The Last Buchan
MORE than a quarter of a century has passed since Richard Hannay found the dead man in his flat and started that long flight and pursuit, across the YOrkshire and the Scotti-h moon) down Mayfair streets, along the passages of Government build- ings, in and out of dabinet rooms and country houses, towandr the cold Essex jetty with the thirty-nine steps, which was to be a pattern for adventure-writers ever since. John Buchan was the first to realise the enormous dramatic value of aclvtarureni, familiar surroundings happening to =adventurous men, members of Parliament and members of the Athenaeum, lawYers `" barristers, business men and minor peers: murder in ": atmosphere of breeding „And simplicity and stability." Rich Hannay, Sir Edward Leithen, Mr. Blenkiron,. Archie Roylance and Lord Lamancha • these were his adventurers, not. Dr. Nik. .011 or the Master of Ballantrae, and -who will forget that first tbnu in 1916 as the hunted Leithen—the future Solicitor-General- "like a thief in a London thoroughfare 'on a June afternoon.
Now I saw hoW ihin is the protection of ciiilisation. • accident and a bogus ambulance—a false charge and a Mus
arrest—there were a dozen ways of spiriting one out of this gay and bustling world.
Now Leithen, who survived the perils of the Green Park and the mews near Belgrave Square, has died in what must seem to those who remember The Power House -a rather hum-drum way, doing good to depressed and starving Indians in Northern Canada, anticipating by only a few months his creator's death.
What is remarkable about these adventure-stories is the com- pleteness of the world they describe. The backgrounds to many of us may not be sympathetic, but they are elaborately worked in: each character carries round with him his school, his regi- ment, his religious beliefs, often touched with Calvinism: memories of grouse-shooting and deer-stalking, of sport at Eton, debates in the House. For men who live so dangerously they are oddly conventional—or perhaps, remembering men like Scott and Oates, we can regard that, too, as a realistic touch. They judge men by their war-record: even the priest in Sick Heart 'River, fighting in the desolate northern waste for the Indians' salvation, is accepted by Leithen because " he had served in a French battalion which had been on the right of the Guards at Loos." Toe H. and the British Legion lurk in the background.
In the early books, fascinated by the new imaginative form, the hairbreadth escapes in a real world, participating whole- heartedly in the struggle between a member of the Athenaeum and the man who could hood his eyes like a hawk, we didn't notice the curious personal ideals, the vast importance Buchan attributed to success, the materialism . . . Sick Heart River, the last adventure of the dying Leithen seeking—at Blenkiron's request—the missing business man, Francis Galliard, who had left his wife and returned to his ancestral North, has all the old admirable dry ease of style—it is the inteilectual content which repels us now, the Scotch admiration of success. " Harold has a hard life. He's head of the Fremont Banking Corporation and a St. Sebastian for everyone to shoot arrows at." Even a nation is judged by the same standard: " They ought to have made a rather bigger show in the world than they have." Individuals are of enormous importance. Just as the sinister Mr. Andrew Lumley in The Power House was capable of crumbling the whole Western world into anarchy, so Francis Galliard—" one of Simon Ravelston's partners "—must be found for the sake of America. "He's too valuable a man to lose, and in our present state of precarious balance we just can't afford it."
But though Sick Heart River. appears at the moment least favourable to these ideas (for it is not, after all, the _-,at men_ the bankers and the divisional commanders and the A:::bassadors who have been holding our world together this winter, and , we survive, it is by "the wandering, wavering grace of humble men" in Bow and Coventry, Bristol and Birmingham), let us gratefully admit that, in one way at any rate, Buchan prepared us in his thrillers better than he knew for the death that may corns to any of us, as it nearly came to Leithen, by the railings of the Park or the doorway of the mews. For certainly we can al see now " how thin is the protection of civilisation."
GRAHAM GREENE
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