Two hundred years ago, in September 1825, John Galt was awarded the Freedom of the Burgh of Irvine, the town of his birth.
Galt visited Irvine with his mother and sister to receive the honour. He had just returned to Britain from his first visit to Canada on behalf of the Canada Company and was visiting his family.
In his Autobiography he writes –
“We had a long journey to perform in the course of that day,
I stepped out of the post-chaise, at the door of the tollbooth, to wait on the
magistrates, when, to my astonishment, I beheld my old friend alive, then a
very venerable man, sitting in the chair.
The sight upon me for a moment was as an apparition, but I was recalled
to myself by the manner in which he delivered the diploma, with an address;
Provost Pawkie himself could never have said anything half so good.”
Provost Pawkie is Galt’s main character in his work The Provost. “Pawkie” in Scots means sly or cunning and
Galt describes his book as –“exhibiting a tolerably correct picture of a Scottish
borough, I had in view, while writing it, a gentleman, who, when I was a boy at
school, had the chief management of the borough council in my native town.” Galt continues -“I believed he was dead, and
had no scruple about choosing him for my model.”
The man being described was Robert Fullarton (1740-1835) who
was a councillor in Irvine for 42 years. Irvine Burns Club have a portrait of Fullarton which you can view here (you will need to scroll down to view it).
Aside from Galt’s surprise that the Baillie was still alive, he also had this to say about the man he met on that important September day in 1825 –
“His speech partook of his character, and evinced a degree
of good sense, of tact, and taste, though delivered in the Scottish dialect,
quite extraordinary. Instead of speaking
the sort of balderdash, common on such occasions, he passed over everything
which related to myself, conceiving, as I suppose, that the honour of bestowing
on me a burgess ticket, was a sufficient recognition of my supposed deservings;
but he paid a well expressed compliment to the character of my father and
mother, telling how much they were held in esteem by their townsfolk, and concluded
with saying, that not the least proof of their merits was in bringing up their
children to be worthy of a public testimony of respect.”
Perhaps not quite the testimonial John Galt was expecting, but presumably his mother would have been pleased to have been recognised!
