FOLIOCollections • Research • Events at the National Library of Scotland ISSUE 10 SUMMER 2005

STEAMSHIP ENTREPRENEURMackinnon the ‘Merchant Prince’

OF TERROR AND DELIGHTFocus on Ian Hamilton Finlay

SWEET OASESThe Edinburgh New Town Gardens

CITY OF LITERATUREUniverse of Ideas

STEAMSHIP ENTREPRENEURMackinnon the ‘Merchant Prince’

OF TERROR AND DELIGHTFocus on Ian Hamilton Finlay

SWEET OASESThe Edinburgh New Town Gardens

CITY OF LITERATUREUniverse of Ideas

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SI R W I L L I A M M A C K I N N O N wasone of Victorian Scotland’sgreatest entrepreneurs. Frommodest beginnings as a grocer’s

apprentice in Campbeltown and as a clerkin Glasgow, he became, in the words ofThe Times of 1893, ‘one of the mostenterprising merchant princes of ourtime.’ He established the world’s largestshipping and trading conglomerate. Hissteam-ship companies, of which thebiggest was the British India SteamNavigation Co. (or BI), dominatedcoastal shipping in South and South-EastAsia and in Australia, and they pioneeredlong-sea liner services between Londonand various Indian Ocean ports. Hisfamily-led business group also invested injute-milling, coal-mining and above alltea-planting in India. However, sincemost of his activities took place beyondScottish shores and were conductedthrough private partnerships andcompanies, his contemporaries knewrelatively little about his business empire.Only towards the end of his life did hecome prominently to public attention –through his involvement in the‘Scramble’ for colonial territory in EastAfrica that was set off by the Germanintervention of 1884–85. Hissponsorship of the Emin Pasha ReliefExpedition and his creation of the short-lived Imperial British East Africa, whichacquired and administered the territoriesnow known as Kenya and Uganda,brought him onto the newspaper pagesand gave him a reputation as someonewho laid the foundations for Britishcolonial rule in the region. Even so, therewas an ambiguity about Mackinnon’sgoals at that time. Why should abusinessman whose operational centre ofgravity lay in Asia become so involvedwith African affairs? Were his motivesbasically patriotic and philanthropic, orwere they essentially commercial andprofit-seeking? In fact, WilliamMackinnon was not marching to thedrumbeat of Anglo-German politicalrivalry in Africa, but to the echoes of anearlier involvement with East Africa thathad its origins in the Scotland of the1870s as well as in his own businessambitions.

Mackinnon saw no dichotomy orincompatibility between commercial andhumanitarian objectives. Like VictorianScotland’s great national hero, David

Glasgow, the Zambesi and ZanzibarWilliam Mackinnon and the Livingstone Legacy in East Africa, 1871–79

Steamship magnate WilliamMackinnon built up a vast tradingnetwork in the latter half of thenineteenth century. In its heyday,his business empire stretched toIndia, Singapore, the Persian Gulf,Australia and Africa. His careerencompassed both magnificent

success and spectacular failure. Hehad to face political, commercial

and social challenges as hecontributed to the early

development of a global marketand sought to employ fellow Scots

whenever possible. J. ForbesMunro, Emeritus Professor of

Economic History at the Universityof Glasgow has made an in-depth

study of Mackinnon’s maritimeenterprise.

Livingstone, he believed in the liberatingeffects of the processes that today wouldbe called globalisation – that materialimprovement and social reform couldproceed hand in hand, and thatCommerce and Christianity weremutually supportive. His primemotivation stemmed from his success as ashipowner and merchant. After theopening of the Suez Canal in 1869, hebecame ambitious to replicate along theshores of eastern Africa the same tradeand transport innovations he hadpioneered around India and through theIndonesian archipelago. He waspersuaded by friends – especially by SirHenry Bartle Frere, the former Governorof Bombay, whose influence had helpedhim acquire mail contracts in India – thatthe maritime trade of eastern Africa wasripe for the same transformation by steamtechnology as was taking place in Asianwaters. Beyond that, he saw East Africaas a stepping-stone for the developmentof shipping lines between India and theBritish colonies of settlement in SouthAfrica, much as the Dutch East Indiesserved him as a halfway house betweenIndia and the colonies in Australia. Suchambitions, however, ran up hard againstthe fact that conditions in eastern Africawere very different from those in Asia.Comparatively low levels of sea-bornetrade, long distances from major centresof world commerce, and a dearth ofnatural allies in the shape of expatriatemerchant houses in coastal ports made ita far trickier trading environment. Untilthe coalfields of Natal could be tapped,he would have to meet the high cost ofsteam coals. There were severedeficiencies in inland transport betweenthe narrow coastal strip and the greatinternal plateau which comprised most ofthe interior of Africa, and furthermore,he would have to contend with thepolitical uncertainties of dealing withZanzibari and Portuguese colonialauthorities, which were strong enough tocontrol access to the ports but too weakto do much to develop their hinterlands.All this made for an extremely difficultmaritime and mercantile environment inwhich to operate.

Mackinnon’s principal ally inovercoming such difficulties was theBritish anti-slave trade movement. Heharnessed his steamships and businessexperience to the belief that so-called

J. Forbes Munro

Pencil sketch of William Mackinnon from the Bailie,May 1881. (U.420)

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‘legitimate commerce’ would drive outthe horrific traffic in human beings thatDavid Livingstone’s travels were bringingto the attention of the English-speakingworld. He began to associate with menwho were either friends of Livingstone orhad collaborated with him in theexploration of East-Central Africa – keyamong them being his own patron andmentor, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, who hadbeen Livingtone’s host in Bombay priorto his setting out on his last journey.Mackinnon drew on the ideas of suchmen about how Africa should be openedup to the ideals of ‘Christianity,Commerce and Civilisation.’ A steamshipline down Africa’s Indian Ocean littoralwould be the first step in a modernisationof African transport infrastructure thatwould extend to the introduction ofsteam navigation on the chain of greatlakes along the Rift Valley to the north ofthe Zambesi – as well as overland road orrail links to the lakes. By such means,East-Central Africa would be drawn intothe world economy, agricultural andmineral exports would replace the tradein men and women, the local economieswould flourish and in the longer termwage labour would replace slave labour.

These ideas were worked out, and thefirst attempts were made to put theminto practice, during the 1870s, whenLivingstone was converted from aforgotten explorer into the great iconicfigure who inspired a generation ofmissionary, humanitarian and geographicendeavour. In 1871 and 1872, Frereused the publicity surrounding Stanley’s‘discovery’ of Livingstone at Ujjiji onLake Tanganyika to mount a politicalcampaign against the sea-borne slave

trade between the island entrepôt ofZanzibar and the Arabian peninsula. Thisresulted in an award to Mackinnon of amail contract to establish a steamship linebetween Aden and Zanzibar, and in theFrere Mission to Zanzibar and Oman of1873, which led to Sayyid Bargash’sagreement to close the slave markets inZanzibar and prohibit the export ofslaves from his territories. Additional mailcontracts from the Portuguese andFrench governments also enabled BI toplace a small steamer on a line south ofZanzibar, to the Portuguese settlementsalong the Mozambique coast and to theComoros Islands.

The start of the first regular steamshipline to East Africa was soon followed bythe outpouring of national sentimentover Livingstone’s death, theextraordinary story of the return of hisbody to the coast, and thence to Britain(carried from Zanzibar to Aden on a BIsteamer), the public mourning at hisfuneral in Westminster Abbey in April1874, and the publication of his LastJournals later that year.

William Mackinnon, a long-standingsupporter of Free Church missionactivities in India, was immediately drawninto the scheme to establish a memorialmission at the north end of Lake Nyasa(modern Lake Malawi), as a locationfrom which to spread Christianity andCommerce throughout the interior ofEast-Central Africa. He became afounding member of the GlasgowLivingstonia Committee, along with aclutch of businessmen that includedJames Stevenson, a wealthy chemicalsmanufacturer. Stevenson, who wassomething of an armchair geographer,harboured ambitions to see thedevelopment of a line of water-bornetransport from the lower Zambesi, up theShire River to Lake Nyasa, and fromthere by overland connections to LakeTanganyika, in the heart of the EastAfrica region. His interests thereforeconverged with William Mackinnon’s,whose shipping line to the Mozambiquecoast stood to gain from anydevelopment of commerce on the lowerZambesi.

