Stanley Weyman (1855-1928) A brief survey

On 31st January 2020 B.C. (Before Coronavirus), we were in one of our favourite Market Towns - Ludlow. It was to watch the unveiling of a Blue Plaque to Stanley John Weyman  (fittingly for him, it was on the wall of his family home in Broad Street, now the H.Q. of the local Conservative Association). There was a decent crowd gathered who, sensibly, afterwards betook of goodly refreshments in The Angel opposite. Also there, was Jim Lawley, who had written an Appendix to a recent re-publication of one of Weyman's best works: Ovington's Bank (by the Ludlow book publishers Merlin Unwin Books, 2018 ISBN 978-1-910723-82-1); and members of the present Weyman family.

   

Broad Street, Ludlow

Evelyn Weyman and family

It was in March 2005 that I and two American friends, one of whom - Donna - was as keen on Weyman as I was/am - visited Llanrhyd Church and adjoining churchyard where Stanley and his wife are buried. This was in the company of another Stanley Weyman, the author's great-nephew (and named after him). Alas. the great-nephew died not that long after, but his widow, Evelyn, and her family were at Ludlow nearly 15 years later.

Weyman's grave at Llanrhyd

Although Weyman called his novels and short stories pleasant fables, he was known as The Prince of Romance in his heyday - from 1890 until c.1908. His later books, from 1919 until 1928 (the last one published posthumously), perhaps showed even greater depths of character drawing. Graham Greene, in a BBC interview in 1970, said The key books in my life included Anthony Hope, Rider Haggard...and I do occasionally re-read them. Stanley Weyman in particular. Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde, amongst other writers, admired Weyman's works. Donna Rudin, my companion in 2005, had already set up a website in 2001 devoted to Weyman, subtitled "Prince of Romance", which was stimulated by her, by chance, picking up his A Gentleman of France and being hooked from then on. I recall reading several Weyman novels whilst at prep school in the wilds of Berkshire, linking him with John Buchan and Baroness Orczy as firm favourites.

In the 1970s I collected and read a few of his books in the Pan paperbacks. I then bought the entire 24 volumes of the Thin Paper edition, which had in the first story, The House of the Wolf, a General Preface by the author,which explained his motives and methods of writing.  The collecting of first editions and ephemera had to wait another decade or so. Now, I have just spent a week scanning the covers and title pages of my entire Weyman Collection, prior to private publication of an illustrated booklet. *  I have also brought them all together on a couple of shelves and am determined to read some of them again before the year is out, starting with Ovington's Bank. Favourites? It is a long time since I re-read them, but I do remember liking some of the later ones set in England: besides Ovington's Bank, there were The Castle Inn, Starvecrow Farm, Chippinge and The Great House. Future Blogs will certainly comment on my reading.

U.K. First Editions I hold of Weyman's novels

1890  The House of the Wolf    1891  The Story of Francis Cludde

1891  The New Rector (2 vols.)    1893  A Gentleman of France (3 vol.s)    

1894  The Man in Black    1894  Under the Red Robe (2 vols.)    

1895  The Red Cockade    1898 Shrewsbury

1898  The Castle Inn    1900  Sophia    

1901  Count Hannibal    1902  In Kings' Byways    

1903  The Long Night    1904  The Abbess of Vlaye    

1905  Starvecrow Farm    1906  Chippinge    

1907  Laid up in Lavender    1908  The Wild Geese    

1919  The Great House **    1922  Ovington's Bank

1924  The Traveller in the Fur Cloak **    1925  Queen's Folly **

1928  The Lively Peggy **                                   

U.S.A. First Editions I hold of Weyman's novels

1891  The King's Strategem    1895  The Snowball    

1895  A Little Wizard    1898  The Castle Inn 

1897  For the Cause     1899  When Love Calls

1903  The Long Night **    1905  Starvecrow Farm  **

1919  Madam Constantia (as Jefferson Carter) **

1919  The Great House **   1924  The Traveller in the Fur Cloak **

1925  Queen's Folly **    1928  The Lively Peggy ** 

** = with dust wrapper

*  A Collector's Illustrated Bibliography series, published under my imprint Greenmantle Books.

2014  The First Editions of Constance Holme (2nd. ed. 2018)

2914  The First Editions of Susan Buchan (Susan Tweedsmuir) (2nd. ed. 2018)

2014  The First Editions of  Alfred Duggan

2014  The First Editions of Maurice Walsh

2015  Nineteenth Century Historical Novels from 1327 to 1485 (Edward III to Richard III)

          Part I: 1822-1882 Part II: 1884-1897 Part III: 1898-1905 Part IV: 1905-1917

2016  The First Editions of Josephine Tey/Gordon Daviot 

2019  The First Editions of John Meade Falkner

2020  The First Editions of Robert H. Forster

2020  Nineteenth Century Historical Novels on Lollardy 1822-1905

and 

2020  Buchanalia: A Private Collection of John Buchan's Works (and other Literature  associated with him and his Family) - regularly updated.

Three-deckers in my Library

Stimulated by my last post about Mudie's Circulating Library and the 'tyranny' of the three-decker, I thought I would tot up my own collection of three-volume novels, all in first edition, bar one set.                                            Hence the list below:

Sir Walter Scott:
1815    Guy Mannering  (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; and Archibald Constable)
1816    The Antiquary  (Archibald Constable; and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown)
1818    Rob Roy  (Archibald Constable; and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown)
1820    Ivanhoe (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1820    The Monastery (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; Archibald Constable;                       John Ballantyne)
1820    The Abbot  (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; Archibald Constable;                              John Ballantyne)
1821    Kenilworth (Archibald Constable; John Ballantyne; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1822    The Pirate (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1822    The Fortunes of Nigel (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1822    Peveril of the Peak (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1823    Quentin Durward (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1824    St. Ronan's Well (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1824    Redgauntlet (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1826    Woodstock (Archibald Constable; Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green)
1828    Chronicles of the Canongate: Second Series - The Fair Maid of Perth (Cadell and Co.;
            Simpkin and Marshall)
1829    Anne of Geierstein (Cadell and Co.; Simpkin and Marshall)

4 volumes
1818    Tales of My Landlord: Second Series - The Heart of Mid-Lothian (Archibald Constable)
1819    Tales of My Landlord: Third Series -  The Bride of Lammermoor; A Legend of Montrose
            (Archibald Constable; Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; Hurst, Robinson, and Co.)
1825    Tales of the Crusaders - The Betrothed; The Talisman (Archibald Constable; Hurst, 
            Robinson, and Co.)
1832    Tales of My Landlord: Fourth and Last Series - Count Robert of Paris; Castle            
           Dangerous (Robert Cadell; Whittaker and Co.)

