Catherine was the second of the four children of George and Mary Anne Macfarlane, God-fearing Free Church middle-class Glaswegians: both her grandfathers had been ministers who sacrificed their livings in 1843 and “came out” to form the Free Church rather than accept patronage and “intrusion”. Though she was converted to socialism by reading Blatchford at the age of seventeen, and later espoused many left-wing causes, she could never quite abandon the idea that “underneath were the everlasting arms” or bear the depreciation of private charity.

Some of the most lively parts of the novel describe Catherine’s family life with her elder sister and two younger brothers, and in many ways the “hens of gold”, as they loved being called by their mother, were surprisingly free. As the most talented of the four she was the only one to attend a university – Glasgow of course – and she read English and was a star pupil from the first, though in those days she could not be admitted to a degree. Before that she spent two years at the Frankfurt Conservatorium and became a respectable pianist. Her mother’s side of the family had relations in Italy, and there too Catherine spent some time. The Aunt Perdy of the book is not a fiction. But the engineer Rasponi, Joanna’s first husband, is an almost complete invention substituted for Catherine’s first, and disastrous, marriage.

In September 1904, when she was twenty-five, she met a man called Herbert Jackson while she was staying with her Glasgow professor, Walter Raleigh, at Farnham in Surrey. Herbert Jackson was Mrs Raleigh’s brother, and some ten years older than Catherine. He had fought in the South African War and his occupation was now that of an artist. There was a whirlwind courtship, and they were married that October. Whether the Raleighs could have prevented the marriage, one cannot know. Certainly they were placed in an appalling situation, for they knew that for some time past Herbert Jackson had shown clear signs of mental instability. He had causelessly assaulted people, issued challenges to duels and complained of imagined slights and persecutions, though most of the time he seemed normal enough. They kept their counsel. Perhaps they hoped marriage would steady him.