Objectors and Resisters, 1914-18: example 1, Edward Gaitens

A passage (pp.94-95) in Robert Duncan's book directs the reader to an "undeservedly neglected novel" not published until 1948 but rooted in the experience of a Scot who opposed the First World War. The author, Edward Gaitens, was a Conscientious Objector (CO) who like many other COs spent time in prison. His work is not entirely neglected; he has an acknowledged place in Scottish literature of the 20^th century and his stories of Glasgow working-class life were published and appreciated in his lifetime. What is overdue for acknowledgement and appreciation is his contribution in this novel to the literature of the First World War.

From "fair daffodils" to dungeons dark...

Canongate Classics edition, 1990

(This blurb's interpretation is open to question, to say the least).

The Introduction by Scottish writer James Campbell to the 1990 edition, although more perceptive than the blurb, touches rather briefly on the pervasive theme of the Great War:  (p.vi) "Eddy tries to spring himself from his slum prison... only to be dumped in a real prison for his idealistic opposition to the Great War..." and 'revolutionary socialist' Gaitens' attitude to it. He mentions the three convicted COs, and the depiction of Wormwood Scrubs as a hell-hole in an "amalgam of fiction and undoubted authentic direct experience." The narrative of Gorbals life includes the "world of ideas", from poetry to left-wing politics, although rooted in everyday reality. 

How He Wrote

The novel is in two sections of six chapters each. Book 1 is prefaced by a quotation from German poet Hans Sachs: "Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn! " - "Madness everywhere!" and Book 2 by "Was gilt's, was ich dir sagen kann?" -  [approximately] What can I tel you it's worth, what can we say it's all for?

Book 1 is mostly set in the pre-war background, introducing characters, setting them in context, and in the case of the younger ones describing their explorations in literature, politics and relationships, their arguments and different standpoints. Women, in some variety, are strongly present and often centre stage in scenes set in tenements, closes, streets and dance-halls. The main protagonist, Eddy Macdonnel, and his two friends Neil and Donald, attend a meeting offering an "open platform to all exponents of progressive political thought" in the Pavilion Music Hall. Among other names dropped are George Bernard Shaw, W W Jacobs, and probably the best-known of Glasgow's war resisters, John Maclean: (p.131 - Eddy wants to attend "Jonny McLean's class on the Significance of the Paris Commune").

In Chapter 6 the effects of war are being felt, with each male of an age to be conscripted constrained to make choices, whether to conform, take a principled stand or compromise. One of Eddy's brothers has already joined the Territorials although "not irresistibly driven by patriotism" and duly obeys the call; another earns comparatively big money doing work of national importance in the shipyards. The friends are opposed to the war effort but Neil argues that it's fair enough to work in protected industries on grounds of Marxian Expediency since "the only logical way to escape participation in a Capitalist war is tae live on a desert island or commit suicide". Both he and Donald opt for conscientious objection when it comes to the bit. The latter's decision is shown in his family context: the arrest of COs "always came in the small hours".  Eddy stages his own one-man demonstration in the recruiting office when it is his turn, loudly denouncing it all and ending this section on a high note of internationalist optimism and revolutionary fervour: 

(pp.135-6) ... mutinies everywhere... He believed the War would end suddenly, any time now, and the Workers all over the world would fraternize.... The great Socialist Revolution would blaze up... John McLean had said it, Guy Aldred had said it, that Glasgow would be the nucleus of World-Wide Revolution... 

 - except that, notwithstanding Eddy's (later self-mocked) heroic stance the doctor keeps right on "passing man after man into the Army and the ordeal of War". 

'Corner-boys' in the Gorbals, 1948

Something of the Gorbals world Edward knew
 was still in existence when his book was published.

The second book considers the consequences of the choices made in relation to the war, and the subsequent fate of Eddy's three older brothers (James, John, Francie) and two friends (Donald, Neil), again firmly rooted.in their families and community as these adapt to the changed world. The reader learns something of what COs have had to go through. Donald has spent time in a Corporation Mental Home after a (para)suicide bid: since the war and the Work Centre for COs "his nerves had slowly gone to pieces". He looks back on the 18 months spent in Dartmoor, remembering the comradeship and the intellectual buzz, but no longer identifies with that youthful idealism. Neil too feels alienated from former political comrades and from his formerly supportive, politically aware sisters (Christian pacifist and uncompromising revolutionary socialist). He notes that fellow members of left-wing social groupings tend to follow the opinions of leaders of their parties instead of thinking for themselves. Both men have apparently settled for conventional post-war existence in 'normal' non-ideal relationships, though not without some mental strife.

Of Eddy's own post-war existence next to nothing is said, apart from a passing mention of his being in London (the fact that a perceived 'normal' relationship was not on the cards for him as EG's alter ego may have something to do with this). Instead, Chapter 6 disrupts the chronological sequence and plunges back to one of the darkest days in the life of a CO, in prison. As well as describing some of what they had to suffer, it goes some way to suggesting how those who survived coped. Eddy is confined to his cell after reporting to the doctor and dreads the prospect of the solitary hours ahead. In the course of them he reflects on prison life and what has brought him to it, ranging over the past, analysing his complex motivation and interrogating his ideals. He refers to key points of COs' history as later confirmed by non-fictional accounts: the behaviour of prison doctors, warders, fellow prisoners including Sinn Feiners; prison diet; the risk of insanity in 'solitary' - three "went mad" including one CO; the pros and cons of 'Absolutism'; alternative 'service' - road-making in the Highlands; a Zeppelin raid; and the impact of the Russian Revolution.

