All One Family

By M F Tatner

John Bell is a man with a burning ambition, which he single-mindedly pursues with no thought for the effect his actions have on his family. A lawyer by profession, he founds the Glasgow Pottery with his brother Matthew, to help fund his acquisition of what he hopes will be an unrivalled art collection. He hopes it will become his legacy to the city of his birth, and secure his name in history.
While nineteenth century Glasgow rapidly changes around him, he lives in the past but with his eyes fixed on the future, and neglects his present with tragic consequences. Told from the viewpoint of different members of the family, it is a story of how one man's obsession dominates and controls the lives of those around him, and of the ultimate folly of the personal vanity of one man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781398413627

M F Tatner

M F Tatner was born in Liverpool but moved to Scotland 40 years ago to start a career as a scientific researcher and university teacher. This is her first novel. She was inspired to write it after collecting Bell’s pottery for several years, having dug up pieces of it in her Renfrewshire garden.

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About the Author

M F Tatner was born in Liverpool but moved to Scotland 40 years ago to start a career as a scientific researcher and university teacher. This is her first novel. She was inspired to write it after collecting Bell’s pottery for several years, having dug up pieces of it in her Renfrewshire garden.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my mother, Eileen Grace, who passed on her love of reading to all her daughters and gave us the best gift possible.

Copyright Information ©

M F Tatner 2021

The right of M F Tatner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398413610 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398413627 (ePub e-book)

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First Published 2021

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Acknowledgement

I owe a great debt to the work of Henry E Kelly, who researched and published on the Glasgow pottery, and whose description of its founding, operation and output forms the factual basis of this book. He also provided the basic biographical details of the Bell family.

I would also like to thank the staff of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for help in sourcing background information on John Bell’s estate and the art world of 19th century Glasgow.

And last but not least, I wish to thank my twin sister, Catherine Cadman, for reading and commenting on the first draft of the novel.

Prologue

This novel is based on the lives of the the Bell Family of Glasgow. The main characters and major events in their lives are based on historical facts, but the backdrop to their daily existence and the relationships between them are fictitious. The story of the Glasgow (Bell’s) pottery is based on the research and the subsequent publication by Henry E. Kelly, The Glasgow Pottery of John and Matthew Perston Bell, China and Earthenware Manufacturers in Glasgow with photographs by Douglas A. Leishman, 3rd edition, published privately in November 2006. Any errors relating to the pottery in this book are caused by my misreading or misinterpretation of Mr Kelly’s research and are my responsibility.

Part 1

Mr Matthew Perston Bell

Chapter 1

This is the story of my family and, in particular, of one member of it – of his life and his life’s ambition. His story shaped the lives of the other members in so many ways; not all of them were good. The man in question is my brother, Mr John Bell, a merchant and lawyer of Glasgow and the founder of the Bell’s pottery, otherwise known as the Glasgow Pottery. My brother was born in that same city in 1806, two years before me. We were raised in a prosperous household with loving parents, yet it never ceased to amaze me how different we were in all things – motivation, temperament, and character – such that he was as distant to me as a stranger. I never understood what drove him, or what made him happy, if he ever was. By writing this account of our life with him at its centre, I hope I will begin to understand him and assuage the guilt I felt at never loving him, as surely a brother should.

