The place of history, literature and politics in the 1911 Scottish Exhibition

Abstract

The 1911 Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry in Glasgow was one of the most successful events of its kind, attracting over nine million visits and resulting in profits which were used to endow a chair in Scottish History in the University of Glasgow. Alongside a popular entertainment section, it included a reconstruction of a Highland village and a Palace of History which housed thousands of items borrowed from public and private collections throughout Scotland. A number of historical aspects were highlighted, notably the importance of Protestant Christianity, the 1707 Acts of Union, commerce, aristocracy and great men, whereas the history of the Highlands, Catholicism, the working class and Scotland’s relationships with Ireland were ignored. The influence of Sir Walter Scott was profound, with the ‘Great Literary Period’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries providing the main narrative and marking the end of a distinctive Scottish history. The topics selected for the Exhibition are shown to relate to the political concerns of its organisers, a group of Conservatives who hoped to demonstrate that the importance of Scottish history lay in establishing Scotland as an equal partner with England in the development of a Protestant British Empire.

The 1911 scottish exhibition

Although there had been fairs to promote industry and design from the late eighteenth century, ‘great exhibitions’ can more properly be seen as having their origin in the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.¹ Glasgow was fairly late following this trend, with its first International Exhibition in 1888. Greenhalgh has regarded the Glasgow Exhibitions of 1888, 1901 and 1911 as being among the eleven ‘major events of the first order’ in Britain between 1871 and 1914.² Given Glasgow’s industrial prominence and the important role that Scots played in the British Empire,³ it is not surprising that the twin themes of Industry and Empire that were first seen in the 1851 Great Exhibition dominated those in Glasgow. Unlike that Exhibition, however, the Glasgow Exhibitions were predominately civic affairs, mobilising the city’s business and professional establishment in their organisation and being dominated by visitors from the West of Scotland. The 1911 Exhibition was the only one to have an explicit focus on a Scottish historical theme, however, billed as the ‘Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry’. Combined with a successful attempt to endow a chair of Scottish History and Literature in the University of Glasgow, the organisers hoped ‘to make the historical side of the Exhibition educative to the willing learner’⁴ and to emphasise Scotland’s place as an equal partner with England in the United Kingdom.

Located in Kelvingrove Park in the West End of the city, a series of buildings for different purposes were constructed, including large halls of engineering and industry, concert halls and restaurants.⁵ The 1911 Exhibition also included reconstructions of a Scottish burgh and a Highland village and, most striking of all, an exhibition of antiquities housed in the ‘Palace of History’ which displayed thousands of items borrowed from public and private collections throughout Scotland. Alongside such educational elements, a substantial ‘Entertainments Section’ at the opposite end of the park included a ‘Mountain Scenic Railway’, aerial railway and, as a visitor described it afterwards,

the joy wheel, the aquarium, with its immense octopus guarding the entrance, the joy house or hall of illusion, and the African village, with its straw huts and natives at work and play. From tropical Africa we stepped into the Polar regions and saw the Lapps and their reindeer.⁶

Nearby was ‘An Clachan’, an evocation of a Highland village, while there were also commercial pavilions, such as those of the German Potash Syndicate, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, bandstands and restaurants. Although the most popular section was the ‘Mountain Scenic Railway’ with 1,285,000 patrons, it is striking that in second place was the ‘West African Village’ with some 900,000 visitors and in third place ‘An Clachan’ with 700,000.⁷ These were well ahead of other entertainments such as the Joy House, Aquarium and Aerial Railway. Officially not part of the Exhibition, but dominating its skyline to the west, were the buildings of the Art Gallery and Museum and the University of Glasgow. The Exhibition was open from May to November 1911 and attracted over nine million visits, leading to profits of approximately £20,000 mainly resulting from the takings of the entertainments.⁸

Fig. 1.

Panoramic view of the Exhibition from the West.

It has been argued that the ‘separation of education from entertainment [in such exhibitions] in Britain was emblematic of the divide between work and pleasure’⁹ in the nineteenth century. The aim of great exhibitions was therefore to offer education to visitors so that they would achieve John Stuart Mill’s ‘general cultivation of nobleness of character’.¹⁰ Exhibitions were therefore divided into distinct areas; ‘in some areas one enjoyed oneself, in others one received ‘instruction’. The entertainment facilities attracted the crowds and subsidised more culturally acceptable areas – including the fine arts – which in turn lent seriousness and status to the exhibitions’.¹¹ Both the financial importance of the Entertainments section and the apparent incompleteness of the Palace of History at its opening¹² may attest to this attitude, though the location and nature of ‘An Clachan’ and the ‘Auld Toon’ were more ambiguous. In this respect they more closely resemble the 1889 and 1900 Expositions Universelles in Paris with their life-size reconstructions of different types of houses and a reconstruction of ‘Le Vieux Paris’ rather than a rigid duality of instruction and entertainment.¹³

Origins and organisers

Although there had been previous attempts to establish the teaching of Scottish history in the University of Glasgow, it was not until after the 1908 Edinburgh Exhibition that this idea was reinvigorated by combining it with an exhibition in Glasgow with a Scottish historical character. The official guide to the Exhibition therefore stated that,

The inception of this [Exhibition] had its origin in the belief, shared by many, that the time had fully arrived when Scottish History should be placed in a different plane than it had hitherto occupied in the education of the rising generations of Scottish children, and not less in the teaching of the subject in our schools and colleges. It was thought that to attain this object a movement should be initiated for the raising of such a sum of money as would adequately endow a Chair of Scottish History and cognate subjects in Glasgow University. At the outset of the movement it was thought that the objects might be best attained by instituting an Exhibition in which the National History, Art, and Industry of Scotland were expounded.¹⁴

