Prester John - John Buchan

Odd that I should re-read, in the space of a week, two stories which I hated when forced to read them at school when I was twelve or thirteen; odder still that I should have bought both at the same time from my favourite bookshop, Skoob, underneath the Brunswick Centre in London.  The other, of course, was 'Odour of Chrysanthemums', which I didn't realise was in The Prussian Officer.

As a kid, it was the African names that put me off Prester John - typically, one of the reasons I like it so much now.  It takes some nerve to call your main location Blaauwildebeestefontein without batting an authorial eyelid.  And it's not as if Buchan was writing to a captive readership; this, in 1910, was his first bestseller.

Then, of course, the action and the issues were contemporary.  The last Boer War was only a few years ago and everyone would know (unlike me) about Beyer's masterstroke with the guns at the Wolkberg.  Not that it matters, though it is essential to read Buchan with an Edwardian eye.  He is unashamedly imperialist, but so was his world.  A purist would say he is racist.  I am not so sure.  He certainly patronises the natives but his hero, Crawfurd, repeatedly stresses the need to improve things for the Africans and he attacks those who exploit them.  The race he really despises is the Portugoose [sic], in the person of Henriques, who encourages a native rising purely to get his hands on their treasure.  Laputa, the 'heir of John', the would-be emperor, epitomises the noble savage.  His word can be relied upon.  His fall - literally - is an heroic end.

What people forget about Buchan is how good he was at maintaining the pace of an adventure.  Prester John is all action and fairly bowls along.  It's a Boys' Own adventure for slightly older boys.

The Prussian Officer - D H Lawrence

Poor old Lawrence never had any luck.  In July 1914 he marries a von Richtofen, in November he published a volume of short stories the first two of which are sympathetic portrayals of German soldiers.  A hundred years on, however, they are great stories.  The titular tail is really a collision of the castes: the officer is aristocratic, aloof from normal human emotion; his orderly is the common man, in love with a common woman.  'Thorn in the Flesh' is about new recruit Bachmann of whom too much is expected.

My favourites, though, are 'Daughters of the Vicar' and 'Odour of Chrysanthemums'.  'Daughters' is essentially about the class system in the same way as 'The Prussian Officer' - the good looking sister feels obliged to uphold the family status and thus submits to a loveless marriage with a strange vicar who comes from money.  The plain sister, meanwhile, falls passionately in love with a collier.  'Chrysanthemums', which I remember being forced to read at school when I was thirteen or so and had thus completely forgotten, is about the wife of a collier who has taken to drink.  She's stuck in the cottage with their two young children, waiting for him to come home, cursing him when he doesn't.  He's gone to the pub again, she assumes.  She won't lower herself to go and get him but she is willing to ask her neighbour to do so.  Eventually they bring Walter home.  He's been trapped in the mine for hours after everyone else went topside.  He suffocated.  His wife and his mother lay him out in the parlour.  For his mother he's a saint, for the wife he's dead meat.  She cannot comprehend that they were once one flesh.  She cannot mourn.

It is years and years since I read any Lawrence.  I had forgotten how ahead of his time he was, how preoccupied with sex and sensuality.   In many ways the short story form suits him best.  For me, the ones set in Nottinghamshire with an industrial background always hit the spot.  They don't necessarily have to be about mining - take for example 'Goose Fair' in this collection.