Cynicus: the first comic postcard artist and a biting caricaturist – Fife’s Martin Anderson

Political cartoonist Martin Anderson sounds like a great guy who would have gone down a storm on Twitter. Born in Leuchars in Fife in 1854 Anderson honed his creative skills at Glasgow School of Art but finding Glasgow Art Club too snooty for his liking he set up an alternative  – St Mungo Art Club. Several members of the GAC, nevertheless, became his friends, including painters James Guthrie and John Lavery and charismatic journalist, adventurer and supporter of Scottish nationalism, R.B. Cunninghame Graham, whose doppelganger he was.  

For a short time Anderson worked as a calico printer before moving to London to

 to study art proper

That lasted only a little while before he headed back to Scotland to take up work with Dundee publishers John Leng and Co. as its staff artist and set up home at Broughty Ferry.

Forever on the lookout for fresh opportunities to bring his talent with pen and pencil to a wider public Anderson contributed to Quiz, a Scottish rival publication to Punch magazine, using the pseudonym, bob but soon bob gave way to the name that would forever be associated with him, Cynicus. It was in Quiz in 1888 that his famous series of sketches was first published, The Satires of Cynicus; biting satires on politics and contemporary society.

Sales of his sketches failed to sell in the numbers he hoped and so Anderson once more took the road south to London where he chanced on a redundant fish and chips shop in Drury Lane which was turned into a studio for his Cynicus Publishing Company. He was giving it the finishing touches, adding its name to the studio window, when a fellow from Dundee happened to walk past and recognised Martin who had just completed CYNICUS PUB. The Dundonian returned home and reported that Martin Anderson had opened a bar in London. Once Anderson completed painting the name CYNICUS PUBLISHING COMPANY on the outside of the shop he set up a display inside the window with a number of his caricatures and one Monday morning he drew up the blind. In no time the police were at the door.

You’ll have to take those pictures away

Anderson’s window display was stopping passers-by in their tracks. Even street traffic was grinding to a halt. A policeman ordered him to remove his cartoons to free up the streets but Anderson sent the policeman packing, telling him it was a police problem, not his. No sooner had the copper left to sort out the horse and wagon chaos than a bunch of reporters turned up – to the cartoonist’s delight. At last, his caricatures would receive the attention they deserved. And so they did. Cynicus’ print series of 1000 copies of his cartoons all but sold out in no time.  

Anderson’s popularity spread in London’s political and artistic circles. His little studio became a mecca for many – among them Canadian poetess, author and performer, E Pauline Johnson, who took the stage under her Mohawk name of Tekahionwake. She appeared in native costume to recite Mohawk poems or as the press described them, “barbaric war songs” that reportedly “scared Keir Hardie stiff.” Hardie became a friend, as did Ramsay MacDonald, George Bernard Shaw, Jerome K. Jerome, James Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, William Morrice and a host of others. Several of these people, including Anderson, were members of a private and exclusively male club called Vagabonds.  

Cynicus’ studio shop was remembered as being always very untidy but homely with the tea-kettle always boiling and ‘no one was allowed to go away without a cup, with food as well pressed on them.’  Anderson was a kindly man who lend money liberally.

Outlets for Anderson’s drawings expanded as his reputation grew. His drawings illustrated many articles and opinion pieces in magazines and newspapers. In 1891 he published The Humours of Cynicus as a book with revisions of several of his early cartoons first seen in Quiz. He also created a series of new cartoons which he called Symbols and Metaphors. The final edition of his Satires of Cynicus was published in 1926 and two years before he died Martin Anderson published Memoirs of Cynicus in 12 instalments in the Glasgow Evening News.

Always looking to increase exposure of his caricatures, Anderson went into postcard production. Postcards were new in the late 1890s and quickly caught on. Anderson’s initial output was for a company called Blum & Degan. These early postcards were court-sized, that is smaller and squarer than later and more familiar rectangular postcards. By 1902 the Post Office cleared the way for postcards to be produced with a split back for message and address and a picture front. And the public loved them. Martin Anderson, Cynicus, was the first person to produce comic postcards.

A postcard studio was set up at Tayport, across the river from Dundee. There at the Cynicus Publishing Company Anderson trained and employed disabled boys and girls who found it difficult to get employment to hand-colour individual cartoons. The Tayport studio opened in 1902, turning out coloured postcards and for a time they sold well but as demand dried up debts increased and by 1911 the North of Scotland Bank insisted it be shut down to pay off creditors, selling off the stock for less than its value.

Anderson went to Leeds where postcards were being produced and he set up there but not for long. The Great War put an end to the enterprise and he moved back to Scotland, to Edinburgh’s York Place which surprised many of his friends but he explained,

I was country bred, and I wanted to be back in Scotland.

That was in 1915, the year he created his powerful anti-war allegorical poster, War! In War! he depicts society as a pyramid with Mammon sitting on top, on a throne, frittering away the nation’s wealth whose main beneficiaries are greedy, unscrupulous war barons. A figure of Lust is there with famine at her feet. Government and Justice are bound and gagged and the Lamp of Truth has been extinguished. Anderson was scathing about the Church, disliked the hypocrisy of those professing to be Christians. In War! the Church is shown supporting the obscene slaughter of war that leads to the blood of soldiers running like a river while rapacious Bankers claim their assets.  

War! was regarded as provocative and dangerous by the state and Anderson was threatened with internment without trial under the government’s strict emergency powers, Defence of the Realm Act or DORA, for displaying the poster in his shop window. Anderson duly removed it from the window and reproduced it as postcards which were lapped up by the public.  

In another poster entitled, Dictator (I can’t track down an image of it) Cynicus addressed another broken government promise – the one that promised any who enlisted in the army would return from war to homes fit for heroes. Some homes were built but for many, post-war brought homelessness, hunger, unemployment and humiliation. Government promises don’t change. Dictator shows demobbed soldiers being met by the bloated figure of Capitalism sitting pretty on a sack stuffed with profits made from selling arms to all sides in the war. The British press are portrayed as a megaphone disseminating government propaganda and lies. The Police who imposed DORA are brutal suppressers of Liberty and Freedom that lie dead and buried. A bloated Lloyd George represents Government as the maker and breaker of promises, and the hypocritical Church with a banner, “Britain’s welcome to the Troops” – that in fact leads to the poorhouse. Britain’s government’s brutal anti-independence policy in Ireland is represented as Black and Tan dog.  

Despite his successes, ill-luck dogged Martin Anderson’s life. In 1924 fire destroyed his shop in Edinburgh and with it, all its contents. There was no money to start up again from scratch so Anderson retired to his native Fife. He had a large house, Castle Cynicus, built on Lucklaw Hill above Balmullo overlooking St Andrew’s Bay which he called Liberty Hall. Carved into the lintel over its main door was the word, Truth.  

His ‘castle’ was tastefully designed and built of red sandstone with yellow Caithness stone roofing and walls of glass windows so that light flooded its spacious interior. A hall ran the length of the building; a huge pipe organ at one end and a grand piano at the other. There were expanses of polished floors, winding staircase, water colour painted wall panels, hand-painted ceiling, large potted plants, studio, tower and lift. A museum was packed with all sorts of rare artefacts Anderson had collected over his lifetime – a chair dating back to 1622, an ancient copy of the Koran, a purple coat that belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie, Chinese jade carvings, precious stones, crystals, fossils, coins, ancient weapons, many rare books and a lot of stuffed animals and birds – a jaguar, reindeer, fox and wild cats and the remains of an Inca princess from 1500 years ago.  

On 14 April 1932 the popular charismatic Cynicus died suddenly, aged 80, a generous man in his lifetime, he died in poverty. A brief death notice appeared in the Dundee Courier four days later – of the ‘artist and author’. A service was held at Liberty Hall and he was buried at Tayport Old Churchyard. Among the wreaths was one from the ILP Cycling Club in Fife. The funeral was never paid and the man who was the first designer of comic postcards and produced biting satires on the dishonesty of life in the UK lies in an unmarked grave.  Two of the pall-bearers were, unusually, women – Miss and Miss A. Peden of Dundee.

Following his death there was an auction of some of Anderson’s belongings to pay off debts. Much of Anderson’s wonderful and rare collections remained in the beautiful empty mansion. Almost inevitably vandals turned up at the empty property. They smashed the large picture windows and gained entry. What remained of the museum collection were destroyed – rare books ripped apart and scattered around. Anderson’s paintings were torn off walls and slashed. His painted wall panels suffered the same fate. Stuffed animals and birds were pulled to pieces. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s purple coat was trampled and thrown down amidst the devastation. The mummified body of the Inca princess had a leg ripped off and the rest of the body pulled apart.

