CHAPTER III
GLASGOW: THE INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS
“There is nothing so certain as the unexpected.” Our first impression, after stepping upon the dry land of Europe, was that it was “limited.” Not that we had been obsessed by the spirit that dwelt in that reinforced Western Yankee, who, while on the island of Britain, was afraid to go to sleep o’ nights lest he might fall off! Yet in Glasgow the word “Limited” stared at us from every shop sign. We had not yet in America adopted the statute of financial limitations for trading firms, but the laws of the United Kingdom even then required that any one doing business with a limited capital or accountability, must state the fact on his shop sign or other public announcement. It was this frequent expression of commercial conditions, then a real novelty, that attracted our initial attention.
It was the day before Scotland’s Sabbath, or, in local dialect, “Sunday First,” that we had our virgin view of Glasgow, and the excellent custom of a Saturday half-holiday was in vogue. This afforded us all the more ease in seeing the principal thoroughfares, which, with the crowd absent and the shops closed, made comfort, but gave to the lengthened areas a deserted look. We sauntered into St. George’s Square, where, in addition to the imposing buildings surrounding it, rises the lofty column on which stands the bronze effigy of Sir Walter Scott. How marvellously did this Wizard of the North delight millions, through many generations, with his poetical numbers and his weird romances! To-day, his name is a magnet that annually brings to Scotland thousands of tourists and millions of dollars. In the long run there are no more valuable assets to a country than its great men and its deathless literature.
There were other statues visible at this time, but the larger number of those which to-day run the risk of being destroyed by bombs from the empyrean, in the new fashions prevalent in aerial warfare, were not then in existence. So it was to the cathedral that we hied, partly for the reason that this was to be the first of the many great sacred and historic edifices to be seen by us in the Old World, but chiefly because the hoary pile was almost the only one which survived the tumult and destruction of the Reformation. Largely by the “rascal multitude,” as Knox called the mob, but also in the then prevalent conviction that these structures, as then used, had survived their original purpose, and should be reduced to ruins, cathedrals, abbeys, and monasteries were levelled. For her size, no country excels Scotland in ruins.
The Glasgow cathedral, in slow evolution during centuries, was never finished. For a time its inner area was divided off to make worship more comfortable and also to bring the structure into closer conformity with those new fashions in religion, according to which the people were given sermons, instead of masses, with more worship through the intellect, and less through the senses and emotions. Yet as we stood within its cold, damp walls, on that July afternoon, we wondered how long human beings, unless clothed in plenty of woollen habiliments, could sit or stand on its stone floor. Despite its age, the interior had an air of newness, indeed, almost of smartness, for its architectural restoration and interior cleansing had been recent. The modern stained glass, made largely in Munich, though very rich, had not yet softened down into the mellowness which only centuries can bestow. One noted that the subjects selected and grandly treated with the glory, yet also within the historic limitations, of the artist in stained glass, were wholly taken from the New Testament. These Biblical and eternally interesting subjects compel thought and provoke contrast with the more garish themes of the modern world.
Going out from the great cathedral, and its wonderful crypt, we visited the Necropolis, Glasgow’s beautiful city of the dead. Being set upon a hill, it cannot be hid. Laid out in the form of terraces, and with many imposing monuments, it challenges our attention. Here sleep the merchant princes of Glasgow and the mighty dead of Scotland. The tombs are of the most costly character, for the most durable materials in nature have been summoned to record facts and to defy oblivion. Everything which love of beauty, chaste refinement, and abundant wealth could command has been wrought with toil and taste to make this lovely home of those at rest a fit resting-place for the brave men and women who are still unforgotten. The long roll of their names forms the brightest page in Scotland’s history, and the native, even when far from home, dearly loves to remember them. On a lofty Doric column, high over all else, is a statue of John Knox, and on its base is the thrilling inscription:—
“Here lies one who never feared the face of mortal man.”
Among the names, read at random on the sculptured stone, were those of Sheridan Knowles, Dr. John Dick, Melville the reformer, and many others familiar and honored in Scottish history. Thus, as out of the past centuries does the old cathedral, so, in the modern day, do the shining monuments of the departed dead look down upon the bustling life that goes on noisily below. One here feels that the spell of Scotland is not only in nature’s glories, but in the matchless landscape of her thought; nor is the empire of Scottish intellect one whit less fascinating than that of her lochs, her moors, her heather, or her granite hills. What Scotland has contributed to religion, in both theoretical study and in fruitage of practical results, argues well for world-unity. Our debt as Americans to her thought is immeasurable.
The next day is the Sabbath. The chimneys are asleep, and after the showers of the night before, even the air seems washed clean. “Like a spell,” the “serene and golden sunlight” lies over land and sea. One can now readily accept another line of verbal genealogy. Remembering that coal smoke is, after all, very modern, and chemical fumes recent, it is easier to believe that “Glasgow” is not derived from words meaning “dark glen,” but is only a modified form of the old Celtic word Gleshui, or Glas-chu, which means “dear green spot,” from glas, green and chu, dear.
Indeed, there are antiquarians who tell us that when the first Christian missionary, St. Kentigern, came to convert the Britons of Strathclyde, this antique term, expressing affection for the place and its beauty, became the name of the settlement. In days when the efficiency of particular saints was believed in more than now, and before the great American god Prosperity was so worshipped, and before both we Yankees and the people whom Napoleon bundled together as “a nation of shopkeepers” did so bow before the golden calf, every city, town, and even village had its patron saint.