Week 4: Amateurs G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown ‘The Blue Cross’ (1910) and ‘The Invisible Man’ (1911)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) Born in 1874 in West London. His father was a prosperous estate agent. Chesterton was educated at St Paul’s School and then the Slade School of Art. Began his literary career as a manuscript reader for a publishing house, then moved into art criticism. Wrote the Father Brown stories between the 1910s-1930s. The character was based on his friend Major John O’Connor who later received Chesterton into the Catholic Church. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922, at the age of 48. This was more than 10 years after the first Father Brown story appeared. A prolific writer of essays, short stories, poems, drama, history. His best-known novel is perhaps the surreal, anarchic The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). His wife Frances Alice Blogg (whom he married in 1896) was his personal manager. When the Detection Club was founded in 1928, Chesterton became its first President. Members had to swear an oath to observe ‘fair play’ in their fiction. Chesterton served in the capacity of President until his death in 1936. G.K. Chesterton by E.H. Hills (1909). Public Domain (Wikipedia).

Father Brown Unassuming and self-effacing – absence in the narratives. But shrewd and worldly – confounding expectations. Solves crimes based on his knowledge of human nature. Methodology – moral identification with the criminal. “You see, I had murdered them all myself […] I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully […] I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.” – The Secret of Father Brown (1927). The morality is hidden beneath a light, whimsical surface. Chesterton preferred the term ‘mystery story’ to ‘detective story’ because he felt the emphasis should be on the puzzle rather than the solver. We see Father Brown working with the official police and the private investigator, Flambeau (originally introduced as a master-criminal). ‘The Blue Cross’ first appeared in The Storyteller (Sept 1910). ‘The Invisible Man’ first appeared in Cassell’s Magazine (Feb 1911). They were both later published as part of The Innocence of Father Brown.

Chesterton on Detective Fiction ‘The true object of an intelligent detective story is not to baffle the reader, but to enlighten the reader; but to enlighten him in such a manner that each successive portion of the truth comes as a surprise.’ - G.K. Chesterton, ‘Errors about Detective Stories’, Illustrated London News, 1920. ‘The detective story differs from every story in this: that the reader is only happy if he feels a fool […] The essence of a mystery tale is that we are suddenly confronted with a truth which we have never suspected and yet can see to be true.’ - G.K. Chesterton, ‘The Ideal Detective Story’, Illustrated London News, 1930.

Chesterton on Detective Fiction On his literary forebears: ‘[Sherlock Holmes] is the one fictitious detective who is a work of art […] By this artistic seriousness he raised one at least of the popular forms of art to the level which it ought to occupy.’ BUT ‘Sherlock Holmes would have been a better detective if he had been a philosopher, if he had been a poet, nay if he had been a lover.’ - G.K. Chesterton, ‘Sherlock Holmes’, in Handful of Authors, 1953. (From essays for the Daily News in 1901 and 1907). On Father Brown: ‘It was the chief feature to be featureless. The point of him was to appear pointless; and one might say that his conspicuous quality was not being conspicuous. His commonplace exterior was meant to contrast with his unsuspected vigilance and intelligence […]’ - G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography, 1936.

Critical Reception ‘There was nothing of the expert about Father Brown […] The real secret of Father Brown is that there is nothing of the mystic about him [….] The little priest could see not as a psychologist, but as a moralist, into the dark places of the human heart; could guess, therefore, at what point envy, or fear, or resentment would pass the bounds of the normal, and the cords of convention would snap, so that a man was hurried into crime.’ Ronald Knox, ‘Introduction’ to Father Brown: Selected Stories, 1958. ‘There is little interest in the official course of justice. Whereas Holmes often circumvented the system of justice, Brown also does so, but in the name of a divine morality.’ - Joseph A. Kestner, The Edwardian Detective, 1901-15, 2000.