by Bill Bryson
The Woodhorn Colliery closed down in 1981, seven years short of its hundredth anniversary. Once it was one of 200 pits in Northumberland, and of some 3,000 in the country as a whole. In the 1920s, at the industry’s peak, 1.2 million men worked in British coal mines. Now, at the time of my visit, there were just sixteen working pits in the country and the number employed had fallen by 98 per cent.
All of which seems a little sad until you step into the museum and are reminded through photographs and accident statistics just how harsh and draining the work was, and how carefully it systematized generations of poverty. It’s no wonder the town produced so many footballers; for decades there was no other way out.
The museum was free and full of cleverly engaging displays showing life down the pits and in the busy village above it. I had no idea, other than in a loose notional sense, just how hard life was in the mines. Well into this century, more than a thousand men a year died in mines and every pit had at least one fabled disaster. (Woodhorn’s was in 1916 when thirty men died in an explosion caused by criminally lax supervision; the mine’s owners were sternly told not to let it happen again or next time they would really get told off.) Until 1847, children as young as four - can you believe this? - worked in the mines for up to ten hours a day, and until relatively recent times boys of ten were put to work as trapper lads, confined in total darkness in a small space with nothing to do but open and shut ventilation traps when a coal cart passed by. One boy’s shift ran from 3 a.m. to 4 p.m. six days a week. And those were the soft jobs.
Goodness knows how people found the time or strength to haul themselves off to lectures and concerts and painting clubs, but they most assuredly did. In a brightly lit room hang thirty or forty paintings executed by members of the Ashington Group. So modest were the group’s resources that many are painted with walpamur,- a kind of primitive emulsion, on paper, card or fibreboard. Hardly any are on canvas. It would be cruelly misleading to suggest that the Ashington Group harboured a budding Tintoretto, or even a Hockney, but the paintings provide a compelling record of life in a mining community over a period of fifty years. Nearly all depict local scenes - ‘Saturday Night at the Club’, ‘Whippets’ - or life down the pits, and seeing them in the context of a mining museum, rather than in some gallery in a metropolis, adds appreciably to their lustre. For the second time in a day I was impressed and captivated.
And here’s a small, incidental point. As I was leaving, I noticed on a label recording the mine’s owners that one of the principal beneficiaries of all this sweat and toil at the coalface was none other than our old friend W.J.C. Scott-Bentinck, the fifth Duke of Portland, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, what a remarkably, cherishably small world Britain is.
That is its glory, you see - that it manages at once to be intimate and small-scale and at the same time packed to bursting with incident and interest. I am constantly filled with admiration at this - at the way you can wander through a town like Oxford and in the space of a few moments pass the home of Christopher Wren, the buildings where Halley found his comet and Boyle his first law, the track where Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile, the meadow where Lewis Carroll strolled; or how you can stand on Snow’s Hill at Windsor and see, in a single sweep, Windsor Castle and the playing-fields of Eton, the churchyard where Gray wrote his elegy, the site where The Merry Wives of Windsor was first performed. Can there anywhere on earth be, in such a modest span, a landscape more packed with centuries of busy, productive attainment?
I returned to Pegswood lost in a small glow of admiration and caught a train to Newcastle, where I found a hotel and passed an evening in a state of some serenity, walking till late through the echoing streets, surveying the statues and buildings with fondness and respect, and I finished the day with a small thought, which I shall leave you with now. It was this:
How is it possible, in this wondrous land where the relics of genius and enterprise confront you at every step, where every realm of human possibility has been probed and challenged and generally extended, where many of the very greatest accomplishments ofindustry, commerce and the arts find their seat, how is it possible in such a place that when at length I returned to my hotel and switched on the television it was Cagney and Lacey again?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AND SO I WENT TO EDINBURGH. CAN THERE ANYWHERE BE A MORE beautiful and beguiling city to arrive at by train early on a crisp, dark Novembery evening? To emerge from the bustling, subterranean bowels of Waverley Station and find yourself in the very heart of such a glorious city is a happy experience indeed. I hadn’t been to Edinburgh for years and had forgotten just how captivating it can be. Every monument was lit with golden floodlights - the castle and Bank of Scotland headquarters on the hill, the Balmoral Hotel and the Scott Monument down below - which gave them a certain eerie grandeur. The city was abustle with end-of-day activity. Buses swept through Princes Street and shop and office workers scurried along the pavements, hastening home to have their haggis and cock-a-leekie soup and indulge in a few skirls or whatever it is Scots do when the sun goes doon.
I’d booked a room in the Caledonian Hotel, which was a rash and extravagant thing to do, but it’s a terrific building and an Edinburgh institution and I just had to be part of it for one night, so I set off for it down Princes Street, past the Gothic rocket ship of the Scott Monument, unexpectedly exhilarated to find myself among the hurrying throngs and the sight of the castle on its craggy mount outlined against a pale evening sky.
