This page contains reviews and other things written about The Flight of the Heron following its original publication. Where publicly accessible archived copies of the reviews are available I’ve linked to them. Of those that are not available for public access, some I obtained from the British Newspaper Archive; and some others were kindly provided by scintilla10.
The Flight of the Heron was first published by William Heinemann, Ltd., London in October 1925. The first American edition was published in 1926 by Dodd, Mead & Co.; but a new edition published by Coward-McCann in 1930 seems to have got more attention in the US.
Accessed via the British Newspaper Archive.
A TALE OF THE FORTY-FIVE.
D. K. Broster has the secret of getting a fresh story out of an historical episode that previous novelists have worn pretty well threadbare. She uses historical events as a mere background—sometimes merely sketched in, sometimes no more than hinted. “The Flight of the Heron” (Heinemann, 7s. 6d.) is a story of the ’45. But one gets no more than glimpses of the standard-raising, of the junketings in Holyrood, of the march into England, of Prestonpans, and Falkirk, and Culloden. What one does get is an admirable story of two soldiers—one a Jacobite laird, the other an Englishman and a professional—whom Fate brings again and again, into an opposition which only strengthens their personal liking.
Ewan [sic] Cameron and Captain Keith Windham are both admirably drawn. In each a high sense of duty is at issue with a fine chivalry. With each the conflict brings danger. Since Miss Broster is writing a story, she is bound to weight her scales. It is Windham, in the end, who is sacrificed to secure Cameron’s safety. Yet no reader would have grumbled much if the author’s decision had been the other way. For the rest, Miss Broster shows, not less clearly than in “Mr Rowl,” that she is a born story-teller. In the glens and mountains of the Highlands, or in Edinburgh city, her story never drags. One notes, too, without surprise, that as a mere picture of the ’45 the book would rank high. It has a truer ring about it than many novels that meticulously describe the “history-book” events. It is as good a story as D. K. Broster has ever given us—and that is saying much.
I think the opinion here about the possibility of Ewen’s being killed off instead of Keith is slightly odd! But I like the praise for the historical and descriptive detail and for the characters.
Accessed via the British Newspaper Archive.
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON By D. K. Broster. (Heinemann; 7s. 6d.)
The last haunt of the true romance will be the West Highlands, sealed to her for ever by the Forty-Five. Take a sensitive and ask him for the immortal story, and see how the telling transfigures him. Take, as in this case, a novelist with more than common gifts of imagination and insight, and you get “The Flight of the Heron”. The names of the clans chime like bells—Stewart and Cameron, Maclean and MacDonald. The mist on the mountain-tops drifts and sags. Wild weather sweeps over the lochs and the glens, lament for the stricken field of Culloden and the hunted Prince. The book begins with a young chief roving through his native heather; it ends with the creak of oars in the rowlocks as he is pulled across a moonlit sea to the French ship that bears him to his exile. Between the two scenes lies Ewen Cameron’s epic of fighting and friendship and glory. D. K. Broster has done nothing better than this. No wonder, with such a subject.
This review focusses purely on the use of history—an interesting angle, but they clearly like it!
Vol. LVIII No. 1506. p. 753. Available here.
The Flight of the Heron, by D. K. Broster. (Heinemann, 7s. 6d.)
An historical novel—and, moreover, a novel of the ’45—which can keep a hardened reviewer out of bed and impatient of every interruption, must be something very much out of the ordinary. This is what Miss Broster’s latest novel certainly is. She has come very near to writing a remarkable historical novel on one or two occasions, and now she has done it. Her plot turns very much on the second sight of one of Ewan [sic] Cameron’s retainers and his prediction of his chief’s [sic] five meetings with a man who first crosses his path through the flight of a heron. This man turns out to be a Captain Keith Windham, for all his Scottish first name an Englishman fighting on the other side, and it is the love which grows between these two young men, the sacrifices and suffering to which it brings them, which give the book its fine quality. Bonnie Prince Charlie, tartans and dirks, satins and powdered hair, all the proper material of the Jacobite novel is here. But the Highland hills and lochs lower and shine from its pages, the Highland winds blow through it, and the romance of heroic fighting and loving—the love of David and Jonathan—lifts it far above the ordinary.
