Josephine Tey Read online

  JOSEPHINE TEY

  JOSEPHINE TEY

  A life

  Jennifer Morag Henderson

  Foreword by Val McDermid

  First published in Great Britain and the United States of America

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Dochcarty Road

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9UG

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © Jennifer Morag Henderson 2015

  Editor: Moira Forsyth

  The moral right of Jennifer Morag Henderson to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  The publisher acknowledges support from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-910124-70-3

  ISBNe: 978-1-910124-71-0

  Jacket design and photo sections by Raspberry Creative Type, Edinburgh

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

  This book is dedicated to my mum Christine,

  who first introduced me to Josephine Tey.

  ‘Her life was much more than I ever imagined. My life expanded in the writing of hers.’

  Valerie Lawson, Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers

  (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013)

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword by Val McDermid

  Introduction: A Mystery Writer

  Part 1: 1896–1923: Elizabeth MacKintosh

  Chapter 1 ‘With Mr & Mrs MacKintosh’s Compliments’

  Chapter 2 Bessie

  Chapter 3 Secondary Schooldays, up until 1914

  Chapter 4 War, and first year at Anstey

  Chapter 5 Anstey’s second year, and teaching

  Part 2: 1924–1945: Gordon Daviot

  Chapter 6 Josephine, and Hugh Patrick Fraser

  Chapter 7 Short Stories and First Two Novels

  Chapter 8 The Expensive Halo, ‘Ellis’ and Invergordon

  Chapter 9 Richard of Bordeaux

  Chapter 10 The Laughing Woman

  Chapter 11 Queen of Scots

  Chapter 12 Hollywood and Josephine Tey

  Chapter 13 Claverhouse

  Chapter 14 The Second World War

  Part 3: 1946–1952: Josephine Tey

  Chapter 15 The Citizens Theatre

  Chapter 16 Miss Pym Disposes

  Chapter 17 Amateur Dramatics, Valerius and The Franchise Affair

  Chapter 18 The Malvern Festival and Brat Farrar

  Chapter 19 To Love and Be Wise

  Chapter 20 You Will Know the Truth

  Chapter 21 Beth’s Will, and Plays

  Chapter 22 The Singing Sands

  Conclusion

  Notes to the Text

  Select Bibliography

  List of Illustrations

  1. Beth, smartly dressed for London; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  2. John MacKintosh, Beth’s grandfather; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  3. Near Shieldaig today, site of Colin’s family croft; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  4. Beth’s maternal grandparents, Peter Horne and Jane Ellis; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  5. Josephine Horne and Colin MacKintosh; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  6. Beth, Etta and Jean MacKintosh; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  7. Summer holidays: Jean, Josephine and Beth; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  8. MacKintosh family portrait: Jean, Colin, Etta, Beth, Josephine; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  9. Jean, Beth, Etta, circa 1914; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  10. The monument to Colin’s parents; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  11. Pupils outside the Inverness Royal Academy, 1905; with thanks to the Inverness Royal Academy.

  12. The new art room at the IRA, 1912; ‘Inverness Royal Academy Higher Drawing Room, 1912’ © Andrew Paterson Collection.

  13. Inverness Royal Academy Gymnasium, 1912. This image was published in the Highland Times, 2nd July 1914. (© Andrew Paterson Collection)

  14. Anstey Physical Training College; with thanks to the Anstey Association.

  15. Beth, in her Anstey sports kit; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  16. Rhoda Anstey; with thanks to the Anstey Association.

  17. Gordon Barber.

  18. Colin and Josephine MacKintosh; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  19. Colin MacKintosh; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  20. Beth, interwar summer holidays; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  21. The letterhead from Colin’s shop; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  22. Castle Street in Inverness today: the site of Colin’s shop; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  23. The arrival of the London sleeper train at Inverness Railway station, early 20th century; with thanks to the Highland Railway Society.

  24. Hugh McIntosh’s house in London (on the left); from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  25. Hugh’s grave in Tomnahurich; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  26. Captain Murdoch Beaton, the inspiration for the fictional Murray Heaton; with thanks to Iain Beaton.

  27. Elizabeth MacKintosh’s first ‘author photo’ – never used: ‘Josephine Tey, December 1928/January 1929’ © Andrew Paterson Collection.

  28. The New Theatre, London (now the Noel Coward); from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  29. Gordon Daviot’s own copy of Richard of Bordeaux, signed by the cast; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  30. Magazines featuring Gordon Daviot’s first three plays; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  31. Peggy, Marda, Gwen and Gordon, Portmeirion, 1934; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  32. Gwen, Gordon and Peggy, Portmeirion, 1934; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  33. Tagley Cottage today; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  34. Humphrey, with Jean in the background; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  35. Jean’s husband, Humphrey Hugh Smith.

  36. Moire; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  37. Colin wrote to congratulate his youngest daughter on her pregnancy; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  38. Josephine Tey. Angus McBean Photograph © Houghton Library, Harvard University; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  39. Beth, 1949; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  40. Lena (centre) and Beth (right), Malvern, 1949; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  41. Gordon Daviot, Malvern Festival, 1949; with thanks to the Malvern Festival.

