Love Scotland podcast – Season 9

Transcript

Five speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Andrew Dempster [AD]; female voiceover [FV]; Andrew Warwick [AW]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
‘Let me say that I look back upon the days I have spent in pursuing this quest as among the best spent days of my life. Amid the strange beauty and wild grandeur of rock face and snow slope, scaling tops where literally almost foot hath never afore time trod, I have indeed come face to face with the sacred sanctities of nature. And he would be indeed dull of heart who could see her beauties thus unfolded, feel her hand on his brow, her breath on his cheek? Who could see and feel that unmoved?’

Hello and welcome to Love Scotland. Those were the words of the Reverend A E Robertson, who we’ll hear more about later. He was describing a uniquely Scottish outdoor pursuit, one which takes in a gamut of abilities, from strenuous strolls to superhuman tests of fitness and endurance. We are talking Munro bagging.

Now, if this description leaves you in the dark, or if you already have a few under your belt but wondered about the origins and people who’ve been consumed by the cult of the Munros down the years, you’ve come to the right place. There are currently 282 Munros in Scotland, that is mountains over 3,000 feet. And the National Trust for Scotland hosts 46 of them, stretching from Ben Lomond to Torridon. My guest today is familiar with them all, and then some. His recent birthday treat was to climb them all for the third time. Andrew Dempster – congratulations! Is that the right word?

[AD]
Yes, I suppose it is! But thank you very much for your introduction.

[JB]
Well done you! Now, you’ve written extensively about Scotland’s landscape and I’ve just finished your recent book, The Munros: A History. I don’t really know what I was expecting – I suppose it was just a list of great climbs and views, and I got all that. But what I also got was a slice of social history and some fascinating characters predominantly. The mountains seem to attract mavericks. Is that fair?

[AD]
Yes, they do, but also I think they attract normal people from everyday life who just enjoy climbing hills. And I was one of those people many years ago. I completed my first round of the Munros in 1988, and I started climbing Munros on Ben Lomond in 1978. That was my first Munro. And since then, the Munro phenomenon, if you like, has accelerated and it’s gone from a trickle to a torrent. It’s incredible now; 7,000 people have climbed all the Munros, and rising.

[JB]
You wrote a forerunner to this book, and you say you wanted to re-evaluate the book’s – and I’m quoting – ‘aims and conclusions’. Now, that’s intriguing.

[AD]
Well, The Munro Phenomenon came out in 1995. And when I write books, I always like to find a gap in the market. And to me, there was a gap in the market as regards Munros. There were plenty of Munros guidebooks even then. There was at least two or three Munro guidebooks out then, and now there’s about 7 or 8. But there had never been a book written about the people who climb Munros, and the compulsions and the philosophy behind the pursuit. So, I decided there and then. I had already written a book, Classic Mountain Scrambles in Scotland, and I was looking for an idea for another book. And this came about, The Munro Phenomenon, and that did reasonably well.

But obviously, that was nearly 30 years ago. It was in the COVID lockdown I decided this book drastically needs an update, so I decided there and then that I would do another. Not The Munro Phenomenon repeated, but a book similar to that. The Munros: A History came out a few years later.

[JB]
It is super, and it’s got so much more – as I said in the introduction – because it’s also about class; it’s about social changes; it’s about economic changes and how that’s impacted on the people who take to the mountains, which we will touch on later. But let’s begin with the entry level stuff, because this is a chat for all. For complete newcomers: what is a Munro specifically? How is it classified, and why is Scotland so well served?

[AD]
Well, a Munro is … it sounds easy to state it’s any mountain in Scotland over 3,000 feet. And because Hugh Munro himself, who classified the Munros, he did not leave any specific criteria as to what he regarded as being a Munro. So, we are left in the lurch here, and lots of people have been putting their oar in and deciding for themselves what Munro might have meant. And someone else says the opposite!

[JB]
Let’s talk about Hugh Munro, the latterly Sir Hugh Munro, born in 1856. Who was he and what led him to the hills?

[AD]
He came from fairly well-to-do stock. He was the son of a landowner, Lindertis Estate up near Kirriemuir, and he travelled about a lot. He didn’t join the SMC I think until 1889.

[JB]
SMC?

[AD]
The Scottish Mountaineering Club. He spent part of his time in London, but he also spent a lot of his time up in Kirriemuir, and obviously that’s quite near the hills. So, he had plenty of time to explore the hills, and I think he just grew into a love of climbing and walking. All that started, I think, in Germany. He was on holiday in Germany and the Alps and Switzerland. And that was the big thing that got him started.

It just takes over your life. I mean, I know from experience that when you start climbing Munros, it becomes a bit of a compulsion. But of course, at that time, he was just trying to work out a list. People didn’t call them Munros then. He was the one that actually produced the list. So, he was on a mission to try and find out exactly how many 3,000ft mountains there were in Scotland and produce the ultimate list.

[JB]
But what about the figure of 3,000 feet? Was that just arbitrary?

[AD]
I think it was in some ways. I think, in my book, I remember explaining that if you look at the height of the original plateau in Scotland, but long, long, many years ago, millions of years ago, there was a huge mountain chain that was worn down. And the worn-down remnants of this mountain chain were around about 3,000ft high. And then of course, when the successive ice ages came in and cut into that 3,000ft plain, you’re left with mountains which are round about 3,000ft high.

And often when you stand on a Munro and you look out and you see other summits, they’re all of that same level. Again, it’s just a nice round figure. To be honest, it sounds good: 3,000 feet. The measurement of foot came from the Romans and the Greeks, so in some ways you could say they’re responsible for the Munros that we see today.

[JB]
So, in the mid/late 1800s, how many Munros did he find and how did he formalise this?

[AD]
He wasn’t just interested in the actual summits over 3,000 feet. He was also looking at what we now call ‘subsidiary tops’, which are subsidiary summits over 3,000 feet but they’re not classified as separate Munros. And if you include all these, you come to a figure of well over 500. So, his aim, his mission was to try and classify all these as well. It was only later really that the specific Munros that we call today Munros are the 282 that people want to climb.

And it’s sad in a way that an awful lot of people that do it today don’t bother with doing the tops. They’re just happy with the minimum requirements of 282 Munros, and they don’t bother with the other 200-odd tops as well.

[JB]
We have Munros, and we have a Munroist. What’s that?

[AD]
A Munroist is basically someone who’s climbed all the Munros.

[JB]
And the first Munroist, if I’m correct, was the chap I quoted at the beginning: the Reverend Robertson, whose eloquent words. And then following closely behind him, there was another reverend, a Reverend Burn, who was the first person to climb the Munros and the tops. Why so many men of the cloth? Because there are quite a few in your book.

[AD]
Yeah, well again, that was a rhetorical question in the book. Was there any reason why the first two Munroists were both reverends? And again, is it to do with the fact that maybe reverends are closer to heaven, and I lift my eyes to the hills, and all this kind of stuff? Or is it maybe they’ve just got more free time, like teachers?!

[JB]
You speak as a former maths teacher!

[AD]
I’m not sure entirely, but it’s probably got something to do with both those things and more.

[JB]
This is where your book I find gets particularly interesting, because you’re talking about the climbers in the late 1800s and it’s a very different Scottish Highlands from what it is today. It’s that golden age of travel: far more rail links, and a lot of the crumbling bothies that we see by the roadsides today, they were inhabited. You could traverse the landscape and meet people.

