Gavin Maxwell, 1914-1969

[Guest]

This year is the centenary of Gavin Maxwell, author of Ring of Bright Water. I loved that book, re-read it loads of times. I went walking up the West Highland coast in the interval between my finals and the results in the year following his death, staying for a couple of nights in Glenelg and walking down to Sandaig, the real Camusfeárna. I had had a lift from Skye (on the Kylerhea ferry) with the vet who used to attend Maxwell's animals; the roadmender Big Angus who slew the first otter Mijbil was a fixture in the Glenelg pub.

The sequel, The Rocks Remain, contained a deal of dissimulation; privately gay, he married briefly and disastrously. His memoir Raven, Seek Thy Brother is a selective rag-bag. Successive books have peeled away the layers of Maxwell's complicated life, the first of which was Richard Frere''s Maxwell's Ghost, (1976). He also had a long-term and toxic relationship with the poet Kathleen Raine, who is scarcely mentioned in his books but who played a significant part in his life - not least allowing Mijbil to escape to his death. She laid a dramatic curse on Maxwell, and held herself responsible for his subsequent misfortunes. I've only just got hold of her memoir The Lion's Mouth (1977) about this phase of her life. I haven't read the authorised 1993 biography by Douglas Botting, which "celebrated his genius as a writer, but did little to dispel the growing picture of him as an egotistical snob who betrayed his friends, neglected his pets and left a trail of destruction in his wake." (Marcus Field, in the Independent).


Wildlife writer Richard Mabey, quoted in this centenary piece in the Independent, sums up my own mixed feelings about Maxwell -

I read the books [Ring of Bright Water and its two sequels] when I was quite young and I was captivated; he's a good descriptive writer, and the romantic idea of this immersion in a remote hideaway with his menagerie was compelling to me...

But since then I've got a very different view of him. The fact that he was, by literally all accounts, an extremely unpleasant man, I think is neither here nor there. It's more what I now feel about his writing about animals, and his treatment of animals. I feel that his legacy has really been quite toxic. He seems to me to be part of that period which was all about developing a relationship with wild animals that was appropriative; that the way to understand them was to domesticate them, imprison them, tame them and keep them as pets.

Two other books of Maxwell's stand the test of time: A Reed Shaken by the Wind, charting his journey into the land of the Iraqui Marsh Arabs with Wilfred Thesiger [Thesiger's book is called, more prosaically, The Marsh Arabs], and Lords of the Atlas, about the Berber Glaoua dynasty in the High Atlas, including Thami el Glaoui, friend of Winston Churchill.

A fascinating life, one that has undergone re-appraisal in the succeeding generation. He only agreed to the truly dreadful film of Ring of Bright Water with Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers because he was hard up (he was spectacularly profligate when in the money) - a sort of sentimental Born Free with otters, best forgotten.

[richardfinegold]

This year is the centenary of Gavin Maxwell, author of Ring of Bright Water. I loved that book, re-read it loads of times. I went walking up the West Highland coast in the interval between my finals and the results in the year following his death, staying for a couple of nights in Glenelg and walking down to Sandaig, the real Camusfeárna. I had had a lift from Skye (on the Kylerhea ferry) with the vet who used to attend Maxwell's animals; the roadmender Big Angus who slew the first otter Mijbil was a fixture in the Glenelg pub.

The sequel, The Rocks Remain, contained a deal of dissimulation; privately gay, he married briefly and disastrously. His memoir Raven, Seek Thy Brother is a selective rag-bag. Successive books have peeled away the layers of Maxwell's complicated life, the first of which was Richard Frere''s Maxwell's Ghost, (1976). He also had a long-term and toxic relationship with the poet Kathleen Raine, who is scarcely mentioned in his books but who played a significant part in his life - not least allowing Mijbil to escape to his death. She laid a dramatic curse on Maxwell, and held herself responsible for his subsequent misfortunes. I've only just got hold of her memoir The Lion's Mouth (1977) about this phase of her life. I haven't read the authorised 1993 biography by Douglas Botting, which "celebrated his genius as a writer, but did little to dispel the growing picture of him as an egotistical snob who betrayed his friends, neglected his pets and left a trail of destruction in his wake." (Marcus Field, in the Independent).


