Reputations revisited:

Edwin Morgan

and Lord Rodger

Kenneth Roy

 

When the exciting, if unexpected, news emerged of the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan's will, his admirers were astonished that the 'Scots makar' had died a rich man with hundreds of thousands in the bank and a share portfolio worth £1.5m, even after the great crash of 2008. Although it is never wise to challenge a 'bona-fide national treasure' (as Morgan has been called), SR dared to put into the public domain questions that many were asking privately. This has yielded the following response from his executors, David Kinloch and James McGonigal (both academics in Glasgow):
     The stocks and shares in question were inherited from his parents on their deaths. Morgan could have accessed this wealth at any stage during the remainder of his life and chose not to do so. Instead he preferred to hold it in trust for the two causes in which he believed passionately: Scottish independence and poetry. For example, he could have used this money to make his own final years much more comfortable. He did not. He sold his modest two-bedroom flat and used these proceeds – as many other pensioners are forced to do these days – to help pay for his care in a home. Prior to that, he gifted an enormous collection of books which he had spent a lifetime gathering together in this flat to the Mitchell Library for the enjoyment of the people of this city and a further substantial collection of art works to the University of Glasgow.
     There is inevitably a sense of disappointment about this statement. The delightful speculation that the old boy, despite every appearance of Scottish frugality, was a closet FT reader, playing a blinder on the markets, has proved to be unfounded. Edwin Morgan did not, after all, create his own wealth – except, of course, to the significant extent that he appointed professional advisers to guard his share portfolio, decade after decade, until and beyond his death, when it could be passsed on to causes dear to his heart.
     But there is also a sense of amusing irony. The source of his wealth turns out to have been the very family against whose conservative, church-going ways the young Morgan rebelled, becoming as close to a revolutionary communist as makes no difference. It was a fortune unimagined by Morgan's obituarists, whose portrait of his father – a clerk in the ship-breaking trade who rose to a seat on his firm's board – never hinted at the scale of the presbyterian enterprise and thrift lurking behind the lace curtains of solid, well-doing Rutherglen. This was the sort of unflashy Glasgow money – the old, old Glasgow money – that so fascinated the playwright James Bridie.
     The story of Edwin Morgan's family is indeed rich in symbolism. Such are the ravages of capitalism, for example, there is not a ship left to break in Glasgow. It is a mystery to me how fortunes are now made in that city, if they are made at all, but they are certainly no longer made in breaking ships. After they had broken the last of the ships, there was only the heart of Govan left to break.

 

     Finally, at the conclusion of this intriguing vignette, there is for me a sense of surprise. I ought not to be surprised, but somehow I am. The incident has revealed something interesting about the attitudes of the liberal-left intelligentsia in Scotland. The lovely people who routinely rail against the evils of the capitalist racket, fulminating against its methods and effects, claimed to see nothing inconsistent in Edwin Morgan's undeclared nurturing of a considerable share portfolio and his anti-capitalist public sentiments.
     One or two people wrote to me expressing delight that old Eddie had manipulated the system so brilliantly and wondering why I had such a problem with it. (As it happens, I don't; I was just making mischief, as journalists do, and wondering idly where it might lead and what it might reveal. I didn't have to wait long.) Some of the justifications were, however, a trifle bizarre. One dear old friend from the unreconstructed left said it didn't matter that Edwin Morgan was stinking rich or that his wealth had been made from the stock market. It didn't matter because – well – he was just so damned handsome when he was young.
     Yes, I shall be looking at the comrades in a new light. If only the bankers had been better looking, much might have been forgiven. And I shall be hoping that, when the time comes to donate my enormous collection of books to the local Oxfam and shuffle off to the nearest care home – as so many pensioners are forced to do these days – I don't end up in a place owned by Southern Cross, that well-known advertisement for the beneficial influence of modern capitalism.
     The other story yesterday – not entirely unrelated to the discussion of Edwin Morgan's public reputation – was the curious official reaction to the death of Lord Rodger, one of the two Scottish judges on the UK Supreme Court, whose opinion in the notorious case of Nat Fraser provoked howls of outrage from the Scottish ministers a few short weeks ago. When we reported at the height of the furore that Lord Rodger was very ill, we did so in the forlorn hope that the personal attacks on him might cease. Sadly, they did not.
     Upon his death, representatives of the Scottish Government – one of whose number suggested earlier this month that what Lord Rodger and his colleagues knew about Scots law they had picked up on a visit to Edinburgh during the festival – were not slow to praise his 'outstanding' contribution to Scottish justice and his many qualities as a jurist. How can these conflicting evaluations of Lord Rodger's worth possibly be reconciled? Either the first claim was true, or the second. They cannot both be true.
     But, as in the case of Edwin Morgan, the age of candour has its limits. I concluded the first piece about Morgan with the rather obvious remark that no one knows the first thing about anyone else. To which a correspondent responded: 'But why would we want to?'.

Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review