Speakable Scots
Scottish Eccentrics. By Hugh MacDiarmid. (Routledge. 15s.) " IT is no joke being a Scottish genius," remarks Mr. Mac- Diarmid in the course of this abounding narrative ; and Mr. MaeDiarrnid ought to know. Happily, although he repudiates with wholehearted scorn the possession of that quality exalted by the English that is called sense of humour, he has to the full the capacity for making a joke at his own expense and' for creating wild fun out of his troubles. He does not hold with putting them in an old kit-bag and smiling. Rather he opens the Pandora's box of his troublous and. troublesorne country and lets the imps fly about our ears with a will. It may also be said, in passing, that if it has never beeda joke to be a genius in Scotland, those who have been blessed with fervent talent have made some rollicking jokes out of their lives.
This gallery of eccentrics, although it catalogues only eleven names, runs to more portraits—full-length, head-and- shoulders, and thumb-nail sketches—than we have time to count. Sometimes, indeed, there is little more than a thumb- nail indication where we expect to find a show piece, while subsidiary names are given large canvases and elaborate gold frames. Hence it is an exhilarating adventure to pace the rooms and passages. The only thing our author never permits himself is caricature. He writes from the heart and dips his pen in his own hot blood : and, of course, he has a thesis:to which every item contributes, wild as their arrangement and execution may seem to the superficial view.
His object is to explode " the general myth regarding our national character," which has been represented as cautious, energetically biddable, and with an eye to the main chance, as exemplified by Scottish business men, soldiers and policeman all over the world, In reality, says Mr. MaeDiarmid, " analysis of the lives of eminent Scots in all branches of arts and affairs, rather tends to characterise them as reckless, improvident, scatter-brained, and subject to the most extra- vagant generosities and the wildest whims," as " wayward, antinomian . . . versatile, erudite, filled with wanderlust spiritual and physical, indifferent to or incapable of mete worldly prudence," as " industrious but flighty," as " brfl- liantly improvisatory," as finding " a difficulty of inhibitioe, of self-limitation, of screwing oneself down to a particular line of accomplishment," and as having a " continual propensity for a genuine transition into another field." Hating to " accept a code of any sort," we tend by nature " in the direction of moral anarchy." This and nothing else is " the clue to that element in us towards the elimination of which, at all costs, every -effort in modern Scottish history has been devoted." " A people only too devastatingly aware of our real propensities and 'terrified to give' rein , to them," we voluntarily emasculate ourselves and conform for the sake of peace "—the result being this " strange distemper, this bleak and horrible disease of the spirit " out of which has come the unspeakable Scot. We are unspeakable because we have done violence to ourselves out of fear and out of deference to' the alien English ideals. And even when we achieve un- speakableness with a semblance of uniformity, we remain, to use a phrase of Mr. Bernard Shaw's with regard to the murdered prisoners of Culloden Moor, " Incompatibles with British Civilisation." Because we are incongruous we work ourselves and Britain an obscure and horrid mischief. Our true type is that of Ben Jonson, who, in so far as he was a Scot, exhibited " unbridled - exuberance of fancy, bordering occasionally upon irreverence."
Lord George Gordon, Sir Thomas Urquhart, " Christopher North," William Berry, Thomas Davidson, Elspeth Buchan, Lord Monboddo, " Ossian Macpherson, James Hogg, and the " great " William McConnell are some of the figures that (into make up this " strange procession-" . _Nearly. all of them
won distinction in a certain lines but divagatediato other lines; from sheer effervescence. Thomas Davidson founded the- Fabian Society merely by the way : Donaldson, who was a painter of distinction, discovered,amethodof preserving meat, and vegetables uncorrupted during -the longest Voyage : the Rev. John Gregory, having invented a specially destructive: gun, scrapped his invention when- Isaac Newton_. pointed out how inimical to human life it was: tte ninth Earl of Dundonald died in poverty in Paris although he had initiated many of the modem uses of coal tar. (The tenth Earl of. Dundonald, whom Mr. MacDiarmid paises over, was even more eccentric. He horrified the authorities of a hundred years ago by inventing gas warfare. It was voted un-English and pigeonholed.) Sometimes, as with Mrs. Buchan, the line between a flamboyant personality and actual insanity is not made clear, and as insanity is in all countries the same, this is a weakness. But on the whole Mr. MacDiarmid bears out his contention well. Even when he abandons himself to special pleading he never fails to be interesting and enter- taining. He has written a delightful, stimulating and valuable
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