The Proper Place by O Douglas
published 1926
[excerpt] Dr. Kilgour had already drunk two large cups of tea, and
was enormously enjoying the hot scones and the feather-light “dropped” scones.
“Curious eerie time, Hallowe’en,” he remarked; “cold winds,
cabbage runts, red apples, and looking-glasses! You know the superstition that
if a girl looks into the glass at midnight on Hallowe’en, she’ll see the man
she’s to wed? A farmer’s wife near here, I’ve been told, advised the pretty
kitchen-maid to go and look. The girl came back—‘Sic blethers,’ she said, ‘I
only saw the maister an’ his black dowg.’
‘Be kind to ma bairns,’ said her mistress, and before
Hallowe’en came round again she was dead, and the kitchen-lass reigned in her
stead. . . . What d’you think of that, Miss Symington?”
“It’s not very likely to be true,” Miss Symington said
prosaically.
Lady Jane laughed. “It’s a good tale, anyway,” she said.
“Pass Alastair the chocolate biscuits, Nikky. Babs dear, will you cut the cake.
. . .”
Immediately after tea a small wooden tub half full of water
was set on a bath-mat by the careful Christina in the middle of the
drawing-room floor, the apples were poured in, and Barbara stirred them about
with a porridge stick, while Nicole knelt on the seat of a chair, with a fork
in her hand…She hung over the back of the chair waiting an opportunity to drop
the fork among the rosy bobbing apples. She chose her time badly and the fork
slid harmless to the bottom of the tub.
comments: We are in The Harbour House in a small Scottish town. This
is a serious comedown for the family who have just moved there from their posh house in the country, but sounds quite acceptable to the rest of us.
New friends have gathered for this small Halloween party: a
classic O Douglas setting. I thought the doctor’s story was quite
extraordinarily unnerving, and it has stuck in my mind since I read the book.
(I explained earlier
in the year how I came to binge on O Douglas, courtesy of
blogfriend Shay: and there is another post
on this book here)
Their method of ducking for apples – trying to spear them with a fork – was unfamiliar to me. As in Agatha Christie’s Halloween Party (though with less desperate results), our custom was to lean into the tub to grab the apples with your teeth.
The book tells the story of three women who are running out of money and have to sell their lovely house to a nouveau riche Glasgow family – in trade, obv. The two families keep up a solid connection, and The Proper Place of the title is a reference to who belongs where. The author doesn’t have much time for social mobility, though Mrs Jackson, the new lady of the manor, is a lovely and well-drawn character: Douglas pokes gentle fun at her, but also shows her good heart and lack of pretension.
Similar fortune-telling apparently took place in Russia on Twelfth Night - all gone into in this post on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.
Twelfth Night: Fortune-Telling in Russia
There'll be more on apple-ducking later in the week.
This does sound properly eerie, Moira. And I thought of Hallowe'en Party , too! It's just the right sort of story for the time of year. I like the sense of atmosphere just from the bits you've shared.
ReplyDeleteHalloween is a great opportunity for authors to write atmospheric scenes, and I love it when they make the most of it
DeleteDropping the fork into the tub seems a waste of time as a way of bobbing for apples! (Even stabbing with the fork, as in spearing fish, would be nearly useless given the way apples behave in water.) Back to eeriness, have you been over to "Ah Sweet Mystery"--Celia Fremlin's short stories can be pretty spooky.
ReplyDeleteNo, I really cannot see how the fork thing works.
DeleteNice post from Brad - I read the book back in 2017, so am thinking I might read it again as I've probably forgotten enough about the stories.
No way is the fork-dropping ever going to work. Presumably it’s a gesture towards Hallowe’en tradition for the genteel who don’t want to get their hair wet – the only effective apple-bobbing technique in my experience is to take a deep breath, stick your head right in and pin an apple to the bottom of the bucket with your face for long enough to get your teeth into it.
DeleteSovay
There's going to be another Halloween post, different book, which will suggest that it is a class-based difference...
DeleteI may have to do some experiments
The practice of looking in the mirror on Hallowe'en and seeing your future husband (or no one) has me creeped out. I guess I ran across it here and there in Britlit, but didn't actually notice it until I read a fairly unsettling episode in one of Molly Clavering's books. (I think Susan Settles Down.) I really had no idea what it was about, but apparently the young woman was terrified at what she saw in the mirror, and shortly after she met with a tragic end. It seems that if you see no one behind you, you will die an old maid. Though how soon, I couldn't say....
ReplyDeleteThe thought of looking in the mirror to see something other than your own reflection is a far from comfortable thought. Brrr....
I think it was a classic thing that is terrifying but attractive to young women, we messed around with it when we were teenagers, not really believing, but.... there was also something about peeling an apple, then throwing the skin over your shoulder. Supposedly it would fall on the floor in the shape of the initial letter of your future husband's name. (Even as I'm typing this I'm thinking how ridiculous it was.)