[AD]
Well, that’s one of the things which really fascinated me about the early Munroists, particularly Hugh Munro and Heddle, that we’ll probably come to later, and Robertson and Burn – it was that they all preferred doing long multi-day jaunts into the hills unencumbered by having to return to a car. And in some ways today, the car is almost a bugbear because you’ve got to return to a car. You drive somewhere. The natural thing to do today is you drive to near a Munro, you climb the Munro and you come back to your car and drive home.

In those days, the advent of the car was only just coming in. So, in a sense, there was more freedom to just go off and travel about – and you could stay overnight with people in the hills and the glens. There were often cottages occupied by keepers and crofters and shepherds, and that’s where these people stayed. They were often given a great welcome because some of these people wouldn’t have seen anyone for maybe months. They were quite glad to put people up. And often these cottages now, a lot of them will be bothies, as you’ve already mentioned. Camping wasn’t a big thing then. You think of the weight of camping gear in those days – people would not think about wandering about in the hills carrying a huge tent.

So, in some ways, the early pioneers did have a golden age of travel in the Highlands. The rail links were better, and they often could get boats sailing up lochs and deposit them in a remote place. There were no enlarged reservoirs formed by hydroelectric, so some of the Munros were far more approachable than they are today. So yeah, they didn’t have it too bad.

[JB]
No, they didn’t. Now, you mentioned Heddle. That’s Matthew Foster Heddle. He was born about 30 years before Hugh Munro, but you believe he’s been overlooked.

[AD]
He has. That was one of the spurs really that made me write this book, because I was looking online one day and I saw this book by his great-great-grandson and it had just come out in 2015, I think. He was saying that Heddle was a way ahead of the game as regards climbing Munros, and he was a contemporary of Hugh Munro. I tried to look in SMC and I couldn’t see anything about this Heddle. I was fascinated and I bought the book, and I really don’t understand how he has just fallen into this trough of obscurity, that he’s become this person that no one talks about. Even in the latest edition of the SMC Guide to the Munros, he’s not mentioned in the introduction at all.

[JB]
Was he listing the Munros too?

[AD]
It was almost certain that he had a list of 409 Munros because at one point he said he’d done 350 tops in Scotland. Obviously, because he’d mentioned this, people were thinking, well, where is this list that he has? He must have a list. And no one has ever found this list. Munro himself complimented Heddle on being such a way ahead of the game, that he climbed more 3,000ft mountains in Scotland than anyone … way more. I think it was only because he became ill in his later life and he couldn’t really do any more climbing that he didn’t finish them. I think if that had not been the case, I am sure that Heddle would have been the first Munroist and would have got far more publicity.

[JB]
People could have been climbing Heddles.

[AD]
Yes, well, possibly!

[JB]
He sounds like a fascinating character. Born 1828, he was a doctor. He was a geologist, professor of chemistry – trained Britain’s first female doctor. But as you say, just by that quirk of fate, we are not climbing Heddles now. So many of the early Munroists were polymaths. They were extraordinary people. They had strengths; they were scientists; they were endurance sportsmen. When I say men, what about women? Because in your book you describe the Munro baggers in the early days of the 1930s and 40s – we’ve moved on a bit – as ‘a male-dominated brotherhood with a classist and sexist tradition’. Oooh, that’s harsh!

[AD]
Well, that was the SMC. I think those words are probably pretty accurate. In those days the SMC were very sexist, very classist. They didn’t allow any women into the Scottish Mountaineering Club.

[JB]
They didn’t allow women?

[AD]
No, it was only men that were …

[JB]
What, because women didn’t have any legs to climb?

[AD]
I think they do now. There was a Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club formed in 1908 and so they were catered for from then on. But they didn’t seem to think that men and women climbing mountains together was a good idea. The whole thing seems very strange.

[JB]
All those boots and beards. So, when did women make their mark?

[AD]
I think it was probably with a Mrs P Hirst, who was married to a Mr Hirst, who was in the SMC. She became the first woman Munroist in 1947. The first 9 Munroists were all men; it was very male-dominated up to that time. But even probably after then, there were still very few women that would be climbing Munros.

[JB]
I suppose the interwar years, where money was tight, held a bit of a silver lining because it became more popular for working class men and maybe a few women to take to the hills too.

[AD]
In the depressed years of the 30s, working class people who were on the dole found that time hung heavy with them during the week when they weren’t going off to work, so a lot of them would just escape to the hills. They would think, oh, that’s one thing that I’d like to get – freedom from this economic depression. And you can imagine some of them looking out their tenement block in Glasgow and seeing the Campsie Fells hanging on the horizon over the smog of the city, and thinking it’d be lovely to go there.

And of course, they were only 10 miles away, so a lot of them could easily escape to there. And then of course, Ben Lomond was literally 15/20 miles from Glasgow as well. That’s the most southerly Munro. So yes, there were an awful lot of working class people, in particular people like Jock Nimlin and Tom Weir and Alastair Borthwick, all these quite well-known ones. But there were thousands of others who just took sanctuary in the hills and enjoyed the escape, and then went back to sign on the dole maybe once a week.

[JB]
And finally, just before we take a break, did the inception of the Youth Hostelling Association in the early 30s, did that help? Did that encourage more younger people?

[AD]
It did. But again, the real working class people just preferred to be living in what they called howffs, which were kind of caves, and they didn’t really have much money. They slept on newspapers; they made their own sleeping bags. There were a certain section of society that found youth hostels a good idea, but again it was to do with money. These places cost money. And obviously the people on the dole didn’t really have much at all. They were quite glad just to be anywhere, get their head down anywhere.

[JB]
Well, let’s take a quick break from the hills for just a moment. And when we come back, Andrew Dempster, we’ll talk about how the cult of the Munros has continued to evolve, and the weird and wonderful attempts to tame them.

[FV]
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[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast. Today we’re reaching the heady and majestic heights of Scotland’s mountain landscape. Specifically, it’s Munros and the people drawn to climb them. Now, let me quote you this, Andrew Dempster:
‘I have emerged from a world of monochromatic monotony to a higher plane of resplendent technicolour and clarity that seemingly stretches out to infinite horizons. But I’ve also been transformed from a sluggardly gloomy merchant to a buoyant, revitalised hillwalker, skipping and dancing along with a fresh spring in my step.’
Your words, as you well know! Is that representative of how you feel when you’re out there?

[AD]
On some occasions! I think the language there maybe got a bit too flowery, but I love …

[JB]
I disagree; I think it’s lovely. Because you do describe, I think it was a hard climb – your head was down; you didn’t quite fancy it. But then you reached …

[AD]
It was just that feeling of getting out of the cloud. I’d been in thick cloud for a good few hours and I had this feeling that it was never really going to lift. But it was one of those magical days when you come out of the cloud, you rise out of this constricting grey mass, and you’re up and you see blue sky and you think, oh, wonderful! And then you go up a bit further and there’s just a sea of cloud with peaks rising up above. I think any hillwalker will know that that is one of those magical occasions, which happen now and again. It’s wonderful to experience it. The problem is, you’re never quite sure when there will be what’s called a temperature inversion. That’s when you can get above the cloud. But in that particular case, I was very, very surprised. I really thought I was going to be walking in cloud for the whole day.

[JB]
Because anytime I’ve ever been up a hill and it’s been fairly strenuous and it’s been very cloudy, you get to the top and you know what? It’s still cloudy and you can’t really see very much! Isn’t it amazing to think that Hugh Munro and the contemporaries, even until the early part of the 20th century, managed to achieve what they did, wearing clothes that we would find laughable now, and without all the technology we have now?

