Paris-Edinburgh: Cultural Connections in the Belle Epoque (review)

Frequenters of second-hand bookshops must often have wondered about the Nelsons series of French classics and contemporary novels, in their distinctive white and green bindings. Why were these books, sold in both British and French markets, produced by an Edinburgh firm? Siân Reynolds provides the answer. Nelsons spotted a business opportunity which technical efficiency allowed them to exploit, but this would have been unlikely without a pre-existing web of cultural links between Edinburgh elite circles and France. Reynolds examines the growth of these links through a series of case studies, modestly claiming only to explore 'cultural threads' and 'connections', not to carry out a full comparative study, or an exercise in the fashionable theme of cultural transfer. Perhaps the strongest direct French influence on Scotland was in painting and sculpture, and here Reynolds stresses the appeal of Paris to the newly emancipated and educated daughters of the bourgeoisie, who could use their French training to establish an independent living. Paris, and French-speaking universities in Belgium and Switzerland, also attracted women medical students, a point deserving further research. A central figure in Reynolds's picture is the social visionary Patrick Geddes, though his Collège des Ecossais at Montpellier in the 1920s is outside her time-frame. Geddes's ideas are notoriously difficult to pin down, but of his multifarious activities and his networking abilities there is no doubt. His 'summer meetings' in Edinburgh were attended by many significant French figures, and were also an opportunity for women's participation. Another chapter shows how the Paris exhibition of 1900 was a focus for Geddes and for other Scots with international interests. Geddes's friendships brought to Edinburgh both Edmond Demolins, one of the circle of conservative sociologists influenced by Frédéric Le Play, and the anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus. A rather different and more sedate network was the Franco-Scottish Society founded in 1896, which had a surprisingly wide appeal to powerful members of the French educational establishment, including Ernest Lavisse, Octave Gréard and Louis Liard; older links between Scottish and French philosophy help to explain this. On the Scottish side, there was academic input from Charles Sarolea, the Belgian-born holder of the first lectureship in French at Edinburgh University, and John Kirkpatrick, professor of constitutional law and history. There is much lively and thought-provoking detail in Reynolds's book, which also raises some suggestive wider issues. 'Morningside was never likely to be mistaken for Montparnasse' (p. 2), yet the Calvinist stereotype of Edinburgh is clearly inadequate. By the late Victorian period, 'the culture of the comfortably off' (p. 19) was becoming more complex, more feminized, and more open to continental influences. The same was true of Glasgow, especially in the visual arts, as several recent studies have shown, and the connections were with Germany, Austria and Scandinavia as well as France. Would a similar pattern be found in English provincial cities, or was there some truth after all in the cliché of the Auld Alliance?