Conrad and the Clyde: intro.

The Clyde is not the first river one thinks of in connection with Joseph Conrad – the Congo perhaps, or one of the fever-ridden mangrove-swamp streams of the East Indies – but not the Clyde.  Not even the most prejudiced Edinburgh imagination surely can see Glasgow’s river as the “Heart of Darkness”.

But Glasgow and the Clyde had their part in Conrad’s life and work and this connection with the Clyde, its ships and its people, is less well known than it might be.

As a writer of the sea Conrad could hardly fail to depict the Scots who built and manned so many of the world’s ships.  As a mariner trained in sail Conrad had no particular love for the steam engine; as his friend the Glasgow-born artist Muirhead Bone wrote in an obituary appreciation:

 

He had none of a Kiplingesque enthusiasm for material powers – with him it was Man and the Elements, with the apparatus always a bit inadequate.

 

So perhaps, despite the splendidly named Captain MacWhirr in Typhoon (1903), we need not look to closely to Conrad for the archetypal Clyde-trained Scots engineer – otherwise a staple of imaginative writing from Kipling’s McAndrew to StarTrek’s Scotty.

 

 

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Doom Castle

Like most of Neil Munro’s fiction Doom Castle, first published in 1901, is set in and around his home town of Inveraray.  The period is 1752 and the Doom Castle of the title is in reality Dunderave Castle on Loch Fyneside, just a few miles from Inveraray.

Dunderave Castle, the “Doom Castle” of the novel

The after effects of the 1745 Jacobite rising are still to be felt and the hero of the book Count Victor de Montaiglon comes to Scotland on a mission of revenge to seek out and kill a mysterious Scot who has been betraying the Jacobite exiles in Paris and turns up at Doom Castle, the seat of a Jacobite sympathiser Baron Lamond. He also finds in the Castle Lamond’s daughter Olivian and his pawky Lowland manservant and general factotum Mungo Boyd.

Doom Castle was warmly received when published – the British Weekly commented that “Since Kidnapped and Catriona there has been no Scottish novel of more unmistakable genius.”  Like most of Munro’s fiction it had gone out of print and I was delighted to be able to write a new introduction to it for its 1996 reprint by B&W Publishing.

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Scotland’s Great Ships

 

The idea that my co-author, Ronnie Armstrong and I had when writing this book, was that there were some Scottish ships which were so important in Scottish history or in the imagination of Scots that they had taken on iconic status. So we have chapters on the Cutty Sark and the Queen Mary, on the mighty Hood pride of the Royal Navy between the Wars and the humble puffer as well as a number of other ships which for one reason or another seemed to us to fall into this category – one of these was the ill-fated Lusitania [pictured above].

Perhaps not all the ships we discuss will be quite so familiar but all have interesting stories to tell – such as the first Cunard liner, the paddle steamer Britannia – seen below in ice at Boston Harbour.

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The Ingenious Mr Bell

Henry Bell was the man who first made a success of steam navigation in Europe – sadly his work did not bring him financial success but his claim to fame as the man behind the paddle steamer Comet [pictured below] is secure.

When my biography of Bell was first published in 1995 it was the first life of Bell since the 1840s and critics made kind comments on it like “scholarly and readable” (Ships Monthly) and “not only an authoritative biography…but a major contribution to the early history of steam navigation” (Lloyd’s List). This paperback edition appeared in 2001 priced at £9.99 – however readers of this blog can buy copies direct from me at only £5.00 post free – email me for details  –brian@bdosborne.fsnet.co.uk

Click here to read my article on Bell’s Highland steamship venture

Neil Munro: intro.

The front page lead story in the Glasgow News of 23rd December 1930 was on the death of the Scottish novelist Neil Munro. Its triple-decker headline read:

Death of Neil Munro

Passing of a Great Novelist

Genius in Journalism

Politics, crime, the economy were all relegated to second place. Over the next few days the News would publish four separate appreciations of Munro from prominent Scottish writers of the day such as R B Cunninghame Graham and J J Bell.

Although Munro was buried in a simple family ceremony at Inveraray, on the same day civic dignitaries, representatives of Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, the churches, An Comunn Gaidhealach and the press attended a crowded memorial service in Glasgow Cathedral.

          Munro’s death was treated as a major event and all the Scottish and British newspapers carried appreciations of his work and accounts of his career. All would probably have agreed with the comment of one writer who observed: “Neil Munro is dead, and a light has gone out in Scotland.”          A much-loved author had died and his death seems to have moved the nation in a quite remarkable way.

          There was little in Munro’s background or early life to suggest the high place in Scottish literature, or in the national consciousness, that he came to occupy; indeed his birth and childhood could hardly have been more disadvantaged.

