The Tycoon and the Bard E-Book

John Cairney

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Andrew Carnegie: self-made Scottish-American steel millionaire and international philanthropist, remembered through trusts, charities and public buildings on both sides of the Atlantic. Robert Burns: Scotland's greatest poet and most famous philanderer; an inspiration for future liberal politicians and an almost mythical cultural icon. What do the world's greatest tycoon and Scotland's finest bard have in common? More than you might think. Despite dying thirty nine years prior to Carnegie's birth, Burns' work so inspired the philanthropist that he recited all eleven verses of 'Man Was Made to Mourn' at just eight years old. Carnegie's enthusiasm for the poet was to accompany him throughout his life, as unbeknownst to him parallels between himself and his idol emerged time and again. Fuelled by ambition, both brilliant Scots went to unusual lengths to better their lives. While Burns travelled the length and breadth of their homeland writing poetry that would endure for generations, Carnegie left Scotland for America to forge his place in the industrial revolution. The connections between Andrew Carnegie and Robert Burns are unexpected and fascinating, running from their humble beginnings to their enduring legacies. John Cairney

Leseprobe

JOHN CAIRNEY BA,MLITT,PHDis a man of many parts. Actor, writer, painter and storyteller, he first took to the stage at the age of17with the Park Theatre Company in Glasgow in1947.After National Service with theRAFin Germany he made his return to theatre, training at the College of Drama in Glasgow. In a career that has lasted more than 60 years, he has played Romeo, Hamlet, Macbeth, Cyrano de Bergerac, Robert Louis Stevenson, William McGonagall and Ivor Novello but mainly he is remembered for his solo Robert Burns. This began in 1965 with Tom Wright’s play There Was a Man which he performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and the Arts Theatre, London. The play was televised twice, recorded as an album for REL Records, Edinburgh, and produced as a video for Green Place Productions, Glasgow.

Cairney made many film and television appearances throughout the 1960s and ’70s as well as writing and recording his own songs forEMIat Abbey Road in London. However, his career has since been taken over by Burns with only a two year break forBBC2’s This Man Craig. The Burns trail brought him a good living, extensive world travel, good friends and his wife Alannah O’Sullivan, the New Zealand actress and writer whom he married in1980. After nearly20years of living in New Zealand the couple are now returned to Scotland.

As well as his books on Burns, Cairney has published18other titles, including three volumes of autobiography, two novels, three football books, a book of essays about Glasgow, a book about theatre practice and another about solo performers.

Cairney’s paintings have been exhibited in New Zealand and in Scotland. HisNine Lives of Burnswere shown at the Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway in2012and more recently hisStations of the Crosswere displayed in Glasgow as part of the Lentfest Festival2014and at St Bride’s Church in Bothwell. His most recent project, a series of paintings calledThe Marian Way, was exhibited in St Patrick’s Church, Glasgow during October2015. John still finds time for solo appearances and book shows.

By the same author:

Miscellaneous Verses A Moment White The Man Who Played Robert Burns East End to West End Worlds Apart A Year Out in New Zealand A Scottish Football Hall of Fame On the Trail of Robert Burns Solo Performers The Quest for Robert Louis Stevenson The Quest for Charles Rennie Mackintosh Heroes Are Forever Glasgow By the Way, But Flashback Forward Greasepaint Monkey The Sevenpenny Gate Burnscripts The Importance of Being

The Tycoon and the Bard

The Tycoon and The Bard

Andrew Carnegie and Robert Burns

How the world’s richest man was inspired by Scotland’s greatest poet

John Cairney

Luath Press Limited

EDINBURGH

www.luath.co.uk

First Published 2016 ISBN: 978-1-910021-96-5

eISBN: 978-1-910324-75-2

Images of Burns and the Burns Cottage sourced from Wikimedia where they have been identified as being in the public domain.

Photographic images of Andrew Carnegie’s life courtesy of Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum.

The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

© John Cairney 2016

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

The Tycoon and The Bard: Andrew Carnegie and Robert Burns

Humble Beginnings

Inner Circles

Homestead Strikes

Carnegie the Autodidact

Carnegie on Burns

A Natural Businessman

Travel for Carnegie and Burns

The Rise of Andrew Carnegie

Married Life

Andrew Carnegie’s Philanthropy

Carnegie’s Death and LegacyA Personal Reflection – John Cairney

Genius Illustrated from Burns – Andrew Carnegie

Address by Andrew Carnegie at the unveiling of a statue to Burns,erected by the citizens of Montrose 1912

Timeline: The Philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

I must first thank my daughter Jane Livingstone, a writer herself, whose idea it was that the lecture I gave on Carnegie’s admiration of Robert Burns at the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum in2011might be the basis for a slim volume.