[AD]
Well, even when I started out hillwalking, I can remember wearing what I call britches, plus fours. They weren’t tweedy, but they were quite heavy wool or woollen garments that came down to just below your knee. And then you had long socks and you had these buttons on them, and gaiters. Of course, we still have gaiters now, but you never see anyone now in britches.

But when you think of what these guys used to wear: heavy britches and kilts and capes and all sorts of things. Everything very heavy, but they’d be warm. But the warmth-to-weight ratio was terrible when you look at the gear they have today.

[JB]
What about the technology? Great as it is, do you think it’s given us sometimes a false sense of security?

[AD]
Absolutely, yeah. I think people now – I’m not saying everyone – but there are people now going up on the hills with GPS and satellite phones and all this stuff, and they don’t have a clue how to use a map and a compass. If any of this technology goes wrong, which can happen quite often, they’re lost. And then they phone mountain rescue. I know there are far more cases of people getting rescued off the hills today than there were in the past. I’m sure it’s because of technology – people just accepting that technology will get them out of the situation. It’s so easy to phone mountain rescue or dial 999, even for people who are maybe not in a particularly dangerous situation. It’s so easy to do that. So yes, I think technology in a way has detracted from safety in the hills. I think it’s got worse.

[JB]
Because we often see in guidebooks ‘this is an easy Munro’, but the mountain rescue and the police often say there are no easy Munros. It’s Scotland and things can change.

[AD]
The weather can change just like that. I’m retired now, so I can easily just look at the forecast. I only go out on days when I know that the weather is going to be settled for the whole day. But you do get people that have maybe travelled for hundreds of miles. They might have just travelled up from England for a few days to do some Munros and they’ve got no Plan B. They’re just doing these Munros as what they want to do, and regardless of the weather, they’ll go up.

I just wouldn’t even dream of setting off to climb a Munro if it was raining and the mist was down. I just don’t see the point of that at all.

[JB]
That’s really interesting. Even you.

[AD]
I used to, in the past – certainly when I was finishing my first round of the Munros, there were occasions when I maybe had 20 Munros still to do and the weather … I knew I had to get these finished because I’d arranged the date for the last Munro and had to get these done. So, I went off in horrible conditions and squelching through bogs and the rain coming down – it was awful!

[JB]
There is a lot of humour in your book and a lot of self-mockery, because you talk about the varying degrees of Munro-itis, which begins with ‘a sudden unhealthy interest in books, woolly hats and the latest breathable garments’! And then you start to list some of these amazing people and how they have managed to complete all the Munros. The couples who complete them together; we’ve already spoken about the Hirsts. The night walkers, people who complete … that doesn’t sound at all safe.

[AD]
It’s something that I’ve often thought might be worth giving a try. I have a friend who climbs Munros by moonlight. He reckons he’s done Ben Lomond 200 or 300 times. He used to do it every night on the Wednesday night and I’ve often been invited to come with him on this.

[JB]
Some people watch Coronation Street; he goes up a Munro!

[AD]
Maybe if I tried it … I’m probably getting too long in the tooth now, to be honest, going up Munros in the dark. But I’m often worried about just tripping. Obviously, if it’s dark, you’re not really seeing where your foot placements are. You would have a head torch, but I think I’m too old now to think about that. I can understand why people want to do it. And the thing about being on top of a mountain and watching the sunrise – that would be incredible. I think I’ve only bivvied on a mountain a couple of times and seen that, but that’s quite something to behold.

[JB]
In terms of the current breed of super-Munroists, if I can call them that, who managed to traverse the country on foot, by bike or swim, who impresses you? What do you think of those endeavours?

[AD]
Somebody who’s done all the Munros in a continuous expedition, I’ve always held this fascination about that and a slight feeling of awe and almost like a ‘I’d like to do’. Certainly in my younger days, I seriously did think about trying to do all the Munros in a single trip. Not trying to break any records, but just for the fun of it.

[JB]
What is the record?

[AD]
You see, you’re now getting into fell running. But originally when Hamish Brown did a single round of the Munros, he was about 112 days. And he wasn’t trying to … well, he couldn’t break records then because he was the first person to have done it. But he wasn’t trying to do them in as fast a time as possible; he was just wanting to enjoy the experience. It’s only over the years that gradually people have wanted to see how fast someone can do all the Munros and of course, fell runners.

Now, Donnie Campbell – I think he was mentioned in my book – and he had done them in under 32 days. And I remember saying in my Munro Phenomenon book that the big challenge would be to do all the Munros in a month, and not really thinking that that was possible. But then this Donnie Campbell came along, and he’s done them in under 32 days. And now a woman has actually beaten that record, under the time that Donnie Campbell did them. I think it’s 10 hours or 15 hours less. And her name is Jamie Aarons. So, a woman has now broken the record.

[JB]
That’ll teach the Scottish mountaineering lot not to allow women into their ranks.

[AD]
Yes! Another woman has also beaten the winter round record. Again, there are some people that want to try and do all the Munros in the winter months, and a woman has now just done them in 83 days – Anna Wells. That’s the same time as Martin Moran, who was the first person to do them in winter.

[JB]
Well done the girls! You have completed, as I said, three entire rounds. How do you celebrate your last Munro of a round? Is there a tradition?

[AD]
There usually is. For most people, it seems, champagne seems to be the big thing, but when I did my last one a few weeks ago, yeah, there was champagne. There was also some whisky involved and there was lots of M&S party food: sausages and chocolate and all sorts of things. So, we’re kind of staggering down the hill after that! There was lots of people there and it was a fun occasion. Couldn't see anything! The mist was right down. Unfortunately, that day out of my three completions, that was probably the worst day weather-wise – couldn’t see a thing from the top.

[JB]
There’s a sense of elation, but there’s also a sort of plummeting of emotions because you write from your diary: ‘the end of an era has come. So much water has passed under the bridge, so many happy memories. It has meant so much for so long. The challenge now lies dormant.’ Is that a sense when you manage to complete something as awesome as that?

[AD]
There was a sense of … it’s a mixed sense of elation and also slight depression that you finished them all. And what do I do now? Of course, it wasn’t long after that I decided to go on and do the Corbetts; I had to have another challenge. I’m the kind of person that’s driven by challenges. I like to have something, like I’m working my way around the coastline of Britain just now in chunks. I like to have something that I can get my teeth into and that I enjoy doing and that I can write about afterwards. It’s just what keeps me going.

[JB]
We’ve talked about the rise of ‘taking to the hills’ and we’ve talked about the peak period, no pun intended. What’s the situation now? Because it was very popular for the Baby Boomer generation, what’s the current situation and what’s the future?

[AD]
There was a huge surge in Munro bagging from about the 70s onwards, and it was rising exponentially. Now it’s settled down, maybe roughly 200 people a year completing the Munros. So, there’s a steady increase in the number of people who’ve done all the Munros, and I think that will continue. It’s a very popular pursuit and I hope it is in the future. I’m hoping it continues to be; I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. It’s something which will continue to fascinate people, I think, throughout the years. I’d be very surprised if the number of Munro baggers per year started to decrease and the activity became less popular.

[JB]
And Hugh Munro, the man who started it all or at least formalised it, he died in 1919 at the age of 63. Did he manage to complete them all?

[AD]
He didn’t. He still had three left to do. He had one planned quite near his Lindertes estate that he planned to keep for his last one, which ironically now is only a Munro top. It’s a subsidiary top, not an actual Munro. Another one on Skye, the Inaccessible Pinnacle, which is commonly regarded as being the hardest Munro; he still had that to do. And there was one other one, Càrn an Fhìdhleir, which he hadn’t done either. So no, he didn’t; he still had three to do.

