Josephine Tey

by Jennifer Morag Henderson

  Studies of modern Scottish Literature, which might have been expected to embrace Beth’s success, have generally ignored her work. There are several reasons for this omission, perhaps including Beth’s reticence and fondness for pen-names, her gender, and a bias against genre fiction. Perhaps also there has been a focus on work that not only comes from Scottish writers living in Scotland and writing about Scotland, as Beth did, but Scottish writers who were explicitly focused on the Scottish nationalist cause. I have never seen any article, essay or comment that explicitly links Neil Gunn and Josephine Tey, despite the fact that they lived in the same town at the same time, knew each other’s work, and responded to each other’s work.

  In Inverness, Tey’s name is widely known, and she has many loyal readers – but she has not received the serious attention she deserves. Unlike Neil Gunn, whose admirers worked hard after his death to set up a society to his memory and publish his biography and his collected letters, Tey had no one working for her in this way. However, her books are always available in local bookshops, old copies never last long in second-hand bookshops, and at the centenary of her birth the local drama group the Florians, in collaboration with the Saltire Society, revived four of her short plays in ‘An Evening with Gordon Daviot’.28 The Inverness Courier reckoned “The four plays [...] offered well-defined contrasts and demonstrated Gordon Daviot’s gift for mystery, suspense and intrigue’, praising her ‘dry Cowardesque humour’ and particularly enjoying the short play The Balwhinnie Bomb. The organizers of the event decided that the substantial proceeds from the event should go towards a lasting legacy, and used the money to create ‘The Highland Culture Award’. Recipients of this award have included writer Katharine Stewart, composer Blair Douglas and singer Mary Ann Kennedy – all people whom the Highland branch of the Saltire Society considered to have furthered the Society’s aim: preserving the best of Scottish Highland tradition and encouraging any new development that could strengthen and enrich the cultural life of the region – a fitting legacy for the very original Josephine Tey.

  However Beth’s legacy has been managed or mismanaged, the fact remains that her books are still in print and still selling and still giving huge enjoyment to readers. They are constantly referenced by new generations of readers and writers, and the recent interest in The Daughter of Time shows that Beth achieved what she set out to do: to make people think about what they are reading and enjoy it. Her stories are as powerful now as they ever were.

  Conclusion

  Elizabeth MacKintosh had her own story to tell, but never had the time to tell it. Comparing the pictures of Beth, the diffident young woman who looks so serious as celebrated playwright Gordon Daviot in 1934, with the confident author photograph taken at Malvern in 1949, it is hard to believe that Beth was ever nostalgic for the past. Beth MacKintosh reinvented herself several times over – she always looked to the future, and felt the best was yet to come. When she died, she was at the peak of her writing powers. Her family believed that if she had lived, she could have taken up some of the very interesting offers that were beginning to come her way from America for adaptations of her Tey novels. No longer tied to Inverness, she could have travelled and perhaps rekindled her love of cinema and her film-writing career as she took advantage of adaptations of her Josephine Tey work. There were many aspects of her varied life that she had not yet explored in fiction – teaching PE to factory workers, or working in a mixed school in Oban or more about her life in Inverness. The Singing Sands’ focus on nationalism shows an engagement with contemporary life that she could have developed further in her writing.

  Beth had not always had it easy. She was never able to do all she wanted, but her writing output in the last few years of her life could not have been higher. She succeeded in completing the novels she was working on before her death, and everything she wanted to publish or have performed did eventually appear in print or on the stage. She had succeeded in creating a life for herself, and her writing gave not only her readers, but Beth herself, enormous pleasure. Elizabeth MacKintosh was Gordon Daviot the playwright and Josephine Tey the novelist, but she was also Beth the homemaker, a daughter, a cousin, a sister, a good friend, an Invernessian. She made many lives for herself, both physically when she was able to move around, but also mentally when she was confined to Inverness and living through her writing.

