I take it back from the mouth of an animal
So I had never heard of D. K. Broster before she was invoked in a comments thread over at ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer's and now I am waiting for the Gutenberg e-book of The Wounded Name (1922), because "Waterloo happens off-stage while the two main characters share a bed in a cave and exchange anguished confessions" is really all the blurb I need for a Napoleonic novel. [edit: It's on Google Books. I'll be back in a bit.] In the meantime, I went looking for information about Broster herself and ran into this simultaneously intriguing and frustrating article:
A particular feature of Broster's fiction is the way in which she portrays friendships between men. There is much stress laid on misunderstanding and reconciliation, and many intense conversations reflecting on minute points of honour. Long passages of dialogue, and some authorial omniscience, enable us to see the characters' interior worlds. Often one man saves another from false accusations of dishonour, or from execution, and the commitments of friendship often take precedence over other allegiances. There is also much emphasis on physical and emotional suffering, and one friend watching over another while he recovers from illness and fever. Blood, sweat and tears are followed by physical and emotional recovery. Some would say that such scenes have a homoerotic element; I'm wary of reading back later interpretations into 1920s fiction, but it would be difficult to write in this way for a modern audience without creating an impression of more than a passionate friendship. I am inclined to say that whilst we may well read homosexual overtones into The Flight of the Heron, and others of her novels where the emotional focus is firmly on the male characters, this wasn't consciously intended by Broster, and my impression is that it was not picked up by contemporary critics. As for D K Broster herself, she was unmarried and lived with her close friend Gertrude Schlich for more than thirty years; but this wasn't uncommon then, and assumptions from a modern perspective about two women sharing a home would only be speculative.
I understand not wanting to project categorizations of the present onto the behavior of the past. I was nonetheless reminded of how it took me until 2014 to find an anthology of modernist poetry which directly acknowledged H.D.'s bisexuality and polyamory and referred to Bryher without equivocation by their chosen name. It is unnecessary as well as inaccurate to suggest that homoeroticism in fiction of the 1920's must be a product of modern slash goggles as opposed to something that could be found on its own recognizance. (Trust me. I'm reading Forrest Reid.) Qualifying it as unconscious on the part of the author treads perilously close to the she-wrote-it-but angle of Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983). I don't even care that much about the readings of contemporary critics, since I can remember reviews of Carol (2015) which missed the chemistry ("Harold, they're lesbians") between its female leads. Look, I am late to the game of this writer and know nothing about her that is not cursorily available on the internet, I know nothing about Broster and Schlich except that they lived together for more than thirty years and I can read the dedication of The Yellow Poppy (1920), their relationship might have been neither sexual nor romantic because people are capable of bonding with neither of those factors in play, but could we still not default to "in the absence of evidence, she mustn't have been queer"? Scootch a generation forward and living with another woman and writing m/m looks like Mary Renault.
Last and less bristlingly: man, hurt/comfort really is older than dirt. I should like to read her supernatural stories, too.
osprey_archer's and now I am waiting for the Gutenberg e-book of The Wounded Name (1922), because "Waterloo happens off-stage while the two main characters share a bed in a cave and exchange anguished confessions" is really all the blurb I need for a Napoleonic novel. [edit: It's on Google Books. I'll be back in a bit.] In the meantime, I went looking for information about Broster herself and ran into this simultaneously intriguing and frustrating article:A particular feature of Broster's fiction is the way in which she portrays friendships between men. There is much stress laid on misunderstanding and reconciliation, and many intense conversations reflecting on minute points of honour. Long passages of dialogue, and some authorial omniscience, enable us to see the characters' interior worlds. Often one man saves another from false accusations of dishonour, or from execution, and the commitments of friendship often take precedence over other allegiances. There is also much emphasis on physical and emotional suffering, and one friend watching over another while he recovers from illness and fever. Blood, sweat and tears are followed by physical and emotional recovery. Some would say that such scenes have a homoerotic element; I'm wary of reading back later interpretations into 1920s fiction, but it would be difficult to write in this way for a modern audience without creating an impression of more than a passionate friendship. I am inclined to say that whilst we may well read homosexual overtones into The Flight of the Heron, and others of her novels where the emotional focus is firmly on the male characters, this wasn't consciously intended by Broster, and my impression is that it was not picked up by contemporary critics. As for D K Broster herself, she was unmarried and lived with her close friend Gertrude Schlich for more than thirty years; but this wasn't uncommon then, and assumptions from a modern perspective about two women sharing a home would only be speculative.
