2110-7-2-43

[JAS - Appt. to Canada]

The University Edinburgh. 29th March, 1935.

May it please Your Excellency, -- (quoth the ex-civil servant, the member of diverse departmental committees and the professor)

My dear Buchan,--- (quoth for the last time the dabbler in Scottish rhymes and ballads)

This is very great news, and I congratulate you and wish you well on your exaltation. I have no doubt you will have a great life, and you will play the part to perfection. What a country to boss!- with unlimited fishing wherever you go. All gladness go with you.

You will observe that I am in Edinburgh, and with a non-descript address. I have had a pretty thin time this year. I came down at the beginning of last term (January-), leaving my house behind. And I had the devil of an amount of work to do, for I was lecturing on new stuff; I had a departmental committee which at times is a glutton of time; and as a newcomer I had to lunch out. And generally life was a burden. We are "flitting" in a week's time, to the house ''presently occupied" (as the Scots lawyers say) by the Very. Rev. Dr Harry Miller, so I am hoping that some of his piety may exude from the wall-paper and redeem my otherwise ribbald lectures.

This in deadly secret: A week ago a fly was cast over my nose, emanating from MacGill, Montreal where they are hard put to find a Principal. Like all well-bred fish, I at once plunged to the bottom, and I am wondering whether there will be a second cast. The truth is that it would be hardly decent to leave Edinburgh, before I have begun to pay rates in the City. But I admit that in some ways this has greater attractions than any other job I have been offered, and if it had only come six months ago, when I was still in Aberdeen, I might have been less coy. As it is, having been in Edinburgh since January only, I feel it is only right to assume the virtuous air of a bride who is tempted on her honeymoon.

I enclose, for you to glance at and throw away, a brochure chronicling a dinner in Aberdeen. I wish I could see you and have a good gossip about my beloved Aberdeen, for which my heart bleeds! Somehow in the last few years everything has gone wrong in Aberdeen. Presently the place will be made up of people who do not speak to each other! The spirit of darkness has possessed it. The speeches at this dinner are, I fear, tinged with oblique references to recent controversies and dissensions, and in particular to two: firstly, what should we teach the young? The governing body says that what was good enough for St. Thomas Aquinas is good enough for us and our granchildren. Secondly, for no earthly reason, the place has been rent with the

extraordinary question wether a professor should be a citizen! No, says the Court, and passes remarkable resolutions: a professor must do nothing which might lead him to be criticised! "'O, God, O Montreal!" as Samuel Butler somewhere has it. Strictly speaking, if one lived up to the Resolutions of the Court, no Professor could be an elder in the Kirk, or lead out a company of boy-scouts. Bowling and golf might be allowed, but even these, I believe, may lead to criticism and controversy, and therefore are doubtfully permissible!

But all this is a far-off controversy when you are packing your trunks for Ottawa; I only mention it because it gives the background for a good many of the speeches at this remarkable dinner of which I enclose the proceedings.

Do not trouble to answer this; I mean it. When I moved south to Edinburgh, I tackled with my own type-writer about 160 letters, from which I infer that probably you are called upon to tackle 16,000 (simple proportion). So let this be one of those which call forth the blessing: Thank God, that doesnt need to be answered".

Again, all good wishes for the future,

Yours always, Alexander Gray