The Silent Sentinels of Stürlack (eBook)

Chapter 1

Strathclyde

The roots of this narrative are embedded in the striving industrial city of Glasgow at the end of the nineteenth century and revolve primarily around my Grandmother, Maggie Wilson. She was the eldest of seven children, born in 1878 to John Wilson, a machine-tool manufacturer, who had played a part in the construction of the Argentine railways, and his wife Margaret Leask, daughter of a Shetland farmer and fisherman. Music and art were certainly important components in the upbringing of this large family. Maggie’s father, although not able to play the piano himself, sat beside his daughter regularly and encouraged her to learn. She showed great aptitude and, despite the fact that she was completely self-taught, became a sought-after accompanist in Glasgow circles while still a very young woman. A younger sister, Mary, played the violin and in her adult years had lessons with the famous viola player, William Primrose. Arthur, the youngest brother, loved painting. Suffering severe shell-shock after being called up in his early twenties to fight in the First World War, he returned to Scotland with his nerves so shattered that he was thereafter unable to engage in any sort of profession. Water-colour painting became his saving grace, together with an intense interest in the propagation and cross-pollination of rhododendrons and azaleas.

When Maggie was twenty-one, her mother unexpectedly died of a stroke at the family’s New Year party. Maggie was in the middle of training to become an infant school teacher, and now found herself responsible for being ‘mother’ to all her younger brothers and sisters. The youngest, Laura, cannot have been more than nine years old. There seems to have been a housekeeper to cook the main meals, but it was Maggie who gave the children breakfast, sent them off punctually to school and sewed most of the clothes. On one occasion, little Laura was not to be coaxed to eat up her porridge in the early morning and she resorted to dubious means to leave her bowl seemingly clean. Down behind her liberty bodice proved to be the perfect solution - maybe she was already acquainted with the benefits of a warm poultice (usually mashed-potato packed between two layers of gauze) when suffering from a cough. Off she trundled to school and it was only at bedtime that the congealed mass was discovered.

On completing her college studies, my Grandmother was given a post as teacher to a class of 5-year olds in the deprived and rough district of Glasgow known as the Gorbals. Many of the youngsters from working-class homes - insalubrious tenements - came to school bare-foot. They knew only the squalid cobbled streets and back yards of their poor surroundings. Their smiling young faces, however, gave Maggie a mission to broaden their horizons, so she quenched their thirst for learning by reading them extracts from one of Scotland’s most popular classics for children - the collection of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’. Here they could at least revel in imagining the countryside, rivers, the sea, cows, trees and flowers - all things lacking in their experience. Maggie thought that one particular poem ‘Foreign Lands’ would be especially suitable:

Up into the cherry tree

Who should climb but little me?

I held the trunk with both my hands

And looked abroad on foreign lands

I saw the next door garden lie,

Adorned with flowers, before my eye,

And many pleasant places more

That I had never seen before.

(here maybe an allusion to the
River Clyde)

I saw the dimpling river pass

And be the sky’s blue looking-glass;

The dusty roads go up and down

With people tramping in to town.

(perhaps the magical Clyde Estuary,
opening into the sea between
Gourock and Dunoon?)

If I could find a higher tree

Farther and farther I should see,

To where the grown-up river slips

Into the sea among the ships,

To where the roads on either hand

Lead onward into fairy land,

Where all the children dine at five,

And all the playthings come alive.

“Now children, who can tell me what ‘foreign lands’ are?” was the enthusiastic young teacher’s ensuing question. One grimy little boy gesticulated wildly with his arm in the air and provided the perfect answer: “Miss, mae Daad wurrks at Farrn Langs and he brings hame biscuits to mae Mither”! The point was proven - the small child’s radius extended no further than Glasgow’s famous bread and biscuit manufacturer, Macfarlane Lang.

Around 1903, it was music that brought Maggie together with her future husband, Peter Govan Dowie. Probably because of her heart-felt obligations to her younger siblings John, Mary, Tommie, Catherine, Arthur and Laura, she stayed at home and did not marry until five years later in 1908. Margaret Leask Dowie, my Aunt Margaret, the first of their four children, was born the following year on 1st August 1909 at 61 Airlie Gardens, Hillhead, Glasgow. She clearly enchanted her parents with her deep blue eyes and it was evident that she retained childhood memories from an extremely early age. When the doctor came to visit my Grandmother Maggie and her baby son, David, on 15th April 1912, he brought the shocking news of the sinking of the ‘Titanic’. The small two-year-old girl was deeply affected by the atmosphere of gloom and sheer disbelief portrayed on the faces of the adults. This, she maintained eight decades later, was her earliest and most vivid memory. Two further siblings were born in 1915 and 1917: Marion Govan, my Mother, followed by Laura Mary.

Margaret, as a young child, developed an avid appetite for reading - she was always to be found somewhere in a corner engrossed in a book. Sent to Glasgow High School for Girls, the renowned Scottish educational system infused her with feeling for language and engulfed her in abundant studies of English, French, German, Latin and Greek.

Following a chain of extraordinary circumstances, which will later form an important part of her curriculum vitae, in around 1941 she was to embark on the detailed, hand-written memories of her early childhood years - written in fluent German. For the reader’s interest in her family background, I have translated these findings, titled ‘Erste Erinnerungen’ (First Memories) into English.

I.

‘My special liking for stories was maybe more pronounced than in most children. Above all I loved hearing true stories about my relations. My mother knew exactly how to satisfy my cravings in this respect. She could describe family events in the most vivid manner, and although I soon knew all her recollections by heart, I never tired of hearing them over and over again. Of course I had my favourites among them, and often on rainy days, when my mother was sitting beside her sewing basket with me playing at her feet, I would ask for just these. So it was that I learned that my parents had been pupils at the same Junior School, without getting to know one another. My mother was roughly two years older than my father, which obviously proved to be an insurmountable obstacle to them becoming acquainted at school. I found this revelation somewhat special and extremely interesting.

My paternal grandfather had suffered many set-backs in his business life. No sooner had he made progress in his undertakings and was able to enjoy a more prosperous existence, than he experienced some form of setback and had to start all over again. With my maternal grandfather things were different. His life bore the marks of continuous success. As Fate would have it, round about the turn of the century, both sets of grandparents moved from Dennistoun in north-east Glasgow to Pollokshields in the south-west of the city. Although they once again lived near one another and certainly often took the same tram into town, my parents had still not met. This only happened later - in my eyes, in a very romantic way.

My father had an elder brother, Robert, who was an enthusiastic participant in choral singing. My mother, being a wonderful pianist, was often asked to play for various performances. At a particular charity concert, she had been asked to accompany a choir - and that was where she met my uncle. She invited him to come to a soirée at my grandfather’s house. These musical evenings took place once a month and must have been very entertaining. Uncle Robert apparently enjoyed it so much that he asked if he could come again and bring his younger brother with him. Robert was proud of Peter. He noticed that Peter had a very good voice, had sent him to a reputable singing teacher and paid for the lessons himself. Now he wanted to introduce the product of his generosity to a receptive audience. It was in this fashion that my mother accompanied my father for the first time at the piano. She never told me what she liked the best about him, but I imagine that her attraction for him might well have been aroused by a small incident that took place on that evening.

The salon in ‘Dunbritton’ - that was the name of my grandfather’s house - was a very large room, that, according to Victorian custom, was never used during the daytime. As my grandfather had a thrifty side to him, the room was hardly ever heated, which in the poor Scottish climate led inevitably to a certain build-up of dampness. As...