A Ring of Bright Water

Mijbill is to be found looking out for his master at Monreith, waiting patiently he gazes on towards the beaches where Gavin Maxwell used to excercise him on his visits back to his family home.

Gavin Maxwell's lovely pet otter 'Mij' immortalised in the 'Ring of Bright Water', book 1960, film 1969 was named after an Arab Sheik that Maxwell had known whilst travelling in Iraq, an account of which was published as the book the People of the Reeds.



The film, starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna was loved by us all from that era, but as I watch the film again on You Tube, as I write this blog, I remember my Mum taking me to see the film, I was just about eight. And I've just watched the scene, where Bill Travers is peering through a hole in a middle of a newspaper at the otter behind a pet shop's window, I'll bet that now I've just mentioned that, if you've seen the film, you'll remember that scene too, and remember the joy of watching the film. And as always when those you love have gone above, such serendipitious recollections are a joy, yet tinged with sadness.

Gavin Maxwell, born at The House of Elrig, near Port William was a successful author, wartime SOE instructor, artist, naturalist and conservationist, son and heir to the of the prominent estate owner's Maxwell family baronetcy. Below the sculpture is Kirkmaiden Church a historic resting place of Monreith Maxwells, and a place of legend, more on future posts.

Mijbil, Maxwells smooth haired otter turned out to be an unknown sub species at the time, (now feared extinct, following recent drainage of marshes in Iraq where the breed lived), and the breed became known as 'Maxwells Otter', Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli. Maxwell gained celebrity by being photographed out walking Mij on a lead along Kings Road, London. Maxwell's love for otters shaped Maxwell's future, 'The Ring of Bright Water' about Gavin Maxwell leaving London to raise his pet Mij in Scotland sold more than a million copies.  

Unfortunately we 'of that age' can remember being moved to tears at the end of the film. Maxwell when tragedy struck, he was away at the time, was utterly devastated. In 'Mij' Maxwell had found a lasting love he felt he could not sustain with people, his love for adventure and danger, caused relationships to be brief. In Mij, Gavin found a love he called a 'compensationary passion' and he was not ashamed about it, in the book he refers to Mij as 'animal-child'. 

The poetess Kathleen Raine, Maxwell's friend, with whom he had a tempestuous relationship, wrote the poem, 'The Marraige of Psyche', a line of which gave the name to the book. The Poem follows below.

Watch 'Ring of Bright Water' again, and visit the memorial, sculpted by Penny Wheatley and look over the sands for Maxwell, and be minded that you too wanted a diving terrier, and dreampt of romantic life living and surviving adversity on an isle idyll.

Gavin Maxwell was a complex character, living up to the clan motto 'Reviresco' meaning, 'I will grow strong again'. See some links below.

Further down the page I have cut and pasted an article from the Monreith website written by his nephew Sir Michael Maxwell of Monrieth BT.

The monument is easy to find by Monreith bay, adjacent to Kirkmaiden Church,  lovely beaches, and walks above St Medan Golf Club. Off the A747 sign posted beside the road.

Gavin Maxwell FRSL, FIAL, FZS (Sc.), FRGS (15 July 1914 – 7 September 1969)

The Marriage of Psyche
by Kathleen Raine

He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water

Whose ripples travel from the heart of the sea,

He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter

Broadcast on the swift river.

He has married me with the sun's circle

Too dazzling to see, traced in summer sky.

He has crowned me with the wreath of white cloud

That gathers on the snowy summit of the mountain,

Ringed me round with the world-circling wind,

Bound me to the whirlwind's centre.

He has married me with the orbit of the moon

And with the boundless circle of stars,

With the orbits that measure years, months, days, and nights,

Set the tides flowing,

Command the winds to travel or be at rest.

At the ring's centre,

Spirit, or angel troubling the pool,

Causality not in nature,

Finger's touch that summons at a point, a moment Stars and planets, life and light

Or gathers cloud about an apex of gold,

Transcendent touch of love summons my world into being.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1498143/The-dark-love-behind-A-Ring-of-Bright-Water.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Maxwell

/https://swanscot.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/a-ring-of-bright-water/

Gavin Maxwell (Writer) 1914-1968

Gavin Maxwell, the author who became a household name in the 20th century through his writing, is undoubtedly the best known of the Maxwells of Monreith and probably the best known of all the Maxwells.

Gavin, who was my father's younger brother, was born in 1914. His father, Aymer who was to be killed a few weeks after his birth in the First World War, was the heir apparent to Monreith, then a substantial and prosperous agricultural estate of about 17,000 acres including four villages around Monreith House. The Monreith Maxwells were descended from a younger brother of the first Lord Maxwell and had prospered over the five centuries since leaving Caerlaverock.

The Monreith Maxwells were more than local "pillars of society". They had been created Baronets in 1681 and would have been considered members of London as well as Scottish Society. Gavin's mother, Lady Mary, was a daughter of the Duke of Northumberland who was one of the richest and largest landowners in England and incidentally a close relation of James Smithson of Smithsonian fame.

Gavin has chronicled own his life in some detail in his various books and several books have been written about him. 1 can perhaps add some details that are not generally known.

Having been bought up on the hills of Elrig near Monreith, Gavin at an early age became an expert shot at wild game and trap shooting. He was much in demand at pheasant shoots where hosts wanted to achieve large "bags". He was also a gun expert. One of his party tricks was to throw a weighted cigarette packet in the air and shoot it with a revolver before it hit the ground. He was a great admirer of Annie Oakley of "Annie Get Your Gun" fame.