Our story begins with the marriage of our parents, John Bell Senior to Jane Perston in 1805. Our mother came from a wealthy family of land and property owners in Glasgow, and it was this union which provided the comfortable middle-class background to our lives. Glasgow itself was a prosperous city and a fortunate place to be born in for aspiring young gentlemen such as ourselves and similarly ambitious folk of more humble backgrounds. Its fame and fortune started the previous century with the tobacco lords and slave traders, who had built themselves fine mansions and named the very streets after themselves. But it was the century we were born into that saw the most dramatic changes to the lives of its diverse citizens. Looking back, I saw our growing prosperity reflected in that of the city of our birth. After the ascension of Queen Victoria in 1837, Scotland became richer day by day, and Glasgow became known as the second city of the Empire. The city was designed as a place of commerce, laid out on a grid system after the fashion of the great American city of New York. The advent of the railways opened up areas of the country previously inaccessible to most people. It allowed the notion of day trips and visits for pleasure to the countryside. At the same time, in the city itself, there was an explosion of entertainment in the form of theatres, music halls and public houses, which, regrettably, were to be my downfall. And the people! The population overtook that of Edinburgh by the 1820s and doubled from a quarter of a million when we were both young men to over half a million by the time of John’s death. There was a huge influx of lowlanders, folk from the Highlands, and the Irish, fleeing the potato famine of the forties. But Glasgow was a city of huge contrasts. Alongside the wide thoroughfares and elegant buildings of the city centre were dank and overcrowded closes of mean tenements and foul-smelling alleyways, where disease and destitution flourished.

The city was an industrial powerhouse and a great trading port, so it was no surprise that our family prospered. The invention of the hot-blast opened up the rich black-band deposits of Lanarkshire and allowed the production of cheap pig iron. The Monkland Canal provided a cheap and easy route into the city. Slowly, the city turned from its main textile industry to engineering and iron founding, shipbuilding and the export trade, making the Clyde one of the most important rivers in the Empire. It was an exhilarating time to be alive!

So, our family was well placed to take advantage of these momentous changes. Our father was a successful merchant in his own right with companies in both Scotland and Newfoundland before his advantageous match to our mother, but it was their union that cemented his position in the respectable and prosperous middle-class society of the era. The marriage was generally regarded as a success, with two sons and heirs born swiftly, and by 1818, the family was firmly ensconced in a substantial newly built stone house south of the river in Carlton Place, with a fine view of the newly constructed St Andrew’s Cathedral. As boys, we never saw or heard our father treat our mother with anything but the utmost respect and affection, and in fact, he often seemed in awe of her.

John and I attended a local subscription school from the age of seven, one of several founded by middle-class parents in the area to provide an education for their sons. It covered the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic plus a daily dose of Latin, with some history and geography. It was learning by rote, and we spent many hours endlessly reciting the names of the kings and queens of Britain and the cities, rivers and mountains of far-flung countries. We had just one schoolmaster, an earnest young man called Mr John Sinclair, who was only a few years senior and was spending some years as a teacher to fund his studies in Divinity at the university. While John studied hard with a single-minded determination evident in his nature even at that tender age, I spent most of the time looking out of the window and idling the time away until I could escape to play in the streets with the local boys my parents so disapproved of. My only redeeming feature was that I developed an interest in collecting fossils and other geological specimens, which I would carefully display on the window-sill of my bedroom and look at with pride. Whereas John was solemn and serious, I was the exact opposite, always getting into scrapes and without a care in the world. Mother treated us equally and showed us both the same care and tenderness, but it was not hard to see that she and I had a special bond based on a similarity in our characters. I do not know to this day if John felt jealous, but I suspect not, as he never showed any signs of it and, in fact, seemed to disdain the affectionate displays of teasing and play that occurred between Mother and me as if they were beneath his dignity.

Our early lives were firmly centred in the family, school and attending church on Sunday. Still, we were aware that our father was a prominent citizen and businessman in the city. We often had guests around the dinner table, who, once the coffee was served, would sit up late into the night with Father to discuss the pressing issues of the day. Father had become a Burgess and Guild Brother in the year I was born, mostly through the support of our mother’s brother Matthew, who was then the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and owned the firm of M and J Perston, textile manufacturers. Most of these conversations passed over my head, but John would stay at the table as long as permitted, listening intently and occasionally asking a question. The men humoured his interest indulgently, and Father would permit himself to show some pride in his eldest son. On one such occasion, the conversation at the dinner table concerned the recent defeat of the French by our British forces and the celebration that was planned at Glasgow Green in April. Several of the worthies at the table had contributed funds towards this spectacle. Although only six years of age, I had understood enough to know that I desperately wanted to go but was considered too young to participate, and I can still recall the intense feeling of envy I felt, when a few weeks later, my brother set off with my parents in their carriage, bundled up against the cold, while I was left at home with the nursemaid. Two years later, I was included on an outing to the docks to see the Earl of Buckingham, the first Glasgow ship to set sail for India, slip down the Clyde with crowds of cheering onlookers lining the river banks, enthusiastically waving flags and raising a tremendous cheer as the ship slipped into the water. I never once thought that in the years to come, I would embark on such a ship and set off to foreign lands myself.