[JB]
That’s a shame, but at least his name lives on. We can’t let you go without getting the benefit of all that experience and knowledge. As I said at the start, the Trust has 46 Munros in its properties. Can you talk about a few of them that you’re particularly keen on, or that you would recommend?

[AD]
Well, the first one that comes to mind, I suppose, is Ben Lomond, the most southerly Munro, which was my first Munro. It’s commonly often the first Munro of many people. In fact, many people would climb Ben Lomond, not even having heard about Munros. They would just climb and think, oh, that’s a nice hill. And then they might look across and say possibly let’s do some other hills.

[JB]
It’s a gateway drug, then, Ben Lomond.

[AD]
Yeah. My favourite Munro, I think, in the NTS Munros would be Beinn Alligin in Torridon. I just love Torridon, and I think probably most other hill walkers would agree that Torridon is a fantastic area. Superb mountains, great scrambling and what we call steep pointy mountains rather than flat top ones like the Cairngorms. And that’s always been my preference. Beinn Alligin in Torridon is definitely one of my favourite Munros, and I haven’t been up it for nearly 30 years, so it’s due another ascent.

[JB]
So, it’s probably calling you. Well, Andrew Dempster, thank you for your time and wonderful insight. Andrew’s book, The Munros: A History, is published by Luath and is a great companion on those hills. Andrew, thank you.

[AD]
Thank you very much.

[JB]
And if you love to take to the hills, look out for a previous episode of Love Scotland called Mountain Birds, where I head for Ben Lawers and the hunt for the elusive ring ouzel.

[AW]
There, right on the horizon, just landed on the top of the rock. You see it, it’s on the horizon. On that there’s a rock. Yeah, yeah. That’s a ring ouzel!

[JB]
And that’s all from this edition of Love Scotland. We’ll be back with more very soon. Until then, goodbye.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

Transcript

6 speakers: Male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Antonia Laurence-Allen [ALA]; Sally Tuckett [ST]; second male voiceover [MV2]; Viccy Coltman [VC]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Today, we’re going to talk about the life and career of a man who was among the greats of British portrait painting. But this is also a story about class, wealth and ambition. Allan Ramsay was born in Edinburgh in 1713. He was not only talented artistically, but by all accounts hugely cultured and oozing with charisma. His friends were part of the intellectual hothouse that was the Scottish Enlightenment. His patrons were at the highest levels of British society, and many of his paintings tell us a great deal about how those Georgian movers and shakers wanted to be portrayed amongst their peers and for posterity.

An exhibition called Ramsay & Edinburgh Fashion is currently running at the National Trust for Scotland’s Georgian House. Where else but in Edinburgh? It’s where I’m sitting right now, alongside the exhibition curator Antonia Laurence-Allen from the NTS and Dr Sally Tuckett, a lecturer in dress and textile histories at the University of Glasgow. Welcome to you both.

[ALA]
Thank you.

[ST]
Hello. Lovely to be here.

[JB]
Now, Antonia, it’s billed as Ramsay and Fashion. So, what does the exhibition consist of and what’s the thinking behind combining these elements?

[ALA]
Actually, if I’m honest, I was standing in front of a Ramsay talking to a visitor, and I realised that we didn’t know who the lady was in the portrait. It’s downstairs in the Georgian House, in the big drawing room. And I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to see how many women painted by Ramsay we have in the NTS portfolio?

So, I looked at the range and then I thought, well, we know about Ramsay. People have written about Ramsay; there have been shows about his work. What about what they’re wearing? Because when you look at a portrait, you want to touch the fabrics that they’re wearing. The dresses are so glamorous and they’re so glossy and beautiful. I actually was in America at the time, working away, and I called Sally and said, Sally, what do you think about doing an exhibition that looks at the fashion and the fashion trade of that period in Edinburgh? Because I wanted to focus on the city of Edinburgh.

[JB]
Sally’s here. What did you say?

[ST]
Oh, do it, do it! Straightaway!

[JB]
Why? What’s your thinking behind it? Why is fashion so important?

[ST]
Fashion speaks to pretty much every level of society, I think. You start at the top with government and politics and trade, and that dictates what materials you get and where it comes from and how it can be used. You go down the social scales and you’ve got to dress according to your status – and then you’ve got individuality and personality. So, it goes all the way through, and I think there’s so many different layers you can do to it.

[ALA]
Yeah. And when we were talking actually, Sally said, oh, don’t you have a wonderful dress at Newhailes? And I suddenly realised, yes, and it’s exactly the same period as the Ramsays that I’d found in the collection. We had women from 1739 to 1769, that mid-18th-century period that Ramsay painted, in the NTS collection; and we have this dress at Newhailes which is dated from the 1760s. I thought, it’s too good to be true!

The other part that’s so important for me as the curator of all these properties is to bring them together under an umbrella, so people can see how they’re related. Because a lot of the people, especially in the Edinburgh properties and the people who owned them, they knew each other. The Georgian House here, which wasn’t built at the time that Ramsay was painting, but the idea for the New Town was fermenting at the time that he was living in what is now called the Old Town. But the dress that’s owned is at Newhailes, and he painted the people who lived at Newhailes.

[JB]
Well, the dress is in the corner of this room.

[ALA]
It’s a bit glamorous, isn’t it?

[JB]
It is magnificent! Sally, can you describe the dress for us?

[ST]
So, what we have, as Antonia said, it’s from the 1760s. It’s a sack back gown. It’s called a sack back – that’s that huge swathe of fabric that you can see coming from the shoulders, going all the way down to the hem, trailing behind her. It’s an open gown, which means you’ve got a matching petticoat underneath.

[JB]
What’s it made of?

[ST]
It’s a beautiful cream silk, brocaded and possibly damask, looking at the sheen that you’re getting off the different kind of flowered patterns here. So, an expensive dress; highly, highly expensive. It’s got beautiful detailing with these rococo scrolls coming down the side of the gown and the robings, and then a matching stomacher, which is very rare to have those 3 components together: the gown, the petticoat and the stomacher.

[ALA]
The stomacher …

[ST]
Are you going to tell me it’s not the original one now?!

[ALA]
No, no! It’s completely original. It’s just a brand new thing for me. I’m not a textile expert, so when I first saw this – and it’s basically just a simple piece of fabric, like a V shape that covers your bust – and I was thinking, how on earth do you keep that on?

Well, when we did some filming for the exhibition, one of the volunteers, Emma, she makes her own 18th-century dresses, and she has not a corset, but a stay. The stay is underneath, which are boned, and she literally pins the stomacher into the stays. I was thinking, is that how they used to do that every single day, be pinned into their dress?

[JB]
Every day’s a school day, even for you! Tell me, we don’t know who exactly owned that dress, but what would it have said about the wearer because this is what this exhibition is all about? It’s how your clothes spoke for you.

[ST]
This would have been an elite woman. This is an expensive gown in terms of fabric. And in the 18th century, you are literally wearing your wealth – you’re displaying how much you own. In a dress like this, because it’s got quite wide skirts, she would have had a hoop underneath it. You’re displaying more fabric – it’s not essential, it’s not doing anything, it’s just display. So, she would have been an elite lady.

Chances are she might have been involved in the salons that were going on around Edinburgh at the time. As a woman, it was unlikely she would have been going to the taverns or anything like that, but who knows what women get up to behind closed doors? But she would have been taking part in assemblies, hosting dinners – the elite lifestyle that you would imagine an 18th-century woman to be doing.

