Josephine Tey

by Jennifer Morag Henderson

  Beth was too ill after the operation to return to Inverness, and there was no question of her living alone. After all these years of Beth caring for her family, it was Moire’s turn to care for her sister. She stayed in Moire’s family home in Streatham, along with Moire’s husband and their little son Colin, who was only five. Beth could do no more writing. Moire tried to make her comfortable, but Beth was not well enough even to travel into London or Essex to see her friends. Moire did not know any of her sister’s friends, such as Lena or Gwen, personally, and the Stokes’ family life was a world apart from the racing, party-going lifestyle of Beth’s theatrical friends. If Beth had asked, Moire could surely have arranged for Lena or Gwen to visit – and they would have been happy to do so – but Beth just wanted peace.

  Beth grew closer to Moire again in the few months that remained of her life. The two sisters had spent most of their adult lives apart, living in very different ways, in different countries, and, however much they had kept in touch by letter, Moire had not ever really been involved in Beth’s private writing life. Colin and Beth had much more in common, in some ways, with Colin’s interest in literature and shared love of the outdoors, but Moire had for many years been occupied with her single life in London, her work, then her husband and son. She was there, however, when Beth needed her. Beth made a couple of special amendments to her will to reflect this, leaving Moire £1,000 extra than she originally planned.21 Beth also asked Moire to sort out her affairs in Inverness, something that was obviously preying on her mind, as she had not left the house in Crown expecting never to return. Beth felt she had unfinished business, particularly as regards her playwriting, and her idiosyncratic will reflected that.

  There was nothing more Moire could do except make Beth as comfortable as possible. Beth’s nephew Colin Stokes retained only a hazy impression of Beth’s last weeks: a sick room that he could not enter, and a house that had to be kept quiet. Beth lasted through Christmas but died on 13th February 1952.22

  Moire sent a notice to The Times newspaper, perhaps hoping belatedly to inform all of Beth’s friends. The notice was filed under ‘Daviot’, rather than ‘MacKintosh’, and it was printed on 14th February, the day after Beth’s death: ‘DAVIOT: On Feb. 13, 1952, in London, GORDON DAVIOT, Playwright and Novelist. Cremation at the South London Crematorium, Rowan Road, Streatham Vale, S.W.16, on Monday Feb 18, at 11am.’ As at the funerals of their father and mother, Moire requested mourners not to bring flowers. Beth had a strong personal dislike of flowers on graves – perhaps because of all those weekly visits to Tomnahurich.

  The death notice in The Times was widely picked up. King George VI died on 6th February, and huge crowds had assembled in London for his funeral. Newspapers were reporting the event, and everyone in London was avidly reading about it. Moire’s short notice was seen by several of Beth’s friends, and her mention of ‘Gordon Daviot playwright and novelist’ was also picked up by journalists the length of the country, showing that the name Gordon Daviot was well known enough to be afforded space even when most column inches were being dedicated to royalty. A long obituary was printed in The Times the day after the original notice, on 15th February, while the Inverness Courier printed an obituary in its Friday edition, also on the 15th. The Highland News ran an obituary on the Saturday. Moire had effectively got the information out in time for Beth’s friends to attend the funeral, but many of them were very upset to learn about the death of their friend in this way. Beth was still relatively young – fifty-five – and, in the postwar years, her friends had become unaccustomed to reading obituaries of their contemporaries.

  John Gielgud was the first to spot the death notice.23 He was playing in Much Ado About Nothing at the Phoenix Theatre, and read his evening paper between acts. He was shocked to learn of Beth’s death. He knew she had been ill the year before, but Beth’s optimistic attitude had led him to believe she had been cured. He had to wait for his fellow cast members to come offstage before he could share the news, and then had to go back onstage himself for the final scenes of the play. His colleagues were busy telephoning Lena Ramsden to try to find out more. Lena, too, hadn’t realized the extent of Beth’s illness, and hadn’t yet read her evening paper. She received the phone call with great shock.

  Lena, and the rest of Beth’s London friends, had got used to Beth appearing in their lives at regular intervals, and between those visits communicating only sporadically by letter. Gwen used to say that it was hard enough to get London people to leave their comfort zone and come out to Tagley Cottage in Essex; Beth had never even tried to persuade her friends to visit her in Inverness. She had met John and Gwen when they had toured in Scotland, but it was always Beth who did the travelling to see her friends.

