The Romantic Spirit of Mary Stewart

I remember the first time I picked up a Mary Stewart book. It was a grey, rainy lunchtime in the school library and I was about fifteen. I’d been looking for a Rosemary Sutcliff book, but I’d read all of hers that were on the shelf. Suddenly, my eye was caught by a title along the “S” row: Madam, Will You Talk?

What an intriguing title, I thought, and picked up the book. I opened it at the first page, and was immediately hooked:

The whole affair began so very quietly. When I wrote, that summer, and asked my friend Louise if she would come with me on a car trip to Provence, I had no idea that I might be issuing an invitation to danger.

I took the book out, and spent the rest of lunchtime curled up with it, and fretting through the next couple of school-hours till I could go home and get back to the story. I managed to finish the book that night and immediately re-read it the next day, bowled over not only by the exciting story with all its twists and turns but also by the sophisticated, graceful elegance of the writing and the vivid, passionate characters. I had fallen in love with the handsome, brooding, suffering hero, who at first we think is a villain, and felt a sense of kinship with his bewildered teenage son. But most of all, I adored the heroine and narrator of the story, Charity Selborne, an independent, intelligent, spirited woman, the young and courageous widow of an airforce ace. I longed to be like her, able to toss off witty asides, out-racing the hero’s fast car on mountain roads with her own speedster, taking difficult decisions, effortlessly elegant and feminine, with a trace of melancholy and quite without arrogance.

Mary Stewart had cast her spell over me. Over the next few weeks, I read every romantic thriller of hers I could lay my hands on: This Rough Magic, The Ivy Tree, My Brother Michael, The Moon-Spinners, Nine Coaches Waiting, Wildfire at Midnight, Thunder on the Right, The Gabriel Hounds, Touch Not the Cat, Airs Above the Ground. Each of them had those delicious Stewart pleasures: the wonderful settings, lyrically rendered; the dashing, unpredictable heroes; the mystery and danger; a touch of real-world magic; limpid writing and fantastic, vivid heroines. I just couldn’t get enough of it, and her novels filled many a dull day with life and sunshine. Later, I discovered her Arthurian novels—The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, The Wicked Day—and though I loved them too, it wasn’t with quite the same passion as the romantic thrillers, which spoke to my passionate teenage heart, craving both the excitement of love and the excitement of adventure all in one gorgeous package.

I read and re-read those books, and looked up information about the author. She was born Mary Rainbow, the daughter of a vicar in Sunderland, County Durham, in 1916. She took a degree in English at Durham University, then rejoined the English Department at the same university as a lecturer. She held the post till her marriage in 1955 to F.H. Stewart, who became the Regius Professor of Geology and Dean of Science at Edinburgh University, and when he was knighted, she became Lady Stewart. She travelled widely as a young woman, especially in France and Greece, and speaks several languages. Madam, Will You Talk? her first novel, was published in 1955, and was an immediate best-seller. All her subsequent novels were best-sellers, in the UK, USA and Australia, and they also received considerable critical acclaim for the freshness and quality of her style. As well as her novels for adults, Mary Stewart has written three novels for children: A Walk in Wolf Wood, Ludo and the Star Horse and The Little Broomstick, which met with as much success as her other books. (Most of her novels are still in print: the adult novels are published by Coronet Books, the children’s novels by Hodder Children’s Books. Lady Stewart is still alive—she turns ninety-five this year.)

It can be a dangerous thing, returning to the novels you loved as a young person. Sometimes the passage of time blights beloved books, so that you see only the faults you did not notice in the past. That’s especially so when you’ve grown up to be a writer yourself. Then you see the ropes and pulleys behind the stage magic, and you cringe at the unfelicitous turn of phrase or the unpleasantly dated sentiment. Not so with Mary Stewart! I’d re-read her books a few times since that long-ago time in the school library, but it was only a few years ago that I began a major re-read of her romantic thrillers, discovering to my delight that the spell was as potent, as fresh as ever. Indeed my admiration of her work only increased now that I knew more about the art and craft of writing myself.

I was struck by the clarity, beauty and intelligence of her style, and the way it manages to wear its learning so lightly. For there are many, many literary and historical allusions in Mary Stewart’s books; her love of Shakespeare and of Greek and Roman classics and Celtic myth, especially, shines through, enriching the books whilst never being overbearing. Her evocation of place, of landscape and architecture and atmosphere, is superb. The books haven’t dated at all, despite or perhaps partly because of their lack of graphic sexual and violent content. And that’s borne out by teenage girls to whom I’ve introduced the novels; they are immediately captivated by their glamour and excitement and do not care at all that the books are set in the 1950s and 1960s.

But it’s more than as a reader that I’ve loved the books. That re-reading of Mary Stewart inspired me to write my own romantic thrillers, written for teenagers (but which have been very popular with adults too) under the pen-name of Isabelle Merlin. With these books, I wanted to create the same kind of atmosphere that I’d so adored in Mary Stewart: the engaging first-person narration, the spirited heroine, the mystery, the danger, the love interest (often two in fact—rivals!), the nail-biting suspense, the hint of the supernatural, the beautiful setting (mine was always France) and the happy-ever-after ending. I’ve modernised and updated the genre, with characters having blogs and websites (real ones which I have created myself on the internet) but at heart they breathe the same air as the Mary Stewart books, which themselves come out of the tradition of Jane Eyre and Rebecca. These books of mine have been taken to readers’ hearts, with many reading them several times, and I’ve had more e-mails and messages about these books than any others, proving this is an evergreen genre all too often neglected by publishers these days.

While I was writing the first Isabelle Merlin book, Three Wishes, I wrote to Lady Mary Stewart for the first time, at her home in the Western Highlands, thanking her for the many years of pleasure her books had given me, and for helping to inspire me in my own writing. Though she was already over ninety, she wrote back quickly, a letter in her own elegant, firm, blue-ink script. It was characteristically graceful and modest, and exactly what you’d expect from the writer of those beautiful novels. It is a letter I will always treasure, along with her books.

The Isabelle Merlin novels, Three Wishes (2008), Pop Princess (2009), Cupid’s Arrow (2009) and Bright Angel (2010) are all published by Random House Australia. They have also been published overseas.

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