Susan Ferrier
1818    Marriage (William Blackwood) (2nd. ed. 1819) (2 of 3 vols of 1st ed.)
1824    The Inheritance (William Blackwood)
1831    Destiny or The Chief's Daughter (Robert Cadell)

John Galt
1822    The Entail (William Blackwood)

Anonymous (Thomas Gaspey)
1822    The Lollards (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown)

Major Michel
1841    Henry of Monmouth or the Field of Agincourt (Saunders and Otley)
1842    Trevor Hastings, or the Battle of Tewkesbury (Saunders and Otley)

Edward Bulwer-Lytton
1843    The Last of the Barons (Saunders and Otley)

G.P.R. James
1844    Agincourt (Richard Bentley)
1844    Arabella Stuart (Richard Bentley)
1849    The Woodman (T.C. Newby)

John Brent
1845    The Battle Cross (T.C. Newby)

Rev. R.W. Morgan
1853    Raymond de Monthault (Richard Bentley)

Benjamin Disraeli
1870    Lothair (Longmans, Green and Co.)

William Harrison Ainsworth
1874    Merry England or Nobles and Serfs (Tinsley Brothers)

Stanley Weyman
1893    A Gentleman of France (Longmans, Green, and Co.)

Mudie's Circulating Library 1842-1937

On my recent visit to London, just before everything 'shut down', I did my usual book-hunting trawl of Charing Cross Road and Cecil Court. Nothing took my eye or, rather, nothing I was prepared to pay the asking price for. Just one book, for £4.00, did not escape: Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel by Guinevere L. Griest (David & Charles, 1970), which I found in the basement of Quinto/Francis Edwards. I dimly recalled occasionally seeing the yellow stickers on some volumes, proclaiming their source from Mudie's Emporium, but W.H. Smith's and Boot's lending libraries sprang more readily to mind.

Griest's book is a fascinating (well, not fascinating perhaps, but eye-opening) account of how Charles Edward Mudie (born in 1818 in Chelsea), son of a small newspaper and stationer seller, set up a circulating library in Southampton Row (then Upper King Street) in 1842. Adding the word 'Select' to its name and excluding certain books for 'moral reasons', he tapped a ready and increasing literate market. In 1852, he moved to larger premises on the corner of New Oxford Street and Museum Street. He used two, successful, methods which quickly made his library almost synonymous with the novel in Victorian England. He advertised extensively 'the principal New and Choice Books in circulation, itemizing the Constant Succession of the Best New Books, Exchangeable at Pleasure';  and, secondly, he acquired new works rapidly and in large quantities. Between 1853 and 1862, he added almost 960,000 volumes, nearly half being fiction. By 1900, he had acquired more than seven and a half million books.

Charles Edward Mudie

Branches opened in the City, Birmingham and Manchester; deals were made to supply book clubs and societies and provincial libraries. However, in 1858, he refused to start libraries on W.H. Smith's railway bookstalls. This forced Smith to set up a competing business which lasted until 1961, long after Mudie's closed on 12th July 1937. The latter's stock was bought by Harrod's and the Emporium remained empty until destroyed by German air raids in the Second World War.

One of Griest's chapters is entitled Mudie's and the Three-Decker. I found this the most interesting, as I have collected over the years a fair few three-volume novels. The term triple-decker was derived from the 18th century three-decked ships. In the 18th century, novels could be anything from two to seven volumes. Sir Walter Scott, with his three-deckers between 1814 and 1832, did much to promote the fashion. Novelists realised that the way to establishing a reputation lay through the circulating library, and almost the only way was through the three-, or more rarely, the two-volume issue. The downside was that this often led to 'padding' - writers needing to reach 150,000-250,000 words. Even though a less expensive, one-volume edition would be issued a year later, the latter seem 'cheap', even questionable; exceptions were novels of religion (Emily Holt?) and of adventure. It was the three-decker at 31s. 6d. that ruled. Too expensive for most pockets, readers needs must use Mudie's or others. A problem was that every copy of a novel bought by a library probably stopped the sale of two other copies.

Neither Charles Edward Mudie, dying in October 1890, or William Henry Smith, dying in October 1891, were alive to see the demise of the three-decker in 1894. By then, the libraries and reading public wanted the 6s. novel. The quick appearance of cheap reprints had been a crucial point in the libraries' decision. Mudie's advertisements, for the first time, now headlined 'Novels in One Volume'. By 1895, the shift from three-volumes to one was clear. The Spectator, for August 1901, was to cite the abolition of the three-volume novel as a major reason for the huge expansion of the reading public. The genre ended due to a combination of the libraries, the publishers and the authors; no one person or firm destroyed the form. Now, only collectors such as myself look for, purchase and read the three-volume book. I must get back to Scott's The Antiquary, before I shed a tear.

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There is a useful chapter in Amy Cruse's book The Victorians and their books (George Allen & Unwin, 1935) which I purchased and read last year. Entitled Books from Mudie's , Chapter XV, it was written while Mudie was still struggling on. Cruse ends the chapter: The increase of cheap editions was a far more serious danger to the circulating libraries than any attack from hostile critics could be. But even that danger Mudie's triumphantly met and overcame. The library was firmly established as a national institution, secure against the shocks that overthrow less stable structures, and an abiding witness to the Englishman's need and love of his books. Not for much longer!.