However, Mackinnon had wideraspirations than his Glasgow associates.He also wanted to see overlandcommunications with the north end ofLake Nyasa and the south end of LakeTanganyika being developed from a porton the Swahili coast under the Sultan ofZanzibar’s jurisdiction. This reflecteduncertainties over the reliability and costsof a Zambezi-Shire-Nyasa route to theinterior, but equally a strong desire onMackinnon’s part to work with and

through the Sultan’s administration so asto stimulate ‘legitimate trade’ betweenthe Swahili coast and the interior. Hisclose ally in pursuing this goal was yetanother Scotsman, John Kirk, the Britishconsul at Zanzibar – who had been onLivingstone’s Zambesi mission, whoowed his position at Zanzibar to Frere’sinfluence, and who guided Mackinnon’sand Frere’s views about the need forgreater British commercial penetration ofthe Sultan’s mainland territories. In1875, Kirk organised an official visit toBritain by Seyyid Bargash, in the courseof which William Mackinnon secured theSultan’s agreement that BI’s agents inZanzibar – Smith Mackenzie & Co –should also become Bargash’s businessagents. (Mackinnon was instrumental inestablishing this firm, and two of its threefounding partners, Archie Smith andArchie Brown, were former employees ofhis Glasgow merchant house.) Theimmediate outcome of the newrelationship was an order for an armedsteamship, which Mackinnon gave to theDenny yard at Dumbarton. The vessel,named the Glasgow, would be deliveredto the Sultan in 1878.

Frere, as President of the RoyalGeographical Society, attended theBrussels Geographical Conference ofSeptember 1876, as did Mackinnon.Leopold II, who had summoned thegathering, proposed to fund a line ofstations along a route between theSwahili coast and Lake Tanganyika, andcalled for the creation of an internationalorganisation to co-ordinate similarinitiatives by national bodies. Frere andMackinnon believed that Leopold couldprovide influential support for their own

John Kirk. (Acc.9942/47)Sir Henry Bartle Frere. From the author’scollection.

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project, and the king’s call forinternational cooperation became thevehicle for their attempt to bringtogether the various strands of Scottishinterest in the region. On 9–10November 1876, they held severalmeetings in Glasgow with the aim ofcreating a Scottish branch of a proposedBritish committee of the InternationalAfrican Association, and giving it the taskof funding two roads in East Africa – thefirst from the north end of Lake Nyasa tothe south end of Lake Tanganyika andthe second from a port on the Swahilicoast to the north end of Lake Nyasa.Such a committee was duly established,comprising the Lord Provost, four MPsand various businessmen associated withthe Free Church or the LivingstoniaMission. Under Mackinnon’s guidance itset about constructing the proposed roadto Lake Nyasa. The road party (a formerRoyal Engineers sergeant named Mayesand two young brothers fromEdinburgh, Frederick and John Moir)arrived in Zanzibar in June 1877 and,taking instructions from Kirk, began theroad from the little-used port of Dar-es-Salaam. Mackinnon hoped to lease Dar-

es-Salaam from the Sultan as a base for BI and Smith Mackenzie operationson the East African mainland. Hisambitions quickly went beyond thatsimple proposal. His scheme was to lease the whole of the Sultan’s mainlandadministration and use its customsrevenues to create a developmentcompany which would transformtransport and communications betweenthe coast and the interior – especially toLake Tanganyika, on which Mackinnonoffered to help Bargash place a steamer.When the idea was put to Bargashthrough Kirk in April 1877, the Sultanseemed willing to entertain it. Only threeyears after Livingstone’s funeral, itappeared that his Scottish admirers wereon the verge of creating a commercialempire to fulfil his vision for East-CentralAfrica, and that Scottish enterprise mightacquire a pre-eminence in the regioncomparable to that of Merseyside in WestAfrica.

It was not to be. Even before theroad party set foot in Dar-es-Salaam, theloose-knit project began to unravel. InJanuary 1877, a special sub-committee ofthe RGS decided that British explorationof Africa should be conductedindependently of Leopold’s scheme.Consequently, there would be no British

committee of the International AfricanAssociation. Frere was in no position toreverse this decision because he wasshortly thereafter sent to Cape Town tobecome the British High Commissionerfor South Africa. The RGS ‘revolt’resulted in the dispatch to East Africa ofthe Johnston expedition (described byJames McCarthy in the Autumn 2003issue of Folio). Although Kirk andMackinnon were somewhat suspicious ofthis expedition, they did not regard it asa serious check to their ambitions. Atfirst, indeed, Mackinnon was onlymarginally discomfited by the turn ofevents – he seemed to believe that theScottish ‘sub-committee’ could functionas an affiliate of Leopold’s association inits own right, and he was determined tocontinue to collaborate with the Belgianking. However, he failed to carry hisGlasgow associates with him. In lookingmore closely at the constitution of theInternational African Association, theyconcluded that it gave too muchinfluence to Leopold and the ‘RomanCatholic powers’, and wound up the‘sub-committee’. This decision coincidedwith the collapse of the City of GlasgowBank in October 1878 – an event thatshattered business confidence in the cityand undermined William Mackinnon’s

The Baghdad, one of McKinnon’s steamships. Fromthe author’s collection.

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Note on sources

An account of the development ofWilliam Mackinnon’s business group intoa near-global conglomerate, and ofMackinnon’s involvement in theprojection of British power and influencein the Middle East and Africa, can befound in J. Forbes Munro, MaritimeEnterprise and Empire: Sir WilliamMackinnon and His Business Network,1823–1893 (H4.203.2055). Theinfluence of David Livingstone’s life andtravels on developments in Scotland andAfrica is treated by various contributorsto David Livingstone and the VictorianEncounter with Africa (NRR andGMK.196.4.1). The papers of Sir JohnKirk (Acc.9942) throw light on hisrelations with Mackinnon, while thecorrespondence of Duncan Mackinnon(Acc.6168) is a useful source for thebusiness group’s activities during the1870s, including its growing involvementwith East Africa. The geographicexploration of the region, and conditionsin Zanzibar and the Swahili coast duringthe 1870s, are dealt with in JamesMcCarthy, Journey into Africa: The Lifeand Times of Keith Johnston, ScottishCartographer and Explorer (1844–79)(HP2.204.1472). Accessions concerningDavid Livingstone are listed in the guideto manuscripts on the website and youmay like to consult G.W. Clendennen &I.C. Cunningham, David Livingstone: aCatalogue of Documents (NLS:Edinburgh, 1979), (NLS, NNR) andI.C. Cunningham, David Livingstone: ACatalogue of Documents: A Supplement(NLS: Edinburgh, 1985), (NLS, NNR).

reputation there (because of his previousmembership of the bank’s board ofdirectors).

In East Africa, meanwhile, thingswent no better. In May 1878, Bargash,under pressure from local Arab andIndian interests, made it clear that hewould not grant a lease of the whole ofhis mainland territories. Around the sametime, the road party aroused the Sultan’sire through the drunken antics of itsleader, Mayes. The two Moir brothersdrifted south to work on the Zambesi-Shire-Nyasa route. Then, in June 1878,the Glasgow arrived in Zanzibar – and sodisappointed the Sultan, who hadexpected something more like a RoyalNavy warship, that he withdrew hisagency from Smith Mackenzie & Co andgave it to an American firm instead.Finally, in May 1879, Bargash informedMackinnon that the lease of Dar-es-Salaam, on which by now he was pinningall hopes, would not be possible becauseit would undermine established tradearrangements. Even Kirk, aware of theSultan’s growing antipathy towardsMackinnon and his business group,temporarily withdrew his backing fromthe proposal. Shortly thereafter, Leopoldabandoned his interest in the routes fromthe Swahili coast to Lake Tanganyika andswitched his attention to the Congobasin.

The collapse of the Mackinnon-Kirk-Frere vision for the commercialpenetration of the Swahili coast and itshinterland left in place the second wingof the Scottish Livingstonian ‘project’ for

East Africa: the exploitation of theZambesi-Shire-Nyasa route to theinterior. This went ahead through theefforts of Stevenson and the men of theLivingstonia committee (now minusMackinnon), and achieved some successthrough the formation of the AfricanLakes Company in 1878, to conducttrade along the route, and with theconstruction of the Stevenson Roadbetween Lake Nyasa and LakeTanganyika. However, these initiativescontinued to be hampered by the veryconditions that had attracted Mackinnonto a more direct overland route to thegreat lakes – the need to tranship goodsat the mouth of the Zambesi (which hadno known direct access for sea-goingvessels), the high levels of Portuguesetariffs on goods entering or leaving viathe Zambesi, and seasonal navigationhazards on the Shire River. All imposedadditional costs on commerce along theroute, and rendered its development amore limited and halting affair than hadbeen envisaged in the first flush ofenthusiasm in Glasgow. For his part,William Mackinnon swallowed hisdisappointment at the turn of events, andcontinued to work hard to defend anddevelop his steamship line along the EastAfrican coast until, towards the end ofhis life, concern about German activity inthe region enabled him to revisit theideas he had espoused in the 1870s. In ascheme now focused on Mombasa ratherthan Dar-es-Salaam, and having at itsheart a proposed sea-rail-lake steamtransport route from London to LakeVictoria and the Upper Nile,Livingstone’s legacy was projected intoKenya and Uganda.

