1899

The Uncertainty of Christopher

Anonymous short story and illustration from Pick-Me-Up (1 April 1899).

The magazine Pick-Me-Up, as we have noted above, took an interest in cinema from 1896, and that early interest continued sporadically. The story below is perhaps the most provocative film-related item that I have seen in this risqué publication, mixing as it does sex and religion. The story could well be a lampoon of one of the first clerics to become interested in cinema, the Reverend Wilson Carlile, for the name “Crawl” in the story is quite similar to Carlile, and the name of Carlile’s church, St. Mary-at-Hill, is similar to St. Anne’sunder-the-hill in this story version. Carlile was well-known and controversial for projecting lantern slides in his church as a means of attracting larger congregations, and later he gained further notoriety for projecting films during his services.⁹ However, his use of film only seems to have started a year or two after this story was published, so perhaps the story anticipated the fact? A similar plot was used in a play at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in the autumn of that year, with a respectable man publicly disgraced when a film of him with a dancer is shown, though in that case he is filmed unknowingly, rather than with the element of coercion which is the disquieting element here (the latter theme also appears in the Apollinaire story in our 1907 section).¹⁰

Peradventure it was but to test his soul. For two years, twice told, had Christopher been curate at St. Anne’sunder-the-Hill, and no other curate could compare with him for meekness, and a general disregard of personal comfort. He for ever marked against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and he told the prettiest young ladies that he hoped to win the crown of martyrdom. He even discussed methods of torture with the matrons, and was enthusiastic, in his mild way, over the drawing of one’s toenails and of tying the wounded toes to a lighted match.

Burning at the stake he considered would give no martyr a fair opportunity of showing how much he could suffer, and even the Chinese system of cutting off small pieces of meat daily while the victim is retained with his toes in his mouth after the fashion of whiting on table he considered was far too easy a death, for the true martyr. And the ladies about St. Anne’s adored him, and the men – the men did not.

Yet one night while he was returning to his peaceful nest after seeing a fair sister – sister only in the church – home, he was encountered by four masked men, who, threatening him with pistols, made him enter a closed carriage, and then drove off with him, whereto he never knew.

Two hours later they alighted and forced him to go into a great gloomy house, heeding not his prayers, nor his threats. In a room wherein they stood, masked and mysterious, they compelled him to take off his clerical attire, and don that of a Pierrot. At first he refused, but the lighted end of a cigar applied to the nape of his neck decided him to do the bidding of the wretches.

His day of martyrdom had not dawned yet, he told himself, when it came it must be that all the world should see it, and be thereby strengthened. Now, such an example as he would show would be lost.

Then, when clad à la Pierrot, there came dancing to him a girl in short skirts, whom he was ordered to smile at and to kiss. Vainly he refused; hot cigars threatened him, a steel fork found out how thin were his clothes, and he knew that for a while martyrdom must be postponed. The agony struck deep into his heart, and he was as water.

“Smile at her and then go up and kiss her," cried a voice in his ear, and the click of pistols chorussed [sic] the request so that his reverence did all this as well as he could...