Category Archives: Library

HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco ‘meets’ his great-great-grandfather, Prince Albert I

Rachel Hosker, Archivist, meets Prince Albert II of Monaco. Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian, looks on.

Rachel Hosker, Archivist CRC, meets Prince Albert II of Monaco. Dr. Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian Archives & Manuscripts CRC, looks on (16 October 2014).

Today, His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco visited the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI), and met the Director of ECCI and staff from the School of Geosciences at the University’s remodelled Old High School in High School Yards .

The evening before – Thursday 16 October 2014 – a number of items from the Centre for Research Collections (CRC) were displayed before the Prince when he attended a reception at Old College, Edinburgh University.

Dr. Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian CRC, meets Prince Albert II of Monaco, Rachel Hosker, Archivist CRC, looks on.

Dr. Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian Archives & Manuscripts CRC, meets Prince Albert II of Monaco, Rachel Hosker, Archivist CRC, and Professor David M. Munro look on (16 October 2014).

The Prince was given a private viewing of the display just before the Thursday evening reception and was accompanied by, among others, the University Principal, Professor Sir Timothy O’Shea, and Professor David M. Munro OBE, Ph.D of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and a member of the Technical and Scientific Committee of the Prince Albert Foundation.

A sketch by William Speirs Bruce of the survey trawling gear on board ‘Princesse Alice’, 1898. Gen. 1646.39.1-2

For the display, items from the William Speirs Bruce collection curated by Special Collections were chosen to reflect the connection between the scientist and explorer William Speirs Bruce (1867-1921) and the Prince’s great-great-grandfather Prince Albert I of Monaco (1848-1922) who was a renowned oceanographer. Items from Edinburgh University Archives were shown too, and these described the award of an Honorary Doctor of Laws by the University to Prince Albert I in 1907.

Ms notes showing temperature and salinity observations made by Bruce from ‘Princesse Alice’, during July, August and September 1899, and between Tromsø, northern Norway, and the west coast of Spitsbergen.
Gen. 1651.101.10

William Speirs Bruce led the famed Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902-1904, on his vessel Scotia. Prior to his southern expedition he carried out research in the Arctic. He sailed the Barents Sea to Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard on the steam yacht Blencathra in May 1898, returning to Tromsø, northern Norway, in July. There he met Prince Albert I of Monaco (1848-1922) and was invited aboard the vessel Princesse Alice which had been constructed for oceanographic research.

In a log-book entry for 13 July 1906, Bruce writes about the improving weather with clouds dispersing so that ‘in the evening the sky was practically cloudless and all the peaks and glaciers clear. At midnight there was brilliant sunshine’. After lunch that day, a party of men went ashore at 3pm ‘when the Prince and the rest of us toasted them’. Gen. 1650.89.3.1-2

Bruce then accompanied the Prince on a hydrographic survey to Spitsbergen, the main island in the Svalbard archipelago. The Prince’s oceanographic research vessel took them to Bear Island as well as Spitsbergen. At the end of the expedition he returned to Edinburgh briefly, before wintering in Monte Carlo and continuing with oceanographic work on the vessel. In 1899 a return expedition was made with the Prince to Spitsbergen, and during the summers of 1906 and 1907 Bruce again visited Spitsbergen. He had been invited by Prince Albert to take part in topographical mapping of Prins Karls Forland off the west coast of the island.

From the Minutes of the Senatus Academicus, 1905-1908, and recording the decision to award the Honorary LLD. EUA IN1/GOV/SEN/1

In January 1907, Prince Albert was to be addressing the Royal Scottish Geographical Society but prior to this, at the last meeting of Senatus for 1906, it was intimated that an honorary Doctorate of Laws (LLD) would be awarded to the Prince. This had been recommended to Senatus by the LLD Committee, triggered by information from Professor James Geikie (1893-1915). A Special Graduation Ceremony was planned for the same day as the visit to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society – 17 January 1907. It was around this time too that Bruce established the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory.