The Dorunda . From the author’s collection.

forwards into the late Sixties and earlySeventies, but backwards into the Fifties.His father’s work from his concretepoetry period was well known, as was histransition from concrete to the making ofLittle Sparta. But the period before this,when he was writing stories and plays,had been little explored. I had comeacross occasional short stories by Finlayin anthologies from the 1970s, ‘TheMoney’ and ‘A Broken Engagement’,and a couple were reprinted in YvesAbrioux’s essential overview, IanHamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer. I hadalso come across the play ‘WalkingThrough Seaweed’, again in an oldanthology, and was intrigued to knowmore. By this time I was working for theScottish Poetry Library, as was LiliasFraser who also had a foot in theBirlinn/Polygon door, and it was agreedthat the new edition would be published

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Dancing VisionsIan Hamilton Finlay’s Early Writing

IN 1 9 9 6 P O L Y G O N , then still part ofEdinburgh University Press, publishedThe Dancers Inherit the Party &Glasgow Beasts, an a Burd. This

featured what one might call the ‘pre-concrete’ poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay,and brought together for the first timepoems from two sources: the shortsequence written in Glasgow demotic,Glasgow beasts, an a burd haw, an inseks,an, aw, a fush, first published in 1961 byFinlay’s own Wild Flounder Press, awhimsical maritime title for the precursorto the long-running Wild HawthornPress; and poems from a largercollection, The Dancers Inherit the Party,first published in 1960. The work waspopular at the time: Glasgow Beasts ran tofive editions, and The Dancers to three,although the success of the latter wasmarred by a legal dispute with FulcrumPress, which incorrectly titled their thirdexpanded edition as a first edition, whichled to the book being withdrawn fromsale. Both sequences remainedunavailable, other than odd poemspublished in anthologies, until the 1996edition.

This was edited by his son, AlecFinlay. Picking up from the 1960s, thenew volume sold out, and after Polygonhad been bought by Birlinn in 2002, itsnew owners expressed an interest inreprinting the collection. Alec was nowinvolved in his own publishing and artprojects, and asked if I might beinterested in taking the project on. Bythat time we had known each other forover a decade, and worked together forseveral years, mainly on the pocketbooksseries. We first met at the GraemeMurray Gallery in the early 1990s, whereI then worked organising exhibitions, ata time when Murray was the mainScottish outlet for Finlay’s printed work,already extensive and burgeoning still. Inquieter moments I would leaf throughthe prints in the plan chest, or browsethe huge array of booklets and cards inan upright cabinet, amazed at thequantity, amazed at the fact that this wasjust a part of Finlay’s output, which alsoencompassed the garden he and SueFinlay created at Little Sparta, as well asart exhibitions and installations aroundthe world.

For the new edition, Alec expressedthe hope that it might be expanded, not

This year marks the eightiethbirthday of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Anartist of international stature, Finlay

has worked in many differentmedia but is perhaps best known

for the creation of Little Sparta, hisgarden in the Pentland Hills nearEdinburgh. A unique synergy ofpoetry, sculpture and garden

design, it is one of Europe’s mostimportant contemporary art works.Some of Finlay’s work was recently

on show at the Library in OfConceits and Collaborators, an

exhibition curated by Tom Bee.Here, poet and editor Ken

Cockburn reflects on bringing intobeing a new edition of The Dancers

Inherit the Party, a collection ofFinlay’s early writing, in an articlethat incorporates material written

by Lilias Fraser.

Ken Cockburn

Portrait of Ian Hamilton Finlay beside a bust ofRousseau from The Philosopher’s Garden, acollection of photographs by Robin Gillanders,National Galleries of Scotland, 2004. Little Sparta(GMP.1998.4.1) with photographs by RobinGillanders and detached sentences by Finlayappeared in 1998; most of the edition wasdestroyed in a flood.

The Dancers Inherit the Party, Polygon, 2004. Acollection of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s early writings,

edited and with an introduction by Ken Cockburn.

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by Polygon in association with the SPL,with myself as editor and Lilias asresearcher.

It was Lilias who dug in the Library.Her initial point of reference was TheSea-Bed and other stories, which Finlayhad published himself in 1958. Gettinghold of a copy of this was notstraightforward, and she was unsure if itsunavailability was due to its rarity,fragility or the fact that, in the monthswhen we wanted to look at it, it wasbeing recatalogued to incorporate it aspart of the IHF collection, and waslurking in various special collectioncupboards for processing. Once accessed,however, it was found to include ahelpful list of newspapers and periodicalswhere the stories had previouslyappeared. In addition, pointers fromAlec, provided in conversations face-to-face and electronically, provided someinvaluable shortcuts to undiscoveredcountry.

Lilias started with the AccessionsDraft Index, picking out files that woulddefinitely or possibly have materialcovering the dates we were looking at.She used a range of resources: newspaperindexes, online catalogue searches, otheronline databases available via theLibrary’s website, the newspapermicrofilm viewer-cum-printer, as well asbooks, journals, manuscripts and letters.(In the course of my own reading, Iwanted at one point to refer to the 1996edition of The Dancers Inherit the Party.Much of Finlay’s printed work isproduced in finely printed, small editions,and unsurprisingly can only be consultedin the North Reading Room; but I was

surprised to find that, presumably on thestrength of this output, even this tradepaperback was also considered specialenough to be delivered and consultedthere!) Lilias also used the advice of thelibrarians, initially to help pick her waythrough the Draft Accession Index, andsubsequently for ideas on how to unearthfurther material. At that stage she waskeeping an eye out for play, story orarticle manuscripts and individual poems,but more realistically she was seekingbiographical information, texts whichmight shed light on Finlay’s literary andartistic development, and suggestions asto where published but uncollectedmaterial might be located.

The fullest letters were those toDerek Stanford and J.F. Hendry. Finlaymet Stanford during his National Service.They corresponded from about 1946 to1956, and then there was a long gapbefore they made contact again in around1967. The letters from Finlay to Stanfordfrom the late Sixties are particularlyinteresting, as he recaps for Stanford hisdevelopment over the years they havebeen out of touch. He emphasisescontinuity rather than change, despitethe stylistic changes, and resents beingpigeonholed: ‘I find it a wee bitdisconcerting when I am typecast as Aconcrete poet’. Stanford’s Inside theForties: Literary Memoirs, 1937–57(1977) provides lively insights intoFinlay’s life and interests during thatdecade, when he knew MacDiarmid,briefly attended Glasgow School of Art,undertook his National Service andbegan to write and paint. J.F. Hendry(1912–86) was a writer some thirteenyears older than Finlay, associated, likeNorman MacCaig, Dylan Thomas, andW.S. Graham (whom Finlay also knew)with the Apocalyptic school of the 1940s

which, although now remembered withlittle affection, provided a springboardfor the very disparate aesthetics of theseand other poets. Hendry is anundeservedly neglected figure today:although his memoirs and a work onRilke remain available, his poetry, beyonda selection featured by Andrew Crozier inthe anthology Conductors of Chaos,edited by Iain Sinclair in 1996, has longbeen out of print, and has attracted littlecritical attention. The range of Finlay’scontacts is further extended in a letter toHendry c.1957, by which time Finlay was living in Edinburgh, undergoinganalysis: ‘Muriel Spark came to see me. I liked her a lot. [...] She showed me aproof of her new novel, about hernervous breakdown.’

Gleaning information from the earlyletters was not always a straightforwardtask. Those which were handwrittentended to be on odd scraps of paper andundated, although occasionally the scrapshappen to be torn-up envelopes, whichshow by their previous postmark theearliest date the letter could have beenwritten. The way in which Finlay usedwhatever paper he could readily obtain,such as old envelopes or the fly-leavesfrom books, brings home in animmediate way his poverty at the time,and the fact that he was writing literallyin order to live. Use of a typewriter –that engine of concrete poetry – signalledletters written after the dates we wereinterested in.

Glasgow beasts, an a burd haw, an inseks, an, aw, afush, with papercuts by John Picking and PeteMcGinn. Wild Flounder Press, 1961. (IHF.s.6(10))

The Wild Hawthorn Press, and the poetry magazinePoor.Old.Tired.Horse (IHF.m.15). were launched in1961, the latter in collaboration with JessieMcGuffie. Contributors included Edwin Morgan,George Mackay Brown and Richard Demarco.

