Excerpts

Introduction Joseph Bottum The problem is that A. J. Cronin was a hack--a popular hack, as it happens, and a skillful one, whose unhappy attempts to practice medicine produced a successful writing career. Beginning to write in his thirties, he quickly discovered he could pen a readable story in nice, clean prose, with a fast-­stepping plot, a sharp dramatic turn, and a set of generally stock but well-turned characters. Filmmakers loved him. They snapped up nearly everything he wrote, from the novels The Stars Look Down (1935) and The Citadel (1937) to the stories that formed the television series Dr. Finlay's Casebook in the 1960s. On and on, the list of his filmed novels runs--The Keys of the Kingdom (1942), The Green Years (1944), The Spanish Gardene r (1950)--each vastly successful at the time, each mostly forgotten now. Except, perhaps, The Keys of the Kingdom . Something a little extra--something a little beyond ready and popular hackery--seems to have slipped unexpectedly into this tale of a Catholic missionary to China named Father Francis Chisholm. Cronin clearly felt an affinity for his hero. As his 1964 memoir A Song of Sixpence reveals, his own childhood in Scotland was similar to the early life he gives Chisholm. Cronin used The Keys of the Kingdom to express his thoughts about the embattled West as it struggled in the Second World War, the Christian faith as it was carried out to a distant and hostile culture, and the shape that a good man's life could take if he gave himself to God. That's not to say that they were particularly deep thoughts. When Cronin sets down what he clearly imagines are the profound spiritual revelations of his novel, they turn out to be little more than pious uplift, along the lines of "Why can't we all just get along?" and "Aren't all religions really saying the same thing?" Thus, for example, the elderly Father Chisholm, back in Scotland after a lifetime of preaching and ministering to the poorest of the poor in China, carefully explains: "If we have the fundamentals--love for God and our neighbor--surely we're all right? And isn't it time for the religions of the world to cease hating one another . . . and unite? The world is one living, breathing body, dependent for its health on the billions of cells which comprise it." To which one wants to say, as a matter of fact, no. Not at a moment when the neo-pagan Nazis and the Japanese militarists were at the peak of their power. Not in an era when the mandarin Confucianism so admired by Father Chisholm had broken down into a China brutally divided among cynical warlords. Not at a time when Christian missionaries like Father Chisholm, sent off to convert the Far East, were being martyred from Singapore to Seoul. Then, if ever, was an occasion in which to draw a distinction--an era in which to realize that Jesus Christ brought something different into the world. Curiously, that's one of the things that the novel actually does reveal. The unique Christian faith that produced a unique culture shines through The Keys of the Kingdom . A. J. Cronin really could write, and it is in the background to his story--in all that he probably took for granted--that a thick and interesting moment of Catholic culture is documented and preserved. At the time Cronin was writing The Keys of the Kingdom , that culture seemed solid and unlikely ever to change, but he describes it with precision and intensity. The antagonism of Protestants and Catholics in Scotland. The priest-run school system that knew how to sharpen the bright, serious young boys and loose them like arrows on the world. The great movement of Christian missions in Asia that for three generations had captivated the imagination of Christians--Protestant and Catholic alike. It's a ­little-­remarked-upon story, but the real origins of modern Christian unity are found in the mission fields of China and Burma and Indonesia--where much of the ancient feud of European Protestantism and Catholicism was set aside in a kind of ecumenism of the trenches. All this is what Cronin knows and his novel captures. Surely that makes a world still worth recalling. Surely that makes The Keys of the Kingdom a novel still worth reading. The number of medical doctors who end up as writers is surprisingly large. There's the poet William Carlos Williams, of course, and the essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and the novelist Walker Percy. The work of doctor authors runs from the genre-­creating mystery stories of Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, to the genuine