A sad end to the life of a talented and humane man who made a significant contribution to popular culture with his mockery of the establishment – of government, church, military and the whole capitalist structure of Britain’s unequal society. At his death Anderson was remembered in Reynold’s News as a man at

the birth of the modern democratic movement

no living cartoonist is more able to preach a sermon in a minute

bold and profound thinker, with a thought in every line he drew

Martin Anderson provided sketches for newspapers and periodicals and drew for postcards that sold in their millions. In his later life he established a school for disabled children at Liberty Hall where he taught them to make a living by drawing and hand colouring. He was an accomplished musician and a man with shrewd powers of judgement that saw right through the duplicity and pomposity of the British establishment.

The Book of Deer . . . my response to Zbigniew Tycienski’s response to it

Firstly, many thanks for commenting on the blog. I did enjoy your own blog response – an excellent rejoinder to my rather glib piece on the Book of Deer.

Allow me to address some of the points made by you.

The question of where the Book of Deer should be housed – at Cambridge University Library in whose collection it has lain for so long or closer to the area whose name it takes and where it is likely it was compiled.

I’m not sure your phrase, “… to consign the Book of Deer to Aberdeen would have been unreasonable” is fair. Aberdeen has for over 500 years been the centre of learning for northeastern and northern Scotland with an excellent reputation across the areas of learning for being innovative and outward-looking. The implication in your response to me that scholars interested in the book would be forced to travel to a remote Scottish city – Aberdeen – to carry out their researches is a bit insulting. For a start Aberdeen is not a remote backwater and if you insist it is remote, then remote from what and where? Many assumptions are carried in the term remote. It may surprise you to learn that even in a remote city there can be found academics who are more than capable of appreciating, understanding and researching the manuscript. That they should be content with a high-quality copy is a strange argument that can be turned on its head. If a facsimile is good enough for Scottish researchers at Aberdeen then it must be equally good enough for researchers south of the Border. As Walter Benjamin might have said – as wonderful as a reproduction of the Book of Deer might be there is something wonderfully evocative being up and close to the original and the sensory experience of working with a manuscript dating from the 10^th century enhances the researcher’s experience, albeit separated by touch by a cotton glove.  

Of course the initial importance of the Book of Deer was as a Christian book. But the perception of any item can change with time. Think of a pair of ploughman’s boots. When worn by an early 20^th century ploughman they are just work boots but when acquired by a museum they are instantly reinvented as objects of cultural historical significance and so treated with respect, tended and protected and they attain a life story surrounding their initial existence; the boots that during their natural lifetime would have been casually pushed aside take on an artificial life in a museum where they become treasured artefacts displayed behind glass with a card alongside explaining their relevance. And so, too, the Christian Book of Deer that evolved during its own lifetime into more than a gospel book when two centuries later it was used as a notebook in which formal Latin gave way to the vernacular language of the time, Gaelic. While appreciating that for Christians the Book of Deer is as a religious script for me the fascination lies in the insights it provides into the cultural life of Scotland of around the 12^th century. The world is filled with religious texts but the Book of Deer is unique in its marginalia and accounts of land deeds. And that, to my mind, is absolutely breathtakingly wonderful. Now I don’t expect anyone in Cambridge to get quite as excited about this aspect of the book as some Scots will. And there is the nub of the matter. Where does the book rightfully belong?

Your flippant dismissal of Scots caring where the Book of Deer is kept as ‘paranoid’ is unworthy. Why must Scots have to travel to England, or elsewhere, to appreciate artefacts that relate to Scotland and/or derive from Scotland – and this one is unique as the earliest surviving document created in Scotland. Surely, surely there is a strong case for it to be given back to Scotland?

Tychy’s argument that Scottish relics displayed outside Scotland can help non-Scots appreciate Scotland is neither here nor there and not a strong argument for having Scotland’s treasures kept in places outside the country. If having Scotland’s artefacts kept in places outside the country where they can be better appreciated and through them greater appreciation of Scotland as a nation then why not apply this to all and everything in Scotland’s museums and galleries? What other country in the world would the argument be – it is better that we spread our cultural treasures here there and everywhere than house them close to the people whose ancestors created them and who are the people they are because of them? Scotland is no different from any other nation in recognising that objects that add to our understanding and appreciation of our own past should be readily available to the people they best represent. Artefacts have greater relevance in or close to their own place of origin. London Bridge dismantled and shipped to Arizona lost its English historical resonance and became just another bridge in its new setting.  

As for the argument that artefacts should be housed where they can be accessed by the greatest numbers then let’s see how popular that is when the British crown jewels are removed from the Tower of London and sent to a museum in Tokyo which has the largest population in the world. And if that is convincing then send every artefact from everywhere to Tokyo for the very same reason.

I don’t advocate Aberdeen refuse to return the book but given the current propensity for returning national cultural assets there is surely a case for Cambridge returning this one.

Tychy’s blog response to mine:

https://tychy.wordpress.com/2021/12/07/where-is-home-for-the-book-of-deer/?unapproved=17873&moderation-hash=20ee89447ac37c7254ce1667de21ec58#comment-17873

The Book of Deer: so important to Scotland it should be repatriated

Leabhar Dhèir, the Book of Deer, is returning to Scotland, until next summer. In these times when questions are being asked about the ethics of artefacts held in museums and libraries outside of where they originated, often acquired through nefarious means, it is right that we question why one of Scotland’s most significant documents is not being retained in Scotland instead of being returned to England.

So what’s special about the Book of Deer? It is ancient, the earliest surviving manuscript perhaps produced in Scotland and definitely used in Scotland, it is unusual in the variety of its contents. What began life as an illuminated gospel book in the 10^th century (between 800 and 900 AD) written in Latin and containing some fairly basic illustrations was a couple of centuries later used to record all sorts of information on pre-feudal life in Scotland. Those Latin texts of the liturgical manuscript gave way to vernacular Gaelic, early Celtic Gaelic, that was different from later forms of the language. In short, the Book of Deer provides us with a window into the world of Alba under the Picts and Celts and is a unique contemporary record of those times.   

Those times have long been written off by historians as – the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages when it was said nothing much happened between Roman domination and the Norman Conquests in England. Haverings, of course. One transformational event that occurred then was the Christianisation of the people of Alba with monasteries established across the north which were centres for spreading the Christian gospel – a monastery for each of the Pictish tribes sometimes covering extensive areas and very different from later local churches serving small parishes. One such monastery was at Deer in the Buchan district of Aberdeenshire, founded by the missionary evangelist, St Columba and his disciples.  

The first monastery of Deer was probably set up in the seventh century and it is very possible the Book of Deer was compiled by a scribe from the monastery. Perhaps the scribe also drew the manuscript’s illustrations. We shall probably never know. A later monastery run by Cistercians was built in the same area.

The Book of Deer

The Book of Deer is small, consisting of 86 parchment leaves,6 inches long and 4 ½ inches broad. In it the Gospel of St John is written out in full along with abridged fragments from the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke – all in Latin. Each initial letter of the gospels is enlarged and decorated with muted colour and the ends of the principal strokes of the letters terminate in dogs’ heads. As is usual with illuminated manuscripts page borders are also adorned – here mainly with interlaced ribbons and patterns.

The really interesting thing about the Book of Deer are its later additions; the vernacular Gaelic which makes this book hugely significant in historical terms for Scotland with its references to land grants and copy of a formal royal charter from King David I. This was a time in Scotland when agreements were verbal, verified by witnesses, a custom that was abolished by the incoming Queen Margaret from England.

Early Scotland or Alba was largely matriarchal and divided up into seven provinces. Leadership succession ran along lines of brothers not down through the generations of sons i.e. they followed through the female line and not through sons of a marriage. A woman’s husband could hold land through his relationship with his wife but was dependent on her and not through his superior male status. Each tribe or clan was ruled by a mormaer, chiefs or toisechs, brehons or judges and town lands had fixed boundaries and throughout all were rights and burdens.

The Book of Deer

How and when the Book of Deer was removed from Aberdeenshire is not known, as far as I can find out, but from the fourteenth century there was great demand from book collectors for illuminated manuscripts so it’s likely it found a buyer somewhere and by 1697 it was in England, in the collection of John Moore, Bishop of Norwich and Ely. Moore was an enthusiastic book and manuscript collector with an enviable library of very early works. When he died in 1714 his vast library was bought for 6,000 guineas by George I so it could be given to the University of Cambridge, which it was, in 1715. There in the university library it lay unnoticed for nearly 150 years until librarian Henry Bradshaw discovered this wee gem, in 1860.

