Young Mrs. Savage, page 31
The First Great War put an end to all these gaieties—certainly nobody felt inclined to dance when every day the long lists of casualties were published and the gay young men who had been ones partners were reported dead or missing or returned wounded from the ghastly battlefields.
In 1916 I married Major James Reid Peploe. His family was an Edinburgh family, as mine was. Curiously enough I knew his mother and father and his brothers but had never met him until he returned to Edinburgh from the war, wounded in the head. When he recovered we were married and then began the busiest time of my life. We moved about from place to place (as soldiers and their wives and families must do) and, what with the struggle to get houses and the arrival—at reasonable intervals—of two sons and a daughter I had very little time for writing. I managed to write some short stories and some children’s poems but it was not until we were settled for some years in Glasgow that I began my literary career in earnest.
Mrs. Tim was my first successful novel. In it I wrote an account of the life of an Officer’s wife and many of the incidents in the story are true—or only very slightly touched up. Unfortunately people in Glasgow were not very pleased with their portraits and became somewhat chilly in consequence. After that I wrote Miss Buncle’s Book which has been one of my most popular books. It sold in thousands and is still selling. It is about a woman who wrote a book about the small town in which she lived and about the reactions of the community.
All the time my children were growing up I continued to write: Miss Buncle Married, Miss Dean’s Dilemma, Smouldering Fire, The Story of Rosabelle Shaw, The Baker’s Daughter, Green Money, Rochester’s Wife, A World in Spell followed in due succession—and then came the Second Great War.
Hitherto I had written to please myself, to amuse myself and others, but now I realised that I could do good work. The English Air was my first novel to be written with a purpose. In this novel I tried to give an artistically true picture of how English people thought and felt about the war so that other countries might understand us better, and, judging by the hundreds of letters I received from people all over the world, I succeeded in my object—succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. My wartime books are Mrs. Tim Carries On, Spring Magic, Celia’s House, Listening Valley, The Two Mrs. Abbotts, Crooked Adam and The Four Graces. In these books I have pictured every-day life in Britain during the war and have tried to show how ordinary people stood up to the frightfulness and what they thought and did during those awful years of anxiety. One of my American readers wrote to me and said, “You make us understand what it must be like to have a tiger in the backyard.” I appreciated that letter.
Wartime brought terrible anxieties to me, for my elder son was in Malta during the worst of the Siege of that island and then came home and landed in France on D-Day and went through the whole campaign with the Guards Armoured Division. He was wounded in ten places and was decorated with the Military Cross for outstanding bravery. My daughter was an officer in the Women’s Royal Naval Service and was commended for her valuable work.
In addition to my writing I organised the collection of Sphagnum Moss for the Red Cross and together with others went out on the moors in all weathers, wading deep in bog, to collect the moss for surgical dressings. This particular form of war-work is described in detail in Listening Valley.
After the long weary years of war came victory for the Allies, but my job of writing stories went on. I wrote Mrs. Tim Gets a Job, Kate Hardy, Young Mrs. Savage and Vittoria Cottage. All these books were quite as successful as their predescessors and Young Mrs. Savage was chosen by the American Family Reading Club as their Book of the Month. My new novel Music in the Hills is in the same genre and all those who have read it think it is one of my best. A businessman, who lives in London, wrote to me saying ‘Music in the Hills is as good as a holiday and, although I have read several other books since reading it, the peaceful atmosphere lingers in my mind. I hope your next book will tell us more about James and Rhoda and the other characters for they are so real to me and have become my friends.” The scene of this book is laid in the hills and valleys of the Scottish Borders and the people are the rugged individualistic race who inhabit this beautiful country. For a long time it has been in my mind to write a story with this setting and to try to describe the atmosphere, to paint an artistically true picture of life in this district. Now it is finished and I hope my large and faithful public will enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
Sometimes I have been accused of making my characters “too nice”. I have been told that my stories are “too pleasant”, but the fact is I write of people as I find them and am fond of my fellow human beings. Perhaps I have been fortunate but in all my wanderings I have met very few thoroughly unpleasant people, so I find it difficult to write about them.
We live in Moffat now. Moffat is a small but very interesting old town which lies in a valley between round rolling hills. Some of the buildings are very old indeed but outside the town there are pleasant residential houses with gardens and fine trees of oak and beech and elm. From my window as I write I can see the lovely sweep of moorland where the small, lively, black-faced sheep live and move and have their being. Every day the hills look different: sometimes grey and cold, sometimes green and smiling; in winter they are often white with snow or hidden in soft grey mist, in September they are purple with heather, like a royal robe. Although Moffat is isolated there is plenty of society and many interesting people to talk to and entertain and it is only fifty miles from Edinburgh so, if I feel dull, I can go and stay there at my comfortable club and see a good play or a film and do some shopping.