literary achievements of Dr. Anton Chekhov, and on to the immensely popular thrillers of Dr. Michael Crichton. The early and mid-­twentieth century seemed particu­larly flooded with novelizing doctors. Francis Brett Young and W. Somerset Maugham were probably the ones with the highest literary aim, but there was a kind of middle run of enormously popular medical writers. Published in 1929, Axel Munthe's now-­unread Story of San Michele , for instance, may have been the best-­selling book of its time. Warwick Deeping sold books like hotcakes, though there is probably no one alive who remembers the plot of his 1935 novel Sorrell and Son. Frank G. Slaughter's medical potboilers and Richard Gordon's Doctor in the House comedies reached large audiences, though their works are so faded they have disappeared even from the used-book tables. And then there was Archibald Joseph Cronin. Born in 1896 in the Scottish town of Cardross, he lost his father at an early age and suffered badly from the ensuing poverty. Like his character Francis Chisholm, Cronin was brought up a Catholic, and he suffered as well from the taunts and bullying of the Protestant schoolboys who had learned from their parents to hate Scotland's Catholic minority. A wealthy uncle paid his way through school, and in 1919 he finished his medical training at Glasgow University, where he met his wife Agnes Mary Gibson. There followed the usual succession of doctor's jobs in those days: a stint as a surgeon in the Royal Navy, residencies in various London and Welsh hospitals, and a cruise as the onboard doctor for a passenger ship. In 1924, he was appointed a medical inspector of mines in Wales--the origin of his angry, 1935 ­social-­commentary novel The Stars Look Down . Health problems drove him back to Scotland in 1930. During his convalescence, he penned his first book, Hatter's Castle , the story of a Scottish hatmaker who longs to join the upper class. Though critics noted that the story borrowed heavily from other authors' works, the novel did well enough that Cronin decided to transfer all his energy to writing. One success after another quickly followed: in the 1930s, The Stars Look Down , The Citadel, and Lady with Carnations ; in the 1940s, The Keys of The Kingdom , The Green Years , and Shannon's Way; in the 1950s, Adventures in Two Worlds , The Spanish Gardener , and Beyond This Place . By the mid-1960s, however, the string was running out. Though he continued writing until his death in 1981, the audience for his books was declining steadily, and few of his books remain in print. Though his specialty was always medical stories--his most famous character still is probably Dr. Finlay Hyslop, the hero of the long-­running British television series Dr. Finlay's Casebook--A. J. Cronin had an enduring interest in religious themes. Often the medical and the religious overlapped. His 1961 novel The Judas Tree , for example, tells the story of a wealthy physician named David Moray who betrays a woman on her way to a Christian mission in Africa. A disturbing chapter--quite possibly Cronin's best piece of writing--in Adventures in Two Worlds tells the story of a doctor who is gradually drawn into complicity with a woman's illegal abortion. And The Minstrel Boy , published in 1975 and one of his final books, features a spoiled priest whose successful career after leaving the priesthood gradually reveals the emptiness of his life--and he sets off at last for the Christian missions of India. The religious theme in Cronin's work is at its clearest and best in this book, The Keys of the Kingdom . Almost without noticing what he was doing, A. J. Cronin caught in enduring detail the harsh boyhood Scotland of Francis Chisholm. Almost as an incidental feature of his story, he photographs the faith of a Catholic world now lost forever. Almost in asides, he documents the great sacrifice of the Christian missionaries to the Far East in the early twentieth century. And almost through indirection, he teaches the joy of that sacrifice--the wonder of that faith.   Joseph Bottum is the editor of  First Things .       