If you have a look at my library thing you’ll see that I’ve been reading John Buchan’s Witch Wood, but I have to admit that I only got to page 43 before deciding that I wasn’t in the mood for it. I almost never give up on a book completely so it’s just waiting until I feel more like reading it, or as we used to say in Scotland – until it comes up my back. Do not ask me where that saying comes from as I haven’t a clue!
Anyway, I felt that John Buchan’s sister O. Douglas matched my mood more, so I settled down with The Setons which was first published in 1917.
This book follows a now familiar pattern of a family with widely differing ages of children. It’s set in Glasgow and of course it’s the Seton family who live there, the father being a widowed church minister. Elizabeth, his daughter, is in her 20s and she takes the place of ‘mother’, especially to her brother ‘Buff’ who is only five years old.
It’s a comfy book, very autobiographical I’m sure, it’s probably an accurate depiction of the sort of life which O. Douglas experienced when the Buchan family was living in Glasgow, no doubt she used plenty of her acquaintances as characters. There is inevitably quite a lot of Scottish Presbyterianism and mentions of the Bible.
She was very fond of having a wee boy who was doted on in her books, it seems such a shame she only had brothers and never had any children of her own. Although the mother in this book is dead, the Buchan’s mother was very much alive and the book is decicated to her.
To MY MOTHER IN MEMORY OF HER TWO SONS
They sought the glory of their country: they see the glory of God.
Towards the end of The Setons the Great War rears its ugly head and it moves from being the usual cosy, romantic and amusing tale with interesting Scottish social history, to something altogether more sad but no doubt it echoed so many peoples’ experiences at the time.
I of course enjoyed it for the Glasgow setting, as I was born there and brought up not far away from the streets mentioned. There were quite a lot of visits to shops and Glasgow owned up-market department stores which I had remembered being in as a child. They’re all gone now, such a shame, but it was quite a nostalgia trip for me. It’s always good to be able to imagine an exact location, even when almost 100 years has gone past since the book was written. I think you can get The Setons from Project Gutenberg.
I just bought a used copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps today. I have it as an e-book but I couldn’t resist a nice bright orange Penguin.
Lisa,
It is lovely to have the old Penguins. I think Greenmantle is my favourite so far. Witch Wood is very different from his rollicking adventure stories though.
I believe I have all of O. Douglas’s books; the last few pages of ‘The Setons’ are memorably poignant [“But that wasna what we meant”…]. Anna Buchan had a great understanding of human nature, and a gift in recounting the events that befell her characters and the settings they lived in.
Valerie,
I still have to find about half of her books. I have Ann and Her Mother and Unforgettable, Unforgotten on my shelves, but unread. I’ve been quite lucky in finding her books in second-hand bookshops. I think that as a ‘daughter of the manse’ O. Douglas must have been well positioned to see people in all sorts of circumstances, and she was perceptive enough to be able to put it all into words, it’s a talent that not many people have. The last parts of the book are very sad, as is the dedication. I had no idea that the Buchans had lost two sons in the war, then of course John spent so much of his life in Canada. I must get to the John Buchan Centre when it reopens in Peebles, apparently at the end of August.
I can’t wait to get to The Setons. It is waiting on my shelf with other O. Douglas’. All the ‘challenges’ I’ve joined are dictating my reading. Pressure! Maybe next year I won’t enter any.
Peggy Ann,
That’s the problem with ‘challenges’, I swore I wouldn’t do any this year but ended up doing a couple. I hope you get to something by O. Douglas soon.