Wildlife writer Richard Mabey, quoted in this centenary piece in the Independent, sums up my own mixed feelings about Maxwell -



Two other books of Maxwell's stand the test of time: A Reed Shaken by the Wind, charting his journey into the land of the Iraqui Marsh Arabs with Wilfred Thesiger [Thesiger's book is called, more prosaically, The Marsh Arabs], and Lords of the Atlas, about the Berber Glaoua dynasty in the High Atlas, including Thami el Glaoui, friend of Winston Churchill.

A fascinating life, one that has undergone re-appraisal in the succeeding generation. He only agreed to the truly dreadful film of Ring of Bright Water with Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers because he was hard up (he was spectacularly profligate when in the money) - a sort of sentimental Born Free with otters, best forgotten.

Richard--what is a "Dramatic Curse"?

[Richard Tarleton]

Richard--what is a "Dramatic Curse"?

I should have said "melodramatic curse". He threw Raine out of the house one night after an argument (bear in mind the cottage was on a remote Scottish beach, down a mile of track and some way from the nearest village), and as she left (not sure if she had her own car, haven't got to that bit) she laid a hand on the rowan tree (rowan trees of course have supernatural powers) and cursed him. As the Independent article tells it,

She revealed how she had been in love with him and how, when he cruelly ejected her from Sandaig one night, she had laid a curse on him. "Let Gavin suffer here, as I have suffered," went her invocation. By a cruel twist of fate, it then became Raine who caused Maxwell's greatest suffering when she allowed Mijbil to run wild on the night he was killed. "I myself became the agent of the vengeance I had worked," she wrote. Maxwell found out about Raine's curse much later, and believed it to be the explanation for everything that went wrong in his life, including the devastating fire.

[mercia]

no doubt you heard the recent radio repeats of the late Terry Nutkins's reminiscences of living with Maxwell, as a boy

[Richard Tarleton]

No I missed that. The Independent article quotes Jimmy Watt, who joined Maxwell as otter keeper in 1958 as a 15-year old school leaver (he features in Ring of Bright Water) who is now 70 and still lives in Glenelg.

[kernelbogey]

Thank you for this, Richard. I read Ring of Bright Water in my early twenties: It led me to a series of holidays on the north-west coast of Scotland, a magical conjunction of mountains and water. I remember that book as very readable, if of its time: I now take the point about domesticating wild animals, but at the time it seemed a model of 're-wilding' oneself as a human.

I read some of his later books, and the Frere book: they all left an impression of someone who was at least a great eccentric.

[Richard Tarleton]

Have just finished the third volume of memoir by Kathleen Raine, The Lion's Mouth - where she tells the story of her relationship with Maxwell. Poet, scholar and mystic, she tells their story in often harrowing detail. She was introduced to Maxwell when his fortunes were at a low ebb after the failure of his basking shark fishery on Soay, and encouraged him to turn the experience to advantage by writing his first book, Harpoon at a Venture (1952). Away from their shared interests in the West Highlands she and Maxwell moved in different circles - he, aristocratic by birth, even escorted Princess Margaret on occasion, she associated with her fellow poets and artists, and researched and taught at Cambridge. She came to terms, or thought she did, with his homosexuality, which meant they could never be lovers, which meant his brief marriage (after the breach between them) was deeply wounding.

There is the cruellest of twists right at the end, when towards the end of his life during a brief reconciliation in Greece (he was staying with his brother, she with a friend), she showed him the manuscript for this book. He was horrified at the portrayal of their relationship, making her realise how deeply she had misunderstood their relationship. She had thought she was the most important figure in his life - she learnt she wasn't.

She was equally wounded by the way she was treated in Raven Seek Thy Brother. She was hurt at the lack of any acknowledgement in person or in his writing of her contribution to the Camusfeàrna idyll, even when he played her the theme song from the film whose title, like that of the book, came from her poem. She was warned by friends from early on - "Gavin does not love you". From having been, as she thought, the established figure helping him in his hour of need, it was she who became the needy one as he grew more successful and distant. Her part in the death of the first otter was the point of no return.

She is unflinching in her portrayal of herself and her failings, devastating in the poetic insight with which she unpicks everything that happened between them. Times and dates are rarely mentioned - this is a memoir of the soul, perhaps the most devastating work of autobiography I have ever read.

