Old Quarter Days

One of the interesting details in many of John Galt’s works are the different terms used which signify important times of the year.

Quarter days were important in the past.  Those four days, roughly three months apart, signified when rent was due, when servants were hired, term times and other important occasions.  They were also the days on which ministers stipends would be due. 

Candlemas – 2 February

Whitsunday – 15 May

Lammas – 1 August

Martinmas – 11 November

Originally these were Christian holy days – Candlemas was the feast of the purification.  Whitsunday was the feast of Pentecost, sometimes called White Sunday.  Lammas celebrated the first fruits of the harvest and Martinmas was the feast of St Martin of Tours.

In a letter to published William Blackwood dated June 1822, Galt writes -  

“Owing to the Whitsuntide holidays the printers have been all idle for the greatest part of this week”.

Other words are used for important dates, for example the time around Christmas was termed Yule and Pace was the word for Easter.

In Irvine, where John Galt was born, the feast of Marymass is still celebrated each year in August with a festival and procession.  Marymass was originally a celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (15 August).  After the Reformation it continued in a different form.

The Last of the Lairds

In a letter dated 11 September 1825 written from Eskgrove, John Galt wrote to publisher William Blackwood concerning his latest work The Last of the Lairds.  Mentioning that he would be in Edinburgh that week –

“I think you may announce The Last of the Lairds or the life and opinions of Malachi Mailings Esq of Auldbiggings.  I would not announce it as by the author of The Annals, at least in the first instance …”.

However in October 1825 the following advertisement appeared.  Obviously Blackwood did not think that Galt was correct!

Galt returned to London and continued writing and amending the novel over the next few months.  However in early 1826, his business with the Canada Company meant that he had to leave for North America.  He gave the draft to his good friend David Macbeth Moir to finish for him.  Galt had lived for a while at Eskgrove House near Musselburgh which is probably where he met Moir, a doctor and fellow writer.  The Last of the Lairds with Moir's additions was published in November 1826.   

In Life and Miscellanies Galt writes of the Last of the Lairds –

“I meant it to belong to that series of fictions of manners, of which the Annals of the Parish is the beginning; but owing to some cause, which I no longer remember, instead of an autobiography I was induced to make it a narrative, and in this respect it lost that appearance of truth and nature which is, in my opinion, the great charm of such works.  I have no recollection how this happened, nor what caused me to write it as it is, but the experiment was a very unwise one, and some day I will try to supply what is wanted, namely, the autobiography of one of the last race of lairds.”

In many ways the Last of the Lairds is similar to the Annals of the Parish, showing the changes in a small Scottish community over the years.  The central character, the laird Malachi Mailings lives alone in his old house - 

"The mansion house of Auldbiggings was a multiform aggregate of corners, and gables, and chimneys … no two windows were alike, and several of them, from the first enactment of the duty on light, had been closed up, save where here and there a peering hole with a single pane equivocated with the statute and the tax-gatherer."

As with many Galt’s other works, the reader is introduced to a wonderful range of characters from the grumpy old Laird himself, to his servants and neighbours.  If you haven’t already read this book, then please do.  It is available to read free online.

Dr David Macbeth Moir
Dr David Macbeth Moir was born at Musselburgh in January 1798 and graduated from the University of Edinburgh.  He practiced as a doctor in Musselburgh while writing contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine where he was known by the name Delta.

He wrote and published a selection of verse and other works including the novel Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor.  He was travelling in Dumfries when he became unwell and died in 1851.  Each year in January, the Old Musselburgh Club lay a wreath at a statue erected in Moir’s memory in the town in 1853.  The statue was made by sculptor  Alexander Handyside Ritchie (who was also born in Musselburgh). It was paid for by public subscription.  The inscription on the pedestal of the statue reads - "In memory of David Macbeth Moir.  Beloved as a Man, Honoured as a Citizen, Esteemed at a Physician and Celebrated as a Poet.  Born 5th January 1798.  Died 6th July 1851."

