Biography

 

Throwing stones at a statue

 

David McVey

The meeting

In 1898, Joseph Conrad was considering returning to the sea. Books such as 'An Outcast of the Islands' and 'Almayer's Folly' had been praised by most critics but sales were poor; Conrad '...could not find his books on sale anywhere'. In September, Conrad headed north, to Glasgow, in the hope of finding a captaincy.
     It's not clear how serious Conrad was in this mission; one recent biographer makes no mention of the trip. While in Glasgow, he met up with Glasgow-based writer and journalist, Neil Munro, whose recent collection of short stories he had admired. Munro was also keen on Conrad's writing; just a few weeks before meeting Conrad he had written, in a newspaper column: 'A generation hence...we shall waken up to find that Joseph Conrad has been the most wonderful writer of the sea English literature has produced'.
     Munro and Conrad dined in the Bath Street home of Dr John McIntyre, a pioneer of X-ray photography. It was a high-tech evening, partly spent listening to Conrad's compatriot Paderewski on a phonograph, and 'we had our hands X-rayed and before we left for a stroll through the sleeping city which lasted till three AM we got the photograph prints of them'.
     It is during this late walk through Glasgow that the episode that concerns us probably took place, though Osborne suggests that it was during Conrad's 1923 visit to Glasgow. The fullest description is given by Lendrum.
     The two men came to Glasgow's George Square, to the north-eastern corner and the statue of James Oswald. Oswald had been a local supporter of the 1832 Reform Bill and had later served as an MP. His statue still stands where Conrad and Munro encountered it, his top hat held in his outstretched left hand. Birds have been known to nest in the hat, and small boys have often tried to land thrown stones in its depths. Munro, who '...was quite capable of inventing ancient Glasgow superstitions at a moment's notice', informed Conrad that he would be an honorary Glaswegian if he managed to land a stone in the hat. After several attempts, he managed to do so.
     It's worth stressing that they had tippled a good deal; Conrad later wrote to Edward Garnett about the evening and in so doing coined a fine euphemism, 'We foregathered very much indeed'. After seeing Conrad safely into the St Enoch Hotel, Munro had to walk several miles to his southside home, having missed the last train. He didn't arrive until 5am.
     The two men kept in touch afterwards, but in its primary purpose the visit was a failure. Conrad told Edward Garnett: 'Nothing decisive happened in Glasgow'. Conrad must have been better known as a writer than he feared, for he later blamed his literary reputation for his failure to gain a ship. 'This confounded literature has ruined me entirely,' he wrote to RB Cunninghame Graham in November.
     For English letters it's as well that Conrad didn't return to the sea. He remains a towering literary figure, but, for readers outside Scotland, Munro is less well known. It is perhaps worth focusing on him for a spell.

