HATTERS CASTLE

                                             BOOK REVIEW: HATTERS CASTLE

AJ Cronin, Hatters Castle, Franklin Classic, (1931), Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1947. (Facsimile 605 pages.)

AJ Cronin is a master of articulation. This finely crafted masterpiece of Scottish literature twists and turns like the swollen and fast-flowing River Leven between Loch Lomond and Dumbarton, in which latter town the dreich, dour, and depressing tale is mostly set and told. But, fear not! Though the subject matter is harrowing, the writing is magnificent! And, the sporadic use of the beautiful Doric dialogue should be of no great challenge to all lovers of languages.

Set in the late 1800s, the streets (such as Station Road, the Vennel, Church Street), and local placenames mentioned (Levenford, the Common, Cottage Hospital), will have the average “Son (or daughter!) of the Rock” (i.e., Dumbartonians) travelling down memory lane, (if such lane can be found after all the years of town-planning mismanagement!). Dumbarton’s Cronin Street memorialises the author.

First copyrighted in 1931, this piece of classic literature, in which Cronin’s omniscient reading of his characters’ thoughts, impulses, and emotions, betray his study of the human psyche as does his medical references reveal his erudition in the fields of medicine and medical conditions.

Whether set indoors or out, Cronin’s highly descriptive use of language has the reader participate (as the proverbial fly on the wall) in each of the book’s scenes, practically engaging the five senses of tasting, smelling, hearing, seeing, and touching. He has you run the whole gamut of emotions, but mostly that of weeping as you follow along from one tangled knot on the story’s thread to another.       

In short, Hatters Castle is home to the Brodie family, over whom the belligerent and abrasive father, James Brodie, the king of the castle, iron-fistedly rules like some tyrannical monarch. Hence, Brodie’s “castle” is also aptly referred to as a “House of Tribulation” (p. 528), and an “Amazing Chateau of Nonsense” (p. 535).

I especially loved Cronin’s liberal use of Biblical references and allusions, all of which served to contrast and expose human deceit and hypocrisy, as well as express Victorian manners and worldview. From steam engines to stifling starched collars, this sad tale leaves a trail of eye-watering thick smoke as it clickity-clacks from one station of despair to another.

Reader beware. This fictional story is not for the faint-hearted. I think the essence of the book may be summed up in the following:   

“It will be as though a man fled from a lion,

And a bear met him!

Or as though he went into the house,

Leaned his hand on the wall,

And a serpent bit him!” Amos 5:19.

HATTER’S CASTLE – The Movie

Adapted from the novel by A.J. Cronin.

Starring Robert Newton, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, Emlyn Williams. 1942.

I watched a crackly version of this movie on YouTube. It had annoying and distracting Romanian subtitles in a large strange light blue font. That aside:

The film cuts to the chase and starts in the Winton Arms with an exchange between Nancy the barmaid and Grierson, the “king of the castle”, James Brodie’s, nemesis. Brodie’s name is mentioned. He is expected to attend a meeting taking place in the pub’s backroom, already in progress in which Brodie’s name is being disparaged. Brodie arrives at the Winton and has a (trystical) meeting (or two) with Nancy as she is coming down (as he is going up) the quiet stairway to the meeting room.

Any likenesses to anywhere in Cronin’s hometown of Dumbarton are only coincidental. The accents are “Brigadoonish” and Nancy and many of the others sound more Etonian than Dumbartonian. Right, the (Scottish) viewer must suppress all feelings of patriotism and settle down simply to be entertained by a non-parochial movie seeking universal (read American) appeal.

So many liberties and departures from the book are taken in the movie, that it would be better for the viewer to forget about the book and simply get on with eating your popcorn. Therefore, meanwhile back at the movie…

The film gets it completely right by focusing on the pompous and tyrannical James Brodie’s daughter, Mary, (played by the beautiful Glasgow-born Helensburghian) Deborah Kerr. Alas! James Brodie seems to be the only member of his whole family that has something resembling a Scottish accent! The viewer needs to be careful not to differentiate the good guys from the bad guys in the movie according to whether they have Scottish or English accents! But I digress. Back to the entertainment…

Scenes of snow falling on top-hats and jingling horse-drawn coaches serve to calm the Scottish purist’s heart. Mary is grounded by her overbearing father. Her love for the dashing and reciprocating Dr Renwick is forbidden. This is the essence of the movie and is indeed the solid undercurrent of the much more elaborative and illustrative book.

Okay, like the book, the movie’s story is pretty-well all doom and gloom. It clearly demonstrates man’s inhumanity to man by the vainglorious Brodie, especially in his brutal treatment of his kind-hearted, but truly resilient, daughter Mary. That is the tension held throughout the movie. The viewer hopes for, nay, begs for Brodie’s comeuppance and Mary’s vindication.

Filmed during WWII, I don’t know if the initial release of this movie brought the house down. However, like Samson pushing apart the two pillars, Brodie (metaphorically, and alas! also physically!) brings his whole house crumbling down about him. But like “a root out of dry ground”, like a soft pleading cry of a hand extended from beneath some bombed-out rubble, Mary brings hope back to humanity, with a promise of redemption.

The book has impacted me deeply. The movie has helped to drive home to me the book’s overall message: Selflessness conquers self-aggrandizement. Love conquers all.