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A. J. Cronin (1896-1981) - in full Archibald Joseph Cronin |
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Scottish novelist, an accomplished storyteller, who practised as a doctor over a decade before devoting himself entirely to writing. A. J. Cronin gained his fame initially with Hatter's Castle (1931), the story of the megalomanic James Brodie, a Scottish hatmaker and his foolish dreams of social acceptance. The Citadel (1937), a progressive novel published by Gollancz, had the biggest sales of any book of the 1930s. Cronin produced several bestsellers drawing from his experiences as a doctor – his most famous character was Dr Finlay Hyslop. Some of his works had religious themes, like The Keys of the Kingdom (1942), which was also made into a film, starring Gregory Peck. Cronin continued to write until he was in his eightieth year. "In the recollections of those who, like myself, have ventured into descriptions of their early years, nothing has bored me more than those long, tedious, and particularized listings of the books the author has read and which led, in the end, to the formation of a literary taste that was demonstrably excellent. For this reason I refrain from presenting a catalogue and state simply that I read everything." (A Song of Sixpence by A. J. Cronin, London: The Book Club, 1964, p. 113) Archibald
Joseph Cronin was born in Cardross, Strathclyde, the
only
child of Jessie Montgomerie, a Protestant, and Patrick Cronin,
a Catholic of Irish origin. Their "mixed marriage" was not approved by
all Cronins and Montgomeries. Within the family, the young
Archibald was referred
to as "Rufus" because if his hair colour. The
death of his father of phthisis pulmonalis in 1904, and powerty and
loneliness, shadowed Cronin's childhood. His mother tried
to struggle forward alone, but was eventually forced to return to her
parents'
home. Cronin's talent for story telling was recognized early. He won
many
writing competition at Dumberton Academy, where he was sent at his
uncle's expense. In addition, Cronin was an all-round sportsman,
particularly fond of playing football – one of his schoolfrends later
said that he was the best left-winger
the academy ever had. When the family moved to Glasgow, Cronin
continued
his studies at St. Aloysius' College. In 1914 Cronin entered the
University of Glasgow Medical School in Scotland. During World War
I Cronin served as a surgeon in the Royal Navy, becoming a
sub-lieutenant. After the war Cronin worked as a ship's surgeon on a liner
bound for
India, and then served in various hospitals. In 1921 Cronin married his
early love, Agnes Mary Gibson. What Agnes saw when they first met at
Glasgow Medical
School was a lanky young man; Cronin was just over six feet
tall, he had greenish eyes, and he spoke with a
soft voice. (A. J.
Cronin: The Man Who Created Dr Finlay by Alan Davies, Richmond, Surrey: Alma Books, 2011, p.
11) With his wife, who was also a
doctor but apparently she never practiced, Cronin left Scotland and
moved to Tregenny, a small mining town in South Wales, and then to
Tredegar, where they spent three years. To get to Cardiff to work in
the pathology laboratory, Cronin rode a motorcycle. He was awarded from
the University of Glasgow an M.B. and Ch.B, and in 1923 he received a
diploma in public health. The next year Cronin was
appointed Medical Inspector of Mines. At this time, his focus was on
researching occupational diseases in the coal industry. In 1925, Cronin was awarded a doctor degree from the
University of Glasgow for his dissertation, entitled The History of Aneurysm. He
subsequently started to practise in the working-class section of
Notting Hill, London. However, he also had well-to-do patients outside
the area. For them he invented a new disease, asthenia: "Asthenia gave
these bored and idle women an interest in life. My tonics braced their
languid nerves. I dieted them, insisted on a regime of moderate
exercise and early hours." (Doctors in Fiction: Lessons from Literature
by Borys Surawicz and Beverly Jacobson, Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2009, p. 42) Cronin's
heath broke down in 1930 and he sold his practice. He never practiced again. "Why do you men take white mice and canaries down the mine? To test for black damp—you all know that. And when these mice get finished by a whiff of gas—do you call that cruelty? No, you don't. You realize that these animals have been used to save men's lives, perhaps your own lives." (The Citadel by A. J. Cronin, London: Victor Gollancz, seventeeth impression, 1939. p. 226) Cronin's experiences in the mining communities formed the basis for The Stars Look Down (1935) and The Citadel. They made Cronin famous in the United States, and inspired the director King Vidor's film version of the latter novel. Robert Donat was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as the idealistic Dr. Andrew Manson. According to a Gallup Poll, The Citadel – it sold 40,083 copies in nine days – "impressed" more people than any other book except the Bible. It's quite possible that Cronin's arguments for social justice and a better health system contributed to the victory of the Labour Party in 1945 and creating the NHS. Whilst convalescing from gastric ulcers in the West Highlands of Scotland, he started to write his 250,000-word novel, Hatter's Castle. Much of its material derived from his frustration with the medical system and bureaucracy in England, though the story tells of a hatter in a Small Scottish town, who destroys himself and a number of others in his struggle to regain his lost stature. Cronin once threw the manuscript away, believing it would not be good. It was found by a local farmer, digging a ditch which his father had dug without finishing the work. Eventually Cronin completed his own effort. The book was an immediate success in Britain and was filmed in
1941.
