Scottish Eccentrics

SCOTTISH ECCENTRICS by HUGH MacDIARMID SCOTTISH ECCENTRICS The distinguished Scottish poet and literary critic who writes this book recalls how Bernard Shaw in On The Rocks ironically declares that the massacres after the Battle of Culloden were not "mur- der" but simply "liquidation," since the slain Scots in question were "incompatible with British civilization." He then surveys the whole field of Scottish biography, and shows how true this has proved of an amazing number of distinguished Scots, no matter how successfully the bulk of the Scottish people have been assim- ilated to English standards since the Union. The facts are irresist- ible and bring out the "eccentricity" of Scottish genius in an extraordinary fashion. The author gives full-length studies often outstanding Scottish eccentrics, including Lord George Gordon of the "Gordon Riots"; Sir Thomas Urquhart, the trans- lator of Rabelais', "Christopher North"; "Ossian" (James Mac- pherson, M.P.); James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd; and William McGonagall, perhaps the world's best "bad poet". But he supports these leading cases with apt material drawn from the lives of hundreds of Scots of every period in history and every walk of life, and in this way builds up a bril- liant panoramic picture of Scottish psychology through the ages, singularly at variance with all generally accepted views of the national character. 15 S. net By the Same Author Poetry Sangschaw Penny Wheep To Circumjack Cencrastus First Hymn to Lenin, and other Poems A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle Stony Limits, and other Poems Fiction Annals of the Five Senses Translations The Handmaid of the Lord (novel, from the Spanish of Ramon Maria de Tenreiro) Birlinn Chlann-Rhagnaill (poem, from the Scots Gaelic of Alasdair Mac- Mhaighstir Alasdair) Criticism Contemporary Scottish Studies Albyn: or Scotland and the Future Scottish Scene (in collaboration with Lewis Grassic Gibbon) At the Sign of the Thistle etc. etc. HUGH MacDIARMID SCOTTISH ECCENTRICS " They do not love liberty who fear license" LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD. BROADWAY HOUSE : 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C. 1936 TO MY FRIEND AND FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN A. J. B. PATERSON WITH GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION The hornless hart carries off the harem, Magnificent antlers are nothing in love. Great tines are only a drawback and danger To the noble stag that must bear them. Crowned as with an oaktree he goes, A sacrifice for the ruck of his race, Knowing full well that his towering points Single him out, a mark for his foes. Yet no polled head's triumphs since the world began In love and war have made a high heart thrill Like the sight of a Royal with its Rights and Crockets, Its Pearls, and Beam, and Span. AUTHOR'S NOTE LIVING remote from library facilities, I have neces- J sarily been greatly indebted in writing this book to friends who have hunted up essential references for me or forwarded to me on loan copies of volumes I required to consult. In this connection I must specially thank Dr. Mary Ramsay, Mr Francis George Scott, Mr John Tonge, Mr Robin M. Black, and Miss Helen B. Cruickshank. HUGH MacDIARMID Isle of Whalsay, Shetland Islands CONTENTS I. Lord George Gordon ..... II. Sir Thomas Urquhart, The Knight of Cromarty . 26 III. The Great McGonagall ..... 57 IV. James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd . 76 V. "Christopher North" (Professor John Wilson) 99 VI. The Strange Case of William Berry 110 VII. Thomas Davidson, and The Fellowship of the New Life 136 VIII. Elspeth Buchan, Friend Mother in the Lord 160 IX. James Burnett, Lord Monboddo 194 X. "Ossian" Macpherson and William Lauder . 212 XL Epilogue : The Strange Procession 261 XII. The Caledonian Antisyzygy .... 284 SCOTTISH ECCENTRICS LORD GEORGE GORDON THE story of Lord George Gordon is a very sensational and very sad one. No British politician ever soared up into public notice like a rocket so spectacularly and none ever came down like the stick so quickly and so abjectly. The third son of the third Duke of Gordon by his Duchess, Catherine, daughter of the Earl of Aberdeen, Lord George was born in Upper Brook Street, London, in December 1750 and George II stood as his sponsor or godfather at his baptism in the succeeding January. "Of his boyhood or education we know little or nothing; nor does there appear to have supervened any peculiar trait of conduct, or bias of disposition, during his juvenile years, to distinguish him from his compeers, or forebode the singular eccentricity and erratic waywardness of his future career." Entering the navy, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant, but left the service to go into politics. In 1772 he went to reside in Inverness-shire with a view to standing in