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Will I never learn? I have just had through the post (Monday, 30th March), a large book parcel. It contains Mudie's Library - Established 1842 - English Catalogue 85th Edition (1931). It runs to 1282 pages - obviously a hernia inducing 'dip and skip' effort required, or I could still be reading it when the Coronavirus scourge has finally ended.

Amazingly, the yearly subscription for a recent novel (library copy), chosen by Mudie's, cost only £1 10s. 0d. post free. It cost three times as much just to send this catalogue to me in 2020! 

Elizabeth Siddall - Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel?

On Sunday, 17th November 2019, whilst staying at the Caledonian Club for one of our regular weekends, I was able to pop in to the  National Portrait Gallery's exhibition on 'Pre-Raphaelite Sisters'. I do not know much about Art, although all our walls here look like an Art Gallery! My two passions are for the Impressionists (to a lesser extent for Post Impressionist work) and the Pre-Raphaelites. I love the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery's collection; have visited the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; and have been more than once to Tate Britain, including going to view its special exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde on Sunday, 28th October 2012.

I think I was first drawn to the Pre-Raphaelites as a teenager, when I first encountered Millais' Ophelia on a postcard.

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, 

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up...

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

                                                                                                     Hamlet Act IV, Scene vii

The painting established Millais' reputation and made the model's face famous. In those days, I wasn't particularly interested in who the model was. It was only many years later, that I read 

about Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Siddall, or Siddal depending on which book you read.

Lizzie had to lie in a large bath filled with water, kept at an even temperature by lamps underneath. On one occasion they went out; the artist, not noticing, painted on. Lizzie, benumbed, naturally caught a severe cold and Millais had to pay a doctor's fee. 

The more I learned about Siddall, the more I was to understand the reason for the subtitle in Lucinda Hawksley's superb biography of Lizzie: The tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel. Apparently, 'discovered' in a Leicester Square hat shop, she first posed, in 1849, for Walter Deverell as Viola in his painting of Twelfth Night. In 1850, she was used by Holman Hunt as the model in A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Priest from the Persecution of the Druids; in 1852 came Millais' famous painting. Dante Gabriel Rossetti then pounced. An idealiser but also exploiter of young women, he was not only to paint her obsessively (Madox Brown said that when Rossetti first saw her he felt his destiny was defined.) but finally marry her in 1860. He did more than 60 paintings and drawings of her, notably Beata Beatrix. 

Beata Beatrix

Tragically this was done from memory from 1864 onward, as she had died of an overdose of laudanum in February 1862. Rossetti placed some unpublished verses in her coffin; then regretted the decision and had them exhumed in a grisly night scene in October 1869. Tragedy even in the grave.

The other tragedy was that Lizzie was herself no mean artist herself and examples of her work have been in several of the permanent and temporary exhibitions I have been to - such as Before the Battle (late 1850s); Pippa Passing the Loose Women (c.1855); The Ladies' Lament (c.1857). Her work was mostly inspired by poetry, particularly the Ballads collected by Sir Walter Scott.  

Before the Battle by Lizzie Siddall

Moreover, as I found out in my recent visit to the NPG, Siddall also tried her hand at poetry. I bought there My Ladys Soul: The Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall. None of her friends or acquaintances mentioned her writings in her lifetime and, so far, only 16 poems and a few fragments are known about. Perhaps, not surprisingly, they tend to melancholy with a strong element of mediaevalism. One poem will suffice.

O grieve not with thy bitter tears

O grieve not with thy bitter tears

My life that passes so fast

the gates of heaven will open wide

and take me in at last

Then sit down meekly at my side

and watch my young life flee

Then solemn peace of holy death

Come quickly unto thee

But true love seek me in the throng

of spirits floating past

and I will take thee by the hands

and know thee mine at last

I much prefer Siddall's almost transparent look to the fleshy, pouting-lipped Fanny Cornforth, Annie Miller or Janey Morris. She fought and suffered for her art and fully deserves the posthumous praise from not only twenty-first century feminists, but also all right-thinking men.  

R.I.P. Lizzie

Other books I hold are:

On Elizabeth Siddal[l]

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal (in Little Journeys to Homes of Great Lovers, July Vol.XIX No. 1, 1906)
The Golden Veil: A Novel based on the life of Elizabeth Siddall by Paddy Kitchen (Hamish Hamilton, 1981)
Lizzie Siddall: Her Journal [1862] by Gillian Allnutt (Greville Press Pamphlets, 1985)
The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal by Jan March (Quartet Books, 1989; pbk 1992)
Rossetti's Portraits of Elizabeth Siddal by Virginia Surtees (Ashmolean Museum, 1991)
Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel by Lucinda Hawksley (André Deutsch, 2004)

On Pre-Raphaelites generally

Rossetti by Lucien Pissarro (T.C. & E.C. Jack, n.d.)
The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy by William Gaunt (Jonathan Cape, 1942; reprint by Sphere Books, 1988)
The Pre-Raphaelites and their Circle by Richard Ormond (City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1965; reprinted 1973)
The Pre-Raphaelites by Timothy Hilton (Thames and Hudson, 1970)
Pre-Raphelite Women  by Jan Marsh (Phoenix Illustrated, 1987)
Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement by Jan Marsh & Pamela Gerrish Nunn (Virago, 1989)
Pre-Raphaelites re-viewed ed. Marcia Pointon (Manchester University Press, 1989)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti  by Alicia Craig Faxon (Abbeville Press, 1989; new ed. 1994)
Pre-Raphaelite Art and Design by Raymond Watkinson (Trefoil Publications, 1990 2nd. ed.)
Oxford and the Pre-Raphaelites Jon Whiteley (Ashmolean Museum Oxford, 1993)
The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites by Edmund Swinglehurst (Parragon, 1994)
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings in the British Museum by J.A. Gere ((British Museum Press, 1994)
The Pre-Raphaelites and their World by William Michael Rossetti, The Folio Society, 1995)
Pre-Raphaelites by K.E. Sullivan (Brockhampton Press, 1996)
The Pre-Raphaelites: Inspiration from the Past by Terri Hardin (Smithmark, 1996) 
Rossetti by David Rodgers (Phaidon Press, 1996; reprint 1998)
Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists by Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn (Thames and Hudson, 1997)
The Pre-Raphaelites by Tim Barringer (The Everyman Art Library, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998)
Essential Pre-Raphaelites by Lucinda Hawksley (Dempsey Parr, Parragon, 1999)
Millais by Jason Rosenfeld and Alison Smith (Tate Publishing, 2007)

From Frederick Forsyth to Death in Venice - a meander

I have just finished reading Frederick Forsyth's The Cobra (2010) - does any paperback not claim The New International Bestseller on its front cover? - which focuses on the deadly international cocaine trade. Moving between Washington, London, South America, West Africa and Europe, it is certainly a compelling and frightening tale.

