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From Cheltenham to Lochiel

It is a strange sensation, rereading a much-loved book after several decades, especially when you first came across it at an impressionable age. Would not my adult eyes, I wondered, see a creaking plot, banal or outdated sentiments, or a sugary romanticism, which had not struck me when I was young? It’s a risk. It may not be the book’s fault, simply that one has grown out of sympathy with the idea. For example, I cannot now bear to read Le Grand Meaulnes, for, in the intervening years since I was 16, it has become as lost to me as the lost domain itself. So it was with trepidation that I approached ‘The Jacobite Trilogy’ by D. K. Broster and, in particular, the first and best-known novel in the series, The Flight of the Heron (1925), a book I first read when I was 10.

I was especially fearful because this historical novel, about the rising of the Highland clans in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, had such a profound effect on my youthful attitudes. In particular, it turned me (a Lowlander by blood whose Presbyterian forbears had almost certainly fought in ‘Butcher’ Cumberland’s army) into a staunch, enduring Jacobite. (Strangely, this led me into trouble. Although generally a polite child, I was downright rude to a teacher at school simply because her name was Campbell. Looking back, she must have been baffled as well as irritated by this eccentric behaviour, since the school was in rural Berkshire and, in 1963, 10-year-olds were generally more preoccupied with the Fab Four.)

Like many of the historical works of John Buchan which I read a little later, the trilogy also encouraged me to think that individuals can affect the course of history, a view that I have never quite forsaken. And I became sensitive to the allure of what the Scots call ‘romance’, which added hugely to my enjoyment of reading fiction.

I need not have worried that the enchantment might be broken. Rereading The Flight of the Heron

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It is a strange sensation, rereading a much-loved book after several decades, especially when you first came across it at an impressionable age. Would not my adult eyes, I wondered, see a creaking plot, banal or outdated sentiments, or a sugary romanticism, which had not struck me when I was young? It’s a risk. It may not be the book’s fault, simply that one has grown out of sympathy with the idea. For example, I cannot now bear to read Le Grand Meaulnes, for, in the intervening years since I was 16, it has become as lost to me as the lost domain itself. So it was with trepidation that I approached ‘The Jacobite Trilogy’ by D. K. Broster and, in particular, the first and best-known novel in the series, The Flight of the Heron (1925), a book I first read when I was 10.

