Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Without sounding like a cliché, women in the mid-twentieth century were defined by their men. A woman could use her sexual attractiveness to embark on a class journey.¹² Thus, if you were a working-class girl, your only chance of moving up the social ladder was to attract a man from a “higher” class. 

My mother grew up in the heart of Glasgow at Govan. Her mother was from a peasant family on the Isle of Eigg. To be fair, her father, Hector MacGillivray, came from a family of artisans in the County of Argyll. Regardless, she grew up near the Gorbals, one of the worst slum areas in Western Europe at that time. In other words, she probably couldn’t go much lower.¹³

Hence, I think she viewed sub-lieutenant Harkness, who had his own house in Chesser Loan, Edinburgh, as a move upwards. Ironically, she was probably unaware of the fact that my father’s ‘middle class’ mother, Georgina Hume, was born a stone’s throw away from her Glasgow “slum” at 52 Bright Street.¹⁴

‘Class journey’, and assuring the future of your children

Like other “post-war” British parents, my mother understood the importance of climbing into a ‘higher’ class, or at least keeping your position, if you were already born into the middle class. 

As a mother of five sons, she stressed to us the importance of education. Obviously, if we were going to go on a ‘class journey’,¹⁵ we couldn’t rely solely on our good looks. This was true for some decades after the war ended. However, this may no longer be the case.¹⁶¹⁷

Admittedly, the post-war ‘working class fiction’ of the ‘Angry Young Men’ proposed the hypothesis that men could also use their good looks to go on a class journey. Joe Lampton in John Braine’s novel “Room at the Top”(1957) was about a working-class man who married an upper-class girl. 

Inherited Desire

In other words, my mother chose the life of a middle-class suburban wife. Interestingly, she has expressed on numerous occasions that she missed the ‘country idyll’ of her summer vacations on Eigg; at the same time, she also enjoys the tumultuous life of urban civilised life.

If syphilis and heroin addiction can be passed down to children from their parents, could it also be possible to inherit the desire for two opposites? Perhaps, urban civilization and country idyll? This is something I have undoubtedly “inherited”, not in “blood,” but through some implicit socialization. 

Personally, I would never want to live permanently in rural or suburban areas, but I do appreciate living there for short periods. I like to visit them during short trips like visiting people in my ‘family’. However, this is seldom done nowadays, as the family members of my own and the previous generations are either very “old,” or deceased.   

Other climbers

My mother was not the only Scottish woman doing ‘social climbing’ by marrying someone from a ‘higher’ class. One such woman is Mary Anne MacLeod. She was born into poverty on Lewis, a neighbouring Island to Eigg. She was the youngest of ten children to Malcolm and Mary MacLeod. Mary bought a boat ticket for America and married the wealthy Fred Trump. Eventually, she gave birth to Donald Trump, the racist 45th President of the United States.

¹² “Class journey” refers to social mobility. 

¹³ Of course, my mother was not the only Scottish woman doing “social climbing” by marrying someone from a “higher” class. In my childhood autobiography, “Boyhood Recollections” (2022), I write about Mary Anne MacLeod, born into poverty, and born on Lewis, a neighbouring island to Eigg (where my grandmother was born), and the youngest of ten children to Malcolm and Mary MacLeod. They were serfs (tenants) with few rights. Members of her extended family were evicted from the land they had farmed for generations, because the “laird” wished to use it as a game reserve.

The living conditions of these families were often “indescribably filthy” and austere. In order to escape living the life of a “filthy” peasant, Mary bought a boat ticket to America. Hardly speaking any English and a poor immigrant, she had only two assets: her looks and her intelligence. With these “weapons”, she hunted down the rich real-estate developer Fred Trump whom she married. She later gave birth to Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States who, ironically, waged a war against poor immigrants like his mother who did not have English as their mother tongue.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anne_MacLeod_Trump

¹⁴ Georgina Hume was born on 7 February 1876 at 52 Bright Street, Glasgow (ScotlandsPeople). Her mother Agnes Hume (Ms. Kay) was illiterate (she signed the birth certificate with a cross instead of a signature), indicating that she came from a lower social class. Her father was John Hume, a blacksmith and a journeyman – in other words, a skilled worker—and thus belong to the “respectable” working class. See the birth certificate in the appendix.

¹⁵ Move socially upwards.

¹⁶ Despite being the single most educated generation in human history, Millennials and Gen Z graduates are finding it difficult to find work after graduation. It’s all the result of long-term factors that have been building for decades. This is why your parents’ advice isn’t working. It’s also why unemployment isn’t necessarily your fault. https://employedhistorian.com/cant-find-job-after-college/

¹⁷ Ainley, P.  (2016).  “Betraying a generation: How education is failing young people”, Policy Press, Bristol.