To go back to Inverness was to return to the house that her parents had bought only in her last year of school; it wasn’t returning to her childhood home. Neither would Colin and Josephine have encouraged her to stay. Jean was doing well in her chosen career, first having been employed in London by the college she had trained in, and then securing an excellent post working in France, first for the Ministere Britannique des Munitions, and then following her boss, with whom she got on well, to move on to the British Scientific Apparatus Manufacturers. The IRA’s excellent teaching was shown in Jean’s employer’s testimonials about her ‘sound knowledge of commercial French’, and she was also ‘quite at home with French Shorthand’. With her younger sister setting an example, Beth tried again down south. She secured new positions, including at a school in Eastbourne, but also focused on extracurricular work: her growing interest in writing, and the experiences she could gain in the long school holidays.
Beth was mixing with writers and other artistic people outwith school hours. In a letter written many years later, she described her social group around this time as ‘entirely “intellectual” [...] scholastic, literary and what-you-will’.17 She made the most of social opportunities, and spent little time at home; she was not a particularly domesticated person.
I’ve an encyclopediac experience of digs, boarding houses, hotels, and other people’s homes. But [...] I’ve never made a home in my life [...]. Never wanted to, of course – I could have had a flat when I was working, but I always preferred the appalling ugliness of rooms to doing anything for myself.18
There are descriptions of the sort of flats Beth knew, and their formidable landladies, in The Man in the Queue, where a mousy teacher creeps in and out of the sitting-room while Mrs Everett plots to help her tenant Lamont to escape the police. Beth’s contemporary Dodie Smith, whom she was later to encounter when they were both successful playwrights, gives long and vivid descriptions of renting rooms in her autobiographies, evoking a lost world where young career women had a different sort of independence. Life in lodgings lacked privacy, but housework duties were smaller as there was only the one room to look after, and meals were often provided.
Beth’s salary as a teacher – around £100 a year at Oban, for example – was quite enough for her to be able to travel in the summer.19 She visited Jean in France, and travelled extensively by train and bus throughout Britain and Europe. When Etta was older, she too joined the sisters on their travels. Beth’s early short stories and plays show particular familiarity with France, though she was always at her best when writing about England or Scotland – her view of France was always rather romantic.
One important journey which Beth made more than once was the pilgrimage to view the battlefields and graveyards of the Great War. After the war was over, many mothers and widows – those who could afford it – made the journey to Europe to try and find their loved ones’ graves. Perhaps they felt that if they could see where they lay, they could come to terms with what had happened, and gain some understanding of it. At first, these visits were informal; the towns and villages around the trenches were flattened, with few places to stay and large swathes of countryside covered in black mud, still full of unexploded shells. Surprisingly quickly, these mud-plains were seeded over with grass and flowers, the formal cemeteries were laid out with the rows upon rows of little crosses that we know today, and the battlefield tours became organized events. Beth visited both the site of the Battle of the Somme itself, and the cemetery where her young officer was buried. She found the battlefield most affecting, rejecting the formality of the official cemetery. Her first novel, Kif, has a fairly realistic picture of the landscape the troops knew in France, but, given the lack of description in her writing, and the pastoral view of France in her short stories, Beth probably only saw the battlefields once they had been cleaned up.
Although it may not have been ideal, after her years working in the English Midlands, and the brief spell back in Scotland in Oban, Beth had managed to establish a teaching career for herself. She accepted a new post, as PE teacher in the High School in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Here, she was happy. She loved the surrounding countryside and, much later, wrote to Marjorie, her Anstey room-mate, ‘I never really felt at home in England until I went south of London, and now for me it is like going home. Over the hill south of Sevenoaks, and there is “my” country stretching in front of me. Each time I go back and I am surprised anew by the shattering beauty of the Weald.’20 Her Tunbridge Wells pupils remembered her fondly as well – particularly her lovely accent – and Beth must have kept in touch with someone at the school because, almost a decade later when she had her hit play Richard of Bordeaux, a party of schoolchildren from Tunbridge Wells High School travelled up to see the former teacher’s play.
It was not as a student that Beth fell in love with England, but as a young working woman. She had overcome the difficulties of starting her career, had put behind her the loss of her young officer in the war, and had managed to create for herself a fulfilling and happy life as a teacher in the south of England. However, this hard-won contentment was not to last, as bad news was coming to her from Inverness.
PART TWO
Gordon Daviot
1924–1945
Chapter Six
Josephine, and Hugh Patrick Fraser
In the early 1920s, Beth’s mother Josephine became ill. Colin and Josephine did not tell their daughters at first, but by 1923 things had become so bad that Colin wrote to Beth, asking her to come home.1
Josephine’s illness was already far advanced, and it was a shock to Beth to see the change in her mother since her last visit. Josephine had been being treated for breast cancer for two years, but the cancer spread to her liver six months before she died.2 With her basic medical training from Anstey, Beth would have had some knowledge to assist her to understand her mother’s condition and be able to help care for her, but it was still incredibly difficult for the family to watch Josephine die.
