G. K. Chesterton's Detective Stories

*FATHER BROWN MEETS SHERLOCK HOLMES* *IN G.K. CHESTERTON'S DETECTIVE STORIES* Remarks By Patrick Killough to PEO Chapter NC/M Swannanoa, NC June 12, 2003 When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, the literary canon of Sherlock Holmes was complete and closed. There would be no more of stories written up by Doctor Watson such as "The Hound of the Baskervilles." Yet modern detective fiction was older than Sherlock Holmes. The 1930s would explode as a golden age of detective fiction. Sleuthing away in pursuit of Holmes's mantle were such as "Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter (Wimsey), the hardboiled Sam Spade .... and G.K. Chesterton's mild-mannered little Catholic priest, Father Brown." (Steven Doyle, p. 1) And the genre lives and prospers to this day. This afternoon let me say a few words arranged under four headings: I. The Pre-History of the Modern Detective Story II. What makes a Detective Story a Good Detective Story III. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) compared with Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) IV. Sherlock Holmes in "The League of Red-headed Men" and Father Brown in "The Invisible Man" +++++ I. The Pre-History of the Modern Detective Story Edgar Alan Poe (1809-1849) invented the modern detective tale. He wrote four short detective stories of which two define the genre. They are "The Mystery of the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." For much of the 19th century 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's released THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB. This was modeled on Emile Gaoriau's Monsieur Lecoq and both characters seem to be drawn on for Sherlock Holmes. (Accardo, 34f) +++++ II. What makes a Detective Story a Good Detective Story? --(1) Not murder and mayhem. --(2) Not thrillers about espionage and diplomacy. --(3) Not just adventures (a lot of Sherlock Holmes is simply this). --(4) More than crime and punishment. --(5) Drama is not enough. In classical tragedy and comedy the AUDIENCE knows what the actors do not. READERS of a good detective story, however, need to know only what the story's characters are looking at. --(6) The first necessary condition is that the narrative create a puzzle, a mystery to be solved. --(7) The first principle of detecting is to observe and notice as Kipling's Kim was taught to do in India. Or per Sherlock Holmes, "there is nothing so important as the observation of trifles." (Doyle, 3) --(8) The good detective story then makes it possible for the READER to solve the puzzle by scattering enough CLUES. Much of Sherlock Holmes comes with the detective telling Watson how he solved the puzzle after it was already solved. Good clues both deceive and enlighten the reader. --(9) The detective yarn is logical, rational. Chesterton saw the detective story as one instance of a LOGICAL PUZZLE. An author devised the story both to attract, challenge and mystify the reader. At the end of a good detective story, the reader should say, "Of course! I had all I needed to see that!" Detective fiction is highly technical and Chesterton was one of the first to investigate the techniques. There were rules and they were approved as part of the code of the Dectection Club of which GKC was first president and Dorothy Sayres was an active member. --(10) Ideally the dective story is a SHORT story. (Accardo, 34ff) Some detective novels are long, complex and have few clues and those few may be separated by a hundred pages. A good detective story, to me, has the flavor of a New York TIMES crossword puzzle or the JUMBLE word games in the daily paper. +++++ III. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) compared with Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) --(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 into a practicing high church Anglican by his believing fiancee/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 1988. (Doyle, p.6) 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 Monsignor John O'Connor) in 1909, serialized in 1910 in the SATURDAY EVENING POST. (Doyle, ibid.) 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." (Ahlquist, p. 28). Other admirers of Chesterton included Marshall McLuhan, Agatha Christie, E.F. Schumacher ("small is beautiful"), Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Day, Hugh Kenner, Gary Wills, Graham Greene, J.R.R. Tolkien, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize winner from Argentina Luis Borges. and on and on (ibid.) +++++ IV. Sherlock Holmes in "The League of Red-headed Men" and Father Brown in "The Invisible Man Let me conclude with a few words showing difference of technique via one story each of Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown, following Pasquale Accardo (pp. 35-41) A. Sherlock Holmes in "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 said 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 and 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. B. 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. 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/notices no one on the street. Smythe hires Flambeau, a detective friend of Father Brown, 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. 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 commissionaire saw no one. Yet there are fresh footprints in the snow leading into the apartment building. 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. 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. I find a kind of lesser Father Brown in the character Flambeau. He was the greatest thief of his age but under influence of Father Brown reformed and became a great detective. Both aproached crimes as persons very familiar with crime and criminals. -OOO- SOURCES CITED OR DRAWN UPON --ACCARDO, Pasquale. "G.K. Chesterton and Detective Fiction," 31 - 43 in Steven Doyle, editor, G.K. CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, New York, The Baker Street Irregulars, 2003. --AHLQUIST, Dale. "The Importance of G.K. Chesterton, " 19 - 29 in Steven Doyle, editor, G.K. CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, New York, The Baker Street Irregulars, 2003. --CHESTERTON, Gilbert Keith. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. First published 1935. Poughkeepsie, NY. House of Stratus, Inc. 2001 --CHESTERTON, GIlbert Keith. THE COMPLETE FATHER BROWN. New York. Penguin Putnam, Inc. 1981. --CHESTERTON, Gilbert Keith (all included in Steven Doyle's G.K. (CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES) ----"Errors About Detective Stories," DOYLE 67-69, Aug. 1920. ----"How To Write Dective Stories," DOYLE 70-74, Nov. 1921. ----"A Defense of Detective Stories," DOYLE 75-77, undated. ----"Sherlock the God," DOYLE 78-79, Feb. 1935. --COREN, Michael. GILBERT: THE MAN WHO WAS G.K. CHESTERTON. 1989 (UK). New York. Paragon House Publishers. 1990. --DOYLE, Steven, Editor/Introducer. G.K. CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, New York, The Baker Street Irregulars, 2003. --WILLS, Gary. CHESTERTON. Originally published by Sheed & Ward,1961. New York, Doubleday. 2001. *********** Swannanoa, NC June 12, 2003 revisited Black Mounain, NC May 30, 2010

"Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter (Wimsey), the hardboiled Sam Spade .... and G.K. Chesterton's mild-mannered little Catholic priest, Father Brown." (Steven Doyle, p. 1)

III. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) compared with Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

IV. Sherlock Holmes in "The League of Red-headed Men"
and Father Brown in "The Invisible Man"

Edgar Alan Poe (1809-1849) invented the modern detective tale. He wrote four short detective stories of which two define the genre. They are "The Mystery of the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter."

For much of the 19th century 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's released THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB. This was modeled on Emile Gaoriau's Monsieur Lecoq and both characters seem to be drawn on for Sherlock Holmes. (Accardo, 34f)

--(5) Drama is not enough. In classical tragedy and comedy the AUDIENCE knows what the actors do not. READERS of a good detective story, however, need to know only what the story's characters are looking at.

--(6) The first necessary condition is that the narrative create a puzzle, a mystery to be solved.

--(7) The first principle of detecting is to observe and notice as Kipling's Kim was taught to do in India. Or per Sherlock Holmes, "there is nothing so important as the observation of trifles." (Doyle, 3)

--(8) The good detective story then makes it possible for the READER to solve the puzzle by scattering enough CLUES. Much of Sherlock Holmes comes with the detective telling Watson how he solved the puzzle after it was already solved. Good clues both deceive and enlighten the reader.

Chesterton saw the detective story as one instance of a LOGICAL PUZZLE. An author devised the story both to attract, challenge and mystify the reader. At the end of a good detective story, the reader should say, "Of course! I had all I needed to see that!"

Detective fiction is highly technical and Chesterton was one of the first to investigate the techniques. There were rules and they were approved as part of the code of the Dectection Club of which GKC was first president and Dorothy Sayres was an active member.

--(10) Ideally the dective story is a SHORT story. (Accardo, 34ff) Some detective novels are long, complex and have few clues and those few may be separated by a hundred pages.

A good detective story, to me, has the flavor of a New York TIMES crossword puzzle or the JUMBLE word games in the daily paper.

III. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
compared with Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

--(1) Both having been born Victorians, Doyle was 15 years older than Chesterton. They might have met each other but we do not know.

----(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 into a practicing high church Anglican by his believing fiancee/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 1988. (Doyle, p.6)

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 Monsignor John O'Connor) in 1909, serialized in 1910 in the SATURDAY EVENING POST. (Doyle, ibid.)

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." (Ahlquist, p. 28).

Other admirers of Chesterton included Marshall McLuhan, Agatha Christie, E.F. Schumacher ("small is beautiful"), Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Day, Hugh Kenner, Gary Wills, Graham Greene, J.R.R. Tolkien, John F. Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize winner from Argentina Luis Borges. and on and on
(ibid.)

IV. Sherlock Holmes in "The League of Red-headed Men"
and Father Brown in "The Invisible Man

Let me conclude with a few words showing difference of technique via one story each of Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown, following Pasquale Accardo (pp. 35-41)

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 said 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 and 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.

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.

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/notices no one on the street. Smythe hires Flambeau, a detective friend of Father Brown, 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. 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 commissionaire saw no one. Yet there are fresh footprints in the snow leading into the apartment building. 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.

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.

I find a kind of lesser Father Brown in the character Flambeau. He was the greatest thief of his age but under influence of Father Brown reformed and became a great detective. Both aproached crimes as persons very familiar with crime and criminals.

--ACCARDO, Pasquale. "G.K. Chesterton and Detective Fiction," 31 - 43 in Steven Doyle, editor, G.K. CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, New York, The Baker Street Irregulars, 2003.

--AHLQUIST, Dale. "The Importance of G.K. Chesterton, " 19 - 29 in Steven Doyle, editor, G.K. CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, New York, The Baker Street Irregulars, 2003.

--CHESTERTON, Gilbert Keith. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. First published 1935. Poughkeepsie, NY. House of Stratus, Inc. 2001

--CHESTERTON, GIlbert Keith. THE COMPLETE FATHER BROWN. New York. Penguin Putnam, Inc. 1981.

--CHESTERTON, Gilbert Keith (all included in Steven Doyle's G.K. (CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES)

--COREN, Michael. GILBERT: THE MAN WHO WAS G.K. CHESTERTON. 1989 (UK). New York. Paragon House Publishers. 1990.

--DOYLE, Steven, Editor/Introducer. G.K. CHESTERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, New York, The Baker Street Irregulars, 2003.

--WILLS, Gary. CHESTERTON. Originally published by Sheed & Ward,1961. New York, Doubleday. 2001.