[JB]
Did the Georgians do anything differently as far as fashion was concerned?

[ST]
I think the main difference is, by the time you get to the Georgian period, people are starting to talk about fashion as perhaps we would define it today. Throughout history you’ve always got people changing styles and you’ve got evolutions in shapes and what people are wearing. But by the 18th century, you’re starting to see people talk about it as more of a seasonal thing. You’re getting people talking about what they’re wearing for summer dresses, winter dresses …

[JB]
It’s almost like the beginning of a fast fashion, but very much slower than our fast fashion!

[ST]
Very much slower. Very much more bespoke. Women of this status would have had different clothes for different times of year. You would have a different dress for morning vs evening wear, and it’s that kind of language that’s starting to creep in. I think that’s probably the biggest difference compared to earlier periods.

[JB]
So, that’s the dress of the time and why it was so important. But obviously we’re here to talk about Ramsay as well. Antonia, tell me about Allan Ramsay’s early years and when this incredible talent came to the fore.

[ALA]
Yes, well, he was born, as you’d said at the beginning, in 1713, which is a really interesting period, just when the Act of Union 1707 came together. You’ve got a Hanoverian monarch on the throne the very next year. And so, there’s this new ferment in Edinburgh, this keenness for a lot of people to make Scotland part of the union and a happy, prosperous, positive place. So, he’s born into that.

And he goes to the High School – he’s sent to the best school in Scotland, which is off the High Street in Edinburgh, when he’s 13. And then he goes to study art in Edinburgh and London, and he goes to Rome. He’s sent off and given money. His father’s the one who writes to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh saying ‘I want my son to go; he’s a genius, he needs to go and paint in Rome’.

And also, the other thing that his father does, in 1729, which is only when Ramsay’s 16, is he makes Ramsay one of the founding members of Scotland’s first art school: St Luke’s, which is on the High Street of Edinburgh. So, Ramsay’s automatically in the art circles of Edinburgh as they are literally beginning and becoming international. The art school was designed to be this international place of study, not just for Scotland but to reach out over into the continent.

Then by the time he was 20, he’s studying at St Martin’s Lane Academy, which is the big London art school, and he’s already settled in London. He’s painting some of the socialites in Edinburgh. He paints Lady Katherine Hall, who’s a friend of the family. He paints her looking like Diana, goddess of the hunt. As he grew, he became steadfastly known as a very intelligent person, so he was just as erudite as he was artistic.

[JB]
And he trained a lot in Europe, and that was to be very important when he came back to Britain and to Scotland.

[ALA]
Absolutely. He travelled through France with Alexander Cunningham, who was a friend, and went through Paris and then down to Antibes and Cannes, and then went to Rome and studied in Rome under some of the biggest names at the time – that would infuse him with a new way of painting. When he was born, it was Dutch painting that was really popular in Scotland and that was where the tradition really was fostered. When he was in Rome, he studied at the Académie Française and really started to pick up on the new trends in French painting, and that’s what you see in his art, I think.

[JB]
So, we had a young man of undoubtedly great talent, but when you were telling me about his early life, you mentioned his father a lot. And that is because I understand that his father was absolutely pivotal. He had an immense impact on Ramsay’s life and his career. Tell me about Allan Ramsay, senior.

[ALA]
It’s quite funny because this is an exhibition about Allan Ramsay the painter, but I’m completely obsessed by his father! I think what’s really interesting about the senior, about the father, is that he was 15 when he was apprenticed as a wig maker.

[JB]
So, he had comparatively humble beginnings then?

[ALA]
Well, his dad was Superintendent of Lord Hopetoun’s lead mines in Lanarkshire, so they had a decent life; they weren’t poor.

[JB]
They were far from the circles in which Ramsay eventually moved in.

[ALA]
That’s right. When he came to Edinburgh, he was an apprentice and he was working his way up. But what I love is that this is an exhibition about fashion, and the wig was such a fundamental part of men’s fashion. Would you agree women weren’t wearing wigs particularly, at the time?

[ST]
Not at this time, but like you say it’s all about the head, isn’t it? And the close attention to details. So, he would have grown up in a household where his father was paying close attention to what people’s heads look like, crafting these things. I think that might have helped him get his eye in.

[ALA]
I agree, but the other thing is the charm and the ability …

[JB]
I said he was charismatic. How charismatic?

[ALA]
I think Allan Ramsay senior was supremely charming. And the reason why I think this is because there’s quite a lot of anecdotal evidence, written down by Victorian writers and people before, that Allan Ramsay senior’s shop … So, once he’d finished his apprenticeship, he opened a shop and it was on the sunny side of the street opposite the Tron Kirk, and people came down every week. You had to get your wig cleaned and de-loused because lice is a problem. And there seems to be stories about every week the daughters of the men who needed their wigs done were free and available to walk down the High Street, to go and hang out at Allan Ramsay senior’s wig shop, to chat to the man because he was so charming.

The other thing that happened was because every week you had to have this done, he developed this network of Lords and Dukes and merchants and lawyers and advocates, all who are coming to his shop. He’s talking to them, but he’s also writing poems. He’s a very observant man. I think the observation, the chat and countenance and the wit then folds over to his son, who’s realising that if you’re charming, if you’re good at reading people, that you can build up this loyal network.

What Allan Ramsay senior does is he writes these little pamphlets and sells them for a penny. He’s writing little poems and he’s sending them down to London, and he’s painting a picture of Scotland and Edinburgh as this really positive, charming place, full of really interesting people. He’s amazing!

[JB]
He’s clearly aspirational for himself, but also aspirational for his son.

[ALA]
His son’s watching all of this and learning. Absolutely.

[JB]
Sally, to begin to talk about the portraiture, how important was how you looked in a portrait within this high society?

[ST]
Bottom line is, you want to look good, don’t you? If you’re going to have this thing sitting on your wall for the rest of your life and hopefully your descendants’ lives as well, you want to make an impression. You want to look refined, polite, elegant and fashionable.

[JB]
You also wanted it to tell a story of your life and your status. Now, we are surrounded by some of Ramsay’s finest paintings. Could you choose a painting from the wall? It’s always difficult in audio, but I’m sure you’re more equipped than most to tell us and talk about the fashion within one of those paintings and what it’s saying.

[ST]
It’s very hard because they’re all beautiful. Actually, in the room that we’re sitting in, you can see Ramsay’s early work. He’s gone through the trend of having plain white silk gowns with the blue wrap, but there’s one in particular, which is …

[ALA]
Janet Dalrymple, painted in 1749 for her wedding.

[ST]
This is a beautiful double portrait, with another portrait of her husband done by a different artist. But she is wearing a gorgeous plain, silvery-white silk gown. Plain white silk would have been very hard to paint like this; you can get lots of shadows. It’s decorated with jewels at the sleeves to bring the arms up. And you can see a very fine linen shift underneath. In this era, if you’ve got clean white linen worn next to the skin, that’s a sign of status. It means you’ve either got a lot of linen, so you can change it when it gets dirty, or you’ve got somebody to wash it for you. Both are very high-status things. Linen shifts like the one you can see on her arm are very important because they keep the outer garments clean. You want to have lots of clean white linen available. So automatically, even just a plain thing like that, says ‘status’.

And then you’ve got the jewels that she’s wearing on her wrist. She’s got pearls looped around her bodice with a lovely blue ribbon. And for modesty, she’s got what is probably called a neckerchief or a fichu – it just covers her shoulders and her chest. It looks like it’s beautiful plain muslin with a lace border at the edges. These are all highly expensive materials, all coming together, that speak to elegance and expense and wealth, but it’s also slightly understated.

