Of course, MacDiarmid is not above criticism, certainly not in my book. His treatment of two of his mentors, Thomas Scott Cairncross and Francis George Scott, was vindictive. His admiration for Stalin as a political superman was misguided. His unacknowledged plundering of lines, and sometimes whole passages, from other men was often disingenuous as if his approach to the art of poetry was to offer something old, something new, something borrowed, something read. But, for all these faults, a great spirit shines through and it must be said that MacDiarmid was deliberately provocative in order to defeat the enemy, self-satisfaction. He constantly questioned himself, indeed much of his poetry is a dialogue between Chris Grieve, the postman’s son, and Hugh MacDiarmid, the self appointed saviour of Scotland. Had MacDiarmid not been such a complicated character and complex poet I could certainly not have sustained an interest in him for some 30 years. And, on a personal level, it was not always sweetness and light. He could be contrary: a wonderfully diverting guest at my wedding in 1963 he also, some years later, wrote me a highly critical letter after I admitted in an interview with the Sunday Times, that I had come to see Marxism as a secular religion (with all the usual dependence on dogma) and not as the science of socialism. However, we resolved that difference and I did not lose my faith in MacDiarmid as, essentially, a man of integrity. I last saw him, at his home in Biggar, shortly before he died, and retain a memory of his unique quality of resolution.
Coincidence, I suppose, accounts for my first contact with MacDiarmid for the connection was Broughton, the Edinburgh secondary school I attended. He had been to Broughton Student Centre, as a pupil-teacher, from 1908 to the beginning of 1911, when he left as a result of being involved in a prank in which some books were stolen from George Ogilvie, the principal teacher of English and an important influence on the poet.
By the time I got to Broughton, in 1955, Ogilvie was dead and had been replaced by John Sinclair as head of English department. Sinclair was one of Ogilvie’s former pupils and (though none of his pupils knew it) had published a novel, A Sop o’ Moonshine, under the pseudonym John MacCallum. One of the books he used, in teaching, was an annotated anthology of Burns by Ogilvie.
I must say that in my first stint at Broughton I had no interest whatsoever in English literature, far less Scots poetry. I was one of the woodworkers, pupils who were classed as non-academic irritants by most members of the staff. Old John Sinclair, however impressed us as a character. As deputy headmaster he held sway in a little building known as the annexe and a few drops of rain were enough for him to declare a half-day for the pupils in his territory. This infuriated the headmaster, Robert Walker, but delighted the woodworkers.
Sinclair did very little classroom teaching, simply because he disliked the ambience, but he enjoyed rambling conversations with his pupils in his room, an aggrandised cupboard. There he smoked incessantly and, in the absence of an ashtray, balanced his cork-tipped fag-ends on his desk where the smoke swirled until the last spark was extinguished. He liked the essays I wrote on Elvis Pressley and other obsessions and called me, affectionately rather than facetiously, “professor.”
Of Hugh MacDiarmid he did not say a word, having no appetite for imposing his opinions on his pupils. I remember Old John as an endearing eccentric, possibly saddened by an inability to fulfil his own literary ambitions. He could for instance, have edited MacDiarmid’s letters to Ogilvie but never did.
Apart from MacDiarmid, Broughton has produced several Scottish writers. Among the poet’s contemporaries were Roderick Watson Kerr (author of War Daubs), Edward Albert (Kirk o’ Field) and Mary Baird Aiken (Soon Bright Day). Other literary Broughtonians include Albert MacKie and J.K. Annand (both of whom, like MacDiarmid, edited the Broughton Magazine). The novelist Fred Urquhart won a bursary which eventually took him to Broughton. “I went reluctantly to Broughton,” Urquhart has written, “and loathed it. I was thankful to leave in the summer I was fifteen.” When I first left Broughton, at the age of 15 in 1958, I too was glad to get away, for the affable Sinclair was the exception rather than the rule at school.
After a year as an apprentice baker I returned to Broughton, determined to get some qualifications. My change of mind was the result of meeting Sandy Moffat, now well known as a painter and the teacher of many of the young Glasgow artists. Sandy had, coincidentally, come from Fife to live round the corner from me in Edinburgh and he, like his brilliant brother John, was a connoisseur of culture. I responded to this enthusiasm and decided to try school again. With such foreboding, I went back to Broughton.
