John Buchan - Section 6

     

6.  Title of Lord Tweedsmuir.

Why did John Buchan choose the title of Tweedsmuir for his honour when he was appointed Governer General of Canada in 1935?   It is fairly certain that he would choose a Title of a location in the Upper Tweed area.   Although born in Perth and his paternal line being born and bred in Peebles he had a special affinity with the Upper Tweed.    In a letter of 1931 accepting the Presidency of the newly formed Upper Tweed Branch of the British Legion he wrote "I am delighted to hear that you have established The Upper Tweeddale Branch of The British Legion.   Our countryside did magnificiently in the War."  The use of the word our says it all.   The banner of the Upper Tweed British Legion is laid up in Broughton Parish Kirk. 

In his younger years he was obviously not very impressed with the Teedsmuir area as in his short story Sentimental Travelling collected in Scholar Gipsies published in 1896 he wrote "Tweedsmuir is one of the bleakest and most solitary of places." However, his views mellowed in later years as indicated in his novel The Free Fishers published in 1934.   Here Mr. Lammas, a licensed minister of the Kirk and a professor in the University of St. Andrews thought "that he had hopes of a college living of Tweedsmuir, far off in the southern moorlands, where he might cultivate the Muses."

My own views on the choice of a title are based on the premise that the person choosing a title must have land/property at the location chosen.    I am sure that he would have loved the title of Tweeddale but that title has for centuries been held by the Hays of Yester (Marchioness of Tweeddale).  He might also have liked Broughton but that was already taken by Sir John Murray of Broughton, 7th Baronet Stanhope and also taken by Lord Broughton. (This Broughton is Broughton Hall in Staffordshire).  Also several Scottish families have Broughton in their titles such as Haldane of Broughton, Hamilton of Stonehouse & Broughton, and McQueen of Braxfield & Broughton.  Buchan's uncles, the Masterton brothers, owned several farms in Tweeddale and two of these were the Fruid and Carterhope farms in Tweedsmuir parish.   Buchan new that these farms would be left to him so he took Tweedsmuir as his title as he owned or was about to own land in the parish. The farms came under a Compulsary Purchase Order as the land was required for the contruction of the Fruid reservoir. The Carterhope farmhouse was duly demolished as was that of the neighbouring Hawkshaw farm and the lands are now under the waters of the Fruid reservoir.

It is believed that JB thought that Manorwater- a tributary of the Upper Tweed - would be a suitable title.  However, thankfully, he was dissuaded.   He had given the name of Manorwater to a fictitous family in one of his early books  A Lost Lady of Old Years (1899) and also in his short story Fountainblue collected in The Watcher by the Threshold (1902).  Strangely, in the former he gave that family the same heraldic armorial as the Buchan Clan - "He found her in the library, where above the fireplace the three lion's heads of Manorwater were cut deep in the Oak".    JB had also given the Buchan Clan crest of a Sunflower to another fictitous family the Westwaters in Castle Gay" The arrogant sheen of the magogany table, which mirrored the old silver and the great bowl of sunflowers (the Westwater crest)."  The Westwater is also a tributuary, via the Lyne Water, of the Upper Tweed.   Alison Westwater appeared in Castle Gay and also in The House of the Four winds."   The Manorwater and the Westwater were probably some of JB's favourite Upper Tweed fishing streams - would John Buchan have chosen a favourite fishing stream for his title?  It does seem odd that JB assigned the Buchan Clan emblems of the Three Lion's Heads and the Sunflower respectively to Lady Manorwater and Alison Westwater.    

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