Glasgow (12 page)

Cookery for the Working Classes – Tickets, 3s per doz. – Broth

Buy some hochs, also tippence worth o' neeps, sibos, carrots, and ingans. Pit the beef intae the pan wi' cauld water. Bile for an 'oor, then in wi' the vegetables. When the guidman comes in at one, serve het. Eh, lassies, there's naething like a drap o' guid kail on a cauld day.

DOON THE WATTER, 1880
J.J. Bell

For generations of Glaswegians holidays meant a trip ‘doon the watter'. Initially, as J.J. Bell intimates, this was no great voyage, Dumbarton being the furthest flung port of call. Later, adventurous travellers went as far as the Isle of Arran, which for many was regarded as being as exotic as the Bahamas
.

The Glasgow Fair Holidays began on a Thursday in July and ended on the second Monday following; but few city clerks, who worked from eight-thirty or nine till six, with an interval for dinner (but none for coffee, cigarette or tea), and shop assistants, whose day was even longer, got more than a week as an antidote to 51 weeks of an unairy and often gas-fumey existence. The heads of business might take ten days, but some took less; to the responsible man of affairs the idea of a month's absence from duty – were it ever suggested – would have seemed worthy of a lunatic.

The bicycle was then a lofty thing, spectacular and unpractical, with thin solid tyres, on which one rode jarringly in the tightest of breeches, with no place for impedimenta. Transport was all but confined to the
trains and steamers, the horse-drawn vehicle used by one-day excursionists, or by adventurous souls who would penetrate beyond the outposts of the railway into the fastness of, for instance, Sutherland.

Golf was not everybody's game – far from it. In Hillhead small boys, including myself, turned to gape at a man carrying clubs. A woman with clubs we never saw. To our house came only one person who ever mentioned golf, though he mentioned it much. I remember that he played at Troon – always Troon. My father respected him as a lawyer, yet judged him to be a little daft. At any rate, golf was then a holiday consideration of the select. I am writing of the West, but even St Andrews, where we spent our holidays in 1880 or 1881, was small and quiet compared with what it is today, and its solitary course was adequate.

It is safe to say that Glasgow generally was satisfied to make holiday within a radius of fifty miles of the city, and mainly on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. As youngsters we knew one or two families who were annually taken inland, and we pitied them, for to us, as to most boys and girls, the countryside appeared as a place in which there was nothing to see and little more to do.

As for ‘Doon the Watter', I cherish a theory that originally it did not imply a voyage beyond Dumbarton, if as far, though it came to include the adventure to the Isle of Arran. Possibly the older generation, or some of its members, of fifty years ago, continued to say ‘Doon the Watter' without a smile, but I do not recollect hearing it, save on a jocular note.

Glasgow people generally did not worry about getting ‘relaxed', or bother about being ‘braced', and so the sheltered shores and heads of the lochs had their goodly shares of summer visitors. My earliest recollection of this kind belongs to Clynder – which many moderns would call ‘fuggy' in mid-summer – on the Gareloch, then, as now, an anchorage for ships out of commission. The vivid part of the memory has, in fact, to do with one of the ships, a steamer, a big and beautiful one, with graceful clipper bow, tall masts, and two scarlet funnels, which lay moored off the pier. Once my father rowed me out to her, and the caretaker invited us on board, and showed us over her – a tremendous experience for a small boy. She was the
Scotia
, last of the famous paddle-wheel Cunarders, and therefore historic. Eventually they took away her paddles, gave her a propeller, and she continued to be useful as a cable ship. Clynder, too, is associated with chickenpox, which we children all developed there, having taken it thither from Sunday school – alas, my poor parents!

The Isle of Arran attracted then, as it attracts now, but, more than any other place on the Firth, it expected to be loved for itself alone.
There was a certain sense of adventure in the voyage beyond the Cumbraes and Bute, or even from Ardrossan in the old
Brodick Castle
, with her pair of black and white funnels set close together, and a certain romance in the island's isolation and wildness, also the wonder of freedom, which did not apply to places on the inner Firth. But for those delights there was a price, however cheerfully it might be paid.

Fascination was the word for it. Glasgow people accustomed to abundant space and every comfort packed themselves gladly into cottages in a way that is best described by the sanitary inspector's word ‘overcrowding'. The cottages were without water supply; the rooms were small, the ceilings low, the windows sometimes so tiny that the ventilation was almost negligible; and after a stewing hot night one had a real need of all the fresh air the hills and glens and sea could give. In such a night, unable to sleep, I lit a candle in order to read and, lo, the wall-paper was swarming with wood-lice! But was I ‘scunnered' at Arran? A thousand times no!

Yet I have since wondered how my mother tholed it. Seven of a family, maybe a visitor or two, the father bringing another at the weekend, and all the difficulties of catering at the head of a glen, maids raging at the small open fire, every pint of water to be carried in from a spring – not much of a holiday for her. Perhaps she was leal to Arran, as well as faithful to her motherhood, for as a girl she had tasted of its delights, without the responsibilities.

