A global archive of independent reviews of everything happening from the beginning of the millennium
Read our Copyright Notice click here
For publication dates click here
THE POINT OF A PIN
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown are two of the great figures of short form detective fiction. From their limitations spring some of their strengths.
Holmes has great observational powers. He is peerless in deducing from observable facts. He has spurts of great energy and he is the master of disguise but his understanding of people can appear thin.
Father Brown comes from the opposite direction. He understands people and human nature, or at least that is the literary conceit. His powers of observation are not lacking, though. He bumbles along, reserving celerity to a few occasions.
So it would be fun doing a bit of literary detective work with none of these powers. Just a curiosity about buildings might suffice.
For novels, people hunt down the imaginary loci of scenes to possible sites where the author might have been. For Sherlock Holmes short stories they do as well. For Father Brown short stories? - I haven't heard of it, despite erstwhile being very popular.
The Point Of A Pin begins:
Father Brown always declared that he solved this problem in his sleep. And this was true, though in a rather odd fashion; because it occured at a time when his sleep was rather disturbed. It was disturbed very early in the morning by the hammering that began in the huge building,or half-building, that was in the process of erection opposite his rooms; a colossal pile of flats mostly covered with scaffolding and with boards announcing Messrs. Swindon & Sand as the builders and owners.
Building sites, which are dangerous places, an unlikely death threat from trade unions, builders who make good and receive honours, changing building technology and the pot is stirring nicely and on familiar ground.
G. K . Chesterton's house
On familiar physical ground as well. I have known where Father Brown's creator G. K. Chesterton's house is since forever and this story since nearly as long.
The Point Of A Pin was one of the last Father Brown stories and written in 1935, in the year before Chesterton died.
There was far from anything wrong with his literary powers - it is one of my favourite Father Brown stories - but by then he was probably at his least physically active.
The block of flats opposite his house was built contemporaneously with the writing of the story. Although other blocks were built in the road about the same time none fits the building described in the story as well as this one so given he probably did not move far from his home, this is the block he is writing about in its half-finished state and his imagination.
At the end of the story there is some artistic license that might make you doubt it - but we are dealing with fiction probably written before the scaffolding was removed. Whether the residents opposite his house realise that their block is the locus for imaginary darstardly deeds is open to doubt.
Now doubt may turn into a pinprick of belief, as this detective would like. After all, Father Brown was strong on belief.
Opposite
*****
Who can say what other local history inspired Chesterton and this story in particular?
High Victorian St Luke's Church, Redcliffe Gardens, listed Grade II in 2003
The developers of Redcliffe Gardens went bankrupt partly due to offering to build and pay for St Luke's Church, creating a new parish in the process. They would appear to have grown grand enough before doing so and one of them had lent his name to stand behind the debts run up by the vicar in relation to the construction. The tower and the pin-like steeple are a Victorian structure one would not want to lose.