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The letters and accessions also yieldedthe mss of ‘Autobahn Aesthetic’, a shortessay about Finlay’s experience of post-war Germany, part of which is reprintedin the Introduction to the new edition,and which heralds Finlay’s laterconflation of modern warfare and classicalthemes; and ‘Jimmy’, a very short storyabout a shepherd. They also containedreferences to stories accepted by theGlasgow Herald and by magazines, aswell as to some plays. The plays, apart

one-set business. I like the simple,dramatic, symbolistic form. For instance,my wee, last one-act play has what I [think]a nice plot. Three old, mad women areboarded out in a private house, as is thecustom in this country when they areconsidered to be harmless [...] anyway,these three old ladies, being shut in thisone room, are hard put to it to pass thetime, so, chiefly, they quarrel. Only, as theyhave nothing but each her own bed andchair, they can’t even find something toquarrel about. So they quarrel aboutChristmas – when it is, because they eachremember from ‘before’ only one thingabout Christmas day. One remembers it hasto do with snow, so she often has aChristmas day – once she had fifteen all in arow! Another, who is very fat, remembers ithas to do with food, and the third, who isthe lowest of the low, remembers only itwas a day when everyone made a specialeffort to be nice. The ‘food’ one has aChristmas whenever the asylum inspector,an old, sour man, comes, as that day thewoman of the house serves up a propermeal. [The play begins on a snowymorning, moves to a good lunch for theinspector’s visit, then a new and niceinspector comes and when they insist onwishing him a happy Christmas he istouched and wishes them a happyChristmas back, so completing theconditions for Christmas for all three.]Simple, but for me, real drama, and I regretthat the church isn’t to my plays as the C.P.would be if I wrote to the party line.

Lilias also used the Library’s resources tocheck the online Scottish TheatreArchive, which provided information onthree broadcast versions of texts byFinlay: the plays ‘The Estate Hunters’from 1956, ‘Walking through Seaweed’from 1961, and the story ‘The Old Manand the Trout’ from 1974.

The surprise for Lilias and myself wasthe number of short stories she managedto unearth. After she had started to lookthrough issues of the Scottish Angler onAlec Finlay’s advice, and then stumbledacross a few more stories by accident, shetried more methodical ways of flushingthem out: the Library’s indexes of theGlasgow Herald, as well as of theScotsman and the TLS, were a usefulshortcut to locating entries. Twenty-onestory titles were noted from the GlasgowHerald index, exciting finds as each newvolume of the index revealed more.

The Scottish Angler was worthviewing for all relevant years (1950–54).As an outlet for the stories this title issomewhat unexpected, and it is odd tosee them next to advice on fly-tying. Thesurprise is lessened when one realises that

Loch View, Little Sparta. Photograph: David Paterson.

L'Ile des Peupliers. Photograph: David Paterson.

from those already published, remaineddifficult to track down. There arereferences to productions of, for example,The Displaced Milkmaid, The FamilyGathering and Peasants, but most suchmanuscripts have yet to surface, althoughLesley Lendrum, a friend andcollaborator from the early Sixties,provided two unpublished playscripts,one of which, ‘The Wild Dogs inWinter’, is included in the new edition.One of the most detailed references to anotherwise as yet unrecovered play comesin a letter of June 1956 to DerekStanford:

I love [drama] – but not this three-act,

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Note on sourcesThe Ian Hamilton Finlay specialcollection consists of about threehundred printed items, examples of hisconcrete poetry and book art productionsfrom his own presses; all are prefixedIHF. Finlay’s correspondence with DerekStanford is listed at Acc.6589 andAcc.6533, while his correspondence withJ.F. Hendry is Acc.10806. A book calledOf Conceits and Collaborations is now inpreparation by Tom Bee. In Septemberthere will be an exhibition ofphotographs by Robin Gillanders fromThe Philosopher’s Garden at the ScottishNational Portrait Gallery.

An iconic image from the collection of Tom Bee,typographer, one of Ian Hamilton Finlay’scollaborators.

Below: Poem by Ian Hamilton Finlay. Typographyby Tom Bee.

the magazine was edited by the poet R.Crombie Saunders (1912–91), who hadedited MacDiarmid’s Selected Poems of1944. All the stories directly concern fishand fishing, which Finlay greatly enjoyedat the time, and it quickly becomes clearthat they hold many of the themes thatdevelop through his career. In a letter ofc. 1948 to Derek Stanford he writes, ‘Ihad a fine day at the fishing yesterday (Ifind angling conducive to clearthoughts).’ By late 1955 he had amassedquite a number of such stories, as hewrote to J.F. Hendry, ‘I write mostlyfishing stories, but they are not what youmight imagine [...] I am finishing a bookof them. I hope to get it published. TheBlue-Suited Fisherman it’s called.’ In factwhen Finlay did publish his stories in TheSea-Bed in 1958, only three of the fishingstories were included; of the others, somehave rural settings, and some deal moredirectly with issues of making art, forwhich fishing had been a metaphor. Thefishing theme has remained important toFinlay throughout his career, and manyof his best known ‘concrete’ works havefishing as their theme, albeit now sea-fishing, a more collective and commercialactivity compared to the individualamateur angler of the earlier short stories.When asked to make a work for the newScottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh,which opened in 1999, he designed atapestry featuring the poem ‘GreenWaters’, written about 1965, whichdescribes a voyage purely by selecting thenames of Scottish fishing-boats.

At some points Lilias was led astrayby references to ‘Ian Finlay’, a journalistand critic who specialised in Scottishculture and art. This may have been whyFinlay decided to use ‘Hamilton’ in orderto distinguish himself professionally andaesthetically. For the Glasgow Heraldstories, he opts for ‘Ian H. Finlay’.Having read his namesake’s newly-published Art in Scotland, he wrote in1948 to Derek Stanford, ‘NorthernRomanticism seems to me a highlydangerous generalisation and it leads toall sorts of contradictions [...] I.F. comesnear to using my own phrase of “EastCoast Classicism”!’ The similarity of theirnames nonetheless continued to causeconfusion down the decades: the index toone of the volumes of the MacDiarmid2000 series lists ‘Finlay, Ian Hamilton’,but a check of the pages listed yields asmany references to the cultural historianas to the writer and artist.

Despite Lilias’s best efforts, it seemslikely that there are other previouslypublished but uncollected stories whichhave eluded our grasp. The Sea-Bed listsin its Acknowledgements the Saltire

Review, as well as two Germannewspapers which presumably publishedtranslations of certain stories, thoughthere is no information as to which, or bywhom the translations were made. Finlaymentions in a letter of December 1955to J.F. Hendry that ‘Forward used toprint stories of mine before they got anew editor... and a German magazine hasjust taken one’. Forward was a periodicalpublished in Glasgow continuouslybetween 1906 and 1960. Other storiesare mentioned by name in the letters, forexample ‘The Christmas Tree’, but where

or whether they were published remainsunclear.

If the stories and the poems in thenew edition of Dancers open up aspectsof Finlay’s work which have beenpreviously unknown, the poems havebeen more available to readers in recenttimes, though there are some newdiscoveries. Alec mentioned a very earlypoem published in 1946 in PoetryQuarterly, then edited by Alex Comfortwho later made his name with The Joy ofSex. Dedicated to Derek Stanford, it is arigorously formal sonnet, which wedecided to omit as a piece of juvenilia.The uncollected poems come mostlyfrom a 1962 issue of Origin, founded in1951 at Black Mountain College andedited by Cid Corman, who from 1962until his recent death lived in Japan.Corman prefaced his generous selectionof Finlay’s poems with a letter from thepoet, and many of the poems containshort notes from Finlay as to Scottishwords or references. Like the Glaswegiandemotic of Glasgow Beasts, or the gentleOrcadian of the ‘Orkney Lyrics’ includedin The Dancers, it is a spoken rather thansynthetic or literary Scots, though hereless localised. These poems have been outof print since their first appearance overforty years ago. The other uncollectedpoem is also a fishing poem, halfwaybetween the individual river-fishing ofthe stories, and the sea-fishing boats ofthe concrete poems, first published inLines Review in 1961, and reprinted inthe magazine’s fortieth anniversaryedition in 1992. ‘Fishing from the backof Rousay’ has a sea-setting, and theviolence of the sea is powerfully evoked,but the poet remains on shore, viewingthe drama around him. It is only whenhe finds a means of casting off andsetting sail, when the boats, as in ‘GreenWaters’, are actually out on the waves,that Finlay finds his artistic sea-legs.

