Looking back with Ian Scott on the life of James Bruce of Kinnaird - the Abyssinian Traveller

When Robert Burns passed through Falkirk district in 1787 he made the same visit to see the newly erected memorial which Bruce had raised a couple of years earlier over the grave of his wife Mary Dundas. Today it is his own memorial but at the time of Rabbie’s visit the great man was still living in Kinnaird House where he died aged 64, some seven years later.

Bruce was born in 1730 at Kinnaird and like aristocratic sons was sent to Harrow School where he excelled with one master saying he had an “amiable temper and an extraordinary aptitude for learning”. Both characteristics stood him in good stead as he embarked on an adventurous life first running a wine merchant’s business owned by the father of his first wife, which brought him to the continent in search of fine vintages and in the process learning several languages: he was said to have been fluent in 13 tongues including those of parts of Africa and the Orient.

The death of his wife after a short marriage set him off on his true vocation – exploration. At the invitation of Government Minister Lord Halifax he became Consul in Algiers where he began his travels through the deserts of north Africa meeting and living with berber tribesmen and later seeking out and finding the source of the Blue Nile. On his return home in 1773 his adventures soon became the stuff of legend and he was derided by many because his tales seemed so outlandish that people though he was making it up! However King George III was greatly impressed by what he heard though the King’s ‘favourite’ Fanny Burney was more taken by his great size- he was 6 foot 4 inches tall and ‘very corpulent’ . She said: “Mr Bruce’s grand air, gigantic height and forbidding brow awed everyone into silence – he is the tallest man you ever saw free of charge”. One biographer said of him “He could ride like an Arab, shoot partridge from the saddle at the gallop and faced danger with icy calm.”

The adventures were eventually published in 1790 but Rabbie’s visit three years earlier proves that Bruce’s fame was already widespread – he was far better known at the time than the poet. James Bruce had married his second wife Mary Dundas in 1776 and Burns commented in his journal that the fancy monument at her grave was raised by Bruce because of his guilty conscience at the way he had treated her! Coming from Rab that’s pretty rich!

Over the years the memorial lost many of its decorative features and stood outside the graveyard and away from the Bruce family enclosure. Today it can be seen in all its glory - a master work of the patternmakers and moulders of Carron Works decorated with plaques representing different aspects of his life in Africa. It is a tribute to their skills and to those of today’s craftsmen, and to the team from Falkirk Council and all their supporters, who have made this fantastic refurbishment possible.

James Bruce settled down at Kinnaird and, having survived the roughest conditions in Africa unscathed, died when he fell down the stairs while “handing a lady to her carriage”. An ignominious end to a life of amazing adventure.