  Beth’s nephew, Colin Stokes, is the only close family member still living. Jean died in the late 1950s; Moire died in London in 1992. The gravestones in Tomnahurich cemetery tell us what happened to a few other members of Beth’s family: her mother’s brother John Horne died in 1955; a cousin died in 1977. None of the other cousins or aunts or uncles had stayed close to Beth, even though they continued to live in the same area.

  John Gielgud, Dodie Smith and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies all lived to extreme old age in their cottages in Essex; Gielgud as a celebrated actor, Dodie as the famous and wealthy author of I Capture the Castle and The 101 Dalmatians, and the indomitable Gwen, working in radio until near the end, forever with the youthful voice of Juliet Capulet. Gwen and John always acknowledged Gordon’s influence on their careers, and cherished the memory of her friendship. Dodie never stopped regretting her life in theatre and always wished she had not gone to America when the Second World War broke out, but she forged a successful second career as a novelist, and put into fiction many of her own and her friends’ experiences in 1930s theatreland. When Dodie’s husband Alec died she was lost, estranged from many of her friends because of her spiky temper, relying on her housekeeper – yet always managing, despite what she said, to keep up her literary links. Her literary estate was left to the author Julian Barnes, who went to considerable trouble to deal with Disney for film rights, while her personal papers ended up in Boston University – a sharp contrast to the way in which Beth’s estate was dealt with.

  Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies worked for as long as she could, maintaining her cheerful countenance and enjoying being a centenarian mightily. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1991 at the age of 100, the oldest ever person to be made a Dame.1 She died in 1992, and is buried in the village church in Stambourne. At her funeral, the church was filled with beautiful roses from Tagley cottage, the roses that she and Marda had planted and cared for. Marda had died in 1970, in London, reconciled in some measure with Gwen, though never totally happy. Marda left all her possessions to Gwen, and her papers are part of the Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive, previously held in the University of Winchester and recently donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  Beth’s friend Lena Ramsden lived a long and happy life, which she wrote about in her aubiography A View from Primrose Hill. Peggy Webster forged a successful career as a director in the US and UK. At one point, Hollywood came calling, but, after a few weeks shadowing Cecil B. DeMille, Peggy decided that the sexism she would have to battle against was too much, and returned to the theatre, where she worked with many actors who are still household names today. She was quick to pick up on the talent of a young Judi Dench, and Dame Judi also worked with Gwen – remembering the incessant jangling of the many bracelets Gwen wore on her arms.2 The theatre world Gordon Daviot knew is intricately linked to today’s.

  Hugh McIntosh, that dim memory of romance and what-might-have-been, is quite forgotten, with no living descendants. Almost all his family asked to be returned to Inverness after death, and are buried in Tomnahurich.

  Beth is not remembered by any gravestone or marker in her home town. But her books are in every bookshop, and on many shelves in many homes.

  Elizabeth MacKintosh was always an Invernessian. She did not feel that she owed the town anything, and certainly did not go out of her way to promote it or to talk up her links to Scotland, but neither was she a Scotophobe as she has sometimes been portrayed. Beth saw herself both as a Highlander and as British, and moved to England because that is where she saw the best career prospects, but it took her a while to get used to the south of the country. It wasn’t u
ntil she was well established in her job in Tunbridge Wells that she found an area of England that she loved and which meant a lot to her, and part of the reason for her strong attachment to the area was that she felt she had to leave before she was ready to do so.

  Elizabeth’s mother’s death changed her life; no matter how much her career meant to her, Beth put her family first. She was Colin’s daughter: he had spent years supporting his family, and had brought his daughters up with the same values, and Beth did not let him down. Although she did not always find it easy, Beth did the best she could to make her life with her father in Inverness enjoyable and meaningful.

  Gordon Daviot achieved her ambition to be a playwright in spectacular style with her first play, Richard of Bordeaux. This play changed not only her life, but also the lives of many of the actors and backstage staff involved. It touched audiences deeply, and the story resonated for years with the people who saw it.

