I was in The Salvation Army looking for 2nd hands books some time ago, and I saw two volumes of James Agate's autobiography, EGO 6 and EGO 7. I only knew his name vaguely, and thought perhaps he had something to do with Evelyn Waugh and his set. I left the books and looked up Agate in some of my own books when I got home. I only found one reference and one quotation, in a biography of John Osborne. The quotation - "A dirty mind is a perpetual feast" - amused me enough to go back for the books the next day. When I went back, I spotted a lovely copy of JA Froude's 'Caesar', which hadn't been there the previous day, an 1896 edition embossed with the gold stamp of The Collegiate School, Glasgow. It was a presentation copy given to someone named Robert K McMillan in 1899 'For distinguished excellence in Latin and French.' Well done him.
All this alone would be a bargain at 50p, but the thing that really thrilled me was when I picked it up, flicked through it, and found it full of photographic negatives, 17 of them, all at least as old as the book. Late Victorian ladies in their gardens, a gentleman at his desk, some kids on a lawn, a picture of George Square here in Glasgow. The negatives are four inches by three and a half inches and in amazing condition for their age, it was only looking at the images that convinced me of their age. I went to The Copy Bureau in Glasgow and simply put reversing the values in the photocopier, and enlarging them, they turned out incredibly well.
I got help at the Hidden Glasgow Forum identifying some of the people and places in the pictures. You can see all the photos at that forum:
http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/forums/vie ... =31&t=9041
A couple of the pictures remain mysterious. I wondered - presuming the buildings are still standing - if anyone here might have stumbled across them during wanderings about Scotland.
Here are the two I'd love to find:
The second one looks vaguely institutional, maybe a small school.
Now you see why I titled the thread the way I did, but any help at all would be not only appreciated but immensely impressive. I'm thinking of writing something about the family based upon the pictures I discovered.
