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John Malcolm Bulloch was born in 1867 and graduated MA from the University of Aberdeen, in 1888. His father, John, was editor of the Aberdeen magazine, Scottish Notes and Queries. Bulloch followed his father into journalism, beginning his career with the Aberdeen Free Press, but later moving to London, where he worked on various illustrated papers, including The Sketch, The Illustrated London News and The Graphic (of which he was editor). From 1924, he was chief literary critic of Allied Newspapers and a well-known theatre critic. Despite living and working in London, he retained a deep commitment to his roots in Aberdeen, and published several historical articles in The Aberdeen University Review. He died on 6 March 1938, after a short illness.
Dr Bulloch was utterly remarkable and produced a volume of work that surely defied the possibilities of one life-span. A scholar, editor, researcher and artisan - his abilities, and indeed energies, had literally no bounds. He loved his Aberdeen homeland and gave back so much.
We are then to be truly grateful, that through the New Spalding Club and its commission for the House of Gordon, that John Malcolm Bulloch lent his inexhaustible talents to researching the depths of the Gordon Family History of his Aberdeen homeland. (Bulloch's Gordon Index)
Edward Gordon of Cairnfield was a continuator of Dr Bulloch, and in his opening remarks of his 19 voulme Gordon history, wrote an honest tribute:
"...Similarly and even more so may John Malcolm Bulloch be described as �the onlie begetter� of this account of the Gordons, for without his enthusiasm, indefatigable research, untiring patience, and vast correspondence with all quarters of the globe, no such account would have been possible. It is the more strange that he had no Gordon blood in him, yet it is to him that those who read what follows, and are of Gordon descent, may acknowledge their indebtedness for the story of their family...A considerable number of families, however, have never appeared in print, and his notes about them with, in some cases, manuscript accounts of them were left to the Aberdeen University..."
Aberdeen University Special Collections
This is where you will find Dr Bulloch's work, with papers relating to the history and genealogy of the Gordon family, compiled by John Malcolm Bulloch. An extensive collection of 230 volumes and 47 boxes of 'Gordoniana'
John Malcolm Bulloch and Thomas Hardy
'Mr Thomas Hardy, who had shaken off a chill during his visit to the fine air of the north, left Aberdeen in cheerful spirits. With several other guests, ladies and gentlemen, he passed an hour in chat in the train, and he lingered later with another group. He recalled his old friendship with William Minto, whose grave in Aberdeen he visited yesterday, and he agreed that Minto was unhappy in leaving the London which he loved. The great novelist was up early enough this morning to join a group in a smoking-room before the train reached London. With a smile in his pensive, sad eyes, he listened to the vivacious talk of his friend Mr John Malcolm Bulloch, while Mr Arthur Symons, the poet and critic, sat beside him, and Mr Robinson of Boston stood at the door'.
His visit to Aberdeen clearly impressed Hardy greatly and he always referred very warmly to the University which, for instance, he described in a letter of 1907 as 'a University which can claim in my opinion to an exceptional degree that breadth of view & openness of mind that all Universities profess to cultivate, but many stifle'. Similarly, in a letter to J. M. Bulloch in 1917, he wrote that 'Yes; the Aberdeen time has receded far into the distance! And yet I often think of the charm it had for me' Thomas Hardy's last known reference to Aberdeen is in another letter to Bulloch, dated 6 October 1918: 'I am glad to hear about old Aberdeen. To me it bears, & always will, a curiously romantic aspect. I suppose I shall never see it again'. Hardy never did return to the city which awarded him his first degree.
J. M. Bulloch recalled his impressions of Hardy during the visit:
'Nobody would have dreamed from his conversation that he had anything like the philosophical grasp which distinguished him. He was intensely shy. But Aberdeen soon put him at home, for the first person he met at the Grand Hotel, where Sir James Murray put us all up, was the manager, a Dorchester man, several of whose assistants also came from Dorchester. Curiously enough, too, several of the officers at Castlehill, who appeared at various functions, were old friends of his, for the first battalion of the Gordons had been for a great many years to all intents and purposes a Dorset regiment'.
Why did Aberdeen give Hardy an honorary degree? It has been surmised that Bulloch himself was the prime mover behind the idea of nominating Hardy. John Malcolm Bulloch (1867-1938) was a native and graduate of Aberdeen, and author of A History of the University of Aberdeen, 1495-1895 (London, 1895) among many others books. He worked as a journalist in London for many years, and he had certainly met Hardy, as the latter's first surviving letter to him shows.
John Malcolm Bulloch and de Peyster and Rabbie Burns
The history of this family is traced by John Malcolm Bulloch in the Burns Chronicle of 1930. It is worth rehearsing here:
In spite of his unusual name, de Peyster was a British subject. His family were of French Protestant descent, and fled to Holland at the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572. The Colonel's grandfather, Colonel Abraham de Peyster, married a Dutch kinswoman, Catherine de Peyster, in 1684. Their seventh son, Pierre, married Catherine, daughter of Arent Schuyler, one of the sons of Philip Schuyler. The elder of their two sons was Burns's friend, Arent Schuyler de Peyster. He seems to have spent his boyhood partly in Britain, partly in Holland, though brought up on British traditions. He joined the British Army in 1755. His regiment, the 50th Foot, had been raised in America in 1748, by the Governor of Massachusetts, William Shirley, who, in 1745, had directed the siege of Louisberg with de Peyster's uncle, Colonel Peter Schuyler. Next, de Peyster held a commission in the 51st Foot, also a regiment raised in America and which at one time had three Schuylers in it. Forty-seven years of his service, however, were spent in the 8th Foot, later the King's Liverpool Regiment. With it, de Peyster campaigned in Germany during the Seven Years War. His main service seems to have been in Canada. From 1768 to 1785, he apparently did service as a Military Administrator, handling the Indians with such tact that when he was about to return to England, they sent him a letter, thanking him, for all that he had done for them. The last seven years of his service were spent in England and Ireland. He retired to Dumfries in April 1794.
