Eminent Victorians

We have only one day to really be tourists in Glasgow, so I had to make some choices among the many possibilities. I settled on two, both grand relics of Glasgow's Victorian heyday, and both also located here in the West End. The first of these was the Glasgow Botanical Gardens. This famed institution was founded in 1817 under the sponsorship of the University of Glasgow. One of its first staff members was David Douglas who soon took off around the world to identify new plants and bring them back to the gardens. In Monterey, California he discovered a wildflower we today call the Douglas Iris. And, for those of us in Oregon, he is best known for identifying Pseudotsuga menziesii, better known as the Douglas Fir. 

Perhaps because there has always been so much interest in collecting specimens of exotic plants, the outdoor area of the gardens, though pleasant, are not terribly interesting or informative. There are lovely grassy lawns, gloriously irrigated by rainfall, and beds of attractively arranged annuals. 

There are benches everywhere, not a homeless person in sight, and not a speck of trash. But these gardens are really about what takes place in the greenhouses.

The largest of the greenhouses is the Kibble Palace, named after an entrepreneur who tried to establish a combination restaurant, concert hall, and greenhouse. It is filled with glorious Victorian kitsch like this statue of Mary and Martha.

And there are equally wonderful period architectural details like those spiral staircases that the Victorians seems to adore.

For me, I find it amusing that many of these British greenhouses are devoted to plants that happily grew in my backyard in Los Angeles.

I was a little intrigued by a whole section in the Kibble greenhouse devoted to carnivorous plants. 

The snapdragons growing outside, however, were a little friendlier towards insects and I managed to snap a picture of one of the many bees that swirled around them.

After our trip to the garden, John and I returned to the hotel. He had a pedicure, and I went off to see if I could find a USB charger with the 3 prongs that they use here in Britain. I never did find one as I wandered through the West End, but I was delighted by the beautifully restored Victorian row houses, each slightly different from the one adjacent. 

In the early afternoon, John and I caught an Uber to our other "eminent Victorian" attraction, the Kelvingrove Museum. Glasgow hosted an international science and industry exhibition in 1888, held in Kelvingrove Park near the university. It was such as success that the proceeds helped pay for a second exhibition in 1901. The current building was constructed for that fair as the Palace of Fine Arts. It is constructed in a Spanish Baroque style, because, I suppose, the first thing you think of when you see Spanish Baroque is Scotland, right?

The central hall as you enter is dominated by a grand pipe organ. Alas, we were a little late for the daily recital. 

The collection is a complete hodgepodge of science, history, and art. Most, but hardly all of it, has something to do with Scotland. We concentrated on those rooms. They have a great collection of works by Charles Rennie MacIntosh, Scotland's greatest twentieth century designer. We found this part so fascinating that neither of us even took pictures. 

We did remember to take pictures in the Scottish painting rooms. For Scots, one of the most famous paintings is the Massacre at Glencoe, James Hamilton's depiction of the slaughter of 38 members of the MacDonald clan by government troops. The MacDonalds, like many Highland clans, did not accept the legitimacy of William and Mary's accession to the throne, and the slaughter, which actually took place mostly in their homes, was intended to intimidate the Highlanders. Yet in the Victorian period, when this picture was painted, the massacre was no longer about the brutal repression of Jacobites, hostile to the English crown, but the internecine warfare between the clans that was now but a distant memory thanks to the union of Scotland and England.

Slightly later, Horatio McCulloch, painted the same area where Hamilton had depicted the massacre as having taken place, now a Romantic fantasy. 

Neither of these painting, as interesting as they are for studying Scottish history, is particularly memorable artistically. But the Kelvingrove also has a phenomenal exhibition of four Scottish painters who were quite talented. This is a group of artists who are known today simply as "The Glasgow Boys."

Probably the most famous work by these artists is The Druids:  Bringing in the Mistletoe, a collaboration between George Henry and Edward Hornel.

When this painting was exhibited, it caused a sensation both because of its technique of layering paint and its romantic celebration of native British pagan rituals, however imaginary they were. 

John had a wonderful time at the Kelvingrove taking pictures with his iPhone, and then pausing to edit them. 

One of his favorites was a picture of a young woman with her two suitors, one rich, the other poor but handsome.

He also loved this one showing the visit of Queen Victoria to Glasgow for the 1888 exhibition. 

He also adored this statue of Elvis.

After we finished at the museum, we wandered through some of the surrounding area looking at shops. We found the "Hidden Alley," a small area, perhaps originally for stables, that now housed arts and handicrafts shops.

In the evening, we went downtown to a Scottish restaurant. I had some venison for dinner. Since moving to Ashland I have lost so many plants to deer that eating one of them seems like sweet revenge. I started, though, with that most Scottish of dishes, haggis, accompanied here by tatties and neeps. That, if you need a translation, means potatoes and turnip. 

Tomorrow we leave Glasgow and take off for Oban.