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.