  Josephine Tey grew her audience through word of mouth. Readers loved her books and recommended them, and have continued to do so: her books have been in print since they first appeared in the 1920s. The novels have been properly ranked as among the best crime fiction of the Golden Age, but they have not received the proper attention due to them as Scottish fiction, partly because of their genre, and partly because they have been overlooked as Beth did not support Scottish nationalism and was not closely linked to the Scottish literary scene. Similarly, Gordon Daviot has been overlooked as a ‘Scottish’ playwright. Beth MacKintosh’s work shows us another aspect of Scottishness, and any analysis of Gunn’s work, or of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, which leaves her out is an incomplete analysis. Elizabeth MacKintosh was an Anstey student, a teacher, a British playwright, and a Scottish Highlander. There should be acknowledgement of different Highland women’s experiences: not just the illiterate Gael and their wealth of folklore and song, but also the extremely literate and well-educated lover of England, Elizabeth MacKintosh.

  Beth used her writing to search for meaning, and, although she always tried to entertain her audience, she did not shy away from difficult topics, tackling religious themes through her plays and an extraordinarily wide range of topics through her novels, from economic troubles after the First World War to historical puzzles. History always held a strong fascination, but her main interest was always in people: she was always an observational writer, whose strength was to draw people, whether from the fourteenth century or the twentieth, that readers and playgoers could believe in.

  As befits someone who understood people so well, Beth was a good and loyal friend. She stayed in touch with people from her college days and, particularly, from her time working as a playwright in the West End – but she needed to have a deep connection to people before she formed those strong friendships. She had little time for people she saw as small-minded, and did not always get on with her neighbours and fellow townsfolk in Inverness. Beth did not want to be public property, and was not interested in maintaining a media profile – she wanted to keep her life the way she wanted it: centred around family and writing.

  Beth was disappointed in love, partly as a result of the First World War, which changed the hopes of so many women of her age, but she ultimately created a fulfilling life for herself as a single woman, and her writing shows how much she enjoyed and celebrated that life. As an Anstey student, she had been exposed to suffragettes and feminist thinking, but she drew mainly on her own life experiences and the strong female role models that were available to her as a child: her mother and grandmother.

  Sometimes it is hard to realize that these lively young women and men are all dead and gone: Beth who wrote such funny letters; Colin, the young boy who walked alone from Shieldaig to Lochcarron; Hugh Patrick Fraser McIntosh filling in his crosswords in his bedsit in Inverness; Dodie Smith, with her entertaining autobiography; charming actress Gwen... But anyone can walk into a shop or library and pick up a Josephine Tey novel – and Beth is there, as lively and opinionated as she ever was. Elizabeth MacKintosh was Gordon Daviot, Josephine Tey, F. Craigie Howe, Beth, Mac, Bessie – she was a student Anstey could be proud of; a daughter Colin and Josephine could be proud of; a daughter Inverness should be proud of; a writer Scotland should be proud of – she was private, spiky, friendly, contradictory, intelligent, funny, inspiring, difficult – and, above all, she is a writer that many readers simply love, without knowing anything about her at all.

  Notes to the Text

  Chapter One: ‘With Mr & Mrs MacKintosh’s Compliments’

  1. Birth certificate. Elizabeth’s date of birth is often incorrectly given online and in academic archives.

  I have checked all birth, death and marriage dates and details with the original certificates, either available through the Scottish registrar’s archival services at the Scotland’s People website; through the Highland Archive Centre (HAC); or from certificates held privately by the MacKintosh family. Census records (also available at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk and HAC) provided extra detail on addresses, size and location of houses, and occupations. For family, records showing baptism dates were also useful. Parish records for Inverness are accessible at HAC, while records for Colin MacKintosh’s family were partly accessible through the Applecross Family History Centre. The latter location also provided access to private local family history research.

  Dates were also checked against family gravestones, most of which are located in Tomnahurich cemetery in Inverness, and these often provided surprising extra details. A further check was made on dates by examining the announcements section of the local papers, particularly the Inverness Courier.

