Catholic priest
GK Chesterton
Oh dear, oh dear; now it’s the turn of Agatha Christie‘s work to be re-written in order supposedly to conform to modern sensitivities. Agatha Christie! Only the most successful novelist of all time. Where will it all end?
Makes me treasure my store of pre-woke books even more. This week I’ve quite deliberately and stubbornly been with GK Chesterton whose character, Father Brown, I referenced recently on my blog. The book of short stories was originally written before the outbreak of World War 1, and my hard copy version has beautiful quality paper and is a joy to handle. The character of Father Brown has more recently been resurrected and reworked for a BBC TV series of that name, which meant readjusting my mental images in returning to the original. And yes, adjusting to language we wouldn’t countenance today.
So who is this Father Brown? He’s a Catholic priest cum detective who uses his deep understanding of human frailty to solve mysteries and crimes. As he explains himself:
Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?
He differs from most other detectives – both real and fictional – in one small point: he never pretended not to understand when he understood perfectly well. His remarkable but effective methods can irritate and upset those whose slowness is underlined by his cleverness, but for all his success he remains delightfully unassuming and humble. As modest as a primrose, in fact.
The first thing that hit me was that the TV priest is a very different character from the one in the book. His friends and associates are also unlike the people on the page. But I can perfectly understand why; they need to be more charismatic and memorable to appeal visually; the crimes he solves need to be more than psychologically engaging.
Each short story portrays the astuteness and sheer humanity of this little insignificant, apparently innocent, man of the cloth, whose long exposure to the way the human mind ticks, and the crimes of which it is capable, has revealed truths and insights unseen and unknown by the regular constabulary.
Then there’s the writing itself. A precision, a certain pernicketyness, seems to date it, but it has about it a wit and wisdom, an empathy, that warms the reader to him. It also includes some beautifully lyrical passages. I’ll share a few sentences that made me pause and re-read them:
A sharp moon was fighting with the flying rags and tatters of a storm …
But the tempest had shouldered away the choking grey clouds that clung to the hills like smoke …
He rattled short sentences like a quick-firing gun, but he was plainly the sort of man who is either mad or right.
… the British officer, was pachydermatous to ideas, but punctilious about behaviour.
I defy modern sensitivity readers to produce anything half as brilliant. If the passages I’ve heard they’ve altered are typical I won’t be reading revised editions.
Oh, and the text is littered with Biblical references – a peculiarly apt touch given the profession of the central character, Father Brown. Throwaway lines by a devout Christian author, not ever labelled as religious, only detectable by those who know their Bibles. Would that too cause offence?
Having said all that, the book is certainly of its time – the tales are spotted with offensive-today epithets and descriptions, prejudices, assumptions, which would certainly merit the big scissor treatment. And his use of ‘Scotch’ instead of ‘Scottish’ wouldn’t get past any editor I’ve ever worked with!
Notwithstanding that, I personally hope this book escapes the notice of the literary police and remains exactly as it began – in Chesterton’s inimitable style suited to the Edwardian period of his day. OK, print a comment to recognise the issue for today by all means, if you must, but please, please, don’t bastardise the writing of a genius.
If I have a gripe it is that in the book the arch-criminal Flambeau is a reformed character. Hitherto wearing my ethics hat, I’ve been mesmerised by a priest capable of preserving the confidences of the confessional in the face of audacious flouting of the laws of good society. Can he? Should he? Will he? Would I?