130 Years
The Real Mackay: Walter Scott’s Favourite Comedian
On 28th November 2024 we had a talk by Helen Graham on The Real Mackay: Walter Scott’s Favourite Comedian. She was introduced by our Hon. Secretary David McClay.
Helen Graham has worked as a knitwear designer and a filmmaker and has renovated several historic buildings. She has published articles and short stories, written a memoir, a poetry anthology and six volumes of family history books. The Real Mackay: Walter Scott’s Favourite Comedian, published in May 2024, is her first novel.
Helen has also composed and recorded numerous songs, directed several award-winning short films, co-founded a community film festival and raised a family.
Brought up in Oxfordshire, she now lives in Edinburgh.
Synopsis: The talk is about Helen’s ancestor, a famous comic actor called Charles Mackay widely known in his day as The Real Mackay, and about how she first heard of him and the family story claiming he was the origin of this well-known phrase. This talk also explores the idea that Mackay was Scott’s favourite comedian, perfectly embodying the characters Scott had created in his national dramas, especially Bailie Nicol Jarvie, whom he played over a thousand times.
Introduction
How I discovered Charles Mackay was my ancestor and was very likely to have been the origin of the phrase The Real Mackay; why I decided to write a book about his life. The journey of my research, the discovery of two portraits and a play about Mackay’s life called The Bailie.
The Real Mackay
An outline of how Charles Mackay came to be an actor, how he came to play the part of the Bailie in Rob Roy (among many other roles) and how he came to be part of the Edinburgh Theatre Royal’s stock company, turning the finances of the theatre around by his immediate and extraordinary popularity.
Walter Scott’s Favourite Comedian
How Scott was ‘electrified’ by Mackay’s performance in Rob Roy in Edinburgh, in February1819, and wrote to him as Jedediah Cleishbotham – marking the beginning of a long friendship. Extracts from other letters of Scott’s about Mackay, an account of the King’s visit in 1822 and of Charles Mackay playing the part of Meg Dodds in St Ronan’s Well, 1824.
Conclusion
An account of the unveiling of Sir Walter Scott as the writer of Waverley at the Theatrical Fund Dinner in 1827, and the credit Scott gave to Mackay for bringing his characters to life. Their friendship through letters continued until Scott’s final illness. A brief mention of Mackay’s ongoing career, his retirement and death, and an explanation of how the phrase eventually became a whisky advertising slogan.
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