The display set out for Prince Albert II of Monaco included items from the William Speirs Bruce Collection.

But… fast forward again to October 2014… and to Prince Albert II…

Dr. Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian CRC, introduces the display to Prince Albert II of Monaco, Professor David M. Munro and the University Principal

Dr. Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian Archives & Manuscripts CRC, introduces the display to Prince Albert II of Monaco, and his party. Rachel Hosker, Archivist CRC, Professor David M. Munro and the University Principal, Professor Sir Timothy O’Shea look on (16 October 2014).

Born in 1958, HSH Prince Albert II is the reigning monarch of the Principality of Monaco, and the son of Prince Rainier III of Monaco (1923-2005) and Princess Grace of Monaco (1929-1982). He is the great-great-grandson of the oceanographer Prince Albert I and his first wife Lady Mary Victoria Douglas-Hamilton (1850-1922) daughter of the 11^th Duke of Hamilton.

Items illustrating a performance by Princess Grace of Monaco at St Cecilia’s Hall in 1976, loaned from the Edinburgh International Festival and from the Herald & Times Group.

After a brief introduction to the display given by CRC staff, Professor Munro very eloquently described the collection items to Prince Albert II, as well as the connections between Bruce and Prince Albert I. The Prince was heard to indicate that he hadn’t ever seen the photograph of his great-great-grandfather taken by Herbert Mather Spoor, and which had illustrated the 1907 report in The Student.

‘The Student’ was a magazine produced by the Students’ Representative Council. It covered student life at the University alongside a broad range of topics thought to be of interest to the student body. The magazine format was later abandoned and ‘The Student’ today is a newspaper. On 25 Jan 1907 it reported that Prince Albert of Monaco had been awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws. The article included a photograph taken by medical student Herbert Mather Spoor (1872-1917), MB ChB, 1908. Spoor was later killed at Ypres in 1917. EUA.P.11

The Prince also observed that when his mother had participated in the poetry recital An American Heritage performed at St. Cecilia’s Hall during the Edinburgh International Festival in 1976, he too had accompanied her on the visit to the city. Princess Grace together with actors Richard Kiley and Richard Pasco had recited poems illustrating American History in four separate performances in the 1976 Festival. Their performance was themed to coincide with the bicentennial of American independence from Great Britain in 1776.

CRC staff in attendance in the Carstares Room, Old College, during the evening agreed that the items selected for the display certainly hit the spot with the Prince and with Professor Munro, and deemed the evening a great success (thanks due, not least, to supporting Conservation and Exhibitions colleagues).

Display set before the Prince... Carstares Room, Old College

Display set before the Prince… Carstares Room and adjoining Raeburn Room, Old College.

Graeme D. Eddie, Assistant Librarian Archives and Manuscripts, Centre for Research Collections

William Soutar’s Caricatures of Hugh MacDiarmid

A few days ago I gave a talk to the Friends of William Soutar in Perth on the friendship between Soutar and his fellow Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid, as illustrated by letters in Edinburgh University Library’s C. M. Grieve Archive (MS 2960.18).

Soutar, confined to bed with a debilitating disease for the last 13 years of his life, adorned some of his letters with affectionate pen-and-ink caricatures of MacDiarmid (whom Soutar always addressed by his real forename ‘Christopher’). On 9 January 1937, he pokes gentle fun at the workaholic MacDiarmid’s idea of ‘taking it easy’, portraying him as a Marxist superman surrounded by piles of manuscripts headed ‘Lyrics’, ‘Autobiog.’, ‘Epic’, and ‘Articles’. When war breaks out, he suggests (19 December 1940) that the drafts of MacDiarmid’s works in progress will make a more than adequate bomb shelter.