A deservedly glowing review, and I thoroughly approve of the reviewer’s recognition of the landscape description and the ‘David and Jonathan’ love between Ewen and Keith as the most important elements of the book.
Accessed via the British Newspaper Archive.
A JACOBITE ROMANCE
Miss D. K. Broster has gone to the nine months’ Jacobite rising of 1745 for the materials of her new novel. It is a ground which it might have been thought has been a little over-cultivated since Scott published “Waverley,” but in “The Flight of the Heron” it again yields an abundant harvest of romance. Great historical events and characters may be said to be in the background rather than the foreground of the story. In one of the episodes into which the book is divided, “Flood Tide”, “Prince Charlie” comes to the front of the stage—a very skilful presentation of him, too—and the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Albemarle, and other historical high personages flit across the scene. But the real interest of the tale depends on the private adventures of Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, a member of a famous Jacobite family, and Keith Windram [sic], a British officer in the force engaged in putting down the rebellion. A strange destiny, of which the “flight of the heron” is a sign and symbol—a destiny anticipated by the weird “second sight” of one of Ewen’s Highland retainers—links his lot with that of Windram. Again and again the two men, mysteriously mutually attracted, meet, and always under circumstances of deadly and imminent peril to one or the other, till the tragic denouement, fatal to Windram and horrible to Ewen, arrives.
Miss Broster has handled her materials with remarkable skill. “The Flight of the Heron” is primarily a novel of incident, and there are many genuine thrills in her narrative of the strange adventures and hairbreadth escapes in which first one and then the other of her weirdly-linked heroes is involved. Her tale marches smoothly, with just enough descriptive writing to give it the form and pressure of the time, but there is not an ounce of padding in it. But it is far from relying wholly on incident for its appeal. Great pains have been taken with the drawing of the various characters, and the contrasted pictures of Windram, essentially the Englishman, loyal, unselfish, sometimes a little slow-minded, and Ewen, essentially the Celt, proud, generous, passionate, devoted to lost causes, are admirably presented.
Compared with these protagonists other personages are of rather minor interest. Ewen’s wife, Alison, is somewhat imperfectly realised, and in her flight to France is early withdrawn from the action of the story. In “Aunt Margaret,” however, we have a charming sketch, and there are many sharply-etched portraits amidst the retainers, officers, soldiers, and so forth, who come and go amidst the stage crowd always found in a story of this type. “The Flight of the Heron,” in both incident and character, is a gratifying evidence that the historic romance has still the breath of life in it in this country.
The Flight of the Heron. By. D. K. Broster. William Heinemann. 7s. 6d. net.
Praise for the historical detail and for the side characters, especially Aunt Marget—I quite agree! And an amusing error in Keith’s name.
Accessed via the British Newspaper Archive.
“The Flight of the Heron”
The stark realism which characterised the stories which appeared during the war and immediately after it was certain to yield sooner or later to a recoil in the opposite direction, to the revival of true romance. The way in which this recoil manifested itself was characteristic. Tennyson began to come to his own again after a long period of neglect.
But the readers of poetry are few, and those who can still delight in the “Idylls of the King” and “The Lady of Shalott” are even fewer. Something of their beauty remains, but their life seems to have gone beyond recall. It is in the works of such writers as Stevenson that one finds the enduring romance, and a small number of novelists appear to be attempting to carry on his tradition.
HONOUR AND ADVENTURE
It is in the this direction one must place Mr. [sic] D. K. Broster, whose new novel “The Flight of the Heron” (Heinemann, 7s. 6d. net), justifies the promise of “Mr. Rowl”. This was a delightful piece of writing, and the reader will find many of its characteristics in its successor. There is the same rather extravagant, arresting, amusing, and slightly irritating sense of honour in Ewen Cameron that was so intriguing in Mr. Rowl; the same spirit of adventure; the same story-telling craftsmanship.
But “The Flight of the Heron” falls back upon a more familiar atmosphere. Prince Charles Edward Stuart has formed the theme of numerous stories, and it says much for the skill of Mr. Broster that his version is as vivid and attractive as though he were turning virgin soil. Here one finds again the ill-fated and gallant Lochiel, and the ill-omened Prince whose destiny it was to bring disaster to so many faithful souls. Here one reads again of the terrible drama of Culloden, which sealed the fate of the Stuarts.
