town, and an odd mixture of ducal dignity and striving industrialism.
It stands at the gates of the Duke of Hamilton’s great park, and
jostles that dignified place in a way that would make the hermit Dukes
of Bedford faint with horror. But the Dukes of Hamilton, who are
Douglases, and of much more distinguished lineage than the Russells, do
not seem greatly to suffer from this contact with the world: although,
to be sure, the magnificent Alexander, tenth Duke, found the old
streets of the town so close to his residence that the colliers and the
weavers of the place could easily observe his domestic affairs. This
was too much, not merely for a Duke: even so comparatively grovelling
a thing as an ordinary squire would have refused to put up with it:
and so the too-neighbourly street, and even the old Tolbooth, were
purchased. The Tolbooth stands, even now, in the park, and the front
walls of the otherwise demolished houses, with doors and windows filled
up, form an odd boundary-wall.
[Sidenote: _THE MAGNIFICENT DUKE_]
The tenth Duke was magnificent indeed. He knew what was due to his
strawberry-leaves, and, being a man of immense wealth, saw that he
got his due accordingly. A great deal is possible to a man with
eighteen titles and five residences, and millions of money to properly
support them. He added expensively to the Palace in 1828 and not only
beautified it and filled it with wonderful collections of art and
literature, but expended £130,000 on a grand mausoleum, so that he
might be adequately housed in death. He even imported the black marble
sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian monarch; who, however, appears to
have been of shorter stature than the princely Duke Alexander, for the
thing was a misfit, and when at length his Grace was gathered to his
fathers, his body had to be doubled up, in a very derogatory way. The
immense collections in Hamilton Palace were at length sold in 1882,
by an extravagant and impecunious successor of Duke Alexander, and
realised £400,000 at auction.
The park and the mausoleum may be seen at due seasons, and sometimes
the miniature castle of Châtelherault, built in 1732, in imitation of
the castle in France whence the Dukes of Hamilton take their French
title of Dukes of Châtelherault.
Hamilton town is a cheery place, with colour and ornament in its new
buildings: very different from the lowering streets of Glasgow, which
we are now nearing. In its present prosperous condition, many old
buildings are being removed, but the passer-by will note a quaint
tablet over an old house in the chief street, with three moustached
lions’ heads, the initials “A. S.” and the inscription:
The . airt . of . weaving . is . renouned . so .
that . rich . nor . poor . without . it . cannot . go .
A very broad and well-kept stretch of road leads from Hamilton to
the Clyde at Bothwell Bridge: the famous Brig where the battle so
immediately disastrous to the Covenanters was fought, June 22nd,
1679. The bridge representing the one that spanned the river so long
ago was built in 1826, and neither it nor the road resembles the old
circumstances of the place in any but the remotest degree. The road
across Bothwell Brig when the battle was fought was steep and but
twelve feet wide. The Covenanters lost the day entirely through the
internal dissensions among their own forces. Each officer wanted to be
commandant, and while they were bitterly wrangling about this point,
up came the Royalist forces under the Duke of Monmouth and “bloody
Claverse,” otherwise Graham of Claverhouse, the “bonnie Dundee” of the
famous ballad. The Covenanting army was well placed for defence, and
the day might, in other circumstances, have gone in their favour,
but as it was, they were defeated, with a slaughter of three hundred.
Twelve hundred prisoners were taken. Of these, some were executed: many
were shipped to the plantations in Barbadoes. Thus was avenged the
initial Royalist defeat by the hands of the Covenanters at Drumclog, on
the 1st of June.
It was not until 1903 that the tall obelisk now standing the north side
of the bridge was erected, to commemorate the Covenanters who fought
and fell “in defence of civil and religious liberty, for Christ’s Crown
and Covenant.”
[Illustration: BOTHWELL BRIDGE.]
[Sidenote: _BOTHWELL_]
The red ruins of the ancient castle of Bothwell stand in the
neighbouring park belonging to the Earl of Home. The little town of
Bothwell, with its finely rebuilt church, fringes the road: in the
churchyard a highly decorative monument of terra-cotta and mosaics
to the memory of Joanna Baillie, the poet, with quotations in praise
of the scenery around Bothwell. The scenery is still (what is left of
it) fine, but since the day when Joanna Baillie wandered in Bothwell’s
braes, and corresponded with Sir Walter Scott, the suburbs of Glasgow
have swept over the scene; and henceforward the way to Glasgow is not
rural.
