Josephine Tey

by Jennifer Morag Henderson

  Beth did draw to a certain extent on her own life to write her fiction, but not to the extent that some commentators believe. Many critics have been tempted, in the absence of an authoritative biography, to see Beth’s life through her fiction. After The Expensive Halo, she certainly never put Colin or her family so clearly into her work, and, although she did draw on her own personal experiences, the intersection between fact and fiction is more complex than straight borrowings from real life. For example, the Irish lawyer in The Franchise Affair, Kevin Macdermott, lives in a small flat in St Paul’s Churchyard, London. Kevin is not a real person, but his flat was real enough: Beth’s sister Moire had a friend from college, Celia Kelly, who lived at 76 St Paul’s Churchyard.

  The Franchise Affair has other roots, very far from Beth’s life. It has been widely reported that it is based on a true story – not Beth MacKintosh’s, but the eighteenth-century trial of supposed kidnap victim Elizabeth Canning – the similarity between this name and Betty Kane is obvious. The 1753 Canning trial had been the subject of contemporary books, such as Elizabeth is Missing by Lillian de la Torre in 1945. The story interested Beth, and she fictionalized it, simplifying and changing several elements, but with no doubt that in her own book Betty Kane was guilty and the Sharpes innocent. The teenage Betty Kane, unlike the genuinely innocent ‘Erica’ or ‘Cornelia’, is the sort of adolescent girl a teacher could easily describe, and she comes across as a complex, believable and plausible character, while the whole fantastical story of The Franchise Affair is endlessly readable. Any summary of a Josephine Tey novel, however, never comes close to what they are really about. The reason they are so re-readable is that the characters are so fresh and real: every time, they strike the reader as being alive – and not just the main characters, but each incidental person met along the way, from Ben Carley, the other lawyer in Robert Blair’s town, to the illiterate Gladys, whose evidence in the witness box is given in such a strong country accent that the court struggles to understand her.

  The Franchise Affair was critically well received as a superior detective tale.14 It went on to be adapted several times, and remains one of Josephine Tey’s most popular stories, with modern writers like Sarah Waters citing it as an inspiration.15 The Franchise Affair was published in the US, like all Josephine Tey’s novels, almost immediately after its UK publication, and was adapted into a major UK film in 1951.

  The US publication had been quickly followed by the book’s release in paperback in the UK, and the negotiations over the rights are a clear indication of just how happy Beth was with her new incarnation as crime writer Josephine Tey.16 Tey’s publishers, her trusted friends Peter and Nico Davies, carried out most of the negotiations for the paperback rights, which were given to Penguin. Even by the early 1950s, Penguin were still keen to mention the more recognizable name of Gordon Daviot somewhere on the cover of the book, but Nico Davies explained to Penguin that both the Peter Davies firm, and Beth herself, wished the Tey name to be built up separately. They compromised on allowing Penguin to include a biography, which Beth wrote herself. The biography is a clear summation of her career as she herself saw it at this point in her life. ‘Josephine Tey’, she began in the biography, ‘is the reverse side of Gordon Daviot’. Beth was also clear that ‘Josephine Tey’ was a crime writer. Her recent books, such as Miss Pym Disposes, Brat Farrar, and The Franchise Affair, were such unusual crime novels that Penguin still felt it necessary to check whether it was okay to issue The Franchise Affair under their green ‘mystery’ covers. In her biographical note, Tey explains that she had found the structure of the novel, such as Kif, a less exciting medium than poems, short stories or plays, but crime novels, she stated, were ‘a medium as disciplined as any sonnet’. Beth had found her niche, and recognized that her strengths as a writer – her original thinking and her characterization – were shown to their best advantage within the formalized structure of crime fiction. Beth’s comment comparing writing detective fiction to creating a sonnet is the clearest statement of how she saw her writing. This, rather than any remark about ‘knitting’, is how her crime fiction should be viewed.

