The paradoxes of mr pond pdf

Well worth your while watching this. Menu Skip to content Home Bio Mr. Pond The Detective and the Author Protocol Search for:. Follow Following. The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond Join other followers. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. May 18, Michael Joosten rated it really liked it. Although, I suppose, technically a collection of mystery short stories, The Paradoxes of Mr.

Pond don't quite read like detective stories. This is a negative, if you find yourself solving the paradox a bit before the characters do and you were expecting an Agatha Christie-level puzzle. Para los que disfrutamos de Chesterton este libro no defrauda. Son ocho cuentos en los que el protagonista, Mr Pond, resuelva con la sencillez, inocencia e ingenio a que nos tiene acostumbrados Chesterton un caso donde el centro del problema pasa por alguna paradoja planteada desde el comienzo del cuento.

Oct 26, Chris rated it it was ok Shelves: mystery. This may be unfair of me, but the way Chesterton wrote mysteries always makes me think of someone insufferably smug telling stories about how amazing they are. Sep 13, Dee rated it it was ok. I really disliked Chesterton's writing style, it's extremely long-winded with paragraphs that run for entire pages.

I wouldn't read Chesterton again I think. Feb 19, Smallllama rated it it was amazing. Great but inconsistent. My favorite short story of all time, "Ring of Lovers," is in this book. Dec 29, Nina Ive rated it liked it. I only read the three horseman as I couldnt find a listing for it by itself as a short story. Aug 17, Ciccio rated it it was amazing. I only refer to the first story in the book. Good story. Great title.

Jan 02, Bbrown rated it liked it Shelves: short-work. I always enjoy reading Chesterton, even if it isn't the best Chesterton. Pond brings the paradoxes that Chesterton loves so much to the fore through the titular character of Mr.

Unfortunately Mr. Pond is not as interesting a character at Father Brown or Gabriel Syme or the plethora of other characters that populate GKC's fiction. While the protagonists of Four Faultless Felons also deal in paradoxes, their delivery felt more natural, while Pond's poor communications co I always enjoy reading Chesterton, even if it isn't the best Chesterton.

While the protagonists of Four Faultless Felons also deal in paradoxes, their delivery felt more natural, while Pond's poor communications come off as more blatant mystery setups than what Chesterton usually writes.

A few of the mysteries are clever, and even the ones that aren't particularly clever have some good witty lines for which Chesterton can always be relied upon. Pond is comparatively uninteresting. By all means give it a read, but only if you've already finished with most of Chesterton's fiction. Mar 01, Ci rated it liked it. I started this book as a pleasurable digression from other more ponderous essays. This is a collection around a Mr. Pond, who has a paradoxical reputation among his friends, but in fact who is simply stating truism in the most shortened fashion.

The central idea is to confront the dominant genre of detective stories along the Sherlock Holmes' line of inquiry. Things are not what they seemed to observers; each of us brings our own mental framework to interpret what we saw. The complex interaction I started this book as a pleasurable digression from other more ponderous essays.

If Sherlock Holmes' victory is largely over linking divers of data together, then Mr. Pond's is about knowing the mental-model that each individual brings to the interpretation of the same data.

One can enjoy the verbal wit in such stories, but the plot-lines are thought-experiments in the barest form. None of them provokes much deep reflection in this reader. Apr 07, Jim rated it it was amazing Shelves: chesterton , humor , short-stories , reread. Pond is another enjoyable shaggy-dog collection of its author's paradoxes. This book did not come out until Chesterton had died, so it is possible there was more editing to be performed. Nevertheless, I am so in tune with Chesterton's fiction that I enjoyed every minute of it.

Aug 07, Uma Shankari rated it liked it Shelves: recently-read. Wonderfully plotted short mysteries by a 20th century writer who also offers some brilliant insights into human nature. Matthew has already reviewed the book, so I'll just use this space to record my favourite part: "Love never needs time. But friendship always needs time. More and more and more time, up to long past midnight. Perhaps it is a fragile illusion; perhaps, on the other hand, it Wonderfully plotted short mysteries by a 20th century writer who also offers some brilliant insights into human nature.