Eddy gets through, and even achieves a sense of well-being in the end, not consoled by religion or even revolutionary fervour, nor by any self-glorifying notion of martyrdom, but thanks to his inner resources: imagination, intense awareness, capacity for enjoyment, and power of rational thought. It has not been entirely a dark day in the life of the mind. And Edward survived to bear witness, to have said what he wanted to say and be listened to, and to get on with his life, eventually finding a long-term partner.

Perhaps surprisingly - for something that so manifestly "should" be read - it's a highly readable book, whether for the first time as a sequential, unusually structured novel, or a collection of stories to keep going back to for particular episodes. 

Time for a new edition, with some notes? Or an adaptation or two in another medium?

The cover of the Canongate Classics edition is "Self-portrait, 1914", by Stanley Spencer - Striking, certainly, but is it appropriate, given that the artist was neither working-class nor Glaswegian and that he served willingly in the First World War? Apart from the great poignancy, with hindsight, of the face of a young man in 1914 (EG would have been 17 in that year) there is however another tie-in: 

"In May 1940 WAAC  [the War Artists' Advisory Committee] sent Spencer to the Lithgows Shipyard in Port Glasgow on the River Clyde to depict the civilians at work there. Spencer became fascinated by what he saw.."

How He Lived

The Pearce Register gives details of what happened to Edward in the war, as follows:
Edward Gaitens

Occupation         'unskilled labourer' - later a writer and novelist

Age        -

Birth year            1897

Year       -

Death year          1966

Soldier Number                -

Address               364, Govan St. (?)

Address 2            Glasgow

Local authority  Glasgow City

County Lanarkshire

Country                Scotland

Latitude               55.85

Longitude            -4.25

Ordnance Survey reference        NS590650

Absolutist            Yes?

Motivation          -

Military Service Tribunal                MST (Military Service Tribunal) Central Tribunal at Wormwood S. 20.12.16, CO class A, to Brace Committee

Central Tribunal                Central Tribunal Nos. W.2557 Class: A - Genuine

War Service        3 (R) H.L.I., Edinburgh; CM (Court Martial) Edinburgh 8.12.16 - 1yr.HL (With hard labour) com.to 28 days, Wormwood S.

Magistrates Court            Arrest reported 15.12.16

Magistrates Court comments     Absentee

Prison   Wormwood S.; 'spent two years in Wormwood Scrubs' (Oxford DNB)

Work Centre      HOS (The Home Office Scheme, administered by the Brace Committee) Ballachulish - 16.5.17 sent home and awaiting arrest. Agent found his work unsatisfactory.

Work Centre comments  Rejected by The Home Office Scheme, administered by the Brace Committee

WO363 false

Notes    'He was homosexual and never married'. His only novel, 'Dance of the Apprentices' (1948) contains descriptions of his time in prison as a CO

Sources                Cumbria RO(Carlisle)D/Mar/4/97; Oxford DNB (2004); NA/WO86/73/20; NA/MH47/1 Central Tribunal Minutes; Not found in NA/WO363; FH/SER/VOPC/Cases/2(4207) also FH/SER/VOPC/Cases/3(3820 and 3350 - spelling 'Gatins')

Record set          Conscientious Objectors' Register 1914-1918

It looks as though the 1916 prison sentence mentioned led to his case being considered by the Central Tribunal and his being sent to work on the Home Office Scheme at Ballachulish, then on being found "unsatisfactory" (perhaps having been involved in the unrest among COs there) he was sent back to the Scrubs for a period which would match the circumstances of 'Eddy' as above. 

Biography [Canongate]

Edward Gaitens 1897-1966), was born in the Gorbals of Glasgow. Leaving school at fourteen, he undertook a variety of casual jobs to support himself over the years. When the First World War broke out he became a conscientious objector and was imprisoned for two years in Wormwood Scrubs. In the 1930s he started to write, and his early attempts were greatly encouraged by his fellow Glaswegian, the successful dramatist James Bridie, who had become chairman of the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre at the time. A number of Gaitens' short stories were first published in the Scots Magazine. mostly based on his own life in the Gorbals, these were later collected as Growing Up and Other Stories (1942).* Six of these stories were incorporated into Dance of the Apprentices (1948), a novel of city life and the turbulent years between the First World War and the Depression. Gaitens continued to write from time to time during the years in which he lived - virtually anonymously - in London and Dublin. Growing Up ... and Dance of the Apprentices remain his only published books.

*At the time of writing this blog the short story collection is rare:

Growing Up and Other Stories. GAITENS, Edward. Published by London: Jonathan Cape, (1942). "Duplicate Proof for Retention", of the first edition. (1942)   Used   Quantity Available: 1

Price: £ 244.12 + Shipping from Canada

Description: Navy blue wrappers, 168pp. Gaitens was born in Glasgow's Gorbals and left school at the age of 14. He was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War I. His friend O. H. Mavor ("James Bridie") encouraged him to send stories to the Scots Magazine, later published in this collection "Growing Up". His novel "Dance of the Apprentices" (1948) is a realistic and unsentimental depiction of working-class life in Glasgow. Gaitens lived in Dublin and London for several years and died on 16 December 1966. Spine cocked and slightly worn at base, else a very good copy of a most uncommon proof. 