  Beth was happy as Josephine Tey, though did not mind the linking of this name to Gordon Daviot. What she did object to, though, was her real identity being revealed. Most of the negotiations for the paperback were done between Penguin (in the person of Eunice Frost, former secretary and now the most powerful woman at Penguin) and Peter or Nico Davies. Tey only wrote directly to Penguin when one of their proofreaders made a plot query that struck her fancy. Was Tey sure, when describing Robert Blair’s repetitive daily life, that she’d given him the right biscuit on the right day? She signed that reply ‘Josephine Tey’. Meanwhile, the only time Tey’s agent got involved was when he conveyed his client’s violent opposition to having her photograph on the back of the book. Josephine Tey wanted to write in peace and focus on writing only; she did not want to do any self-promotion. In her biographical note, Beth was keen to stress that, apart from Miss Pym Disposes she did not use her own personal experiences in her novels – not strictly true, but a point that she reiterated, saying also that her first novel Kif had been ‘notably unautobiographical’. She admitted to being from the Highlands, but rather cagily ended her potted biography by saying that ‘now she is reduced to domesticity [Tey] divides her time between the Highlands and London’. This was how Beth wanted to be seen.

  The Franchise Affair did well for Penguin, and they continued to ask for paperback rights to Tey’s work. The Franchise Affair, meanwhile, was adapted for television in 1958, again in 1962, and once more in 1988, while Penguin reissued it several times in the 1960s, and on into the 70s.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Malvern Festival and Brat Farrar

  Following the success of Miss Pym Disposes and The Franchise Affair, Josephine Tey continued to write mystery novels, working on what was to become Brat Farrar. Beth found the writing creatively satisfying, and her books as Josephine Tey became more and more popular. With publication of her novel both in the UK and the US, Josephine Tey built up a loyal audience in both countries. Gordon Daviot’s plays, however, were also still in demand, and 1949 finally brought to a conclusion the unsatisfying story of The Stars Bow Down.

  The Stars Bow Down was written as early as 1936, but, as discussed in Chapter 12, problems with casting meant it had never been produced.1 The script had been published, but not until 1939, when theatreland was not in a position to look for new material. After the war, however, it was not forgotten. Gordon Daviot’s plays had been finding new outlets, with her short plays, such as Remember Caesar, in 1949, anthologized, and others broadcast on the radio.2 The Stars Bow Down was finally produced as a radio play in 1948 for the BBC’s Saturday Night Theatre programme.3 This in turn influenced the programmers of the culturally important Malvern Festival, who decided to pick The Stars Bow Down as one of their 1949 festival plays.

  The Malvern Festival was founded by Barry Jackson and Roy Limbert in 1929 to celebrate the playwright George Bernard Shaw.4 In Gordon Daviot’s time Shaw was considered by many to be the greatest playwright after Shakespeare, with actors clamouring to appear in his plays and audiences flocking to see his work.5 Popular demand had established the Malvern Festival as an annual, critically acclaimed fixture in the arts calendar. The Malvern Festival was not just dedicated to Shaw in name only; the playwright was a regular attendee, writing plays specifically for the festival, but equally happy to share the stage with other dramatists. Both classic plays and new works by living playwrights had been performed at previous Malvern Festivals, with previously produced playwrights and plays including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, Lady Precious Stream (a popular Chinese play by S. I. Hsuing), James Bridie, a version of Jane Eyre by Helen Jerome, as well as Shaw’s Pygmalion, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, and many more.

  In 1949 the event was in its twelfth year (it had not been running during the war) and included six plays which were perfo
rmed several times each over the course of the whole month of August and into September.6 Three of the plays were by Shaw, and the other contributors were Lewis Wood, Denis Cannan, and Gordon Daviot. Mathew Forsyth, who had worked with Daviot at the Citizens Theatre and on Richard of Bordeaux, was the overall producer. Other linked events were tea-time talks on a variety of subjects, including the theatre and Isaac Newton; a literary luncheon featuring Compton Mackenzie; a Shakespeare festival; and church and choral singing.

