Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps

by Ursula Buchan

  He [Augustus] would marvel … at the current talk of racial purity, the exaltation of one breed of men as the chosen favourites of the gods. That would seem to him a defiance not only of the new Christian creed, but of the Stoicism which he had sincerely professed. [Moreover] he would be perplexed by the modern passion for the regimentation and the assumed contradiction between law and liberty … And when this expert in mechanism observed the craving of great peoples to enslave themselves and to exult hysterically in their bonds, bewilderment would harden to disdain in his masterful eyes.78

  No one at the time would have missed what JB was driving at: the similarities and differences between Augustus and the European dictators of the 1930s, especially Mussolini, who had the arrogance to arrive at an ambassadors’ reception in 1936 in an Augustan toga. JB told Baldwin that he wished to goodness Augustus’ mantle had descended upon ‘the present ridiculous Dictator of Italy’.79 Indeed, some of JB’s comparisons between Augustus and the Fascist dictators – unfavourable to the latter – were excised from the Italian translation of the book, and were not reinstated until a revised edition was issued in 1961.

  When JB sent a copy of the book to Roosevelt, he said that he hoped it would interest him, as many of Augustus’ problems were his own, but he can hardly have been delighted when the pre-publication advertising in America ran: ‘The Governor-General of Canada tells the story of how a Republic became a Dictatorship. Americans, has this no lesson for you?’80 Roosevelt, however, took no offence.

  As in Sir Walter Scott and Cromwell, JB treated the general reader at the beginning to a tour d’horizon – in this case of the Roman Empire – which is flattering because so easily comprehensible, yet educative in the best way:

  A little fortified town, the centre of a community of yeomen, had within four centuries of her foundation made herself the mistress of all Italy. Two centuries later she controlled the shores of the Mediterranean and a large part of the empire of Alexander; her inconsiderable hills had become as famous as the Acropolis or the Pyramids; the mountain torrent which washed her walls was a name as familiar to men as the River of Egypt; and her commercial expansion had kept pace with her conquests…81

  One of the delights of the book is a description of the poet Horace, whom JB had so much admired at Oxford:

  He was a plump little man with hair prematurely grizzled, and he had always been something of a valetudinarian … Horace was a court poet, but no courtier; he was not afraid to laugh gently at Augustus’s paternalism and his belief in making people virtuous by statute, and he cherished and gave constant expression to a kind of literary republicanism. There was never a more independent poet-laureate.82

  To JB’s relief, the book went down well with Professor Tenney Frank, the great authority on Roman history, who told him he was going to make it a textbook for his classes at Johns Hopkins University. ‘If I have the approval of scholars that is all I care for,’83 JB wrote to Mrs Buchan, but indeed, the critics liked it as well.

  In December two articles appeared, in successive weeks, in The Sunday Times84 about JB’s time Down North, sent to the newspaper by an anonymous Canadian friend of the Governor-General, and based on the memorandum he wrote, and the radio broadcast he delivered, on his return to Ottawa. Needless to say this managed to irritate Buckingham Palace, since it seemed to King George VI (or his officials anyway) a way of promoting Canada at the expense of the other Dominions, about which they were ultra-sensitive. Sir Alexander Hardinge wrote to JB: ‘The “Sunday Times” episode did cause us a certain amount of anxiety but, thanks to your giving us a free hand with the Editor, we were able, without putting him to the embarrassment of cancelling the promised article, to arrange for its reproduction in such a way that the greatest objections were overcome. On the other hand it would be idle to pretend that even by this means criticism over here was entirely avoided.’ Arguably, it was a just rebuke, but Hardinge continued, with stupendous pomposity, that the King didn’t like ‘His Majesty’s personal representative … being a Publicity Agent for boosting a particular Dominion’.85 Hardinge also took this opportunity to caution JB severely against saying anything the least controversial in his public utterances. It is clear that the Palace not only wanted but expected him to be what T. E. Lawrence called ‘a figure’, a role for which JB discovered in Canada he was constitutionally unsuited, and against which he sometimes rebelled.

