Weidenfeld & Nicolson Essentials, 2021, 212p, plus vi p Introduction by Maggie O’Farrell. First published 1991.

From the outset we know where this tale of growing up as a misfit is going; Barker shows us in her prelude, titled Janet. This is not foreshadowing as such – it goes beyond prolepsis even – but it does set up an intriguing question. Why will what Barker tells us happened, happen? Why was Janet’s misadventure so easily glossed over? What was it about her that made her dismissable? But this is arguably fairer on the reader than Kate Atkinson’s revelation in A God in Ruins which turned upside down what we thought we had learned in all its pages up to that point.

Some reviewers have observed similarities to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle (written much earlier than O Caledonia) but the characters of Cassandra Mortain and Janet are very different and Barker is a much subtler writer but I did wonder while I was reading O Caledonia if Kate Atkinson was familiar with Barker’s novel. I found the weird incidents of Janet’s childhood oddly similar to the manifold earlier days of Ursula Todd in Life After Life; there were perhaps even greater similarities to Atkinson’s first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum (from 1995.) Still, it allows Barker the acid observation “The subject was closed in favour of the living, who offer continuous material for persecution.”

Janet is a child in wartime living in the manse inhabited by her grandfather and subject to many an admonitory sermon. Scotland’s religious heritage, though never pushed, is an intermittent drum beat through the book as in, “At this time there were many Polish officers in the village. The Marine hotel had been requisitioned for them. They were popular with the lonely girls and the more flighty wives, so that after the war some stayed on and married, while others left behind girls who were even lonelier now, alone with tiny children in the unrelenting chill of a Calvinist world.” (This sort of memory of Polish soldiers was familiar to me from the tales told by an acquaintance who had lived in Kelso during the Second World War.) Barker also has Janet remark, “There seemed no place for gallantry and romance among Calvinists,” and, in a particularly self-flagellating moment “the nature of Caledonia was a pitiless nature and her own was no better.” That it had unintended effects is illlustrated by a passage wherein nannies asked children if they had done what they should today (ie moved their bowels) and unwittingly unleashed dissembling – “a horde of artful dodgers on the world.”

It is when the family inherits Auchnashaugh, a crumbling pile in the Highlands, that Janet’s alienation blossoms. She resents her younger siblings, fails to comprehend adult concerns or live up to their expectations and when older, retreats into books, having an appetite for things beyond her age, Latin and Greek tags and the like. Her experience is summed up by Proust’s phrase ‘l’étouffoir familial’ the family suffocation chamber. Of how many sensitive souls has that been true.

She similarly fails to fit in at St Uncumba’s, the boarding school she is sent to far south in England where her distaste for, and inability at, games and liking for literature are mocked. Until she learns to dissemble.

The signal feature of her otherness is her adoption of a not yet fledged jackdaw whom she names Claws and who is her constant companion at Auchnashaugh.

O Caledonia is far too little known for a book so accomplished. How it did not get onto the list of 100 best Scottish books is beyond me. Perhaps its reissue far too late (2021) could explain it.

Pedant’s corner:- The young Janet sees the beam of a lighthouse sweep her bedroom (but this was in wartime; the lighthouses were switched off as part of the blackout precautions,) “she sucked a vengeful Pandrop” (a pan drop,) “the baby prone within” (the baby supine is more likely,) “golden rod” (goldenrod,) “je men fous” (je m’en fous,) “Miss Wales’ grizzled hair” (Wales’s,) “the gaping maw of the furnace” (stomachs do not gape,) standing in a great Victorian cemetery in Glasgow for her grandfather’s funeral (at that time in Scotland women did not go to interments, still less children,) clipe (usually spelled clype,) “Sir Patrick Spens’ lords (Spens’s,) Sawney Bean is said to have carried out his cannibalistic activities on the Aberdeenshire coast (most accounts put this legendary tale in Ayrshire,) “True Thomas’ faery queen” (Thomas’s,) “Euripides’ Medea” (Euripides’s,) “Barr’s Iron Brew” (the proprietary name is Irn Bru,) “came Francis’ voice” (Francis’s,) “the war memorial” (War Memorial – used later,) “‘a wee Doc and Doris afore ye gang awa’!’” (usually spelled Deoch-an-Doris,) Kiichen (a manuscript misreading of Küchen?) “Watt and Grants” (Watt and Grant’s,) swop (swap,) “Francis’ voice” (Francis’s,) “she was couched out there” (crouched makes more sense,) “Propertius’ poem” (Propertius’s,) “Tiresias’ description” (Tiresias’s) “Claws’ residence” (Claws’s,) “jeune jille” (jeune fille,) “passage from the Georgies” (the Georgics that would be,) “Orpheus’ final loss” (Orpheus’s.)

Corsair, 2012, 381 p. First published in 1963.

In Book One we meet Jane Minton on her way to take up a post as secretary at Dome House, owned by Rupert Carrington to whom Jane had taken a slight fancy at her interview. Her encounter with Carrington’s children Drew, an aspiring writer, Richard, a composer, Clare, whose only ambition is to be a king’s mistress, and the fourteen-year old Merry who wishes to be an actress (this was first published in 1963; it was how female thespians were referred to in those days) plus their two live-in servants is entirely convivial and Jane settles in.

Her idyll is soon shattered, though, by the arrival at dead of night of Carrington, who informs her he is wanted by the police on suspicion of fraud and must flee the country, enjoining her to tell his family of this new circumstance. The five hundred pounds he has given her to tide the family over will not last long and all will have to fetch for themselves.

