Glasgow (6 page)

To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow, is unnecessary. The prosperity of its commerce appears by the greatness of many private houses, and a general appearance of wealth. It is the only episcopal city whose cathedral was left standing in the rage of the Reformation. It is now divided into many separate places of worship, which, taken all together, compose a great pile, that had been some centuries in the building, but was never finished; for the change of religion intercepted its progress, before the cross isle was added, which seems essential to a Gothick cathedral.

The college has not had a sufficient share of the increasing magnificence of the place. The session was begun; for it commences on the tenth of October, and continues to the tenth of June, but the students appeared not numerous, being, I suppose, not yet returned from their several homes. The division of the academical year into one session, and one recess, seems to me better accommodated to the present state of life, than that variegated of time by terms and vacations derived from distant centuries, in which it was probably convenient, and still continued in the English universities. So many solid months as the Scotch scheme of education joins together, allow and encourage a plan for each part of the year; but with us, he that has settled himself to study in the college is soon tempted into the country, and he that has adjusted his life in the country, is summoned back to his college.

Yet when I have allowed to the universities of Scotland a more rational distribution of time, I have given them, so far as my inquiries have informed me, all that they can claim. The students, for the most part, go thither boys, and depart before they are men; they carry with them little fundamental knowledge, and therefore the superstructure cannot be lofty. The grammar schools are not generally well supplied; for the character of a school-master being there less honourable than in England, is seldom accepted by men who are capable to adorn it, and where the school has been deficient, the college can effect little.

Men bred in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which countenanced in general by a national combination so invidious, that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise so vigorous, that their enemies are constrained to praise it, enables them to find, or to make their way to employment, riches, and distinction.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN BRENTFORD? 1773
James Boswell

In his journal of the tour of the Western Isles he undertook with Samuel Johnson, James Boswell was as keen to relay what his companion was doing and saying as to describe the people and places visited. But though he was in awe of Johnson, Boswell was a brilliant and colourful reporter and his biography of Johnson, which drew heavily on his infamous journal, is one of the main reasons why the great polymath is still remembered. Boswell was born in Edinburgh, the eldest son of Lord Auchinleck. He studied law at Glasgow but his passion was for literature and making friends with the famous. He first met Dr Johnson in a bookshop in London in 1763. When he told Johnson that he came from Scotland, he was told: ‘That, Sir, I find, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help.'

On our arrival at the Saracen's Head . . . I was made happy by good accounts from home; and Dr Johnson, who had not received a single letter since we left Aberdeen, found here a great many, the perusal of which entertained him much. He enjoyed in imagination the comforts which we could now command, and seemed to be in high glee. I remember, he put a leg on each side of the grate, and said, with mock solemnity, by way of soliloquy, but loud enough for me to hear it, ‘Here am I, an
English
man, sitting by a
coal
fire.'

The professors of the university being informed of our arrival, Dr Stevenson, Dr Reid and Mr Anderson, breakfasted with us. Mr Anderson accompanied us while Dr Johnson viewed this beautiful city. He had told me that, one day in London, when Dr Adam Smith was boasting of it, he turned to him and said, ‘Pray, sir, have you ever seen Brentford?'

DUNG-MOVING, 1781
Glasgow Mercury

An extract from an advertisement placed by the magistrates of Glasgow, who were clearly determined to force their fellow citizens to clean up their act
.

That all proprietors of houses in this city shall, as soon as the season will admit, remove all water-barges, and fix and erect rones and pipes
for the purpose of conveying the water from the eaves of of their respective buildings; so constructed as to prevent loose slates from falling upon the streets; and it is recommended to those the inhabitants who have already conveyed down their water in this manner that they will cause their pipes to be lengthened so as to prevent inconvenience to the public in rainy weather.

That all persons using ladders for repairing houses shall remove the same every evening before sunset, and no mason or slater, or any person working on the roofs of the houses in this city, shall throw over rubbish of any kind without keeping a person as a watch to prevent danger to the inhabitants.

That the person or persons having properties in dunghills in the closes opposite to which the dung of the street is laid down, shall remove the same in twelve hours after it is collected by the scavengers, and no dung going to the country will be suffered to remain on the street after sunset on any pretext whatsoever.