With the online records now available it is possible to trace more of the life, as in:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB):
 Gaitens, Edward (1897–1966),short-story writer and novelist
... was born on 26 February 1897 at 104 South Wellington Street, in the Gorbals, Glasgow, probably fourth of six surviving children of Edward Gaitens, stationer, and his wife, Mary, née Colwell. Gaitens was educated locally and left school at the age of fourteen, taking up a succession of unskilled jobs. During the First World War he spent two years in Wormwood Scrubs prison as a conscientious objector. He was homosexual and never married.
Gaitens began writing in his middle thirties. His first short story, ‘Growing Up’, was published in the London Mercury in 1938 on the recommendation of the playwright Osborne Henry Mavor (James Bridie)*, to whom he later dedicated his only novel. His first book, Growing Up and Other Stories (1942), was well reviewed. H. G. Wells wrote to the author, ‘I do not exaggerate when I say that at least two of these stories are among the most beautiful in the English language’ (Gaitens, Dance of the Apprentices). These ten lively, social–realist pieces depict a sensitive boy observing and responding to his Glasgow background—family, shipyard work, unemployment—and discovering transcendental moments of beauty, as in ‘The Sailing Ship’. They appear to draw their inspiration from Gaitens's own experience. His long-term companion (and later literary executor) Charles Turner has been quoted as saying that ‘he put his life into his writings’ (Urquhart and Gordon [see below], 203).
Gaitens lived in London during the Second World War and served for four years as a firewatcher. He returned to Glasgow after the war, working as a night telephonist. Encouraged by an Atlantic award in literature (1946) for Growing Up, he wrote Dance of the Apprentices (1948), the novel for which he is best-known today. It is episodic in structure, six stories from Growing Up appearing, with minor alterations, as chapters in the novel. Again the book seems to be semi-autobiographical, charting the adolescent experiences of Eddy Macdonnel and his friends, the apprentices of the title. Part 1 closes as they go gladly to prison as conscientious objectors at the outbreak of the First World War. Part 2 covers the next twenty years as they come to terms with the unsatisfactory ‘world fit for heroes’ to which they have returned, but the last chapter is a strikingly detailed and bitter depiction of Eddy's—or Gaitens's—experiences in prison.
Gaitens published little else during his lifetime and his work was neglected for some years, perhaps owing to the restricted scope of his subject matter, perhaps to the ephemeral nature of his true medium, the short story. During the early 1960s, renting a basement flat in Edinburgh in poor health and considerable poverty, he sublet a room to the poet George Mackay Brown, who later wrote ‘I think his gift had deserted him, but he kept still a bright eye and an eager spirit … He had long abandoned Catholicism, but men must be believing something and Edward's religion was art’ (Brown, 159). Gaitens died of a heart attack in Deaconess Hospital, Edinburgh, on 16 December 1966.
* A pre-title page in the Canongate edition is headed "To Dr O. H. Mavor, a Glasgow man", presumably Gaitens' original dedication although this is not explained.

1901 England, Wales & Scotland Census: Govan, Hutchesontown, Lanarkshire, Scotland:
In 1901 the family were to be found at South Wellington Street in the Gorbals

     Name           Household                        Age       Birth year  Occupation       

Edward Gatens Head     Married    Male      35           1866        News Agent       

Mary     Gatens Wife      Married    Female   34           1867       -              

James   Gatens Son        -              Male      11           1890         Scholar 

John      Gatens Son        -              Male      9              1892       Scholar 

Frank     Gatens Son        -              Male      5              1896       -              

Edward Gatens Son        -              Male      4              1897       -              

-              Gatens Son        -              Male      0              1901       -              

William Caldwell  Brother-In-Law Single    Male      17     1884       Bleachfield Worker    
 Place of birth for all of the above is given as Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

The fictional Macdonnel family in the novel closely matches the Gaitens (spelt Gatens in the Census) household as it appeared in 1901: in the novel, Eddy has brothers called James, John and Francie, and a maternal Uncle Wullie who lives with them. ('Francie' dies young not long after the war, in a mental hospital; Frank/Francis Gaitens died in 1923.) On the other hand, the father in the book is not called Edward, and the mother usually just gets 'Mrs', perhaps distancing their sometimes harsh protrayal from the real parents.

In 1911 the family can be found via Scotland's People, once you get past another misspelling, at 364 Govan St., as a household of 9 occupying 3 rooms with 1 or more windows, and sharing the address with five other families. The parents are listed at the end of one page, their six children (and the uncle) on the next.

GAITENS EDWARD  aged 45 Brassfinisher, Foundry b.Lanark, Glasgow

GAITENS Mary aged 40
... GAITONS EDWARD 1911 M 14 [page 644/15 32/ 20] b. Hutchesontown Lanark ...