Munro

Lendrum is the best source for biographical information about Munro; much of the following is drawn from her work.
     Neil Munro was born, the illegitimate son of a kitchen maid, in Inveraray, Argyll, in 1863. He grew up bilingual in English and Gaelic, and moved to Glasgow when he was 18; he drifted into journalism and began submitting poems and short stories to the press. Blackwood's Magazine became excited about some of his short stories and some of these were included in 'The Lost Pibroch and Other Sheiling Stories'.
     In these stories, Munro tackled Gaelic culture and history, and attempted to reflect Gaelic speech rhythms in English ('Its story was the story that's ill to tell – something of the heart's longing and the curious chances of life'), but his fiction is earthy and often tragic. The stories show little of the wistful Celtic twilight and perhaps a more apt comparison is with Hardy's Wessex short stories. 'The Lost Pibroch' sold well in England as well as in Scotland.
     Munro's first novel was 'John Splendid', a historical tale set during Montrose's campaigns ('And splendid indeed it is', wrote Conrad to Munro in November 1898). His final completed novel, 'The New Road', was another historical piece, this time set before the 1745 Jacobite rising; it's usually regarded as his best and was adapted for BBC television as recently as 1974. Superficially another exciting Highland novel after 'Kidnapped', 'The New Road' is a searching, thoughtful exploration of how ancient, martial societies decline and break up. The rebellious Highlanders will be tamed not just by force of arms, but by trade and goods, by a money economy and cultural dilution.
     Munro published eight novels between 1898 and 1914, but remained a full-time journalist. He was married with, eventually, six children surviving to adulthood and he juggled journalism – including the editorship of the Glasgow Evening News – and other writing, mindful of the number of mouths his pen had to feed. Hugh MacDiarmid, in his put-the-boot-in series of Contemporary Scottish Studies, commented of Munro: 'He has consistently served two Gods – and has not succeeded in avoiding the consequences of a divided allegiance'. This is one of MacDiarmid's kinder comments in the series.
     In Munro's regular newspaper columns he would often use recurring fictional characters to populate short humorous sketches. Three of these cycles of sketches eventually were collected in books of their own. 'Erchie: My Droll Friend' was a comic Glaswegian worthy, while 'Jimmy Swan' was a commercial traveller. However, his tales of the comical adventures of the crew of the Clyde coastal puffer the Vital Spark, collected in 'The Vital Spark', 'In Highland Harbours with Para Handy' and 'Hurricane Jack of the Vital Spark' were destined to be his most successful works of all. A complete collection of the three volumes together with previously unpublished sketches was published in 2002.
     These comic sketches – always journalism, never 'short stories' as such – were published under the pseudonym 'Hugh Foulis', though everyone was in on the secret. The runaway success of the Vital Spark stories became an embarrassment, like the popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories to Conan Doyle. However, he had tapped into something real and enduring, particularly in the vainglorious but loveable figure of the boat's skipper, Para Handy. Today, if English readers have been exposed to Munro at all, it's through the three generations of the BBC sitcom based on Munro's characters, with, successively, Duncan MacRae, Roddy MacMillan and Gregor Fisher as Para Handy.
     Neil Munro died in 1930. He had had a happy and contented marriage and family life, difficult conditions for ensuring prolonged fame. His work remained popular in Scotland, though, and the Para Handy stories have never been out of print. In more recent times, Munro has started to attract critical attention – curiously, there is a lengthy tradition of academic study of his works in Germany. His major novels and short story collections are back in print. His granddaughter, Lesley Lendrum, published a readable biography – the first – in 2004.
     Some in England are unaware of this critical shift. One Conrad scholar clearly struggled to understand Conrad's meetings with Munro, whom he describes witheringly as 'a now forgotten journalist and a writer of Scottish fiction [who] had the popular touch and reached a wide audience'. The same scholar also dismisses 'John Splendid' as 'unreadable now'.

Why Munro?

The story of Munro and Conrad in George Square is difficult to source; both Conrad and Munro wrote about other aspects of the meeting, but never about the stone-throwing; the source of that seems to have been George Blake, Clydeside novelist and journalist colleague of Munro (cited by both House and Lendrum).
     Neil Munro's diary is a sketchy record of meetings and travels from the 1880s to 1916, but the encounter with Conrad is not mentioned, though the week before he made a humdrum entry remarking: 'Sold Lipton shares at 24/- premium'. The stone-throwing has become 'Munro folklore' but there is no good reason to doubt that it occurred; Blake was a good friend of Munro's and would have often heard the story of the 1898 foregathering. Taking the incident as a real one, I'd suggest it surprises us because we see Conrad, a rather sombre figure, indulging in drunken juvenile japery; and possibly because we see him frolicking with a writer, now seen as far from the first rank, whose principal gift was for journalism.
     Munro was an exceptional and hard-working journalist. We have perhaps forgotten how influential print journalists could once be, and the freedom with which they could approach their trade. Today's broadsheet newspapers are often full of vacuous columnists with little to say and no great art in saying it, but the columnist of the past was a more substantial figure. Munro wrote all kinds of journalism, and many columns, some with a byline, some without, some with a pseudonym. His Jimmy Swan, Erchie and Para Handy stories were journalism, but they were journalism of an especially creative sort. Most of Munro's pieces were written to address issues in the local or national news but the characters, situation or dialogue are sufficient to ensure that all three – but especially Para Handy – can still be read with enjoyment today.
     'The Grand Old Man Comes Down' is an Erchie story that tackles the issue of public statuary. Erchie muses on how statues in his day go out of fashion very quickly, with no one looking at them after they've been in position for a year. Erchie, or, rather, Munro, goes on to remark, perhaps remembering the 1898 foregathering and looking forward to Conrad's second visit to Glasgow, that James Oswald's in George Square is the only one that gets any attention, if only from small boys throwing stones.
     Erchie describes a future where statues will be cast on wheels so that they can be moved about to different locations in the city, thereby never losing their novelty. An idea worthy, perhaps, of Alan Coren or Armando Ianucci.

While we may be surprised to see Conrad, the consummate literary artist, jesting and socialising with Munro whose '...instinct and... talent were for journalism', we should remember that Munro is an unjustly neglected writer of fiction, and a creative and imaginative journalist of some influence. The incident where Munro and Conrad hurled stones towards an august Victorian statue is not only an irresistible anecdote, but an attractive picture of two different approaches to the literary arts combining not just in mutual respect, but in shared enjoyment of off-duty frivolity.