Josephine MacKintosh died on the morning of 24th June, 1923, about a month before Beth’s twenty-seventh birthday. The final cause of death was cardiac failure. Her death was to change Beth’s life, not just because of the emotional impact, but also because of the practical consequences. Beth was close to her mother, and for Josephine to die at the relatively young age of fifty-two was a shock. Beth’s youngest sister Etta was only nineteen, just leaving school. Josephine’s mother, Jane Horne, was still alive, and Beth had probably imagined her own mother living as long as her grandmother, telling stories about their family for many years to come.
Colin MacKintosh was bereft. He had been married to Josephine for twenty-nine years, and they had worked together to build up their business and raise their three daughters. Colin was close to his wife’s family, living near them and embracing their English-speaking heritage. Now, just as they could finally relax together in their lovely house in Crown, with the war over, and their three daughters becoming established in their own lives – he was alone. The day after Josephine died, Colin registered her death, and he and his daughters began to make arrangements for this new life he would face as a widower.
Josephine was buried in Tomnahurich cemetery, not far from her father, sister and Colin’s parents. Unlike the large monument he chose to mark his parents’ passing, Colin chose a simpler marker for Josephine’s grave: a raised kerbstone marking out the plot, inscribed with only their names – ‘Josephine Horne Wife of Colin MacKintosh’ – and the date of her death. Since the colossal loss of life in the First World War, fashions in gravestones had changed. Perhaps Colin also hoped to make this a family plot, and put up a larger headstone in later years, but this was not to be. Nowadays, the grave is difficult to find, and the names hard to read, particularly as the letters are raised, rather than engraved, and are slowly wearing away as the grave is forgotten. During his lifetime however, Colin visited Josephine’s resting place with fresh flowers every week.
Colin was named joint execut
or in his wife’s will, along with his two eldest daughters, Beth and Jean.3 Josephine had made her will a couple of years before her illness took hold, and had made sure, the year before she died, that it was lodged with the family solicitors, Stewart, Rule & Co. She left all her money and property to her family, with personal items of jewellery bequeathed to each of her daughters.
It was decided that Beth would remain with Colin in Inverness, to keep house for him. In the same way that Colin had cared for his parents, so his daughter cared for him. As the eldest, Beth took most of the responsibility. Jean had left her job in France after some ill-health, and had recently started a new job as a secretary at St James School, West Malvern, and Etta was just starting domestic science college in Edinburgh.4 Beth was ambiguous about teaching and had other interests, such as writing, that could be continued in Inverness. The situation may have been temporary to begin with, but, as things turned out, Beth was able to make her career based in Inverness. She was to remain the only daughter unmarried, so the responsibility for their father always stayed with her.
The house in Crown was large. After living in lodgings for eight years as a student and a teacher, learning how to run the household was an all-consuming task at first. She had only moved into this house a couple of years before leaving to go to college, and had seen her home as being the place she had created for herself as a teacher in the south of England. She had to relearn how to live in Inverness. There were many practical things she had to learn about Crown Cottage. ‘Keeping a house’ in the 1920s meant something different than it does today; without the benefit of modern technology, all household tasks, such as washing, cooking and cleaning, took a lot longer. The pace of life necessarily had to be slower: food had to be bought or ordered every day, from many different little shops; no fridge meant that food was prepared and kept differently; no washing machine meant washing was either done by hand or sent out to a laundry; no central heating meant fires had to be laid and maintained; and so on. Beth had some domestic help, and in later letters mentions someone doing tasks like cooking. There was some help with cleaning and washing went out to a laundry, but these were all people she had to speak to and arrange work rotas with.5 This was not a grand house with servants, it was a normal middle-class household, but domestic help was routine in most similar households. It had become more difficult to fill these sorts of positions after the Great War as the women who had previously been domestic servants now had other opportunities opening up to them.
The Depression in the 1920s and 30s may also have affected Colin and Beth’s ability to pay for domestic help – and, of course, Beth was no longer drawing her regular teacher’s salary. There is some suggestion that Beth did a little teaching work – perhaps tutoring? –after returning to Inverness, but she did not go back to work full-time.6 She was relying once more on her father’s money, although, like most Scottish women of her class, it is likely that the family’s finances had been managed by Josephine, and this job may now have fallen to Beth. Colin doesn’t seem to have been fully aware of his daughter’s financial position once she started earning from her writing (as shown by the provisions he makes for her in his will), but Beth was probably in charge of not only the household accounts, but also the accounts from the shops. Despite this, Beth was no longer an independent woman in the same way, but once more her father’s daughter. She had to learn how to keep house, and also how to adjust to living in Inverness as an adult; to start thinking of a career other than teaching; and learn how to live with her father now that she was an adult.
