Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps

by Ursula Buchan

  77Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, p. 280.

  78JB to Susie Grosvenor, 20 June 1907, NLS, Acc. 11627/2.

  79JB to Susie Grosvenor, 2 July 1907, NLS, Acc. 11627/2.

  80Undated letter from JB to Susie Grosvenor, annotated ‘Just before our marriage’ by Susan Tweedsmuir, NLS, Acc. 11627/2.

  81Tweedsmuir, The Lilac and the Rose, p. 144.

  82Buchan, Unforgettable, Unforgotten, p. 105.

  83JB to Caroline Grosvenor, 28 July 1907, NLS, Acc. 11627/8.

  84The eleventh edition was published in 1907.

  85Susie Buchan to Caroline Grosvenor, 13 August 1907, NLS, Acc. 11627/8.

  86Ibid.

  87John Buchan to Caroline Grosvenor, 11 August 1907, NLS, Acc. 11627/8.

  88JB to Janet Adam Smith, 5 May 1937, QUA, 2110, box 13.

  89Susie Buchan to Caroline Grosvenor, 18 August 1907, NLS, Acc. 11627/8.

  90Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, p. 137.

  5 London and Edinburgh, 1907–1914

  1Willie Buchan to Helen Buchan, 17 July 1907, private collection.

  2Willie Buchan to JB, 29 March 1908, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  3JB to Lucy Lyttelton, 24 February 1908, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  4John Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1940, pp. 151–2.

  5Willie Buchan to JB, n.d. September 1909, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  6JB to Gilbert Murray, 22 April 1910, QUA, 2110, box 2. This was an early sign of what was to come, the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Armenians by Turks during the First World War.

  7JB to Charles Dick, 30 April 1910, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  8Ibid.

  9Published in Blackwood’s Magazine, April 1914.

  10JB to Susie, 15 October 1910, NLS, Acc. 11627/4.

  11JB to Susie, 25 February 1911, NLS, Acc. 11627/4.

  12Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, pp. 135–6.

  13Caroline Grosvenor to Katharine Lyttelton, 23 August 1911, QMUL, Lyttelton Collection, PP5/24/14.

  14Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, p. 146.

  15John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps, William Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1915, chapter IV.

  16William Blackwood to Willie Buchan, 26 March 1912, quoted in Anna Buchan, W. H. B., privately published, 1913, p. 63.

  17Willie Buchan to JB, 17 April 1911, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  18Willie Buchan to JB, 22 November 1911, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  19JB to Susie, 21 November 1911, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  20JB to Katharine Lyttelton, 28 November 1911, QMUL, Lyttelton Collection, PP5/24/20.

  21Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch to JB, 11 January 1912, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  22Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to JB, n.d., QUA, 2110, box 2.

  23The Bookman, December 1912, p. 140.

  24Stuyvesant Fish to JB, 30 November 1910, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  25John Buchan, Women’s Suffrage: A Logical Outcome of the Conservative Faith, Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association, October 1913, p. 1.

  26Ibid., p. 3.

  27Susan Tweedsmuir, A Winter Bouquet, Duckworth, London, 1954, p. 90.

  28Anna Buchan, Unforgettable, Unforgotten, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1945, p. 176.

  29JB to Helen Buchan, 21 October 1912, NLS, Acc. 11627/4.

  30JB to Susan Buchan, 12 November 1912, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  31Lord Carmichael to JB, 5 December 1912, NLS, Acc. 11627/37.

  32John Buchan, ‘Fratri Dilectissimo’ (poem), the dedication to The Marquis of Montrose, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh, 1913.

  33JB to Hugh Walpole, 30 March 1913, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  34Quoted in Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1965, p. 233.

  35John Buchan, ‘The Muse of History’ in Homilies and Recreations, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh, 1926, p. 95.

  36Ibid., p. 101.

  37Quoted in Anna Buchan, A. E. B., privately published, 1917, p. 14.

  38JB to Helen Buchan, 30 December 1913, NLS, Acc. 11627/4.

  39John Buchan, Francis and Riversdale Grenfell, A Memoir, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh, 1920. Arthur Grenfell, although over forty when war broke out, joined the 9th Lancers, in which his twin brothers also served, was badly wounded, and won the DSO.

  40Ibid., pp. 182–3.

  41Ibid., p. 183.

  42Ibid., pp. 184–5.

  43The history has been meticulously analysed by John Gilpin in his PhD thesis, ‘The Canadian Agency and British Investment in Western Canadian Land, 1905–1915’, University of Leicester, 1992, in which there is extensive reference to contemporary records, including correspondence and the Official Receiver’s Report on the Canadian Agency, issued on 13 February 1915.