But Friendship eats up time. Pond clad himself even more conventionally and carefully than usual, and proceeded to pay a round of calls on a series of ladies: a frivolous solemnity which with him was by no means usual. The first lady he waited upon was the Hon. Violet Varney, whom he had hitherto only seen in the distance, and was gently depressed at having to see so close. She was what he believed, in these latter days, to be described as a platinum blonde.

It was doubtless a graceful reminiscence of her own name which led her to tint her mouth and cheeks with a colour that was rather violet than purple, giving an effect which her friends called ghostly and her foes ghastly. Even from this listless lady he did extract some admissions lending to help in the reconstruction of Gahagan's real remarks; though the lady's own remarks had their usual air of expiring with a gasp before they were really finished.

Then he had another interview with her sister, Joan, and marvelled inwardly at the strange thing which is human personality and stands apart from modes and manners. For Joan had very much the same tricks of style; the same rather high, well-bred voice, the same sketchy, uncompleted sentences; but, fortunately, not the same purple powder and not in the least the same eyes or gestures or mind or immortal soul. Pond, with all his old-fashioned prejudices, knew at once that in this other girl the new virtues were virtues, whether or not they were new.

She really was brave and generous and fond of the truth, though the Society papers did say so. Pond to himself. A great deal better than gold. And oh, how much better than platinum! Stopping at the next stage of his pilgrimage, he visited the monstrous and ludicrous large hotel which had the honour of housing Miss Artemis Asa-Smith of Pennsylvania. She received him with the rather overwhelming enthusiasm which bore her everywhere through the world; and Mr.

Pond had very little difficulty in her case in extracting an admission that even a man who goes to a club may happen not to be a murderer. Though this explanation was naturally less personal and intimate than his interview with Joan about which he always refused to say a word to anybody , the ardent Artemis continued to earn his approval by her reserves of good sense and good nature.

She saw the point about the order of the topics mentioned, and its probable effect on her own mind; and so far the diplomacy of Mr. Pond had been successful. All the three ladies, with whatever degrees of seriousness or concentration, had listened to his theory of what Gahagan had said; and had all agreed that he might very probably have said it. This part of his task being done, Mr. Pond paused a little, and perhaps rather pulled himself together, before approaching his last duty—which also took the form of calling on a lady.

He might be excused; for it also involved passing through that grim garden where a man had lain murdered, to that high and sinister house where his widow was still living alone: the great Olivia, queen of tragedy, now tragic by a double claim. He stepped, not without repugnance, across that dark corner inside the gate and under the holly tree where poor Fred Feversham had been spiked to the earth by a mere splinter of a sword; and as he climbed the crooked path to the doorway in the narrow and bare brick house that stood above him like a tower, dark against the stars, he revolved difficulties much deeper than had yet troubled him in the more trifling matter of the supposed inconsistencies of Gahagan's conversation.

There was a real question behind all that nonsense; and it demanded an answer. Somebody had murdered the unfortunate Frederick Feversham; and there were some real reasons for directing the suspicion upon Gahagan. After all, he had been in the habit of spending whole days, or half of the nights as well, with this actress; nothing seemed more horribly natural, more repulsively probable, than that they had been surprised by Feversham and had taken the bloody way out.

Feversham had often been compared to Mrs. Her own external behaviour had always been full of dignity and discretion. A scandal for her was not an advertisement, as it would be for Violet Varney. She had really the stronger motive of the two.

Suppose Gahagan really was innocent—but at that price! Whatever his weaknesses, he was just the man to be hanged like a gentleman rather than let The Lady—He looked up with growing terror at the tower of dark brick, wondering if he were to meet the murderess.

Then he furiously flung off the morbidity, and tried again to fix himself on the facts. After all, what was there against Gahagan or the widow? It seemed to him, as he forced himself to colder considerations, that it really resolved itself into a matter of time. Gahagan had certainly spent a huge amount of time with Olivia; that was really the only external proof of his passion for her.

The proofs of his passion for Joan were very external indeed. Pond could have sworn that the Irishman was really in love with Joan. He threw himself at her head; and she, on the accepted standards of modern youth, threw herself back at him.

But these encounters, one might say collisions, were as brief as they were brilliant. Why did a lover full of such triumphs want to go off and spend such a lot of time with a much older woman?

