A Long Stride. Nicholas Morgan
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1883 feued a substantial piece of ground in the same town from the Duke of Portland’s estate and began the construction of Crosbie Tower, a large mansion with substantial grounds to the designs of Gabriel Andrew. He also sought to develop the adjacent site: ‘I was just a little afraid that some speculator would put down some garrison next to Crosbie Tower which I did not at all care for.’66 Gardening was a passion for Walker (he was Honorary President of the Kilmarnock Horticultural Society) and he exhibited at local shows – in 1881 his ‘collection of stove and greenhouse plants and model flower garden (with rockery)’ were the focus of attention.67 At Troon he took great personal interest in the construction of an ‘Orchard House’ at Crosbie Tower (‘Which I can show my friends’); he wrote to Henry Norrie, an old Kilmarnock acquaintance who had been agent at the Union Bank there, ‘with regard to the vandas [a type of orchid] I must tell you that I have no accommodation for them. You are altogether mistaken about the Orchid Glass. It is an Orchard House I am erecting and will have plenty to fill it.’68 Both houses were also built with sufficient stable space to allow Alexander to indulge his interest in keeping and breeding cobs, both for show and for driving. His success at the former was not always fully acknowledged, as he complained after one particularly successful year: ‘The proprietor of the Kilmarnock Standard here is a very strong radical and because I take an interest in the other paper he did not even mention them; he has heard plenty about it since.’ It was also his pleasure not just to take his small coach down to his offices in the town from Piersland House, but also, like a free spirit, to take to the open road with his wife: ‘In a day or two we are off for a ten-day drive with the two cobbs, just our two selves with the coachman and a lad.’69
The house at Troon also allowed Alexander Walker to indulge in his passion for golf (‘the golf and the shooting I have takes up all of my spare time’).70 It was literally built next door to the newly established Troon Golf Club (now Royal Troon), of which he was a founder member, jealously guarding the interests of Troon and Kilmarnock members against the much-resented incursions of Glaswegians, who he criticised for trying to take over its management.71 Crosbie Tower, and Piersland House in Kilmarnock, were the focus for both domestic and business entertainment. For despite his occasional misanthropic outbursts it’s clear from his correspondence that, alongside his family, Alexander Walker relished nothing more than good company and companionship, and shared food and drink.72 Few visitors were discouraged, but sometimes for all its critical importance in oiling the wheels of the business the duty of hospitality took a heavy toll. ‘I am beginning to think that my health is of more importance to me than other people’s enjoyment,’ he complained. ‘We have had to do so much entertaining to Colonials & Cockneys etc.,’ he wrote in October 1885,
that we hardly knew what it was to have a quiet day to ourselves, the consequence being that I am not all the man I should like to be and I am determined that I shall never attempt to do anything of the kind again. It seems so different entertaining strangers whom you may never see again compared with your real friends.
Blaikie, aware of the ‘constant stream of visitors’ to Scotland, apologised that the irrepressible Robert McKilligin, of R. Marquis McKilligin & Co., a frequent visitor to the London office in search of sherry and a biscuit, and an important customer, ‘told me he intended to look you up as he is a chap not calculated to forward one’s work’. On the other hand a visit from Bernard Lewis, who held the company’s New Zealand agency, promised little distraction: ‘I daresay he will be a bit of a bore but we must get through it as best we can.’73 Family and friends were much preferred: ‘We had a great party last night, about 50 I suppose. They seemed to enjoy themselves well, which was all that was wanted. Kept me a little from sleeping but that was no matter’. ‘With the youngsters here,’ he wrote to William Calder early in January 1886, ‘all around it has been parties, parties, every night. I expect we shall have the result of it bye and bye.’ And generosity did not only extend to hosting. At Christmas in particular gifts of wine and whisky were carefully dispatched to friends and customers; game from the shoot he rented was sent to London ‘to distribute as judiciously as possible’; Kilmarnock cheese was a very special gift. But for all his love of whisky and good wines, of local cheese, freshly shot game, pork pies and even snails and frog’s legs, it was something far more simple that stole his heart, as he wrote to a friend at Christmas 1888: ‘It occurred to me that you might still have a Scotch tooth in your head and I have sent you a small box of Kilmarnock shortbread. I always tell my wife it is one of the shortest roads to heaven that I know of.’74
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