I have enjoyed the few Forsyth books I have read: The Fourth Protocol, The Veteran, The Devil's Alternative and, above all, the two thrillers which made him famous - The Day of the Jackal (1971) and The Odessa File (1972). Being fascinated by 19th and 20th century French History, the former book held a natural appeal. Alexander Werth's biography of  De Gaulle (in the Pelican Original Leaders of the Twentieth Century), bought in my second year at University, gave me a good grounding in that remarkable, disdainful character; on my first trip to Europe, we returned through Paris and, standing on the pavement by the Eiffel Tower, witnessed de Gaulle's motorcade, with his easily recognizable profile, being driven past. Albert Camus' novels and other non-fiction books  - such as Andrew Hussey's excellent The French Intifada (Granta, 2014) - on the Algerian war, filled in details of the OAS and the feeling of many that the General had betrayed them over Algeria once he took power.

Frederick Forsyth (1938-      )

Forsyth is a fact-finding/checking journalist as much as a novelist and this is both his strength and, occasionally, weakness. His love of (admittedly accurate and meticulous) detail can slow the pace down but it is a minor fault. He is an admirer of John Buchan's thrillers and it shows. The cold-blooded, nameless killer, known only by his codename of Jackal, thwarts the security net until the end. The 1973 film, directed by Fred Zinnemann is excellent in its own right. The planning and movements of the Jackal are paralleled with the forces of law and order straining to trap him. Edward Fox as The Jackal, Michel Lonsdale as his police pursuer, Cyril Cusack as a doomed supplier, Alan Badel and other actors are all on top form. I have watched the DVD four or five times, but de Gaulle always gets away with it.

The Odessa File, set in a world of clandestine arms deals (with warheads of nuclear waste and bubonic plague) and international espionage, is equally thrilling, but even more disturbing. The repellant Nazi war criminal, protected by Odessa (the organisation of former SS men) is pitted against Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Once again, the film (directed by Ronald Neame and released in 1974) matches the book. Jon Voigt is convincing as Peter Miller, the post war journalist, who is out for vengeance on the man who killed his father in cold blood during the War - SS Captain Eduard Roschmann. Maximilian Schell exudes evil in his sinister portrayal of Roschmann. There were excellent cameo parts too, played by Derek Jacobi and Peter Jeffrey. Once or twice, the pace dragged, but I have watched the DVD two or three times and, like The Day of the Jackal, will surely do so again.



The Day of the Jackal (1973) and  The Odessa File (1974) both figure in my Top Twenty films. They are the ones which I return to every so often, never tiring of viewing them again.

Others are (at present): two of Alfred Hitchcock's films: Notorious and North by Northwest;
The Barchester Chronicles (1982); Bride and Prejudice (2004); Casablanca (1942); Cold Comfort Farm (1995); The Go-Between (1970); How Green was my Valley (1941); A Man for all Seasons (1966); A Month in the Country (1987); The Quiet Man (1952); Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1955); Room with a View (1986); The Third Man (1949); Twelfth Night (1996); Roman Holiday (1953); Three Days of the Condor (1975); and Visconti's Death in Venice (1971).


N.B. The latter two films have a tenuous link. Max von Sydow, that compelling actor, died recently (8th March). He was, as usual, excellent in Three Days of the Condor - as Joubert, who led the massacre of Robert Redford's co-workers and who now hunts him down.

Bruce Anderson, in The Spectator this week, had this to say about Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice: I always thought that Dirk Bogarde was miscast as Gustav von Aschenbach in the film of Death in Venice. He came across as a fussy valetudinarian, throwing away the drama of Aschenbach's crumbling and collapse, as his refined, ascetic self-disciplined morality proves powerless against subconscious stirrings. We observe him succumb to forbidden beauty, the lures of the south, the overthrow of caution: all ending in illness and death. With a face that resembled Rodin's bust of Mahler, von Sydow would have been more suitable to convey all that.

'The House with the Green Shutters' by George Douglas [Brown]

From its first sentence - The frowsy chamber-maid of the "Red Lion" had just finished washing the front door steps. - The House with the Green Shutters attacks one's senses. By the end, one has been assailed by a remorseless and almost soul-destroying sense of despair for humanity - particularly of the Scottish ilk. One can view the novel as 'brutally honest' or as a bitter polemic. Either way, Hardy's cruel nature's law seems mild compared with this story of cruel mankind's laws. George Douglas Brown, who wrote as George Douglas, admitted to a friend: "So far, nobody but the Glasgow Herald man has seen that I'm showing up the Scot malignant - which you and I thought, in a way, the raison d'être of the book."  Brown, born at Ochiltree in 1869, was educated at Ayr Academy, Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford and pursued a career in journalism or, as he described it, 'belle lettres'.  He early on formed a deep dislike of the Kailyard School of 'Ian Maclaren' * and others - he hated its maudlin and morbid sentiment and determined to write a violent counterblast, a polemic against the whole genre.

The story of John Gourlay and his family is the chronicle of a pathway to hell. Gourlay dominates the first half of the book as he dominated the village of Barbie, with a virtual monopoly of its carrying trade; his son, also John, is the focus of the second half. Brown skewers Gourlay senior's character mercilessly:

Gourlay, understanding nothing, was able to sneer at everything...The man had made dogged scorn a principle of life, to maintain himself at the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a bar to the success of his irony.

