The Bishop of Souls Book

Gilbert Keith Chesterton's own life stories were every bit as madcap and zany as this book is. I'll tell you a bit more, if you like...

One day, during his days of his éminence grise littéraire - the days late in his unbuttoned life of entre deux guerres - we find him on his own madcap mystery tour on the de rigeur readings and signings circuit. The total stress and if-this-is-Friday-it-must-be-Paris kaleidoscopic feeling of it all, must have overwhelmed this poor, usually windbaggish bonhomme...

For, totally lost and panic-stricken, he cabled his worry-wart wife tersely:

"Am in Golders Green. Where SHOULD I be?"

Came the prompt longsuffering reply from his wife:

"HOME!"

And, oh, Yes - fittingly, THESE are the madcap adventures of a mild-mannered Scotland Yard investigator who has stumbled onto an Anarchist plot in Edwardian London, but can't reveal it to anyone. Art mirrors life.

Substitute "terrorist" for "anarchist", substitute "post-Brexit" for "Edwardian" London, and you have the makings of a rollicking good yarn.

And Chesterton delivers!

Being Catholic, he has an acutely suspicious eye for pure evil - which sobriquet precisely fits this odd and ornery assortment of bad guys.

And he expertly holds our attention to the end, a dénouement which is truly apocalyptic - in the best religious sense of the word.

It has to be that way, you know!

Because, you know, the more our awareness grows, the more evil becomes amorphous. Part of the scenery. But... it's there.

But that doesn't mean we won't resist it all the more. But our resistance sustains and feeds evil. And all our seemingly innocuous indulgences give it ample space to grow to a blackly cynical adulthood.

C.S. Lewis has noted wisely that evil is by nature parasitic. It grows stronger the more we try to be good. Why do you think good kids are more likely to be bullied?

That's the raison d'être for Apocalypse. It's like someone calling in the Cosmic Cops. God blows the whistle that ends the game.

Whether it's an earthly one or a fictional type as here, apocalypse is the only possible eschatological answer to evil that has grown out of all proportion.

So here Chesterton is faced with that same type of crime - one calling for a Deus ex Machina!

Modern times, which were really only beginning when he wrote this, had already blurred the lines between good and evil. So what does he do? He confuses us even more!

Pure poetic license.

That was one of his own favourite stock-in-trades - blurring the lines between extremes and absolutes. You no longer know which side is Up.

He creates such weird and wonderful, baroquely crowded, phantasmagorical stories, all a delightful PARODY of our crazy times.

And that's why the stunning apocalyptic conclusion of this novel WORKS.

It is as fantastic as every changing mood, every twist, every bizarre character in this wonderful story.

And what is he telling us?

That the result of mass, widespread confusion and anarchy can only be Apocalypse, whether the apocalypse of mental collapse, or the apocalyptic end of the old world, and the Dawn of the New Heaven and New Earth.

And that Apocalypse is revealed in the final horrible transmogrification of the Head of the Anarchists...

Into the Infernal Diabolical Power behind this planet's innumerable Nondescript Gnostics. I must admit, though, on first reading my heart went out to him. Sympathy for the devil, as Mick Jagger sang! It was a horrid feeling.

But it all changes at that point into quite a peaceful, reassuring mini Apocalypse...

For in the end, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL!

And Suddenly, everything 'dulce et decorum est.'

The world returns to its Eden...

For ALL IS FORGIVEN!

It is no wonder that Chesterton called this yarn a "nightmare"... but it's a nightmare that's loads of fun, and you know why?

It's all (every last bit of it?) JUST a DREAM!