The Half-Hearted

by John Buchan

In the closing years of the 19th century, Lewis Haystoun, a dilettante and coward, falls for Alice Wishart, a guest at a Scottish country house party hosted by Lady Manorwater.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Adventure

296 pages, Paperback

First published March 8, 1900

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

John Buchan was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
As a youth, Buchan began writing poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, publishing his first novel in 1895 and ultimately writing over a hundred books of which the best known is The Thirty-Nine Steps. After attending Glasgow and Oxford universities, he practised as a barrister. In 1901, he served as a private secretary to Lord Milner in southern Africa towards the end of the Boer War. He returned to England in 1903, continued as a barrister and journalist. He left the Bar when he joined Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers in 1907. During the First World War, he was, among other activities, Director of Information in 1917 and later Head of Intelligence at the newly-formed Ministry of Information. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927.
In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, appointed Buchan to succeed the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada and two months later raised him to the peerage as 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. He occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan promoted Canadian unity and helped strengthen the sovereignty of Canada constitutionally and culturally. He received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Daniell, author of The Interpreter’s House: A Critical Assessment of the Work of John Buchan, describes The Half-Hearted as ‘an interestingly uneven novel’ but admits that there are some ‘marvellous things’ in the book.  I think this is a fair assessment. One of John Buchan’s early novels, The Half-Hearted provides an indicator of Buchan’s strengths as a writer and the things he would arguably struggle with.

Let’s look at the good things first. In the first part of the book set in the Scottish Highlands, Buchan demonstrates his ability at describing landscape, especially his beloved Scottish countryside. ‘Mists were crowding in the valleys, each bald mountain top shone like a jewel, and far aloft in the heavens were the white streamers of morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch’s edge, and one tall heron rose from his early meal. The world was astir with life: sounds of the plonk-plonk of rising trout and the endless twitter of woodland birds mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the lowing of full-uddered cows in the distant meadows.’

The second part of the book, set in Northern India and what is now Afghanistan, is full of ‘derring do’ and the sort of breathless adventure that readers have come to expect from Buchan. Set against the backdrop of the so-called ‘Great Game’ as Britain and Russia vie for territorial advantage in Central Asia and the North-West Frontier of India, Lewis and his friend, George, are sent to the area on an unofficial fact-finding mission and find themselves pitted against the mysterious Marker, thought to be working on behalf of the Russians. Lewis is suspicious of Marker and his motives from the off and suspects his ‘friendly advice’ is deliberate evasion. It’s exciting stuff, very well-described and the story builds to a dramatic conclusion. In the end, Lewis becomes not the ‘half-hearted’ but the ‘stout-hearted’.

Now turning to the less good things… The first part of the book to my mind displays Buchan’s difficulty with depicting romantic relationships that is evident in all his books. The dynamics of the relationship between Lewis and Alice Wishart, the girl to whom he is attracted, never really convince. It’s a story of missed opportunities, true feelings unspoken and misunderstandings that left me rather confused about why it all ends as it does. Lewis has a rival for Alice’s affections and the choice she makes astounds me every time I read the book.  The book also contains some rather scathing remarks about ‘ordinary people’, some rather un-PC generalisations about women and references to Jews that might have been commonplace at the time the book was written but which today we would find distinctly unsavoury, if not bordering on the anti-Semitic.

In The Half-Hearted, Buchan explores themes that he would revisit in other books such as Mr. Standfast and Sick Heart River – honour, self-sacrifice, being prepared to fight for your beliefs, the importance of facing life’s challenges and the value of things hard-won. It’s easy to detect the influence of Buchan’s childhood companion and lifelong vade mecum, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Not for the last time, Buchan attributes virtue to physical fitness and the ‘clean, outdoor life’. Lewis is told, ‘Life has been too easy for you, a great deal too easy. You want a little of the salt and iron of the world.’

Having said all this, The Half-Hearted is a book I’ve read a number of times and for me its shortcomings are outweighed by its good points. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as a book for readers new to Buchan (he wrote better books) but for aficionados it provides fascinating glimpses of the writer Buchan would become.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my all-time favorite books, but in all honesty, I can’t claim that it’s a great book, and I would be very hesitant to recommend it to almost anyone. Buchan tells the story of a man ill at ease in his own life, constantly torn between conflicting interests and social values. The result is a book which is constantly in conflict with itself. The story both illustrates and demonstrates this conflict. It’s almost as if Rudyard Kipling wrote the odd-numbered chapters – many of which brim with adventure in the Hindu Kush – and Jane Austen wrote the even-numbered chapters, which focus on duty within upper-class British society. The result is a dizzying but limpid study of a character who can neither fully embrace nor deny his place in the world. I sometimes wonder if a lot of people today might actually relate to this book, but it’s simply too strange and obscure to appeal to a wide audience. Recommended only for readers who can enjoy a book for its strengths and overlook its shortcomings. Or for people who can imagine that such an idiosyncratic book might be fun. For the record, The Half-Hearted is an oddity among Buchan’s works, most of which tend to be very focused, story-driven, and tightly-plotted.