When Gourlay approached there was always a competition for who should be hindmost.

The house [with the Green Shutters] was himself; there was no division between them. He had built it bluff to represent him to the world. It was his character in stone and lime.

...for the house which a man has built seems to express his character and stand for him before the world, as a sign of his success.

Strong men of a mean understanding often deliberately assume, and passionately defend, peculiarities of no importance, because they have nothing else to get a repute for.

For, like  most scorners of the world's opinion, Gourlay was its slave...

The supreme tragedy for Gourlay, as his wealth, standing and world began to crash around him was that more and more, as his other supports fell away, Gourlay attached himself to the future of his son.

His son is idle, worthless and a braggart. A failure at Barbie's school and at Edinburgh University, he turns to drink and the latter part of the book chronicles his pitiful, occasionally maudlin, decline into alcoholism. Brown skewers him - There is nothing on earth more vindictive than a weakling - as  the denouement approaches. He murders his father, commits suicide and he's followed to the grave by his mother and sister in a shocking final chapter: We are by ourselves - the Gourlays whom God has cursed.

The core of the story is about the tragic family, but the book also has the other mission to fulfil - the denigration and cruel depiction of Scots' petty vindictiveness in a small town.

The genus "bodie" is divided into two species: the "harmless bodies" and the "nesty bodies". The bodies of Barbie mostly belonged to the second variety...      For many reasons intimate to the Scot's character, envious scandal is rampant in petty towns such as Barbie.

Many Scots walk through life wrapped comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit.

"What they'll think of me at home" - that matters most to Scotsmen who go out to make their way in the world.   A Scot revisiting his native place ought to walk very quietly. For the parish is sizing him up.

Common sense...makes the average Scotsman to be over-cautious. His combinations are rarely Napoleonic until he becomes an American. In his native dales he seldom ventures on a daring policy. And yet his forecasting mind is always detecting "possibeelities".

And of an important character in Gourlay's fall: Gibson's [eyes] had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal.

But there was always the demon drink to fortify and sustain the small town harpies (skilfully portrayed in all their meanness and spite by Brown) - and they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram...whisky makes the meanest  of Scots poetical

One of his targets was the Scots ministry ('Ian Maclaren' was such), which he venomously sent up: 'Of the Rev. Mr. Struthers...[he] had big splay feet, short stout legs, and a body of such bulging bulbosity, that all the droppings of his spoon - which were many - were caught on the round of his black waistcoat, which always looked as if it had just been splattered by a grey shower.' (His accurate sense of humour reminded me a little of Sir Walter Scott and Susan Ferrier).       And again:
'Ministers are just like the rest o' folk. They mind me o' last year's early tatties. They're grand when they're gude, but the feck o' them's frostit.'                                                              and
(Gourlay speaking of his son) 'I mean to make ye a minister - they have plenty of money and little to do - a grand easy life o't. MacCandlish tells me you're a stupid ass, but have some little gift of words. You have every qualification!'

One felt Brown was berating the prissy Kailyard School novels with "Ou, there's waur than an oath now and than. Like spice in a bun it lends a briskness. But it needs the hearty manner wi't.

Over and above Brown's ceaselessly malign depiction of the Gourlays and small-town Scots, one feels he added, throughout the book, some heartfelt and personal comments - bitter, perhaps?

Our insight is often deepest into those we hate, because annoyance fixes our thought on them to probe.

He was one of the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their schooldays - and are fools for the remainder of their lives.

And the intensity of this remark: It's almost as offensive to ask a man when his book will be out, as to ask a woman when she'll be delivered...A big work's a mistake; it's a monster that devours the brain.

As his closest friend wrote, after Brown's early death aged just 33: There's no doubt that he allowed the moral view to run away with the artistic intention. Humour does leaven the bitter lump - just. However, even the use of the Scots language seems not just humorous but caustic. In fact, it was not, as most think, Brown's first novel. He had written, under the pseudonym of Kennedy King, Love and the Sword - A Tale of the Afridi War (1899), a story for boys. Copies are on the Internet, but the only first edition, published also by John Macqueen, is offered at the monstrous price of £804! I must buy the far cheaper 1905 edition, published by John F. Shaw.

ADDENDUM

Reading George Blake's Barrie and the Kailyard School (1951) leads me to add one or two comments by him.

The house with the green shuitters is finally the mortuary of the Gourlays and their pride.

The supreme literary virtue of the tragedy is Brown's brilliant success in the presentation and characterization of his Greek chorus - the "bodies" of Barbie.

It is still said, sometimes by people who should know better, that it blasted the Kailyard seedlings overnight; and that is to ignore the clear fact that the Kailyard was bound to wither in the changing social and scientific conditions of the early twentieth century.

The last word was probably with Brown's old teacher at Glasgow University, that Walter Raleigh, who liked neither the human race nor its silly face, and wrote:

"I love the book for just this, it sticks the Kailyarders like pigs."

*
Ian Maclaren was the pen name of Rev. Dr. John Watson D.D. (1850-1907) who produced nostalgic tales of rural Scottish Life. His works included

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush (1894) which sold over 700,000 copies
A Doctor of the Old School (1895)
The Days of Auld Lang Syne (1895)
Kate Carnegie and those Ministers (1896)
Afterwards and Other Stories (1898)
Rabbi Saunderson (1898)
Young Barbarians (1899)

I purchased all of them in first editions, a long time ago. Stimulated by Brown's polemical attack, I must try and re-read some of them! I need also to turn to A.J. Cronin's Hatter's Castle, castigated for plagiarising Brown's novel.

Newton Wonder

During the Second World War, Robert Newton enlisted in the Royal Navy and served on H.M.S. Britomart as an escort ship on several Russian convoys. He was medically discharged in 1943. He resumed his acting career with Noel Coward's This Happy Breed (1944)and Laurence Olivier's production of Henry V (1944), playing Ancient Pistol in the latter. After the war, two of his films were Odd Man Out (1947) and David's Lean's version of Oliver Twist (1948). By now in his mid forties, he was given the lead role in the attempted-murder thriller Obsession (1949).

