McManus 168

Minister and liberal churchman

In his 42 years at School Wynd Church, George Gilfillan preached a liberal and progressive version of the Christian faith. His attempts to reconcile religion with liberal thought and scientific progress brought censure from the Dundee UP presbytery. Nevertheless, his ‘Sunday Evening Lectures’ , popular sermons on contemporary affairs, attracted large crowds and he was one of the first Scottish clergymen to preach on Darwinism and biblical criticism.  Gilfillan’s  belief in self-improvement attracted a largely working class congregation of men and women committed to individual and social progress. Gilfillan and his parishioners were active in the Watt Institution and on the Free Library committee.^[9]  School Wynd Church was at the forefront of promoting causes  such as the abolition of slavery, hosting the visits of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe to Dundee, Gilfillan delivering the civic addresses..^[10] After Gilfillan’s sudden death in August 1878, huge crowds of factory workers, ‘the largest concourse of mourners that ever honoured the remains of a townsman’ followed his funeral cortege to Balgay Hill. ^[11]His commitment to  religious, cultural and material progress was continued in the founding of the Gilfillan Memorial Church in Whitehall Crescent in 1887.^[12]

Gilfillan and the platform

‘Gilfillan of Dundee’ was a prominent figure in the public life of Dundee, and well known across Britain, as a popular lecturer on literary and cultural topics, and as a public orator, in support of the reforming movements which dominated the mid-Victorian period. In Dundee, Gilfillan lectured at the Watt Institution, addressed literary and benevolent societies, and led public commemorations of cultural  events, notably the Burns centenary in 1859, and the Shakespeare Tercentenary in 1864. ^[13]Through his association with John Leng and the Liberal establishment in Dundee, Gilfillan addressed numerous public meetings. He was notable for his impassioned oratory in the cause of justice and freedom from tyranny, for example in the Anti- Corn law and Anti-Slavery campaigns of the 1840s; in support of Kossuth, Garibaldi and the Italian liberation in the 1850s-60s;^[14] and as a committed supporter of the drive for political reform. In addition to grand public events, Gilfillan was noteworthy for his willingness to speak at  workers’ meetings, unlike other local clergy.^[15]

Literary critic and patron

Gilfillan’s career as an author was launched in 1845 with his Galleries of Literary Portraits, sketches of  contemporary authors, followed by Bards of the Bible (1851), Martyrs and Heroes of the Scottish Covenant (1852) and numerous works on the literary and religious heritage of the British Isles over the next thirty years. ^[16]Gilfillan was  a regular contributor to the Scottish periodical press as critic and book reviewer, for example in the Dundee Advertiser. His own verse epic, Night: A Poem (1867),  met with lukewarm critical response, and his literary reputation rested on his criticism, editing the forty eight volumes of the Nichol’s Library Edition of the Poets (1853-60) and The National Burns, published posthumously in 1879.^[17]

Many aspiring authors, especially from the working classes, sought Gilfillan’s patronage  and help with publication, a duty he willingly undertook as part of his belief in ‘self- culture’ . He prefaced, edited and publicised their work in book reviews, and sponsored worker poets for charitable grants. Two of the best known of ‘Gilfillan’s poets’ in Dundee were Ellen Johnstone, known as the ‘Factory Girl’, and William McGonagall, who composed his first ‘ode’ in honour of his hero:

‘Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee/There is none can you excel;/You have boldly rejected the Confession of Faith,/And defended your cause right well/The first time I heard him speak/’Twas in the Kinnaird Hall,/Lecturing on the Garibaldi movement,/As loud as he could bawl’.^[18]