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Mr G. M. Fraser, librarian,
Aberdeen Public Library, gave a valuable contribution to local
literature in a lecture which he delivered to the members of the
Aberdeen Diocesan Society in Aberdeen, on 12th December.
Mr Fraser said, in seeking to rescue a little the personality and work
of Francis Douglas, they were at the disadvantage that so little could
be known of him apart from the specimens of his printing press that they
were able to lay hands upon. In Aberdeen he was one of the unpopular
Jacobite minority of the eighteenth century, and so his life had to be
lived and his work accomplished in the face of hostile fellow townsmen,
who would not be likely, to make the best of him either in his lifetime
or after he had passed away. And yet his influence was very real in one
or two directions in the northeast of Scotland. Francis Douglas was born
at Blackmiln, (Logie-Coldstone), in 1719. His father, blaster Robert
Douglas, was the eldest son of the Rev. William Douglas, minister of
Midmar, and he in turn was the son of the Rev. William Douglas, minister
of Aboyne, who had many sufferings and vicissitudes in his career. A few
generations earlier the paternal relationship sprang from Sir Archibald
Douglas of Glenbervie, who had married (for his second wife) Bessie,
daughter of Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum, so that Francis Douglas had
kinship with both the Glenbervie and Drum families. His mother was a
daughter of Harry Farquharson of Whitehouse.
Douglas was apprenticed to a trade in Aberdeen—the humble craft of a
baker. This seemed, all things considered, such an extraordinary
occupation for him, whose interests were wholly rural and literary, that
he (Mr Fraser) was much puzzled to account for it until he found that
about this time a Robert Douglas, doubtless a relative, had been in
business as a baker in the Netherkirkgate of Aberdeen, and that it was
his premises actually that Francis Douglas afterwords occupied as a
baker on his own account. On completing his apprenticeship, which was
about 1737 or 1738, Douglas went to London, and is said to have worked
there at his trade. He was back again in Aberdeen in 1743, setting up in
business. In September in that year he was admitted a Burgess of Guild,
and of the baker craft. In 1745 he took another important step. He
married Elizabeth Ochterlony, daughter of David Ochterlony of
Tillyfroskie, Birse, a small property similar to Douglas’s own paternal
home. Although come of a succession of Presbyterian ministers, and
himself bred a Presbyterian, Francis Douglas, about the time of his
marriage, entered the Episcopal communion. James Chalmers, the printer,
who knew him in later life, stated in a letter to his brother George
Chalmers, of “The Caledonia," in 1805, that after becoming an
Episcopalian, Douglas “displayed much acrimony against the Church he had
left." In Aberdeen, Douglas became connected with St Paul’s Church.
One curiously significant feature of the church register was found in a
single word. Up to 1748, Francis Douglas was always designated
“baxter”—that is baker. In the next entry, 1750, he was termed
“merchant,” and merchant he remained throughout. What had happened in
the meantime to lead to the change? They found the key in the following
intimation in the newly-started “Aberdeen Journal” of 31st May 1748—“
There is a collection of books to be sold very cheap by Francis Douglas,
Baker, catalogue of which may be had at his house in the Netherkirkgate,
Aberdeen.” Francis Douglas, baker, had become a bookseller as well. He
had safely weathered the storms of the 1745 period in the town. Like all
Episcopalians, he would be a marked person at the time, and his
bakehouse in the Netherkirkgate so closely adjoined the Duke of
Cumberland's lodging in the Guestrow that, they could have little doubt
he was one of the “ovens” taken possession of and heated—as they were
told—with the dismantled altars, pulpits, and seats of the Episcopal
churches while the duke’s forces were, in occupation. This entrance on
bookselling showed the curiously restless enterprise that was a
characteristic of Francis Douglas through all his life.