Newton plays a well-off doctor, Clive Riordan, who finds out his wife Storm (Sally Gray) is having an affair with a younger American, Bill Kronin (Phil Brown). He forces Kronin to a deserted cellar (the bombed site is especially creepy) and chains him to a bed. The aim is to keep him there until interest is lost by any police search, then dissolve him in an acid bath. He slowly fills a bath with the acid, using hot water bottles (which, strangely don't perish!). The scene in his small medicine-cum-laboratory reminded me slightly of Jekyll and Hyde and it gave rein to what little Newtonesque eyeballing there was in the entire film.

On his trail is Supt. Finsbury - a very laid back Naunton Wayne. Although the first part of the film was perhaps a little slow, I never found it tedious. Storm's dog played its part well - the play from which the film was taken was called A Man about a Dog - and Riordan was caught. I was impressed with the sober (pun intended) way Newton approached the role. He exuded gravitas - mildly like the early scenes in Hatter's Castle - with the obsessive dedication and ruthlessness required.

If one had only seen that one film of Newton's, then one would have been very surprised by the following year's outing. Walt Disney's Treasure Island.

Long John Silver is perhaps the role that Newton is best remembered for. It was his tour-de-force.

There were some lovely, hammy remarks, such as "You couldn't say more, not as if you were my mother" and the relish with which he said "Amen" and "dubloons" was top notch. The huge white (sclera) of his eyes deserved an Oscar and the teeth followed on behind. Although there were sterling performances from Blind Pew (John Laurie!), Israel Hands (Geoffrey Keen), and Finlay Currie (Capt. Billy Bones) and a dollar one from Bobby Driscoll (Jim Hawkins) - I suppose an American input is vital if the film is going to bring in the $s - it is undoubtedly Newton's film.

Rather like some of the Errol Flynn films, Treasure Island was rollicking good fun - easy on the eye and no hidden depths. Newton reprised his role in Long John Silver (1954) and The Adventures of Long John Silver (TV series 1954), before, sadly, dying of alcoholism  one year later. I may yet watch more of his films and Blog about them.

From 'Hatter's Castle' to Robert Newton

I watched a DVD (1942) of A.J. Cronin's Hatter's Castle (1931) last week - as I intend to read not only the book but the novel many said gave Cronin's the basis for his plot, The House of the Green Shutters (1901) by George Douglas Brown. More in future Blogs about the two books. Watching the film made me concentrate on the main actor, Robert Newton.

I dimly recalled Newton's role as Treherne in Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939)  but had never seen his most famous part of Long John Silver in  Disney's Treasure Island (1950) or as Bill Sykes in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948). Newton was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset in June 1905 and was educated at St. Bartholomew's School, Newbury. He began his acting career, aged 16, as an assistant stage manager and in small parts for the Birmingham Repertory Company, making his first film Reunion in 1932. and some 44 films in all, ending with Around the World in 80 Days in 1956, the year he died. His erratic film career was down to his excessive drinking, his unreliability often resulted in unemployability. His death was due to alcohol related causes.

Typically, I then also purchased and have just finished watching Jamaica Inn, Obsession (1949) and Treasure Island.  Jamaica Inn was his eleventh film and he looks remarkable young as the government 'spy' amongst the smugglers.

Newton has been called a 'much marinated ham' in several of his films, but in Jamaica Inn he was relatively restrained. The outsize porcine behaviour came from Charles Laughton (no wonder Hitchcock disliked the film) who waddled through the scenes like a ripe, ugly pumpkin. Moreover, Leslie Banks was over-theatrical as Josh Merlin, the innkeeper, and Emlyn Williams, did his bit as a very Welsh Harry the Pedlar.

The still above shows Newton with Maureen O'Hara (whom I loved in The Quiet Man) in her first major film role. Watching the film for the second time in three years, I formed a slightly higher opinion of it. Yes, melodramatic; yes, cardboard sets; but Banks was quite impressive, O'Hara was beautiful and Newton? Subdued and straightforward to start with (though his 'give me a drink' at one point brought a wry smile to my lips), one could see the later eye-rolling and teeth-gnashing of Long John Silver in embryo when he was tied up in the Inn.

Hatter's Castle, released only three years later, shows a much older looking Newton in a much more powerful role. Set in the 1880s, the film and book are both melodramatic in many places. In fact, until towards the end, it shows Newton in his more controlled moments as James Brodie - for a long while the only hatter in a small Scottish town. He rules through brutality and arrogance - a tin pot tyrant. Tragedy follows tragedy - his daughter Mary (a young Deborah Kerr), like his wife terrified of him, loses her lover (another interesting cameo played by Emlyn Williams) to the Tay Bridge railway disaster; his son, Angus, who is awarded the only sliver of humanity in Brodie's cruel outlook, commits suicide; customers flock to a newly-opened larger hatters next door; and the young Doctor (James Mason) is unable to save Brodie's wife. The melodramatic ending, near Gothic in its playing and in its 'castle' backdrop, sees Newton at last able to give full rein to his eye-ball rolling and large helpings of ham. However, he 'fits' the storyline and, if you have a taste for 'Gothic', it is a strong finale. After dying in his burning keep, Brodie's funeral delivers the moral: no-one has a good word to say about him and the doctor is able to walk off into the future with Mary.

                                   Beatrice Varley  -  James Mason  -  Deborah Kerr

To be continued

Helen MacInnes "Queen of spy writers"

Taking up a considerable place on my shelves are the novels of Helen MacInnes. Published between 1941 and 1984, her twenty-one thrillers saw her regularly in the best seller lists with four of them made into films. I started to collect the entire set in Fontana paperbacks from 1970 and bought the last one in 1984. Not long after, I bought all her works in first editions, all hardbacks with dust wrappers, bar one: The Unconquerable (1944), which was given a different title in the USA - While We Still Live. In the U.K., MacInnes was published firstly by George G. Harrap (six books) and then by Collins (who also published the Fontana paperbacks).