After its publication accusations were made, that Cronin had
plagiarized George Douglas Brown's novel The House With the Green
Shutters (1901).
Cronin had read the book in his youth. His publisher Victor Gollancz
denied plagiariasm and said: "We constantly get manuscripts in which
there are startling resemblances to other books, and we find that
perhaps an author of fifty had read the book in question as a
schoolboy..." (A. J.
Cronin: The Man Who Created Dr Finlay, p.
103) Nevertheless, the novel allowed Cronin to give up
practicing medicine in favour of writing. The Stars Look Down was
a socially charged novel, which examined injustices in a North England
mining community. Carol Reed's film adaptation, starring Michael
Redgrave, was praised by the writer Graham Greene
in The Spectator (26 January, 1940): "Dr Cronin's mining novel has produced a very good film – I doubt
whether in England we have ever produced a better." (Graham Greene Film Reader: Reviews, essays, Interviews & Film Stories, edited by David Parkinson, New York, NY: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 1994, p. 366) Generally The Stars Look Down was
regarded as the first British film with social relevance. Vigil in the Night, first published in Good Housekeeping in 1939, was filmed by George Stevens in 1940, starring Carole Lombard, Anne Shirley, and Brian Aherne. In this romantic melodrama Lombard played a dedicated nurse in a provincial hospital in England, who sacrifices herself for her sister, but then finds work in a large hospital. Cronin's stories inspired also such directors as Victor Saville (The Green Years), Philip Leacock (The Spanish Gardener), and Jack Cardiff (Beyond This Place). In 1939 Cronin moved with his family to the United States,
where he
first settled in Greenwich, Connecticut, then in New Canaan. In the new
surroundings, he wrote The Keys of the Kingdom,
a story of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Francis Chisholm, who spends
years as a missionary in China. Father Chisholm becomes familiar with
the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, adopts a simple way
of life, and advocates ecumenical cooperation between all Christians.
His tolerance is viewed with suspicion within the institutional Church
by his superiors. David O. Selznick had bought the screen rights to the novel in 1941 for $100,000, but he did not want to do the film with Gregory Peck. However, Darryl F. Zanuck, production chief at 20th Century-Fox, was convinced that Peck was right for the role of Father Francis Chisholm (after viewing some of the rushes featuring Peck in Days of Glory), ignoring the fact that in the book Chisholm aged to a little old man, whereas the Hollywood star was tall and impressingly handsome. Nunnally Johnson had written earlier the screenplay and it was revised by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The principal photography on the Fox studio lot took six months. With its $3 million budget Keys was one of the most expensive pictures of the year. Cronin himself was satisfied with the result and praised both adaptation and Peck's performance – the actor later said that he had been helped by a Catholic missionary, Father O'Hara, who had lived eight years in China. Peck was voted for an Oscar nomination for best actor. The New York Times observed: "Not since Clark Gable crashed upon the screen over a dozen years ago has the arrival of a young leading man created as much commotion as did that of Gregory Peck as the saintly and human Father Chisholm." (Gregory Peck: A Biography by Gary Fishgall, New York: Scribner, 2002, p. 94) Catholic faith was also the central subject in The Minstrel Boy (1975). The narrator is Alec, who follows through decades of disasters and triumphs of his friend, Desmonde Fitzgerald, a young priest. Alec becomes a doctor and a successful writer. Desmonde wins a singing competition and his marvelous voice opens the doors to music for him, and later to Hollywood films. But he also must solve his relationship with the beautiful and wretched Claire, whom he has married, leaving his career within the organization of the Church. Again Cronin's hero must find his true calling in life. Desmonde rejects fame and glory, and also the golf club at Bel Air and the Racquet Club at Palm Springs. During his long walks on Malibu Beach he realizes the emptiness of his life: "Few people use this stretch, far from the swimming beach and bathing huts, and I encounter only the regulars: Charles Chaplin, too enwrapped in his own genius to be conscious of anyone but himself, and a tall, strongly built man who walks slowly, reading, but who occasionally nods and smiles to me as we pass. These apart, one can fond solitude, and here I walk, struggling with myself and with my own unhappy thoughts." (Ibid., p. 267) Eventually Desmonde goes to Madras to work amongst the neglected and homeless children of the Untouchables. Although English books were forbidden in Germany during World War II, Cronin's works dealing with mining communities were in 1943 on display in Dresden's bookstores for propaganda reasons. After the war Cronin traveled with his family in Europe. In the autobiographical book Adventures in Two Worlds (1952) Cronin returned to his experiences as a doctor in Scotland and South Wales, and examined his religious beliefs in the last chapters. Cronin tells how he rediscovered his Catholic background in the 1930s. At school Cronin had grown away from religion – he had been teased because of his Catholic faith, and he started to feel disgust for bigotry. Cronin's own dream was brotherhood between people and ecumenical understanding between different churches, not tearing rivalry. This spirit of conciliation marked all his books dealing with questions of faith. A person of many interests, Cronin loved traveling, golfing, gardening and fishing. Among his favorite writers were Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Francis Brett Young and H.G. Wells. His companion in later life was Margaret Jennings ("Nan"), a qualified nurse and his secretary. By 1958 the sales of Cronin's novels amounted to
seven million in
the United States, but his Dickensian humanism and social realism made
him popular in the Soviet Union, too. In Poland, the pro-communist
Catholic organization PAX published The
Citadel, The Keys of the
Kingdom, and The Stars Look
Down
in the 1950s, in spite of the state's reluctance to spread western
literature. The forewords were not written in praise of the
Scottish novelist. "Let us make one thing clear: Cronin has fallen
behind. Even more clearly: he was never in the forefront," said Zygmunt
Lichniak at the beginning of The
Citadel. (Censorship,
Translation and English Language Fiction in People’s Poland by
Robert Looby, 2015, Leiden: Brill, pp. 105-106) A Song of Sixpence (1964) and A Pocketful of Rye
(1969) juxtaposed the early years
of
poverty of the hero, Laurence Carroll, with the posh live he has at a
clinic in Switzerland. The television series Dr Finlay's Casebook(1959-66,
new adaptation 1993), set in the 1920s was based on Cronin's stories.
It became one of the most popular series on British television, but
Cronin himself never saw the show. It success astonished him. For the last 25 years of his life Cronin lived in Switzerland, where resided in Lucerne near the actress Audrey Hepburn, and became the godfather of her first son. His other friends included Laurence Olivier and Charles Chaplin. Moreover, Cronin had homes on the French Riviera and in Bermuda, and he enjoyed the many summers he spent in Blue Hill, Maine. Due to his phobia of the press (and life long shyness), he turned down interview requests. Cronin died of bronchitis on January 9, 1981, in Glion, Switzerland, a clinic near Montreux. For further reading: 'Losing His Religion: the Neglected Catholicism of A.J. Cronin' by Gerard Carruthers, in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. 45: Iss. 2 (2019); 'AJ Cronin: Novelist, GP, and Visionary' by Roger Jones, in The British Journal of General Practice, Volume 65:Number 638 (September, 2015); A.J. Cronin: The Man Who Created Dr Finlay by Alan Davies (2011); 'Cronin, A.J,' in Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Fiction: From C.S. Lewis to Left Behind by Nancy M. Tischler (2009); Doctors in Fiction: Lessons from Literature by Borys Surawicz and Beverly Jacobson (2009); 'Politics and the Medical Hero' by Ross McKibbin, in English Historical Review Vol. CXXIII No. 502 (2008); A. J. Cronin: The Man Who Created Dr Finlay by lan Davies (2001); 'Cronin, A. J.,' in World Authors 1900-1950, Volume 1, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); A.J. Cronin by Dale Salwak (1985); A.J. Cronin: A Reference Guide by D. Salwalk (1984); Adventures in Two Worlds by A. J. Cronin (1952); Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches 1930-1947, edited by Matthwe Hoehn (1947). Selected works:
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