The marches and manoeuvres, the short taste of success in Edinburgh, and the levity with which so much admirable material was wasted live anew in these pages. But it is the life story of Ewen Cameron which holds the reader’s interest. The rest serves but as the background. Cameron, as the second cousin of Lochiel, takes the field on the summons of his relative and chief when Prince Charles lands in Scotland, and at the outset is flung into contact with Captain Windham, of the Royalist [sic] side.
Windham is riding back for reinforcements when a heron flies in front of his horse, and he is flung unconscious on the ground. Cameron rides up, and after some spirited swordplay captures him. This is the first interference of a heron, and already Cameron’s foster-father, who possessed the gift of second sight, had foretold that a heron should bring about a meeting between him and the English soldier, but whether for good or ill he did not know. It is the hearing of this that causes one of Cameron’s henchmen to attempt to shoot a heron on the island, the incident with which the story opens.
BREATH OF ROMANCE
Windham as a prisoner is treated with the most extravagant courtesy until, on the expiry of his parole, he escapes. The two are flung together several times again, mutual respect and liking growing between them until at the last meeting Windham is killed and Cameron finds his way to France and his wife.
The story is never for a moment dull, and surely this is much to say when most of the younger generation of novelists appear to have lost the art of story-telling. But it has much more to recommend it than its power as a thrilling story. It conveys the very breath of romance; and the strange mystic flavour which seems to have moulded the Scots character to sadness and sternness gives it an air of symbolism. Ewen and Alison, his young wife, make a charming pair of lovers, and, though they have much to suffer, Mr. Broster steers their bark deftly into harbour at the end as a finished romanticist should.
H. C. O’N.
A long, detailed and favourable review. I like the comparison to Stevenson. It’s interesting to note the mistake about Broster’s gender—apparently this was common amongst general readers, but newspaper reviews mostly avoid it. Also interesting that it spoils the ending!
Vol. 169 p. 615. Available here.
Until I read Miss Broster’s tale
I entertained the firm conviction
That quite exceptionally stale,
Flat and unprofitable fiction
Was fairly certain to be found
In any book which tried to render,
As though the theme were virgin ground,
The doings of the Young Pretender.Well, I was wrong, for, though The Flight
Of (thus it’s named) the Heron centres
Around a topic fairly trite,
And much familiar history enters,
The yarn (from Heinemann) so stirred
My stagnant fount of admiration
That I withdraw each single word
Of my Shakespearean quotation.The plan is simply told; it shows
The grim perplexities that tether
Two friends whose duty makes them foes,
Yet brings them constantly together;
This to embroider so that thrill
And charm combine to give you pleasure
Needs something more than common skill,
And that is here in ample measure.
A delightful positive review in the form of a comic poem!
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON.
Miss Broster, in following the mystic and ominous FLIGHT OF THE HERON (Heinemann, 7s. 6d. net) through the Western and Central Highlands in the stormy days of “the Forty Five,” shows a pleasing ability in dealing with a vexed and difficult period. Cameron of Ardroy, who “comes out” for the Prince, and Captain Windham, who holds King George’s commission, have the heroship, as it were, in commission between them. Ardroy, unusually cultured for a Highland laird, yet so true to type as to be oppressed by omens and to offer his life to save that of his Chief, Lochiel; Windham, a gallant and resourceful officer who resists every enticement and every threat, even when in the presence of a Royal Commander-in-Chief, to induce him to stoop to dishonour in order to send another victim to the scaffold at Carlisle. Each in turn is prisoner to the other, each in turn saves the other’s life, each in turn sees the other in victory and in defeat. It is a fine and well-woven story, rich in local colour and admirably embroidered with historical detail.
Miss Broster, like Cato, prefers the conquered cause and does not shrink from referring to incidents and episodes which throw so much discredit on those who occasioned them as to affect even the reputation of the Army in the ranks of which they did these disservices. But, on the other hand, she writes feelingly about those cases where officers and men insisted on behaving like Christian gentlemen in spite of examples and orders to the contrary. There is much, but not by any means too much, history in her pages; but the history always subserves the interests of the story and the latter never gets carried away in the stream of what really happened. Even at the last Ardroy is added to the list of those who in sober fact helped to play the part allotted to him; and at the end Romance comes entirely into her own, and the final flap of the haunted wings of the Heron brings about a disaster as picturesque and convincing in Miss Broster’s hands as if it had been itself an additional page of actual Highland history.