The Last of the Lairds on Stage

In the 1990s Scottish playwright Allan Sharpe (1949-2004) produced a work for the stage based on John Galt's The Last of the Lairds.

It certainly seems to have been popular.

John Galt Fountain, Greenock

The John Galt Memorial Fountain can be found on Greenock's scenic Esplanade.  

The fountain was first put in place in 1871 providing drinking water for many of those enjoying a lovely walk along the Esplanade.

In 2015, Galt's head had vanished from the fountain and was replaced by that which can be seen today.  It is the work of sculptor Wayne Darnell.  Fortunately John Galt's new head is still there, but unfortunately something else is now missing.

This rusty square was once the home of a beautiful lion's head.

Photo source - the Greenockian

Hopefully Inverclyde Council will repair the damage in the near future.

Elizabeth Gaskell - John Galt knew her father!

In John Galt’s Autobiography (Volume 1) he mentions his friend Mr Stevenson.  Galt writes - 

“Many years after, my friend Mr Stevenson, the brother in law of Mr Holland, compiled a work about voyages and travels, I forget the name of it, but I expected he would have noticed the Statistical Account of Sicily, not because it was mine, but because it was truly valuable.”

Here Galt is probably referring to William Stevenson’s work – Historical Sketch of the Progress of Discovery, Navigation and Commerce published in 1824 and seems a bit annoyed that his own work Voyages & Travels published in 1812 was ignored.  Galt continues -

"But he [Stevenson] said nothing of it; not, however, being a man of practical ideas, although I noticed to him the omission it did not surprise me, for I had long before observed that bookish men are not very good appraisers of facts; they have no adequate conception of the cost and care which such compilations require.”

Quite a put down!

William Stevenson (1772-1829) is perhaps best known as the father of Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.  Stevenson was born at Berwick upon Tweed and had a variety of careers including tutor, farmer at Saughton, and boarding house keeper in Edinburgh before moving to London, where he  obtained a government post at the Treasury.  He also wrote for various publications including Blackwoods in Edinburgh and for a while was editor of the Scots Magazine.  In 1797 he married Eliza Holland, and had two children.  Eliza died in 1811 and he married Catherine Thomson, sister of Dr Anthony Todd Thomson, a great friend of John Galt..

“Mr Holland” mentioned by Galt was Swinton Holland, a partner in the Barings Bank.  He had been in business in Trieste and Malta and had built up a considerable fortune.  He died in London in December 1827.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson (1810-1865) married Rev William Gaskell in 1832.  She is the author of many well loved works including Mary Barton and Cranford.

Elizabeth’s middle name, Cleghorn was possibly given in memory of Robert Cleghorn, farmer at Saughton Mills.  This farm was tenanted by her father, William Stevenson after Cleghorn’s death in 1797.  Robert Cleghorn was a friend of Scottish poet Robert Burns.  There is a very interesting article on Robert Cleghorn, Robert Burns, Saughton Mills and the Stevenson family here.

John Galt - "that magnificently picturesque figure"

In an article in The Week (Volume XIII, No 51)) dated 13 November 1896 and published in Toronto, there is an article about John Galt.  The Week was a Canadian political and literary magazine which ran from 1883 until 1896.  

Part of the article is entitled John Galt as a Novelist and describes some of Galt’s literary works reviewed by Howard J Duncan, a lawyer from Woodstock, Ontario.  That article is followed by a review of In the Days of the Canada Company – The Story of the Settlement of the Huron Tract and a View of the Social Life of the Period 1825-1850” by Robina and Kathleen Macfarlane Lizars - a fascinating read!

The review of the book states – 

“the authors plunge us into the midst of their subject, and very fittingly give us an insight into the life of that magnificently picturesque figure, John Galt”.

and goes on to state with great insight -

“men, and not facts, make history; that to know a period we must know fully the men who made the period.  Facts we forget; souls, once known, abide with us forever, and the insight into the lives of John Galt and Tiger Dunlop makes the state on which they acted more vivid to our minds than volumes of bare facts could have done.”