Soutar was an Edinburgh University student, matriculating in 1919, after serving in the Royal Navy during the First World War (an experience that turned him into a pacifist). He began a medical degree, but soon switched to English Literature, where he proved a notoriously difficult student. He refused to study both Anglo-Saxon and novels in general as he considered both irrelevant to his future career as a poet. He did, however, publish early verses in The Student, many of which reappeared in his first published volume Gleanings by an Undergraduate (1923).

For information on our holdings of William Soutar manuscripts and correspondence, see Scottish Literary Papers.

Paul Barnaby, Centre for Research Collections

New Guide to Scottish Literary Papers

A new online guide to some of our major collections of Scottish literary papers is now available on the Centre for Research Collections website. It provides an overview of fourteen of our most significant twentieth-century collections, covering the literary manuscripts and correspondence of poets George Mackay Brown, Norman MacCaig, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Helen Cruickshank, Tom Scott, Andrew Young, Maurice Lindsay, and Duncan Glen, of short-story writer Fred Urquhart, and of historian and biographer Marion Lochhead. There are also pages on novelist John Buchan’s correspondence as literary adviser to Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd (in our Nelson Archive).

The guide not only lists the most significant literary manuscripts for each writer, but highlights links between the collections, charting correspondence between the featured writers, and mutually inspired creative and critical writings. For each writer, there is also a list of manuscript materials of relevance in other Edinburgh University Library collections. There are further links to online hand-lists and to relevant entries in the Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue.

The literary papers cover a great variety of materials:

Manuscript and typescript drafts of literary works, such as Norman MacCaig‘s version of the Brecht/Weil song Mack the Knife (above right)
Correspondence, including George Mackay Brown‘s application for a summer job at Edinburgh University Library (below left)!
Photographs, such as W. R. Aitken‘s portrait of Hugh MacDiarmid and family on Whalsay, Shetland (above left)
Other visual materials, such as Sydney Goodsir Smith‘s sketches for staging one of his plays (below right)

In due course, the pages will be expanded to cover smaller Scottish collections and pre-20^th-century manuscripts, and to detail our holdings of writers (like Sorley Maclean or Edwin Morgan) for whom we have no discrete named collection. We hope that the guide will provide an invaluable gateway to our collections for anyone interested in researching 20^th-century Scottish writing. To explore the site, go to:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/library-museum-gallery/crc/collections/special-collections/scottish-literature/overview

Paul Barnaby

The University benefits from Christmas

Robert Irvine (1839-1902) FRSE. Endowed the Chair of Bacteriology.

A recent enquiry about a benefactor has thrown up an interesting set of connections within and beyond the University.

The son of Robert Irvine, manager of The Scotsman newspaper, Robert Irvine was born in Edinburgh in 1839. By 1871 he was married to Margaret Sclater and living in a large house in Baltic Street, Leith, the manager of a chemical works. By 1891 he was the owner of Caroline Park at Granton. This included, the marine station, laboratories and warehouse as well as his own home. He was now a Chemical Manufacturer. He was a friend of oceanographer, Sir John Murray (1841-1915), assistant on the Challenger Expedition and founder of the Marine Station at Granton, either on or adjacent to Irvine’s property (accounts differ).

Murray was also involved in establishing the Christmas Island Phosphate Company. One of the investors was Irvine and it was part of the fortune realised by this lucrative venture that was bequeathed to the University of Edinburgh. This established the Chair in Bacteriology and the first Professor was James Ritchie (1864-1923), MA, BSc, MD, FRCPE.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1886, his proposers including Sir John Murray, and David Mather Masson, Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (English Literature). The winner of the Neill Prize 1892-5, he also served as Councillor 1899-1902.

Irvine died in 1902 at his home at Granton, predeceased by his wife. They had no children.

Irvine appears in our collections not only as a benefactor to the University but also in the records of the Granton Marine Station, which suggest his was role in it was quite hands-on. The station closed shortly after Irvine’s death by which time most of the work had already moved to the west coast (for further information, see http://www.sams.ac.uk/about-us/our-history).