[JB]
Understated!

[ST]
Compared to some things that you could see. If you compare it to the gown that’s in this room as well, which is highly decorative – lots of woven patterns throughout, different coloured threads and silks – it is a bit more understated.

[ALA]
Would you say, though, that that dress is 100 years old compared to when it was painted? 1749 when it was painted, but actually it’s not fashionable anymore. It’s not worn on the street, so it’s a dress for portraiture.

[JB]
It’s a throwback.

[ST]
Yes, you get this trend for historicism. People would bring in elements of an earlier period and sometimes it is part of fashion. You do sometimes see people wearing things that are like this.

[JB]
Retro, almost as we would wear retro today.

[ST]
Exactly. When it comes to portraiture, it’s a bit more complicated because there are so many reasons why you might get a portrait painted. It’s sometimes thought that the bringing in of historical elements make you look more timeless; you don’t age as quickly. If you’re wearing the most up-to-date fashion in your portrait, and in the next five years it looks completely different, people are going to be able to age you by looking at that portrait. So, it’s thought that they bring in this ‘hearken back to a different time’ to make you look more timeless.

There’s elements here of 1640s dress, the Van Dyck era, Charles I, in the shape of her bodice and with the way that she’s got the fichu draped around her neck. It’s not quite 1740s fashion as you would see her, like Antonia says, walking down the High Street. She probably wouldn’t have worn that walking down the Canongate.

[ALA]
And I’m always curious about her jewels as well. She’s actually holding up her bracelet as though she’s indicating that it’s incredibly important. I assumed, and again this is an assumption, that it’s a gift from her husband; it’s a wedding gift and a nod to the contemporary fashion.

What I enjoy looking at is that blend of the historical costume to make you timeless and the contemporary moment to make you feel like a real person who’s in life, so that you fit in that portraiture tradition but you also are an active member of society.

[ST]
And the fact that it’s placed opposite the one of her husband. They’re speaking to each other, with varying degrees of success, I think.

[JB]
Yes, well, because we’re going to take a break, we’re going to end this half on a bit of a bombshell because when I was reading your notes, [ALA: oh no!] I get to the bit that says: Ramsay didn’t paint the clothes; he had something called a drapery painter. Cheating. Cheating scandal?

[ALA]
He wasn’t cheating!

[JB]
Go on, tell me about drapery painters.

[ALA]
It was the tradition at the time. I think what’s really fascinating when you study history is you have to try not to put our contemporary perceptions of what is good and bad, right and wrong onto the past. It was really, really normal for a drapery painter and a portrait painter to work together. And in this case, one of the most famous drapery painters was based in London. He was Flemish, and he and his brothers came over in the 1720s and he died in 1749. He died fairly early on in Ramsay’s career, but from the very beginning we have several paintings in the exhibition, including the full portrait of Agnes in her pink dress. We know that he used Joseph Van Aken, who was this Flemish drapery painter.

[JB]
OK, so how did this work? I would come along to have my portrait painted. Would I know in advance the sort of pretend clothes that I would like? I would like to be a shepherdess. Or was that discussed later? How did it work?

[ALA]
I don’t precisely know when it was discussed, but it was certainly discussed – and it could have been actually after the face was painted and after the hands were painted.

[JB]
So, Ramsay basically did the head – and I still think it’s a bit of a cheat!

[ALA]
It feels that way – but it wasn’t perceived that way. I think what’s interesting though is that there aren’t two signatures on the portrait, right? There’s just Allan Ramsay. So, you’re buying a portrait from Allan Ramsay and you’re getting two artists for your money, so to speak.

[JB]
Because the drapery painters were much in demand.

[ALA]
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, the artists were fighting over Van Aken. They were trying to get him to work exclusively for them because his skills were absolutely beyond reproach. It was because he was mimicking the Van Dyck tradition, which was so popular because he painted all the monarchs. If you could be painted into that tradition, then you had made it in society, which is partly why the dress mimics that as well. It’s that stitching you into the tradition of portraiture. But yes, they were fighting over him. They would send the canvas down by carriage down to London, probably with sketches and details of what the sitter wanted. As you said, shepherdess dress or a Van Dyck collar or something, and then he would do the rest and then send it back. Now, there are some notes of some women saying no, I’ve decided I’ve changed my mind. I would like to be painted in something different.

[JB]
I’d like to be a high woman!

[ALA]
I think what’s remarkable about it is that actually the sitter did have – it sounds like it shouldn’t be remarkable – but actually the sitter had quite a lot of say in how they were portrayed.

[JB]
Alright, well, I’m still stunned. While we all recover from that extraordinary admission, let’s take a quick break and we’ll be back soon.

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said with a smile. Of course she did. The art, the architecture; Scotland’s history can really turn your head, so we signed up to take care of it. Keep it looking dapper.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to the Georgian House in Edinburgh where we’re discussing the career of the painter Allan Ramsay. Now, Antonia, Allan Ramsay, as we’ve discussed, learning how to charm a network from mainly watching his father. This was the Enlightenment. Lots of men of great thinking and power around here, but also lots of women who are under-represented perhaps in history, but who were influential in their way … and Ramsay knew this. He caught on to this.

[ALA]
Yes, absolutely. And a lot of the paintings that he does of women actually portray this element of power that they had and self-authority. That interestingly came from when Ramsay was a child. His father was writing about women of the city and writing poems about women of the city. One of the things his father did was write about the ladies who organised polite society in Edinburgh. They were the ones who organised the dances in the Assembly Rooms, and their drawing rooms were places of conversation. That’s where people went in the evening to play cards, to play chess, to talk, to debate philosophy and history.

And so, one of the things that I think infused the boy at the time was that for women, part of their charm and part of their power (if you want to use that) was in their fashion, but also in their independent minds. If you look at his work, the clothing is as important as the eye that looks at you out from the face that he’s painting. The women have a presence in the portraits.

Back in 1723, his father wrote a poem about the women who organised the assembly balls, which were actually decried by the church leaders at the time as immoral. But the poem waxes lyrical …

[JB]
Because there was a power struggle going on there, from this more secularised society and the Church fearing that it was losing some of its dominance.

[ALA]
That’s right. And drink and women being out and dancing of all things was just appalling. I think Ramsay and Allan Ramsay senior, and then his son and their friends and the cohort they were with, they believe that women actually through entertainment, through good intellectual conversation, could raise the society to be very progressive, and through a politeness – which is quite a lovely concept really. But I think through this, there was a concept that women were at the heart of the project to make Edinburgh the best city in the world.

[JB]
Which is something that, as I said in my question, you never really get a flavour of whenever we talk of the Enlightenment and when we talk of what was happening in Edinburgh. Sally, I’m very much aware that we’re talking about those and such as those. What would we have been wearing in those days?

[ST]
I’d like to say anything that you like, but it might have been a bit more tricky than that. There would have been many layers to Edinburgh society in the 18th century, and the people Ramsay were painting were at the top. You’ve got the landed gentry, but you’ve also got the merchants, the successful lawyers, medics, professional classes are starting to make their impact on society. When you get down to the bottom, you’re going to have essentially the same type of garments, so everybody’s wearing a gown or a petticoat. Men would be wearing breeches and jackets, but the difference is going to be in quality and quantity.