These broodings had turned him into an automaton and brought him unconsciously past the servants and up the stairs and into the very room where he was asked to wait for Mrs. He nervously picked up an old battered book, apparently dating from the time when the actress was a schoolgirl, for the flyleaf showed in a very schoolgirl hand: "Olivia Malone. But, anyhow, she must be Irish—at least by tradition.

As he bent over the shabby book in the dusky anteroom, there shot into his mind a white ray of serene and complete understanding: so far as this tale goes, the last of the paradoxes of Mr. He felt full and complete certainty; and yet the only words to express it wrote themselves rapidly across his brain with the bewildering brevity of a hieroglyphic. But Friendship always needs time. More and more and more time, up to long past midnight. When Gahagan had done those crazy things that blazoned his devotion to Joan Varney, they had hardly occupied any time.

When he fell on her from a parachute as she came out of church at Bournemouth, the fall was naturally very rapid. When he tore up a return ticket costing hundreds of pounds to stay with her half an hour longer in Samoa, it was only half an hour longer. When he swam the Hellespont in imitation of Leander, it was only for exactly thirty-five minutes' conversation with Hero.

But Love is like that. It is a thing of great moments; and it lives on the memory of moments. Perhaps it is a fragile illusion; perhaps, on the other hand, it is eternal and beyond time. But Friendship eats up time. If poor Gahagan had a real intellectual friendship, then he would go on talking till long past midnight. And with whom would Gahagan be so likely to have one as with an Irish actress who was chiefly interested in Shakespeare?

Even as he had the thought, he heard the rich and faintly Irish voice of Olivia welcoming him; and he knew he was right.

It's called Poetry; or perhaps I ought to say it's generally called Recitation. It's been suppressed by the police in all the English salons; and that's the worst of the Irish wrongs. People in London are not allowed to recite poems to each other all night, as they do in Dublin.

Poor Peter used to come to me and talk Shakespeare till morning; but I had to turn him out at last. When a man calls on me, and tries to recite the whole of Romeo and Juliet, it gets past a joke.

But you see how it was. The English won't allow the poor fellow to recite Shakespeare. Pond did indeed see how it was. He knew enough about men to know that a man must have a friend, if possible a female friend, to talk to till all is blue. He knew enough about Dubliners to know that neither devils nor dynamite will stop them from reciting verse. All the black clouds of morbid brooding on the murder which had oppressed him in the garden had rolled away at the first sound of this strong, good-humoured Irishwoman's voice.

But after a little while they began to gather again, though more remotely. After all, as he had said before, somebody had killed poor Fred Feversham. He was quite certain now that it was not Feversham's wife. He was practically certain it was not Gahagan. He went home that night turning the question over and over; but he had only one night's unrest.

For the next day's paper contained the news of the unexplained suicide of Mr. Luke, of the well-known firm of Masters, Luke and Masters; and Mr. Pond sat gently chiding himself, because he had not thought of the obvious fact that a man who is always tearing and rending people because he has been swindled, may possibly discover one day that he has been swindled by his own solicitor.

Feversham had summoned Luke to that midnight meeting in the garden, in order to tell him so; but Mr. Luke, a man careful of his professional standing, had taken very prompt steps to prevent Mr.

Feversham telling anybody else. Pond, meekly and almost tremulously. Pond's paradoxes were of a very peculiar kind. They were indeed paradoxical defiances even of the law of paradox. Paradox has been defined as "Truth standing on her head to attract attention. But it must be admitted that writers, like other mendicants and mountebanks, frequently do try to attract attention. They set out conspicuously, in a single line in a play, or at the head or tail of a paragraph, remarks of this challenging kind; as when Mr.

Bernard Shaw wrote: "The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule"; or Oscar Wilde observed: "I can resist everything except temptation"; or a duller scribe not to be named with these and now doing penance for his earlier vices in the nobler toil of celebrating the virtues of Mr.

Pond said in defence of hobbies and amateurs and general duffers like himself: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. But Mr. Pond belonged to a more polite world and his paradoxes were quite different.

It was quite impossible to imagine Mr. Pond standing on his head. But it was quite as easy to imagine him standing on his head as to imagine him trying to attract attention. He was the quietest man in the world to be a man of the world; he was a small, neat Civil Servant; with nothing notable about him except a beard that looked not only old-fashioned but vaguely foreign, and perhaps a little French, though he was as English as any man alive.