Grant Buttars, Deputy University Archivist

New acquisition: Further papers of Alexander Craig Aitken

The mathematician, statistician, writer, composer and musician, Alexander Craig Aitken, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 1 April 1895. He was of Scottish descent. He attended Otago Boys’ High School from 1908 to 1912. On winning a university scholarship in 1912 he went on to study at the University of Otago in 1913, enrolling in Mathematics, French and Latin. Studies were cut short by the 1914-1918 War however and he enlisted in 1915 serving with the Otago Infantry. Aitken saw action in Gallipoli and Egypt, and he was wounded during the Battle of the Somme. After his hospitalisation, he returned to New Zealand in 1917.

On the completion of his studies in 1920, Aitken became a school-teacher at Otago Boys’ High School and the same year he married Winifred Betts the first lecturer in Botany at the University of Otago where he also did some tutoring. Then, encouraged by a professor of mathematics at the University, he gained a postgraduate scholarship which brought him to Edinburgh University in 1923. His thesis on statistics gained him the degree of D.Sc. in 1925 when he also joined the University staff as a lecturer in Statistics and Mathematical Economics. In 1937 he was promoted to Reader, and in 1946 was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics.

Aitken’s publications include: jointly with H. W. Turnbull, The theory of canonical matrices (1932); with D. E. Rutherford, a series of Mathematical Texts; wartime experiences in Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand infantryman (1963); and, posthumously To catch the spirit. The memoir of A.C. Aitken with a biographical introduction by P.C. Fenton (1995). He made many important contributions to the many fields of his subject, particularly in the theory of Matrix Algebra and its application to various branches of mathematics. In his time, Professor Aitken was one of the fastest mathematical calculators in the world.

While at school, Aitken had learned to play the violin, and later on in life he played both the violin and viola and composed pieces for performance by university groups. He died in Edinburgh on 3 November 1967.

Shortly before Christmas we acquired a further tranche of Aitken’s papers. These include a number of original mathematical manuscripts, correspondence, legal documents, offprints, publications and photographs. Amongst these is a review by Aitken of Sara Turning’s “Alan Turing”.

At the moment we still have to look through the collection, box it up and create a basic handlist. Once this is done it will be available for consultation.

Ivanhoe in Belgium

Last weekend I was in Leuven at the Annual Conference of the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education (BAAHE), where I’d been invited to give a paper on translations of Walter Scott in our Corson Collection. While there, I took the opportunity to display two images from another University Collections item which vividly illustrates the extent of ‘Scottomania’ in 1820s Belgium. These are from an album of hand-coloured lithographs by Marcellin Jobard (later Belgium’s first photographer) showing the Ivanhoe-inspired costumes for a fancy dress ball hosted by the Prince and Princess of Orange in Brussels on 5 February 1823.

Belgium was then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, whose court resided in The Hague and Brussels in alternate years. A report in the Lady’s Monthly Museum (May 1823) noted that while the Queen’s balls were very ‘showy and stately’, those held by the Crown Prince and Princess were ‘recherché and graceful’. The 5 February ball was held in honour of the British community, to whom the young royals were ‘remarkably attentive’. Three weeks notice was given

during which period, you may be sure, the hammers of the armourers of old, on the eve of a battle, were never plied with more skill and industry than were our own fancies and our maids’ needles, to prepare for these promised fêtes

A party of thirty-two guests went as characters from Ivanhoe, dancing a quadrille which caused such a sensation that they were invited to repeat the performance at the next Queen’s Ball. Three months later, a report in The Repository of Arts, Literatures, Fashions, Manufactures, &c declared that the Ivanhoe costumes remained ‘the principal topic of conversation at Brussels’. They clearly made sufficient impression for the costumes to be immortalized by the country’s leading lithographic press. The images show the costumes for Ivanhoe himself, for the ‘Black Knight’ (aka Richard the Lionheart), and for their rivals Prince John and Maurice de Bracy. We also hold hand-coloured engravings for a similar Scott-inspired costume ball in Vienna in 1826.