  Beth’s friends’ shock at hearing of her death was perhaps mingled with some guilt that they had not kept in touch more regularly. There was a general feeling that Beth should have told them about her illness, that they should have been more involved. When her friends were later interviewed about her death this realization that Beth had been alone in her last few months came through as being in some way her own fault. Her friends were all genuinely upset and saddened by her death, but the way that her silence about her illness has been reported is a little unfair to Beth. ‘Her sudden death [...] was a great surprise and shock to all her friends in London,’ wrote John Gielgud in the foreword to Gordon Daviot’s collected plays. ‘I learned afterwards that she had known herself to be mortally ill for nearly a year, and had resolutely avoided seeing anyone she knew. This gallant behaviour was typical of her and curiously touching, if a little inhuman too.’24 This quote has been repeated over and over again, and become central to analyses of Beth’s personality and work, but it is not the whole truth. Beth, and her friends, had known she was unwell for some time, but Beth herself had not known the full extent of her illness until the operation in London. After that, she barely had the energy to contact any of her friends, and her sister Moire would not have known how to contact them on her behalf – even if she had the time, when looking after both a small child and an invalid. If Beth’s friends had wanted more regular contact, they could have established that themselves, many years before. The only one of her theatre friends who had ever visited Inverness, it seems, was James Bridie, when he had toured there with the Citizens Theatre production of The Little Dry Thorn.

  James Bridie’s widow Rona made the trip down from Glasgow to London to attend the funeral, noting that ‘Gordon had always got on so well with her husband, that she [Rona] felt she wanted to come, to represent them both’.25 Lena drove a small party of Beth’s theatre friends out to the crematorium in South London, where they were joined by others who had heard the news. Among the attendees at Beth’s funeral were John Gielgud, the actor George Howe (currently performing in the same Shakespeare play as Gielgud), Veronica Turleigh (who had played the lead role all those years ago in The Laughing Woman), actresses Edith Evans and Betty Makeham, and writer Elisabeth Kyle.26 Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies was in South Africa, and Peggy Webster was in America. Beth’s family was represented by Moire and Jean, who met Beth’s theatre friends for the first time at the funeral. Lena Ramsden talked to Beth’s sisters, but was left with the impression that Beth had only arrived in London two weeks before, and had stayed at her club in Cavendish Square before heading to Moire’s. Beth had of course been at her sister’s since October 1951. Perhaps she had been able to make one last trip in to her Club before her death, but, if so, she must have been very weak and would have struggled to make contact with her friends.

  It’s a pity that there was this misunderstanding about the length of time Beth had been ill. Perhaps Moire, like Beth, was in denial about the cancer, or perhaps she was acting in accordance with Beth’s wishes, but, either way, it didn’t spare Beth’s friends any distress. Lena was very upset to know that Beth had been so ill and so close and yet she had not seen or helped her, and talked of the incident with some emotion in her autobiography, written thirty-two
years later. By this stage, Lena’s memory of the events were not perfect: she confused the years, and thought that Gielgud had been starring in The Winter’s Tale, rather than Much Ado About Nothing. John Gielgud also repeated the story, and it became one of the most persistent myths about Beth. Sadly, after her death, Beth’s desire for privacy didn’t translate into a silence or lack of knowledge about her, it translated over the years into a false picture that bore little relation to the reality of her life.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Beth’s Will, and Plays

  The main bequest in Beth’s will is well known, and has been mentioned on the cover of almost all the reprints of her books since her death. ‘I, Elizabeth MacKintosh,’ she wrote in Inverness in March 1951, ‘desire that everything of which I die possessed, whether money, goods, property, personal possessions, investments, play book and film rights and royalties, or any other belongings whatsoever, shall, except as hereinafter provided, be devoted to furthering the work of the National Trust for England’.1 This is the first line of a personal, somewhat idiosyncratic will. To read it is to hear once again Beth’s voice; the strong opinions and outspokenness familiar to readers of Josephine Tey novels. After a lifetime spent largely looking after her family, Beth decided that, in death, she was going to do what she wanted.

  The idea of leaving money to the National Trust had been in her mind for some time. The heroine of her second Josephine Tey novel, Christine Clay, does the same thing in her will, and Beth had made donations to charity out of her writing income as early as the mid-1930s.2 However, there were a number of codicils to the will, and it is a fairly lengthy document. The picture is not quite as clear-cut as that first sweeping statement makes out, and not quite as stark as the little note in Beth’s published work suggests. Beth did remember friends and family, and she did also remember Scotland and her home town of Inverness.

  The second thing that Beth requested in her will was that she wanted her unpublished Gordon Daviot plays to be printed – and if her agent couldn’t find an interested publisher, this was to be done at her own expense, money for the purpose being taken out of her estate before the remainder was handed over to the National Trust. Her writing was the most important priority.

  Beth then specified a number of personal items that were to be given to her youngest sister Moire. These included jewellery and other items that had belonged to their parents: a pearl and wreath diamond brooch, an amethyst brooch of their mother’s, and their father’s gold watch and seal. Beth also wanted her own personal jewellery to go to Moire or her descendants: the pearl earrings Colin had given her, which she had worn in her official author photographs; a diamond crescent and a diamond brooch. Some household items of value from Crown Cottage were also to go to Moire, including valuable silver spoons and Moire’s own choice of some of the furniture from the Inverness house. As can be seen from this growing list, Beth’s assets were of considerable value. Assessing the value, and disposing of her estate was something that would take some time, particularly given Beth’s strict conditions and the fact that Moire was based at the other end of the country.

