GK Chesterton is a writer with whom I have only recently become acquainted. One of his adages is known as Chesterton’s Fence:
“Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.”
It needs no explanation but he does amplify it thus,
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.”
To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer:
“If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
Chesterton’s character of Father Brown is one that may be termed whimsical in the sense that his literary appearances in many a far-flung or familiar location is suggestive of an omniscient elf or fairy who can arrive and depart at will.
He is a student of mankind, a man of the rarest of abilities for he is one who can see beyond the apparent.
This is, of course, a paradox for Father Brown has never existed. He is a fictional character of whom I have become very fond. What a strange thing to write, you may say and I would have to agree with you. Father Brown is a small and rotund man who is dressed in the garb of a Catholic priest and his omniscience is as Godlike as it is fairy like (maybe this is unsurprising as the boundaries between the two are non-existent, or, at most, watery in their lucidity).
He only exists as a fictional character at the centre of GK Chesterton’s fictional accounts of this diminutive detective. In many ways, he is the antidote to Sherlock Holmes (were it needed and who is to say it isn’t?).
Naturally, being a ‘man of the cloth’, his character has a spiritual aspect that is not usually evident in the likes of Sherlock Holmes,
In the Head of Caesar, we have this dialogue,
“the girl sprang to her feet and stood quite quietly, but with clenched hands, like one about to stride away; then her hands loosened slowly, and she sat down again. “
You are more of a mystery than all the others,” she said desperately, “but I feel there might be a heart to your mystery.”
“What we dread most,” said the priest in a low voice, “is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare.”
“I will tell you everything,” said the red-haired girl doggedly, “except why I am telling you; and that I don’t know.”
We would do well to remember that we ourselves are also fictional characters for the world itself, being a simulacrum, is also a fiction by definition. As Jason Breshears frames it,
“We are in a photo-negative of another world.”
In the Sins of Prince Saradine, Chesterton hints at the same,
“I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,” answered Father Brown. “The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.” P160
That’s not to say that eternal Truths are not to be found in fictions because they most assuredly are. It is all very paradoxical - it is and it isn’t.
It exists and it is non-existent.
The light is best seen in the darkness, just as it is best weighed against the heavy.
To grasp it is to let it slip. We dream that we are awake and we imagine ourselves to be here when each night we are elsewhere.
And so on, and on it goes: round and round and where it stops, nobody knows.
The beauty of fiction is that it allows a character to express the truth at a distance from the author. In The Curse of the Golden Cross, we have this passage,
“The paradoxes are multiplying,” observed Tarrant; “but surely you won’t deny that Jews were persecuted in the Middle Ages?”
“It would be nearer the truth,” said Father Brown, “to say they were the only people who weren’t persecuted in the Middle Ages. If you want to satirise medievalism, you could make a good case by saying that some poor Christian might be burned alive for making a mistake about the Homoousion*, while a rich Jew might walk down the street openly sneering at Christ and the Mother of God. Well, that’s what the story is like.
It was never a story of the Middle Ages; it was never even a legend about the Middle Ages. It was made up by somebody whose notions came from novels and newspapers, and probably made up on the spur of the moment.”
When we pay attention, we see our lives are each and all a mystery and that it is all unfolding like a detective story.
By way of illustration, last Saturday the children and I were walking along the former tramway, now a footpath, on the Eastern side of Shipley Lake when I spotted a most curious sight: a walking stick lay under a small oak tree. It was black with a flat oblong handle and it had been separated into its two parts. Next to it was a two and a half kilo bag of white potatoes.
A mystery before our very eyes.
To whom did it belong? When had it been left there? Why had it been left? Was there a simple explanation? Or, had something unfortunate happened? Why was the stick in its two parts? What on earth had happened?
I could speculate but this is not a detective story with an ending for the truth amidst the fiction is that, unlike the adventures of Father Brown or those of Sherlock Holmes, life only rarely delivers neatly encapsulated explanations and satisfactory endings.
The mystery of life lies in its essentially fictional quality. And yet, within this simulacrum, the adage, Seek and Ye Shall Find stands as a truism.
Thus, the Truth is invariably to be found in a fiction, or an imagining, for this is the nature of life in this place that we are passing through. Maybe it is a simulated mysterium through which we are journeying and our seriousness over what is a Divine cosmic joke is the most hilarious aspect of it all. All of which may, or may not, explain my delight and enjoyment of Chesterton’s writings.
*”of the same or similar substance”
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