Scotiana

The Willow Tea Room Sauchiehall Street © 2007 Scotiana

Hi everybody ! Try to imagine we’re all sitting on a Mackintosh chair round a Mackintosh table, in the very special atmosphere of the Willow Tearooms in Glasgow, chatting about everything Scotland, our favourite subject !

Jane Haining

To begin with, have you read our friends’ second Letter from Scotland? This time, Iain and Margaret have told us a very moving story. I must confess I didn’t know anything about Jane Haining before reading this marvellous page about her. What I will retain about this remarkable Scotswoman, who lost her life protecting the school-girls she was in charge of in a Hungarian school, during WWII, is not only her intelligence and courage but the very kindness with which she has always acted from beginning to end.

Her story has now entered world history and her name has been inscribed, with so many others, on the walls of impressive Holocaust memorials but, under the talented pen of Iain, Jane keeps a human dimension. She becomes so lively that we feel as if we knew her, following the young woman along her short life, from her native Dumfriesshire to Glasgow and Budapest. We lose trace of her in the deadly mist of Auschwitz but a picture, a poem on a stone, a written page will speak of Jane forever.

Iain told us he had found a little book about Jane Haining which he used to write his post. He recently mentioned something which may well interests some readers. I quote him :  “did you wonder that Jane should have a step-sister alive in 1997? It comes about in this way….  Jane’s father remarried in 1925 (when he was about 55). Just six months or so later, he died. But in November of that same year, a child was born to his new wife.. .. a girl, Agnes.. .. known as ‘Nan’.. .. who was to become Mrs O’Brien. I wonder whether she’s still alive.. .. she’d be almost 85?”

The Sauchiehall Street Willow Tearooms - Wikipedia

But now, back to the Willow Tearooms where we are supposed to be sipping our tea, nibbling delicious Scottish scones. I’ve nearly forgotten that, in spite of the magical decor and the very tempting menu card. Jane, who “used to bring each week a bag of cream buns for her pupils”, would certainly have liked to be here with her girls!

Quite astonishing the modern look of this tearoom! It has been renovated in its original “Modern’ Style” which, as the name doesn’t indicate, dates back to the end of the 19th century.  What we have here is a marvellous example of what we call in France “Art Nouveau” . It’s simply beautiful. No wonder! It is the result of a unique collaboration between two very talented persons : Kate Cranston and Charles Rennie Mackintosh…

Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Wikipedia

Catherine Cranston - Wikipedia

Kate Cranston was born in Glasgow in 1849. Her social and family background partly explain why she has become a successful entrepreneurial lady. Her father, a baker and pastry cooker, had bought a hotel situated in Glasgow city centre. After some renovations he finally renamed it “Cranston’s Hotel and Dining Rooms” offering his customers no less than : “Convenient Coffee room and detached Smoking Rooms on Ground Floor, commodious Commercial Room and Parlour, comfortable Bed-rooms and Baths, etc. Coffee always ready. Cigars, wines, spirits, ales, Newspapers, Time-Tables, Writing Materials. Superior and varied Bill of Fare at the usual moderate charges.”

Catherine’s brother, a tea-dealer, had already opened several tea shops offering sandwiches to their customers when Catherine Cranston, launched herself in the business, carrying it a step further. With the opening of her ‘art tea-rooms”, Miss Cranston was the first to offer men and women a beautiful and cheerful place to meet in a city where industrialization was making life of people more and more difficult and grim. By the way, these tea-rooms proved to be a good alternative to pubs in times when alcoholism was widely spread and quite destructive…

Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery : Mackintosh Tearoom - Glasgow © 2007 Scotiana

Kate Cranston successively and very successfully opened four tearooms :

1878 : The Crown Luncheon Room in Argyle Street
1886 : Ingram Street Tearoom
1896 : Buchanan Street Tearooms
1903 : The Sauchiehall Willow Tearooms.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh had been born in Glasgow in 1868 and when Kate Cranston first commissioned him to design the wall murals of her Buchanan Tearooms he was only 28. This was the beginning of a long partnership between them. The Willow Tearooms opened at 217 Sauchiehall in October 1903. For the first time, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was given the opportunity to fully express his art, designing not only the interior fittings, but also the exterior and internal layout of the building. The Willow Tearooms quicky became a favorite meeting place in Glasgow.

