians, Doyle was 15 years older than Chesterton. They might have met each other but we do not know. --(2) They were more unalike than alike. ----(a) Doyle was born Catholic, but lived and died deep into spiritualism and seances. GKC was born into a vaguely Unitarian family, flirted with nihilism, was made a practicing high church Anglican by his believing wife and was Roman Catholic for his last 14 years (1922-36). ----(b) Doyle, a physician, volunteered as a doctor during the Boer War (1899-1902). Chesterton, trained as an artist, campaigned for Boer rights.
----(c) Sherlock Holmes dwarfed Conan Doyle. Had he not written
detective
stories, Doyle would be an obscure footnote among writers of his age.
Detective
stories and mysteries made up only a half of
Chesterton's fiction. Had he not written
about Father Brown, he would still be read and studied for his poems,
essays, biographies, works
of literary criticism, economics, religion and politics. "Chestertonians ... rarely rank Father Brown--their hero's most memorable literary creation--very high in the list of their author's favorite books." (Accardo, p. 42) Doyle portrayed Sherlock Holmes in
56 short stories and four novels. In Chesterton's lifetime 48 Father
Brown stories appeared in print.
Since then three more have been offered posthumously, as recently
as
In Doyle’s first sketches, Holmes was Sherrinford
Holmes and Dr Watson was Ormond Sacker. By his own frequent admission,
the principal model for Sherlock Holmes was Doyle’s old Edinburgh
professor
Dr Joseph Bell. Doyle wrote A STUDY IN SCARLET in three weeks in March
1886. How much of Sherlock Holmes was in Conan Doyle? In his
autobiography
Dr Doyle “a man cannot spin a character out of his own inner
consciousness
and make it really life-like unless he has some possibilities of that
character
within him.” (Booth, p. 112)
Chesterton began his dectective fiction in 1904 with the collection, THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES and the novelette, THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. He began writing about Father Brown (loosely based on his friend Father (later Monsignor) John O'Connor) in 1909, serialized in 1910 in the SATURDAY EVENING POST. Chesterton's writings had wide direct impact
on such people as Mohandas K. Gandhi and Michael Collins, the Irish
revolutionary. "C.S. Lewis was
an atheist until he read Chesterton's book The Everlasting Man and
became a Christian. (Dale Ahlquist). Other
admirers included Marshall McLuhan, Agatha Christie, E.F.
Like Sir Walter Scott, Chesterton wrote fiction to make money. In GKC's case he always needed money to keep alive the newspaper his deceased brother had founded and his own successor GK's WEEKLY. He wrote in October 1929: "I could only manage until very likely
to keep this paper in existence at all, by
earning the money in the open
market; and more especially in that busy and
happy makret where corpses
are sold in batches. i mean the mart of Murder and
Mystery, the booth of
the Detective Story." ... many a detective crawled about on
the carpet
for clues, before some of those little printers' bills could be
settled,
(Maisie Ward,
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON, 515f)
III. Sherlock
Holmes in "The League of Red-headed Men"
A. Sherlock Holmes --"The League of Red-headed Men" Sherlock Holmes meets his red-headed pawnbroker client, Jabez Wilson. By way of preliminaries, Holmes deduces that Wilson takes snuff, is a Freemason who has been to China, etc. A newspaper ad has announced formation of the League of Red-headed Men. The mysterious League contracts with Wilson for his clerk to copy Encyclopedia Britannica every work day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. After only eight weeks, another newspaper announcement says that the Red-headed League is dissolved October 9, 1890. The copying was done by Wilson's assistant, John Spaulding. Wilson commissions Holmes to solve what Wilson regards as a kind of practical joke. Holmes discovers that Spaulding is a notorious criminal of royal blood (Holmes does not share the information with the reader--from various physical marks of the criminal) who has used the time supposedly spent in copying (with an accomplice) to dig a tunnel from the pawn shop to the vault of a nearby bank. Holmes, Watson (with a weapon) and a policeman then apprehend the criminal as they emerge with their spoils. Notable is the fact that Conan Doyle/narrator Dr Watson do not share with the reader enough information to solve the crime. Doyle does not sprinkle enough clues for the purpose. We have here a mystery within a mystery and the reader is diverted to solve the wrong one. [For the text see http://www.geocities.com/fa1931/british/conandoy/blaze.html] [For the complete text see
--(2) “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” My personal guess is that this story or at least one clue in it is the one thing that everyone associates with Sherlock Holmes: the dog that did not bark in the night. There is a great rivalry between two thoroughbred race horses. The greater horse, Silver Blaze, famed for the white mark on his forehead, disappears from his owner’s (Col Ross’s) stables. His trainer is found dead a quarter mile away from the scene of the robbery. Killed by a blow to the head. Holmes and Watson investigate. There are no (human) witnesses to the disappearance. The two stable boys heard nothing. A small specialized knife had been found in the dead man’s (Straker’s) hand. Holmes learns that three sheep had recently gone lame. He discusses important clues with police Inspector Gregory, who asks if there are any more incidents to which Holmes wishes to draw his attention. “To the curious incident of the dog in
the night-time.