Yet although Glasgow is, in its population, the “second city of the
Empire,” coming next after London, it is by no means the centre of so
great a number of smaller townships as Manchester, and by consequence
the approach, along crowded streets to the centre of the city, is
not so lengthy. Bothwell, at the very furthest, is the limit, and is
nine miles from the Exchange at Glasgow. Laurel Bank and the suburb
of Uddingston follow, and to this fringe in these days the electric
tramways extend. To these marches of the city succeed Broomhouse and
some busy outlying collieries of the Lanarkshire coal-fields, Mount
Vernon railway station, and Tolcross. It was at the approach to
Tolcross, soon after the mail-coach to London had been established,
that a desperate attempt to wreck and rob the mail was made. The road
at that time passed through a small fir wood, where a strong rope was
stretched across the highway and securely fastened at either end to
tree-trunks, at the height of the places usually occupied by coachman
and guard; but, as it happened, a slow-moving hay-waggon came along
first, instead of the more quickly moving van, and the waggoner got
rather a surprise.
XXXV
[Sidenote: _GLASGOW CROSS_]
At Tolcross, the traveller has at last arrived at Glasgow, and enters
there, into the wealthy city, by the meanest of back-doors. Tolcross
and its lengthy continuation, Gallowgate, are one long-drawn slum, and
so conduct shamelessly to the very heart of things: the junction of
Trongate, Saltmarket, and High Street, where stands the old centre of
the city in coaching days, Glasgow Cross.
Here Glasgow is at its busiest, and the hurrying crowds look as though
they had little time for sentiment. Yet the Glasgow people have, of
course, an interest in Sir Walter Scott, and some there are who can
point out to the stranger the house, once an inn, in King Street,
turning out of Trongate, which Scott once frequented. It was perhaps
the original of the “Luckie Flyter’s Hostelry” in _Rob Roy_. The
pilgrim will be bidden look at the iron ring to which Sir Walter, in
common with many another traveller, secured his horse.
But there is little enough of this sort of thing: railways old and
railways new; railways above and railways below, and electric tramcars
on the surface, are the chief things in evidence.
Here you see the Cross station of the underground railway, cheek
by jowl with the old equestrian statue of William the Third, that
tells you, without more ado, of Glasgow’s old Whiggish complexion of
politics: the tall steeple of the old Tolbooth, and straddling the
sidewalk, the tower of the Tron Church. The Tron itself (it was a
public weighing-machine) went very long ago, together with the pleasant
custom of nailing to it the ears of those tradesfolk who gave short
weight.
Between this point and Candleriggs were found the principal coach
offices. From Walker’s coach-office at the “Tontine,” the mail-coach
for London started at about 1 a.m., called at the Post Office in
Glassford Street for the bags, left there at 1.15, pulled up again at
the “Tontine” for the way-bill, and then was off in earnest, its five
lamps glaring through the darkness. Its first considerable pull-up was
at Beattock Inn, where breakfast before a blazing fire, off Finnan
haddock, chops, ham and eggs, baps and buttered toast made amends to
the passengers for much. Such, until the beginning of 1848, were the
initial circumstances of the long journey to London.
The coaching inns of Glasgow were distributed in the Gallowgate, the
Cross, and Argyle Street. Chief among these was the “Saracen’s Head,”
a large building, for its era, with a frontage of one hundred feet to
Gallowgate. Greatly admired at the time of its being built, in 1754,
it was, according to modern ideas, a singularly grim and hard-featured
frontage of stone that greeted travellers who halted here, at what was
then by far the foremost hostelry in the city of Glasgow.
[Sidenote: _THE “SARACEN’S HEAD”_]
It stood hard by where the East Port in the Gallowgate marked the
ancient limits of the city in that direction, and owed its origin
to the expansion of Glasgow following upon the more settled times
that ensued after the suppression of “the Forty-five.” The Glasgow
magistrates caused the old Gallowgate Port to be removed in 1749, and,
in their zeal for extending the city, spared nothing; demolishing the
neighbouring fourteenth-century Archbishop’s Palace, and desecrating
the chapel and kirkyard of St. Mungo without the walls. In 1754 they
advertised their readiness to sell the old kirkyard for feuing, and
offered especial inducements to any speculative person who would
undertake the establishment of an hotel, then felt to be greatly
needed in Glasgow; where, up to that period, only inns of a doubtful
character, and of an insanitary condition that admitted of no doubts
whatever, existed. The speculator was duly forthcoming, in the person
of Robert Tennent, landlord at the time of the “White Hart” inn, in
the Gallowgate, who on November 24th, 1754, purchased the land of the
kirkyard, on the understanding that he built an hotel according to
plans to be agreed upon. As an extra inducement, the vendors threw into
the bargain the stones of the demolished Archbishop’s Palace, and from
them the “Saracen’s Head” was accordingly built.
