Return of the native
TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN
About ten days ago, I decided to return to my native land for a brief—and workless—visit. I had recently been in Scotland opening or dedi- cating the new Adam Smith building at the university, but that was work and the only notable event was the result of my quoting from The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith's disapproval of the appointment by Louis XIV of Colbert to control the French eco- nomy. It was Dr Smith's opinion that it was a mistake to give even the most expert tax gatherer control of productive business. I dar- ingly glossed this passage by asking what would the Philosopher have thought of appoint- ing a man trained in the Inland Revenue to be head of Imperial Chemicals? Three hours later, Sir Paul Chambers's resignation was announced —which shows how speedy modern communi- cation can be.
This time I was not going to indulge in deep thoughts, simply to enjoy my return to my native city and to cast a kindly eye over its pre- sent state. I would not visit the magnificent picture collection because so much of it was in Edinburgh on loan and I could not visit most of the great Burrell Collection because most of it is still in hiding, the result of nearly a genera- tion of corporation bickering. But I would visit the latest gift to the city, the elegant Pollok House and its magnificent policies (anglica park). I would also look at the new Gorbals and, of course, go `doon the water' to see the upper and the lower Clyde. I had heard that Scotland had been enjoying (as had Ireland) magnificent weather and I could do with even tolerable weather after the horrors of Cam- bridge. The weather, if not magnificent, was good, the view from my brother's house north to the Highlands as exciting as ever, the city was looking unusually clean.
But my handsome native city (see the archi- tects' trade paper a year ago) was looking well under the sun, the lassies less 'weel happed up' as is customary and prudent and there were, as usual, a great many 'braws.' This is a word invented by my English fianc6e after her first visit to Glasgow to describe the numerous red- heads she saw (there are male braws as well as female to catch the eye) and there are few more agreeable sights to me than a group of `braw wee weans,' looking well fed and de- cently clad, so unlike the children of the deadly 'thirties.
It is a fact not much known in Glasgow, and totally unknown outside it, that Glasgow has more parks and park acreage per thousand inhabitants than any city in north or south Britain. (And this is not counting the remote municipal holdings on Loch Lomond and Loch Long.) The Green, where, we were told at school, James Watt thought up the separate condenser and made possible the modern steam engine, is not as big as once it was, but it is more beautiful, for a tree planting policy begun in my childhood is now paying off, and the topless towers of the new Gorbals look out over admirably massed boskage (a word I have never got a chance to use before).
I walked up the Saltmarket, familiar to that great Glasgow municipal hero, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and contemplated the ruin of the High Street. That began when the elegant seven- teenth century college was transferred three miles west to a magnificent site on Gilmorehill, a site turned over to the first Gilbert Scott to ruin as best he could—and his best in this line was very good. But the new University of Strathclyde is steadily extending eastward and will, I hope, soon restore the Glasgow Latin Quarter that the Victorians abandoned.
Strathclyde was founded, at the beginning of the French Revolution, as the Andersonian University by the eccentric and Jacobinical Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics), as a rebuke to the old university then at the height of its European fame. Unfortunately, Professor Anderson died insolvent and his foundation, one of the oldest technical schools in the world, staggered along until things took a turn for the better at the beginning of this century. His other foundation was less fortunate; it was for a col- lege of bagpiping in Skye. In vain I had sug- gested to a leading official of the Royal College of Science, on the eve of its transmogrification into the University of Strathclyde, the estab- lishment of an Andersonian chair of bagpip- ing to bridge the gap between 'the two cultures,' the Professor of Bagpiping having the duty of piping in the Chancellor (Lord Todd, now of Cambridge, Eng.)at all great functions.
But one landmark was gone, Duke Street Jail (no gaol nonsense) in whose courtyards so many eminent murderers repose. (We are very rich in murderers and I suppose I can now say that Madeleine Smith, who got off on a 'not proven' was one of them. She was also an earlier member of the Fabian Society.) But in- stead of terracing the steep slope up to Cathedral Square and giving an open view of the cathedral, a most ingenious system of low and medium rise houses has been built. The cathedral, the only great church left in Scot- land, was badly damaged not by the English or by the Reformers but by the new rich nine- teenth century admirers of Ruskin. The Gothick Revivalists were the real villains. Inside, the cathedral suffered little, and has been greatly improved by the removal of nineteenth century `stained' glass imported at vast expense from „Munich and its replacement by some good modern glass. In other ways, the High Kirk of St Mungo has been romanised in a way that would have shocked not only John Knox whose statue towers over that veryodd Campo Santo, the Necropolis, but even Queen Victoria's favourite divine, Dr Norman Macleod.
But the most remarkable statue is the-eques- trian effigy of King Billy -dressed as a Roman Emperor that used to stand at Glasgow Cross. Some cynics suggest that the statue was a cheap fake of the late Renaissance that the thrifty baffles (good Whigs all) put up to com- memorate that Stadholder who 'gave us our freedom, religion and laws.' When I went into the cathedral, two jolly 'operatives' were paint- ing the statue gold. The horse's tale is sup- posed to be on a ball-bearing and it contrasted, in its golden sheen, very agreeably with the drab alleged bronze of the statue. But when I came out, the whole statue was black again. The gold was only a ground and the 'noble soldier' of the children's rhyme was as dark as the more than 700 year old fabric of St Mungo's.
And so to Pollok. It lies four or five miles to the south of the centre of the city and is a most magnificent monument to the taste of a great family of Lowland lairds whose merits as a class Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran has so nobly commemorated. Round a most elegant Adam house lie the 400 acres of the policies, complete with great trees and Highland cattle. Inside, the house is as it was when inhabited, till a year or two ago, by the highly cultivated family of Stirling-Maxwell, and the marks of their cultivation are to be seen in the delight- fully lived-in house, in the furniture, in the books and, above all, in the pictures. Com- pared with Pollok, Kenwood is a very poor relation.
But I must finish. I am off, for the first time in my life, to see a `needle' match between Celtic and Rangers at `the Paradise' i.e. Celtic Park. The police and no doubt the military have been quietly put on the alert. The atmosphere rather that of Washington or Newark on the eve of a race riot. But I have been assured by the 'wife of a Celtic director that the directors both of Celtic and Rangers are above the battle in their blockhouse. Nevertheless, I'll be relieved when this great religious festival is over and I am back in my brother's house, in the shadow of Hampden Park, home of Queen's Park, the `Southside amateur confederacy' and called after the patriot non-taxpayer of Whig legend.
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