BOOK REVIEW

Spiritism became him

Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes, 505 pp, 2006 Vintage paperback, Available at Asia Books and leading book stores, 350 baht

BERNARD TRINK

Life is filled with choices, most of which don't seem very important at the time yet have far reaching consequences. What if the Mongols had put off trying to conquer Japan? Then their invasion fleet wouldn't have been sunk by a tsunami. What if Hitler had been accepted by the art academy in Vienna, so that he didn't look for a career elsewhere?

British author Julian Barnes poses the question in Arthur & George. Arthur is Arthur Conan Doyle, the Scotsman whose ambition was to be a medical doctor. Ophthalmology was his speciality, but patients didn't flock to his door. What if they did? He'd have treated them, of course. It would have been his life's work and we'd never have heard of him.

Husband and father, Arthur took his obligation as the family breadwinner seriously. How else to earn a living while not giving up his practice? Sitting in his office with time on his hands, he conjured up a private detective who solved cases by closely observing what others ignored, deductive reasoning, playing his violin, smoking a meerschaum pipe and taking cocaine.

Sherlock Holmes captured the imagination the world over and he no longer had money worries. However rational, Arthur took to spiritism (the term he preferred to spiritualism). Turning his back on the charlatans it attracted, he embraced those he regarded as genuine clairvoyants. He was convinced that the dead were trying to contact the living.

Certain that Arthur was every bit the sleuth his literary characters were, aficionados wrote entreating him to help them find justice. One such supplicant was George Edalji, scion of an Indian Parsee father turned Church of England vicar and an Englishwoman. George, more English than the English, became a solicitor. He lived with his sister.

Anonymous poison pen letters to the police resulted in his arrest for ripping open farm animals. The constabulary, clearly prejudiced by his colour, railroaded him to prison where he spent three years. Released, he asks Arthur to exonerate him so that he may have his solicitor's license returned to him. Barnes asserts it actually happened.

Like Emile Zola across the Channel coming to the defence of Captain Dreyfus, Arthur takes on Scotland Yard and the Home Office to undo the miscarriage of justice. To his credit he succeeds, an avalanche of letters arriving pressing him to do the same for them. His wife succumbing to TB, he weds a lady waiting in the wings.

In time Arthur gives up his writing and his practice, but goes even more deeply into the occult. Neither George from afar nor his wife at his side share his belief, but they respect and love him too much to express their scepticism. If mediums have the extraordinary ability to communicate with those who have gone over, who are they to doubt it? Arthur & George offers a clear view of Edwardian England.

Bangkok Post
Friday February 02, 2007