I'm not quite sure how to describe this book. It's 1747, and there's an extended family gathering at Gleneagles, and not everybody quite sees eye to eye even if the family tries to pull together. The shadows of the divisions caused by the Scottish uprisings in 1715 and 1745 are still there. On a more personal level, Kirstie and her second husband William have both come through difficult experiences before being happy together.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, but it kept me hooked from the start. ( )

The novel is set in 1747, the year following that of the Jacobite cause’s final downfall at Culloden. Its plot unfolds over two days at Gleneagles, seat of the Haldanes (and Mitchison’s ancestral home) but the backstories of both Kirstie (Haldane) Macintosh and her husband William of Borlum delve into the long shadow thrown by the 1715 rebellion and the now all but forgotten Glenshiel rising of 1719.

The Jacobite rebellions are an itch that Scottish writers were seemingly unable not to scratch. (That this is no longer self-evidently true is, perhaps, a measure of how times have changed.) Walter Scott arguably had an excuse when he kicked off the historical novel with Waverley, Culloden was only ‘sixty years since’ as his subtitle attested (though see my caveats in that post's Pedant's Corner,) but this book was first published in 1947 a full two hundred years after the last of those events. (Then again, consider Zhou En Lai’s remark about the ramifications of the French Revolution -though it seems he was slightly misunderstood.) It cannot be denied however that the defeat of Jacobitism cemented the Union (which was then tempered by the acquisition of Empire) and the changes it brought about altered the Highlands, and their relations with the Lowlands, for ever.

Mitchison herself provides copious, very readable, sometimes intriguing notes on her novel, covering incidental details of the Scotland in which the book is set, the history of the Union and its effects on Scotland, the evolution of grouse shooting and much more.

The main characters in The Bull Calves are Kirstie and William Macintosh who are making a visit to Kirstie’s childhood home at Gleneagles. William’s family had been “out” in 1715 and his land was confiscated as a result. William himself had a price on his head and fled to the American colonies. On his return he managed to regain his Highland lands but despite not joining in the ’45 his assumed Jacobite sympathies mean his in-laws regard him with some suspicion. In that same interim Kirstie had made an unwise marriage to a dour Minister with the typically unsympathetic attitude of his type to the miners in his Ayrshire parish. There were doubts about his death and she has confessed to William that she had indulged in what may have been witchcraft, something which he dismissed out of hand. An on-the-run Robert Strange, who had been contracted to design and engrave Bonnie Prince Charlie’s (never distributed) banknotes - and was one of the author’s great-great-great grandfathers! – turns up, whereon William and a Haldane nephew contriving to hide him in the attic. Lachlan Macintosh of Kyllachy, who had set his cap at Kirstie in the long ago and therefore holds a grudge against her and husband both, and now believes he has compromising information about William’s sojourn in America, also arrives, thus putting all the plot motors in place.

Mitchison’s characterisation is delightful, extending even to minor figures such as Phemie Reid, Kirstie’s childhood nursemaid, and Mrs Grizzie, the Gleneagles housekeeper.

On the treatment meted out to the Mcgregor clan one character says, “‘If evil is done to one man or woman they may be able to ... forgive their enemies. But if evil is done to a whole race of folk, they will be bound to do evil again.’” A more general, and still true, observation is that “...’those who are making the best living out of a country, they will be expressing their fine moral sentiments... But they will not be seeing the kind of a lie they are telling themselves..... they will believe that the present ordering of life was ordained of the Lord. Which is .... blasphemy.... But... (Highlanders) will do best when they are sharing, with everything held in common, the old way.’”

A flavour of the times is given by exchanges such as (between William of Borlum and Mungo, head of Gleneagles,) “‘It seemed to us that the Union with England was destroying Scotland. It had been bad enough with Queen Anne, but the new lot had no interest at all in Scotland, we were thought of as a county of England.’
‘Ach, yes,’ Mungo replied. ‘We found that down in Westminster, “Have we not bought the Scots and the right to tax them?”’

About the unequal conditions Scotland was subject to in the Union’s early days we have, “‘Our fisheries could compete with the bigger Dutch boats but the salt tax ruined them, our coal trade with Ireland suffered from a duty not put on English coal, our linen trade was attacked, for all it was our staple, ...they wouldna buy our timber if it would mean spending money on roads.’”
Of the Ayrshire miners Kirstie incidentally remarks, “‘They would even keep the Popish holidays, such as Christmas.’” And Mungo supplies us with the typically Lowland sentiment, “‘English or Highland, what’s about it? You canna be trusting either of the two of them, although they have different kind of villainies.’”

Many people may ignore the Notes but I would urge you not to as for me that was where a lot of the interest lay. In them Mitchison made a plea for Scottish children to be allowed to express themselves in spoken and written Scots of their own district. That plea is no longer unheeded though it took nigh on forty years to be so.

She says, “At that time, as now in Scotland, a married woman was known by her maiden name.” This perhaps became slightly less true in some of the 70 years after her book’s first publication but has become so again, less as a cultural practice than an assertion of a woman’s individuality. In any case Scottish gravestones always attested to this phenomenon.

