Whilst Glasgow is a city of flats its people are resourceful and energetic. Keen and canny, they drive a close bargain but, scrupulous and conscientious, fulfil it faithfully. Proud of their city and its progress, its industries and manufactures, its civic importance, they are a little disdainful perhaps, perhaps a little jealous, of their beautiful elder sister, Edinburgh. Glasgow is the Belfast of Scotland!
Self-contained houses are the exception and are limited to the well-to-do. The flat, in most cases, means a restricted number of apartments, insufficient bedroom accommodation, and the concealed bed is Glasgow’s way of solving the difficulty.
Tom and I did not take kindly to our hole in the wall, and soon found other lodgings where space was not so circumscribed, and where we could sleep in an open bed in an open room.
Our new quarters were a great success; a ground-floor flat with a fine front door; a large well-furnished sitting room with two windows looking out on to the street, and an equally large double-bedded room at the back of the sitting room. Our landlady, a kind, motherly, canny Scotchwoman, looked after us well and favoured us with many a bit of good advice: “You must be guid laddies, and tak care o’ the bawbees; you maun na eat butchers’ meat twice the week; tak plenty o’ parritch and dinna be extravagant.” Economy with the good old soul was a cardinal virtue, waste a deadly sin. I fear she was often shocked at our easy Saxon ways, though Tom and I thought ourselves models of thrift.
Once, it was on a Sunday, Tom and I, with a party of friends, had had a very long walk, a regular pedestrian excursion, thirty miles, there or thereabouts, to use a Scotticism, and poor Tom was quite knocked up and confined to bed for several days. Our good old landlady was greatly shocked; a strict Sabbatarian, she knew it was a punishment for “breakin’ the Sabbath; why had na ye gane to the kirk like guid laddies?” We modestly reminded her that we always did go, excepting of course on this particular Sunday. “Then whit business had ye to stay awa on ony Sabbath?” We had nothing to say in answer to this. The dear old creature
was really shocked at our backsliding; but she nursed Tom very tenderly all the same.
When the sultry heat of summer came we found Glasgow very trying, and though sorry to leave our good landlady, moved into the country, to Cambuslang, a village some four miles from the city, which was then becoming a favourite residential resort.
At Cambuslang I made the acquaintance and became the friend of Cynicus, the humorous artist whose satirical sketches have, for many years, been well-known and well sold in England, in Scotland and in Ireland too. He was then a youth of about twenty. Longing to see the world and without the necessary means, he emulated Goldsmith, made a prolonged tour in France and Italy supporting himself not by his flute nor by disputations, but by his brush and palette. For a few weeks at a time he worked in towns or cities, sold what he painted, and then, with purse replenished, wandered on. He and I were living “doon the watter,” at Dunoon, on the Clyde, one summer month. A Fancy Dress Bazaar was on at the time. The first evening we went to it, and he, unobserved, made furtive sketches of the most prominent people and the prettiest girls. We both sat up all that night, he working at and finishing the sketches. Next morning by the first boat and first train, we took them to Glasgow, had six hundred lithographic copies struck off; back post-haste to Dunoon; in the evening to the Bazaar, and sold the copies at threepence each. It was an immense success; we could have disposed of twice the number; every pretty girl’s admirer wanted a copy of her picture, and the portraits of the presiding “meenister” and of the good-looking unmarried curate were eagerly purchased by fond mammas and adoring daughters. We had our fun, and cleared besides a profit of nearly four pounds sterling. This financial coup would not have come off so well but for the warm-hearted co-operation of our railway printers, McCorquodale and Coy. They, good people, entered into our exploit with a will, did their part well, and made little if any profit, generously leaving that to Cynicus and myself.
To his mother, like many another clever son, Cynicus owed his talent. She was a woman of great intellectual endowment, with highly cultivated literary tastes. Her memory was remarkable and her conversational powers
very great. She read much and thought deeply. In a modest way her parlour, which attracted many young people of literary and artistic leanings, recalled the Salons of France of a century ago. She entertained charmingly with tea and cakes and delightful talk. Of strong, firm, decided character, she might, perhaps, have been thought a little deficient in womanly gentleness had not genuine kindness of heart, motherly feeling, and a happy humour lent a softness to her features and imparted to them a particular charm. She exercised an authority over her household which inspired respect and contrasted strikingly with the easy-going parental ways of to-day. There were other sons and there were daughters also, all more or less gifted, but Cynicus was the genius of the family—its bright particular star.