The double life of the Book of Dee from traditional religious text to a record of 12^th century Scotland makes it one of vital importance and surely there is a strong case for it to stay in Scotland where it belongs and from where it should never have left.

The Book of Deer

Bottom Lining: blood and soil Tories, a mad monarch and debauched Duke of York

The UK is not a migrant friendly country. It says it is. It isn’t. The UK is hostile to migrants. Not all of the UK but certainly that bit that controls migration.

People have migrated. That’s it. People have migrated the whole of human existence. Migrated to find the essentials of living – basically what it takes for survival.

When humans migrated across continents they came from Africa. Oh, yes. Even you racists out there, pucker up because you are basically, African. Learn to love your genes. Of course none of those emigrants who landed on these shore about 1,000,000 years ago would be welcome today. Imagine the scene  – boats loaded with terrified people attempting to make safe landing. But wait, back then there was no evil little Home Secretary shooing them away. There was nobody here at all. And so the British African arrived. And that was that. People forgot who they were. But we haven’t got all day – fast forward to – not Patel but a government not unlike today’s unscrupulous Tory gang of spivs and toffs.

James Gillray’s depiction of British MPs getting ready for the daily grind

The year is 1803. Britain was at war with France. Again. They didn’t want any queer democratic revolutionary happenings in Blighty. So war it was. Tories were in charge. Again. A guy called Henry Addington and a mad King. Just call him George.

The mad king has his sights on Boney

Like most Tories the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Back in 1803 it was all the rage – on the take, doing a mate a favour, you scratch my back. We’re well acquainted with the idea. Well acquainted. Pub landlords getting squoodles of millions for making virus test tubes. Turns out they were – well not test tubes as science understands the term. But. Well, always a but. Didn’t have viruses back then. They did but didn’t know them as viruses.

Anyway. 1803. War. Tories in power. Tories everywhere. Even those who didn’t call themselves Tories were Tories. Tory = look out for the bottom line. In Tory minds that meant squeezing the last sweat of profit out workers. One of the most horrible jobs back about 1803 was cutting, gathering, laying out to dry, burning and collecting the ash of kelp. Kelp is a type of seaweed that was essential to manufacturing soap and glass. Everyone needs glass and/or soap – except the Hudsons. In-joke involving cruel snorting schoolkids at sight of 19^th century add for Hudson’s soap because of a local family of that name who weren’t too familiar with soap. Enough of this nonsense. Soap and glass back in 1803 delivered excellent bottom lines because so much of the hard graft going into them was done by kids. What do child workers mean? Profits. Kids and their folks were sick of this work. They’d been farmers until thrown out of their homes by their lairds. This is Scotland, in the Union, in 1803. Highland lairds (landowners) found a better bottom line by throwing impoverished natives off the lands of their ancestors and replacing them with sheep. People pay to eat sheep and wear wool and sheep don’t need much looking after. Bottom line, remember.

Where were we? Yes, people were sick of this kelp drudgery. They couldn’t return to their burnt out homes invaded by sheep so many chose to migrate to North America. Migration was quite a thing across the British Isles and families who claimed to own the Highlands were so bottom lining with sheep they’d persuaded lots and lots of people to pile into boats and take their chances in North America where they might eventually be able to farm.  What I mean by persuaded is forced. Some had a choice. Some had no choice. People wept, said their last farewells to any too old or decrepit to migrate. They wouldn’t see them again. Or the land. Or the graves of their families. Choice wasn’t really a thing back then – for the poor.  One way out was to risk everything, basically everything these folk had was their lives, and emigrate. No Union bonus for them.

Pause for a link but come back a’body. Kelp, Clearances, Clanranald, Speculators and Scottish Scoundrel Lairds

Furious lairds did what they could to dissuade them from leaving – apart from paying them properly and improving their working conditions. When this didn’t work they lobbied their friends in government to make it all but impossible for these poor folk to leave the country and so leave proprietors without labour to do their dirty work for them.

The Tory government and the mad king were happy to play their part. The Passenger Vessel Act was quickly pushed through parliament in London. To add insult to injury it was tarted up as being in the interests of migrants – to protect them from being exploited by transportation organisations with less overcrowding and better treatment of passengers. Bunkum, of course. The motivation was entirely to prevent workers leaving the United Kingdom to settle in North America, for example, the fare to Canada tripled from £3 to at least £10 which in today’s money is a hike from £300, still a small fortune back in 1803, to an outrageous £1,000 per person; on a par with people smugglers skinning desperate immigrants nowadays. And we’re talking about the most impoverished folk with virtually no money to their name. It’s worth saying at this point that the Act was repealed in 1827 when prices for kelp plummeted and Highland lairds wanted rid of what had become unwanted workers – 20,000 once employed in the kelp industry. Westminster was only happy to oblige them once again by dropping the cost of migration onboard vessels to North America. Westminster politicians were as unscrupulous then as they are today.  Alexander Macdonell, chaplain of the Glengarry Fencilbes, said the 1803 Act was passed on a

specious pretext of humanity & tender benevolence towards the emigrants.

Passengers were crowded onto vessels

The swiftness of the Act’s passage through parliament took some Hebrideans by surprise. They had already given up their tenancies and were abandoned by the government for a generation.

However – always a however – there were exceptions allowed. What are friends in high places for if not to pull strings. The Earl of Selkirk who had ambitions to resettle Scots in Prince Edward Island in Canada was indulged as was the Hudson’s Bay Company (echoes of PPE contracts). Selkirk set up travel agents at Portree and other Highland ports to collect prospective migrants’ deposits, some very large amounts.

Highlanders were being pushed from pillar to post. They were despised by most of the rest of the United Kingdom as uncivilised brutes and scum. But uncivilised brutes were exactly what UK military leaders, government, the mad king and the Duke of York (who was involved in sex scandals which seem to be an occupational hazard for Dukes of York) wanted as recruits to fight its wars. A regiment was formed in North America to absorb some of these hulking Highlanders who had proved so willing to spill their blood for king and country; the Canadian Fencible Regiment appeared then disappeared in 1804 when recruits grew disgruntled over their treatment and were condemned by the military authorities, parliament, the mad king and the debauched prince as strìopach (stroppy). The government, mad king and the grand ol’ Duke of York were feargach (angry) and raged at the men they’d soft-talked into signing up for becoming ‘troublesome’. Though not so troublesome they’d leave them be. Parliament and royalty – mad and bad – were desperate for cannon fodder, fit and brave young men they could sacrifice on the altar of Empire. The 1819 Military Register refers to Highlanders’

blood copiously shed in our service.

In 1810 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register asks why government grants that were provided to the Highlands to keep the young from migrating was not available in Ireland. Perhaps it was something to do with the copious amount of blood shed by the youth of the Highlands and Islands.

So, sheep were moved onto land where once there were people; families and villages and the communities scattered hither and yon. Not untypical were the seven or eight families who lived on a farm in Argyleshire forcibly evicted and the farm let to “a gentleman because he can give more rent” and the 100,000 acres of lands of Glenshiel (then Glen Sheal), Morvich and Dornie on the west coast of Ross-shire once filled with communities of people was advertised in 1810 as pasture for sheep and black cattle, game, fishings, lead and other minerals. 

Oh, why I left my hame by Thomas Faed

There was panic on both sides – months before the Act with warnings over the “destructive depopulation of our island” and calls for “immediate and vigorous interposition of our Legislature” to stop the removal of desperate Highlanders with no means of support by what amounted to ‘unwilling banishment’. Highlanders whose only language was the Gaelic were approached by human traffickers armed with travel documents in English. Some were inevitably duped by them.

Highlanders were the disposable property of landowners in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. After the ’45 uprising and the butchery and cruelty that followed there were Scots desperate to leave to find safety. The Highlands were treated as alien territory by the British army which built forts which it filled with loyal troops to remind Highlanders who was in charge and put down resistance to its hegemony. The incursion of sheep and sporting estates created other incentives to leave. The 1803 Act was another means of controlling Highlanders. And that was another bottom line for the Union.

Books on a shelf: a random miscellany blog number 7 – culture, cannibalism and courage

I ended last time with Charles Dickens, a wonderful writer whose novels and commentaries evoke Victorian England in all its captivating awfulness to the extent they found a new lease of life in the guise of the television serial and Christmas special. If it isn’t Dickens then it’s Austen. And if it’s Dickens or Austen it’s Christmas. Except nowadays Christmas tends to be cheap and trashy dancing shows and Mrs. Brown’s Boys. The progress of civilisation, huh? With both Dickens and Austen we feel we know their worlds for we’ve been exposed to a succession, a very long succession, of directors and scriptwriters who’ve reinvented their characters and storylines, adapting them to the mores of the day. Of course, we don’t. We have not the faintest sense of the privileges and suffering they wrote about. Suffering we’ll come back to but none can deny that many a Dickensian character sticks in our minds as clear as any picture because of his sheer ability to distil their persona onto a page of letters. Pictures are a powerful medium – I feel a link coming on.