F O L I O10

‘Landscape With Trout’ first appeared in theGlasgow Herald in December 1951.

Landscape With TroutIan Hamilton Finlay

The old pair who let the cottage were not, as I first thought, man and wife: they were brother and sister, and afterthirty years in this part of Fife they stillretained traces of their native accent – a soft stratum of Lancashire coming throughthe hard, borrowed, sing-song of the ScotsNorth-East.

She was frail and bird-like, with a paledrained face, and she sat in the kitchen,polished and hung with faded water-coloursin dustless gilt frames – gifts from artistswho had been her summer visitors at dates inscribed neatly in the corners of foregrounds.

He, an old man of over 60, sufferedbadly from rheumatism; and when he camefishing with me he used the awkward tacticsdictated by the rusty hinges of his limbs.He preferred to sit on the bench and talk,his back to the honeysuckle bushes, and hisvoice rambling on and on. What he talkedabout is beyond remembering but themethod of utterance – its soothing,anaesthetic quality – is vivid still.

The stream was a few hundred yardsfrom the cottage – a few minutes’ walkdown the road, blue and sticky in thesummer heat. One took one’s rod, ready-assembled from the old shed where the tilesleaked sunlight on to cobwebbed brass.Then, on the way to the water, one passedthe large brick house of the old lady whodistributed fishing permits – a house whichoffered a life of seclusion, behind ivy-covered windows, in rooms bulging withmassive stained furniture which was reflectdin mirrors tarnished by damp.

Red and YellowAt the grey stone bridge one turned offmelting tar and found a way down to thenarrow passageway between the edge of thecornfield and the stream’s lush banks. Thebanks, thick with a growth of some weedlike a wild variety of garden rhubarb, madea six-foot strip of unkempt wilderness in alandscape where everything else had beentidied and pruned and trained to producethe maximum edible wealth. A little lessthan waist-high, this wild-growing weed,varied by wild flowers, made excellent coverfor a kneeling angler.

Writing about one’s past encounterswith landscapes or with trout is an attemptto reach back through the soft blur ofnostalgia to actualities of water and stone.Looking back to that Fife landscape I havea vivid impression of its rich red-and-yellowpastorality, but it is more difficult to digdown to its constituent causes – red-tiledroofs set in yellow cornfields; red poppiestoo, among the yellow wheat.

The stream also, shared in this fatprodigality; it was a stream and not a burn,

because a burn is thin and brown and fast,and this water was crystal-clear and slow-moving. And beyond the imitationrhubarb-weed one could see the red-tiledfoor of the hollow mill and the brightyellow horizon dotted with blue- greenclumps of trees. No pines here! – thenearest thing to an image of the desert wasthe monkey-puzzle tree in the expensiveclipped garden of someone retired.

The trout were all fat and sleek, and inthe shallower reaches there were shoals ofsilver minnows which fled from one’sshadow into brown crevices in thecrumbled bank, or out to mid-stream, silverflickers in the trailing green weed.

A Notable PoolThe only taint of error in this tributary ofthe Eden was a dull red dye which camedown the water daily, and punctually, atfour o’clock. I never discovered whatfactory it was which opened its sluices anddischarged this stuff into the crystal water.But their daily dose of industrialism had noapparent effect on the trout beyond that ofdriving them temporarily off the feed – an hour of fasting, one felt, they could well afford.

They were rich relatives, these trout, of poor starved cousins in far-off mountaintorrents: the two types were of the samefamily but as unlike each other as a NewYork millionaire and a blubber-eatingEskimo.

Behind the cottage was the cottage-garden: red currant bushes, vegetables,rusted wireless-mast, and the hen-coop,which had its tarred back turned to a field of corn. If one went down throughthe garden and across the field one couldtake in an extra arc of the river, and fish it down to, and under, the bridge. Therewas a notable pool down there, long, flat,and shallow-seeming, its smooth surfacescored by the trailing twigs of a twistedwillow tree.

I remember a summer evening by thispool when, in the grey-dark, I watched anunknown angler take two lovely trout fromits deceptive depths. Then he wrapped thefish carefully in a clean white handkerchief,and we walked together up the edge of thecornfield till we came to his motor bicycleparked by the hedge. He at any ratethought this stretch worth while, and Iheard him start the raucous engine andbegin his trip back to a town 30 milesaway. In the course of a month’s steadyangling he and a farm-hand who waswhiling away his evening with a fly were theonly fellow-anglers I met.

One pool I recall in particular – thecorner-pool which ended the favouredstretch. This pool, open on the one hand tothe sun-drenched landscape, was shadowedon the other by a bank of dense trees. Thewater was deep. but it sloped up to a shoreof sun-dried pebbles, and beyond thepebbles was more of that rhubard-likeweed. Across the top of the pool ran arusting cattle-fence, a possible snag if ahooked fish had run that way.

But the pool’s charm lay in its unusual

colouring – its shade of a dark brown whichcould be traced to a drain, emptying out itscontents continually like a never-endingstream of tea poured from a rusted, almostgrass-hidden spout. Since then, I have spentsome time in a country cottage where thetaps poured forth this same brew – wherethe bath-water threatened to dye oneyellow, and the water’s iron-content settledand lay like unmelted sugar, thick andunwholesome at the bottom of one’s cup.But the taste was not of sugar: it wasdreadfully bitter, as our always half-drainedtea-cups showed.

This single drain, emerging from itstunnel of matted grasses, and injecting itstrickle of brown dye into the slow-movingstream, was sufficient to colour the wholepool, and to colour one’s appreciation of it besides. Brown water is natural to themountains and, at least for the imagina-tion, it has the colour and the taste ofsolitary moors.

But this water was soiled by iron andnot by peat: and it gave the pool acharacter which was uniquely its own. Onewas not surprised to find that, by the timeit had entered the next pool, the riverreasserted its crystal self. And from then onits colour affirmed that this single irondeposit was indeed unique.

RevisitedApproaching the pool carefully, and gentlyparting the stalks of the undergrowth, onecould stare down into autumn-colouredwater illuminated and made mysterious byshafts of sun which had found a way downthrough the branches of trees. More, it waspossible to see the inhabitants of the poolpoised in these oblong sunshafts, no lessopen to inspection than stuffed trout inshowcases but alive and balancing onundulating fins.

One could watch the slow, rollingmovement with which a fish picked astruggling fly from the surface, or thesidling motion which took it over to somemicroscopic particle of food. Then, if aworm was cast over, and if luck held, a fishwould turn with it and swim down intoopaque shadows, and the next time onefished there another trout would haveswum up and claimed that place.

Vividly I can recall this brown-stainedpool, but I cannot analyse its fascination, ordecide why brown water should be morecompelling than clear.

I went back to the stream two yearsago, only to find that the corner pool hadvanished because a tree had fallen obliquelyacross it, and the branches had choked upwith stones and silt. It was a hot summerday, and the drain, too, had ceased totrickle; and the friend who was with meraked the water coldly with a pair ofbinoculars and complained that, when hetried to cast, the line always cracked behindhim like a whip.

Going back up the road we passed theonce-rented cottage: but there was nosmoke coming from the chimney, and Ihesitated and walked by without knockingat the door.

IE M B A R K E D W I T H the rather naive

idea that there must have been somekind of clear notion about thecreation of the New Town urban

communal garden spaces. Such anassumption of coherent forward planningseems perfectly reasonable when youconsider the layout of Edinburgh’s NewTown. Its orderly rows of houses offsetwith green circles, crescents, squares andbordering strips of cultivated open spaceconspire to suggest that a neat statementof intent must have existed. My first taskwould be to unearth it. With that, Iwould proceed firmly on my way. Alas,life was not to be quite so simple: thestory that emerged was by no meansstraightforward, and proved unexpectedlytesting to unravel.

The Map Library made an obviousfirst port of call, to consult maps thatwould help make sense of the earlyevolution of the band of land whicheventually became East, Central and WestQueen Street Gardens. In the eighteenthcentury much of this area was owned bythe Heriot Trust, which let parcels of landto farmers. When the Trust agreed to ajoint development plan for housing, theyspecified that it should be kept as openspace. However, communal pleasuregrounds were not intended at this stage.Indeed, the very first charter, granted in

F O L I O 11

Edinburgh’s New Town Gardens

Connie Byrom

The medieval Old Town ofEdinburgh, built on the spine ofrock that runs from the castle

down to Holyrood, had by the lateeighteenth century become

overcrowded and a fire hazard.Wealthier residents were attractedby the lifestyle offered in the broadstreets and spacious homes of theNew Town that was beginning to

take shape on the slopes thatrolled down towards the Forth.Over the years, green areas and‘pleasure gardens’ were created,

softening the austerity of theclassical architecture. Here, Connie

Byrom reflects on some of thecharacters – including artists,

planners and early residents – sheencountered while researching thehistory of the New Town gardens.

