Back in 2023 I took a short mooch around the Scottish Borders town of Moffat, looking for the spirit of authors D.E. Stevenson and Molly Clavering. I found Stevenson’s old house looking somewhat neglected and sad but the little town felt very pleasant and the surrounding landscape certainly seemed still to glisten with the pleasures of these old writing friends’ books. In the intervening eighteen months or so I’ve passed the motorway signs for Moffat several times and never detoured, but last month I finally returned for a brief stop to stretch my legs and visit the Moffat Bookshop to see what secondhand treats it might have on its shelves.

After a good rummage I came away with two books, the first of which was a lovely 1950 pocket hardback reprint of the 1920 novel ‘Penny Plain’ by O. Douglas. Now I am certainly no expert on early to mid 20th Century British fiction, but I like to think that over the past few years I have become aware of a good number of names to look out for whilst browsing the secondhand shelves. O. Douglas however was entirely new to me and with the book’s jacket promising a tale set in a Scottish Borders town it felt unwise to pass up the opportunity. I’m certainly glad I didn’t, because ‘Penny Plain’ is a charming little book that sets a Cinderella tale within the context of post WW1 Britain, exploring as it does so threads of class and social snobbery. It may suffer slightly from a certain clunky style that is, in my limited and non-academic experience, prevalent in a lot of British fiction from the early 20th Century, but there is enough lightness of touch to carry things off. Again, from a thoroughly non-academic perspective, it seems to me that a lot of popular genre fiction written in this period is still struggling somewhat to find a 20th Century voice. It certainly feels true in the crime and detective genre where the (for me) rather dull and overly wordy 19th Century flavour lingers long into the 1920s and, for some writers, through most of the 1930s. I get the same kind of feeling from what I suppose one would broadly call the romance genre, and there is I think a degree of this in ‘Penny Plain’s otherwise delightful romantic entertainment. As already mentioned however there is a degree of lightness to the book and certainly the way in which Douglas conjures both the landscape of the fictional Borders town of Priorsford and its maze of social connections is done very nicely indeed. Priorsford is by all accounts a lightly fictionalised version of Peebles, and the clues are certainly there to guess that much, even more than a century later. There is a lovely segment late in the book when the little Jardine family on whose fortunes the narrative largely dwells take a motor trip down into England. The first part of this in particular is vividly written and, I dare say, little changed in the past hundred years. Certainly the road that they follow along the Tweed and then descend via the Devil’s Beeftub with its views across Stevenson and Clavering’s beloved Annan Water into Moffat must be essentially still the same.

Speaking of Stevenson, there is in ‘Penny Plain’ a little of the gentle social satire of Stevenson’s 1934 classic ‘Miss Buncle’s Book’ as well as a similar soft conservatism throughout everything. Sometimes this can feel a little disquieting to a 21st Century liberal/progressive viewpoint but on the whole the charm wins us over, whilst Douglas’ rather withering portrayals of the most obnoxiously snobbish and rampantly traditionalist characters sadly ring as true today as they would have done in her time.

The owner of the Moffat Bookshop could not tell me anything about O.Douglas but I have since learned that it was the pen name of Anna Masterton Buchan, younger sister of John Buchan (’39 Steps’, ‘Greenmantle’ etc) and that she published a number of other novels, including two more to complete a Priorsford trilogy, throughout the 1920s and 30s. I left behind several of these on the shelves of the bookshop, many in a similar 1950 pocket hardback format, and I hope they might still be there next time I am crossing the border.