At this point. James, aged 20, was an Engineer’s Labourer; John (19) working in a Shipyard; Francis (15) an Engineering Apprentice; Edward (14) and Cuthbert (7) Scholars; and a sister, Mary, was 3 years old. William Caldwell (26) was a Lamplighter, Edward senior a Brassfinisher in a foundry. Cuthbert, if aged 7, was not the unnamed 1901 baby who may not have lived long. A few more autobiographical boxes are ticked: in the novel, as well as the 3 older brothers, Eddy has a sister, Mary, and a younger brother, Egbert - the rather incongruous choice of name is blamed on his mother - appears fleetingly. 

... and some daffodils

A different sort of tenement?
 No.37 Church Rd.

In the 1939 Register of Electors (England & Wales) 

Edward appears in the "Turner Household (2 People) 37 Church Road, Barnes M.B., Surrey, England":

Edward Gaitens 25 Feb 1897        Male      Commercial Traveller (Cereals Selling To Retail Trade)     Single

Charles Turner  14 Nov 1901        Male      Private Sec To Film Scenario Wrist [Writer] Single    

The ODNB article above refers to Gaitens' "long-term companion (and later literary executor) Charles Turner."

A section of Church Rd., SW13 including nos. 27-37
(looking over Barnes Pond).

Charles and Edward shared No.37 with two other 'households' of electors (and possibly some non-electors),  one of 4 people, the other consisting of a (married) shorthand typist whose husband, from her surname, may not have been eligible to vote.

"A lasting place in Scottish literature"
The title story of Growing Up and Other Stories (London: Jonathan Cape, 1942) - about a 14-year-old going to work in a shipyard - was published in a 1978 anthology. (As noted above, the full collection is currently available in the form of a used ‘Duplicate Proof for Retention’ of the first edition at £244.12 plus shipping from Canada).

From Modern Scottish Short Stories

In some illustrious company.

Here's Tae Us, Wha's Like Us?...

Observing and Imagining 'Others' in a 1934 Novel

About: J.S.Flett, Bid for Fortune: The adventures of four young men. Moray Press, Edinburgh & London, 1934. 

Note: Joseph Flett (1887-1976) had no middle initial. It seems the publishers thought he should have, and he may have chosen 'S' because many Smiths have a place on his family tree along with Fletts. (As far as is known, looking back at least to the mid-18th century, he was not related to the eminent geologist Sir John Smith Flett. Nor is there any known connection between his family and members of the Cree Nation with that surname.)

Joe Flett's novel Bid for Fortune, published in 1934, has already featured on this blog, considered both in relation to its post First World War setting and as a source of interesting sidelights on particular aspects of that context, notably the trans-Atlantic herring trade and travel in early 20th-century Newfoundland. Attributes of this kind are what can make it worthwhile to seek out and read such bygone works of fiction. At the same time, not very surprisingly if disappointingly, there are some more negative aspects to be acknowledged, in the way of attitudes and expressions of opinion, sometimes in the authorial voice, that are now, to say the least, problematic. To observe that they were apparently accepted without comment at the time of publication, and were shared by a large number of contemporary writers from the very famous to the more or less equally obscure, is not to excuse them.

'Other' stereotypes and generalisations: Race-pride and prejudice?

The idea that it is perfectly valid to generalise about large groups of people on the basis of what they are, e.g. as members of a race, nation, or gender, has not of course died out. (You only have to hear an English comedian going on about the French, and getting a reflex smug endorsement from the audience [to generalise a bit about the English].)  And arguably there is not much wrong with the thesis that a shared culture, heritage, environment and life-style may well result in certain shared characteristics being prevalent among the group. Problems arise when individuals are encountered, interacted with (or not) and judged only as belonging to the given group, with its perceived characteristics imputed to them a priori, instead of considering each as an individual. Readers of a novel like Bid for Fortune will decide for themselves where the line is crossed, and how much this sort of thing detracts from their appreciation of it - while perhaps adding to its value for cultural historians as a product of its time and even providing some incidental entertainment.

Some stereotypes are more favourable than others, and it is perhaps not surprising that the author's compatriots - his ancestors had their being in a small, close-knit (although not isolated) community in north-east Scotland for many generations - don't come off too badly. Three of the novel's main protagonists, flawed and conflicted characters though all four turn out to be, are "Scotsmen of the healthy country-bred type". This can work to their advantage as "a Scots accent helps a man along... especially in America."  Reputedly "Nobody is better at holding his tongue" than a "Scotchman". "Scotchmen" are also seen as "notoriously irascible", liable to the "ready pugnacity of the North". One of them catches himself on in the process of being "race-proud as most English and nearly all Scots are" (p.115): "What a very great country this might have been if only they had not let so many foreigners into it... would have dominated the world - of course for the world's own good..." he reflects, but then "came down from the heights of British moral superiority." Anyway, as someone points out (later, p.243) "Bandit, or pirate, or land-houper - that's how ancestors be always made."

The English are different, but then they are less fortunate, having to put up with "flat ditch-water kind of air... It's only north of the Tweed that a man can feel like a man." Boston is as "squalid as any English city". Jimmy himself is "an Englishman, not prone to easy credulity". "Snobbish English" are adjured not to despise cod and herring, important in the economic development of St John's, Newfoundland. Bad guys include "Cockneys of the worst class". To disarm suspicion it is found useful to display "truly British (as understood in America) ineptitude" and act like a "blatant specimen of the Great British Ass".  

