Talking-up Scotland

pdf for printing: the-arrival-of-the-goldfinch

 

 

Images: national galleries.org, abebooks.com, amazon.co.uk

‘One of the most iconic paintings in the world, which has never before been seen in Scotland, will make a flying visit to Edinburgh this autumn. The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) will travel to the Scottish National Gallery from its home in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, in The Hague.’ (nationalgalleries.org)

I read recently of the impending arrival of this tiny painting in Edinburgh and it caught my attention. The Goldfinch, the bird not so much the painting, had been somehow important for me since the age of only nine. My grandfather, in his later years, had been a roadman in the Berwickshire hills above Duns where I was born. In the summer of 1961, age ten, I spent the school holidays with him while my mother was in hospital for an extended period. My father had his work to go to. During that period, as he maintained the road verges with his mighty scythe, he also introduced me to his hobby (pun?) of bird-watching. It became my hobby too and for Christmas that year, he sent me a pair of binoculars and a book of birds, the one above. I still have it. In it, I saw an image of a goldfinch for the first time. I was stunned by its exotic colouring and amazed that such a thing could live in this cold place.

I wasn’t to see a real goldfinch for another thirty years. We lived in a mining village and then a dock area in Scotland’s industrial centre. No goldfinch appeared there. Then, one winter’s day in the early 1990’s now living in Ayr, my peripheral vision picked up a flutter of wings outside my study window. It was a flock of around six or seven goldfinches feeding on a lavender bush. They were only there for a few minutes before they had devoured all the seeds and moved on. The bush died soon after and I haven’t seen them since but the Goldfinch is clearly deep in my subconscious waiting to be called on. So when I read of the iconic painting arriving in Edinburgh it seemed to trigger something. I bought a print of the painting and a copy of Donna Tartt’s novel of the same name. The book is about:

‘Theodore Decker who, at the age of 13, survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum, in which his beloved mother dies. Staggering out through the debris, he takes with him the world-famous painting of ‘The Goldfinch’. This unique object of beauty sustains him through many trials as he descends from that first theft into other crimes, including years later killing a gangster in self-defense. From that pit, he gradually climbs by returning the picture (for a huge reward) and trying to reconcile with the people he has wronged.’ (Wikipedia.org)

It is a beautiful thing, the painting, but it was only when I got the print, that I noticed something quite ugly – the bird is chained. Seeing that chain around the bird’s thin leg has changed my thinking dramatically. The beautiful thing became suddenly tragic for me.

OK, here’s the leap to politics. Don’t groan, too loudly, I know it’s a clumsy leap.

Not long after my grandfather’s introduction to the exquisite and seemingly unattainable goldfinch, his son, my father, began to introduce me to politics. He had been a Scottish Nationalist for as long as he could remember. Having left school at fourteen, his formal schooling was short. He had picked up some Scottish history and living only ten miles from the border with England, on land owned almost entirely by Anglicised gentry, this had developed into a mix of class and ethnicity-based hostilities. Freedom from ‘English’ rule was his answer and it became mine too for a while. Of course things have changed. Like you, reader, I know it’s much more complicated. My dad had never met working-class English people who he might have come to empathise with, so can be excused, I hope.

So, the goldfinch link is? Well, the dream of seeing Scottish independence has been with me almost as long as the dream of seeing the goldfinch dream has. Somehow, in my admittedly confused and often tangential mind, the two ‘feel’ the same. Does seeing, for the first time, that the bird was chained, make this comparison any more poignant or is it just a clumsier leap? I’m not responsible for my subconscious, scientists tell me, so I don’t really care.

I don’t know if I’ll make it through to Edinburgh to see the painting but I’ve seen the real thing, if only once. In 2014, I hoped to see the other one, unchained. There’s time yet.

Sources:

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/whatson/on-now-coming-soon/the-goldfinch/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goldfinch_(novel)