The Gleam in the North — D. K. Broster, Heinemann (1930 impression)

Opening

The dedication reads: TO / MY FRIENDS NORTH OF TWEED. Not a named individual, not a literary predecessor in homage — a collective and geographical dedication to Scotland and the Scots who had befriended Broster in the writing of the Jacobite trilogy. The River Tweed, which forms much of the border between England and Scotland, had been the conventional dividing line in political and cultural geography since the medieval period. Broster was an Englishwoman — born near Chester, educated at Oxford, lived in England — who had gone north to research and was acknowledging the people who had made the books possible. The novel's epigraphs then declare its historical territory without ambiguity:

"He sent our Lawfull Prince amongst us, and I followed him."

— Laurence Oliphant the younger of Gask.

"A brighter courage and a gentler disposition were never married together."

— Lord Clarendon (of Sir Bevil Grenville).

Two quotations: one from a living Jacobite officer who followed Charles Edward Stuart to his ruin, one from the great English historian of the Civil War speaking of a Royalist hero who died for his king. Both are about loyalty unto death, the thread that runs through the entire trilogy.

The Book

The Gleam in the North by D. K. Broster is the second volume of the Jacobite Trilogy, subtitled on the title page A Sequel to The Flight of the Heron. It was published by William Heinemann Ltd., London. The publication history from the title verso reads:

First Published — July 1927
New Impressions — November 1928; June 1929; March 1930; October 1930

The title page bears the date 1930 — placing this copy as either the March 1930 or October 1930 impression, the fourth or fifth printing of the novel within three years of first publication, a measure of sustained demand. The title page reads: The Gleam in / The North / A Sequel to / The Flight of the Heron / By / D. K. Broster / 19[X]30 / London: William Heinemann Ltd. — the Heinemann windmill device incorporating the date appears between the author's name and the imprint. The printer's colophon reads: Printed in Great Britain by The Whitefriars Press, Ltd., London and Tonbridge.

The By the Same Author list (title verso) records: The Flight of the Heron · "Mr. Rowl" · The Wounded Name · The Yellow Poppy · Sir Isumbras at the Ford — five titles, reflecting Broster's complete published output to 1927, before The Dark Mile (1929) and later works.

The Binding

The binding is sage-green cloth, plain, with a double black rule border on the front and back boards and no pictorial design on either board — the standard Heinemann fiction hardback style of the late 1920s. The spine carries the title and author lettered in black in the same bold sans-serif face used on the front board: THE / GLEAM / IN THE / NORTH / D.K. / BROSTER with a horizontal rule and the Heinemann windmill device (the crossed X symbol) above the publisher name HEINEMANN at the foot. Page edges are plain and unstained. There is no inscription in this copy. Condition: the head and foot of the spine show wear; the cloth is clean overall; foxing spots visible on the page edges.

The Epigraphs

Laurence Oliphant the younger of Gask — Laurence Oliphant (1724–1792), eldest son of Laurence Oliphant the elder, Laird of Gask in Perthshire, acted as aide-de-camp to Prince Charles Edward Stuart at the Battle of Prestonpans (1745) and served throughout the campaign to Culloden. [web:929][web:935] After Culloden he went into exile in France with his father. The quotation Broster uses — He sent our Lawfull Prince amongst us, and I followed him — is one of the defining statements of Jacobite loyalty: unconditional, personal, and in the past tense. It is the voice of a man who knows it is over and does not regret it.

Lord Clarendon (of Sir Bevil Grenville) — Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609–1674) was the great Royalist statesman and historian whose History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England is one of the masterpieces of English prose. Sir Bevil Grenville (1596–1643) was the most celebrated Royalist commander in Cornwall; he was killed leading the Cornish infantry at the Battle of Lansdowne on 5 July 1643. [web:930][web:936] Clarendon's eulogy of him — A brighter courage and a gentler disposition were never married together — is one of the finest single sentences in the History, and Broster quotes it as the novel's second epigraph to set up its central character, Dr Archibald Cameron: a man who combines physical courage with personal gentleness and is executed for both.