  Malvern and the Malvern Hills are near Birmingham in the West Midlands. The area was familiar to Gordon Daviot from her days studying at Anstey Physical Training College – she wrote fondly of remembering Christmas in the Malvern Hills in a letter to Dodie Smith, and she was delighted to see The Stars Bow Down finally get a full on-stage production with a good cast at such a prestigious festival.7 She arranged her holidays to fit in with the dates of Malvern, and invited her good friend Lena Ramsden to join her there.8 Colin MacKintosh, now elderly and frail, was left in the capable hands of a housekeeper, whom Beth hired in order to get a couple of weeks’ holiday and respite each spring and autumn.9 Beth was still free to travel, but she had to now spend more time organizing each trip, making sure that Colin was not left alone. Money to hire a housekeeper was not a problem.

  In her autobiography, Lena Ramsden described their activities during the week they spent at Malvern, saying that they climbed the hills above the town and visited nearby towns such as Cheltenham and Tewkesbury – but she doesn’t mention the two women watching or commentating on the other plays in the festival.10 Lena was an avid theatregoer, but it seems significant that her description of the week focuses on the many other activities they did: Gordon Daviot enjoyed writing plays, and enjoyed watching them – but she did not enjoy talking shop, and would not have considered her holiday well spent if she had sat in the theatres all day, speaking only to theatre staff, management or actors. She wanted to see the countryside and spend time with her friend, and was happy to wait until the Friday to make a special trip to see her own play performed.

  John Gielgud, way back when Richard of Bordeaux was produced, had said that Gordon Daviot was the best of playwrights for an actor or producer because she left everyone to get on with it, and her attitude had not changed in the meantime. Dodie Smith had far more control over her plays – and ultimately far more success – but Gordon Daviot had far less stress. She had faith that what she had written would easily be interpreted by the actors. Dodie Smith had been an actress, and was intimately interested in the nuances of performance and the technical work needed to bring a drama to life on stage. Gordon Daviot was a writer. She wrote, and that was the end of her job. A question often asked of dramatists is whether they find it strange to see their work performed, as actors must surely change what they have written and interpret it differently to how it was intended, but sometimes the reverse can be true: sometimes it seems impossible for the actors to interpret it differently, and it can seem as though the writer’s mind is just being laid bare onstage. Gordon Daviot saw actors in a very different way to Dodie Smith. Dodie, as an actress herself, felt that parts were open to interpretation, while Gordon simply saw her writing as something the actress must read and perform. Dodie Smith’s autobiography is full of descriptions of actors and their personalities and the difficulties of casting. Gordon wrote no autobiography, but her letters rarely talk about actors, only about books and plays as entities in themselves.

  On the day of the performance of The Stars Bow Down, a day when a writer like Dodie Smith might have been taking a last look at changes or at the theatre or the stage sets, Gordon prepared by having a rest.11 She took her meals in her room and remained in bed all day. Lena looked in on her a couple of times – by invitation, she is careful to add – and asked Gordon what she was thinking about. ‘Nothing,’ Gordon replied, ‘absolutely nothing – I’ve had a wonderful time’. Given the stress of her private life in Inverness at that moment, it is easy to see, with hindsight, why she needed a rest. The theatre was not her whole life – her father Colin, now very elderly and frail, was taking up a lot of her time and energy, as were problems with his business, not to mention the beginnings of a concern about her own health. The Malvern Festival, for Gordon Daviot, was not a career opportunity, a chance to mingle with producers and get her name out there again – it was an end in itself. She was enjoying the moment of having her play produced, without seeing it as any sort of stepping stone to the future. Malvern was her holiday and her rest time; it was not part of a carefully devised career plan. Dodie Smith spent a long time after the war trying to re-establish herself as a dramatist, speaking with managers like Binkie Beaumont, trying to cast new plays, writing works that were rejected. Dodie was always worried about the next project; Gordon simply enjoyed what she had. Of course, another key difference was that Dodie was the main wage earner for herself and her husband Alec, whereas Gordon still used her earnings for extras. Colin’s business was still nominally the MacKintosh’s main income.

