The English Air

SPOILER ALERT! The items discussed here are familiar books that are being re-read for travel. As such, no effort is made to shield the reader from the results of plot development.

• This book was written by D. E. Stevenson in 1940 and was published by Farrar & Rinehart. It deals with a young cousin of the family whose mother was an English woman and whose father was German, who wooed her and took her to Germany in 1914, where her foreign-ness held back his career and caused him to fall out of love with her. She willed herself to death, and her son repudiated the stain of his English heritage. By 1938, he was a proper young Nazi, when his father had him visit his English cousins to determine what they are like, and whether they would fight in a war.
• The English family is upper-class, and they all appear silly to the stiff German Franz at first. But he sees daughter Winne and son Rob fight one moment, and be friends the next, and hears from Claire who had studied music in Germany that social work is performed by a large unpaid army of social workers, and that Winne handles a troop of Girl Guides.
• However, there is more to all this than social convention. Frank feels increasingly light and young. When he realizes that cousin Wynne looks fragile, but that she can play games all day and dance half the night without turning a hair. "The air of England is very wholesome," said Frank. "Yes," Wynne agreed, "of course it is. You're much fitter than when you came." [This makes Frank think.] The food was amazingly good, of course, but Frank preferred to ascribe his increased weight and fitness to the English air. (page 101) At one point, Cousin Sophie looked up and met Frank's eyes. "Did you enjoy yourself?" she inquired. "Very much," replied Frank. "It was a lovely drive. The English country is very pretty. It has an air of its own." (page 103) [Later, the process was completed.] Frank had surrendered to the kindness of his new friends and for a time he was completely happy. He had never been so happy in his life. They all noticed his changed appearance, his light step, his ready smile, and the gay abandon with which he threw himself into the business of living. "You're looking so much better, dear Frank," Sophie told him. "It's the English air," replied Frank. (page 109)
• The countryside helps. Before Hitler brings all relations crashing down by invading Prague, Frank and Roy go for a tour in western Scotland, and are told of short walk to the village of Inverdrum, but they can not find it after they had ..."walked hard for an hour and a half and there were still no sighs of the 'fine wee town' they came to the conclusion that they were lost. They did not mind much for the hill was a pleasant place to wander, and the air was soft and clear and fragrant. There was no sound save the sudden cry of a bird and the tinkling of water ... water running everywhere. It ran in small rocky channels or hidden between overhanging banks of green grass. There was withered brown heather; there were outcrops of rock; there were bushes of bog myrtle and an occasional bush of gorse with blazing golden flowers. Here and there they came upon treacherous patches of moss, some of it brilliantly green and some of it pale pink like the inside of a seashell." (page 151, 152) I find this writing conveys a strong, pleasing picture to me.
• A shephard directs them to the shoulder of a hill and they see, "a magnificant view. The hill stretched steeply down to the shores of a big sea lock -- a wide expanse of blue water which curved away between the green hills and brown mountains until it was lost to sight. The sun was dipping down into a bank of rosy clouds and the eastern slopes of the hills were faintly shadowed. Below them and a little westwards lay the town which they had been seeking, it was build on the shores of a bay and was sheltered from the winds by rocky promontories. The houses were close upon the edge of the lock, and the waterfront was built up from sea-level with old grey weatherbeaten buildings which looked as if they had been there from time immemorial. A pier ran out into the water, and there was a church spire with a clock; the remainder of the twon consisted of small grey houses and winding streets and one or two villas in patches of green garden. To Frank the place looked like a wood-cut from the fairy tale -- it had an other-worldly air-- and Roy put this feeling into words when he inquired suddenly in a puzzled voice: 'Shall we ba able to buy socks there . . . and handkerchiefs?' 'No,' said Frank, half laughing and half in earnest, 'no Roy, we shall only be able to buy ingredients for a fairy's spell . . . ." Nature points beyond itself, into a land of fairy, or even into a further land of heavenly strength.