John Brown

A Man of Wit and Humour

John Brown
1874-1940
'My father ...was a man of wit and humour.'
     from from For the Islands I Sing

From George's writing, not much can be gleaned about grandfather John Brown, except that he enjoyed a drinking spree, and soon after the Education Act (passed in 1872), was fined ten shillings for not sending his children to school.  This disgrace was reported in the Orkney Herald.

John was a master shoemaker who married Margaret Sinclair on Hoy on 5^th October 1865.  They lived in Brown's Close at the South End of Stromness.

George reports in his autobiography that several generations ago there were many Browns in Stromness; they had to be differentiated by prefix.  His branch of the family were known as the Duckie Browns – because they kept ducks round a pond, now long gone. Of course, this may be apocryphal. 

Peter was the first-born of John and Margaret Sinclair.  He became an officer in the Salvation Army and later a Congregational Minister.  Three daughters followed before John, George's father, was born in Stromness on the 20^th December 1874, and then another son and two more daughters. 

John's younger brother James married a woman with some mental affliction.  Eventually he left her; George remembers a melancholy uncle coming for dinner on Monday afternoons.  In the mid 1930's he went missing, and his body was found in the harbour a few days later.   

John was well liked in the town, cheerful with ready wit and laughter.  He must have been delighted to be able to bring his young bride back to Stromness on the mail boat St Ola, brightly decked with flags especially for the occasion. 

As a young man, George's father had heard (twice in one day) William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, preaching to a huge throng of people in Glasgow.  This made a big impression on him.  He had a deep sensibility about conditions facing the poor and always took their side against the wealthy and over-privileged. 

But in spite of the prevalence of religion at that time in the islands as elsewhere, John Brown did not apparently have a high regard for ministers and elders by the time he had a young family.  This did not mean he wasn't a god-fearing man.  He took his whole brood to one of the three Presbyterian churches in Stromness where he sang the hymns 'full throated' from the back seat of the gallery where they always sat.  For reasons now obscure, he wore a little ivory crucifix on his watch chain on Sundays.  

This weekly event was preceded by a ritual George remembered fondly.  His father would rise  and light the fire while the rest of the family was still in bed.  Then he made breakfast, carrying a tray up to Mary and George, who had sneaked into the vacated warm place next to her.

By profession, John was a tailor, working in the Stromness shop of Peter Esson at the foot of Kirk Road.  But progress meant that suits were coming ready made to the islands, fresh from factories in the south, and his tailoring work was part time to his main job as postman.  George had an abiding memory of him coming into the kitchen-living room at Clouston's Pier with rain streaming off him.  As all postmen did then, he wore a lantern pinned to the lapel of his overcoat, and the wick needed trimming.

                      My father passed with his penny letters
                      Through closes opening and shutting like legends

                      He quenched his lantern, leaving the last door.

George remembers him as small and stout, but early photos show him in a line of post office workers looking small and wiry, almost lost under a large moustache. 

George thought that his father, with his ability as a mimic and his fine tenor voice, had the makings of a good actor. In fact, he cut quite a dash in amateur drama circles.  Especially when the whisky was flowing, he loved to sing Edwardian music-hall songs and sentimental hymns, his favourite being The Old Rugged Cross. 

But as a child, George was also privy to a melancholy side of his father. He listened at his father's door while John paced to and fro, speaking aloud his doubts and worries, half frightening, half intriguing the child to hear this stranger.  George's realisation of the complexities of human beings, the masks we all wear to face the world, began about then.  Later he used this insight to good effect in his writing.

When the family moved to Melvin Place around 1927-28, John became very ill with rheumatic fever.  He recovered but suffered for the rest of his life, his hands and feet twisted by the disease.  He would send one of the children for a bucket of sea water, not harbour water but good Atlantic water from Hoy sound, to bathe his feet in the hope of relief. 

One doctor suggested that his teeth might be at the root of his troubles.  John had them all extracted at one sitting.  He ­– and the dentist – consumed half a bottle of whisky during the extraction.  

John read books borrowed from the public library, especially in his fifties when he was ill in bed with severe arthritis.  Eventually he could no longer manage the postal round in all weathers, and put in a few hours with Peter Esson, painfully cutting and stitching with his twisted hands.  He felt himself to be a burden to his family, who were very poor during his times of illness. 

In the last few years of John's life, George began to discover poetry and read aloud to him.  John read the first few verses written by his son, and George believed he approved of them. 

When the second World War began and the naval supply base was being built on Hoy, there was such a demand for work people that John managed to get a job as a hut-tender, keeping the living quarters of the other workmen clean and their beds made. 

In July 1940, John died suddenly in Lyness, Hoy, aged 64, from coronary thrombosis.  The police informed Hugh, the oldest son, who broke down in tears.  He was particularly attached to his father.  John was brought home and the coffin stood in the little bedroom downstairs.  George equated death with the remoteness of stars, and the coldness of the touch of his father's forehead stayed with him.  Both find their way into his writing.

                        When I saw the first star-coldness
                        I was a child.