Douglas was supposed to have set up his printing press in 1750. He was
still paying close attention to his bookselling, and developing it in
rather a remarkable way. The “Aberdeen Journal” of 17th December, 1751,
contained the intimation by Douglas of what, so far as Mr Fraser knew,
was the first auction sale of books in Aberdeen. In 1752, his printing
house was on the east side of Broad Street, in a tenement owned by his
kinsman, Rolert Douglas of Whiteriggs, from which he issued his various
publications in the next fifteen or sixteen years.
In the first few years of his printing venture, Douglas had a sleeping
partner associated with him. This was William Murray, druggist, whose
shop was also in the Broudgate. He, too, was a member of St Paul’s, and
as others who became associated with Douglas in the following years were
mostly of the same way of thinking in both religious and political
affairs, they could see how very largely the old Jacobite intercut lay
at the root of the productions of the Douglas press. For the first thing
to be issued from the now printing press of Douglas and Murray, Broad
Street, was nothing less than a weekly newspaper, representing the
Jacobite interest in opposition to Chalmers’s Whig “Aberdeen Journal.”
The “Aberdeen Melfigcncer” was issued in October, 1752, and continued to
bo published for four years and a half. It was most unfortunate that no
single copy of the “Intelligencer” was known to exist. Like Chalmers’s
sheet of 1746, and the remarkable “Weekly Diurnall” which the Town
Council caused to be issued in 1657 (the earliest periodical newspaper
in Scotland), the “Intelligencer,” from beginning to end seemed long ago
to have become dust and ashes. If by any chance a copy of it should ever
be discovered, it would be worth more than its weight in gold as a
bibliographical and historical curiosity.
In 1753, in addition to issuing the “Intelligencer,” Douglas ventured on
book printing. He began by reprinting a work that had already run
through nine editions, and so might be supposed to be acceptable to the
public. It was the “Familiar Letters on Important Subjects wrote from
the year 1618 to 1650. By James Howell, Esq., Clerk to the Privy Council
to King Charles.” In 1753 Douglas and Murray reprinted another notable
book—“The Life of God in the Soul of Man,” by Henry Scougal, Professor
of Divinity in Aberdeen. Throughout 1753 and 1754 the printing press was
otherwise quite busy, and a number of volumes were issued, and in 1755
they struck some of the better quality of Douglas’s original work. Mr
Fraser proceeded to give an interesting enumeration of the works
produced up to the time of Murray’s withdrawal from the business, and
mentioned that the first production, of Francis Douglas’s independent
press in 1758 was a rather remarkable one. It was, so far as was known,
the first book printed in Greek characters in Aberdeen—“The Delectus, or
Chosen Passages.” It was only within the last few years that such an
early work printed in Greek characters had come to light. The credit of
the discovery was due to Mr W. Kellas Johnston, of London, -well known
for his researches in Aberdeen bibliography, who came upon a copy
accidentally a few years ago, and thus displaced another noted volume,
but two years later in date, which was shown to tho British Association
on its last visit to Aberdeen as the earliest Greek-printed book. In
preparing that paper, it was the lec^Ber’s intention to ask Mr Kellas
Johnston to send him his copy of the “Delectus” that he might show it to
that meeting. Curiously enough, that was not necessary, for within the
past few weeks a young friend of his—in fact, his own boy—came upon an
excellent copy of the “Delectus” in the New Market, and bought it for
the sum of four-pence! It was rather amusing to have to say that within
recent weeks the same young man who discovered the second “Delectus” had
also discovered another copy of the rare “Plato.” Mr Fraser dealt at
length with the other numerous productions of Francis Douglas’s press,
and referred to his subsequent settlement as a farmer at Abbots’ Insch,
Paisley, for 15 years. He died in 1786, and was buried in Paisley Abbey
Churchyard. His grave is in no way marked.
Francis Douglas was not in any sense a genius, for in all that he did he
never seemed to have touched the regions whence genius derived its
inspiration. But he was intensely interested in things, and he had a
great capacity for taking pains, and had some claim to kindly
remembrance by the Episcopal Church and by Aberdeen. |