  2. Josephine Tey, The Expensive Halo (London: Peter Davies, 1978), pp. 18–19. Editions referred to are from Jennifer Morag Henderson’s own collection. The text of Tey’s novels was never substantially changed, except in the abridged American editions (discussed later in the text).

  3. Letter from Colin to his youngest daughter, held by the MacKintosh family descendants; undated, probably from mid-1940s.

  4. Incident described in a letter from Colin to his middle daughter, held by the MacKintosh family descendants; dated 21st July 1927.

  5. Mary’s story is traceable through the census and birth records, and Colin’s support of his sister is clear in the Valuation Rolls (HAC), which show who was paying the rent on the family’s houses. No reference to Mary survives in any letters, and Elizabeth MacKintosh’s descendants had no knowledge of her, or her son.

  6. Colin’s mother’s ownership of the shop is clear from the Valuation Rolls (HAC), which list ‘E. MacKintosh’ as a tenant, while an advert in the local press lists her as proprietor, and gives the length of time the shop had been open. Roderick’s involvement is mentioned by Colin in a letter to his youngest daughter (held by the MacKintosh family descendants; undated, probably from mid-1940s.) Colin’s original apprenticeship to a grocer is detailed in the census records.

  7. John’s story was revealed through searches at HAC, and will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3.

  8. Details of Colin’s shop were obtained partly from the Valuation Rolls of Inverness (HAC), which every year listed the owner and tenant of a building, its use, and its rental value. In 1892–3 numbers 55 and 57 Castle Street were rented by Colin from Duncan and Margaret Sutherland of Broadstone Lodge, Kingsmills Road. The Sutherlands also owned the MacKintosh family flat at number 67.

  9. A useful discussion of the pupil-teacher system as it was experienced in Highland schools appears in Robert A. Reid (ed.) Oban High School – The First 100 Years (Oban: Oban High School, 1993), p. 51. Josephine probably worked at Farraline Park School – now Inverness Central Library – as she had family connections there, but I haven’t been able to confirm this.

  10. See ‘Danny the Dago’, with his Spanish dark looks, in Kif.

  11. Mairi A. MacDonald, The Banks of the Ness (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing, 1982), pp. 10–11.

  Chapter Two: Bessie

  1. Details of Joseph
ine and Mary’s children are from census records, announcements in the Inverness Courier, and family gravestones in Tomnahurich cemetery.

  2. Elizabeth’s name is a source of confusion as she changed how she was known by family members, and she also chose to write under pen-names. On the census records of 1901 she is recorded as ‘Bessie’, and friends from school also remember her by this name. The second MacKintosh daughter was more consistent in her name; she was never called ‘Jane’, and her nephew had only ever known her as ‘Jean’.

  3. MacDonald, (1982), p. 114.

  4. Murdo’s details are in the birth, death, marriage and census records. Information and photographs of the firm Macrae and Dick, the biggest firm in Inverness employing cabmen, are detailed on the Highland Council’s history and culture website, Am Baile (http://www.ambaile.org.uk/).

  5. Gaelic and English language preferences were recorded in census details.

  6. Information on Mary Jeans’s children comes from death certificates, the announcements page of the Inverness Courier, and family gravestones.

  7. From the private MacKintosh family collection.

  8. Information on Colin’s ownership and tenancy of properties, as well as the ownership of surrounding shops, is shown on the Inverness Valuation Rolls (HAC).

  9. MacDonald, (1982), p. 117.

  10. Details of addresses, tenants and occupations are from census records.

  11. Family memory from Mary Henrietta’s son.

  12. MacDonald, (1982), pp. 7–8.

  13. Sir Alexander Malcolm MacEwen, The Thistle and the Rose: Scotland’s Problem Today (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1932), p. 223.

  14. As shown by the witnesses to Josephine’s will.

  15. From the private MacKintosh family collection.

  16. Occupations shown on the census records.