J.D. Salinger: Family Connections With Allan Thompson

Dear Andy, 

I have been browsing through your most excellent Blog while the spring sunshine casts its light in our lounge, the wind blows through the bushes, the cat sleeps soundly in the sunlight on Mary's end of the couch, and the world faces an uncertain future.

I was reading the Salinger entries and wondered if I had ever sent you details of my very tenuous family connection with him.

My Father's only sister, Agnes Thompson, married a man called Sholto Douglas and they had no family.

I was conceived in West Africa where my Father worked for a gold-mining company as transport manager. My parents returned to Scotland and I was born in Dumfries (image below) in January, 1943. My Father went back to Africa soon after my birth and my Mother and I moved into a vacant flat belonging to my Uncle Sholto and Aunt Agnes who had moved to Greenock to work in a munitions factory as part of the War effort. This made Sholto exempt from military service which was probably his intention. One day, later in the War, my Mother and I returned from shopping to find all our belongings packed up and piled on the pavement and the door lock had been changed. Sholto, realising that he could make much more money by letting the flat to Army officers, had evicted us!!!! We were able to find other accommodation, thankfully, and my Father returned home in 1945 or 1946.

https://singapore60smusic.blogspot.com/2020/03/jd-salinger-catcher-in-rye-inspired.html?m=1 (JD SALINGER is well-known for his masterpiece, ‘THE CATCHER IN THE RYE’.)

I knew that my Uncle Sholto was related (probably a nephew) to Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sholto Douglas, who was also Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, and was one of the earliest of very many children of Robert Langton Douglas by various mothers. Another of Robert Langton Douglas's children, born about 40 years after the others, was Claire Douglas, and she married J D Salinger and was mother of his two children. Very complicated stuff! If all these relationships are valid, then Salinger was my great-uncle by the marriage of my aunt to Claire Douglas's nephew. (Phew! is probably the most appropriate word with which to end this story).

Best wishes, 
Allan.

Written by 
Allan Thompson
England.