A thoughtful review with some good observations. It’s interesting to see an explicit statement in so many words that Ewen and Keith are both equally ‘the hero’—this contrasts with the later view, which seems to have originated following the publication of the 1930 US edition by Coward-McCann (see reviews of that edition below!), that Ewen is the sole hero.
Vol. 4 issue 12. Available here.
“The Flight of the Heron” is title [sic] of an arresting novel by D. K. Broster. As has already been foretold by Highland second-sight, it is a chance heron which first brings together the protagonists of this story, the Scottish Jacobite and the English soldier, whose paths are thereafter to cross and recross so dramatically in the year of that bright and fateful bird of passage, Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
That “indefinable gift of the real storyteller” which won “Mr Rowl” its success, here finds material for the clash of character and circumstance alike. Here are tense moments of devotion, peril or escape, glimpses of a happy love, triumph, failure, even the shadow of dishonour. Through them all the rest of the old seer’s dim prophecy gradually fulfils itself, while the half-reluctant liking felt by one man for the other, moulding choice and action, is to lead both Ewen Cameron and Major Windham at last, by unforeseen roads, to widely different destinies. (Heinemann; through Whitcombe and Tombs.)
Praise from the Antipodes! Most of the reviews I’ve found are from either Britain or the US, so it’s nice to see the book being appreciated over an even wider geographical range.
Available here.
A Romance of Distinction.
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON. By D. K. Broster. Dodd, Mead & Co. $2.
By LUCILE GULLIVER.
To that old literary form, the historical novel, relegated for a time and now in this post-war period renewed in response to an unconscious appeal from a generation wearied with immediate reality, “The Flight of the Heron” adds distinction. It presents the most dignified and moving features of its class; it exemplifies in a marked degree the joint part which character may play with action in such a fiction form. While its canvas as smaller than that of “Between Two Thieves,” less intensive than that of “The Conqueror,” less romantic than any of Sabatini’s, it presents a brief period, a small territory and a conflict in a manner admirable. In it one historic year returns, and out of its tangled elements the author creates living characters and about them weaves a tale of exceptional quality and parts.
The period Miss Dorothy Kathleen Broster has chosen for this, her fifth historical novel, is the sorry year of the attempt by the Highland clans to regain the English throne for the House of Stuart, in the person of the Young Pretender. Such a background bespeaks a military novel—and throughout its pages the English and the kilted troops pass, chiefly among the braes and lochs of Scotland—but Miss Broster’s theme is not one for the grand military manner.
Broadly, her theme embraces the conflict between Highland Scotland and England, between Jacobite and loyalist, yet essentially it is concerned with the conflict between two men, Ewen Cameron of the indomitable Cameron clan, and Captain Keith Windham of the King’s forces—enemies by the causes which they espouse, yet made acquainted and friends by the very circumstances of their opposition. While the story’s raison d’etre is a cause, character is its prime motive. This it compasses by a conflict of natures as possessed by the two men, unlike in racial and family heritage but intrinsically strong and generous, the manhood of the Scot expressing and enlarging itself, the other’s finding itself. One side of the military cause is inevitably a loser, but the chief enemies issue from the ordeal victors.
The plot, the love story throbbing in the background, the action within embattled walls and among heathered sweeps and mist clad hills are all that one could ask of an author who adhered to probability and psychologic truth. Yet the reader finds himself most concerned with the increasing devotion of two men for one another, and by that less romantic feature does Miss Broster prove a high plane of conception and technic.
It’s good to see such a nice review of the first US edition, which doesn’t seem to have got a huge amount of attention in general.
Vol. LXXVI. No. 25,257. Available here.
BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON. By D. K. Broster. 366 pp. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.
