Amazing Stories from the Web
Part 2
ELIZABETH, GORDON AND JOSPHINE
PRE-READING
Discussion Questions
1. If you ever wrote a book, would you use a pen-name? Why/Why not?
2. Do you prefer prose, poetry or drama? Why?
On February 14, 1952, massive crowds assembled at Westminster Hall to pay their last respects to King George VI, who died on February 6. The new young Queen Elizabeth II graciously received condolences. Congratulations on her becoming Queen were to follow later. All the newspapers, naturally, were full of the funeral. A notice in the obituaries column in London’s “The Times” went unnoticed. “Gordon Daviot, playwright and novelist, February 13, 1952, in London…”
The name Gordon
Daviot, of course, was well-known to the British theater-going public. Indeed, Rex
Harrison, who shot to incredible fame in 1956, as the best Professor Higgins of the new
musical “My Fair Lady”, wrote about the playwright in his memoirs. Daviot’s
play “Richard of Bordeaux” was among those admired by Sir John Gielgud, another
theater legend. Mary Higgins Clark, the American thriller writer titled “the queen of
suspense”, whose books have been in various bestseller lists for decades, mentions an
author whose books she loved to read as a young woman. She tells us that Josephine Tey,
with her detective novels “The Daughter of Time”, and “The Man in the Queue”, was
a great influence on the genre. Last but not least, Elizabeth MacIntosh, born in
Scotland, was mourned by her friends, who knew her as a lovely retiring woman of many
talents and accomplishments.
Elizabeth, Bessie and Betsy… As we know from a nursery rhyme, all these are really the same person. In our case, more unusually, Elizabeth, Gordon and Josephine are also the same person.
Elizabeth MacIntosh was born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1896. She received training and began her working career as a physical training instructress at a college in Birmingham. After several years as a teacher, she had to return home to take care of her ailing father. A working woman was still a rarity at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the other hand, it was considered natural to break up a woman’s career, even her whole life, if one of her male relatives needed special care. Amazingly, in spite of the many household duties, she found time to write. Some short stories were accepted by various periodicals. Elizabeth studied theater and tried her hand at writing a play. In 1932, her first and most successful play Richard of Bordeaux was first performed, to immediate success. Gordon Daviot, playwright, was born. Gordon Daviot continued writing his plays, sometimes to critical acclaim, often to enthusiastic response from the audience, rarely to both. The name became well-known in the theater world. Ironically, not even the performers, let alone the general public, knew the real identity of the author.
She wrote her first detective novel, “The Man in the Queue”, for a literary competition in 1929. Inspector Alan Grant became her main character for most of the detective fiction she was to write. She signed the novels with the pseudonym Josephine Tey, Josephine being her mother’s first name, while Tey was the last name of a distant grandmother. Obviously, in Elizabeth’s mind, writing detective stories for publication, and writing plays for performance, were two completely different occupations. Thus two completely different personas, about whom neither the critics nor the readers or theater goers knew much. Sir John Gielgud, who played the leading roles in all her plays and was a life-long friend, explained that it was not secrecy as much as shyness which made Elizabeth keep to the shadows. It seems that when she wrote a detective novel and sent it in for a competition, or when she wrote a play and submitted it to a theatrical agent, she never expected her work to attain fame and success at once.
It is clear from both her plays and her detective fiction that she was fascinated by history, and by psychology. In all of her works, the characters try to search the past in order to understand the present. And in all of her works, she tries to find explanations for the human behaviour. “The Man in the Queue”, while paying tribute to her colleagues and contemporaries, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, is different in that the author’s main interest lies in the “why” it was done, not “who” did it, or “whodunit”, as the genre was called. Her main hero is the police inspector who pursues his quarry to the ends of the Earth, if necessary. It is inspector Grant’s motivation we see; it is his dedication, even his obsession with his job that makes up the plot. The author was also fascinated by the exploration of the fact that an innocent person might be persecuted, and from there she went on to examine minutely the evidence of a crime committed by any of her characters.
Her novel “The Daughter of Time” (1951), featuring inspector Grant, holds a unique place in detective fiction for its serious contribution to historical knowledge. In it, she gives her own interpretation of the events which led to the infamous murder of the two young princes, allegedly by Richard III. It is cleverly built as a series of flash backs which inspector Grant experiences while convalescing in a hospital after a wound. It was often said that her mysteries are enjoyed by people “who don’t” mysteries, meaning that her detective stories are popular among those who do not usually read such fiction.
According to her friends, Elizabeth enjoyed the good things in life, including clothes, good food and wine, horse-racing, fishing, and the cinema. “She went to the cinema twice a week in Inverness, and preferred to discuss films – their acting and direction – rather than plays, which she very seldom had an opportunity of seeing,” Gielgud explained. Generally a recluse, Gordon Daviot rarely went to church; however she was a diligent student of the Bible and could expound on it at length. She had a great interest in history and strove to distinguish fact from legend by painstaking and detailed research. As a character says in The Daughter of Time, “Give me research. After all, the truth of anything at all doesn’t lie in someone’s account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house. The price of a ring.” When asked about her success, she replied that she could always find a four-leaved clover in any bunch of field flowers.
Elizabeth MacIntosh never married. It is not known for sure whether she had a love interest who might have perished in World War One. Although she was born and bred in Scotland, she loved England with all her soul. She left all of her considerable fortune to the National Trust for England, for the preservation of historical homes and monuments. Her valuable personal possessions, including an early Victorian gold ring set with emeralds and diamonds, which she had worn for the greater part of her life, she left to the Inverness Museum.
pseudonym n. pen-name, a name used by a writer instead of their own one. P is silent (when you say the word, you do not pronounce [p]
If you are interested in this story, you can enter into the address line either one of the three names which Ms. MacIntosh used for herself during her short life, or use a search engine <yahoo.com>, <google.com>.
You can also enter <Guttenberg books online> to read the texts of various books.