I mentioned having lots of linen to change earlier. Somebody, for example, in the Orphans’ Hospital, which was opened in the 1730s, they were only given two shirts to have in their wardrobe. Somebody that Allan Ramsay was painting was more likely to have anything from 20 to 60 shirts that you can just change constantly and wash and rotate. There’s expectations: everybody’s expected to dress in a certain way according to your status. And so, fashion is really helpful for that, but equally it can be subverted.

There’s lots of concern about people dressing above their station. You see lots of comments, particularly in London society but it creeps into Edinburgh as well, about servants dressing too finely, wearing outfits that may have been cast down by their mistresses and then looking too fashionable. And then people can’t tell what status you are if you’re dressing above your station. In some cases, you get a lot of concern to try and control that, and you start to see the rise of institutionalised clothing. The orphan hospital is one example: they were given certain amounts of linen and woollen cloth. The woollen cloth was described as cinnamon-coloured. And the idea was that the trustees said that this was so that the orphans all look the same, so there was no distinction. On one level, that’s nice; it’s like school uniforms today. Everybody should wear the same thing, so nobody stands out. On the other hand, whenever the orphans left the orphanage, they would have stood out like sore thumbs when they went into the rest of society.

This was made even worse by the fact they had to wear a little red O stitched to their lapel to mark them out even further as orphans. And obviously, what I think is really interesting about clothing is that you get the resistance and the rebellion through it. In the minutes of the orphan hospital, these young boys were ripping the O off because they wanted to try and blend in a bit more and disappear.

The beauty of Edinburgh is that they are all so jam-packed together, everybody would have seen everybody else. There would have been lots of emulation in some level, like you mentioned aspiration before – it would have been some sense of, oh that looks nice, I want a bit of that, I want some lace, I want some ribbon. And the lower down you get, the more important accessories become. You may not be able to go and buy a whole gown, but you can go and buy ribbons. So, you can attach a ribbon to your lapel, or you can add a little neckerchief that’s brightly coloured and adds a bit of sparkle. Accessories become really important to make it a more fashionable garment.

[JB]
Where were people getting their clothes here?

[ST]
All along the High Street, up and down, you have down the closes all the ranges of shops. Antonia can speak to this much better than I can. The luckenbooths outside St Giles’ Cathedral.

[JB]
The luckenbooths?

[ST]
Luckenbooths – small little shops. Booths.

[ALA]
Yeah, the north side of St Giles’, along the High Street.

[JB]
That’s on the Royal Mile, for people who don’t know Edinburgh – the crammed, crammed Old Town. The New Town was in the planning; it hadn’t yet been executed.

[ALA]
In fact, we’ve got the portrait of a young girl painted in 1739 who marries Gilbert Elliot of Minto, and he’s the one who pushes the plans for the New Town. So, that’s where we’re at. We haven’t even broken ground on the New Town yet.

[ST]
Still the Norloch.

[JB]
So, if I wanted a fabulous new frock, where would I go and how would I do it?

[ST]
It’s not like today; ready-made isn’t really a thing. For people of this status, it’s about bespoke and getting things made for you. But you would have had to do a little bit of effort, because the cloth and the dress wouldn’t necessarily be from the same shop or the same place. You’d have to go and choose your fabric, collect the fabric, take it to your mantua maker if you’re a lady or your tailor if you’re a gentleman. They would make it up. When you look at the accounts, what I think is always quite striking is that it’s the cloth that’s the most expensive thing.

Labour is very cheap. When you look at some of these beautiful gowns, they’re beautifully made, but there’s also lots of cheats in them. When you look at them underneath, the seams are often very loosely done, and that’s because the textile is the most expensive thing, so if you stitch things too carefully you can’t unpick it and reuse it.

[ALA]
I was just going to ask you, so for me, the most fascinating thing I’ve learned is about how a dress is used for a long period of time, and unstitched if you put on a bit of weight or you get pregnant or if you hand it down to a daughter or put it in a will. I realise there must be some areas of a dress that are stitched a lot tighter than other areas. The back, for instance – the back stitch is literally called a back stitch. I’m learning this as I go along. It’s pretty tight, but other areas are designed to be unpicked so that you can change the dress.

[ST]
And that’s the beauty of something like the sack back, which is the dress you’ve got in the exhibition, because there’s so much fabric at the back. As you move through the 18th century, what you start to see is that fabric gets pinned down to the back, so that you see more of the shape of the back. And that’s called a robe à l’anglaise as opposed to the robe à la française, which is the sack back as well, because there’s lots of toing and froing about who is the most fashionable, whether it’s England or France – lots and lots of debate.

Rather than cutting it to make the dress more fitted at the back, they would literally – if you had a nice sack back that you wanted to repurpose – you would just pin it down very carefully. So that should sack backs ever come back, you can just unpin it again and you’d have all the fabric, and you haven’t lost anything.

[JB]
How clever. You mentioned there was a sort of rivalry between France and England post the Union of the Parliaments. Where did Edinburgh sit in that league table of being fashionable? Did the ladies have to go to London for the very, very best, or was there enough in the High Street as you’ve described? Or were they looking to London for the trends?

[ST]
It’s a bit of all of it, I think. London is seen as where the most up-to-date things are. London is where court is. Court is often considered the place where you’re going to see the most fashionable people. They might not be court-dressed because that often became quite archaic and fossilised, but London being the big centre for silk weaving in particular, so Spitalfield silk, all that lovely expensive cloth.

London was seen as somewhere to look to, but not necessarily the only place to look to. And what you find is that mantua makers in Edinburgh, even further north … ‘mantua’ was a term they used for the gown. Mantua was a style of gown from the late 17th century that became very popular. It started off, as most fashions do, as informal wear – basically a length of cloth that went from your feet, chucked over the shoulder and stitched down the middle. Ladies would wear it to relax in. But it became more formalised and became court wear. And then mantua makers became the first real area where women could make clothes for women. Before that, all the clothes were made by men.

[ALA]
That’s right. You see adverts in Edinburgh at this period, and you have tailors and you have mantua makers. The men went to the tailors and the women went to the mantua makers.

[JB]
Let’s get back to Ramsay. Let’s not forget that he was in Edinburgh during a huge moment in history: the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745–1746. He painted Bonnie Prince Charlie.

[ALA]
Yeah, so there’s a bit of a story. It again goes back to his father …

[JB]
You are obsessed!

[ALA]
I’m obsessed with his father! But the reason it does is because his father bought a piece of land in the 1730s just under the Castle Hill or just on Castle Hill, below Edinburgh Castle. And they built a house there which became known affectionately as Goose Pie, because it looked like literally an octagonal pie that people would buy at the time. But the reason it’s important is because that’s where Ramsay painted when he was in Edinburgh. He had a studio there, and lots of beauties would come to his studio.

In 1745, when the Jacobites were trying to take Edinburgh back, the Hanoverian garrison was in Edinburgh, firing cannons over the top of his house while he was in the house, firing them at marauding crowds who were trying to break into the castle. At that same point, Bonnie Prince Charlie is down at Holyroodhouse at the bottom of the High Street. He wants to get his portrait painted and out in an engraving as fast as possible to promote the idea that he is the rightful heir to the throne – to the British throne as well as the Scottish.

And so, Ramsay goes down to paint him, and then immediately an engraving is ordered in order to create propaganda, to fly out across the land. And that happens, but obviously James doesn’t get the throne in the end. Bonnie Prince Charlie doesn’t end up getting the throne for his dad. And so that all doesn’t happen. But Ramsay’s right there in the middle of it, as the cannons are bashing into the tenements beyond him. And actually, his house is ransacked by the troops as well, but he doesn’t get hurt or anything. I think that family is very typical of families at the time who sort of hedged their bets.

