The
Two Cousins
Episode
9: Hector and Ronnie
Iain
Smith
We left Hector MacIver
in Episode 7 resuming his teaching career in 1945. One of his students of that
era recalls him:
“Hector MacIver became one of the outstanding
teachers of English in Scotland in the two decades immediately after the war.
This may sound like a very large claim, but its truth can be supported in three
ways: by the achievement of his best pupils; by the intellectual stimulus and
pleasure he gave to hundreds of boys who had no pretensions as English
specialists; and by the way in which through his own example and enthusiasm he
taught a large number of young English masters their job and encouraged them to
go on to posts of higher responsibility.”
Another school student
was the distinguished writer and critic Karl Miller (and the editor of the
posthumous 1970 book tribute to MacIver). Miller (today celebrated as the most
distinguished living alumnus of the Royal High School of Edinburgh) writes in
1970 about Hector that
“
[In 1948], when I was his pupil at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, Hector
used to tell stories about the faculty of second sight, which seemed to be an
important matter, still, in the Hebrides where he grew up……….To Lowland
school-children, Hector came as revelation: an exile from the Western Isles,
from the ‘lone shieling of the misty island’, he had qualities of dignity,
elegance, eloquence and fantasy that seemed not only exotic but literally
portentous”.
Hector, like
many of his literary friends, enjoyed the good life. Miller writes: “he may
once have been in the habit of sending back his lobster to the counter in the
Café Royal if he did not think it came from Lewis – nevertheless the world was
his oyster.” (This is a most unlikely,
if fun, story.)
The Café Royal
remains largely unchanged to this day, its rooms haunted by the ghosts of
Compton Mackenzie, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas – and Hector MacIver. It was
there, according to Karl Miller, that Hector MacIver one night assaulted the (now
forgotten, but then Paxman-like) broadcaster Gilbert Harding for having called
him “a bloody highlander”.
Apart from his full-time job, Hector in
the 1950s was himself active in broadcasting.
“… he still kept up a stream of radio
broadcasts and plays, and articles, in
English and in Gaelic. ……
“He also reviewed books on radio…..
At this time too, his friend Louis MacNeice was broadcasting programmes of
reading from Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queen’ and Hector used to go down to London to
take part in these. He also featured in such radio dramas by Louis as The Dark
Tower. At this time also he was taking part in radio plays and programmes by
Neil Gunn and Robert Kemp.”
Hector
maintained his friendship with Dylan Thomas, as his wife Mary recorded; and she
paints a vivid pen-portrait of Thomas:
“I
somehow found it difficult to think of him as grown-up, he looked so like a
cherubic baby with his pop eyes and fat cheeks, loose lips and curly hair. He
always seemed merry; but somehow I felt that at bottom he was rather a sad
person, rather alone, always aware of the uncertainty and tragedy of life and
the evanescence of time.”
And, of course,
in almost no time at all, the evanescent Thomas was dead, not yet forty years
old. This year the centenary of his birth is being remembered.
Comparatively late in life
(in the 1950s), Hector MacIver married.
Mary’s
introduction to her mother-in-law was dramatic:
“She shook her head, sadly, and said ‘Ah, Hector was ruined by the Navy!
The drink you know.’” Hector’s mother had been a pupil-teacher before, later in
life, having upgraded her teaching qualifications and returned to teaching when
her husband went bankrupt. As with many Lewis teachers of her generation, and
indeed of later generations, she clearly could be blunt and open with negative
assessments of the young. Whether she took pride in the more positive sides of
her son’s achievement (Head of English in Scotland’s most prestigious state
school; critic; broadcaster; writer) is not recorded.
Mary
and Hector shared many literary and cultural interests, according to one of her
ex-students:-
“The most inspirational teacher I had
was Mary MacIver. We hit it off immediately. Mrs MacIver turned out to be
probably the most formative person in my life. She had a profound effect on me.
She was married to Hector MacIver, who taught English at the Royal High School. I already knew about Hector MacIver because I had read critical articles he wrote in the Scotsman and other newspapers about all sorts of things, particularly poetry. Mary and Hector lived in the village of Temple, next door to the painter William Gillies and knew all sorts of poets, musicians, actors and painters. Over the coming years they took me under their wing and introduced me to people like the poet Robert Garioch, the painter Robin Philipson and the weaver Sax Shaw.”
She was married to Hector MacIver, who taught English at the Royal High School. I already knew about Hector MacIver because I had read critical articles he wrote in the Scotsman and other newspapers about all sorts of things, particularly poetry. Mary and Hector lived in the village of Temple, next door to the painter William Gillies and knew all sorts of poets, musicians, actors and painters. Over the coming years they took me under their wing and introduced me to people like the poet Robert Garioch, the painter Robin Philipson and the weaver Sax Shaw.”
Mary and
Hector’s cultural interests were however not narrowly intellectual:
“Ronnie
Corbett, a previous pupil of Hector, also became well known as a comedian. When
we were first married I had to listen to every ‘Crackerjack’ programme with
Hector, for he was so interested in following the beginning of Ronnie’s
successful career.”
In 1962, Hector
spent a term on a secondment to Balliol in the University of Oxford. He records
some of that experience:-
“I
attended lectures by Professor Ayer, very impressive on ‘Facts and Propositions’;
Professor Davies on ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Professor Trevor Roper
on the Puritan Revolution; Tolkien on the Study of Old English Poetry; Mr
Wordsworth on the Scottish Chaucerians; AJP Taylor on post-War History.”
In 1965, Hector
took ill. Unknown to him, he had cancer of the liver. His cat was also ill, as
his wife records: “When Hector was dying, Peader was terminally ill also, and Hector
said to the tiger-striped Peader as she lay on the quilt on Hector’s bed - Ah,
little one, we’re both on the way out.”
On 30 April
1966, Hector MacIver died. He was 55 years old.
Postscript: There our story of these odd, but
talented, Macivers ends. It began when two little boys, a long time ago, speculated
as to why Robert and Hector were so gifted, yet so different - and united
apparently only by surname. And when a Lewis mother said to her two boys: “It is obvious why they were talented. They
were first cousins: both Macivers of the stock of Maciver’s Garage in Bayhead.”
As always, a Lewis mother has the last word.
(Concluded)
Iain
Smith