Second time around, I came under the influence of Ronald Stevenson, who taught music at the school to make ends meet, and who made music at home to affirm his real priorities. As well as having an en encyclopaedic knowledge of music (especially the music of Busoni) Ronald was passionately interested in modernist literature and introduced me to the work of Joyce, Pound - and MacDiarmid.
I was a regular visitor to Ronald’s home at West Linton and from there it was a bus ride to Biggar where MacDiarmid stayed with his wife Valda. When Ronald thought I was ready (he lent me his copy of In Memoriam James Joyce which seemed to me as astonishing as the Cantos of Pound) he put me in touch with MacDiarmid.
A meeting had been arranged but, before I took the bus to Biggar, I met MacDiarmid in Edinburgh. It was the winter of 1962 and I was a student at Edinburgh University. MacDiarmid had been invited to read some of his poems to the Literary Society and I went along to listen. Norman MacCaig was also reading and, during a discussion of the significance of names, he told MacDiarmid, “You’re name’s Grieve and you’re not crying.” “Grieve,” MacDiarmid chuckled, “has nothing to do with grief, it means a farm manager.” Subsequently the talk became more serious and MacDiarmid discoursed at length about the direction of his poetry and the destiny of his country.
After the meeting I walked up to MacDiarmid and introduced myself. “Yes,” he said, “I thought it was you, I’ve been hearing about you from Ronald Stevenson.” Almost speechless by this confrontation with the great man, I recalled the words of his immortal Drunk Man and quoted one of the exclamations: “Fegs!” MacDiarmid laughed and was pleased to let my friend Alan Hamilton take a photograph of us both together (a photograph reproduced above). “I’ll see you at Biggar,” MacDiarmid assured me as he left with MacCaig.
The first visit to Biggar was no disappointment. MacDiarmid was in sparkling conversational form and swapped jokes with Valda who supplied us with soup, possibly as an antidote to the malt whisky (Glenmorangie) we drank on that occasion.
Like many before me, I was surprised that MacDiarmid’s gift for great poetry and biting invective did not diminish his talent for friendship. Fundamentally, he was a very gentle man, fond of a joke and a drink. His ferocity as a polemicist was a tactic to shake Scotland out of its crippling complacency and this he did so effectively that many still regard him as a fire-breathing political dragon rather than as the poetic mystic he undoubtedly was.
I saw MacDiarmid fairly frequently after that, either going out to Biggar or enjoying a drink with him when he came into Milne’s Bar, In Edinburgh’s Hanover Street, for a Saturday lunchtime session. He would drink at the front bar with MacCaig and Sydney Goodsir Smith, just as Alasdair Gray has observed in 1982 Janine: “The bar was crowded except where three men stood in a small open space created by the attention of the other customers. One had a sombre pouchy face and upstanding hair which seemed too like thistledown to be natural, one looked like a tall sarcastic lizard, one like a small sly shy bear.” In other words, MacDiarmid, MacCaig and Smith in that order.
Along from Milne’s front bar, there was an alcove known as the Little Kremlin as it was a meeting place for members of the Communist Party. When MacDiarmid wasn’t standing, smoking and drinking, at the front bar with MacCaig and Smith he would sit down in the Little Kremlin with Communist friends like Jimmy Crichton and the actor Alex McCrindle. I would come into Milne’s with Sandy Moffat and our mutual friend, the painter John Bellany, and we would make our way towards MacDiarmid. He was most encouraging, insisting that only the uninhibited could make a contribution to the culture of Scotland.
In 1965 MacDiarmid graciously agreed to introduce my first volume of verse, Society Inebrious, published by Alan Hamilton and Bill Mowat. Characteristically, MacDiarmid wrote a massive introduction and said he would be glad to abbreviate it or alter it as I wished. We did not, of course, alter one word but shortened it by cutting out quotations from a book, by Laura Hofrichter, about Heine. I was moved by MacDiarmid’s generosity and determined that, at some future date, I would try to do him justice as a man and a poet.
Now, on the tenth anniversary of MacDiarmid’s death, my biography is published and it is up to readers to decide if I have succeeded in portraying the real MacDiarmid. (This article first appeared in the Glasgow Herald, Weekender, August 13 1988)