[JB]
Yes, I was going to ask, was it a measure of his charisma and networking ability to be all things to all men that Ramsay then went on to paint the Georgian royal family?

[ALA]
Exactly. So, they were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian king, but they also supported the Stuarts. And so, when he was in Rome, famously he went to the Masonic Lodge, which was supportive of the Jacobites and actually didn’t pick a side, which was very wise, I think. And also, he’s a very acute businessman.

[JB]
Didn’t that all come back to his father? I said it before you did!

[ALA]
Actually, yeah, it did.

[JB]
Well, let’s talk about another influential man, because from your notes, I loved the line ‘the most handsomest leg in Britain’. Tell us about that!

[ALA]
That wasn’t Allan Ramsay’s father actually who had the handsomest leg; that’s Lord Bute, who was connected to a few people in the exhibition, actually. Katherine Muir, who’s our poster woman – she’s on the marketing materials for the exhibition – she’s a painting next door that Ramsay painted in 1769. Her husband worked for Lord Bute; he was a manager of his estates. Lord Bute became the Prime Minister for George III and introduced Ramsay to the king, and the king actually ordered Ramsay to do a painting of Lord Bute. So, there was this reversal. Lord Bute, who had ‘the handsomest leg in Britain’ – you can see that’s …

[JB]
His own byline, wasn’t it? He was very proud of that.

[ALA]
He was very proud. And actually, if you look at the painting, it’s very interesting. You could talk about what he’s wearing, but there’s an engraving at the Georgian House that you can see. He’s got this … is it a frock coat that comes down to your knees? And his leg is just very tantalisingly poking out in a very daring way with his stocking. It’s like he’s showing off!

[ST]
Gracefully arched. Some people used to put padding in their stockings to get a nice shapely calf in the 18th century, so I think that’s why he’s possibly so proud of this.

[JB]
I’ve heard of padding in clothes, but never in your calf.

[ST]
Maybe that’s why he was so proud, because he had all natural calf muscle!

[ALA]
OK, I didn’t realise that. That’s interesting.

[ST]
To do with the virility of man, isn’t it? The muscles, the hunter gatherer …

[ALA]
I’m not sure Lord Bute was a hunter gatherer, but yeah.

[JB]
But the thing is, Ramsay went on to become the painter for the Georgian royal family.

[ALA]
Yeah, yeah, he did. And he ended up setting up a studio down in London which almost exclusively for years just painted the royal family.

[JB]
So did he abandon Edinburgh then?

[ALA]
No, no, no, he would come back. He leased out Castle Hill, the Goose Pie house, for a number of years, but he used it again and he painted. I remember there’s a memory, the son of Katherine Muir, who’s one of the portrait paintings here, he remembered David Hume coming to the house wearing a French …

[JB]
This is the philosopher David Hume, who was a mate.

[ALA
That’s it – Ramsay and he were friends. David Hume hung out at Katherine Muir’s house in Abbeyhill, near Holyroodhouse. And when Katherine Muir’s son was five or six, he remembered David Hume coming from France and coming to the house to play cards or whatever, wearing a bright yellow coat with black spots. And I’m just thinking, I’m trying to picture that in my head – but that really rich, brightly coloured fabric was certainly not domestic. It certainly came … well, was it actually? This is something for you. Was it dyed in Britain? If the raw silk came here from …

[ST]
Yeah, then probably it would have been dyed. It would have been dyed here, close to home. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t imported. It wasn’t all imported as a woven fabric as well. There are so many steps in textile production; it could be at any point.

[JB]
Well, I’ll say at this junction that we’ve purposely not begun to even talk about male fashion. Perhaps that’s for another podcast? But I think they get enough time, so let’s go back to Ramsay’s career. He is painter to the king, a fantastic career. However, he stops painting, perhaps earlier than he was intending to.

[ALA]
Yeah, it’s quite sad. It was in 1773 and he had an accident.

[JB]
What age would he have been?

[ALA]
He would have been 60. What happened was there was a fire nearby in the neighbourhood where they were living in London, and they went up into the roof, onto the top of the roof – pushed a ladder into the loft to go and see the fire. They stood up there looking at the fire, and he turned to come down and he missed the step and he fell. He broke his arm, and from that point on didn’t really paint. And so, what he focused on, because he was a writer as well, he wrote quite good – what would you call them? – treaties, pamphlets on taste. He wrote quite a lot.

[JB]
‘A dialogue on taste’. Do we know how the abrupt end of his painting career affected him? Is there anything written?

[ALA]
I don’t know. Personally, I haven’t read anything, but I do know that he transitioned fairly well into writing and travelled again into Europe. He’s travelling, he’s going to Italy, he’s writing, he’s spending time with friends and his daughters were living abroad. I think in 1784 he discovered that they were going back to England, and he wanted to see them. He hadn’t seen them for a while. He wasn’t very well and he was in Italy and he travelled, if you can imagine, by carriage through Italy, through France, getting to Calais. He’s with his son and he’s not very well at all; he’s pretty much dying by the time he gets to Calais. He gets over the water, arrives at Dover and he dies in his son’s arms in Dover.

But he’s had an incredibly illustrious career, and I think the end of his life – I imagine, and this is just an imagination – that after having literally a factory producing portraits for the royal family, he’d be ready to maybe do something different. I think that he got into a formulaic way of painting that might have become a little bit boring, but that’s just a subjective opinion based on no evidential fact.

[JB]
But he had the writing to fall back on. Sally, we seem to be fascinated by the Georgian period – so many television programmes, so many movies. Is the fact that it looks so good aesthetically part of the attraction?

[ST]
Oh, I think so, wouldn’t you? There’s something about the appeal of it. I think there’s something about the 18th century that is about the quest for knowledge, the quest for understanding; and you see that seeping through society.

If we’re bringing the women back into the conversation, the tea table – having tea was that perfect way of starting those conversations in a female environment rather than a male one. But you’re using tea which is obviously coming from China or from India. You’re getting sugar from the West Indies. So, it speaks to colony, it speaks to empire. There’s a lovely frivolous side, but then there’s also a darker undercurrent.

I think as humans, society in general, we can always relate to that, can’t we? That there’s a lovely bright thing going on and a lovely ball, and all that kind of stuff. But then there is also this darker side, where all this stuff is coming from and how we’re getting it and how we’re using it; how much Scots are benefitting from empire, from colonialism. That is literally being worn in the drawing rooms and being eaten and drinking at the tea tables and everything as well. I think that’s just a fascination with what you see on the surface isn’t quite always what is going on underneath.

[JB]
It looks like just a portrait, but it has many, many layers and many, many stories to tell. And the subjects in this exhibition certainly do that. They look great. And if you’d like to come to the Georgian House before the exhibition ends in late November 24, you can see them for yourselves and enjoy the house and its contents as well.

Antonia and Sally, thank you so much for transporting us to that golden age … well, for those who could afford it. And that’s all from this edition of Love Scotland. I’ll be back with another very soon. Until then, goodbye.

And if you’d like to hear about the life of another great Scottish artist, search out our Love Scotland podcast on Sir Henry Raeburn.

[VC]
What I think happens with Raeburn is that he corners the Scottish market, because if you live up in the Highlands you have to perhaps come to Edinburgh on your way somewhere else. And that happens quite a lot, that people sit to Raeburn from the Highlands when they’re in Edinburgh on their way south.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.