Friend Mac Donald

CHAPTER XVIII

Intellectual Life in Scotland. – The Climate is not so bad as it is represented to be. – Comparisons. – Literary and Scientific Societies. – Why should not France possess such Societies? – Scotch Newspapers. – Scotland is the Sinew of the British Empire.

How active and intellectual life in Scotland seems, in comparison with the petty and monotonous existence led by the dwellers in Provincial France!

Is it the climate that so stirs the Scotch up to action? Possibly it may be, up to a certain point: in a cold damp climate, a man feels it imperative to keep his brain and body stirring; however, it is not fair to abuse that poor Scotch climate too much. I saw roses blooming on the walls of a house I visited at in Helensburgh last January, and I culled primroses in the open air in February, at Buckie on the north coast of Scotland.

Scotch intellectual activity is the result of a widespread education which is within the reach of the poorest.

Enter the lowliest cottage and you will find books there – the Bible, books on agriculture, a novel or two, and almost invariably the poems of their dear Burns.

There is no little town of three or four thousand inhabitants but has its Literary and Scientific Society.

In some cases, a rich philanthropist has come forward with a sum of money to build a suitable home for the Society, but very often no such building exists, and the meetings are held in the Town Hall, or some other public edifice of the place.

Scotchwomen are excellent housewives. In their leisure time they draw, write, and make themselves acquainted with the social, religious, and political, questions of the day.

They organise societies for the help of the poor, or get up concerts in aid of the unfortunate. On Sundays, they teach the Bible to the children of the poor. The old maids hunt out cases of distress and make themselves useful to the community: they do the house-to-house visitation.

At any rate it is living.

Compare this existence with life as led in Provincial France, where people are wrapped up in their own family circle, take to keeping birds, and divide their spare time between saying their pater nosters and criticising their neighbours.

In Paris there is too much life, and in the provinces too little. All the blood goes to the head, and the body droops and is paralysed. It is the initiative spirit that is wanting; for, thank Heaven, it is neither the brain nor the money that lacks.

I spoke of Buckie at the commencement of this chapter. You have probably never heard of Buckie, dear Reader. I assure you that a few months ago I was in the same state of ignorance. My lecturing manager had marked this little town on my list. I was invited to lecture at Buckie, it appeared.

This little hive of three or four thousand bees looked to me, as I alighted from the train, like a most insignificant little place.

The chief doctor of the town, having written to offer me hospitality for the night, had come to the station to meet me.

"Do you mean to say you have a Literary Society here?" I said to him.

"I should think so indeed," he replied; "and a very flourishing one it is."

"It is a manufacturing town, I suppose?"

"Well, no; we have here a few well-to-do families. The rest of the town consists of farmers, shopkeepers, and fisherfolk."

"I hope the lecture-room is a small one," I remarked.

"Make yourself easy about that," he replied; "our room holds from seven to eight hundred people, but I guarantee it will be full to-night. They will all want to come and hear what the Frenchman has got to say."

I pretended to feel reassured, but I was far from being so.

His prediction was verified after all, and never did I have a more intelligent and appreciative audience.

Surely Lyons, Marseilles, Lille, Nantes, Nancy, Bordeaux, ought to be able to do what can be done by Buckie!

I doubt whether the Scotch are more intelligent than the English (I mean the masses), but they are still more energetic and persevering, much more frugal and economical, and certainly more intellectual; that is to say, that the pleasures they seek after are of a higher order.

The Scotch are great readers.

In their public libraries, I have seen hundreds of workmen and labourers thronged around the tables, and absorbed in reading the newspapers.

The Scotch papers, such as the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald, the Glasgow News, the British Mail, are in no wise behind the London papers in importance or in literary merit. They have their own correspondents in all the capitals of the world, and get the news of the day at first hand.

Comic papers are remarkable by their absence. The Scot does not throw away his time and money on such trifles.

On the other hand, religious papers swarm and make their fortune.

The famous Edinburgh Review has perhaps no longer quite the reputation it used to enjoy, but it is still one of the most important Reviews of Great Britain.

Yes, in all truth, Scotland is an energetic, robust, and intelligent, nation.

It is the sinew of the British Empire.

CHAPTER XIX

Higher Education in Scotland. – The Universities. – How they differ from English Universities. – Is he a Gentleman? – Scholarships. – A Visit to the University of Aberdeen. – English Prejudice against Scotch Universities.

Scotland boasts four universities: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrew's.

These four great centres of learning constitute the system of Higher Education in Scotland.

These universities differ essentially from the two great English ones, first because men go there to work, secondly because they are open to the people. A peasant's son, like Thomas Carlyle for instance, can go there without fearing that his fellow-students will avoid him because he comes of a poor family.

When a new student arrives at Oxford or Cambridge, the others do not enquire whether he is a clever fellow or a dunce; what they want to know is what his father is, and who was his grandfather. It is only after obtaining a satisfactory answer to these questions that they associate with the new comer.

In Scotland, as in France, every man who is well educated and has the manners of good society is a gentleman. The son of a peasant possessing these is received everywhere.

Each Scotch university offers from fifty to eighty scholarships, varying in value from £8 to £70. These sums, paid annually to the winners of the scholarships, help them to live while they are devoting their time to study.

The most admirable thing about high education in Scotland is that it is put within the reach of all, and is not, as it is in England, a sugarplum held so high as to be often unattainable.

The result is that every intelligent young Scotchman may aim at entering a profession. There may be in this a little danger to the commerce and agriculture of the country. However, these young men do not encumber Scotland; their studies fit them for a lucrative career, which they often go and seek in the Colonies. An Australian friend told me recently that more than half the doctors in Victoria were Scotchmen.

I have spoken, in a previous chapter, of the privations that Scotch undergraduates will often impose upon themselves. Nothing is more remarkable than the sustained application and indefatigable will which they bring to bear on their studies. Nothing distracts them from their aim; they never lose sight of the diploma that will be their bread-winner. I have seen them at work, these Scotch students. I visited the School of Medicine at Aberdeen University, in the company of Dr. John Struthers, the learned Professor of Anatomy. I was struck, in passing through the dissecting room, to see about fifty students, without any professor, so absorbed in their work that not one of them lifted his head as we passed.

In France it would have been very different: every eye would have been turned to the stranger, and all through the room there would have been a whisper of Qui ça? And then remarks and jokes would have run rife.

The English are very prejudiced against the Scotch universities.

How many times have I been told in England that young fellows, who fail to obtain their medical diploma in England, could get them easily enough in Scotland. Nothing is more absurd; if ever it was so, it was a long while ago. In these days, the examinations of the four Scotch faculties are quite as severe and quite as difficult as the English ones.

Whenever there is a vacant mastership in an English public school advertised in the newspapers, it is always stated that the candidates for the post must be graduates of one of the universities of the United Kingdom. This does not alter the fact that candidates, who are not Oxford or Cambridge men, have no chance of being elected. I have known Scotch masters in the public schools. They had studied at Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Aberdeen, but had gone to Oxford or Cambridge to reside, in order to obtain an English degree.

Why is this?