Various sets of people come in for odd sideswipes or casual comment: "a Canadian speaking the truth, unusual for them"; "the coopers were black-avised, rough-looking Polacks instead of grimly smiling Scots". Two rum-runners have Irish names, while the book’s villain-in-chief is apparently Russian, although not much is made of this. Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, is the abode of Dutchmen, praised for their boat-building. A Syrian merchant is one of the few passengers on a cross-country train; on the same journey "a darky train attendant" with the "whole-hearted smile of his race" has a sympathetic cameo role. Nova Scotia is later found to be "full of deserted farms and powerful negroes". And the sight of "hordes of priests", observed at St. George's, is taken as a portent of "ill luck". 

 

On a giant liner there are "many jovial and sociable Americans and Canadians" making the voyage like "a big children's party". However: "The Americans didn't despise law-breakers; the only thing they really despised was poverty" - and (p.218) "Crime in America was a close corporation, something like a trade union. Each gang had its own district, its own hand-fed police..." Lawlessness entails the "need to travel Pullman - first-class was a risk in America, in the immediate post-war years. Third-class was good enough for any reasonable person in Britain."  The captain of a schooner has "Red-Indian-like features" but Native Americans don't appear as such, until the rather sudden announcement that the object of the sort-of-main character's affection is (p.272) "a native princess in her own right".

Portrayal of Jewish characters

The most obvious, recurrent and disturbing examples of racial stereotyping in the book occur in relation to Jewish characters, giving rise to colourable allegations of anti-semitism. It should perhaps be said that this accusation came as a surprise to some of those closest to the author, who did not recall him ever having expressed such views and thought them out of character. But it is hard to deny that the book lays itself open to it; there is a case to answer. Picked out and listed (as follows), the references to and characterisations of Jews do begin to look like a regular preoccupation, if not bordering on obsession, although no doubt in the less prejudice-aware 1930s it would have been easier to miss, among so much else in the book. And the "else", as has been shown, includes many other generalisations about various nationalities or kinds of people and even, at one point, something like a self-subverting send-up of such notions.

The root of the preoccupation may be indicated in the remark passed by one of the four central characters, Tommy, in relation to their plans: "We'll all bud out into herring importers, gaberdines and all. I understand the cured-herring trade in America is a pet preserve of the Chosen Race." The remark is particularly unsettling given who else was making similar complaints when it was published (in the mid-1930s), and what that led to. Its point is reinforced in the authorial and other voices as the narrative progresses. Adam in Glasgow finds himself "an amateur amongst experts" to wit "a little group of men, Jewish of feature but very American in accent, flitting about, following two coopers...noticing subtle differences..." who are seen as being "a' the time tryin' to deceive..." i.e. to get themselves the best deal. (One man's deceitful cunning is another's business acumen.) In relation to the herring trade, Flett was writing about what he knew, so it is probable that his comments (appreciation of expertise) were based on experience and observation, and not entirely unbiased (competition for native traders): "The fishing trade is an important one in Scotland, ranking next to agriculture..." (p.99).

Across the Atlantic: "The herring business seemed to be entirely in the hands of Jews" who treated it with "tremendous seriousness", sampling and taking bites of raw herring. A fellow Scot ventures to "hope ye'll mak the Jews sit up... things ower much their ain way." They are not always successful and enviable, however. On his cross-country train Jimmy encounters a  "New York Jew", who insists on recounting the "history of his life ... the usual hard-luck story with which nobody has any patience"; in fact he has been the victim of a swindle involving herring. Jimmy "felt sorry for him"; and "quite, or almost quite, believed his story" but can't be doing with his volubility, a sore trial to the taciturn Brit.

Not all the Jews' supposed attributes are negative, for example being "munificent to employees whom they valued"; and having "the tenacity of purpose of [this] race" as well as the "racial instinct to haggle" and a capacity for "real inveterate Jewish enmity". On the second-last page, "New York was pleasantly warm... even the Jews relaxing a little to the geniality of nature." Apart from such anonymous or minor characters - "a Polish sort of Jew at that"; "a Jew syndicate back of us" according to a rival gang in the rum-running episode - there are two who play significant parts in the story.

The more pejoratively presented, Maurice Levitt, is "smart" and young, whose intelligence and witticisms appeal to Adam without disarming his distrust; expecting to be deceived, he pre-emptively deceives Maurice by trying to appear thoroughly naïf. He is invited to lunch, welcomed into the home circle; introduced to "all kinds of Jew" and included in theatre parties, but inevitably his suspicions turn out to be justified. It may be that Maurice is based on someone known to the author - there was some word of him having been let down or cheated by an American business partner - and Jewish characters may of course be less than perfect (the Scottish friends have no strong claim to moral high ground either); the pernicious aspect is the implicit linking of his race with his defects. This tendency is reinforced when he is given a passage of internal monologue, with the obnoxious admission that he "despised the Britishers, yet secretly cringed before them". He claims to have spent three years in Scotland. His attempts to win Adam over include an allusion to him being "a hit with the girls" and an interesting riff on post-traumatic stress when Adam displays an exaggerated startle response: (p.222) "I should have remembered that you've been through the War," he said contritely. "I've noticed lots of our ex-soldiers jumpy like that, easy startled, can't bear to be touched. A terrible strain on the nerves it must have been. And long continued... It seems to have affected everyone who went through it, one way or another."