          Born on 3^rd June 1863 in the Argyllshire town of Inveraray, to Ann Munro, an unmarried domestic servant, Neil Munro grew up with the problem of illegitimacy and in very modest circumstances. He never knew who his father was, although local rumour has persistently suggested a member of the family of the Dukes of Argyll.  

In the 1871 Census the young Neil was recorded as living with his grandfather, a retired crofter.  Ann Munro married the widowed Malcolm Thomson, the Governor of Inveraray Prison, in 1875, but at the 1881 Census Neil was staying with his great aunt Bell MacArthur, a former agricultural worker. This family background, with its roots in the Argyllshire countryside, meant that Munro was brought up bi-lingually. Gaelic culture and the Gaelic spirit informed much of his writing, although he never published any works in that language.

          After attending school in Inveraray, Munro about the age of 13 entered the local law office of William Douglas as a junior clerk.  This was an odd appointment. Nothing in Munro’s background made a career in the law likely; his fellow clerks were from a more conventional middle-class background – a doctor’s son and a lawyer’s son.  The job was in fact wished on Munro. He later wrote he was:

 

…insinuated, without any regard for my own desires, into a country lawyer’s office, wherefrom I withdrew myself as soon as I arrived at years of discretion and revolt.

 

Nor was it just any country lawyer’s office. William Douglas was a central part of the Argyllshire establishment: Clerk to the Commissioners of Supply, Clerk to the Lieutenancy of Argyll, and later, Sheriff Clerk and Justice of the Peace Clerk.  Perhaps the string-pulling that had landed the bright young Munro such a coveted job was connected with the mystery of his father’s identity.

         

 

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Para Handy

Para Handy Scottish icon!

Yes, Para Handy is surely one of the most remarkably resilient comic characters ever created. He first appeared in the columns of the Glasgow Evening News in 1905 and has never been out of print since.

 

Created by the Scottish novelist and journalist Neil Munro the Para Handy stories tell of the adventures of Para Handy,  Captain Peter Macfarlane, and the crew of the puffer Vital Spark.

OK – what’s a puffer?

A small steam lighter mainly used to carry general cargoes around the West of Scotland.

Despite the fact that the puffer has disappeared from our waters (apart from a couple of museum ships) and the world that they inhabited has changed almost beyond recognition, the stories have retained their freshness and humour in a quite remarkable way.

A typical puffer.

My co-editor, Ronnie Armstrong, and I were delighted and thrilled to discover 19 original stories, which had previously been unpublished in book form, in the files of the News  and have included these, along with comprehensive notes and introductory material and archive photographs in our Birlinn edition of the Complete Para Handy.

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For more about Neil Munro check out the Neil Munro Society website http://www.neilmunro.co.uk/

John Splendid

John Splendid was Neil Munro’s first novel, published in 1898 after serialisation in Blackwood’s Magazine.  Like most of Munro’s fiction it is based in and around his home town of Inveraray in Argyll and is set in the troubled period of the 1640s and the Civil War. War however in Argyll took on much of the character of a clan battle. The Campbell stronghold of Inveraray is burned by the Royalist forces under Montrose, assisted by Alasdair MacDonald or MacColla, who saw the struggle between King and Parliament as an opportunity to strike back at his clan’s traditional rivals the Campbells, represented by Archibald, the 1st Marquis – Gillespeg Gruamach (Archibald the Grim).

As I write in my introduction to the B&W reprint of John Splendid the story starts in 1644 when: “… Colin, heir to the Laird of Elrigmore returns to his native parts after a long absence. Five years of study in Glasgow University had been followed by seven years of campaigning in Germany and the Low Countries as a soldier of fortune campaigning in one of the Scots regiments fighting in the Thirty Years War.” He returns to Argyll where his family were allies to the Campbells and finds himself in another war zone and meets McIver of Barbreck, a distant cousin of the Marquis and the John Splendid of the title.

Munro’s cast of characters reveal the Highlands in all their complexity – John Splendid for all his military prowess is shown to be less than noble, always ready with the answer that the Marquis wants to hear, while the Marquis, fated to be a war-leader of a fighting clan, has all the instincts of a lawyer and a politician. When his town of Inveraray is burned he takes the prudent but unheroic course of sailing away to seek reinforcements.

John Splendid was a bold choice for Munro’s first novel – the same story of Montrose and Argyll had been dealt with by Sir Walter Scott in  A Legend of Montrose – but it is tribute to Munro’s skill that his version is capable of being compared with the Scott novel.

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For more information about Neil Munro go to the Neil Munro Society website www.neilmunro.co.uk