Matthew Flinders was in charge of the expedition, a Lincolnshire man. He married John Franklin’s aunt, was captivated by Robinson Crusoe and probably realised, even then, that he would be disappointed by human nature and the legitimised deceit of powerful men. Flinders lies in the no-man’s land where, if you are forced to retain your integrity amid human folly, you stand alone, for no-one is brave enough to stand with you. Flinders’ cat accompanied him on all his voyages, a symbol of quiet diplomacy and tact. Like Flinders, he became the victim of unscrupulous men who lived only with their fears.

The artistic genius of the expedition was an Austrian, Ferdinand Bauer. The colours in his paintings of plant life are so extraordinary, they are almost more beautiful than the plants themselves, and he discovered their essence. He only sketched them in the field. He reproduced the colours later from an intricate numerical coding system and, I suspect, from a lateral mind. Like his contemporary Goethe, he found a place somewhere between precision and imagination, between art and science, and produced the impossible.

Robert Brown had studied, at one point or another, both art and medicine, in a time when an interest in one did not preclude the other. He became a botanist, a logical slot between two worlds, and eventually founded the botanical department at London’s Natural History Museum. When I asked about the department at the Museum’s front desk, I was told it contained very little of interest, and I discovered that its slot had been replaced by a theme park dedicated to Charles Darwin, a more fashionable scientist. Brown catalogued the plant life of Terra Australis, and gave names to Bauer’s images. On their return, the two joined their colours and words into a monumental publication which sapped their strength, and which the world did not appreciate.

The publications of all three men were commercial failures. Their genius languishes largely in museum store cupboards, but their story is one to inspire all those who dare to read between the lines. Perhaps, one day, the story will bring the images back out of the cupboards.

Is too much a mountain, seen from the foot, or a chasm seen from the edge? Is it an excess of the mundane or a longing for it? Are we subject to it or do we seek it, and where do we draw the line or write the rules? Is too much yours or is it mine? Can it make us right or call us wrong, and when are we ever safe from it?

And what is too little? Is it a lack or a fear of commitment, a failure to respond or to rise when rising is called for? Is it the mundane or a facet of it, creeping into the rules and greeting us each morning before breakfast? Is it forgotten or too much remembered, and where does it begin and end?

Is too little a half finished dream, interrupted by a call to arms? Is it a half-hearted plea or an unanswered prayer, and is it the lie we tell or the truth we seek? Is it a weak line or incongruity? Is too little yours or is it mine?

And were I to hazard a guess, the answer may lie in whether we fear too much or too little, and dream too little or too much?

More disturbing, however, was the person’s successful appeal to the fear and indifference of those around them, and the imposition of a moral bann on beauty and respect. Perhaps they thought that, in some sordid way, a glorification of the mundane would make their own inadequacies less visible and that unopposed bullying would shorten the long road to success. When those in their vicinity became aware that there may be something unpalatable in this apparently contagious behaviour, the general reaction was to feed it, in case it should turn in on everyone else.

My own misfortune was to see it differently and – a little naively – to hope that if I showed respect – however little there was around me – the beauty would return. The trail of destruction, however, continued unchecked, and even a little bostered by its apparent success, so that I was forced to turn and run, leaving the beauty hopelessly subject to the mundane. I went on a long journey to look for it somewhere else.

In time, the sadness has lessened, but the destruction has not, and the threshold of powerlessness has shifted a little for the worse. I remain perturbed by a curiously persistent question: “Why does everyone apparently prefer the ugliness to the beauty? Where does respect hide?” If this is not the case, and the people of the daily world are simply hiding behind their fears, perhaps we should expect beauty and respect to return at length from their exile, or at least occasionally to show their faces in an uncommon act of honour? Where, amongst all the mayhem, have they gone in the theme park of today’s mercenary world?

The Buddha apparently once said, “Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.” What he failed to say is that its success resides in the sad fact that everyone falls for it.

Discover the magic of Scottish fiction through The Books and the Sea, a collection of short stories, Scottish literature with a maritime flavour, written by Jane Coutts.

