22 October: Boreham on John Buchan

Peep Behind the Scenes
Those who desire a pleasant and profitable study for a quiet hour on this day cannot do better than to turn to the fairly voluminous literature that has sprung up concerning the late Lord Tweedsmuir, better known to his readers as John Buchan. Lord Tweedsmuir filled a large place in the public eye. As one of the most popular novelists of his time, as a member of Parliament, as the Historian of the First World War, as Director of Information, as Lord High Commissioner, and, finally, as Governor-General of Canada, he played an important part in shaping the destinies of his country. But today we may be permitted to forget all this and to think of him merely as a man. He represents the finest type of manhood. Yet, although essentially a man's man, the darling of his father, the idol of his sons, and the pride of all the people who basked in the sunshine of his friendship, he understood, appreciated, and admired the choicest types of womanhood as few men in his position have ever done. For this there was a reason, and that reason was—his mother.

John Buchan was a son of the manse. His father was a typical minister of the good old Scottish type—saintly, scholarly and every inch a gentleman. He and his little bride, Helen Masterton, were married whilst still very young; it was a bitter midwinter's day as they trudged their way through the deep snow to the kirk. Helen put up her hair for the first time on that memorable occasion. Whilst sharing to the full her husband's studious and busy life, she was essentially a homelover. The kitchen was her throne room. She gloried in her beautifully browned girdle scones, in her home-made jams with their preliminary skimmings, and in all the little dainties and delicacies that her own clever brain and cunning fingers so artfully contrived.

A Woman Whose Home Was Her Glory
True to the traditions of her kind, the high festival of Spring cleaning was the sweet of the year to her. "She prided herself," her brilliant daughter—the novelist, O. Douglas—tells us, "on being able to get the house cleaned meticulously with the minimum of discomfort to its inhabitants; and how she enjoyed it! She began in the attics and worked down, superintending everything herself, glorying in letting the early Spring sunlight into every corner." But her really golden days, her days of heaven upon earth, were the days on which her babies came. "I would lie there with my baby," she herself says, in one of her beautiful letters, "listening to the voices of my healthy, happy children as they played in the garden and would thank God for the best man woman ever had. My cup of happiness was just lipping over." The stories that her children have fondly and proudly recorded all stress this aspect of her engaging personality.

Yet there was nothing narrow or clannish about her maternal domesticity. She had a smile, a warm hand clasp, and a place in her heart for everybody. No one, says O. Douglas, had such a welcoming way as she had. The most shy and awkward visitors felt perfectly at their ease as soon as she entered the room. John Buchan himself tells of her amazing compassion for the people whom the rest of the household regarded as insufferable bores. If there was anything good in them she would coax it out. Someone said of her that she warmed the atmosphere of half of Scotland. With lonely people she was at her golden best. Her daughter once reproved her for kissing a young girl at her first introduction. "The idea!" the mother replied in self-defence; "a lonely girl, working for her bread; what harm was there in it?" Among the heaps of letters received by the family when she died was one from this very girl. "I can never forget," she wrote, "that the one and only time I met your mother, she kissed me. It did much to encourage and help me over a rough bit of road." When occasion required, she could be devastating in her criticism, but she always deplored the necessity for any such reproof and was obviously delighted when the unhappy episode had passed.

A Home That Sweetened The World
Unlike her husband, she lived to see her distinguished son become a peer of the realm and Governor-General of Canada. She scarcely knew what to make of it. John wrote home to say that he wanted his mother to visit him, and, after a thousand objections had been overridden, it was arranged that she should go. But amidst the splendours of Government House she blinked like an owl at noonday. On State occasions she was told that she must curtsy when "Their Excellencies" were announced. But she stubbornly insisted that her old legs were of the wrong kind for curtsying. When Lord Tweedsmuir entered, she gave him, instead of a curtsy, a wicked little nod, whilst her wrinkled face was lit by a smile that had the sweetness of ages in it. Often, at imposing functions, the self-conscious guests would be made to feel at home by catching sight of a little old lady in grey lace, sitting in the corner of an enormous sofa knitting as calmly and composedly as if she had never heard of her son's exaltation.

Throughout the whole of his brilliant public career, Lord Tweedsmuir was every day conscious of his mother's influence upon him. He was always at his best in his relationships with women. He would send for young mothers—Catherine Carswell, for example—to see what he could do to help their growing sons; and, what he could do, he cheerfully did. "Most perfectly happy in his own marriage," Catherine Carswell says, "his liking and sympathy went out to women of all sorts and ages. His approach was without effusion, without shyness, and without suspicion." He regarded the women whom he met in cafes and railway carriages with inquisitive friendliness, and rewarded those who gave him their confidence with generous appreciation and encouragement. For his mother's sake he liked to help any woman whom he met, and those who had known his mother had no difficulty in recognising in him a reincarnation of all that was best in her.

F W Boreham

Image: John Buchan