He had married Rebecca Blair, sister of John M'Murdo's wife, Jane, and, like her, a daughter of Provost Blair of Dumfries. On his retirement, de Peyster settled at Mavis Grove, on the Nith, three miles from Dumfries. There, he threw himself eagerly into the Volunteer movement, becoming Major Commandant of the Dumfries Company of which Burns was a member in 1795. Colonel de Peyster must have been physically tough, but 'beneath a rugged exterior he concealed a warm and affectionate heart', as one Burns editor put it.
In response to an inquiry by de Peyster about Burns's health, in January 1796, Burns wrote:
"My honor'd Colonel, deep I feel
Your interest in the Poet's weal:
Ah! now sma' heart hae I to speel
The steep Parnassus
Surrounded thus by bolus pill
And potion glasses."
Burns is generally considered to be the author of a letter bearing twenty-five signatures, including his own, asking Colonel de Peyster to suspend asking a public subscription 'for defraying the exps of our Association. That our Secretary should have waited on those Gentlemen and others of that rank of life, who from the first, offered pecuniary assistance, meets our idea as highly proper but that the Royal Dumfries Volunteers should go abegging, with the burnt out Cottager and Shipwrecked Sailor, is a measure of which we must disapprove.
'Please then, Sir, to call a meeting as soon as possible, and be so very good also as to put a stop to the degrading business, untill the voice of the Corps be heard.'
De Peyster led his Volunteers on the occasion of Burns's funeral.
In 1813, he published in Dumfries a book of verse, Miscellanies by an Officer, only three copies of which are still known to exist, all of them in America. According to Bulloch, this includes 'threnodies on Nelson, Sir John Moore, the Marquis of Cornwallis, and Mrs de Peyster's parrot'. He died as the result of an accident, and was given a large funeral. He is buried in St Michael's Churchyard. His wife died in 1827.
In Sketches from Nature, published in 1830, John McDiarmid, who knew de Peyster, wrote: 'No man ever possessed more of the principle of vitality. Old age, which had silvered his hair and furrowed his cheeks, made so little impression on his inner man that... up to... his last illness his mind appeared as active and his intellect as vigorous as they had ever been. When the weather permitted, he still took his accustomed exercise, and walked round the billiard table or bestrode his gigantic charger, apparently with as little difficulty as a man of middle age.'
From an Aberdeen Family of Literature: JMB's grandfather
With support from the National Fund for Acquisitions, the Department of English, and the Friends of Aberdeen University Library, in November we acquired a 239 page folio manuscript volume of considerable local and national literary interest: John Bulloch�s Shakespearian Readings, 1862-73, now MS 3614. John Bulloch (1805-82) was the father of John Bulloch, editor of Scottish Notes and Queries and author of George Jamesone, the Scottish Van Dyck (1885) and numerous other literary and historical pieces; and grandfather of John Malcolm Bulloch, alumnus of the University, journalist, critic, author, literary-, antiquarian- and genealogical researcher, and one of the major benefactors of the University in terms of research material. There is apparent evidence of the script having been used for typesetting of a series of articles in the Aberdeen Herald, which form the basis of the author�s Studies on the Text of Shakespeare; published with numerous emendations (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1878) after many years of collaboration with the editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare.
VARIOUS WORKS:
Territorial Soldiering in the North East of Scotland during 1759-1814 by John Malcolm Bulloch, New Spalding club, Aberdeen, 1914
Bulloch, J. M. The Contribution of the Town of Aberdeen to Volunteer Defence 1794-1808. [Aberdeen: Privately printed at the Aberdeen Daily Journal Office], 1915.
Clement Shorter's published writing also included several volumes on Napoleon, two works on George Borrow, a volume of essays and addresses, and a fragment of his autobiography. C. K. S.: an autobiography was edited by J. M. Bulloch and published posthumously in 1927.
THE BRITISH LIBRARY COLLECTIONS:
BULLOCH, John Malcolm [1867-1938]. (1)
Scope: Articles on Scottish genealogy and biography in the form of cuttings or offprints from newspapers and periodicals. Material dates from 1898 to 1937. 38 parts.
Location: 9915.pp.23.
BULLOCH, John Malcolm [1867-1938]. (2)
Scope: Articles on the Gordon Family in the form of cuttings or offprints from newspapers and periodicals. Material dates from 1898 to 1938. 40 parts.
Location: 09915.t.2.
BULLOCH, John Malcolm [1867-1938]. (3)
Scope: Articles on various subjects, extracted or reprinted periodicals, together with collections of newspaper and other cuttings. Material dates from 1916 to 1936. 21 parts.
Location: 012272.f.10.
BULLOCH, John Malcolm [1867-1938]. (4)
Scope: Six volumes of portraits and biographical details of some officers distinguished in the South African War. Material dates from around 1900.
Location: L.R.271.d.1.
BULLOCH, John Malcolm [1867-1938]. (5)
Scope: London and Aberdeen theatre programmes and related newspaper cuttings, dating from 1882 to 1938. Collected by J M Bulloch. With an index to the year 1901. With manuscript notes. 57 vols.
Location: 11797.c.1.
Bulloch, John Malcolm, 1867-
The art of extra-illustration, by J. M. Bulloch.
London, A. Treherne & co., ltd., 1903.
"How the Scots Traded in the Baltic" Aberdeen 1899 J.M. Bulloch
"The Baltic was the great Mecca for the Scots"