But, for that matter, French respectability is far more respectable than English; and Mr. Pond, though in some ways cosmopolitan, was completely respectable. Another thing that was faintly French about him was the level ripple of his speech: a tripping monotone that never tripped over a single vowel.

For the French carry their sense of equality even to the equality of syllables. With this equable flow, full of genteel gossip on Vienna, he was once entertaining a lady; and five minutes later she rejoined her friends with a very white face; and whispered to them the shocking secret that the mild little man was mad. The peculiarity of his conversation was this: in the middle of a steady stream of sense, there would suddenly appear two or three words which seemed simply to be nonsense.

It was as if something had suddenly gone wrong with the works of a gramophone. It was nonsense which the speaker never seemed to notice himself; so that sometimes his hearers also hardly noticed that speech so natural was nonsensical. But to those who did notice, he seemed to be saying something like, "Naturally, having no legs, he won the walking-race easily," or "As there was nothing to drink, they all got tipsy at once.

The stupid because the absurdity alone stuck out from a level of intelligence that baffled them; it was indeed in itself an example of the truth in paradox. The only part of his conversation they could understand was the part they could not understand. And the clever stopped him because they knew that, behind each of these queer compact contradictions, there was a very queer story—like the queer story to be narrated here.

His friend Gahagan, that ginger-haired giant and somewhat flippant Irish dandy, declared that Pond put in these senseless phrases merely to find out whether his listeners were listening.

Pond never said so; and his motive remained rather a mystery. But Gahagan declared that there is a whole tribe of modern intellectual ladies, who have learned nothing except the art of turning on a talker a face of ardour and attention, while their minds are so very absent that some little phrase like, "Finding himself in India, he naturally visited Toronto," will pass harmlessly in at one ear and out at the other, without disturbing the cultured mind within.

It was at a little dinner given by old Wotton to Gahagan and Pond and others, that we first got a glimpse of the real meaning of these wild parentheses of so tame a talker. The truth was, to begin with, that Mr.

Pond, in spite of his French beard, was very English in his habit of assuming that he ought to be a little dull, in deference to other people. He disliked telling long and largely fantastic stories about himself, such as his friend Gahagan told, though Pond thoroughly enjoyed them when Gahagan told them. Pond himself had had some very curious experiences; but, as he would not turn them into long stories, they appeared only as short stories; and the short stories were so very short as to be quite unintelligible.

In trying to explain the eccentricity, it is best to begin with the simplest example, like a diagram in a primer of logic. And I will begin with the short story, which was concealed in the shorter phrase, which puzzled poor old Wotton so completely on that particular evening.

Wotton was an old-fashioned diplomatist, of the sort that seemed to grow more national by trying to be international. Though far from militarist, he was very military. He kept the peace by staccato sentences under a stiff grey moustache.

He had more chin than forehead. It was an old row, of course; and I expect it was six to one and half a dozen to the other. The English are the lunatics of the earth, who know that everybody else is mad. But we do sometimes differ a little from each other, you know. Even we in Ireland have been known to differ from each other. But you see the Pope denouncing the Bolshevists, or the French Revolution rending the Holy Roman Empire, and you still say in your hearts, 'What can the difference be betwixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee?

You will remember that it is distinctly recorded that they agreed. But remember what they agreed about. Wotton looked a little baffled and finally grunted: "Well, if these fellows have agreed, I suppose there will be a little peace. Men very seldom do fully and finally agree. I did know two men who came to agree so completely that one of them naturally murdered the other; but as a rule. Gahagan uttered a sort of low whoop of laughter.

I don't know what the devil he does mean; but he doesn't mean anything so sensible as that. But Wotton, in his ponderous way, still attempted to pin down the narrator to a more responsible statement; and the upshot of it was that Mr. Pond was reluctantly induced to explain what he really meant and let us hear the whole story. The mystery was involved at first in another mystery: the strange murder of Mr.

James Haggis, of Glasgow, which filled the Scottish and English newspapers not many years ago. On the face of it, the thing was a curious story; to introduce a yet more curious sequel. Haggis had been a prominent and wealthy citizen, a bailie of the city and an elder of the kirk. Nobody denied that even in these capacities he had sometimes been rather unpopular; but, to do him justice, he had often been unpopular through his loyalty to unpopular causes.

