Old Bestseller Review: Charlotte Fairlie, by D. E. Stevenson

Review: Charlotte Fairlie, by D. E. Stevenson

by Rich Horton

This is the fourth D. E. Stevenson novel I've read. (There are at least three more on hand.) Dorothy Stevenson Peploe (1892-1973) was a Scottish writer, the first cousin once removed of Robert Louis Stevenson. She wrote over 40 novels, mostly what can be called "light romantic" novels, and others more in the domestic life genre, including her Mrs. Tim novels, which deal with the experiences of a military wife. (Stevenson herself was a military wife, and those novels draw directly from her experience.) I've summarized her bio before, but the Furrowed Middlebrow edition of this book (from Dean Street Press) includes an autobiographical afterword, apparently first written when her novel Music From the Hills was published, just before Charlotte Fairlie. And that includes some nice additional details, such as that her father was actually quite close, in childhood, to his first cousin RLS (whom the family apparently called Louis), and also that Dorothy was a first-rate golfer -- reaching the semifinals of the Scottish Ladies' Championship in her early 20s.

Charlotte Fairlie was published in 1954, and is set at the time of writing (1952-1953) with an episode centered on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. (The US edition had the title Blow the Wind Southerly, and later paperback editions were called The Enchanted Isle.) The title character is in her late 20s, and has just taken a job as the headmistress of Saint Elizabeth's, a fairly posh girls' boarding school not too far from London. Charlotte's mother died when she was young, and she was very close to her father until he remarried, after which she was raised by an uncle and sent to Saint Elizabeth's. She continued to university, and even spent some time in the US. 

The first part of the novel is to a great extent focused on her professional experience. She is a very competent headmistress, and we see her dealing with a couple of significant issues, including a senior teacher who had wanted the headmistress position and does her best to sabotage Charlotte, and a couple of student crises. One concerns Tessa MacRynne, a 13 year old new girl whose (American) mother has just left her father Rory, who is "The MacRynne" -- that is, the basically feudal leader of a Scottish island. Tessa nearly causes a scandal when she tries to run away back to her home. The other crisis concerns one of Tessa's friends, Dione Eastwood, a sweet girl who is a bad student, and who has two younger brothers who are students at the nearby boys' school, who are also reputedly bad students. Charlotte manages to learn that their issue is their verbally abusive father (the mother, once again, is absent!) Charlotte also makes friends with the headmaster of the boys' school, a pleasant young man not too much older than she. She is also shown attending a conference in Copenhagen. All of this is quietly interesting, and straightforward and honest about the challenges of that job, the loneliness of it, and the rewards, in the context of the challenges of a woman making a career. This latter part is emphasized by the ambition Charlotte had before her father's remarriage -- to become her father's partner in his business; as well as the similar ambition Tessa has -- to help her own father in his role.

The second part of the novel introduces the "light romance" element. Tessa has invited both Charlotte and the Eastwood children to visit her island home over the summer break. The bulk of this section concerns that visit. To no reader's surprise, sparks fly between Charlotte and Tessa's father. And the visit proves helpful to the Eastwood children as well, especially the younger boy, Barney, who is enchanted by the island and by the kind of life Rory models. But over the Eastwood family their father's presence still hovers, and this leads in the end to a tragic event. There is a lightly fantastical element here, in the form of an old prediction about the first red-haired MacRynne (who turns out to be Rory) and also in the appearance of a supposed magic well, at which both Tessa and Barney make wishes, that, in the way of such wishes, have ambiguous results.

The conclusion -- which is somewhat muted -- turns naturally on the resolution of Charlotte and Rory's romance. Charlotte has realized she is desperately in love with Rory, but given her own life experience with a father's remarriage, and her knowledge of Tessa's personal ambitions, she feels it necessary to refuse him. The book gives an answer, entwining Charlotte's career position, and Tessa's own feelings ... there's a bit of feeling of patness to the ending. Still, I greatly enjoyed the book. And I also read it very quickly indeed -- emphasizing something I'd already noticed about D. E. Stevenson. She had that gift -- nearly magical, I sometimes think -- of making the reader want to keep turning pages. I don't think this gift is necessary to be a good or great writer, but nor do I think it a bad thing. It's something some writers can manage, and others can't. And both types of writers can be great writers. (For the record, I think D. E. Stevenson a fine writer, even a very good one at her best, but she falls short of greatness -- which is no terrible thing, really.)