When It Was Dark, by Guy Thorne, 1903

Christopher Hitchens called When it Was Dark a “piece of trash novel which makes ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or the ‘Left Behind’ series seem like Proust or Balzac or George Eliot.” He was being generous, but with that ‘recommendation’ I felt compelled to check this out. Sadly, other than it being a historical curiosity it has no redeeming features whatsoever. Worse, it is deeply anti-Semitic and racist. As always, I read these things so you don’t have to!

The central concept of the novel is actually a potentially compelling idea. Archaeological discoveries in the Middle East at the end of the nineteenth century were causing scholars to rethink earlier ideas about the bible, more specifically about the life of Christ. Some religious people found those discoveries and the interpretations put upon them threatening to their beliefs. Christian faith had at that time already faced significant challenges from  the scientific advancements of the nineteenth century, chief of which was of course Darwin’s theory of evolution, which had led many to question the literalist interpretations of the bible, reinterpreting many of the stories as fables. If Christ could tell stories that we intended to help people understand morale issues without being taken literally – whether or not there was a real ‘Good Samaritan for instance simply isn’t important – then why could that principle not be extended to the whole text?

Thorne’s starting point is that Christianity, specifically the form of Christianity practiced in the United Kingdom, rests solely on a belief in the literal truth of the resurrection. Anything that challenges that faith is in turn a challenge to morality and social order. Without a belief in the resurrection there is no reason why people should not behave lawlessly, following their baser instincts rather than the teachings of Christ. Anyone wanting to undermine the social order, anyone with malevolent intent against Christian society, would simply have to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the resurrection did not happen.

Take a minute to think about that. Thorne is arguing – and his novel was hugely popular and very widely supported from pulpits throughout the land – that the reason we don’t rape and murder one another is not because we belief in the importance of social order, not because we believe in God, not because Jesus told us how to relate to one another, not because of the centuries of Christian teaching, but because the resurrection literally happened. As soon as that one building block of faith is removed, everything comes crashing down.

So that’s what happens. A malevolent character forges the ‘discovery’ of the tomb of Christ and blackmails a senior archaeologist from the British Museum to confirm the discovery is authentic. The forgery is of such a high standard that the many other independent experts from around the world also confirm its authenticity – apparently only British experts need to be bribed, everyone else just goes along with the Brit. Once news of the discovery spreads, society quickly begins to crumble.

Even the author himself finds this thesis implausible. He quickly recognises that for most people the resurrection isn’t the lynch-pin of their faith. Millions of people around the world are not Christians, and they manage to sustain a civil society reasonably well. The response of the Roman Catholic church is quite hilarious. The Pope issues an instruction to all Catholics that they must ignore the archaeological finds, and forbids them from even talking about it. Civil society in Catholic countries, even in areas of the United Kingdom with a significant Catholic population such as Liverpool, resists the breakdown in order experienced elsewhere. Muslim countries are also largely unaffected and many Christians are able to adapt by accepting that the resurrection was a fable in the same way many already thought of other bible stories. But Protestant England suffers:

There was the curate at Wigan, who had shot himself and left a heart-breaking letter of mad mockery behind him; there were other cases of suicide. There was the surging tide of crime, rising ever higher and higher as the clergy lost all their influence in the slums of London and the great towns…. “the evil was growing and spreading each day, each hour.” True as it was that the myriad lamps of the Faithful only burned the brighter for the surrounding gloom, yet that gloom was growing and rolling up, even as the clouds on which her unseeing eyes were fixed as she walked along the shore. Men were becoming reckless; the hosts of evil triumphed on every side.

Moral law will be abrogated for a time. The whole moral fabric of Society will fall into ruin at once until it can adjust itself to the new state of things. There will be war all over the world; crime will cover England like a cloud——”

The novel’s villain is industrialist and MP Constantine Schuabe. The ‘foreign’ sounding name given to the character is not a coincidence, of course – throughout the novel anything evil or negative is given foreign connotations. Schuabe’s Jewish ethnicity is emphasised every time he appears. This is how he is introduced:

“The man was tall, above the middle height, and the heavy coat of fur which he was wearing increased the impression of proportioned size, of massiveness, which was part of his personality. His hair was a very dark red, smooth and abundant, of that peculiar colour which is the last to show the greyness of advancing age. His features were Semitic, but without a trace of that fulness, and sometimes coarseness, which often marks the Jew who has come to the middle period of life. The eyes were large and black, but without animation, in ordinary use and wont. They did not light up as he spoke, but yet the expression was not veiled or obscured. They were coldly, terribly aware, with something of the sinister and untroubled regard one sees in a reptile’s eyes.