John Galt

The Lizars family were related to the Galts.  John Galt’s eldest son, John (1814-1866) married Helen Hutcheson Lizars (1820-1896) in 1840.  Robina and Kathleen, authors of the book, were her nieces, daughters of her brother Daniel Home Lizars.

John Galt's home in Irvine

This is the house in Irvine where John Galt was born on 2 May 1779.  The house was situated on the High Street near the Seagate.  Galt's father, also John, was the captain of a ship trading with the West Indies.  His mother was Jean Thomson.  The couple married in Ayrshire in 1776.  

The site of the building is now home to a branch of the Bank of Scotland.  There is a plaque on the outside wall showing its connection to John Galt.

The plaque was made by Robert Bryden and is dated 1903.

Robert Bryden (1865-1939) was an artist and sculptor who was born in Coylton in Ayrshire.  Many of his works showed scenes of places in Ayrshire.  See more of his work here.

Delap-cheese or Dunlop cheese?

In both The Annals of the Parish (1821) and The Ayrshire Legatees (1820), John Galt mentions Delap-cheese.  While of course the works are fiction, there was a particular type of cheese that originated in Ayrshire and would have been popular when Galt was a boy in Irvine.  It is called Dunlop cheese. 

Dunlop cheese takes its name from the Dunlop, a village in Ayrshire where it was supposedly first made.  The story goes that a woman named Barbara Gilmour, a farmer’s wife, was the first to introduce the cheese in Ayrshire.  It is said that Barbara went to Ireland to avoid the troubles around the time of the Covenanters and it was there that she saw the process which she thought improved the taste and texture of cheese.  On returning home around 1688, she applied it in her own dairy, and the cheese became very popular and was produced throughout Ayrshire and other parts of Scotland.

In The Ayrshire Legatees, Mrs Pringle in a letter from London to her friend Miss Mally Glencairn describing her preparations for her journey to London writes –

“and in the same bocks with them I packit a small crock of our ain excellent poudered butter, with a Delap cheese, for I was told that such commodities are not to be had genuine in London.” 

John Galt has his own version of the origins of the cheese.  In Annals of the Parish The Rev Micah Balwhidder describes his future wife - 

“Soon after this, the time was drawing near for my second marriage.  I had placed my affections, with due consideration, on Miss Lizy Kibbock, the well brought-up daughter of Mr Joseph Kibbock of the Gorbyholm, who was the first that made a speculation in the farming way in Ayrshire, and whose cheese were of such an excellent quality, that they have, under the name of Delap-cheese, spread far and wide of the civilized world.”

Dunlop cheese was well known throughout Scotland and thought especially good for roasting and spread on oat cakes.

Galt, Gog and Magog

The History of Gog and Magog, the Champions of London by Robin Goodfellow.  A children’s book, it was written by John Galt and published in 1819 by J Souter of London.  Galt wrote under several pseudonyms, especially his text books and children's books.

Guildhall, London - source

While many people will associate the name Gog of the land of Magog with the Bible in Ezekiel, Chapter 38, there were many other ancient myths and legends about the characters.  Gog and Magog’s mythical association with London dates back to the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth which seem to have inspired John Galt’s tale for children, as well as other works.  Gog and Magog were said to have been legendary giants, who lived in a castle on the site of London’s Guildhall.

Two large statues of Gog and Magog are displayed in the Guildhall in London and are paraded each year in the Lord Mayor’s Show.  The present statues date 1953, from but statues of these characters have been connected with London for many centuries.  The first wooden carvings were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and were replaced.  Later representations were destroyed in the Blitz during WWII.  Read more about the Guildhall carvings here.

John Galt weaves the legendary characters into a tale about giants, princesses, battles to save the city, with a little bit of the history of London thrown in for good measure.  Galt’s tale ends –

“The renowned, the munificent, the courageous, Gog, and Magog, are gone.  But their spirit will never die, it will enter into the hearts of all good citizens.”  

