'The Unclean Spirit' - Humphrey Gilkes

In Humphrey Gilkes’ The Unclean Spirit (1937), Peter is the thirteen year old son of an unworldly clergyman and an ambitious mother. The father is also a composer, whose work is published and performed, and Peter too has musical ability, enjoying playing the violin. But a bicycle accident and a later uncanny shock make him an invalid, paralysed in one leg and morbidly in fear of having fits in public.

Sent to Brighton for his health, he encounters Lady Bending, a redoubtable old trout somewhat in the manner of Bertie Wooster’s fearsome aunts, who improves his condition by a brusque approach, and encourages positive thinking. His mother is pleased to become acquainted with a titled lady, even when it emerges she is not a peeress but the widow of a knighted tradesman.

Lady Bending is associated with a group called the Theogonists, who believe that ‘women are God’, and that they can exercise a compelling psychic influence on their sons, thus directing public affairs by unseen, unknowable means.  This is no mere metaphor, nor an expression of social roles, but a sort of occult teaching, a craft. The society has its origins, or at least inspiration, in the Himalayas, and it seems likely it is intended as a mild spoof of the Theosophists. The book is dedicated to ‘Millicent Gilkes, who laughs at the Theogonists’: it is not clear whether because she does not believe in them, or finds the idea all too true, but I suspect an implication of the latter. 

But this is not the only idea advanced by characters to cure the boy: by the end of the book there is a converging array of them. The gardener remembers an old herbal remedy of his mother’s, who sounds like she might have been a witch; the parson carries guilt from a youthful indiscretion and thinks the boy is possessed by demons as a result. He consults an old book for clergymen on how to tackle evil spirits and prepares for an exorcism. Meanwhile, his brother has come on a visit from Africa, where he was a tobacco-planter, and remembers a ritual used by witch doctors there.

Gilkes adroitly manoeuvres all these schemes together in a deft conclusion that leaves open which, if any, of them might be responsible for healing the boy. As he was himself a senior medical man, we might assume that he intends to mock these alternative and rather outré practices. But that is not quite what comes across. The doctors themselves, despite some common sense and patience, are not shown to be particularly effectual, and come in for some trenchant remarks from Lady Bending, who had been a hospital matron.  The Theogonist workings seem to have at least a temporary effect and a fortifying influence. Any one of the other cures might have played their part. The novel treats all the possibilities with a certain respect, even if tinged with irony, and their advocates are shown to be sincere. 

The book therefore deals with uncanny and supernatural elements at face value but without definitely endorsing their reality. Similarly, the title is subtly ambiguous. It appears to be a phrase from a rite of exorcism, implying a psychic malaise or spiritual possession, but might also be taken to refer to ‘unclean’ in a strictly hygienic sense, or be deployed sardonically as a critical description of the sort of mental atmosphere that can generate such nostrums.

According to a draft biographical notice online, the author seems to be Humphrey Arthur Gilkes MC & Three Bars (13 October 1895 – 11 July 1945), a British soldier and doctor, one of only four men to be awarded four Military Crosses, in his case because of dangerous and daring reconnaissance work beyond the front line. Like the boy in his story, he was a keen amateur violinist. 

He had attended Dulwich College, where his father, Arthur Herman Gilkes, was the Master (ie headmaster): an affectionate description of the school appears in the early pages of the novel. P G Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler were students here while his father was Master, while C S Forester would have been a younger contemporary of his there, four years his junior.  His father, in addition to educational textbooks, was also the author of several novels for boys.

After the war Gilkes read medicine at Oxford and qualified as a doctor at Bart’s, and later joined the Colonial Service as a Medical Officer, first in Northern Rhodesia then in Trinidad. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in WW2, serving in East Africa, and was killed in an aeroplane crash at Djibouti. An earlier novel, Black (1935), draws on his colonial experiences.

The writing in The Unclean Spirit is assured, the characterisation shrewd, the insight into the boy’s mind sensitive, and the development of the plot plausible. There is a certain breezy scepticism about human affairs, too blithe to be outright cynicism, but with the tone of a man who is well-accustomed to observing a range of foibles. At the same time the author understands and sympathises with less worldly yearnings such as the love of music and the love of nature.

In some ways the mood is not unlike Denton Welch’s later A Voice Through A Cloud (1950), the autobiographical novel about the aftermath of his bicycle accident, and the flurry of his friends and relations around his recovery. It also seems probable that Humphrey Gilkes was exploring in the book contrasting aspects of his own character: and it offers, alongside its inventive satirical drive, a certain pensive, inward quality. 

(Mark Valentine)