That all boys shall be discharged by their parents and masters from playing tops, shinty, or using any diversion whatever upon the flags [flagstones] that may be incommodious to the inhabitants; they are likewise discharged from playing shinty on the Green.

That no person shall shake carpets, or throw water or nastiness over any of the windows of this city.

That all boys, or others, who shall be detected at any time, throwing stones, making bonfires, crying for illuminations, or attempting to make any disturbance on the streets of this city, calculated to endanger public peace, shall be punished with the utmost severity. On all such occasions parents and masters are to be accountable for their children or apprentices, and a reward is hereby offered of Five Pounds sterling to any person who shall detect or discover boys, or others, guilty of these practices, to be paid on conviction of the offenders.

That as the poor who have a right to the charity of the city are amply provided for, it is earnestly recommended to the inhabitants to give their assistance in suppressing and discouraging vagrant and public beggars.

That all horses going to water shall on no pretence be rode hard, nor shall any person be permitted to gallop through the streets or avenues of this city.

1801–1850

HAUNTS OF VAGRANCY

GLASGOW GREEN, 23 AUGUST, 1803
Dorothy Wordsworth

Accompanied by her brother William, and for a short period by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) travelled north from their home in the Lake District on a tour of Scotland which took them through the Scottish Lowlands and south-western Highlands. As summer slid into autumn they covered over 660 miles. On their return home, Dorothy recorded with warmth and poetic imagery her impressions in a journal she entitled
Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803.

A cold morning. Walked to the bleaching ground [Glasgow Green], a large field bordering on the Clyde, the banks of which are perfectly flat, and the general face of the country is nearly so in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. This field, the whole summer through, is covered with women of all ages, children, and young girls spreading out their linen, and watching it while it bleaches. The scene must be very cheerful on a fine day, but it rained when we were there, and though there was linen spread out in all parts, and great numbers of women and girls were at work, yet there would have been many more on a fine day, and they would have appeared happy, instead of stupid and cheerless. In the middle of the field is a wash-house, whither the inhabitants of this large town, rich and poor, send or carry their linen to be washed. There are two very large rooms, with each a cistern in the middle for hot water; and all round the rooms are benches for the women to set their tubs upon. Both the rooms were crowded with washers; there might be a hundred or two, or even three; for it is not easy to form an accurate notion of so great a number; however, the rooms were large, and they were both full. It was amusing to see so many women, arms, head, and face all in motion, all busy in an ordinary household employment, in which we are accustomed to see, at the most, only three or four women
employed in one place. The women were very civil. I learnt from them the regulations of the house; but I have forgotten the particulars. The substance of them is, that ‘so much' is to be paid for each tub of water, ‘so much' for a tub, and the privilege of washing for a day and, ‘so much' to the general onlookers of the linen, when it is left to be bleached. An old man and woman have this office, who were walking about, two melancholy figures.

The shops of Glasgow are large, and like London shops, and we passed by the largest coffee-shop I ever saw. You look across the piazza of the Exchange, and see to the end of the coffee-room, where there is a circular window, the width of the room. Perhaps there might be thirty gentlemen sitting on the circular bench at the window, each reading a newspaper. They had the appearance of figures in a fantoccine, or men seen at the extremity of the opera-house, diminished into puppets.

INDESCRIBABLY UNDERBRED, 1818
Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus

Born in Edinburgh, the daughter of a Highland landowner, Elizabeth Grant (1797–1885) spent her formative years in London, holidaying in Scotland in summer. In 1814, the family returned permanently to Edinburgh. She is known chiefly for her diary
, Memoirs of a Highland Lady
(1898) and its sequel
, The Highland Lady in Ireland.

Glasgow was not a place to improve in. We were there once, I forget in what year. My father went to collect evidence in some political business, my Mother and I with him, as a cloke I suppose. We were at Aunt Leitch's pretty new house in St Vincent Street, and she took a great deal of trouble for us in making up parties at home, engagements abroad, and even directed an Assembly. We were not very refined in manners in Edinburgh, some of us, but there were brains with us, abilities of a high order, turned to a more intellectual account than could be the general employment of them in a mere manufacturing seaport town, for into that had Glasgow sunk. Its college, as to renown, was gone; its merchants no longer the Cadets of the neighbouring old County families, but their clerks of low degree shot up into the high places. ‘Some
did
remain who in vain mourned the
better
days when they were young,' but as a whole the Society was indescribably underbred.