The Keys of the Kingdom   To my friend F. M., for twenty years a missionary in China     "And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." --Christ to Peter     Part I Beginning of the End 1 Late one afternoon in September 1938 old Father Francis Chisholm limped up the steep path from the church of St. Columba to his house upon the hill. He preferred this way, despite his infirmities, to the less arduous ascent of Mercat Wynd; and, having reached the narrow door of his ­walled-in garden, he paused with a kind of naive triumph--recovering his breath, contemplating the view he had always loved. Beneath him was the river Tweed, a great wide sweep of placid silver, tinted by the low saffron smudge of autumn sunset. Down the slope of the northern Scottish bank tumbled the town of Tweedside, its tiled roofs a crazy quilt of pink and yellow, masking the maze of cobbled streets. High stone ramparts still ringed this Border burgh, with captured Crimean cannon making perches for the gulls as they pecked at partan crabs. At the river's mouth a wraith lay upon the sandbar, misting the lines of drying nets, the masts of smacks inside the harbor pointing upward, brittle and motionless. Inland, dusk was already creeping upon the still bronze woods of Derham, toward which, as he gazed, a lonely heron made labored flight. The air was thin and clear, stringent with woodsmoke and the tang of fallen apples, sharp with the hint of early frost. With a contented sigh, Father Chisholm turned into his garden: a patch beside his pleasance upon the Hill of Brilliant Green Jade, but a pretty one, and, like all Scots gardens, productive, with a few fine fruit trees splayed on the mellow wall. The Jargonelle espalier in the south corner was at its best. Since there was no sign of the tyrant Dougal, with a cautious glance toward the kitchen window he stole the finest pear from his own tree, slid it under his soutane. His yellow, wrinkled cheek was ripe with triumph as he hobbled--dot and carry--down the graveled drive, leaning on his one indulgence, the new umbrella of Chisholm tartan that replaced his battered favorite of Pai-tan. And there, standing at the front porch, was the car. His face puckered slowly. Though his memory was bad and his fits of absentmindedness a perpetual embarrassment, he now recollected the vexation of the bishop's letter, proposing, or rather announcing, this visit of his secretary Monsignor Sleeth. He hastened forward to welcome his guest. Monsignor Sleeth was in the parlor, standing, dark, thin, distinguished, and not quite at ease, with his back to the empty fireplace--his youthful impatience heightened, his clerical dignity repelled, by the mean surroundings in which he found himself. He had looked for a note of individuality: some piece of porcelain perhaps, or lacquer, a souvenir from the East. But the apartment was bare and nondescript, with poor linoleum, horsehair chairs, and a chipped mantelpiece on which, out of the corner of a disapproving eye, he had already noted a ­spinning top beside an uncounted litter of collection pennies. Yet he was resolved to be pleasant. Smoothing his frown, he stifled Father Chisholm's apology with a gracious gesture. "Your housekeeper has already shown me my room. I trust it will not disturb you to have me here for a few days. What a superb afternoon it has been. The colorings!--as I drove up from Tynecastle I almost fancied myself in dear San Morales." He gazed away, through the darkening window, with a studied air. The old man nearly smiled at the imprint of Father Tarrant and the seminary--Sleeth's elegance, that bladelike look, even the hint of hardness in the nostril, made him a perfect replica. "I hope you'll be comfortable," he murmured. "We'll have our bite presently. I'm sorry I can't offer you dinner. Somehow we've just fallen to the habit of a Scots high tea!" Sleeth, head half-­averted, nodded noncommittally. Indeed, at that moment, Miss Moffat entered and, having drawn the drab chenille curtains, stealthily began to set the table. He could not but reflect, ironically, how the neutral creature, darting him one frightened glance, matched the room. Though it caused him a passing asperity to observe her lay places for three, her presence enabled him to lead the conversation safely into generalities. As the two priests sat down at table he was eulogizing the special marble which the bishop had brought from Carrara for the transept of the new Tynecastle procathedral. Helping himself with good appetite from the ashet of ham, eggs, and kidneys before him, he accepted a cup of tea poured from the Britannia metal teapot. Then, busy buttering brown toast, he heard his host remark mildly: "You won't mind if Andrew sups his porridge with us. Andrew--this is Monsignor Sleeth!" Sleeth raised his head abruptly. A boy about nine years of age had come silently into the room and now, after an instant's indecision, when he stood tugging at his blue jersey, his long pale face intense with nervousness, slipped into his