Unforgettable, Unforgotten by Anna Buchan

Author:Anna Buchan [Buchan, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798664418521
Google: lybfnQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 56343638
Publisher: #PrB.rating#3.0
Published: 1947-01-15T00:27:31+00:00

He had learned to love the countryside round Oxford when at Brasenose, and now that it was his home it meant much to him. Minster Lovell gave him the idea for The Blanket of the Dark, a legend about Dr. Johnson and the Jacobites made him write Midwinter, and all the time he was writing the Hannay books. Sometimes he cut himself shaving through chuckling at some cantrip of the Gorbals Die-Hards and Dickson McGinn that had come into his head.

J. B. always felt that they had done a wise thing in deciding to be country dwellers. Elsfield was a delight to them all. He and Susie spent strenuous hours working in the garden. There was a pond, and beneath it a little glade with a burn running through it, and they determined to make this a sort of water-garden. The children had any amount of space, and a wealth of outhouses to play in, not to speak of a twelfth-century barn which, when they grew older, John fitted up as a small hall, with a stage and everything complete.

In one of the outhouses the three boys started a bank. Painted on the door was the legend 'Buchan Bros.' We were all asked to put some money into it—half a crown was, I think, the sum suggested—and we received in return a neat little cheque-book. But it was not a dependable bank: we never saw our half-crowns again.

Elsfield always seemed to me a singularly happy home, and it helped to make a happy village.

Mrs. Charlett, the cook, instead of being a firebrand as so many good cooks are, was a sort of benediction in the place. She was a widow, and at one time had three of her family working with her at Elsfield. John, coming in from a tramp on a wet day, liked to go round by the basement with his wet coat, and find Mrs. Charlett, with her benign face and comfortable presence, presiding over a tea-party which included the postman and the carrier. That, he said, was the nice thing about having a house by the side of the road; people could be cheered on their way.

John cheered many people on their way, giving not only money but, what meant much more to him, time. He never grudged writing letters and interviewing people about jobs during the difficult years that lay between the Wars, when so many young men were compelled to be idle. When misfortune overtook a friend he was there, and willing to help to his uttermost. After he had gone, we were unhappily conscious that many of whom we knew nothing must be missing bitterly his help and encouragement.

The Manor was the place the villagers went to for advice or help in a difficulty. The men working on the place were all friends of the boys, and to this day their letters home always contain affectionate messages of remembrance to them. Amos Webb, the chauffeur, was part of the Elsfield background. His smiling face at the station when we arrived on a visit was the first of our welcome.

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