  That autumn, his mother was very breathless and tired, which made her bothered and worried. In August JB had written to wish her a happy eightieth birthday. ‘I don’t think anyone has ever [had] a better spent life, for you have warmed the atmosphere for half Scotland. You have been a wonderful mother to your children. You inspired them with your own eager and courageous interest in life, and you made a centre of attachment for us all. You choose to pretend that you are nervous and timorous, but you really fear nothing except the Almighty. And your kindness is as wide as the mercy of God.’ He finished by calling her ‘the linch-pin of the whole coach’.86

  She died quietly and without pain on 18 December at Bank House in Peebles. There were lengthy tributes in Scottish newspapers and she even earned an obituary in The Times. JB, to his surprise, received messages of condolence from, among others, the King, the American President, several Prime Ministers, Cardinal Villeneuve and Archbishop Cosmo Lang.

  Susie told Johnnie: ‘He [JB] was so good and took it so bravely but I can see that he feels that something big and interesting has gone out of life and I expect that’s what we all feel … Gran, for such a tiny person, filled up a big space and I can’t imagine life without her.’87

  It has been said on occasion that JB was afraid of his mother, but there is no clear evidence for that. He took his duty to his parents seriously, and had the enduring pleasure of bright childhood memories, but he stood up to Helen stoutly on many occasions. He was certainly irritated, even angered by her at times, but he loved her and could see her many sterling qualities, especially her selfless generosity and care for the people around her, her energy and drive, wit and sharp intelligence, what one correspondent called ‘charm indescribable’ and her steadfast belief in him. Her faults, in particular her worldly vanity, he understood, since he had something of that himself. She made life troublesome for him at times, she would not let him off family hooks even when he was ‘hustled’ with work and problems during the Great War, and she criticised his children. But there never was anything approaching a rift between them. For JB (and for Susie) such a thing would have been unthinkably disloyal and damaging. In 1937, he will have reflected with gratitude that, instead of dying twenty-five years before, which could well have happened, she had been ‘spared’ to see her children do her very proud.

  *Ottawa to Vancouver took roughly five days by train.

  *The benefit was mutual: through JB, Karsh met Mackenzie King and, as a result, he was invited to take pictures after Winston Churchill spoke to the Canadian parliament in 1941. The famous ‘bulldog Churchill’ image came about because Karsh clicked the shutter a second after taking Churchill’s cigar out of his mouth.

  *The footmen apparently made the best skaters.

  *In 2018 the prizes in fourteen categories, seven English and seven French, were worth $25,000 each.

  *Professor Jonathan Meakins was one of the guests at the state luncheon, which was mainly composed of foreign diplomats, presumably to keep a wary eye on his patient from across the table.

  *There were Canadian Clubs in all the big cities, founded to promote patriotism in such a diverse and enormous country, and concerned with the fostering of culture, business, science and so on.

  *What is now Ontario.

  *She was to become a famous war photographer, and something of a pin-up for the American troops during the Second World War.

  **Known, when it occasionally appears in Britain, as the Camberwell Beauty. They hatched successfully, much to the fascination of the Governor-General and his staff.

  *Now known as Tweedsmuir Prov
incial Park.

  10

  Canada, 1938–1940

  Mrs Buchan died the day on which the announcement was made that her son had won the election to be Chancellor of Edinburgh University. In late 1937 he had accepted an invitation from the university, since he thought his was the only nomination, only to find, to his consternation, that the Marquess of Lothian had also entered the lists, so that there would have to be a contest. However, it was too late to back out and, in the event, he won easily. Predictably, it brought down, once more, a rebuke on his head from Buckingham Palace.