He was the sort of old Radical who is more rigid and antiquated than any Tory; and, maintaining in theory the cause of Retrenchment and Reform, he managed to suggest that almost any Reform was too expensive for the needs of Retrenchment. Thus he had stood alone in opposition to the universal support given to old Dr. Campbell's admirable campaign for fighting the epidemic in the slums during the slump.

But to deduce from his economics that he was a demon delighting in the sight of poor children dying of typhoid was perhaps an exaggerated inference.

Similarly, he was prominent in the Presbyterian councils as refusing all modern compromise with the logic of Calvinism; but to infer that he actually hoped all his neighbours were damned before they were born is too personal an interpretation of theological theory.

On the other side, he was admittedly honest in business and faithful to his wife and family; so that there was a general reaction in favour of his memory when he was found stabbed to the heart in the meagre grass of the grim little churchyard that adjoined his favourite place of worship.

It was impossible to imagine Mr. Haggis as involved in any romantic Highland feud calling for the dirk, or any romantic assignation interrupted with the stiletto; and it was generally felt that to be knifed and left unburied among the buried dead was an exaggerated penalty for being a rather narrow Scottish merchant of the old school. It happened that Mr. Pond himself had been present at a little party where there was high debate about the murder as a mystery.

His host, Lord Glenorchy, had a hobby of reading books on criminology; his hostess, Lady Glenorchy, had the less harmful hobby of reading those much more solid and scientific books which are called detective stories. Lancelot Browne, a brilliant London barrister who found it much more of a bore to be a lawyer than to pretend to be a detective; also, among those present, was the venerable and venerated Dr.

Campbell, whose work among the poor has already been inadequately commended, and a young friend of his named Angus, whom he was understood to be coaching and instructing generally for his medical examinations and his scientific career. Responsible people naturally love to be irresponsible. All these persons delighted to throw theories about in private which they need not answer for in public.

The barrister, being a humane man, was delighted to prosecute somebody whom he would not have to hang. The criminologist was enchanted to analyse the lunacy of somebody he could never have proved to be a lunatic. And Lady Glenorchy was charmed at the chance of considering poor Mr. Haggis of all people as the principal character in a shocker. Hilarious attempts were made to fix the crime on the United Presbyterian minister, a notorious Sublapsarian, naturally, nay inevitably, impelled to stick a dirk in a Supralapsarian.

Lord Glenorchy was more serious, not to say monotonous. Having learnt from his books of criminology the one great discovery of that science, that mental and moral deformity are found only among poor people, he suspected a plot of local Communists all with the wrong-shaped thumb and ear and picked for his fancy a Socialist agitator of the city.

Angus made bold to differ; his choice was an old lag, or professional criminal, known to be in the place, who had been almost everything that is alarming except a Socialist agitator. Then it was that the point was referred, not without a certain reverence, to the white-haired and wise old physician, who had now behind him a whole lifetime of charity and good works.

One of the many ways in which Dr. Campbell seemed to have emerged from an elder and perhaps honester world was the fact that he not only spoke with a Scottish accent but he spoke Scottish. His speech will, therefore, be rendered here with difficulty and in doubt and trembling. And I'll tell ye fair at the start that I winna gie a bawbee to ken wha dirked Jamie Haggis. Gin I kent, I wadna' say.

It's a sair thing, na doot, that the freens and benefactors o' puir humanity should no be named and fitly celebrated; but like the masons that built our gran' cathedral and the gran' poets that wrote our ballads of Otterburn and Sir Patrick Spens, the man that achieved the virtuous act o' killing Jamie Haggis will ha'e nae pairsonal credit for't in this world; it is even possible he might be a wee bit inconvenienced.

So ye'll get nae guesses out of me; beyond saying I've lang been seekin' a man of sic prudence and public spirit. There followed that sort of silence in which people are not certain whether to laugh, at a deliberate stroke of wit; but before they could do so, young Angus, who kept his eyes fixed on his venerable preceptor, had spoken with the eagerness of the ardent student.

Campbell, that murder is right because some acts or opinions of the murdered man are wrong? Campbell blandly. Salus populi suprema lex. The silver-haired saint of sociology continued to regard him with a wholly benevolent smile; but there was an odd gleam in his eye as he answered:.

