Glasgow (15 page)

STEEL DROPS,
c
. 1895
J.J. Bell

There is nothing particularly modern about quack medicines and ersatz remedies for common complaints. Nor has there ever been a dearth of snake oil salesmen eager to off-load them on to gullible hypochondriacs. J.J. Bell, the author of the pawky novel
Wee Macgreegor
(1902), about a small boy and his adventures in Glasgow, also wrote two volumes of memoirs about his early life in Glasgow
, I Remember
(1932) and
Do You Remember?
(1934)
.

I forbear to give a list of medicines which, however pleasingly reminiscent to my contemporaries, would probably be as sound and fury, signifying nothing to my younger readers. But I should like to mention Steel Drops, one of the favourite tonics, ere yet the days of hypophosphites and glycerophosphates have dawned. Steel Drops, though the name is suggestive of small shot or ball-bearings, are a yellow-brown ferruginous liquid, and, preparatory to becoming stronger, you let fall so many drops into so much water, three times a day, before (or possibly after) meals. The only drawback to the Drops is that you have to purchase also a glass tube, so that you may imbibe the strength-giving fluid without spoiling your teeth. Of course, you may already have a tube at home, having been a partaker of Steel Drops those many years, though as yet the bloom of health has not become apparent.

One druggist sells a goodly quantity of Flowers of Sulphur, especially in the Spring, for many people still believe in Mr. Squeer's mixture of brimstone and treacle; and other people buy chunks of rock variety, as I believe they yet do, to put in their doggie's water, all with the same touching faith that inspired the old lady to place a bright screw nail in her canary's seed. The only popular disinfectant, I think, apart from carbolic, is Condy's Fluid. Pears' Soap has lately arrived, and in a few
years half the population, with an air of originality, will be saying ‘Good-morning!' and asking the other half if they have used it. ‘Worth a guinea a box' has not yet appeared on the hoardings. There is little, if anything, in the shop that has come from America, apart from Florida Water, in tall slim bottles, with its crude, quaint floral label, as now.

GLASGOW BOYS, 1897
Francis ‘Fra' Newbery

Over a period of twenty years at the end of the nineteenth century, a group of young painters based in Glasgow, but working across Scotland, established an international reputation for realism and plein-air painting. Among the most prominent were James Guthrie, John Lavery, Arthur Melville, George Henry and E.A. Hornel. Known collectively as ‘the Glasgow Boys', they shared an enthusiasm for naturalistic subject matter and strong, clean, fresh colours, as well as a willingness to range widely from the east coast of Scotland to France, the Mediterranean and the Middle East in search of subjects, settings and inspiration. Another unifying factor was their dislike of the Scottish artistic establishment, embodied in the Edinburgh-based painters who dominated the Royal Scottish Academy. ‘Fra' Newberry was Director of the Glasgow School of Art from 1885 to 1917
.

It is curious to note how most of the great triumphs of Art have been won in cities, and in cities, too, whose life was oftentimes of the busiest and most complex description. Rome, with its subtle life of political ecclesiasticism, though never of herself producing an artist, yet, by her attraction of men, dominated in the sixteenth century, the Art of the Italian Renaissance; and Paris to-day is the hub of the Art Universe, because of the blood and brains of men, brought from the outermost confines of France. A civic life would seem to knock fire out of me, like the sparks evolved from the contact of flint and steel.

And at this end of the nineteenth century, in the midst of one of the busiest, noisiest, smokiest cities, that, with its like fellows, make up the sum-total of the greatness of Britain's commercial position, there is a movement existing, and a compelling force behind it, whose value we cannot yet rightly appraise or whose influence is not yet bounded, but which, both movement and movers, may yet, perhaps, put Glasgow on the Clyde into the hands of the future historian of Art, on much the same grounds as those on which Bruges, Venice, and Amsterdam find
themselves in the book of the life of the world. And in making such a statement and in advancing such a claim, it were well to guard against either exaggeration of language or an extravagant dealing with facts. All work that is being accomplished, and all effort that has reached a certain present finality, are, on account of their nearness to the onlooker, entirely out of perspective, and have oftentimes a worth that is purely fictitious, and an estimate which bears no relation to the real value.

And in this present instance, dealing with this movement now existing an influence in and from the city of Glasgow, it should be borne in mind that neither revolution nor revelation is being attempted, nor are the minds of the workers bent upon much else than that of doing a day's work with the best possible credit to themselves. These Scottish artists desire to be neither prophets nor preachers, nor do they attempt that which Art should ever have left to the pulpit – namely, the task of conversion. Furthermore, it is extremely unlikely that any such result is to follow from their efforts as was the outcome of the discovery of the Van Eycks; nor are their works likely to displace the treasures the Old Masters have left to us. One thing, however, is certain. The Glasgow portraits and landscapes will never have the sky line at future permanent exhibitions; and the future New-Zealander, after visiting the ruins of St Paul's, may possibly propose to himself a pilgrimage to the city of Glasgow, in order to see the pictures produced by the later nineteenth-century artists who worked within her boundaries.

Now, it may safely be taken that most movements, whether artistic or political or under any other heading, are protests against tradition, as then received. Men think about matters, and some of the clearer among them begin to see there is something wrong in, say, a certain state of affairs. Gaining in strength of thought these men protest, and then and there begins the inception of a movement.

About the time the younger Glasgow men were bestirring themselves, the Association of Painters in London, known as the New English Art Club, was making its assault upon the citadel of academicism, and was endeavouring to throw down the walls of that artistic Jericho, into which they and their works were equally forbidden, then, to enter. In Paris the fight against the tradition of the State school and of the strong man who ran the atelier, resulted in the separation from the old ideals of a body of artists who now find room for their pictures on the walls of the Salôn Champ de Mars . . . In Paris the struggle is going on to-day, and will probably continue so long as a complaisant Minister for the Fine Arts finds room for the two opposing bodies in which to exhibit their trophies.

But in Glasgow there was neither fight nor rupture; and for the
simple reason that there was neither academicism to battle against, nor an opposition, fitly to be called such, to be overcome. And what is more, men, resident in the West of Scotland, had painted pictures in a good tradition, and had thereby created an interest in Art matters, in more ways than one, helpful to the rise of the new movement. But here comes in the difference between Glasgow and, say, the majority of northern and midland cities of England. The Royal Academy of London controls not only the Metropolis, but issues its dictum and influences the Art tendencies of practically the whole of England. In the provincial cities and towns of England, an artist's success depends, in large measure, upon the annual acceptance or rejection of his works, by the hangers at Burlington House; and he must be a strong man who can evade the test successfully and yet live.

But in Glasgow, on the contrary, there never was, nor at the present moment does there exist, either a controlling power vested in a body of artists, or an indication of opinion arising from a cultured lay community. Artists were, and still are, free to do what they like, as they like, provided always they take the consequences of their own ways and works. The businessman buys what he likes, or is persuaded to like, or because it pleases him; and though the Glasgow artists might possibly wish for a better representation than at present is the case, either in the municipal or in local private galleries, it would be hard to find a city where there are collections of pictures showing greater bravery of purchase.

The very rivalry between the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow serves the purpose of emphasising the position taken up by the Glasgow men. The Royal Scottish Academy is now richer in the possession of strong recruits, which a more enlightened policy has had the wisdom to enrol from among the Glasgow men; but when the movement spoken of began, some ten or twelve years ago, there was practically no representative from Glasgow upon the Royal Scottish Academy roll, and very little inducement offered the young aspirants working in the West to contribute their products to the walls of its annual Exhibition. As for Burlington House, it may be questioned whether, even at the present moment, there is any large number of Glasgow painters affected in their work, either by its dicta or its desires. Certainly the Exhibitions of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts are noticeable by the absence of the works of living Royal Academicians, a position of matters that should cause a little regret, especially when it be considered who some of these Royal Academicians are. But it may broadly be stated, that in Glasgow a man's success is not dependent upon the judgment passed on his work by the selecting committee of the Royal Academy; and the
possibility has been proved of artists working in Glasgow and attaining to a world-wide fame and reputation, without being even regular contributors to the walls of Burlington House. This young body of painters, therefore, working in Glasgow, and now happily – or unhappily – since styled the Glasgow School of Painters, had no cause to complain of their efforts being thwarted, or their aspirations checked by the influence of a power that held possession, and either ruled the market or dictated the taste. The field for their labours was as clear from any cramping or confining influences, as were the very earth and heavens they delighted to depict, and the traditions of a school – which, like bands binding a prisoner, have to be broken before even the blood can quicken the pulses – never even had an existence in the case of the Glasgow men.

1901–1925

FIGHTING WOMEN

THE CITY MAN, 1901
James Hamilton Muir

There was no such person as James Hamilton Muir. He was a composite of three young, mischievous Glaswegians: the artist Muirhead Bone, his brother the journalist James Bone, who later became the London editor of the
Manchester Guardian,
and the lawyer Archibald Charteris. Together they produced a perceptive book called
Glasgow in 1901.
Much that they had to say about the city a century and more ago holds true today, such as: ‘The best you can say for football is that it has given the working man a topic of conversation.' Even then there were signs that shipbuilding was starting to decline. Poor people drank too much, the university lacked focus, and there was too much drinking in public, and not of the wonderful water which arrived largely untreated from Loch Katrine
.

Glasgow, like most towns given over to industry and commerce, has no leisured class. Some of the inhabitants do, indeed, contend that the class exists and contains thirty-one persons, who are professors at Gilmorehill. But this is an absurd contention, for if you include professors, how are you to treat the officials of the Board of Trade or of the Custom House, or even lieutenants of the police? No, if the class exists in Glasgow it contains only nine-and-twenty persons, and these are not professors at all, but infantry officers stationed at Maryhill Barracks. And this is why the military man, whom, of a summer afternoon, you recognise by his flannels, his straw hat, and his fox-terrier, has an air so wearied and listless. With the other leisured men in the town he may have dined every night since the regiment came to Maryhill; now, on this pleasant day, he is just a little tired of them and would almost give his dog to any new person of the class who could help him to air it. Think of it! Alone of 750,000 people, he of the straw hat and old flannels has no ‘job'.

No doubt there are others who are leisured against their will; the business of a professional man, for instance, who is still on the stocks, the waiters at Drury Street who are out of work, the student who, as the decades roll over his head, is turning ‘chronic'. But to avoid being stared at, the man of this stamp adopts at the least the habits of the occupied, and then, like the Sergeant at Law –

The unashamed leisured are the military man and his rare twin brother the Oxford undergraduate in Glasgow for the vacation.

Now, this character of the Glasgow man as one having a job may be read by him who runs. It affects dress, manners, habits, even expression. Thus, existing more for use than ornament, the Glasgow man has small regard for the delicate niceties of dress. He clothes himself for work, and wears tweeds which have an air of being worth their price. If he should bestow pains on his clothes and do their maker infinite credit, depend upon it, the very rarity of his caprice will earn him the title of ‘Tailor's Block'. But even the most modest person respects what he has purchased, and thus in our uncertain climate he will wear his trousers turned up and will carry an umbrella, and these two habits are said to be the stigmata of the Glasgow man, revealing his origin even in the Outer Hebrides. Until he has ‘arrived' he rarely (except to funerals) wears a tall hat, unless indeed he is a professional man, and then if he is a lawyer it may sit on his head more as a badge of his calling than as a harmonious element in his colour scheme. Very often he hangs it in a cupboard before leaving his office, and should he chance to spend the next day a-golfing, his clerks will play charades with it in his private room. It is of a piece with his character that he refuses in business hours to be seen in the street with a stick in his hand. So to be seen would occasion the oddest surmises among his friends, the chief that he was leaving his office for good at a strangely early hour, or that he was a wedding guest. He might even seem to be a stranger passing through Glasgow on his way to the West Highlands. In Edinburgh, on the other hand, where appearance, not time, is money, a stick is carried even by the junior apprentice delivering a letter.