Think Renaissance with a capital R and you are probably thinking pictures and characters. First book up is The Penguin Book of the Renaissance edited by J. H. Plumb. Plumb had a long and glittering career as a historian. Not your average working historian for a glance at his Wiki page explains how this well-connected academic was so successful he was able to ‘indulge his taste for fine food and wine, build a collection or rare porcelain; drive a Rolls-Royce’ and had residences in England, France and New York. But this isn’t about him.

I used this little book when studying History of Art at university and for some reason while other books from that time went the way of many things, this one has stuck fast to a book shelf, possibly because it is small and can be squashed in between other books. Anyway, renaissance art was one of the major topics in my degree cannily chosen to overlap with aspects of my history degree which included Renaissance Italy. Art was intrinsically mixed up with the treacherous, inspiring, enlightening social and political events of that tumultuous period – ever fascinating and exciting.

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It is impossible to isolate the art: painting, drawing, etching, sculpture, architecture from dynastic struggles between feuding families who were the main patrons of the arts. This was the world of political murders and unquenchable corruption that affected religious and lay life: the Borgias, Sforzas, Medici, Machiavelli. Ruthless tyrants and immoral politics. The wealth and privileges enjoyed by the great families associated with the renaissance was only made possible because of the craftsmen and women who manufactured items, agricultural labourers who worked their lands, their guards and militiamen who protected them from equally rapacious rival clans or families. Not that any Borgia or member of the Medici would have acknowledged they were dependent on anyone so low.  

Fifteenth century Italy – magnificent and cruel. Artists who stood on the shoulders of their forebears of classical Rome and Greece in developing their specialisms that so beguiled their unsavoury patrons continue to fill us with awe and admiration today – indulgent, ravishingly beautiful – often providing pictorial evidence of that period. Architects designed homes for the powerful, fortresses, chapels and churches. They painted their portraits positioning them alongside saints as though they were part of the narrative of Christ’s life and work. They flattered and massaged the egos of Italy’s elites. And that got them more work.

The book looks at many works in detail: The Tribute Money by Masaccio – researching Scottish farming many years ago I chanced on a bull in the Scottish Highlands called Masaccio. I liked that. But back to the art. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, his figure of David, Fra Angelico’s Life of St Nicholas.

The arts at this period flourished to a level that was astonishing and inspiring despite or was it because of the back-stabbing that was happening in pursuit of power both religious and secular, including in the Vatican. Whereas now rich and powerful individuals and families indulge themselves and show off their wealth through owning fast cars, enormous yachts, racing horses, properties in the world’s chic destinations, trips into space and art collections – but often collecting art created by long-dead artists who starved to death in the proverbial garret. Fine art consumption, a bit like hoarding bitcoin. Back in the renaissance living artists were given contracts by princes and tyrants keen to bask in the glory of an outstandingly beautiful cathedral or sumptuously painted ceiling. Okay, so they didn’t pay much but usually they paid something.

Paintings, sculpture, architecture and other associated crafts were rarely just seen for their intrinsic beauty but as property and narratives that carried a message to influence behaviour.

Nowadays? Well, there are pally newspapers and TV editors to massage the egos of the great and the good (sic) and mould a public impression of them that flatters and deceives. Different times, different media but essentially buying an image has been around for a very long time.

*

And from the old world to the new – or so those Europeans who settled in what became America would have us believe was new. A new world to them, certainly. Again, there are comparisons with today. We’ve become inured to flimsy vessels taking to the seas packed to the gunwales with the scared, the frightened and the ambitious. It was ever thus. Where do you think we in the British Isles first came from? Under a cabbage leaf? Think boats and migration.

The factors that influence people to up-sticks and migrate to another country or a different part of a country vary but for most it is in the hope of a better life – somewhere safer, more pleasant, land available, work available, exploration. The ‘pioneers’ who took to a temporary itinerant life to travel westwards across America from east to west, to California, were following their own individual drives but surely all shared the belief they were heading towards better times.

Ordeal by Hunger by George R. Stewart is one of the most harrowing books you will ever read. He tells the story of the final group of the 500 wagons that left Independence Illinois for California in the spring of 1846. The pioneers tailing onto this huge body of migrants came to be collectively known as the Donner-Reed Party. Stewart’s account was first published in 1936 but our copy is from the press of Ace Star Books, 1960 edition, which we bought from Old town Books in Tempe, Arizona in April 1991.

During that spring of 1846 hundreds of people; single people, servants, whole families (there were many children), rich and poor thought to undertake a journey of more than 2,000 miles for a host of reasons – to escape difficulties, to find land to farm, to forge new businesses, to find work, to find religious freedom, for adventure – all adults had their own reasons. They were not the first to head westwards and of those who made it through some sent letters to their folks back east or in other parts of Europe that California was a fine place to settle and bring up a family. So, under the leadership of George Donner and James Reed this last group set off along the Oregon Trail. They would have anticipated reaching California by fall, all going to plan but the plan was altered. Instead of continuing along the established trail as those ahead of them had done it was decided they would take a largely untried route recommended by Lansford Hastings, an explorer who had never attempted to take a wagon across this inhospitable and unbroken diversion. On the map it appeared Hasting’s trail would shorten the journey and because of earlier mishaps that had held up the wagon train the Donner-Reed party was behind in their schedule and winter was fast approaching in the high territory that lay ahead. This decision was their undoing. They became completely bogged down in the mountains in treacherous conditions. Snow tens of feet deep prevented wagons progressing, oxen disappeared and horses couldn’t cope. What hope was there for men, women and children on foot, fast running out of food? Practically none. These were not mountain men and women but people used to the plains of the east. They did not have the knowledge of folk living in extreme conditions who in any case would not have considered embarking on moving people, the majority children, and goods across untamed boulder and tree strewn mountainous landscapes with snow, ice, gale-force winds and swollen rivers.  

It is impossible to imagine the extent of miseries experienced by the men, women and children who found themselves stranded in a living nightmare.  One by one they weakened, grew sick or got injured and began to die. Some of the stronger ones endeavoured to scale the mountains to make contact with help. One or two made it. They were met with enthusiasm from settled Californians who volunteered food, money and animals and some risked their own lives to rescue those trapped across the Continental Divide who were dug into rudimentary shelters completely submerged under deep snow with nothing to eat.

Well before this stage because of the delays in crossing the lower part of the trail food was in short supply and water frequently unavailable for many miles. To try to prevent their mouths feeling so dry distressed children were given a flattened bullet to chew on. With food supplies dwindling to non-existent some folk were reduced to eating grass. That was fine, in a sense, until heavy snows piled feet high over the ground. Animal hides, used as tent covers and cut into strips to make fastenings for quickly manufactured snowshoes from ox yokes were soaked and cooked over fires and eaten – a choice of food over shelter. They ate tallow and mice. Then it was decided they would have to eat human flesh. One can only imagine the tensions ensuing during a discussion about how this might be done. It’s almost unbearable to read a passage describing two men contemplating firing loaded revolvers at each other until one is shot dead instead of black-and-white murder. When it came to eating human flesh revulsion prevented this for long and some never would touch it except to keep children alive.

Stewart is a good story-teller. His descriptions of landscape and horror are well-done. And, too, his accounts of kindnesses for this is not simply a horror story but one where adversity brought out the very best in people as well as the worst. There are so many characters involved it is hard for the reader to keep individuals in focus but there’s a roster of the Donner Party at the end and a condensed itinerary plus other notes on people and incidents to assist.

Accounts of their harrowing trial came from survivors and diaries kept by some of the migrants. Forty-eight of the ninety pioneers who set out made it to California. Some fared well in their new lives but for others so deeply were they affected by the horror imposed upon them they were never able to reconcile what they lived through.

*

As though there was method in the madness of filling bookshelves the next book along is also about the land featuring above, only thirty years later and from the experience of a lone traveller – I offer you A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird.

There’s a bad breed of ruffians,” she’s told, “but the ugliest among them all won’t touch you. There’s nothing Western folk admire so much as pluck in a woman.

And so it was.

Isabella Lucy Bird certainly had pluck. Daughter of an English clergyman she was born in 1831 and owing to her fragile state of health was advised to spend time abroad in American and Canada. And so the 23 year old began on an incredible set of travels around the world. Not quite sure the adventure she embarked upon was quite what that English doctor had in mind but what was soon abundantly clear there was nothing at all wrong with her other than, perhaps, boredom with her life in England.