What we doctors are beginning to ca' an Intelligence Test. Whether it was an accident, or whether the intuitions of Lady Glenorchy were a little alarmed by the seriousness of the subject, it was at this point that she struck in. Campbell won't pronounce for us, I suppose we must all stick to our own suspicions.

I don't know whether you like cigarettes in the middle of dinner; it's a fashion I can't get used to myself. At this point in his narrative, Mr. Pond threw himself back in his chair with a more impatient movement than he commonly permitted himself. Really successful hostesses. They will cut into conversation, on the theory that it can be broken off anywhere.

Just as it's quite the definition of a good hostess to make two people talk when they hate it, and part them when they are beginning to like it. But they sometimes do the most deadly and awful damage. You see, they stop conversations that are not worth starting again. And that's horrible, like murder. Cutting short its life is worse than murder; it's infanticide. It's like killing a baby that's trying to come to life.

It can never be restored to life, though one rose from the dead. A good light conversation can never be put together again when it's broken to pieces; because you can't get all the pieces. I remember a splendid talk at Trefusis's place, that began because there was a crack of thunder over the house and a cat howled in the garden, and somebody made a rather crude joke about a catastrophe. And then Gahagan here had a perfectly lovely theory that sprang straight out of cats and catastrophes and everything, and would have started a splendid talk about a political question on the Continent.

The hostess swept it all out of our heads, and then had the cheek to say afterwards that we could talk about it some other time. Could we? Could we make a contract with a cloud to break just over the roof, and tie a cat up in the garden and pull its tail at the right moment, and give Gahagan just enough champagne to inspire him with a theory so silly that he's forgotten it already? It was then or never with that debate being started; and yet bad results enough followed from it being stopped.

But that, as they say, is another story. Trefusis said," murmured Mr. Pond sadly. But if you're really interested in the other matter, I don't mind telling you all about it; though I'd rather not tell you exactly how I came to know all about it.

That was rather a confidential matter—what they call a confession. Pardon my little interlude on the tactful hostess; it had something to do with what followed and I have a reason for mentioning it.

A mere trifle, too light and airy to recur to our minds at any other time. But there was another trifle that did recur to my own mind afterwards; and kept my attention on a murder of which I might have thought little enough at the time, as De Quincey says. I remembered once looking up Glenorchy in Who's Who, and seeing that he had married the daughter of a very wealthy squire near Lowestoft in Suffolk.

These are dark hints," said Gahagan. If she had introduced the cigarettes at her father's dinner-table in Suffolk, such trifles as the Ten Commandments would instantly have been tossed away from everyone's mind and memory. But I knew I was in Scotland and that the story had only just begun. I have told you that old Campbell was tutoring or coaching young Angus for his medical degree.

It was a great honour for a lad like Angus to have Campbell for a coach; but it must have been quite agreeable even to an authority like Campbell to have Angus for a pupil. For he had always been a most industrious and ambitious and intelligent pupil, and one likely to do the old man credit; and after the time I speak of, he seemed to grow more industrious and ambitious than ever. In fact, he shut himself up so exclusively with his coach that he failed in his examination.

That was what first convinced me that my guess was right. Pond; frwiki Les Paradoxes de M. Joan, now married to Gahagan, appears in the framing sequence of mr. Pondplease sign up. One can enjoy the verbal wit in such stories, but the plot-lines are thought-experiments in the barest form. In this case he should have been exiled for being important; but he was so very important that nobody could be told of his importance. This collection of short mrpond regarding this titular government employee and his tendency to speak within paradoxes illustrates the Wittegensteinan notion that the meaning of the speaker is not always immediately grasped by the person listening to the story.

Pond takes the whole thing of paradoxes to a new level. But well worth it, and he inserts philosophical musings on all sorts of things — friendship, men, women, love, conversation, etc — into the writing, via the enigmatic story-teller Mr Pond. Jun 15, Matthew fe it really liked it Shelves: Takes a bit of attention to read bc Chesterton is an early 20thC journalist from the Uk, steeped in the classical tradition, his writing is a bit more dense but very lyrical, and his plots are complicated and take time to build up.

I enjoyed it almost more than Father Brown. And so it goes with the Paradoxes of Als. Quotes from The Paradoxes of It meant that in ancient Athens a man was sometimes exiled merely for being important; and the votes were recorded by oyster -shells.