📖 Greenmantle ✍

There’s no way to take John Buchan seriously today, but for sheer escapist, eclectic tosh, he’s very entertaining, especially as a free download from a library. I’m not even sure how to go about reviewing the book, and while procrastinating I tried to find contemporary reviews to see how it might have been received in 1916, scant months after the events it depicts. Alas, my knack for finding things quite by accident is way less developed than Richard Hannay’s.

I did find some more contemporary scribblings that generally give a plot synopsis and, usually, some choice quotes that nod to the fact that Buchan was writing at A Different Time.

Who am I to argue? Here are my two choice quotes.¹

In the caravanserais of Bokhara and Samarkand he is known, and there are shikaris in the Pamirs who still speak of him round their fires. If you were going to visit Petrograd or Rome or Cairo it would be no use asking him for introductions; if he gave them, they would lead you into strange haunts. But if Fate compelled you to go to Llasa or Yarkand or Seistan he could map out your road for you and pass the word to potent friends.

That’s Hannay’s introduction to Ludovick Gustavus “Sandy” Arbuthnot, his battalion colleague from the little scrap at Loos. Sandy is both a master of disguise and of turning up at exactly the right moment.

One big difference between Greenmantle and The 39 Steps, Buchan’s first Hannay book, is the presence of a woman, the evil, mad, bad, evil, evil Hilda von Einem. Hannay goes weak at the knees in her presence, despite his lack of experience with the fair sex, and she may well have fallen in love with Sandy. John Scantlebury Blenkiron, the dyspeptic American businessman, unsurprisingly has no idea what to make of Hilda.

I guess we Americans haven’t got the right poise for dealing with that kind of female. We’ve exalted our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life. Consequently, when we strike one playing the biggest kind of man’s game we can’t place her. We aren’t used to regarding them as anything except angels and children. I wish I had had you boys’ upbringing.’

I haven’t mentioned Piet Pienaar, the cunning Boer hunter from Hannay’s days on the high veldt, who just so happens to show up in Lisbon when he is needed and who, I would argue, is the true hero of the story, if there be only one.

A cracking romp, as long as you don’t take it too seriously.