Peopling the past

1769 to Robert Ord, Lord Chief Baronof the Court of Exchequer, for a portionof ground opposite his house at 8 QueenStreet, states quite clearly that it was to bemade over solely as an individual garden.No building was to be allowed exceptwhat was necessary for a private garden.This condition is repeated in subsequentcharters for the remaining pieces of landalong this stretch.

Several maps dating from the earlypart of the nineteenth century trace agradual division into private garden plotsbelonging to several different owners.Kirkwood’s 1817 map shows somealready neatly laid out, while othersremain as rough ground. The nextKirkwood map, dated 1819, indicatesfurther developments, and includes thedepiction of washing lines festoonedacross the middle section, together withthe outline of Farmer Wood’s cattlepond.

Whose washing lines were they, Iwondered. Although I never could haveexpected to find that out, I did discoverseveral anecdotes that carried a vividsense of the lives of some of those whosaw the first New Town gardens comeinto being.

One of the first purchasers of gardenground – at the east end of QueenStreet, adjacent to Robert Ord’s plot –

Robert Kirkwood’s planand elevation of theNew Town, 1819.(EMS.s.61a)

F O L I O12

was David Steuart, who was to becomeLord Provost of Edinburgh from 1780 to1782. Steuart spent a lot of moneycreating an attractive garden. His friendand business partner Robert Allan, whoowned a house at the west end of QueenStreet, also bought some ground, butapart from adding an enclosing wall, itwas left untended. Both of these menhave a presence in the National Libraryof Scotland, and in a subtle way eachadded a dimension to the unfolding sagaof the gardens.

In the days of his prosperity, Steuartwas an avid collector of books, some ofthem rare and of great value. But hisfortunes dwindled into bankruptcy andhe was forced to put them up forauction, where they failed to make thehoped-for prices, many being ‘boughtin’. He sold some of his most precioustreasures – including a copy of theGutenberg Bible – to the AdvocatesLibrary, which later became the core ofthe National Library of Scotland. Muchinvaluable background information iscontained in David Steuart Esquire: AnEdinburgh Collector, a scholarly work byBrian Hillyard who now heads theLibrary’s Rare Books Division.

In contrast to the sombre notes ofSteuart’s life, his friend Robert Allan hasan altogether more light-heartedpresence in the Library: I refer to theHarden papers, which provide a happyand lively account of family life. Thesepapers consist mostly of the journaljottings of Allan’s second daughter, Janet(1776–1837), who was usually calledJessy. Her day-to-day record of eventsaround the Queen Street house werepartly written for her sister Nancy whowas in India. After Jessy’s marriage toJohn Harden, a gifted amateur artist, hesometimes contributed sketches showingthe daily happenings. The family wascomfortable and sociable, enjoyingdinner and supper parties, making music,

reading and playing card games; theyliked exploring further afield as weatherand mood dictated. Robert Allansometimes added to the jottings andfeatured in several of John’s illustrations. Jessy makes no comment on the family’sdecidedly neglected garden ground.However, this lively, carefree record ofthe Hardens’ lives drew me close to timeslong gone and gave me an intimate senseof their domestic life. A delightfulintroduction to the Harden drawings canbe found in Elegance and Entertainmentin the New Town of Edinburgh: TheHarden Drawings, with an essay by IainGordon Brown, Principal Curator ofManuscripts at the Library.

A small jump in time takes us to thegradual reintegration of the individualgarden plots to form the East, Centraland West Queen Street gardens. Theformation of these communal pleasuregardens was not achieved without a greatdeal of effort.

The first to be set up was the EastQueen Street garden. This was in 1814,

which surprisingly enough predates WestPrinces Street by several years –surprisingly, because the very first NewTown houses were at the east end ofPrinces Street and in St Andrew’s Square.The other two gardens in Queen Streethad to wait until a Private Act ofParliament of 1822 finally galvanisedconcerted action.

John Hay, an eminent nurserymanand garden planner and James Skene ofRubislaw were involved with the designof the East garden. Skene seems to havebeen a bit of a livewire. He qualified asan advocate but devoted most of hisenergies to various Edinburgh societies.In an unpublished memoir held in theEdinburgh Room of Edinburgh CentralLibrary, he gives a vivid cameo from hischildhood. Using a door as a raft, he andsome friends were caught playing on thecattle pond mentioned previously. WhenFarmer Wood chased them away, theyscampered off to the saw pits, no doubtfor more fun and mischief. The mentionof the saw pits is interesting: these wouldhave been used for cutting planks for thenew buildings under construction nearby.

From the garden minute books,which I consulted in a solicitor’s office, I discovered that Andrew Wilson(1780–1848) was responsible for thelayout of both the Central and WestQueen Street gardens. Wilson is afascinating figure who deserves to bebetter remembered. A rare example of aprofessional artist becoming involved inlandscape design, he was for a timeMaster of the Trustees Academy(established originally to provideinstruction in drawing and design forpupils who intended to follow a trade).In the early 1820s Wilson was a keyfigure in the Scottish art world. He madenumerous forays to the continent in thequest to purchase Old Masters on behalfof private clients and for the RoyalInstitution (eventually to become the

Watercolour of man sketching.

Pen and ink drawing: reading and writing by candlelight.

Pen and ink drawing of the Allan family in theirQueen Street drawing room.

We are fortunate to have in theNational Library a collection of letterswritten in the 1830s by Playfair tomembers of the Rutherfurd family(especially to Major John Rutherfurd andhis wife Elizabeth), which offer manypersonal insights into this most sensitiveand conscientious of men. Playfair writesreverentially about his mentor, theGlasgow architect William Stark(1770–1813) and though he playfullyrefers to architecture as his ‘mistress’, hisdevotion to his craft did not prevent himfrom having a wide circle of friends. Hiscongeniality comes through strongly inhis letters: for instance, when friends’children address him informally as‘Willy’, his words almost glow withpleasure, while with merry indulgence heforgives his fat dog Tuba her excess ofappetite, on account of the affection shebestows on him.

Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchusnotes in her memoirs that, when herfamily moved to 8 Heriot Row in 1814,there were no ‘prettily laid out gardens’opposite: ‘only a long strip of unsightlygrass, a green, fenced by an untidy walland abandoned to the use of the washer-women. It was an ugly prospect, and wewere daily indulged with it, thecleanliness of the inhabitants being soexcessive that, except on Sundays and“Saturdays e’en”, squares of bleachinglinens and lines of drying were everbefore our eyes.’ Many years later, whilevisiting Edinburgh during a ‘broiling’ hotspell in July 1848, she describes thetransformation into Queen Streetgardens. Taking a gentle stroll, sheenjoyed the green oasis as a welcomerespite from the bustle of the city. Sherefers to the gardens most aptly as‘blessings as well as beauties’ – which Ihave taken as the title of my forthcominghistory, a broad look at the developmentof the Edinburgh New Town gardens.

While pursuing my research, I always

National Gallery of Scotland). However,a love affair with Italy finally prevailedand he took his family to live therepermanently in 1826. He returned toEdinburgh in 1848 to meet up with oldfriends, including members of the RoyalScottish Academy. His health was failingand he suddenly fell ill and died, not farfrom the two gardens he had helped tocreate. This man who had contributed somuch, not least in the shape of twoimportant gardens, now lies in anunmarked grave in Warriston Cemetery.

Andrew Wilson entered my lifethrough a scatter of surviving material,not least what I discovered at theNational Library, where is a small butvery interesting cache of items relating tohim. It includes accounts he keptshowing his purchases abroad, andbusiness letters, which contain intriguinglittle asides about his sketching andpainting activities as well as sundry detailsabout his family.

My final leap takes me away fromQueen Street to focus briefly on anotherindividual who played a small butnevertheless important part in the historyof the New Town gardens. WilliamPlayfair (1789–1857), best known for hiswork as an architect, is less well knownfor his involvement with areas of openspace within the New Town. In 1826, he suggested improvements to land tothe east of the Mound (the future EastPrinces Street gardens), while his 1819masterplan, drawn up on behalf of theHeriot Trust, and covering an extensivearea east of Calton Hill and northwardstowards Leith, proposes several areas ofpleasure gardens. Only a fraction of hisvision was realised, but this was highlysignificant: on land to the east of CaltonHill, he was responsible for creating the generous-sized Regent gardens and also the London Road gardens,which had previously been the site ofquarry workings.

