SCOTTISH SCENES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 154, 26 March 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

SCOTTISH SCENES

Bruce Lockhart Remembers His Youth “My Scottish Youth,” by 11. H. Bruce Lockhart (London: Putnam). To the Scot, particularly the Scot who shares .Mr. Lockhart’s enthusiasm for Rugby football (for they all will share his love of his homeland) this book will be a sheer delight. To others it will provide reading both interesting and pleasant. Mr. Lockhart is a thorough-going Scot. In his own apparently wellknown phrase, “For me home begins where the water flows north,” his enthusiasm for his native land is reflected in everything he writes, and, since it, does not impair the impartiality of his judgment, lends a charm to the book.

Many an author has encountered difficulty in trying to write in an interesting manner of his early childhood, and one feels that, for a small section in the beginning of the book, Mr. Lockhart shares this difficulty. But only for a short time. Before long he is well into his stride, and then comes a holiday in the Highlands and the opportunity of telling many an interesting tale of days long and not-so-long past. This is a considerable part of the book, and the author is completely happy in roaming about this historyladen countryside, recalling, in a manner reminiscent of Mr. H. V. Morton, battle and other events of the days when England and Scotland were at war, inci'dents in which his own ancestors took part, both then and later, and expeditions and small adventures of his own childhood days.

Mr. Lockhart tells, of a visit to Glamis Castle, and relates the following little story of the present Queen:

I never played ericket at Glamis, but before we left Brought? Ferry my brother Rufus took part, I think, in several matches. On one occasion, when the visiting eleven were batting and were doing badly against the deliveries of the Glamis fast bowler, a little girl of five gave great amusement to the batsmen who were awaiting their turn. Every time a wicket fell she clapped her hands and jumped around with partisan glee. “Who is the man bowling?” asked one of the visiting team. “That’s James," said the little girl gravely. “I’m going to marry him when I grow older.” James was one of the Glamis footmen. The little girl is now' Queen Elizabeth.

One branch of Mr. Lockhart’s family for a long time owned a whisky still, and he has stories to tell of this beverage:

Inevitably, even as small boys, we learnt much about the making of whisky. It was a surprise to discover that it was colourless and has been so drunk by the Scots for centuries until the distillers set out to capture the English market. In those days the English, regarding whisky as a kind of inferior gin consumed by Scottish savages, spurned it. Then by various artificial processes the Scot added the sherry colouring. Blending was also Introduced to please the English palate, and in this manner whisky conquered England. Moro tragic from the Scottish point of view were the economies of the trade. The first duty Imposed was only 3/4 a gallon, and the excise officer took the distiller’s word for the amount of his production. Gradually the need of finding fresh sources of revenue and the demands of temperance reformers brought about.successlve increases of the duty, and to-day it stands at the high figure of 72/- a gallon.

The last section, of the' book deals with .the -author’s time at:the famous Fettes School, an institution with both an excellent academic record and a great Rugby tradition. It is not surprising, seeing that his father was once one of the selectors of the Scottish fifteens, that Mr. Lockhart should have had an intense interest in. Rugby. It is likewise not surprising that he retains his interest in the game, since he played well himself at school and his immediate family has given two internationals to Scotland. But from what he* says one feels that Scottish Rugby supporters, in those days at any rate, would yield nothing, even to New Zealand, in enthusiasm for the game. Finally, Mr. Lockhart’s comments on present-day iScotland are Illuminating, after deploring the failure to give adequate protection to the agricultural industry, the consequent depopulation of the glens and the aggregation of people in the cities, and the disappearance of the old virtues of thrift, patience and self-reliance before the onslaught of undesirable features of modern life, such as the dole, he says:

Were I the counsellor of a foregn Government, and were I asked to write a confidential report on Scotland, I should have to paint my picture in black colours. I should underline the lack of unity among the population. I should refer to the danger of Scotland becoming little more than the fag-end of the depressed areas of England. And I should be compelled to point out that the Scots have now the poorest physique of any race in Europe. Moreover, I know’ that such reports have been written in such colours by unbiassed foreign observers. There is one experienced diplomatist who has compared the postwar Scotland with post-war Austria—a land that has lost faith in itself and now Jives on the foreign tourist. INSPECTOR HEAD AT WORK “Evidence in Blue,” by E. Charles Vivian (London: Ward, Lock). Mr. Vivian’s character, Inspector Head, ranks high among the detectives of fiction by his intelligence, his ability to let facts speak for themselves and the straightforward manner in whicli he does his job without the spur of those sudden and to the reader irritating intuitions which come to the aid of some of his fellow sleuths. Inspector Head’s latest case is the murder in an hotel just opposite the police station of a provincial town of a man from London, who is found stabbed with a bill spike. The inspector’s investigations disclose strange events in the theatrical life of London and in a country house. The story is well-writ-ten, the suspense is well-sustained and the mystery is eventually solved with admirable neatness. R.L.S.’s NEGLECTED GRAVE It has come as a painful shock to many lovers of Robert Louis Stevenson to learn, through the Sydney correspondent of the London “Dally Telegraph,” that his grave, on the summit of Mount Vaea—the spot where lies “the sailor home from the sea and the hunter home from the hill” —is to-day in a sadly neglected state. Not only so, but vandals have been allowed to scratch their names on the tomb and to remove chunks of the concrete slab which covers the grave. The New Zealand Government now holds, under a League of Nations mandate, what was formerly Germen Samoa, and complaints are made that its indifference to the condition of the grave of R.L.S. contrasts unfavourably with the care taken o£ it under the .Gfirman..administration