By comparison, Mr. Rufus Maclevy doesn't come off so badly. Adam and Jimmy, the characters who display most affinity with their author, each discover eventually that the "can't help liking Rufus" - whose first appearance has been as the victim, chosen for his affluence and accessibility, of the four friends' first attempt at seriously illegal activity, to wit kidnap and extortion. He is able to assess the fairly low level of risk they pose and to strike a bargain, initiating their subsequent adventures. In the end, having cemented their alliance against Rakovsky, the "virtual king of the underworld", it is he whose cunning plan and substantial resources extricate them from danger and difficulties and set them on a more acceptable course of life. "You can't beat the Jew, now can you, I ask you?" they conclude (p.265), with evident appreciation, adding a Biblical quotation: "... the more they were smitten the more they flourished and multiplied."

Future patriarch JF with his eldest son.
Canada, 1920-21

What about the women?

Given its date (1934) and best-fit genre (adventure story/ crime caper) it is not surprising that women don't get much of a look-in on the main action and are "other", even alien to the main characters, whose male bonding and default assumptions (carried over from the war and/or rooted in their culture) preclude their involvement on equal terms. Jimmy, in chapter 1 and a state of mind he later repudiates (blaming it on his experiences in the war), reflects that "Neither the War, nor that worse enemy, Women, had robbed him of his youth..." while "The women! - clean and sweet and gracious; they were what made life worth living. But he had met few of that kind." Later he "avoided women". They nevertheless pop up from time to time as part of the landscape or to add a bit of colour and detail: a "young coloured woman, quadroon or octoroon or some such blend"; a maternity nurse going to St. George's; a reference to "women being caught trying to smuggle valuable lace"; prohibition "killing the young men and corrupting the young women"; beautiful women in Boston, "frank and fearless enough." Adam resorts to flirting with a young widow although such behaviour was "out of his character" and is encouraged to revisit Maurice's wife and his "little friend Lucille", being supposedly "a hit with the girls". At one point (p.156) Jock and Tommy find themselves "comfortable and jolly here, in a house that held seven buxom and flirtatious daughters..." constituting a "Mohammedan (but, we hasten to add, completely innocent) paradise ..."

Only one female, Nelly Brown, appearing after more than 50 pages, is given a full name, along with a distinctive voice of her own, and a key role in the main action. She is notably transgressive, being one of the most deadly criminal gang who lures Tommy into their clutches (albeit protesting when it looks as though he may be killed) and later persuades him and two of the other pals into a planned escape so that they can be followed. She also persuades them to finance her own escape from the gang, purportedly to set her up in a little shop in her native village. Tommy is happy to believe they have had the "chance to pull a girl out of the mire and set her on her feet again". He briefly considers the idea of her joining in their enterprise, only to realise "a woman would spoil everything". He perceives the plight of "a girl on her own" which is also Nelly's rationale for what she does: (p.68) "It was a hard old world... Aw, well, he was only a man anyway. She hated men. Disgusting, sensual brutes... They cared nothing for women except in the satisfaction of their brutish appetites. Or the tickling of their contemptible vanity. They ruined girls, then laughed and crowed over it..."

A different kind of female is on hand when rescue, rest and recovery, and at last a personal (quasi-existentialist) resolution are required for Jimmy. Not that their first meeting is conventional; saved from hypothermia and exhaustion by a woman's cry and "surrendering control once he recognised safety" he ends up being nursed by Cissie and her sister Susie, but not without being attacked by their axe-wielding mother. Passing over this incident - "She's had a hard life, and now she's got crazy about money; but we'll take good care she doesn't get the chance again" - he lapses into "voluptuous ease", "utterly content for the first time since the War" and enjoying the "atmosphere, familiar to the lucky amongst us, of being petted and nursed by devoted women.." as in the "paradise of the true believer". It has been explained that two men of the family are away for most of the winter and one is working elsewhere, and that "Susie would be going away in the fall. There was no keeping young girls at home nowadays; they would go... Young gels got desperate like when there wasn't no young men about. But Cissie was a good quiet girl, content with the day's work." Apart from this, the sisters are not clearly differentiated; they share a physical description - sheeny golden brown hair, friendly eyes, musical voices, soft cheeks, and "both had that peculiarly well-bred manner, direct and fearless. treating all as equals and none as superiors, of those brought up in the complete independence of the wilds."  After further adventures and a deal of introspection, Jimmy decides that it's Cissie who is "the only girl in the world for him" and duly finds her waiting for him. - [THE END]

Rumour has it that the "love interest" was a late addition at the behest of the publisher, which may be seen as some kind of plea in mitigation. It seems they had nothing to say about the more regrettable features of the work, as quoted and criticised above.

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Anyway that's probably enough to be going on with about this (not quite deservedly?) obscure, almost forgotten novel - unless anyone has the bright idea of organising a new edition, or an adaptation for radio, film or TV... Could work?

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A Findochty Flett in Canada

In Imagination and Memory...