Our mother was an interesting woman. Well educated by her parents at home, she was a very intelligent woman with a keen interest, not only in her immediate society but in the world at large. She was an avid reader and kept a well-stocked library at home, which she added to regularly. She purchased all the modern novels of the time, being a great admirer of the works of Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austin, but also had volumes on ancient and modern history, geography and poetry. Latterly, she took an interest in the scientific advances of the age. She would read the newspaper every morning. Most often, she would relate the most important stories to Father, and hence indirectly to us at the dinner table, as he always maintained he had no time to waste on such matters. She was also a passionate supporter of the arts, not only because it was the fashion for the prosperous middle class to do so, but from a genuine interest. Patronage of the arts had been the prerogative of the aristocracy in the early years of the century and very much centred in the capital, Edinburgh. The Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland had been founded in 1819 by the Duke of Argyll and had its first exhibition in York Place, with ninety-two old masters by, among others, Titian and Rubens on view, on loan from these wealthy patrons. Our mother would read out the notices to us and lament the lack of any such institution in Glasgow and patronage of any living artists as she was a great admirer of the works of Raeburn, Geddes and Nasmyth. She did not have to wait long, as in 1821, the Institute for Promoting and Encouraging the Fine Arts in the West of Scotland was formed by forty-three gentlemen of humbler birth, including the then Lord Provost, and was much more egalitarian from its commencement. Our mother insisted that Father become involved, as befitting his status and aspiration as a prominent Glasgow citizen, and while he reluctantly gave financial support, he could not be persuaded to attend the yearly exhibitions, so Mother took us instead. I remember attending the very first, in August of 1821, which was held in a gallery connected to the shop of a Robert Finlay, a carver and gilder at 2 South Maxwell Street. There were over two hundred works on show, the main attraction being paintings by John Graham. There was a charming pen and ink drawing of cottages by a very young man called David Macnee, which Mother purchased. She was so enamoured of his work that she later commissioned him to do a drawing of herself and Father, which was hung in the drawing-room above the fireplace and much admired.

Years later, in the 1850s, she attended the public meeting held to promote the establishment of an Institute for the Fine Arts with the aim of establishing a permanent venue for the yearly exhibitions. The engineer Napier and Alexander McLellan, the prominent Glasgow coachbuilder who was a business acquaintance of my father, sought to raise funds but were unsuccessful at the first attempt. With perseverance, Glasgow acquired its own permanent exhibition space in what became known as the Corporation Galleries, which moved to its final site on Sauchiehall Street sometime later.

Mother had a gentle, kind nature, underpinned by her religious faith, and was a great one for espousing crusades of one sort or another. Our father would attend church with us every Sunday, but for him, it was more a question of maintaining his position in society rather than from any strong religious conviction. We were expected to attend all the time we lived in the parental home, and while I found it a chore, John took it very seriously, as he did everything else. As he grew older, he became very inflexible in his views, which alarmed Mother somewhat. Her faith was firmly rooted in action rather than dogma, and she tried to persuade both of us to take an interest in those less fortunate than ourselves. I would often be taken along when she visited her charity cases and attended the numerous organisations she was involved with, and found that much more enjoyable than sitting on a hard bench in a cold, draughty church being sermonised at, simply because I loved being with her. John, on the other hand, was firmly of the opinion that God helped those who helped themselves and that it was not up to him to assist those lacking in the necessary moral fibre to improve their situation by their own efforts. Growing up, we lived a sheltered life, and even though our mother tried to instil a social conscience in us, she sheltered us from the many true horrors of life in the city at that time. The overcrowding in the wynds and closes of the High Street, Saltmarket and Gallowgate took the brunt of the epidemics of cholera in 1814, and then later, of typhus in 1837 and 1847. By then, like many of the better off, we had simply moved away west and left the poverty behind us, out of sight and out of mind. I do remember the floods of 1815 and 1816 when the River Clyde burst its banks and the fantastic display of the Aurora Borealis, which followed a violent storm in 1818, and our local minister using these events to remind us sternly of the awesome power of the Almighty.