  44Gilpin, ‘The Canadian Agency’, pp. 137–9 and 164–7.

  45Arthur Grenfell to the Earl Grey, 26 August 1906, quoted in Gilpin, ‘The Canadian Agency’, p. 159.

  46Guy St Aubyn to the Earl Grey, 11 July 1908, quoted in Gilpin, ‘The Canadian Agency’, p. 166.

  47Interview between the Earl Grey and Herbert Smith, June 1914, quoted in Gilpin, ‘The Canadian Agency’, p. 316.

  48Herbert Smith to Lady Wantage, 4 June 1914, quoted in Gilpin, ‘The Canadian Agency’, p. 318.

  49JB to Susie, 26 June 1914, NLS, Acc. 11627/4.

  50Susan Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1947, p. 73.

  51Author’s conversation with Sir Edmund Fairfax-Lucy, Alice’s son, January 2018.

  52JB to George Brown, 4 August 1914, University of Edinburgh Special Collections, Thomas Nelson Collection, Gen 1728/B/5/68.

  53JB to George Brown, 6 August 1914, UESC, Thomas Nelson Collection, Gen 1728/B/5/69.

  54JB to Lord Rosebery, 9 October 1914, NLS, Acc. 11164/21.

  55In the Thomas Nelson Collection, UESC.

  56JB to George Brown, 3 December 1914, UESC, Thomas Nelson Collection, Gen 1728/B/5/160.

  57John Buchan, Greenmantle, Hodder and Stoughton, 1916, chapter II.

  6 The Great War, 1914–1918

  1The Spectator, 27 February 1915, p. 16.

  2Hew Strachan in the Introduction to John Buchan, Mr Standfast, Polygon, Edinburgh, 2010.

  3John Buchan, A History of the Great War, vol. III, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh, 1922, p. 436.

  4David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, vol. III, Ivor Nicholson and Watson, London, 1933, p. 1,492.

  5B. H. Liddell Hart, The Liddell Hart Memoirs, vol. I, Cassell, London, 1965, p. 886.

  6Peter Buitenhuis, The Great War of Words, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 1987, pp. 94 and 132.

  7For example, Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, London, 1998, p. xxix.

  8See, for example, Alan Clark’s The Donkeys (1961), Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem (1962), a new edition of The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen (1963), the play and film Oh! What a Lovely War (respectively, 1963 and 1969), and the television series The Monocled Mutineer (1986) and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989).

  9Ivor Gurney, Severn & Somme, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1917.

  10Dan Todman, The Great War: Myth and Memory, Continuum, Hambledon, 2005, p. 162.

  11For example, Todman, The Great War.

  12William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme, Abacus, London, 2010, p. 292.

  13Keith Grieves, ‘A History of the Great War: the re-emergence of Buchan’s grand narrative on the Great War in 1921–2’, The John Buchan Journal, no. 13, p. 8.

  14John Buchan, Nelson’s History of the War, vol. XIV, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh, 1915–19, p. 160.

  15Ibid., vol. XVI, p. 40.

  16Ibid., p. 36.

  17Ibid., vol. XXIV, pp. 123–4.

  18Lecture, 22 March 1915, QUA, 2110, box 14.

  19The Times, 17 May 1915, p. 9.

  20The Times, 22 May 1915, p. 9.

  21The Times, 29 May 1915, p. 6.

  22JB to Gilbert Murray, 19 July 1915, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  23JB to Susie, 28 September 1915, NLS,
Acc. 11627/4.

  24Buchan, Nelson’s History of the War, vol. X, p. 200.

  25The first two volumes came out in 1921 and the second two in 1922.

  26Buchan, A History of the Great War, vol. II, Thomas Nelson, Edinburgh, 1921–2, p. 321.

  27Quoted in the Daily Telegraph, 10 October 2015.

  28Sandy Gillon to JB, 6 and 9 December 1915, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  29JB to Gilbert Murray, 30 December 1915, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  30The Spectator, 6 November 1915, p. 630.

  31Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1965, p. 197.

  32John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps, William Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1915, chapter V.

  33LeRoy L. Panek, The Special Branch: The British Spy Novel, 1890–1980, Bowling Green University Popular Press, Bowling Green, OH, 1981, p. 66.

  34Ibid., p. 39.

  35John G. Cawelti and Bruce A. Rosenberg, The Spy Story, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1987, p. 100.

  36Leslie Stephen, in Hours in a Library, Smith, Elder, London, 1874, quoted in John Buchan, Sir Walter Scott, Cassell, London, 1932.

  37Byron Rogers, The Man who Went into the West: The Life of R. S. Thomas, Aurum, London, 2007, p. 194.