There are several questions which recur again and again in letters from friends and acquaintances. Perhaps I should try to answer them. The first is, why do you write? I write because I enjoy writing more than anything. It is fascinating to think out a story and to feel it taking shape in my mind. Of course I like making money by my books—who would not?—but the money is a secondary consideration, a by-product as it were. The story is the thing. Writing a book is the most exciting adventure under the sun.
The second question is, how do you write? I write all my books in longhand, lying on a sofa near the window in my drawing room. I begin by thinking it all out and then I take a pencil and jot it all down in a notebook. When that stage is over I begin at the beginning and go on like mad until I get to the end. After that I have a little rest and then polish it up and rewrite bits of it. When I can do no more to it I pack it up, smother the parcel with sealing wax, and despatch it to be typed. I am now free as air and somewhat dazed, so I ring up all my friends (who have been neglected for months) and say, “Come and have a party.”
Another question is, do you draw your characters from real life? The answer is definitely NO. The characters in a novel are the most interesting part of it and the most mysterious. They must come from Somewhere, I suppose, but they certainly do not come from “real life”. They begin by taking shape in a nebulous form and then, as I think about them and live with them, they become more solid and individualistic with definite ideas of their own. Sometimes I get rather annoyed with them; they are so unmanageable, they flatly refuse to do as I want and take their own way in an arbitrary fashion.
All the people in my books are real to me. They are more real than the people I meet every day for I know them better and understand them more deeply. It is difficult to say which is my favourite character, for I am fond of them all, but the most extraordinary character I ever had to deal with was Sophonisba Marks (in my novel The Two Mrs. Abbotts.) I intended her to be a subsidiary character, an unimportant person in the story, but Miss Marks had other ideas. In spite of the fact that she was plain and elderly and somewhat deaf and suffered severely from rheumatism, Miss Marks walked straight into the middle of the stage and stayed there. She just wouldn’t take a back seat. She is so real to me that I simply cannot believe she does not exist. Somewhere or other she must exist—perhaps I shall meet her one day! Perhaps I shall see her in the street, coming towards me clad in her black cloth coat and the round toque with the white flowers in it and carrying her umbrella in her hand. I shall stop her and say loudly (because of course she is deaf) “Miss Marks, I presume!”
It will be seen from the foregoing sketch that my life has not been a very eventful one. I have had no hair-raising adventures nor travelled in little-known parts of the world, but wherever I have been I have made interesting friends and I still retain them. Friends are like windows in a house, and what a terribly dull house it would be that had no windows! They open vistas, they show one new and lovely views of the countryside. Friends give one new ideas, new values, new interests.
Thank God for friends!
Someday I mean to write a book of reminiscences; to delve into the cupboard of memory and sort out all the junk. There is so much to write about, so many little pictures grave and gay, so many ideas to think about and disentangle and arrange. Looking back is a fascinating pastime; looking back and wondering what one’s life would have been if one had done this instead of that, if one had turned to the left at the crossroads instead of to the right, if one had stayed at home instead of going out or had gone out five minutes later. Jane Welsh Carlyle says in one of her letters, “One can never be too much alive to the consideration that one’s every slightest action does not end when it has acted itself but propagates itself on and on, in one shape or another, through all time and away into eternity.”
About The Author
Born in Edinburgh in 1892, Dorothy Emily Stevenson came from a distinguished Scottish family, her father being David Alan Stevenson, the lighthouse engineer, first cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson.
In 1916 she married Major James Reid Peploe (nephew to the artist Samuel Peploe). After the First World War they lived near Glasgow and brought up two sons and a daughter. Dorothy wrote her first novel in the 1920’s, and by the 1930’s was a prolific bestseller, ultimately selling more than seven million books in her career. Among her many bestselling novels was the series featuring the popular “Mrs. Tim”, the wife of a British Army officer. The author often returned to Scotland and Scottish themes in her romantic, witty and well-observed novels.
During the Second World War Dorothy Stevenson moved with her husband to Moffat in Scotland. It was here that most of her subsequent works were written. D.E. Stevenson died in Moffat in 1973.