  42. Colin and Beth, 1949; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  43. Colin and Josephine MacKintosh’s simple grave marker; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  44. Richard of Bordeaux was reprised as a BBC radio drama shortly after Beth died – Moire’s collection of cuttings; with thanks to Colin Stokes.

  45. Beth’s novels and plays were reprinted many times; from the author’s collection © Jennifer Morag Henderson.

  Acknowledgements

  Full references and acknowledgements are given in the endnotes to the main text. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders.

  Thank you first of all to Mr Colin Stokes for generously sharing family papers, photographs and memories.

  Thanks to the National Trust, David Higham Associates and Mr Colin Stokes for permi
ssion to quote from Elizabeth MacKintosh’s published and unpublished writings.

  Quotes from John Gielgud are by kind permission of the trustees of the Sir John Gielgud Charitable Trust.

  Use of the Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies archive was made possible by kind permission of Margaret Westwood.

  Acknowledgements and thanks go to: the Dodie Smith Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University; the National Library of Scotland; the British Library; the Scottish Theatre Archive at the University of Glasgow; and Argyll & Bute Council Archives. Thank you to Dr Ida Webb, Prof Tansin Benn and the Anstey Association – particularly the Scottish section of the Association, for the invitation to their biannual meeting where they shared many stories of their Anstey experiences. I am grateful to Charles Bannerman for his help in accessing and understanding the Inverness Royal Academy archive, and thanks go to Academy archivist Robert Preece, particularly for his help with photos. Thank you also to the Highland Railway Society, to Iain Beaton, and to the Harvard Theatre Collection at the Houghton Library, Harvard University for further assistance with photos. Thank you to Valerie Lawson for allowing me to quote from her work.

  I should also like to acknowledge the following institutions and organizations, and their staff: Inverness Museum and Art Gallery (and Cait McCullagh); the Highland Archive Centre; Am Baile (and Jamie Gaukroger); the Paterson Collection (and Adrian Harvey); the National Archives of Scotland; Inverness Central Library; Malvern Theatres; the Applecross Heritage Centre (and Gordon Cameron); the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; the Highlander Museum at Fort George; the Inverness Local History Forum; and the Richard III Society.

  Researching and writing this biography took several years, and during that process I was lucky to meet many interesting people who shared their enthusiasm and expertise, and I should like to express my thanks to all of them. Many people replied to emails and took time to talk to me about Tey and about writing, including Judith Braid, Prof Ian Brown, Prof Gerry Carruthers, Catherine Deveney, Jane Dunn, Maureen Kenyon, Val McDermid, Shona MacLean, Tinch Minter, Donald Murray and Prof Alan Riach. Dr Helen Grime of the University of Winchester helped me navigate Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’ archive and world; Patrick Watt answered questions about the army and generously helped me with research into Tey’s soldiers; former librarian Norman Newton was the first to invite me to give a talk about Tey and has shared his wealth of local history knowledge; and my friends Stuart Wildig and Helen Young showed me how a Highlander could learn to like England and the English, and didn’t mind their holidays being taken up by visits to graveyards, strange houses and old theatres.

  Thank you also to Robert Davidson and Moira Forsyth of Sandstone Press.

  Finally, I should like to thank my family for supporting me and putting up with me: my mum Christine Henderson, whose fault it all is, and especially my husband Andrew Thomson and our son Alec. I could have done it without you, but I wouldn’t have wanted to.

  Foreword

  Val McDermid

  In 1990, the Crime Writers’ Association voted The Daughter of Time the best crime novel ever written. I can’t say I was surprised. I can still remember the excitement of my first encounter with Josephine Tey more than forty years ago. It was a battered, second-hand paperback of Miss Pym Disposes. I hadn’t read a crime novel like this before. It was the opposite of formulaic; it explored relationships and character in a nuanced way that made it feel much more modern than most other genre novels I’d read; and the ending was far from the usual cut-and-dried resolution of its era.

  It left me hungry for more. I soon discovered that Tey had produced a handful of novels that were still fascinatingly readable decades after their first publication. But more than that, they were all startlingly different from their contemporaries, cracking open the door that made possible the work of successors such as Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell and Gillian Flynn.

  That’s a significant achievement in itself, but the truth behind Josephine Tey’s pseudonym is so much more than that. Biographical information has always been scant, mostly because that’s the way this most private of authors wanted it. The brief details on her book jackets reveal that Tey was born Elizabeth MacKintosh and that she also enjoyed success under another pseudonym – Gordon Daviot, author of the West End hit Richard of Bordeaux, the springboard that launched John Gielgud to stardom.

  Sometimes they mention that she was a native of Inverness who lived most of her life there. But until now, Josephine Tey was herself the greatest mystery at the heart of her fiction.

  But at last, with Jennifer Morag Henderson’s biography, we can fill in the colours and bring animation to the sketchy outline of the life of one of our most significant crime writers, an author who provides a unique bridge between the Golden Age and the modern genre, a woman who characterized the detective novel as ‘a medium as disciplined as any sonnet’.

