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Patrick Geddes: the French Connection (review)

2007; Edinburgh University Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/shr.2007.0089

1750-0222

Tom Normand,

Scottish History and National Identity

Reviewed by: Patrick Geddes: the French Connection Tom Normand Patrick Geddes: the French Connection. Edited by Frances Fowle and Belinda Thomson. Pp.104. 48 col. & b/w ill. ISBN 1 873487 11 8. Oxford: White Cockade Publishing. 2004. £9.99. Patrick Geddes is often referenced as one of the 'lost boys' of cultural history. Lewis Mumford was to complain that he was 'obscure in his lifetime, hardly better known today', and it might be argued this sad refrain still echoes through the pages of international scholarship. But Mumford wrote this eulogy in 1944, some twelve years after Geddes' death, and he could not, at that time, acknowledge the biographies of his friend that would be written by Paddy Kitchen in 1975 and also by Philip Boardman in 1978. Nor could he know of the intelligent study by Helen Mellor, from 1990, and most recently the critical essays on Geddes' achievements edited by Walter Stephen in 2004. Still, Geddes' name is one recognised chiefly by academics and does not seem to have the currency of, say, William Morris, with whom he might usefully be compared. [End Page 359] Geddes, of course, was protean in his talents and liberal in his interests. Indeed, the seeming infinite variety of his skills, coupled with his restless intellect, have served as a barrier to those categorisations so useful to academic procedure. The role call of his achievements would include, at the very least, pioneer evolutionist, botanist, urban-planner, sociologist, educationalist, and cultural activist. It is this last role that is reprised and explored in Patrick Geddes: The French Connection. This lively and interesting book consists of five essays focussing on Geddes' part in introducing a Symbolist aesthetic into Scottish cultural life. In doing this it underlines Geddes' importance as an internationalist, as well as his links with like-minded intellectuals and artists. During the 1890s the city of Edinburgh became Geddes' locus, and his project. Here, he helped regenerate the Old Town while establishing the first ever students' halls of residence and simultaneously creating a 'sociological laboratory' in the Outlook Tower by the Castle Esplanade. He also founded an annual series of educational Summer Schools and patronised more radical artists through commissions and through the publication of his symbolist journal, Evergreen, between 1895 and 1896. This fascinating material is the subject of the first essay in this book, by Elizabeth Cumming. But Cumming extends this into a history of Geddes' associations and correspondences with other, ambitious, intellectuals. Here, the extraordinary range of Geddes' ambition becomes evident; he is instructed by T.H. Huxley, Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers and Edmond Demolins, he is an intellectual affiliate of Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte, Frederic Le Play, John Ruskin and William Morris, and he is patron to the most radical practitioners of the arts in his native Scotland. But always Geddes' work was directed to what Cumming calls 'a vision of world communities' (p.24) and it is this relationship with other cultures that is his abiding strength. In some ways this idea introduces the second essay in this book, Frances Fowle's discussion of 'The Franco-Scottish Alliance'. This is a detailed and erudite study focussing upon the associations between Scottish Symbolist painters, notably the influential John Duncan, and their French counterparts. Fowle makes the case for a precise link between mural painting in Edinburgh, revived under Geddes' patronage during the 1890s, and the French example promoted by the, then, popular decorator of civic monuments, Puvis de Chavannes. This sense of international partnership, with Geddes a beneficent director, is further explored in Belinda Thomson's fascinating contribution on '…French Connections'. The unique aspect of Thomson's essay is situated in the scholarly analysis of the painter Charles , a Geddes protégé, and his links to the most radical aspects of the French Nabi group. Thomson offers clear lines of association between Mackie, who would create the embossed leather cover design for Geddes' Evergreen, and advanced continental painters including Paul Sérusier, Edouard Vuillard and Paul Gauguin. These links, however, led Geddes and his coterie into further associations, most notably with anarchist thinkers and activists. Thomson highlights, in particular, Geddes' contacts with Augustin Hamon who 'at the time of...