I recently had the pleasure of reading one of the most horrifying books I have ever read: The Double Life of Mr Alfred Burton. It was written by the delightful E Phillips Oppenheim, who also wrote one of my favourite tales of mistaken identity, The Great Impersonation.

Double Life, however, is in no danger of becoming a favourite book. In fact, I should be afraid to read it again.

The story concerns the eponymous Cockney, a man who rather fancies loud colours and wears “eight and sixpenny trousers … with the
blue stripe and the grease stains”, and sports a “sham diamond stud” and “three inches of pinned on cuff”. After eating an unusual bean from a small tree, he develops a sense of the aesthetic and a compulsion to tell the truth. This transforms his life. Unable to find happiness in his garish home and surroundings, he joins the stratum of society appreciative of fine things. But alas, the effects of the bean begin to wear off. Mr Burton had neglected to eat a leaf of the tree. By the time he finds this out, the tree is lost and he is doomed to revert to his former self. The description of the transformation is terrible.

In the end, Mr Alfred Burton is unable to keep up his high-brow life because he is unable to keep his values. First his values slip away from his grasp. Then his life slips away. Oppenheim makes the point that what we cherish defines us, and when what we love changes profoundly, we might almost be said to be different people.

Although in The Double Life the change is brought about instantaneously and is undone almost as rapidly, we can all point to changes in our own values that have happened almost unconsciously over a period of time.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Paul exhorts all of us to “cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9, NIV) and even lays down a love of what is good as a requisite for elders.

I found The Double Life to be helpful. It portrays the transformation that occurs when one ceases to love what is good. In real life, the change may be slow, but it would be just as horrifying as the transformation that awaits Mr Alfred Burton in the last few pages of Oppenheim’s novel.