Born in Glasgow in 1907, MacInnes attended its High School for Girls, then took her M.A. at Glasgow University. She later reminisced of being very conscious of the Great War while growing up and, partly due the knowledge of German spies in Britain then, realised "that good intelligence could win or even prevent a war, and for that you need good agents who are willing to risk a great deal". Moving to University College, London (my alma mater), she met and married Gilbert Highet, a classics scholar. After a time in Oxford, they moved to the USA in 1937, when her husband began teaching at Columbia University, New York. They lived in America until their deaths - his in 1978 and hers in on 30 September 1985.

Her first four novels - Above Suspicion (1941), Assignment in Brittany (1942), The Unconquerable (1944) and Horizon (1945) - were written during, and about, the Second World War. When war broke out, her husband suggested she wrote a novel, partly based on their travels in Europe. "I sat down in the living room and started writing 'Above Suspicion'. I actually stopped writing for two or three weeks because I feared the whole free world was going to fall apart. Then I decided 'What the hell. If everything collapses I'll send the book out underground'."

The novel went straight on to the best-seller list. About a young Oxford Professor, Richard Myles, and his wife, Frances, who are enlisted by British Intelligence to find and link up with another agent, the book was so realistic that her husband's superiors (he was about to join Intelligence) suspected she must be an agent herself. Reviews were uniformly positive:

"Here 'John Buchan's' bow is bent, if not with all its strength, with all his charm." (Birmingham Post)

"This Scotswoman has the genuine Buchan touch without being a copyist..." (Belfast Telegraph)

"Excellent novel...It is Babes in the Wood versus Gestapo, but the Babes are intelligent babes."
(Cavalcade).

Re-reading  Above Suspicion, for the first time for 50 years, I can concur with the Buchan angle. The idea of being a Hunter and being Hunted runs through the book. (A later book, published in 1974, was entitled The Snare of the Hunter). Throughout her life and writing career, MacInnes balanced her staunch anti-totalitarian views (first against Nazi then Communist ideologies) with first-rate story-telling, narrative drive, realistic dialogue and general creative impulses. Only in her last books did the black become perhaps too pitch  black (USSR) against pristine white (USA and the UK). However, she did reflect the views of millions of others in the West.  Two of the other characters in her first novel, Thornley (British) and Van Cortlandt (American) concur: 'Now you and I don't hate the Nazis because they are German. We hate the Germans because they are Nazi'. The dust wrapper rear flap aptly extols the BBC - 'From London comes The Voice of Britain...The Voice of Freedom.'

Her second novel, Assignment in Brittany, I read immediately after the first. Again, it is a rattling good read!  It is the story of a British officer, who is parachuted into Occupied Brittany to report on the Nazi movements prior to a probable invasion of England. Cornishman Martin Hearne is a 'flesh and blood' character - level-headed, brave but cautious, but not super human. He is also the physical double for Bertrand Corlay, a Breton rescued from the Dunkirk evacuation. The twist is that, well into the book, it becomes obvious that Bertrand was a Fifth Columnist in Brittany for the Germans. As C. Day Lewis, in a penetrating contemporary review, remarked: 'Hearne is now in a doubly false position: those who should be his friends are hostile; those who ought to be his enemies (German troops, French collaborationists) are embarrassingly helpful'. MacInnes builds on a strong narrative - there is a particularly tense section set on Mont St Michel - realistic portraits of Corlay's mother, fiancé and servants; of an American escaping from Paris (the same Van Cortlandt we met in Above Suspicion); of other Bretons; of various Nazis - not at all 'paste board'. 'Hurrah for the master race, goose-stepping so neatly to the fulfilment of their conquering destiny.' There is also a burgeoning love story, which in no way detracts from, or feels bolted-on to, the story.

No wonder it was chosen as the Book Society's book of the Month in January-February 1942 and was also made into 1943 film, which bore some resemblance to the book. I am certainly looking forward to re-reading more of Helen MacInnes' novels this year.

UPDATE: the 1943 film of Above Suspicion, starring Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray arrived today - actually the DVD cover says Bajo Sospecha. However, the soundtrack is still in English or, rather, American. Joan Crawford was nothing like my idea, or the book's, of Frances Myles; Fred MacMurray was more akin the husband. Remarkably, the film followed the book's sequence pretty accurately and, allowing for pretty unreal backcloths, it told the story quite well. This time there was a good German (the marvellous Conrad Veidt) instead of the American Van Cortlandt, supporting the Myles, and the bad German (played by another compelling actor, Basil Rathbone). I enjoyed it, even though one has to accept that Americans won the war and any top billing.

My Literary Library

I am often asked which authors do I 'seriously' collect. Since 1978, the list has grown slightly but not by much. Obviously, the total of each author's books has expanded considerably. Very rarely do I add new writers. I am perhaps a first edition 'snob' and I do try to ensure the book is not only a first edition but also has its dust wrapper (that is, if it ever had one), unless it is beyond my pocket. Below are my main collecting fields:

John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir)  - all his fiction and non-fiction first editions - all in dust wrappers, both U.K. and USA printings, apart from The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle (both of which I have facsimiles) and Midwinter. My collection includes all books he wrote prefaces or introductions for, or edited; also a huge library of books and magazines and journals about him and his works. Also a collection of ALS by the author. It is probably the largest collection of his work in private hands.

Susan Buchan (Susan Tweedsmuir) - all her novels and non fiction in first edition and in dust wrappers.

O. Douglas (Anna Buchan) - all her novels in first edition, with half in dust wrappers.

Alfred Duggan - all his novels and non fiction in first edition and in dust wrappers.

Daphne du Maurier - all her novels in first edition, except The Loving Spirit, Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, and in dustwrappers.

John Meade Falkner - all his novels and non fiction in first edition, as well as many subsequent editions and books which include extracts from his works. Also a collection of ALS by the author.

Susan Ferrier - all three of her novels, two in first edition.

