Green shirts and green kirtles: some good and bad associations

Oscar Wilde's proposition that favouring the colour green is a sign of creativity in individuals but of moral laxity and decadence in nations has made me think of a few green items that have both positive and negative aspects and associations. 

Green shirts and green kirtles for example are worn by both good and bad people.

A few of John Buchan's books are relevant here, and so is one of C. S. Lewis's Narnian books.

Good and bad real-life Greenshirts
John Buchan's fictional Evallonian Greenshirts, who appear in The House of the Four Winds, were described earlier. 

There are some interesting connections here involving an unusual character called John Gordon Hargrave (1894 – 1982), who was an artist, a pagan cult leader, a Utopian thinker, a believer in both science and magic, and many other things. His life story is fascinating, but only a few elements are relevant here.

Hargrave was getting assignments to illustrate books by the age of 12, including some of John Buchan's works!

Hargrave founded various organisations for social change, including one called The Green Shirts. They were dedicated to smashing fascism and campaigning for a universal basic income in the UK.

They may also have been the inspiration for John Buchan's Greenshirts.

Rather ironically, Hargrave's anti-Fascist Greenshirts were balanced by the Irish Greenshirts, a small off-shoot of the Blueshirts, Ireland's largest fascism-inspired movement. Green was chosen because it was the colour of Irish nationalism.

John Hargrave and his militaristic Greenshirts:

Hargrave's Greenshirts are mentioned on his gravestone:

Something about John Buchan and the colour green

After listing some connections and references to the colour green in the life and works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and covering some similar occurrences of this colour in the life and works of Rudyard Kipling, the next step was to look for green connections in the life and works of John Buchan. 

Buchan's works certainly contain a very large number of references to the colour green, but they are mostly casual and incidental. Many come from his frequent and routine descriptions of landscapes and the sea for example, and some just describe clothes of a colour suitable for wearing in the countryside and other wide open spaces. His books would greatly shrink if all these adjectives of colour were removed, but this would make little difference to most of the stories!

Even so, I have found some green references that can't be discounted quite so easily.

Buchan's exciting adventure story Greenmantle is an obvious candidate for inclusion, but its green aspects have mostly been covered already. 

The colour green in The Three Hostages
The Three Hostages has also been the subject of a previous article, but the green elements were not mentioned as they were not of particular interest at the time. 

A major character is called Doctor Greenslade.

One of the cryptic clues to the location of the hostages is “the green fields of Eden”.

One of the hostages, who is hidden in plain sight in a low-class dance hall, is frequently referred to as “the girl in green”.

A small green bottle plays a large part in defeating the villain Dominick Medina.

When Richard Hannay is sent for treatment to the practitioner Madame Breda, he finds that her front door has been newly painted a vivid green.

Richard Hannay tells his young friend Archie Roylance to look out for a green light. Archie is a great birdwatching enthusiast; nesting greenshanks and green sandpipers are mentioned in this connection.

Minor references include a set of green Chinese jars and a green herb fire.

Today is Anthony Hope’s birthday

The novelist and playwright who wrote under the name Anthony Hope was born on this day, February 9th, in 1863.

Anthony Hope is the main founder of the Ruritanian romance genre; his best-known book is The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).

Taking a short break from Stella Benson and Living Alone to refresh my memory and produce something to mark the occasion has been a great relief. Unlike the Stella Benson material, The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau have no disturbing associations; they don’t stir up painful and depressing memories or give rise to horrible ideas.

On the other hand, the Zenda stories don’t contain the sort of material that generates investigations and commentary; they have no witches or magic in them, although they are fantasy of a kind.

The basic biographical information available, most of which can be found in Anthony Hope’s Wiki entry, is not very relevant either.

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was an English gentleman. He and his swashbuckling adventure stories have some similarities with John Buchan and his works. Both men had brief legal careers before they started writing for example.