F O L I O 13

Note on sources

The Library’s digital library at nls.uk hasan extensive map section, includingseveral maps which show the developmentof the New Town. Listed under‘Edinburgh City’, Robert Kirkwood’s1817 Plan of the City of Edinburgh andits environs (Newman 598) and his 1819Plan and elevation of the New Town(EMS.s.61a) are wonderfully detailed.Zoom in, and you can even see individualtrees. The drawings and watercolours byJohn Harden accompanying this articleare collected under MSS. 8866-68. JessyAllan’s journal 1801–1811 (MSS. 8832-63), written for her sister Nancy who wasliving in India at the time, gives a livelyaccount of daily life in the Queen Streethousehold. Elegance and Entertainmentin the New Town of Edinburgh, by IainGordon Brown, Principal Curator ofManuscripts, includes a selection of theHarden drawings and watercolours. The1995 edition is in the Library’s collection(GNE.1995.1.3); the 2002 reprint is onsale at the Library shop.

A watercolour showing the North Bridge linkingthe Old and New Towns, 1809.

The Old Town from Calton Hill, 1810. Washheightened with white on grey-brown paper.

found it a pleasure to enter the Libraryon George IV Bridge and ascend to thepeaceful surroundings of the readingrooms, already musing on what treasuresand fresh acquaintances might await me.The human dimension I uncovered thereinjected life into what might otherwisehave been a rather dry process. Althoughmy book is now written, further pieces ofthe jigsaw may remain undiscovered inthe Library’s collections, which meansthat the fun of the chase is still there forothers to experience.

F O L I O14

cultural capital for the ages. The idea of aformal designation came about because fourbook lovers thought that Edinburgh, andindeed Scotland, should take onresponsibility for the future development ofa literary culture that has distinguished andenlightened our country’s past.

We want to share the literary culture ofour capital city with the world … The ideais not about competition but aboutaspiration and partnership.

The steering group was joined by leadingcrime writer Ian Rankin, who ‘startedwriting novels while an undergraduatestudent, in an attempt to make sense ofthe city of Edinburgh’. Martyn Wade,the National Librarian, also came onboard. He saw his involvement ascomplementary to his commitment tothe ‘Breaking through the Walls’strategy, which means extending publicaccess to its treasure-house of the writtenword.

The Library’s major acquisitions areposted on its website. The latest batchincludes the Palis of Honour by GavinDouglas, London [1553], a rare copy ofthe earliest known edition of one of hisbest known works: ‘a mirror for princes,spelling out princely duties and ideals …very much in the European tradition ofcourtly allegory’. Gavin Douglas wasappointed provost of St Giles in 1501. Inthe prologue to Book VII of his

translation of Virgil’s Aeniad into MiddleScots, he gives one of the first publisheddescriptions of Edinburgh:

The plane street is, and every hie wayFull of floshis, dubbis, mire and clay.

Also among the acquisitions is acollection of thirty translations of booksby Alexander McCall Smith, who recentlygave a talk at the Library about his highlysuccessful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agencyseries. He is one of the hundreds ofwriters who, since Gavin Douglas, havegiven pen portraits of Edinburgh: his 44Scotland Street is a day to day account ofthe comings and goings at a fictitioushouse in a real Edinburgh street. McCallSmith is one of the best known writerscurrently resident in the capital. Manyothers are identified in the presentationto UNESCO, which took the form oftwo volumes, one bound in green, theother in a pale purple, evoking thecolours of Scottish heather. They are acelebration of Scotland’s literary life, pastand present.

Interviewed by Folio, Jenny Brownexplained that everyone had expected itwould take UNESCO months to reach adecision. In fact, the news came straighton the heels of their bid. It was brokento the Scottish delegation at a UNESCOreception in Paris last October – aliterally glittering occasion. She describedthe scene: the lights of the Eiffel Towersparkled against the night sky as ‘we weretaken to one side and told of our success.It was an unforgettable moment. Thenwe learned that the Scottish media hadalready been given the news!’ Therefollowed a hectic round of interviews andphoto calls.

The mood of euphoria has beenmaintained with the news that the 2005Man Booker Prize is to be announced inEdinburgh, and that the John MurrayArchive is to come to the NationalLibrary. Recently, Sophy Dale wasappointed City of LiteratureDevelopment Manager. Her brief is to‘build on this honour to deliver clearbenefits for the city and for Scotland, topromote our country through literatureand to establish the city as an example forall the other cities of literature thatfollow.’

I was interested to hear from JennyBrown her early experiences of the

WHEN EDINBURGH becamethe first UNESCO City ofLiterature last year,UNESCO’s Assistant

Director General for Culture, MounirBouchenaki, expressed the opinion thatby sharing its entrepreneurial and creativeknow-how, ‘Edinburgh has the potentialto achieve a truly global impact … Bybringing together the differentindividuals and organisations of its richliterary heritage in order to foster futureliterary creativity, this innovative proposalis fully in keeping with the mandate ofUNESCO to foster cultural diversity.’

Gavin Wallace, Head of Literature atthe Scottish Arts Council, was alsodelighted. He said: ‘Securing theUNESCO designation is a triumphantsymbol of the huge success story ofLiterature in Scotland, and a newbeginning in our responsibility to ensurethat the benefits of that success will beavailable to all. It is a thrilling outcome,and also a testament to the strength,unity and aspiration of a nation’sliterature community working inpartnership.’

From the outset, partnership has beena key constituent of the Cities ofLiterature concept, which originatedwhen literary agent Jenny Brown,Lorraine Fannin of the ScottishPublisher’s Association, CatherineLockerbie, director of The EdinburghInternational Book Festival and JamesBoyle, head of The Cultural Commissionfor Scotland got together to discuss theway forward for Scottish Literature. Theywere keenly aware that in funding termsLiterature, which has been described asthe Cinderella of the Arts, deservedgreater recognition. The EdinburghInternational Book Festival annuallyattracts over 200,000 visitors, and arange of organisations and agencies, suchas Scottish Book Trust, the PoetryLibrary and PEN, are devoted topromoting literature and forginginternational links; but even so, it wasevident that far more could be done toraise public awareness and appreciation ofScotland’s rich and diverse literaryculture. They explain in their exuberantpresentation:

Edinburgh already is a world city ofliterature. Its great heritage of the book andits contemporary literary life define it as a

City of EverywhereReading the Future

Jennie Renton

With its marvellous collections ofbooks and manuscripts, the

National Library is now playing akey role in creating the vision forEdinburgh in its role as the first

UNESCO City of Literature.Appropriately enough, the bid waspresented in book form, a boxedset in two volumes. Here, Folio’seditor dips into them and hearsfrom literary agent Jenny Brown

about some of the possibilities thatare opening up for literature in

Scotland.

F O L I O 15

Note on sources

Practically every author who has lived inEdinburgh or written about the city isrepresented in the Library’s Collections,which can be explored via its website,nls.uk. The papers of Robert LouisStevenson, widely regarded as the mostquintessentially ‘Edinburgh’ of authorsdespite his passion for travel, havefoundtheir way into libraries around the worldsince his death in 1894. However, theLibrary hasseveral important items andgroups of letters relating to him amongits manuscript collections. On theStevenson section of the website theseare identified as including ‘early works,such as the illustrated History of Moses,composed when he was six years old, andlecture notes from his time as a studentat Edinburgh University. Two importantgroups of letters, to W.E. Henley andFrances Sitwell, chart his development asa writer and his travels around the world.These are complemented by the papers ofGraham Balfour, Stevenson’s firstbiographer, which include a richcollection of photographs of Samoa’.The quote from Norman MacCaig’s‘Dropout in Edinburgh’ is reproduced bycourtesy of Polygon.

literary charisma of Edinburgh, which hasbeen her home for most of her life. Shetold me that she has been an avid readerfor as long as she can remember. Herlove of books was encouraged by visits tothe South Bridge branch of James Thin,where the children’s department washeaded by Miss Grainger, one of thegreat unsung heroines of children’sliteracy in Edinburgh – someone whocould make readers out of children whowere previously uninterested in books.Always ready to suggest titles that werelikely to engage their imagination, shewas a good listener, genuinely interestedin what children had to say about theirreading interests. Her gift for nurturing apassion for books was perhaps a factor ininspiring Jenny to share her ownenthusiasm with others, on both apersonal and a professional level.

Jenny recalled another formativeincident: as a final year pupil at JohnWatson’s, she drifted by chance into areading by the ‘Lost Poets’ in GeorgeSquare. ‘Literary events weren’t socommon then, they were more at theperiphery of things and I had neverexperienced that sort of atmospherebefore. I remember feeling very intriguedand wanting to know more about whatwas going on. Of course, literary eventsare now very much more mainstream andthey reach all sorts of people.’