I understand not wanting to project categorizations of the present onto the behavior of the past. I was nonetheless reminded of how it took me until 2014 to find an anthology of modernist poetry which directly acknowledged H.D.'s bisexuality and polyamory and referred to Bryher without equivocation by their chosen name. It is unnecessary as well as inaccurate to suggest that homoeroticism in fiction of the 1920's must be a product of modern slash goggles as opposed to something that could be found on its own recognizance. (Trust me. I'm reading Forrest Reid.) Qualifying it as unconscious on the part of the author treads perilously close to the she-wrote-it-but angle of Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983). I don't even care that much about the readings of contemporary critics, since I can remember reviews of Carol (2015) which missed the chemistry ("Harold, they're lesbians") between its female leads. Look, I am late to the game of this writer and know nothing about her that is not cursorily available on the internet, I know nothing about Broster and Schlich except that they lived together for more than thirty years and I can read the dedication of The Yellow Poppy (1920), their relationship might have been neither sexual nor romantic because people are capable of bonding with neither of those factors in play, but could we still not default to "in the absence of evidence, she mustn't have been queer"? Scootch a generation forward and living with another woman and writing m/m looks like Mary Renault.
Last and less bristlingly: man, hurt/comfort really is older than dirt. I should like to read her supernatural stories, too.
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And, yeah, I agree about that article. I do think she probably did mean it like that, and this: Qualifying it as unconscious on the part of the author treads perilously close to the she-wrote-it-but angle of Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983) —is a very good point.
The supernatural stories—I've only read the ones in A Fire of Driftwood—are very interesting—especially, I think, in how they reflect and distort the subjects and themes of her realistic historical fiction.
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Is she at all available in print? Or not without committed combing of used book stores? She looks exactly like the sort of writer that Valancourt should pick up for their queer section, but I checked and they unaccountably have not. It is a testament to her readability that I hacked my way through 400-plus pages of Google Books for her sake, but I am a person who has a lot of trouble with e-books of any kind and I like to re-read in three dimensions if I can.
I do think she probably did mean it like that
Seriously, why should she not have?
The supernatural stories—I've only read the ones in A Fire of Driftwood—are very interesting—especially, I think, in how they reflect and distort the subjects and themes of her realistic historical fiction.
That does sound fascinating. And I see it's on Faded Page, so I guess her readability wins again.
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Otherwise, Faded Page is the best resource!
Seriously, why should she not have?
Oh, I thought your comparison to Mary Renault was interesting, too—I've not actually read any of Renault's historical books, only a couple of the contemporaries, but I think there are similarities between her and Broster's general styles—both very rich, precise, detailed prose and emotional observation.
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I'm still glad to see the news, and if I can buy the book, I almost certainly will.
Oh, I thought your comparison to Mary Renault was interesting, too—I've not actually read any of Renault's historical books, only a couple of the contemporaries, but I think there are similarities between her and Broster's general styles—both very rich, precise, detailed prose and emotional observation.
Thank you! I would need to know that Renault read her to think of her as a direct progenitor, but she feels like part of the same constellation, if that makes sense. So does Rosemary Sutcliff. (I am trying to figure out if the constellation is specifically queer, I know nothing about Sutcliff's orientation toward people or not, I'm wondering if I can add Bryher into it, too.)
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Rosemary Sutcliff, who was disabled by severe childhood arthritis, fell in love with an ex-RAF pilot with flaming red hair and a tin-can racing car, "the first person to whom it ever occurred that I could be asked out without my parents." She was 27. Rupert courted her quite charmingly, invited her to a very special weekend in postwar London, with all its newly reviving arts and culture--to meet his fiancée. It broke Sutcliff's heart, but deepened her as a writer.
Blue Remembered Hills, her autobiography of childhood and youth, is an absolutely wonderful book.