From San Francisco she took to the saddle riding for hundreds of miles around the Rockies mainly inhabited then by wild men and animals, proving herself braver and more resilient than everyone gave her credit for at the outset. There in the Rockies she fell in love – with the place – the immense grandeur of its mountains, the flowers of the foothills and many of the animals still abundant in the 1870s. And though she hardly admits it, surely fell in love with one Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent – beguiled by his kindness, his poetry and long blond curls.

Okay, so I’ve cheated. The passage above comes from a blog I wrote some years ago on the intrepid Ms Bird and being someone who doesn’t believe in wasting energy reinventing the wheel I’m reproducing a fragment from my earlier piece, A Woman’s Woman – in a land where men were shot like skunks. For the whole blog click on the link:

A Woman’s Woman – in a land where men were shot like skunks | Lenathehyena’s Blog (wordpress.com)

I’ve read Isabella’s book several times and on each occasion find it totally spellbinding. That’s not to say I like Isabella for I find her prejudices, her racism and disparaging remarks about native Americans hard to stomach but I admire her guts and sense of adventure. Hers is an astonishing story recorded in a series of letters sent home to her family which were published in 1879 which paints a picture of the West as proficiently as any artist with a brush: her palette the carmine, vermillion, greens, blues, yellows, orange, violets, lemons of the skies, the grasses, the hillsides, the gorges, the mountain streams of Colorado so the reader can imagine those crimson sprays of Virginia creeper, snow-capped summits, colossal rocks crested with pines, “beautifully arranged by nature,” blue jays and chipmunks, deer, elk bighorn, grizzlies, mountain lion, bison, rattle snakes, tree snakes – every kind of snake. Her writing is lush and spare at the same time for she doesn’t tell all.

If you haven’t yet read it then give this one a go. I’m not a great one for re-reading books, with a few exceptions such as James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Bird’s tales of the American West. Her book on China I didn’t like as much.

We’re just about there, folks. Next time should do it. End of a bookshelf. Till then forget Freedom Day. Being free to contract Covid is no kind of freedom so take care and keep well.

Year of the Plague in 2020 a far from average year – self-isolation diary. Week 5

Another week gone. Five down and we are now into our sixth week. So how did last week turn out?

Weather has been running hot and cold and very dry. Our last rain consisted of some light showers on 2nd April and we wouldn’t mind a good drenching because we don’t have water to spare for tubs and pots outside which this year will have to be used to grow vegetables and herbs. Bought seeds online and they have now arrived. Didn’t foresee this as after a lifetime of growing fruit and veg we recently got rid of our vegetable plot and this is the year it has become more vital than ever to grow our own this summer so will have to see how that goes. Some vegetable seeds are in as short supply as bread flour and yeast but in a way that’s encouraging because more people appear to be returning to growing plants in their gardens instead of hard-landscaping that has become a widespread phenomenon in recent years.

After deciding to cut down on fresh vegetables because of uncertainty about contamination since so much supermarket produce comes in from abroad, just like PPE, we have refreshed our stocks of gherkins, pickled red cabbage and sauerkraut (I know but it’s pickled) but I did order one or two British-grown apples, red and green cabbage and carrots and tomatoes. The cabbages are tiny wee things hardly worth a damn as my late aunt might have said. The tomato arrived. I stress tomato singular. Described as a British beef tomato it was quite a nice example but a single tomato between two people over a fortnight will take some mathematical calculations over the best way of dividing it up. Cost 85 pence which fairly astonished me. None of the vegetables that arrived I would have selected had I been able to do my own shopping but they are fresh – even having spent their three days in quarantine and undergone a warm soapy bath.

More essential items were sent out by an excellent health store in Aberdeen, although it only posts out a tiny fraction of its food. Our reserves of Vego chocolate and hazelnut spread have been supplemented by two jars. It is the nectar of the gods and just the thing to perk up folk in lockdown who receive a single tomato to last two weeks.

My confidence in the legal profession has taken a dive this week. I’ve had two experiences over recent months – dire and fairly dire but amusing. Dire has descended into dire hell in sheer incompetence. I suppose fairly dire has also but I’m more amenable to that solicitor. I suspect solicitors are finding their proofing skills are sadly lacking without their office staff to check details for them. Latest signed update went into the pillar-box today hot on the heels of another one yesterday. Professionals huh?

Having dipped my toes into the waters of picture communications I set up a WhatsApp account this week to speak with family and friends and have discovered the signal is much better than on our landline.

Still walking locally. Some days it can get a bit too busy for comfort although it’s always good to catch up with neighbours and folk we hardly know who live about the area. This week the cotton mask I ordered arrived. It’s well made and won’t be as hot as wearing a scarf as the temperature increasingly heats up. Lots of unfamiliar faces keep appearing to walk up the hill at the back, most presumably farther away neighbours who’ve always kept their distance till now. Heard from a social media friend that his wife who works in a care home had a run-in with people who had travelled some distance to walk their dogs in our local village park. Some people don’t seem to recognise the devastating impact of possibly carrying infection from one place to another. My friend now has Covid-19 and so his wife is also in quarantine. One of the women who had been delivering groceries and medicines to people in this area is now also self-quarantined.

Still reading Jack London but think I’ve probably reached my limit of stories about dogs and heroic canines taking down other animals. I suspect for many readers times have changed and the thrill of a kill is confined to a blood-thirsty deranged minority. However, London’s To Light a Fire is very fine piece of writing which I urge you to read.

As for our couple of hours of TV in the evenings we gave up on the BFI’s recommended films for a while. Like the parson’s nose, they’re an acquired habit. The final straw was The Long Day Closes by film director Terence Davies. Having spent an inordinate amount of time watching the opening credits scroll down the screen in a font that was all but illegible and around half an hour staring at a bit of a rug I asked my husband if the film was by that bloke that ruined Sunset Song?” It was. I won’t ever forgive him for that. He took one of the best books ever written misunderstood it totally and made a masterpiece into film kitsch. To prove not all directors are self-indulgent bores we watched two super films – The Guilty is a Danish drama largely comprises a single actor in a police control room. Perhaps a little predictable towards the end but enthralling nonetheless. That was on Netflix. On Amazon Prime we watched the Chinese movie The Farewell that explores eastern and western attitudes towards death – charismatic and charming film with the subject ably handled. On a completely different level we’ve started watching Breaking Bad. Yes, I know – so behind the times. But good huh?

And finally – my alter ego Alex Chisholm published the latest magnum opus on Amazon Kindle and paperback due out soon. The Durer Affair is set in the little town of Nuremberg in the year 1504 where the artist, the painter Albrecht Durer, lives in harmony with the world until strangers arrive who turn his world and that of his fellow townsmen and women upside down. It’s comic and it’s tragic – as is life. You can follow the adventures of Durer and his friends Willy and Otto who all have prodigious appetites for pork knuckles washed down by Ana Brauer’s blackest beer and there’s even a doggy aspect to this page-turning thriller in the form of a very un-Jack London little hound called Ulf.

Stay safe.

My blog on Davies’ Sunset Song

Iron-hearted Tories, bloated corruptionists, and hordes of other venal creatures – John Steill and William Wallace.

William Wallace at Aberdeen sculpted by William Grant Stevenson in 1888. Paid by John Steill of 38 Grange Road, Edinburgh.

‘Never was the destruction of an ancient state more complete and humiliating than that of Scotland; – never did a people consent so tamely to surrender their liberties, and submit themselves to the overbearing dictation of another kingdom, as the Scotch have done.’

These are the words of John Steill of Edinburgh. I knew that Steill left money to pay for the colossal statue of William Wallace which dominates Schoolhill in Aberdeen but nothing else. Steill would have loved Twitter, with a handle such as @Patriot for he was like the best of us, opinionated. But Twitter did not exist in Steill’s time and he had to make do broadcasting his views through letters to the press and published as pamphlets. His main interests were the union with England and Clearances in the Highlands and Ireland, all of which he vehemently disapproved. The press, mainly staunchly conservative and reactionary, vilified him describing his words as dangerous.

It was in 1844 Steill wrote his most famous letter, later pamphlet, attacking the union and to place it in some kind of perspective I clicked onto Wikipedia to see what else was happening in the UK in 1844. What I found was that nothing at all happened in Scotland that year. Any events worthy of note took place exclusively in England. I expect John Steill could have told me that.  Towards the foot of the Wiki page was a link to Scotland in 1844 which is odd since last time I looked Scotland was part of the UK – apparently an unworthy part but part all the same whose events were just not important enough to get a mention on the UK page.