When the Second World War broke out, he was a natural choice as a small arms instructor to the Special Forces. He was due to be parachuted into France to help the Resistance but broke an ankle on the compulsory static jump onto a concrete floor in a gymnasium. Soldiers who did that were not allowed to do the real thing in case it happened again.

At the end of the war, Gavin took flying lessons. He was reputed to have run out of instructors willing to fly with him before he could qualify. He then enrolled on a postal course in journalism, which he did not finish. Both his grandfathers had owned newspapers. For a short period of time Gavin tried to make a living as a portrait painter with limited success.

Gavin then hit on the novel idea of making a fortune by fishing for basking shark on the West Coast of Scotland. This involved buying a small island, building a processing plant and buying several harpooning boats, which suffered from varying degrees of unseaworthiness. To do this he borrowed large sums of money from various relations, which was totally lost. Unfortunately the Maxwells have always been better at marrying money than making it. The only good thing to come out of this episode was his first book "Harpoon at a Venture" which got critical acclaim and sold reasonably well.

Gavin had always been interested in the story of a distant aunt who had married a Sicilian nobleman in the early 1 91h century who had died soon after the wedding. She continued to live in Sicily until her death many years later. Gavin's interest was in what had happened to the estate and money rather than respect for a dead relative. Gavin at this time was a director of the family farming company at Monreith and so "borrowed" a farm Land-Rover. then a new toy, and drove to Sicily in search of the lost fortune. He discovered that a Neapolitan lawyer had been paid to manage the estate by the Monreith Maxwells after Ms Maxwell's death. Every year the lawyer had asked for more funds to be sent from Scotland to repair the villa until finally the Scottish Agent had been instructed to tell his Neapolitan counterpart that the Maxwell family wished to have nothing more to do with the property. Gavin also discovered that the Neapolitan lawyer had taken possession of the property and assumed the Sicilian title.

Gavin arrived in Sicily shortly after Salvatore Guiliano, the charismatic politician, had been assassinated. Guiliano had been campaigning against Mafia corruption and was betrayed by one of his friends. This was the basis for Gavin's next book "God protect me from my friends", which further established his literary reputation. Sadly the Land-Rover either broke down or crashed and was sold to pay for the airfare home.

Gavin always loved fast cars but was, according to his brothers, dangerous at any speed. The state of his finances at any time could be assessed by the quality of his car. It was about this time that Gavin acquired in England a very inexpensive two-seater Maserati sports car. This was a far cry from the sleek Italian styled job that might be imagined. It had actually started its life in 1936 as a single-seater, eight cylinder supercharged grand prix car and was driven by Whitney Straight, the well-known American amateur racing driver. After WW2, it was converted by an enthusiast for road use by the addition of an ugly two-seater body and a starter motor that was woefully inadequate. As a result, whenever Gavin went anywhere he had to arrange for the local garage to tow start him when he wanted to leave. As well as being ugly, uncomfortable and very unreliable, it was a very strange colour. The reason for this was that the previous owner wished to have it painted 1talian Racing Red as are current Ferraris. The local garage was not familiar with this description and so the owner had the brainwave to dispatch a cherry of exactly the right colour to the garage. Unfortunately the car returned painted nearly black as the cherry had ripened before the car was painted. On the rare occasions that it worked it was extremely fast with a top speed of over 150 mph. It is now restored as a single-seater and in a museum.

1 had an interesting motoring experience with Gavin when he took me from school to see one of his friends who kept otters near Henley on Thames. The Thames valley is notorious for dense fogs in winter and that evening the fog was particularly bad. As usual Gavin's own car had suffered from a malfunction and was in a garage being repaired. As a result he had hired a basic level Ford which 1 remember as being very slow and cold. It also had a floor mounted gear shift lever with the sequence opposite to that of other European cars. All went well until we arrived in a dark and very thick fog at a major road, which we had to cross. Gavin explained that he would wait until no car lights were visible either way and then accelerate sharply to the other side. The execution was not quite as planned as Gavin selected the wrong gear. The car shot forward a few feet and the engine stalled. In his efforts to find the correct the knob to start the engine, he managed to turn the car lights off 1 was too young to drive but realised that stopping across a major road with no lights on a dark foggy night was probably not a good idea as indeed did the drivers of two cars that just missed us and shouted most uncomplimentary things. Gavin finally worked out how to turn the lights on, s" the engine and located first gear. 1 took a train back to London.

Gavin was then offered a chance of visiting the Marsh Arabs of Iraq and wrote about it in "A Reed Shaken by the Wind". It was another best seller. It also resulted in him being given a baby marsh otter which he took back to London. Both the otter and Gavin became instant celebrities when he was photographed taking it for a walk on a lead down the Kings Road in Chelsea, London.The otter was not suited to London life and developed the anti-social habit of occasionally biting people and so Gavin decided to take it to Sandaig, his remote Highland cottage situated on the coast near the village of Glenelg. His subsequent book "A Ring of Bright Water" about life in the cottage with this otter and subsequent otters, became a world best seller. A film of the same title was loosely made from the book.

When Sandaig was completely destroyed by fire in 1966, Gavin moved into a nearby former lighthouse keeper's cottage on the island of Eileen Ban near Kyle of Lochalsh where he died from cancer in 1968. The island is now an otter sanctuary and his cottage a museum. His grave and that of the otter killed in the house fire are all that remain at Sandaig which is still visited by many hundreds of people each year.

This biography was written by Gavin Maxwell's nephew, Sir Michael Maxwell of Monreith Bt.