place, reaching mechanically for the milk jug. As he bent over his plate a lock of dank brown hair--tribute to Miss Moffat's sponge--fell over his ugly bony forehead. His eyes, of a remarkable blue, held a childish prescience of crisis--they were so uneasy he dared not lift them up. The bishop's secretary relaxed his attitude, slowly resumed his meal. After all, the moment was not opportune. Yet from time to time his stare traveled covertly toward the boy. "So you are Andrew!" Decency demanded speech, even a hint of benignity. "And you go to school here?" "Yes . . ." "Come then! Let us see how much you know." Amiably enough, he propounded a few simple questions. The boy, flushed and inarticulate, too confused to think, betrayed humiliating ignorance. Monsignor Sleeth's eyebrows lifted. Dreadful, he thought. Quite a gutter brat! He helped himself to another kidney--then suddenly became aware that while he trifled with the rich meats of the table the other two kept soberly to porridge. He flushed: this show of asceticism on the old man's part was insufferable affectation. Perhaps Father Chisholm had a wry perception of that thought. He shook his head: "I went without good Scots oatmeal so many years I never miss it now I have the chance." Sleeth received the remark in silence. Presently, with a hurried glance, out of his downcast muteness, Andrew begged permission to depart. Rising to say his grace, he knocked a spoon spinning with his elbow. His stiff boots made an uncouth scuffling toward the door. Another pause. Then, having concluded his meal, Monsignor Sleeth rose easily and repossessed, without apparent purpose, the fleshless hearth rug. With feet apart and hands clasped behind his back he considered, without seeming to do so, his aged colleague, who, still seated, had the curious air of waiting. Dear God, thought Sleeth, what a pitiable presentation of the priesthood--this shabby old man, with a stained soutane, soiled collar, and sallow, desiccated skin! On one cheek was an ugly weal, a kind of cicatrix that everted the lower eyelid, seemed to tug the head down and sideways. The impression was that of a permanent wry neck, counterpoising the lame and shortened leg. His eyes, usually lowered, took thus--on the rare occasions that he raised them--a penetrating obliqueness, which was strangely disconcerting. Sleeth cleared his throat. He judged it time for him to speak and, forcing a note of cordiality, he inquired: "How long have you been here, Father Chisholm?" "Twelve months." "Ah, yes. It was a kindly gesture of His Grace to send you--on your return--to your native parish." "And his!" Sleeth inclined his head suavely. "I was aware that His Grace shared with you the distinction of having been born here. Let me see . . . what age are you, Father? Nearly seventy is it not?" Father Chisholm nodded, adding with gentle senile pride: "I am no older than Anselm Mealey." Sleeth's frown at the familiarity melted into a half-­pitying smile. "No doubt--but life has treated you rather differently. To be brief"--he gathered himself up, firm, but not unkind--"the bishop and I both have the feeling that your long and faithful years should now be recompensed; that you should, in short, retire!" There was a moment of strange quiet. "But I have no wish to retire." "It is a painful duty for me to come here"--Sleeth kept his gaze discreetly on the ceiling--"to investigate . . . and report to His Grace. But there are certain things that cannot be overlooked." "What things?" Sleeth moved irritably. "Six--ten--a dozen things! It isn't my place to enumerate your--your Oriental eccentricities!" "I'm sorry." A slow spark kindled in the old man's eyes. "You must remember that I spent ­thirty-five years in China." "Your parish affairs are in a hopeless muddle." "Am I in debt?" "How are we to know? No returns on your quarterly collections for six months." Sleeth's voice rose; he spoke a little faster. "Everything so . . . so unbusinesslike. . . . For instance when Bland's traveler presented his bill last month--three pounds for candles, and so forth--you paid him entirely in coppers!" "That's how it comes to me." Father Chisholm viewed his visitor thoughtfully, as though he looked straight through him. "I've always been stupid about money. I've never had any, you see. . . . But after all . . . do you think money so dreadfully important?" To his annoyance Monsignor Sleeth found himself reddening. "It makes talk, Father." He rushed on. "And there is other talk. Some of your sermons . . . the advice you give . . . certain points of doctrine." He consulted a ­morocco-­covered notebook already in his palm. "They seem dangerously peculiar." "Impossible!" "On Whitsunday you told your congregation, 'Don't think heaven is in the sky . . . it's in the hollow of your hand . . . it's everywhere and anywhere.'