Joseph Flett was aged 27 when he sailed to North America in August 1915, 28 when his young wife and baby daughter joined him in May 1916. While he may at that time have intended to make a permanent home in Canada, circumstances decreed otherwise and he had returned to Scotland 13 years before his novel Bid for Fortune was published in 1934. The book contains several chapters set in Newfoundland where he had spent over five years. Although a work of fiction presented as an escapist adventure story, it clearly draws extensively on the author's knowledge and experience (as well as his thoughts and feelings), including some about his temporarily adopted country.

Written on May 21, 1916:
"No desire to return to Scotland", but circumstances decreed otherwise five years later

In the context of post First World War alienation and lack of prospects the four main protagonists in the novel, after a failed business venture, turn to less legal schemes for securing some kind of future for themselves. While one takes care of the main plan, to smuggle accidentally-acquired diamonds into the USA with a view to disposing of them, the other three proceed via Newfoundland to rendez-vous with him in New York. Rather than wait idly, they decide to have a go at putting another idea into practice, rum-running from the French colony of St. Pierre to the Prohibition-era dry States. Rum-running to the USA, one of them has argued, would constitute a "real service" as well as being "almost respectable":

"For the greater convenience of rum-runners and Newfoundland fishermen - they've got Prohibition even in their foggy clammy island, poor devils! - there happens... to be two bits of rock off the south coast of Newfoundland that still belong to the sensible and thirsty Républque Française... an oasis in an arid land." (Chapter 5, p.55)

Anyway: "The Americans didn't despise law-breakers; the only thing they really despised was poverty. And rum-running was by now almost a respectable industry in the States."  (Chapter 14, pp.128-9)

On board ship their fellow passengers "cursed Prohibition. It was leading the youth of the country astray... It was killing the young men and corrupting the young women." (Chapter 17, p.148)

The next morning they were swishing through slob ice, with an occasional bump and grinding into the harder hummocks. Late in the afternoon they came up to the narrows of St. John's harbour. Huge cliffs towered above the narrow channel, bare grey rock plastered white in every cranny with snow, formidably wild and desolate-looking. Wooden huts and scaffoldings of fishermen [boats] perched on shelves of rock just above the water. A grim land it looked. Passing through the narrows, they entered a calm, land-locked harbour, full of drifting ice and little anchored schooners, Christmas-toy-like in their frosted shrouds and the long icicles pendent from bow and stern and gunwales.

 ... A small fleet of sleighs awaited the landing of the passengers... A grim country. A devil of a climate. (Chapter 17, p.148-149)

These first impressions are expanded into a more elaborate description of the place (with a small sting in the tail): "A rover of the sea turned merchant... St John's achieves, too, the metropolitan air... shares in the councils of the nations. She has a parliament all of her own... active mentally, and that's the great thing... It loves to take the stranger in, in one way or the other." (Chapter 18, p.150)

The next objective was to be Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, travelling to which was possible but advised against by locals at this time of year, the advice being heeded by only one of the three: "Jimmy, listening to the proposed itinerary, ruled himself out of it. He wouldn't, deliberately and of his own free will, shove himself into such horrible discomforts. But Tommy and Jock were still of the mind to go through with it." (p.151)

Tommy and Jock decide to kit themselves out, gradually, in seamen's clothing –

Then, on pretence at first of touring the outports, they crept down the coast, from one fishing hamlet to the next... until at last, from long rubber thighboots to mackinaw and ear-flapped cap, there was naught to distinguish them outwardly from the most native of natives. The local accent, a peculiar blend of West-Country English with the Irish brogue, presented much more difficulty to Jock... Jock, they decided, would have to pass as a Cape Breton Gaelic-speaking Scotsman, in whom any variety of English, from the purest to the most broken, gives no surprise to anybody - or at least so they had gathered from their boon companions in St. John's.

From Placentia... they drifted down... Everywhere they landed they found houses that would take in the weary traveller for a dollar or two... (p.154)

After an enforced wait that turns out to be "comfortable and jolly" in Grand-Bank, Fortune Bay, "there came a morning at last, even in a Newfoundland February, when the raging seas simmered down into a sullen heave of swell."

They landed on rocks at an unfrequented part of the island...

Saint-Pierre was quiet.. The transatlantic headquarters of the French cod-fishing fleet, its busy time was over for a year, except for the occasional visit of a big French trawler and its surreptitious activities in the rum-running trade...

The cod-fishing business was not what it had been. Newfoundland long ago had done its direst to kill that trade by prohibiting the sale of Newfoundland bait to the French, and in any case the business of fishing was getting more and more into the hands of big steam-trawling companies... (p.157)

While this adventure proceeds:

Jimmy put in the three weeks' waiting at St. John's pleasantly enough. He skated on the ice-rinks; he practised snow-shoeing until he quite fancied himself as an expert; he played poker and bridge; avoided women... As soon as it was certain that Jock and Tommy had made the passage, Jimmy packed up and took sleigh for the railway station.