Approximately 1,500 people are listed in the exhibition catalogue¹⁵ as contributing to the exhibition in the Palace of History. Among them was a small group of perhaps fewer than twenty who managed the historical aspects of the exhibition. A critical feature to emerge is the importance of a network of the Glasgow establishment, drawing together business, professional and political life.¹⁶ Fortunately, the memoir of one of the key individuals, George Eyre-Todd, was published¹⁷ and there are short biographies of a number of the others in the Glasgow paper The Bailie as ‘The Man You Know’. Eyre-Todd, a journalist, became secretary of the Historical Committee, while the Lord Provost’s Secretary, John Samuel, who had suggested combining the fund-raising for the Chair of Scottish History with the proposal for the Exhibition, was a member of the Historical Executive Committee. As Convenor of the Historical Committee, they enlisted the Professor of Surgery in the University, John Glaister, while Andrew Pettigrew, Chairman of the department store Pettigrew and Stephens, former Town Councillor and recently appointed Justice of the Peace, became Convenor of the Exhibition’s Executive Committee and was subsequently knighted for his services to the Exhibition. The Marquis of Tullibardine, who later became the eighth Duke of Atholl,¹⁸ was appointed as President of the Exhibition. A fuller analysis of those serving on the many committees would show how these people were embedded in the long-standing Glasgow business, professional and political establishment, such as the reappearance in 1924 of Tullibardine, Pettigrew, Eyre-Todd and Walker (the Exhibition architect) as Patron, President, Secretary and a Vice-President respectively of the newly founded Highlanders’ Institute.¹⁹

As might be expected, there were only five women out of more than a hundred members of the historical committees – contributing to work on historical portraits, dress and needlework.²⁰ Elsewhere in the Exhibition, the Ladies’ Committee²¹ was responsible for the Decorative Arts exhibits, the crèche, a series of lectures and a committee for the welfare of female workers which provided a suite of rooms for the female attendants at the Exhibition. Although they are more difficult to identify, it would appear that the male social networks outlined above had their parallels among the women.²² Lady McInnes Shaw, the Lady Provost, convened the Ladies’ Committee and its Crèche sub-committee, while the sub-committee for the Welfare of Female Workers was convened by the wife of Andrew Pettigrew. The convenor of the Decorative Arts sub-committee, Miss Story, was also one of the two Secretaries to the Historical Portraits sub-committee and appears to have lent material for display in the Palace of History, likewise Miss Melville, convenor of the Lectures sub-committee. It is also striking that both Miss Story and Miss Melville lived within a few hundred metres of each other in Hillhead, close to Kelvingrove Park.

The 1911 Exhibition was opened by the Duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria’s only surviving son, with links to the land-owning aristocracy also fostered by the organisers, most notably Lord Tullibardine. A study of the exhibition catalogue shows that the list of donors to the Exhibition includes what is virtually a roll-call of the Scottish aristocracy: the Dukes of Argyll, Atholl, Buccleuch, Fife, Montrose and Sutherland, the Marquises of Ailsa, Breadalbane, Bute and Linlithgow, the Earls of Camperdown, Elgin, Galloway, Mar and Kellie, Moray, Rosebery, Stair and Wemyss, the Countess of Seafield, Cameron of Lochiel and MacLeod of MacLeod, while visitors during the Exhibition included foreign royalty such as the Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden.²³

While museums lent seventeen per cent of the items on display, most loans (fifty-eight per cent) were from individuals, with other institutions, such as libraries, churches, clubs and burgh councils contributing twenty-five per cent. The University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum was the most significant public lender, perhaps encouraged by the Exhibition’s aim of raising funds for University, but also benefitting in the longer term from donations by people who had lent material to the exhibition, such as A. Henderson Bishop. Of the public collections listed as lending material, the absence of material lent by the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Edinburgh is most striking. This was because the management of the collection was in the hands of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, while the collection was owned by the nation, resulting in the Society believing that it could not lend items to the exhibition because it had ‘no power to allow any objects added to the National Collection to pass out of their custody’.²⁴

A sense of place

In 1911 Glasgow was the ‘Second City’²⁵ of the British Empire; one of the pre-eminent manufacturing centres in the world. The inequality of the distribution of wealth from these industries was seen in the growth of the wealthy West End around Kelvingrove, but also in the poverty and squalor of many other parts of the city. Glasgow Green, according to Eyre-Todd the ‘old common of the citizens’,²⁶ in the poorer East End would have been a possible alternative location for a large-scale exhibition. It had played an important part in Glasgow’s history, being the place where the Jacobite army was reviewed in 1746, where James Watt claimed to have invented the steam engine in 1765, where the first monument to Lord Nelson was erected in 1806, where there had been demonstrations preceding the Reform Act of 1832 and where evangelical meetings were held by Moody and Sankey in 1874–75.²⁷ In 1897 the People’s Palace, a museum, gallery and winter garden for the people of Glasgow, was opened on Glasgow Green with the aim of balancing the existing galleries in the city that were largely patronised by the well-to-do. It is therefore significant that the first curator chaired one of Keir Hardie’s first Labour Party meetings in Glasgow.²⁸ While ‘the dense volumes of smoke which often pour on to it from the factory chimneys on the south side impart a generally grimy aspect to all it contains’²⁹ made it an unattractive venue to the organisers, the choice of a less politically charged place was also important. An added advantage was the importance of ‘green-ness’ in the city’s mythical history; including the popular etymology of Glasgow as the ‘Dear Green Place’, the pride with which Daniel Defoe’s description of the city as the ‘most beautiful little town in Britain’ is often quoted³⁰ and the boast that Glasgow was ‘especially well provided with public parks.’³¹ To many visitors, such as one of the winners of the Daily Record and Mail essay competition,³² Kelvingrove had particularly strong connotations in this respect, being the presumed location of the famous romantic song:

Let us haste to Kelvin Grove, bonnie lassie, O Thro’ its mazes let us rove, bonnie lassie, O Where the roses in their pride deck the bonnie dingle side Where the midnight fairies glide, bonnie lassie, O.