  With her access to family papers and previously unpublished material, a picture emerges of a writer with several strings to her bow. Acclaim as a playwright in London and with the pioneering Glasgow Citizens Theatre; success as a radio dramatist; a fledgling career as a Hollywood scriptwriter; a writer of short stories, historical biography and literary fiction. All of this has faded from public consciousness, but it sheds light on what shaped her.

  With this illumination of the life, the work becomes clearer. It’s hard to resist the sense of a life divided, and not just in the practical sense of the gap between the life Beth MacKintosh might have expected and the two she had. She left her native Inverness for Birmingham in her late teens to train as a PE teacher but the career she’d just begun to enjoy was cut short by the death of her mother and she returned to Inverness to take care of her father. Her emergence as a writer meant she spent a few weeks every year in London, giving an almost schizophrenic aspect to her life.

  In Inverness, she was the self-contained daughter of the local fruiterer who went to the cinema on her own; in London, she was a fêted playwright who moved in theatrical circles and attended glittering parties. She was a straight woman whose strongest friendships were with a group of lesbians that included actresses, artists and directors. She was a proud Highlander who left the bulk of her estate to the National Trust in England at a time when most of the Scottish literary establishment espoused Scottish nationalism. Yet somehow as a writer she was enriched by these contradictions, creating characters in her fiction who struggle constantly with the idea of identity.

  Jennifer Morag Henderson’s meticulous biography gives us the chance to understand what shaped Beth MacKintosh into the writer she became. It’s a revealing journey that makes sense of one of crime fiction’s most intriguing mysteries. Finally, we can feel we have come to know the crime writer’s crime writer.

  Val McDermid

  Introduction

  A Mystery Writer

  Mystery writer Josephine Tey’s work has never been out of print since her first book was published, over eighty years ago. Never backed by any publicity campaign, the books’ popularity has spread by word of mouth, and Tey is ranked among the best of the Golden Age crime writers, number Five to the Big Four of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham. Tey’s extraordinary novel The Daughter of Time, with its unique mix of contemporary detective work with the historical mystery of Richard III, was selected by the Crime Writers’ Association as the greatest mystery novel of all time. Josephine Tey’s novels have been adapted for radio, television and film – most notably by Alfred Hitchcock – and they have been cited as inspiration by many modern writers, including Ian Rankin. And yet, Josephine Tey herself is a mystery.

  There has never been a full-length biography of Tey, and most readers’ knowledge of her is limited to the brief blurb on the back of her books. That blurb only raises more questions, for all it says is that ‘Josephine Tey’ was a pen-name for a woman called Elizabeth MacKintosh from Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, who was once a PE teacher, and who, after her death at the ear
ly age of 55 in 1952, left her fortune and the copyright to her books to the National Trust in England.

  A little more digging reveals the information that, before Elizabeth MacKintosh wrote the ‘Josephine Tey’ crime novels, she had another ‘life’ as an extremely successful novelist and playwright under a different pen-name – ‘Gordon Daviot’. Gordon Daviot’s first play Richard of Bordeaux launched the career of a young John Gielgud, and she worked, and was friends with, the best stage actors of the 1930s, including Laurence Olivier and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies.

  Despite her popularity, however, information on ‘Gordon Daviot’ seems almost as scarce as information on ‘Josephine Tey’. Two short biographical essays written by her near-contemporaries talk about an ‘enigma’, ‘a lone wolf’, ‘a strange character’ – a mysterious woman writer from the Highlands with a secret life, possibly a secret past, perhaps even a tragic romantic past.

  Elizabeth MacKintosh was a mystery to those around her because she inhabited more than one world, and lived more than one life. Yet she is a writer whose work and life should be understood. A brief snapshot of Elizabeth MacKintosh’s life in the late 1940s gives an idea of the very different worlds that she inhabited, a glimpse of the sort of woman she was – and an idea of just how important her work was, and how highly it was rated by the influential and important names of the literary and theatrical worlds.

  By late 1949, Elizabeth had re-established some routine in her life after the disruption of the Second World War. She was at the height of her writing powers, completing The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar and To Love and Be Wise, and publishing at least one new work a year. Most of the time she was settled in Crown Cottage, her father Colin’s home, situated in a good area of Inverness, in the north of Scotland. Elizabeth was needed at Crown Cottage as housekeeper, organizing the chores in the large house with only occasional help. She and her father Colin took pride in their beautiful garden, growing roses admired by their neighbours. Inverness was still a small town of around 20,000 people, and almost everyone knew everyone else. Elizabeth was surrounded by people she had gone to school with, their children and families, but she held herself slightly aloof from them. With no children herself, she was no longer involved with teaching or the local schools, or the friendly chats over tea that other women, mothers and grandmothers her age, indulged in. Instead, Elizabeth settled into a routine that allowed her enough time to care for Colin and the house, enough time for her hobbies, such as walking – but plenty of time to focus on her writing career.