Alexander Bennett M'Grigor

8/9/2019 Alexander Bennett M'Grigor

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Alexander Bennett MGrigor, LL.D.

(1827-1891)

Alexander Bennett MGrigor was the only child of Alexander MGrigor, of Cairnoch, and

Janet Stevenson Bennett. Alexander MGrigor was a writer of the good old firm which had

been founded by his father, also Alexander MGrigor, and was then styled MGrigor, Murray& MGrigor; Janet Stevenson Bennett was daughter of William Bennett, underwriter, founder

of the firm still flourishing as Bennett, Browne & Co.

Young MGrigor served his apprenticeship in his fathers office, and after a year or two of

law in Edinburgh, and a long Continental tour, returned here at 21, married, and settled down

for life. He was a partner in the old firm, but for many years he was rather in it than of it. He

went regularly to the office, kept touch of what went on, and occasionally took up some case,

like that of the town clerkship or the Lockhart cognition, that took his fancy from the curious

points involved. But he was not pressed to exertion by want of money or want of resource,

and he took business easily. His friends of these days, not a large circle, were to be envied.

All through his life it was a privilege to know one with mind so keen and cultivated, of such

wide and generous sympathies, so incapable of a selfish or disloyal act. But in the years whenhe was best known there came at times a shade of weariness on his face; in earlier days the

sun was never off it; his spirit flew in feathers then, that was weighted later on by care and

toil.

In those days he had a den, where his friends, if chairs were short, sat on folios, and forgot the

hours in his company. MGrigor did not aim at mots framed for repetition, but his talk

sparkled like Spa water, and it was strong as well as bright. An only child, and with few

companions, he had taken as a boy to books; a rapid reader, he had read more when still a

young man than most of us read in all our lives; and with his ready and retentive memory, and

his power to skip and still catch the point, he had assimilated what he had read. He never

obtruded his knowledge, and would listen as readily as talk; but he could talk to good purpose

on most subjects grave or gay, poetry or prose. He had the happy gift of making the most of

everything, and he could consume a yellow-back with relish just as he could be pleased in

commonplace company; but he had his special subjects. He was well up in the history of the

Commonwealth, and had made considerable collections for a work he at one time planned on

Charles I.; he had Shakespeare at his finger ends; he knew most of the poets of the 18 th

century, and was deeply read in the poets of this century; he was a early devotee of Maurice

and Browning, and had mastered their writings; he had studied the Alps and the Holy Land

till he could have gone without a guide into any corner of them. He had a quick eye for both

sides of a question, and it was a favourite amusement with him to take them turn about, or to

pile up ingenious arguments for a paradox, and strangers were some times puzzled to know

what his real opinions were. But on serious points there was no mistaking him. He wasdowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, and gave no quarter to the mean, the

selfish, or the dishonest. Yet his wrath was against the act, not the actor; he had it not in him

to be personally vindictive.

There were delightful nights in the den, one especially that MGrigor would himself recall,

when Norman Macleod had been unusually brilliant a Nox Ambrosiana whose flavour

lingered on the palate.

Suddenly, in middle age, MGrigor broke out in an unexpected quarter. Books had never been

his only pursuit. He had always had a catholic list of tastes. He was hospitable and he was

social; he was a keen politician; he was fond of music, and very fond of the play; he was fond

of sport, and of travel and scenery, delighted in Arran, and revelled in the Alps. What those

who knew him best and rated him highest had never dreamt was that he would come out as aneager and able man of business. But at 36, when most men have closed their list of careers, he

first seriously entered the professional arena, and at one bound was in the first rank. Offhand,


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to replace a partner suddenly called away, he took up the agency of the projected Union

Railway. Railway work is an entirely special branch of the law, and reckoned its most

difficult, and the Union Railway was a difficult subject; it was nobodys body, and was

scarcely taken seriously. MGrigor made it a reality. The work was new to him, and to his

firm, but he piloted the bill through rock and shoal as if he had been bred to the helm; in the

coplicated arrangements that followed on the Act he showed an intuitive grip; in theReferences on the purchase of property, from the college down to some derelict tenement in

the wynds, he called in no counsel, and himself faced, on at least equal terms, the leaders of

the Bar. He revelled in work and defied odds.

His success took others by surprise. I do not think it surprised himself. No man was less

inclined to self-assertion, but I think MGrigor felt his own strength from the first, and was

like the cragsman who dares the horrible steep, knowing that he can trust himself foot and

head. He certainly had an unusual combination of business qualities. He was exact,

methodical, and prompt; he went into everything himself, and went to the bottom of it; he had

the faculty of throughput, but he did not trust to it, and was always well abreast of his work;

he had rare acuteness, and he had solid common sense. In conducting his cases he showed tact

and courtesy; he was fair-minded, and never overdrove his argument, nor grudged anadvantage to his opponent; he spared no trouble to master his facts, but he always sought to

lift up facts to broad principles; he did much to make law, and he established on a right basis

the rules for compensation under the Lands Clauses Acts. In an overstocked profession the

supply of lawyers of this stamp is still short of the demand, and, now MGrigor had been

found out, he had to take the consequences; the public seized hold of him, and he had to let

the old leisure go. Business flowed in on him. It seemed natural that tramway work should

follow railway work, and our pioneer tramways, the Glasgow lines and the Vale of Clyde,

were put into his hands, and ably carried through. But if a big job of any sort broke from its

moorings it was pretty sure to drift his way.

The City Bank was the biggest of the derelicts. MGrigor was one of those selected to make

the preliminary Report to the shareholders, and was subsequently the chief advisor in the

Liquidation and in the numerous cases that it led to. These cases interested him by their

importance and by the principles they involved; he threw himself into them heart and soul;

and he carried them through with great credit and success. Finally, by his Assets Bill the

whole sad affair was wound up with unexpected and unexampled speed.