Let us wander by the mill, bonnie lassie, O To the cove beside the rill, bonnie lassie, O Where the glens rebound the call Of the roaring waters’ fall Thro’ the mountain’s rocky hall, bonnie lassie, O.³³

In this way, the apparently arbitrary and neutral space of the Park became a place that was used to support certain views of Scottish identity. According to the Official Guide,³⁴ visitors were expected to start their visit at the Stewart Memorial Fountain, which combined a celebration of the engineering marvel of supplying clean drinking water to the city with a physical link to the romantic Loch Katrine in the Trossachs, made famous by Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Lady of the Lake’. The fountain is therefore a metaphor for the tension between contemporary dynamism and romantic nostalgia that pervaded the Exhibition,³⁵ or as Eyre-Todd described Glasgow, ‘the magic of its modern achievement and the charm of its storied past.’³⁶ The placing of ‘An Clachan’ was also important, being among established woodland next to the river and with a painted backdrop to separate it from the rest of the Exhibition. These attempts to authenticate the reconstruction were highlighted in the official guide which noted that ‘An Clachan is situated in the Exhibition grounds on the banks of the River Kelvin, or “Caol Abhainn” as it was called in Gaelic times’.³⁷

The Exhibition created a miniature world within which visitors could be ‘transported suddenly into the life and manners of a bygone century’³⁸ or transported in space to visit the Scottish Highlands, Africa or the Arctic, while tours throughout the West of Scotland ‘by rail, steamer, or coach, which can be accomplished in one day’ were advertised in the Official Guide.³⁹ The Exhibition therefore became a place ‘out of place’, a heterotopia, ⁴⁰ somewhere that could encapsulate a sense of other times and places. The sense of escape from the world of daily life enabled the creation of apparent windows on other imagined worlds, such as the creation of the stereotypical (and otherwise non-existent) Highland village in the Exhibition. The intended hyperreality⁴¹ of this creation is seen in the official guidebooks that describe the plaster and canvas buildings as though they were authentic, while a story by Neil Munro that was published in the Glasgow Evening News in May 1911 shows how visitors willingly colluded in creation of an image:

Jinnet was delighted with the Clachan. “It’s jist the same as it was rale,” she said; “I’ve seen the like o’t afore in Islay. Whit are the lads gaun to dae on the platform?” “They’re gaun to dance a reel”, said Erchie, without hesitation. “They’re aye dain’ that in the genuine An Clachans [. . .]. It’s a triumph of science, like Loch Katrine Water.”⁴²

Even more striking was the brushing out of a church and tenements in the background of a photograph of the site that was used on postcards and album views.⁴³ Such images had a powerful influence beyond the Exhibition, being sent to people throughout the world and doubtless subverting the memories of visitors. Nonetheless, the experience of visiting the Exhibition undermined a simple acceptance of such creations and suspension of disbelief. As the prizewinning article of the Daily Record and Mail competition put it,

The Old Glasgow Street with its cross encourages us, a meeting with our red-coated friend almost convinces us that once again we are centuries behind. But, alas, the sight of a delightful old-world shoppe selling toy aeroplanes meets our eye, and we are again disillusioned. The smell of hot oat-cakes cheers us, but – fresh disappointment – the girdle is a gas-fired plate, and Old Glasgow has eluded us again. A chat with the Bailie among his toys, and a whiff of his pawky humour, revives us – but only for a moment. A military band, on a very modern bandstand, is filling the air with the strains of the latest waltz, and mingling with its dreamy air is the deep clap of the Aerial Railway. Our dream is finally dispelled, and, all the while feeling the folly of the change, we shed our mood romantic, and take upon ourselves the mantle of a modern citizen of the world – we become cosmopolitan.’⁴⁴

It is striking that there was no explicit presentation or discussion of the environment per se in the Exhibition, however, other than in the Prehistoric Section and in landscape paintings in the Palace of Art. Despite its obvious impact on the experiences of visitors and their views of Scottish identity, the environment was seen as a mute canvas on which cultural life and history were painted.

The palace of history

The heart of the Exhibition was the Palace of History, the contents, organisation and layout of which were recorded in an illustrated catalogue.⁴⁵ This includes a list of the items on display, some with accompanying notes, recording the cases in which objects were displayed or the wall on which paintings were hung. As this is accompanied by photographs of the displays, it is possible to approximately reconstruct the layout of the displays, beyond the initial chaotic appearance indicated by the section on Relics of Scottish Explorers being next to Old Scottish Architectural Exhibits, Burghal relics next to the Roman Section next to the Furniture Section and Arms and Weapons next to the Banking Section. Understanding the detailed arrangement is much more difficult, and was the origin of complaints at the time about the lack of a readily available catalogue or of numbered cases.⁴⁶ The main structuring principle of the displays, as stated in the Catalogue, was the didactic one of juxtaposing portraits of illustrious people with objects associated with them.⁴⁷ Over one hundred people shared the work of identifying material for loan and organising it for display, organised into three sub-committees: Scottish History and Literature, Ethnographical and Historical Objects and Historical Portraits, each with small groups responsible for different aspects. The organisation of the displays therefore seems to have been driven by the allocation of space between these committees and by the varying quantities of material assembled by individual people. With less than two years between the announcement of the Exhibition and its opening, the quantity and quality of material assembled in such a short time is more striking than the apparent disorganisation.

