R. B. Cunningham Graham

Biography

Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham was, primarily, a public star and personality and only afterwards an artist. Born in London, England May 24, 1852, to Scottish parents William Cunninghame Bontine and Anne Elizabeth Fleeming Bontine (Gale, 133). Anne was the daughter of a Royal Naval officer. William, an officer in the Royal Scots Greys, was of radical political affiliation, and was heir to one of the largest estates in Scotland (Ardoch, Gartmore, and Finlaystone) (Gale, 134). Graham grew up primarily on his grandparents’ estate under the care of his mother, and thus had Spanish as his first language and English as his second (Cedric Watts). He studied at Harrow and also in Brussels for a time (Gale, 134). However, his most important education was discovered in his travels across Europe, Africa, South America, and Morocco where he was caught masquerading as a Muslim holy man in order to gain access to sites of religious importance to Islam (Gale, 135).  He traveled to South America before his 18th birthday and while there he drove and sold horses in a civil war for native revolutionaries and European expatriates (Gale, 134). He remained in South America as a rancher until a bout with Typhus sent the young man packing back to Europe (134), although he did return often to South America. His travels and adventures in South America had a heavy influence on his writing, which included histories, essays, short fiction, and travel writing.

As a young man, he paraded as an aristocrat but was humbled by his travels abroad (Cedric Watts). His passion was in horses but he was also involved in everything from politics to gold prospecting (Watts). He never had children but on October 24th, 1878 he eloped with Gabrielle de la Balmondière, who claimed to be the Chilean-born daughter of a French father and a Spanish mother (Gale, 135). Not until the 1980s did biographers learn that she was really Caroline Horsfall from Yorkshire (Cedric Watts). He is known to have been friends with and corresponded with Henry James, H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, and Ezra Pound (Watts). Caroline died in 1906 of tuberculosis and complications due to her smoking habits (Watts). Graham eventually joined her after his death in Buenos Aires, due to a bad case of pneumonia, on March 20th 1936, in the grounds of the Augustinian priory on the Lake of Menteith in April 1936 (Watts).

Much of Graham’s fiction features picturesque settings filled with bloody violence, or native women who are ravaged by Europeans, or prostitutes who are more moral than their clients (Gale, 136-8). His literary work spans poetry, prose, and travel fiction but he is most admired by critics such as Leonard Woolf and Ford Maddox Ford for his short fiction (136-8). Graham was the first socialist to win a spot in parliament and was a radical believer in Scottish nationalism, anti-imperialism, as well as being a fighter against racial and social injustice. He was an organizer, along with Parnell, of the demonstrations in Trafalgar square and was beaten and imprisoned in November 1887, on Bloody Sunday (Gale, 134). While his prose typically reflects these movements, others, such as “The Captive” and “A Braw Day,” show a mysterious and submerged narration that is reflective of the early years of his life as an adventurer.