This novel by D. K. Broster is a historical novel in the romantic manner, which has for its theme the lost cause of the Young Pretender. In the general use of this pattern—worn thin with usage, and hard usage, in less skillful hands—it has become rubber-stamped. “The Flight of the Heron” is a long narrative, chronicling the attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to gain Scotland, from his landing to the terrible hunting down of rebels that followed Culloden. It deals with opera bouffe warfare and then the final disaster. Yet the book is full of heroics and seldom comes to life. It gives picturesque descriptions of Scotland, but is tedious in it renderings of noble sentiments. Its characters are either so noble they hurt or so brutal as to be inhuman.
Nothing, perhaps, can quite catch the melodramatic manner of this novel better than a quoted extract from a conversation between the Duke of Cumberland and Windham, when the latter is pleading for humane treatment:
The Duke frowned. “You forget, I think, Major Windham, with what kind of men we are dealing—bloody and unnatural rebels, who have to be exterminated like vermin—like vermin, sir! Here is a chance of getting rid of one rat the more, and you ask that your private sentiments shall be allowed to excuse you from that duty! No, Major Windham, I tell you that they shall not!”
I think this is the only generally bad review I've found in all my searching. Cheerfully missing the point in most ways, even this review allows that the descriptions are good.
[in the section headed ‘New Children’s Books’]
By ANNE T. EATON
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON, By D. K. Broster. Illustrated by Helene Carter. 372 pp. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc.
The romance and glamour of lost causes and devotion to a king, clan and country so steadfast that death rather than disloyalty is counted a very little thing, give the atmosphere to this tale, which is set against a backdrop of Highland hills and lochs. Edinburgh is pictured, too, in the gayety and gallantry of the first few weeks of the Jacobite uprising of 1745. There is no more stirring period for the writer of tales than the days when Prince Charles Edward came to his native country in the forlorn hope of winning back his kingdom. From the time when the young hero, Ewen Cameron, and the English officer, Keith Wyndham [sic], are brought together by the flight of a heron, as foretold by a Highland seer, there is no dearth of adventure. Duels, midnight escapes by secret stairways, raids and battles follow one another in rapid succession, but always there is more than a mere recital of happenings, for the author understands Highland character and knows Highland history. Cameron and Wyndham are real, and one sees their development and their influence upon one another. The generosity and mutual respect of men fighting on opposite sides give a fine touch of nobility to the story. The book is attractive in form. The end papers show a map of the Highlands, a plan of eighteenth-century Edinburgh serves as frontispiece and the small black and white drawings for each chapter are in key.
D. K. Broster is popular in England as a writer of excellent historical tales, but although several of her books have been published in this country she is not so well known over here. It is to be hoped that this attractive edition of “The Flight of the Heron” will bring this thoroughly worthwhile writer to the attention of a large circle of readers.
The NYT evidently changed their mind! It’s interesting to see the book categorised clearly as a children’s book (or rather as what we’d now call YA); this is the general view of it that persisted into later decades, but Flight of the Heron was not originally published as a children’s book and neither the original British reviews nor those of the first US edition consider it one. The view may have originated with the edition reviewed here, the 1930 US edition published by Coward-McCann. This review also illustrates another popular later opinion which wasn’t so much in evidence at first, that Ewen is the sole ‘hero’ of the book (compare the 1925 Times Literary Supplement review above).
Volume VI, number 37. p. 906. Available here.
THE FLIGHT OF THE HERON. By D. K. Broster. New York: Coward-McCann. 1930. $2.50.
Reviewed by Catherine Woodbridge
The figure of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” seems still to have an irresistible fascination. “The Flight of the Heron,” a Junior Book of the Month Club choice, is another novel following the traditional plan. It is a sort of composite of the romance of Scott and Thackeray’s penetrating analysis of human character. Here the young Pretender cuts as poor a figure as did his father in “Henry Esmond,” but the glamour that belonged to him is transferred to his followers, the flower of the North, whose loyalty to a desperate cause glorified the rash and ill-planned uprising of ’45.