The Palace of History was converted from the former Kelvingrove House, with a substantial extension to the north quadrupling the available display space. Although externally designed to resemble a Renaissance palace based on Falkland Palace in Fife,⁴⁸ internal views of the new building show a functional, almost industrial, design with exposed steel roof beams and plain walls. Access between old and new parts of the building was limited to a vestibule that also gave access to the upstairs gallery of the South Gallery and to the Prehistoric Gallery. Seven open doorways between the four new galleries resulted in a very permeable layout of that part, presumably enabling visitors to follow their own routes around most of the exhibition. With entrances to the building into both the South and North Galleries, there was therefore no prescribed order in which visitors encountered the material on display, with the exception of the Prehistoric Gallery. The North Gallery was, however, the first described in the catalogue and was the ideal place to start a visit with its display of historical portraits ‘from the beginnings of modern portraiture to the death of Sir Walter Scott’,⁴⁹ offering a chronological narrative that was otherwise absent from the displays. The West Gallery was mainly devoted to weapons and militaria such as uniforms and medals, with other sections showing other numismatic items and displays of French, Dutch and Swedish material to emphasise the connections, often military, with Scotland. As the Official Guide put it,

Firearms and weapons, swords, targes, and pistols, used during the times when history was making in Scotland, furnish their grim story to the mind and imagination. Here may be seen the weapons handled by the Covenanters when religious liberty was at stake, there the sword of Robert the Bruce, or the sword of Sir John de Graham, and of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Not less instructive is the large collection explicative of the military prowess of Scottish sailors and regiments.⁵⁰

Placed at the centre of the Palace of History, the Literature Gallery included a wide range of manuscripts, charters, seals, diplomas and early printed books. This literary emphasis, already seen with the displays about Scott and Burns will be discussed more below. Also highlighted with a special display, which extended the display of a small number of portraits in the North Gallery, was a section on Jacobites. The East Gallery displayed ‘General Agricultural Implements’, ‘Punch and Toddy Ladles’, ‘Spectacles and Cutlery’, ‘Historic Costume’ and ‘[Free]Masonry’. There was also a section exemplifying the focus on great men by displaying portraits and relics of Scottish explorers such as James Bruce, David Livingstone and John Rae. The South Gallery, located in the old extension to Kelvingrove House, was a more elaborate space with thirteen windows and a balcony on which were displayed the Norwegian items. The rest of this gallery was dominated by three themes – heraldry, sports and pastimes and the ecclesiastical section. With its architectural elaboration and the dominance of the heraldic theme, this gallery was an alternative entrance to the Palace of History, with the displays of heraldry complementing the portraits of royalty and aristocracy in the North Gallery and the ecclesiastical section complementing the displays of church silver in the North Gallery.

Fig. 2.

View of the North Gallery in the Palace of History.

The Prehistoric Gallery had a more explicit structure than any other part of the exhibition, in which ‘Sixteen Large Wall charts are placed in their sequence in time around this Room, beginning at the left on entering and finishing at the right. A like sequence has been attempted in the position of the relics’, while ‘below the Large Charts have been placed about forty smaller notices describing facts, some of which are entirely new to Scottish and even to European Prehistoric Archaeology, and are demonstrated by the relics laid out in the cases.’⁵¹ Following an overall evolutionary approach, particular attention was paid to the ‘evolution’ of pottery and of axeheads from stone to iron. The display also emphasised that ‘Man at those times was not a savage, but a skilled craftsman and artist’⁵² by the display of finely worked objects of glass, amber, gold and jet. Despite this aim, a visitor speaking of the Exhibition years later remarked that

on the higher ground a scant population carried on their struggle for existence. As we look at their rude shelters, we could hardly call them houses, their stone implements and weapons, and thought of their scanty dress of skins, we wondered how they ever managed to live.⁵³

A significant aspect of the Prehistoric Gallery was its aim to create a more substantial display of Scottish prehistory than had been attempted previously and to do this in an innovative way. The organisers wanted to avoid the traditional style of museum display by reconstructing sites to put the objects in the context of their discovery. As it was described in the Glasgow Herald,

The Pre-history sub-committee have been attempting to avoid the old style, which still persists in nearly all museums of showing casual ‘finds’ without associations inadequately labelled, as this style of display produces no educative results and does not give the visitor any opportunity of becoming intelligently interested. They aimed instead at a show of Scottish pre-history objects seen in their original environment and described accurately but concisely. The committee have with this in view been engaged for more than a year in excavating, transporting and reconstructing from actual soil relics and selections for various pre-historic sites and in preparing descriptive placards and labels.⁵⁴

This approach was not to become common in most museums until many decades later and would seem to have been partly responsible for the popularity of the display, as the crush of people around the cases led to the cases being strengthened.⁵⁵

Urban progress and squalor

Nineteenth century Scotland had seen dramatic urbanisation, such that by 1911 fifty per cent of the population lived in towns of more than 20,000 inhabitants, with the country being the most urbanised in the world after England.⁵⁶ Pride in these accomplishments was one of the aims of the Exhibition, with the Palace of Industries comparing Scottish achievements with those of other countries. As the Marquis of Tullibardine said at the initial ceremony, ‘they should be able to show so far as industry and art were concerned that Scotland was not simply a mere postscript to England but was able to stand on her own feet’.⁵⁷ The industrial strength of nineteenth century Glasgow depended on the work of thousands of people who flocked to the city, many of whom lived in overcrowded, insanitary and decaying buildings. The establishment of the City Improvement Trust in 1866⁵⁸ was an attempt to deal with some of these problems, but ‘not only were the slum properties removed, but also the University buildings in the High Street, the picturesque castle and mansion house in the Gorbals and the seventeenth century buildings in the Saltmarket and Bridgegate, including the last of the half-timbered houses.’⁵⁹ It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the ‘Auld Toon’ was created with reconstructions of demolished buildings from various parts of Glasgow and ‘typical’ examples of a Scottish castle and town hall. Likewise, the Palace of History highlighted town life with ten per cent of the exhibits on this theme, not counting some one thousand coins. There was, however, little mention of the history of the urban poor in Scotland other than a display of beggars’ badges that say more about the control of beggars by burgh and parish authorities than they do about the experience of poverty.

