ABiblio-thief. April
12, 2002
“Try carters Bookshop in Wigtown”, said Archie, present
caretaker at Monreith who I encountered once back outside in the grounds of Monreith
house. “Carter was caretaker here for ten years and took a lot of the Maxwell
collection with him when he left”.
When I entered G C Books in Wigtown, two women sent me to the
back of the shop where indeed the booty from Monreith House was kept. I wanted
assistance. I retraced my steps and noticed a middle-aged man behind a
computer.
“I hear you have most of the Maxwell collection”. I said with
undisguised lack of tact. (Immobilise your prey with attack). He bade me sit
down and was extremely forth-coming about Jolly; source material, history, a
candid appraisal of the way local memory worked, and his undisguised dislike
for the present caretaker of Monreith House.
“Evening memories is the Herbert Maxwell to read.” He
maintained. “There is an account of the first wheeled vehicle arriving in
Wigtownshire by ship”. It seemed that wishing to arrive at a local election
with great panache Sir William Maxwell, third baronet, had the stone dykes
opened to widened the bridle paths for his new carriage... once at the meeting
he was shouted down by the opposition for his involvement in smuggling. Though
the mandate was to stop it going on, it appears Sir William Sir William was making vast sums and avoiding taxes on in
tea, whisky etc, by using the farms on his land to hide the contraband coming
over from the Isle of Mann.
Carter believed, because of the lack of roads Jolly came from
Liverpool which took a few hours to get to by
sea. Carter spoke with an English cockney accent and reminded me of Fagin in
Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist. Maybe the rumour that he had begun his bookshop
with the Maxwell collection made me prejudiced, whether it was guilt or genuine
altruism he divested himself of all he knew.
“Sir William was heart-broken when Jolly died. He had hit him
in a fit of temper” and “Yes it was with a cane. Friday was a lot older than he
was in the painting”.
Carter did not think it was a Raeburn. His, (Carter’s) own
name was cited for the collection for tax reasons; they had become national
property on the proviso that the public could view them once a year. Carter put
forward the hypothesis that Sir William, himself, has had the painting commissioned
after Jolly’s death, so grief-stricken was he.
“Jolly married a local girl but continued to work for Sir
William. When people remember around here they remember things passed down. The
Jollys, and it is pretty certain, all descend from Jolly. You can tell when you
look at them”.
It seemed Sir William had Jolly as a status symbol; “It was
swashbuckling to have a blackamoor in those days and Sir William saw himself as
such”
“Sir Herbert gives an account of why there was a move from
Myrton castle to Monreith House in Evening memories”.
The image of the arrival of the first carriage is
fascinating; Wheels arriving from a ship, the first wheeled vehicle ever, and
the first blackamoor.
Carter told me about a book of letters written by a fourteen
year old boy working on a slave ship. These are published. There are other
sources. I would need to sit down and read these patiently.
If Sir William commissioned the painting why have it feature
the cane in the very hands of the person it mowed down? Was this some kind of
penance, a reminder of the wicked deed?
“There are graves in the garden near Monreith. It is where
they used to be buried; it is supposed they buried Jolly there too” said
Carter.
I felt sad for his life wrenched away from his father, taken and
sold into slavery, Alesander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe, fell on hard times and betrayed his Man Friday and resold him
into slavery.
I have yet to visit Whithorn.
When Carter got up to see me out he had an acute hunchback
and supported himself with a cane…!
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