Peter West by D.E. Stevenson ~ 1923. This edition: Isis Publishing, 2007. Hardcover. Large Print. ISBN: 978-0-7531-7824-9. 213 pages.

My rating: 6.5/10. Very much reads like a first novel, which it is. The author tries hard, and ultimately succeeds, in telling her soberly romantic little story. I had been warned not to expect much from this obscure first work, but I was pleasantly surprised by its readability once I learned to navigate the flowery language and the bits of Scots dialogue from the local lassies, crones and crofters.

A point off for the constant references to the heroine’s figurative gossamer wings. Urgh!

Also lost a point for excessive use of the convenient plot device of the random hand of death. Deus ex machina, dear author? Please don’t make that a habit!

*****

This was now-esteemed and very collectible romantic fiction writer Dorothy Emily Stevenson’s first published novel. According to the BOOKRIDE rare book guide website, it was first released in magazine serial form.

Bookride, 12 February, 2007:

‘Peter West’ is the first of over 40 novels by the popular writer. Her sister married into the Chambers publishing family, and Ms Stevenson got this novel serialized in ‘The Chambers Journal’, and published by them in book form in 1923, but it wasn’t a success. Dorothy Emily Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1892, she was related to Robert Louis Stevenson, who was her father’s first cousin. She was 24 when she married Captain James Reid Peploe of the 6th Gurkha Rifles in 1916. Created the immortal characters Mrs Tim and Miss Buncle published by Herbert Jenkins. Can find nothing on ‘Peter West’ except that it is much wanted and highly elusive.

Almost ten years were to pass before D.E.Stevenson’s second novel was published. Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, 1932, inspired by Stevenson’s personal diary as an army wife,  proved much more successful and is one of the very few of her forty-odd books currently in print.

But we want to talk about Peter West. Apparently it is quite obscure, though the copy before me, obtained from my local library, is a very recent (2007) large print edition from Isis Publishing, so there must be a few of these in circulation. The following review contains spoilers, so if you want to search out Peter West for yourself and be surprised, stop reading now.

*****

Dedication by the author:

Dedicated to all who love Scotland, her tears and smiles, her dark woods and sunlit moors, and the plain and homely folk in the lonely villages of the north.

And the first few paragraphs of the Prologue, to give you a taste of the author’s descriptive style:

Mr. Maclaren loved Kintoul. Ever since he had come there, nigh on twenty years ago, the place had “grown on him,” as the saying goes. It had seemed a paradise of rest and quiet to the town-weary minister – a place where a man might regain health and strength of mind and body; where a man might forget the ugly striving and pushing of the city, and steep his very soul in the peace of God.

It was, on the whole, an easy thing to fall in love with Kintoul. There was something alluring about it, something mysteriously feminine. Even in the depths of winter, when the pure white snow covered all the hill-side, hanging on the pine-trees like fleecy blankets, and the river (the only non-white thing in the whole valley) ran like a narrow snake between jagged ice – even then there was something soft about Kintoul. The hills were friendly sentinels for all their rugged crests; the long dark nights were lighted by misted stars; the very snowflakes seemed to caress one’s cheek as they fell.

When spring came, soft, blustery winds blew primroses and cowslips into the sheltered hollows, still moist and green from the late melting of the snows. Soft white clouds drifted across the blue, blue sky, throwing patches of moving shadows on the newly awakening hills.

Summer brought long. drowsy days – days which seemed to have forgotten how to fade into night; when the emerald turf paled to a soft dun colour, and heather bloomed like a purple mist under the golden sun.

Autumn came as a king in the full panoply of state, and, in a single night of frost the hill-side glowed with colour like the dream of a demented artist. Here rowan and beech, with their clashing tones, mingled harmoniously, and the dark unchanging pines stood like quiet tokens of immortality among the gay but transitory foliage of their neighbours. And over all was the mist, the cool, soft white mist, lying sometimes in the valley hollows, sometimes capping only the hills, eddying hither and thither, and enhancing the beauties of the landscape by revealing them afresh and unexpectedly through rents in its clinging folds.