I am reminded, however, of all the great men and women of history and antiquity whose ideas had to wait a century or two to gain ground, and who, during their own lifetime, suffered the derision and criticism of more powerful interests or of louder people with considerably less talent than themselves. Galileo, Bruno, Lister. These were the braver ones who did not give up, but it cost them their lives, their sanity or, at the very least, the recognition they deserved during their own lifetime. It is, however, remarkable how good ideas will not lie down and die. They have a habit of living on, because somewhere in the root of them is something truly great.

It seems to be an unfortunate characteristic of good ideas that they carry the inherent risk of incurring the wrath of others. Someone, somewhere, will feel threatened by them, and the louder the threatened shout, the more they carry popular opinion with them. For some reason, members of the public love to be told what they should and should not like, and eventually, they come to believe that their opinions are, in fact, their own. They rarely stop to think that they have been presented with such a limiting selection of choices that they could not fail to choose the one they were supposed to.

Unfortunately, it is ultimately the fickle nature of popular opinion which determines right and wrong, truth and falsehood, acceptability and rejection. Popular opinion, as marketing magnates, politicians and successful scientists well know, is very easily bought with any combination of money, favours, flamboyance, self confidence and a round of drinks. “But,” whispered Galileo under his breath as he was tortured into renouncing his views: “…still it moves.”

Discover the magic of Scottish fiction through The Books and the Sea, a collection of short stories, Scottish literature with a maritime flavour, written by Jane Coutts.

Somewhere in the depths of antiquity, did someone dream up a definitive answer to schizophrenia or cancer, and did someone invent a simple system for making sure everyone found a comfortable place for themselves in life. Did someone pass a virtual law of tolerance and patience, and did someone once catch a glimpse of the infinite without needing to define it?

And when the idea appeared, in a single moment as someone was walking down the road or finishing their work for the day or burying their children, did it vanish again into the ether for lack of a door into the world, or for being too far ahead of its time or because, just that day, everyone was too busy to listen? Like energy, do ideas simply change shape and come back around, or do they die an unequivocal death?

How many great ideas are doomed to obscurity because someone dislikes them, or because they get in the way of someone else’s work? How many ideas never make the light of day because they are too quiet and unassuming, and no-one has the vision to see how important they are? How many books are not read because people are afraid someone might see them? How many ideas fade away because we live in a society where most people prefer to follow the crowd, and the loudest and often the most distasteful is given the most credibility?

How many times do we miss by just an instant?

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas. Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, 1913

Discover the magic of Scottish fiction through The Books and the Sea, a collection of short stories, Scottish literature with a maritime flavour, written by Jane Coutts.

A quiet, unassuming man at the back of the hall stands up from his seat and excuses himself to those alongside him, asking them politely if they would mind letting him past. His movements gradually arouse the attentions of the men of standing, who become more and more prominent the closer they are to the stage. The quiet man walks from the back of the hall towards these great men at the front, a little self-consciously, but aware that, for a brief moment in time, they are not why he is there.

As he approaches the stage, he sees, out of the corner of his eye, a man waiting for him on the stage itself. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he recalls how many times he was ridiculed, how many times no-one took him seriously and on occasions, laughed. He remembers, though he would rather not, how many times he had to find from the very depths of his being the last drops of energy to explain why his ideas were so important, and how he needed to be taken seriously. He has never felt brave. He has only known the consequences for mankind if he gave up on his ideas, and he has stumbled many times on the way to the foot of this stage.

As he climbs the steps, he notices the man on the stage looking straight at him, and he is old and infirm, and inclining his head forwards slightly in encouragement. Spontaneously, which is rare at such a formal gathering, the great men in the audience begin to applaud, and one by one, row by row, they stand up from their seats until each and every one of them is loud in their recognition. The quiet man walks across the stage towards the old man waiting there, and when they meet, for the first time, something has changed in the world. They embrace each other warmly, and then stand back for a moment.

Neither of them hears the applause, which they had once – earlier in their lives – so longed for, because they each have something to say to each other. Amongst the clamour, which is deafening by now, they stand before one another and say, one in French and the other in English,

“Thank you.”

Discover the magic of Scottish fiction through The Books and the Sea, a collection of short stories, Scottish literature with a maritime flavour, written by Jane Coutts.

