Probably not altogether. He is, literally, in my blood after all. But it’s been nearly a year now since Don Roberto: the Adventure of Being Cunninghame Graham was published, and more than seven years since I first gave the talk that would become the book.
The last eleven months have been a seemingly endless round of articles, talks, festival appearances, and the constant nagging question: what else can I do to promote and sell the book? I now even have a card reader, which I have employed in venues as diverse as the Argentine Ambassador’s Residence in London’s Belgrave Square and a basement room in the Rusty Nail on Aberdeen’s Rosemount Viaduct. Such is the lot of the 21st century author.
Now I’m beginning to think it may be time for Don Roberto to move over, to make space for something else. Though not before we’ve celebrated his life, his travels and vision in a culminating weekend of talks and visits entitled Don Roberto and Scotland: International Perspectives, to be held at the Stirling Smith Museum and Gartmore House in May (11/12).
I’d forgotten what it was like to organise an event: the number of moving parts, the missing ones, the annoying cogs that grind against one another rather than slotting smoothly into place. We got off to a sticky start with a ticket price which we thought fair, but which our potential audience clearly didn’t. They stayed away in numbers. It’s hard to gauge how people value different things. Now that’s sorted, the tickets are selling and we can focus on the programme.
On Saturday, at the Stirling Smith, we’ll hear from leading novelists, playwrights, poets and academics about Don Roberto’s relationships with South America, with Empire, with Joseph Conrad and WH Hudson, with his editor Edward Garnett, with Scotland, creativity, and the women in his life and writings. The international perspective refers both to him being a Scot looking out at the wider world, and a world traveller looking back at his native country; and his conclusion that nationalism was a necessary step along the way towards internationalism.
On Sunday we’ll visit Gartmore, the place of his roots, the Graham family seat for 300 years, until he was forced to sell in 1900. My first cousin, Robin Cunninghame Graham, will lead a tour of the house and grounds. He and author Lachie Munro will talk about A Careless Enchantment, the new collection of Robert’s Scottish short stories and sketches which they have jointly edited. And we’ll hear from Lachie about the new Cunninghame Graham archive which he has curated at the National Library of Scotland.
We’ll pray for fair weather so that in the afternoon we can catch the boat across the nearby Lake of Menteith to Inchmahome, where Robert and his wife Gabriela are buried beside one another in the ruins of the 13th century Augustinian priory. In May, this enchanted island should be at its most beguiling with azaleas and rhododendrons in flower and Spanish chestnuts budding by the water.
Standing at his graveside will be a fitting conclusion to the seven-year journey he has taken me on. Set into the priory wall is the plaque he placed in memory of Gabriela, whose grave he is supposed to have dug himself. On the plaque is a Spanish proverb: los muertos abren los ojos a los que viven. The dead open the eyes of the living. It is true. He has opened my eyes to a great deal over the last seven years – about him, about me, about Scotland, about the world.
As the poet Hugh MacDiarmid said: ‘we will never see his like again.’
Tickets for the weekend are available from Eventbrite at the very modest price of £33. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/don-roberto-scotland-international-perspectives-tickets-856190838847
A Few Kind Words 