GLASGOW: THE INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS
“There is nothing so certain as the unexpected.” Our first impression,
after stepping upon the dry land of Europe, was that it was “limited.”
Not that we had been obsessed by the spirit that dwelt in that
reinforced Western Yankee, who, while on the island of Britain, was
afraid to go to sleep o’ nights lest he might fall off! Yet in Glasgow
the word “Limited” stared at us from every shop sign. We had not yet
in America adopted the statute of financial limitations for trading
firms, but the laws of the United Kingdom even then required that any
one doing business with a limited capital or accountability, must state
the fact on his shop sign or other public announcement. It was this
frequent expression of commercial conditions, then a real novelty, that
attracted our initial attention.
It was the day before Scotland’s Sabbath, or, in local dialect, “Sunday
First,” that we had our virgin view of Glasgow, and the excellent
custom of a Saturday half-holiday was in vogue. This afforded us all
the more ease in seeing the principal thoroughfares, which, with the
crowd absent and the shops closed, made comfort, but gave to the
lengthened areas a deserted look. We sauntered into St. George’s
Square, where, in addition to the imposing buildings surrounding it,
rises the lofty column on which stands the bronze effigy of Sir Walter
Scott. How marvellously did this Wizard of the North delight millions,
through many generations, with his poetical numbers and his weird
romances! To-day, his name is a magnet that annually brings to Scotland
thousands of tourists and millions of dollars. In the long run there
are no more valuable assets to a country than its great men and its
deathless literature.
There were other statues visible at this time, but the larger number
of those which to-day run the risk of being destroyed by bombs from
the empyrean, in the new fashions prevalent in aerial warfare, were
not then in existence. So it was to the cathedral that we hied, partly
for the reason that this was to be the first of the many great sacred
and historic edifices to be seen by us in the Old World, but chiefly
because the hoary pile was almost the only one which survived the
tumult and destruction of the Reformation. Largely by the “rascal
multitude,” as Knox called the mob, but also in the then prevalent
conviction that these structures, as then used, had survived their
original purpose, and should be reduced to ruins, cathedrals, abbeys,
and monasteries were levelled. For her size, no country excels Scotland
in ruins.
The Glasgow cathedral, in slow evolution during centuries, was
never finished. For a time its inner area was divided off to make
worship more comfortable and also to bring the structure into closer
conformity with those new fashions in religion, according to which
the people were given sermons, instead of masses, with more worship
through the intellect, and less through the senses and emotions. Yet
as we stood within its cold, damp walls, on that July afternoon, we
wondered how long human beings, unless clothed in plenty of woollen
habiliments, could sit or stand on its stone floor. Despite its age,
the interior had an air of newness, indeed, almost of smartness, for
its architectural restoration and interior cleansing had been recent.
The modern stained glass, made largely in Munich, though very rich,
had not yet softened down into the mellowness which only centuries can
bestow. One noted that the subjects selected and grandly treated with
the glory, yet also within the historic limitations, of the artist in
stained glass, were wholly taken from the New Testament. These Biblical
and eternally interesting subjects compel thought and provoke contrast
with the more garish themes of the modern world.
Going out from the great cathedral, and its wonderful crypt, we visited
the Necropolis, Glasgow’s beautiful city of the dead. Being set upon
a hill, it cannot be hid. Laid out in the form of terraces, and with
many imposing monuments, it challenges our attention. Here sleep the
merchant princes of Glasgow and the mighty dead of Scotland. The
tombs are of the most costly character, for the most durable materials
in nature have been summoned to record facts and to defy oblivion.
Everything which love of beauty, chaste refinement, and abundant wealth
could command has been wrought with toil and taste to make this lovely
home of those at rest a fit resting-place for the brave men and women
who are still unforgotten. The long roll of their names forms the
brightest page in Scotland’s history, and the native, even when far
from home, dearly loves to remember them. On a lofty Doric column,
high over all else, is a statue of John Knox, and on its base is the
thrilling inscription:--
“Here lies one who never feared the face of mortal man.”