The Willow Tearooms - Mackintosh 1903 - Wikipedia

The Willow Tearooms - Mackintosh Room de Luxe - Wikipedia

The location selected by Miss Cranston for the new tearooms was a four-storey former warehouse building on a narrow infill urban site on the south side of Sauchiehall Street. The name “Sauchiehall” is derived from “saugh”, the Scots word for a willow tree, and “haugh”, meadow. This provided the starting point for Mackintosh and MacDonald’s ideas for the design theme.

The decoration of the different rooms was themed: light for feminine, dark for masculine. The ladies’ tea room at the front was white, silver, and rose; the general lunch room at the back was panelled in oak and grey canvas, and the top-lit tea gallery above was pink, white, and grey. In addition to designing the internal architectural alterations and a new external facade, in collaboration with his wife Margaret, Mackintosh designed almost every other aspect of the tearooms, including the interior design, furniture, cutlery, menus, and even the waitress uniforms. Willow was the basis for the name of the tearooms, but it also formed an integral part of the decorative motifs employed in the interior design, and much of the timberwork used in the building fabric and furniture. (Wikipedia)

On entering the Willow Tearooms, though they have been renovated a number of times since their first opening, in 1903, we immediately feel the peculiar atmosphere Charles Rennie Mackintosh had wanted to create for Kate Cranston. Clear and sober lines – nice colours – beautiful geometrical and floral motifs – a feminine touch – what a feast !

The art of Mackintosh is omnipresent in Glasgow and our enthusiasm never failed when visiting other places or admiring objects he or his talented wife, Margaret MacDonald, had designed.

Time to share another cup of tea !

The Willow Tearooms - ©unresttwothree - Flickr

Chin Chin !

A bientôt. Mairiuna

We are delighted to publish this second Letter from Scotland received from our dear friends Iain and Margaret. A very moving story…

I wonder whether you remember driving that time from Wanlockhead (home to the Lead-Mining Museum) all the way to Wigtown, to explore the many bookshops? The journey would have taken you through part of Nithsdale, just north of Dumfries, a relatively quiet but very pleasant part of Scotland. Drumlanrig Castle, with its art treasures, and Ellisland Farm – where the poet Burns tried farming for the last time – are two of its main attractions.

Dumfries & Galloway Wanlockhead Road © 2006 Scotiana

H V Morton wrote about this area, too, in his travel books of the late 1920’s and early 30’s: “In Search of Scotland” and “In Scotland Again.” (I know he’s a particular favourite of yours, Marie-Agnes!)

But who would suspect a link between this quiet corner of Scotland and the most appalling event of the Second World War – the Holocaust that spread through Europe, as country after country fell under Nazi domination?

That link was Miss Jane Haining, the heroic Church of Scotland missionary born near Dunscore, but who died in the vile prison-camp of Auschwitz. Her name has been added to those of the Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Memorial, Jerusalem.

Jane Haining

Jane Haining was born on the 6th June 1897, at Lochenhead Farm, just a short distance from the village of Dunscore. Her parents were deeply religious. When Jane was just five years old, her mother died in childbirth. Grievous and bitter though this loss was, it may have played some part in making Jane the outstandingly self-reliant and resourceful woman she was to become.

A clever girl, Jane excelled at school, winning a bursary to attend Dumfries Academy. In the senior school, she was the leading pupil in her year (‘dux,’ as we say in Scotland.) She had a particular flair for languages, and was an early boarder at Dumfries – both relevant to her later life’s work, as we shall see.

Jane, now 18, moved up to Glasgow, where she took a secretarial course, and soon had a job with J & P Coats Ltd, of Paisley, the famous threadmakers. She progressed to become secretary (‘P.A.’ we might say today) to the Company Secretary – a senior and responsible job. And Jane had also by now joined Queen’s Park West Church, quite close to the rooms where she stayed in Forth Street, Pollokshields. (This same Church is now known as Strathbungo Queen’s Park Church.)

