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    The Club of Queer Trades
    The Club of Queer Trades
    The Club of Queer Trades
    Ebook168 pages3 hours

    The Club of Queer Trades

    By G. K. Chesterton

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    About this ebook

    G. K. Chesterton’s masterful mystery features men who earn their livings in the most peculiar ways

    The Club of Queer Trades is an incredibly exclusive society that comes with a specific conceit for entry: Its members must have a talent that is extremely unusual and use that skill to earn a living. For judge Basil Grant, the club is also a mystery that he must solve. Basil first learns of the group when his brother tells him about an army major who believes that this strange band of men is plotting to kill him. To get to the bottom of the threats against the major, Basil must track down each member of the organization one enigma at a time. Along the way, he crosses paths with a real estate agent who specializes in tree houses, a business that creates great adventures for its clients, and many other strange entities.
     
    In The Club of Queer Trades, Chesterton has created a loving parody that is sure to delight any fan of Victorian mysteries.
     
    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateJun 30, 2015
    ISBN9781504017244
    Author

    G. K. Chesterton

    G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was a prolific English journalist and author best known for his mystery series featuring the priest-detective Father Brown and for the metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Baptized into the Church of England, Chesterton underwent a crisis of faith as a young man and became fascinated with the occult. He eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and published some of Christianity’s most influential apologetics, including Heretics and Orthodoxy. 

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    Reviews for The Club of Queer Trades

    4/5

    192 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A parody of the Sherlock Holmes mystery stories, these tales are light and amusing. I prefer his Father Brown stories, but these were fun.
    • 4/5
      So much fun. Basil Grant always figures things out way ahead of any of the other characters, and generally before the reader (except in the case of the elms, it has to be admitted). The idea is simple - there are many, many clubs in London, but the most interesting of all is the club of queer trades, of forms of gainful employment that are in some way unique. Each chapter explores another of these companies, though the secret to that company must be figured out like a Sherlock Holmes riddle. Very inventive.
    • 2/5
      I didn't like reading this at all. I have read three other works by Chesterton, all of which I didn't like very much. I am not a great fan of detective stories, and I hadn't liked his Father Brown stories. The concept of each of these seven stories is kind of complex: the action takes place in a strange, bewildering (a weird guild), the detective is an ideosyncratic, puzzling person and the problem of each story is a mystery which is to be solved.

      However, it must be said that perhaps I wasn't fully concentrated because I was travelling, and that's why perhaps I should read this slim work another time, just to be fair.
    • 3/5
      There are a few good quotes in this collection of short stories with a common theme and main characters. If you guess the mystery in the story, however, there is not enough left---say, character development or moral questions---of much interest. A Club member must "have invented the method by which he earns his living." The stories are about the members and the queer trades they have come up with.

      The stories are:
      The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown
      The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation
      The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit
      The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent
      The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd
      The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady

      Some quotes:
      "A fine chap, that Major; when one hasn't a touch of the poet one stands some chance of being a poem." [p. 24, "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown"]


      "Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction," said Basil placidly. "For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it." [p. 67, "The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent"]

      I had met Grant [for the first time]... and exchanged a few words about the weather. Then we had talked for about an hour about politics and God; for men always talk about the most important things to total strangers. It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache. [p. 90, "The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd]
    • 5/5
      A delightful collection of six short stories, this is one of my favorite Chesterton books yet. It is about a club whose members must have an original occupation to join and who must actually make a living from said occupation. Not so easy to think up as you would first believe. Though I picked up the theme of the tales fairly quickly, the occupations were always a revelation.
      I love his use of language and found myself laughing out loud in the car while I listened to this book. David Barnes reads with just the right spirit and is a delight to listen to.
    • 5/5
      This was a very sweet little read. I believe my favorite character—other than of course the prodigy mystic and former Judge, Basil Grant—was Major Brown. I can only imagine my own horror if I climbed a wall to see pansies arranged in such a malevolent and personal pattern of growth.

