Gus Skinner
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Children at dusk, Monifieth, Angus
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
My happy days
with the great
Scottish playwright
Iain Macmillan
James Bridie
In this extract from ‘I Had it From my Father’, the newly-published autobiography of Scottish lawyer Iain Macmillan (former president of the Law Society of Scotland), the author recounts his working relationship with James Bridie, for whom he worked as a young man during the second world war, before he was called up.
‘How are you getting on Iain?’ asked this nice OBE man [Dr T Pettigrew Young, director of the Glasgow Commercial College]. ‘I hear you’re working for the Ministry of Food’. He made it sound as if I were running the place, instead of being the lowest form of clerical life. ‘I wondered if you might fancy another job’, he said. ‘A friend of mine is looking for a secretary. James Bridie. Have you heard of him? He’s a playwright. Writes plays you know. Real name is Mavor, Dr Mavor. His own secretary has been called up. Thought you might be interested. Only a temporary job – about a year, he thinks’.
My heart leaping with excitement, I told Dr Young – dear Dr Young – that I would be interested, certainly, very interested indeed, and was told to attend for an interview at Dr Mavor’s house in Bearsden on Saturday morning.
Of course I had heard of James Bridie, and the notion of working for a person who could write such amusing plays as ‘Susannah and the Elders’ and ‘A Sleeping Clergyman’ was very exciting indeed. But I was apprehensive about this interview. I had never been interviewed by an author before. Or by anyone for that matter.
I got off the bus at Bearsden Cross three days later and made my way up Roman Road in the warm summer sunshine, gazing doubtfully at the large houses that lined the road. Although anxious, I was also thrilled at the prospect of meeting a real author, a person who actually made his living by writing.
I took it that the lady who opened the door to me was Dr Mavor’s wife (as indeed she was, Rona Mavor). Tall. Good-looking. She led me across a wide hall and showed me into a study. Or was it a library? ‘You’ll find him out there somewhere. I think he’s helping Bingo roll the tennis court’.
Dr Mavor had a wide circle of friends and associates, many of them theatre people or literary people, and I typed endless amusing letters for him on his Remington typewriter, with which I was familiar, thanks to the Commercial College. Nowadays James Bridie’s name may not be so well known as it once was, but in his time he was a star. He had then, as I recall, three plays running in the West End, including his latest, ‘Mr Bolfry’, and this generated a lot of correspondence with some important people like Bernard Shaw and J B Priestley. I began to learn something of the practical concerns of a successful dramatist. I got to know about casting books with photographs of Alastair Sim and Robert Donat, and weekly returns from the theatres showing audience numbers. I was fascinated by it all.
He contributed many articles to papers and journals, and I typed those to his dictation. He liked to dictate straight on to the typewriter. He wrote his plays in the same way – at least that is how he worked when I was with him. I sometimes had to stop typing because of laughing so much at a line he had just dictated, and then he would laugh too, sitting back in his big armchair; and once or twice, caught up in the hilarity of it all, I would suggest the next line, and he would tell me, in spite of my protests, to put it in. So there are a couple of lines ‘by me’ in some of these plays.
He talked to me easily about the theatre, about writing, about literature, about painting. He had a hundred and one outlandish, recondite, queer little bits of learning about myths and superstitions and odd religious cults; about medical lore (for he was a medic by training and practice) and folk lore, and wonderful far away places like Baku and Samerkand. I was entranced and amused and grateful to this wonderful man whom I came to love dearly.
My mornings were spent with Dr Mavor in his study, and apart from a couple of late afternoon classes at the college, the rest of my time was spent at the Citizens’ Theatre. Dr Mavor had come up with the idea of a new theatre in Glasgow, and some of his friends had been persuaded to support this venture – Tom Honeyman, director of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, George Singleton of the Cosmo Cinema, Norman Duthie an accountant, his cousin Guy McCrone, the novelist, and several others. We would take the bus into Glasgow at lunch-time, and he went off to the Glasgow Art Club in Bath Street where he met up with his colleagues, while I went to the theatre.
It was then housed in the old Athenaeum, the Scottish Academy of Music, and on 11 October 1943 it opened with one of James Bridie’s own plays, ‘Holy Isle’, with Duncan Macrae in the cast, supported by Denys Carey and Yvonne Coulette. In the succeeding months some eight or nine plays were presented, including Ferenc Molnar’s ‘Liliom’ later translated into a film called ‘Carousel’.
Guy McCrone, whose novel ‘Wax Fruit’ is still widely read, was the theatre manager, assisted by his delightful wife Sylvia. I helped to count the petty cash, and assisted Sylvia with the book-keeping, which I knew something about, thanks to the Commercial College. I also wandered about backstage where the players were nice to me. I listened to gossip about Denys Carey and Yvonne Coulette, and sometimes I was allowed to paint scenery.
