Authors: Raymond Lamont-Brown
In the fifteenth century there was little distinction between professors and students, but the head of the society of academics was called the Rector, being elected to the position by the
Comitia
, the general congregation of university members. The first Rector of St Andrews University was the theologian and philosopher Laurence of Lindores, Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity in Scotland. In the early years the Rector’s role was to preside over the university’s constituent parts, supervising its order and discipline and assisting students in their commitments to the university, and he was also the vital link between town and gown. The role of the Rector varied little until 1858 when the position no longer represented the ‘corporate identity’ of the university. By 1862 a certain political flavour had entered the election of Rector and this persisted until 1892. Carnegie followed a long line of distinguished men, some of whom, like John-Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, were generous benefactors to the university. From 1885 the Rector paid heed to the Students’ Representative Council.
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(Today the Rector is a public figure elected for three years by the students; he or she represents them at the University Court and gives a rectorial address at his or her inauguration.)
Carnegie became Rector of St Andrews University by the unanimous decision of the students at University College, Dundee (an adjunct of the University of St Andrews) and St Andrews itself. One year later, according to tradition, in October 1902 the academic body gathered in the Volunteer Hall at St Andrews (the Younger Graduation Hall was not opened until 1929) to install Carnegie as Rector, with Principal James Donaldson presiding; the town was represented by Provost James Welch. Carnegie was euphoric; from the moment when he and Louise had been greeted at St Andrews railway station by students – who themselves pulled his carriage to Donaldson’s residence on The Scores – Carnegie was on an emotional high. Here he was the successor of great men like John Stuart Mill and James Anthony Froude, as well as his friend A.J. Balfour, enjoying the torchlight procession, the student mummery and lauded with pomp and ceremony to his greatest honour yet. Not bad for a poor, untutored boy from Dunfermline.
The installation ceremony was redolent with student humour; as with past Rectors, students had researched Carnegie’s weaknesses to lampoon and mock him. The classicists made much of his ‘hostility to dead languages’. When Donaldson administered the Rectorial Oath in Latin, a Scots voice rang out: ‘Oh, Jamie, why don’t ye tell Andra what ye’re saying?’ Carnegie simply beamed. And when he was required to reply in Latin with the word
Juro
(I swear), the students raised the roof with cheers and laughter. Carnegie’s Rectorial Address was likewise interrupted, but he did not rise to angry ripost. He had spent a great deal of time on his address. The first draft was extremely autobiographical; he explained why he had abjured organised religion, particularly the beliefs of Channing and Swedenborg favoured by members of his family, and noted how his father had rejected the Reformed (Presbyterian) Kirk. He proposed an alternative religious philosophy to replace Christianity, which reflected the thoughts of Spencer and Darwin. Science, insisted Carnegie, would explain the secrets of the universe. He prepared to exhort his youthful audience to value and promote their lives and careers on earth and not to be in any way concerned with the possibility of an afterlife.
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Carnegie submitted his first draft of the address under the title ‘A Confession of Religious Faith’ to Donaldson, who advised that what he had to say did not fit either with the spirit of the age in Scotland, or with the establishment. Carnegie returned to his desk to pen a more ‘modern’ text. This time he called his address ‘The Industrial Ascendancy of the World’; emphasising the rise of industrial America, he suggested how Europe should respond, and laid particular stress on the relationship between America and Britain. Carnegie still believed that Britain’s destiny was tied up with America’s fortunes.
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The address went down well and Carnegie could not resist giving the students a piece of advice from his literary hero Robert Burns; in June 1795 Robert Burns had written these lines to financier Patrick Heron of Heron:
Thou of an independent mind . . .
Thine own reproach alone dost fear.
Carnegie was Rector of St Andrews until 1907, as the students re-elected him in 1904. Some of the students, unhappy at the prospect of another unopposed re-election, wrote to Scottish man of letters Andrew Lang, inviting him to stand. A graduate and erstwhile lecturer at the university, Lang agreed but then withdrew his nomination when he realised that he was the candidate of a ‘rump’ and was likely to lose however sportingly he might enter the fray. Carnegie’s thoughts on being opposed are unrecorded.
During his Rectorship Carnegie became the university’s last great independent benefactor. In 1904 he presented a park to the university, the same year that a Women’s Union was established by Louise Carnegie. The next year Carnegie donated a gymnasium and physical education equipment – until then there had been only a ‘makeshift arrangement in the college cloisters’.