      Basil Grant's brother, the rather cynical, or at least pessimistic, Rupert Grant—a private detective, whose logic is always shown to be flawed—very much reminded me of many other "# 2s" of the Mystery genre. Funny that Mr. Swinburne was Rupert's own "#2" man, as well as the narrator.

      The real target of Chesterton's satire was Mr. Doyle's Holmes. I do wish to make it known that Chesterton was quite the intellectual fellow. He often debated his close friend George Bernard Shaw alongside many others. I give you one of Chesterton's most memorable Holmesian quotes:

      [...] to realize that Sherlock Holmes is not really a real logician. He is an ideal logician imagined by an illogical person. [...] But Sherlock Holmes is an ideal figure, and in an imaginative sense a very effective one. He does embody the notion which unreasonable people entertain of what pure reason would be like.

      This witty and quite humorous little novel was a pleasure to read. There is much commentary on the modernity of man, which is not at all outdated, nor will it ever become so.

      Paradox runs rampant throughout, as it was one of Chesterton's favorite toys. There also is a great many memorable quotes within, viz.,

      "What is the modern mind?" asked Grant.
      "Oh, it's enlightened, you know, and progressive --and faces the facts of life seriously." At this moment another roar of laughter came from within."

      The six short stories within are interconnected, sequential, yet independent. Each presents us with a trade, or way of making a living, that the world has never seen before. Brilliant!!
    • 5/5
      More lovely surreal detection puzzles.

      Our narrator and his friend, the mad judge, and his amateur detective brother embark on a series adventures all stemming from a mysterious club, a club which only people with bizarre jobs can join.

      Chesterton is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. These series of linked short stories are all wildly inventive and wonderfully surreal, a sort of antidote to factual Sherlock Holmes detective stories. There is feeling of joy in his novels, a celebration of life even while it is delving into darkness. His odd way of looking at things allows you to think about them from a different point of view and while I don't always agree I am always intrigued and entertained.
    • 3/5
      Despite the unfortunate title, this is a very entertaining book.
    • 3/5
      This is pretty good and very similar to - although not nearly as sharp as - Sherlock Holmes stories. I must admit, I had never heard of Chesterton before and was a little hesitant to read him since he was part of the rabid Jesus-people. Although there is a little bit of preaching in this book, it's easy to overlook if you set your mind to it... The solutions to the "mysteries" are quite deux ex machina, but if you remember how long ago they were written, they're quite charming, and so forgiven. I particularly like the guy who lives at The Elms! :)
    • 4/5
      The first Chesterton I read, and I felt kinship at once. A wonderful introduction to his style and sensibility -- the first few stories are the best, however.

      "To realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world."

      Recommended.
      Re-reading 12.3.07
    • 4/5
      This is a clever collection of short stories where things are never what they seem. Each story starts out with a wildly improbable scenario which is then sensibly explained by members of the Club of Queer Trades, a club devoted to the creation of unique new professions.
    • 4/5
      Bizarre, but everything in this book fits together tidily. Highly recommended. This book will help me to remember that what seems simplest isn't always the best explanation.

    Book preview

    The Club of Queer Trades - G. K. Chesterton

    Chapter 1

    The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown

    RABELAIS, OR HIS WILD illustrator Gustave Dore, must have had something to do with the designing of the things called flats in England and America. There is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of economising space by piling houses on top of each other, front doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel, and passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the twilight corridors of a dream. If the Thugs set up a Strangers’ Assassination Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street, and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries, no inquiries would be made. And the Club of Queer Trades reigns in a great edifice hidden like a fossil in a mighty cliff of fossils.

    The nature of this society, such as we afterwards discovered it to be, is soon and simply told. It is an eccentric and Bohemian Club, of which the absolute condition of membership lies in this, that the candidate must have invented the method by which he earns his living. It must be an entirely new trade. The exact definition of this requirement is given in the two principal rules. First, it must not be a mere application or variation of an existing trade. Thus, for instance, the Club would not admit an insurance agent simply because instead of insuring men’s furniture against being burnt in a fire, he insured, let us say, their trousers against being torn by a mad dog. The principle (as Sir Bradcock Burnaby-Bradcock, in the extraordinarily eloquent and soaring speech to the club on the occasion of the question being raised in the Stormby Smith affair, said wittily and keenly) is the same. Secondly, the trade must be a genuine commercial source of income, the support of its inventor. Thus the Club would not receive a man simply because he chose to pass his days collecting broken sardine tins, unless he could drive a roaring trade in them. Professor Chick made that quite clear. And when one remembers what Professor Chick’s own new trade was, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