The following year Steill took out his pamphlet

On the Necessity of Dissolving the Union between England and Scotland, and on Restoring Scotland to Her Ancient Supremacy As an Entire and Distinct Nation

For Steill signing the union between Scotland and England was

 ‘one of the blackest transactions in history’ which reduced Scotland to becoming a vassal nation and he questioned why any Scot would think it right that a once sovereign state could demean itself to become dependent on another –

not least as betrayal of all those Scots who fought and died for their nation – Scotland’s real heroes who

‘would utterly disown and despise us.’

Then as now apologists for the union insist it was good for the Scottish economy  – an argument that failed to dent Steill’s certainty that any margin of economic benefit was a very bad trade-off for the

‘the annihilation of our independence and very name as a nation.’

The economic advantage argument he states could be just as easily applied to justify slavery as slave owners insisted their people were well cared and even prospered under it.

Any prosperity created by Scots, Steill insists, comes not from being in union with England but through Scots using their intelligence and application to prosper.

Wreath on statue of William Wallace
Guardian of Scotland

Scotland has been the butt of an unremitting propaganda assault since before union where she is painted as uncivilised compared with England. The truth is Scotland far from being nation of savages, feckless and barbaric was one of the world’s best educated of nations with a long and significant literary tradition, its people clever, enterprising and outward-looking Europeans, more open to democratic principles than their English counterparts.

That this modern European state could find itself shackled to an insular and war-like country like England incensed Steill. England in union dominated and overwhelmed Scotland, insisted Scots travel to London to represent their Scottish constituents, no easy matter in the 18^th century (even before the travails of Scotrail.) Having tackled the hundreds of miles to London over several days through difficult and uncomfortable conditions (still prior to Scotrail) Scottish MPs found their opinions drowned out by

‘iron-hearted Tories, bloated corruptionists, and hordes of other venal creatures…’

The equivalent of the little woman who could do nothing without the permission of her husband Scots were forced to seek approval for each and every policy to be introduced into Scotland from English MPs. That any Scot should regard this humiliation appropriate for a nation that was once successfully independent struck Steill as reprehensible. In short Scotland, abundantly equipped to being a normal self-governing nation was constrained by England in a way that was degrading and oppressive.

Steill writes that his country is the victim of tyrants – ‘selfish aristocrats’ who contribute nothing but are idle, spend their time hunting on horseback and living in luxury but who have power to ‘beggar, starve, and banish’ Scots men and women who do work and contribute to the wealth of the country.

Steill points to parts of Scotland devastated as a direct result of the actions of tyrant landowners and distant Westminster and advocates nationalising their estates – distributing the land between the people who live there and depend on it. Condemning landowners who sell their land as if it ever belonged to them Steill insists, correctly, they were just lineal descendants of elected chiefs with no special right of property in the soil of Scotland. The land these Highland lairds sold or cleared, he writes, was never theirs – it belonged to the people of to the clan or sept collectively.

Not impervious to the hardships of English people, either, Steill blames their situation on ‘an imperious obligarchy’ stretching back to William the Bastard and his ilk who claimed entitlement to pillage and destroy right across the British empire for their own enrichment.

As though he had Gordon Brown breathing down his neck Steill tackles federal parliaments being proposed to quell Scottish discontent over the dominance of England in union. Steill is not in favour of federalism which he argues still chains Scotland to England with all that such an unequal partnership brings – its only benefit is not having to send MPs to London to look after Scottish interests. Federalism is a ploy to keep Scotland as an appendage of England with Westminster regarded as the chief government where real power resides with minor parliaments dispersed around the UK as England sees fit. The English parliament at Westminster still gets to dictate how every part of the union will be taxed based on England’s needs not theirs and these subordinate parts of the UK would still be obliged to participate in England’s wars.

Steill had no time for ‘crazed “gown-men” and ‘treacherous nobles and gentry’ who sell Scotland short. These scoundrels ‘sold off their native land to her enemies’ – against the wishes of the greater population of Scotland who deplore Scotland’s fate of becoming a vassal state of England’s instead of ranking equally among the ‘States of Europe’ that was once her position.

He pleads for Scotland to become ‘free and unfettered … independent and absolute, not a controllable and subordinate’ region of the UK. Scotland, he insists, should levy her own taxes, enter her own treaties with foreign powers, have control over her defence and not be a state that interferes with other kingdoms – as England does.

Steill’s Scotland once she recovers her independence should apply universal suffrage for her people and get rid of ‘monarchy and hereditary feudal aristocracy, both these useless, tyrannical, and all-devouring institutions…’ in other words become a democratic republic free to run her own affairs.

Sculptor and his masterpiece

He concludes with a plea for Scots to demonstrate some of that spirit of the past that resisted when Scottish ‘rights were trampled on, and their national honour invaded.’ Those strengths are even more needed now, he argues, that Scotland has become a ‘contemptible province, stripped of her very name (is referred to as North Britain) , deprived of the power to remove those crying evils which afflict her, both socially and politically, and when she is left with no other memorials of her former dignity and independence but the moss-covered ruins of her palaces and citadels, whose gigantic fragments but too emphatically tell what Scotland once was, and what she now is.’

John Steill certainly had strong views but then so did those who defended the union. He was said to have been a pleasant man, intelligent and a great reader who kept a fine collection of books on Scottish history. When he died he left his money to his housekeeper, Margaret Strachan, with the proviso that what remained after her death went to erecting a sculpture of his hero, William Wallace. Money was also provided by him for repairs and upkeep of the monument, left in the hands of Aberdeen’s magistrates.

The monument he declared was to be a colossal bronze raised up on a large pediment. There would be nothing fancy or fussy about it but bold to properly represent the statesman and warrior. Aberdeen’s granite roughly hewed and imposing would be ideal for its ability to support the hero Guardian of Scotland.  

Around the base would be engraved words spoken by Wallace such as his interview with the English Ambassadors prior to the Battle of Stirling Bridge when the English envoy requested the Scots lay down their weapons and submit to the English king at which point Wallace would be pardoned of ‘all his treasons’ – i.e. where treason was defined as daring to protect his country from foreign aggression.  

Wallace, the leader who in England was called the ‘Master of thieves’ told England’s ambassadors ‘to go back to your masters and tell them that we came not here to treat, but to fight and set Scotland free’  and so these words are cut into the plinth.

It should be said this monument is magnificent and undoubtedly the most impressive Wallace statue in Scotland which means in the world. I find it impressive and I’m certain Steill would be pleased at how it turned out. However, I suspect he would have been both amazed and depressed that there are still Scots who are apologists for a union that continues to treat Scotland as a vassal state. Not an admirer of the press which he regarded as apologists and champions of the union Steill reserved much of his ire for the Scotsman with ‘its marked dislike to anything Scotch.’ He dismissed much of the press for being prejudiced against Scotland’s interests and for being “profoundly ignorant” – about Scotland – thoughts that echo through time and are just as relevant today. Yes, John Steill @Patriot would have savaged today’s toady and unprofessional press fawning over ‘iron-hearted Tories, bloated corruptionists, and hordes of other venal creatures…’

Aberdeen City Council has shown itself not fit for purpose. Whatever that purpose may be. Art Gallery? What Art Gallery etc.

And now Aberdeen City Council’s hapless and hopeless crew of Labour and Tories with assorted others making up the numbers have announced Aberdeen Art Gallery will not reopen until 2019. If the situation were not so serious it would be laughable. There’s little doubt that this council is one of the worst in the 1000 year history of the city of Aberdeen. 

 

Art Gallery shut since 2015
Cowdray Hall shut since 2015
Remembrance Hall shut since 2015
Provost Skene’s House shut since 2015
Music Hall shut since 2016

24 June 2009
Aberdeen City Council agreed in principle to support the redevelopment of the Art Gallery.
No financial implications were forecast as the Marguerite McBey Trust attached to the Art Gallery would be used to fund the cost of c. £20 million along  with funds raised through Heritage Lottery grants and additional fundraising.
It was estimated the cost of storage for collections during the redevelopment would cost around £1.6 million.

11 Sept 2009
Aberdeen puts in a bid for UK City of Culture 2013.

Nov 2009
The £20 million Art Gallery project, part-funded by the McBey Trust is announced.
A team of experts is established to oversee the redevelopment.
Glasgow architects Gareth Hoskins chosen to design changes to make the Gallery ‘fit-for-purpose’ – as the jargon goes. Fit for purpose in the 21st century, presumably.

Plans will also improve the Cowdray Hall.