opposition to General Fraser of Lovat, as member for the county, at the next general election, which would of necessity take place in not more than two years thereafter. He made a model candidate and nursed the constituency to some tune. His project was, indeed, "bearding the lion in his den, and appeared almost as Quixotic an undertaking as that of displacing one of the chieftain's native moun- tains". Yet the unexpected happened; Inverness- shire witnessed a political equivalent of the fall of Goliath at the hands of David. Lord George was, nevertheless, not destined to enter Parliament for a Scottish seat. The campaign and the result have been described as 1 B — 2 SCOTTISH ECCENTttlCS follows: "Such were his ingratiating qualities, the frank- ness of his manners, the affability of his address, and his happy knack of accommodating himself to the humours of all classes that, when the day of election drew nigh, and the candidates began to number their strength, Lovat found to his unutterable confusion and vexation that his beardless competitor had actually succeeded in securing a majority of votes. Nor could the most distant imputa- tions of bribery or undue influence be charged upon the young political aspirant. All was the result of his winning address and popular manners, superadded to his handsome countenance, which is said to have been of almost feminine beauty and delicacy. He played on the bagpipes and violin to those who loved music. He spoke Gaelic and wore the philabeg where these were in fashion. He made love to the young ladies, and listened with patience and deference to the garrulous sermonising of old age, and, finally, gave a splendid ball to the gentry at Inverness one remarkable incident concerning which was his hiring a ship and bringing from the Isle of Skye the family of the McLeods, consisting of fifteen young ladies—the pride and admiration of the North. It was not to be tolerated, however, that the great feudal chieftain should thus be thrust from his hereditary political possession by a mere stripling. Upon an application to the Duke (Lord George's eldest brother had now succeeded their father) a compromise was agreed on by which it was settled that upon Lord George's relinquishing Inverness-shire Gen- eral Fraser should purchase a seat for him in an English borough and he was accordingly returned for Ludgers- hall, the property of Lord Melbourne, at the election of 1744." Little could the Inverness electors imagine—hardly can Lord George himself have had the first shadowy pre- monition—that the handsome, dashing, debonair young M.P. was six years later to head one of the greatest mob risings in British history and be the leader of a movement which resulted in what might easily have become a second LORD GEORGE GORDON 3 Great Fire of London; that he was to stand his trial and be acquitted on the charge of high treason; that he was seven years later to be convicted on other counts, flee the country to evade the sentences, and be brought back, a convert to Judaism, his beard hanging down on his breast, and his studiously sanctimonious deportment at appalling odds with the debonair and engaging figure he had cut on his first incursion into public affairs; that he was to linger in prison, sending out frenzied appeals and trying to negotiate for help with the French revolutionaries, until he died, at the early age of forty-three, of a fever in New- gate gaol, after three days' delirium. Yet such was his destined course. In the few years before the shadows began to fall there was no sign of morbid tendency, unless an increasing in- dependence of opinion which gave him an isolated place in Parliament is to be accounted as its earliest manifesta- tion. It could not have been interpreted in that way at the time, and it is easy to be wise after the event. It was immediately evident, at all events, that Lord George was not to be a silent or inactive member of the national assembly. He aligned himself at the outset with the Ministry of the day, but soon—it is alleged owing to the influence of his sister-in-law, the celebrated Duchess of Gordon—espoused the principles of the Opposition. "It was not long", we read, "ere, at the instigation of Governor Johnstone and Mr Burke, he fairly broke with the Ministry, upon their refusal to comply with a most unreasonable demand for promotion over the heads of older and abler officers, which the gentlemen just named had incited him to make." But this explanation of his change-over may be a partisan one, and even if he made any such unreasonable demand he may have put it for- ward as a mere pretext for changing his political colour. It is too early yet to charge him with displaying any of that unreasonableness which in the light of what followed can be all too readily adduced as an early symptom of his subsequent lamentable and disastrous trend.

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