To a surprising extent, and far more than in Wales, Edinburgh felt like a different country. The buildings were thin and tall in an un-English fashion, the money was different, even the air and light felt different in some ineffable northern way. Every bookshop window was full of books about Scotland or by Scottish authors.And of course the voices were different. I walked along, feeling as if I had left England far behind, and then I would pass something familiar and think in surprise, Oh, look, they have Marks &C Spencer here, as if I were in Reykjavik or Stavanger and oughtn’t to expect to find British things. It was most refreshing.
I checked into the Caledonian, dumped my things in the room, and immediately returned to the streets, eager to be out in the open air and to take in whatever Edinburgh had to offer. I trudged up a long, curving back hill to the castle, but the grounds were shut for the night, so I contented myself with a shuffling amble down the Royal Mile, which was nearly empty of life and very handsome in a dour, Scottish sort of way. I passed the time browsing in the windows of the many tourist shops that stand along it, reflecting on what a lot of things the Scots have given the world - kilts, bagpipes, tam-o’-shanters, tins of oatcakes, bright yellow jumpers with big diamond patterns of the sort favoured by Ronnie Corbett, plaster casts of Greyfriars Bobby looking soulful, sacks of haggis - and how little anyone but a Scot would want them.
Let me say right here, flat out, that I have the greatest fondness and admiration for Scotland and her clever, cherry-cheeked people. Did you know that Scotland produces more university students per capita than any other nation in Europe? And it has churned out a rollcall of worthies far out of proportion to its modest size -Stevenson, Watt, Lyell, Lister, Burns, Scott, Conan Doyle, J.M. Barrie, Adam Smith, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Telford, Lord Kelvin, John Logic Baird, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and lan McCaskill, to name but a few. Among much else we owe the Scots are whisky, raincoats, rubber wellies, the bicycle pedal, the telephone, tarmac, penicillin and an understanding of the active principles of cannabis, and think how insupportable life would be without those. So thank you, Scotland, and never mind that you seem quite unable to qualify for the World Cup these days.
At the bottom of the Royal Mile, I came up against the entrance to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and picked my way to the centre of things along a series of darkened back lanes. Eventually I ended up in an unusual pub on St Andrew Square called Tiles - an apt name since every inch of it from floor to ceiling was covered in elaborate, chun
ky, Victorian tiles. It felt a bit like drinking in Prince Albert’s loo - a not disagreeable experience, as it happens. In any case, something about it must have appealed to me because I drank a foolish amount of beer and emerged to find that nearly all the restaurants round about were closed, so I toddled back to my hotel, where I winked at the night staff and put myself to bed.
In the morning, I awoke feeling famished, perky and unusually-clear-headed. I presented myself in the entrance to the dining room of the Caledonian. Would I like breakfast? asked a man in a black suit.
‘Does the Firth have a Forth?’ I replied drolly and nudged him in the ribs. I was shown to a table and was so hungry that I dispensed with the menu and told the man to bring me the full whack, whatever it might consist of, then sat back happily and idly glanced at the menu, where I discovered that the full cooked breakfast was listed at £14.50.1 snared a passing waiter.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but it says here that the breakfast is fourteen-fifty.’
That’s right, sir.’
I could feel a sudden hangover banging on the cranial gates. ‘Are you telling me,’ I said, ‘that on top of the lavish sum I paid for a room I must additionally pay fourteen-fifty for a fried egg and an oatcake?’
He allowed that this was, in essence, so. I withdrew my order and asked instead for a cup of coffee. Well, honestly.
Perhaps it was this sudden early blot on my happiness that put me in a grumpy mood or perhaps it was the drippy rain I emerged into, but Edinburgh didn’t look half so fine in daylight as it had appeared the night before. Now people plodded through the streets with umbrellas and cars swished through puddles with a noise that sounded testy and impatient. George Street, the core of the New Town, presented an unquestionably fine, if damp, prospect with its statues and stately squares, but far too many of the Georgian buildings had been clumsily abused by the addition of modern frontages. Just around the corner from my hotel was an office supply shop with plate-glass windows that had been grafted onto an eighteenth-century frontage in a way that was nothing short of criminal, and there were others in like vein here and there along the surrounding streets.
I wandered around looking for some place to eat, and ended up on Princes Street. It, too, seemed to have changed overnight. Then, with homeward-bound workers scurrying past, it had seemed beguiling and vibrant, exciting even, but now in the dull light of day it merely seemed listless and grey. I shuffled along it looking for a cafe or bistro, but with the exception of a couple of truly dumpy discount woollens places where the goods seemed to have beendrop-kicked onto display counters or were spontaneously climbing out of bins, Princes Street appeared to offer nothing but the usual array of chain establishments - Boots, Littlewoods, Virgin Records, BHS, Marks & Spencer, Burger King, McDonald’s. What central Edinburgh lacked, it seemed to me, was a venerable and much-loved institution - a Viennese-style coffeehouse or treasured tea-room, some place with newspapers on gripper rods, potted palms and perhaps a fat little lady playing a grand piano.
In the end, fractious and impatient, I went into a crowded McDonald’s, waited a century in a long, ragged line, which made me even more fractious and impatient, and finally ordered a cup of coffee and an Egg McMuffin.