Our mother’s brother, our uncle Matthew, was a very frequent visitor to our house. He was several years older than Father and a very imposing and rather formidable gentleman of the old school. Unmarried himself and being the patriarch of his family for many years due to the early death of our maternal grandfather, he was used to having his wishes deferred to. I learnt later that he was not overjoyed at the marriage between his sister and our father, whom he considered not of their class, but it was a genuine love match, and Mother was surprisingly strong-willed. He assented reluctantly, a fact that was not lost on Father, but continued to have a rather overbearing role in the family as if he did not quite trust Father to manage his own affairs. He was nearly always present at dinner, and definitely so whenever Father was entertaining his business associates. Uncle seemed to have an opinion on every aspect of our family life, be it the hiring of our nursemaids and domestic staff, the furnishing of our house and the upbringing and education of his two nephews. As I grew older, I could not understand why my father tolerated his interference so well, but he was a gentle soul who disliked any confrontation, and he would never do anything to upset our mother. Mother regarded her brother more as a father figure, and I suppose, felt it was her duty to at least listen to his opinions, but I knew it irked her and especially at times where she felt her husband was being slighted. John, needless to say, developed a deep dislike of our uncle, which at times he failed to hide.

One evening, I think, it must have been in the year 1820 or thereabouts, we had just finished dinner in the smaller dining room where the family would eat an early meal at 6 pm once my father had returned from the city, and if we were not entertaining. Unusually, and perhaps fortuitously, it was one of the rare occasions when Uncle Matthew was not present. The candles were casting a soft glow over the tablecloth and sending the shadows dancing over the walls, so it must have been wintertime. Mother had just finished telling Father about the latest gaslighting innovation and trying to convince him to install it in the house, but he was not to be persuaded as he was already thinking of moving again. My mother laid down her napkin in resignation and signalled to Agnes, our maid, to clear away the dishes when John slid from his seat and turned to face Father. John was then fourteen years of age, very stocky, and as tall as he would ever be at a small 5 foot 5 inches. Father, he said, I would like your permission to enrol at the university. My teacher says I am more than ready, and I feel it is time I started my preparations for my career. With that, he sat down again and stared silently at the pristine white tablecloth in front of him. This was the longest speech John had ever made at home, and it took us all by surprise.

Well, indeed, said Father after a few moments, with a glance at my mother. That is a very admirable ambition, I am sure. But neither I nor any of your uncles felt the need to study at university, and we have made our way in the world quite successfully, I am sure you will agree. Here, Father indicated by a sweep of his hand the very comfortable room and furnishings, the crystal glasses and damask table cloth. Without the need to pay for more study. I do not see how an education in the classics would prepare you for a career in business. I had intended for you to be apprenticed to the family firm.

There was a moment’s silence, then John looked up and directed his gaze quite fearlessly at his father. I wish to make my own choices and my own way in the world. I wish to become a lawyer.

Mother drew a sharp intake of breath, fearing Father would take offence at this, and it might well have been thought of as ill-mannered and ungrateful were it not for the frank and honest manner in which it was spoken.

Father glanced at Mother again, but her gaze was fixed on John.

We shall speak more on this later, John. Both you and your brother can leave the table now.

Without a further word, John and I left the room. I felt an unaccustomed surge of pride in my brother and would gladly have quizzed him as to his plans, but he directed not a single word to me and went straight up the stairs to his room and closed the door firmly behind him.