Tennent immediately began to build, and reared his hotel on the site
of the kirkyard; grubbing up and destroying without scruple the
gravestones of the old burgesses of two hundred years earlier. By
December 1755 he had completed the building and removed from the “White
Hart”: advertising in the _Edinburgh Courant_ of December 18th that his
new house was a “convenient and handsome new inn,” built by himself at
the request of the magistrates of Glasgow. He took the opportunity of
acquainting “all Ladies and Gentlemen” that he had “36 Fire Rooms now
fit to receive lodgers. The Bed-chambers are all separate, none of them
entering through another, and are so contrived that there is no need of
going out of Doors to get to them. The Beds are all very good, clean,
and free from Bugs”—which obviously was not commonly the case, or there
would have been no need for him to lay stress upon the fact.
Notwithstanding the peculiar advantages of his house—its independence
of Keating or his predecessors, and the convenience of guests not
being obliged to walk out of doors to reach their bed-rooms—Tennent’s
speculation was a failure, and on February 3rd, 1757, he died, heavily
in debt. His creditors, at a loss what to do with the house, let it
to his widow at a rent of £50 a year. When she died, in 1768, it was
sold to James Graham, of the “Black Bull,” who carried it on, with much
success, until his death in 1777. But although he was so successful
with the “Saracen’s Head,” he was unfortunate in other directions and
died bankrupt. He was succeeded by his widow, who in 1791 married one
Buchanan, who seems to have been rather a wild person, and indeed
himself went bankrupt in 1791, dying two years later.
In 1792 the “Saracen’s Head” was purchased by William Miller; who,
later, converted it into shops and tenements.
The sign of the house was an enormous half-length picture of a turbaned
Saracen, with goggling eyes, represented as fiercely drawing his
scimitar, and habited in a claret-coloured gown, decorated with a red
sash.
This house was exceptionally famous as a literary landmark. In October
1773, Johnson and Boswell stayed two nights, on their return from the
Hebrides; the poet Gray is thought to have met the brothers Foulis,
the famous Glasgow printers, and to have concluded arrangements here
for their edition of his poems, including the famous _Elegy_; Dorothy
Wordsworth, in her “Journal,” under August 22nd, 1803, tells how
pleased she and her brother were at last to leave the weary coach and
find themselves in “the quiet little back parlour” of the “Saracen’s
Head.”
The magistrates, in that age a convivial set of men, delighted to
assemble in the “Magistrates’ Room,” and their capacity for drinking
deep may be judged from the size of the famous punch-bowl of the
establishment, which held five gallons. Adorned with the City arms, it
was usually brought in, shoulder-high, by the landlord himself, and
with great ceremony placed before the Chairman and the magistrates, who
were probably themselves carried home at a later stage of the session,
or left sleeping off the effects under the table. The bowl has for many
years been lost sight of. Last seen in 1860, it is believed to be no
longer in existence.
The “Saracen’s Head” building finally disappeared in 1904.
The “Black Bull,” second only to the “Saracen’s Head,” was built close
by the West Port, in Argyle Street, in 1758, and took its name from an
old inn on the opposite side of the road, kept at that time by James
Graham, who afterwards acquired the “Saracen’s Head.” The building of
the “Black Bull” was a shrewd speculation of the Highland Society,
which in 1757 purchased the freehold site for £260 11_s._ 6_d._ It
contained twenty-three bedrooms, and six reception rooms, and was
provided with an ample sufficiency of cellars: six in number. For a
number of years the rent appears to have been £100 per annum. By 1788,
it had risen to £140, and under a nineteen-years’ lease from 1789 to
1808 was £245. In 1825, when shops were made on the ground-floor, the
combined rental of shops and hotel had risen to £1,168; by which it
would appear that the Highland Society had secured full measure and
brimming over from its investment of £260 in 1757.
The year 1849 saw the closing of the “Black Bull,” when it was
converted into a drapery establishment. The building stands at the
corner of Virginia Street, and is now occupied by Messrs. Mann, Byars &
Co.
