Iconic father of Liverpool’s culture

Jul 29 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

Iconic father of Liverpool’s culture

When musing on Liverpool’s culture, our thoughts turn to the masters of baton, string and wind, letters, clay and canvas, but who was our first Renaissance man? David Charters reports

MAYBE, while breaking the cold earth on his father’s potato patch, the boy started believing that his town would one day match the cultural glories of Florence.

Well, we’re all loyal to the marrow of our souls, but surely, even in moments of swollen pride, we would accept, with a resigned shake of the head, that Liverpool remains a whisker behind that blessed city on the River Arno.

There, such chaps as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Donatello spread their beauty, others filled their lungs with romantic song, while the quills of poets quivered, all beneath the Crosses of faith piercing Heaven from the great churches below.

Many still believe it was the greatest flowering of culture in history.

But if you dream, you should dream high. In a later age, William Roscoe was dedicated to the proposition that the banks of the Mersey should be as noble as those of the Arno.

He resented outsiders, who mocked Liverpool as a port, where the lust for money had blocked out the lights of art and learning. But that need not always be the case.

In other towns and cities, prosperity had given rise to culture.

It is true that Liverpool has never quite realised the magnificence of Florence, but, as all students of history should know, the money for most of our galleries, theatres, libraries, and other places of learning, came from local benefactors, whose riches were drawn from the port and its surrounding industries.

But the smiling author with a dancing glint on her spectacles is dedicated to another proposition – that Roscoe was the father of Liverpool’s culture, the first of many “iconic” figures down the years, who sensed that Liverpool could not become a great international city on trade alone.

Some would argue that the people of literature, music, art and sport are now held in higher esteem than the merchant princes and industrialists.

And, of course, Liverpool, as the European Capital of Culture, is in the midst of another renaissance, which, until very recently, had been running alongside the improvement in Merseyside’s economy.

But would that have been possible without Roscoe (1753-1831)? From his influence grew the notion of the Liverpool gentleman, a Manchester man, a Bolton chap and a Wigan fellow.

The question interests Arline Wilson, an old girl of Blackburne House school, Liverpool, whose book, William Roscoe: Commerce and Culture, has just been published.

“The Liverpool merchants possibly felt superior to the Manchester industrialists,” she says. “Liverpool today is trying to re-brand itself after suffering some negative stereotypes, which were more media-myth than reality I would say, coming from Liverpool. But it is interesting to me that at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Liverpool, was again trying to change its image after suffering from negative stereo-typing from its association the slave trade.”

The image suffered not only because of the abhorrent practice of shipping, branding and selling people, but because quick profits seemed to be at the heart of the port’s being.

Somehow, Liverpool had to present itself as a more gentlemanly place to counter the impression abroad that it was brash and vulgar – full of adventurers, chancers and dealers, but few people of learning.