  The new year opened with rumours in the newspapers that he would be given the American ambassadorship – one of the few diplomatic posts that did not necessarily go to a career diplomat – when Sir Ronald Lindsay finished his time in Washington; certainly Lindsay thought JB would do the job very well. JB claimed to Tommy Lascelles that the rumours were ‘idiotic’, but that ‘there has been this much in them that the President and Cordell Hull keep on saying they want me. But only his Majesty and the Canadian Government can move me, and the Canadian Government certainly won’t agree. I am determined not to desert Mr. Micawber, for my work here is only beginning.’1 It must have caused him a considerable pang, for Washington was the job he really wanted, and Canada could feel rather out of the way. He told Stanley Baldwin that he sometimes felt like a late eighteenth-century Highland laird, cultivating his estates in Sutherland, while Fox, Pitt and Burke were sparring in the House of Commons, and France was in revolutionary turmoil.

  Early in January, Neville Chamberlain coldly rebuffed Roosevelt’s suggestion of an international conference to discuss economic and other international difficulties. Roosevelt had talked at length about this with JB in April 1937 and thereafter, and he wanted British support in advance of any initiative. Chamberlain, who thought he knew better how to deal with the European dictators, turned down FDR precipitately and against the strong advice of Lindsay, and without consulting his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, who was unfortunately away on holiday. As a result of Chamberlain’s reaction, Roosevelt retreated and, when Eden found out, his relations with Chamberlain markedly deteriorated and he resigned the following month. The leader of the opposition, Clement Attlee, was never told of this initiative and maintained later that, if he had been in Downing Street, he would have accepted Roosevelt’s invitation, saying: ‘If Hitler had realised that there was also America, and America was going to stand in, he would have thought twice about it, or his generals would.’2 Eden and Churchill were of the opinion that such a good opportunity to avert war as Roosevelt seemed to offer never came again.3

  In the spring, JB toured the Prairies again to see how the drought-prevention measures were working. Amongst the communities he visited was the small, mainly French-speaking, frontier settlement of Val Marie, close to the American border in Saskatchewan. George Spence, Director of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency, wrote a vivid account4 of the preparations that the town made for such a momentous occasion: the shooing of cows from Main Street; the painting of the fronts of the buildings; the removal of outdoor latrines; the bulldozing of rubbish into the river; the search for bagpipes and a kilt for the (Norwegian) piper; the prodigious lunch laid on in a tent; the vain efforts on the day to prevent His Excellency from joining the line of men to wash his hands; the cheering of schoolchildren, when the party arrived at the platform in the town park. JB spoke both in English and French, and declared another day’s holiday for the children, which he said he had the constitutional right to do. After the formalities were over, he was told of an elderly Scots couple, originally from the Borders, who had travelled overnight more than 100 miles in an old car ‘juist to get a guid look at John Buchan!’ He asked to be introduced, and talked to them in Lowlands Scots, while the tears rolled down their cheeks.

  In late June, he went south to the United States as a private citizen (for which he had had to ask permission from the King) to receive honorary degrees from both Yale and Harvard. These were the only two of many invitations he succeeded in accepting. The President at Yale University said of him that he was as versatile as Richard Hannay and as reliable as Mr Standfast and, in his reply, JB said he wouldn’t talk the usual platitudes about what good friends the United States and the British Empire should be. ‘I believe most profoundly in that friendship, but don’t let’s get self-conscious about it … I think the best way for Americans and Britons to understand each other is not by analysing their feelings, but by doing things together.’5 At Harvard, he received a bigger cheer even than Walt Disney, and gave the Commencement Address, on the subject of Henry Adams’ description of himself ‘as a conservative Christian anarchist’, declaring that it was a description that fitted himself. The ‘anarchist’ meant that he was resolute about clearing away rubbish, whether new or old. He wanted his audience to cultivate the three qualities necessary for the times: humility, humanity and humour. ‘Humour is the best weapon with which to fight pedantry and vainglory and false rhetoric … Laughter is the chief gift of civilization.’6

  Shortly afterwards, he left for England for the first time since 1935, Susie having gone ahead some weeks earlier. He intended to be there for no more than a month or so, just long enough to see his doctor (Bertrand [now Lord] Dawson); be installed as Chancellor of Edinburgh University; meet Chamberlain, Baldwin and the Earl of Halifax in London; and see family and friends.