Among the names, read at random on the sculptured stone, were those
of Sheridan Knowles, Dr. John Dick, Melville the reformer, and many
others familiar and honored in Scottish history. Thus, as out of the
past centuries does the old cathedral, so, in the modern day, do the
shining monuments of the departed dead look down upon the bustling life
that goes on noisily below. One here feels that the spell of Scotland
is not only in nature’s glories, but in the matchless landscape of
her thought; nor is the empire of Scottish intellect one whit less
fascinating than that of her lochs, her moors, her heather, or her
granite hills. What Scotland has contributed to religion, in both
theoretical study and in fruitage of practical results, argues well for
world-unity. Our debt as Americans to her thought is immeasurable.
The next day is the Sabbath. The chimneys are asleep, and after the
showers of the night before, even the air seems washed clean. “Like a
spell,” the “serene and golden sunlight” lies over land and sea. One
can now readily accept another line of verbal genealogy. Remembering
that coal smoke is, after all, very modern, and chemical fumes recent,
it is easier to believe that “Glasgow” is not derived from words
meaning “dark glen,” but is only a modified form of the old Celtic word
_Gleshui_, or _Glas-chu_, which means “dear green spot,” from _glas_,
green and _chu_, dear.
Indeed, there are antiquarians who tell us that when the first
Christian missionary, St. Kentigern, came to convert the Britons of
Strathclyde, this antique term, expressing affection for the place
and its beauty, became the name of the settlement. In days when the
efficiency of particular saints was believed in more than now, and
before the great American god Prosperity was so worshipped, and before
both we Yankees and the people whom Napoleon bundled together as “a
nation of shopkeepers” did so bow before the golden calf, every city,
town, and even village had its patron saint.
Such an association of ideas--of connecting public welfare with holy
men and prosperity with obedience to their exhortations--was perhaps
fully as reasonable as is the modern desire of our City Councils and
Boards of Trade for railways, electric lights, and the location within
their municipal bounds of factories and commercial establishments. Even
villages then welcomed the monks with free hand, much as our towns boom
their reputation by offering building-sites free to those who will
locate. So also the reason why in Europe we find so slight a variety of
names for boys and girls, and why in certain regions particular local
names are so frequently repeated, is because of the zeal and industry
of certain old-time saints. According to the popularity of the holy man
or woman was the census of boys’ and girls’ names--as, for example, in
Holland, Kilaen and Fridolin; in France, Henri or Denis; in Ireland,
Patrick and Bridget; in England, George and Mary; and in Scotland,
Mungo, Andrew, or some other Christian name once borne by a spiritual
pioneer, whose story is one of inspiration.
In such a climate and era of opinion, Glasgow took for its patron
saint, Mungo, and the municipal motto and arms are wholly identified
with his career. “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the
Word” was his verbal gift and bequest, though in ordinary use and
conversation the municipal motto is shortened to “Let Glasgow
flourish.” This is very much as in the Netherlands the national motto,
once much longer, is now abbreviated to two words in Dutch (or rather
French) which in English mean “I will maintain.” Our own native city
has the advantage of having adopted that scriptural command, or desire,
which begins a famous chapter in Hebrews, “Let Philadelphia continue.”
Kentigern, whose name meant “chief lord,” was one of the three pioneer
apostles or missionaries of the Christian faith in Scotland. Ninian
took as his task the converting of the tribes of the south; St.
Columba was the apostle of the west and north; while Mungo restored
or established the religion of the British folk in the region between
the Clyde and Cumberland. Of high birth and of early British stock,
he saw the light at Culross in the year 514. His mother Thenau was
the daughter of a saint of the Edinburgh region. So dearly was he
beloved by the monastic brethren that his baptismal name of Kentigern
was exchanged in common speech for Mungo, meaning “lovable,” or “dear
friend.” Leaving Culross, he made use of the chief forces of missionary
propagation in that age, by planting a monastery at a place now known
as Glasgow. He became bishop of the kingdom of Cumbria, as the region,
partly in the later-named England and partly in Scotland, was then
called.