It would have been remiss of me of course not to have looked for some D.E. Stevenson novels on the shelves of the Moffat Bookshop and, as expected, there were quite a few on offer (though sadly nothing by her friend Molly Clavering), almost all of which I had already read in the excellent reprint editions from Furrowed Middlebrow. I did however pick up a nice first edition of her 1954 novel ‘Charlotte Fairlie’, a novel set for the most part on a fictional island of the Inner Hebrides. However, whilst still being an enjoyable enough piece of romantic fiction, it strikes me that it is far from being Stevenson at her best. The story is essentially one in which Professional Spinsterhood is pitted against Traditional Family Structures with (Not At All A Spoiler Alert) predictably conservative outcomes. It all feels oddly older than its 1954 publication date might suggest and perhaps gives lie to the idea that post-WW2 Britain was entirely in tune with progressively socialist ideals. There is precious little of that here, as the headmistress of a girls’ school (private of course – none of your leftie State School rubbish) finds herself drawn into romance with the parent of one of her charges. Inevitably this parent happens to live in a castle on a Scottish island to which the novels titular character is invited to spend the summer by the child. To the modern (state) educationalist’s eye this is an outrageous suggestion that sets off just about every safeguarding klaxon one could imagine, yet seems entirely normal in the book’s 1950s context. Indeed, for all I know, those working in 21st Century private schools might not bat an eyelid at such a situation, but it is still one of the most jarring pieces of period reference that I’ve come across in my not inconsiderable reading of early to mid 20th Century fiction, ranking alongside Josephine Tey’s ‘Dago’ debacle in her 1929 debut ‘The Man In The Queue’.

Rarely do I find the preposterous nature of scenarios in novels (particularly those broadly within the romantic fiction genre) to be a stumbling block, but I admit that I continued to find the relationships between headteacher, students and parents to be so in ‘Charlotte Fairlie’. Certainly there are interesting threads in the book that explore the role of fathers, and the verve with which Stevenson describes the landscapes of the island of Targ (it feels like an amalgam of the islands of Rùm, Coll and Tiree) and the West Country in which Charlotte Fairlie’s school is set (at one point she contemplates a trip to Sidmouth) is as admirable as one would expect. Others will no doubt struggle much less with these difficulties and will enjoy the book immeasurably more as a result, but for me ‘Charlotte Fairlie’ is distinctly a second or third division Stevenson.

Finally, staying in the environs of the Hebridean isles, I just finished reading Mabel Esther Allan’s lovely 1950 children’s novel ‘Over The Sea To School’. Reissued in 2024 by the marvellous Girls Gone By imprint (who also reprinted Allan’s ‘The Amber House’ which I so enjoyed recently) the book takes us over the sea to Skye and into the somewhat progressive (again private) school of Dundonay House. Jennifer Shelley’s short but informative introduction to this reprint suggests to the uninformed children’s fiction rookie (like me) that 21st Century academia sees such books as belonging to “an unrecognised radical literature for children in the early to middle twentieth century.” I admit that it can be difficult to see much evidence of radical views in a book like ‘Over The Sea To Skye’ for the narrative is crammed full of deeply traditional and conservative attitudes. The crofters of Skye feel rather like caricatures, as does their excitement at welcoming back the traditional Laird to the Castle. It does rather feel like we are in the midst of some Conservative propaganda for A Return To The Old Values of pre-war society rather than imagining an equitable or, dare one say it, socialist utopia. As for the Dundonay House school, there is a distinct air of the middle classes being able to BUY progressive teaching and learning methods as a means of salving their conscience about How Things Ought To Be. It’s not unlike 21st Century progressives convincing themselves they are Saving The Planet by buying enormous new electric 4×4 vehicles every other year and being rampantly authoritarian about individual recycling efforts.

Yet this ought not to discourage one from reading ‘Over The Sea To School’ for it is a marvellous book that does a fine job of capturing the timeless internal conflicts that plague teenagers in whatever era one might choose and that invokes the tremendous thrills of the best children’s mystery and adventure stories. Yes, the adventure thriller angle is rather suddenly thrust into the mix as the novel nears its conclusion and arguably feels a little shoe-horned into place, but then one remembers that it IS a children’s book and that perhaps such boisterous leaping from one episode to the next is entirely to be expected and indeed encouraged. What lingers most strongly from Allan’s writing however is the tremendous sense of place that she conjures in her writing. ‘The Amber House’ with its setting in Rye and Winchelsea suggested to me that this might be the case with her other books, and certainly the beauty of Skye and the surrounding island landscape of Scotland is as well served as in any other text for children or adults. I’m certainly looking forward to the forthcoming reprints of Allan’s sequels, ‘A School in Danger’ and ‘At School in Skye’ with eager anticipation.