Of his many clients, the one (always excepting his first love, the Union Railway) that he liked

best was one that gave him no fees. He was a sort of standing counsel to the University; he

did good work as a member of the University Court, first as Dean of Faculties and then as

Lord Rectors assessor; he took a special interest in the library; at his own cost he supplied

many deficiencies in the students reading-room, and both by his suggestions and by his

generosity he helped on the noble catalogue at which Professor Dickson has laboured so long.Any notice of MGrigor would be imperfect which left out his own library. He had partly

heired it; both his grandfather (a friend of Archibald Constable) and his father were buyers of

books; but he made it one of our finest collections. It was like himself, solid, thorough, varied,

and bright. He did not care for curios books with him were tools, not toys but he had the

best editions in the best condition of the best books in all branches of general literature, and to

complete a subject he spared neither time nor lime; notably the Alps and the Holy Land, on

which his collection was unique. He could lay his hand on any book he had, and he had a

great many. In 1875, when he drew up and privately printed a catalogue, a fine quarto of 378

pages, he had 8000 volumes on his shelves; in 1885 Mason found several thousands more;

and there have been large additions since. The last work he had on hand was a new edition of

his catalogue, which he had printed off as far as letter L and page 246. The old cataloguebears the motto from Bacon:- Read not to contradict and to confute, not to believe and take


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for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. It was the rule of his

own reading-

He taught, but first he followed it himselve.

He took a keen interest in politics. A Liberal by descent, he remained a true Liberal to the last,

and his advice was often sought by his party. But his keener interest was in social movements

that were not yet assured, but needed help to give them time and space to work and spread.The Western Infirmary, the University Settlement Association, Queen Margaret College, the

Medical School for Women, these and others like these owed him at their start invaluable

help. He accepted the honorary secretaryship of the Glasgow Exhibition of 1888, and owing

to the illness of his coadjutors, Dr. Kirkwood and Professor Roberton, he had the bulk of the

work to do, and many a time he was kept till near midnight advising upon the multifarious

questions that arose in the launching of that great undertaking. To every cause that he took up

he brought the strength that comes not of ability only and fairness, but of the undefined

quality of wecht.

With all the calls on his time, and with the social tastes that he still tried to keep up, MGrigor

never seemed to be in a hurry, but the strain on him was none the less sore. He was not

naturally robust, and in spite of frequent holidays (if possible to his beloved Alps) he agedbefore his time. 3 years ago, when his mental powers were in their prime, he was struck down

by an illness from which he never really recovered. He reappeared after a time, but the face

was weary and the foot heavy, and after renewed illnesses he passed away on Sunday the 22nd

ult.

If success did not shorten his days, it certainly curtailed his intellectual work. He has left us

only enough to show us what with more leisure he might have done. He contributed to his

friend Dr. Leess Abbey of Paisley a paper on a professed Papal Commission to the Abbot

of Paisley to absolve the Bruce for the murder of the Comyn, a paper showing curious

research in a department that he was not known to have touched; he contributed the article on

the Holy Sepulchre in the last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; he contributed some

papers to the Academy, and some articles to his friend MacLehoses Hundred Glasgow

Men; he delivered to the Liberal Unionist Association of the college division an address on

the History and Functions of the British Parliament (republished as a pamphlet); and he threw

off one or two fine copies of verses. One fine speech of his is still remembered, one of the

finest, may I say? that has been delivered in Glasgow by a Glasgow man. It was at the annual

meeting of the Royal Infirmary on 28th January, 1878. a proposal to exclude Roman Catholic

nurses or servants stirred MGrigors wrath, and he brought to bear on it such an array of

broad principle, close reasoning, happy illustration, as carried the meeting with him by 30 to

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One other relic must be noticed. The Holy Land and the Holy City had always fascinated him,

and for half his life he was working at a book that should confirm Fergussons theory that theMosque of Omar is the true Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He read, he annotated, he studied

maps and plans and sections. Finally he visited Jerusalem itself, of which he knew beforehand

every nook. The article in the Encyclopedia Britannica was a sketch of the magnum opus.

But MGrigor, though a quick worker under pressure, was naturally fastidious, and dallied

with his subject, and he never finished the magnum opus; only some chapters of it he had

printed off for private reference. But in 1876, to bring into one view all the early allusions to

Jerusalem localities, and so clear the ground for the problem he had set himself, he printed a

few copies of what he modestly called Contributions towards an Index of Passages bearing

on the Topography of Jerusalem from Writings prior to the Eleventh Century, a monument

of vast research. The Jerusalem quest brought him into contact with various out-of-the-way

subjects. Thus he undertook and began as an amusement during his illness the translation ofan old Greek traveller to the Holy Land; and he took much interest in the Palaeographical

Society, and contributed several plates to its issues.


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Honours came to him unasked. His party often pressed him to stand for Parliament; the

University made him LL.D.; and the Government, just before his health broke, had nominated

him on the University commission. He valued these honours, but I think he valued at least as

highly one of a quite other sort. In 1886, on the resuscitation of the long dormant Clan Gregor

Society, he was chosen vice-president; and in 1887, on the death of Sir Charles MGregor, the

bravest of the brave, he was chosen president. They tried hard in bygone days to stamp out theClan Gregor. It is well that they failed.

By his wife, Elizabeth Robertson, Dr. MGrigor has left two daughters, married respectively

to Neale Thomson and Matthew Arthur, and a son and partner, Alexander, who, by his wife, a

daughter of the present Lord Provost, has a little boy, a 5th Alexander MGrigor.

(From the Glasgow Herald of 3rd April, 1891)

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Alexander Bennett M'Grigor