[Thomas Cotterill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Half-Hearted (1900) is one of Buchan’s early works. He had not yet fully settled to turning out his trademark “dime novel” adventures. In fact, a good portion of the book reads like a light literary novel of manners. His great series novels still lay 15 years or more in the future. The Richard Hannay books did not begin until 1915 with the publication of The Thirty-Nine Steps, the more cerebral Sir Edward Leithen novels began a year later with The Power House, and Dickson McCunn did not rear his retired grocer’s head until Huntingtower came out in 1922. In 1900, Buchan seems still to have been searching for his métier.

Buchan’s main theme in The Half-Hearted is – as the title suggests - the inability to commit whole-heartedly to anything, or more importantly for the story, to any one person. Lewis Haystoun, the novel’s wavering protagonist, gets into trouble during a moorland walk with friends when the object of his affections, the pretty Alice Wishart, falls into a deep rocky pond. Lewis hesitates just long enough to allow his rival to play the gallant by jumping in to rescue her. A minor incident, to be sure, and Alice sees nothing in it. After all, the rival was standing closer. She thinks no less of Lewis and still prefers him.

For Lewis, the incident swiftly takes on sinister proportions thereby revealing a fatal character flaw. He fears that others might see his hesitation as cowardice. The mere thought unnerves him and he begins to suspect he really is a coward. His uncertainty poisons his relationship with Alice. The situation reveals the less visible portion of Buchan’s theme: the inability to commit whole-heartedly to oneself. Unable to stand firm in his own sense of worth, Lewis, quite literally, has turned on himself.

A wise friend recognizes that while Lewis does not in fact lack physical courage, he does lack the bravery to deal with his own doubts about himself. Eager to escape from a psychological dilemma he cannot come to grips with, Lewis agrees to undertake a dangerous mission in Central Asia on behalf of the British Empire. He looks to prove his courage, but fails to see that his shortcomings in that direction are not of the physical kind.

At this point, the novel slips into the familiar Buchan mold. While the theme continues to play out, the last third or so of the novel is also a rousing tale of skirmishes and military maneuvering on the threatened Afghanistan frontier culminating in Lewis’s singular act of heroism.

I have long been a fan of John Buchan’s novels and welcomed the chance to read one I had not seen before. While The Half-Hearted is not entirely an adventure story, it is still a good read. The book reveals a surprisingly sophisticated psychological side to Buchan, one he ultimately chose to abandon in favour of the more straightforward action and adventure yarns for which he is famous.

[dragonhelmuk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kindled for free: Horror writers shouldn't be allowed to write romance. The first three-quarters of the book is what I'd expect from Jane Austen. Thankfully the pace picked up and the ending was quite good, but it's not worth trundling through the rest of it just for that!

Having said that, here are some amazing quotes:

"What a nice taste you have in arrangement!" he cried. "Scott, Tolstoi, Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of the Corpus Boreale, some Irish reprints, Stevenson's poems, Virgil and the Pilgram's Progress, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above them... Lewie, you must have a mind like a lumber room!"

"What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?" he asked. "The sense of competence," was the answer, given without hesitation. "Right... There are a certain number of things in the world to be done, and we have got to do them. We may fail--it doesn't in the least matter. We may get killed in the attempt--it matters still less. The things may not altogether be worth doing--it is of very little importance. It is ourselves we have got to judge by. If we are playing our part well, and know it, then we can thank God and go on. That is what I call happiness."

Now you've seen the best parts of the book I would suggest you go read 39 Steps, or better still his amazing short stories (No Man's Land!) instead of wasting your time here...

[Laura]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

[Mary Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing has changed since this book was written. Now Tinder would have chosen Alice Wisheart for Lewis Haystoun and they'd be living in Notting Hill with two cocker spaniels and four children in boarding school. Afghanistan is still an issue and Lewis would have to resume his career with MI 6 and sort it out, probably still dying in the process while the Amerixans left all their rifles behind. I found this a bit heavy going at first with all Lewis heart searching but enjoyed some of it too. A good read.

[DAVE O'DWYER Ba Ma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stuck with this novel because I love 39 Steps, but found this novel very hard going and couldn't wait for the last page. The novel is very disjointed and is more like two short novels joined onto each other with very little relevance to each other. A Romantic novel mixed with a boys own adventure story, with no real resolution. I've got the two other Richard Hannay novels lined up to read in the near future and hope they are written with same skill as 39 Steps.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't really relate well to this book. In its essence, it is the story of a young man, the last of his family, who owns an estate in Scotland. He is a world traveler, very intelligent, but doesn't have "a job". Several characters talk about this as in his needing direction for his life in the early part of the book. The romantic interest is not entirely well done (in my opinion!) and the "ruling class" issues are awkwardly handled. I should try this book again at a later date, because it is possible that it is suffering by comparison to the Richard Hannay novels. That main character is decisive and is at the heart of the novels, in a way that this character is not. Interesting book, however and a wonderful dramatic ending.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Of no interest - I even had trouble abandoning it as the last chapter bore no resemblance to the early chapters! The first half of the book consists of social and political machinations in Scotland of no interest and the second half is some Kiplingesque 'Great Game' white man getting praise from manly barbaric tribes by dying 'well'.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

By the author of The Thirty Nine Steps, this book shows it's age with it's attitude toward the British Empire, non-Anglo people, romantic chivalry, and so much more. A curious yarn probably only of interest to John Buchan fans.

[Ajitabh Pandey · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book written depicting the times of the great game. Too slow and too literary.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the review by Thomas Cotterill (q.v.), who did a much better job than I would have. I re-read this book quite recently.