John Buchan, L. M. Montgomery and some snakes

I neither love and revere snakes nor hate and fear them. I once horrified a friend by trying to stroke a big snake in a small zoo. I couldn’t understand why she reacted the way she did! 

Snakes certainly bring out strong emotions in people, and in fiction they represent evil more often than good.

The discovery that both Stella Benson and Antonia White were lovers of snakes made me wonder if any more writers of interest shared their views. Did anyone other than Stella Benson believe that they had the soul of a snake?

I looked for obvious personal opinions as opposed to standard Biblical references where they are classic symbols of evil.

I couldn’t find any more positive references to snakes by the people featured on here apart from Gerald Durrell, who doesn’t really count because he was a conservationist and zookeeper who loved all wildlife.

I found that neither John Buchan nor L. M. Montgomery had a good word to say about snakes. Buchan used them to describe some of his villains and L. M. Montgomery obviously loathed and feared them.

A few snake references from John Buchan
This is from The Thirty-Nine Steps:

“...the real boss... with an eye like a rattlesnake.”

“Then he looked steadily at me, and that was the hardest ordeal of all. There was something weird and devilish in those eyes, cold, malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly clever. They fascinated me like the bright eyes of a snake. “

This is from The Power House:

“It was with profound relief that I found myself in Piccadilly in the wholesome company of my kind. I had carried myself boldly enough in the last hour, but I would not have gone through it again for a king's ransom. Do you know what it is to deal with a pure intelligence, a brain stripped of every shred of humanity? It is like being in the company of a snake.”

This is from Mr Standfast:

“Blenkiron got out of his chair and stood above me. 'I tell you, Dick, that man makes my spine cold. He hasn’t a drop of good red blood in him. The dirtiest apache is a Christian gentleman compared to Moxon Ivery. He’s as cruel as a snake and as deep as hell.'”

84 years of John Buchan’s Island of Sheep

The Island of Sheep, published as The Man from the Norlands in the US, is the fifth and final book in the series of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay adventures; it follows The Three Hostages.

The Island of Sheep was first published in July 1936, so its 84th anniversary is this month. 

I said in the article about Mr Standfast that The Island of Sheep was lower in my estimation than The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle and The Three Hostages. The latter was published in 1924; the 12-year gap between The Island of Sheep and its immediate predecessor suggests to me that John Buchan had finished with Richard Hannay but finally gave in to pressure from publishers and demands from dedicated Hannay fans for more exciting adventure stories.

The new thriller that he produced does not in my opinion have the appeal of some of the earlier books. Something is missing. Rudyard Kipling would have said that Buchan’s creative spirit or daemon was not involved in the construction process. 

Much of the material is familiar from the previous books; there are many descriptions of fishing, wildlife, sheep and Buchan’s beloved Scottish landscape and its people for example. 

There isn’t much that inspires commentary apart from a few miscellaneous passages and Richard Hannay’s ambivalent feelings and ideas about his comfortable life.

Richard Hannay’s inner conflicts
At the start of The Three Hostages, Richard Hannay was living a quiet life as a country gentleman. He had paid his dues and earned it. Having to leave it all to go on a mission seemed like a fate worse than death to him. 

At the start of The Island of Sheep, Richard Hannay has been living the quiet life for many years. His attitude towards it has changed: it is much more complicated and ambivalent this time around. 

100 years of John Buchan’s Mr Standfast

This day, August 26th, is John Buchan’s birthday. This article marks the 144th anniversary of his birth.

This year, 2019, is the 100th anniversary of the first publication of John Buchan’s spy thriller Mr Standfast.  

Mr Standfast is the third book in the series of five Richard Hannay adventures; it follows Greenmantle and precedes The Three Hostages.

I think of Greenmantle and The Three Hostages as being the best of the Richard Hannay books; I find Mr Standfast and The Island of Sheep the least enjoyable to read; I put The Thirty-Nine Steps in the middle of the two groups.

The main problem with Mr Standfast is the effect that it doesn’t have. I find it less enthralling than other books in the series. To me, Mr Standfast is more of the same; it is The Thirty-Nine Steps with World War I scenes added.

Although most of the small amount of inspirational material that Mr Standfast contains has already appeared in two previous articles, there is still a little more to say about the book. I want to highlight a few quotations and scenes that I particularly like.

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.

103 years of John Buchan’s 39 Steps

Today is the 103rd anniversary of the first appearance of John Buchan’s classic spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps.

This exciting adventure story was first published in book form in October 1915, soon after it had run as a serial in Blackwood’s Magazine under the pseudonym H. de V. during July, August and September of that year.

Surprisingly, the very first appearance of The Thirty-Nine Steps was in the American magazine All-Story Weekly. It was published in two instalments, in the June 5th and June 12th 1915 issues.

The Thirty-Nine Steps was an immediate and great success.

John Buchan went on to write more books about the adventures of Richard Hannay. Unlike some of these later stories, The Thirty-Nine Steps does not contain much material that is directly relevant to this blog; it may however have some subtle messages for us.

All the world’s a stage

Perhaps there is a message in what Richard Hannay says about playing a part and how you have to think yourself into it. You must convince yourself that you are it and stay in part all the time, always behaving as if enemies were watching.

Today is the 141st anniversary of John Buchan’s birthday

John Buchan was born on this day, August 26th, in 1875.

His birthplace was Perth, Scotland. The house where he was born fell into disrepair, but together with the house next door is being extensively refurbished and set to be turned into offices. Other than a small plaque, there will be no evidence remaining that John Buchan ever lived there.