Is it something we give to ourselves or to each other, and who decides who shall have it and who shall not? Does it come and go with the tide and each change of ethos, or is it loyal to the seasons and discerning? Does it last forever or until it is broken?

Is respect skin-deep or does it take account of question marks and things it does not understand? Does it have rules or can it be created according to circumstance? Is it visible and does it have a name? Must we know in order to respect or not know, and must we know why? Can we respect others if we do not respect ourselves, and can we fail to respect when we are not perfect? Is it a matter of courtesy and good manners or a human need?

Is respect a given, more or less, or is it subject to fashion? Is it transient and determined by flights of fancy, or does it endure regardless, from a desire to see everything in the best light, because there is already enough suffering in the world. Should respect be withheld like a prize or given freely as a human gesture, and will we notice if it disappears? Will it notice if we disappear?

Jane Coutts, who recently wrote Merinder’s House, Scottish literature with a European flavour.

In this place, she put into words what so many have since struggled to understand, the beauty inherent in the contradictions of the human mind when it is at peace with itself, and at odds at the same time, and when it teeters on the edge of a melancholy where human judgement holds no sway. To do so, she gave us a privileged glimpse of an imagination which did not need us, the reader. Emily Brontë told us what she saw whether we were listening or not, and did not write so that we would hear. If she had, she would never have been able to produce the poetry of Wuthering Heights.

She created a wild landscape which is at once a moor in Yorkshire and the eternal depths of a mind which was most at ease with the darker corners where no-one is looking. It is a place not to be trifled with, but neither can it be avoided if we are to encounter life at its best. So many people live their whole lives without ever noticing it, or shutting it out, and are the worse, I think. For this dark place is, for good or ill, our imagination, and it does not come free.

How clear she shines! How quietly
I lie beneath her guardian light;
While heaven and earth are whispering me,
“To-morrow, wake, but dream to-night.”

…While gazing on the stars that glow
Above me, in that stormless sea,
I long to hope that all the woe
Creation knows, is held in thee!

(Emily Brontë/Ellis Bell)

Jane Coutts, who recently wrote Merinder’s House, Scottish literature with a European flavour.

In keeping with one or two of the better travel writers, I have always sought out the absurd rather than the ordinary, and I have rarely been disappointed. In my youth, I had the pleasure of encountering a one-room log cabin on a remote mountain, built to house only a grand piano. I met someone who had lost their memory and was retracing their steps to try and find it. On train journeys and coastal boats I heard stories that lasted a whole day and a whole night, and in all these years, I have never forgotten them.

I have seen places where the sun never sets and ones where it does not rise, and sometimes too, I have spoken with people who do not move or who move too much. I have seen houses perched on the edge of extinction and islands made by the sea overnight. In some of the places, I have even stayed a while.

I do not believe I have ever yet visited a place where anyone lives up to the generic stereotype, for if they were to do so, they would be so much of an exception as to give a whole new meaning to the word. Usually, because I am, myself, on a journey, I meet only those who are curious, or undefined, because that is the nature of journeys. The stories they generate last for ever.

Jane Coutts, who recently wrote Merinder’s House, Scottish fiction with a European flavour.

Thankfully, I was tucked away in a remote corner no-one much cared about, so I was able to be a little more inventive in what I did with all the photographs and pieces of other people’s past, and not worry too much about upsetting the fashionable versions of history which encourage homogeneity and a glorification of the mundane over the unusual. Instead, I was – for a little while until it began to show signs of being successful – able to ask questions.

The questions invariably led down unpopular routes. Sometimes they asked whether it was realistic to assume someone was born good because they were poor, or bad because they were born rich. They questioned the convenient perception of small communities, and asked whether everyone in them really wanted to live the same way or should want the same things. On occasion, they asked whether we were looking in the right places for the answers we were seeking from the past, and on other occasions, they simply asked people to ask questions.

Inevitably, this cast a shadow of doubt over all the corporate images, and challenged the authorities and even the mavericks, because some stories will not lie down to be processed or made to stand still, no matter how much people pay for them. Then one day, out of the blue, someone asked me a question I could not answer truthfully without compromise, and I became aware that most questions do not generate answers, only more questions.

Jane Coutts, who recently wrote Merinder’s House, Scottish fiction with a European flavour.