[Sidenote: _THE “TONTINE”_]
Later in date, and more advanced in comforts, was the “Tontine Hotel,”
built originally as the Glasgow Exchange, in 1781-2. With the advantage
of a central position, at the Cross, it eventually became the foremost
hotel in Glasgow. It was leased to one “Mr. Smart” in 1784, as an
hotel; a coffee-house and imposing reading-rooms forming important
adjuncts.
The arrival of the London newspapers at the Tontine Reading Rooms was
in the old days the signal for riotous excitement. Immediately on
receiving the bag of papers from the Post Office, the waiter locked
himself up in the bar. After he had sorted the different papers and had
made them up in a heap, he unlocked the door and, making a sudden rush
into the middle of the room, tossed up the whole heap as high as the
ceiling. Then came an irresistible rush and scramble of subscribers,
every one darting forward to lay hold of a paper. Sometimes a lucky
and agile fellow would secure five or six and run off into a corner,
to select his favourite: always hotly pursued by half a dozen of the
disappointed scramblers, who without ceremony snatched away the first
they could lay hold of, regardless of its being torn in the contest.
On those occasions a heap of gentlemen could often be seen sprawling
on the floor and climbing over one another’s backs, like so many
schoolboys.
The name of the hotel derived from the financial, lottery-like
principle of the tontine, by which the building funds were raised.
One hundred and seven shares of £50 each were subscribed in 1781; the
interest upon the investment being paid at regular intervals, and the
property gradually devolving, as the members of the tontine died,
upon the survivors; the lessening number of the persons to share out
increasing _pro rata_ the value of the survivors’ holding.
The “Tontine Hotel” ceased to be an hotel many years ago, and is now
the warehouse of Messrs. Moore, Taggart & Co.
XXXVI
Here, then, we are come to the end of this long journey, into the
roaring, overcrowded streets of modern Glasgow.
I shall not attempt to describe the Glaswegian: there are so many
varieties of him. Nor his accent, which evades characterisation. The
Londoner, accustomed to think his own city busy and crowded, will
find, on coming to Glasgow, that he has still something to learn about
congested streets. Let him, for example, resort to the Central station
of the Caledonian Railway (the whistles of whose Prussian-blue-painted
engines have an accent of their own) and he shall see a high tide of
life new to him.
[Illustration: TRONGATE.]
As for ancient Glasgow, I know not where to bid you look for it,
unless it be in the Cathedral, and that is ancient indeed. The rest
is very new, yet very grey and gloomy, for the immense commercial
interests of Glasgow have not only compelled the extension of the city,
but also the complete rebuilding of its centre, and have caused it
to be rebuilt exclusively in stone. The chief streets are of stone,
are paved with stone, and have remarkably tall buildings, and so with
the side streets: the sole difference being that while the principal
thoroughfares contain the shops, every side street leading out of
them is a more or less dirty slum, where dirty little bare-legged,
ragged-tailed boys and girls play in the road or spit out of windows
on the passing stranger. I suppose the respectable people do their
business in the city, and live outside it.
There is no colour in Glasgow, which, when once you are out of the
noise and bustle of the business streets, is thus a very depressing
place; and I think the Scotsman’s praise, “Man, ye should live in
Glesca’, there’s such gran’ faceelities for gettin’ oot o’t,” must have
taken unconscious count of this.
In one way, and one only, Glasgow resembles London. This is in the way
in which the Clyde divides it, north and south. North, you have old
Glasgow and its immediate extensions; south are the dependent districts
of Hutchesontown, Laurieston, Gorbals, Govanhill, and a dozen others.
[Sidenote: _SAINT KENTIGERN_]
The Clyde and the neighbourhood of the Lanarkshire coalfield are the
determining factors that have made Glasgow what it is, yet although its
wealth and size are of modern growth, it is no parvenu, upstart place
without a history. St. Kentigern, or St. Mungo, the patron saint of
Glasgow, came here so early as A.D. 543, but early as he was, Glasgow
was already here, in the guise of one hamlet on the Molendinar Burn,
where the Cathedral now stands, and another nearer the Clyde.
And here, with this mention of St. Kentigern, it is necessary
for awhile to divert the stream of historical narrative into the
interesting backwater of saintly biography, and thus learn the story of
how the city came by its singular armorial bearings.