The Author's Note

The Author's Note, printed on a separate recto page before the contents, reads in full:

In all that concerns Doctor Archibald Cameron this story follows historical fact very closely, and its final scenes embody many of his actual words.

This is a precise and unusual claim. Dr Archibald Cameron of Lochiel (1707–1753) was the younger brother of Donald Cameron, the Gentle Lochiel, chief of Clan Cameron. A physician by training (Edinburgh and Paris), he served with his clan in the rising of 1745 primarily as a doctor, treating both Jacobite and government wounded. [web:928] After Culloden he escaped to France. He returned to Scotland secretly in 1749 and again in 1753 on Jacobite business, was betrayed at Glenbucket, arrested, taken to Edinburgh Castle and then London, and on 7 June 1753 became the last Jacobite to be executed for high treason — hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, conducting himself throughout with extraordinary composure. [web:926][web:928] His final speech, his letter to his son, and the account of his behaviour at Tyburn were all printed within days of his death; it is from these documents that Broster drew many of his actual words for the novel's closing scenes. [web:934]

The Contents

The novel runs to 346 pages of text plus Epilogue (p. 340 onwards in the text, with page 346 the final page in the photographic evidence), structured in 24 chapters and an Epilogue:

I. The Broken Claymore (p. 11)
II. Lieutenant Hector Grant of the Régiment d'Albanie (p. 23)
III. A French Song by Loch Treig (p. 35)
IV. The Man with a Price on His Head (p. 46)
V. Keithie Has Too Many Physicians (p. 63)
VI. 'Who Is This Man?' (p. 73)
VII. A Great Many Lies (p. 90)
VIII. On Christmas Night (p. 102)
IX. The Worm at the Heart (p. 115)
X. 'An Enemy Hath Done This' (p. 134)
XI. The Castle on the Shore (p. 153)
XII. After Sunset (p. 164)
XIII. The Reluctant Villain (p. 178)
XIV. In Time — and Too Late (p. 196)
XV. ''Twas There That We Parted—' (p. 212)
XVI. The Door in Arlington Street (p. 224)
XVII. Foreseen and Unforeseen (p. 237)
XVIII. Crossing Swords (p. 248)
XIX. Keith Windham's Mother (p. 263)
XX. 'Lochaber No More' (p. 278)
XXI. Finlay MacPhair Is Both Unlucky and Fortunate (p. 296)
XXII. 'Stone-Dead Hath No Fellow' (p. 307)
XXIII. Constant as Steel (p. 323)
XXIV. 'The Sally-Port to Eternity' (p. 337)
Epilogue (p. 340)

Note: The older scan (file:860) gives Chapter XIX at p. 263 and Chapter XXI as "Finlay MacPhair is both Unlucky and Fortunate" at p. 290; the newer scan (file:922) gives Chapter XIX at p. 262 and Chapter XXI at p. 296. The newer scan's OCR is preferred.

The Novel

The Gleam in the North continues the story of Ewen Cameron of Ardroy and Captain Keith Windham from The Flight of the Heron, now set in the aftermath of Culloden (April 1746) and the years of the Jacobite aftermath — the hunt for fugitives, the proscription of Highland culture under the Act of Proscription 1746, and ultimately the fate of Dr Archibald Cameron. The Régiment d'Albanie of Chapter II was a real unit: a French regular regiment in which many Jacobite exiles served after 1746, based at Bergues; its colonel, Donald Cameron, died in October 1748. [web:933] The chapter title 'Lochaber No More' (Chapter XX) refers to the traditional Jacobite lament Lochaber No More — a Highland song of exile whose words ("Farewell to Lochaber, farewell to my Jean... For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more") and whose tune, based on an old Gaelic melody transcribed by Allan Ramsay, became one of the defining sounds of Jacobite grief. [web:932][web:938] 'The Sally-Port to Eternity' (Chapter XXIV) is a phrase from Dr Cameron's own speech at Tyburn: the scaffold as the passage out of time. The 'Stone-Dead Hath No Fellow' of Chapter XXII is a quotation from Viscount Falkland at the trial of Strafford — Stone dead hath no fellow — meaning that execution is the only security.

The novel was first published in July 1927, two years after The Flight of the Heron (1925) and in the same year as the cheaper edition of Heron. It reached its fifth impression by October 1930, confirming the trilogy's ongoing commercial success through the late 1920s.

The Author

Dorothy Kathleen Broster (2 September 1877 – 7 February 1950) was born at Broughton, near Chester, educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and St Hilda's College, Oxford, and worked as secretary to Sir Charles Firth, Regius Professor of History at Oxford, from 1903 to 1914. She served as a Red Cross nurse in France during the First World War. She published under the initials D. K. Broster, deliberately obscuring her gender. She died at Lingfield, Surrey, on 7 February 1950. [web:905][web:908][web:919]

The Jacobite Trilogy in sequence:

The Flight of the Heron (Heinemann, October 1925)
The Gleam in the North (Heinemann, July 1927)
The Dark Mile (Heinemann, 1929)

Full published bibliography: Chantemerle (with G. W. Forrest, 1911) · The Vision Splendid (with G. W. Forrest, 1913) · Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1918) · The Yellow Poppy (1920) · "Mr. Rowl" (1921) · The Wounded Name (1922) · The Flight of the Heron (1925) · The Gleam in the North (1927) · The Dark Mile (1929) · Ships in the Bay! (1931) · Almond, Wild Almond (1933) · Child Royal (1937) · Sea Without a Haven (1941) · Couching at the Door (short stories, 1942). [web:905][web:909]

The Publisher and Printer

William Heinemann Ltd. published the entire Jacobite Trilogy. This copy was printed by The Whitefriars Press, Ltd., London and Tonbridge. The Whitefriars Press was founded in the Whitefriars district of London in the 1820s, originally printing Punch magazine. The Tonbridge operation (at Medway Wharf Road) started in 1896 and became Tonbridge's largest employer; a catastrophic fire in 1926 destroyed half the factory but the firm rebuilt and re-equipped, so that by the time this impression of The Gleam in the North was printed (1930) the press was newly modernised. [web:931][web:937] By the 1940s it was printing two million Penguin paperbacks a year. This contrasts with the earlier Heinemann Broster volumes: The Flight of the Heron (this copy) was printed by Butler & Tanner, Frome; The Wounded Name impressions were printed at The Windmill Press, Kingswood, Surrey. Heinemann distributed printing across several quality British houses simultaneously.

Bibliographic Details

Author: D. K. Broster (Dorothy Kathleen Broster, 1877–1950)

Title: The Gleam in the North: A Sequel to The Flight of the Heron

Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd., London

First published: July 1927

This copy: 1930 (March 1930 or October 1930 impression — 4th or 5th printing)

Printer: The Whitefriars Press, Ltd., London and Tonbridge

Dedication: To My Friends North of Tweed

Epigraph 1: Laurence Oliphant the younger of Gask (He sent our Lawfull Prince amongst us, and I followed him)

Epigraph 2: Lord Clarendon, of Sir Bevil Grenville (A brighter courage and a gentler disposition were never married together)

Author's Note: Dr Archibald Cameron — the story follows historical fact closely; final scenes use his actual words

No inscription in this copy

Binding: Sage-green cloth, double black rule border, no front board design; Heinemann X device on spine

Format: Hardback, 346 pp; 24 chapters + Epilogue (begins p. 340)

Series position: Second volume of the Jacobite Trilogy

By the Same Author (title verso): The Flight of the Heron · "Mr. Rowl" · The Wounded Name · The Yellow Poppy · Sir Isumbras at the Ford