There was probably a reason why Galt wrote this tale under the name of Robin Goodfellow.  That name has an interesting history in British folklore, being linked with a mischievous spirit.  Shakespeare used the name in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Puck.  In 1628 a tract was published called The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow.

Galt's house in Guelph

The City of Guelph was founded by John Galt on St George’s Day (23 April) 1827.  One of the first houses built there was “The Priory” on the banks of the River Speed.  It was named after Charles Prior, who along with Dr William Dunlop were there with Galt at the ceremony to found the city.  Charles Prior was described as the Overseer of the Guelph Settlement by the Canada Company, on whose behalf the city was founded.

Galt, in his Autobiography (Volume II) describes The Priory -

“Having some sort a kind of taste in architecture, it seemed to me that the house could be made into a comfortable ecclesiastical abode, and accordingly, although it was only ten feet high in the ceiling, I employed my best skill in laying it out.  The reader will recollect, that it was but a cottage of one story and formed of trunks of trees; as I have said, however, before, it was of its kind very beautifully constructed by Mr Prior, externally.  I only added a rustic portico to it of trees with the bark, but illustrative of the origin of the Ionic order, it did not cost five pounds.”

Model of The Priory (Guelph Museums)

In 1828 Galt’s wife, Elizabeth and his three sons joined him in Canada.  They first stayed at Burlington Beach, but after his sons had gone to boarding school, the couple moved back to Guelph and lived at The Priory.  Galt described that time – 

“About a month ago, after sending the boys to school in the Lower Province, I brought Mrs Galt to this city, for now it begins to be worthy of the name, where, all things considered we are not uncomfortable.  Our house, it is true, is but a log one, the first that was erected in the town; but it is not without some pretension to elegance.  It has a rustic portico formed with the trunks of trees, in which the constituent parts of the Ionic order are really somewhat intelligibly displayed.  In the interior we have a handsome suit of public rooms, a library etc.”

In A Brief Sketch of the Early History of Guelph by Robert Thomson (A First Year’s Settler) the Priory is described – 

“The main building is about fifty by thirty feet, with a wing or lean-to at each end, which was all finished in first class style in 1828.  It was originally intended as a general headquarters for the company’s employees, and was also the residence of Mr Galt for some time previous to his being recalled."

John Galt was recalled to Britain by the Canada Company in 1829 and was never to return to Canada.  The Priory remained a landmark in Guelph.  A tavern was opened in one of the wings of the building. For a while it was also the local post office.  Later the building became the railway station.  After catching fire several times, it was dismantled in 1911.

The Priory as a railway station

Guelph Museums have an interesting article on The Priory - read it here. 

John Galt's schoolfriend William Spence

While in school in Greenock, John Galt formed a friendship with two other boys, a friendship which lasted for many years.  One of these boys was William Spence, son of a Greenock coppersmith, who from an early age showed a great interest in mathematics and science.  He was also a musician, as Galt writes in his Autobiography (Volume I), he encouraged Galt to learn to play the flute.  Galt writes of Spence - “Spence, besides being a most delicious performer was a considerable composer, and made beautiful sonatas, which had as much character as the compositions of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.”

While young men in Greenock, Galt together James Park, William Spence formed a “monthly society” where the read various publications and wrote their own contributions.  Galt writes - “The essays of William Spence were very astronomical, we thought them profound; they were all about planets and comets, the cosmogony of the earth, the infinite divisibility of matter, and the boundless nature of premundane space; any thing of this world was too gross to enter into his speculative theories.”

While the three young men went their separate ways as far as their careers were concerned, Park and Spence visited John Galt shortly after he moved to London. 

William Spence died in 1815 at the age of 37.  In 1819 his mathematical essays were edited by John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871).  Galt wrote a biography of Spence for this publication.  

In his Biography of Spence, Galt described him  – “His manners also were no less peculiar and his staidness was so remarkable, even before he became a mathematician, that about the age of fourteen he obtained from his companions the title of the Philosopher; and this title, although certainly not intended as a mark of respect, was undoubtedly bestowed from a sentiment of that kind mingled with something in ridicule of his constitutional gravity.”

He was so well regarded in his hometown of Greenock that a subscription was raised to mark his life with a memorial in the Wellpark Mid Kirk, Greenock.  This was widely encouraged by John Galt.

You can read more about William Spence here.

Ouranoulogos – John Galt’s “complete failure”!

It is not often that people own up to their failures!  In his Literary Life (Volume I) John Galt writes of his work Ouranoulogos - 

“But although the work was brought out at less than a fourth of the price at which it should have been published, and was greatly admired by everyone who saw it, it fell literally still-born from the press;  A more complete failure, indeed, I never heard of.”

The Ouranoulogos or The Celestial Volume, was a work written by John Galt in 1833 and published by Cadel in London and Blackwood in Edinburgh.  As the advertisement for the work shows, Ouranoulogos was meant to be the first of twelve instalments and Galt was fortunate to have the artist John Martin, provide an illustration for the first volume.

Ouranoulogos by John Martin

In a letter to William Blackwood written in March 1833 Galt writes – 

“I hear you are to be in town about the end of the month but in the mean time I write to say that I have seen Mr Cadell respecting a joint publication projected by me and Mr Martin (Balshazzar) and I propose to him to be my publisher with you; to which he readily acceded and I write this in consequence.”

John Martin, artist

Galt, continues -

“The work is to be in royal quatro and to consist of a picture by Martin and an illustrative tale by me with an extract from the original work that has suggested it.  It is to be executed in the very first style that the arts allow here and to come out in numbers.  We expect it will form an era in the arts as the drawing and engraving are to be executed simultaneously and the printing to be as elegant as can be produced.”

John Martin (1789-1854) was an English painter, engraver and illustrator known for his large, dramatic works, many of biblical scenes.  His works became very popular especially “Belshazzar’s Feast” of 1820 to which John Galt alludes in his letter to Blackwood.  John Martin illustrated scenes from many novels and was also an engineer and inventor.  The illustration for Ouranoulogos was later expanded by Martin into a work now owned by the Royal Collection Trust entitled The Eve of the Deluge. 

"Eve of the Deluge" by John Martin - source

Galt explains his lofty idea for Ouranoulogos in Literary Life -

“I really designed, and in part executed, a solemn abstract work of the Miltonic kind, a natural effect, as I believe it to be, of the comparative solitude to which I was consigned.  I allude to the Ouranoulogos, of which one number was published, illustrated with a picture, a rare and recently invented species of engraving, in which Mr Martin displayed all his singular power.”

Ouranoulogos is the story of the Biblical flood and Noah's Ark -

"Forty days and forty nights the rain fell as a curtain – the hills were drowned, the windows of Heaven were opened, and the angels contemplated the retiring Austerity of the Lord.  All around was the loneliness of death, and as the rimless vast of the premundane." (John Galt, Ouranoulogos)

Galt also quotes from the work by Arthur Golding (1536-1606) the translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses of 1603 - 

“Th’ outrageous swelling of the sea

The lesser hillocks drown;

Unwounted waves on highest tops

Of mountains did rebound.

 

The greatest part of men were drownde;

And such as scapt the flood,

Forlorne with fasting overlong,

Did die for want of food.”

In 1833 John Galt had become increasingly unwell and short of money.  At the time, he and his wife, Elizabeth were living at Barn Cottage, Old Brompton in London.  While admitting Ouranoulogos was a failure, he reasoned that -

 “A more complete failure, indeed, I never heard of; and it can only be accounted for by supposing, astrologically, that the disaster which withered my limbs, extended to my fortunes.  As yet, to be sure, I am not very sensible that it has affected my head, but it will do so, no doubt, by and by.”

Galt ends this rather sombre chain of thought with the words – 

“The hours that are rung on a doctor’s bottle, are not so salutary as those which are chimed by the village clock.”  (Literary Life Volume I.)