The stage is set, and in this idyllic scene Mr. Maclaren muses and reminisces about a certain local romance which he has taken a great interest in. Romantic Mary Simpson, lovely young daughter of Mr. Maclaren’s predecessor as Kintoul’s church minister, fell in love with the rough and ruggedly handsome John Kerr, ferryman at the river crossing. Against her parents’ wishes Mary married John, and found all of their dire predictions coming true. Sheltered Mary was unprepared for John’s practical and brusque ways. Mary found herself in the unenviable position of being shunned by her former friends, who felt she had lowered herself by her marriage to a common working man, and viewed with suspicion by the villagers as having stepped down out of her proper class and therefore not adhering to the proper social code. Poor Mary “did her duty” as a wife, had three children, and then died of a decline – a “bruised heart” – when her youngest child, her only daughter, was eight years old.

Elizabeth – Beth – is that daughter, and she is the focus, along with the titular Peter West, of this story. Turns out that Mary, and then Beth, were befriended by a local upper-class Englishwoman, Prudence West, who recognized “something unusual” in the young Beth. When Prudence died, her son Peter, sensitive and gentle, and the possessor of a “bad heart” which precluded normal manly activities, carried on his mother’s patronage of young Beth. (I must add here that I stopped to do the math, and as this story starts Beth is sixteen, and Peter thirty-five. You may wish to remember this as the tale progresses.)

So here we have “sprite-like” Beth and sensitive Peter, thrown together by circumstances with predictable results. Beth’s father John is deeply suspicious of the “meddlings” of Peter, and when the opportunity to arrange his daughter’s marriage to a neighbouring farmer arises, he pushes his daughter into an early wedding. Beth, who has experienced a dawning suspicion of romantic love for Peter, is apathetic and goes to the church without a fuss, because Peter has become romantically involved with another woman, and Beth has witnessed a scene of passion between the two (they kissed!) which has left her stunned and heartbroken.

I’ll back up a bit to explain. Peter is possessed of a bossy elder sister, who occasionally descends upon him and makes a great ruckus and meddlement in his affairs. She has suspected an attachment with the unsuitable village girl, so she has brought along a lovely young woman to distract him; her ultimate goal is to marry Peter off to a bride of her choosing, and she quickly succeeds.

Peter’s new wife, the former Natalie Horner, is not quite the lovely, intelligent, playful creature she appears to be. Apparently she is heir to a family curse of insanity, and she also has a wee bit of a drinking problem. Peter learns of this too late, and he does the best he can with his wife, though her quick descent into full-blown depression shocks and saddens him. Eventually she runs into the night and tragically perishes in the river. Peter returns to his solitary life, giving up hope of romance and steeling himself for whatever the future brings. (The weak heart seems to be ticking along not too badly, by the way.)

Meanwhile Beth’s abusive husband Alec and her harsh-mother-in-law Mrs. Baines have between the two of them almost broken the spirit of sweet little Beth. She eventually runs away and ends up in Peter West’s study, where the two of them have a poignant scene and finally admit their mutual attraction. Beth is offered a way out of her difficult situation by another older man, Brownlow Forth, who was once in love with her mother, Mary, and has since cherished a deep interest in her daughter. Brownlow is in the neighbourhood staying with Mr. Maclaren, and while visiting Peter he becomes enmeshed in the dilemma of Beth’s desertion of her husband, and offers to take her to London to get a job and live independently though under his (Brownlow’s) protection.

So off they go in the night, leaving the village agog with Beth’s mysterious disappearance. Peter is eyed suspiciously, as his affection for Beth and hers for him are naturally well-known to the local gossips, but as Beth is not anywhere in evidence, he stands up to investigation and the rumours die down.

Fast forward a few months, and a flu epidemic strikes peaceful Kintoul. Both Beth’s father and husband are stricken, and Beth, hearing of this, returns at once to care for her now-remorseful father. She pulls him through, but Alec, weakened by his self-indulgent lifestyle, succumbs.

Their first spouses handily disposed of, Peter and Beth are now free to resume their interrupted courtship. The novel’s ending is not quite as expected, though it will satisfy the most romantic-minded of readers, and I will leave that a secret, though I’ve given away most of the high points of the plot already.

A fast little read, and full of melodrama and romantic situations – perfect serial fare.

Rather a solemn story, missing the humorous touches of D.E. Stevenson’s later books, but I thought it a quite respectable first novel, and a more enjoyable read than I had first anticipated. I’m glad it was a short one, though – that was definitely a point in favour!

Recommended for the D.E. Stevenson fan who would like to check off every one of her books from their reading list, but probably not a good sample of her larger bibliography, and not a place to start for the fledgling Stevenson reader, unless they are willing to take a leap of faith and trustily go on to the much more light-hearted Mrs. Tim and her literary descendents.