Aberdeen withdraws its bid to become the UK’s City of Culture for 2013 due to council finances.

2010
Development Studies came up with different approaches.
Option A: minimal c £15.7 million.
Option B: backpack c £18.4 million.
Option C: outside the box c £23.8 million.
Option D: outside the box c £24.3 million.
Option E: extending into RGU Gray’s School of Art c £22.7 million + site purchase

29 Nov 2012
Estimated cost of the project £33 million over the next 4 financial years: £30 million for the Art Gallery + £3 million to create a facility to house the museum collections.
Aberdeen City Council to make imminent application for Heritage Lottery Funding of £10 million.
It confirmed £3 million from the council’s non housing capital programme 2013-14 and £10 million from the same programme 2013-17.
The Council guaranteed up to £10 million to meet any shortfall in fundraising.

The redevelopment is to be the cornerstone of the Council’s City of Culture bid 2017.

26 February 2013
Aberdeen bids to become UK City of Culture 2017.

City of Culture bid fails.

Aberdeen’s City of Culture bid – a lesson in mediocrity

18 December 2013
Redesign plans for Aberdeen Art Gallery approved by councillors.

19 June 2014
Design work completed . Planning and listed building permission approved.
Finance, Policy and Resources Committee approved estimated cost of £30 million for construction, demolitions, enabling, new build, building, exhibition fit outs, design team, surveys, furniture and fittings, contingencies and inflation.
Projected opening after redevelopment 2017.
Instructs proposal to go to out to tender with deadline of January 2015.

18 February 2015
Meeting of the Council’s Finance, Policy and Resources Committee report that the Marguerite McBey Trust supported the redevelopment, to the tune of £50,000 per annum for 3 years to fund a fundraising officer to oversee the refurbishment project.

‘5.2 By contracting an independent specialist fundraising consultancy, the Council obtained guidance on how best to seek external financial support. This includes how to undertake a fundraising campaign, the categories of prospective donors (for example, trusts, charities, corporate social responsibility, personal and general public donations), the sequencing of when and how to fundraise. As part of the consultancy, approaches were made to ascertain the level of interest in the redevelopment, as well as understand other issues which might influence whether interest could be capitalised into donations, or other contributions. ‘

27 February 2015
“A councillor is confident money will be raised for the refurbishment of Aberdeen Art Gallery – but has said some donors want to remain anonymous due to planning issues in the city.”
“Cllr Marie Boulton said the project would be held in ‘great esteem.'”

Aberdeen Art Gallery shuts its doors.

25 August 2015
Contractor appointed for the £30 million redevelopment.
Completion date: winter 2017.

31 Aug 2016
Designers Hoskins Architects, Glasgow website featured the interior of the newly refurbished Art Gallery, Cowdray Hall and Remembrance Hall.

As you can see by the illustrations this includes glazed panels on the roof of the extension to the Gallery. Perhaps they don’t know in Glasgow but Aberdeen has gulls, lots and lots of gulls who need to poop.

Cllr Marie Boulton didn’t offer her view on the impact of seagull poop on a glass roof in Aberdeen but she did describe the development as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve something really special for Aberdeen by forming a world-class cultural centre.

Completion of the works due 2017.

Feb 2017
Press reports of “vastly underestimated” cost of the museum collections centre – Aberdeen Treasure Hub.
Initially projected to cost £3.6 million late in 2014 costs were still being calculated in 2016 but by then they had nearly doubled to £6.5 million.

Why?
Apparently “the scope of the project was inaccurately defined and vastly underestimated the cost of the project.”
Not only that but those behind the scoping had not engaged with the insurance team at the start of the project and consequently the insurance provider refused the fire suppression system which was designed and installed.

Public money, huh?
Criminal negligence.

The Council’s response – it learnt a number of lessons for future projects.

I wouldn’t bank on it.

The Council thought the public would have money pouring in to make up the funding gap. It didn’t.
I heard that after performances of the panto over Christmas that buckets were produced for collections among the audience so that work on the Music Hall could continue.
Can this be right?
I haven’t mentioned the music Hall fiasco yet.

The severity of the shortfall in funding Aberdeen’s regeneration of the Art Gallery, Cowdray Hall, Remembrance Hall, Music Hall and Provost Skene’s House has led to council staff flogging raffle tickets at £2 a time. Fellow staff are being encouraged to buy them.
It is unseemly and bizarre and exceptionally unprofessional approach to public works.

SNP Cllr Nicoll:

“I wonder if the next public art installation in Aberdeen will just be a pile of burning cash.”

Culture is draining away in Aberdeen as it is on the rise in Dundee with the magnificent and truly innovative V & A on top of other attractions on that city’s water front.
Aberdeen has cancelled its very popular and long-standing International Youth Festival and it looks as it doesn’t have a future. Just wait, another city will take up this initiative and have it running before Aberdeen councillors can utter the words, we are applying to become the City of Culture in …

1 Feb 2018
Meeting of the Finance committee. Request to identify more funding “for the additional costs” of the redevelopment.
Just what these are is anyone’s guess because everything related to the Art Gallery redevelopment has just become top secret.

I asked Ross Thomson MP (backed by Independent Alliance Councillor Marie Boulton – see above) if he could answer 4 questions relating to the Art Gallery Provost Skene’s House developments.
1: the reason for the over-run of the refurbishment
2: the problems which have led to the over-run
3: the current state of finance for the projects
4: when councillors were made aware of the problems leading to this state of affairs.

What I eventually got in response from a member of Thomson’s staff was hardly illuminating and little short of a council PR statement –

“Aberdeen Art Gallery (AAG) is the jewel in the crown of Aberdeen’s cultural offer …
As is to be expected with such works on buildings of the sensitivity, age, history and complexity of AAG, some challenges have emerged during the construction process. The Council, the project manager, contract administrator and contractor have been working hard to address these challenges and reduce any impact in financial terms and to reduce in delay in the Gallery’s re-opening. Although, the project programme has slipped as a result this is being managed. and it is anticipated that the AAG will reopen in early 2019. The resulting budgetary impact is currently being discussed and is at a commercially sensitive stage.”

Now wouldn’t you have thought that a contractor would have done a analysis report before pricing a job in an old building?
What are the ‘challenges’ aside from the cash?
Who is responsible for not anticipating these ‘challenges’?

“Given the complexities of the project and to ensure that it is delivered to the highest standards, the Council, earlier in 2017, appointed Faithful and Gould to project manage the refurbishment of AAG.  This investment of resource and management shows the Council’s commitment to successful delivery.”

So to be clear a company called Faithful and Gould were appointed to project manage the redevelopment in 2017? Who was project managing before then and are they being held responsible for the utter shambles this exercise has been?
Is it incompetency that has led to the increased costs and delays?
And when will the Gallery, Cowdray Hall and Remembrance Hall re-open?

Meanwhile place yourself in the position of a visitor to Aberdeen – no Art Gallery, no Cowdray Hall, no Music Hall, no Provost Skene’s House. If it wasn’t so serious the mess this council has landed the city in would be laughable.

16th century building, Aberdeen’s oldest.  Let’s hide it behind tons and tons of concrete.

Ross Thompson’s staff email continues:

“The Council committed investment in PSH when it allocated £1.5m in September, 2016 to facilitate its refurbishment. A project was developed to secure a new attraction, focused around people from the North East who helped transform the wider world, and supporting enabling works for this. Such a project fits with the desire to promote PSH as relevant to Aberdeen and integrate it with the Marischal Square development.

In developing the project through the autumn of 2016 and into 2017, it became apparent that the condition challenges facing PSH had not been readily apparent at project commencement due to restricted access as PSH sat within the Marischal Square development site. In taking the project forward, it was important to understand these challenges in order to ensure that refurbishment would be to the standard required and that any works would ensure that PSH was fit for purpose over the next 30-40 years. Consequently, Adams Napier Partnership was commissioned to undertake a full and comprehensive condition survey which reported in June 2017. This established that there were a range of urgent, necessary and desirable works required to the building fabric.”

PSH is Provost Skene’s House. According to Thomson’s staff there were things which came to light only late in 2016-17
“due to restricted access as PSH sat within the Marischal Square development site.”
Except Skene’s House has been there for over 400 years. It isn’t as though it sneaked away so contractors couldn’t get into its gubbins.

Then he gets to the nub of Council speak “fit for purpose” that get-out clause.
So in June 2017 another company was contracted to survey PSH. I’m beginning to see how this mess has grown into one helluva expensive mess.

This recent scrutiny of the 400 year old building found it in need of “urgent, necessary and desirable works.”

