Sit down & strap in: it’s going to be a long, wild Scottish literature 🧵…
What 🏴 Scotsman was caught up in a South American civil war before he was 20? Wrote a book that inspired an Oscar-winning film? Met a runaway teenager in Paris & married her against the wishes of his family? Lost his ranch to raiding Apaches?
1/18
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Went into Parliament as a Liberal MP & came out as a Socialist? Assaulted a policeman in defence of free speech & was sent to prison? Travelled in disguise in 🇲🇦 Morocco trying to reach a forbidden city?
2/18
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Helped found both the Scottish Labour Party AND the SNP? Was a ferocious critic of imperialism, racism & cruelty to any human or animal? Bought his favourite horse – an Argentine mustang – from the Glasgow Tramway Company and rode it for twenty years?
3/18
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Wrote nearly thirty books, including 200 short stories & sketches? Knew nearly all the great writers & artists of his day? Had a funeral attended by the President of a republic & the two most famous horses in the world?
4/18
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Is buried in a grave beside his wife on a small lake-island not far from Glasgow? Has, strangely, been nearly totally ignored, even almost forgotten, as a personality & politician & writer by recent generations?
5/18
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Ladies & gentlemen, please allow me to introduce Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936). Traveller, adventurer, politician, Scottish laird, American rancher, superb horseman, writer of essays, polemic, history, biography, & fiction, he was born #OTD, 24 May.
6/18
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“An impenitent & unashamed dandy” – from Joseph Conrad’s Letters to R.B. Cunninghame Graham, ed. C.T. Watts (Cambridge University Press, 2011), quoting George Bernard Shaw
7/18
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #Victorian #Edwardian #JosephConrad #GeorgeBernardShaw
“You ought, Mr Graham, to be the first president of a British Republic.” “I ought, madam, if I had my rights,” he answered sardonically, “to be the king of this country. And what a three weeks that would be!”
—Ford Madox Ford, RETURN TO YESTERDAY
8/18
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RBCG’s wife, Gabriela de la Balmondière, was equally exotic & romantic. Born in Chile, her father – French nobleman Francisco Jose de la Balmondière – & his elegant Spanish wife were both killed when Gabriela was 12. She grew up with an aunt in Paris.
📷 Gabriela de la Balmondière
9/18
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RBCG & Gabriela met in Paris when he was 26 & she was only 17. They were married just 6 weeks later. They travelled to the USA & settled into a Bohemian life in Mexico, where RBCG taught fencing & Gabriela taught French & guitar.
10/18
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They returned to Scotland where Gabriela won the admiration of her husband’s society friends – Wilde, Yeats, Engels, & others – with her “slight accent, neither French nor Spanish, but most attractive and charming, as foreign accents sometimes can be, especially with ladies.”
11/18
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Gabriela was a talented writer herself. Emilia Pardo Bazán introduced Gabriela’s work to Spanish literary journals, & Gabriela translated Bazán’s novel El destripador de antaño into English. She also wrote a highly regarded 3-volume biography of St Teresa of Avila.
12/18
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #Victorian #Edwardian #translation #Spanish
In 1906, when Gabriela died, tragically young, she was buried on the island of Inchmahome in the Lake of Menteith. RBCG dug her grave himself. He never remarried. When he died, 30 years later, he was buried alongside her
13/18
https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2018/01/adventurer-worth-remembering/
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Then, in 1985, papers were discovered by the family. “Gabriela” had not been born in Chile to European nobility: her real name was Carrie Horsfall, from Masham in Yorkshire, who ran away to become an actress – which might explain why her exotic accent was so hard to pin down.
14/18
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Clearly, Carrie was an accomplished thespian. She, and Robert – & Carrie’s sisters, who were in on the secret – maintained the deception throughout her life & after, under an ever-present shadow of possible scandal & ruin.
15/18
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Gabriela’s – Carrie’s – incredible career inspired the historian & novelist Clare Clark, whose novel BEAUTIFUL LIES is a (very lightly) fictionalised version of her life. But can fiction beat reality?
16/18
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/400682/The-gaucho-MP-and-the-girl-from-the-Yorkshire-Ridings
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Our book EMPIRES & REVOLUTIONS: Cunninghame Graham & His Contemporaries contains essays exploring ideas of revolution, emancipation, equality, & liberty in the works of RBCG & other Scottish writers of the period – in print & online via Project MUSE
17/18
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/occasional_papers/empires-and-revolutions/
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You’ve made it to the end! Have a FREE book! 3 short stories by Cunninghame Graham: “A Hegira”, “The Goldfish”, & “Beattock for Moffat”. Set in 🇲🇽 Mexico, 🇲🇦 Morocco, & 🏴 Scotland, they are about journeys & frontiers, & about tenacity, loss, & death.
18/18
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/free-publications/three_stories/
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PS: Billy Kay’s 5-part radio series, “Don Roberto”, which he made for the BBC in 1999 – practically the only significant piece of media attention RBCG has received in living memory – is available to listen to on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgI0uOcqlxqQYMvtLxvwZaDhqrxIzKJHo
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PPS: a small selection of RB Cunninghame Graham’s books – including THIRTEEN STORIES, from which “A Hegira”, “The Goldfish”, & “Beattock for Moffat” are extracted – are available free from @gutenberg_org
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/644
#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #20thcentury #Victorian #Edwardian
Assoc for Scottish Literature
Lilly Hunter