Gillian Avery writes in the ODNB:
"Immobilized in a wheelchair (something she was not allowed in her mother's lifetime), Sutcliff had visited few of the localities she described with such passionate feeling, and her experience of life was of necessity vicarious and mainly through literature. Kipling was one influence she named; another may be identified as Dorothy Kathleen Broster, whose trilogy of novels about the Jacobite rising of 1745 was published in 1925–9. The emotional climate is very similar, featuring male loyalty and camaraderie (both writers tended to use women only as subsidiary characters), the enemy who becomes a friend, the hero-worship of a leader."
Nine
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HAH NAILED IT.
(Kipling I could see for myself as soon as I really began to read him in 2006: The Eagle of the Ninth even directly quotes "The Roman's Centurion's Song," if the likeness of "The Girl I Left at Clusium" to "Rimini" weren't enough. It took until now for Broster to get on my radar. Thank you for the confirmation!)
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You did indeed.
I note that Faded Page has made available the Jacobite trilogy, and six more of Bruster’s novels.
Nine
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I had been on the point of making a post about Broster and Sutcliff, to see if I could get someone to tell me if there was something real there or just over-driven pattern recognition. Renault might be merely part of the tradition of queer women writing historical m/m—I don't see why she shouldn't have read Broster given the decades of popularity, but there's a plausible alternative in convergent evolution—but Sutcliff felt like a direct line of descent.
I note that Faded Page has made available the Jacobite trilogy, and six more of Bruster’s novels.
I just read The Flight of the Heron, which is indeed a better novel than The Wounded Name—the one now looks in many ways like a dry run for the other—and almost as textually slashy. I am contemplating whether I will read the sequels; it has an ending calculated to rip the heart out of an emotionally invested reader, but unfortunately it just made me feel cynical about the number of narratives in which my favorite characters died. I might go for "Mr Rowl" instead, which just sounds like fun.
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Nine
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I am delighted to hear it and not totally surprised; as noted in other comments, it is extremely MY ID AND WELCOME TO IT.
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Actually, Broster has an antecedent, too: Flight of the Heron is dedicated to Violet Jacob, a Scottish author whose book Flemington (1911) is another slashy enemies-to-lovers story set in 1745. It's another book where the slash really is foundational to the book; there wouldn't be a story without it, and I can't help but think Broster was inspired by it. Jacob has exactly the same fondness for dilemmas where one is torn between love and the demands of duty or honour. I wonder if they ever met and fangirled together?
In Flemington, Archie Flemington is a government spy who gets entangled with the Jacobite James Logie. I do find that the relationship between them is not as well developed as between Keith and Ewen in FotH; Broster obviously went "hmmm, needs more meetings between them". But in compensation, there's a second slash pairing which is also quite affecting (Archie Flemington/Captain Callandar). I haven't read any more Violet Jacob yet to see if her other works are slashy, but I will.
It's in print, or available as a free ebook or audiobook. Also, I'm proud to say I have provided fandom with one fic for it.
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I saw the dedication, but I didn't pursue it! Nice. I assume this genealogy leads ultimately back to Robert Louis Stevenson?
It's in print, or available as a free ebook or audiobook. Also, I'm proud to say I have provided fandom with one fic for it.
I shall check it out, your fic included.
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I haven't read The Master of Ballantrae myself, so I was thinking of Kidnapped as the potential taproot for tropetastic Jacobite adventures.
[edit] Mentioned in more recent comments, I just found an article examining the literary influences on The Eagle of the Ninth. It doesn't mention Broster, which I now officially consider an oversight, but:
"Marcus and Esca's flight through the heather certainly resembles the plot of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped; the Stevenson connection appears the more likely when we reflect that Sutcliff's sequel to The Eagle – The Lantern Bearers – shares its title with a critical essay by Stevenson."
This reference work flatly claims, "All in all, the general model for Broster's work would seem to be Robert Louis Stevenson," which elides the acknowledged influence of Violet Jacob, but again puts him somewhere at the back of this constellation. Before him, I don't know—Sir Walter Scott? But I think something does change when women begin to write, in numbers, historical fiction. I hope to God this was someone's dissertation.
[edit edit] I think it was.