  Gordon Daviot did not have to do any extra self-promotion to gain status at Malvern, as she already had top billing in the festival programme.12 Her introductory essay comes first and takes up more space than is given to the other two featured dramatists. Her photograph is included, but no mention is made of her real name and there is no biography given other than what she herself chooses to mention in her essay. It’s the same for the other two playwrights, and the general impression is that the reader of the festival programme is expected to be cognisant of the dramatists’ work and to accept at face value the festival’s programming as being of high quality. Daviot is in illustrious company, and her play is being given serious critical attention merely by being included in the programme. Critics have seen some similarities to Shaw in Daviot’s work, citing her assured dialogue and seeing his influence on Queen of Scots and Cornelia.13 This sort of critical attention is in contrast to the cheerful comments about Josephine Tey’s crime writing, which, although praised, was not always received with such serious consideration. Crime reviewing has become more serious over the years, but it is worth reiterating that in 1949, Elizabeth MacKintosh would have seen a clear distinction between Gordon Daviot’s work being invited to join the Malvern Festival, and Josephine Tey’s crime novels being published in popular paperback editions. They were seen as very different types of writing, and this coloured how Beth spoke about her own work, even if it didn’t affect how she approached the writing itself.

  Gordon Daviot’s introductory essay in the festival programme provides interesting comment on how she saw the popularity of her own plays.14 She discusses Richard of Bordeaux, and how she felt it was somewhat misrepresented by critics as being a work of pacifism, rather than an exploration of Richard’s revenge on those who had tried to thwart him. She then says that, despite this, she did not return to novel writing, but carried on writing plays, because that was ‘the thing I liked doing best in the world’. Remembering that the programme had no potted biography, this assumes that the Malvern audience had some knowledge of Daviot’s novels under her own name, as well as her Tey work. Daviot explains, however, that she has now chosen to write plays on Biblical themes, and, while admitting that this may not appeal to the regular playgoer, she defends her choice, and hopes that the play she is presenting at the Malvern Festival, The Stars Bow Down, a rewriting of the story of Joseph and his brothers, will appeal. This essay gives some insight into how she viewed her critics, and her own writing. She writes purely for enjoyment, rather than for the audience – or for the money. Her Biblical scholarship is serious, and she wishes to see Biblical characters not only in their religious but also in their historical context. This chimes with the interest in history found in many of her other works. She also gives some indication of how she approaches playwriting and plotting, explaining that she is interested in moments of conflict, whether this is personal and individual or wider political or religious conflict.

  The plays at the Malvern Festiva
l were performed mainly by the Malvern Company, with the addition of extra actors as needed. The Malvern Company was a group of actors and actresses who were based at the Malvern Festival Theatre, but who also travelled across Britain doing shows elsewhere as a repertory company. Daviot’s play has a cast list of thirty-two people including two or three child actors, a considerable cost and logistical challenge for the Malvern Festival. Although many of the actors doubled up to play parts in the other plays, Daviot’s cast requirements are significantly higher than the other playwrights’ (twelve listed cast members for Shaw’s Buoyant Billions, for example, plus nine people for The Tressinghams and eight for Max, the other two plays). None of the actors are really household names today, but they were all hard-working professionals who appeared in numerous well-known plays, television series and films.

  Gordon Daviot’s own photograph is prominently featured in the Malvern Festival programme, and it shows a very different woman to the young, diffident playwright in Sasha’s pre-war studio portraits.15 At fifty-three, she now looks confident and mature, rather than having an air of being dressed up for the camera. She is wearing the same pearl earrings as in the Sasha portraits, which were a gift from Colin. She is much more relaxed and almost smiling, with her head resting on her hand. Her dark hair is swept up and back from her forehead, and, although the photo is just as posed as the Sasha ones were, this time it seems as if Gordon is in control, rather than the photographer. A full-length photograph showing Gordon in the same outfit, and so presumably taken at the same sitting, was kept by the MacKintosh family. This print is signed by the photographer: Angus McBean. McBean was a well-known figure in the theatrical world, a friend of the Motleys, for example, and of similar stature to Sasha. He is seen in the world of photography as a forerunner to David Bailey because of his post-war work with celebrities, and he photographed many well-known people, including, in 1963, the Beatles, for the cover of their first album. The fact that he photographed Gordon Daviot shows that she continued to have stature in the theatre world.