The jaw, which dominated the face and completed its remarkable ensemble, was very massive, reminding people of steel covered with olive-coloured parchment. Handsome was hardly the word which fitted him. He was a strikingly handsome man; but that, like “distinction,” was only one of the qualities which made up his personality. Force, power—the relentless and conscious power suggested by some great marine engine—surrounded him in an almost indescribable way. They were like exhalations. Most people, with the casual view, called him merely indomitable, but there were others who thought they read deeper and saw something evil and monstrous about the man; powerless to give an exact and definite reason for the impression, and dubious of voicing it.”

It’s worth spending a moment on this description. The author tells us Schuabe gives an impression of massiveness – and he also has ‘very massive’ jaw. Can things be ‘very massive’? Its not the usual way of describing something very big. Schuabe is both not handsome (“Handsome was hardly the word which fitted him“) and in the very next line “a strikingly handsome man“. This is not a stereotypical portrait of a Jewish villain from Victorian literature – there is no suggestion he is motivated by avarice or greed and there is no mention of his nose which is often used as a marker of Jewish identity in such texts. But he is something possibly much worse – he intends to destroy Christian society.

Later in the novel Schuabe is described from the perspective of another character, Father Ripon:

“His hair, which could be seen beneath his ordinary hard felt hat, was dark red and somewhat abundant. His features were Semitic, but without a trace of that fulness, and often coarseness, which sometimes marks the Jew who has come to the period of middle life. The large black eyes were neither dull nor lifeless, but simply cold, irresponsive, and alert. A massive jaw completed an impression which was remarkable in its fineness and almost sinister beauty.“

It’s good to see that he hasn’t changed and that the author hasn’t taken the trouble to find anything new to say about him. This account is given before Ripon has been introduced to Schuabe, so the reader is working out with him at the same time who this mysterious stranger might be. But Thorne assumes the reader is probably a bit stupid, so provides heavy hints about his identity by using identical descriptors. In other words it is horribly clumsy writing.

I confess I got one thing wrong about this novel. About half way a new character is introduced, Sir Michael Manichoe. Manichoe is described as

“the stay and pillar of “Anglicanism” in the English Church… a man of great natural gifts. The owner of one of those colossal Jewish fortunes which, few as they are, have such far-reaching influence upon English life, he employed it in a way which, for a man in his position, was unique.….in his public life Sir Michael was diplomatic enough. He worked steadily for one thing, it is true, but he was far too able to allow people to call him narrow-minded. The Oriental strain of cunning in his blood had sweetened to a wise diplomacy“

I thought this character would eventually be exposed as part of the conspiracy, and it is possible the author was going to go this way at first and then changed his mind – certainly the reference to an Oriental strain of cunning is a hint that there is more to Manichoe than meets the eye. But in fact no, he’s just a well-meaning rich man who helps the small group of people working to expose Schuabe’s conspiracy. This is done remarkably easily – Schuabe has left clues and the means to reveal his forgery all over the place and the crime quickly crumbles. A bitter end comes to him and his collaborators, one which Thorne takes great pleasure in describing in a postscript.

This is a piece of Edwardian trash that really should have never been reprinted if it weren’t for Hitchens’ passing reference to it. According to the internet Thorne wrote over 120 novels, which tells you a lot about the care he put into his work. It’s a glimpse into a mindset of an embattled faith struggling to come to terms with a changing world. I was reminded of some of the invasion literature I have written about here previously which took a similar approach to challenging readers’ ideas about the UK’s place in the world. Edwardians had lost the certainty of the nineteenth century and were worried about what was to come – turns out they were quite right to feel that way!

When It Was Dark, by Guy Thorne, 1903