Nothing more was said concerning the future of John or me, but it was clear that it exercised our father’s mind considerably. There were several conversations between him, our mother and Uncle Matthew to which we were not privy, and it caused me at least great consternation when Mr Sutcliffe was summoned to our house one evening. I would sit on the stairs trying to eavesdrop through the drawing-room door, but John showed no interest or apparent concern on these discussions about his future as if he already knew what the outcome would be. After what seemed an interminably long time, we were both ordered to the study, where Father pronounced our fate. John would be allowed to go to the university as Mr Sutcliffe had confirmed he would easily pass the entrance exam in Latin composition, whereas I, once I had finished school the following summer, would be apprenticed to my uncle’s textile and manufacturing firm in the city. John simply replied, Thank you, sir. If anyone expected me to complain that I was not to go to the university, they were disappointed. I was delighted to be leaving school and being an apprentice in my uncle’s firm; I simply thought of it as an escape and was secretly glad that I was not to work for Father. He had taken both of us to his city offices once, and the sight of long rows of clerks perched on high stools, scribbling away into huge ledgers for hours on end had filled me with dread. We learnt much later that Uncle Matthew was vehemently opposed to the idea of John pursuing a different career from the family business, but Mother was absolutely delighted that John wished to attend university, as she had an absolute love of learning and maybe secretly hoped to enter that world by proxy. So, Father managed to defy his brother-in-law and please his wife with a single decision. I was offered to Uncle Matthew as the consolation prize. No one knew quite what to do with me, so my parents probably thought that a position with my uncle would at least keep me out of trouble and that I might work harder for my uncle than I would have for my father. As for myself, I had no idea what my new role was supposed to be or what I was expected to do, but I saw it as my first step to independence and freedom from the restrictions and obligations of family life. How wrong I was.

The university was situated on the High Street, so it was quite a walk for John every morning to leave the house, cross the river over the bridge at Jamaica Street, turn right along the banks of the Clyde, and proceed up the Saltmarket, passing the Trongate and Glasgow Cross, and onwards up the hill. The bridge had been in existence since 1771, being only the second one over the Clyde. It would not be until several decades later that several other bridges, including the railway bridges, crossed the river at numerous locations along its journey through the city. John studied for the MA degree, which took four years and was taught entirely by lectures from the professors. John had been well-schooled in Latin by Mr Sutcliffe but had to start learning Greek from scratch in his first year. He continued with Latin and also took history, mathematics and natural philosophy, and logic and moral philosophy. Students attended lectures as and when they could afford them and had to pay two or three guineas per class, directly to the professor at the start of each course, who would then grant them a certificate of attendance at the end. Entry was open to all who could pass the entrance exam and afford the fees, and because of this, there was a huge social mix of students, not only from Glasgow itself but drawn from the numerous other groups of people who had moved to the city. John never mentioned any of the people he met at university and did not seem to make any friends there. He was an assiduous student, attending every lecture and spending the hours in between in the library, writing the essays for each required course. He never once bought a friend or acquaintance home and took no part in the social aspect of student life. Mother was sadly disappointed in her hope that John would return from his studies each day and share his newfound knowledge with her. My father never did see the relevance of all this studying but kept true to his word and supported John financially throughout. John finally graduated in 1824, whereupon he was apprenticed to the law firm of William Lindsay. To please Father, he also set himself up as a commission merchant for Uncle Matthew’s firm so that he could establish himself as a man of business as well. However, John did no work for our uncle as he was determined to follow his own career path as a lawyer. The following year, John’s apprenticeship was transferred to the firm of James Finlayson, and he re-enrolled at the university for a one-year law course.

Both my father and mother were anxious to maintain their position as a family of substance, and at that time, this necessitated frequent changes of house to move into ever better areas. This time, we moved back north of the river, to 2 Claremont Terrace, but were hardly there a year when our maternal grandmother died and bequeathed a substantial sum to our mother, who used it