Deep Local Involvement

Rather than wilfully or ignorantly making things up, it is perhaps best to enquire about Elsfield in that very place. In writing of these years the biographers have, no doubt inevitably, concentrated mainly on his endeavours, professional and literary,463 with little ‘bottom-up’ view. Janet Adam Smith recognised that Buchan felt at once that ‘Elsfield is curiously like Broughton Green’, that Amos Webb ‘was his chauffeur and became his close friend,’ and that he ‘talked

458 _{MHD, 231.}

459 _{‘What the Union of the Churches means to Scotland.’} 460 _{LJB, 230.}

461 _{MG, 162-63.} 462 _{SJB, 364-65.}

endlessly about the countryside’ with him and with Tom Basson, his old gardener. It occasions no surprise that these employees were empathetic, but his youthful Border roamings had introduced him to a wide variety of rural characters whose language he learned.465 He was therefore adept at transferring this ability to rural Oxfordshire. Moreover, such ease was not just with retainers, for how warmly remembered the Buchans were in the folklore of the village has not been sufficiently noted.

John and Susan Buchan assumed the responsibilities of the incumbent of the Manor with the energy and dedication they had demonstrated in other walks of life. They continued the system which the Parsons family [their predecessors] had begun, taking on board the welfare of their employees and taking an important part in village life. In return, villagers took the whole family to their hearts, basking in the reflected glory of being connected to such an illustrious family. They were ‘comers-in’ but had every intention of being accepted by the residents.466

Mildred Clinkard had grown up as a child on Forest Farm in the 1920s and early 1930s. Half a century later as Mrs Masheder, she wrote to Buchan’s heir arranging an interview because she wanted ‘to create a picture of some of the village folk seen through my child-like eyes and indeed the whole way of life in the twenties, especially the caring side.’467 Thus, she was something of a latter day Flora Thompson who, a generation before, had written of her own Oxfordshire childhood many years after the event in the Larkrise to Candleford trilogy. Mildred wrote to, and was remembered by Johnnie Tweedsmuir half a century later, received a ready response, and her parents were recalled with ‘great admiration.’468 Thus the Buchans were by no means aloof from the villagers during the Elsfield years, even Johnnie, who spent much of the time away at the Dragon School, Eton, Brasenose, and in serving overseas.

Smith pointed out other salient facts about the Buchans after January 1920 when they finally moved in.

It was the success of his thrillers469 that enabled Buchan to buy Elsfield, but he had no wish to extend his property or his house, and no ambition to play the squire. He liked joining in certain village activities, like the rook shooting; he read the lessons in church; he would talk to the village club on politics if they invited him, as he would

464 _{SJB, 222-23.} 465 _{Ibid., 38-39.}

466 _{Curtis, ‘Elsfield Village.’}

467 _{NLS Ac.11628/4 Letters and Papers, Elsfield Manor 1932-1994: Letter, 26/11/1987.} 468 _{Ibid., reply of even date.}

talk to an undergraduate club; but he had no wish to run the village just because he lived in the Manor, and certainly expected no particular deference.470

These are interesting and importance caveats but they do not make Buchan appear as a very intimate figure among the local inhabitants, perhaps with only an occasional sally into that world at his doorstep. Once again, the village worthies recalled more about the Buchan’s involvement in the village:

there were housemaids from the village, Mabel and Dorothy Chaulk being two of them, sisters recruited during the 1930s. Mabel remembers that they had to be “quiet as mice” as they did their work so as not to interrupt John Buchan’s writing. They were allowed Sunday off every other week but were obliged to go to church. If they failed to do so, they were severely reprimanded. John Buchan sat at the front of the church surrounded by his household and always did the readings.471

So here is John Buchan regularly in Elsfield Church Sunday by Sunday, and actively participating.

‘He had not the slightest wish to make a splash, to cut a dash in county society’,472 though this did not debar him in time from being a Justice of the Peace (Bullingdon bench), where his role was advisory rather than judicial, and also a Deputy Lieutenant for Oxfordshire, just as in Peebles. Janet Adam Smith was one of the undergraduates who visited the Buchans, and she admits that her Aberdeenshire Scottishness left her ill-at-ease in English country houses, though not at Elsfield. While there, she may have perhaps even heard Buchan reading the lessons in the Church, and this is probably a personal reminiscence, but without realising that this had a greater implication. Moreover, she overstated Buchan’s reluctance to take on any public role in the locality when she added controversially that ‘he never served on the parish council.’473 Elsfield was too small for a secular one; John and Susan were elected to the Parochial Church Council (1920). Professor Clark wrote about Elsfield (1927) having encouraged the schoolboy, Johnnie to contribute on the fauna. In a second account (1975), he says of Buchan that though

there are not a few books in which his life and hospitality have been described, let it be recorded that this many-sided man, always over-taxed with work, was the first

470 _{SJB, 223.}

471 _{Curtis, ‘Elsfield Village, 1-2.} 472 _{SJB, 223.}

473 _{Oxford Times, 23/02/1940 for the service at Elsfield Church, and comments by Mr Sing, Chairman, Bullingdon} magistrates; SJB, 223.

President of the Marston and District Branch of the British Legion. To this unadvertised work for his neighbours he gave of his best.474