The Club of Queer Trades

I received this early book of Chesterton's for my birthday and am enjoying it. This edition includes his sketches, which is a plus.  He had not developed his plotting ability and spiritual depth we see in Father Brown or The Man Who Knew Too Much, but his love of paradox and contradiction are much apparent. The stories revolve around a younger brother Rupert, who fashions himself a detective in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, drawing conclusions from unimportant details, and an older brother Basil, a retired judge who sees through the unlikely events that present themselves before them solely on the basis of judging character by appearance and the actual behavior of honest men and criminals he saw before him for years. The former is invariably wrong, and Chesterton was clearly having fun mocking Conan-Doyle's  approach.  The latter proves right at the end of each of the six short stories.  The bizarre appearances turn out to have simple, humorous explanations. The fifth story is a disappointment.

The other characters are indeed queer, even more than their trades. Several seem to spring straight from the novels of P.G. Wodehouse*. I know that many English gentlemen in the years from Victoria through George V adopted eccentric hobbies, some which significantly advanced natural history and others which were entire pointless, but I hadn't expected one that resembled Lord Emsworth to show up quite so immediately in the first pages.

I thought I had remembered that they were friends and played for the same amateur cricket club. This turns out to be only partly true, as they both played for the terrible but humorous Allahakberries, founded by James Barrie and including AA Milne, Jerome K Jerome, Rudyard Kipling, HG Wells, Conan Doyle, and Bernard Partridge, in addition to Chesterton and Wodehouse.  They were not close as far as I can tell, however.  Wodehouse did slip in sly references to him in his works.

BTW, Going to matches in which the Allahakberries played would be an efficient use of time travel for both entertainment and learning, I think.

There is a wonderful quote in the fifth story, "The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd."

…we had talked for about half an hour about politics and God; Men always talk about the most important things to total strangers. In the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

But this is just Bertie Wooster in one of his characteristic moments of stumbling upon sense in a dim way. It's not so hard to imagine.

“How would you explain it, Jeeves? I asked. “Waiting in front of The Goose and Gherkin for the rain to stop I spoke with a chap I had never seen before about politics and God for half an hour. I’ve known Gussie Fink-Nottle since we were at school together and never once had a conversation of the least seriousness.”

“Mr. Fink-Nottle may not be the best comparison, m’lord.”

“An astute observation, Jeeves. Gussie turns the conversation to newts rather predictably, doesn’t he?”

“Many have noticed this habit of Mr. Fink-Nottle, yes.”

“But back to this chap last evening. This is a man I have never shared so much as dry biscuit with, yet here I was sharing my deepest thoughts. I have noticed this before, Jeeves. The stranger is a thingummy, the human..."

          "Unadorned, perhaps?"

"...yes, the human unadorned, as it were, without the distraction of resemblances to an uncle or any doubts about the wisdom of his mustache. One of the poets must have said something about it.”

“Several, m’lord, including Milton in Paradise Regained… “

“Not Gerald Manley Hopkins?”

“I am less familiar with modern poetry. Perhaps you were thinking of something from the Authorised Version? St Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews…”

“That’s the winning horse, Jeeves. You never fail me. 'Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.' He was an angel, and there I was, unawares. I took the Scripture prize at school two years running.”

“So you have mentioned, sir."

*pronounced "Woodhouse," BTW.  I had that wrong for years.  That's what comes from reading words before one hears them.