The book follows the chief events of the rebellion through the experiences of two men, Ewen Cameron, a young Highland chief [sic], and Keith Windham, a captain in the English army. It is told from the point of view, now of one, now of the other. Such a method gives an opportunity to picture both camps in detail and to bring out differences in temperament and attitude. The Scotch are fighting on their own soil, and Miss Broster, from the opening paragraph of concrete visualization of a Highland lake, conveys a very deep sense of love of the land. It is because Prince Charlie belongs to this land and this blood rather than from any personal characteristics that he commands such devotion. The contrast in the loyalties of the two sides, the Scotch ardent and mystical, the English practical—half cynical but equally deep-rooted, is brought out in the two central characters. This contrast is in fact intensified in the individual case—for Ewen Cameron has his bride and his home at stake, while Keith Windham has nothing to lose. Fate repeatedly throws these two together until what was at first merely respect for a chivalrous enemy becomes the root of a friendship which their allegiance to different causes must as repeatedly thwart. So the very fact of the war, in throwing them together in moments of extreme stress, intensifies this emotion until loyalty to friend and to cause must inevitably clash. The melodrama of the solution is dramatically effective because it is prepared throughout the book by the omen of the heron’s flight. Though immediately tragic in its consequences for one of them, this friendship is pictured as a fulfilment in both cases.
This theme binds together a maze of exciting incidents set in a most authentic frame. Miss Broster’s historical reconstruction has a very immediate and personal quality. She uses details of places and people to illustrate and make plausible the action rather than to hamper it. Her description of the gathering of forces before Culloden is particularly memorable. Although chosen for older girls, such passages as well as the intense excitement of the whole story make it suitable for boys as well.
I think this one misses the point in a couple of places, but it’s a basically favourable review and contains some good insights, especially in describing Keith and Ewen’s relationship as ‘a fulfilment in both cases’. The book is again categorised as a children’s book (generously allowing that boys as well as girls can enjoy it!).
Vol. 20 issue 8, p. 56. Available here.
[in the section headed ‘Exceptionally Good Stories’]
The Flight of the Heron, by. D. K. Broster. Coward-McCann. $2.00
A young Highland chieftain and an English army officer meet and influence each other’s destinies as was foretold by a blind old seer. These meetings come during the Jacobite rising of 1745 and that ill-fated attempt is splendidly pictured while the characters and Ewen Cameron and Keith Windham are well drawn. They come out of the pages as individuals and their situation as enemies, though they are immensely attracted to each other and long to be friends, is dramatic and is so portrayed as to arouse the reader’s feeling and sympathy. There is a thread of romance, but most of the book is devoted to the Jacobite struggle, as it affected the two heroes in their five meetings which, according to the prophecy, brought them to bitter grief and one to death.
Again the Coward-McCann edition, which seems to have got a lot more attention in general than the Dodd, Mead & Co. edition, is treated as a children’s book.
These are generally cases where I’ve found another source that quotes from the review, but not a copy of the review itself.
Date and volume unknown; quoted on the flap of a 1979 Heinemann edition of the book.
The excitement is sustained, predictions are fulfilled, when hope itself is defeated the impossible happens; there is love of men, love of women, magnificent scenery, magic, disaster, and triumph. In short, this is a first-rate romance.
Date and volume unknown; quoted at the back of this book published by Heinemann in 1926.
The author deals with the rebellion of 1745, and gives a compelling picture of that ill-starred event through the clash of destinies of a Cameron chief and an English major. The description of the eve of Culloden is especially effective. The author belongs to the school of Neil Munro in sympathetic interpretation of the Highland character and in a distinction of writing that is far above the average.
Quoted in this US catalogue of children’s books from 1936. The source is given as ‘Pittsburgh’, which I suppose refers to a local paper from that city, but I can’t find a list of abbreviations in the catalogue that might explain it.
A Romantic story of love and chivalry in the stirring days when ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ sought to regain his Scottish kingdom. The hero is one of the Cameron clan and Lochiel and other historic characters are introduced. The title comes from a prediction concerning the interweaving of the destinies of Ewen and another brought together through the intervention of a heron.
Where I have evidence that a review exists, but can’t find even a partial quote from it.
Review on p. 8, mentioned in this US digest of book reviews from 1931. Available here with a New York library card; if you have such a thing and would be willing to use it to find and retrieve the review text, please let me know!
Supplement to vol. 70. The existence of this review is merely suspected; see the section on The Bookman, August 1924 below.