Glasgow Queen's Park Baptist Church - Wikipedia

Jane Haining was active in Sunday School work, a knowledgeable and hard-working teacher; kindly too, bringing each week a bag of cream buns for her pupils. She founded a library of books on Missionaries, in which she had, even then, a particular interest.  It may be significant that Jane had a cousin already doing missionary work in India, sent by a Canadian church. Around 1927, Jane Haining seems to have first felt herself called to this work. Her employers at Coats’ persuaded her to stay on, giving them time to train a successor.

Five more years were to pass before Jane’s work began in earnest. Following another year-long course in Glasgow, this time at the College of Domestic Science, Jane Haining arrived finally at the Scottish Mission in Budapest, Hungary. It was September 1932, and she’d been appointed Matron of the Girls’ Hostel attached to the School there (which you can still see in ‘Vorosmarty utca’ – Vorosmarty Street.)

Budapest then, as now, was a beautiful city. Jane loved it from the start. The Scottish Mission, housed in a handsome five-storey building, had a long history, stretching back to the 1840’s. The School  had its own head-teacher and staff -  the head of the Junior School set about teaching Jane Hungarian, and in three years she had an excellent command of this difficult language.

Hungary Budapest Mujegpalya Ice Rink - Wikipedia

In Jane’s charge were 30 to 40 girls, mostly from a Jewish background, many orphaned or otherwise uncared-for. The total roll of the School – which had an excellent reputation – exceeded 400 pupils at times. It’s important to understand, I think, that the Scottish Mission did not set out directly to ‘convert’ young people – this was actually against the law in Hungary. Rather, the Mission aimed to show these deprived youngsters Christian love in action, surrounding them with care and kindness; so that,  in years to come, many of them would turn towards Christianity.

To this end, it was thought good that some of the girls – a quarter, or so – should be Christian. Jane Haining had the idea of keeping in touch with the girls who left each year, by holding an ‘At Home’ on Sunday afternoons, open to all who wished to visit. These reunions were an important feature of the Mission’s work.

Jane loved her girls, and they loved her, too – but what was she really like? A simply-written letter explains; received at the Mission  after Jane’s death, from a girl called Anna.. .. (She is tearful, having been brought to this strange place by her mother, who couldn’t cope.)

“Suddenly I heard a nice voice. ‘Oh, you would be our little Anna.’ I could not see anything except a couple of beautiful blue eyes and I felt a motherly kiss on my cheek. So this was my first meeting with Miss Haining, and from this very moment I loved her with all my heart.”

Jane declined to return to Scotland when war broke out in 1939; later, it was reported that she’d cut up her suitcases, using the leather to repair the girls’ shoes. Abandoning the children was never in her mind.
‘If they need me in days of sunshine,’ she wrote in one letter home, ‘how much more do they need me in days of darkness?’

Budapest Jane Haining plaque © The Girl from Noddy's House -Flickr

The Scottish missionary must have felt in particular danger – if, indeed, she thought of herself at all – after the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944. Very soon she was under arrest. The incident that prompted her seizure by the Gestapo seemed trivial enough in itself – she’d challenged a young man, Schreder by name, who’d been helping in the kitchen, accusing him of stealing from the girls’ meagre supply of food. But this fellow was an ardent Nazi, a member of the Hungarian Nazi Party, and he denounced her. From the ‘Gestapo Villas’ in the Buda Hills, Jane was taken to the ‘Fo utca Prison’ (Fo Street Prison) in Budapest, then to the dreaded Auschwitz camp.

Appeals from the Church of Scotland, the Hungarian Reformed Church and the Swiss Government were ignored. Brave and saintly Jane Haining died in Auschwitz on 17th July 1944.

Irongray churchyard Jane Haining family Memorial © Iain McEwan

The Church of Scotland has been prominent in commemorating the life of this heroic missionary. A pair of stained-glass windows in Jane’s old church in Glasgow  – one to each side of the entrance – were amongst the first memorials. There are plaques, of course, at the site of the Mission in Budapest. And a small cairn was built in 2005 to Jane’s memory in the grounds of Dunscore Parish Church.