    The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. That I should have come at last upon so singular a body was, I may say without vanity, not altogether singular, for I have a mania for belonging to as many societies as possible: I may be said to collect clubs, and I have accumulated a vast and fantastic variety of specimens ever since, in my audacious youth, I collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, perhaps, I may tell tales of some of the other bodies to which I have belonged. I will recount the doings of the Dead Man’s Shoes Society (that superficially immoral, but darkly justifiable communion); I will explain the curious origin of the Cat and Christian, the name of which has been so shamefully misinterpreted; and the world shall know at last why the Institute of Typewriters coalesced with the Red Tulip League. Of the Ten Teacups, of course I dare not say a word. The first of my revelations, at any rate, shall be concerned with the Club of Queer Trades, which, as I have said, was one of this class, one which I was almost bound to come across sooner or later, because of my singular hobby. The wild youth of the metropolis call me facetiously ‘The King of Clubs’. They also call me ‘The Cherub’, in allusion to the roseate and youthful appearance I have presented in my declining years. I only hope the spirits in the better world have as good dinners as I have. But the finding of the Club of Queer Trades has one very curious thing about it. The most curious thing about it is that it was not discovered by me; it was discovered by my friend Basil Grant, a star-gazer, a mystic, and a man who scarcely stirred out of his attic.

    Very few people knew anything of Basil; not because he was in the least unsociable, for if a man out of the street had walked into his rooms he would have kept him talking till morning. Few people knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without them; he welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds. He lived in a queer and comfortable garret in the roofs of Lambeth. He was surrounded by a chaos of things that were in odd contrast to the slums around him; old fantastic books, swords, armour—the whole dust-hole of romanticism. But his face, amid all these quixotic relics, appeared curiously keen and modern—a powerful, legal face. And no one but I knew who he was.

    Long ago as it is, everyone remembers the terrible and grotesque scene that occurred in—, when one of the most acute and forcible of the English judges suddenly went mad on the bench. I had my own view of that occurrence; but about the facts themselves there is no question at all. For some months, indeed for some years, people had detected something curious in the judge’s conduct. He seemed to have lost interest in the law, in which he had been beyond expression brilliant and terrible as a K.C., and to be occupied in giving personal and moral advice to the people concerned. He talked more like a priest or a doctor, and a very outspoken one at that. The first thrill was probably given when he said to a man who had attempted a crime of passion: I sentence you to three years imprisonment, under the firm, and solemn, and God-given conviction, that what you require is three months at the seaside. He accused criminals from the bench, not so much of their obvious legal crimes, but of things that had never been heard of in a court of justice, monstrous egoism, lack of humour, and morbidity deliberately encouraged. Things came to a head in that celebrated diamond case in which the Prime Minister himself, that brilliant patrician, had to come forward, gracefully and reluctantly, to give evidence against his valet. After the detailed life of the household had been thoroughly exhibited, the judge requested the Premier again to step forward, which he did with quiet dignity. The judge then said, in a sudden, grating voice: Get a new soul. That thing’s not fit for a dog. Get a new soul. All this, of course, in the eyes of the sagacious, was premonitory of that melancholy and farcical day when his wits actually deserted him in open court. It was a libel case between two very eminent and powerful financiers, against both of whom charges of considerable defalcation were brought. The case was long and complex; the advocates were long and eloquent; but at last, after weeks of work and rhetoric, the time came for the great judge to give a summing-up; and one of his celebrated masterpieces of lucidity and pulverizing logic was eagerly looked for. He had spoken very little during the prolonged affair, and he looked sad and lowering at the end of it. He was silent for a few moments, and then burst into a stentorian song. His remarks (as reported) were as follows:

    "O Rowty-owty tiddly-owty

    Tiddly-owty tiddly-owty

    Highty-ighty tiddly-ighty

    Tiddly-ighty ow."