John Buchan House, 20 York Place, Perth

The new Buchan Story Heritage Museum in Peebles explores his life and works. They are acquiring, preserving and displaying many interesting exhibits. Buchan was the Conservative candidate for Peebles, which is to the south of Edinburgh, and his family had many associations with the area.

The new Buchan Story Museum in Peebles

The John Buchan Way is a commemorative walking route from Peebles to the Borders.

I am not in a position to make pilgrimages to these far-away places to mark the occasion; London, where Buchan came to live early in 1900, is another matter. I am very familiar with many of the central London locations that he visited, lived and worked in and wrote about. I often go through and past them on the bus.

John Buchan and London, his ‘magical city’
This is a very evocative description:

“The spell of London wove itself around me. Fleet Street and the City had still a Dickens flavour, and Holywell Street had not been destroyed. In the daytime, with my fellow solicitor's-clerk, I penetrated into queer alleys and offices which in appearance were unchanged since Mr. Pickwick's day. On foggy evenings I would dine beside a tavern fire on the kind of fare which Mr. Weller affected. Behind all the dirt and gloom there was a wonderful cosiness, and every street corner was peopled by ghosts from literature and history. I acquired a passion for snugness, which I fancy is commoner in youth than is generally supposed. A young man, a little awed by the novelty of everything, is eager to find his own secure niche…

London at the turn of the century had not yet lost her Georgian air. Her ruling society was aristocratic till Queen Victoria's death and preserved the modes and rites of an aristocracy. Her great houses had not disappeared or become blocks of flats. In the summer she was a true city of pleasure, every window-box gay with flowers, her streets full of splendid equipages, the Park a showground for fine horses and handsome men and women. The ritual went far down, for frock-coats and top-hats were the common wear not only for the West End, but about the Law Courts and in the City. On Sunday afternoons we dutifully paid a round of calls. Conversation was not the casual thing it has now become, but was something of an art, in which competence conferred prestige. 

Also clubs were still in their hey-day, their waiting lists were lengthy, and membership of the right ones was a stage in a career. I could belong, of course, to none of the famous institutions; my clubs were young men's clubs, where I met my university friends. One was the Cocoa Tree in St. James's Street, a place with a long and dubious history, of which the bronze cocoa-tree in the smoking-room, stuffed with ancient packs of cards, was a reminder. At that time its membership was almost confined to young men from Oxford and Cambridge. I belonged also to the Bachelors', then situated at the foot of Hamilton Place, a pleasant resort for idle youth, from whose bay- windows one could watch the tide of fashion flowing between Hyde Park and Piccadilly.”

From John Buchan’s autobiographical memoir Memory Hold-the-Door

Although some aspects are unchanged, much of what John Buchan describes has gone for ever - including the foggy Victorian atmosphere. The streets he mentions still exist, but many of the shops and buildings have gone and the people in these streets are of very different demographics with very different lifestyles from those of Victorian and Edwardian gentlemen. I wish I could go back in time and visit John Buchan’s London!

John Buchan may have felt snug and secure in London, but some of his investigative and hunted heroes saw it as a dangerous and sinister place where they were watched, threatened, pursued and attacked. It is possible to retrace the routes that Richard Hannay and Sir Edward Leithen took and visit some of the featured central London locations, but the traffic and the masses of tourists and shoppers make it impossible to recreate the paranoia-inducing atmosphere that the fictional action took place in. The poor air quality is the most dangerous aspect now.

John Buchan and Portland Place

I have mentioned Portland Place in the Marylebone district of central London in connection with Masonic associations and street patterns that look like Olympic torches.

There are also some connections with John Buchan: he lived at no. 76 from 1912 to 1919; he wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was ill in bed there. Richard Hannay resided in a flat in Portland Place; he was known to the public and the police as the Portland Place murderer.

The Georgian terraced house where John Buchan lived was later demolished together with its neighbour and replaced with a bland, contemporary office building. No. 76 recently became the new home of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

As I was visiting the area this week, I decided to take a look at some buildings of interest in Portland Place, no. 76 in particular. 

The notorious no. 33 appears unoccupied. There is nothing to show that John Buchan ever lived in a house on the site of no. 76; there really should be a blue plaque on the outside. There was once a plaque in the foyer, but it went missing during some recent renovations. All we have now is the photographic record.

John Buchan deserves a much better London memorial than this:

Hebden Bridge and Parliament: a strange suggestion

The Houses of Parliament are reported to be slowly turning into an uninhabitable ruin; an option under consideration is moving MPs and peers out for five years.

A news article about a possible move sees it as something positive:

“…with both MPs and peers in Parliament and the Queen in Buckingham Palace facing the possibility of decamping while renovations are made to their historic homes, is it now the time for power to shift in the UK?”

LSE Professor Tony Travers makes a bizarre suggestion:

“…perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to move power out of London. There are compelling arguments to decentralise the UK by moving Parliament...why don’t we move it to...” he trails off, reaching for Google Maps “... now, where’s sort of in-the-middle? Hebden Bridge! We could put it there.”

Hebden Bridge is just about in the middle of the British Isles, although it is not one of the official geographical centres and is considered to be far up north to people who live in the south of England. Even so, it is a very strange place to select almost at random from a map when there are other, better known places in the area, big cities such as Leeds or Manchester for example. 

Professor Travers may have been joking about moving Parliament to such a small market town, but Hebden Bridge has associations and connections that make a place of interest for several other reasons. 

There are some coincidences involving Parliament too.