Table of Contents
Title
Content

The Man Who Was Thursday

A Nightmare

Table of Contents

G. K. Chesterton

Worldwide Classics

First publication: November 2004

http://badosa.com/n216

The book was called The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. It was not intended to describe the real world as it was, or as I thought it was, even when my thoughts were considerably less settled than they are now. It was intended to describe the world of wild doubt and despair which the pessimist were generally describing at that date; with just a gleam of hope in some double meaning of the doubt, which even the pessimists felt in some fashion.
G. K. Chesterton
in an article in the Illustrated London News,
13 June 1936 (the day before his death)

Chapter I

The Two Poets of Saffron Park

Chapter II

The Secret of Gabriel Syme

Chapter III

The Man Who Was Thursday

Chapter VI

The Tale of a Detective

Chapter V

The Feast of Fear

Chapter VI

The Exposure

Chapter VII

The Unaccountable Conduct of Professor de Worms

Chapter VIII

The Professor Explains

Chapter IX

The Man in Spectacles

Chapter X

The Duel

Chapter XI

The Criminals Chase the Police

Chapter XII

The Earth in Anarchy

Chapter XIII

The Pursuit of the President

Chapter XIV

The Six Philosophers

Chapter XV

The Accuser

TO EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY

A cloud was on the mind of men

And wailing went the weather,

Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul

When we were boys together.

Science announced nonentity

And art admired decay;

The world was old and ended:

But you and I were gay;

Round us in antic order

Their crippled vices came—

Lust that had lost its laughter,

Fear that had lost its shame.

Like the white lock of Whistler,

That lit our aimless gloom,

Men showed their own white feather

As proudly as a plume.

Life was a fly that faded,

And death a drone that stung;

The world was very old indeed

When you and I were young.

They twisted even decent sin

To shapes not to be named:

Men were ashamed of honour;

But we were not ashamed.

Weak if we were and foolish,

Not thus we failed, not thus;

When that black Baal blocked the heavens

He had no hymns from us

Children we were—our forts of sand

Were even as weak as we,

High as they went we piled them up

To break that bitter sea.

Fools as we were in motley,

All jangling and absurd,

When all church bells were silent

Our cap and beds were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort,

Our tiny flags unfurled;

Some giants laboured in that cloud

To lift it from the world.

I find again the book we found,

I feel the hour that flings

Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok

Some cry of cleaner things;

And the Green Carnation withered,

As in forest fires that pass,

Roared in the wind of all the world

Ten million leaves of grass;

Or sane and sweet and sudden as

A bird sings in the rain—

Truth out of Tusitala spoke

And pleasure out of pain.

Yea, cool and clear and sudden as

A bird sings in the grey,

Dunedin to Samoa spoke,

And darkness unto day.

But we were young; we lived to see

God break their bitter charms.

God and the good Republic

Come riding back in arms:

We have seen the City of Mansoul,

Even as it rocked, relieved—

Blessed are they who did not see,

But being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears,

Even of those emptied hells,

And none but you shall understand

The true thing that it tells—

Of what colossal gods of shame

Could cow men and yet crash,

Of what huge devils hid the stars,

Yet fell at a pistol flash.

The doubts that were so plain to chase,

So dreadful to withstand—

Oh, who shall understand but you;

Yea, who shall understand?

The doubts that drove us through the night

As we two talked amain,

And day had broken on the streets

E’er it broke upon the brain.

Between us, by the peace of God,

Such truth can now be told;

Yea, there is strength in striking root,

And good in growing old.

We have found common things at last,

And marriage and a creed,

And I may safely write it now,

And you may safely read.

G. K. C.