Two Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Library paperbacks

 

Jarrolds' Publishers - both October 1936

Lat year, I took eight Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Crime paperbacks to Corfu and read them all. I had saved the earlier Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Library ones for our holiday in Greece again - this time returning for the third time to Halkidiki on the mainland. Such was the tiring experience of Birmingham Airport that for the first day and evening I just could not begin to read. I managed just four novels by the end of the week's trip. Two of them are above.

Rather strangely Jarrolds decided to publish the third book of a trilogy, Grey Granite, as the second book in their new 'Jackdaw' Library.  Not until No. 16, was Sunset Song produced, followed by the middle story Cloud Howe as No. 19. Having elected to read them in the order that Jarrolds printed them,  I not only began with the story of a now middle-aged Chris Guthrie but also, by leaving Sunset Song until later, missed what was voted Scotland's favourite book in a 2005 poll, to be repeated in 2016 in the BBC's Love to Read campaign. The fact that Nicola Sturgeon wrote a feature article about the novel in an issue of the New Statesman only slightly diminishes my desire to read it.

What of Grey Granite?

I must admit that, of the four 'Jackdaw' novels I read in Greece, Grey Granite was the one I least felt an affinity for. I think it was partly the unfamiliar syntax used and the strange (Scottish?) words that kept popping up. But I have managed Scott and Galt and other Scottish writers, so I don't think it was that unsettling.  I wasn't quite sure what to make of political aim of the book. Reading that Lewis Grassic Gibbon (actually James Leslie Mitchell) was a committed socialist/communist won't have endeared him to me. It didn't help that the focus of the novel seemed to move from Chris to her son, Ewan. I found him most unsympathetic. His early, rather withdrawn and non committal youth was preferable to his increasing involvement in left-wing politics. Inevitably, humour drained away - why are left wingers so humourless?! His behaviour to his teacher girlfriend, Ellen Johns, when she admits she has left the Party (for the perfectly understandable reason that she might otherwise lose her job) was shocking: Go to them then in your comfortable car - your Labour Party and your comfortable flat. But what are you doing out here with me? I can get a prostitute anywhere. Nauseating. Chris herself returns at the end of the trilogy to her roots, she had found the last road she wanted and taken it, concerning none and concerned with none. She was only in her late thirties, but appeared older. (Tragically Gibbon himself  was to die just short of his thirty-fourth birthday). As Chris comes full circle, she'd open her eyes and see only the land, enduring, encompassing.

The Reverend Edward MacShilluck was a lovely character, smug in his  sanctimonious hypocrisy, preaching of the Hand of Gawd and starting most of his sentences with ahhhhhhhhhhhh, slapping his housekeeper's bottom and tiptoeing regularly up to her room to peep in at her and shogged his mouth like a teething tiger... The characters who board at the lodging house which Chris runs in partnership with the admirable Ma Cleghorn, who states that there is nothing worse than some old runkle of a woman body living on with no man to tend and no bairns and then sensibly dies, are also skilfully drawn: the prim Miss Murgatroyd, dying for her tea the poor old wretch, quavering in her lace night-cap; Archie Clearmont, nice loon who went to the University and was awfully keen on music and jokes; the maniac cyclist Mr. George Piddle, the Runner reporter, thin and he he-ing, minus his hair so that he could go bald-headed for news, finally leaving head down, neck out, without a He-he!; Miss Ena Lyon, the typist, powdered and lipsticked, and awful up-to-date, baggy a bittie below the eyes and a voice like a harried peahen, poor lass. A marvellous microcosm of humanity. 

There are some other realistic cameos: Syne Feet the Policeman, who would say Ay, majestic-like, like a steer with the staggers and who had no time for picket lines and socialistic blethering; Big Jim Trease, leader of marches and, for a while, a mentor for Ewan; Lord Provost Speight, with his long, dreich, wrinkled face, frightened that a past demeanor would surface at any time.

As I type this, I realise that Gibbon's characters are so full of life, however awful it might be. What a pity he had to drown it in leftie politics, with a main character so full of bile.

*******************************************************************

George Goodchild I have mentioned before as I read the two books of his in the Jarrolds Crime 'Jackdaw series - No. 5 The Jury Disagree and No. 7 Dear Old Gentleman (see Blog for 31 May 2022). I have found out that Tiger's Cub was written in 1917, being novelized (!) from a play. It's a frontier yarn set in the Yukon of the Gold Rush, where Men were Men, and could well make a great silent movie with suitable sub titles. Tiger's Cub, so called because her father (but was he?!) Hank Bloss, was known as the Tiger. And a very unappealing man he was, quite prepared to give Cub a thrashing with a huge dog-whip, with a bestial growl of rage. He is not  quite as nasty as his big mate and partner in crime, Bill Slark. The names fit their characters.

On the side of the angels are Lone Wolf, of the Chilkat tribe - on the whole it was an intelligent face, pleasantly removed from the moon-like, expressionless visages of the Esquimaux (you wouldn't get away with writing that nowadays), whose dying master, Colonel Summers, gave him the ultimate praise: You've been a good pal - a good - pal; a white man through and through. Father Jerome, the Jesuit priest, who travels the country attending to patients and giving the last rites. Then there is Tiger's Cub herself, later to be proven as Mary Mackenzie  - with a self possession amazing in one so young. her eyes were wonderfully eloquent, alight with an expression of merriment and quick wit...yet an indiscreet word would transform them into rivers of flashing wrath; and David Summers, the young undergraduate from Oxford who comes looking for his father. His nightmarish journey through the white expanse of the wintry Yukon is superbly described. 

The actual Tale is straightforward enough. English Colonel comes to the Yukon and apparently strikes rich on the Golconda. Two baddies cheat at cards to swindle him out of the stake. He gets shot on his way home, leaving his Indian servant his signet ring. Plucky young attractive daughter falls in love with son of the dead man. Together they aim to wed. Bad dad and his mate come home; agree a deal where one gets the young girl, the other gets a stake. Wedding takes place but bad groom is also shot dead. Ends with Indian going off into the Yukon having proven dad was bad and both youngsters live happily ever after (eventually in England), even though the daughter's bad dad was strung up by the Sheriff and his team. It was a nice, easy holiday read; it reminded me a little of Hammond Innes.