  Beth had been careful to stress that ‘If at the time of my death I still own Crown Cottage, no sale of the contents shall be permitted until the said contents have been removed from the house to a sale room: nor shall any inspection of the house by prospective purchasers be allowed until all the contents have been so removed’. In an addition to her will made in November 1951, she added that on her death, her sister should get the keys to Crown Cottage, and no one was to enter the house until Moire had time to gather and sort Beth’s personal belongings and papers. This condition is witnessed by two nurses, and was made around the time that Beth had her operation in London. Beth had left Inverness in autumn 1951 in the expectation that she would return, and had left her house accordingly. The reference to ‘papers’ shows that Beth was particularly concerned about her written work, and it’s likely, given the posthumous publication of material, that Beth gave Moire specific instructions about what she should look for. As with the instruction in the main body of the will about her unpublished Daviot work, Beth was trying to ensure that her final writings were published. For her help, Moire was allowed to take anything from the house that she found useful, and, in addition, at the end of January 1952, just over a week before her death, Beth asked her GP, Dr McGill, to witness a statement saying that Moire should get an additional £1,000.

  There was another possible reason why Beth was so keen not to let anyone into her house after her death. She knew that, given the chance, some local people would have loved the chance to snoop around. Quite apart from her worry over her literary work, left lying and unorganized, Beth did not have a perfect relationship with her neighbours. Niggles like noise complaints from her and complaints of unfriendliness from them meant Beth did not look too kindly on them and did not like the idea of them looking through her personal belongings.3 She may also have known that there was interest in the property itself. After her death, her house was bought by neighbours, and they showed a particular interest in Beth’s work and life that could be construed as nosiness.

  Beth added a similar caveat when she stated that none of her clothes were to be disposed of locally. Inverness was still a small enough town that people could have recognized the original owner of clothes distributed through charitable organizations, particularly if they were of exceptionally good quality, as Beth’s were. She did have a preferred recipient for her clothes: Celia Kelly, of Wren’s View, St Paul’s Churchyard, London was to get those, including her furs, currently in storage in the London branch of Debenhams. Celia Kelly was Moire’s friend from college, and her flat had been used by Josephine Tey for her fictional character Kevin Macdermott. As an adult, Moire’s son was particularly pleased with the idea that Beth had remembered Celia.

  Finally, contrary to popular opinion, Beth did not forget her home town in her will. Although she left the bulk of her fortune to the National Trust, she had made a special provision in her original will that Inverness Museum should receive not only personal possessions, but also items pertaining to Beth’s career, and items of particular interest to the town. The Museum and Library (then housed in the same building) were to get a valuable Victorian ring which Beth habitually wore, and the original script of Richard of Bordeaux. Beth also stated that she had already lent the museum a collection of tartans and a silver spoon, which they could now keep. Even in her final days, Beth was thinking of Inverness, as she made an undated addition to the will while she was in England, adding another gold ring to her donation to the Public Library, and reiterating that the script of Richard should be placed there. The tartans and spoons had been part of a contemporary display organized by well-known local librarian and curator Miss Margaret MacDougall, who was a specialist in both tartan studies and old Inverness silver. These have now been subsumed into the general museum collections.4

  The script for Richard of Bordeaux now forms part of a special collection, available on request, and the two rings are kept with the script, though recently the Victorian emerald and diamond ring was on public display.5 The two rings have been the subject of some speculation as to their origins, but it’s clear from a letter in the family archives that the Victorian ring was a twenty-fifth birthday present from Josephine MacKintosh to her daughter Beth. The double gold ring is a wedding ring, made by James Ferguson of Inverness some time around the mid-1800s, and matches the description of a ring in Josephine MacKintosh’s will – which probably means it belonged to Beth’s grandmother, the long-lived Jane Ellis, who had told the young Beth so many stories. Beth wore both these rings throughout her life. In this way, Beth made sure that both Josephine and Jane had a presence in Inverness history.

  Beth’s will was not actually registered until August 1952, six months after her death.6 Her request that Moire should hold the keys to her house and be the first to enter held things up considerably, as Moire did not feel she could make the long journey north
until the better weather, particularly with her small son and husband to look after and consider. Moire was not the executor. Beth perhaps had some idea of how difficult Moire would find it to travel north, and, given what she wanted done, she did not ask her sister, who had had very little interest or input into her literary career or life, to administrate the will. The executor’s duties were split between the family solicitors Messrs Stewart, Rule & Co, in Inverness; Beth’s bank in London, the Westminster; and her literary agents, Pearn, Pollinger and Higham Ltd. There were further delays when Beth’s agents, in the person of David Higham, declined to take on the duties of executors. Her agents were involved in the assessment of the worth of Beth’s copyrights, and the posthumous publication of plays and novels, but they had no desire to do anything other than their already established job with regards to Daviot and Tey work. Beth seems to have written much of her will without reference to the people named within it. Although her family solicitors, the main executors, were well aware of what they would have to do, she may not have discussed it with her agent, and it may only have been towards the very end of her life that she discussed it with her sister Moire. After years of looking after other people, Beth was definitely pleasing herself when she wrote her will.