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from Hugh de Blacam -
The Irish Times, Ltd Dublin, 20 - 7 - 1925.
Dear Mr Buchan,
Several times I have had the privilege of reviewing books of yours, & once you were generous enough to say that my notice was the best you had received to date.
The occasion of the present screed is to mention that I am forwarding to you separately some comments on "The Northern Muse" made by a learned lady to whom I lent it. Miss Younge is an amazing encyclopaedia of biographical facts, & serves as British Museum to dozens of Irish writers. She annotated my precious "Northern Muse" with about 200 (?)emendations.
I have just received "John Macnab,"
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which compares more than favourably with the first two-thirds of "Huntingtower", and that is the same as to say that it is unsurpassable by any other living writer. A Thighearna mhaith! - how you make a reader yearn for the moorland. I have not smelt turf and heather so since I had to abandon life in the Donegal highlands. _ I hope our review will please you, when it appears next week.
When I am in London next autumn, I mean to adopt John MacNab's own regard for the law & seek you, with a pistol if needs be, to steal twenty minutes of your time. I want to talk to you
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about the problem with which I have wrestled for three years - how to treat Ireland in fiction as you treat Scotland. Could it be done? Just a hundred years ago this month Scott was in Ireland, & declared himself - wizard that he was - enchanted by places which are at Dublin's door. It is a secular disaster that he failed to bring Ireland into one of his books. Will not Providence inspire you to fulfil his mission some day?
Yours very faithfully
Hugh de Blacam.
Col John Buchan.
