The Club of Queer Trades

by G.K.Chesterton




Chapter 1

The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown

Rabelais, or his wild illustrator Gustave Dore, must have had
something to do with the designing of the things called flats in
England and America. There is something entirely Gargantuan in the
idea of economising space by piling houses on top of each other,
front doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those
perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in
one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of
the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance
that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing
attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. The passer-by is
only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro
Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel, and
passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the
twilight corridors of a dream. If the Thugs set up a Strangers'
Assassination Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk
Street, and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries,
no inquiries would be made. And the Club of Queer Trades reigns in
a great edifice hidden like a fossil in a mighty cliff of fossils.