Kentigern, the founder of the see, was born in A.D. 518, or 527, and
was by birth a by no means humble person, having been the son of Ewen
ap Urien, a prince of Strathclyde, and of Thenewth, daughter of Loth,
King of Northumbria. Kentigern was born at Culross, where, as a youth,
he entered the Church, under the guidance and protection of St. Serf,
the old Bishop of Culross, who showed great affection for him, and used
to style him, intimately, “Munchu,” a nickname said to derive from
words signifying “dear, well-mannered little fellow.” Kentigern was
not only urbane, but pious as well, and early of such holiness as to
be able to perform miracles. The first of these was the bringing again
to life a pet robin belonging to his patron, which had been accidently
killed by other lads in the monastery, who laid the blame of the
accident on him. Taking the dead bird in his hand, and making the sign
of the Cross, it revived, and flew off, chirping, to its master.
The next miracle was exhibited to reprove his mischievous young
companions, who, seeing him fall asleep over a consecrated fire which
it was his duty to attend, extinguished it. Kentigern merely, when he
awoke, went outside and found a frozen hazel branch which he breathed
upon, in the name of the Trinity, whereupon it burst into flame.
The precocious sanctity and the amazing miracles of Kentigern so
impressed St. Serf—as well they might—that when the cook attached
to the monastery died suddenly at harvest time and the reapers were
returning to a dinner that had not been prepared, the Bishop merely
gave him the choice of cooking the dinner, or raising the cook from the
dead. Whatever else Kentigern was, he was no _chef_, and so did the
easiest thing for him to perform, and resurrected the cook, who was
doubtless grateful: but probably not so grateful as the reapers, who
narrowly escaped having their dinner spoilt.
But these were not his most celebrated exploits; and were mere
side-shows compared with the famous adventure of the Queen of Cadzow,
which he saved from becoming a tragedy. It seems that the King of
Strathclyde had given his consort a ring of great price and singular
beauty, but she in turn presented it to a knight with whom she was on
terms of peculiar friendship. As ill-fortune would have it, the King
espied it on the knight’s finger, and, indignant that his gift should
have been passed on, snatched it off and flung it into the Clyde. He
then, saying nothing of what had happened, asked her for it. She made
a temporary excuse, and in distress turned to Kentigern, who listened
patiently, and then instructed her to cause a fishing-line to be cast
into the river, when the first fish hooked would be found to have the
missing ring in his stomach.
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF GLASGOW.]
The line was cast, the fish caught, and the ring duly found and
returned to the King, who was thus completely hoodwinked. Our
sympathies are rather with the King, over this business, than with the
Queen, or the saint, who does not seem to have been able to withstand
a woman’s tears or the desire of showing-off; even though it were in a
questionable cause.
But he was equal to any emergency. Preaching once to a great crowd, to
whom he was almost inaudible and invisible, owing to the flatness of
the ground he stood on, he caused a mound to grow up beneath his feet,
and prophesied that Glasgow should rise as the mound had done.
Finally he died in A.D. 603, and was buried on the site where Glasgow
Cathedral stands.
[Sidenote: _THE ARMS OF GLASGOW_]
The arms of Glasgow illustrate many of these stories, but were not
adopted until toward the close of the sixteenth century, the earliest
representation of them being found sculptured over the entrance to
the Tron Kirk, and dated 1592. They were heraldically formulated in
modern times, and, in the language of heralds, are: “Argent, on a mount
in base, an oak-tree proper: the stem and bole thereof surmounted by
a salmon on its back, also proper, with a signet-ring in its mouth,
or; on top of the tree a redbreast, and on the sinister fess point an
ancient bell, both also proper”: the bell referring to one he is said
to have brought from Rome. The crest includes a half-length of the
saint, in the act of benediction, and the supporters are two salmon.
[Illustration: GLASGOW CATHEDRAL, AND THE NECROPOLIS.]
Although the arms are modern, the same, or similar, devices appeared
upon the common seal of Glasgow from an early period: the mound,
however, being a comparatively recent addition, necessitated by the
hazel branch having become, by some unexplained species of evolution,
an oak tree. The earliest representation of the mound is said to be
that shown on the bell of Tron Kirk, which also first exhibits the
famous Glasgow motto, which, in its original and unexpurgated form:
“Lord, let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word and praising
Thy name,” is to be found over the entrance to Blackfriars Church.
The theological and missionary complexion of this aspiration was
completely obscured in 1699, when the abbreviated form was first used
as the city motto: the inference, to satirical minds, now being “Let
Glasgow Flourish—by all means.”
Popular disbelief in these miraculous things is expressed in the lines: