Michael Innes - Lament for a Maker

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About the Author

Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who was born in Edinburgh in 1906. His father was Director of Education and as was fitting the young Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy before going up to Oriel, Oxford where he obtained a first class degree in English.

After a short interlude travelling with AJP Taylor in Austria, he embarked on an edition of Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays and also took up a post teaching English at Leeds University.

By 1935 he was married, Professor of English at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and had completed his first detective novel, Death at the President’s Lodging . This was an immediate success and part of a long running series centred on his character Inspector Appleby. A second novel, Hamlet Revenge, soon followed and overall he managed over fifty under the Innes banner during his career.

After returning to the UK in 1946 he took up a post with Queen’s University, Belfast before finally settling as Tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. His writing continued and he published a series of novels under his own name, along with short stories and some major academic contributions, including a major section on modern writers for the Oxford History of English Literature .

Whilst not wanting to leave his beloved Oxford permanently, he managed to fit in to his busy schedule a visiting Professorship at the University of Washington and was also honoured by other Universities in the UK.

His wife Margaret, whom he had met and married whilst at Leeds in 1932, had practised medicine in Australia and later in Oxford, died in 1979. They had five children, one of whom (Angus) is also a writer. Stewart himself died in November 1994 in a nursing home in Surrey.

PART ONE

THE NARRATIVE OF EWAN BELL

1

It will appear full plain in this narrative that Mr Wedderburn, the writer from Edinburgh, is as guileful as he’s douce – and that he has need of all the guile that Eve passed on from the Serpent may be supposed, him with his living to make among the lawyers. Gleg he is. And as a first proof here is Ewan Bell, the shoemaker of Kinkeig, taking pen in hand to begin fashion a book – and all because of the way he has with him, Mr Wedderburn. It was like this.

We two were sitting in his private room at the Arms, with a glass of toddy against the weather; and, faith, in those last days I had been through more than snow and a snell December wind, so that time had been when I scarce thought to see toddy and a brave fire again. We sat chewing over the whole strange affair – such, certain, had never been known in these parts – and syne Mr Wedderburn looked up from his glass and ‘Mr Bell,’ he said, ‘more than anything else it has been like a novel.’

‘Indeed, Mr Wedderburn,’ I replied, ‘that’s true; for it’s been nothing but plain work of the Devil from start to finish.’

He smiled at this in a canny way he has: often you think Mr Wedderburn must be seeing some joke other folk don’t see. Then he looked at me fell gravely and said: ‘I believe you could make an uncommonly good story of it yourself, Mr Bell. Why not try your hand?’

I was fair stammagasted at this: strange days, I thought, when a civil-spoken lawyer should say such a thing to an elder of the Kirk in Kinkeig. Power of invention is ever an evil lure, unless it be used for the godly purpose of conceived prayer. Yet here was Mr Wedderburn insinuating I was a romancer born, and presently urging me to write an account of the whole stour – not to any moral end but because it had the makings of a bit tale! There is ever something whimsical in Mr Wedderburn, dour as he can be at need, and this plan was sure the daftest ever. I said I had no fitness for such employment, being but a cobbler growing old, at his last.

‘Why, Mr Bell,’ he said, ‘it’s well known that after the minister and the dominie the sutor’s the man of learning in the parish.’

‘He’s said to be the atheist too,’ I replied right dryly, ‘and there are exceptions, maybe, to each rule.’ But I own I was pleased at what he said. Partly because I like the old words; long after Will Saunders had changed his bit board from Flesher to Family Butcher (which is a daft way of speaking, surely) I had bided Kinkeig’s sutor still. And partly I was well-pleased because I felt the saying true of our parish at this day: true and a bit more. For though we have a right learned minister in Dr Jervie never a dominie have we at all, the time of such being over and they replaced by unbedable queans: you can hear the scraich of the Kinkeig schoolmistress above the noise of the whole school skailing, and what man would want that by his lug in the morning? And though Miss Strachan – which is her name – has her letters from Edinburgh University she has nothing the learning of the old dominie; I mind having a bit crack with her once and she thought Plutarch had written his books in the Latin tongue: I was fell put out to change the subject. And yet pleased with herself she is: at Edinburgh she wrote a bit paper – thesis, she calls it – on The Cinema as an Aid in Visual Education , and her as proud as if she’s written Bain’s Logic or the Rhetoric of Dr Hugh Blair. I mind Rob Yule asking once: ‘And what is Visual Education?’ and before the woman could reply Will Saunders cutting in sharp: ‘It’s what Susannah afforded the elders.’ A daft speak and black affronted the schoolmistress: he’s but a coarse chiel, Will.

But it looks ill for my writing if I am to ramble like this.

I knew fine that if anyone in the parish was to tell the tale it must be myself, for none could expect it from Dr Jervie, who has learning for more important things. And, truth to tell, I am not an unread man, it being forty years since I followed Sir John Lubbock through the Hundred Best Books – and I doubt if the bit lassies at the colleges do that. Nevertheless I said to Mr Wedderburn now: ‘ Ne sutor ultra crepidam’ – that being, strange enough, the way the Romans told a man to mind his own affairs. And I won’t say that the fetching so trig a reply out of my head didn’t put me better-humoured still. Anyway, I was right content feeling those awful days were over.

But Mr Wedderburn gave no more than a nod to my bit Latin and went on. ‘Do you but begin, Mr Bell, and we’ll get others to take up the tale, and tell of their own part in it.’

‘Including yourself, Mr Wedderburn?’ I said this sharp, thinking to bring home the senselessness of the plan to him so.

‘To be sure,’ said he – and what did he do on that but order in more toddy!

I was fair stammagasted again. ‘Well,’ I said, doubtful, ‘I suppose there was Sir Walter.’

‘To be sure there was, Mr Bell. And we can be as anonymous as he was. You’ll remember Lockhart tells what a mystery the Great Enchanter was.’

I was pleased at his taking it for granted I’d read Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott . But even so, I believe I would have held out if my vanity hadn’t betrayed me. For I was just going to say No outright when – faith! – another appropriate bit Latin came into my head. ‘Mr Wedderburn,’ I said, ‘I’ll take it to avizandum’ – which is what his friends the judges at Edinburgh say when they’re afraid to give an opinion without sleeping on it. And at that he laughed and we left it until he was going back south next day.