[aeolium]

Richard, do you think that at least with some naturalists the intensity of their relationship with animals or the natural world almost results in a degree of intolerance or callousness towards humanity (or even downright misanthropy in some cases)? I was thinking for instance of Konrad Lorenz whose zoological studies led him to conclude that Nazi racial eugenic ideas were justified, and he even reportedly participated as an examining psychologist in racial profiling in occupied Poland during the war. Henry Williamson, of Tarka the Otter fame, was another who had pretty unpleasant views such as believing the bombing of London had had a cathartic effect (and incidentally joined Mosley's British Union of Fascists before the war). And it's not just naturalists but some writers about nature, such as D H Lawrence who seems to me to write much more sympathetically about animals than he does about humans, as does T H White - like Maxwell, a self-repressed homosexual. Even "national treasure" David Attenborough would rather have more animals and fewer humans

Not that I'm suggesting any necessary linkage between a love of the natural world and a dislike for humanity, though I do sometimes get the impression that people in Britain would get much more worked up about cruelty to animals, especially dogs, than cruelty to children....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

£1, 000, 000: Amount raised in 24 hours for Manchester Dogs Home after fire killed 60 dogs and left 150 homeless.
£20, 000: Amount raised for victims of floods in South Asia which have killed 500 people and left at least 2m homeless

(Private Eye)

Although it might be the case in at least some of the people mentioned by aeolie that they turned to Nature studies because of misanthropy, rather than the intensity of their relationship with animals resulting in such intollerance and callousness.

[Richard Tarleton]

An interesting line of enquiry aeolium - one can think of a few more cranky or misanthropic zoologists - Dian Fossey, the Adamsons, and another leading female primatologist who is still with us....I daresay they are self-selected in the first place, as you'd clearly want to enjoy living in remote places with just animals for company, and that a feedback loop operates once you're there, reinforcing those tendencies. Having myself lived and worked on nature reserves and for a time on a small island (all in the UK) I have noticed one's tendencies towards territorial behaviour tend to be, er, enhanced.

But David Attenborough a different case altogether - he's an environmentalist who has had unique opportunities to observe ecosystems across the planet and man's effect on them. He is informed by a concern for the sustainability of all life on the planet, not misanthropy. When he talks about population size, he's stating nothing less than the obvious. He's also a genial and clubbable man. Maxwell, White, Williamson were all in their very different ways polymaths, authors and eccentrics rather than environmentalists first and foremost.

Ferney I think the case of the dogs' home was something entirely different - I don't suppose there were too many environmentalists among the people who jumped into their cars and clogged the M6 in their eagerness to adopt the surviving dogs, or who donated money. I don't think that phenomenon, worthy of study as it may be, has anything whatsoever to do with a desire to get close to nature or conduct zoological studies.

A timely reminder today from the Zoological Society of London that wildlife populations around the world have more than halved since 1970 - so we've got plenty to be misanthropic about, IMV

[vinteuil]

... the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, RSPCA ; The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, NSPCC.

[Richard Tarleton]

...well, yes - but as with ferney's example I'd suggest this belongs more in a thread about national characteristics rather than authors and naturalists? It may also tell us something about the Hanoverians whose patronage the former enjoys.....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's more a reference to the final statement of aeolie's #8: I do sometimes get the impression that people in Britain would get much more worked up about cruelty to animals, especially dogs, than cruelty to children....

[aeolium]

But David Attenborough a different case altogether - he's an environmentalist who has had unique opportunities to observe ecosystems across the planet and man's effect on them. He is informed by a concern for the sustainability of all life on the planet, not misanthropy. When he talks about population size, he's stating nothing less than the obvious.

But is it obvious? Growth rate in population has been declining in every continent of the world in recent decades. The birth rate in Ethiopia has gone down by a third since the 1950s. The only reason that the population is not declining is that the death rate (including infant mortality) has decreased even faster, notwithstanding famine and war and AIDS. And this is true in most places, including developing countries. The problem is not too many births but not enough deaths, though it's hard to see how it is desirable to rectify that

And when Attenborough goes on about population size being the problem in Ethiopia, as he does in these (in my view) rather crass comments, is he correct? Isn't famine more to do with climate change and bad government, with periodic civil wars? Climate change which may be influencing the more frequent long droughts in the Horn of Africa is generally thought to be the result of excessive carbon emissions from principally the developed world. Is Attenborough, with his own substantial carbon footprint, really in a position to tell developing countries what they should be doing to cut their own population?

[Sorry if this is getting rather OT from discussion of Gavin Maxwell - if necessary perhaps some helpful host could hive off this and other relevant comments to a different thread?]

[Richard Tarleton]

It's more a reference to the final statement of aeolie's #8: I do sometimes get the impression that people in Britain would get much more worked up about cruelty to animals, especially dogs, than cruelty to children....

Ah yes....