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"All in all, the general model for Broster's work would seem to be Robert Louis Stevenson,"
What, really? I mean, I've only read one Stevenson, but to me it didn't feel much like Broster's style. But maybe there's more of a pattern if one reads more Stevenson.
Re: the dissertation, ha! Must be satisfying to find something one is sure should exist. : )
Oh, there's also White Cockades from 1887 by Edward Prime-Stevenson (who was actually gay). I'm in the process of recording it for Librivox (I suppose I committed to recording all the tropetastic slashy Jacobite adventures in the public domain which they didn't already have).
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At the moment I don't feel I have enough information about either one of them to draw substantiable conclusions. I've read Treasure Island (1883), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1886), plus A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) and a handful of short stories, and from this selection he feels less like an overall model than a couple of strong imprints. I would be actively surprised if Kidnapped weren't in Broster's literary DNA. His unfinished novel St. Ives: Being The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897) not only sounds like her sort of thing, she quotesd it for an epigraph in The Wounded Name. Beyond that, they both wrote historical novels in the same periods? If I find an interview where she cites him as one of her formative writers in the same way as Kipling, I'll change my opinion.
I would also not say that "romance . . . in general in Broster's work is secondary to period political matters," but maybe some of her books are plotted more by the politics and less by the id. "Mr Rowl", so far, isn't it.
Re: the dissertation, ha! Must be satisfying to find something one is sure should exist.
I'm going to see if I can get hold of it. The chapter titles are tantalizing: "Hollow Men and Homosexual Heroes: Exploring Masculinity in the 1950s." That'll be Renault.
Oh, there's also White Cockades from 1887 by Edward Prime-Stevenson (who was actually gay).
Brilliant!
I'm in the process of recording it for Librivox (I suppose I committed to recording all the tropetastic slashy Jacobite adventures in the public domain which they didn't already have).
I'm delighted there's enough of it for a genre.
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Well, no, I would not agree with that statement! Even if romance doesn't have a large role in all her books, I wouldn't say that politics does, either. It's always the impact of events on the characters and the choices they have to make that matter. Even if a large part of the characters' motivation may be their allegiance to some political cause.
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Flight of the Heron is easy to find used copies of, and it's also in print again now that the copyright has gone out--there's one where someone slapped a cover with inaccurate Napoleonic-era redcoats on it. It could plausibly have a romance novel-style cover with a redcoat soldier holding a wounded and half-naked Highlander clad only in a plaid in his arms (this is in fact a scene from the book), but sadly no one has taken that opportunity...
I've gotten the more rare books off Abebooks. But anyway, not all Brosters are equally interesting--Ships in the Bay! for example, is fairly boring het. She seems to have grown a bit less iddy towards the end of her writing career? And also less interesting in the very beginning--check out
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I am glad to hear it; I liked all of it very much except the end.
It could plausibly have a romance novel-style cover with a redcoat soldier holding a wounded and half-naked Highlander clad only in a plaid in his arms (this is in fact a scene from the book), but sadly no one has taken that opportunity...
I'd buy that edition in a heartbeat. Accurate covers are so rare to begin with.
But anyway, for slash the most interesting ones are Flight of the Heron, The Wounded Name and Mr Rowl--her trademark thing, besides h/c, is situations where characters are torn between love and what their duty or honour requires, and she's great at that.
It's a very compelling tension!
She's written some good het versions of it, too, as in The Yellow Poppy and Sir Isumbras at the Ford.
In the nicest possible way, it's good to know she can write plausible het. My problem with Avoye was much less the quasi-incest than the underwriting.
Warning for a possible overdose of French Royalists in those, though.
I appreciate the warning. I figure if I didn't overdose on The Wounded Name, I should be good on that front, although I am fascinated that it's one of Broster's recurring milieus.
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Yes, well. She did also occasionally write het with a similarly tragic ending, so it's not just the m/m. But I can understand if you are bitter about queer people dying. : / Fortunately, one can fix it with fic.
There's one book (FotH) where she feints and kills off a different character than is foreshadowed, another where she clearly signals which character will die and then commits to it, and a third where you're almost sure someone is going to die who then survives after several narrow escapes.
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I didn't even get as far as feeling the novel buried its gays; I was just bitter about Keith.
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