Edinburgh's best museum

          Robert Louis Stevenson was once told by his doctor ‘not to have his hair cut unless both the state of his health and the weather were propitious’. Looking at the portrait in front of me, by the American painter John Singer Sargent, I conclude that it was sound advice. The great Scottish writer cuts an alarmingly thin figure, his legs spindly and his wrist and fingers positively skeletal.  

          This striking print is found in the fascinating Writers’ Museum, which is located in a fine four hundred year old house in a quadrangle off the Mound, in the heart of the city. The building was bought and renovated at the end of the nineteenth century by the Earl of Rosebery, and donated to the city for use as a museum. The literary theme extends into the adjacent courtyard, where quotes from Scottish writers are etched into paving slabs.  

          My favourite section is in the basement, which is devoted to Stevenson and reached via a very low staircase. Romance and adventure burst from the black and white pictures of the gaunt Edinburgh native and the far-flung destinations he visited on his travels: Honolulu, Sydney, San Francisco, the Gilbert Islands, Samoa. 

          These monochrome images open up an exotic and vanished world. In one photograph an unsmiling Hawaiian missionary sits against a jungle backdrop, flanked by his equally serious wife. ‘I have never known a more engaging creature’, Stevenson wrote of him, but it’s very hard to imagine this stern man slapping backs and cracking jokes.

          There are silhouettes of men hauling copra from a distant three-mast ship through the shallows to a beach on Butaritari in the Gilberts. Another picture shows the wide bay of Apia, capital of Samoa, where low houses line the shore before a fringe of tropical trees, and a dark range of hills looms in the background.  

          As a fan of Stevenson, the displays on Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns hold less appeal for me. Still, they feature interesting curios, like Scott’s chess board and pipe, and aged editions of their books. There is also a somewhat ghoulish plaster cast of the top half of Burns’ skull. Attractive paintings and engravings grace the walls, and there are pictures of the Scott Monument during its construction. 

          Recordings of passages from their books play as you study the exhibits; in the basement, you can enjoy an excerpt from Treasure Island as you peer at photographs of Stevenson lounging on a veranda with the Hawaiian king, or sitting up in bed playing the flageolet in ‘a grim little wooden shanty’. 

          It’s a great place, but I do have a suggestion for the curator: get rid of the centuries-old locks of hair! Does anyone really want to see these grim remnants of the departed?

Málaga's English Cemetery

‘Ingles?’

          The man who asks this question has clearly taken stock of my ungrammatical Spanish and sun-starved skin. He’s elderly and has the deeply tanned face of one who has spent his life in warm climes. His eyes hint at a great intelligence, and I’m not especially surprised when I discover later that he was once the British government’s representative in this handsome coastal city. Now he oversees Málaga’s English Cemetery, a tranquil spot near the sea, hidden away behind a curtain of vibrant purple bougainvillea. 

          I like cemeteries, which I guess puts me in the minority. They are peaceful, and full of mystery and hidden tales. Like horror stories, they can exert a magnetic and paradoxical fascination. This explains my decision to explore even the overgrown, topmost extremity of this arid and thirsty burial ground. A strange pull led me up there, and it wasn’t until I reached a grave whose covering slab was cracked wide open that I beat a hasty retreat downhill. 

          This cemetery is full of stories. A shrouded urn atop a column coloured a soft shade of orange marks the final resting place of a man who rose from poverty in Berwick-upon-Tweed to become British consul in Málaga. It was thanks to the efforts of this long-forgotten diplomat, one William Mark, that this beautiful graveyard was founded. 

          When Mark became consul in 1824 deceased Protestants were simply taken down to the beach by the Mediterranean and buried upright in the sand. He wrote that his 'blood curdled at the thought' of his countrymen being treated in so infamous a fashion, and his determined lobbying led to the founding of the English Cemetery in 1831. It was the first in Spain.  

          Another obscure figure, Robert Boyd of Londonderry, is commemorated on a cracked monument nearby. He ‘fell at Málaga in the scared cause of liberty’, or so the inscription tells us. After a bit of research I discovered that this freedom fighter was a sometime soldier who poured his inheritance into an ill-starred insurrection against the Spanish king in 1831. His comrades are buried beneath an obelisk in Plaza de la Merced, one of the city’s most famous squares. 

          You don’t have to be a history aficionado (or a cemetery enthusiast) to enjoy the graveyard though. An abundance of exotic flora is on display: palm trees; cacti; false pepper trees, with their drooping clusters of berries; the brilliant orange flowers of the cape honeysuckle; and an unknown (at least to me) and nightmarish green plant whose tentacles protrude menacingly. Two pines catch the eye, their boughs stretching out at crazy angles above the oldest section, a small enclosure of flaking white walls called the Inner Cemetery.

          I walk downhill, past the white lions and gabled lodge that mark the entrance to the grounds, and find myself once more on busy Avenida de Pries. Gone is the peace of the graveyard, where I could even hear the soft breeze blowing in from the sea. I walk to a restaurant close to the bull ring, order a plate of gambas pil pil and a bottle of Alhambra beer. Suddenly the English Cemetery seems very far away.