Not surprised given the pile driving that had gone on month after month after month next to a fragile and historically valuable ancient building. 

March 2017
Work on Provost Skene’s House won’t be delayed said Aberdeen City Council.

Oops factor – as part of the development of PSH one contract was valued at under £50,000 which meant work could be approved quickly. However all quotes came back over £50,000 which meant the tendering process kicked in …blah blah blah… delays “with consequence for the anticipated opening in parallel with Marischal Square in July 2017” said a council spokesperson/robot.

Provost Skene’s House – the under £50K work shot up to £84,700.

On 11 December 2017 the Press & Journal published what was claimed to be shocking photos from within Skene’s House.

This 16th century building, with no foundations, has taken a helluva pounding over months as the concrete monstrosity of Marischal Square has risen up around it.

Liberal Democrat Cllr Yuill spoke of his shock at the lack of protection provided during the building works of the ancient painted ceilings and panels.

It is hardly appropriate to use the term responsible when seeking to discover who at Aberdeen City Council is behind years of chaos and cultural delinquency. Their actions are wholly irresponsible. And profoundly unprofessional.

In response to Cllr Yuill’s concerns a council spokesperson denied there was ever any risk. Who was this anonymous person and what is their expertise on preserving art?
I think we should be told but perhaps that information has also been locked up in the secret drawer.

Nov 2017
Re work on Provost Skene House.
Cllr Lumsden (Conservative and Unionist) said, “It’s a case of the project almost has to start again.. The business case has been done now but there are new costs that need to go to committee for approval. The costs that were done a few years ago were unrealistic; it was costing up a Hall of Heroes.”

Hall of Heroes, huh? Precious few of them in the council chamber.
It transpires the council is looking for a – what’s the term? A yes, fit for propose attraction – not a councillor then?
Three years on and the hapless council is still waiting for the project to be properly scoped. “and know exactly what we are going to do.” !!!
Really?

Oops – little bit damage to Provost Skene’s it appears.

It’s like groundhog day as work on Provost Skenes’ House has ‘almost to start again’ and the new provisional re-opening date is 2019. Well past the opening of Marischal Square – which I believe hasn’t yet opened although it is now February 2018. I don’t know because I don’t go near that horrible and misbegotten development. I am, however, planning a visit to Dundee’s wonderful and creative waterfront V & A which has emerged over the same time-frame as Aberdeen’s extension hasn’t. 

Dundee’s V & A

Aberdeen City Council has proved itself not fit for purpose. Whatever that purpose may be.

Art Gallery shut since 2015 may re-open 2019
Cowdray Hall shut since 2015 may re-open 2019
Remembrance Hall shut since 2015 may re-open 2019
Provost Skene’s House shut since 2015 – think of a date
Music Hall shut since 2016 —see below

Don’t laugh but …

The Music Hall upgrade scheduled to finish in December 2017 has been pushed back to later 2018.  This is later 2018 I expect it will open imminently.

 

Oh, and there’s this –

 

Andy Scott: can a leopard change its spots?

I took the following comment from Flickr on the topic of artist Andy Scott’s leopard in Aberdeen’s hideous Marischal Square shopping complex.

I post this simply to make the point that the sculptor Andy Scott well-known for the Kelpies also raised some publicity for his objection to “Bavarian” burger bar opening at his “masterpiece”. He was quoted as saying that Falkirk Community Trust had “no understanding of the cultural importance of the asset they have inherited, nor of their obligations to the artist who created them”. The Bavarian fast food outlet was described as “tacky”. Andy Scott has just had unveiled a Leopard (in the Kelpie style) at Aberdeen’s Marischal Square, a building which is perhaps the biggest architectural crime visited on Aberdeen in the past fifty years. I do wonder what responsibility the sculptor might feel in helping give artistic credibility to such a terrible project? Oh that we had had the choice in Aberdeen of a small Bavarian burger bar or a monster glass and steel box which hides the magnificence which is granite Marischal College

The Fate of the Embroiderer from Peterhead

It was in 1707 that fraudulent bankruptcy became a capital crime in England; what the penalty for personal sequestration in Scotland was then I have not been able to discover but I suppose an English hanging may have been preferable to the French punishment of strangulation. 

Peterhead’s Alexander Thompson was about thirty years old when he found himself on trial at the Old Bailey in London in February 1756. Brought up in the Blue Toon in the northeast of Scotland, Thompson was educated to some degree, as were most Scots children, in the basics of reading and writing.

Like many of his countrymen and women before him, Thompson travelled abroad, first to Paris where he learned the specialized craft of embroidery.  No mere stitchers embroiderers were skilled in designing patterns used to create gorgeous intricate needlework that would be used decorating clothing worn by the wealthy and for home furnishings. 

After five years in France and still a young man in his early twenties Thompson took his experience as an embroiderer to Holland where he carried out his trade for several years, enhancing his reputation as a successful businessman in both Rotterdam and Amsterdam, before turning up in England.

In London he took lodgings in a ‘reputable’ coffee house and enjoyed the high life of the city; forever visiting entertainments. It was at a dance he met his prospective wife, Lydia Davis, but safe to say her father wasn’t keen on his prospective son-in-law. Lydia, or rather her father, had some money as apparently did Thompson and the couple moved into a comfortable house in St. James’s, Westminster. From there Thompson earned a living as embroiderer, dealer and a chapman (seller of cheap popular books.)

However, Thompson was of the mind that all work makes Jack a dull boy and quickly the marriage turned sour and the couple separated. Then one evening Thompson asked his wife to go dancing with him and together they went to Fish Street Hill which appeared to have prompted something of reconciliation. They were at a friend’s house when at around four in the morning on the 20th February 1755 the marital home, where Thompson still carried on his business, went up in flames. Fortunately it was well insured nevertheless all his work materials were lost as well as personal belongings and more importantly two people, both servants, died in the fire.  

Rumours abounded that Thompson had been seen in the neighbourhood before the fire broke out, denied by Thompson who maintained he was with his wife the whole of that night. He collected an insurance payout of £500 despite the property having been insured for £900 and immediately went off to a tavern with his father-in-law and a friend to pay off a debt. It emerged Thompson was in debt to several people but despite having enough money in hand he chose not to discharge his debts which amounted to no more than £200 and sent a note to his wife informing her he was leaving London.

His marriage over Thompson sailed for Scotland and in his absence he was declared bankrupt by the courts in England. He later claimed he knew nothing of this although he would have been well aware when he turned his back on England he left as a debtor and failure to discharge debts was then a very serious offence.

Thompson arrived in Edinburgh, described erroneously as the north of Scotland in English court papers and in the southern press. He was still only in his twenties and before long he got married again. History repeated itself when he found this father-in-law was none-too-keen on him either and kept at him to pay off his debts which Thompson must have admitted to so Thompson, possibly reluctantly, sailed back to London. Knowing he was in trouble not only over the money he owed but having committed bigamy Thompson persuaded a woman he met there to impersonate his English wife and swear before a lawyer that they had not been married but only cohabiting in an attempt to make his Scottish marriage legal.

The attempted fraud was quickly discovered when under pressure the woman broke down and admitted the deception. Thompson was apprehended and dragged before his English father-in-law who identified him. In no time Thompson found himself locked up in Clerkenwell New Prison and later Newgate. His bigamy was by now the least of his worries.

During his absence in Edinburgh the London courts issued an order for his appearance before the Commissioners in Bankruptcy at the Guildhall “to make a full discovery and disclosure of his estate and effects, when and where the creditors are to come prepared to prove their debts.” Having failed to comply, Thompson hired a legal representative to argue he had no knowledge of the matter, being in Scotland at the time. He was put on trial for bankruptcy and failing to comply with an interdict to deal with it. His declaration he knew nothing of the action did not wash with the jury and he was condemned to death for not surrendering himself to the Commissioners’ scrutiny.

William Robertson’s portrait of Flora Macdonald

Meanwhile at Edinburgh Baillie Court that July an action was taken out against Thompson by William Robertson, a limner,* for what I don’t know  as the court papers are missing and an application was made by Margaret Lamb, daughter of George Lamb, a wright of Potterow, against Alexander Thompson for his bigamous marriage to her.

Despondent in his English goal Thompson wrote several letters imploring understanding of his situation including one sent to his English father-in-law demanding his help. Thompson, a Protestant, also railed at the church for failing to support him and increasingly desperate angrily declared his desire to die a Catholick. His rekindled interest in religion found him penning prayers, attending chapel and spending time in quiet devotional meditation which led him to regret his ill-treatment of his English wife. And so a contrite Thompson calmly faced the hangman’s rope – and in doing so left two widows.

* artist, or portraits or miniatures