  The idea for a Royal visit to Canada had been mooted as early as November 1936, but plans had scarcely got underway before the Abdication Crisis erupted. However, JB never lost sight of the immense value of a Royal tour, not only for Canada but also the United States, and persuaded Mackenzie King, who mentioned it when he was in London for the Coronation in May 1937. The year proposed was 1939.

  The reaction of Buckingham Palace was favourable but, with the European news so unsettling, Chamberlain and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, were at first dubious, until persuaded by JB of the value at such a time of exposing the barely known Royals to the patriotic public gaze of Canadians and to harder-to-please Americans. Roosevelt wrote directly to the King inviting him to the United States, on the grounds that it would be an excellent thing for Anglo-American relations.

  JB was installed as Chancellor of Edinburgh University on 20 July. His address was entitled ‘The Interpreter’s House’, a title drawn, of course, from The Pilgrim’s Progress, ‘where we receive our viaticum* for the road’, and a compliment to the university as a place of both teaching and the advancement of learning. He played on one of his favourite themes, that of the undoubted quality of youth but its particular contemporary challenges. His son, Johnnie, listened to his speech on a ship’s wireless close to Lake Harbour on the shore of the Hudson Strait, having gone to work for a year at a Hudson’s Bay trading post on Baffin Land. In 1980 he could still recall his father’s words: ‘… there are spiritual frontiers, the horizons of the mind. We are still frontiersmen in a true sense, for we are domiciled on the edge of mystery, and have to face novelties more startling than any which confronted the old pioneers.’7

  Friends and family gathered en masse for the occasion, but the luncheon party, garden party with speeches, dinner party and evening reception made it a very long day, and old friends such as Sandy Gillon, Johnnie Jameson and Violet Markham, who had not seen him for three years, muttered anxiously to each other. (The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres told his brother, after he had seen JB in London that July, that he looked ‘thin, meagre, almost shrunken in appearance’.)8

  The next day, JB motored with Anna and Walter to Peebles, via the Glasgow Exhibition, which he had promised to visit. Anna recalled:

  Partly because it was one of his ‘well’ days, and partly, I expect, because of the relief of getting a big job over, John that day seemed to throw from him every care … He sang songs and told us ridiculous stories. We knew him well in this mood. All his life, after long concentration, writing for hours, he would suddenly take what Mother called ‘a daft turn’ and p
our forth a stream of nonsense, which reduced us all to helpless laughter. And hearing him, Walter and I realized how much we had missed those fits of nonsense…9

  At his doctor’s insistence, he spent time at Ruthin Castle in north Wales, a private sanatorium for those with digestive problems,* run by a physician called Sir Edmund Ivens Spriggs. In the end he was ‘binned’ for six weeks, from early August to mid-September. ‘I console myself with reflecting how many good men have had to endure a spell in jug,’10 he told his wife.

  Although his time at Ruthin Castle initially entailed some very painful and wearisome examinations, the treatment undoubtedly improved matters, both by helping him to gain a stone in weight (he was no longer El Greco but Rubens, he told Violet Markham) and also by giving him a rest cure, far away even from international anxieties.

  Susie stayed on in England so that she could visit JB at Ruthin, travelling up from Elsfield several times to see him and lodging nearby. They would walk together in the gardens or drive out into the hills. In one of the last letters he wrote to her, for they were never apart again, he said ‘I am going to miss you dreadfully, and shall wander about in the Italian Gardens, which I specially associate with you.’11 By this time they had been married for more than thirty years.

  The rest of the time he spent resting, reading (‘Henry James’ later style gives me the impression of swimming in spinach!’),12 and writing his reminiscences. This engendered a period of acute retrospection and a rare mood of sentimentality. ‘My love to every member of the best staff in the world,’13 he wrote to his wife, when she was leaving once more for Canada.