John Malcolm Bulloch
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John Malcolm Bulloch (1867–1938) was a Scottish journalist and magazine editor, known also as a genealogist, and a literary and theatre critic.[1]
He was born at Old Machar, Aberdeen 26 May 1867, the elder son of John Bulloch (1837–1913) and his wife Mary Malcolm (1835–1899); William Bulloch was his younger brother.[2][3][4] His father edited Scottish Notes and Queries, and wrote a biography of George Jamesone.[1]
After attending the grammar schools of New Aberdeen and Old Aberdeen, Bulloch was a student at King's College, Aberdeen.[5][6] He graduated M.A. in 1888;[3] and began his career as a journalist on the Aberdeen Free Press, aged 22, making an early reputation for vers de société and antiquarian research.[1][5][7]
Moving to London in 1893, Bulloch had an Aberdeen send-off in the form of a smoking concert at Mann's Hotel.[8] He took on an editorial position at The Sketch.[7] During his early days in London he lodged with a group of Scots, including his brother William who was a medical colleague of Arthur Keith, a friend of the family; the brothers' maternal uncle "Malcy", an architect; and two journalists, William Andrew MacKenzie (1870–1942), recommended in 1895 as a poet by John Davidson to John Lane, and J. G. George. This was at 19 Calthorpe Street in Clerkenwell.[9][10][11]
By September 1895 Bulloch had moved to Pall Mall.[12] In the early years of the 20th century he married an English wife.[13]
Editor of illustrated journalism
Bulloch was then assistant editor of The Sphere, under Clement Shorter.[14] The "new illustrated journalism" of the 1890s was defined by Bulloch as "the art of treating pictorially every aspect of the passing pageant of life that can be illustrated at all", attributing it to Shorter; who at least concurred with Bulloch.[15][16] William Ingram, a proponent of Melton Prior and Frederic Villiers, made public criticism of Shorter's choice of artists in 1899.[16] By this point halftone photographs were coming to outnumber engravings in illustrated papers.[17]
From 1909 to 1924 Bulloch edited The Graphic.[18] It had established a pictorial style in the late 1860s, with Luke Fildes as staff artist.[19] Bulloch succeeded Comyns Beaumont, who called him "a stumpy, gnarled, thick-set son of Caledonia", a "crusted Tory", and "one of the least-fitted men" to edit it.[14]
Scots language
Bulloch became noted in London for his "unquenchable" Doric dialect.[20] He did not approve of what he called "Albyn Place English" taught in some Aberdeen schools.[21] He championed the Scots language poetry of Mary Symon and Jean Baxter.[22]
The Vernacular Circle, of the Burns Club of London, was set up in 1920 for discussions of the future of the Scots language (known variously, e.g. as Lallans or Braid Scots). Bulloch became president, with William Will, another Scottish journalist, as Secretary. It involved Bulloch in controversy with the poet Christopher Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid). The latter's views on Scots were close to those of Lewis Spence, and he had taken to heart the strictures and mockery of George Gregory Smith on dialect Scots, who had written in 1919 of "the surprising travesty called 'Braid Scots'".[23][24]
Grieve took aim at "the pedantic patriots of London".[23] He objected to literary use of Doric: writing that for the most part "the Doric tradition serves to condone mental inertia — cloaking mental paucity with a trivial and ridiculously over-valued pawkiness".[25] He hit out, after Bulloch lectured to the Vernacular Circle on Doric and diminutives: "Dr. Bulloch's plea for Doric infantilism is not worthy of the critical consideration of nursery governesses".[26] He objected to Bulloch's praise of Mary Symon, and overall to what he saw as misrepresentation of Robert Burns and his poetry.[27][28][29] He did see a function for the Doric: rounding out flat kailyard school characters with "Scottish psychology" drawn from "unconscious" traces in Doric literature.[30] Grieve's Vernacular Circle lecture, "Unexpressed Elements in Scottish Life", was excluded from The Scottish Tongue (1924), the published form of the lecture series.[31]
Critic
In 1924 Bulloch became literary critic for Allied Newspapers Ltd.[32] He wrote between 500 and 600 book reviews annually.[31] He had long had a reputation as "first-nighter", having by 1917 "seen 1,746 plays of more than one act, the programmes of which he keeps bound and indexed."[33] He became known as a theatre critic.[1]
Death
Bulloch died at Seaford, East Sussex on 6 March 1938.[2] A service for him was held at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street.[7] A memorial was placed in the Library of King's College, Aberdeen.[6]