Alasdair Gray - Poor Things

I know (you thrawn old Devil) that you will not believe a word of this, and think I have a heart “too easily made glad”. I know you are even now reaching for your pen to describe for me all the obviously vicious worms gnawing at the roots of Blooming Britain. Leave that pen alone! I am going to die happy.

If you have read my publications (but has anyone alive ever done that?) if you have read A Loving Economy (which should be read as a poem, just as your worst poems should be read as treatises) if you have skimmed through even a paragraph of my poor neglected little magnum opus you will know I am unusually acquaint with my inner workings. No wonder! I was introduced to them by a genius. A cerebral haemorrhage will release me from this mortal coil in early December. I am winding down the little clinic which was launched so bravely and richly fifty-six years ago. Easily done! My patients now are some children’s pets and two elderly hypochondriacs who feel slightly happier after talking breathlessly to me for an hour about things only Sigmund Freud could understand. I have found homes for all my dogs except Archie, the Newfoundland. He has a home waiting for him, but will not be led off to it until the friend who calls on me after breakfast (Nell Todd, a courageous Sapphist who defies the Glasgow police in male attire) uses the basement key I have given her, and finds me out. Completely. I would have preferred a warm steady man at the last, but there has only been one in my life, and he died thirty-five years ago. Not that I disliked the fly-by-nights — some of them were great fun. But steady heat is what I need now, and my Archie will provide it.

If you insult me by offering to provide it I will never speak to you again. My love to Valda.

Sincerely,

Victoria McCandless.

Dr. Victoria McCandless was found dead of a cerebral stroke on 3rd December 1946. Reckoning from the birth of her brain in the Humane Society mortuary on Glasgow Green, 18th February 1880, she was exactly sixty-six years, forty weeks and four days old. Reckoning from the birth of her body in a Manchester slum in 1854, she was ninety-two.

The Necropolis of Glasgow where the three principal characters of this book are interred in the Baxter Mausoleum — the Romanesque rotunda on the far right.

GLASGOW GREEN, 1880. The circle surrounds the spot where Lady Victoria Blessington drowned herself: also the bridge from which she leapt; the wharf where Geddes saw her drown; the Humane Society House where Godwin Baxter examined her corpse .

ENTRACE TO PARK CIRCUS FROM THE WEST END PARK

ORIGINAL PLAN OF THE CIRCUS AS IT STILL STANDS

The Stewart Memorial Fountain with Glasgow University to the left, Park Circus right.

The Midland Hotel, St Pancras, where Bella and Wedderburn spent the second night of their elopement .

Lansdown United Presbyterian Church, where a wedding ceremony was interrupted on Christmas Day, 1883.

The kind of cab in which General Blessington planned to abduct his drugged “wife”, Bella Baxter.

AUCTIONING LOOT IN MANDALAY AFTER BURMESE EXPEDITION “‘Thunderbolt’ Blessington believes that the common soldier who preserves the peace of the Empire deserves more than mere wages.”

KING PREMPEH’S HUMILIATION: “One of the Governor’s demands made after the Ashanti rebellion was that King Prempeh should make abject submission in accordance with native custom. The King removed his crown and sandals, came forward with the Queen Mother to perform the act of humiliation, and reached the platform on which was seated Sir Francis Scott, General Blessington and Mr Maxwell. They knelt and embraced the Englishmen’s legs and booted feet, while the Ashantis looked on with astonishment at their King’s abasement.”

Events in General Blessington’s career as shown and reported in the Graphic Illustrated Weekly News.

MURDER IN NORTHERN INDIA: “The punitive expedition against the Lushai Hill tribes has found the gun of the late Lieut. Stewart in the grave of the Chief Howsata. It had been reported from other villages that if Howsata had murdered Lieut. Stewart, the gun would be in the Chief’s grave. This was opened. Howsata’s embalmed body was found lying with the gun beside it: conclusive proof that General Blessington had been right to burn the homes of the guilty tribesmen.”