  38‘39 steps to a better life’, Country Life, 11 May 2011.

  39The Scottish novelist Robert J. Harris has recently written a sequel to The Thirty-Nine Steps, entitled The Thirty-One Kings, Polygon, Edinburgh, 2017.

  40‘Fountainblue’ in Blackwood’s Magazine, part II, 1901.

  41Howard Spring, In the Meantime: Reminiscences, Constable, London, 1942, p. 111.

  42JB to Susie, 23 May 1915, QUA, 2110, box 2. Repington also caused an uproar by disclosing in The Times that General French had told him that shortage of munitions had caused the failure of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. This at least partly led to the founding of the Ministry of Munitions, under David Lloyd George.

  43Quoted by Hew Strachan in ‘John Buchan and the First World War’, in Kate Macdonald, ed., Reassessing John Buchan: Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps, Routledge, London, 2009, p. 79.

  44Brigadier-General John Charteris, At G. H. Q., Cassell, London, 1931, pp. 146–7.

  45Ibid., p. 149.

  46General Charteris to Lord Newton, 15 July 1916, The National Archives (TNA), FO 395/51.

  47JB to George Brown, 22 July 1916, University of Edinburgh Special Collections, Thomas Nelson Collection, Gen 1728/B/6/152.

  48Alfred Noyes, Two Worlds for Memory, Sheed and Ward, London, 1953, p. 118.

  49JB to Susie, 5 October 1916, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  50The Battle of the Somme, First Phase and The Battle of the Somme, Second Phase, published by Thomas Nelson in 1916 and 1917 respectively.

  51JB to George Brown, 5 October 1916, University of Edinburgh Special Collections, Thomas Nelson Collection, Gen 1728/B/6/222.

  52JB to Captain Basil Liddell Hart, 2 December 1916, QUA, 2110, box 13.

  53Dedication in John Buchan, Greenmantle, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1916.

  54Lord Tweedsmuir, Always a Countryman, Robert Hale, London, 1953, p. 292.

  55Buchan, Greenmantle, chapter II.

  56Ibid.

  57Quoted by James Buchan in The John Buchan Journal, no. 12, autumn 1992, p. 3.

  58Buchan, Nelson’s History of the War, vol. XIII, pp. 82–98.

  59JB to Charles Dick, 30 April 1910, QUA, 2110, box 13.

  60Arthur Balfour to JB, 30 October 1916, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  61According to General Sir Douglas Haig in a letter to The Times, 28 November 1916.

  62David S. Katz, The Shaping of Turkey in the British Imagination, 1776–1923, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016, pp. 220–1.

  63Ibid., p. 210.

  64Ibid., p. 204.

  65JB to Helen Buchan, 27 October 1917, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  66JB to Susie, 14 October 1916, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  67JB to Susie, 17 October 1916, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  68John Buchan, These for Remembrance, privately published, 1919, p. 36.

  69John Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, pp. 164–5.

  70JB to Susie, 19 October 1916, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  71JB to Susie, 20 October 1916, QUA, 2110, box 2.

  72Anna Buchan, A. E. B., privately published, 1917, p. 24.

  73Cabinet minute, 31 August 1914, TNA, CAB 41/35/38.

  74Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992, p. 38.

  75Cabinet minute, 24 January 1917, TNA, CAB 21/37 24.

  76‘Propaganda Arrangements’, Robert Donald’s report to David Lloyd George, 9 January 1917, TNA, INF 4/9.

  77Lord Milner to David Lloyd George, 17 January 1917, Parliamentary Archives, LG/F/38/2/2.

  78‘Propaganda – A Department of Information’, memorandum by John Buchan, 3 February 1917, TNA, CAB 24/3/33.

  79Michael Redley, ‘What did John Buchan do in the Great War?’, The John Buchan Journal, no. 47, p. 20.

  80Susan Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1947, p. 81.

  81Reginald Farrer, The Void of War: Letters from Three Fronts, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1918.

  82Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, p. 83.

  83Paul Nash, Outline: An Autobiography and Other Writings, Faber and Faber, London, 1949, p. 207.

  84Buchan, A. E. B., p. 22.

  85Ibid., pp. 31–2.

  86Anna Buchan, Unforgettable, Unforgotten, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1945, p. 150.

  87Buchan, A. E. B., pp. 37–8.

  88JB to Anna Buchan, 18 April 1917, NLS, Acc. 11627/37.

  89JB to Helen Buchan, 19 July 1917, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  90JB to Anna Buchan, 20 July 1917, NLS, Acc. 6975/14.

