Gavin Maxwell, author of Ring of Bright Water, has been dead for
nearly a quarter of a century. His celebrated house at Sandaig, by
Glenelg -- Camusfearna -- was burned to the ground the year before his
death. Today the Skye bridge is goring through his final retreat on the
island at Kyleakin. Yet the life of this elusive and unhappy man
continues to fascinate. Thousands still make the trek to Sandaig to gaze
upon the site of his dream, and the grave of his otter, Edal. Now there
is an authorised biography, published this month.
THE brave man who would attempt to chronicle the life of Gavin Maxwell
faces three problems. Most of Maxwell's life was recorded by Maxwell
himself -- of his 10 books, seven were virtual autobiography,
incomparably written at that -- and the biographer has inevitably to
recycle much of that material.
The second is Maxwell's sexuality -- at once flawed and veiled. He is
often dismissed as a homosexual, but it was not nearly as simple as
that; he was briefly married, and enjoyed other heterosexual
relationships.
And the third is Jimmy Watt: Maxwell's long-time youthful assistant at
Sandaig, and at the end, his heir. Watt still holds the greater control
of Maxwell's literary estate -- and wielded final sanction over the long
overdue execution of an authorised biography.
Douglas Botting ''knew Maxwell well during the last 12 years of his
life'', trills the blurb, ''and has been given full access to his
letters, friends, papers, and acquaintances''. But there was a price to
pay, and poor Botting has to record it in the preface. ''Readers who
view modern biography as a kind of voyeurs' bazaar may be disappointed
that I have felt unable to pursue this aspect. Maxwell's homosexuality
to the last drop and tittle of detail.'' And he unblushingly reveals
that Maxwell's literary trustees have insisted that this aspect of the
great man's life be discussed only in broad general terms, ''with no
references to specifics''.
Botting admits that this gives Maxwell's conventional affaires a
''disproportionate emphasis'' in the book; he further, and with some
heat, insists that ''friends of Gavin Maxwell who appear in this book
are just that -- friends''.
It won't do. Our trust in the author is derailed from the start, and a
cloud of doubt still descends round all Maxwell's friendships, and
especially relations with his very young (and handsome) retainers at
Sandaig. Meanwhile, silly coyness marks Botting's account of the long
''outed'' homosexual ties -- though that has not stopped one paper from
''extracting'' the relevant section with salacious satisfaction. And two
longstanding famae against Maxwell -- that he was in youth blackmailed
out of a fortune after one homosexual entanglement; and that his later
marriage to Lavinis Renton was motivated by sexual attraction to her
young sons -- are simply ignored.
It is wrong for a writer to embark on any project under such
restriction; it is grossly unfair to admirers of the man, and indeed to
the memory of Maxwell himself. One does not need every last detail of
sodomy; the reader nevertheless deserves a clear-cut line between such
man-to-man friendships of Maxwell's as were wholesome and such as were
not. This now is denied; but so to read.
MAXWELL'S 55 years may be briefly described. At one level it was a
glamorous, Buchanesque adventure -- born the scion of Borders
aristocracy, reared with nature -- notebook in one hand, shotgun in the
other, early an Arctic explorer, in war a training-officer in the
top-secret Special Operations Executive. There follows the famous
shark-hunting venture from the Isle of Soay, its collapse and ruin; a
hand-to-mouth existence as a (bad) society portrait-painter; weekends as
a skilled amateur racing-driver; eligible bachelor in glittering London
(he briefly courted Princess Margaret, and there was talk of marriage)
and emerging writer-adventurer, with memorable travels to Iraq, Sicily
and North Africa.
Meanwhile he constructed a private haven -- born from poverty rather
than whimsy; a remote cottage, lacking every convenience, in the lovely
bay of Sandaig. And, from Iraq, he brought a pet otter. At length, in
1960, appeared Ring of Bright Water, the lyrical account of his western
retreat. It became a worldwide best seller, and made Maxwell a fortune.
But under all this thrashed Maxwell the Greek tragedy. He was a highly
strung, highly disturbed, profoundly inadequate man. He grew up without
a father (Maxwell pere fell in the Great War, when his youngest son was
less than three months old). A secluded childhood was rudely ended by
the plunge -- when the boy was only 10 -- into the barbaric world of
English boarding schools. His schooling ended in long and near mortal
illness when Maxwell was 16.
Gavin Maxwell, the man, was incapable of controlling money. The
fortune from Ring was squandered like other windfalls before. As vanity
and greed grew upon him, the simple bothy of Sandaig became a complex
empire -- complete with telephone, electricity, motor launch, Jeeps,
staff -- that, in today's terms, cost #75,000 a year to run.
He was incapable of close long-term adult relationships. He doted on
boys and animals; loves, by their very nature, ephemeral and
unrewarding.
His life was a drama he consciously enacted before he wrote it. It was
a saga, at the last, of self-destruction, marked by almost supernatural
ill-luck -- shipwrecks, car crashes, fires, floods, betrayals, defeats
and disasters galore -- and ended in an early death, miserably, of
cancer, as a very poor man.
Yet his friends loved him. At his best he was a sparkling companion.
Maxwell wrote some of the finest prose in post-war English -- liquid,
glittering, marked by a hard integrity of observation and self-analysis.
He knew himself for what he was. And, in the end, he wanted only to die.
BOTTING'S biography is a fair, detailed account of Maxwell's career,
not blinded by any means to the faults of the man, and eminently
readable. There are, as we have seen, odd omissions.
Like many ''friendship biographies'' -- Walter Hooper's studies of C S
Lewis make a good example -- he finds it hard to keep his own identity
secure. At times Botting writes like Maxwell, only not so well.
The book is consciously devised to resemble Longman's fine Maxwell
editions of the sixties -- large print, stout paper, ottery endpapers
and decorations. It has a satisfying weight in the hand. Like Gilbert's
official biography of Churchill it will be the official mine for future
writers. But, as an acute portrait of Gavin Maxwell, it is not nearly as
good as Richard Frere's moving 1976 memoir, Maxwell's Ghost.
Maxwell today appeals because of his association with lost values --
heroism, nobility, hardship, friendship. His life sought the highest
ideals of humanism -- courage, honesty, scientific endeavour. Today
there are no such heroes. Ring of Bright Water was a dream for its day.
In the nineties we have other fantasy books -- a French cottage,
abundant food, flowing booze, racial caricature, all lovingly retailed
by the creator of a cartoon penis.
* Gavin Maxwell: A life. By Douglas Botting. pp585. Harper Collins
#22.50.
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