Urban life was therefore represented by an emphasis on small towns and the traditional role of the burgh in maintaining social cohesion as well as the importance of commerce – both themes close to the hearts of the organisers. By presenting this idealised image of urban life, the Exhibition was able to make a link between pre-industrial Scotland and a future based on commerce and industry, without having to tackle the portrayal of largescale urban poverty and the harshness of industrial employment. Despite the historical emphasis of the Exhibition, some of the most popular attractions were therefore those that emphasised the importance of technology and industry to the present and future of Scotland, such as the electrical illuminations of the whole site and the displays of industry and engineering. As a visitor described it,

Here we understand why Glasgow enjoys herself so well, for here is the record of her accomplishments in applied science. This is the secret of her wealth and power. Here rather than in her chequered past is Scotland’s real interest for us, our country’s great hope for the future. Surely a strange lesson to learn from an Historical Exhibition.⁶⁰

‘an clachan’ and the highlands

The technological and urban future of Scotland was further emphasised by the building of ‘An Clachan’: a creation of a Highland village that was ‘undoubtedly one of the outstanding sights of the Exhibition’⁶¹ and the only part of the Exhibition to be marked by a permanent memorial. The rural Highland mythical identity was something that had grown to dominance from the later eighteenth century with the destruction of the traditional way of life in the Highlands being accompanied by the incorporation of a romanticised version of those Highland traditions into mainstream views of Scottish identity.⁶² Despite the existence of a wide range of portrayals of the Scottish landscape, by 1911 Highland landscapes had come to be seen as representing Scotland in a way that Lowland and urban scenery did not.⁶³ The paintings in the Palace of Art were therefore described as ‘a stream of patriotic thoughts, for while the artistic beauty delights all, there is a deeper appeal that goes straight to every Scottish heart, the appeal of thundering Highland torrents, the frowning glory of rugged mountains’.⁶⁴

Intimately associated with ‘Highlandism’ is the centrality of the eighteenth century Jacobite risings in the creation of modern Scotland, in reality, myth and literature.⁶⁵ The catalogue caption of the portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart clearly makes this point, saying that ‘no Highlander would betray him, and he was helped by Flora Macdonald and others’.⁶⁶ As well as being included in the display of historical portraits, the Jacobite rebellions were highlighted in the ‘Stuart and Jacobite Relics’ Section of the Mid Gallery of the Palace of History with some three hundred items. Also on display in various sections were a variety of published editions of the epic poetry of Ossian, first revealed by James MacPherson in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Despite continuing doubts as to its authenticity, Ossian had been popular since its publication, doubtless in part due to the apparent salvaging of a lost heritage from a people who were no longer a serious political or military threat. It is interesting to note that George Eyre-Todd wrote the introduction to an edition of Ossian in which he discussed the controversy about ‘the authenticity of Macpherson’s translation of the Gaelic Homer’.⁶⁷ Editions in Gaelic, English, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Italian were displayed in the Palace of History, representing a rather dubious Scottish contribution to early European literature.

In the guidebook accompanying An Clachan, a clear romantic link was made between the contemporary Highlands and the Jacobite past:

The men who came out of the mist one hundred and sixty-six years ago and marched between English meadows, wearing moccasins and bearing shields, more like creatures of mythology than actual beings in the eyes of their English observers, have not all, surely, been swallowed up in the mist whereto the adventurous class returned. Some glen we like to fancy, yet retains a remnant, or at least one phantom who cannot forget.⁶⁸

An Clachan was thus designed as a way of experiencing that lost world, ‘for the curious to reconstitute in the imagination that byegone state by seeing its still-surviving domestic features represented at an Exhibition and by reading of those other features – tribal, feudal, predatory, or martial – which for some centuries, more manifestly distinguished the Gael from the Lowlander.’ ⁶⁹ This portrayal of the Highlands as timeless, with no change over a millennium or more until the externally imposed destruction of that culture, was a common one at the time. It was possible to think of the people of the Highlands as the ‘remnants of an ancient folk (who had) survived with all the customs of the early world, untouched by modern history and proof against the assault of years.’⁷⁰ As James Hunter has noted,

Fig. 3.

‘Granny at her Wheel’ in An Clachan. Note the painted backdrop and the joints between the plaster panels in the cottage wall.

newspaper editorials dealt habitually in the notion that Highlanders, just like the Irish, were a less-developed species whose many difficulties were to be attributed, for the most part, to their own innate failings. Then the idea that Gaelic-speakers possessed a worthwhile history was one that, from a southern perspective, seemed little short of an absurdity.⁷¹

Matching the authentic appearance of the buildings, Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were employed to inhabit An Clachan. Like the ‘Lapps’ and West Africans in their compounds in the Entertainments Section, about whom there were many patronising comments in the press, Gaelic culture was thus portrayed as ‘Other’; indeed inferior to the rest of Scotland. It was therefore possible for a visitor to say that ‘without feeling that we are infringing the laws of privacy we can pry into the inner life of the humble cottar, view the conditions under which he lives, and see him engaged in his daily employment’.⁷² In contrast, visitors with a Highland background appear to have treated the inhabitants as equals, with one commentator noting that they were reviving old memories ‘around the cottage fire, and the friendly handclasp was warm and frequent’,⁷³ while to others, such as emigrants, the attraction was nostalgic as ‘cottager and visitor recounted youthful experiences in the accents of the much-loved Gael.’⁷⁴ To the Highland community in Glasgow, An Clachan became more than a mere pastiche created for passive consumption by others, such as the comment that ‘the informal ceilidhs of an evening in the Clachan are much enjoyed. Many societies now have their special night for coming and their own special nook as “gathering ground”.’⁷⁵

As well as being a portrayal of the past, An Clachan was designed as a demonstration that the future for the Highlands lay in developing a craft industry. This had been a longstanding concern of George Eyre-Todd,⁷⁶ while the Official Guide noted that ‘An Clachan has not been undertaken as a commercial speculation, but with the patriotic object of arousing a greater interest in the Highland people, in their traditions and customs, in their beautiful Gaelic language, literature and music, in their distinctive Celtic art, and especially to afford a unique opportunity for exhibiting and disposing of Highland Home Industries to the vast concourse of people who will visit the Exhibition from many lands’,⁷⁷ with the profits divided between An Comunn Gàidhealach and the Co-operative Council of Highland Home Industries to further encourage such work.

History or nostalgia?