Here is where the novel’s structure begins to break down as the next four Books follow each of Carrington’s children in turn, first Merry, then Drew, then Clare and finally Richard, as all (except the last) set off into the wider world ,meet people only too willing to think the best of them, and manage to fall on their feet; Merry (in an actress’s alias disguising her true age) with an aristocratic family, Drew as an old lady’s companion, and Clare with an eccentric old gentleman with a secret. These “Books” are interluded by single chapters back “under the Dome.” They are in effect separate novellas having little to do with each other cobbled together under one umbrella.

As in Smith’s I Capture the Castle we have an upper-middle class family down on its luck being saved by happenstantial meetings. There, the narrative voice, being that of a young woman with not much experience of the world, was fresh and lively. Here, extended over five third person viewpoints, it became more wearing. There was also a relentless focus on matters of domestic detail, too much telling rather than showing, and a deal of introspection from the viewpoint characters.

It all felt very cosy. Too cosy.

Pedant’s corner:- a missing end quotation mark (x 3.) “Drew and Merry were in the hail” (in the hall,) ‘‘’One should think of it’ (has an errant apostrophe,) “‘you”re going to’” (you’re,) Glare (x 2, Clare,) grills (grilles,) “‘I wish I’d time for a test before dinner’” (a rest before dinner,) wisteria (wisteria,) “of the Whitecliff’ songs” (what that apostrophe is doing there goodness only knows,) Mr Sevem (Severn,) “three old ladles” (old ladies,) forgotren (forgotten,) doubifully (doubtfully,) a missing full stop, “‘but saintly no. l assure you.’” (‘but saintly no. I assure you’,) Aunt Winlfred (Winifred,) “all dosed” (all closed,) sudduely (suddenly.) “‘Is it a nervous trick’” (nervous tic?) “ their spines and comers bound” (their spines and corners,) “who had waked Mr Charles” (woken,) inlayed (inlaid,) “the ftont door” (front.) Mt Charles (Mr Charles,) cracking (crackling,) linancial (financial,) ex-girl friend (this makes her seem an ex-girl; ex-girlfriend,) “‘and I I’ll kiss you’” (doesn’t need that ‘I’,) “meant it as regard Lord Crestover” (as regards,) “the fall truth” (full truth,) presenfly (presently,) “he sat in the ball all morning” (in the hall,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, Rasouniovsky (elsewhere always Rasoumovsky.)

Penguin Popular Classics, 1997, 265 p, including Original Preface (7 p,) Preface to the Collected Edition (4 p,) The Daughter of Lebanon (6 p,) Appendix (9 p.) First published 1821-22. One of the 100 best Scottish Books.

I doubt I would have read this had it not been in that list of 100 best Scottish books but what place it has in such a list I have no idea. While describing the author’s peregrinations through England – taking in Manchester, London and the Lake District – and Wales there is nothing at all to indicate any sense of Scottishness within it. The only mention of the place is in a footnote which states that from Hammerfest in Norway in the north to Naples and Gibraltar in the south “Glasgow … is the one dearest place for lodgings known to man.” What in Edinburgh “could be had for half a guinea a week, in Glasgow cost one guinea.” De Quincey did spend the latter part of his life living in Edinburgh but I’m not sure that allows this work, even if it is a seminal piece of autobiography, to be claimed as Scottish.

The footnotes are copious and include the information that filibustier is the original and, De Quincey asserts correct, spelling of filibuster and that the word objective in the sense of dispassionate was almost unknown in 1821. (This last must be a footnote to the collected edition of 1856.)

The prose is of its time and to modern eyes appears long-winded. As with Walter Scott it takes getting used to but once attuned is straightforward enough.

The main interest lies I suppose in the author’s use of opium which he took originally in order to relieve a toothache and the effects of which he asserts were not addictive – to him at any rate. He takes issue with Coleridge over the suggested drawbacks of opium use and contrasts the drug with alcohol. “Whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in the proper manner) introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession, opium sustains and reinforces it ….. most men are disguised by sobriety, and exceedingly disguised; and it is when they are drinking that men display themselves in their true complexion of character.” However discussion of opium does not begin until more than two-thirds through, the early parts of the book giving a blow by blow account of his schooling – and dropping out – and his penniless sojourns in the streets of London.

Other concerns intrude at times, “If in this world there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incommunicable,” which is of a piece with sentiments expressed both in Time Was and I Capture the Castle which I read immediately prior to this.

However, De Quincey’s implicit reproof of others in his statement that, “at no time of my life have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a human shape,” sits uneasily with his aspersions elsewhere on those who did not adhere to Christian beliefs or did not live in these islands – and even some of those: “Wales, as is pretty well known, breeds a population somewhat litigious. I do not think worse of them for that.” To which I immediately posed myself the question, what does he think the worse of them for, then?

A historical curiosity. But one more struck off that list.

Pedant’s corner:- Due to the book’s antiquity 19^th century spellings are fairly prevalent; eg Shakspere for Shakespeare. Most page numbers are in large print at the top left (even pages) or right (odd pages) margin but pages 13 and 249 are in small print centred at the bottom,) “the whole race of man proclaim” (the race proclaims,) “the household at the Priory were released” (the household was released,) “the brother Talbots” (the brothers Talbot,) “by-the-bye” (by-the-by,) an opened but unclosed parenthesis on page198, parantheses (parentheses.)