?" Sleeth frowned censoriously as he turned the pages. "And again . . . here is an incredible remark you made during Holy Week. 'Atheists may not all go to hell. I knew one who didn't. Hell is only for those who spit in the face of God!' And, good gracious, this atrocity: 'Christ was a perfect man, but Confucius had a better sense of humor!'?" Another page was turned indignantly. "And this incredible incident . . . when one of your best parishioners, Mrs. Glendenning, who cannot of course help her extreme stoutness, came to you for spiritual guidance you looked at her and replied, 'Eat less. The gates of paradise are narrow.' But why should I continue?" Decisively, Monsignor Sleeth closed the gilt-edged book. "To say the least, you seem to have lost your command of souls." "But . . ." Calmly: "I don't want to command anyone's soul." Sleeth's color heightened disagreeably. He did not see himself in theological discussion with this shambling dotard. "There remains the matter of this boy whom you have so misguidedly adopted." "Who is to look after him--if I don't?" "Our own sisters at Ralstone. It is the finest orphanage in the diocese." Again Father Chisholm raised his disconcerting eyes. "Would you have wished to spend your own childhood at that orphanage?" "Need we be personal, Father? I've told you . . . even conceding the circumstances . . . the situation is highly irregular and must be ended. Besides . . ." He threw out his hands. "If you are going away--we must find some place for him." "You seem determined to be rid of us. Am I to be entrusted to the sisters too?" "Of course not. You can go to the aged priests' home at Clinton. It is a perfect haven of rest." The old man actually laughed--a dry short laugh. "I'll have enough perfect rest when I'm dead. While I'm alive I don't want to be mixed up with a lot of aged priests. You may think it strange--but I never have been able to stand the clergy in bulk." Sleeth's smile was pained and flustered. "I think nothing strange from you, Father. Forgive me, but to say the least of it . . . your reputation, even before you went to China . . . your whole life has been peculiar!" There was a pause. Father Chisholm said in a quiet voice: "I shall render an account of my life to God." The younger man dropped his eyelids with an unhappy sense of indiscretion. He had gone too far. Though his nature was cold he strove always to be just, even considerate. He had the grace to look uncomfortable. "Naturally I don't presume to be your judge--or your inquisitor. Nothing is decided yet. That is why I am here. We must see what the next few days bring forth." He stepped toward the door. "I am going to the church now. Please don't trouble. I know my way." His mouth creased into an unwilling smile. He went out. Father Chisholm remained seated, motionless, at the table, his hand shading his eyes, as though thinking deeply. He felt crushed by this threat that had gathered, so suddenly, above the quiet of his hard-won retreat. His sense of resignation, long overtaxed, refused acceptance of it. All at once he felt empty and used up, unwanted by God or man. A burning desolation filled his breast. Such a little thing, and yet so much. He wanted to cry out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He rose heavily, and went upstairs. In his attic above the spare room the boy Andrew was already in bed and asleep. He lay upon his side, one skinny arm crooked before him on the pillow, defensively. Watching him, Father Chisholm took the pear from his pocket and placed it on the clothes folded upon the cane-­bottomed chair beside the bed. There seemed nothing more for him to do. A faint breeze swayed the muslin curtains. He moved to the window and parted them. Stars were quivering in the frosty sky. Under these stars the span of his years reached out in all its ineptitude, built of his puny strivings, without form or nobility. It seemed such a short time since he had been a boy himself, running and laughing in this same town of Tweedside. His thoughts flew back. If there were any pattern in his life at all the first fateful stroke was surely drawn on that April Saturday sixty years ago when, out of untroubled happiness, so deep it passed unrecognized . . .   Excerpted from The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.