PPS: Billy Kay’s 5-part radio series, “Don Roberto”, which he made for the BBC in 1999, is available to listen to on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgI0uOcqlxqQYMvtLxvwZaDhqrxIzKJHo

PS: a small selection of RB Cunninghame Graham’s books – including THIRTEEN STORIES, from which the above three are extracted – are available free from @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/644

You’ve made it to the end! Have a FREE book! 3 short stories by Cunninghame Graham: “A Hegira”, “The Goldfish”, & “Beattock for Moffat”. Set in Mexico, Morocco, & Scotland, they are about journeys & frontiers, & about tenacity, loss, & death.

18/18

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/free-publications/three_stories/

Our book EMPIRES & REVOLUTIONS: Cunninghame Graham & His Contemporaries contains essays exploring ideas of revolution, emancipation, equality, & liberty in the works of RBCG & other Scottish writers of the period – in print & online via Project MUSE

17/18

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/occasional_papers/empires-and-revolutions/

Gabriela’s – Carrie’s – incredible career inspired the historian & novelist Clare Clark, whose novel BEAUTIFUL LIES is a (very lightly) fictionalised version of her life. But can fiction beat reality?

16/18

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/400682/The-gaucho-MP-and-the-girl-from-the-Yorkshire-Ridings

Clearly, Carrie was an accomplished thespian. She, and Robert – & Carrie’s sisters, who were in on the secret – maintained the deception throughout her life & after, under an ever-present shadow of possible scandal & ruin.

15/18

Then, in 1985, papers were discovered by the family. “Gabriela” had not been born in Chile to European nobility: her real name was Carrie Horsfall, from Masham in Yorkshire, who ran away to become an actress – which might explain why her exotic accent was so hard to pin down.

14/18

When Gabriela died, tragically young, she was buried on the island of Inchmahome in the Lake of Menteith. RBCG dug her grave himself. He never remarried. When he died, 30 years later, he was buried alongside her

13/18

https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2018/01/adventurer-worth-remembering/

Gabriela was a talented writer herself. Emilia Pardo Bazán introduced Gabriela’s work to Spanish literary journals, & Gabriela translated Bazán’s novel El destripador de antaño into English. She also wrote a highly regarded 3-volume biography of St Teresa of Avila.

12/18

They returned to Scotland where Gabriela won the admiration of her husband’s society friends – Wilde, Yeats, Engels, & others – with her “slight accent, neither French nor Spanish, but most attractive and charming, as foreign accents sometimes can be, especially with ladies.”

11/18

RBCG & Gabriela met in Paris when he was 26 & she was only 17. They were married just 6 weeks later. They travelled to the USA & settled into a Bohemian life in Mexico, where RBCG taught fencing & Gabriela taught French & guitar.

10/18

RBCG’s wife, Gabriela de la Balmondière, was equally exotic & romantic. Born in Chile, her father – French nobleman Francisco Jose de la Balmondière – & his elegant Spanish wife were both killed when Gabriela was 12. She grew up with an aunt in Paris.

Gabriela de la Balmondière

9/18

“You ought, Mr Graham, to be the first president of a British Republic.” “I ought, madam, if I had my rights,” he answered sardonically, “to be the king of this country. And what a three weeks that would be!”
—Ford Madox Ford, Return to Yesterday

“Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham”, Sir John Lavery (1893)

8/18

“An impenitent & unashamed dandy” – from Joseph Conrad’s Letters to R.B. Cunninghame Graham, ed. C.T. Watts (Cambridge University Press, 2011), quoting George Bernard Shaw

7/18

Please allow me to introduce Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936): traveller, adventurer, politician, Scottish laird, American rancher, superb horseman, writer of essays, polemic, history, biography, & fiction, he was born #OTD, 24 May.

6/18

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2012/05/a-world-of-story-rediscovered-r-b-cunninghame-graham-scotlands-forgotten-writer/

Is buried in a grave beside his wife on a small lake-island not far from Glasgow? Has, surprisingly, been almost totally ignored, even almost forgotten, as a personality & politician & writer by recent generations?

5/18

Wrote nearly thirty books, including 200 short stories & sketches? Knew nearly all the great writers & artists of his day? Had a funeral attended by the President of a republic & the two most famous horses in the world?

4/18

Helped to found both the UK Labour Party AND the Scottish National Party? Was a ferocious critic of imperialism, racism & cruelty to any human or animal? Bought his favourite horse—an Argentine mustang—from the Glasgow Tramway Company and rode it for twenty years?

3/18

Went into Parliament as a Liberal & came out as a Socialist? Assaulted a policeman in defence of free speech & was sent to prison? Travelled in disguise in Morocco trying to reach a forbidden city?

2/18