    He then retired from public life and took the garret in Lambeth.

    I was sitting there one evening, about six o’clock, over a glass of that gorgeous Burgundy which he kept behind a pile of black-letter folios; he was striding about the room, fingering, after a habit of his, one of the great swords in his collection; the red glare of the strong fire struck his square features and his fierce grey hair; his blue eyes were even unusually full of dreams, and he had opened his mouth to speak dreamily, when the door was flung open, and a pale, fiery man, with red hair and a huge furred overcoat, swung himself panting into the room.

    Sorry to bother you, Basil, he gasped. I took a liberty—made an appointment here with a man—a client—in five minutes—I beg your pardon, sir, and he gave me a bow of apology.

    Basil smiled at me. You didn’t know, he said, that I had a practical brother. This is Rupert Grant, Esquire, who can and does all there is to be done. Just as I was a failure at one thing, he is a success at everything. I remember him as a journalist, a house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a publisher, a schoolmaster, a—what are you now, Rupert?

    I am and have been for some time, said Rupert, with some dignity, a private detective, and there’s my client.

    A loud rap at the door had cut him short, and, on permission being given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper man walked swiftly into the room, set his silk hat with a clap on the table, and said, Good evening, gentlemen, with a stress on the last syllable that somehow marked him out as a martinet, military, literary and social. He had a large head streaked with black and grey, and an abrupt black moustache, which gave him a look of fierceness which was contradicted by his sad sea-blue eyes.

    Basil immediately said to me, Let us come into the next room, Gully, and was moving towards the door, but the stranger said:

    Not at all. Friends remain. Assistance possibly.

    The moment I heard him speak I remembered who he was, a certain Major Brown I had met years before in Basil’s society. I had forgotten altogether the black dandified figure and the large solemn head, but I remembered the peculiar speech, which consisted of only saying about a quarter of each sentence, and that sharply, like the crack of a gun. I do not know, it may have come from giving orders to troops.

    Major Brown was a V.C., and an able and distinguished soldier, but he was anything but a warlike person. Like many among the iron men who recovered British India, he was a man with the natural beliefs and tastes of an old maid. In his dress he was dapper and yet demure; in his habits he was precise to the point of the exact adjustment of a tea-cup. One enthusiasm he had, which was of the nature of a religion—the cultivation of pansies. And when he talked about his collection, his blue eyes glittered like a child’s at a new toy, the eyes that had remained untroubled when the troops were roaring victory round Roberts at Candahar.

    Well, Major, said Rupert Grant, with a lordly heartiness, flinging himself into a chair, what is the matter with you?

    Yellow pansies. Coal-cellar. P. G. Northover, said the Major, with righteous indignation.

    We glanced at each other with inquisitiveness. Basil, who had his eyes shut in his abstracted way, said simply:

    I beg your pardon.

    Fact is. Street, you know, man, pansies. On wall. Death to me. Something. Preposterous.

    We shook our heads gently. Bit by bit, and mainly by the seemingly sleepy assistance of Basil Grant, we pieced together the Major’s fragmentary, but excited narration. It would be infamous to submit the reader to what we endured; therefore I will tell the story of Major Brown in my own words. But the reader must imagine the scene. The eyes of Basil closed as in a trance, after his habit, and the eyes of Rupert and myself getting rounder and rounder as we listened to one of the most astounding stories in the world, from the lips of the little man in black, sitting bolt upright in his chair and talking like a telegram.

    Major Brown was, I have said, a successful soldier, but by no means an enthusiastic one. So far from regretting his retirement on half-pay, it was with delight that he took a small neat villa, very like a doll’s house, and devoted the rest of his life to pansies and weak tea. The thought that battles were over when he had once hung up his sword in the little front hall (along with two patent stew-pots and a bad water-colour), and betaken himself instead to wielding the rake in his little sunlit garden, was to him like having come into a harbour in heaven. He was Dutch-like and precise in his taste in gardening, and had, perhaps, some tendency to drill his flowers like soldiers. He

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