The journey turns out to be something of an epic one. "The train lurched and bumped... in a manner disconcerting to the novice", eliciting the reassurance that [JF does the voice] 

"This ain't the season yit foh upsets. Next month now, yoh go to sleep mebbe in a lowah berth and waken up in a uppah berth with the train turned right upside down"  - in which case the procedure would be to climb out by the windows, with "drifts of snow fawty feet deep sometimes" at the "tops'ils". Asked "How do you like it up here?" the attendant replies that there are drawbacks and 'vantages: "We coloured gemmen have fah moah considuation up heah, sah. But dis consumption play the devil with coloured folks up heah, sah." (p.181-182)

The same attendant breaks the news to him when they get snowed in, and the conductor confirms that nothing can be done until the storm blows itself out and the "rotary" clears a way for them, which might take weeks. There are very few passengers in the sleeper - "Only the strongest urgency could persuade anyone to do the cross-country voyage at this time of year" - and after three days of being cooped up with them Jimmy, "ready for anything, no matter how desperate, that would break the monotony", decides to set out walking. Grand Falls he reckons is only about 80 miles away; some houses are scattered along the route; he expects to find "lots of English people there, employees of Northcliffe's paper mills".  Although he goes equipped with snow-shoes and green-tinted spectacles bought from a fellow passenger, his initial optimism as he begins "to follow the line of railway telegraph posts over the deep and pathless snow" is seriously misplaced.

On the point of collapse, he is rescued by a gaunt elderly woman and then tended by her two young attractive daughters, in whom he observes "that peculiarly well-bred manner, direct and fearless, treating all as equals and none as superiors, of those brought up in the complete independence of the wilds". However (half way to Grand Falls after ten days):

The happy interlude was brief, as usual. One morning smoke was seen down the line; then came the rotary, throwing up cascades of snow before it.. [The train] did not come along until the next day. With the usual obligingness of Newfoundland trains it stopped for Jimmy's excited wavings and took him aboard. (p.204)

The remainder of the journey is more pleasant - 

Without much apparent thaw the snow had long since begun mysteriously to disappear... The first taste of spring comes sudden and sweet in the countries of the long long snows…

The barren monotony of the interior changed as they came to the West Coast to high hills and woodlands. The River Humber roared through its steep and matted gorge down to Bay of Islands, still fast and serene under six feet of ice. It was a strange sight to Jimmy to see horses and heavily laden sleighs creeping over the frozen sea.

The country had a further test of endurance in reserve - 

"... when they arrived at Port-aux-Basques, the terminus of the railway and the port of transhipment for Canada. The s.s. Kyle had already been waiting there two days, already full of passengers who had come with her direct by sea from St. John's; the gulf was full of heavy ice, now packed close and tight to the land by the in-wind that had been blowing... The usually spick-and-span mail-boat had been putting up a losing fight against overcrowding and delay... (p.206)

"Another day of dank, smelly, tedious misery... then Jimmy woke up to woke up to the throbbing of engines and the swish and grind of a ship forcing her way through ice...

Up on deck the air was dancing, the ice-fields glittering in the strong sunlight. 

Finally - 

Here was the land again, praise be! and freedom from the mob. A drink!.. He had been looking forward to it ever since he smelt that ship. Now without preparation or softening the blow was dealt to him. Nova Scotia was dry. The country of all countries that needed a drink to was down its miserable dullness was dry!

The Syrian, who had been a fellow-passenger... now proved a friend in need. Nova Scotia was dry all right; but you could get all you wanted just the same; the only real difference was that you now had to pay through the nose for it.

... In defiance of all law, Jimmy was a bit flushed and smiling when he joined the train at North Sydney that evening. (p.209)

Jimmy's farewell to Canada is not final. After the four friends are reunited and share some further adventures and difficulties, they each end up (spoiler alert) with a substantial sum of money, and the partnership is dissolved. Jimmy,'with whom the narrative has opened, also occupies the closing chapter, in which after much soul-searching and existential agonising, he diagnoses the root cause of his troubled state as "nothing but that most common of ailments, the mating fever".

He had been unhappy... ever since he had left that lonely spot in the wilds... His mind went back to that scene, visioned the snow and the lake and the little fir tree.. Suddenly young Susie's face flashed up and filled his mind...

Having been characterised as English (distancing him from Joe) and therefore prone to snobbery, he has to account for his choice of this young woman from the wilds (while remaining apparently unfazed at the prospect of an intermittently homicidal axe-wielding mother-in-law). A momentary misgiving is set aside - "Susie was not a young savage; she was a native princess in her own right... glorious and free." (pp.271-273)

Recollecting -  her mother had said there was "no keeping young girls at home nowadays"  - that "she had been thinking of going away, of leaving home; a lamb going out innocently unafraid into the jungle" (pp.275-276) he loses no more time in organising his return, "a different man", to a different experience:

The s.s.Kyle, now neat and clean enough. Port-aux-Basques, raining as usual, but this time warm muggy rain. The casual leisurely crawl of the Newfoundland train... the homely genial atmosphere that more than made up for all discomforts... No such thing as time in Newfoundland: nothing for it but to wait, as tranquilly as everybody else. (pp.277-278)

The train may be slow, but the story now skips briskly onwards to the required happy ending.

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(A more thorough and critical review of the novel appears later on this blog.)

J.S.Flett, Bid for Fortune. Moray Press, Edinburgh & London, 1934

The adventures of four young men. Price 7/6 [Seven shillings and sixpence = 37.5p. 
Second-hand copies have been available on-line at different highish prices, e.g. at £35 about 12 years ago, £399 (80 years after publication), £50 without jacket (currently).]

The book sat well with its mid-1930s contemporaries in the Moray Press list
 of (would-be) popular but far from unintelligent adventure yarns.