KENNEDY JONES,
c
. 1885
Neil Munro

Born in Glasgow, ‘K.J.' (1865–1921) as he was known, was educated at the High School before embarking at sixteen on a career in journalism. He worked as a reporter for several local papers before moving south, where he fell under the influence of Alfred Harmsworth. Always entrepreneurial, he returned to Glasgow in 1895 and acquired the
Daily Record.
Though not titularly its editor, ‘K.J.' determined its style and content, increasing sales from 100,000 to half a million within three years of its launch. Here he is recalled by the journalist and novelist Neil Munro (1864–1930), author of the sublime Para Handy tales
.

In the middle 'eighties a young Glasgow lad, living with his parents in Crown Street, Gorbals, started on a Press career, which terminated in London about the year 1921, when he retired, reputedly a millionaire.

He had begun as acting editor of a boys' paper, and so made certain of having his own contributions accepted. He finished as a partner of the late Lord Northcliffe, whom he was largely instrumental in launching into daily journalism.

In his retirement he occupied his time by keeping a stud of racing horses, and, as a director of Waring and Gillow, took an active interest in Mr. Donald Matheson's preliminary schemes for what was to be the grandest hotel in Scotland, possibly Britain – Gleneagles. But the war intervened; all work on Gleneagles was suspended for some years, and he did not live to see it finished. His last work was to write a volume dealing with his own part in the development of the ‘new journalism'.

For a certain number of years the destiny of
The Times
itself had been to no little extent in the hands of Mr. Kennedy Jones, the lad from Gorbals.

The first time I met Kennedy Jones was on a Monday night in the stalls of the Princess's Theatre, Glasgow, where I had gone to write a notice of
The Shaughraun
, as played by Hubert O'Grady's touring company. There was a sparse audience, which doubtless accounted for Mr. O'Grady's bad temper that night.

Sitting next to me was a remarkably precocious young fellow I had never seen before, or heard of, who took an early opportunity to let me know he was editor of a new weekly called
The Detective
, which I had not yet seen. It appeared that
The Detective
specialised in short stories of crime and its nemesis, mainly written by himself, and in guinea competitions.

The previous week he had offered a guinea for the best short contribution dealing with the stage, and written by a professional actor. The guinea had been won by an actor in Hubert O'Grady's company, to whom he was going to present it personally at the end of the performance.

I accepted an invitation to go behind the scenes with him to witness this important ceremony, and we found the successful and highly delighted prize-winner alone in a dressing-room washing off his grease-paint. The presentation was hardly finished and the actor still in his under-pants when a stage hand came into the room with Mr. O'Grady's compliments and the information that we must leave immediately, as visitors in the dressing-rooms were strictly prohibited. Young Mr. Jones had no plausible
locus standi
, but I thought to establish one by sending a messenger back to O'Grady explaining that we represented the Press.

In the messenger's absence the young actor explained that the insult was directed exclusively at himself, as there was a violent feud between
him and O'Grady. Two minutes later O'Grady came into the dressing-room, profoundly apologetic. He was in a state of
deshabille
, without coat or waistcoat; one suspender inadequately holding up his breeches; his unbuttoned shirt revealing the hairiest of chests; and his face all streaked with paint.

‘I didn't undershtand ye were pressmen, boys,' he said. ‘The Press is always welcome. What paper do ye represint?'

‘The
Evening News
,' I informed him, quite unaware that a colleague of mine (‘Lorgnette') that very afternoon had cruelly written of O'Grady's own plays, as apart from Boucicault's, as of no dramatic value.

Fifteen minutes later, Kennedy Jones and I were contumely ejected into Main Street, Gorbals, accompanied by our friend, the young literary actor, who had there and then thrown up his engagement with the
Shaughraun
company. A painful scene, in which Madame O'Grady, also in
deshabille
, joined her husband and helped him to express his sentiments about us where his own pretty extensive vocabulary fell short!

The Detective
soon lost the clue to fortune, died soon after, and Kennedy Jones transferred his talents to a more orthodox Glasgow weekly paper,
The Scottish People
, in which he began a sensational story, entitled,
The Golden Cross
. The plot of it had been suggested to him by the editor, Mr. Andrew Dewar Willock, and its publication began in the paper when only the second instalment had been written. To advertise the new serial, tiny placards three inches square, and gummed on the back, were printed off in thousands for distribution by the newsagents.

Very late one night – or, rather, early in the morning – the author of
The Golden Cross
, on his way home to Crown Street over a deserted Jamaica Bridge, bethought him that here was an opportunity to stimulate the sale of good literature. He had with him a pocketful of the little placards exhorting the public to ‘Read The Golden Cross, by Kennedy Jones', which he began to moisten in the natural way upon the back, and stick at intervals all along one parapet of the bridge. Unobserved by him, another belated citizen, a baker, was crossing the bridge behind him, and was intensely interested in this new development in publicity – obviously contrary to police regulations.

The stranger overtook ‘K.J.' at the south end of the bridge where he was at the moment sticking on his final placard; watching him gravely for a moment under the lamplight, and then asked, ‘Are you by any chance Kennedy Jones, the author of this story?' Jones admitted that he was.

‘I thought so!' said the baker. ‘I hope they pay you well for working on the night shift', and having so revealed a fraternal interest in the hardships of the humblest of the working classes, passed on into the darkness.

Each week's instalment of his serial, however, came later and later to the printer's hands, till finally he was being sent for to Green's Billiard Room in Drury Street on the day before going to press that he might come across to the office and provide ‘copy' for the following day.