When this holy missionary lived, there were no such specific regions,
with boundaries fixed by surveyors and known as England and Scotland,
nor were Highlanders or Lowlanders discriminated by any such later and
useful terms of distinction. The region which Mungo first entered was
called Cumbria and was then and long afterwards an independent kingdom.
It has since been broken up into Cumberland in England, and that part
of Scotland which is now divided into the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew,
Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Selkirk, Roxborough, and Dumfries. The name of
Cumbria, notably differentiated from what in recent centuries has been
called England, was governed by its own kings, who had their seat at
Dumbarton or Glasgow. The name still lingers in the Cumbria Mountains.
In this great knot of peaks and hills lies the famous British “lake
district,” which is very much in physical features like Wales, being
unsurpassed in the British archipelago for picturesqueness and beauty.
When the varied Teutonic tribes--Saxons, Angles, Frisians, Jutes, and
what not from the Continent--pressed into the Lowlands, the natives
inhabiting the western and more mountainous districts, north of the
Forth and the Clyde, had to be distinguished from the newcomers.
Then it was that these people of the hill country received names not
altogether complimentary. They were called the “Wild Scots” or the
“Irishry of Scotland,” and only in comparatively recent times “Scotch
Highlanders.” The last prince of Cumbria, named in the records, was
the brother and heir of King Alexander I of Scotland.
Glasgow is really a very modern city. As the city on Manhattan is the
evolution from a fortress, so the cathedral was the nucleus around
which the ancient town of the “dark glen” grew. The university, when
founded, became also a magnet to attract dwellers. In the twelfth
century, King William the Lion erected the settlement into a burgh,
with the privilege of an annual fair. Yet even down to the sixteenth
century, Glasgow was only the eleventh in importance among Scottish
towns. It was the American trade, after the union with England, which
gave an immense stimulus to its commerce. If “Amsterdam is built on
herring bones,” the Scottish city became rich through the tobacco leaf.
For a long time the merchants of Glasgow, who traded with Virginia,
formed a local aristocracy, very proud and very wealthy. For a century
or more, this profitable commerce lasted. Then our Civil War paralyzed
it, but other industries quickly followed.
The permanent wealth of Glasgow comes, however, from its situation
in the midst of a district rich in coal and iron. Furthermore,
the improvements made in the steam engine by James Watt, and the
demonstration, by Henry Bell, that navigation with this motive power
was possible, wrought the transformation of Glasgow into the richest
of Scottish cities. Speaking broadly, however, as to time, Glasgow’s
wealth is the creation of the nineteenth century, and its influence
upon the world at large is not much older. As upon a ladder, whose
rungs are sugar refining, the distillation of strong liquors, the
making of soap, the preparation of tobacco, the introduction of the
cotton manufacture, calico printing, Turkey-red dyeing, beer-brewing,
and the iron trade, including machine-making and steamboat building,
the prosperity of Glasgow has mounted ever upwards.
The tourist seeking rest, refreshment, and inspiration is but slightly
interested in mere wealth or prosperity that is wholly material. So,
despite the attractive solidity of its houses, built of free-stone,
and of its streets running from east to west, in straight lines and
parallel with the river, the city of Glasgow, with its dingy and ever
smoky aspect, has little to attract the traveller whose minutes are
precious and whose days on the soil are few. So on this first visit, a
day and a night sufficed us, and then we left the burgh of the (once)
dear green spot and took the train to “Edwin’s burgh,” or Edinburgh.
Many times did we revisit Glasgow, noting improvement on each occasion.
We came to consider this the model city of Great Britain in its
municipal spirit and constant improvement. We blessed the Lord for
electricity which is steadily annihilating smoke and brightening the
world. “The city is the hope of democracy.”