Robert Henry Forster - all his novels and poetry and non fiction in first edition.

Constance Holme - all her novels in first edition, with dust wrappers if they had them. Also a considerable collection of ALS and TLS by the author.

Emily Sarah Holt - nearly all of of her novels, many in the rare and hard-to-find first editions. It was unusual for her publisher to date her books, hence the advertisements are the clue.

Sir Walter Scott - all his first editions, except Waverley (too expensive!) and Tales of My Landlord (1st Series)

Robert Louis Stevenson - all his novels and essays in first edition - except New Arabian Nights, The Silverado Squatters and The Amateur Emigrant.

Josephine Tey (Gordon Daviot) - all her novels and plays in first edition, except A Shilling for Candles; with all in dust wrappers except The Man in the Queue, Kif, The Expensive Halo,and The Franchise Affair.

Maurice Walsh - all his novels and short stories in first edition and in dust wrappers.

Mary Webb - all her novels in first edition , except The House in Dormer Forest, with several books about the author, all in first edition.

Stanley Weyman - all his novels in first edition and, where they had them, in dust wrappers.

Apart from Scott, Ferrier and Stevenson, I am also developing a collection of  early 19th century Scottish authors in 1st edition: John Galt, J.G. Lockhart, Mary Brunton and Elizabeth Hamilton.

Also a chosen few of the works of G. A. Henty, J. G. Edgar, Frances Mary Peard, Charlotte Yonge, Henry Newbolt, Allan Campbell McLean, and Iris Murdoch - all in first edition.

My Library - nearly all Literature and History - totals just over 8,000 books. Every one greatly valued. With well over 400 of the 600+ pocket Oxford World's Classics (all first printings with dust wrappers if they had them), self-isolation would not be a problem, whatever world virus was about.

Alberto Moravia's 'The Woman of Rome'

Plans were made during my first year at university to go to Europe in the summer vacation.
The University College, London Department of History awarded me a £40 scholarship from the
Sir William Meyer Fund for funding the trip; this proved more than enough for the three and half weeks! With three school friends, we set off in a 1957 Morris Traveller 1000 on 26th July.
Picking up one friend from Hamburg university, we travelled south through Wurzburg, Munich, Innsbruck, and over the Brenner Pass to Italy - our proposed destination. Venice (in a downpour), Florence, and Siena were all visited before the real object of our trip - Rome. The return journey took in Pisa, Genoa, Milan, Como, St Gothard Pass, Lucerne, Zurich, Basle, and Paris. A fantastic experience at any age, but especially for a late teenager studying History.

Just prior to the trip, I had purchased two of Alberto Moravia's novels: The Empty Canvas (1961) on 28th June and The Woman of Rome (1949) on 10th July. I have just finished a re-read of the latter, using the same Penguin paperback from over 50 years ago. It is not an easy read, due to the sustained intensity throughout. Critics hold the book up as Moravia's best and best-known work. Set in Mussolini's Rome (around the period of the Abyssinian war)  and told in the first person, it is the story of Adriana, a poor, simple girl (16 at the beginning) who models naked for a painter and then turns to prostitution.

An Author's Preface tries to forestall a suspension of disbelief in the reader: how could an uneducated woman be capable of 'telling her own story in the correct literary style I have lent her'. Rather than using 'a clumsy, poor dialect, incapable of expressing more than a limited number of feelings and incidents', Moravia decided to 'make my characters speak in my customary style' as 'the language of literature is always truer and more poetically expressive than the spoken language'. Well, yes - to a greater extent it works because Moravia has an extraordinary facility for getting inside his characters. A natural story-teller, he almost forces the reader to become the characters.

Throughout the novel, we see the other players through Adriana's eyes: the scheming, calculating young chauffeur Gino, her first real love (who turns out to be married). Adriana realises 'I had a gift for love-making which even without Gino would have shown itself later'. Then, Astarita - introduced to Adriana by her friend Gisella - who works for the  political police and is totally besotted; thus Adriana can use him and his money time and time again for her own purposes. It's only late in the day that Adriana 'discovered that real unhappiness comes when all hope is gone; and then it is no use being well-off and in need of nothing'. Two other characters dominate Adriana's life in the second part of the novel: Giacomo (Mino), a wealthy self-absorbed student engaged in sedition against Mussolini and his fascists, who appears incapable of love, who regards mankind as worthless, and who makes Adriana almost permanently miserable. Humiliated by him, she decides to say, if he does return: 'I'm a street-walker, nothing more...if you want me, you've got to accept me for what I am'. She realises 'My strength lay in my poverty, my profession, mother, my ugly house, my simple clothes, my humble origin, my misfortunes...' And there is Sonzogno, whose arm 'was like a bundle of iron cords...' and who is a murdering psychopath and who terrifies Adriana.

Each of these characters are so well drawn by Moravia, that we feel we, too, 'know' them. There is an air of impending disaster which hovers like a cloud over the latter part of the novel. Adriana compares a freezing room to her past: 'It occurred to me...if I looked back at my life objectively without any illusions, I saw that it contained nothing beautiful  or intimate, indeed it was entirely made up of ugly, worn and chilly things, like Zelinda's room'.The denouement is shocking, though not unexpected: Sonzongo murders Astarita and is later shot by police; Mino commits suicide; and Adriana is left pregnant by Sonzongo. Her life, mirroring Fascist Rome has proved distressing, seedy and corrupt. The only sliver of light in this depressing tale, is that Mino has written to his family that it was his child (Adriana has lied to him) and so, instead of the actuality of it being the child of a murderer and prostitute, he/she would have 'a gay, happy life' - unlike its mother.

Rather than it being 'enjoyable', reading the book was more like being mesmerised by Moravia's skill of character drawing and story-telling. Back from Italy, and into my second year at university, I had clearly enjoyed the author's work then, because on 10th November, I purchased The Bitter Honeymoon and Other Stories (1927-52). I also have Moravia's Two Adolescents (1944 and 1950), which I must have bought many years later.

Alberto Moravia (1907-1990)