Fiction by D.E. Stevenson
Published by Dean Street Press
Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941)
Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947)
Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952)
Smouldering Fire (1935)*
Spring Magic (1942)
Vittoria Cottage (1949)
Music in the Hills (1950)
Winter and Rough Weather (1951, aka Shoulder the Sky)
The Fair Miss Fortune (written c. 1938, first published 2011)
Green Money (1939, aka The Green Money)
The English Air (1940)
Kate Hardy (1947)
Young Mrs. Savage (1948)
Five Windows (1953)
Charlotte Fairlie (1954, aka The Enchanted Isle, aka Blow the Wind Southerly)
The Tall Stranger (1957)
Anna and Her Daughters (1958)
The Musgraves (1960)
The Blue Sapphire (1963)
Other Titles
Jean Erskine’s Secret (written c. 1917, first published 2013)
Peter West (1923)
Emily Dennistoun (written c. 1920s, first published 2011)
Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (1932)*
Golden Days (1934)*
Miss Buncle’s Book (1934)
Divorced from Reality (1935, aka Miss Dean’s Dilemma, aka The Young Clementina)
Miss Buncle Married (1936)
The Empty World (1936, aka A World in Spell)
The Story of Rosabelle Shaw (1937)
The Baker’s Daughter (1938, aka Miss Bun the Baker’s Daughter
Rochester’s Wife (1940)
Crooked Adam (1942)
Celia’s House (1943)
The Two Mrs Abbotts (1943)
Listening Valley (1944)
The Four Graces (1946)
Amberwell (1955)
Summerhills (1956)
Still Glides the Stream (1959)
Bel Lamington (1961)
Fletcher’s End (1962)
Katherine Wentworth (1964)
Katherine’s Marriage (1965, aka The Marriage of Katherine)
The House on the Cliff (1966)
Sarah Morris Remembers (1967)
Sarah’s Cottage (1968)
Gerald and Elizabeth (1969)
House of the Deer (1970)
Portrait of Saskia (collection of early writings, published 2011)
Found in the Attic (collection of early writings, published 2013)
* see Explanatory Notes
Explanatory Notes
MRS. TIM
Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, the first appearance of Mrs. Tim in the literary world, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1932. That edition, however, contained only the first half of the book currently available from Bloomsbury under the same title. The second half was originally published, as Golden Days, by Herbert Jenkins in 1934. Together, those two books contain Mrs. Tim’s diaries for the first six months of the same year.
Subsequently, D.E. Stevenson regained the rights to the two books, and her new publisher, Collins, reissued them in the U.K. as a single volume under the title Mrs. Tim (1941), reprinted several times as late as 1992. In the U.S., however, the combined book appeared as Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, and has generally retained that title, though a 1973 reprint used the title Mrs. Tim Christie. Adding to the confusion, large print and audiobook editions of Golden Days have also appeared in recent years.
Fortunately no such title confusions exist with the subsequent Mrs. Tim titles—Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941), Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947), and Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952)—and Dean Street Press is delighted to make these long-out-of-print volumes of the series available again, along with two more of Stevenson’s most loved novels, Smouldering Fire (1935) and Spring Magic (1942).
SMOULDERING FIRE
Smouldering Fire was first published in the U.K. in 1935 and in the U.S. in 1938. Until now, those were the only complete editions of the book. All later reprints, both hardcover and paperback, have been heavily abridged, with entire chapters as well as occasional passages throughout the novel cut from the text. For our new edition, Dean Street Press has followed the text of the first U.K. edition, and we are proud to be producing the first complete, unabridged edition of Smouldering Fire in eighty years.
FURROWED MIDDLEBROW
FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK
FM10. Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM11. Begin Again (1936) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM12. Company in the Evening (1944) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM13. The Late Mrs Prioleau (1946) ... MONICA TINDALL
FM14. Bramton Wick (1952) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM15. Landscape in Sunlight (1953) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM16. The Native Heath (1954) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM17. Seaview House (1955) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM18. A Winter Away (1957) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM19. The Mingham Air (1960) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM20. The Lark (1922) ... E. NESBIT
FM21. Smouldering Fire (1935) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM22. Spring Magic (1942) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM23. Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM24. Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM25. Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM26. Alice (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM27. Henry (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM28. Mrs. Martell (1953) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM29. Cecil (1962) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM30. Nothing to Report (1940) ... CAROLA OMAN
FM31. Somewhere in England (1943) ... CAROLA OMAN
FM32. Spam Tomorrow (1956) ... VERILY ANDERSON
FM33. Peace, Perfect Peace (1947) ... JOSEPHINE KAMM
FM34. Beneath the Visiting Moon (1940) ... ROMILLY CAVAN
FM35. Table Two (1942) ... MARJORIE WILENSKI
FM36. The House Opposite (1943) ... BARBARA NOBLE
FM37. Miss Carter and the Ifrit (1945) ... SUSAN ALICE KERBY
FM38. Wine of Honour (1945) ... BARBARA BEAUCHAMP
FM39. A Game of Snakes and Ladders (1938, 1955) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE
FM40. Not at Home (1948) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE
FM41. All Done by Kindness (1951) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE
FM42. My Caravaggio Style (1959) ... DORIS LANGLEY MOORE
