Albert Morris

Two friends of The Scotsman’s beloved columnist remember the man they knew

Albert was a longtime member of the Scottish Arts Club; increasing blindness made him dependent on his beloved wife Theresa to get him to and from the club, until some three years ago when increasing frailty finally forced him to give up his membership, and that with great reluctance.

Called up six months before the war ended, he was, we believe, the last member of the club to have served in the Second World War; of his war service Albert would simply say, “A shot in anger was never fired by me, at me, or anywhere within miles of me.”

Albert joined the club in 1982, and as a very “clubbable” person, with dry humour and extensive literary knowledge, wasarealasset;itwasstillthen a “Gentleman’s Club”. When moves were made, a year or two afterwards, to open up membership to ladies, Albert, by no means a misogynist, viewed those moves with little enthusiasm; he was not alone. Financial pressures on the club, however, made the change necessary, and as a result the SAC survives today.

0 Albert at the Scottish Arts Club in a picture taken by the author

The ethos of a Gentleman’s Club was still very apparent there when I joined in 1998. At lunch on Tuesdays there was always one, and usually two tables of like-minded, retired professional gentlemen, quite happy with their own company; the ladies, all but one, understood and respected this.

Prior to lunch the gentlemen met in the Smoking Room upstairs for a drink and for wide-ranging discussion, which would continue over lunch and later, back upstairs, over coffee. Albert, a raconteur,

with an alert, well-stored and well-storied mind could be relied upon to identify, or provide, an apt quote or story. One discussion on old Edinburgh dance halls, led on to the Blue Danube Waltz, to the river Danube itself and then to Danube Street, in the New Town; cue Albert’s story concerning a date with a former girlfriend who lived in a bedsit there, next door to a house owned by a certain Mrs Noyce.

Sitting in his car outside, awaiting his girlfriend, as gentlemen did in those days, Albert, with the eye of a journalist, took in the scene; a warm summer evening in a quiet city street, few cars around in those days; a resident, surely an owner, painting his railings opposite the “popular address”. Then a taxi arrived, from which emerged, to Albert’s surprise, “a high heid yin” in the hierarchy of The Scotsman, very well “refreshed”.

Having paid off the taxi, the man immediately began knocking on the famous door, such was the urgency of his mission, and so disturbing the peaceful evening. After some minutes the painter paused, put down his brush, and entered his house.

He emerged with a chair in his hands and carried it over to the knocker, who thanked him, sat down and continued his knocking; the painter returning to his task. Minutes passed, the door was opened, and the man was pulled, literally pulled, inside; the painter retrieved his chair, and, calmly, took up his brush again.

Such a scene, said Albert, could only happen, in douce, respectable Edinburgh, an Edinburgh that Albert loved; anedinburghthat,likealbert, has gone.

ANDRA NOBLE