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a well known posting house, with its entire equipment, furnishings, coach houses and stables was put on the market at the end of September (note 6). For James the schoolboy, it must have been a very trying and unsettling time and one is not surprised that, in all the circumstances, he was reluctant to continue at the local school. He appears to have made his home with his brother Robert Menzies who in that year had commenced business in the town as a draper and who showed a kindly interest in his youngest brother. Fortunately James had in his minister, the Rev. Andrew Gardiner, in whose church his father had been an office-bearer and who was a close family friend and who was also a trustee in the late Thomas Dewar’s estate, a wise and kind counsellor. Himself, “a classical scholar of no mean order”, Mr Gardiner appreciated the outstanding ability of his young charge and persuaded him to go for a year to The Dollar Institution and not without some difficulty did he also persuade his co-trustees to make available the funds necessary for the lad’s maintenance as a boarder at the school. There, in the house of Dr Lindsay, he found an excellent “home from home” under the supervision of a genial Christian man and also, in Dr Lindsay the dominie, a superb mathematician and an unusually brilliant teacher under whose tuition James was to make most remarkable progress. Nothing finer could have happened to the boy. Between teacher and pupil a very close bond of friendship grew up. James Dewar was spoken of as “the doctor’s favourite pupil” and the pupil cherished a life-long sense of gratitude to his mentor. When, in 1907, he returned to his former school, now as Sir James Dewar and a scientist of European renown, he began his address to the pupils with a eulogy of Dr Lindsay “under whose roof it had been my great good fortune to reside and who could only be described as a great man. It was entirely due to his influence and under his direction that my bent in life was directed toward the side which it has been“ – and then he added with his customary modesty when speaking about himself – “and probably the only side where I should have succeeded”. Nor was he alone in appreciating Dr Lindsay’s knowledge and teaching skill. Sir David Gill, one year senior to James at school and later to become Astronomer Royal at Capetown, had this to say about Dr Lindsay’s method of instruction; “I shall never forget my first lesson in Euclid. My word, that was a revelation! . . . We were taken through the whole axioms in Euclid and asked to deny them if we could. Lindsay made us feel as if we were finding out things for ourselves and that we were really growing Euclids that might advance to knowledge. There was at once a strong practical interest in the whole business. So it came about that the whole thing was one of deepest interest to us from beginning to end. In chemistry it was extraordinary how, absolutely without a laboratory, he continued to instruct us in it. Lindsay got hold of me and all my soul was wrapt up in him and what he had to teach me.” In James Dewar’s time John Milne was the Rector. “Dignified, genial, immaculately dressed and always a perfect gentleman”, says a former pupil, “he occasionally taught the classics and did it well”. There was Mr Kirk, a man of wide erudition, who taught Latin but who knew also several other languages including Hebrew and Hindustani (note 7). Dr Clyde, who later went to Edinburgh Academy where he taught Latin and Greek, was a charming man who at Dollar taught French, German and Italian. Mr Douglas, who had succeeded Mr Peter Steven as writing master in 1855, was known to the pupils as “Black John”. He was swarthy of countenance and inky of finger and though an excellent instructor he had a most irascible temper. His house was exactly opposite Dr Lindsay’s and on dark winter nights the boarders in Dr Lindsay’s house would tie a long thin string, which was carried across the street from the window of their boarding house, to the knocker of Black John’s door. Then, a knock would be heard at the door. A servant would open it to find no one there. Another knock followed, with similar consequences and yet another, until Black John himself would emerge in a tearing rage and rush around the garden looking for the culprit among the buses, to the delighted amusement of the boys opposite who remained quite unsuspected – James Dewar, one imagines, being among “the innocents”! Reflecting on his schooldays, Sir James, who presided on Thursday, 24th May 1906, at the first “Old Dollar Boys’ Dinner” south of the Tweed, in the Great Central Hall in London, said of his teachers: “They were not only teachers but men to whom the pupils could look back with confidence for guidance and example in the broader issues of life.” His brief career at The Dollar Institution terminated on 3rd August 1859 when the annual examination, attended by external examiners, took place to be followed by the prize-giving. The two principal examiners were Professors Pillans... NEXT PAGE
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