  91JB to Helen Buchan, 23 July 1917, NLS, Acc. 6975/14.

  92Lord Burnham to Robert Donald, 31 July 1917, TNA, INF 4/7.

  93Buchan, A History of the Great War, vol. II, p. 65.

  94John Buchan, Poems Scots and English, T. C. and E. C. Jack, Edinburgh, 1917, p. 7.

  95The Times, 7 August 1917, p. 7.

  96JB to Helen Buchan, 7 August 1917, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  97JB to Susie, 10 September 1917, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  98Collection of reports and memoranda by John Buchan and others, Department and Ministry of Information, March 1917–December 1919, QUA, W. D. Jordan Library, John Buchan Collection, no. 130.

  99Pembroke Wicks to Sir Edward Carson, 20 October 1917, TNA, CAB 21/37 20.

  100Hubert Montgomery to JB, 24 October 1917, TNA, CAB 21/37.

  101Entry for 20 August 1917, Leo Amery, The Leo Amery Diaries, vol. I, 1896–1929, Hutchinson, London, 1980.

  102Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, pp. 82–4.

  103JB to Helen Buchan, 17 May 1918, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  104Quoted in Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, Allen Lane, London, 1977, p. 47.

  105Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, p.82 footnote.

  106Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, p. 38.

  107Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, p. 134.

  108William Buchan, John Buchan: A Memoir, Buchan and Enright, London, 1982, p. 160.

  109Pilgrim Trust Ninth Annual Report, 1939, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1939.

  110JB to Helen Buchan, 5 August 1918, NLS, Acc. 11627/4.

  111JB to Helen Buchan, 10 August 1918, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  112Lord Beaverbrook’s memorandum to the House of Commons, September 1918, p. 3, QUA, W. D. Jordan Library, John Buchan Collection, no. 130.

  113JB to Helen Buchan, 11 September 1918, NLS, Acc. 11627/4 11.

  114John Buchan, The King’s Grace 1910–1935, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1935, pp. 234–5.

  115Buchan, The King’s Grace 1910–1935, pp. 247–9.

  116John Buchan, The Three Hostages, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1924, chapter IV.

&nbs
p; 117Adolf Hitler, My Battle, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, 1933, pp. 76–7. See also Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, p. 200.

  118James Duane Squires, British Propaganda at Home and in the United States from 1914 to 1918, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1935, p. 283.

  119Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, p. 166.

  7 Elsfield, 1919–1927

  1Memorandum, 1 January 1919, Parliamentary Archives, LG/F/95/1/1.

  2John Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1940, p. 181.

  3Ibid., pp. 182–3.

  4Ibid., p. 184.

  5Susan Tweedsmuir, ed., John Buchan by his Wife and Friends, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1947, pp. 289–90.

  6Toby Buchan, ‘John Buchan and the Great War’, in The John Buchan Journal, no. 7, winter 1987, p. 6.

  7John Buchan, These for Remembrance, privately published, 1919, Preface.

  8JB to Helen Buchan, 19 June 1919, NLS, Acc. 6975/14.

  9Cadmus and Harmonia (John and Susan Buchan), The Island of Sheep, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1919, p. 68.

  10J. P. Parry, ‘From the Thirty-Nine Articles to the Thirty-Nine Steps: reflections on the thought of John Buchan’, in Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British History presented to Maurice Cowling, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 217.

  11Arthur Balfour to Lord Beaverbrook, 13 December 1918, NLS, Acc. 7006.

  12JB to Lord Beaverbrook, 22 February 1922, NLS, Acc. 7006.

  13JB to Lord Beaverbrook, 11 May 1922, NLS, Acc. 7006.

  14Lord Beaverbrook to Winston Churchill, 2 June 1922, Parliamentary Archives, BBK/G/15/2.

  15University of Glasgow to JB, 1 May 1919, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  16John Buchan, Mr Standfast, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1919, chapter 1.

  17JB to Helen Buchan, 9 May 1919, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  18JB to Helen Buchan, 16 June 1919, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  19JB to Helen Buchan, 5 June 1919, QUA, 2110, box 3.

  20Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door, p. 187.

  21Ibid., p. 188–9.

  22Ibid., p. 188.

  23Robert Stanley, ‘Mr. John Buchan at Home’, in Homes and Gardens, November 1932, pp. 251–4.

  24William Buchan, The Rags of Time, Ashford, Buchan and Enright, Southampton, 1990, p. 21.

  25JB to Helen Buchan, 15 December 1919, NLS, Acc. 6975/14.

  26Susan Tweedsmuir, A Winter Bouquet, Gerald Duckworth, London, 1954, p. 48. There is no longer a Women’s Institute in Elsfield.