Dunscore Jane Haining Memorial © JamesPicsSK - Picasa

The State of Israel honoured Jane Haining in 1997, when her name was added to those of the Righteous Among the Nations (or ‘Righteous Gentiles’  -  non-Jews who, often at great risk to themselves, helped Jewish people during the Holocaust.) A tree was planted, and Jane’s name  inscribed on the wall in this section of the huge Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Yad Vashem Memorial Hall of Names - Wikipedia

Jerusalem Yad Vashem Memorial Hall of Remembrance - Wikipedia

In Glasgow, too, a dignified and memorable ceremony took place on 8th December 1997, in the new St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art. Mr Moshe Raviv, Ambassador of Israel to the UK, presented Jane Haining’s medal and certificate from the Yad Vashem Authority to her step-sister, Mrs Agnes O’Brien. (These items are now displayed in the St. Mungo Museum, very close to Glasgow Cathedral.)

Glasgow St Mungo's Museum © 2001 Scotiana

Mr. Ben Helfgott, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Committee in Britain, spoke first. (Mr. Helfgott is himself a concentration-camp survivor, and was instrumental in having Jane’s heroism recognised by the Israeli authorities.) The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Right Reverend Alexander McDonald, replied on behalf of Mrs O’Brien. “This award is a timeous reminder of a life lived faithfully, both in service and in sacrifice.”

Assuredly, the memory of this courageous Scotswoman will endure for all time.

Holocaust Righteous medal Wikipedia

A bientot, Marie-Agnes, Janice et Jean-Claude!>

Iain.

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Glengarry Highland Games - Canadian Stamp -1997

Each year, hundreds of bagpipes musicians gathered in various bands offer concerts to enthusiastic crowds
all over the world and they are the key element to any Highland Games.

Wearing the MacDonald kilt, Ottawa bagpiper John-Hugh MacDonald is pictured here on the Canadian stamp issued in 1997 to commemorate the 50th Glengarry Highland Games held in Maxville, Ontario.

Highland Games Glengarry, Ontario - 1997 Canada First Day Cover

Commissioned by Canada Post to take pictures of the event, Andrew Balfour shot approximately 40 photos from which four participants were chosen to figure on the 1997 Canadian official commemorative stamp.

The caber tosser, Harry MacDonald is native of London, Ontario while the dancer, Jennifer Blackburn, is from Port Perry, Ontario.

We also see Russell Pretty, the drummer, wearing the traditional kilt, jacket and hat of the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa.

Canada First Day Cover - 1997 - Glengarry Highland Games

“….the stamp was “significant (because) a reasonably large chunk of our population comes from Scotland and a lot of people in Canada are involved in this. There are highland games virtually every weekend somewhere.”

Glengarry Highland Games tartan

“The Maxville games, which date back to 1863, claim to be the longest running continuous highland games in Canada.

(…) The Glengarry Highland Games are billed as the world’s largest.”

http://www.camerons.ca/News_Stamp_Unveiling_1997.html

Even though I live near St-Eustache, in the province of Quebec, I’ve never attended the Glengarry Highland Games, which are only two hours driving distance. I will remedy to this shortly as I jotted down on my agenda the dates of July30 -31st, for this year’s event. It will be a great opportunity for camping as the site provides facilities.

Maxville, Ontario, Canada - Host of the Glengarry Highland Games

The only Highland Games I ever attended were the Scottish Aboyne’s Highland Games event during our 2007 trip to Scotland.

Aboyne Scottish Highland Games - Copyright © 2007 Scotiana

It was very impressive!  Seeing those big guys caber tossing is something you must see at least once in your life!

The Highland Games are definitely a very entertaining event were piobaireachd (or “peebrock” : pipe/playing music), fiddling, dancing and other Scottish traditions are kept alive with so much enthusiasm.

By the way, when was the last time you attended a Highland Games event? Leave a comment below to share your experience with our readers.

Ireland-Bagpipes-2001

PS: Have you ever thought of starting a Bagpipes topical stamp collection? As you can see on HotPipes.com, there are more than 150 different stamps from all over the world that have issued stamps depicting bagpipes.

Bagpipes on stamps

Enjoy!

Talk soon.

Janice

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