When all is settled, Holmes tells all. That the dog did not bark means that the thief was known to the dog and trusted. [For the text see http://www.geocities.com/fa1931/british/conandoy/blaze.html] B. Chesterton's Father Brown in "The Invisible Man" Neither Sherlock Holmes nor Father Brown is a professional detective. Both are in that sense "eccentric," off to the side of society and so are their methods. As we recall from our in depth study in our second class together, In "The Invisible Man" Laura Hope, a sometime waitress in a confectionary shop, is proposed to by two different customers, both of whom she finds physically distasteful but is too polite to say so. She puts them off by saying that the man she marries must earn his own living and not live on inheritances as do the suitors. Time passes. She receives a letter fom the short Isadore Smythe saying that he is making his fortune selling his invention, robotic household services. She never sees nor hears from the tall rival James Welkin. But she thinks she hears his laugh a few seconds before receiving Smythe's letter. Just after reading the letter, she even hears Welkin threaten Smythe. But she sees no one on the street. Smythe hires Flambeau, a detective friend of Father Brown (who happens to be visiting), to keep an eye on his flat after receiving threats from Welkin. But blood is found in Smythe's flat and Smythe's corpse is found in a canal--after Father Brown urges the police to search there. An invisible man must have done the deed! Witnesses: the chestnut vendor saw no one suspicious at Smythe's flat. The policeman on the beat saw no one. The commissionare saw no one. Yet there are fresh footprints in the snow leading into the apartment buildign. Father Brown explains that the invisible man was the postman (Welkin), so taken for granted as not to be noticed. Brown had asked if a heavy mail bag was discovered near the corpse--a clue shared with readers before the denouement. Brown then spends hours walking and speaking with (counseling?) Welkin. [For the text see http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/innocence/invisman.html] COMMENT: Chesterton gives enough clues
to solve the problem. He also solves crimes by looking at evil within
himself
and asking, how would I have drawn on my inherent evil to commit this
crime?
Father Brown maintains the same logical rigor and reader friendliness
in
every single mystery.
IV. Dorothy Sayers
and "Lord Peter Wimsey."
The following text is from http://www.mysterynet.com/sayers/ It can hardly be improved on for saying so much in so few words. Dorothy L. Sayers
Oxford-educated Dorothy Leigh Sayers was one of the most popular authors of the Golden Age era. Born in England in 1893, she received her degree at university in medieval literature. Following her graduation, besides publishing two volumes of poetry, she began to write detective stories to earn money. Her first novel, "Whose Body?" (1923), introduced Lord Peter Wimsey, the character for which she is best known. Wimsey, with his signature monocle and somewhat foppish air, appeared in eleven novels and several short stories. Working with his friend, Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, Wimsey solved cases usually involving relatives or close friends. Sayers was well known for "combining detective writing with expert novelistic writing," and the imaginative ways in which her victims were disposed of. Among the many causes of death seen in her novels were, among others, poisoned teeth fillings, a cat with poisoned claws, and a dagger made of ice! (The Whodunit). Sayers also edited several mystery anthologies collected under the Dorothy L. Sayers heading "The Omnibus of Crime" (1929), which included a noteworthy opening essay on the history of the mystery genre. Later on in her life, Sayers gave up detective fiction to pursue her other interests. She spent the last years of her life working on an English translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, having always claimed that religion and medieval studies were subjects more worthy of her time than writing detective stories. Three Tales of Lord Peter Wimsey Let me now commend to you one readily available collection of the Wimsey short stories. By volume they may make up a tenth of the total Wimsey stories, which are mainly in novel form. Dorothy L. Sayers, LORD PETER: THE COMPLETE LORD PETER WIMSEY STORIES, New York, Perennial, 1972, 2001 paper. It has 20 tales and a helpful introduction by James Sandoe. There is not much of Harriet Vane, Wimsey’s longtime on again, off again girl friend and eventual wife and mother of his son. But that relationship is adequately probed in recent Masterpiece Theatre TV productions. So in “The Incredible elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey,” Peter does not marry Harriet or anyone else for that matter. He non-romantically elopes, literally “runs out” (in this case "rescues") from the high Basque country of Spain with the viciously misused American wife of an American doctor who has driven her to the edge of mindlessness. He had done this jealously to spite a young man whom he suspects of having had an affair with her. This man meets Lord Peter on a train to Paris and tells him a sad tale. Wimsey and a Basque speaking magician then go in disguise to Spain while the doctor is away in America on business. They worm their way into