DeleteBut the mirror idea is genuinely spooky.
I remember doing the apple- peeling – as I think Terry Pratchett points out, it’s only going to work if the future husband’s initial is S or C. Also pouring melted lead into cold water and divining the future from the shapes it set in – much the same idea as reading tealeaves. I never had the nerve to do the mirror spell – if I ever see anyone behind me in a mirror who isn’t actually standing behind me in the room, I intend to go into Strong Hysterics.
DeleteSovay
Yes, I was thinking exactly the same as Lord Terry of Pratchett when I was remembering it! Note exactly going to marry Mr Quirk or Mr Barlow are you?
DeleteThe mirror thing is a scarey idea. Is there a fictional time where someone fakes it to fool a girl?
I can’t recall ever reading anything with that specific premise, though somewhere in the back of my mind is a short story, possibly by Michael Innes, in which a supposedly dead man poses as a ghost by contriving to appear mysteriously in mirrors.
DeleteSovay
That rings a faint bell. If anyone can remember such an incident I would expect it to be you Sovay.
DeleteThe story of the farmer’s wife and the kitchen-maid actually ended less scarily than I feared it would – my immediate thought was that the kitchen-maid had seen the devil (aka the Master or Maister), who traditionally appears as, or accompanied by, a “black dowg”.
ReplyDeleteI hope she was kind to the bairns …
Sovay
I wondered about the dog symbolizing death. I also wondered if it wasn't a con by the maid and Hubby who planned to dispose of the wife, and wanted to play on her superstitions--detective novels on the brain, I guess.
DeleteI normally have detective stories on the brain but that hadn't occurred to me - it would be a good ploy though because the mirror spell has to be cast alone, so the farmer's wife couldn't know what the maid had or hadn't seen.
DeleteSovay
You have a suspicious nature Marty! I like to take the supernatural version, and I did wonder about the black dog. 'Be kind to ma bairns' is the bit that sticks with me.
DeleteI knew of a family where the mother died very young: the nanny (who was staunchly helping out during all this) boasted to the other local nannies on a drunken night out 'I'll have married him [ie the widowed husband] by the time the year is out.' And she did.
Somehow the thought of nannies on a drunken night out rather frightens me. But it's obviously better than getting drunk on the job! And the thought of the bairns losing their mother is rather poignant, especially with the wicked-stepmother trope in everyone's mind. Even a perfectly nice stepmom would be a big adjustment.
DeleteTerry Pratchett's Nanny Ogg comes instantly to mind in connection with drunken nights out, though she's not quite the same kind of nanny. I wouldn't put it past her to make a play for the widower either, even if he's a third of her age.
DeleteMarrying the nanny ... on the one hand the bairns already know and (hopefully) like her; on the other, there might be that suspicion in the back of their minds as they grew up - was there something going on between Dad and the nanny whilst Mum was dying?
Sovay
Sovay
Marty: fair enough for the nannies to have a night off! The parents had drunken nights out too...
DeleteSovay: now I feel I want to read some TP. Such a wonderful writer.
Both: Yes, the stepmother thing can so clearly go either way. And then looking back, all those Victorian mothers dying in childbirth and the fathers re-marrying - so many children must have grown up in that situation.
I didn't know the family in my anecdote well, but the thought of it has stayed in my mind for many years. I don't know how it turned out at all.
Just thought that I would add this bit of information. Of course women did die in childbirth, or even sometimes from a miscarriage, but we have forgotten the great scourge of the nineteenth century, which was TB, affecting mostly young people, also creating many stepfamilies. Chrissie
DeleteOh yes, thank you for adding that. It is horrible, once you start reading about it, to realize what a huge problem and horrible disease it was.
DeleteI can vouch for fork apple dooking!
ReplyDeleteWe started during the pandemic, it's much less likely to get water everywhere.
The dooker stands on a step stool and drops the fork (post pandemic we sometimes make them hold the handle in their mouth). It works better in a more cylindrical shaped container like a bucket.
I suppose if you pack the apples tightly into the bucket and use a sharp fork ...but getting water everywhere is half the fun!
DeleteSovay
Thanks for the lived experience! I still can't quite imagine it, will have to have a go.
DeleteI hadn't thought of the pandemic's effect on bobbing for apples, but it makes sense not to have people sticking their faces into the same tub of water Wonder if the flu epidemic after WW1 had the same effect?
DeleteI suppose at a big party? if it was just immediate family you'd think it wouldn't make any difference...
DeleteDooking with forks, umm, interesting, might give it a go. O Douglas seems a bit hard work generally but this sounds really entertaining despite the Scots dialect dialogue.
ReplyDeleteShe annoyed me, but I couldn't stop reading! And I am very unreceptive to dialect in fiction, but it didn't bother me on the whole. Attitudes were what got to me...
DeleteThat is a very unsettling story! Mirrors can be rather uncanny things generally. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteUnsettling is exactly the right word!
Delete