The Exhibition openly acknowledged its debt to Sir Walter Scott, with almost one hundred relics including the original manuscripts of some of his novels, first editions, letters in his handwriting, furniture used by him while writing various novels and even items of clothing worn by him. Emphasising his importance, the catalogue caption of his portraits states that it ‘fitly occupies the place of honour in a Scottish “Palace of History.” ’⁷⁸ Pittock argues that ‘In Waverly, the ‘old’ consists of north and Highland Scotland, the clans, Jacobitism and the Scoto-Latinist intellectual tradition; the ‘new’ is Britain, settled prosperity and empirical common sense [. . .]. Scotland is childhood, Britain adulthood: this is Scott’s essential and repeated equation.’ ⁷⁹ This sense of a gulf between the present and the historical past about which he wrote was discussed by Scott through the mouth of the fictional narrator of the Chronicles of the Canongate:

My own opinions are in favour of our own times in many respects, but not in so far as affords means for exercising the imagination, or exciting the interest which attaches to other times. I am glad to be a writer or a reader in 1826, but I would be most interested in reading or relating what happened from half a century before. We have the best of it. Scenes in which our ancestors thought deeply, acted fiercely, and died desperately are to us tales to divert the tedium of a winter’s evening.⁸⁰

The gap between present and past is seen very clearly in the way that the series of historical portraits in the Palace of History ended with ‘The Great Literary Period’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the near total absence of items dating to the latter half of the nineteenth century and the creation by the same organisers of the ‘Auld Toon’ elsewhere in the Exhibition in which ‘many shall wander [. . .], thinking of the days that have gone forever in Scotland.’⁸¹ As Cairns Craig (1996) has argued, this attitude positioned Scottish history as being of little relevance to life in contemporary Scotland. Instead,

Nostalgia for the past is a strongly-developed strain in Scottish fiction, as it is in the Scottish character. The past is important to small nations living close to powerful neighbours, for they must take pride in their history if they are to keep their identity. Scotland’s past, thanks above all to Scott, is habitually viewed romantically or sentimentally, so that Mary Queen of Scots and Charles Edward Stuart are accorded the same veneration as Bruce and Wallace by people who in real life would certainly have fought against all they stood for.⁸²

The most popular Scottish authors at the turn of the twentieth century were probably James Barrie, Ian McLaren and S. R. Crockett, now known as the ‘Kailyard’ school,⁸³ which emphasised rural quaintness and decline, just as was seen in the displays in the Palace of History and the ‘Auld Toon’. Ian Carter, commenting on the works of Ian Maclaren, one of the most prominent Kailyard novelists, commented that

He writes of the virtues of peasant life as if by writing about them he could preserve them. And the large number of people in England and Scotland, in Canada and America who suddenly discovered that Scottish peasant life was admirable at the moment when it was in its death throes bought his books and sighed with him over the extinction of “the last of the old Scots folk”.⁸⁴

The overall picture of Scottish history therefore emphasised the stories of ‘great men’, the importance of the aristocracy and royalty, church and burgh life, while portraying a specifically Scottish history in the pre-Union past. Unsurprisingly, there are also geographical patterns, with forty-two per cent of the items on display in the Palace of History being lent by owners based in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, compared with nineteen per cent from Edinburgh and the South-East. The North-East was proportionately well-represented at seventeen per cent, though this was the result of the leading role of Professor James Cooper, who had previously been a minister in Aberdeen, in the Ecclesiastical sections, and the loan of prehistoric items from Aberdeenshire by Graham Callander, Director of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and native of Aberdeenshire.

Religious identity

With the vast majority of people in Scotland regularly attending church in 1911, the role of religious history was an important aspect of Scottish identity. The Exhibition highlighted the importance of church history, with a number of sections displaying many objects, despite the comment that ‘Scotland is in the unfortunate position of having less to show [. . .] than in any other Christian country. Nowhere else has the destruction of what is ancient been so complete, and nowhere else have circumstances produced so little’.⁸⁵ Nonetheless, it was possible for the catalogue to claim that the displays of ecclesiastical literature were especially representative and had ‘bulked so largely in Scotland during the struggles for religious liberty’.⁸⁶

An important feature of the 1707 Union was the protection of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, ensuring that it would not be subject to government control, unlike the Episcopal Church of England. By the end of the nineteenth century, arguments about secular interference had led to a number of divisions in the church, notably the Disruption of 1843. By 1911 there were therefore two main Presbyterian churches in Scotland: the established Church of Scotland which was identified with Conservatism and the United Free Church of Scotland which, with its history of a desire for disestablishment, had close links with the Liberals.⁸⁷ The Scottish Episcopal Church was much smaller, though important among the aristocracy and in the North-East.

Rev. James Cooper, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Glasgow, played a significant role in the organising committees and had a significant impact on the representation of church history. The material selected emphasised the dangers of extremism, with the 1551 catechism of Archbishop Hamilton described as showing ‘great moderation and judgment, and if it had been issued earlier might have done much to check the violence of the reformation movement in Scotland’.⁸⁸ Likewise, Episcopalian liturgy was ‘not only considerable in itself, but of great and far-reaching importance’, ⁸⁹ whereas the later Covenanters were described as ‘the extreme men in the S.W. of Scotland who took up arms in support of their position’.⁹⁰

While Cooper was an important member of the Church of Scotland, of which he became Moderator in 1917, he preached a sermon in 1902 on the benefits of ‘a United Church – a United Reformed Church – for the British Empire’.⁹¹ He was a founder of the ‘high church’ Scottish Ecclesiological Society and the Scottish Church Society, the latter accused by a critical minister of being ‘proved a wicked Jesuitical conspiracy, hatched by traitors, to change the pure Church of Scotland again back into a devilish hierarchy of prelatic and Popish tyrants, and to blasphemous idolatries’.⁹² Despite the Exhibition’s emphasis on moderation and ecumenism, this did not extend to Roman Catholicism. Although there were many Catholics in Scotland, particularly in Glasgow, the exhibition displayed only ‘a few books published by or for Scottish Roman Catholics’ and dismissed the Catholic contribution to Scottish history in the phrase ‘for some time after the Revolution they were very active in Scotland.’⁹³

Europe and empire

With a focus on the history of Scotland, there was little mention of the other parts of the British Isles, notably despite the pre-eminent historical impact of England, nor the strong historical links between Scotland and Ireland. The latter included the many people living in Glasgow of Irish descent, many of whom were Catholic, such that ‘the words “Irish” and “Catholic” were synonymous in Glasgow and its hinterland, until at least the First World War’.⁹⁴ Paradoxically, it is striking that there were sections of the Exhibition devoted to Scotland’s historical links with Sweden, Norway, France and the Netherlands. The Scandinavian links were a highlight of the Exhibition with a model long-ship dominating the South Gallery (borrowed from the Norwegian navy) and the exhibition catalogue claiming that ‘too little account perhaps, has been taken of these relations in the past’,⁹⁵ though it is striking that no mention was made of the independence of Norway in 1905.

On the other hand, even if every few items from the rest of the world were displayed, the British Empire was highlighted. The third Earl of Bute was therefore described as the ‘First Scotsman to become Prime Minister of Britain’ and as ‘a builder of our Empire’,⁹⁶ while the Empire was also celebrated by the large section of the Palace of History devoted to explorers. Comparisons were made between pre-Union Scotland and people living in the colonies, with the Exhibition being seen as valuable preparation for people embarking on colonial service as:

native populations all over the world were organised on tribal and patriarchal lines rather than as nationalities, the family had been and is the principal unit for political purposes. By studying the history of his own country in this aspect the Scotsman could best prepare himself for administrative work abroad and learn to enter into the point of view of those whom he might be called upon to help to govern when he went out into the great world.⁹⁷

The Exhibition also highlighted the importance of the Union, portraying it as a necessary step in the civilisation of Scotland, but also as the required progenitor of the British Empire. Although dating from a couple of decades later, an article by Scottish Unionist MP Robert Boothby in 1932 captures the intertwined importance of Union and Empire to Scotland:

Prior to 1707, the Scottish people were a pack of miserable savages, living in incredible poverty and squalor, and playing no part in the development of civilisation. Since 1707, they have been partners in the greatest undertaking the world has ever seen. It was the Union that turned the Scots into an imperial race.⁹⁸

Patriotisim and unionism

The Exhibition has been seen as relating to a resurgence of Scottish national identity and moves towards home rule at the turn of the twentieth century, such that ‘with nearly a third of the cabinet Scots, or sitting for Scottish seats, independence seemed within reach’.⁹⁹ However, as will be discussed below, the emphasis on Scotland’s heroic past with its battles against England should be read as being more concerned with establishing Scotland and England as equal within the Union rather than as an argument for independence. This was exemplified by the Scottish Patriotic Association, of which the Exhibition’s instigator, George Eyre-Todd was chairman in 1911.¹⁰⁰ It had been formed in 1901 to campaign for the equality of Scotland and England in the present through,

the proper presentation of Scottish history in Scottish schools and the proper quartering of the royal arms when used in Scotland, and it stood against the use of the terms “England” and “English” when “Britain” and “British” were meant. Also, with less popular appeal and less likelihood of a successful issue, it protested against an error in the royal title. King Edward, it pointed out, was neither the seventh of the name to sit on the British throne nor the seventh to rule Scotland.¹⁰¹

The importance of the royal and aristocratic aspects of Scottish history was emphasised in the Exhibition by the Scots Baronial architecture and heraldry, notably the Palace of History which was modelled on Falkland Palace and on which was ‘hoisted the Banner of the King of Scots – the lion rampant and double tressure’.¹⁰² As Ash¹⁰³ has noted, history in the later nineteenth century ‘remained central to nationalist thinking and propaganda. For the romantic and generally Tory wing of the [nationalist] movement this appeared in an interest in heraldry, genealogy and the Jacobite cause’, but for most people ‘Scottish history had little to offer’¹⁰⁴ to help them explain their position or prospects in the world.

Fig. 4.

The front of the Palace of History from the North. Note the lion rampant banner on the Palace of History and the heraldic crest on the Palace of Industry tower in the background.

As has been pointed out by Rembold,¹⁰⁵ the political background to the Exhibition was more complex than a superficial reading might suggest. Far from being part of a campaign for home rule, the Exhibition’s leaders were committed Unionists. Andrew Pettigrew, chairman of the Executive Committee, was a former Conservative town councillor,¹⁰⁶ Professor John Glaister, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chairman of the Historical Committee, had been President of Conservative Association of the Glasgow St Rollox Division and ‘of incalculable value to the cause of Unionism’,¹⁰⁷ while Eyre-Todd was listed as being a Conservative in Who’s Who. The importance of this political association was emphasised by the appointment of the Marquess of Tullibardine as Honorary President of the Exhibition. Not only was he an important member of the aristocracy as heir to the Duke of Atholl, he was also a leading member of the Conservative Party, having been elected as MP for West Perthshire in the January 1910 general election. At the initial ceremony in April 1910, Pettigrew praised him saying that,

personally he believed most fervently, from the last step which the Marquis had made in entering the House of Commons after a stiffly contested election, that it only wanted time and opportunity for him to become what Scotland had been looking for during many years – a real leader of the Scottish people.¹⁰⁸

Although the main focus of Unionism was the union with Ireland, the Conservatives were ‘acutely aware of the sensitivities surrounding issues of nationalism and national identity, and of the depth of Scottish feeling and the potential resentments which might be aroused by attempts to absorb or marginalise it.’¹⁰⁹ As one of the participants at the inaugural meeting of the campaign to found a Chair of Scottish History suggested, ‘they could not commemorate the Union of 1707 in a better way than by establishing a Chair of Scottish History in the University.’¹¹⁰ In this they again followed the lead of Sir Walter Scott, who described the Union of 1707 as ‘an event which had I lived in that day I would have resigned my life to have prevented but which being done before my day I am sensible was a wise turn.’¹¹¹

However, Liberalism was still the dominant force in Glasgow politics in the early years of the twentieth century, though it had been weakened by the split over Irish Home Rule in the 1880s that had led to the formation of the Liberal Unionists. At the same time, socialist ideas were being promoted in Glasgow¹¹² by a number of charismatic leaders, including Tom Johnston who edited the Independent Labour Party’s newspaper Forward, which had been founded in 1906.¹¹³ While the main concerns of the ILP were economic and social, in an issue of Forward a fortnight before the official opening, Johnston made a forthright attack on the Exhibition,

The history you’re going to get is the history Lord Tullibardine thinks will suit your present state in culture development; it’s the history the Duke of Connaught likes and the story of Kingly heroes and Queenly Saints, who gave their lives for their subjects; the Reformation history you’ll get is the history that won’t raise questions and murmurings about the Marquis of Ailsa’s property; the Church history won’t tell you how the discoverer of chloroform was treated for daring to impugn a test declaring that women must suffer pain at child-birth and you can rest assured that you’ll hear nothing whatever about Muir or Mealmaker or Baird or Hardie or McKinley or any other political martyrs. Not one word either about the Chartists, or about Sandy Macdonald. Not a word!¹¹⁴

Partly inspired by moves towards Irish home rule, the Scottish Home Rule Association was established in 1886 and then the Young Scots Society in 1900.¹¹⁵ Both organisations had strong links with the Liberal Party who, with the support of a growing number of Labour MPs, introduced a series of Home Rule bills in Parliament before the outbreak of the First World War¹¹⁶ as part of their campaigns for wider social reform. The Unionists’ feared that Home Rule would rejuvenate pre-Union animosities with England. As the Marquis of Tullibardine claimed in a 1912 debate in the UK Parliament, ‘I am quite certain the result would be to drift back on the whole stream of progress which has been flowing ever since the time of the Union, and to put us back into the small backwater of Scotland, if you put us back into the position of separation in which we were before the Union.’¹¹⁷ As a result, ‘the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists closed ranks in defence of the union and empire and in 1912 finally merged as the Unionist Party’.¹¹⁸

Conclusion

With almost a quarter of the items in the Palace of History relating to vernacular life and the dramatic confections of ‘An Clachan’ and the ‘Auld Toon’, the following quotation could almost refer to the nostalgic air of the Exhibition:

By the beginning of this century – in the music hall, on picture postcards, in newspapers – what had developed was a grotesque amalgam of the romantic and the kailyard, attracting to it a whole array of mythic symbols, of dubious national character traits, of false social experience. But the falseness mattered little for its acceptance: like all myths, it operated as an ideology to help people adjust to their environment. Urban Scots wanted to believe that there was a Scotland that was like that: it embodied, if on a thoroughly inadequate way, their aspirations to escape from a squalid, inhuman reality.¹¹⁹

Far from being merely of entertainment value, the Exhibition organisers thus intended that visitors would leave with a view of Scottish history that concluded with Scotland being an equal partner with England at the heart of the British Empire. The portrayal of Scotland in the Exhibition was therefore one that may have had little to do with the lived experience of most visitors, especially the many who had an Irish or Catholic background, instead managing to ‘paper over the geographic, class and religious divisions in Scotland’¹²⁰ to demonstrate a Scottish identity explicitly allied to the Union, Protestantism, trade, self-improvement and the importance of the aristocracy. While this was a Conservative viewpoint, revealing the political beliefs of the organisers, it was also a mainstream one. For example, Peter Hume Brown, the first Professor of Scottish History in the University of Edinburgh and Historiographer Royal at the time of the 1911 Exhibition, published A History of Scotland for Schools in 1907, with a second edition in 1910 and republished as A Short History of Scotland with editions in 1908, 1930 and 1951. In this he said ‘since the Union of her Parliament with that of England, Scotland has not only grown rich and prosperous for her own good, but also for the good of the whole British Empire’,¹²¹ while in a genealogical table he lists ‘Edward I (VII of England)’.¹²² Rather than Scottish history being portrayed as something deserving political debate, politics and historical debate were kept apart. Instead, the aim of the Exhibition organisers was to retrieve the type of history espoused by Walter Scott that could unify Scotland, but which had faded during the nineteenth century such that ‘a general interest in Scottish history had ceased to be the mark of broadly educated Scotsmen and had come instead to be seen as the mark of a narrow parochialism most Scots wished to abandon.’¹²³

The study of Scottish history and literature has changed significantly from the interests of the Exhibition organisers, and of the first Professor of Scottish History and Literature in the University of Glasgow, Robert Rait, who was an expert on the 1707 Union and Scottish politics of the period. A generation of critical scholarship and literature has resulted in a much richer view of Scottish history that cannot be reduced to a simple narrative or the stories of a few key individuals, but that has broadened its scope to include the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the lives of the working class, Catholic and Irish people who were excluded from the history portrayed in the 1911 Exhibition.¹²⁴ In this, the hopes of the Exhibition organisers that Scottish history would gain academic credibility have, eventually, been fulfilled, though probably not in the ways that they would have hoped. Scottish history has not been politically significant, however, beyond the banal use of disconnected icons like Wallace and Bruce, though Lord Tullibardine’s fears of separation continue to resonate with those wishing to maintain the Union. Instead, it is striking that the conservative version of history that uncritically focused on romantic myths and famous men is still powerful and that there has been little discussion of Scottish history during recent debates about Scottish independence.

The Exhibition itself appears to have faded rapidly from the collective memory, perhaps due to the trauma of the First World War and the changed politics after the war. However, it is perhaps also because the history that the Exhibition highlighted was that of the Conservative middle class who organised it: the importance of Protestant Christianity, the Union, commerce, aristocracy and great men. Aspects that might have engaged many more people in Glasgow, such as the history of the Highlands, Catholicism, the working class and Scotland’s relationships with Ireland were ignored, removing history from Scottish political debate as part of the ‘the strange death of Scottish history’.¹²⁵