the confidence of the wary Basques through magic tricks, victrola playings and Wimsey’s orating in classical Latin and Greek. Wimsey confirms his suspicion that the doctor has withheld his wife’s medicine needed to treat her thyroid condition and begins to bring her back to “life” with small doses before “eloping” with her. +++++ Very much worth reading is also “The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba.” In it the hero leaves England for many months and is ostensibly killed shooting big game in Tanganyika. It is a ruse, of course. And Wimsey is making a personal crusade to detect and put paid to a gang of big time robbers of art and jewelry. He pretends to be a former servant of Wimsey, one Rogers. He is approached by a gang member, pretends to join and helps them steal from himself, his mother and others. The gang consists of both men and women identified only by numbers and run by a mysterious Number One and his wife Number Two (she is slavic). By carrier pigeon and otherwise Wimsey, who knows he is watched, alerts the police to a special general meeting of the robbers. At that combined dinner and ball he is correctly denounced as a spy and he and the man Jukes who introduced him to the group are to be eliminated. Wimsey admits who he is but says that in a secret safe behind a safe which his watchers have missed are the names of all the members. He has told the police how to open his safe. This information excites a general rebellion among those present who demand that Number One himself go and recover the information. In return Wimsey is promised a merciful death and his mother and sister will not be harmed. But WImsey has prepared an ingenious door within a door. Number One is trapped in a small space and will die unless rescued. Only Wimsey can do that. Number Two makes him promise to let Number One go. The others however rebel and flee, after locking up Wimsey and telling him they are about to blow up the place. Number Two frees Wimsey and they escape in time to avoid being blown up. The police apprehend the survivors of the gang. Wimsey’s voice saying “Open Sesame” then triggers the electric mechanism to open the door. The nearly asphyxiated Number One is handed over to justice. +++++ Finally, a few words about “The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager’s Will.” This is a particularly impressive rendering of code-breaking as a challenge to detectives. The story begins with Bunter, Lord Peter’s man servant, asking his master for a seven letter word with S (ESS) in the middle meaning two. Peter suggests “Ambsace” which works. Here is the core of the story. Uncle Meleager Finch, recently dead in his 80s, has left a will giving his 250,000 pound sterling estate to a silly charity. If his pseudo-bolshevik niece Hannah Marryat can, however, through “being frivolous” find a second will leaving his estate to her and her mother, Uncle Meleager’s invalid sister. Hannah is a friend of Mary, Wimsey’s sister and Mary persuades Wimsey to hear the challenge. All go down to Uncle Meleager’s imitation Roman villa to find clues. The house has been searched. But Lord Wimsey’s man Bunter has found out from remaining servants that Uncle Meleager was madly keen on puzzles, crosswords, acrostics and the like and was active with them to the end. Lord Peter and Mary repair to the attic where they find stacks of puzzles. They find an intriguing one that begins “Truth, poor girl, was nobody’s daughter;
In the near dark, coming out of the attic, Lord Peter falls into the non-Roman pool and discovers that its tiles are in the form of a crossword puzzle. Next morning Peter, Mary and eventually Hannah start trying to fit hints from the leading puzzle papers the uncle had left into the pool pattern. The story contains all the hints and the answers are given later in the book (page 289). Miss Marryat becomes increasingly frivolous and jolly as she contributes to the search. The final clue is deduced to be a Scriptural reference. They fail when using a Revised Edition Bible. But Bunter says he is more familiar with an earlier Scriptural version. They therefore consult Meleager Finch’s own Bible to read, “In the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs.” Housekeeper Mrs Meakers is called and remembers that nine months previously Mr Finch had pointed a crack under the surface of the stairs and had a man fill it up. Sure enough, in that crack they found “POSITIVELY
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF MELEAGER FINCH.” Finally, as at the
beginning,
Bunter asks Lord Peter’s help with a word in a current newspaper
crossword
puzzle.
Dorothy Sayers is notable for weaving detection into longer novels. Also for the romantic element and the long, very long, Popeye-Olive Oyl-like pursuit by Wimsey of Harriet. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= A final note on how Arthur Conan Doyle created his detective stories, and all good detective story writers after him. This is from Martin Booth, THE DOCTOR AND THE DETECTIVE, p. 143. “Conan Doyle knuckled down. His method
of working out a plot was simple and the same as that employed by any
other
detective writer before or since. He invented the crime and its
solution,
plotted the outline and course of detection, then, constructing the
characters
within it, sat down and wrote it, concealing the solution until the
climax.
“
-OOO- 10-19-2003 |