Some of Beth’s early writing – particularly her short story ‘His Own Country’ – betrays a deep sense of bitterness and isolation about her return to her home town. She felt that there was no one she could relate to – and no one she wanted to relate to. After her experiences as a teacher and in hospitals, meeting people from all walks of life, Beth did not feel stimulated by the people she was returning to in Inverness. She also felt keenly the snobbery of the small town, as shown by the obsession with class in her second novel, The Expensive Halo. Beth made a deliberate decision when she first returned to the town not to get involved in the usual society rounds, a decision that affected her reputation greatly. She never re-joined Inverness ‘society’ fully: ‘I found that the “going out to tea” business would leave me no life of my own at all if I didn’t do something drastic,’ she wrote in a letter. ‘So I decided to go nowhere […]. This was held to be slightly queer – in those days no one knew that I “wrote” and so I had no right to be queer – but it has worked out very well in practice.’7 Many people began to see her as a little odd or different – even arrogant – because of this. Beth did keep in touch with all of her close friends, and was to make friends with people in the local area such as the schoolteacher known as ‘Miss Mac’ at her old holiday destination of Daviot, and she was always a regular, chatty correspondent, but after her mother’s death she did not make much effort to become part of her neighbours’ world.
She did not totally isolate herself. Although there is some bitterness in some of her early short stories, there are also several stories which tell of happy Highland upbringings, little portraits of happy family life, describing quirky situations and the attraction of the rural settings Beth was familiar with in Inverness and on the west coast, where her MacKintosh relatives were from. This is an important strand of her work, though it is sometimes overlooked as it is mainly expressed through the less well-known short stories and one-act plays such as The Balwhinnie Bomb. On her mother’s side of the family, Beth’s grandmother, Jane Horne, was still living close to her son-in-law and granddaughter in her little house in Crown. Now in her eighties, she was physically and mentally frail, needing daily help at home. Jane Horne was the great matriarch of the family, telling the stories that gave Beth her extensive knowledge of her maternal antecedents and her English ancestors. Beth was sometimes considered to like the company of the elderly more than that of her own generation, but perhaps her mother’s illness had made her more sensitive to the needs of those who were housebound: ‘She often asserted with a quick smile – “I won’t go to anyone’s house until they’re bedridden. Then I’ll go and see them as often as they like” – and she did, showing a kindness, thoughtfulness, and tenderness which surprised many of her contemporaries.’ 8
Beth was a great walker, and her walks around town grew longer and longer the more time she spent in Inverness, as she re-explored the area. Though her family were no longer so close, her uncles and aunts were scattered around town, all within walking distance. She also shared two key interests with her father: reading and fishing. Beth and Colin may have been too alike always to get on, but they each took great pleasure in their hobbies, and these were pastimes that could be carried out side by side, in companionable silence, allowing them to spend time with each other but also time with their own thoughts.
All this time, Beth was thinking about and looking for something else. She wanted to develop her writing, and started to search out the literary communities in Inverness, a search that would shape her work and also bring her into contact with the man who was the real love of her life; the man whose story has been lost until now, confused with that of the First World War soldier. As with that first romance, her feelings for this man were not a part of her life that Beth shared with her friends, but, of course, her family were aware of the relationship. Etta later passed on some of the story of this second, important romantic friendship, while I have uncovered the rest through research.9
Inverness had a thriving cultural scene. Then, as now, there was plenty of music, including outdoor concerts on the Ness Islands. This, along with the music she played at home, influenced Beth’s early writing. She had access to lending libraries and read widely, and the literary community in Inverness was strong enough to have several distinct groups. Mairi MacDonald, who was later to write the biographical sketch of Gordon Daviot, left school and stepped into a writing community made up of her parents and parents�
�� friends, well-established townspeople with a keen interest in the Gaelic revival, writing short essays about Highland culture, joining and creating societies, and with a strong interest in folk music. Beth lampooned their meetings mercilessly in her early short story ‘The Find’.
Neil Gunn, the future author of The Silver Darlings, was living just across the river, only fifteen minutes’ walk from Beth. Gunn, newly married, was, in 1923, at exactly the same stage in his writing career as Beth – making a start and hopefully sending out short stories to magazines. He was to become well known and successful, producing novels about Highland history and culture with a strong Scottish nationalist bent, and he was at the heart of the Scottish Literary Renaissance. Given just how different the writings of Neil Gunn and Josephine Tey are, it is startling to realize that Elizabeth MacKintosh and Gunn are almost exact contemporaries. Their work has never been discussed in any detail in the same context, but they were aware of each other and reacted to each other’s writing. Placing Gordon Daviot/Josephine Tey in the context of the Scottish literary scene sheds new light on her work, and shows Gunn’s work and attitudes in a new light as well. Realising Tey’s place in relation to her contemporaries of Scottish literature and the accepted Scottish literary canon is like reading The Daughter of Time: it makes the reader question what they have been taught and taken for granted. Her exclusion from a mainly male group of writers is understandable in the context of the time. However, given her success and lasting influence, her continued exclusion from later assessment of twentieth century Scottish literature is something that should be challenged.
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