In which I reveal what Henry Vollam Morton has taught me about myself

Touring for six weeks in Scotland with my twentieth century travel buddy Henry Vollam Morton has been an insightful privilege, for which I thank the indulgence of Niall Taylor and H V Morton Society members. The journey has helped me to better understand HVM’s writings; and surprisingly, informed me about myself.

It not simply took me across an autumnal Scotland with ‘In Search of Scotland’ 1928; and ‘In Scotland Again’ 1933 in my bag; but during those six weeks exposed me to much commentary about HVM - Michael Bartholomew, John McCarthy, Walter Mason, Stephen McClarence, Nina Sankovitch, Prof Michael Gardiner - some critical, others sensitive, but all recognising his mastery of his medium.

Few of us have the strength of character that we expect of other’s unblemished lives - the myth of ‘the perfect gentleman’. But does unvarnished biographical reconstruction steal away a writer’s magic; and has it affected my fascination with HVM?

Retrospective judgment of character is an acid tool. Social mores change, and evolve (or regress). To appreciate the writing, do we really need to know about the writer? To view a man in the time of his life, shouldn’t we enter ‘both the man and the time’? For some of Morton’s biographical commentators this has seemed an impossible task, causing me to question their motivation (and morality).

In my travels with Henry, I focused simply on his writing not personality. The character that accompanied me was the Henry Vollam Morton discovered from his work, the one that charmed and captivated contemporary society and has seduced travellers since. For me, his is an identity described without critique, displayed solely from his words.

In my opening paragraph I mentioned that the journey also informed me about myself. It may appear strange that a senior twenty first century barrister would gain personal insight from the writings of a mid-twentieth century travel writer. The insight relates to my responses to our shared travels. In a nutshell, under Henry’s influence it was increasingly difficult (and unnecessary) to remain objective and factual about what I saw and felt - and in consequence what I wrote.

It was not until I fictionally ‘introduced’ HVM to Robert Louis Stevenson on the banks of Loch Linnhe that I realised what was happening. At the Corran ferry I gazed out at the glory of the Highlands, the silhouettes of mountains peeling away from the stillness of the loch. Perhaps I should have anticipated my emotional response to the landscape from the romantic writings of Robert Burns and Walter Scott; or more latterly, Mike Tomkies’ “A Last Wild Place’ and Amy Liptrot’s ‘The Outrun’. Tales of Scotland are necessarily historical romance rather than simple historical fact. Each observation and memory has woven into its core a peat-flavoured thread of heart-pounding fiction, not always intentional, but inescapable. It is impossible to write about the Highlands without the romance; for the stark realities of one moment evaporate on the suffused colour and countours of the next.

Detractors have tested HVM’s writing against a template of their perceived reality. Did he actually walk the fells above Loch Nan Uamh, rest at the Loch Sligachan inn, meet the Highlander Campbell in Glencoe? I sense that the answer to that question -  is to question the question. Was it ever relevant? Did his readers wish to know, or simply believe? Like me, and many Mortonites like me, they simply sought to submerge themselves in his prose - to feel the wind against their faces, to smell the heather and to hear the call of the curlew across the fell. Henry was walking in the steps of the romantics, Burns and Stevenson; that is what Morton invited me to do, and it is precisely why we love what he wrote.

I have sought to capture the fusion of fact and fiction, where time stops and starts again, in a place where Henry and I indulged ourselves in the almost real romance of yesteryear.