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During 1907–9 an extension of the University Library was funded by Carnegie with a gift of £10,000 (later increased to £12,000). Carnegie’s gifts to the university also included an organ for the University Chapel. (During 1912–14 Carnegie was elected Rector of the University of Aberdeen, but he bequeathed very little to that university.)
Principal Donaldson held his position throughout the whole of Carnegie’s Rectorship – indeed, his Principalship actually lasted 29 years – and there were those who voiced the opinion that Donaldson had ‘conned’ money out of Carnegie. One such was Douglas Young, polymath and poet, erstwhile lecturer at Dundee and St Andrews, and Professor of Greek at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, and in North Carolina.
Referring to the ‘fine sports park’ that Carnegie donated to St Andrews University in 1904, Young asserts that Donaldson ‘pulled a fast one’. The land which was ‘bought’ for the university by Carnegie, the university itself had owned since before 1747.
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Carnegie had jibbed at the price he had to pay for the land, and Donaldson pointed out that rich jute barons from Dundee were buying land around St Andrews for villas, forcing up the price of land. Carnegie also wrote a cheque for the construction of a modern ‘indoor swimming-pool for students’. However, Sir Peter Scott-Lang, Regius Professor of Maths, ‘insisted on spending the money on an armoury for the cadet corps’.
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In due course Carnegie wanted to see the swimming pool he had paid for, and Donaldson took him to the armoury door; fortunately for Donaldson, said Young, Coutts the janitor had ‘mislaid’ the key and Carnegie was guided ‘off to tea at the University Hall’.
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In their volume on past Rectors of the university, students Greg Twiss and Paul Chennell doubted the whole truth of such playing fields and swimming pool stories.
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Nevertheless, Donaldson knew that the land was held in trust and had to be exchanged for money. The university received the money and the students got their park, but Douglas Young was not the only one who considered Donaldson a culprit of ‘academic roguery’ and the stories still persist that Carnegie was duped.
One academic duty that gave Carnegie particular delight is mentioned in his autobiography, with Professor Donaldson cited as its instigator.
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The Dean of Radcliff College, Harvard University, was Miss Agnes Irwin, who happened to be the great-granddaughter of American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin. Franklin had been awarded the degree of LLD
in absentia
in 1759 from St Andrews and when he visited the town later the same year he was received with great honour. As a part of the university’s celebration of Franklin’s bi-centenary in 1906 the Senate agreed to confer the degree of LLD on Miss Irwin in recognition of Franklin’s connection with the university. As Rector, Carnegie conferred the degree on Miss Irwin at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in April 1906.
Despite the euphoria created for Carnegie by the Rectorship, 1901 brought him a severe blow. At the age of 87 his beloved uncle George Lauder died just before Christmas. Both his mother and Uncle George had been emotional crutches for Carnegie since his childhood. He wrote to John Morley: ‘I feel so lonely. . . . The intense interest he took in all my doings gave me satisfaction. . . .’
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He also conveyed his grief to his bereaved cousin Dod:
I am stunned and somehow protected from severe shocks, except every now and then one comes that seems almost to stop the heart.
What this loss is to you and to me no one knows but ourselves; they cannot know. I don’t believe there ever was so sweet, so fond and attachment on earth, as between us three men – the Teacher and his pupils.
But I can’t write about it; I must quit.
It is so saddening. What on earth will Scotland be to me now? He was Scotland.
Well, I must bite my lips and say nothing. This life, so delightful to us when it touches the precious relationship, is, apart from these sweet touches of affection, a fearful mockery; but good night. Do write a few lines and tell me how you are. This blow doesn’t draw us closer – nothing could do that; but it does send the thoughts more to you.
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Carnegie sank his grief into his philanthropic plans. Education was very much uppermost in his mind, but he still had a hankering to support medical research. Towards this end he gave $50,000 to the Polish-born French physicist Marie Curie, who, with her husband Pierre, would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. To the German physician and pioneer bacteriologist Robert Koch, a former Director of the Berlin Institute for Infectious Diseases, he gave $120,000; Koch was also awarded a Nobel Prize in 1905 for physiology and medicine.