The initial project was encouraged by Angus Hogg, Chairman of the Dunfermline Burns Club and facilitated by Chief Executive of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, Nora Rundell, who gave approval for me to approach Lorna Owers, Curator at the Birthplace Museum, to undertake the appropriate preliminary research. My research also included contact with the Greenock Burns Club and the Robert Burns World Federation at Kilmarnock.

This was the ring of support created for the text to be written and submitted to Gavin MacDougall at Luath Press who commissioned a book with cover and illustrations by Mark Hosker of13hundred Creative Partners in Edinburgh. I am also indebted to Katharine Liston for her scrutiny of the text. I sincerely thank all of the above for making this book possible.

Andrew Carnegie

Preface

It’s a well-known fact that Andrew Carnegie, the Dunfermline-born industrialist, was a passionate admirer of the poet Robert Burns. This throws an interesting new light on the character and reputation of Carnegie. That he was inspired from youth and throughout his life by a poet – and an egalitarian, intensely romantic one at that – is perhaps at odds with Carnegie’s image as a ruthless capitalist. Nor was his admiration for Burns some hobbyist whim. There is clear evidence that Carnegie put both his actions and his money where his passion was. Not only did he stipulate that a bust – not of himself but of Burns, Scotland’s national poet – be installed in each of the 2,811 free libraries he famously gifted around the world, but two papers held in the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum in Dunfermline demonstrate the exact nature of his regard. The first is the address Carnegie delivered in 1912 at the unveiling of a statue of Burns in Montrose. Carnegie had contributed to the funding of the statue at a time when other benefactors had been hard to find and in his speech he extols Burns’ virtues at length and with great conviction. The second paper is ‘Genius Illustrated from Burns’, an essay in which Carnegie captures the essence of Burns’ prodigious talent. These papers are quoted throughout this volume.

‘Genius’ was the mystery in Burns that first attracted Carnegie: ‘Talent has climbed Parnassus… Genius alone has scaled heights and revealed to us the enchanted land beyond and over the mountain-top.’ However, Carnegie revered Burns not only as a poet but as a philosopher and a prophet. He saw him as a challenger of religious dogma and a champion of republican democracy. Carnegie shared Burns’ love of laughter and song and was also deeply touched by the poet’s tender humanity, his respect for all living things and compassion for human frailty: ‘his spontaneous, tender, all-pervading sympathy with every form of misfortune, pain or grief; not only in man but in every created form of being. He loved all living things, both great and small.’ As a writer himself, Carnegie greatly appreciated too Burns’ vivid leaps of imagination and immaculate word choice.

Born in humble circumstances – Burns almost 80 years before Carnegie – both men had, by their mid-30s, already achieved on a colossal scale. Burns was to die at only 37, leaving behind a body of work of such quality that it would ensure his lasting legacy. Andrew Carnegie had by the age of 33 pledged in a memo to himself to give away any surplus income beyond $50,000 a year, for the good of his fellow man. In so doing he, in effect, became the father of modern philanthropy. How truly remarkable that two young men from the same small country should entertain such powerful instincts which would do so much to shape the world.

Burns is loved the world over but, while he is recognised for his success and good deeds to this day, there are those who judge Andrew Carnegie harshly for his record as an employer, particularly on account of the incident at Homestead Steel Works (of which more later). Carnegie was however a typical employer of his day and, while Homestead did indeed damage his reputation, there is yet much to admire. He directed much of his philanthropy toward the education of workers (including women – Carnegie believed he owed everything good in life to his mother and his wife), as well as gifting libraries and technical institutes musical instruments and countless other benefactions. He took a passionate stance against slavery and war and was, unusually for the time, strongly opposed to racism, contributing to the funding of Tuskegee College for Colored Teachers and providing a pension for its founder, Booker T Washington. He believed the rich should be taxed more severely than the poor and that every citizen should have a vote. He introduced pensions for his workers, and for many teachers, and set up trusts for the effective and continuing disbursement of his fortune after his death. One of the trusts most precious to him was the Hero Fund for the recognition of those who lost their lives in acts of peacetime heroism.

In a life that was much honoured, Carnegie never hid his delight in being made an Honorary Vice-President of the Burns Federation and took great pride in being elected a life member of the Greenock Burns Club, the oldest Burns Club in the world: fitting tributes to his practical efforts to make Burns better known around the globe, especially in the United States.

Andrew Carnegie drew on the poetry and ideas of ‘his favourite’ Burns for both inspiration and solace: this modest book attempts to show how this, combined with a shared belief in the ‘brotherhood of man’, underpins the respect that one famous Scot felt for another, a respect that was to be both life-changing and lifelong.

John Cairney Glasgow, 2016