We are told that on his peregrinations down the country and back up again Bonnie Prince Charlie “paid for everything that he and his household got. Doubtless it was good policy for the Prince to pay, but – he did so. Cumberland was less particular.” On piety – or lack of it, “The Pharisees are well in control now, just the same as they used to be,” and, on the west coast, “in each succeeding generation the Elect manage to torture their children slightly less with fear of hell-fire,” On Scotland’s clinging to tradition, that” a church of hell-fire will be against change. In Scotland attention is still directed on personal sins, such as fornication, drunkenness and playing football on Sunday rather than social sins such as usury, and the forcing of the destructive facts of poverty on millions.” A cultural tic that has vanished in those 70 years is that, “God is called to save (the King) after every stage and screen performance, as well as by the BBC.”

We find in a note on Robert Strange that his betrothed, Isabella Lumisden, “did actually do the traditional thing, and hid him under her hoop, when a sudden searching of the house took place. Which only shows how much more gentlemanly, or less efficient, the soldiers who did the search were in those days.” Quite.

Much Scottish anxiety rested (rests?) on the tension between respectability and the desires of the flesh. Historically, respectability outwardly prevailed but Mitchison counters, “We would have it supposed that sculduddery (lewd behaviour, fornication) is far removed from our kailyards. Our illegitimacy statistics prove otherwise. So does our great national song, to a strathspey tune, of which not one verse is publishable.” Which last has me mystified. Does anyone know the song to which she refers?

In the context of authors seeking a new symbolism there is a mention of SF visionary Olaf Stapledon. Unlike others’, his was external rather than internal. ( )

Naomi Mitchison lived a remarkable life. She was born into an aristocratic Scottish family; she studied at Oxford, but gave up her studies to become a VAD nurse; she married a Labour MP and became a campaigner for social justice; she travelled widely; and yet she still found the time to write poetry, three volumes of autobiography, and a wide range of novels.

I picked up three of those novels, in green Virago editions, but they sat unread for quite some time; because they seemed so diverse – in size and in subject-matter – and there were so many other books on the Virago bookcase that called me more than they did.

Eventually its time came, and I am so pleased that it did; this was a big book, it required careful reading, and it was utterly absorbing!

Naomi Mitchison spent the Second World War in Carradale, Kintyre. She welcomed evacuees and refugees into her home, she managed the farm, she organised the local Labour Party, she was involved with her local dramatic society, and she wrote a diary for Mass Observation, of more than a million words.

She also wrote this novel; beginning in the dark days of 1940 and working slowly and carefully because she knew that what she wanted to say was important. She wanted to write about the need for peace and reconciliation after war; and she did that in a story set early two hundred years earlier, in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Her setting is Gleneagles House, home of the Haldane family, set on the southern side of Perthshire where the lowlands of Scotland give way to the Highlands. Over the course of a summer’s weekend in 1947 the family gather for the first time in many years; they have different feelings about what has happened, and different ideas about what should happen in the future. There is much to talk about and a great deal will happen over the course of that weekend.

At the centre is Kirstie Haldane, the daughter of a Whig family, who has married Jacobite William Macintosh of Borlum. Her brother have concerns about her choice of husband; his political views are quite different to theirs and they have heard stories about his past, about what might have happened in the years he spent in the Americas.

Kirstie has no such doubts. She tells her young niece, Catherine, about the difficult years she had to endure with her first husband, about how she coped during the uprising, and about how she finally met and married the right man. Catherine was fascinated, and so was I.

That leads Kirstie to tell her husband a little more about her past than she has before; she tells him about the time when she crossed paths with witches. He tells her about some of the difficult things he had to do in America, and husband and wife both feel that they have reached a better understanding.

Neither has told everything though, and they both face the prospect of their darkest secrets being revealed before the end of the gathering.

Meanwhile, younger members of the family are concealing a Jacobite rebel. Robert Strange was an engraver, and all he wanted was to travel south, to practice his craft, and to return to his beloved books. Catherine began to fall in love with him, and I did too.

When a message arrives, saying that the Lord President Duncan Forbes will visit the house as he travels south, they are worried. Can they keep their man hidden, or can they get him away on time?

Those are the bones of a story that is underpinned by a wealth of detail.

Naomi Mitchison writes beautifully of the house, the grounds and the surrounding countryside. I couldn’t doubt for a moment that it was a place she knew and loved.

The stories that her characters tell and the conversations that they have say a great deal about the history they lived through and the future that they saw for their country. Some question, and even consider repudiating, the Act of Union, but others believe that Scotland’s agriculture, trade, and relations with the rest of the world are stronger as a result of that Act.

It was helpful that I had some idea of the history and that I was familiar with the rhythm of Scottish speech; those two things ran right through the book, I appreciated that the author did it very well, but it took a lot of concentration to keep track of everything, and I suspect that the significance of some things passed me by.

This books greatest strength is that it is a wonderful human drama. The characters were quite simply drawn, but I found it easy to warm to them, to understand their cares and concerns and to be drawn into their different stories.

I particularly appreciated the way the story showed the differences between generations who had lived through different periods of history and were at different stages of life; and how so much happened and so much changed over the course of a few days without the story feeling too contrived.

I have to admire the way that Naomi Mitchison reflected her concerns about the world she lived in, and the future it faced, in this historical family saga; and I know that a great deal of what she says is still relevant.

I loved the lengthy notes that she provided.

I can’t say that it is has become one of my favourite Virago Modern Classics, or one of my favourite historical novels; it’s a little too serious, a little too detailed, and a rather lacking in humour or light relief for me to be able to say that.

But I can say that it is a very good book. ( )