J.M. Barrie - early novel

Suggest and discuss books to read (all languages welcome!)
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Peter Why
Posts: 5801
Joined: November 24th, 2005, 3:54 am
Location: Chigwell (North-East London, U.K.)

Post by Peter Why »

I'd like to suggest "A Window in Thrums" by J.M. Barrie.

J.M. Barrie (1960-1937)

Gutenberg link: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/20914

and here's the link to the preceding work about the same village (Aulde Licht Idyls): https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/8590

This is the summary for Thrums on the Bartleby site:
... a continuation of the ‘Auld Licht’ series. Its scenes are confined mainly to the interior of the little Scotch cot in “Thrums” where lived Hendry and Jess McQumpha, and their daughter Leeby. In Mr. Barrie’s later work, ‘Margaret Ogilvy,’ an affectionate and artistic picture of his mother, we discern that in Jess and Leeby his mother and sister sat for the portraits. Jess is a quaint figure. A chronic invalid, yet throbbing with interest in everybody and everything, she sits at the window of her cottage, and keeps up with Leeby a running fire of terse and often cutting comment upon village happenings, and thus holds herself in touch with the life and gossip which she knows only through the window. Barrie’s sympathetic ability to see how inseparable are humor and pathos makes his characters living and human. Tammas Haggart, the humorist, at much pains to understand and dispense the philosophy of his own humor; the little christening robe which does the honors for the whole village, and which is so tenderly revered by Jess because it was made for her own babe, “twenty years dead,” but still living for her; the family pride in Jamie, the son who has gone to London, in whom we may see “Gavin Ogilvy” (Barrie’s own pseudonym); and finally, Jamie’s home-coming to find Hendry, Jess, and Leeby gone to the long home, are absolutely real. And if the reader laughs at the whimsicalities of the village folk, it is because he loves them.
... and this is Barrie's introduction to the work:
When the English publishers read "A Window in Thrums" in manuscript they thought it unbearably sad and begged me to alter the end. They warned me that the public do not like sad books. Well, the older I grow and the sadder the things I see, the more do I wish my books to be bright and hopeful, but an author may not always interfere with his story, and if I had altered the end of "A Window in Thrums" I think I should never have had any more respect for myself. It is a sadder book to me than it can ever be to anyone else. I see Jess at her window looking for the son who never came back as no other can see her, and I knew that unless I brought him back in time the book would be a pain to me all my days, but the thing had to be done.

I think there are soft-hearted readers here and there who will be glad to know that there never was any Jess. There is a little house still standing at the top of the brae which can be identified as her house, I chose it for her though I was never in it myself, but it is only the places in my books about Thrums that may be identified. The men and women, with indeed some very subsidiary exceptions, who now and again cross the square, are entirely imaginary, and Jess is of them. But anything in her that was rare or beautiful she had from my mother; the imaginary woman came to me as I looked into the eyes of the real one.
And as it is the love of mother and son that has written everything of mine that is of any worth, it was natural that the awful horror of the untrue son should dog my thoughts and call upon me to paint the picture. That, I believe now, though I had no idea of it at the time, is how "A Window in Thrums" came to be written, less by me than by an impulse from behind. And so it wrote itself, very quickly. I have read that I rewrote it eight times, but it was written once only, nearly every chapter, I think, at a sitting.


The language has a beautiful flow to it, but the speech really needs a reader or readers who are comfortable with the sound of the highland Scottish dialect.

Peter
"I think, therefore I am, I think." Solomon Cohen, in Terry Pratchett's Dodger
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