J.K. Rowling, the contemporaryauthor credited with introducing tens ofthousands children to reading, was avigourous supporter of Edinburghbecoming a UNESCO City of Literatureand she provided an introductory notegiving her ‘personal reasons for finding

the city creatively inspirational’:

Edinburgh has been my home since 1994.It was the place that Harry Potter tookshape; as has been well-documented, I usedto sit in the Old Town’s cafes scribbling asmy young daughter slept in her pushchairnext to me. And I nervously posted off themanuscript for Harry Potter and thePhilosopher’s Stone from a post box in Leith.All the books in the series so far have beencreated largely in Edinburgh. My base inScotland has given me many advantagesand inspirations as the series has developed,and as I found myself more and more inthe public eye. I’m proud to be known as aScottish writer, albeit by adoption –although my Scottish ancestors would havebeen even prouder to have heard medescribed as such, I think.

The hope that new projects will bestimulated, encouraging residents andvisitors alike to ‘experience the city anewthrough literature’, is based on the factthat Scotland already has so muchhappening in the literary sphere. In thesame month that Edinburgh gained itsnew title, a statue of the eighteenth

century poet Robert Fergusson wasunveiled outside Canongate Kirk, just afew steps from the Scottish PoetryLibrary. Polygon’s new collected editionof the poems of Norman MacCaig,published this spring, incorporates 101hitherto uncollected works. In hisPrecipitous City: The Story of LiteraryEdinburgh, Trevor Royle describesMacCaig as a ‘singular voice … a poetwho writes in English with an Edinburghaccent never far away’. He also includesMacCaig’s ‘Drop-out in Edinburgh’; thesecond verse captures the tension atEdinburgh’s heart which so haunted andinspired Robert Louis Stevenson, even inlush Samoa:

City of everywhere, broken necklace in the sun,

you are caves of guilt, you are pinnacles of jubilation.

Your music is a filigree of drumming.

You frown into the advent of heavenly hosts.

Your iron finger shatters sad suns –

they multiply in scatters, they swarm

on fizzing roofs. When the sea

breathes gray over you, you become

one lurking-place, one shifting of nowheres –

in it are warpipes and genteel pianos

and the sawing voices of lawyers. Your buildings

are broken memories, your streets

lost hopes – but you shrug off time, you set your face

against all that is not you.

Robert Burns wrote ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ (MS.586, f.32r)for ‘Clarinda’ after their final meeting, in theWhite Hart Inn in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket.

Scots language campaigner George Philp besidethe statue of Robert Fergusson in Edinburgh’sCanongate. Photograph: Gordon Wright.

Photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson in languidpose. (Adv.MS.21.6.10)

F O L I O16

Notes on contributorsCONNIE BYROM, latterly a lecturer inSociology at Napier University, has spentover thirty years researching open spaceas it relates to housing. One of herprimary interests is the history of thedevelopment of communal open spacesin Edinburgh’s New Town. Later thisyear, Birlinn are set to publish herBlessings as Well as Beauties: TheEdinburgh New Town Gardens, the firstmajor work on the subject, in which shereveals how these spaces came into being,how they were designed and how theyhave been used over the years.

KEN COCKBURN, former AssistantDirector of the Scottish Poetry Library,is a poet and editor. With Alec Finlay heestablished and ran pocketbooks, anaward-winning series of books of poetryand visual art, and they are now co-directing platform projects, its publishingsuccessor. His first collection of poems,Souvenirs and Homelands, was shortlistedfor a Saltire Award in 1998. His poemshave appeared in a number ofanthologies, including Love for Love andDream State, and in literary magazines.The sequence, ‘On the fly-leaf of... abookshelf’, was shortlisted for the DericBolton Long Poem Award in 2003.

J. FORBES MUNRO is Emeritus Professorof International Economic History at theUniversity of Glasgow, where he has alsobeen Clerk of Senate. He has heldvisiting lectureships at Queen’sUniversity, Belfast, EdinburghUniversity, and the University of CapeTown. He specialises in the history ofeconomic relationships betweendeveloped and developing countries. Hismost recent publications are MaritimeEnterprise and Empire: Sir WilliamMackinnon and His Business Network,1823–1893 and (jointly authored)University, City and State: The Universityof Glasgow since 1870.

JENNIE RENTON is a freelance editorand journalist. In 1987 she foundedScottish Book Collector magazine. Itsfirst interview was with Edinburgh poetNorman MacCaig and since then shehas interviewed a string of authors,including J.K. Rowling, PhilipPullman, Louise Welsh and YannMartel. She now edits textualities.net,an online literary magazine, and itscompanion print version, Textualities.She is editor of Folio and reviews forthe Sunday Herald.

BE A FRIENDThe Friends of the National Libraries

is dedicated to helping the libraries and record

offices of Britain acquire books, manuscript

treasures and archives for the nation, especially

those which might otherwise be exported.

It has been doing this valuable work since 1931,

and has helped the National Library of Scotland on

many occasions. Annual membership is £15:

contact Dr Iain G. Brown of the Manuscripts

Division for information on joining the Friends.

National Library of ScotlandGeorge IV BridgeEDINBURGHEH1 1EWTel 0131-623 2700Fax 0131-623 3701www.nls.uk

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Folio is edited by Jennie Renton

ISSN 1475-1151

NLS diary dates Autumn 2005MALCOLM BAIRD writes about hisexperiences of researching and writing, withAntony Kamm, the biography of his father,John Logie Baird: A Life, which waspublished in 2002 by the National Museumsof Scotland. In October 1925 the world’sfirst television picture was sent across BairdSnr’s cramped London laboratory. Heincludes some personal thoughts about howtelevision has changed the world and theworld has changed television.

OLIVE GEDDES, Senior Curator in theLibrary’s Manuscript Collections Divisiondiscusses ‘going for the messages’ in thedays before our shopping habits weretransformed by supermarkets, shoppingmalls and online ordering. From the marketstall and corner shop to co-operative storesand Jenners in its heyday, she considers theretail trade and its role in Scottish life andsociety in the 1920s and 1930s. TheLibrary celebrates our centuries-old love ofshopping in a new exhibition opening inDecember 2005.

MARGERY PALMER MCCULLOCH exploresthe significance of 1925 for Scottishwriting, a year that saw the publication ofHugh MacDiarmid’s first Scots poetrycollection Sangschaw, Edwin Muir’s FirstPoems and John Buchan’s anthology TheScottish Muse. Willa Muir’s Women: AnInquiry marked an increasing interest inwriting by and about women. McCullochdraws on research for her Modernism andNationalism (2004) – much of it carriedout in the National Library of Scotland’sarchives.

ANN MATHESON, former Keeper of PrintedBooks at the National Library of Scotland,examines the creation of Scotland’s nationalcollection and its origins in the Advocates’Library. The National Library was formallyconstituted in 1925, and on 26 October1925, assisted by the munificence of SirAlexander Grant of Forres, the non-legalcollections built up by the Faculty ofAdvocates as the Advocates’ Library passedto the nation. In the eighty years since, asthe Library has faced the significant changesthat the 20th century has brought, it hassought to continue to emulate ThomasCarlyle’s judicious assessment of theAdvocates’ Library in 1874 that ‘essentiallyit belongs to the whole nation’.

JUNE

As part of Scottish Refugee Week, theLibrary is holding two events. ‘FascistDisneyland’, a reading from the letters of imprisoned Nobel Prize LaureateAung San Suu Kui by Iain Banks, LizLochhead and Sarah Boyack MSP, is on Tuesday 21 June at 7pm inCausewayside. On Saturday 25 June at 2pm at George IV Bridge, Burmesepuppets bring to life tales of an ancientand remarkable culture in ‘The Hour ofBlazing Clouds’.

8 JULY – 16 OCTOBER

Scotland’s Secret War. Some of thehidden stories of World War II arerevealed in this fascinating exhibition ofsecret government documents, privatepapers, maps, photographs and artefacts –including the code-breaking Enigmamachine. Open Monday – Saturday 10amto 5pm, Sunday 2pm to 5pm.

A full programme of events runsalongside the exhibition, includinglectures on Hamish Henderson’s warpoetry, Bletchley Park, children’sliterature in World War II, and Hess inScotland – as well as a reminiscenceworkshop and a Forties tea dance!

Admission to the exhibition and events isfree, though the events are ticketed.More information is available by phoningthe Library Events Line on 0131 6233845 or by e-mailing events@nls.uk

Cover image: Seyyid Bargash with his delegation inLondon, 1875. (Acc.9942/47)