I was especially fearful because this historical novel, about the rising of the Highland clans in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, had such a profound effect on my youthful attitudes. In particular, it turned me (a Lowlander by blood whose Presbyterian forbears had almost certainly fought in ‘Butcher’ Cumberland’s army) into a staunch, enduring Jacobite. (Strangely, this led me into trouble. Although generally a polite child, I was downright rude to a teacher at school simply because her name was Campbell. Looking back, she must have been baffled as well as irritated by this eccentric behaviour, since the school was in rural Berkshire and, in 1963, 10-year-olds were generally more preoccupied with the Fab Four.) Like many of the historical works of John Buchan which I read a little later, the trilogy also encouraged me to think that individuals can affect the course of history, a view that I have never quite forsaken. And I became sensitive to the allure of what the Scots call ‘romance’, which added hugely to my enjoyment of reading fiction. I need not have worried that the enchantment might be broken. Rereading The Flight of the Heron, I recaptured something of the uncomplicated delight and excitement that I had felt first time round. The story of Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, a minor chieftain of the Cameron clan, his part in the ill-fated campaign to put Charles Edward Stuart on the throne, and his difficult but growing friendship with an English redcoat officer, Keith Windham, had not lost its power to stir. Ewen is not at all the barbarian of Hanoverian propaganda, but a fine figure of a man, tall, good-looking and cultivated, having spent time in Paris. He is sensible, humane and courageous, while also sometimes hot-headed and over-scrupulous, and fiercely loyal to his chief, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, one of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s staunchest and most honourable allies. Ewen’s foster-father has ‘the second sight’ and predicts that Keith will both do him a great service and cause him bitter grief. And so it proves. There are times when both he and Keith have to face conflicting loyalties and retain their principles in extreme circumstances. The Gleam of the North (1927), which opens seven years later, sees Ewen (together with his too-good-to-be-true wife, Alison, and their two small boys) living quietly on his estate, trying to do his best for his clan dependants in the face of oppressive regulation and restriction. (The wearing of the tartan, the carrying of arms and the observance of non-Presbyterian religious practices have all been proscribed.) But Jacobite plotting, involving his impulsive brother-in-law Hector, leads him back into danger, and lands him with the obligation to try to save his cousin, Dr Archibald Cameron (brother of Cameron of Lochiel and an historical figure) from capture. Ewen fails and eventually sees Archie die on the scaffold. If you have tears to weep when Windham and Ewen say goodbye to each other in prison in The Flight of the Heron, you will surely have more to shed when you read of Archie Cameron’s brave end. The plot is a mite shaky at times, but one can forgive a lot for the rattling nature of the yarn. The Dark Mile (1929), the last of the three books, set in 1755, features Ewen more peripherally, focusing instead on his kinsmen, the Stewarts of Invernacree, one of whom falls disastrously in love with a Campbell girl. Loyalty and duty are once more divided. The love interest is decidedly soupy, but there are some good fights and imprisonments, especially those involving Hector Grant and the wicked and treacherous MacPhair of Glenshian, a splendidly realized villain. And the problematic relationship between Ewen and the Jacobite who betrayed Archie Cameron is satisfactorily resolved in the end. The reader feels that finally the Camerons of Ardroy can settle back and let the pain of Culloden gradually fade. Well, for a few years at least, until the loosening of clan ties, which resulted from the Jacobite defeat, led to the even worse tragedy of the Highland Clearances. These novels have all the ingredients of a good adventure story: credible characterization of the main protagonists, a clear and urgent narrative style, an underpinning of solid research, wonderful descriptive passages, a high moral seriousness, acceptable partisanship, and both tragedy and joy – attributes which more than make up for some outrageous coincidences, the saccharine treatment of both lovers and children, and a tendency occasionally towards overwriting. Like everyone else, I imagine, I assumed that D. K. Broster was a Scotsman, because of the books’ subject, the use of untranslated Gaelic, and the clever way in which fiction and fact are interwoven. The fictional estate of Ardroy is placed somewhere in the hills north of Loch Arkaig, which presupposes a knowledge of the Highlands, and the Jacobite cause is undermined by the mad MacPhair of Glenshian, whom D. K. Broster equates with the government agent, Pickle, another historical figure (Alexander MacDonnell of Glengarry, according to Andrew Lang). Wherever possible, the descriptions of castles, prisons, towns, lochs and moors are true to life. When Ewen and Hector escape from Fort Augustus prison, they are rowed down Loch Linnhe by Ewen’s Stewart relations to the Narrows at Ardgour; you can trace the journey on a road atlas. So it was a surprise to discover that D. K. Broster was an English spinster christened Dorothy Kathleen, who was born near Liverpool in 1877, and educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she read History. She worked for some years as private secretary to an Oxford history don, then for a while as a nurse in France during the First World War. Her early books were mainly Orczy-influenced tales of the French Revolution (such as The Yellow Poppy, 1920) and it was only after a visit to friends in Lochaber in 1923 that she decided to write about the ’45: ‘I was there five weeks (in almost constant rain),’ she wrote, ‘and had not when I went the slightest intention of writing about the Forty-five which, as an overwritten period and one which I knew very little about, rather bored me. But the spirit of the place got such a hold on me that before I left I had the whole story planned almost in spite of myself.’ She went on to point up the difficulties of blending history with fiction, noting that ‘The clash of character is far more vital than the clash of swords.’ Certainly, most of the battles – Prestonpans, Falkirk, even Culloden – are referred to only in retrospect. In The Flight of the Heron it is the growing friendship, with its attendant conflict of loyalties, between Keith and Ewen, which is the central theme of the book. The battles, marches and politics provide simply an accurately embroidered backcloth. D. K. Broster wrote six more historical novels after ‘The Jacobite Trilogy’, including Almond, Wild Almond (1933), together with two collections of short stories, and some poetry. None of these appear to have been so well liked by the public as her Scottish novels. Of her private life, there does not appear to be much known. She lived with a close friend, Gertrude Schlich, for many years, and died in 1950. The Flight of the Heron was intended to be read by adults, but it became popular with teenagers after the Second World War, and ‘The Jacobite Trilogy’ was still in print until just a few years ago. The books are certainly still widely available in secondhand bookshops and on book websites. I am glad this trilogy came my way so early. To my mind, at least, the ideals of honour, loyalty, physical courage and self-sacrifice and their obverse – duplicity, cowardice, selfishness and treachery – are proper themes for novels, and especially novels that children can read. There are problems with these stories, however, as I discovered when I gave The Flight of the Heron to my very English husband to read. Not everyone is bowled over by the notion that the clan leader has a prior call over immediate family. Reading Scottish history now I find a disillusioning experience; duplicity and treachery were common to both sides. Nevertheless I feel at liberty to choose the swirl of the kilt and the skirl of the pipe over the pidgin English and haughty, stolid ways of the Hanoverians, knowing that there is no price to pay for the choice. That’s the great thing about historical fiction.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 22 © Ursula Buchan 2009


About the contributor

Ursula Buchan writes on gardening. She is indebted for the biographical information about D. K. Broster to an appreciation of her by Belinda Copson.

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