"LAN MACLAREN."

Otago Witness, Issue 2672, 31 May 1905, Page 70

" LAN MACLAREN."

The Rev. John Watson Retires from the Pulpit.-— His Forthcoming Play. — "I am worn out, and cannot go on." Keaders of lan Maclaren's Drumtochty sketches discovered a note of pathos in this confession made by Dr Watson when retiring recently from the ministry in Liverpool. After a period of rest, however, some imaginative work may be anticipated from this graphic writer. Already his first book, "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush," has been dramatised with, success foa* the American stage, and th« play will appear forthwith in England.

— A Gamekeeper's Criticism. —

Without scorning delights, Dr Watson has lived laborious days'. A Scot by descent and temperament, although by accident born in Essex, after a career of distinction as student at Edinburgh and Tubingen, he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministi-y in the hillside village of Logiealmond in tbe early "seventies." That Highland glen could not detain him more than two years. With the reputation of a coming preacher, he migrated to Glasgow in 1877, then to Sefton Park Church, Liverpool, in 1880. "He's a good preacher, but he scatters terribly." Such, according to one of Dr Watson's anecdotes, was the Highland gamekeeper's criticism of his minister. Dr Watson did not scatter his energies. Concentration was his secret. For ten years he was little known beyond the opulent suburb of Sefton Park in the Mersey city.

— "England, God's People." — Excellent sermons, full of ripe thought, derived from wide reading, embellished with the scholar's chastened style, and delivered with cultured elocution; a consummate diplomacy in administration ; the organising gift of a leader of men; exceptional "tact, and the rarest catholic sympathy; the magnetism of a massive personality, drew around him a congrega- J tion of Watsonites,- where every sitting was let, with 70C communicants, and aa annual revenue of £5000. In Liverpool he stood for catholicity, could not ~b& dragged into controversy, and left polemics of sect and party to the clever laymen who occupied his pews. One of his warmest friends in affairs civic and social was the late Monsignor Turner, of the Roman Catholic Church. A theologian, he was little of an ecclesiastic; rather was he the humanist of the type of Fegnelons, whom the people called "The Good Father."- As public questions arose, he dealt "with principles always, attacked person^ never. I cannot forget the ecstatic thrill with whioh I listened to a sermon by him — an oration — one dark, tempestuous January Sunday on "England, God's People^" which was informed by the sanest Imperialism, at a time wlien clouds and darkness encompassed the nation from the sid« of foreign politics.

— A Good Raconteur. —

In the early nineties nobody around Sefton Park euspect^S^D^ '-Watson of literary ambitions. "His medium was the j sermon, his metier the service of his church. He was much talked about for a raconteur, whose anecdotes, mostly of Scottish origin, kept the table in a roar. Nor had he- personal dreams of fame in : letters. He relates in his facetious manner how his first and last leading article was written for an obscure local print in "condemnation of the abortive match tax associated with the name of Robert Lowe (Viscount Sherbrooke). Barry had popularised the Scottish vernacular idyll known now as "Kailyard," in the late "eighties." In the middle of tlie "nineties" Rumour whispered in Liverpool that the i.iew writer of "Kailyard"' stories in th© British Weekly, who was concealed behind the pen-name of lan Maclaren, was the gifted minister of Sefton Park Church. The secret was not kept ; but if the experimental story-sketches had failed lan Maclaren would have died unidentified soon after he was bom ! Success came in. a flood. Drumtochty was accepted for the rjcmpltsment of Thrums, and Maclaren's homespun characters^ — Hillocks, Drumslieugh, Burnbrae, Jamie Soutar, Rabbi Saunderson, etc. — charmed a pujblic already enamoured of Barrio's Haggart, Whamond,. Mealmaker, and other worthies of Thrums. — The Drumtochty — - r His first pastoraCe at Logiealmohd! gave Dr Watson the raw material for these popular tales and character sketches. Solitude is ever the nurse~~of great souls. Even Burns produced his masterpieces when undisturbed by fame at Mossgiel. Carlyle expanded into a Titan of the mind on the dreary moors at Craigeniputtoek. Dr Boyd ("A. K. H. B.") gathered tie impressions embodied in his essays in the pastoral tranquillity of his parish of Irongray. For the Liverpool writer the' past won "a glory from its being far." Logiealmond, a typical Scottish "claclian" on the southern fringe of the -Perthshire Highlands, sleeping there in the lap of a fertile valley, and overlooked to the north by the weird solitudes and romantic grandeur of the Sma Glen, was transfigured in glory clouds born of the imagination into the Drumtochty of his books. Thither now pilgrimages are made when the heather is in bloom, and in the modern vernauclar fiction of Scotland, Drumtochtv and Thrums are rivals for the hand of Fame. With moist eyes, or with roars of laughter, did the expatriated Scot in the United States and tbe colonies read the Di'umtochty tales. Was not this the p l t! home in the glen idealised? Had not he, too, known his Jamie Soutar, his Doctor Maclure, his Driunshouwh, his Burnbrae, his Milton who "carried Pharisaism to the point of genius"? Within two years 80,000 copies of the "Bonnie Brier Bush" were printed. In 1896 Dr Watson accomplished his first visit to the United States, where he delivered his "i'sxle lecture on "The Cure of Souls," and was rented by Major Pond at a great price for an itinerary of Drumtochty lectures ; besieged wherever he went on the American Continent l>y Scotsmen, and Sqots-

women as well, eager to grasp his hand, and weeping in noble teais as patriots selfexiled and prosperous. On. his return from this record lecturing tour I had an important interview with Dr Watsorj. While we sat together, telegrams were flying thickly about liis ears ; for great editors —-whom he somewhere describes as "the infallible barometer of public opinion" — wanted "'words" from him about many tilings. "Ah!" hs remarked lo me, "they say I have grown famous now ; but, I tell you sincprely, I often wish I could divest myself of the burden of public distinction and go back to the obscure tranquillity of any fiist lktle charge in the Highland glen." "Kailyard" cannot be called either a permanent or a classic phase of literature ; but the wit, humour, pathos of lan Mnclaren, his tongue sweet or "nippy" in books, will find readers at home and in the United States and the colonies in whatever mould or medium these qualities of his genius may reappear. There is an element that is deeper than mere "Kailyard" in his fiction.

— A Possible Statesman. —

At fifty-five it is not too late for Dr Watson to seek his newer world. There is a possible statesman in him. His books, lake his sermons, attract the cultured class as well as the common people. In the morning of fhe fatal Sunday which, witnessed Matthew Arnold's sudden death at the Dingle, Liverpool, the poet heard Dr Watson preach. After searaxm, Watt's affecting hymn was sung, "When I survey the wondrous cross." In the home of his. host immediately before he walked out into tihe arms -of Death, Arnold was overheard repeating to himself the lines-: See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down ; Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

That is a sacred menw>ry of later Victorian literature. Other wayfaring Arnolds may yet find guidance, soothing, stimulus in the new work of lan Maclaren, produced in the freer air, of an exclusive literary life. — ,T. P.'s Weekly.