The programme was a simple card, folded over, such were the exigencies of wartime. Inside were notes about the current production, which Guy McCrone sometimes asked me to write. There was a little footnote inside telling the audience that – ‘In the event of an air raid the performance will continue. If you wish to leave, please do so as quietly as possible’. Presumably this was so that those who remained, though heedless of the bombs and the anti-aircraft guns, should not be disturbed by the noisy tipping-up of seats. ‘Sorry to disturb you. Thought we’d just pop down to the air-raid shelter for a bit. My husband, you know, he gets a bit…’
Guy used to take me to the Whitehall Restaurant for lunch. The gin and lime which we inevitably had by way of aperitif was my first introduction to liquor. I thought that drinking a gin and lime before lunch was a frightfully dashing thing to do, and I took to it pretty well. Guy and Sylvia also invited me sometimes to their beautiful apartment in Huntly Gardens where they entertained artists, painters and musicians. I don’t suppose these people gave me more than a second glance – a gauche novice who murmured ‘hello’, and quickly merged into the background. Nothing in my background had prepared me for carrying on a casual conversation with people who earned their living by painting pictures, or playing the piano.
In the meantime Dr Mavor did his best to encourage me. He astonished me one day by suggesting that I too should write a play. ‘Why don’t you have a go at writing yourself, Iain? There’s bound to be a play or two in these stories you’ve been telling me about Oban’.
But of course I would write a play. I had long since decided that the only possible career for me was that of author. A week later I presented my mentor with my one-act play. He read it carefully and suggested that it needed a ‘purple passage’ for the final scene, and explained what he meant. Dr Mavor was very keen on purple passages. I wrote one, and immediately he announced that he was sending it off to Paul Vincent Carroll for his opinion. We had done one of Paul Carroll’s plays at the Citizens’ – ‘Shadow and Substance’. (You will notice the use of the first person plural, perhaps). Mr Carroll was very nice about my play, but suggested that I had still a bit to learn about the trade of dramatist before I was let loose upon the public.
I was not in the least discouraged, for Dr Mavor now had me off on another tack. Why didn’t I do a bit of theatre criticism, he asked? Would I like to try that? Before I had time to demur he was on the telephone to Colin Milne, the dramatic critic of the Glasgow Herald newspaper, as a result of which I was engaged to cover the next production at the wee Park Theatre in Park Circus. For the next several months I went every week to one or other of the Glasgow theatres, usually with a friend to take advantage of the complimentary ticket. I hoped, of course, that my friend would be suitably impressed when I arranged to meet him (or more likely her) later in the evening, after I had hurried off to the Herald office in Buchanan Street. I was naturally intoxicated by the smell of printers’ ink in the editorial room, the fighting for a seat among all the crush and din, and the sense of urgency as I typed my ‘copy’ on their curious yellow paper and handed it to a sub-editor, whose rapid pencil swiftly transformed my prosy comments into something short and snappy.
I hope I appreciated that Dr Mavor was trying to encourage me, to bring out whatever latent talent he thought I might have. I cannot believe that he supposed himself to be nurturing some native talent that would burst forth one day in a work of genius. Hardly that. More likely he recognised that I was lacking in self-esteem; and thought that a little encouragement might help me develop whatever potential lay within me. He was essentially a kind man.
He demonstrated this one morning when he had to rebuke me. On my arrival in his study he said – ‘Iain, I fear that a rose has fallen from your chaplet’. It transpired that I had, unwittingly I think, divulged some observation of Dr Mavor’s which had been intended for my ears only. I was appalled, and stammered out an apology. He dismissed it; said it was not all that important; but I would remember, wouldn’t I, that what I heard in the privacy of our room was not to be repeated. I learned a lesson that morning about confidentiality that was to prove useful to me in later years. More important, I also learned that a rebuke can be administered with some degree of understanding. A couple of days later, after reading one of my theatre notices, he said – ‘Iain, the rose has been restored!’.
I made my way to Dr Mavor’s house in Bearsden for the last time. It was a fine spring morning. I took the low road, by the fields. I remember lingering by the fence, admiring the dew-dropped cobwebs sparking in the early sunshine. I thought of the nine months I had been with Dr Mavor, and of all that I had learned, and how kind he had been to me. It seemed to me then that this had been the happiest time of my life.
‘I Had it From my Father’ is published by Standfirst (£15 plus £2.80 p&p).
It is available by post from Standfirst, 217 Liberator House, Glasgow Prestwick Airport, Prestwick KA9 2PT. Cheques payable to Standfirst.
To order by telephone using a credit or debit card, please call 01292 473777. Also available on Amazon
