CHAPTER TWELVE

FATHER BROWN.

Once in telling his creator what delight Father Brown had given him, the author asked if the spiritual detective was a real person.

“Indeed he is,” answered Chesterton. “His name is Father John O’Connor and he lives in Bradford, Yorkshire.”

“‘Trent’s Last Case’ had recently appeared,” Father O’Connor himself writes the author, “and Chesterton full of admiration for E. C. Bentley, was humbly envious, longing to add to the small (as it was then) crop of detective stories. He also was bitten with costume drama and would without provocation ‘lurk’ by the jamb of a doorway with cloak-and-sword (he had a sword-stick) as it were in wait for the Duke of Guise. He had a column the next week in ‘The Daily News,’ relating how the forest-keepers of Ilkley apprehended him for making passes at the local trees, but released him on learning that he was a guest of a Justice of the Peace.

“Many a glorious day we had together under that hospitable roof of Francis Steinthal and his ever gracious wife. Chesterton himself tells how two young men that first evening, after I had gone home, wondered how a sheltered existence like mine could ever take part in the rude, naughty world as it stood, and how this gave the first push off to the Father Brown series. Disguise is mingled with description--I did carry a specially large and cheap umbrella--had quite a habit of brown-paper parcels--and the episode of the sapphire cross--(in America, a diamond cross, of course) has this relation to sordid fact, that I was still vain in having bought five sapphires for five shillings in an obscure pawnshop in Bradford. Many years later, in Bradford again, some duffer introduced me as Father Brown to two international crooks who were playing themselves into the book-trade, and they both disappeared, leaving no trace, within twenty-four hours!”

Father O’Connor never forgot the day that he spent with the two Chesterton brothers at St. John’s, Ilkley, and has often wondered since if anyone ever had a better chance to observe their mental difference and their deep attachment at such close quarters as he did that day. Cecil was a Church of England Conservative Fabian Socialist, Gilbert was almost an official Liberal, and at that time writing for “The Daily News.” Cecil had already, in “The Fabian Review,” battered daylight through the Liberal Party in many a large hole. This can be seen in his “Gladstonian Ghosts.” From lunch till tea and from tea till dinner, Cecil stood his ground, and Gilbert must have walked many miles around the large dining table trying to reply to his brother’s arguments.

Chesterton gave the author his own version of how he first conceived the idea for the famous character,

“While at tea with Father O’Connor the conversation turned to philosophical and moral channels, and I mentioned with considerable timidity, a certain rather sordid question of vice and crime, which I intended to discuss in a future essay. I was vastly astonished to find that the priest not only had a thorough working knowledge of the subject but was able to furnish me with further facts of an almost sensational nature.

“Some days later Father O’Connor and I took dinner with two Cambridge undergraduates. When the priest left the room, the young men remarked on what a thoroughly charming and cultivated person he was despite the fact that in his cloistered existence he knew so little of the world. One of them remarked, ‘It’s a very beautiful thing to be innocent and ignorant, but I think it’s a much finer thing not to be afraid of knowledge.’

“The complete and crushing irony of the remark so touched my imagination that there was born in my mind the idea of a priest who should appear to know nothing, but as a matter of fact, knows more about crime than the criminals themselves. The point of him (Father Brown) was to appear pointless; and one might say that his conspicuous quality was in NOT being conspicuous. I have always thought that the most appropriate compliment ever paid my famous detective priest came from the lips of a charming Catholic lady who remarked, ‘I am very fond of that ‘officious little loafer’.”

The prototype of one of the Father Brown characters, Hesketh Pearson, writes the author,

“I greatly enjoyed the Father Brown stories, and remember his telling me that he had described me in one of them, though I cannot remember which. My last meeting with him was not altogether a pleasant one because he started it by asking,

“‘Why, are you not a Catholic? All the best writers of today are Catholics and you are much too clever to be anything else!’

“I was forced to explain my view of God, which was not his, and this disagreement cast a slight shade over the subsequent conversation--though I am sure he was much too kindly a soul to let it affect his feelings towards me, which were always most cordial. He was extremely generous to me at two crucial moments in my life, and I shall always remember him with gratitude, admiration and affection.”

Rafael Sabatini’s first acquaintance with Chesterton’s work “was made through Father Brown, and I don’t know that I cared more for any of his creations. He was, we all know, one of three contemporaries to whom allusion was commonly made by their triple initials: G. K. C. in his case. The other two, G. B. S. (George Bernard Shaw and Clement K. Shorter). One day that perverse genius, T. W. H. Crossland (of whom little may have been known in the States) was in my study chatting with me in his usual disgruntled fashion. The conversation turned on Shorter. Whilst he talked he scribbled on a British Museum reading room ticket, which he left carelessly on my table. After he had gone I looked at the ticket and found on it scribbled the following quatrain, which has remained hitherto unpublished,

‘G. K. S. G. K. C. G. B. S. N. B. G.’”

G. B. Stern has “received intense pleasure from a good deal of G. K. C. One of my most treasured books is a first edition of ‘The Napoleon of Notting Hill’ which excited me wildly when I first read it, some time in my teens. I was born in Holland Park, and used to be sent as a child for daily walks all over Campden Hill and up and down through ‘Napoleon’ kingdom, so that it had a strong local interest as well as its romantic appeal. I think, therefore, this remains the favorite of his works, together with ‘Lepanto,’ ‘The Secret People,’ and two or three of the other poems; but I also greatly enjoy and have re-read several times the Father Brown stories and ‘The Flying Inn.’ Also I was present at the very first performance in London of the play, ‘Magic,’ which seemed to me even then inspired with those queer colored bursts of truth which were so peculiarly Chesterton.”

The late Mr. S. S. Van Dine, author of “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” and “The Philo Vance Murder Case,” wrote the author, “I am very glad to be included as one of America’s admirers of G. K. C.’s Father Brown series. Father Brown has long been a favorite with me.”

And Mary Roberts Rinehart, “Of course I was a great admirer of the Father Brown stories, and was naturally pleased that Mr. Chesterton liked my own work. In a way we formed a sort of mutual admiration society.”

“Chesterton and I wrote a detective story together,” recalls Sir Max Pemberton. “I opened the mystery--he closed it, most ably, of course. I can’t remember what it was about, but I am sure he brought the villain to justice.

“He was a truly great figure--a worthy successor to the immortal Doctor Johnson. Both had rare gifts, of literature and Faith.”