Carnegie had created more millionaires than any other businessman with the sale of Carnegie Steel. But what people like Charles Schwab did with their money both angered and dismayed Carnegie. Palatial mansions, gambling, stupendous largesse – it was all monitored by Carnegie. True, what they did with their money was none of his business, but he took it personally, after all he had made them rich; an inveterate ‘interferer’, Carnegie would clearly have liked to run their lives for them too.
Charles Schwab’s declining health caused his resignation as the President of US Steel in 1903: this was bad enough in Carnegie’s eyes, but the fall in US Steel stock angered him in case his bonds were devalued and thus blighted his philanthropic plans. His mind was also troubled by the loss of old friends and mentors; Herbert Spencer died on 8 December 1903. But Skibo regularly refreshed him, as did cruises round the Scottish coast in
Sea-breeze
, motoring trips to various parts of the Highlands and the ‘simple, happy family life’ at Achinduich, a small shooting lodge on Skibo estate with its views of the River Shin.
Honours were coming to him thick and fast; two examples serve to give a flavour. At a ‘great gathering’ at the City Hall, Perth, on 8 October 1902 the Freedom of the City and Royal Burgh was conferred on Carnegie. For once the warmth and enthusiasm of the reception proved too much for Carnegie and drove ‘everything he intended to say . . . from his head’. His shortened acceptance speech was greeted with much applause and cheers. Carnegie became the nineteenth Freeman of Perth since 1833.
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In the same year Carnegie was made an ‘Honorary Master of the Bonnetmaker Craft of Dundee’, one of the famous Nine Incorporated Trades of the City, and whose ‘Seal of Cause’ dates from 1496. A new seal was designed for the Craft and used for the first time on Carnegie’s certificate. He donated to the Bonnetmakers a $1,000 gold bond.
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All such academic, civic and cultural honours pleased him, but one ‘honour’ was given pride of place in his mind ever after.
On an afternoon in October 1902 a Dornoch telegram boy hastened up the drive of Skibo with an urgent message from Dunrobin Castle, the home of the Duke of Sutherland, 15 miles away. A guest at Dunrobin, King Edward VII, was now on his way to Skibo for an unscheduled visit. After his delayed coronation on 9 August 1902, King Edward was setting about refurbishing Buckingham Palace, which at the time of Queen Victoria’s death was something of a mausoleum dedicated to the memory of the late Queen’s husband Prince Albert. The King was keen to brighten up the palace and rid it of its atmosphere of funereal gloom; having heard of Carnegie’s work at Skibo he wanted to review the modern embellishments. Awakened from his afternoon nap, Carnegie had hardly time to put on his Norfolk jacket before the King’s new Daimler appeared at Skibo’s
porte cochère
. Somewhat tousled, Carnegie greeted His Majesty, who was delighted to be piped indoors, to stand in the hallway while a flustered organist (who had just emerged from the swimming pool) played the national anthem.
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The King took tea, inspected the house and in the billiard room was attracted by a curious sketch. Carnegie had been intrigued in 1898 by a
New York Journal
report of a dinosaur skeleton recently discovered in Wyoming. He had directed the curator of the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh to buy it for $10,000 – the sketch the King saw was of this new exhibit,
diplodocus carnegiei
. This was to lead to a further museum collection of dinosaur bones. Edward VII was so impressed by it that he urged Carnegie to have a reproduction placed in the British Museum. This was done, and further publicity led to reproductions being presented to several European capitals. Other bones were named in honour of Louise Carnegie as
Apatosaurus louisae
.
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As the royal visit was coming to a close, the King encountered 5-year-old Margaret Carnegie. Years later she recalled the incident:
I had been naughty, and as usual on such occasions, after Mother had talked to me, I was sitting alone in her upstairs sitting room to think matters over until I was ready to say I was sorry. Mother never hurried me, but this time she had hardly left the room until she was back . . . the next thing I knew, I was in the garden picking roses with Nana [Nannie Lockerbie]. She explained that the King was coming that afternoon and that the roses we were picking were for him to take back to the Queen. Then freshly dressed, I was standing . . . in the drawing room with the flowers. A tall bearded man was bending over and asking if I would give him a kiss. I never liked to kiss bearded faces. They had sloppy wet lips, but this face was very different. This man knew how to kiss little girls. I gave the roses to him for the Queen, and a rosebud, ‘for your ownself’, which he put in his buttonhole.
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