Revisiting Ring of Bright Water

When I wrote about 'Peking Picnic' a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the postal book group I'm in. Well my book was 'Ring of Bright Water' Simon was the last person to read it, and both book and accompanying notebook landed in my mailbox just before I went on holiday. 'Ring of Bright Water' has a special place in my heart, it's a book I've read many times over the years but it was really as a homesick teenager that it got under my skin. I already had a bit of an Otter obsession after close encounters with them in Shetland, 'Ring' was published in 1960 so in the late 80's it read as nostalgic but still quite recognisable. Re- reading it last year with another 25 odd years on the clock Maxwell's way of life and the world he led it in seems much further away - at least all of it's 60 odd years...

I will admit that I was nervous opening the notebook to see what everyone thought of this book - I'm aware it's not perfect, and knew when I sent it off that it was something I'd spent years fruitlessly trying to get the group to embrace - so as a group choice it was a bit of a gamble, and I would have hated it if nobody had liked it. Happily pretty much everybody did like it (huge relief) which is a great testament to Maxwell's writing.

Maxwell at his best really is a terrific writer, I have most of his books but am only really familiar with the Otter series - of which 'Ring' is by far the most appealing, his childhood memoir ('The House of Elrig' - worth searching out), and 'Harpoon at a Venture' which I consider to be his best book and desperately in need of being reprinted. His charisma jumps off the page in 'Ring' in a way that's made this book a lifelong friend, I suspect the man himself would have been considerably more difficult to get along with which is one reason I've never read his biography. A few of my book group friends had though and it was recommended a couple of times in the notebook. I know enough about Maxwell to know that 'Ring of Bright Water' is the varnished truth. There are omissions and occasional romancing - all of which makes for a better book - but perhaps it's time to read a little bit more about the man behind the book...

It's an irony that the success of 'Ring of Bright Water' contributed to the end of Maxwell's highland idyll, although my impression of Maxwell is that he'd always find a way to make a mess out of his life. Maybe that's part of the appeal of this book. The otter bit is emotional and funny - until it becomes tragic, the bits about the west highlands are classic British nature writing at it's best, but what I notice now is the window onto my grandfathers generation. Men who had grown up between wars, fought in the second one, and had to try and make sense of that post war world. Maxwell was ridiculously well connected with the privileges and introductions that went along with that, his life was fascinating and full of incident, but there is so much failure - he was part of a generation of gentlemen adventurers who seem long gone now.  

Ring of Bright Water - Gavin Maxwell

Little Toller Books have turned out to be a joyous discovery - and one more reason to be thankful for Gavin Maxwell. My original copy of 'Ring of Bright Water' started to fall apart last time I read it and is now kept for sentimental rather than practical reasons. For a while the only version in print was an abridged amalgamation of 'Ring of Bright Water' and its two sequels; 'The Rocks Remain', and 'Raven Seek Thy Brother', it's not a format that appeals to me so I was delighted to find Ring not only back in print, but in such a handsome form. The cover illustration is particularly apt - it's a detail from Winifred Nicholson's 'Bonnie Scotland' and I'm assuming it's a view from Maxwell's Camusfearna (she was a regular visitor and if I had an outrageous amount of money I would have loved to buy this) and I can't imagine anything capturing the spirit of the book better.

I've read 'Ring of Bright Water' any number of times and each time it's a slightly different book, undoubtedly because each time I'm a different person so there were surprises. Memory associates it exclusively with otters and the small patch of the highlands Maxwell came to call home but the otters don't appear until half way through, the whole first half of the book is an evocation of Camusfearna (really Sandaig, but Maxwell wanted to protect his privacy and the place he writes about has become so much a place of fable that his name for it seems more appropriate than a specific geographical location).

The way he tells it he was casually handed the keys to his spirtual home by a friend from university days whilst he (Maxwell) was attempting to earn a living as a portrait painter after the failure of the Soay project. It's love from the beginning and so begins a new phase of life, the chance find of a barrel top from the shark fishery leads to the writing of 'Harpoon at a Venture' and the death of his dog Jonnie leads to the search for a new animal companion. On a trip amongst the marsh Arabs of Iraq with Wilfred Thesiger he buys an otter cub, she doesn't live long but just before he leaves the country he acquires another - it's the beginning of an obsession which will last for the rest of his life. The otter section of the book is both funny and heartbreaking. Mijbil the otter who barely makes it back to the UK alive is with him for a year and a day before his untimely end.  

The grief that colours the whole book is at it's rawest re-living that year and its aftermath. Mijbil was an otter sub species previously unknown to science and so is named after his owner - as Maxwell says "he belonged to the only race of living creature that was ever likely to bear my name", he's aware that the love he lavished on that beast makes him slightly ridiculous but he's prepared to expose himself to it anyway. 

There are a hundred things I could say about this book, but as I've been told the quotes I chose from 'Harpoon at a Venture' were stomach churning I'll leave the last words to Maxwell to redress the balance and because they sum up how I feel about the book as a whole.

"It is October, and I have been for six unbroken months at Camusfearna. the stags are roaring on the slopes of Skye across the Sound, and yesterday the wild swans passed flying southwards low over a lead-grey sea. The ring of tide-wrack round the bay is piled high with fallen leaves borne down the burn, and before a chill sea wind they are blown racing and scurrying up the sands. the summer, with its wild roses and smooth blue seas lapping white island beaches, is over; the flower of the heather is dead and the scarlet rowan berries fallen. Beyond are the brief twilight days of winter, when the waterfall will thunder white over flat rocks whose surface was hot to bare feet under summer suns, and the cold, salt-wet wind will rattle the windows and moan in the chimney. This year I shall not be there to see and hear these things; home is for me as yet a fortress from which to essay raid and foray, an embattled position behind whose walls one may retire to lick new wounds and plan fresh journeys to further horizons. yet while there is time there is the certainty of return."