Vol. LXVI. no. 395, p. 267. Available here. This is a nice little summary of Broster’s career before The Flight of the Heron, which is mentioned as being in progress.
Miss D. K. Broster, whose new novel, “Mr Rowl” (Heinemann), is reviewed elsewhere in this Number, began her literary career by contributing short stories, articles and poems to the Cornhill, Spectator, and other periodicals; then wrote two novels, “Chantmerle” [sic] and “The Vision Splendid,” in collaboration with Miss G. W. Taylor. Her third novel (her first without a collaborator) was “Sir Isumbras of the Ford,” [sic] a romance of the French émigrés in the ill-fated Quiberon expedition of 1795. This she followed with “The Yellow Poppy” and “The Wounded Name,” her own favourite among her books. “The Yellow Poppy,” dramatised by herself and Mr. W. Edward Stirling, was produced by the Repertory Players at the Comedy, and this last spring has been touring through the provinces. All her books, so far, have had a strong French element, but she is now engaged on a novel that deals with another race and country. Miss Broster was educated at the Ladies’ College, Cheltenham, and at St. Hilda’s Hall, Oxford, where she took an Honours Degree in Modern History—this perhaps explaining the historical accuracy of her stories, and her tendency to go to history for her themes. But though she finds her themes in the past, her chief interest is in character and its interplay, and she protests against the conviction which seems to be rooted in the minds of some critics that a story dealing with any century but the present is a “costume novel” and must be classified as “a novel of action.” It is as possible to study the psychology of people of the past as of the present, and certainly Miss Broster’s are as much stories of character as they could be if their scenes were laid and their incidents happened in our own day.
The review of “Mr Rowl” is on p. 288 of the same issue, and is charming! Despite this review and a similarly favourable one of The Gleam in the North in 1927, I’ve been unable to find a review of The Flight of the Heron itself in The Bookman. This seems like an odd omission, given that they clearly like Broster a lot; one issue from around the right time, the supplement to volume 70, is unavailable on the Internet Archive, and I suspect there may be a review in there. Please let me know if you can access a copy.
Date unknown but before 1929, and probably soon after the book’s publication in 1925. Quoted in an article by Broster in The Horn Book Magazine (see also the Literary commentary page). Dr Brown, an expert on Venetian history, was descended from the MacDonell chieftains of Glengarry.
I have just finished the book, which has moved me more profoundly than anything else I have read for years. I had no notion I was so Highland and so Jacobite. . . . The landscape is marvellously true; not a false touch, not an overstrained note. . . . He [sic] has touches, too, that only a poet could have written, so quiet and so full. . . . But how the devil (damn him) did the author get this intimate, inside knowledge of the Highland character? . . . It is marvellous, and makes this book far and away the finest Highland Jacobite story I know.
This is a notable instance of what seems to be a general view amongst Scottish readers, that Broster portrays the character of Scotland and particularly the Highlands especially well. Quite a compliment!
[in what’s evidently a regular column called ‘My Favourite Book’]
“The Flight of the Heron”
BY A CUPAR READER.
The book that has undoubtedly influenced me the most is “The Flight of the Heron” by D. K. Broster.
There have been many good and interesting books written of the time of the Jacobites, and many a fireside tale told of our “Bonnie Prince,” but “The Flight of the Heron” stands out supreme as the embodiment of the spirit of Scotland.
I read it at a time (I am quite young) when my mind was struggling to express itself, I knew not how, and this desire found expression in the lasting thrill of patriotism which the book has given me.
I found just how much it mattered to me that I was Scottish, and I took a new pride in the fact that I had blood from the “Isles” in my veins.
The book has a strange and whimsical beauty—like a lochside mist—and we feel as we read that to none other than a Scotsman would have thought of the crushed sprig of young heather under the head of the dying Highlander.
Thus it came as a surprised to me, as to most others, to find that the D before Broster stood for Dorothy rather than, say, Donald, and that the author of this book of things so near the Scotsman’s heart was in reality an Englishwoman.
It makes us feel that there is some hope for these “puir craiturs” beyond the Border after all!
Another particularly emphatic example of the admiration for Broster’s authentic and powerful portrayal of Scotland—and the resulting surprise of readers upon learning of her actual nationality.