‘Do you want an apple turnover with that?’ asked the spotty young man who served me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘do I appear to be brain-damaged?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t ask for an apple turnover, did I?’
‘Uh . . . no.’
‘So do I look as if I have some mental condition that would render me unable to request an apple turnover if I wanted one?’
‘No, it’s just that we’re told to ask everyone like.’
‘What, you think everyone in Edinburgh is brain-damaged?’
‘We’re just told to ask everyone like.’
‘Well, I don’t want an apple turnover, which is why I didn’t ask for one. Is there anything else you’d like to know if I don’t want?’
‘We’re just told to ask everyone.’
‘Do you remember what I do want?’
He looked in confusion at his till. ‘Uh, an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee.’
‘Do you think I might have it this morning or shall we talk some more?’
‘Oh, uh, right, I’ll just get it.’
‘Thank you.’
Well, honestly.
Afterwards, feeling only fractionally less fractious, I stepped out to find the rain beating down. I sprinted across the road and, on an impulse, ducked into the Royal Scottish Academy, a grand pseudo-hellenic edifice with banners suspended between the columns, which make it look a little like a lost outpost of the Reichstag. I paid £1.50 for a ticket and, shaking myself dry like a dog, shuffled in. They were having their autumn show or perhaps it was their winter show or perhaps it was their annual show. I couldn’t say because I didn’t notice any signs and the pictures were labelled with numbers. You had to pay an extra £2 for a catalogue to find out what was what, which frankly annoys me when I have just parted with £1.50. (The National Trust does this, too - puts numbers on the plants and trees in its gardens and so on, so that you have to buy a catalogue - which is one reason why I won’t be leaving my fortune to the National Trust.) The works in the RSA exhibition extended over many rooms and appeared to fall chiefly into four categories: (1) boats on beaches, (2) lonely crofts, (3) half-clad girlfriends engaged in their toilette, and, for some reason, (4) French street scenes, always with at least one shop front saying BOULANGERIE or EPICERIE so that there was no possibility of mistaking the setting for Fraserburgh or Arbroath.
Many of the pictures - indeed most - were outstanding, and when I saw red gummed circles attached to some of them I not only realized that they were for sale but developed a sudden, strange hankering to buy one myself. So I started making trips to the lady at the front desk and saying, ‘Excuse me, how much is number 125?’ She would look it up and state a figure several hundred pounds beyond what I was prepared to pay, so I would wander off again and after a bit come back and say, ‘Excuse me, how much is number 47?’ At one point, I saw a picture I particularly liked - a painting of Solway Firth by a fellow named Colin Park - and she looked it up and told me that it was £125. This was a good price and I was prepared to buy it then and there even if I had to carry it all the way to John O’Groats under my arm, but then she discovered that she had read the wrong line, that the £125 picture was a little thing about three inches square and that the Colin Park was very considerably more than that, so I went off again. Eventually, when my legs began to tire, I tried a new tack and asked her what she had for £50 or less, and when it turned out there was nothing, I left, discouraged in my quest but £2 richer in regard to the catalogue.
Then I went to the Scottish National Gallery, which I liked even better and not just because it was free. The Scottish National Gallery is tucked away behind the RSA and doesn’t look much from outside, but inside it was very grand in an imperial, nineteenth-century sort of way, with red baize walls, outsized pictures in extravagant frames, scattered statues of naked nymphs and furniture trimmed in gilt, so that it rather brought to mind astroll through Queen Victoria’s boudoir. The pictures were not only outstanding, but they had labels telling you their historical background and what the people in them were doing, which I think is to be highly commended and in fact should be made mandatory everywhere.
I read these instructive notes gratefully, pleased to know, for instance, that the reason Rembrandt looked so glum in his self-portrait was that he had just been declared insolvent, but in one of the salons I noticed that there was a man, accompanied by a boy of about thirteen, who didn’t need the labels at all.
They were from what I suspect the Queen Mother would call the lower orders. Everything about them murmured poorness and material want - poor diet, poor income, poor dentistry, poor prospects, even poor laundering - but the man was describing the pictures with a fondness an
d familiarity that were truly heartwarming and the boy was raptly attentive to his every word. ‘Now this is a later Goya, you see,’ he was saying in a quiet voice. ‘Just look at how controlled those brush strokes are - a complete change in style from his earlier work. D’ye remember how I told you that Goya didn’t paint a single great picture till he was nearly fifty? Well, this is a great picture.’ He wasn’t showing off, you understand; he was sharing.
I have often been struck in Britain by this sort of thing - by how mysteriously well educated people from unprivileged backgrounds so often are, how the most unlikely people will tell you plant names in Latin or turn out to be experts on the politics of ancient Thrace or irrigation techniques at Glanum. This is a country, after all, where the grand final of a programme like Mastermind is frequently won by cab drivers and footplatemen. I have never been able to decide whether that is deeply impressive or just appalling -whether this is a country where engine drivers know about Tintoretto and Leibniz or a country where people who know about Tintoretto and Leibniz end up driving engines. All I know is that it exists more here than anywhere else.
