1880s portrait, fromIn 1926, the poet Hugh MacDiarmid described Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936) as ‘potentially the greatest Scotsman of his generation’, and a year later, the Sunday Post commented: ‘There are few men nowadays so well known as Mr R. B. Cunninghame Graham’. On his death in 1936, his early biographer Aimé Tschiffely wrote that ‘his name will surely grow’, but in fact he quickly faded from both the academic and the public consciousness. A mere sixteen years later, on his centenary, the cultural revivalist Hamish Henderson asked the question: ‘Who Remembers Cunninghame Graham?’
The reasons for Graham’s eclipse were complex, but part of the explanation is that his the peace; an irreverent wit and a polemical moralist. Graham’s legend also fed off disparate and contradictory elements in his character: great charm and charisma, a powerful and deeprooted morality and philanthropy, which frequently militated against his own best interests, and a personal vanity, coupled with a surprising humility about his own literary talents. These were counterpoised by elitism, and the instincts of an adventurous and incautious showman – complex combinations outwith normal human experience.
Early life
Graham’s mother was Anne Elizabeth Elphinstone Fleeming (1828-1925), daughter of Vice-Admiral the Hon. Charles Elphinstone Fleeming of career appeared both disparate and contradictory, divided between the radical politician and rabble-rousing MP, and the nostalgic essayist; a nationalist and an internationalist; a justice of the peace and a disturber of
Cumbernauld (1774-1840), a friend of Simon Bolivar, and later, MP for Stirling, and Doña Catalina Paulina Alesandro de Jiminez of Cadiz (1800-80). His father was Major William Cunningham Bontine [sic] (1825-83), a cornet of horse in the Scots Greys. Their principal family inheritance had come through Graham’s great-great-grandfather, Robert Graham of Gartmore (1735- 97), who had made his fortune in Jamaica (through the use of enslaved workers) and who owned the estates of Gartmore, Ardoch, Lochwood and Finlaystone.
Graham’s father, who had received a severe head injury during military service in Ireland, slowly became more disturbed, and by the summer of
