The Grove of Ashtaroth
John Buchan
Location: Welgevonden, South Africa.
Time: June, 1910.
Eyewitness Description: “And then I honestly began to be afraid. I, a prosaic modern Christian gentleman, a half-believer in casual faiths, was in the presence of some hoary mystery of sin far older than creeds or Christendom. There was fear in my heart.”
Author: John Buchan (1875–1940) was another man for whom the start of the 20th century would mean a significant shift in his fortunes from “half barrister and half writer”, to quote his own words. The early years of the new century were spent in South Africa, which would provide the raw material for some of his later books, notably the fantasy adventure Prester John (1910), and the spur five years later for his immortal spy thriller, The 39 Steps. “The Grove of Ashtaroth” draws on his knowledge of South African supernaturalism to tell the story of a young man who falls under the spell of an old temple dedicated to the worship of an ancient goddess. It is a significant story among Buchan’s work in that critics have in the past used the part-Jewish hero as an example of his anti-Semitism. In fact, although Buchan did make the occasional tasteless remark about Jews in his fiction – as did many other leading writers of the period – he numbered several among his friends and was one of the first important literary figures to denounce Hitler’s persecution of the race during his rise to power.
We were sitting around the camp fire, some thirty miles north of a place called Taqui, when Lawson announced his intention of finding a home. He had spoken little the last day or two, and I had guessed that he had struck a vein of private reflection. I thought it might be a new mine or irrigation scheme, and I was surprised to find that it was a country house.
“I don’t think I shall go back to England,” he said, kicking a sputtering log into place. “I don’t see why I should. For business purposes I am far more useful to the firm in South Africa than in Throgmorton Street. I have no relations left except a third cousin, and I have never cared a rush for living in town. That beastly house of mine in Hill Street will fetch what I gave for it, – Isaacson cabled about it the other day, offering for furniture and all. I don’t want to go into Parliament, and I hate shooting little birds and tame deer. I am one of those fellows who are born Colonial at heart, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t arrange my life as I please. Besides, for ten years I have been falling in love with this country, and now I am up to the neck.”
He flung himself back in the camp-chair till the canvas creaked, and looked at me below his eyelids. I remember glancing at the lines of him, and thinking what a fine make of a man he was. In his untanned field-boots, breeches, and grey shirt he looked the born wilderness-hunter, though less than two months before he had been driving down to the City every morning in the sombre regimentals of his class. Being a fair man, he was gloriously tanned, and there was a clear line at his shirt-collar to mark the limits of his sunburn. I had first known him years ago, when he was a broker’s clerk working on half commission. Then he had gone to South Africa, and soon I heard he was a partner in a mining house which was doing wonders with some gold areas in the North. The next step was his return to London as the new millionaire – young, good-looking, wholesome in mind and body, and much sought after by the mothers of marriageable girls. We played polo together, and hunted a little in the season, but there were signs that he did not propose to become the conventional English gentleman. He refused to buy a place in the country, though half the Homes of England were at his disposal. He was a very busy man, he declared, and had not time to be a squire. Besides, every few months he used to rush out to South Africa. I saw that he was restless, for he was always badgering me to go big-game hunting with him in some remote part of the earth. There was that in his eyes, too, which marked him out from the ordinary blonde type of our countrymen. They were large and brown and mysterious, and the light of another race was in their odd depths.
To hint such a thing would have meant a breach of friendship, for Lawson was very proud of his birth. When he first made his fortune he had gone to the Heralds to discover his family, and those obliging gentlemen had provided a pedigree. It appeared that he was a scion of the house of Lowson or Lowieson, an ancient and rather disreputable clan on the Scottish side of the Border. He took a shooting in Teviotdale on the strength of it, and used to commit lengthy Border ballads to memory. But I had known his father, a financial journalist who never quite succeeded, and I had heard of a grandfather who sold antiques in a back street at Brighton. The latter, I think, had not changed his name, and still frequented the synagogue. The father was a progressive Christian, and the mother had been a blonde Saxon from the Midlands. In my mind there was no doubt, as I caught Lawson’s heavy-lidded eyes fixed on me. My friend was of a more ancient race than the Lowsons of the Border.
“Where are you thinking of looking for your house?” I asked. “In Natal or in the Cape Peninsula? You might get the Fishers’ place if you paid a price.”
“The Fishers’ place be hanged!” he said crossly. “I don’t want any stuccoed overgrown Dutch farm. I might as well be at Roehampton as in the Cape.”
He got up and walked to the far side of the fire, where a lane ran down through thornscrub to a gully of the hills. The moon was silvering the bush of the plains, forty miles off and three thousand feet below us.
“I am going to live somewhere hereabouts,” he answered at last.
I whistled. “Then you’ve got to put your hand in your pocket, old man. You’ll have to make everything, including a map of the countryside.”
“I know,” he said; “that’s where the fun comes in. Hang it all, why shouldn’t I indulge my fancy? I’m uncommonly well off, and I haven’t chick or child to leave it to. Supposing I’m a hundred miles from a railhead, what about it? I’ll make a motor-road and fix up a telephone. I’ll grow most of my supplies, and start a colony to provide labour. When you come and stay with me, you’ll get the best food and drink on earth, and sport that will make your mouth water. I’ll put Lochleven trout in these streams – at 6,000 feet you can do anything. We’ll have a pack of hounds, too, and we can drive pig in the woods, and if we want big game there are the Mangwe flats at our feet. I tell you I’ll make such a country-house as nobody ever dreamed of. A man will come plumb out of stark savagery into lawns and rose-gardens.” Lawson flung himself into his chair again and smiled dreamily at the fire.
“But why here, of all places?” I persisted. I was not feeling very well and did not care for the country.
“I can’t quite explain. I think it’s the sort of land I have always been looking for. I always fancied a house on a green plateau in a decent climate looking down on the tropics. I like heat and colour, you know, but I like hills too, and greenery, and the things that bring back Scotland. Give me a cross between Teviotdale and the Orinoco, and, by Gad! I think I’ve got it here.”
I watched my friend curiously, as with bright eyes and eager voice he talked of his new fad. The two races were very clear in him – the one desiring gorgeousness, the other athirst for the soothing spaces of the North. He began to plan out the house. He would get Adamson to design it, and it was to grow out of the landscape like a stone on the hillside. There would be wide verandahs and cool halls, but great fireplaces against winter time. It would all be very simple and fresh – “clean as morning” was his odd phrase; but then another idea supervened, and he talked of bringing the Tintorets from Hill Street. “I want it to be a civilised house, you know. No silly luxury, but the best pictures and china and books . . . I’ll have all the furniture made after the old plain English models out of native woods. I don’t want second-hand sticks in a new country. Yes, by Jove, the Tintorets are a great idea, and all those Ming pots I bought. I had meant to sell them, but I’ll have them out here.”