CHAPTER IX. ‑Crome yellow

In Chap­ter IX of “Crome Yel­low,” we’re intro­duced to Mr. Bod­i­ham, the rec­tor ensconced in his study, enveloped in an atmos­phere steeped in shades of brown, from the var­nished fur­ni­ture to the the­o­log­i­cal tomes that pop­u­late his book­shelves. The light strug­gles to pen­e­trate the room, mir­ror­ing the gloom per­vad­ing Mr. Bod­i­ham’s spir­it. As a fig­ure marked by an iron-like stern­ness and grav­i­ty, he embod­ies the devout preach­er, his metal­lic fea­tures sug­gest­ing a rigid­i­ty of belief and demeanor that seems almost inhu­man.

Return­ing from a ser­mon that felt as futile as yelling into a void, Mr. Bod­i­ham is dis­il­lu­sioned. His con­gre­ga­tion at Crome, accus­tomed to his fer­vor, remains unaf­fect­ed, their hearts likened to india-rub­ber, imper­vi­ous to his metaphor­i­cal flail. On this day, his ser­mon sought to instill a dread of God’s wrath—an attempt to shake his parish­ioners from their com­pla­cen­cy and make them con­tem­plate the severe mer­cies of an almighty God.

Haunt­ed by the appar­ent futil­i­ty of his years-long endeav­or to pre­pare his flock for the Sec­ond Coming—a theme he pre­vi­ous­ly expound­ed upon through the lens of war, pesti­lence, and the decay of moral society—Mr. Bod­i­ham reflects bit­ter­ly on the lack of vis­i­ble signs from heav­en. Despite his rig­or­ous analy­sis and the painstak­ing con­nec­tions he draws between cur­rent events and bib­li­cal prophe­cy, the world remains unchanged, indif­fer­ent to the por­tents he per­ceives. His 1914 ser­mon, which he revis­its with a mix of hope and des­per­a­tion, posi­tions the war as a pre­cur­sor to the end times, with each detail of his inter­pre­ta­tion drawn sharply against the back­drop of con­tin­ued glob­al unrest.

The sud­den entry of Mrs. Bod­i­ham, almost ghost-like in her pale­ness, inter­rupts his brood­ing. She hands him an enve­lope con­tain­ing a cat­a­logue from “The House of Shee­ny, Cler­i­cal Out­fit­ters,” a stark, almost jar­ring con­trast to the apoc­a­lyp­tic con­tent of his thoughts. The cat­a­logue, with its ornate and eccle­si­as­ti­cal flour­ish­es, seems an anachro­nism, a triv­ial mat­ter in the face of the pro­found spir­i­tu­al cri­sis Mr. Bod­i­ham is expe­ri­enc­ing.

This chap­ter offers a vivid por­trait of Mr. Bod­i­ham: a man caught between the unyield­ing grip of his con­vic­tions and the dis­heart­en­ing real­i­ty of indif­fer­ence that greets his impas­sioned pleas. Through the somber set­ting of his study, his ser­mon loaded with dire warn­ings, and the abrupt shift to the mun­dane inter­rup­tion, we’re shown a char­ac­ter wrestling with the weight of his belief in the immi­nence of divine judg­ment and the seem­ing imper­vi­ous­ness of the world around him to this impend­ing reck­on­ing.